“This is what I wish people would have taught me. Not just the technical part of making a picture but what is going on in your mind to put you there. This is the important stuff.”   -Kyle Green

There are lot of photography blogs out there… this one gives you a glimpse into other photographers’ minds when they made some of their signature images.

rep’in from the northwest:  Erika Schultz, Sol Neelman, Kyle Green and Rob Finch

Got to hang with Lindy Hinkelman this week, who credits his farming upbringing with his back to back fantasy baseball wins. After netting more than $300 thousand in two consecutive years, people are listening. The pigs, they could care less.

An old boss of mine at a paper in farm country had a bag of one liners that he would rotate through on a regular basis.

One of the classics would be uttered as he’d look at a photo I’d made of a farmer standing among his crop “Looks like you photographed a guy outstanding in his field”, he’d chuckle and retreat to the daily meeting.

Mark Schoesler is the last full-time farmer in the Washington state senate and the kind of farmer I’ve photographed before – a busy one.  I caught up with him on Friday morning at his house which overlooks the wheat farm that has been in his family for five generations.  Naturally Mark had some meetings looming, so we only had a little time for him to show me his family’s digs.

I knew we wouldn’t have many natural moments to document as he had cleared his schedule for me. This is always the most difficult part of being a documentary journalist – trying to get someone to let you actually document them living in their natural setting. Most of the time you settle for making a few nice portraits before you’ve overstayed your welcome. So that’s what we did.

The paper ran the first image I’d made while Mark was still wrapping up some business on the phone. It as the one genuine moment from the entire shoot, and one that somewhat summed up a little of the balancing act he has to pull off every day.

But for the record, he’s still out standing in his field.

One of my students turned my onto this color IQ test that basically tells you how accurately you are observing the world.  See what you can score. I got a 3, which means my eyes are still working.

We gathered up a new team for Spokane’s 48 Hour Film Festival and tossed together this film starring local musician Jacob Butcher and the voice over talents of Tyler Tjomsland. With a little ballot stuffing, we picked up a best picture award, but more importantly got to meet the great Ray Liotta, who had little to say about our victory, but was generous enough to take a photo with us while doing his best Goodfellas impression.

Here’s a few film stills from the shoot under the Palouse skies by the Infinite Monkeys team.

<
img class=”p3-insert-all size-full alignleft” src=”http://www.rajahbose.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/xmovieset.jpg” width=”675″ height=”477″ alt=”" title=”xmovieset” />

I thought I’d celebrate the first birthday of this blog with another photo Kurt, who was again overly generous to waste another afternoon dangling from rainbows and other less glorious locales. Here’s to another year of four-leaf clovers.

In Seattle University’s most recent magazine is a four-page spread of donors who have given back to their school. The photo was the idea of Seattle University photographer Chris Taylor and we worked together to build this image from seven different separate photographs made over the course of a day. We weren’t able to coordinate a time that worked for everyone, so we had them stop by as they could and stitched the image together afterward.

The first page is actually a combination of three separate photos while the second two-page spread contains four images. All in all, the Photoshop work took about 8 hours and used a series of layers and additional shading to replicate the natural look of a single image.

Last year I met John Babcock on the day he turned 109, along with a gaggle of journalists watching his every move that day. He wasn’t much for the spotlight, but he endured it, humoring the media onslaught that sought his picture every July.
Of the more than 650 thousand Canadians that served in the Great War, John Babcock was the last living WWI veteran.

On Thursday, a few months short of his 110th birthday, John “Jack” Babcock died in Spokane where he had lived since 1932. In a small ceremony he was remembered by his grandchildren and honored by top Canadian dignitaries. Canada’s Minister of Veterans Affairs Jean-Pierre Blackburn presented his widow Dorothy with a Canadian flag that flew over the Canadian Parliament building the day he died.

John Babcock was 15 when he enlisted in the Canadian army, a decision he is remembered for almost 100 years later. But he never sought the attention. He served his country into his mid-twenties, moved to the U.S and ran a heating business for 26 years, became a naturalized U.S. citizen when he was 46 years old, and earned his high school diploma when he was 95. He was a devoted husband, married to his first wife, Elsie, for 45 years. Dorothy, his second wife, was a nurse who helped care for Elsie before she passed away. They were married for more than 30 years.

It was only recently that he became the center of attention as a national hero, every birthday outshining the last. It was an accomplishment he was quick to downplay.

The weekend John Babcock passed away, the news was overshadowed by the birth of another Canadian hero at the Olympics as Canada won the gold medal in hockey.

John Babcock was far from the spotlight.  Finally.