Lawrence Ripsher's Photo Journal

Fear

#3 in a series

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.”

Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries

Getting Older

 

A wise man once said that he counted his age not in years, but by the number of dogs he had shared his life with. By this measure, I will never tire of getting old.

A new series...

Projects are what took my photography from being just 'nice' to something more personal and meaningful. I make no secret about how Chuck Inglefield (a fellow member of Lost in Focus whose personal blog is here) got me started down this track. The difference is fairly subtle from just every day shooting - a project is a more an idea, a concept or theme that binds together images. Although that idea can be a simple one, the difference can be dramatic.

Urban Melancholy, Chuck's social narrative photo project which he started on Pbase back in 2005 was the first time I ran into this idea. After a few discussions on email, we quickly became friends and I found myself craving to find something I could be similarly immersed in.

My first project was "negative space" - for a month I mounted a 60mm prime lens to my DSLR and only shot images that fit that theme. I went from having average composition skills to being able to capture images I never would have even noticed. After that I started on more ambitious ideas. One of my projects yielded just 16 images I shared online, although it was the result of weeks of shooting, a dozen models and thousands of images.

Since I got to the US, I've been shooting the kind of photography that I love, but it's been been a long time since I started a personal project. A recent thread on facebook gave me an idea and this weekend I shot the first two images for it.

This project doesn't have a name yet. Maybe I'll just call it "25 things". This is #1 in a series.

 

When I was a child, all I wanted to be was happy.

As I got older, I learned about pride and by the time I was a teenager, I found myself saying “I’d rather be proud than happy”.

It was a long time before that changed. Now I realise that I’ll take happiness any day.

I guess I was right all along.

My images in the Contender Season 4

If you didn't catch the Contender Season 4, one of the big moments for me was after the 8th fight. This was the end of the first round and the only competitors left in were about to begin the quarter finals. As a reward, we took my best shots of the winners from all the fights that had taken place so far and printed them up in 20"x30" or so size. These were then placed in the main room and bedrooms of the Contender house. The fighters had no idea this was being done (they'd seen no pictures at all up to that point) and the reaction when they walked back into the house and saw themselves frozen in time was priceless. I managed to find a youtube version of that episode here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KpKUhdZ_3s - the scene takes place at around 1:29.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KpKUhdZ_3s

Exploring the Area

Since I moved to Seattle, there's been very little time to explore the surrounding areas. First there was the snow, and then the general lack of time as we moved into a new house. In fact, this weekend was the first day where we didn’t need to get up and buy furniture, get stuff arranged for the house, or any number of things that have eaten up previous saturdays etc. So we took a drive out with the dogs instead and started to explore the area. As there’s so much water around here, you often find yourself needing to get a ferry so we drove onto the Richmond - > Kingston ferry and just headed for the coast. I gotta say, when the sun shines, the views are just breathtaking. I have no aspirations to become a landscape / nature photographer but it’s going to be hard to see how I’m going to be able to resist photographing things like this in 2009.

All images were shot with the 5D Mark II on Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 24mm f/1.4 or Canon L 200mm f/2.8

 

 

 

Looking towards 2009

Here's an entry I posted on my revamped Lost in Focus site earlier today. Thought i'd share it here too.

"2008 was great for photography for me in some respects. I had the Contender Asia final, the Contender Season 4 season and a number of commercial shoots. So while the year was a great success on that level, on the other hand, I did very little photography for myself - the kind of photography that got me started on this in the first place.

So I just spent the Xmas break looking through some of some of my Pbase favourites’ and the most popular galleries on that site. With the exception of those people who have continued to push their limits, boundaries and comfort zones, very little has changed. This is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because my favourites’ consisted of mostly excellent photograhers and that certainly has not changed. On the flip side, I’ve also noticed a trend amongst the general populus of photographers to move towards heavier and heavier processing, more obvious poses of pretty models and lots more “me too” images. The photography and processing has gotten more and more creative and simultaneously the images mean less and less. Mutton dressed as lamb we’d call this back in ol’ blighty. It used to impress me but digital photography, Photoshop and photographic workshops have all amazing tools in the hands of average photographers and now a glimpse through popular galleries looks more and more the same. Even more than it did a year ago. Popular photography, at least on pbase, is dominated by the same old usual suspects - followed closely by the crowd who wants to be just like them. Nothing wrong with that of course - but it bears no resemblance to what I consider to be photography. There are exceptions of course. Those who fall into that category already know who they are.

In contrast, this site has been an inspiration to me. Seeing everyone’s work continue to be posted on here while I was tied up in other things makes me believe that if you start something interesting enough, it quickly creates its own momentum and takes on a life of its own. That’s what has happened to Lost in Focus. It started slowly at first but in the past few weeks and months I sense a crossing of the Rubicon. Not every image has to be a work of art - but what we strive for will ultimately determine how interesting the journey is along the way, and ultimately the destination too. Keep that goal in mind and everything else starts to change naturally. Amazing photography when in that mindset almost becomes the side effect. To point out one individual whose work I think lives and breathes that, we need to look no further than Kal. Kal is someone someone whose work I always liked, but seeing how he seemingly effortlessly transformed his work to a completely new level with a film camera in his hand has truly been an honour. There are countless other images on this site that shout this also. When I think about the images I want to create, I think I owe it to myself and the peers whom I respect, to try to create genuinely original work. Again, not a masterpiece for every shot - but to never compromise on honesty and to be critical with myself and others. This means investing in subjects, trying new things, not getting pulled along with the crowd and continually reminding myself not to settle for less than I’m capable of. It’s such a pleasure to have this forum to share work on. Lost in Focus 2009 is really going to be something.

Here’s an image I took yesterday to punctuate how I felt as I start to get serious about my own work again"

 

A discussion has continued on the site on this topic. You can follow it here.

The Contender Season 4

Regular readers / those of you who know me already know that I was the stills photographer on The Contender Asia last year. Well, before I left Singapore, I had a great opportunity to perform the role of official photographer for The Contender Season 4 (the original US / boxing version), which was being produced in Singapore. I loved Muay Thai but I've always wanted to have an extended run at shooting boxing and this was an amazing opportunity. Other commitments prevented me from shooting the promo images and training / behind the scenes so I stuck mostly to the fight nights. Luckily I had time to shoot all the episodes. The production team was awesome and I think it's going to make a great show. I look back on the photos and am so excited about what came out of it. It feels like an entire career of boxing images from just two months.

The Contender Season 4 is airing now on Versus (cable tv) every Wednesday, 7pm Eastern.

Narrative Photography

For months I've been nagged by the feeling that I need to get my images off Pbase and onto a gallery which is better for presenting a portfolio of images. I finally took care of that this weekend, pulling out a subset of my favourite shots and getting them all on a new site. The name? - well seeing as I've been using it for so long to describe my own work - it had to be narrativephotography.com

Feel free to swing by.

Obviously I'll be continuing to post here. This is more the website-on-the-business-card.

Chingay 2008

Chingay 2008 is Singapore's (and Asia's) largest festival. This year I was invited to attend with a media pass, thanks to a friend ,Eric Goh, who is a well known and respected photographer here.

It was my first time attending Chingay. At first, I found it difficult to shoot almost due to there being too many subjects. Took some time for me to focus, remove the noise / distraction and then concentrate on what I thought were interesting images. A highlight for me was definitely the debut of a F1 car on Singapore's streets as it put a Redbull car through its paces in a brief demonstration. Singapore will be hosting its first F1 GP next year so this was a preview of things to come at the world's first F1 night race later this year.

A few shots are included below.

The Beginning

I've kicked off a new project and this the first image. As is normal with projects I've done in the past, I end up with far more images that get thrown away than ones that actually make it into the final set and the jury will be out on this one while it sits with me for a few days. The important thing for me however is having a starting point and I'm looking forward to seeing which direction this goes in from here.

More soon.