Adventure Photography: Capturing In-Between Moments

1. Introduction: My name is Jeff Johnson. I'm a photographer, and my class is all about telling stories and getting out there and immersing yourself in your subject, and hopefully, inspiring others as well. My interest always comes down to people. Even if I'm in some beautiful setting shooting climbing or surfing, I tend to gravitate towards people. Even though my whole life is geared toward being outdoors and in nature, to me, that's an obvious thing. People have free will, so they're way more interesting in nature I think and they're evil and they're kind and there are so many different things going on with people where nature it's this one thing that's semi predictable or people aren't. So, a lot of times as I'm shooting, it just gets narrowed down to the people and I think that's why I'm drawn to portraiture and street photography. For me personally, I like shooting things as they unfold. You have to be ready for that kind of shooting and what I've realized over time is that most special moments are these in-between moments. Those are the ones I love. We get so focused on if you're going surfing or climbing or whatever the activity is. You get focused on that activity and you forget what's going on in between it all and what I've noticed over the years is those in-between moments, they can be the most unique. To me that's my favorite because they're really hard to pose. They're almost impossible to duplicate. You can't go back and redo it so you have to be ready to capture those moments and we all tend to forget about that and just focus on the action. But to be ready for those moments is key, to having a system where you're setting getting ready for that and there's there's a few instances where those moments have happened and I didn't even really realize it. We pulled up to the surf spot and it was raining and cloudy and not the waves weren't that good there's couple of waves here and there but it just wasn't that happening. So, I sat around the boat and we're just, where can you shoot on the boat. Everybody is sitting around and there's a moment where somebody out in the water got a wave and everybody on the boat got really excited. I shot I think two shots of it, of just everybody noticing that wave. That's most published photo from that whole trip, was just that one incidence. Well, that's why those moments are so priceless because they're hard to find and hard to capture and I just know my own experience going through magazines, surf magazines or climbing magazines you see these beautiful shots of the action and it's a diamond dozen after a while even though I might have had posters of them in my room as a kid. The ones I remember are these lifestyle photos that were few and far between. I've noticed in my own work that those are the gems that I like too and I still tend to forget. You concentrate on those on the action but I always remind myself, keep your camera out, keep your settings dialed and be ready for those moments. 2. Project: Photograph an In-Between Moment: You've got to totally immerse yourself in whatever it is that interests you. 90% of getting good photographs is just being there. Try not get too bogged down with equipment and technical details. You have to remember that it's the photographer and not the camera. The creative process is a struggle, it's not easy. There's very few photographers that take five shots and they're all good. But you should go into it, thinking there is a story and have an idea of what that story is. And that may change throughout the journey, but you should go in there with some kind of idea. 3. Seeking Inspiration: Before I started taking pictures I used to write a lot and keep journals. I still do. That's how I started telling stories. It's through my writing. I wrote a lot and started getting my stories published and that got me more interested in photography. I took that aspect of storytelling into imagery. So, still to this day books are what inspire me. So, I read every day and there's a bunch of authors that to this day are some of my biggest inspirations like Bykovsky, Cormac McCarthy. Some of my favorite books are Paul Bowles. I get images from writers and I get a lot of imagery from my own writing. So, photography was a natural way to convey that in a different way. People ask me who my favorite and who's my most inspiring photographer, and the first thing I think of is writers. Because that's kind of what's inspired me in the first place before photography. So, when I think of where all this comes from it's usually the written word. Of course, there's a ton of photographers that I love. Robert Frank, of course there's Henri Cartie Bresson, Elliot R Witt. They're guys from the 30s, 40s, 50s. Even with all the equipment that's available or technologies available, I don't think you can do much better than this. I think it's all been done, and that's how I like to treat my own photography. My favorite pictures are the ones that you can't tell what era it's from or when it's shot. These guys are timeless. You just can't get better than this as far as I'm concerned. I mean you get clearer, sharper images, you can put them in Photoshop and tweak them as much as you want. But what these guys were all about is the content and what's actually happening in the photo. I'm more concerned with that. I'd rather have a blurry image with great content than a sharp image that's relatively boring. 4. Storytelling: Photography, at least for me, it's storytelling. The first thing you have to figure out is what is the story? The story might not be totally apparent right away. But you should go into it thinking there is a story and have an idea what that story is. That may change throughout the journey, but you should go in there with some idea of what it is. So, you try to concentrate on that, but also be open to that story changing and becoming something else. When we did 180 South, a good example is climbing the North-American wall. There's a lot of layers to that because Yvon Chouinard did the first descent. But this is 40 years later and the kind of story with us was that Keith Malloy has never climbed in his life basically and we're taking them on this huge seven-day climb or whatever. So, I really focused on Keith because that was the story. There's lots of different layers, but that was the main story, is Keith's experience as a climber. There's photos that reflect that. There's photos of him tucked in a way in a cave, and this other season climate have a smoke, relax and Keith has just gripped. So, that story was an easy obvious one. I think where you can get in troubles to where you get too attached to what your idea was in the first place. Like, say you see something you want to shoot, you go, "Okay, I'm going to come back there and shoot that with a person." A lot of times, when you get back to that place and put a person in there, it changes the whole photo and it doesn't look like what you envisioned. Some people will stick to that and try to fight it and force it to make it work. But I think you got to open up and be open to different ideas and things changing. So, a good example is one time we're just climbing one day and we're rappelling off the climb, and I saw this angle that looked really neat. I made a mental note, yeah, come back here and shoot a climber on this, so it'll be great. So, we came back and we got all the way up there. When she got into position there, it just didn't work exciting at all. It just didn't work for me. Then I did a little research and I realized that that angle has been shot before too, so I'd be just re-shooting it. So, I had to figure something out, I do take a different angle or something. So, and the light was fading, sun was setting, we're going to lose our lights. So, I just moved around and goofed around with the camera a little bit and try to figure something out. I had this angle where this rock hung down the foreground and gave it more of a dynamic look. Story can always change. But always have a story in mind. This day and age, research is easy because you have Google on. So, you can just go online and can search images. It's a great thing to do. If you see something, especially if you think it's never been shot, you might want to Google it first because odds are, it probably has been shot. So, I'll just Google stuff or I'll ask around or talk to other photographers. See who else has been there. Annie Liebovitz in her book tells a great story about Richard Avedon going to shoot a couple on how he wasn't getting what he wanted. He had this idea and it wasn't happening and he knew they like this particular dog, and they are a gloomy couple I guess. They're poets or artists or something, and he want to get more of a gloomy shot. So, he lied and said, on the way there, they ran over a dog or a couple of dogs and they were in shock, and they got this look on their face and he took a photo and it's like this famous photo. But he got what he wanted, but he had to lie to do it. But it's because he knew what kind, he did his research. So, you want to do your research before you go and shoot somebody. Of course, the idea with a portrait is you're trying to tell that person's story in one frame, which is really hard. It's like having a whole movie just in a split second. So, it's really difficult to capture somebody with a photograph. So, either you know them really well or you have to learn about them. Fred Beckey with the Hasselblad is a good example. I just want to get, he's 80, almost 90 years old and he's a total character, he's got these classic lines on his face. Hopefully, I captured it there. I have another friend, Tom Adler, who's an artist and he's really shy with the camera. So, I got him surrounded by all the artwork he's collected and he's hunched. You can tell he's a little shy. You do your best to try to really capture what that person's about. When I got the assignment to shoot Yvon Chouinard and Fred Beckey climbing, the story was that they hadn't climbed together in 40-some odd years. The place that we're shooting wasn't particularly photogenic. I focused on them having fun together, and I got a couple shots of them climbing, but I really want to get them hanging out, laughing and catching up and telling stories and stuff. So, that's what I tried to do as best I can. Then after that, I want to get a really good portrait of Fred Beckey and just capture him as a person. That was a tough one because I only had 15 or 20 minutes to take that photo. The photo editor at Patagonia actually tricked Fred. I had my friend setup a backdrop, and I borrowed a camera from Chris, a Hasselblad, and had it all set up. Then she called me she said, "Fred's over it. He doesn't want to do his portrait." So, she started moving the car and she goes, "Fred jump in, I'm just moving the car around the corner." She tricked him and she drove him up to where we're shooting. When she got there, she goes, "Look, he's not into it. You got 15 minutes." I was using a camera that I've never shot before. So, it was kind of crunch time a little bit. So, I just had to focus on him. I was trying to get something out of them and my friend who is assisting me in that photos was like, "What do you want him to do? What do you want him to do?" I was purposely not asking him to do anything because I wanted to get a candid photo. So, I wasn't going to direct him, but he was interacting with them. I was just shooting away as he was interacting with them. So, that's how I got what I wanted out of him without directing him or something. 5. Immersing Yourself: From the beginning, I just wanted to document what my friends were doing because I thought they're doing some pretty interesting things, and to this day, that's how I feel my photography is, is that I'm still taking pictures of my friends. What that means is for anybody else getting into photography, you have to totally immerse yourself into whatever interests you. You have to become that thing whatever it is. There is something to be said, being an outsider at a certain aspect, you can have a fresh take on things, but to really get into something, you have to become that, and you have to totally immerse yourself in that. Make it your life and because if it's not your life, it's just going to be a piece of it. When people see your photos or they're going to get that feeling, like wow this is a part of your life, or this is really rich or it's not. I photograph the things I love to do, I love to climb, I love to surf, I love to travel, and a lot of my favorite photography is just traveling. A lot of times when I'm climbing, I don't want to take photos, but that's who I hang out with, I hangout with surfers and climbers. I think that's what my photography reflexes, all these people around the world and doing these activities. My favorite type of photography is photojournalistic and shooting from the hip. You don't have a lot of control there with your light. It's either happening or it's not happening, and it could be good light or crappy lighting. You have no control over that. But, if you are planning to go out and shoot and it's somewhat not pose, but somewhat planned, you can control when you start and when you stop. So, for instance, shooting in the mountains, a lot of times you're sleeping in a lower elevations, or down in the valleys, in the first light is going to be on the peak. So, in order to get that light you have to get up super early and that might mean getting up at 3:00 in the morning, and climbing for few hours or running or doing something to get to where you want to be to get that first light. I think it's always good too that speaking about lighting, like I said before, don't get too obsessed with your original idea. There's one time this last winter when I was on the North Shore in Hawaii, I was shooting off the wall and I had this idea of shooting just kind of really point blank, kind of classic shot of off the wall, that's been shot for years, but I want to get that look and it was already the evening, and I took a couple shots, and waves are good, but it's just kind of flat and instead of obsessing on that, which I could have tried to just force that, all I had to do is just walk a few feet up the beach and take a different angle and the lighting was insane. But, it's not the exactly the shot I wanted, but it was the best shot of the day for sure for me. It was all because I didn't obsess on that one little thing, and I was just open to where the light is. Like when you're shooting surf, you can move 20 feet down the beach and it looks totally different if you move 20 feet the other, with whatever way is the Sun. Sometimes that angle might not be your favorite, but that's where the light is. So, you gotta go with the light. The best way for me to learn was to actually do stuff and it's really difficult for me to read, even I'm an avid reader, but I read novels. But, I can't read a textbook and get it, I have to do it. So, when I started taking photography seriously and wanting to shoot better photos, I had all these friends who are great photographers around me, and I just asked a lot of questions. The first when they're trying to explain all these F-stops and ISO film speeds and all these stuff, and all these terminology, I just, I cannot grasp it, and I was so overwhelmed, and just them trying to explain things to me, but then once we go on, and take the cameras on and start shooting. Once I started doing that, I got it and now all that terminology and all those things they're talking about are second nature to me because I've been shooting for 10-15 years. But, first is overwhelming, I just had to do it. At one time, I was going up to Yosemite, do some climbing and I was talking to this climber named, Ron Calk, he's a legend in the climbing world, and I said something, "I'm just trying to make a plan," and he goes, "It's best not to have a plan," and he's kind of right. 6. Gathering Equipment: One of my main concerns with photography is not getting overwhelmed with the equipment, I think it can be stifling at a certain point. This is a lot of equipment here, but this is accumulated over 10 years of shooting. But, it all started when I first started shooting seriously, this is all I had. It was just one body and two lenses. A film body, this is the old EOS-3 Canon. Started out with a 50 fixed lens, then it was a 17-35 zoom lens, but now it's a 16-35. But this was my entire kit for years. This is all I used, and it was perfect. I have tones of published shots from this exact setup and it's really all I needed for a long time. My clutch was always this little Yashica T4, it's just a point and shoot camera takes film. I've used it for years, I still use it to this day. Again, not super high-tech but it's really all you need, you don't need a whole lot. To me, the most important thing is just keeping things simple and not getting too bogged down. In a perfect world, I would just shoot this. This is just a fixed 50 on a Leica body, I love shooting Rangefinders. This is the body and lens that I have on me almost all the time. You can almost shoot everything with a 50. Some of my favorite photographs were shot with a 50, and to me, shooting with a Rangefinder is much different than shooting with let's say, a Canon 5D, or this Mark four. I just love how I think with this thing, I shoot differently than I do with these things, so I react to things differently with the Rangefinder, you're focusing differently so it's. Again, the technical aspects of photography don't really concern me as much, it's just the way you feel about stuff and the way you approach things, and I approach things differently with this camera. I love black and white photography and this is a monochrome body, it's digital but it only shoots black and white. So, I love the commitment of going out and just shooting black and white. That's all you're going to shoot, it's like the film days, I come from a film background. So, to me, this is the closest thing to shooting film. I use this is an old Hasselblad it shoots film. I use this for a lot of close-up portraits. Just because the detail on people's faces and what not. This is a workhorse the Canon 5D, I shoot this for work a ton. The tools I use definitely depend on the job. If I'm going to shoot high action sports I'm definitely going to use a fast camera like this. Zoom lenses, fast zoom lens. It just depends, when things are moving quickly, I'm going to want to shoot with one of my Canons and rock-climbing a lot of times you can't move around, so zoom lenses are great because you can adjust as you move, you're static so you have to be able to move the camera around without moving. Most of my surfing is done with the Mark four or the Canon 5D. All these are just tools, the iPhone is incredible tool to use. I mean, they always say the camera that you have is the best one to use. So, the iPhone is what you always have on you. There's so many great photos being made today because of the iPhone so. And some of these are publishable size. So, with climbing, it just depends on how remote it is. If I'm traveling a lot, or running, or covering a lot of ground, I might go really light. Couple of years ago I shot a kind of Shoe campaign with a little Sony NEX-7 and a little GorillaPod and that's the only thing. I just had one lens, one tiny little body and that's the only thing I had for this whole adventure that we went on. I shot video and the stills with that and it was cool, it totally worked, it was just a very simple setup and really light, it was like having nothing. Another option, what I've been doing a lot lately is, just going out with a setup like this. With my Leica M240 and just a couple of fixed lenses. Super-simple and light, compared to what it might be if I'm shooting say, I'm shooting something that's not too remote and I want to bring some zoom lenses. Like this would be maybe a setup here, and this is heavy and a lot, great to use but a lot to carry around. Since I love shooting my Leica so much and I have a few digital Leicas, this will be, that setup now turns into this. Well, I have a 50, a 35 and a 21-millimeter lens and it's super light, it does everything all that would do. The only problem is, they're fixed lenses and I have to move around a little bit more, I'm not so static. Don't be so intimidated by all this, you don't need all this, but this is what happens over ten years of shooting. I can't stress how important experimentation is in your photography, always trying something new and to get out of your comfort zone it's super important. You don't grow unless you stress yourself a little bit I think. I had this assignment to shoot, Yvon Chouinard and Fred Beckey, his old climbing partner, going climbing and they're older guys and Yvon is 74, he's 88 years old or something, and they went climbing together for the first time in 40 years and it was a great thing to document. As I was shooting it, I was shooting my regular setup, and I was looking at Fred Beckey and he is this old guy and he's just got these classic lines and a lot of history in his face. So, I was looking at this guy and wondering how I could capture his face, and I talked to my friend Chris Orwig about borrowing a camera from him. So, I borrowed a Hasselblad from him, and it was the first time I ever used it, and I always think there's something magical about doing something for the first time. Some of your best results will come from the first time doing something. I believe that's crucial to your photography is always expanding that, always experimenting because those will be your best images. Some of your first images doing something will be your best. So, I borrowed this camera from him, and this one is mine now, this isn't his, but this is the one I bought for myself. It was the first time I ever used it, and it was a little awkward at first, but I was so excited about having a new camera and something different and shooting film. So, I did end up spending- it was a really quick session with him only like 15-20 minutes. But some of my favorite photos came from it. This is one of his shot of him, 89 years old, still climbing every day. But he just has these classic features, and it's something that I don't think I could have captured as well with any of my other cameras. That's just what happens is, you don't go out and buy all this stuff, you think of something, and then you figure out how to do it, and a lot of times that first time figuring it out is going to be your magic time. There's a lot, there's photos that have been published that were the first time I was even doing something. So, always experiment, it's something that you have to keep doing. When I started shooting it was film, and I was shooting color slides in black and white print film, and I think around 2006 or 7 I switched over to digital. I was kind of the last, all my friends had switched over, I was really reluctant because I'm not good with computers and all that. It took the wind out of my sails a little bit, because I was on this path of learning film and it's really a hard process, and digital just, I was spending more time behind a computer screen than I was shooting. So, it was just stifling to me and I was in a little bit of a bummer about it. A friend of mine urged me to get back to shooting film again. We were doing this project and I was about to take off on a trip for six months down to South America, and he said, "Well, why don't you start shooting film again? I can see you shooting one of those Leica so a Rangefinder and you should check it out." So, I had never shot a Rangefinder before, and I got this Leica M7 with a fixed 50 on it, and it kind of changed everything for me. Because I was into this whole digital thing where you tend to shoot a lot, you can overshoot with digital because you can just fire away. It doesn't cost anything, you don't have to reload film or whatever, which is awesome. But it just, I had to go back to how I used to shoot, which was sparingly and taking, giving a lot of thought to your photos. So, shooting with a Rangefinder just forced me to slow down and really concentrate on what I was doing, and it kind of gave me a new love for photography because I kind of went back to how I used to shoot. I started shooting a lot of black and white film again, and just the whole process was different for me, and it was a learning curve to. Its very different shooting with a Rangefinder and you have to think differently. There's a- you react differently to your subject than you would if you just have an auto-focus. Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm not saying film is better than digital or anything like that. Again, it's just mixing it up and I had to go back to kind of my roots of shooting and shooting in a different way. So, I started shooting with the M7, and for a few years and just loved what I was getting out of it. Eventually, Leica came out with a digital body which is the monochrome I mentioned before. To me, this is a lot like shooting the M7, its only shoots black and white, and I love the commitment when you go out and shoot them monochrome. Because you're shooting black and white, and you have to think in black and white, and you're totally committed to it. So, in a way it's like shooting film, going back to experimenting and getting out of your comfort zone. It's always essential to growing as a photographer, and this was a big, big part of that for me is shooting Rangefinders. 7. Shooting: Every person is different. You want people to relax and things do change when you pull out a camera, definitely. So, sometimes it's the camera that you're using. If the person knows you're taking a photo and they're comfortable with you, you can have big cameras and stuff. If you're trying to get candid shots of people that don't know you and either on the street or wherever, that's why I like the Leica, the Leica is a really good camera for that, because especially in this day and age it doesn't look like a serious camera. It just looks like a little toy camera or something, and they're really quiet and unassuming. If I was out on the streets and I took out my Canon with my 70-200 zoom lenses, people were like "whoa, what's going on here?", but if I had just this little camera and you're just cruising around. So, the camera has a lot to do with it, and I think the way you interact with people, too. If you don't want to be this intrusive person, but you are intruding for sure. Soon as you pull out the camera people look at you. If I go out and I'm trying to shoot people on the streets it's just, every situation is different and everywhere I do it's different. Sometimes I'll try to set my focus beforehand and just hold my camera down my waist, and shoot away with my camera down here. I have one shot I literally shot from the hip, and we were climbing a mountain in Patagonian with Doug Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard and the sun was just coming up, and the light was kind of changing, so I put it on auto-settings. I was being filmed, so I couldn't take out my camera, which was frustrating because the light was great and I wanted to shoot but I was on camera. So, I took out my little point, I had a little Leica point-and-shoot and I just held it on my hip, and just try to time my shots. I took like five shots and luckily turned out, and the composition looked right and stuff. That was literally shooting from the hip. Photos aren't reality easily; they are an image of reality but they're not really reality, so there's a lot of ways to manipulate that to get where you want. Just like I said, there's photographers that go on two or three months trips that come back to National Geographic and don't have a photo. They probably shot thousands of photos, but you still have to shoot a ton to get that image and sometimes you may not get that image. I'm always challenging myself and experimenting and I think it's essential to your growth as a photographer and there's always little things like assignments that I'm giving myself. The most recent one is, I made a water housing for my Leica, a monochrome camera. This is just a one-off. I just had one of these built a year ago and it shoots black and white, and it's not something I'd probably do commercially because not a lot of people like black and white surf photography, but I do, so this is more of a personal thing. I love to swim out and get images with this little setup right here, and it's light and simple, totally different compared to my other housing, which houses my Mark 4. It's big and bulky and a lot going on. But if it's super high action, I want to get color, this is probably the setup I'd use. To meet your personal work is what influences your every day work, so it's really essential in your photography to keep this going, to always have some personal passion that you're working on. It's been a long journey, it's been really hard to figure out the focus underwater, and I've had to go through a couple of different ports and it's a process. That's always fun to have something like that on the side that you're doing, and that's interesting, and then I can take it around the world with me and mess around with it. So, I've gotten a couple of good images with it, but it's a work in process, it's going to take awhile, and that's exciting if I got the thing made and took it out first time and got my best images, it might not be that exciting. The process is what's fun. 8. The Van: So, I have an office in my house and I work at on my van mostly. So, this is where I spend probably 50 percent of my time. It's my office slash home away from home. Yeah, this is the office. This is the bedroom. That's the office. Now I got a little place for my laptop goes there, books, have power over there, got my water, little food and cooking utensils, junk drawer. Oops! Socks, probably leave it there, curtains, entertainment center. So, I have these two for quick reflectors, to reflect a little light for portraits. All my climbing gear, I take all my climbing gear and stuff, and the boards. 9. Closing Thoughts: If I could spend the rest of my life just shooting one camera and one lens, it would be a rangefinder and the lens would be a fixed 50 millimeter lens. It's the lens I use most of the time and some of my favorite photos have been shot with a 50. This is another example. This isn't the perfect photo, it's not the best exposure but I did get a moment there of him laughing, and this is Doug really in his element. So, some of my favorite photos have been shot with a 50. It's something I always fall back on. If you're going to get one lens, the 50 is the one to get as far as I'm concerned. We tend to be really hard on ourselves and I know I am. I'm my worst critic and with every photo I've ever taken, I would always change something. There's always something I would have done differently, and I can pick them all apart. If there's one photo that I wouldn't change a thing, this would be it. This is my personal favorite. It's a shot with my Leica M7 on, I think I used black and white Ilford film, and it's just one of the few pictures I've ever taken where I just wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change the angle, or the film, or the ISO, or anything, or the aperture, or anything. It was just a really quick moment. I was climbing around some rocks down in Chile and I noticed this guy out of the corner my eye kind of appear and disappear in the rocks, and it looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I also like the idea that it's timeless. You wouldn't know when this was taken, whether it's in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever. If I could, I'd like to have all my photos have that feel to it. A lot of my stuff comes down to people, very few landscapes. I always tend to just focus in on people. Like here, we're on a surf trip and the idea is that you go shoot surf photos and this is the stuff I like the best. He just killed the fish, he's cleaning it, all the birds are coming. These are the photos that I feel are hard to duplicate or pose. It's one time I was going up to Yosemite to do some climbing and I was talking to this climber named Ron Kauk, he's a legend in the climbing world. I said something like, "I'm just trying to make a plan." He goes, it's best not to have a plan, and he's right. 10. Explore Photo Classes on Skillshare: