A recent article in the New York Times practically proclaimed the death of traditional professional photography. (The New York Times, March 29, 2010, “For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path”, Stephanie Clifford)

First, I felt offended as I scanned the paragraphs. Then, I decided not to participate in that pessimistic frame of thought.

The story said, “There are very few professional photographers who, right now, are not hurting.” And, “Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets… are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options.”

Hmmm… true, true! Perhaps this is because the amateurs are keeping up with trends and technology better than many stiff-shirt, inflexible professionals. Hellllloooo…. the world is changing, and photography is changing along with most other crafts and arts. We all love iTunes, right? Wrong! The recording companies hated it. They lost money and had to scale back on out-dated, and obsolete methods. They were forced to adapt, and many of the forward-thinking will survive.

Look at other media industries which have gone through fundamental transformations:
Book Publishing — books now available as downloads and “print-on-demand”

Newspapers and magazines — now competing with free internet news

Motion Pictures and Hollywood — now a cheap and fast download

Television Networks — who even watches any more? Better content is faster and free on-line.

Art — It seems like only yesterday that Andy Warhol was catching hell for painting “Campbell’s Soup Cans” so photo-realistically (1962). Now we can turn a photograph into painter-realistic!

Industries change, and the individuals who are most successful and profitable are those who adapt fastest to current trends and technologies. So as photographers we all have reason to embrace the current trends. The world is at our fingertips! We can now grab a camera and, with some basic computer skills, produce virtually any image that we can imagine in our own mind. We used to be limited by physical characteristics of film and cameras, but this is no longer the case. Our own creativity is the only limit. Today’s modern professional photographer has powerful tools that would boggle the mind just a decade ago.

Ahhh, and so do the amateurs…… which is why some pros are feeling threatened.

Today’s professional photographers can continue to pay the bills; feed the family; find internal satisfaction; live an enviable lifestyle, and retire with a smile. Likewise, amateurs can earn extra money; have a blast; and continue to push us pros as they have done for the past few decades. So what is the issue? This is just a normal shake-up in an industry which was thrust completely and quickly into the digital age. Professional photography will not die — we pros will just continue to find new leaders, artists, teachers, and heros, as we keep a close eye on the amateurs who will push us to create new images and greater accomplishments.

Photography has been given a breath of new life — and for this I am thankful.

Hmmm. I am still trying to figure out the new brush tools in Photoshop CS5 . I have to admit, this is a real fun challenge! Techniques like this will evolve nicely into the portrait industry, I think.

I still have two spots left in my June 14th-20th Boot Camp!

In the exciting world of retail art photography, a photographer has to keep on evolving; keep on experimenting; keep on creating new looks.

Like most serious photographers, I have a truckload of old images that are really top quality, but which needed to be given a breath of new life. For ten years now I have been trying to paint my images manually, one way or another. I tried it with a paintbrush and acrylics at first. Then I tried painting oils on to my fiber darkroom prints. Finally I tried watercolor paints mixed with colored pencils. I had limited success, and ruined a lot of prints.

I have tried a couple of digital painting programs lately, and found them a bit difficult to understand. The instruction manuals still sit in a stack on my special desk, which is dedicated to unfinished projects.

As a tester for the new Adobe Photoshop CS5, I started toying around with the new mixing brush tool. You’ll find it hidden under the paint brush tool. I love it! It is pretty understandable for those artists who already have a basic grasp of Photoshop. The image below was painted relatively simply, using just two different brushes on a single layer. Boy, I am really excited to dig further into the “wet brush” settings and develop a line that will really catch some attention when printed on large stretched canvases.

This image is of a champion hula dancer named Haunani. If you have ever wanted to photograph real hula on the beach in Hawai’i, you can join me and Rick Sammon, and Juan Pons, and a dozen other pros at the Maui Photo Festival in August! Rumor has it that the famous Adobe Photoshop Evangelist Russell Preston Brown will show up again this year to give us the inside scoop on CS5.  There is nothing better than shooting a digital camera while standing barefoot in the white, tropical sands of Maui!

If you are looking for a workshop even more intimate, then check out my Tropical Island Boot Camp for Creative Photography. Russell Brown and I will spend an adventure-packed week exploring the secret spots all around the island. This will max out at 10 students,. i have two openings left at this moment. Email me for more information!

Aloha,

Randy

After months of planning, it is finally time to announce my June photography workshop!

The workshop will be officially announced tomorrow morning to several thousand people on my email list. I expect it to sell out to all ten lucky students pretty quickly. This workshop is unique from all the others, as we will be living together, “boot camp” style, in a dormitory. This intensive 6 day, 6 night adventure will be all-inclusive! I have arranged for accomodations, meals, and all ground transportation!!!

To top this off, I have partnered up with the incredible Photoshop Evangelist Dr. Russell Brown from Adobe! Yes, this is the Emmy Award winning, Photoshop Hall-of-Fame inductee, world-famous mad scientist himself!

Maui Pro shooter Aubrey Hord will be our assistant. Her job is to keep us on track, and on schedule for the duration of the week.

Please download the brochure by clicking HERE.

~randy

Appropriately, I selected a photo of one of America’s heros to post for this Independence Day. I have followed Willie Nelson for about 30 years now.

I tell my kids that I have been in professional baseball and football stadiums - sold out - in major cities, just to hear his message and his sweet voice. My kids don’t believe me.  He lives more than half the year on Maui, so Willie has become a familiar sight to local folks, who treat and trust him as a friend. Because he is a neighbor to all Mauians, I have had the pleasure, in recent years, of witnessing live concerts in tiny gatherings, and seeing him in restaurants, and on the golf course. Last week at the Maui FIlm Festival I thanked him for all he has done for America, looking him straight in the eye. Then I had a few minutes to photograph him up close and personal. It was one of the greatest moments in my life.

Willie Nelson is not a “pop culture” icon. He is so much more for the good people of this great country.

Happy Independence Day. Relax, Enjoy.

(more…)

Oh what a month it has been!

I have been lucky enough to travel from Parker Ranch on the Big Island to Kalalau Valley on Kauai, with several stops in between. I am tired and satisfied because I have learned so much this month.

I was asked to travel to Kamuela (Waimea) on the Big Island to photograph the incredible Lim family hula halau practicing and performing in the historic old theater there. The show was incredible! I loved to work with so many friends like Lokelani Hurwitz,  Ka’ea Alapa’i, Nani Lim, Mary Lim, Bubba Lim, Lorna Lim….

Naturally the Big Island was sold out of rental cars, and so I rented a moving van. My other choice was a dump truck. My mother traveled with me — poor woman.

After getting back to Maui I arranged to spend a week with my friend Russell. “Dr. Russell Brown” is Adobe’s irector of Creativity, and is the “face of Adobe”. We planned to spend the week in my kayak photographing whales. Well, the weather was horrendous that week, Then my kayak broke. No whales. Well, actually there was one close encounter with a pod of whales, but the timing was off, as we happened to be taking a little bladder-break at that exact moment and the cameras were not in our hands!

We took a helicopter tour with Alex Air after giving up on the kayak. Naturally we asked for a “door-off” flight because we wanted to lean WAAAAYYY out over the skids to get the right shot!

I ended up spending a second week with Russell as he taught a PS4 “Magic of Masking” seminar on Oahu, at the University of Hawaii. I taught a mini class on HDR Panoramics during a lunch break. Portrait artist Joanne Barratt, of Sunset Beach hosted us for a cook-out beach her mansion, allowing us to get out and shoot some cool surfing images after hours.

Changing topics really fast, please mark your calendars for the Maui Photo Festival in September! This is the first year of an annual event that is sure to grow with the recovering economy. This year will offer an intimate experience with several top digital photography experts and the price is fantastic! Check it out on-line at www.mauiphotofestival.com. I am planning to teach 3-4 classes myself. Additionally, I am considering taking a small group of interested campers on an excursion for the next couple of days following this event.

Rachael and Jasmine have held their own in the gallery — actually they are flourishing in my absence! Thank you to all of our loyal customers whom make the trek up the mountain to see what is new and exciting in our gallery.

This man is nuts. Perhaps is is not so obvious for our mainland tourists to realize the dangers of large surf. All it would take is for a few tons of water to smash this man into the razor-sharp lava, for him to understand that he is standing too close to the waves.

While I was on Oahu recently I realized how photography had changed so quickly during the past 5 years. Everybody jumped out of their rental car, or tour bus with some sort of imaging device. Cell phones, pocket cameras, 35mm cameras, video cameras, disposable cameras, iPhones….  I was amazed. Age didn’t matter, either. Even the older folks were holding their cameras out toward the waves for a quick snapshot.

Where do all of these images go? This is the big question? What does the future hold for photographic printing? Scrapbooks? How will we view these images? …Just a few things that I am pondering these days.

Sometimes a good storm is just the right “kick in the pants” for a photographer.

I had a good storm. As luck would have it, I took my first voyage on the Hawaii Superferry, with my car, to O’ahu last week. Right after I got there all of the government warnings started popping up all over the news. “extreme wind, thirty foot surf, all schools closed!” I suppose Iit was exciting, but I was on O’ahu to photograph tranquile scenes in paradise.  Oh well.

So, I went with the flow and headed straight to the very famous North Shore! Waimea Bay! Sunset, Log Cabins, Back Yards, Pipeline! I spent three days there hoping for the wind to die, and for the waves to become surfable.  They called for the Eddie Aikau Big Wave contest to be ready!  It never happened, the waves were too dis-organized.

I waited in my car (completely covered with a salt layer) for the sun to peep through the clouds. I, and waited longer than the herd od other amature and pro shooters. THEN! THere it was, for thirty minutes the sun lit up the North Shore, illuminating the exploding tons of water! The noise was thunderous. The croud was cheering as though each monster wave was a firework creating a blinding and overwhelming display of light!

Was it worth my wait in my van? You betcha! Can’t wait to return!

The new Humpback season us underway. For me, that means it is time to dust off my kayak and put the roof rack back on the car. I am hoping to get out once per week throughout February and March. I have yet another simple book concept called “Wednesdays with Whales”.

The first week of March will be exciting for me as I will get to go shooting with the very infamous Dr. Russell Brown — Senior Creative Director for Adobe. I am hoping for glassy seas and “whale soup” off of Maui’s south shore.

I continue to search for a WP Blog developer to help me make this blog more visitor-friendly. Hopefully soon. …and Rachael’s blog too. Her blog has all the loyal followers.

Tomorrow and the day after my days will be spent with a Photoshop Guru Ben Willmore. Ben is the homeless dude living in his little $350,000 bus. He criss-crosses the continent shooting, teaching, and doing other guru-things.

The Moon last night was reported to appear 14% larger than normal due to it’s closer proximity to the Earth. I have to admit, there was a great moonrise at 7pm as it came up behind Haleakala. Naturally, I was camera-less at that moment.

But this morning I shot several clean images of the moon using a 400mm lens. I like having moonimages on hand just in case I decide to spruce-up an otherwise “blah” photo. I made the image below with my little Canon Rebel XTi. I’ve printed it as a 5 foot long canvas, and it rocks!

Moral: Keep a full moon handy just in case.