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Hello nature photographers! My name is Michael Gordon, and I am honored to be doing this AMA and answering your questions. I have now been composing and exposing for more than thirty-five consistent years - and a full-time professional for nearly twenty - but this makes me neither an expert nor a master. The longer you’re in it, the more you realize that the creative expressive journey is a lifelong path of finding oneself through photographs.
My love for nature and land came before the camera, and my work is intimately tied to California’s wildlands. For more than twenty years I have been obsessively hiking and climbing over California’s (and neighboring states) misunderstood deserts trying to find the essence of place and plant through visual equivalents. It’s an exciting and never-ending pursuit.
I have the great fortune of spending nearly a quarter of each year living, teaching, and exploring Death Valley National Park, where I host nearly all my workshops and private photo tours. Desert light is unlike any other, especially in Death Valley, and I am lucky to experience and photograph many phenomenal events of light and atmospheric each year.
My affiliation with NPN dates to the early 2000’s, when I was a forum moderator and regular contributor. Jim and Donna Erhardt had built something great, David and Jennifer have made it even better.
I look forward to spending the day with you – ask me anything!”
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I notice that much of your work is done with a shorter focal length in the normal range instead of an emphasis on telephoto work. What is your stance on focal ranges and their tendency to distort perceptions of the viewer? Either UWA or long telephotos which compress the scenery. I’m concerned that these distorted focal lengths will remove a part of the human experience and connection, both for the creator, and the viewer. Are they just gimmicks to make something look “cool”?
Hi Michael,
I took a Death Valley workshop with you and Guy Tal about 12-13 years ago. Fantastic experience! I’m hoping to sign up for something with you again once I retire and have more flexibility in my schedule.
My question is about the broader human experience of living in this world (which sometimes feels pretty dark and ugly) and pursuing nature photography.
For me, nature is a kind of refuge from the ugliness, but I often lose the mentality to pursue it.
I’m wondering how you find the energy, motivation, and positivity necessary for getting out there . If it were not your livelihood (yeah, that’s a motivation) how would you stay mentally prepared for photography?
:
" Perhaps the most important consideration for a monograph is image sequencing, or the rhythm of your images - the way they unfold as you flip through the pages. An ill-considered or imperfect sequence can make or break a book. Monographs are a lot like music albums, films, or novels: they should start strong; the main body should help build the story you wish to tell; and that story should climb to a crescendo finish - a strong concluding statement. This is easier to state and write about than to do, so here is my suggestion: I like to use Adobe Bridge’s Output module to create a PDF of all my book images with a four-up configuration (2x2 cells on an A4 sheet, which gives me four prints per page at a reasonable output size), printed on plain office paper, cutting each sheet into pieces. You don’t need higher quality than plain paper for this preliminary proofing, but print higher quality if it will aid in your process. Now, carefully sort and collate your prints so that the collection starts strong, continues to build the story you wish to tell, and then finishes with a crescendo. Keep flipping through the stack until you feel you can no longer find room to improve upon the sequence. Take a break for a day, then flip through the stack of prints again. Tack them to a wall if it works better for you. When you can go through this procedure a couple of days in a row and can no longer find room to improve, you’ve likely reached “peak sequencing.” You may also wish to ask others for their opinions. Just keep in mind that everyone has them, and they may differ from yours and your intent."
Take a look at my attached snapshot. This demonstrates what I write in the article; in this case, sequencing images and their respective wall positions for an exhibition of 25 of my works. This is how I arrive at what to me feels like the right sequence.
I’m going to say the potentially unexpected: I do not consider the perceptions of anybody other than me when making a photograph. I conceive and compose in a way that makes ME want to hang my piece on the wall, completely independent of what anyone else may perceive. This may seem anachronistic to an era where photographers now tend to use words like “collaboration” and “community”, but neither have ever had anything to do with my artistic process.
And my mentality begins with my preferred choice of the black & white medium: I generally anticipate that at least 50% fewer people will look at any image devoid of color. Ideally, I think that if one is concerned with viewer perception (without quantifying the type of viewer), then shooting 50mm beautiful and representational color images that do not require an investment of attention might be a better route to consider
I think you might agree with my perception that the experience of the viewer - relative to the maker - is inherently compromised. They see only a facsimile of the real thing, and it’s limited to what we want them to see (by compositional choices). Even for me, my own photographs fail to quantify the emotion and experience behind the image. But I was there, I lived it, and my photographs are records of that experience. I can study one of my images for just a few seconds and instantly be transported to that place and time. This to me is the real power of photographs, but only the creator gets to live it.
Telephoto and UWA are nothing more than tools in our toolset. I wouldn’t call them any more of a gimmick than say, a table-side flambé. It’s flashy but it serves a purpose. I use both of these with specificity, because of the effects they achieve. Typically, I prefer in-your-face images - I want to feel invited and be able to “walk into” the frame as if the place or moment was right in front of me. I use telephoto a lot, but it tends to feel remote and distant - not inviting.
I hope I answered your questions well, Jason! Thank you.
Hi Igor!
I hope you’re doing great, thank you for your question.
After several decades of photography, I’ve learned what I want to spend the rest of my photographic days trying to adequately convey: what the/my desert feels like. This is intrinsically tied to decades of exploration, play, and photography across America’s deserts. I’ve largely winnowed my work down to one photographic idea that feels the most authentic and personal to my human experience.
I call myself a landscape and nature photographer, but the winnowing process has revealed to me that what I really love and want to photograph are desert plants. I cannot adequately explain this weird fascination, but it has a lot do with their evolutionary biology, survival, and the general quirkiness of many of them. They seem made for the camera, and it’s become a fascination attempting to express these characteristics in the best way possible. It’s the pursuit that makes it enjoyable, not the success of capture.
Like you, I cannot photograph with or around others. I know that many photographers get together today for shoots, I cannot. Group shoots might be good for developing social skills and friendships, but for me photography is about developing my work and my mind. I cannot properly think, conceive, or compose in the presence of others - it’s a distraction. Which is exactly why I photograph vast and quiet places. I’ve tried photographing on the street - instant paralysis.
I’ve learned that the images I make are for me more important than the medium of photography. I’ve studied (and taught) the history of photography, I’m fascinated by the history of the medium and its many processes, and I love most genres of photography. But would I continue to photograph if you took all my subjects away, the very things I love? Every time I ask myself this question, the answer is “probably not”.
I hope this provides some insight, Igor! Thank you.
Hi Marylynne!
I like existential questions more than photographic ones
I want to first concur that nature is refuge. From all sorts of things. Second, I consider that there are two worlds. One that is absolute perfection; that required billions and millions of years to arrive at this state - and then there’s the world that humans created for themselves, which as you note is often ugly and mean spirited. But it’s also how it has always been. It’s just more amplified with 8.124 billion souls on the planet.
I am human. I inhabit both worlds - very few modern humans do not. But my life, nature, and photography have always been intertwined. What I do for pleasure is also what I do for business. What I do with my free time is also what I do for work.
Because I find much of the human made world disenchanting, nature itself is what provides me with energy, motivation, and positivity. What could possibly be more beautiful? If it is direct advice you’d like, my suggestion is to limit your screen time, don’t watch TV (I do not), and limit your exposure to news (none of it is good). Read nature journals, natural history guides, field books, anything that will keep you in THAT world rather than the other one. Most of all, spend every bit of your available free time consuming that which uplifts - nature. Go walk in the woods, watch birds (man, they’re amazing), go paddle - whatever it is that will help free your mind for the stuff that can actually benefit it.
I hope I adequately answered your question, Marylynne! Thank you.
I appreciate your work greatly, thank you for creating photographs.
The question I have is specific to the photographs the include strong vignetting. I assume you are creating that in your printing/production work. With that said, how much of that effect are you visualizing at time of exposure versus working through the image post exposure. Related to that, some of the vignetting is quite visible in the transition and I’d appreciate some insight into your thinking on that effect.
Although most lenses display subtle edge darkening/vignetting, I add vignetting/edge burning to nearly 100% of my prints. In some the effect is subtle enough that you cannot detect it, in other cases I enjoy the aesthetic created by distinct vignetting. I have no hard rules regarding how I do it - it’s case by case every time. Only on higher key images (which are infrequent for me) do I generally omit vignetting; here’s an example: https://www.michael-gordon.com/photo/untitled-6/
Even though I don’t really consider the vignette at time of exposure, it’s such a baked-in part of my process that I’d suggest I am subconsciously visualizing it in the final print.
I’m doing fine for all the mileage I have on me now. This aging thing is not easy at all. The heat right now is not helping.
Thank you for the kind comment on The Pharaoh rock formation. Be sure to say hello for me to any of us old NPN-1’s you might make contact with out there. Take Care !
Hi Paul:
Harley Goldman and I chat semi regularly. Guy and I chat daily. I haven’t talked to Preston since his last birthday, but all of us old-timers keep semi- in touch for the most part.
This heat and humidity suck! At least the latter pulled back some today.
I enjoy that your galleries have both color and monochrome images. Do you know prior to taking an image which of those two directions you will take it, or is it a matter of experimenting when processing (or both)?
As a follow up, do you have tips for previsualizing (“seeing”) in black and white?
I took the Death Valley class you and Guy taught last year. (I slid off the road three times trying to get home from it, through a snow storm!) Can you please elaborate on what you mean about finding photographic equivalents and how you go about it, if you indeed have a conscious process for it?
I absolutely know whether it’s color or B/W before I ever get out the camera. I continue to work in both media because even though men have a high degree of color blindness, I have excellent and excitable color perception (not a brag, rather as evidenced by Farnsworth-Munsell testing) which causes me to respond to color in a different way from how I work when visualizing in b/w.
IMO, visualizing in b/w is a lifelong ongoing pursuit (concept + composition + tone + skill at craft) . The more you practice, the more you will see and be able to visualize possibilities . As to the simpler side of tips, using the “Monochrome” setting on your camera’s style setting will show you roughly what you might get. Even better, Monochrome camera settings can be modified to include tinting, filtration, etc.
Not every subject makes a great b/w image. You can use LCD playback to help you learn how color converts to tone (filtration matters here; yellow, orange, red, etc). You can also consider something like the Tiffen #1 Black and White Viewing Filter).
Hi Brad! Great to hear from you. I hope your snow slides were fun yet uneventful
At its very simplest, Minor White (the great photographer and visionary who carried forth Alfred Stieglitz’s concept of Equivalents ) said, “One should not always photograph things for what they are, but for what else they are."
My practice may differ from others, but I have no conscious process for finding equivalents. It’s rather the way I now see the world - I am usually attracted to and respond to things that represent something else. This can be a word, it can be a concept or idea, it can even be food! In each of these cases, my initial response to the subject was for what else it was, not its literal appearance. I did not stand in each of these locations attempting to create an equivalent to what I saw - the equivalent was my immediate response.
In each of the examples I provided, it is reasonable to suggest that not everyone will see or understand the equivalent. And that’s perfectly okay.
One Minor White critic wrote “Without a capacity to see in rocks some glimmer of essential form, as Weston did, or in clouds some hint of a universal life force, as Stieglitz did, one cannot understand White’s pictures”
Well, old friend, it is good to see you here! I took a rather lengthy hiatus from photography and NPN, but now I am back.
I just realized that come October 1, it will be twenty years since we first met at the campground on Bishop Creek. You were leading a large format class, and it was the night of that fabulous lenticular cloud.
That got me thinking. Do you still do any large format? I loved the soft focus work you did in B&W.
I am happy to hear you are well, and still on your game!
-P
