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Panorama from 80 Meters
So I may have gotten a new toy. It may or may not have 4 propellers and an hd camera attached to it.
Panorama from 80 Meters (click to see in all its glory) I am probably really excited about it.
David duChemin (Or Long overdue article I should have written a long bloody time ago, sorry David)
Before I get to talking about David duChemin:
You know when you get am email or voicemail from someone, and you think “I should reply to that. I’ll do it in an hour”. Then something happens 55 minutes later, and you find yourself 2 days later thinking “Crap, I forgot to reply, I better do it soon, or they will think I don’t care.” Then something happens and you find yourself three weeks later thinking “Crap, I better reply NOW, cause now it totally looks like I am ignoring them..” Then 3 months later…
You get the idea.
The same thing happens with blog posts, to me, also. Way back when I was launching this thing and I was all “YAY new thing I’m excited about!” I had this idea to send a small list of questions to photographers I respected, and do little profiles on them. I did a few of photographers that were no longer with us, and enjoyed it. Busy photographers are busy, what with all the world travel and actually working and stuff, and the reply rate was, well, not really there.
Which is OK, I expected I’d have to do a bit of legwork, this little blog isn’t exactly The New York Times, so I’m sure if my email made it though the spam filters, it likely ended up in it’s own “Oh crap, I should do that” loop before spiraling down into being forgotten.
So I re-sent a couple requests, and got one back! I was pretty excited. Then our world turned upside down, and the next year and some was spent dealing with the illness and eventual loss of my father, and the whole photography and writing thing kind of took a backseat for a while.
Well I’d like to get it started again. Even if this is the only article I write, I owe it to David for actually taking his time and responding.
So enough excuses, here we go (also, sorry again that this took so impossibly long):
When I started taking pictures, it was just for the fun of it (it still is, really). I enjoyed learning new techniques, dreaming of new gear and gadgets, getting new gear and gadgets, and eventually putting new gadgets in a drawer never to be seen again. It got to a point within a few years that people wanted to spend money on my pictures. Not a lot. Just some, but it was enough that it got me thinking about “going pro”. I got books on budgets and business management and they ended up with all the miracle gear in the drawer.
The worst thing to end up in the drawer alongside the books and gadgets was my enjoyment of photography. I got so wrapped up in my theoretical “business” that I forgot how to enjoy taking pictures. I stopped shooting and my camera almost ended up on the drawer too. It’s a big drawer.
That Christmas, I got a gift card for Chapters from my grandmother. Almost out of instinct I went to the photography section, and just randomly grabbed a book off the shelf.
That book was VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography. It totally shifted my perspective. While the book talks about moving into vocational photography, it talks a lot about staying true to your actual vision, and remembering what got you tripping shutters in the first place. I love this book. Both for the lesson contained within, but also for the different artists it introduced me to and their experiences and points of view.
David does a lot of things. He’s an amazing travel and humanitarian photographer. what always strikes me about his work is how hes able to capture emotion, tell the stories, but it never feels like the subject isn’t part of the process. I find with some travel shots that it can seem like “Hey, look how different his person over here is, see how different hey are?!?” Davids work doesn’t do that. I don’t know how or why, but when I see his work I feel more united to everyone else.
If I had to guess at a reason, I think his vulnerability plays a role. As I read the book (then read more of his books) and started following him online, I felt like I was let into his process. He has an honesty and vulnerability that I think informs his talent, both as an author and as a photographer. Following him online, I got to see not only the work of the photographer/author, but also the other details, getting new vehicles, travels, injuries (be more careful), recoveries and other behind the scenes things.
Through Visionmongers, I was introduced to several other photographers, many that I still follow today. Now that I think about it, I suppose I’m sort of lifting the idea of profiling other artists from his book. I didn’t realize that till right now.
Over the years I have sort of drifted away from the whole “photo-education” industry that seemed to take slowly morph every site I followed into courses for wedding and baby photographers. Not that those aren’t challenging and artistic paths for a photographer, I just started to see almost everything selling the “dream” of being a photographer, and no one talking about inspiration and art. (plus I got really sick really fast of people making heart shapes with their hands and super cute bokeh).
David is an exception to that. His educational books strike a great balance of technique and inspiration. Somehow, he can describe changing a Lightroom slider and talk about the change in feeling it should create.
In that , David created Craft and Vision, a collection of educational and inspirational e-books. Like the profiles he added in to Visionmongers, David doesn’t take all the attention himself, rather giving other artists a voice as well, even his manager gets a word in for the business/creative perspective. These books are great, and I have a nice little virtual library of them (even managed to have one of my photos published in one of them!). I highly recommend any of them, but I’ll put a list of links to my favorites at the end.
Aside from the fantastic photographic work and great books, David has also done some photo tours and gives talks. Though I haven’t been lucky enough to see them live, I did get to see him present a class in a very early CreativeLive, as well as several for the Manfrotto School of Xcellence. Based on those I can highly recommend that if you have a chance to see him speak, you should take it.
So without further ado, here is my little interview with David:
What do you love about photography (industry and/or craft):
Photography is about light and time. Those are the two rawest materials, without which we’d not have our art. Photography opens my eyes to both in a way I don’t think I’d experience otherwise. It gives me a way of looking at the world with greater intention, and of expressing how I feel about the world. It makes me see places, people, light, and moments, in new ways – to pay attention to things others might dismiss as mundane. And it opens doors for me. I’ve traveled the world with my cameras and they’ve always created more experiences for me than not having them would have done.
What do you hate/dislike/want to change/wish you could ignore etc. about photography (industry and/or Craft):
Photography is necessarily tied to the gear we use to create the photographs, and for some reason photographers often seem a little fonder of their gear than I think is helpful if your goal is creating compelling photographs. We could do with more photographs and less gear. But then that’s life. Some people play guitar, others just collect them and talk about them. The ones who really make art will do so no matter how old their camera is, or what brand it wears.
Who is your biggest influence as a photographer:
That’s a hard one. I think people expect me to name a photographer, and there are plenty, but I think most of us have to credit an ever-changing list of influences – the books we read (right now it’s a biography of Van Gogh and one on Monet), the music we listen to, TV we watch, and most of all the real live humans we surround ourselves with. It’s important to keep our eyes open, find inspiration and influence in all corners. If what you mean is, Which photographer is my biggest influence, that changes too. Right now it’s Salgado. In fact, oddly, most of my influence comes from black and white photographers, though I’m more of a colorist myself.
What is your favorite photograph, and why (not yours):
I’m terrible with favourites. Every time someone asks me about favourites I fell like I’m just making stuff up; my favourite today will be different tomorrow. But I can tell you my favourite images are those with a strong emotional connection. That could come from a great moment or amazing light or colour, or a conceptual contrast that tells a really compelling story, but something in the frame has to make me care. I know that’s a cop out, so if I had to be pinned down, I’d say anything from Elliott Erwitt.
What is your favorite photograph, and why (yours):
It used to be whatever my most recent work is, but increasingly I feel like that work needs to sit a while, like a bottle of wine. I need to live with my work for months, even a year or more, before I’m sure it’s really as powerful as I tried to convince myself it was when I first made it. A little time gives a lot of perspective. Right now some of my favourites are black and white images from India and Vietnam a few years ago. The memories have kind of mellowed and allow me to see the photographs a little more objectively (whatever that means).
Varanasi, A boat comes in to shore on the Ganges. Rendered in a sepia and purple split-tone. Image ©David duChemin 
Varanasi, A man has a shave on the ghats at the anges River. Rendered in a sepia and purple split-tone. Image ©David duChemin 
Delhi. Two older men drink chai at Nizzamudin Shrine. Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Image ©David duChemin 
Varanasi, Three boats on the Ganges River, a young boy tries to catch a falling kite. Rendered in a sepia and purple split-tone. Image ©David duChemin What/who would you love to shoot that you haven’t yet:
It’s funny but the photographs I most want to make right now are all in places I’ve already been. The longer I do this the less I feel the need to fill the pages of my passport or my portfolio, and instead want to go back to places I’ve not explored deeply enough. Iceland, Antarctica. But most of all I’m longing to go back to northern Kenya and continue the work I’m doing there with the BOMA Project among the nomadic pastoralists. I feel at home there and like I’ve only scratched the surface of that work. I head back in a year, after another round of surgery on one of the feet I injured in Italy a couple years ago. I can’t wait.
Addendum: Because it took me soooo long to write this, David has found the time to go to Kenya, and also come back, and also write another great book about his work there. So, yeah, I gotta get better at this. But yay David!!
Links:http://davidduchemin.com/ – Davids Website
http://craftandvision.com/ – A fantastic collection of e-books to improve your craft
My favorite books on Craft & Vision:
Making Light 1 – Great flash guide by Piet Van den Eynde
Making Light 2 – Great flash guide by Piet Van den Eynde: The Sequel!
Your Creative Mix – Balancing creativity and business, by Corwin Hiebert
Drawing the Eye – Composition by David duChemin
Lightroom 5 Unmasked – Indepth Adobe Lightroom 5 guide by Piet Van den Eynde
All of these – Seriously, they are all good, even if you pick one at random you’ll be happy
So whats an appropriate excuse for not posting in almost three years?
I’ll admit that I knew going into this that I was eventually going to go off the rails. I didn’t think it would go so far off the rails that it couldn’t see the rails anymore. I think I did pretty good really, at least for me. In hindsight, it may have been foolish to try and start this a matter of months before a major life change. When I started this project, I thought writing would be much faster. But that didn’t account for the stalls. Like that last sentence, it reads:
“…major life change. When I started…”.
But typing it was more like:
“…major life change. {stare at screen for 6 minutes}{check facebook}{stare at screen for 3 minutes}{flip record over on turntable}{check facebook again}{stare at screen for 8 minutes} When I started…”.
I have things to do, and it got pretty easy to say no to spending hours starting at a cursor. It got easier still as time went on and the amount of crap I had to write about piled up. Sometimes it feels like writing about stuff takes longer then doing the stuff I’m writing about.
So at the risk of taking for-freaking-ever here’s a synopsis of the last three years:
- bought a church
- sold a house
- moved into apartment
- renovated church
- moved into church
- hosted some concerts
- got sick of taking pictures
- photographed a music conference
- got excited about taking pictures
- found out my father was ill
- got a dog
- traveled to Sudbury and back (7 hours each way) every weekend for several months
- lost my father
- hosted some more concerts
- got excited about audio recording
- got sick of taking pictures
- photographed a music conference
- got excited about taking pictures
- got sick of audio recording
- got excited about audio recording
- realized I haven’t looked at my website in three years
- figured out how to recover my password on my website
- wrote this
So that’s it in a nutshell. I’d like to get this thing back up and running. I think I may make some changes to it; hopefully that keeps me feeling like I want to put things on it.
Less Rules:
Initially I thought that having a schedule of what to post when would keep me posting, but it apparently didn’t work. I’m going to throw the whole music Monday/wallpaper Wednesday/Photographer Friday out the window. If only because the alliteration makes me uncomfortable.
I’m still going to post wallpapers, write about music and profile photographers that inspire me; I’m just going to do it whenever I want.
More Things:
It occurs to me that I am more than a photographer. I do a lot of things. I like a lot of stuff. I should talk about that stuff. Maybe I review my favourite video games, old or new (my thoughts on Minesweeper: an essay?). Maybe I talk about a board game we are playing or best record of the year (but by best record I mean best record I found at the antique store one town over). Maybe I’ll talk about feelings. All the feelings.
Whatever.
“Rebranding”:
You may have noticed that I changed the logo on the main page (unless all the views of the page are mine, in which case, yes I did – good job on the new logo Mike). I have been thinking of going, artistically at least, by my full name. Michael Stanley Bourgeault. That got me thinking of my initials. MSB.
When I was studying audio engineering, we learned the structure of digital audio data, including the concept of the most significant bit. I’ve always liked the term, I like the initials, and I kinda like my name.
Stanley is my maternal grandfather’s name; his love of music helped to inspire mine. His record collection is often my photo editing soundtrack.
My last name reminds me of my father; his inventiveness and tinkering nature inspired me to be who I am.
The term itself, “most significant bit”, relates to how much time I spend with digital things, audio, photos, computers and such.
Not only that, but I think it’s a pretty spot-on description for what photography is supposed to be; capturing that significant moment.
Plus it sounds kind of British. At least I always hear it in my head in a British accent.
Also, I “designed” the new logo, tried it out, then realized I had accidentally deleted the original logo. I have backups, but I can’t seem to find them. So I guess it is good that I like the new logo.
Well, that’s all I’ll bore you with for now. We’ll see how it goes.
July 25, 2012 – Hidden
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For this weeks wallpaper I have gone back a few years. This is a picture I took in my Mom’s old garden. She had this pond that was always filled with frogs. While we were up for a visit, I saw this guys sitting on a leaf and ran in to get my camera. It’s one of my earlier shots, shortly after I got my first DSLR, but it has remained one of my favorites.
Our renovations are coming along. We have fully functioning offices now in the new place, and hopefully we will be living there by next week. Once that happens I will hopefully be able to find some time to do some Monday and Friday posts.
Stay Tuned!
July 18, 2012 – Dedication
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So I made it a month before I started missing scheduled posts. That’s not too bad. Its not that I haven’t been blogging though. The last two weeks have been a blur of activity. I promise as soon as things settle down on the home improvement front, that these posts will pick up again.
Even with all the craziness, I think I can find the time to keep the Wallpaper Wednesday posts going, as they aren’t as time intensive.
I’d like to dedicate today’s wallpaper to my Grandmother, Patricia Smith, who’s birthday it is today. I took this picture on a family outing a couple years ago, at Wanapitei Provincial Park, north of Sudbury, Ontario.
The piers in the North river pictured here used to form a bridge to the other side. I liked the different shades of blue, brown and green in this picture, not to mention the memories of a great day at the beach.
Happy Birthday Nan!
July 11, 2012 – Forgotten Piano
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I came across this shot while driving around the countryside killing some time. Usually when Leah is in church, I’ll drive around exploring and taking pictures of whatever I can find. On this particular Sunday morning, I was getting frustrated with a lack of material. I was running out of time and hadn’t taken a single shot.
Right before I gave up and turned around, I noticed what I thought was a bench in the ditch. As I drove by it I thought it was weird how the top of this bench had what looked like piano pedals sticking out of the top of it. Didn’t seem like a comfortable design.
I was about 500 meters past it before I clued in. I slammed on the brakes and backed up. I think I spent the next 20-30 minutes photographing this both with my digital and with my Graflex Crown Graphic 4×5 press camera. This picture is taken with the Graflex.
July 9, 2012 – Trent Reznor
Ok im going to start this with a couple disclaimers. First, I am ridiculously busy these days. But I am going to stick to this posting schedule the the best of my ability. Second the pictures in this post are very early work. I had’t even held a DSLR at this point. And the camera I took these with was many steps below even a low quality point and shoot from this time. Seriously, this camera came in a blister package, in 2005.
Ok, excuses over. Post continues.
I have been a fan of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and Trent Reznor since 1994, when I saw the video for March Of The Pigs. You could say it was probably one of the most important musical influences of my adolescence, and to this day I believe had a major impact on the path my life took.
The one-man-shop aspect of NIN amazed me, and the thought that a single person could have control over the creation of so much sound was exciting. In 1999 I moved to London and attended the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording. I had big dreams of becoming a record producing rock star. Knowing myself now, it does seem kind of silly. I don’t regret getting that education (though I always get saddled with being the sound guy when my band plays), but I don’t think I am destined to be a record producer, at least to the level I thought I was.In all these years, I had never gotten the chance to see my “idols” live. Growing up in Sudbury, Ontario, meant a three hour drive to Toronto, where the big shows were. It was not a practical situation, since, well, I didn’t drive.
Fast forward to 2006, I get an announcement that NIN will be playing at The John Labatt Centre, in London. I just happened to be living across the street from The John Labatt Centre. This transportation situation I could swing.When it came time for the concert, I didn’t want to take my digital point and shoot, for fear it would be confiscated. So instead, I opened up a birthday present I was waiting to mail to my brother. I tried to find a picture of it, but no matter how strong my google-fu is, it is like this camera never existed.
It was at best, 0.6 megapixels. It was the size of a normal thumb drive, and similar in every way, except that it had a tiny lens, a shutter button, and a 2 digit digital counter. The package boasted a 16MB capacity, space for hundreds of photos!! WOW!
I wasn’t holding out much hope, picture wise. I couldn’t wait to get to the show.
When NIN took the stage (after Saul Williams blew my mind) I went straight for the moshpit. One of the benefits of buying your camera in the checkout isle at Zellers is you won’t be too broken up if it goes flying. For the entire show I kept it in my hand and would hold it up and snap a few pictures now and then.
I definitely used the 16MB capacity of that little camera. And there was a lot of garbage. But there were also some gems. I ended up keeping 14 of the pics for different reasons. There aren’t any that are so sharp that you could really tell who it was if I didn’t tell you, but I think a couple managed, somehow, to capture the intensity of the performance.I look forward to someday getting to photograph Trent with some proper gear, but until then these will have to do. I still kinda like ’em.
July 4, 2012 – The Ship Hector
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Another one from Nova Scotia. Our trip out east lasted two weeks. I brought one suitcase; and three camera bags. In addition my my digital rig, I brought a Mamiya C330, a Conley Jr. from 1913 and my Busch Pressman 4×5 view camera. Leah is a very supportive and patient partner. Loading film holders in the front seat of a moving vehicle in a changing bag in humid conditions can lead to some swearing.
This ship is a reproduction of the ship that originally brought the first Scottish settlers to Nova Scotia in 1773. It is part of a very cool museum in Pictou.
I took this with the view camera from right beside the van where we parked. At this point in the trip the camera bags were empty and the van was acting as a mobile studio, with most of my gear rolling around the back. It’s one of my favorite film shots yet.
July 2, 2012 – Corin Raymond
Ok, I am going to try to get this post done quick. I had this big lofty idea that I would be able to sit down on a Sunday and write two months worth of posts. That is not going as planned. It takes much longer to write about things I like than I thought. Hours longer. I spend a lot of time with the backspace key.
But I don’t have much time today, and this is going to be a busy week (month, year, rest of life), as the purchase of our new home closes tomorrow!
For my music Monday post this week I’m going to talk about Toronto singer-songwriter Corin Raymond.Although I’ve known Corin for a few years, he recently spent some time here at the London Fringe Festival, and I figured I should write about him and help get the word out before his current summer tour is over.
Corin can almost be considered an institution in the Toronto roots scene. He’s part of The Undesirables, and The Sundowners (whose other members, as well as the group themselves, will no doubt be featured here at some point). In addition to that, he writes and performs his own solo material, both theatrical performances as well as musically.
I first saw him perform at the Home County Folk Festival in 2009, in his duo The Undesirables, with fellow singer-songwriter Sean Cotton. I was immediately struck by how much of himself he gives to the audience. It’s not unusual to watch a singer simply hold the mic, maybe move their hands and feet to the music a bit. Not Corin, he involves his whole body in the song, and truly communicates with the crowd.
You may have seen or heard of Corin recently on the news. He is in the process of creating an album of his favorite Canadian folk and roots songs. That in itself is pretty cool, but what really sets this apart is that the studio he is working with will accept Canadian Tire money as payment. To date he has raised over $4000 in “paper nickels and dimes”. That means over $1,000,000 was spent at Canadian Tire to earn that much. Corin calls it his first million dollar record. It is expected to be released sometime in the Fall.
What really makes me want to write about him right now is not so much his music, but the show he performed at this years London Fringe Festival. Bookworm. Aside from getting rave reviews, he also won the Producers Pick award, which is essentially a best in show as decided by the folks putting the festival on.
Bookworm is a one man show, starring Corin, in which he talks about his childhood and how much of an impact literature has on him, particularly the work of Ray Bradbury. Corin’s energy in his presentation on the theatrical stage is no different than his music performance. He gives everything he can to his audience. In an hour, with no more on stage than a stack of books, he manages to build the walls of his childhood around you.I can’t recommend this show enough. He will be touring the show to the Winnipeg Fringe Festival from July 18-27, Edmonton Fringe August 16, Victoria Fringe August 12, Vancouver Fringe September 6 and the Words Aloud Festival in Owen Sound on November 2.
You can find out more about Corin, Canadian Tire Money and Bookworm at his website: www.dontspendithoney.com. It also has a comprehensive schedule of upcoming show dates.
July 6, 2012 – Jim Marshall
One of the challenges I am going to find with this writing experiment is how to describe the people I write about. I am going to really have to work my inner thesaurus to avoid calling every photographer I profile “my favorite”. To be perfectly honest, I find the premise that one artist can be “better” than another difficult to come to terms with. In reality, every artist I am drawn to is, indeed, my favorite. It may be based on the mood I’m in that day, maybe because of something that reminded me about them; certain artists tend to dominate my attention for a while, then fade into the background.
With music that has always been the way I worked. Right now I’m in the middle of a long hip-hop phase that started with the untimely passing of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, which then led me to The Roots (who I am listening to right now), and is phasing into repeated listenings of Saul Williams, which will likely lead to several weeks of Nine Inch Nails.
This is going somewhere, related to photography, I swear (I think). Hang in there.
A few years ago, I would haunt the photography section at Chapters, looking for the latest photography how-to that would answer all my questions and make me a famous and rich photographer. Bit by bit, I found my gaze shifting left on the shelf, towards the photography collections, away from the “instructional” books. There was one that always grabbed my attention, with a giant picture of Janis Joplin on the cover, but every time I looked at the book, it was shrink wrapped; the well-behaved polite young man I am would not allow me to tear it open and look inside. One day the cover caught my eye, and beside it was a crumpled pile of cellophane.
I grabbed it, started leafing through the pages, and was floored. Though I didn’t buy the book on that visit, A few weeks later Leah gave it to me as a gift, after I described how much I liked it.
That book was called Trust, by photographer Jim Marshall. It is one of the first photography collection books I owned, and it changed (literally) how I looked at books about photography, and photography itself for that matter. I come back to it often.You have seen Jim Marshall’s work, I can guarantee it.
Marshall can easily be described as one the most important photographers in popular music. Looking through his work, it almost seems unreal how he could find himself and his camera around so many iconic figures, often fitting 5 or six of them into the same frame.
Jim was the chief photographer at Woodstock in 1969, and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He was the only photographer given backstage access to the Beatles last concert. The access he was given would be a dream for any photographer, and turned it into some of the most important pop culture work of the later twentieth century.
From anybody who worked with him, Jim was known as a very complex person. He didn’t care if he offended somebody, and would fly off the handle at small and seemingly miniscule misunderstandings. He was also very hard on his body, fully embracing the sex, drugs & rock and roll mentality of the times.
Some of my favorite work (if I have to choose) of his is of jazz legends John Coltrane, and particularly Miles Davis (I have to admit, I have a trumpet bias). Jim’s shots of them were some of the first portraits that I ever saw as more than a picture of a person. He grabs their souls, and you can see what makes them who they are. What is beautiful about this is that even though you can see it, it is almost impossible to describe it to someone else, they need to see it too, so they can understand.In the pages of Trust, Jim tells the story of getting to work with Miles Davis, an equally complex and, let’s say, direct person, but one that was one of Jim’s musical heroes:
In passing by Miles backstage at some point in the early 60’s (he doesn’t specify exactly when), Jim tried to strike up a conversation and asked “Hey, Miles, why do you play a green trumpet?” Miles responded “Motherfucker, why you askin’ me about the color of my trumpet? I don’t ask why you are using a black camera!”
That would have been it for me. I would have ran with my tail between my legs and crawled under my bed in the fetal position. I suppose it was somewhat similar to Jim. But he tried again.
At a later event, he brought a copy of one of his portraits of John Coltrane, handed it to somebody and asked them to give the print to Davis. When he received the picture, he excitedly went over to Marshall to thank him, and tell him that Coltrane is one of his favorite musicians. Jim Marshall replied “Yeah, I know.”
Then, and this is my favorite part, Miles Davis asked him “Why don’t you ever take pictures like that of me?” Jim’s reply:
[blockquote]“Why don’t you let me?”[/blockquote]
I love this story. I love everything about it. The interaction between two people I look up to immensely, but would have been terrified to meet in person. The fact that one was terrified of the other. The fact that they are both such forces of nature, and that in order to come together they had to almost ricochet off each other first.
And I’m glad that they did. When I was first leafing through Trust, the photos of Miles stopped me in my tracks and moved me, changing how I felt about photography forever.
When I got home after discovering the book, I started researching Jim Marshall. He passed away in his sleep on March 24, 2010. That was just a few weeks before I found out about him. For some reason that makes me sad, like I found him too late. One of my goals for this part of the blog is to send a small list of questions to photographers who inspire me. Questions like: what do you love about photography, what is your favorite photo that isn’t yours, who would you like to shoot that you haven’t. I would have liked to send it to him. He probably would have told me to screw off.
And it would have been awesome.
This video is a great insight into who he was. It also blows my mind at 2:08, considering this year we also lost Jim Marshall of Marshall Amp fame.
Jim never had any children, but he considered his photos to be his offspring. Upon his death he left everything to his assistant, Amelia Davis. She formed Jim Marshall Photography LLC with the goal of preserving and protecting his legacy.
I can’t recommend checking out the website enough. I’ve spent hours there looking at his work, and watching interviews with this legend.
That, or you could just leaf through your record collection, his work is probably in there too.
All images in this post are ©Jim Marshall Photography LLC
