Sometimes things I find interesting slip through the cracks of a deadline. I saw the shadows on the back wall and tried to make something out of it for the CA, but didn't feel it was accomplishing what I wanted. I came back across it today and did a long crop and threw it in B&W. Whether it works or not, I find it to be interesting and a nice break from things I'm usually shooting these days.
Members of the Collage Dance Collective perform "Abandon-Salvation-Grace: An Evening of American Dance" at the Buckman Performaning Arts Center. This performance marks Collage Dance Collective's inaugural show to present their artistic voice to the city since the group moved from New York to Memphis in 2007. Drawing from classical dance to blend with more contemporary style, Collage hopes to increase diversity on the stage. Collage mirrors this with "Abadon-Salvation-Grace" by featuring a diverstiy of dancing styles in the performance that are connected through a classical foundation.
You know your day is might be in trouble when an editor emails you an assignment and it begins with "I’m not that gung ho...." But that was my Thursday morning. It was Read for the Record day where all across the world, children were reading "The Snowy Day" on the same day to break last year's record of 2 million children reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." The gimmick I was sent to shoot was Mayor A.C. Wharton going to Sea Isle Elementary to read to the student. For me that meant some over-exaggerated photo opt by a politician that I had to somehow make look interesting. Usually, when I get these kind of "photo opt" assignments with politicians or other things like ribbon cuttings, the rule is don't shoot the actual ribbon cutting, but what's going on around it. The story was more about the kids reading than the mayor anyways, so I went to my every so ready backup plan of finding a cute kid with a book. Unfortunately, only three preschoolers in this entire cafeteria had books. So, I make a couple tight images of their noses in the books and when I went to get their names, every one starts signing all around me. Turns out these were the hearing impaired students, so I thought "ok, that will be some nice additional information in the caption." The presentation started, Wharton did not read to students because he was behind in his schedule and the situation was visually flat. As everyone was filing out, an administrator made an announcement for all their readers to wait to get their assigned rooms. I thought about the hearing impaired kids and thought, "Hmm, they'll be reading the story too, and it will be more interesting than some tight shot of a kid with his nose in a book." So, my entire shoot was from the hearing impaired classes, and how they are reading just as much as the other students, but in a more visual style of storytelling. I walked away feeling gung ho.
Sorry for the photo not filling in the width of the post box, flickr is being lame and won't give me a bigger size. But you know who isn't lame, Brittany Ragon, she was one beautiful and classy bride. John, her husband, is one lucky guy. There are so many more photos to come. Special thanks to Sarah Patch for helping me out.
Here are some engagement photos of Melinda and David. They are getting married six months to the day that they met. I knew Melinda from college, she has become the fake big sister I never had growing up. So, it's a real honor to shoot their engagement photos and their upcoming wedding on Oct. 9th.
"A schedule is like a house of cards. Take one away and they all come tumbling down." -Herbert Arthur Runcible Cadbury, Richie Rich
This quote can basically summarize my saturday morning. When the call I got from my editor friday night started with "okay...so I'm going to have to give you a pep talk for Saturday." I knew it was going to be a long day. In short, a bunch of key stories for the weekend fell through at the last minute, except my 7:30 am assignment (lucky me). I was reassigned to a redistricting story (which was a bunch of people crammed in a small room starting at another person talking, not visually exciting) and then left to feature hunt in DeSoto County.
I quickly ran through the Hernando Farmers Market and found the two girls munching on cupcake cones between the 7:30 am race story and the redistricting meeting, but felt I needed one more image. I heard a rumor of a car wash for St. Jude going on at an Advance Auto parts, but it was untrue as I checked every store in the area. They had no idea of any carwash. I decided last minute to meander over to Olive Branch and saw some boy scouts holding these flaming signs of "Chicken" and "Butts." Though I knew butts meant pork meat, it was still kind of funny to see a boy waving a "Butts" sign at passing cars. So I pulled over and got my second feature. Scary thing was that I've been shooting in DeSoto long enough now some of the scouts recognized me. Finally, at 12:30 I made my way back home to edit and transmit. Definitely one of my crazier saturdays.
“A contact sheet is a window in the thought process of a photographer. It can be considered a photographer’s “sketchbook”—something not often seen by others. Each photographer sees things so very differently from every other that it is almost impossible to compare them. Photographers are like musicians who play similar notes on their instruments and yet the sounds they create are completely unique.”
A problem came up in the editing process of selecting the right photo to turn for the paper. I got down to about 10 or so similar photos and ultimately went with a random reaction on choosing the photo to turn in. This, to me, is one of the downsides of being a young freelancer, a lack of unbiased perspective of working through the photographic thought process. In school, there is the benefit of the classroom and friendly competition of colleagues who would respond sometimes with the brutal honesty of something like, “Eh, this doesn’t do anything for me.”
As a freelancer, my newsroom is my Gmail inbox and I’m more or less my own editor. Which can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the day. I know if I turn in a nut and bolts kind of shot as well as something a little more creative, I can usually bet the newspaper is going to run with a nuts and bolts kind of shot. If I’m feeling risky, I’ll send in only the creative shot and wait to see if I get called to give them something more nuts and bolts. The downside I feel is with little feedback comes little growth.
So, I’m left with the echoes of critiques I’ve heard at conferences and workshops I attended over the last 6 years I have pursued photojournalism. The big thing people ask you to show them is your portfolio. Now, I’m not going to say don’t have a portfolio, but I began to realize how little one can grow from a portfolio critique. Either you get response on the structure of your portfolio, which is handy, but everyone has a different approach and preference, or you get comments like “well if you had just moved to the left about a foot, this would have been a nice shot.” Good advice, sure, but it would almost be as good to say to get rid of a shot like that because its over and you missed. Just be sure to file away in your mind to move a little to the left the next time you are in a similar situation.
Most portfolio critiques I walked away from, I would always remember my flaws, and not necessarily learning to see images better. Where I learned to see better was at workshops with someone hovering over my shoulder looking at every frame I took on a project as they say things to me like “what were you thinking here? Why didn’t you stick with this? If a situation like this were to happen again, how could this shot be better?” Going through a couple days of that kind of experience can drastically change the way you see images.
Now, I will say again, I am not against having a portfolio. I think a portfolio is a photographer’s best marketing tool, but it’s not a sharpening block.
I read the book Magnum: Fifty Years on the Front Lines a while ago and one of many things that struck me about the early days of that photo agency was when an aspiring photographer plucked up the courage to seek out one of the giants like Henri Cartier-Bresson and show him their work, he would almost immediately go to their contact sheets rather than looking at their portfolio of their best work. He was more interested in the process of their eye than their final result.
I don’t know, but I feel we are losing something in our modern age with the need to generate more content for quantity and not quality.
Shoot, shoot and shoot. Then, shoot some more (why? Because you can.) until you got that “perfect” image. Then delete all the bad images.
But what happens when spend so much time shooting to cover all the angles that you stopped seeing the heart of the situation?
I am glad the paper I work for does not pressure me into shooting for galleries except on the rare occasion. Even then, it’s usually collaboration from the entire staff and no one person is dumped with the need to provide an overly large supply of photos.
I’m all for exploring a situation for the best image, but this mindset of just mindless shooting for content or for online galleries to get hits on a site, just feels so self-destructive. How is anyone going to grow by going into to situations, camera’s blazing and then editing in the aftermath of hundreds maybe even thousands of photos.
To what end I am writing this? Probably my frustration about my own solidarity, I guess a sense of nostalgic for the dark room days when there was time for people to stop and look and discuss the process instead of the assembly line way of life we currently live in. Also, to record a thought I had in between assignments that’s been brewing in my mind for some time and probably to complain for the sake of complaining. Maybe I’m advocating the idea of sharing our sketchbooks with one another to encourage communal growth. I’m still not really sure.
Well, for whatever it’s worth, here is an excerpt from my sketchbook.
Let me make a disclaimer: I’ve been trying to write this post since March and if I felt like I was sounding too pretentious or preachy I put would it away to try writing more a couple weeks later. My only intent here is to share an internal stream of thought. Also, I don’t want to imply these particular photos are anything extraordinary. Every time I look through them, I find more things wrong with them. I'm still not even sure I selected the best image. These are merely the photos that trigged the idea of this post and seemed like a good example I had of seeing something and working through the thought process of finding the image.
There's a long story about Alex and Jenni's photos.
Alex will be marrying Jenni in May of 2011. So in the meantime they wanted to get some engagement photos done in the sunflower fields at Shelby Farms because sunflowers are Jenni's favorite.
(That might not seem like a long story to you, casual blogger. I salute you for visiting btw! But that's okay, because it's an inside joke for Alex's benefit. Not yours. But you can still enjoy the photos.)
As I ride with my uncle through Connecticut backroads in a Buick LeSabre he's restoring, he sees me shooting the floor mats and asks, "So when was the last time you had Betty Boop between your legs?"
These are some things I've shot that were not done for the Commercial Appeal. Some more from those Sassie Seniors. Family photos for Michelle, these photos of her son were made about a week after he was born. Then a sample of some wedding moments I did for Dan McCleary of TN Shakespeare Co. and his wife Stephanie. So, if you need wedding or family photos. I'm around. www.kylekurlick.com.
Montee Boulware holds up her new dragon, trying to think of a name, at the Animaland fundraiser to raise support for the Horn Lake Library.The event was put on by the Friends of Horn Lake Library.
Nothing says Fourth of July like parades, baseball and citizenship. Unless you want to include hot dogs, fireworks and Mom's homemade apple pie; however, none of those were a part of my holiday assignments. Ironically though, I did do profile on a pet grooming store called, Hot Dawgs.
Brittany Compton, an Iraq veteran, plays with her daughter, Kaitlyn, 5, at a relative's house in Collierville. Kaitlyn and her sister, Kennedy, were placed in foster care in 2009 after Brittany spanked the girls at day care. Both girls were abused in foster care and Kennedy died. Her death has been ruled a homicide. While police have a primary suspect, no arrests have been made since Kennedy's death in 2009 because the suspect refuses to take a lie detector test.
Never lived at a house with a pool in the backyard before. I know this is a cliche photo, but I found myself mesmerized by the movement of the water as I stood on the diving board.
I was going through some of my photos from my global trekking and came across this photo from Robben Island Prison off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. This place has been on my mind frequently for the better part of the last six months while I've read Nelson Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk To Freedom." There's is a quote on the front cover from a Boston Globe review that said it is a book everyone must read. I agree. I want to go back to South Africa and revisit this place with the fresh perspective experiencing Mandela's life story. I only had a superficial perspective of South Africa and the apartheid on my first trip, and in hindsight I regret not having a greater respect of what Mandela and his fellow members of the struggle went through. I guess this has been a good reminder to me as a storyteller of the written word and visual narrative of the importance of having as much knowledge about an area I'm going to if I want to properly tell a story. Looking back on the photos I took from that trip, I kept thinking how differently I would have shot this had I read his autobiography before I went.
Well, if you don't have the fortitude to read Mandela's 600 page autobiography, even though I think it's worth it, you should at least watch the film Invictus. It will give you a small taste of Mandela's life and work, and the film even revolves around a world cup (rugby, not football). So it's sort of a timely film with the current World Cup going on in South Africa.
Sue Halperson gets ready to take her Chihuahua, Ginger, and her Irish Wolfhound, Ms. Georgia, for a walk at the American Kennel Club all-breed dog show at the arena in Southaven, MS.
Thanks to my former roommate, Conner Walker, I've become a big fan of Irish Wolfhounds. Here is the legend that made me a fan of these incredible dogs:
"Gelert the Great" The grave of Gelert can be found just south of Snowdon, in the grey-stoned village of Beddgelert set among the wild mountains of Wales. Here, in a beautiful meadow below Cerrig Llan, is a large stone slab lying on its side with two upright slabs which owes its fame to the legend of Prince Llewelyn ap Iorwerth and his faithful hound.
Llewelyn (1173-1240 CE) was very fond of hunting and in the summer he lived in a hunting lodge at the foot of Snowdon. Although he had many dogs, his favorite was the brave Gelert, his great Irish Wolf Hound, not only a dog fearless in the hunt, but a loyal friend and companion at the fireside.
One fateful day on the hunt, Gelert refused to accompany his master further, but instead he ran howling back to the Lodge. When Llewellyn returned he was met by his dog, bounding to meet him, but splashed with blood around his muzzle. On entering his living quarters, Llewellyn found a scene of confusion with rooms disordered and articles scattered in heaps. Now Llewelyn had a son, barely a year old, and as the prince recalled how Gelert and his little boy used to play together, a terrible thought came to his mind!
He rushed to the nursery only to find the cradle was overturned, the bed clothes bloody and though he looked frantically for his son, the child could not be found.
Turning to Gelert, whose muzzle was still wet with blood, Llewelyn came into a great rage and cried, "Thou hast killed my only son", and drew his sword and drove it into the heart of the hound.
Then- as all was silent but for the steady drip of blood onto the stone flag floor, the wail of a baby could be heard. On searching further Llewellen found his son safe and well, lying next to the body of a large grey wolf.
It was plain to Llewellen what had happened.
Gelert had killed the wolf whilst defending the baby from attack. Overcome with grief at his hasty action, Llewellyn buried Gelert with all honor and raised a memorial over his grave.
From then on the settlement was known as Beddgelert, meaning "Gelert's Grave" and this is the traditional tale still told today.
Larry Emory takes takes a nap with Brogan, a two-year old Irish wolfhound, on the floor of the Southaven arena after Brogan won best in his breed at the American Kennel Club all-breed dog show.
Today I photographed Will & Tori White's Wedding in Union City. Here's some portraits we did earlier in the week in Memphis. The weather indicated sunny skies, hot with classic Memphis humidity until Monday morning when a thunderstorm came out of nowhere. Well, it caught my iPhone's weather app off guard, and the storm threatened to ruin the shoot. I was scrambling to come up with alternative spots that could support some kind of shelter above us, with good light and were free. Turn's out that really isn't possible at the last minute, but I did manage to come up with a couple that were not my first choice, but would have functioned. After watching the clouds out my window move by and checking the doppler online, I decided to take my chances and go with my original plan. In the end, about 90% of the storm had passed before our scheduled time to shoot, so everything worked out and it left some nice overcast clouds to really soften the light. I found out during the shoot that Tori prayed for it to be not hot out when were shooting and she was well obliged.
Also, thanks to Natalie Newberry for helping me out for these portraits and thanks to Beth Spain for helping me out at the wedding today. Both of you are awesome.
I recently did some photos of young Henry for leaders in my community group, Nick and Morgan Hayes. We had a get together at Morgan's parent's house and it was one of the coolest places ever. There were many fun things to work with like Pete the Great Dane or giant mailboxes in nice golden hour light. Probably the coolest of all was Henry's Star Wars onesie.
There is a very loose, slightly ironic, connection between these photos from two assignments I covered today.
One was early in the morning down in Horn Lake, MS to cover the city's participation in the Great American Clean-Up and made this photo of young Alex Freeze hauling a bag of trash that was practically as big as him.
The second photo is for a business profile on hair stylist, Feras Hdaib, working on Jasmine Crew's prom hair. As I am finishing up with Feras, he tries to get me to schedule my own hair cut. I politely and professional dodged the question, but in my mind I was saying "STAY AWAY FROM MY GLORIOUS MANE!" Then Feras runs out of the salon to hand me a coupon to give to my girlfriend for a 1/2 off first visit.
So, if I don't have a girlfriend, then didn't Feras technically litter by giving me a coupon I won't use since I will ultimately throw it away?
Met up with the Sassie Seniors as they were getting ready to perform in a parade. Project is still taking shape, hence these vague one-liners about them.
Hannah Huggins, fiance of my soon to be former roommate, Conner Walker, watches the weather as she checks the radio while her father installs window shutters on their home.
Christina Carrera, left, learns about the life and impact of Rosa Parks during a tour of the Civil Rights Museum with fellow child actors of the South Pacific cast currently performing at the Orpheum. While the young actors receive schoolwork regularly from a traveling tutor, their schedules are much different from those of normal elementary and middle-schoolers. In addition to keeping up with schoolwork, they must adapt to new cities and time zones, stay in touch with family and friends and find the time to be a kid.
Side note: When shooting in very low light museum situations, it helps to utilize the TV station's video light while they are shooting b-roll.
Gavin Steadman of Olive Branch, MS. learns how to function a manual water pump at Our Family Farm, in DeSoto County. Our Family Farm put on a family farm festival to celebrate National Agriculture Day with demonstrations of farm techniques and technologies both past and present.
I wish I had some profound witticism about covering John Mayer, but I don't. All I have to say it's cool to have the kind of access my job provides. Out of the estimated 11,500 in attendance, I could feel the pining to have my spot in the pit from 9,000 something girls aching to be physically close to Mayer. The remaining 2,500 were guys hoping by taking a girl to a John Mayer concert would ultimately receive some kind of "thank you" by the night's end. Still, I bet they probably wondered what it would be like to stand at the stage as they passed the time. One guy on the front row did reach out and touch the stage. That must have been a profound moment for him that I probably shouldn't mock. I hope he really likes the texture of carpet because that's all it was and not tell him he could have the same experience in a Home Depot or Lowe's.
My opinion still stands of concert photography being gratuitous. I think only one or two people in the world can truly make interesting concert photos. Or maybe I was a little hurt when a friend told me that another mutual friend, whom I won't drop their name, sorry, didn't "Follow Friday" me on their Twitter account of cool concert photographers. So much pain....ow. Maybe one day I will be a cool concert photographer and be followed. Oops! Don't have a twitter. Looks like I fail.
Saturday I had an assignment to cover a Comic Convention in Mississippi. I was looking forward to it because I thought a place where hobbits, stormtroopers, Klingons, zombies, and comic book heroes gathered would be a very visual experience. Maybe it was my insomnia from the night before or the weather zapping everyone's energy, but I really felt I failed on this assignment. Ironically, I was probably regarded as the most freakish person there, because I was armed with a camera and didn't want anyone to pose for me. I walked away with something that more or less worked of a zombie family shopping for little rubber ducks dressed in human clothes, but it felt just eh, passable. My advice to shooting a comic convention, Don't chase Klingons. Find something that's like a bug zapper for nerds, like the sword replica booth or the Harry Potter wand replica booth, and camp out. I wish I did. I think Gandalf was running the sword booth. Next time. These are a couple images I got from the assignment. I'm not a big fan of them, but in hindsight and attaching some Wikipedia definitions, found some mild humor from them.
"Deadpool is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. A disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary, Deadpool is famous for his tendency to break the fourth wall and is frequently referred to by the moniker 'Merc with a Mouth.'"
And apparently sells cuddly monkeys on the side. His sales pitch could use some work.
Enter myself: strolling along this comic convention, look for an interesting image. See clone trooper looking at art.
Camera clicks (clone notices me too quickly, I miss the moment)
Clone: [Quite seriously] um, was I in your shot.
Me: Um, no. [Despite the fact I was four feet away and pointing the camera right at him, I was obviously way more interested in the dragon over his shoulder. Clearly.]
Okay, so essentially why I went to India in October was to produce this project for the organization, Global Ministries Fellowship, GMF. It was my first time to pick up video in about 2 1/2 years, so it's a little clunky here and there. Also, I went over to India not 100% sure of what was going to come from what I gathered and it's really a combination of a couple things I discussed with GMF rolled together. It's things like this I hope to do more of in the future and get more opportunity to refine my ability with this kind of storytelling.
To make a long story short, I have experienced a lot of trouble making this project on a technical level and I am very happy its over. I would especially like to thank Mr. Ben Cole for helping me solve my problems. Also, I would like to say that my opinion of Apple's customer service was tarnished by this experience when they ultimately refused to help me by ignoring me mid-dialogue when I was trying to set up an appointment with their Final Cut person. Shame on you Apple! I have always been such a big fan too. Well, this is it. Please feel free to critique it. I embrace critiques. I couldn't imagine why people only want to get patted on the back and not have a legitimate chance to grow. Also, video isn't my thing and I feel it's important to get better at it.
As of late, I have been in editing mode on things like videos of trips that have caused me great mental pains and finishing weddings and updating my site, and I felt that it I would post a sampler of things that I did for weddings in late '09. The first photo made it to my web site, I like the toning on it so I thought I would re-post it here. The other three did not make the cut, but I felt they deserved to have at least a blog appearance. I usually don't post wedding stuff on my blog. I honestly don't know why since it is part of my freelancer lifestyle, so maybe I'll be better in 2010 of showing the larger spectrum of work I've been doing.
Sometimes you get lucky when feature hunting and things look like they are not going to shape up to anything interesting.
Here's the caption:
3-year-old Jessa Ellis barters with Nancy Yates over the price of a doll at a warehouse yard sale for the Children's Museum of Memphis. Grabbing collectible coins on the display counter, Ellis tried to bargain and purchase the doll for two coins until her parents decided to help and treat her to the toy with more up-to-date currency. The yard sale was put on by the children's museum to clean out excess office furniture and toys in storage. All the proceeds benefit the museum's educational exhibits and programs.
Recently, I photographed a band called "Saul 2 Paul." This was my first legit band shoot. Always fun to have a new experience. Since my dad is serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan, I'll give him a little nod and share a slogan he always enjoyed telling me. "Kurlicks try things at least once." There you go dad. So that's what I did, I tried something new. Great group of guys to work with, especially since I made them stare into the sun for the better part of two hours and I'm still here to share these photos.
So for this round of snow in Memphis, I was at my folks home for the day because of the complementary heat, food, internet and family provided. I took some time to play with our dog, Bailey, in their backyard. She was born in Nov. '08 and is very much a winter dog as you can see.
One of my favorite work days working for the newspaper was this past Friday when the city was blanketed in snow and ice. I spent the day looking for features and watched the entire progression from freezing rain to fluffy snow flakes falling to the city crystallizing in ice. Memphis is completely schizophrenic when it comes to weather. Over early weeks of this year, I have gone from running in the park in shorts to dodging frozen branches falling in my back yard.
Coming from Northern stock, I possess an intrinsic connection to wintry weather. Some people complain about the cold, but I love it and love the fact I have a job that lets me spend my day trekking around my city, making images of this magical rarity.
This was from an assignment I had for a ribbon cutting at a Census office here in Memphis. The top one was the one that ran in the paper.
Here's the caption:
Recruiting clerk, Betty Moses, works the phones to obtain temporary work positions for volunteers to get ready for the 2010 Census at the Shelby County Local Census Office off of Dexter Road in Cordova where an open house was held to formally kick the Census.
The bottom photo is of the new Memphis Mayor, A.C. Wharton. I posted a photo of A.C. over the summer on my blog with meeting some kids. I got to thinking of that photo during the press conference and thought I would try something again. I was told not to turn in any photos of politicians, but something a little more artistic or, dare I say, abstract. Well, I saw those flags on the back wall and had fun passing the time during the ribbon cutting getting a photo of A.C. with the flags, but not show his full face.
This is a compliation of assignments I had over the holiday season and I thought I'd throw in some John Lennon lyrics to be a little more festive. Happy 2010.
So this is Christmas And what have you done Another year over And a new one just begun Ans so this is Christmas I hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young
A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Christmas For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones The world is so wrong And so happy Christmas For black and for white For yellow and red ones Let's stop all the fight A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Christmas And what have we done Another year over And a new one just begun Ans so this is Christmas I hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear War is over over If you want it War is over Now...
