ERIN SCHWARTZ

SATURDAY’S WEATHER

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source: wunderground.com

RangefinderThe

Friday, Oct. 2, 2009Issue 61 - Volume 5Festus & Crystal City, Missouri

FYI

MPW picnic at 7pm. Meet at Mom’s Garden.

Invite your subjects to the library exhibit!

Angus McDougall remains an inspiring presence at the Missouri Photo Workshop.

“We don’t have

to begin the sentence with the

loudest voice.

”David Rees

“Less is more.

”David Rees, on editing

CLOCKWISE, from top center: Team B dicusses a take; Patrick Fallon and his notes; memory cards waiting to be processed; Hannah Hardaway enjoys her time in Festus; Calin Ilea gets some fresh air; Carlos Moreno hangs out with Carol’s Nikon gear; David Rees and Duane Dailey guide us through the power of buttons.

All photos by CLARE BECKER

“ Excite the eye.

”Rick Shaw

Words of Wisdom

Ask yourself:

Does your story have...

...a sense of place?...a strong leading image?

...visual variety?...portrayal of relationships?

...transitions?...a sequence?...a surprise?

...tension or conflict?...a closing image?

...resolution?

David Rees and Rick Shaw

Friday, Oct. 2, 2009Issue 61 - Volume 5Festus & Crystal City, Missouri

by Seth Putnam

Turn in cards. Check. Edit total take. Check. Write captions. Check. Sit back; relax. The workshop’s over.

Since the first issue of the Rangefinder start-ed off with Mustafah Abdullaziz, it seems fit-ting to check back to see how things ended up for him.

“I’m willing to go on their journey,” Mustafah said on Monday about his editors shooting down his first idea, “but at the end of the week I hope I’ve reached the point where I’m happy with why I went on that journey.”

It’s safe to say that at the end of the journey he is happy. So happy, in fact, that after turning in his final take at noon, he went back to keep pho-tographing his subject. His project ended up being on a kid named Landon, or L-Train as he calls himself.

Landon is a kid that enjoys immense popu-larity at Crystal City High School, but it’s

not all roses for him. At 17, he’s got a child on the way. After meeting Landon on the football field, Mustafah decided to focus on how contem-porary rural life plays out in the high school setting, especially with a dynamic character who’s trying to live large in the middle of nowhere.

“People act out their characters in extraordi-nary ways in high school because they think it’s important,” Mustafah says. “I wanted to pho-tograph something that was social commentary but at the same time make it a personal sto-ry that revolves around him.”

Today I watched Mus-tafah work. He’s quiet at times, active when he needs to be. Unobtru-sively, he blends into the background but comes out to joke and build rapport when necessary.

“I’m gonna go take a piss,” Landon announc-es.

“Can I take pictures?” Mustafah jokes, and ev-eryone laughs.

He explains, “It’s about personality and

getting the people to trust you and be com-fortable.”

Oh, so that’s how he does it. It might just be me, but I’ve always found the idea of a pho-tographer tagging along kind of weird and artifi-cial, so I wanted to talk to some of his subjects and see how they felt. While having Musta-fah around was certain-ly a departure from nor-mal, it didn’t seem that strange to the kids.

“Sure, make me fa-mous,” says one of the players, explaining how he feels about Mustafah taking pictures.

Landon adds, “We hang out, and he takes pictures. It’s no big deal, really. If he’s just taking pictures and he doesn’t talk to me, then that’s a problem.”

While many high school students already have inflated egos and enjoy being the cen-ters of attention, there’s something about these kids’ willingness to be photographed that offers a general truth about people and the power of story.

As humans, we’re

naturally drawn to nar-ratives about the lives of other humans. I think the subjects of the sto-ries realize this, even on a subconscious level, be-cause in effect they’re the stars of their own motion pictures.

I didn’t realize volun-teering at a photo work-shop might actually make me a better writer. But this week has been chock-full of some valu-able reporting lessons that apply to all jour-nalists, whether they’re broadcasters, photogra-phers, writers or some-thing in between.

From mastering tricky techniques for starting conversations to learning how to cre-ate an intimate relation-ship with someone you just met—from deal-ing with rejection to re-specting the sanctity of the narrative—I’ve cer-tainly learned how to be a better storyteller, even if I do it with words. My hat’s off to you, photog-raphers.

Man, I really wish there were a Missouri Writing Workshop.

10am-12pmphoto exhibition at Festus Public Library

7pmpicnic

7:30pmclosing ceremonies

MPW’s done; what did we learn?

Rangefinderfounders Cliff and Vi Edom

co-directors Jim Curley David Rees

director emeritus Duane Dailey

mpw coordinator Amy Schomaker

photographer Clare Becker

rangefinder staff Ivy Ashe Seth Putnam

roving reporter Liz Lance

consultant Sid Hastings

By the numbersAround MPW Headquarters

Bags of ___ consumed at Carol’s table:Swedish Fish 9Peanut M&Ms 3Plain M&Ms 3Peanut Butter M&Ms 4

Time to print one color photo: 6:23m

Multimedia Pieces Produced: 6No. of Individual Movies in Flash Piece: 7

Saturday’s Schedule

Kim Komenich, center, and Carolyn Cole, right, meet with Team D after evening critique.

CLARE BECKER

by Duane Dailey

Pick up the book from Team B’s table, and take it to a quiet corner to read and contemplate. The gentle quiet photo-graphs by gentle quiet John Isaac deserve undi-vided attention. No mul-titasking. No tweeting while viewing.

Your reward will be beautiful photos of a hidden corner of a strife-torn world. “Vale of Kashmir” illustrates the quiet side of culture, largely untouched by modern intrusions. Too bad that India and Paki-stan see it as a political battleground.

Isaac brings a talent for separating and clar-ifying a complex world. Some photos show a mass of humanity, hun-dreds of praying Mus-lims, rugged landscapes, lakes clotted with boats and floating gardens. Yet, the complexity is presented as beautiful-ly as an intricately de-signed Kashmirian car-pet.

This book transports us to a beautiful valley, a historic channel of trade routes from the times of the Greeks and Romans seeking goods from the East. We glimpse the simple life, closely linked to their agrarian and

fish-catching way of life. The floating farmers markets show us the ba-sics of subsistence.

Study the cultural ar-tifacts. Study the reed basket containing a bra-zier of hot coals, or the rickety bridges across torrential mountain streams. And, the myr-iad boats. Travel, if not by mule or by boat, is by foot up the mountain trails. Read the text, and study the prints.

Also contemplate the elegant portraits in de-fining light. The simplic-ity is awesome.

There are lessons aplenty for a photog-rapher. Each picture is

worthy of long looks to absorb the details that reveal life in an ancient culture preserved.

The surprise is that all of them were shot on a 5 megapixel camera. I like that lesson. If Henry Da-vid Thoreau had a dig-ital camera, I’m sure it would not be more com-plex than a 5mg box.

Look and learn. Then visit with John about the images.

“Vale of Kashmir” by John Isaacs and story by Art Davidson, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2008, 192 pp. Available on Amazon.

MPW offers freedom from pesky reporters

by Ivy Ashe

After four and a half days of shooting out in the field, it’s editing day at MPW. Photographers are sit-ting down with their 400 (give or take a few) frames and the editing wisdom of David Rees and Rick Shaw echoing in their ears, and starting to sort through the images.

“At this point,” says Kim Komenich of Team D, “the pictures have to take you. You have to be the one to yield to what the pictures are really saying.”

Being able to listen to the quiet voices of images is a gift for Komenich and team partner Carolyn Cole. Their group is the only one in which both faculty members are newspaper photographers (Kim re-cently left his position at the San Francisco Chronicle to teach at San Jose State University).

“Most of the people in this workshop are going to go back home and back to being problem solv-ersback to illustrating reporters’ conclusions of what they think the story is,” says Kim. “[MPW] is giving you the license to truly take charge of your own des-tiny as a photojournalist.”

The two can’t help but look at a story without “thinking about how we would shoot it ourselves,” says Carolyn. “‘Could I pull this off, are there enough pieces to the story, and is…a storyline even there?’”

“That’s what this workshop is about,” notes Kim. “It’s a really gut level of [storytelling] from picture to picture, without words.”

“We’ve seen all the culminative parts through-out the week,” he adds, “but it really comes down to what that photographer’s version of the truth is, and if they can present it, and if they can get it past us, there’ll be consensus that this is the story.”

A must-see: “Vale of Kashmir” by John Isaac

CLARE BECKERTatiana Fernandez, left, Alice Pak and Mustafah Abdulaziz.