thought the lens

I wrote an artical for the PRT newsletter last week. I am going to post it here. Hope you like.

THROUGH THE LENS
I look at the world in 1/250th of a second slice or a single click of the shutter. In that instant I am able to capture a moment in time and record it into history. As the photographer of Kapisa Provincial Reconstruction Team, I tell a story that encompasses multiple cultures, generations of people and a multinational force working to bring a better life to a war torn country.

Life over here is foreign to what we see in the U.S. and it makes it hard to comprehend sometimes. As I watch a child drink out of the gutter or sit in the dirt because he has nowhere else to sit, I see my role as a photographer expand. I am not just telling the PRT’s story; I am telling theirs. The PRT and the local government work together to change the quality of life for the people of Afghanistan and I have the opportunity to capture that.

Some people may think that all I do as a photographer is snap some pictures, right? Wrong. Capturing imagery is only a small aspect of what I do. The images that I collect ultimately become the face of the PRT; they are what people see and how people connect to us. Whether it is a civil engineer inspection or a key leader engagement during a shura, the world sees it though my lens and it is those images that tell the world what we, as a PRT, are doing here after 9 years.

My photos also provide a glimpse into the life of the PRT, which allows family and friends to better understand the importance of the mission we’re supporting while away from home.

Capturing that critical moment of time isn’t as easy as it seems. In order to produce the best image possible, I need to understand what someone is doing and why they are doing it. I love it when I have the time to work with an individual before I photograph them and gain that feeling. I feel that by seeing something though someone else’s eyes your photographs can convey emotion.

Emotion is a huge aspect of photography and can ultimately
turn a “good image” into a “great image.” The emotion conveyed within an image allows you to see the character and personality of person, and personality is something that the Afghans have a lot of.

While working with the Afghans I have found two groups of people that have emotion flowing in their eyes. The children who have not had the rule of the Taliban over them and the elders who lived though the soviet occupation, civil war, Taliban occupation and Operation Enduring Freedom.

The children here live in conditions that we would consider to be primitive at best and yet they have such life in their eyes. The elders have been through so much in their life and it is worn on their faces, but they still have hope for the future of their home, their children and their country. I think of the children when we are completing a school or working on a road that will connect a village with the district capital and hope that what I am doing is going to play a part in the rebuilding of this province.

My time with the PRT is short, but the images that I produce will live for the unforeseen future. My goal is to document this history with my images so hopefully in 15 or 20 years these photos will become pages of history that the children here will be able to look at and reminisce about similarly to how we look back at photo albums created by our own families. If I can change the life of even one person over here with my photography, then my time here will have been a success.

Photography Quick Tips

One of my favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis, has coined the phrase “the best camera is the one you have on you.” The key is that you just have to get out and shoot. Here are three quick tips that will help improve your imagery.

Change your point of view — Most of the world sees things from 5’4” to 6’2” off the ground. So if you take a picture from a normal standing position, it’s how everyone normally sees it, so get high or low. Step up on a chair (one that doesn’t swivel or have wheels) or a ladder to look down on those subjects. Get to the ground and shoot with the camera at knee level or lower to provide you a unique look at the world.

Fill the frame — There are times that you should have the person in the photo be really small like your family at Mount Rushmore, but there are many time that you need to cut out all the dead space in the picture. By filling the frame you make your subject prominent and you can remove clutter and unwanted stuff in the background. This can be done in a few different ways. The first is with the camera zoom, which will allow you to appear closer without actually moving. The other way it to simply move around and that leads me into my next and final tip for today.

Move Around — One of the keys to good photography is to be flexible both physically and figuratively. Standing in one position and shooting images is possible and can sometimes be the only way to shoot depending on the situation, but you really need to get to the action. Don’t be afraid to get up and close to the subject that you are photographing.