Robbed

On Monday, my laptop, external hard drive, and ipod were all stolen from my office at my new job.  It happened in the middle of the day, while other people were in our suite, which is tucked away in a rarely-visited corner.  I was only gone for about half an hour.  Luckily no one else lost anything, no one got hurt, and I had my phone and wallet with me.  I kept hoping there was some other explanation–that I had left my laptop at home, or a coworker had moved my ipod.  Yes, I did everything I was supposed to do, from filing a report to changing my passwords.  I know people mean well, but I’m not all that interested in advice that would require time travel for me to carry it out.

It’s so strange to not have a “when it happened” moment.  I have been robbed before, but in this instance there was no action, just a realization that I didn’t have my things and it wasn’t a mistake.  There’s also some irony in that these objects have been with me all over the world, and yet they were taken from my posh new job at home.  I keep hoping that maybe the thief will see the laptop is a pc, and ditch it.  Or that they’ll have a heart when they see the hard drive is just a terabyte of images, and will turn it in as though they found it.  I would honestly let them keep the stuff if they offered to give back the data.  But I know none of that is realistic.  As the cop said, my things are gone forever.

I’m honestly not that bothered by losing the stuff.  They are just things, and while I’d rather not drop $1,000 or so to replace them, they are replaceable.  What breaks my heart is all the data that cannot be recovered, especially the photos.  Conservatively, it’s at least 50,000 images.  Basically every image I took from 2012-2014 is now gone forever, which includes almost every image I shot on my dSLR, and basically all of the photos that were any good.  Ireland, India, most of Cuba, everything that happened in Boston last April, as well as thousands of family photos and quite a few events are all gone.  What I can recover is mostly not RAW files, meaning they are lower quality and completely useless for some purposes.  The ten posts about Ireland that were queued up to have images added and be posted over the next three or four weeks now seem sad and boring, a little reminder of what I do not have.

I know I have some things backed up on the cloud, and older stuff (like Benin, Egypt, and my first three months in Cuba) on my other hard drive, but to be honest I don’t even have the heart to look and see what I have left.  I really just don’t feel like remembering again of what is lost.  I spent a whole day fixated on the hard drive and therefore thinking that at least I still had my India pictures, and then I remembered that my laptop was also taken, and India is gone too.  Every couple of minutes I remember again that it’s all gone, and the idea of setting about to pick up the pieces holds no appeal.

I certainly have a lot of regrets, like not separating my backup from my originals, not uploading the images to the Ireland posts this past weekend, not having everything on the cloud, and not locking my door in what I thought was a safe office suite.  I wish I had just eaten the lunch I brought from home, and of course I wish the two office guard dogs had been there to scare the thief away.  But mostly I’m just sad.  I think of all the memories that are gone, images, writing and songs going back to high school and in some cases middle school.  I think of the years of hard work, all the hundreds of hours that went into those thousands and thousands of images.  It’s all gone, and I don’t think I have it in me to start again.

The top photo is one of the few India photos that was sitting in the cloud, albeit in a crappy, overly-small jpeg.  It’s also a picture of trust, trust that no one will take your shoes while you go inside the temple, and sometimes it’s nice to remember that.  

Make Your Own Luck

I feel lucky to have found someone actively repairing a bicitaxi, but it never would have happened if I hadn’t spent 100+ hours walking around Habana Vieja.

In photography, people often dismiss great shots by attributing them to luck or other outside factors. That person just happened to be there at the right time, they have nicer equipment, that shot is easier because the subject itself is so interesting, colorful or rare.  But as Andrea, one of my favorite photography professors, reminds me, photographers make their own luck. Yes, that may be a lucky shot, but you’re not seeing all the other shots that didn’t work out.  You don’t see how many hours they waited in that location for something good to happen in that frame, how much research they did to find the right location, or how much time they invested getting their subjects to trust them and feel comfortable.   You’re also not seeing how much time they spend practicing being creative and getting to know their own equipment, so when the time comes they can see something more interesting than what everyone else is seeing, and capture the image quickly.

Capturing a little girl in the act of hocking a loogie seems lucky and statistically rare, but the important thing to remember about this image is that I took it when the group was back at the all-inclusive resort, too busy with sun and booze to go out shooting. If you’re not shooting, the likelihood of taking a good image is 0%.

During my two summers in Cuba as a TA to Northeastern University’s photography program, the students with the best collection of images were the ones who created their own luck. They went back to the same locations over and over again, getting to know people and becoming an accepted presence in their midst as opposed to an intruder existing outside the action. They learned the necessary background information to find the potential for great shots, and learned when the variables could possibly line up.  Eventually, this hard work paid off with gorgeous, insightful, authentic views of their subjects in their own environs. Like a musician or actor who is an “overnight success,” luck is just a downplayed misnomer for the reality of their success: hard work and patience.

I got this image because I chose to march in Havana Pride, not to view it from the sidelines. If you get in the middle of the action, you’re way more likely to come across something amazing. Plus, it’s more fun.

In travel we have a similar opportunity to make our own luck. It’s why I got the large passport, the ten year, multiple-entry visa instead of the single-use one. It’s why I go to travel meet-ups, and include my travel as part of my professional image.  It takes a million small decisions of setting yourself up for success, going the extra mile, and keeping an eye out for opportunity disguised as risk to make your luck.  Of course, not everyone has the privilege to take advantage of these opportunities, and that is nothing to sneeze at.  Nor is it due to any negligence or shortcoming on their part.  I feel strongly about making travel more accessible for all, as well as publicizing cost-effective opportunities.  When I talk about people who don’t make their own luck, I do not refer to people without a realistic ability to take advantage of opportunities.  Rather, I’m speaking about people with the ability to take advantage of opportunities (which other people would kill for)  who choose not to go for it because they’re too tired, it’s too much work, it’s too far out of their comfort zone or they’re too easily distracted.  I’m speaking about people who haven’t prioritized an attainable goal they say they want, and then are surprised when they don’t reach it.

The way I was able to get this close was that I hung out with these guys for 45 minutes or so, chatting in Spanish, after spending time in the youth center outside of which they were sitting. I only did that because I decided to follow an older couple when they offered to show me the place, which only happened because I actually talk to my subjects in the first place.

People say I’m lucky to have gone to Cuba three times, twice in a work capacity. But those opportunities never would have existed if I didn’t put in the hard work of applying and then making it through the three month Cuba program I did in 2010.  I took a risk of being homesick, unhappy, missing out on everything back home, and losing a precarious relationship in order to go on what I knew would be a strange and challenging adventure.  I didn’t know yet all the ways it could pay off, but that hard work and risk is still making me “lucky” to this day.  I didn’t plan for employers to google me or to win a contest, but since 2009 I’ve been writing online, putting in the time and effort.  I’ve been told I was lucky to win a spot on the Kerala Blog Express, but most of the people who say that could never have even entered the contest, because they have never put in the work of writing a blog and cultivating an online presence. That’s not a bad thing, but the difference between me and the people who didn’t win isn’t just luck, it’s years of hard work.

The only reason I knew there was a Gay Pride Parade happening down the street is that my roommate got up early, saw it, and knew I would want to be there. The lesson from this, other than to shoot and travel with cool people, is that your network not only needs to be strong, but they need to know what you’re looking for. I send him every sports-related tip I can, and in return he bullied me into getting my ass out of bed for an amazing event. Good deal.

Another huge difference is a willingness to take risks.  Most of he people I know who are jealous of my Cuba trips wouldn’t have the guts to go if they were presented with the opportunity, never mind the guts to go on a longer trip when it was an unproven, unknown quantity.  Many people would never have entered a contest because it seemed sketchy or too good to be true.  They wouldn’t have lobbied their contacts for votes, and they wouldn’t have committed to buying a plane ticket to the other side of the planet, still a little unsure if it was all a scam.

If we consistently work hard, take risks and set ourselves up to be able to take advantage of opportunities, we’ll find ourselves stumbling into a whole lot of luck.  So get up early, pound the pavement, separate yourself from the crowd of long lenses, talk to some strangers, and make your luck happen.

Living it up in the Hotel Kerala

For our first day of touring we were shepherded from one luxury hotel to the next in Kovalam.  Luxury is not how I roll, and I am not interested in writing about a place I didn’t actually stay.  The staff was all very nice, our lunch was delicious, and I chose to pass my time by getting to know my fellow bloggers (mostly by talking about how much the place was not our speed) and by chatting with people who worked in the various hotels.  There’s not much to say of substance since not much happened, but here are some of my best images of the day.  I didn’t notice until I went to post them how much saffron features in almost every image.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post.  I am in Kerala, India on a trip sponsored by Kerala Tourism.  The views contained are completely my own.  I accept advertisers as long as they are relevant to my subject matter and I experience the product, service, or location myself. For advertising inquiries, please e-mail harrington.delia@gmail.com

Sunrise at Uday Samudra in Kovalam

I’ve never been very good at relaxing (or at resorts), so waiting around at UDS waiting for this trip to start has me a little stir crazy.  After spending so much time yesterday reading, sleeping or in the pool, I had to do something that felt productive today.  When I realized I was definitely done sleeping at 6 am, I decided to go see what was shaking at sunrise.  Today marks the start of the official program, so I hope to have more updates coming soon.

 

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post.  I am in Kerala, India on a trip sponsored by Kerala Tourism.  The views contained are completely my own.  I accept advertisers as long as they are relevant to my subject matter and I experience the product, service, or location myself. For advertising inquiries, please e-mail harrington.delia@gmail.com

Gear I Love: Mobi Cards by Eye-Fi

I received no sponsorship or compensation of any kind for this post, and the views contained are completely my own. 

An image I uploaded to this blog via Eye-fi, of spoken word artist Jasmine.

So often when I’m shooting an event (particularly when there’s a photo booth), attendees ask me if/when the images will be on Facebook. They want to know if I can upload them immediately and directly from my dSLR, and if not, they sheepishly ask if I mind re-shooting the portrait on their phone.  I usually tell them not to worry, I’m not too high and mighty for a phone camera, and laugh it off apologetically when they ask if my Canon gets wi-fi.  That is, until today.

This Christmas I received my favorite type of present: one that I is both completely perfect for me and a complete surprise.  Michelle, my future sister-in-law and fellow jet-setting photographer on the fly, gave me a Mobi memory card by Eye-Fi.  The card uses its own wi-fi to transmit photos from your camera (anything from a point and shoot to a full-frame, professional dSLR) to your phone, e-reader, or tablet.  Using the free app, the photos can be selected, rotated, and posted to the social media of your choosing, including instagram, Facebook, WordPress, and twitter, or simply texted or emailed to a friend.  The card is a punchy orange, which ensures I won’t take a boring old regular memory card by mistake, and it comes with an activation key on the card’s cover that ensures your photos end up on your device.  You can add up to 20 different Mobi cards to your Eye-fi, and opt for push notifications that will announce the progress of each photo upload.

An image I took and uploaded to this blog using the Mobi card. Food and drink courtesy of Lauren Cooper, image by Delia Harrington

Keep in mind that other than the Pro X2 cards, in order to use the wi-fi you need to shoot in JPEG (or more likely for those on a dSLR, in RAW and JPEG since the card will still read and write all the usual types of RAW files), and there is a slight lag while the photos upload to your phone or other device, but not more than five minutes or so.  Also, your camera has to stay on for the duration of the upload.  You may need to fiddle with the settings a bit, but the online support provided via the app is sufficient (except, of course, that it doesn’t mention the necessity of JPEGs, as far as I could see.)  The app was still rather easy to download and use, and the quality of the photos is immediately apparent.  Personally, I wouldn’t use this card for a standard shoot with many images (since the backlog of uploading or hunting through the app for the best one would be annoying) or images that won’t be publication-ready right out of the camera.   However, Eye-fi is great for all of the casual, day to day use my camera gets, especially when I am only taking a few social shots which will probably never find themselves in any photo set or online album.

An image I took and uploaded to this blog using the Mobi card.

The verdict?  I am pretty much in love with the product, and have been itching to use it whenever I can.  Every photographer I’ve mentioned it to so far, from the casual to the professional, has been floored and totally excited.  So for everyone I’ve promised to email with details in the last couple of weeks, consider this the full low-down on what Mobi cards have to offer.

I have the 8GB card ($49.99), but it is also available in 16GB ($79.99), 32 GB ($99.99), and 16GB Pro X2 ($99.99), which can also upload to a computer and can upload RAW files.    The cards are all Class 10, and the Pro X2’s have faster read/write and uploading speeds.  Be aware that the card capacities quoted on the Eye-Fi website refer to how many JPEG images can be stored, not RAW images.  The cards are currently available for a slight discount on Amazon, B&H, as well as on their website, Adorama, and Best Buy for full price.  The Eye-Fi app is available on Google Play, the Apple App Store, or the Kindle Fire app store.  For a full list of camera compatibility check here.

*Top image courtesy of Eye-fi.  All others are my own.

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Aesthetics and Lectures

There are some beautiful photos coming out of this group. Some, though, don’t look like the Cuba that I know. Not that they’re going to new neighborhoods or meeting new people. Rather, some students are so good with their tools that they can manipulate a country (and a people and even buildings) I know so well into an alien landscape of pure, distilled beauty, often divorced of any social, political or economic reality.

Cuba is just too important to me for that.

I hate that for an American, there is no place to consume valuable, accurate news about Cuba. You can read the nostalgic memoirs of Miami Cubans, dipped in vitriol for Fidel. You can see the photos online of cigars, old cars and the same few Cuban workers dressed in colonial costumes. You can read Yoani Sanchez’s pissed prose, or the blogs of a few dedicated gringos. You can read the old fiction of Hemingway or Graham Greene. But where does an American turn to hear what regular old life is like for the majority of Cubans?

After I came back last time, a couple of my dad’s cousins asked me, while we were doing the MS Walk in Porstmouth, NH, what a couple of guys like them would be doing if they were in and from Cuba. That is the question we need to ask ourselves about foreign countries, instead of reducing everything to sexualized or demonized stereotypes.

I guess if I felt like Cuba was a well-covered topic, I could go for pure aesthetics. In Boston I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I value seeing the glorious within the everyday. But when the glory is artificially manipulated and the vida cotidianna is nowhere to be found in public discourse, it seems more like dishonesty than an aesthetic choice. There are a few journalism majors here, and I’ve enjoyed hearing their perspective on which stories we should be telling with our photos.  While some of the students are design majors, many are not and the combination makes for a lively mixture.

Granted, I don’t think my method is any better. Given the chance, I would accompany all of my photos with novellas explaining the several decades worth of history, culture, politics and economic shenanigans that converge on the theme of my photo. It was pointed out to me that I am allowed one sentence, and any more than that would be a lecture. Um, yes. Can I just do that then? Can I just give everyone lectures and accompany them with a handful of photos?  Luckily, Andrea (one of the professors) is awesome and understood my dilemma right away.  When we get back to the US, everyone is going to put together a final product.  For me, she suggested that I do a book–the photos I take here broken up into thematic chapters with a lot of copy.

On rough days, I feel that photography may just not be the medium for me. This fatwa on words is pretty anathema to everything about my personality. At the very least, I hope when I return to better internet the enhanced photos will make the lectures I post a bit easier to stomach.  But then I have days where if I don’t shoot until the afternoon I get antsy.  And everyone in the class I’m (supposed to be) assisting has been incredibly helpful with their critiques.  I’m certainly enjoying the steep learning curve, and I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by some incredibly talented, kind people from whom I have picked up a lot.

The Ethics of Travel Photography

In the film Before Sunset, Helene talks about her boyfriend, a photographer.  They were walking and saw a homeless man, and it troubled her that while her reaction was sympathy and empathy, her boyfriend lined up a shot, even adjusting the man’s collar so it would look better. 

I took only two pictures in the trash city of Cairo, the Zebelline.  I have almost no pictures of street children or people who begged for money.  Part of the issue is that when things become second nature, you forget that they’re worth capturing.  The other part is that sometimes, it just seemed wrong. 

Whenever I ponder this I am reminded of the Pullitzer Prize-winning photo of a starving child in Sudan.  While the photo of the beyond-emaciated child raised much awareness, the author, Kevin Carter, later commited suicide.  Do you have a responsibility, as a photographer/journalist to capture the scene but leave it untouched, unhelped?  What about the people who look for the worst of things for their pictures?  I definitely could have manipulated my Egypt pictures to make the place look more wealthy, poor, western, urban, rural or exotic. 

There’s also the logistics of photography.  Some people never come out from behind the lense, never enjoy themselves.  Some of my best, most interesting, most National Geographic-worthy moments are not captured on film because I was too busy living them.  I don’t have a picture of swing dancing on a fellucca boat on the Nile, or dancing in a street wedding in Alexandria.  I didn’t take any pictures in the Khan el-Khalily market because I wanted to seem like an ex-pat who knew the drill, not a dazed tourist who would pay triple. 

Somehow, for me, having a better quality camera takes you from tourist to photohrapher, and makes it all seem more artistic than exploitative. 

Do you ever feel uncomfortable taking pictures?  Do you feel like having a legit camera makes it more acceptable?  Is it messing with journalistic integrity to help the person after you click?  What about as a humanitarian–do you risk jeoprodizing your research status to help someone?  Or do you leave them in hopes that your continued ability to research will help more people in the long run?