#LeicaConversations​ -The Journey: with Arthur Meyerson

and welcome everybody to another episode of leica conversations i'm tom smith i'll be your host for today's program today's guest arthur meyerson is simply universally recognized as one of the finest color photographers there is and you know he has had uh for decades a commercial and editorial career uh was three times uh named adweek's southwest photographer of the year american photo magazine named him uh one of the top uh one of the top 30 american uh advertising photographers and beyond the success he's had with his uh commercial work as a teacher mentor workshop leader he's influenced countless photographers he's produced two monographs the color of light and the journey and we're in luck today because we get to find out some of the stories behind his journey in photography help me welcome arthur myerson hey arthur good to see you great to see people out there i can't see you but i thank you for being here we'll try to make it a fun day a fun afternoon so thanks for being here arthur thank you so much we've got i i'm anxious to jump in because i know we have a lot of images and a lot of stories to cover i also want to encourage the people who are watching if you've got a question for arthur i'm going to take some time and try to in weave in your questions as many as possible before the end of the show so feel free to use the q a function in zoom and ask away uh and we'll we'll get to your questions arthur you know i i in preparing for this went through both of your books and especially the the journey and there's such a wealth of information in it and that can help photographers of all backgrounds but let's go back to the very beginning here and bring up an image you know i know you've been taking pictures for a long time but maybe not seriously from the age of five right that's a great one to start with and hey tom got a big surprise for you what there it is the dick tracy special this is not the actual camera in the photo but it is an actual camera from that time period and uh it was the one that uh i guess led me on my way photographically so apologies to leica it's a dick tracy model yeah no radio wrist watch well you know arthur i know you you uh had this this career in in commercial photography and and you know where you were one of the main photographers for coca-cola for for many years uh but a lot of what we're going to talk about today is your personal work but i want to mention you didn't go to school for photography you went to school for journalism and like many of us you you fell in love you know as i understand it seeing the the image come up in the tray in the dark room absolutely i think like everyone that magic uh was where it started but i've traced it back even further to when i was young a little bit older than the picture you just saw but i used to crave every week when those big picture weekly magazines life looked geographic whenever those came out i was down on the couch pouring through the pictures uh and that that time frame i just remember so well and there had to be some kind of a connection to pictures and photography that links me back to that time frame uh that i i really remember i wasn't doing photography so seriously back then but photography uh in those publications definitely connected with me and it was later on when i went to uh university and i was in my uh junior year i took a course called photojournalism 101 which is that basic processing and printing uh course that many of the viewers here i'm sure remember and took and that first moment when the photograph appears on paper in that tray it was magic and i always loved magic as a kid anyway so it was like a double whammy so that's when i think photography took a serious hold of me was that from that point going forward well arthur i mentioned your first book uh the color of light which other than special editions i understand is is is sold out but you still have some special editions available through your your studio can i ask you to this picture that we're looking at now and you know i think magic might be a theme that's going to recur again and again in our conversation today magic light magic moments how about this moment how did it happen it was an underappreciated non-expected moment my wife and i were in europe i just finished up an assignment i'd been there for about six weeks and we ended up in london and i told her i want to go to stonehenge and i want to shoot the great photo i want to outdo all the other photos ever been done something dramatic bold beautiful gorgeous and it rained the entire time there when we finally got there there were very few people and this was at the time i don't know now but this at the time this was as close as you would get it was roped off and out of nowhere the man came mowing the lawn and at first i was like uh oh no this is going to ruin my big moment but not exactly what i had in mind and then like things do something else took over and i thought humor humor is good and this is humorous and i can remember taking this picture waiting for this guy to get the same each time and i could hear the tourists and people behind me you know whispering like he doesn't know it but that guy's in all of his photos well um it was it was a it was it was planned as far as waiting for him it was unplanned as far as expecting a guy to be mowing the lawn in stonehenge well it's become a favorite for sure i think one of the first images i ever uh when i became aware of your work this one has stayed with me for a long time and you know selfishly i some of the pictures we're going to look at here are personal pictures that uh for me were very influential and uh and i wanted to hear the stories behind them and i think if there's one picture that is a signature of yours this is one that's often uh referred to yeah it uh toothpick and i was photographing this ranch in west texas i'd been photographing on and off for about eight or nine years it really became the first and biggest project i ever worked on and so every spring and fall roundup i would find myself out at this ranch documenting the photography of the the cowboy life and the hardest thing to do was really to separate from the cowboys they they didn't particularly like you being in their way but i won myself over to them in time usually by providing a case of beer and a couple of bottles of whiskey at the evening campfire which didn't hurt anything but there was this one moment i remember this specifically i was sitting up on a fence post they were doing a they were i had brought the cattle in they were separating them out and branding and this one guy was down below me he was squatted down and out of nowhere that pristine toothpick stands out and it's a photograph for me that is not only about the toothpick or the back of a cowboy's hat a good friend of mine sam abel looks at this picture and calls it a faceless portrait and i think he's absolutely right proving that we don't always have to have a person's face to you know a portrait that you can do it by looking at other elements within the shot that toothpick certainly says something because just as all cowboy hats are slightly different depending on each individual the things they put in the back of their hat bands can vary as well but you look at this shot and you look at this guy's head you see the layers of dust on the you see it as it uh you know mirrors the image of dirt on his uh denim vest there and you start to get a feeling for this individual who he is uh and and what he does and again it's it's become a very popular image and it still resonates with me today the faceless portrait i think is is is an assignment you know uh we're going to get into some uh photographic tools and and and your approach to teaching but certainly this would be an assignment that anyone could uh could aspire to make uh and a great example how about this i was in santa monica i just left the airport at dawn um in those and this was still in the days of film and my assistant and i we were in a helicopter and we were just risen above the fog and we were busy in the back loading cameras doing whatnot and the pilot up front i hear a big oh and of course you never want to hear the pilot say that that is just not standard operating procedure and i immediately looked up and said what what what and he said look there and he pointed down and that's what we were seeing and it was spectacular i had him make a couple of passes made the shots and uh now my client was also up in the front seat too which for people that have done commercial work usually know this drill he's wondering what the hell we're doing because this has nothing to do with why we're renting a helicopter and flying out at dawn but i explained to him that i think this was going to be worth it and we'd still make it to his shot on time and get him something great which we did but yeah this was a very very unique thing uh he said he'd never seen this in 25 years of flying uh in that area so being ready being prepared and and hearing those words from the pilot all came together well and that seemed to be a signature of of your reputation i i you know anyone uh i should check out your website and there's a section under colleagues and the the alkalines that your colleagues say of you i think speaks to your uh you as a person but also your attention to detail and acceptance of nothing but the best in terms of what would make it into your your final uh you know the monograph of the color of light but also here's a question is how important has it been to you to always make your own pictures whether it was a commercial job or uh you know just in your own time making how important has that been to your progression as a photographer absolutely necessary and there was never a question about it i didn't get into photography initially to become a commercial photographer i got into photography because i loved making pictures and i never wanted to stifle myself by not taking a picture anything i saw that was worthy i was going to do my best to capture i think there's a part of me too that i think a client a good client and truly you are only as good as your client a good client would recognize in a photographer that was constantly looking making pictures that maybe weren't part of the actual project or ad or brochure or whatever it was you were doing that enthusiasm i think can carry over at least that was my hope and wish and um it it was it was like it was like doing warm-up exercises if you were an athlete you'd do your stretches well your stretches might be you know going seeing a moment making a few shots and working a situation for a bit before you know you get involved doing whatever the the actual assignment may have been but no it was always important to do the personal work as well as the commercial work one fed the other and a lot of cases things i learned from what i did in personal work i was able to carry over into the commercial and vice versa so you know it was a trade-off but i never really wanted that inasmuch as i could i didn't really want to have the distinction of this is his commercial work and this is his personal work in fact um as you were saying a lot of my contemporaries would say you know one of the great things about your photos is i can't tell which is a commercial assignment which is a you know personal and couldn't make me happier by saying that because i was usually trying to do that arthur to that point i bring into this picture you were already established as a successful commercial photographer you find out there's an opportunity to spend two weeks with uh a a photographer who admired and you decided to sign up for a workshop and that leads us to this picture can you give us the story on this oh yeah um the photographer was ernst haas the great color photographer and it was an opportunity to travel to japan with him and a group of photographers for a couple of weeks and travel the country and make photos and be in the shadow of that great man and unbeknownst to me a relationship evolved and developed from that where we became not only good friends but he became a mentor one of my first mentor my first mentor actually and one of the places we went during that trip was to this rice planting festival and this is actually happening at the end of the event during the event there's a rice paddy and there's hundreds of these women in these wonderful outfits that are out in the field they're planting there's music it's very very elaborate kind of scene the only negative is that you had the japanese media barrel down into the rice paddy as well so getting a photograph without having them in the shot and hiding it was problematic so i patiently waited i did the best i could but i patiently waited and at some point across the rice paddy for me these women started coming up and out on the bank and lining up like this and i began making photographs that lineup of the five women there was was working beautifully great i loved it but i just felt like it needed something else and the something else to me was something to break that perfect pattern of five individuals and that happened when i at a corner of my eye i saw this other woman the one who's down there walking across approach and she breaks the rhythm and pattern of that shot to me that's one of the big things that makes the shot now the shot itself is very much about light or lack of light color beautiful color that's uh because it was raining which was even more ironic as that's what they were praying for in their uh ceremony here um and finally and most importantly gesture and that jir begins with the tilt of their hats their body language their individual way they're standing their hands even down to the one down on the far right who's humped and up and gathering or feeling the raindrops it was a really really wonderful moment for me and uh it happened to occur on that trip with thurnst and made it even more special and he he becomes a huge influence you you become you become friends and could i ask you what else did you learn on this trip in terms of gear that stayed with you in terms of the gear you use the biggest thing and the biggest thing ever uh backing up just a bit i remember the very first day of that trip i arrived at our first location with a camera bag uh about seven lenses in there two or three bodies with motor drives uh a tripod it was a ridiculous amount of gear and he started laughing at me and i said what's so funny and he said how do you feel and i said i feel miserable and he said here's a suggestion go lighter tomorrow come with one or two cameras one lens or two lenses each that's all you need and the rule of thumb here was that has always stuck with me and it's something i continue to pass on to my students is the less you carry the more you see and the more you see the more you shoot because you're not continually being you know weighted down literally by that thing on your shoulders or going across your chest that can weigh a ton you just don't need all of that stuff and it was a real eye-opener and it really and truly uh over time began to influence i think uh how i photographed well you know we're going to uh get transition into the journey and set this up a little bit arthur i mean the the color of light again sold out except for the special edition hint anybody who wants to get this special edition please reach out to arthur we're going to put his information for his website into the chat window and uh you know have all of that there and also follow him on instagram because if you're enjoying these stories occasionally he'll share the stories on his instagram as well but you had this book that was a retrospective how was your approach in producing the journey different uh the color of light was really an attempt to put 40 years at that time 40 years of personal work between book covers i had all this personal work my commercial work had been pretty well seen by you know anybody that you know looked at that type of work but the personal work i didn't feel like it was getting its due and i i was proud of that work i wanted that work scene and i thought the only way it's going to get seen is be able to produce and publish a book and so that's that book is very much about personal work um and and lessons learned from that when i went to do the second book i wanted to do something very different i very easily could have done another volume 2 3 4 of the color of light but i i really truly i thought it was okay i'd done that now i want to do something different and the something different really evolved in a conversation that i was having with anne tucker and wilkes tucker who is the former curator of photography at the museum of fine arts here in houston very very well known and respected she's a good friend but she had agreed to do a conversation with me for the book which at that particular time i didn't have a real clue as to what i wanted to do but she said let's talk the conversation went on for three days and it really and truly began to uh form the basis of what the journey would be which was it was a look back it was a look back not only at personal work but commercial work it was a look back at teaching which has always been a very big part of my life i've been teaching now for 30 years or more um and and continuing to do the you know personal work as well so that book is divided up basically into about three major sections one the first section is a very very good conversation between ann and myself talking about my background my history uh et cetera and then it's beyond good arthur it's it's it's invaluable the the the lessons that are in there and i think really ingenious uh get us into some pictures here ingenius in that the layout of the book follows the conversation in the interview uh well and i wanted i was very lucky i had the same designer that i had for the first book i had anne and then the rest was up to me to like produce pictures or you know help uh come up with the photos as well as in this book i did a lot more writing than i did in the first book and it was mainly talking about process which is my photograph graphic process which has to do with visual tools that i acquired over time that actually helped me to produce the images i produce which is one of the things we talk about in my workshop um for instance this photograph here awareness one of the tools that we talk about is light seems very common seems very typical but light is without light we don't have photography and different types of light this would be the most mundane worst type of light for most people midday light it's bright it's heavy shadows what do you do with it and early on in my career i was doing everything with that golden hour light that everybody knows makes anything look good but i thought if i would enough i should be able to shoot all day long and i had to find ways that would allow me to do that and so one way was looking at bright light and what happens in bright light i think one needs to acquire an appreciation for all kinds of light this to me was this was at a gay pride event in istanbul of all places and i just happened to stumble upon it beautiful quality of light that's happening over the uh flag and then the group of people that are uh in line across the other side some holding the flag some just passing by but that again that combination of that hard light in the background the soft rolling light uh that we have here in the foreground and then what else do we have here tom i know we have another shot this is one that i yeah i call magical light and the subject for anyone who doesn't know this is jay mazel a great great color photographer in new york and a very dear friend and this came about through simply we were having a late afternoon cigar in his uh studio the light is coming through a series of a half a dozen light panels above the frame there and so the smoke being produced created this wonderful kind of event that you're seeing there uh which he couldn't see i could and so i got to make the picture which aggravated the hell out of him but hey so what anyway it made him look good and it really and truly it's it to me is again having that uh awareness having a camera all of those things come together and then taking advantage of the moment until you feel like you've captured something that's a great portrait of of jay and and i think you too in addition to being friends are our brothers in arms and in terms of this fascination with color light and gesture that is is so prevalent in both of your work uh though he he remarks in on your your site that you know when you have traveled together photographing similar subjects it infuriates and that often your pictures are better i was surprised you got that quote out of jay yeah well it surprised me too but um let me just say before i go any further i said i had two major influences in my career one was ernst who i didn't have for as long as i would have loved but i had and it made a huge impression the other was jay who i've had for 45 years and that's been a pleasure on so many levels so to have certain people in your life that can help advance your work your photography to have somebody just to share ideas and talk with this is special this is unique and inasmuch as people can i highly uh encourage you to you know try to get a relationship like that with someone yeah well i know you have been that for a lot of photographers uh you know throughout your career i want to continue on and i want to mention everybody that in the book you've got 10 of these visual tools we're only going to touch on a few of them but this one in particular perception i think really is prevalent in so much of your work how how can you speak to that with this picture um well because this is really a very mundane subject it's a parking garage and it does something really fascinating and this came out in my conversation with ann when we were talking she actually brought this picture up and she mentioned how kandinsky the painter talked about how dark colors and dark things recede and light things come forward and it's very very prevalent in this shot here where that's warm uh sunset afternoon light that's uh streaking through the the garage uh and through those openings uh the railings add to this as well but yeah it's to me perception is one of those things that a lot of times we take for granted uh that people understand or know our photos and then they'll they'll they'll refer to the photo and no that's not at all what that is or no that's not how that happened so there's that and then there's you know just the perspective of where we are in terms of perception so it's one of the great things in photography that i think uh is unique to photography and we as photographers and as much as we can should try to take advantage of it and you get you get there by looking for it well here's one word for example yes i was in um hong kong and i was driving in a car i was in the passenger side and i saw this thing happen and i told the guy to stop the car and i got out and i had a long lens on my camera i think it was a 300 and which turned out to be perfect because when i looked at this i got right at the point where green meets blue now a lot of you are looking at this and it's fun because when i do a live presentation i can see a lot of heads in the audience do this and it's because your brain wants to turn it you know you want to put the blue which is sky at the top of the frame not at the side um what you see here is the green is the uh a wall it's a tenement building and so you've got the green wall of the tenement building the blue of course is sky but all the things extending out into the blue is actually laundry from the various balconies of the tenements and you know again you talk about perception i've had people look at the picture and refer to it as the one with the sailboats and there's no sailboats in there although i guess if you turn it on aside they may look right well that's i i gotta ask you this arthur do you think that there is a surrealist built in you somewhere is is is is that something that seems to be more and more prevalent pictures that make people not only ask questions but also show us the world in a different way is that a goal i no it's not a goal it's not a goal i'm not that good i i i really i'm being sick i i just sometimes i see things like all of us do and i want to record them i want to capture them the way i see them i'm not looking to pull any punches or do any tricks uh which to me makes it even better because when you look at that you're sure that there's something going on there but it's as simple as the way i just explained it um so this is yeah this is this is what we do is photographers we we go out into the world we look and see things and we want to bring them back not just to leave in your camera or on your computer you want to share them with the world and that's always a fun exciting thing to do no regardless of whether it's you know a slideshow or a book or a gallery show whatever it is that's that's to me one of the great joys of photography and being a photographer let me get one more of your your visual uh tools in here that in terms of composition seems to be uh very important to you we've got an example counterpoint yeah this is one i talk a lot about to my class um it's something that a lot of people may be using and not be aware of or are not using and should be because it can take the photograph to another level very quickly this was a commercial ad for look very carefully i think most of you that don't know the story can tell that the skyline in the background is san francisco how do we know that if you look carefully you see the pyramid the transamerica up appeared thus that's who the ad was for but when i was making the shot uh or doing the shot what was given to me was we need a great shot of the building and i had three days to produce it on day one i worked from the ground day two i worked from a helicopter uh flying above it and day three i got up at dawn went across the golden gate bridge the sun's just starting to come up through the fog and i look through the rear view mirror and i'm seeing this i'm seeing that those cables those cables those vertical lines are the golden gate bridge and they're coming into the headlands which is the other side of of uh of the bay there and i'm seeing the hillside and i say this is it we've got a shot and jump out we set everything up and there's something missing something's really bothering me here and i'm thinking we need something that something became my term or a term i've heard often used counterpoint i needed a counterpoint and that counterpoint became my assistant charlie who jumped in the car rode back on a walk he totally positioned him and told him what to do and it makes such a difference to have the counterpoint in there as opposed to not it's a sense of scale when we see a human figure we all can relate to that and it it's an add to the overall drama of the photograph so it's something to keep in mind also to keep in mind is all counterpoints are not people i don't know what else you picked up for this section but we'll see well i think we yeah we have another one here there we go yeah this is uh this is this is this is a funny one actually this was totally unplanned this gorgeous room that i'm in was this funky hotel in motel in austin texas and i was sitting up on my bed and i was playing with my brand new leica m9 and i was trying to figure out how to do something with it and in the process it clicked and i looked at the back and oh my god that eyeball was staring at me so as much as i'd love to say i took credit and planned this or no this was actually going on on television it was an eye drop commercial this time it was all about getting lucky but it was such a great lucky thing that it's okay you know and to me that eyeball does become a counterpoint to this uh bazaar-like uh uh decor that you find in this little motel room and the fact that it's staring right back at you well you know arthur you say you're not a surrealist but that's a pretty surreal picture a straight straight picture not manipulated at all which is another hallmark of your approach but pretty surreal well i i'm not arguing that i just i can't say that i planned that i wish i wish i could have but i'm being honest with you sure well let's talk about you know that's another one here the color moment and i'll bring up the example you know back referring to the the helicopter story it's it's not so much that you're planning it it's that you're prepared and even when you're waiting in a hotel lobby you're always looking that's right and this this photograph which uh was made in tokyo uh in the reception of a hotel that uh myself and my group was staying at it was a glass wall and the glass wall had water uh running over it uh 24 7. but i got totally mesmerized with just the the visual of looking through this thing and the color and i began to sit there and look and while people were checking in i thought well i'm going to spend my time making a picture here and i began to and i thought it would be interesting to have obviously to have people in the shot without it it's very painterly but it needed something just like the other shots needed something and so i had groups of people i had people on this side of the of the glass that didn't work as well it ended up that this one person walking by comes through and i fire the shutter right as she centers the shot the shot was done at about an eighth of a second because there is i wanted the motion a little bit of that water motion on the glass it was taking a bit of a risk because i knew the person would blur a bit but behind the glass wall i didn't think that would be too much of an issue and then very very closely if you zero in on her hand down there the hand's pretty damn sharp now for you technical geeks i'll tell you this was done with a leica q at about i think was around an eighth of a second 12 800 iso and that my friends is one of the great things about digital that we could not have done in uh on film uh it allowed me to make an image like this and the image ended up becoming the cover of the uh the book the journey of the journey and and you have i understand a 30 by 40 of this in in your studio and even at that high iso it holds up very well uh you know beautiful yeah and and so you you started with you you've had a variety of gear and it sounds like you know in researching past interviews you switching up your gear every so often is is a part of your approach to to keep things fresh but in terms of your first connection with leica when did that happen and and how is a leica small m or now the q how is that fit into the way that you work i was shooting with leica from the very get-go as soon as i could afford one that is and i bought an m4 and that camera was always around my neck um it had a j i think i generally had a 35 millimeter lens on there but um i had black and white film and i used that camera just for lack of a better term kind of as a a diary camera that was i was just on record moments and things throughout my day my other cameras that i held on my shoulders around my neck or that my assistant was schlepping for me um or that we were doing the assignment with those were color film but the initial uh connection with leica was the m4 eventually uh i went to the six um after that to the seven and then when the eight came out i was offered an opportunity to try out the eight the which was the first digital that leica did and quite frankly i didn't like it and i sent it back um it's a full size sensor call me and the nine did come out so i've gone with the nine and i've gone with the 10 uh i have the 10p and the q2 now the thing is what i like about the camera is what everybody likes about the camera they're small they're not uh you know they're not gonna scare people off um it doesn't weight wise it's not gonna you know rip your shoulder out or give you a neck ache they're they're perfect for doing all kinds of photography most people associate street photography with the m's and that's fine and usually how they were used but i use them for a variety of things and i think that they're just excellent and of course the the lenses that uh i match with them i i have three lenses for my m i have a 28 a 35 and i have a and the uh 50 apo that i have is one incredible piece of sharp glass i hounded tom about it for months uh to see if he could get me a deal which he couldn't but i broke down and got one anyway it's an amazing piece of glass and uh as are all their lenses i don't like to get too hung up seriously about equipment and things because bottom line is they're too cool and a lot of people are just as happy you know going out with their phone and most people do and it's one of the reasons why we as photographers have to work that much to do what we do there's so much photographic noise out there everybody in the world is making pictures that never would have did but before why they did it because they can it's easy it's too easy and so one of the things that i like trying to do with my class as well as myself because i do try to practice what i preach is discipline and a discipline in how you shoot in what you shoot and um and what you choose to shoot with well i promise to no that no that's excellent arthur and it brings in some questions the audience has asked and i i promised i would i would include some of their questions so to some of what you've just shared uh in terms of gear first if you only had one lens what's the one lens you you would shoot with the most or what's the one lens you'd keep the one with the most it no it isn't it's the 35 uh millimeter the but you know i'm i'm kind of on this quest to shoot only with the 50 for a while i it's kind of i have this method of like uh or idea of like using certain lenses up to a point and then putting them away and going with something different and it's how i started out initially as you'll know zoom lenses were terrible back in the 70s when i started shooting all of a shot with fixed lenses and you normally saw a photographer with three cameras the 20 you know something wide something medium and something moderately telephoto and you got to know those focal lengths and how they worked and you would reach for that focal length and uh know that that was going to be perfect coverage for what was in front of you and and do you feel like you know the gear has gotten so good the zoom lenses that are available are are very good our sensors have gotten so good that you can crop in and and have there's a great deal of versatility that comes with digital but in terms of craftsmanship why is filling the frame and and and you should you want to avoid cropping why do you think that's fundamental to good photography uh it goes back to me and i think i'm speaking from my generation of photographers that especially those of us who shot 35 if you shot kodachrome or slide film you didn't know if that piece of film was going to be used postage stamp size or billboard size it was terribly important to make every single part of that frame count and so you you you had the discipline you had to have the discipline to to shoot that way you also had 36 opportunities and then you had to change film and you might miss something in between so one of the things i try to get people to do is number one not crop their photos and that usually meets with uh a lot of people aren't too thrilled with that idea but the point is it's not not to make it more difficult for you it's for you to actually see what's in your frame most people include things in their frames that they don't really mean to be there and their thought is well i'll just crop that out later but with that kind of an attitude you're going to end up slicing and dicing and an image down to the point of you know it could truly affect the overall fidelity of the image if you're going to make a print i'm not talking about hairline cropping and for god's sakes yes i have cropped images before but i can tell you i'm never never happy about it when i do my feeling is i should have seen it i should have realized it and dealt with it but the key word here is having a sense of discipline and that discipline goes not only with that it goes with shooting so many people you know shoot with diarrhea the trigger finger and they just and you know it's great you may have the shot good luck now you got to download and edit all those so i would say why a little more careful well you know in your interview with with uh ann in your uh in the journey she points out that from her perspective keys to your success were discipline hard work curiosity and technical skills to which you add one more people skills so and that brings me to this question so here's my question for you what's growing up in texas done to help make you a better photographer i'm friendly no i mean i i think it's my nature but i i like people and i think that especially in photography it makes a hell of a difference how you approach someone i get a lot of people who you know are either timid about shooting people or just won't shoot people because they're afraid and it's i think it has so much to do with your approach to things and how you do it and boy a smile will work wonders you don't even have to say anything i mean so many places i go i don't even speak the language but i can you know i can make my point known seen whatever simply by you know a smile a wink whatever and or a lot of times i'll just you know i'll do this i'll just hold up the camera is that okay and if i get the no or the this or that i okay i don't i don't fight it i don't fight it because i found so many times i'll go around the corner i'll be pissed off that i didn't get the shot because you know i didn't have the cooperation but by god i can tell you so many times something else around that i never would have gone to or seen was there waiting and happened so you know it's what we're doing is great i love it i sincerely love it i think it's amazing that i've made this wonderful life and career doing it but it ain't brain surgery and so we you know we do what we makes a big difference so i think you've kind of given me a segue there into let's talk about travel something we haven't no one for the most part has gotten to do in the last year let's take a little trip and hear the stories behind first cuba and i understand this picture which is on the back of the book the journey your designer argued maybe should be on the front yeah but uh and clearly you you won that battle but but how about this picture what what attracted you to it and how long did it take you to make it give us tell us the scene a little bit very i was in the flower market in havana i was up early with my class one morning just walking we went there i saw the people i saw the activity going on i saw what she was doing this wasn't hardly planned but there was this one moment where she had created this kind of bouquet if you will and she was preparing she was preparing to hand it to someone i made the snap right when she had covered her face with it and i thought that that was actually kind of fun and interesting a little bit different um but no by no means was this planned it was just kind of again so much of what we do as photographers is we observe and by observing uh we see possibilities and this became one of those um very recent again last trip to cuba um and it's very much something i've worked a lot at over the last few years and that's working more uh in layers uh i'm working with the telephoto but working in layers with a wider format this was 35 is a totally different thing first thing was building this shot from the background forward i saw that wall on this playground i saw the light how it was late afternoon light hitting it the shadows are sweeping across the ground they're playing and then there was this mix of these kids some in the shadows some without in the sunlight and then some back in the shadows so it was like a foreground of the little boy in the foreground it becomes the silhouette forward foreground middle ground to the three boys the two one pulling the other guy's shirt and again the body language that's going on there absolutely wonderful and then the background layer of the little boy in the far distance also silhouetted kicking the soccer ball so which has become more complex but you still have the same responsibility for everything within a photograph just as you would if you were using a telephoto lens or anything else so very very much about being cognizant of everything within the frame and then what's going on in these various layers you try you're trying to see in these spatial relationships and then connect uh and and uh executed and what what did you shoot this one on what what am i what camera do you remember i think it was the m10p m10p on this i i want to get in a question that pertains to this that uh ashley martin asks i've heard sam abel say over and over compose the picture and wait do you have a similar mantra for the way you approach photography and as you answer that we'll move on to another picture uh sam is a very close dear friend of mine people that know me know that and it's that's one of several things we agree on uh that is his mantra for sure uh the compose and weight and i would say that in that particular shot that is very much what happened i spent a tremendous amount of time there because i had these several moving objects it was so much about the moving objects and where they were relative to light and shadow and and what about this next one we're moving to japan now and i i've chosen japan and cuba because not only are those the two most recent countries you you visited uh prior to to the pandemic but also it seems to mark a distinct change in that you are traveling lighter than you ever have before in terms of gear and so speak to that and then i'm dying to know the story of this picture because i i've been asking you about it for a couple months now and wanted to wait till this to hear the story yeah well so the fact is um it's it's maybe not as uh surreal as you would think uh well it is surreal uh looking but what's going on here is this is at the kanazawa art museum and it's a an installation they have outside and it's a pool with a plexiglas like surface at the top if you follow the lines at the top the dark lines there at the curve and you above that you see some figures through that it actually has water running over it underneath here there's no water there's actually a tunnel that you descend and go down into and you're you're uh free to walk around and look up through the plex and wave to people up above rather than that i thought that i wanted to do something a little more fun and i was watching people in my group that came down with me and they began this one person began to climb up the ladder and she started jumping and i got this moment where her leg pants legs are like it looks as though she could be underwater it looks as though she's floating there and then you see the figures up above so i can't take all the credit for the magic here but it was about the moment and putting myself in a place to where i thought i could uh do something interesting with it one of the tips arthur that you include in your workshops is to try to see things not how they look but how they could look and it's so many of the examples uh you know this the the the the flags or the you know the laundry on the wall that we looked at earlier i seem to speak to that idea of how something could look uh is it you is there a few results yeah go ahead that was a a lesson from ernst ernstast ernsthaus said that and so much of what he said i committed to memory and try to pass on to my students but more than that try to apply them so that we can you know uh make new photographs see differently try to take your work to level this is a digital art museum in tokyo uh made up of a lot of amazing lights mirrors and the people walking through and it just provided itself with an interesting moment and the only thing i added to this was uh i yeah i zoomed a little bit with i had a small little zoom that i had and i zoomed with it to kind of give it this stellar star-like look well in your most recent trips uh to japan you you've taken one or two cameras a q an m and i i think the a buddy trip you did recently you you took the the leica gear but and also a hasselblad x-pan i made a trip in to japan with uh two friends uh sam abel and george nobecci a japanese canadian photographer and we basically did a train trip from north to south and i wanted to go light so i took the q with the 28 i took the m10 with 35 and i also had a 54 at the 50. and i also took a hasselblad x-pan which is a film camera and uh but long panoramic horizontals and uh and that was it so my long as my telephoto was a 50. and well what it does though just briefly is you begin to look and see things differently you begin to see the possibilities of not having a 300 now what do i do or having not having a 20 and now what do i do so it causes you to move yourself and make new compositions and that's something that i've worked very hard on the last few years for myself and fortunately i think it's worked i think i've created a lot of new work that is very different than the uh earlier work well as we we start to reach the end here i i i wanted to end with these pictures from japan because i got to tell you arthur i there there's something magical and i dare say spiritual uh that you seems to carry through in your pictures and i i got to ask you do you is there something about japan that you think you're responding to differently or is it just a matter of where you are with your uh your progression in photography a little both but mostly japan japan is just an absolutely amazing place for those that have been there i know some of the people that are watching today have probably been with me on trips there have been and uh the trips that we put together have just uh we you know it's not just tokyo kyoto and nara we get out and go to different places we're planning another trip for uh november of 21 if all's well and it'll be in a different area but it it does tom it does there's a japanese aesthetic that comes across and i think it touches everyone who goes and it definitely has a bearing on your photography how you see how you approach things and i only only positive only positive things and just in terms of process you come back from a trip and i imagine many people listening are anxious for another chance to you know their next chance to travel but how have you used this time the last you know uh year really since you made your last trip to japan do you typically look at your pictures right away or is there an editing process that you can share with us that you think is important in terms of spacing uh the trip from the edit yeah um well i do an edit fairly soon thereafter and i'm usually editing out the obvious mistakes uh problems whatever i mean you know things i didn't mean and then i'm marking close ones and twos but before i get down and make finals i'll put them away i think the best thing i can do in way of advice to you is to tell y'all time and space that's just best uh examples for dealing with editing because then the smells the taste the whatever you had to do to get it that's all gone now you're looking at the image for what the image is keep in mind people look at your work it shouldn't really rely on a uh uh a title in fact i generally don't like titles i think place and dates enough but um it shouldn't yeah just it should connect with people just for what it is and then if there's a story to be told you can tell that another time it should stand on its own and i think too often people kind of get hung up on that but putting time and space between you and when you took the picture is the best way to i think make uh good good picks and i know from experience because so many times i picked things and gone back six months or a year two or five or ten years later and went holy that was the wrong thing i should have picked this one and here's why and part of it is we as photographers if we do this enough we gain a thing i call photographic maturity and that maturity happens with time and our ability to understand and accept and realize why photographs work or don't work and um that's it it's that easy as we start to get to the end here arthur i understand this picture we're looking at now is one of the last pictures you made on your last trip to japan can you share this we've got time for one more story can you share the story behind this uh it was it was made from the last trip coming back from february right coming back to the pandemic action that's my friend george george was going off to make another shot i sung back but there was this one beautiful moonlit uh shot we had a full moon snow we're up in uh upper hokkaido we had been shooting the cranes and um swans and end of the day we started basically chasing light moonlight and found this one opening where there was the volcano off in the distance there and so it seemed like a perfect place to make a snap and say sayonara well i you know i i would tell you that one of the things it seems to me that you've gotten i don't know if it's a family uh characteristic or growing up in texas but you're a great storyteller and i i've seen you in action with students and and i'm so glad that you took the time to sit with us today and and share a few of your stories i want to share with the audience how to stay in touch with you and maybe before the stay in touch with you we'll let people know there is at least at last check two spots left in your upcoming workshop for leica you teach a variety of places through it throughout the year and i'm hopeful if i can twist your arm i'll get you to come back after this program sells out yes i think we talked about this and besides this march i think we we will probably do in april or may um but uh yeah for anybody that's interested love to have you it'll be an online class we'll go over a bunch more tools it'll be in-depth it's an intensive five days but um we cover a lot and uh talk to people that have done it i think you'll find they got a lot out of it well i'd like your story about taking a workshop with ernst haas i know for a fact that you have been that turning point for a lot of people and the choice of a good workout shop instructor can really make that difference so i would encourage people to check out your website for your ongoing workshops uh if anyone's interested in in picking up a copy of uh the journey they can order that directly from from you arthur it's been an absolute pleasure i can't wait till i have an opportunity to have a drink with you and see you in person thank you absolutely tom thank you and everybody thank you so much for showing up today i wished i could see you but uh i virtually see you so until we can all hug and kiss i do we'll see you all next time for like the conversations thanks for being here you

Channel: Leica Camera USA

Views: 36,757

Keywords: #LeicaConversations, Arthur Meyerson, Leica, Color Photography, Texas, Houston, Tom A. Smith, LeicaQ, Ernst Haas, Jay Maisel, Sam Abell, Japan, Photogrpahy workshop, Photo Tips, Travel, Art, Photobooks, Photography

Id: eSbF5jwx9Tk

Length: 60min 44sec (3644 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021