Photo Traveler

Bob Krist’s Travel Photography Blog

New Hope: In Character—Reception Timelapse

Destinations,Events,multimedia — August 30, 2010

The reception for New Hope: In Character was Friday night at the New Hope Arts Center and we had a large and very responsive crowd.

Besides the local luminaries, many of whom were on the wall AND in the crowd, several old photographer friends showed up, including the Geographic’s Mike Yamashita, NY Daily News sports shooting ace Linda Cataffo (we started at The Dispatch together, but the years have been far kinder to her!) and The Record’s Peter Monsees (we’ve known each other since grammar school), The Intelligencer’s Rich Kennedy, and freelancers Jerry Millevoi, and Arun Paul.

Here’s a web gallery of the show. The prints, some as large as 30×40, were made by Aspen Creek Photo. This is the consumer lab division of West Coast Imaging. We had to keep the costs down on this job and WCI’s excellent custom B&W printing was not in the budget. But Rich Seiling and the Aspen Creek crew did magnificent work on the consumer prints that just looked great.

I’d love to take credit for the good looking files those prints were made from, but it was the  Nik Silver FX Pro plug in that made those flawless B&W conversions so easy, even I could do it!

The prints were mounted by another crackerjack outfit, Philadelphia Photographics. Jack and his crew turned the job around quickly and perfectly….and they even delivered!

I can’t guarantee it would be the same for you, but photographing friends and neighbors was one of the most rewarding projects of my career…and one huge benefit was that all I had to do was walk two blocks to work—no metal detectors, no baggage handlers, and no crowded overheads! It’s the lowest carbon footprint travel photography I’ve ever done…..

Spectacular Lijiang

Destinations,Events,Ironies,Photo Gear,Travel — April 17, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

We’ve caught a bit of a weather break in Lijiang, in western China.  What a beautiful area this is! In the foothills of the Himalayas, it’s one of the gateways to Tibet, and it’s being promoted heavily as a destination for Chinese tourists by their government.

Here, the lives of acceptable ethnic minorities like the Naxi and the Mosos are celebrated (as opposed to the minority in the T-word country, which as you know, is not being celebrated).

Yes, tourism is king here. I used to joke with my brother Gary, a writer with whom I’ve worked on countless stories, that if we had a nickle for every hotel folklore show we’ve sat through, we’d be millionaires.

But as jaded as I am in that department, nothing prepared me for the 500-man spectacular show called Lijiang Experience. It is the mother of all folkloric shows, and was directed by the same gentlemen who directed the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics.

Gadzooks! I knew I was being fed a company line on the way all minorities get along together, but just like the Coca Cola Disney (thanks to reader Peter for pointing out the error in sponsorship attribution)  “It’s a Small World After All” exhibit did at the New York World’s Fair in the early ’60′s, this show just captivated me. What can I say?

Sometimes, despite the 45-or-so years that has passed since I saw “It’s a Small World” out in Queens, spectacular visuals still sway me and help me overlook glaring script inaccuracies. I guess that’s why I’m a shooter and not a writer!

But, despite the slickly-packaged tourism product available in Lijiang, we did manage to capture some slices of real life, including photographing a couple Dongbas, or holy men, doing their thing.  To see a few of them, plus a few more of the show pix, hit the jump.

Read more…

Can’t Go To Bhutan…try Ka,Ka,Ka,Kathmandu!

Destinations,Events,Ironies,Travel — April 3, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

It was the second aborted landing that really put my heart in my throat. In the best of conditions, landing at the short strip of Paro Airport, the only airport in Bhutan, is roughly equivalent to trying to land a jet on a bowling lane, with that lane being strategically placed in the middle of Sixth Avenue skyscrapers.

Strong crosswinds were vexing our Druk Air pilot on the Airbus approach. We couldn’t use our regular chartered 757, only Druk, the national carrier can fly into Bhutan, and they use specially equipped Airbus models to deal with the, um, insanity of trying to to land there!

Our pilot warned us we might have a tough go of it, but we were only a couple of hundred feet off the ground when he had to gun it, and bank hard to avoid the Himalayan mountain at the end of the runway.

Ain’t travel grand?

He gave up after a third pass, and we headed to Kathmandu. In the meantime, I was shooting video out the window with my little Kodak Zi 8 video point and shoot, and composing the headlines for the story in my local paper:  “Photog documents own demise in final Kodak moments.”

I wondered what the repercussions would be of spending my last moments as a sentient being shooting video? Is this any way to move up the karmic chain and attain Nikonian Buddha-hood? What has the world come to?

We did have time for a quick walk round Kathmandu in the late afternoon, and that was all I needed to convince myself I was still either in this world, or purgatory.  I’m sure Kathmandu was cool in the sixties and seventies, but it’s pretty much a madhouse now.

So when we flew out again at “oh-dark thirty” the next morning for Paro, I was happy to say “adieu” to Kathmandu.

I’ll keep you posted….

Jumpin’ in Jordan

Destinations,Events,Lighting,Photo Gear,Photo Techniques,Travel — March 30, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

Cold, fog, and rain greeted us in Jordan, but the atmosphere was warm and welcoming at dinner the first evening. These musicians did a lot to warm up the reception when they broke into a traditional dance, complete with flourishing cutlasses (I’m glad they liked us).

The next day, though, was clear and sunny and most of our group headed off to the magnificent Petra. Having seen it before, I opted to go out to Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum looks for all the world like the Cathedral Valley in Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah…..except that it has camels and bedouins. like these guys below, serenading us with music and song in their tent while we took a break from the midday sun.

Photo © Bob Krist

Photo © Bob Krist

For a couple more pix and a quick discussion of the flash technique for the top picture, hit the jump. Read more…

A Slight Aside

Events,Photo Gear,Photo Techniques,multimedia — March 27, 2010

Greetings from Jordan! Where the weather is wet and foggy and internet is GLACIAL.

I’m just preparing a blog entry about our visit to Egypt and the remote Siwa Oasis, but I wanted to share this video that Rich Kennedy, of the Doylestown Intelligencer, did about my little local portrait project.

Rich is an extremely generous photographer, and donated two full days of his time (on a weekend, on his days off) to run the computer end of the weekend of pro bono family portraits we did of area families serving in the armed forces.

I didn’t even have to ask Rich….once he heard about the project, he wanted to contribute.

Not only did he run the computer so that the 50 families could walk out from the session with a USB drive of JPEGs from their shoot, he also quietly saved my bacon with posing ideas when he saw me running into some creative brick walls (like fitting a family of 13 onto a backdrop).

If you ever wanted a guy to cover your back on a big shoot, you couldn’t do better than Rich Kennedy.

Marvelous Mali

Destinations,Events,Photo Gear,Photo Techniques,Travel — March 24, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

My long odyssey is starting with a bang with a quick (hey, everything is going to be quick) visit to Mali in Western Africa. We visited Djenne and its spectacular mud walled mosque. Loved walking through the streets grabbing street scenes with the 16-85mm.

The street vendors were ambitious, but not obnoxious. People were cool about being photographed, by and large. If they didn’t want it, they good naturedly wave a finger. But there’s so much to shoot, you don’t even feel a pang of regret if you have to walk away from a great photo. There’s another one around the corner.

I’m guessing the reason the vendors are not as aggressive as some other places I’ve been is because not that many tourists make it out here. It’s, as they say, hell and gone from everywhere.

This evening, we enjoyed a performance of Dogon dancers in a hotel courtyard. Perfect place to practice slow synch flash, or shake and bake, or strobe and burn, or whatever you call the technique of panning with a slowish shutter speed and firing the flash.

It’s onto Luxor and a desert oasis from here!  I’ll keep you posted.

Photo © Bob Krist

The wearin’ o’ the Red, White, and Blue….and Green

Destinations,Events,Travel — March 20, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

It was a glorious St. Patty’s Day in NYC this week….I, for one, had no idea that that many bagpipes and kilts existed on the whole planet, let alone on a forty block stretch of Fifth Avenue.

It was a lovely sunny day, creating killer contrast for shooters to deal with (look for the shade, look for the backlight!), but nothing but good vibes and comfortable marching conditions for the hundreds, maybe thousands (I swear, it felt that way), of marching bands.

The parade is as much about New York’s Finest and New York’s Bravest—-the police and the fireman—as it is about a Celtic saint. There’s a lot of heritage intertwined there, and if you think it’s been diluted over the years, well, just show up on Fifth Avenue any given March 17th and see for yourself.

The NYPD is so totally cool and professional handling these things and even near the end of the day, when a scuffle broke out among some young bucks in the low 40′s who enjoyed a bit too much of the green suds, they handled the situation with efficiency and aplomb.

It all happened behind me as I was photographing, but I felt it before I saw it, because I got winged with a bottle tossed by one of the scuffling celebrants. Thankfully, it was a full plastic bottle of Poland Springs mineral water, and not a fifth of Jamesons or Bushmills, so I’m upright and here to tell you about it.

I’m glad the lads had the good sense to toss the mixer, but keep the good stuff close at hand. Otherwise, I might have been in the ER instead of ready to leave on my six week odyssey.

Oh, and I spotted at least one shooter who was totally in the moment, and using the right brand camera to boot!

Photo © Bob Krist

I’ll be back at you from Africa in a few days.

More Fun at Home….

Destinations,Events,Ironies,Lighting,Photo Gear,Photo Techniques,Technology,Travel — March 7, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

Well, I know this is supposed to be a travel photography blog, and I have been traveling lately (but again, can’t show the results just yet due to legal issues), but I am having a stone-cold blast working on my “New Hope: In Character” community portrait project.

New Hope, or Coryell’s Ferry as it was called at the time, was the place where Washington and his men crossed the Delaware to defeat the Hessians and the Brits in Trenton on Christmas Day all those years ago.

These guys re-enact that crossing every Christmas Day here in Bucks County. They get in those longboats, and unless the river is choked with ice, they row across Delaware come hell or high water. It’s an amazing sight to see and a Christmas morning tradition in these parts.

Now, I don’t want to say that they take their roles seriously, but some of the guys who re-enact the crossing had ancestors who were actually involved in the original crossing three hundred years ago. Can you say, “tradition?”

I was so appreciative that these gentlemen decided to come up and participate in this portrait project. In these parts, these guys are almost as famous as the men they are embodying.

For a look at the lighting setup, hit the jump. Read more…

Drop, and Give Me….How Many????

Destinations,Events,Lighting,Photo Techniques,Travel,Workshops & Seminars — February 26, 2010

I’m heading off to San Francisco, blizzard gods willing (update: they’re not, I’m holed up in an airport hotel watching it snow after a two hour battle up here because my flight showed “ON TIME” until I pulled into the airport!), to teach a seminar for National Geographic Traveler with my buddy Ralph Lee Hopkins. I’m going to hang a few extra days and shoot some stock.

Okay, stop laughing. Travel stock of San Francisco? Good luck selling it. Yeah, yeah, I know.  But I’ve never really shot there, so I’m doing it for the therapy value. Peggy and I lived in the Bay Area when we were first married and I was in acting school (at the American Conservatory Theater), and I hardly ever get back and I always wanted to shoot it. So who cares if it never sells? At least that’s what my therapist says….

So the blog will be a little quiet and I thought I’d share a couple more shots from the New Hope portrait project. Like the one above of Dan and Katie, proprietors of New Hope Fitness. Now that’s what I call strength training. This shot was a lot easier for me to pull off than it was for Dan. All I did was use the regular big softlight I wrote about in the previous post.

A more difficult challenge came lighting Adele, the Ghost Lady of New Hope. Adele gives ghost tours of town, and you really need a scorecard in this town because it’s full of them, from as far back as the Revolutionary War and beyond.

To get the basic “ghoul” lighting, we took the big lightbox off the stand and aimed it up  from the floor. That was a cool effect, but the lantern candle wasn’t quite cutting it, and we had a shadow of her arm across her face.

We bypassed the candles (truth is, I knew they’d never be bright enough) and instead put in a little Morris mini flash slave in the lantern to simulate the lantern light. Then all we had to do was balance the light from the box hitting all the black of her outfit with the light from the slave hitting her face—-piece of cake.

Only took twenty minutes until we had enough ND material in the lantern to provide a good balance. Then we had to work out a position where the highlights in Adele’s glasses weren’t too distracting (couldn’t get rid of them altogether—-the studio space we’re shooting in is said to be haunted too, and the ghost just wouldn’t let me have an easy time of it!).

But, thanks to Adele’s patience and good relationship with the spirit side, we got off a fun shot.

In My Little Town…

Events,Lighting,Photo Gear,Photo Techniques — February 22, 2010

Photo © Bob Krist

Every time I spend some time around New Hope, PA, where I live, I’m always blown away by the great array of talented and interesting folks we have living in town. It’s a little art community on the banks of the Delaware River, and it’s home to great music clubs, art galleries, restaurants, funky shops, artists, sculptors, actors, musicians, cabaret artists, female impersonators, brewers, screenwriters….well, you get the picture.

I’ve always wanted to document my neighbors, and I have some studio space this month (courtesy of the New Hope Arts Center) to work on a project I’m calling “New Hope: In Character.”  I just started shooting this week and thought I’d share a couple with you. Right up top is Andre who runs a great restaurant called Zoubi.  Andre is from France and is the quintessential restauranteur—friendly, charming, and sophisticated.

Below are Sam and Stasia, the girls from Love Saves The Day, a funky shop (the original was in Greenwich Village) where you can find vintage clothing, toys from the 50′s and 60′s, and, um, all kinds of other stuff. There’s always a wacky mannequin outside the shop, and so we just had to include her.

And finally, Brendan the master brewer (so young, and so accomplished) and his associate, Dan, from the Triumph Brewery, where I often rush the growler to bring home some fresh, delicious suds that really make it hard for me to even pretend I’m leading a low-carb lifestyle!

Photo © Bob Krist

Photo © Bob Krist

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As part of this project, I also spent last weekend offering pro bono portraits for area families with a member serving in the military. We photographed 45 families in two days!

It was an incredibly busy and rewarding weekend. We met some amazing folks who have put a lot on the line for us all, and it was a real pleasure to give a little something back.

My friend, Rich Kennedy, photo editor of the Doylestown Intelligencer, volunteered two days of his time and did all the computer work (plus some excellent art direction when I started to melt down on occasion…like when 13 people from one family showed up)!

We also had help from photographer Arun Paul and Rose Gutekunst, not to mention Peggy (aka SWMBO).

For a look at the studio space and a quick discussion of my basic light setup, hit the jump. Read more…

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