Transcription of Richard Olsenius’ talk to a Tucson, Arizona area camera club, in January 2026.

This transcript has imperfections.

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A daunting crowd. My gosh.

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All right, well, let's just get started here. My name is Richard Olsenius. And I think tonight we're going to try to get through this in 45 minutes because I know everyone gets antsy if we've had a meal, maybe a glass of wine. So I don't want to see any heads nodding. But tonight I want to just go through the the variety of stories that I was given.

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I want to give you a little overview of how I actually got into this, and then I want to take a second step to kind of look at the evolution. So I think we're all in with our cameras and where we're going with photography. It's changing. I mean, if you ever watch the news conference or whatever, you know, there's no need to have a photographer there because there's like a thousand people with their cameras up.

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And I promise you, this is not going to be my life. Beginning with my childhood. But there are four pictures I want to share. Like, where do we all get our sensitivity in our lives? And, for me, our family cabin very early on, I realized water and sky and fish. And I became very, sensitive to that, location.

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So I think my appreciation of landscape and place, started way back then. And there was my father's German camera. And I discovered early on that that camera came out when it was an important moment or a family gathering. And so for some reason, I was attracted to that camera and the little yellow boxes of Kodachrome. So anyway, this little camera to me started to represent the cameras were meant for moments, and I think we all have our family albums and all that.

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And when we took a lot of family trips, he was a minister, Lutheran minister in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. And, but every month during the summer, we had a months together and so we took pictures and we met people. So changeability landscape, going to Phoenix, going out to Williamsburg, I started to see things. I started to see people, and I still remember that moment.

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And lastly, on this little nostalgic trip, is sitting at home right now. That was my first camera, and it sits in our shelf along with a bunch of others. And I am reminded often that a camera like this, that evolved into other things to take me around the world, actually, that's all I've ever done, is take pictures. So the nostalgia moment is done.

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We're going to jump forward 15 years where Vietnam was really permeating the news and the American psyche. And I had enlisted in the reserves and gone to become a medic and had just come back from training. And I was assigned to my unit in Minneapolis. And so I started to go to school in journalism. And because of all the turmoil and all that, I wanted part of that action.

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So I started photographing in Minneapolis is no stranger to turmoil. It's always been an active, progressive city. I mean, this was the feminist movement that was starting the year, the Vietnam War. I think I spent half of the next 3 or 4 years walking backwards, photographing things like that. Then, of course, the Minneapolis police force was even known back then under Charlie Stern as the Minneapolis Goons.

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So there was a heavy handedness with police at that time. Crowd control, protests, mass arrests, surveillance, the Honeywell project. I don't know if you remember that it was Honeywell was making these cluster bombs. And so Minneapolis was a midwest town, a lot of good people, but it was always a hotbed. And here is where I started to see moments, and I started to look for light in black and white, of course, was the main thing.

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But the tension at that time was also with the Black Power movement. Students, were pushing back against tracking discipline. So I did a relatively deep project on high schools and also learned how to work in difficult situations and try to get trust with people, because most of my life has been kind of intruding into people's lives, not intruding, but trying to get as close as I can because I work very close.

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And so I did this whole collection of work. There's a social change going on white flight from the cities, the neglected cities of Minneapolis, Saint Louis and Boston and you name it. A lot of people were moving out to the suburbs. So I have this huge collection, and I was able to get Institute of Arts, exhibition, which was one of their first journalism acquisitions.

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It was exactly at this time that the Minneapolis Tribune had been following my work, you know, and they thought, hey, this everyone else was coming out of the four by five cameras and the speed graphics. And here's this kid with a 35 millimeter. And they said, well, let's give him a try, you know? And so for the like the next 12 years at the Tribune, these passports represent an entree into places that most people couldn't go.

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So the next slides are not so much by my greatest hits at a newspaper, because we did a lot of two people in a check and, you know, someone who won a plaque for you young being 40 years at work and stuff like that. So what I was starting to do was looking at the power of the camera in the moment, in my interaction with people, because as you'll see, a lot of my work, though, I love landscape and do that.

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And you have to a geographic, most of my work was with people finding a way to within seconds, sometimes to get that moment where people can relax, where you can get beyond just a snapshot, but something where an emotion is spread between, by self in the subject matter and also to get in there. I mean, this was a hippie commune and they didn't, you know, once it clean cut kid actually at that time and I was following photographers like Diane Arbus and, Richard Avedon and Eugene Smith and all this kind of decisive moment was important to me.

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And I started looking beyond newspaper work. I was looking for kind of odd moments, and they were actually running some of this. This was a neighborhood that had several twins, and they're having a birthday party. And for some reason, no one was standing still. So I just said, could you please just hold them up against the wall? So we just get a shot and there's a little bit influence of Diane Arbus.

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And, because I like I like to have the humor, but I also like to kind of cut through that so you never really know. And, you know, the beauty contests and stuff like that. You know, public relations was a big deal in Minneapolis. And so a PR firm was going to take this cow up to the seventh floor of a bank as a promotion.

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They had a guy behind with a rag just in case. I don't know what he'd do with that. So I was following up there, and I mean, I saw this cafeteria coming up and it's like, oh, photography. It's it's timing, seeing something in advance, anticipating. So also I was, you know, I mean, I make light of all this and try to be light, but there was also things that were affecting me and people living on the edge.

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I was becoming aware of Minneapolis and other places, but most of my work was in Minneapolis at that time. And then just odd things, you know, on the way out to South Dakota, you know, stopping at a table that's kind of interesting. And two people came up and I like it. Maybe it doesn't add up to much, but so anyway, this collection of work through 1977, it was picked up by a small publishing group.

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They wanted to do my landscapes, which I had a lot of, but I convinced them to do this book. It it's relatively dark, but it's kind of like through birth, through death and all of the turmoil that a lot of us go through. So that was a published book and, and, it was great to hear. It's called flight and it's still still available on eBay occasionally.

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But then in 1979, I was out photographing, harvesting in west of Minneapolis, and I got to get a phone call and, they asked me to, you know, go halfway around the world to Cambodia. And this was just at the end of the terrible. I mean, it was like 2 million people that had actually died under Pol Pot, but most of them now that had survived were trying to make it to Thailand.

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So I was sent to that and, had no experience with what I would come across in this, thousands of people pouring out of the jungles of, Cambodia trying to find hope and food inside Thailand. And it was, a lot of guns around, a lot of bombing going off. And I won't show some of the stuff that is very difficult.

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But they had, you know, some places up to 180,000 people. There was two camps. Those two camps together are larger than Tucson proper. And I can't explain the the smell and the anguish going on. And they were bringing people into a tent every, every day. So. And then on occasion, I would go in. I had a bodyguard.

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He carried a 357. There was, a lot of fighting going on inside the Cambodia side. It's a complicated story there. There was Camera Rouge, and then there were three camera Rouge, and they were fighting, and the Vietnamese were coming in looking for Pol Pot. But the real tragedy was the starvation that was going on.

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This is some of the tear sheets. The Tribune gave this a lot of attention. And you feel guilty sometimes going into these situations and then turning around and leaving. You always weigh it against how much work or good can this and, you know, bring forth. And so you're balancing, you know, are you intruding? Am I helping? And, just about a year ago, this this young girl second from the left, I got an email saying, Dear Mr..

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All seniors, I saw this picture on your website. Our whole family finally made it out of there and made it to Los Angeles. So they made it to America. They they built themselves up, and it was a really, important turn. So coming back, I was changed. I didn't have any, you know, residual, like like, I can't handle this.

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So I was restless and wanted to do more with my photography. So I resigned from the Minneapolis Tribune. So I started working in four by five large format. Now I started traveling out west of the Missouri. You know, I liked black and white become because sometimes time becomes more visible. The other thing I like about black and white is that when portraiture, you can't hide, you know, it's it's right there.

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It's, you know, you're not wearing a yellow shirt. You don't have an orange bandana. It's just you and your composition around you. So I always have this kind of attraction to, things and or things that just didn't seem right. And we put together a calendar, Christine and I. And while we were working on this calendar, she called.

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I was down in the basement trimming some prints, and she called down, says, why don't you pick up the phone? National geographic is on the line. So, I don't know what am I, 32 at that point? 35. So what happened is that I never fully realized what that phone call would mean. Obviously, I was like on the fence, like, well, it's all color.

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And, you know, you're working at NASA 25, you got to have a tripod or you got to be really steady. But obviously I took the job, you know, and so the first assignment was, the Great Lakes, the challenge there is that there's 11,000 miles of shoreline around the Great Lakes. That's more than the East Coast, West Coast, and the Gulf of Mexico, if you take the mileage.

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And so this is where I photograph 36,000 frames. And I was accused once of like my picture editor said, you know, is your motor drive stuck? And, I mean, you joke, but it is a it is a difficult place because if you, you know, if they don't like you that point, there's so many people that would be willing to feel you're your boots anyway.

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So the scale of the story was impossible. And so I did a lot of driving around the lake shore trying to capture, you know, moments and the environment. I mean, the greatest amount of water. I think 20% of the world's water, freshwater are in these Great Lakes, and they create their own weather, you know. So you looking for landscapes?

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My first assessment I didn't know what they want and they didn't know what they want. One of my pictures, you had a couple on this story said, we don't know what we want. It's like building a house. We're going to have bricks. You bring the bricks into us and then we'll shape it. And this was at a point when they had 11 million circulation.

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The presses never stopped and there was no budget. We didn't have to do a budget, needed a helicopter. They would fly someone out. And, you know, the art director would come out and take a look at things. And it was it was a lot of money spent and and, I'll say just that. So I started to narrow the story down.

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I wanted to do what I do best is, is find myself with people. And this quick story is just driving along and I saw this ramshackle house helmer I click is his name. He was wandering around in front and this, Great Dane. I think that was a Great Dane, big dog. And I pulled over and we started talking.

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His wife, Christina was inside, had coffee. We went around the back. He showed me his boat. The quick story. And this is helmer Hartwig. Back in 1958 on Thanksgiving, I think, was the date. His best friend was out fishing and a storm came up and I came, got really cold. One of those cold fronts. And he was out for 26 hours looking for his friend where they never found, and they found him.

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A Coast Guard boat was, they found him with his hands frozen to his jaws. So that was a long time ago. And he was given the Carnegie Hero Award and was written all up. He was a very famous person. And so when I came through his boat was there. Elmer was, you know, along in his years. And so that picture means a lot to me.

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This is Jeff Poole. So I started looking for people that were doing unusual things on the lake. Jeff Pope built this. He was a lingerie salesman through the Dakotas for most of his career, and decided he wanted to sail Lake Superior. And he built this 50ft topsail ketch and I followed him. Christine, I sail on with him quite a bit.

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Anyway, the quick story on that is that we did a film on him later, and then Jeff said, you know, I'm going to Europe. And he sailed, to the bottom of, Greenland. You've all heard of Greenland, right? And got trapped in ice, and they called for Mayday. And the kayak, was a Danish fishing vessel. And they just heard this faint little call for Mayday, and they turned around, and then they were told by the Danes, don't go after them.

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You're going to damage the boat. The captain, they found him, and they got the boat out. Unfortunately, it sank in a gale two days later as they were heading for Denmark. She was on her roof. I was driving by and I got about a mile past. And for some reason, I know this sounds crazy. So I turned around and went back to her house, and she'd been up there for, I think, a little over a day.

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Her ladder had blown down and she she was tearing her roof. And this was her 80th birthday. Wrong. So I got the ladder up and then she came down and she had one little cake. Someone had dropped off. And so we had cake and coffee, and she still had a little, series of rooms that she rented out.

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And she was bringing flowers down to them anyway, moments, with people and their work and, tug. Captain, the Great Lakes still have an active or fleet of 1000 footers. It is something to be on one of these boats when they are training in the bow line. All right. So that's the Great Lakes. And that was the most difficult story and somewhat disappointing.

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And that's a whole nother discussion. But I stuck with it. They liked what I was doing. And then they said well you know you've been driving around 11,000 miles. They said, let's, let's ask Richard if he wants to get on the yacht that's going to sail from Greenland or from Alaska to Greenland. The Northwest Passage never been done by a private yacht.

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This was the sixth year that this person's boat was trying it, and they. He thought we could make it. So I was on there for a little over a month as we went, roughly 2600 miles all the way to Greenland. And here I was afforded the opportunity to go back and forth between Alaska and East and eastern Canada.

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I learned to live and and and I and I hunted and we sailed and we were on the flow edge and and also, it was beginning to get the feel of the, climate change that was going on there. Now, because this was the year that the ice did open and you could work your way through amount of resources.

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13% of the world's reserves are up in the Arctic Circle. And Greenland is part of this quotient. Now, as we are being aware, made aware of. And so I was able to get out with his rigs. I was one one that you had to shovel out. There's a whole sequence of them trying to break this out and get out and start, you know, drilling or going for research drills, went out, way above the Arctic Circle, tagging polar bears because of their concern.

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The problem here is that it was like 25 below. Everything was 25 below. And the helicopter pilot says, I've got to start it up. No one knows where we are. We didn't have radio contact or anything. I've got to start up the helicopter. And the wind G stirred up, woke up all of the bears there. They used angel dust.

00:18:04:17 - 00:18:23:06

And the problem with angel dust. It's really good, but you can pop out of it fast. And so I got a couple frames off and then did you know as I should because, But then I warned everybody that, hey, this this guy is looking pretty active. And so I had a chance to hold one of these heads.

00:18:23:06 - 00:18:43:14

They were doing, they're doing blood sample lip tattoos. One was getting a radio collar, so they'll follow it. And all this. But in this last one was, whale hunting went out. Took a long time to get confidence to go out with a crew. They don't like people from outside their community. Greenpeace was their biggest concern because the most incredible event.

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24 hours on out on the Chukchi Sea, where they brought in a 50 ton whale divided up amongst the community. So anyway, that story ran and it was really a successful story. And so to be awarded that, they says, well, why don't we send him onto the Alaska Highway, which has nothing there except beauty. And I love bleakness.

00:19:08:02 - 00:19:27:18

You know, I spent a I drove that twice from Minneapolis or from the Two Harbors where we were living, to Fairbanks, and that was 11,000 miles. I can't tell you how long a trip that is. And they bought me a expedition and put a winch on the front. So I was on there by myself, loaded up with stuff.

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So that was my assignment. It's beautiful. There's a number of rangers there of Saint Louis Rangers, the Alaska Range, the Wranglers. But the scale was too big and I had to start thinking how to narrow it down. I wanted to look at, you know, what it was to move oil and that up these roads. Because during the summer, yes, people go up there, take a vacation.

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It's a long vacation, but during the wintertime it's a whole different story.

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You know, they've got little oases along the way. They've got, you know, Watson, Lake, Whitehorse, you know, the trucks pull in logging trucks and whatever. And no one shuts their engines off. So you have a little room along the side and I can't tell you, like for three months hearing every night run run run run run run run, run.

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I mean, they don't shut the cars off because it's too, too cold. Then to try to gain trust of the people. There was a challenge and and I'll tell you, the people that find themselves at the end of the road in Alaska or along the Alaska Highway, they are at the end of the road, you know, I don't know what they were going to live in this, but they were hauling up this big box and they were going to start this new life somewhere in Alaska.

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So they were up the road and, but gold is still a big thing. But we went back to his cabin or his house to drink beer. He brought out some gold nuggets that were like you could hold in the palm of your hand. It's basically a, unfortunately, it's a gravel operation. The culture up there, there's something else.

00:20:56:13 - 00:21:17:19

I won't linger on that too long. Richard Dix was the on the Canadian side of the Alaska border. He's the last house on the Alaska Highway in Canada. And I stayed with them for a couple of days. And they were worried because there was some break up and he had to break these ice chunks up because they were afraid of the house as things really took off, would overwhelm them.

00:21:17:21 - 00:21:38:21

And, but it was just a story of characters. And I never did figure out it's a double wide. I never figured out how they got that bear. And I know I must have asked him, but I cannot remember what it was. It had wandered into their yard, though. Yeah, and now is in their living room.

00:21:38:23 - 00:22:02:06

And second of the last shot on on this is that, I went up with a 79 year old, Indian, man who was an Indian leader in their community and a guide who, you know, 30 years ago, took supplies up to Dawson, which was on the Yukon River, for the gold rush. And he says I can find you this trail.

00:22:02:06 - 00:22:24:00

We'll go up there for a few days, and, well, our supplies never made it. The pack horses never made it. We ended up sleeping on the ground where there's bears wandering around, and, we're sleeping on horse blankets, so I smelled pretty good by the time we got back. Okay. So beautiful up there. The lights, the landscape. It was a successful story.

00:22:24:00 - 00:22:45:15

It ran, and then they said, well, let's reward Richard. Let's send him to a place where there are no roads. And so I was sent up to Labrador. This is the only cover that I got for my work at geographic. But I spent a number of months up in Labrador, which is north of Newfoundland, and it has two sides.

00:22:45:15 - 00:23:10:00

It's got the coastal side, and the icebergs are all calving off of Disko Bay. I think it is a Greenland. And they come out into the Labrador Current and they just they drift by and we're in a 16ft land fishing boat. And if any part of that would have collapsed, we would not have come back. I mean, I just roll you over and you're in freezing water.

00:23:10:02 - 00:23:38:04

And then on the other side of the coast is the what they call the height of land. And here there is absolutely no, you know, no roads, no connection. You helicopter was my main source. So on the height of land, of course, there's the the George River caribou herd. We were photographing them and a snowstorm overtook us and we barely made it through a hole in the clouds, following a, wires up to the top to a dew point site.

00:23:38:06 - 00:23:58:18

But most of the winter, it's, like, so quiet there and everything is put up boats. And during the summer, the beauty of there, the quietude, the, this is an outpost, I guess you'd call it, cod fishing is is like, almost non-existent. I think they're trying to bring it back. But there was this, serene beauty up there.

00:23:58:19 - 00:24:19:00

Christine was with me on some of it. We got up to Nain once and then a lot of time out with fishing families and, the communities, you know, it's just like everyone, you know, we were sitting in that house on the top of the hill there, and the people just walked in. They didn't knock, you know, get got.

00:24:19:02 - 00:24:41:13

Yeah, they were friendly. So to almost top the story off, I did spend, a few days with this Inuit family there, not Inuit there in the Lower South, but I was out in their winter camp, and, with her family. I can't tell you, for someone to let you into their tent and sleep with their family for three days, you know, it's it's magical.

00:24:41:13 - 00:25:04:19

And the only problem was they had caribou skins and blankets. So when they turned at night, there was no sound. I had RTI nylon down. You could not move without making a scratching sound. So for like three nights I couldn't sleep because I needed to move, but it would wake everybody up. So that was the end of Labrador.

00:25:04:19 - 00:25:19:15

But there's I could do a whole show and go go into it, but this is this fast 10,000ft view. So this being done and they said, well, let's reward Richard, let's send them to Wyoming in winter.

00:25:19:17 - 00:25:43:06

I mean, I joke about it now, but, you know, it was it was like they couldn't think of a better angle other than that. This was the assignment. Go to Wyoming, see what you can find and do it in the wintertime. Snow. It was cold. I waited for an hour and a half with a long lens. I don't use a lot of long lens in Shoshoni waiting for some.

00:25:43:06 - 00:26:00:12

There's only one bar in town and I'm waiting for someone to come out of the bar. This guy was trying to say it was like a 30 mile an hour wind. It's, you know, ten degrees or whatever. But anyway, the beauty of extremes in Wyoming range from, you know, the Tetons on the west to the high Plains on the east.

00:26:00:14 - 00:26:19:21

I don't know why I thought I could run in Sorel boots, trying to get a picture of these guys coming back from feeding their cattle. But this is one of my favorite photographs I hate to point out, like why this is good, but every foot, every head turn, you know, the horses feed the dogs. I mean, it's just like one moment in time that that will happen.

00:26:19:23 - 00:26:44:01

And, and if it doesn't happen, right, it just doesn't work for me. And cause it's, you know, this isn't miss. This is ice fog. And, Christine was also there for part of the trip. These are elk. This was outside of Jackson Hole at the Elk Ranch. But once again, it was the people that I started to look for and try to get in close and families.

00:26:44:03 - 00:27:10:12

And if there isn't a, Wyoming family, they weren't sure they wanted their picture taken. And then there's, you know, people out there training for the rodeos. And I mean, you know, you don't think that happens anymore. Well, yeah, it does. You know, I literally went down roads looking for things and would find always find something. I don't know if there's a God up there or not, but I did kind of spend some time working with the ranchers and the sheepherders.

00:27:10:12 - 00:27:34:13

And, you know, it's a brutal time of year in the spring with the cabin. This guy on the right was starting up his new business. I have a whole little segment on him. They had a spring storm that came through, and so many of his sheep that he had bought passed away. So he needed diapers. Because if all of the lambs he was saving were inside and they needed diapers.

00:27:34:15 - 00:28:09:08

So, you know, here I run it. I ran into town, says, hey, where are the smallest diapers you can fit on a lamb? And, so I spent time trying to cover and look into backroads and, and places and, try to get moments and feelings that were real and authentic. And, and even this shot was of a scene in the city's ranchers house, and they were so upset because they got a letter from the post office to move their mailbox because the, mailman didn't want to have to go down to the road and turn around to come back.

00:28:09:10 - 00:28:30:10

He wanted to get it all in one swipe. Somehow. I don't know, did a story on Puget Sound, which was, another extraordinary assignment. And we're going to move past that to the dog stories, which we did, finish off on the geographic part. This was Garrison Keillor. I don't know if any of you have heard of Garrison Keillor.

00:28:30:12 - 00:28:54:08

He proposed National Geographic. I want to do a write a story about a place that doesn't exist, because it's mythological. It's Lake Wobegon, and so I was raised in Minnesota. They said, well, let Richard try it. And I said, I'll do it. And two important points. I want to do it with a large format camera, and I want to shoot it in black and white.

00:28:54:10 - 00:29:13:22

And so we did this whole story in black and white. But it was a look at rural America. And what was the cohesion that, brought everyone together, in this rural, you know, Wobegon. And I thought it was just unusual at this point in my life that I'm driving the backroads of, of Minnesota, realizing they're all small towns.

00:29:13:22 - 00:29:34:00

Triangulate their church, their bar, and their American flag and things that bring a town together is it's gathering places. And this is Charlie's Cafe. And so at 730 in the morning, I walked in there and set up a tripod. On the counter was a four by five. I have two frames from this shot and 730 in the morning.

00:29:34:00 - 00:29:48:00

I think there's eight coffee cups on there, and I talked to the owner about that and says, you know, you're not making any money. It's all refills. And he says, we'll do the math. These guys have been coming here for 30 years. They buy 1 or 2 cups of coffee and then it's all refills. But do the math.

00:29:48:00 - 00:30:06:20

Over 30 years and seven days a week. Yeah, he says, I can't check them out. I mean, there's a lot of money there. And I drove along until we saw a bunch of cars on the road and I pull over and walk around the side and say, hey, you know, I'm doing this thing. Can you, you know. And so this is like two sheet films, a different way of shooting.

00:30:06:20 - 00:30:28:18

It was like you do a sheet film and you wait for something you can't just rattle, roll off. And so the ball was coming in and they're going to ambush him with a water balloon there that they pulled back. I discovered that small towns hold their losses quietly. No big speeches, rituals repeated every year until they actually become the ritual themselves.

00:30:28:20 - 00:30:54:15

Small towns don't remember wars, really. They remember their sons and daughters. And then, you know, it's the weekends and, you know, the having a good time, the water barrel fight and holding forward. Anyway, so most of my time was spent working, trying to capture the feel of small town America and, the rock pickers one would run up to this guy.

00:30:54:15 - 00:31:12:20

I mean, I chased up and down these hills with this camera on a tripod and a black cloth over my head. It was fun when it was. When I was done. Been the last shot here. Oh. The quick story. A little boy would run up with a rock and says, hey, John, is this one okay? Says, no, put it back.

00:31:12:20 - 00:31:18:04

It'll be bigger next year. Oh.

00:31:18:06 - 00:31:39:18

And I'm up in a bar having a beer with these people. And they'd taken their buckboard up to the up to the bar. They're up there. I looked out the window and saw this. I ran down there and I literally said he was laying like this. Says, don't move. I'll explain a second. Just stay there. And but, this is one of my favorite moments.

00:31:39:20 - 00:32:00:02

And of course, trying to decide whether the small town survives or not is always tough for the next generation. Choose to stay long enough where the town will have an effect on them. It's, you know, it's up to debate. So this was the homecoming court. They don't lie. Off campus, they were driving around in circles in the parking lot and this is just before they got started.

00:32:00:02 - 00:32:39:18

And I didn't realize it turned out that this was the truck from the artificial inseminated in town. I, so in any in any case, garrison wrote some wonderful essays in this and the photographs and and so that's the end of kind of the quick overview of of a life, you know, in photography. But I want to do one thing because there is an evolution that we've all been using our iPhones, and I've been doing some testing, and I would go out with a Sony mirror and come back and pixel poke in it, and I decided I'm going to leave the camera bag at home.

00:32:39:18 - 00:33:03:00

So this whole exercise was to go out in the road with an iPhone and enjoy ourselves. Xi'an is where we were going and everyone has done Zion much better than I have. This was a two day event, so this is the new photo expedition. You know, it's funny, but it's also a big change. So I'm just going to go through 7 or 8 pictures with the iPhone.

00:33:03:00 - 00:33:24:23

And only work that's been done on these is bring them into Photoshop, maybe change the contrast level a little bit. What's blowing me away is that for years and working in film and then later digital to get the contrast range, the capability in raw to have the high contrast and the shadow detail. But it was just an exercise.

00:33:24:23 - 00:33:43:10

And can I come back with anything that esthetically, you know, feels good to me. And it was, of course, mid-November, which is time to time to go. And then the other thing, the last shot here is they're working back from dinner one night. This is something, of course, we've all done with our kind of like, how can it do that?

00:33:43:12 - 00:34:06:00

So, like, we stopped and there were some lights on the trees. This is at the Zion Lodge and we're walking back. And so I thought I would just hold it up and take a shot. And anyway, we don't know exactly if it's a shooting star or whatever, but trying to do that handhold. Unbelievable. Thanks very much for.

00:34:06:02 - 00:34:06:12

Unknown

I'll take a.

00:34:06:12 - 00:34:07:16

Few questions, Jim. Go ahead.

00:34:07:16 - 00:34:11:13

Speaker 3

Richard. Fantastic. By the way, the small town we.

00:34:11:18 - 00:34:14:04

Talked about later. Okay.

00:34:14:06 - 00:34:31:03

Speaker 3

You use the word decisive moment a lot, do you think you think you see the world differently because of the film? And what if you had a digital camera in your hands at that time? Would that have made a difference? Maybe a question that's hard to answer may not have an answer.

00:34:31:05 - 00:34:53:11

Well, I know I'm doing, you know, work now that hasn't been wouldn't be able under film. And so I'm thinking now yes I can do things that I couldn't do. I can maybe react a little bit faster not to I put on the 20 millimeter than you know, and load, you know, load the film after 36 shots. But the problem is, is that with film, you had to think a little bit more.

00:34:53:16 - 00:35:12:08

You only had 36 frames. You you waited for moments more. Now we all like each, you know, it's just like you roll that stuff through and then you got megabytes. Well anyone ever. Yeah. Well the kids see those. I can go back into my office now and pick out a box from the Northwest Passage. Where is that? Ask about that in that hunt.

00:35:12:13 - 00:35:30:13

Yeah, that was on. Oh, there it is. You know, I mean, I have a lot of them in Lightroom scan, but, yeah, I think digital has its pluses and minuses. But again, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

00:35:30:15 - 00:36:02:00

There are stories in people's eyes not written but waiting. Quiet as a rain. On an old tin roof. Soft as a breath before truth is spoken I, I didn't just frame them, I heard them grief wrapped in a mother's glance. Hope in a child's twitching smile. Face in the way old hands folded like, well, red pages.

00:36:02:02 - 00:36:27:21

Now those moments rest. Tucked inside a box on a shelf in a quiet room where stillness sings louder than memory I take them down sometimes. Not just to see, but to feel again. To remember the gift of being invited. To know that a story shared is a story honored.

00:36:27:23 - 00:36:41:03

A notebook of emotions stitched in light and humanity held not just by hands, but by the heart that was lucky enough to be let in.