Color in a Black and White Room
I’ve been trying to write this piece for a few weeks now and something keeps getting in the way of me sitting down and writing about this incredible experience. I think a part of it is that it’s had such a profound effect on me that I’m scared I won’t properly convey the depth of it with mere words. But ultimately, words are all I have so I will endeavor to relay my experience.
This story begins two days before the new year when I was struck by massive anxiety replete with panic attacks. There were likely several factors contributing to my malaise, but the largest one had to be the shutting down of my professional photography business. There were reasons behind such a move, and something I was looking forward to, but what I didn’t anticipate was my identity as a photographer would be disappearing and reborn into something new like some sort of phoenix. I was not prepared for such a transformation.
Fortunately, kismet stepped in when I spied an online workshop with Reuben Radding. It was six weeks, a 3-hour zoom call each week, and it would be limited to a total of six participants. Structure. Exactly what I needed. I enjoy my freedom but I also become paralyzed by it. I needed a path to follow, otherwise I’m like a golden retriever who will stray at the first hint of something new.
Before our first meeting, we were tasked with selecting 15 photographs from within the past year that represented where we currently were in our photographic journey. To be honest, I hadn’t been shooting much street over the previous twelve months, at least not in the classic sense when one thinks of “street” photography. I managed to scrounge up ten passable shots with people in them, but I also included five with nary a soul in sight, as that was the direction I was currently heading, and I wanted to present an honest snapshot of my present work.
What I was looking to learn from Reuben was getting in closer and capturing people in interesting ways doing interesting things. In recent years I have been stepping farther and farther back from people and using them more as an accent rather than the main event. I also wanted to finally learn what makes a good street photograph from just another shitty one. I have been a terrible editor of my own work in this area. Images that I routinely pass over are ones that catch the eye of others whose feedback I value. Something wasn’t right and I needed to find a way to become a better judge of my own street work.
The date of our first zoom meeting eventually arrived. We began by introducing ourselves, where we were from, and how long we’ve been shooting. Then it was time to dive into the 15 photos we each had submitted to Reuben. He decided to go alphabetically by first name, so of course, I was first up. I was nervous AF. My confidence level with 10 of my photographs was near zero. There were several I personally liked but I knew they would not fit into Reuben’s idea of good or interesting photographs.
The first thing he did was cycle through each photo before pulling back out and showing the complete gallery. He then selected the five with no people to showcase them. I explained he asked for photos of where we currently were in our photography and these were representative of that. Reuben explained he generally feels pictures with people in them are more interesting and dismissed all but one out of hand. He did like my picture of the Golden Gate Bridge as he said he’d never seen it from that angle before.
He then removed those photos and cycled through the other ten, dismissing most out of hand, including my favorite picture from last year of the woman walking her dog at sunset. Basically, there were two or three passable photos but, in general, it was obvious he did not find my work interesting. Although my ego was bruised, I was completely fine with Reuben’s assessment. After all, the pictures I had submitted are nowhere near the kind of pictures I wanted to make during the workshop (or so I thought - stay tuned).
After my set of photos, we moved onto the next person. It turned out when all was said and done I was the only one shooting in color, and only the second person shooting digitally. At the end of the class, Reuben tasked us with submitting twelve new photos before next week’s class. We would only be working with photographs taken during the workshop. Getting one good shot in a week is near impossible in street photography, so submitting twelve meant there were going to be some stinkers. This, of course, was by design. As I’ve told my students for years, the best way to learn to be a better photographer is to make tons of mistakes.
Anytime I want to do street photography in the Sacramento area, especially during the week, I go to Old Sacramento because it has the highest number of people walking around at any given time. Sacramento is the capitol of California, but it’s still has the feel of a small city and it is spread out so there’s not many places you can count on finding large groups of people. Because of this fact, walking around raising my camera to my eye is not always possible. It’s not New York City. Getting close to people and making it obvious you’re taking their pictures is a great way to invite confrontation.
This meant I would be taking a lot of “from the hip” shots if I wanted to be super close to my subjects. I could still raise my camera in certain situations, but I wanted to push myself to get as close as possible. So that’s what I did.
The photos I submitted for Week 2 were almost all “from the hip” type of shots with the exception of one in my “normal” style and one from a Cameras and Coffee meetup I went to over the weekend. I felt good about a few of them as I had met my goal of getting closer and managed to capture good gestures and/or interesting facial expressions.
During the review, Reuben praised some of my shots and selected out the shots above as the keepers from the week (with the exception of the couple with the woman keeping the sun out of her eyes). I was worried the one with the woman in the green dress was too much “like me,” so I was surprised when he selected it (this would be the seed that would grow).
A few days after our second meeting, Reuben sent out a follow-up email (something he does each week). What he said inside it finally clicked the lightbulb for me in terms of editing my own street pictures. He wrote about energy in photographs and the musicality of the street. It wasn’t necessarily anything brand new, but perhaps the way he wrote it? Anyway, whatever it was, it struck a chord. Suddenly, I could go back into my archive and identify previously passed-up work and recognize it as something worthwhile.
This brand new way of seeing also caused me to go back over photos I had already selected for week 3 and rethink my choices.
These brought me more effusive praise than the previous week and I was feeling pretty good. I still had a “me” photo in there. I told Reuben I had to keep the dog photo. He laughed and said he actually liked the dog’s pose (some water on the sapling).
With newly found confidence, I wanted to get away from the look of Old Sacramento. For week 4, I visited 5 different places including other areas of Sacramento, Historic Folsom, and Downtown Roseville (small towns only a few blocks long). This would turn out to be my peak week for the class, but that did not mean I’d learned my biggest lesson yet (those do not come with success).
When culling photos for my week 4 submissions, I knew I had some strong work in there. One in particular stood out, but it was such a “me” photo, something I would’ve taken before the workshop. It didn’t quite fit with the rest but I liked it so much I decided to keep it in and just say I included it because I couldn’t bear to cut it.
When it came to my turn in the meeting, after scrolling through the entire set, Reuben immediately came back to the “me” photo. Not only Reuben, but everyone in the class heaped praise upon it with words like “magic” and “I can't stop looking at it.” I was taken aback. There were no people in it. It was just a picture of a house with some nice light and some fallen petals. I mean, I fucking loved it, but I didn’t think anyone else would.
Two other photos, the man in front of the moving train and the group waiting at the bus stop also stood out to everyone. One of my favorites, the big dog mural, was “too on the nose” and Reuben dismissed it immediately.
For week 5, I managed to completely ignore the lesson that stared me in the face. I returned to Old Sacramento to take a bunch of “from the hip” shots hoping for a hand gesture or interesting face. While out shooting this way, I was uninspired, as if I was just going through the motions.
On a day when I was due to drive down to Sacramento, I felt so listless about my work so far that week that I decided to go somewhere closer. So I went to Roseville again. There are barely any people there, especially in the morning, so I took some pictures of the trains and went home. I returned later in the day to see if I could get anything in the evening light. I liked one with a woman in shadow, but it wasn’t something Reuben would be into.
Somehow I managed to fool myself into thinking I had a strong set to present in that week’s meeting, but it was so bad it was embarrassing. All the Old Sac photographs were similar, uninspired, and frankly, just plain boring. At the end, Reuben selected the one with the trains and, surprisingly, the silhouetted woman at sunset. He explained the ones from Old Sac didn’t really say anything, but the other two had a voice.
Did it sink in at that moment? Of course not. Why would it? The upcoming weekend was Mardi Gras in the gold rush town of Nevada City. My wife and I were spending the weekend up there and I was going to get exciting shots and interesting photos of people dressed up and celebrating. Amazing how we can deceive ourselves and not see the forest through the trees.
I wasn’t completely clueless. Some part of me knew composing shots with intention seemed to be where my sweet spot was, so I took a few of those, but still concentrated mostly on capturing people watching the parade and just celebrating in general.
To the surprise of no one by now, the girl peering around the corner was a stand out in our final meeting along with the couple at the bar. Everything else was dismissed out of hand.
And then the lightbulb moment. After reviewing everyone’s submissions for the week, we took a break and when we reconvened, we went through everyone’s top photos from the past five weeks and culled them down into the the best 3-10 photos for the entirety of the workshop with everyone giving their input.
And there it was staring me in the face. Four out of the five photographs selected by my peers were “Me” pictures (the group at the bus stop was a hip shot). Looking back on it, or even just reading this, one might say, “Well, duh!” And from afar, you're probably right. But for me, I wanted to shoot “street” like other people did. I wanted to get close. I wanted to capture those Garry Winogrand moments of a man upside down in the air.
This wasn’t my wheelhouse of black and white landscapes. No. I had no confidence around my street photography. And now I realize that was because I was trying to shoot like other people and not myself. I had learned this lesson in landscape and travel photography, but for some reason, I didn’t think it applied to street. I know, it seems stupid even writing it, but there you go.
Enter Reuben Radding. My photography is not his cup of tea, but that’s irrelevant. His workshop has the word “street photography” in it but Reuben does not really believe in labels when it comes to photography. I, and many others, tend to compartmentalize our work into genres (landscape, travel, street, etc.). But according to Reuben, it’s all photography. And he’s right. I shoot what I shoot, irregardless if I’m in a city, or traveling, or hiking through a forest. What Reuben gave me was the confidence to follow my own voice and project it out into the world unapologetically.
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