In synch, by Celia Lim, Malacca, Malaysia, 2007
Celia Lim (
http://www.pbase.com/cecilialim ) catches me sitting next to my friend and fellow pbase photographer Tim May in the sanctuary of Malacca’s ancient Cheng Hoong Tang Temple. We are waiting for Celia to finish shooting her own images, and use the time to check our own progress, editing our work on the fly. Celia sees me as mirror image of Tim – we are wearing the same brand of shooting vest (Domke) and even the same brand of shirt (Ex-Officio), hold our cameras before us in the same way, tilt our eyes towards our LCD screens together, thereby highlighting the fact that we both have less on top than we used to have. Celia links us to the context of the temple by including a pair of windows above us, windows that rhythmically repeat our side-by-side positions. Celia says in her own caption for this image that “over the years of shooting together, Phil and Tim have become quite in synch with each other. They can even anticipate how the other will likely see or shoot an image.” She is correct – I often find myself shooting a “Timesque” image, and Tim will often repay the compliment. Tim and I have shot and edited side by side all over the world. Here, in Malacca’s Cheng Hoong Tang Temple, we seem joined at the hip.
Community, by Cecilia Lim, Singapore, 2007
My outstretched left arm seems to be the focal point of this image, made by Malaysian pbase artist Celia Lim (
http://www.pbase.com/cecilialim ) following a magical day of shooting with a group of fellow pbase photographers in Singapore in late August, 2007. We had pulled four tables together at a local Starbucks, and turned the room into an impromptu conference center. Although everyone appears to living this moment in their own unique way here, the interplay of hands and arms lends a sense of community to the scene. The cameras in the foreground speak of our mutual passion. Our Singapore shoot was graciously hosted by pbase artist Ai Li Lim ( no relation to Cecila ), who sits at left center.
29-APR-2008
Tutor, by Rusty Latshaw, Phoenix, Arizona, 2008
Rusty (
http://www.pbase.com/russellt ) has traveled from Pennsylvania to Arizona three times in three years to work with me in my one on one tutorial training sessions. He made hundreds of images during his two days with me, but the one that we both liked the best was a portrait he made of me during lunch in a very dark restaurant. Rusty has come to appreciate the value of shadow as an abstracting medium, and in this image he makes use of shadow to its full extent. Using a single bulb in an overhead fixture as his light source, Rusty finds me in a reflective mood. I was studying the menus of my own camera at the moment, and had no idea he was photographing me. He uses a high ISO to make the image, which largely envelops me in darkness. It is an appropriate darkness – our time together was filled with explorations that involved mutual discoveries and many unknowns. The image is intimate and subdued, an interlude of unusual silence, a rare moment during our intensive interplay of teaching and learning.
16-SEP-2007
With Tim May at the Summer Palace by Shirley Wang, Beijing, China, 2007
Shirley has placed my friend and travel companion Tim on one side of a tree and has me emerging from the other. She beautifully abstracts us with backlight, using the leaves of the tree as a counterpoint. I love how she stresses our varying approaches to the camera, too. I am looking down into my flip up viewfinder, while Tim presses his camera to his eye. We are virtually joined here – yet each of us is shooting in different directions.
17-SEP-2007
On the Great Wall, by Tim May, Mutianyu, China, 2007
Tim, who has tracked my adventures around the world, abstracts me here – I am not as much Phil Douglis as I am a photographer, exploring one of the greatest ruins on earth. The day was foggy, and Tim does not try to remake the image as it would look on a sunny day. Fog can be delightful weather for photography because it can hide as much as it can reveal and Tim tells it like it was. The moment Tim selects is a very characteristic one. I carry my hands away from the body, as if to gain traction on the uneven roadway. My head is down, seemingly giving me an air of determination. Actually I am watching each step – the uneven road is a recipe for disaster. Tim is standing within one of the wall’s towers, and he frames my distant figure within an arch that was built in the age of the Mongol invasions. I walk into history here – and that is what I probably love to do the most when I travel.
05-DEC-2007
Student and Mentor, by Vera Saltzman, Ottawa, Canada, 2007
When I challenged my new student Vera Saltzman (
http://www.pbase.com/saltzman40 ) to practice by becoming her own model, she not only took me up on it – she also decided to include me in the bargain. She says “this is a standard spot to find me lately; in front of Phil Douglis’ website, studying pictures.” It occurs to me that this is how everyone I’ve met on pbase must first see me –- staring back at them from the front of my cyberbook as an array of colored pixels on a computer monitor. Such is the nature of cyberlearning. The day may well come, however, as it has for many of my other pbase students, when I will get to meet Vera face to face, cameras in hand, as we share a shooting adventure together. Until then, I will imagine her as she appears here, sitting in the darkness wearing an orange fleece, skillfully juggling new concepts such as abstraction, incongruity and human values. Meanwhile, Vera will gradually come to know me through my writings and images, as well as by studying the many remarkable photographs in this particular gallery that have been made of me by other pbase students over the years. This image shows that Vera is a quick learner – she uses color and abstraction to tell the story of learning, which is a human value.
25-OCT-2007
Thinkers and teachers, electronic collage by Marcia Manzello, 2007
Marcia Manzello created this striking electronic collage by combining Peggy Hammond’s 2003 portrait of me (
http://www.pbase.com/image/33919891) with my own 2007 photograph of a Confucian Temple in Nanjing, China. (
http://www.pbase.com/image/86307890) By placing Peggy’s portrait of me, which relies largely on hands, just below the crossed hands of Confucius, she creates a strong symbolic linkage that expresses thought. I am struggling to know, while the serene hands of Confucius seem to already know. The incense sticks and smoke add a spiritual context to this linkage. Marcia speaks here of what I am and what I do -- I put much thought into my work, and then I teach what I learn. Marcia takes what had been reality, and by copying, pasting, merging and blending two images into one, she expresses her idea beautifully through fantasy.
01-SEP-2007
Double Vision, by Tim May, Maur, Malaysia, 2007
This is the only image (so far) in this gallery that not only shows how another photographer sees me, but also another observer. The man watching me work here brings his arms inwards, and appears to be quite relaxed. In contrast, I seem to be gasping for air. Two old geezers – one is passive, the other active. As Tim notes in his caption (
http://www.pbase.com/mityam/image/87404543) , “as we travel, many people look at what we are photographing and seem to wonder what in the heck we see. We see the world with new eyes – to them it is every day stuff.” Tim loves to photograph visual puns, and this image is a double play on the word “vision” in the sign just behind us. Both parties here wear glasses, and there is a large pair of spectacles on that sign. It also underscores another point: expressive photographers are often fixated on using their vision well. One more bonus here is the striking pink pair of trousers in the background, worn by our Malaysian host, pbase photographer Cecilia Lim. She and her husband Chor traveled with us through Singapore and China as well – and those pink trousers often helped us keep her in sight.
30-AUG-2007
At the Singapore River, by Ai Li Lim, Singapore, 2007
Our group of pbase photographers was photographing a group of statues on the bank of the Singapore River, life sized sculptures of children seemingly about to jump in for a swim. Our Singapore host, Ai Li Lim, (
http://www.pbase.com/limaili ) , manages to find the moment when the angle of my arm, poised to make a photograph, rhythmically echoes the arm of the statue of a boy ready for a swim. She also uncannily matches the expressions on our faces – we are both full of enthusiasm for the moment. Her black and white rendition of it gives the immediacy of a news photo. There is a lot more going on in this image as well. She does a good job in showing how I prepare for a shoot. A bottle of water is tucked into the pocket of my photo-vest, and a rain jacket is lashed around my waist. Singapore is hot. Hydration is essential. Yet the rains can come at any time, and on this day, they did. Even the old British bridge that spans the river can be seen in soft focus in the background. It is a wonderfully expressive image
On Ubin Island, by Melvin Austin Noronha, Singapore, 2007
Melvin catches a relaxed Phil here. We had been walking and shooting in the tropical heat for the better part of the morning, and I finally enjoyed a much-needed rest at the house of a former village chief. I had just feasted on a cold Coke, and a slice of sponge cake that Melvin had somehow acquired. The local dog was investigating my crumbs. By making this image black and white, Melvin makes the moment timeless. The shoot on Ubin was part of a delightful gathering featuring pbase photographers from three countries. See Melvin’s gallery on the shoot at
http://www.pbase.com/1melvin/pbase_meet
08-MAY-2007
Lion shoot, former Westward Ho Hotel, by Rusty Latshaw, Phoenix, Arizona, 2007
Pbase photographer Rusty Latshaw (
http://www.pbase.com/russellt ) recently spent a couple of days shooting in downtown Phoenix with me as part of a one-on-one tutorial session. We spent several hours searching for images together in a senior citizens residence, housed in what once was the lavish Westward Ho Hotel. The historic hotel was built in 1928 and closed forever in 1980, but many of its treasures are still intact, including this fountain featuring a ceramic lion’s head. Rusty and I were both photographing it, but I had had no idea that his concept involved me. I guess he saw the whimsically incongruous connection between my hat, which I originally purchased to use on an African safari, and that ceramic lion I am shooting. Rusty used the same kind of camera to make this image that I am holding in my hand – the Leica V-Lux-1. Its amazing image stabilization feature allowed him to make this image in a very dark hallway, without flash, at a one-third of a second exposure, hand-held. The image I am trying so hard to make here involved shooting that ceramic lion in profile. It never made my cut. I am fond of quoting my iconic mentor Henri Cartier Bresson, who also used a Leica, (but not this one). He said, “You have to milk the cow a lot, to get a little cheese.” In this case, there was a lot of milk, but alas, no cheese.
21-FEB-2007
Composing on the crest, by Tim May. Mesquite Flats, Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
Tim sees me as part of the landscape here, a lonely figure that gives his image scale incongruity. He titles his image simply “Photographer,” giving the image enough verbal context to define my purpose. Note how he waits until I stand astride the line where the sand ends and the shadow begins. In a way, he implies here that as photographers, we are often “pushing the edges” as we work, walking that tightrope between the reality before us and the power of our imaginations to transform it. (He also says in his caption that I was muttering the whole time I was working the image.” He is correct – sand dunes, particularly those trampled by dozens of other tourists, and populated by other photographers, are not my favorite subject matter.) I was able to make a worthwhile teaching image from here, however. You can see it in my Composition gallery by clicking on the thumbnail below: