The blog of adventure photographer Michael Clark

The Art of Learning

08.21.23

As a professional photographer 28-years into a career, I have spent a good chunk of my life either learning or teaching. I have taught photography workshops of one kind or another for the last 20 years—mostly to give back to the community but also to diversify my income. During the pandemic, for most creatives everything stopped on March 11, 2020. And by stop, I mean nothing was going on at all workwise. Hence, like many of us, I looked to my hobbies to fill up that time waiting for the world to come back online.

One of those hobbies I resurrected was playing the guitar. I have been dabbling in guitar since my early teens—and back in the day I used to perform live in front of fairly large crowds. Back then, I thought I knew how to play guitar at a decent level. As a pro photographer who normally travels six months or more per year for work, there isn’t a lot of time in between assignments to play an instrument. As a result, for the last 25 years I barely ever picked up my guitar. When I decided to pull the electric guitar out of the closet and start playing again there was a lot I had to remember and relearn. And this is where this article comes full circle. The last three years of relearning what I used to know and learning much more than I ever knew has been very insightful. Hang with me here. This will all come together in the end.

As the graph below shows learning is a process of continuously trying and failing and eventually figuring out the details that lead to mastery. In terms of my photography, I would say I am off the chart shown below after 40 years of working on my craft as a photographer—long before I became a professional. There are still little things that I pick up and the learning will never end but for the most part I have learned eighty to ninety percent of what I really need to know to create the images I want both for myself and my clients. At this point it is more about going out and creating the images than it is about learning how to create them.

But when it comes to guitar, I have realized that I am in the valley just beyond the first bump. Back when I was playing in a band in Austin, Texas I thought I knew what I was doing. I knew there was a lot I didn’t know but I didn’t worry about that. I wrote songs, performed them on occasion and had a lot of confidence—enough that I could perform solo (singing and playing) in front of a large audience. That experience in my early twenties has really helped me throughout my career when it comes to speaking to large groups of people about my photography. But when I picked up the instrument again in 2020, it felt like I had a long, long ways to go to get back to where I had been 25 years earlier. In fact, I had much further to go than that.

After a year or so of playing and practicing guitar, sometime in 2021, I realized that I didn’t know much of anything back in my youth. I knew a good deal of the basics but there were a lot of holes in my knowledge and even more in my skills. Assignments in the photo world were still chaotic and since I had lots of time I started taking in-person lessons every week once the vaccines came out. That filled in a lot of holes in my knowledge and was very valuable.

Above is an image illustrating what it feels like being in the valley between blind confidence and true understanding. Truly mastering anything in a long path paved with consistent effort.

I also started to make the classic mistakes that I see participants in my photo workshops make—namely thinking that better gear will make me a better guitarist. I started out just wanting to buy a new amplifier since my old Peavey amp (from the late 80s) was not so amazing. I purchased a new mid-tier Fender amp and was pretty blown away by how much better it sounded. Then I got the bug to get a new guitar—one that was different from my old Stratocaster. That new guitar was even more amazing and really got me thinking about how much better it would sound with some effects pedals. And then I went to the College of YouTube and literally watched thousands of videos about how to play guitar, studied up on all the different gear and also started intensively studying music theory. On and on it went. My obsessive nature kicked in.

Two years later I own four guitar amps, five guitars, more effects pedals than I would like to admit and endless little gadgets to connect it all together and record myself here in my office. I completely succumbed to Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) and luckily did not go completely broke in the process. I have learned a lot. The electric guitar is a complicated beast these days in terms of the gear available and all the options. You can certainly get lost in the gear. More gear does not make you a better guitar player. It can certainly make your guitar sound better but it doesn’t improve how you play the instrument. The same holds true for photography, you can buy all the gear in the world and that won’t make you a better photographer. I have seen participants in my workshops roll in with a $100,000 medium format kit that made my own at the time look pedestrian. The image quality was technically amazing but the images themselves, while not bad, were not what I would call amazing.

As shown above, I might have gone a bit overboard on the guitar gear in the last several years. But creating music, chasing various tones and learning must theory has been a total blast.

Trust me, this is a gear head of epic proportions writing this article. In the photo realm I have two giant closets in my office and a storage locker full of photography equipment. I pay a small fortune just to insure all of it every year. The amount of money I have spent on photo gear over the course of my career could have bought a house in this not so inexpensive city I live in. When I start a new hobby, it usually becomes an obsession and I dive in deep. I don’t go halfway when it comes to gear—especially climbing gear where your life is literally hanging on that equipment. Luckily, I at that point, post-GAS, I am trying to shave down the amount of guitar gear I own since it is not my profession—and less gear equals more time practicing and less time fussing with the gear. On the photography front, I am not sure I will ever shave that gear down, but it is my profession and I need to have all the odds and ends for whatever assignments come my way.

What I have learned these last three years, that I am grateful for as it gives me insight into how to teach photography in my workshops, is that learning is difficult, and it is a rough road. Some concepts seem easy, and some are harder—it just depends on the person. Often those concepts that seem easy are much more nuanced than they seem at first and it is only months or years later you realize just how difficult it is to pull off the simple stuff well. Regardless, at first everything is hard. Learning and executing a new technique, whether it is a new guitar solo or learning how to use artificial lighting, is not easy if you have never done that before. The biggest hurdle for myself and for the participants in my workshop is embracing failure. Knowing you are going to fail, and rushing towards that failure, knowing that it is part of the learning process is key to getting better at anything.

Mastering anything takes decades in my experience. Mastery is a long-term process—and it may never end. At this point I am just starting to get onto that second incline with my guitar skills. I am essentially at the base of the big never-ending mountain in that regard. Years ago I thought I was nearing the summit, only to realize that it was just a small peak among many. I now know just how much more I have to learn and the uphill climb feels incredibly steep and unrelenting. I have literally decades of practice ahead of me before I can even call myself a decent guitarist. That was no different with my photography. It took decades of hard work and constant learning to get to where I am now and the learning never stops.

Learning new things, and really learning to master a craft, is part of what makes life so interesting. It usually is accompanied by adventures of some sort or another—as when teaching photography workshops, we as a group have a few fun adventures along the way that makes the experience so much richer. Learning can be fun as well, given the right conditions and motivations. If I am being honest, playing guitar again helped get me through the pandemic and deal with the stress and lack of assignments. I am grateful for that. The insight I have gotten from learning guitar and music theory will certainly help me as I get back into teaching in-person workshops as well.

For information on upcoming workshops visit the Workshops page on my blog.

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Summer 2023 Newsletter

07.31.23

The Summer 2023 issue of the Michael Clark Photography Newsletter is now available for download. If you’d like to sign up for the Newsletter just drop me an email and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

This issue of the Newsletter includes an editorial entitled The Swing of Things, a review of the Epson SureColor P900 inkjet photo printer, an article on a recent assignment documenting the 2023 International Red Bull Aerial Camp, an editorial entitled The Editorial Conundrum, and much more.

The Michael Clark Photography Newsletter goes out to over 8,000 photo editors, photographers and photo enthusiasts around the world. You can download the Summer 2023 issue on my website at:

http://files.michaelclarkphoto.com/summer_2023.pdf

If you’d like to check out back issues of the newsletter they are available on my website here.

Please note that the newsletter is best viewed in the latest Adobe Acrobat reader which is available for free at www.adobe.com.

If you are a subscriber and you have not already received the Newsletter, which was email out a few days ago please send me an email with your current email address and/or check your spam folder.

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The Elinchrom FIVE

07.29.23

Disclaimer: I have been an ambassador for Elinchrom since 2007 and have worked with them very closely on several projects over the last fifteen years or more. Two Elinchrom FIVE strobes were given to me as part of the assignment for the launch. These are my opinions and I have not been paid to write this article. As usual, I will give my honest opinion here and compare this unit to existing previous options as well. This article was previously published in the Winter 2023 Newsletter.

Late last fall, I got a call from my good friends at MAC Group, who are the distributors here in the USA for Elinchrom. Elinchrom had a new strobe, that they alluded to in 2022, a 500 Watt-second monobloc “all-in-one” battery-powered strobe with TTL and HSS (High Speed Sync). As a long time Elinchrom brand Ambassador MAC Group wanted me to take the new FIVE out for a test drive and put them through the paces. I happily obliged and took two of these new strobes out to photograph rock climbing and motocross.

Elinchrom has had the ELB 500 TTL in the line up for quite a while now, which has most of the same features as the new FIVE but market forces brought about the FIVE, with the battery built into the flash head and no separate power pack. The new FIVE has some new features that the ELB500 TTL did not have like active charging via a USB-C port, faster flash durations, and an even better optimized HSS system.

Above: Amy Jordan on a route named Las Golondrinas (5.13-) at the El Camino Crag near Santa Fe, New Mexico. This image was created with two Elinchrom FIVE strobes in High Speed Sync (HSS) mode and two high performance reflectors focusing the light. FUJIFILM GFX100S, GF20-35mm lens, f/4 at 1/200th sec, ISO 1600.

When I first got the FIVE, I weighed it to see if it is lighter than the ELB 500 TTL that I have had for a few years. The FIVE comes in at 6.8 lbs (3.08 Kg) total with the battery attached and the standard reflector while the ELB 500 TTL comes in at 8.4 pounds (3.81 Kg) with the flash head, adapter and the power pack, making the new FIVE 1.6 pounds (0.73 Kg) lighter. The FIVE is perhaps a bit bulkier than the ELB 500 TTL was but they both fit into the same space in a camera bag—and you don’t need an adapter to fit larger soft boxes and light modifiers to the FIVE, which is very nice. For a photographer who has to carry strobes long distances (see the image above) that weight savings is very welcome.

Of course, with all of the weight in the flash head this makes the total weight of the strobe—with the light modifier attached—quite a bit heavier than with the smaller, lighter ELB 500 TTL flash heads. Hence, you will need a beefy light stand to hold all of this safely and you will need either sand bags or weights to hold the stand steady, especially if working with the strobes outdoors. All of my light stands are tough, heavier stands these days so that isn’t an issue but I just mention it here because this is certainly not a strobe to be used with wimpy, light weight stands. This is no different than with other 500 Ws monobloc strobes made by other manufacturers.

Above: This behind the scenes image shows the lighting setup for the rock climbing image shown above. To light the rock climber who was 100-feet (30 meters) away, I used two Elinchrom FIVE strobes in High Speed Sync (HSS) mode and two high performance reflectors to focus the light. Both strobes were placed right next to each other and were held steady by canvas bags filled with rocks. FUJIFILM GFX100S, GF20-35mm lens, f/5.6 at 1/400th sec, ISO 800.

In my testing, and while using the strobes on these two assignments, I found the High Speed Sync (HSS) to be incredibly efficient. Note that HSS is completely different in how it works compared to the HS (Hi-Sync) feature found in the older Elinchrom ELB 1200. Hi-Sync is technically more powerful and more efficient than High Speed Sync, but for many photographers HS (Hi-Sync) is also much harder to figure out and use. Elinchrom seems to have optimized the HSS feature in the FIVEs to a degree I have not seen on any other strobe. It is very close to the same efficiency as HS (Hi-Sync) and much easier to use.

My first assignment with the FIVEs was photographing rock climbing at a new crag here in New Mexico. The climber was about 100-feet away (30 meters) and 80-feet (25 m) off the ground. I set up both lights right next to each other because I knew that I would need both FIVEs to have enough power at that distance to overpower daylight. The cave was shaded but the background was in full sun. As can be seen above the two FIVEs easily overpowered daylight with both strobes in the HSS mode, which gave me a lot more confidence that we could pull off the image I wanted to create. Also, note both strobes were fitted with the High Performance reflectors as well to boost and focus the light.

The idea with the rock climbing shot was to wait until sunset to get some decent light in the sky behind the climber. Sadly, there were no clouds to reflect the last light so we had to make do with the clear purple-blue sky, which did make for a clean background. We also got lucky with the rising half-moon just behind the climber as well.

For the second assignment with the FIVEs we worked with a motocross rider and created a mixture of portrait and action sequences to put the FIVE through the paces. We started off with a portrait as shown below. For this portrait, the strobe was fairly far away from the rider due to the giant mound he was standing on with his bike. One FIVE with a high performance reflector was enough to overpower the strong afternoon light.

Above: The images above show how this portrait of Daniel standing atop a large jump was created. I used one Elinchrom FIVE with a high performance reflector on a tall lightstand. Since the light was fairly far away, the long throw reflector helped to concentrate the light on him and not light up the foreground.

For the image below, we photographed Daniel Coriz (the rider) launching off a big jump. For this setup I had the two flash heads side by side to get as much light as possible on the rider. I was able to darken the background and the sky considerably to get a more dramatic image. In HSS mode, I used a fast shutter speed (in this case 1/1,600th sec.) to freeze the motion of the motocross rider at the top of his jump.

Above: To capture this image of the motocross rider mid-air on a huge jump I used both Elinchrom FIVE strobes, placed right next to each other (as shown on the following page). Both strobes were in HSS (High Speed Sync) mode, which allowed me to darken the background. Nikon Z9, Nikkor Z 14-30mm lens, f/4 at 1/1,600th sec, ISO 800.

Above: The above image shows how I had the lights set up for the image shown just above this one. They were placed side by side. Note that I also had clear 4mm thick plastic taped to the front of the reflectors (using gaffer’s tape) to protect the flash tubes from any rocks that might be thrown at the strobes.

At the very end of the photo shoot, with the last light of the day starting to fade, I also created some motion blur images on the big jump to test out the fast flash duration. At the lowest setting the flash duration is a wicked fast 1/8,080s at t0.1, which is comparable to 1/20,000th sec at t0.5. [Note that the t0.1 flash duration nomenclature is a much better and more accurate reflection of how fast the flash duration actually is when compared to the older t0.5 standard. It is great to see Elinchrom using the t0.1 measurement as it shows just how confident they are with this specification.]

Of course, there are quite a few things that make the Elinchrom FIVE somewhat unique. First, as I said at the outset, Elinchrom has optimized the HSS mode to be incredibly efficient—more so than any other strobe I have tried. Second, the battery lasts for an amazing 450 shots at full power and you can plug in any external battery pack with a USB-C cable and power the strobe while using it, which makes this a very versatile strobe both outdoors and in the studio. Third, it has an incredibly simple, yet powerful interface on the back of the unit and you can also use the Elinchrom Studio App to control the strobe from your phone, which comes in handy if you have the strobe mounted up high above your subject. Of course, you can also control most strobe functions using the Elinchrom Transmitter Pro on your camera. Lastly, it has an adjustable LED modeling lamp with color temperatures from 2700K to 6500K and an output of 4000 Lumens. All in all, I would say Elinchrom packed a lot of solid features into the FIVE.

Now, I know Profoto, Godox and other brands have had a very similar style of monobloc strobe design for quite some time. Many would say Elinchrom is late to the party and the FIVE isn’t that much different to these other options. And honestly, they may be right. But, I would counter with the fact that Elinchrom has done it better than any of the other brands. The FIVE has an old school circular flash tube that fills up light modifiers as they are designed to work—unlike some other brands that have a flat front port. The HSS is also optimized to a level none of other competitor’s strobes can match. Toss in the fact that Elinchrom makes some of the best softboxes and light modifiers in the game and it is a kick ass system. Some of us might need more light output (i.e. Power as in Watt/seconds) and that is why I still have my ELB 1200s and use them often. For most folks, 500 Ws is going to be plenty of power and the FIVE might just be the best battery-powered 500 Ws strobe on the market. My thanks to MAC Group and Elinchrom for letting me test out these new strobes. Go to Elinchrom.com for more info.

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The Analog (Print) Backup

05.18.23

Several years ago I posted an article here on the blog entitled The Analog Backup. It was not a popular article. But it did inspire a few of my peers to start printing their best images as an archive. One of those, my good friend Andrew Kornylak, an amazing photographer and cinematographer, has been printing a lot of his work over the last year in order to create a photo ark, or a print backup of his best work. We have been talking every few weeks and it has been fascinating to see how he has approached this process. After months of work, he has published a great article entitled The Print Ark on his blog. I highly recommend checking out his blog post as it is much deeper than anything I have written on the subject.

Andrew, and his son, have done a lot more research on what historically is remembered and how what we leave behind helps us and our work to be remembered. Hence, that is the whole point of having not just your images backed up on hard drives but an analog, or print, backup as well that can be discovered and protected much more easily than a giant pile of hard drives. As he points out in his article, with the latest Epson printers and certain papers, Wilhelm Imaging Research has discovered that these new ink jet prints can last up to 400 years with proper storage. None of these ink jet prints have been around that long so it remains to be seen what the reality is but they will certainly last much longer than silver gelatin prints created in the darkroom.

Way back in 2018 I wrote the following:

“When you kick the bucket, who is going to dig through your hard drives to pull out those epic, once in a lifetime images and save them for the world to consider twenty, sixty, or a hundred years from now? If you want to make sure your work can stand the test of time, then making prints of your images is the only sure fire way they will be remembered a century or more from now.”

For the last five or six years I have been creating 17×22-inch prints from my older Epson 3880 and now for the last year from the newer Epson SureColor P900 that replaced my old 3880. The new P900 definitely produces slightly better print quality but I have not gone back and replaced those older prints as they are sufficient. Over the years I have had long spells (six months or more) where I did not add any prints to the print archive, but I seem to go in spurts when I have downtime between assignments.

Andrew pointed out in his article, and I mentioned in my old blog post, this is not an inexpensive affair. He reckons that each 17×22 inch print costs around $8.44 USD. That seems pretty accurate. If the goal is to make two prints of your best images and let’s just say that is 500 images, then the total comes to around $8,440 USD! That is a huge amount of money for a print backup. But in retrospect, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on giant RAID enclosures and hard drives to back up all of my digital images and video content in triplicate–and that is just in the last decade or so. Hard drive storage is not cheap when you have sixty to seventy terabytes of images that need to be backed up–and those hard drives also need to be continually maintained and monitored. On my desk I have over 200 TB of hard drives in RAID enclosures and another hundred TB of hard drives offsite as well. Hence, while the print archive sounds expensive, it is only a small percentage of the amount I have spent on hard drives.

In defense of the print archive, there is another side benefit–which is really diving deep into your archive and thinking long and hard about which images might be the most memorable decades from now. It is amazing to me how differently–and how much more critically–I look at a print than I do when the image is on a monitor. I have a 31-inch Eizo CG319X top-end monitor that is about as glorious as monitors get. It better be because it retails for $6,000 USD! But even with that amazing screen to look at, I still see things in my prints that I didn’t see on the monitor somehow. Making large prints helps not only to archive the images but also in some cases to further refine the images themselves.

I honestly still get excited to see the images roll off the printer. The new Epson SureColor P900, which I have had for about a year, seems to be slower than my older 3880, but the print quality is a fair bit better. These days I am using a variety of papers, but all of them are from the Baryta family including Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl and Ilford Gold Fibre Gloss. Ilford’s Gold Fibre Silk was and still is one of my favorite ink jet papers ever but it has been out of production for a number of years now. The Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta is the closest paper I have found to Gold Fibre Silk. The newer Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl is fairly similar but with a slightly different texture than the older Gold Fibre Silk. All of these options are high-end fine art papers that will last (according to the Wilhelm Imaging Research website) over 200 years. The reason I use these Baryta papers is not just how long the prints will last but also because I love the way my images look when printed on these papers. The paper has a wide dynamic range so the full range of tones in my images print almost identically to how they appear on my monitor. That is critical so that my images appear in print as I want them.

This is obviously an ongoing project. As I create new images that seem worthy of the print archive, I make the prints and add them to the boxes. For every image that gets added to the archive, I make two identical prints of each image. In the early days I made three identical prints of each image but that took forever, so I dropped down to two prints of each image. At this point I have over 600 prints in the archive (which means I have two or three prints of around 250 images). I still have a backlog of prints to make–and I am constantly finding new and old images to add. In those quiet times between assignments I have a few days here and there where I can make a dozen prints or more while working on other projects. The P900 is just whirring in the background all day.

Regardless of the cost (of the prints) it is nothing compared to the cost of creating the images. As global climate change continues to march on I find myself drawn to images of massive glaciers and forests that may or may not be here in a hundred years. The adventure sports images will undoubtably look dated at some point–just as expedition images from one hundred years ago look to us now. But, these are part of the historical record. And some of these were created with boundary pushing photographic techniques that weren’t possible a decade ago. Hence, it isn’t just an archive to protect the images but also an archive to showcase the photographic techniques used to create those images.

At 17×22 inches, the prints don’t feel that big to me. But they are just big enough that when framed they would look respectable–and could be shown as a set in a gallery setting. I know very few of my colleagues will consider making a print archive a must, but I hope more photographers consider it so the epic images we have created are not lost on hard drives.

I will leave it here and get back to making some more prints this afternoon. At the very least, I encourage all photographers to get a decent ink jet printer and to make some prints of their images. It is a lot of fun, and also gives a lot of insight into what the image really looks like. Put a few up on the wall and live with your images for a while. That is perhaps the best thing about a print–that you can live with an image for years. Seeing it everyday reminds you not just of that moment but also that you really got something–you captured a bit of magic.

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The Wall of Pyro

04.19.23

On a recent assignment photographing the 2023 Red Bull Aerial Camp, I was tasked with covering a wide array of sky divers, wingsuit skydivers, paragliders and more. On one evening, the crew got the idea to set up some pyrotechnics for the team to swoop through when coming in for a landing. This is not an unusual idea as I have photographed similar situations before with the Red Bull Air Force — and the day before the team was swooping through a giant wall of colored smoke.

For those not accustomed to the term “swooping” as it relates to sky divers, when coming in for a landing advanced sky divers will pull down on their canopy and fly at high speeds horizontally just before touching down and sliding to a stop. At this moment the sky divers can still be flying at speed in excess of 60 mph (96 Kph). Hence, the term swooping is used to describe this dynamic maneuver.

In this instance, the crew were setting up the Pyro along a shallow pond right at sunset. The team went up on the last jump plane just before it started to get dark. Having photographed this sort of scenario before (more on that later) I set up on the opposite side of the pyro and made sure we were well lit so the sky divers could see us as they came through. I had an assistant hold multiple bright headlamps right where we were positioned. The pyro was set up so it wasn’t a dense wall but so that the sky divers could actually see through it. But just before Sean MacCormac came through a few additional pyrotechnics went off thereby creating a wall of smoke and bright white pyro, which made it very difficult to see anything on the otherside.

Because it was already pretty dark, I opted to use a 50mm f/1.2 lens, which meant being closer to the pyro than I really wanted to be with the oncoming sky divers swooping through. Three of us bunched together and crouched down to make ourselves as small as possible. The first several skydivers came through just fine–and were able to see us because there were gaps in the flying sparks. But when the additional pyro turned on and created a wall of white sparks and smoke Sean couldn’t see anything. The image above, at the top of this blog post was captured just as he blasted through the wall of sparks. As can be seen in the series of images below–captured at 20 frames per second–he came right at us.

From experience, I knew the best option was to stay put so I didn’t move. Sean, with his incredible reflexes pulled his legs to one side at the last millisecond so he didn’t hit me squarely but even so he still clipped my camera, which collapsed the lens hood over the front of the lens barrel, and then scraped the side of my face. Behind me the two other people dropped to the ground and thankfully didn’t get hit. My camera was fine, the lens hood was shattered but getting a new lens hood is not expensive. Sean took a bigger hit than I did because the lens hood impacted his lower leg pretty hard. He had a big bruise on his shin. Because my face was bleeding I got patched up by the EMTs on site and checked for concussion. Sean got checked out as well and they used a pressure wrap to keep his leg from swelling. We both felt horrible about the incident and apologized profusely to each other, but I was really mad at myself for even putting myself (and two others) in that position as I should have known better and did know better.

A few years earlier, on an assignment for the Highlight Skydiving team I was in a similar situation. As shown in the image below, the sky divers were swooping through a wall of fire. In this instance, I was shooting with a 70-200 lens and stood quite a ways back from the flame anticipating the sky divers not being able to see us on the other side. This was also at dawn, so it wasn’t full on bright sunlight but it wasn’t dark either.

Most of the sky divers came through and flew by our position easily but one came through and very narrowly missed my head by just a few inches while moving at over 60 mph. She moved her legs at the last second to avoid hitting us. I didn’t move but felt her go by knowing it was pretty close. A few people standing about twenty feet behind were filming the whole thing and captured the near miss on video. I heard them exhale loudly right when it happened, which let me know it was closer than I realized. Upon watching their video I saw it was pretty dang close and both myself and the skydiver could have been seriously injured. Luckily, it was only a near miss. I swore to myself I would never put myself in that position again. Hence, this is why I was so mad at myself after the accident with Sean MacCormac.

After the accident with Sean, I didn’t check my camera or the images until after getting checked out by the EMTs. I was perhaps still a bit dazed by the accident and everyone rushed over to check on us–and seeing blood on my face rushed me over to the EMTs. They did a comprehensive job checking me out and patching up my face. It was only after all of that when I checked the camera to see if we had captured anything and I saw the image at the top of this blog post. I was floored by the image as it happened so fast I just mashed the shutter release down and blasted away. I was also amazed that the image was in focus, especially since I was shooting at f/1.2 in near total darkness. This is definitely the best image of the entire assignment.

My sincere apologies to Sean for lining up in a bad spot. I am so glad that everyone, especially Sean, came away relatively unscathed. It was a blast to hang out with all of the athletes and the crew supporting them. And it was especially cool to meet and work with the international athletes that I had not met prior to this aerial camp. Below is a photo of all the athletes lined up on one side of the pond.

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The Rise of Ai

02.21.23

This editorial originally appeared in the Winter 2023 Newsletter. I thought I would repost it here as well so it is easier to find.

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) has risen to a level where it has become fairly alarming for many creatives—especially photographers and illustrators. At the moment, the leading Ai websites like DALL-E 2 and MidJourney.com are only generating fairly low resolution images for social media. But, I can certainly see a not too distant future where those sites or others will create much higher resolution images. This will certainly disrupt the advertising world in many ways. For example, what small to mid-size company would pay a photographer or illustrator to create images for them when they can just type in a few words, add photos of their project to the mix and poof—out pops a few wild looking, eye catching images for them to use for local and regional ads. If they don’t like the results, try again until something comes out that works. And all of this costs a very low monthly fee compared to hiring a human.

On the flip side, there are still events (Weddings, sporting events, etc.), real-life action and a host of other things that will need to be photographed to show reality. Hence, I don’t see real world photography going anywhere. This will hit some photographers harder than others. I don’t really know how it will impact the photo industry. No one really does. But I know that change has always been a part of this industry and you either embrace it or give up and move on to something else. From the inimitable Seth Godin in a recent blog post about change he said, “The world changes and we have a choice: Fight hard to keep it the way it was or notice what happened and then decide to do something with that insight.”

Fstoppers (not a source I reference very often) also recently posted a blog post about Ai and how it might impact the industry, “What’s basically happening is that Ai is scraping photos by living, breathing photographers on the internet and putting them in a blender to spit out lookalikes that could potentially land users in legal hot water. And even if it doesn’t, the one thing that the Ai won’t have is the story to go with capturing the photo.” At the moment Getty has already filed two lawsuits against Ai companies. Hence, the “scraping” of copyrighted photos to create new composites is going to get really sticky in the legal sense. Because of this I have a feeling larger corporations might not jump into the Ai world (at least not right away) as much as smaller businesses. Another interesting quote from that same article was from engineer Fran Blanche, who said “AI is plagiarizing our past to generate our future.” I have to admit, the imagery that I have seen from DALL-E 2 and other Ai options are compelling. For the outdoor genre I am not too concerned at the moment, but Ai will certainly eat up a little bit more of the advertising pie, leaving less money to hire content creators. As usual, the only certainty is change.

On the Day that my Winter 2023 Newsletter was published Heather Elder, one of the top photography reps in the industry also published a very well thought out and interesting article entitled “Are we Going Out of Business,” regarding Ai and its impact on the photography industry. I highly recommend checking it out.

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Winter 2023 Newsletter

02.14.23

The Winter 2023 issue of the Michael Clark Photography Newsletter is now available for download. If you’d like to sign up for the Newsletter just drop me an email and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

This issue of the Newsletter includes an editorial entitled Artemis, a review of the Elinchrom FIVE 500 Ws battery-powered strobe, an article on a recent project documenting the NASA Artemis 1 launch, an editorial on Ai and how it might impact the photography industry, and much more.

The Michael Clark Photography Newsletter goes out to over 8,000 photo editors, photographers and photo enthusiasts around the world. You can download the Winter 2023 issue on my website at:

http://files.michaelclarkphoto.com/winter_2023.pdf

If you’d like to check out back issues of the newsletter they are available on my website here.

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If you are a subscriber and you have not already received the Newsletter, which was email out a few days ago please send me an emailed with your current email address and/or check your spam folder.

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