Of all the things I've written in my life, this feels the most important, the most personal, the most universal.  In fact, if this could be read and taken seriously by everyone on the planet, I'm certain that world peace would ensue.  If you're intrigued, read on...

Across America, families and interested onlookers are gathering to see kids perform in all kinds of settings: choir performances, preschool shows, ballet, you name it.  And at nearly every one of these an announcement is made on behalf of the state fire marshall.  Usually this announcement includes a welcome to the show, a call to notice the exits in case of a fire, and another very important warning:

"For the sake of the safety of the performers, please, NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY."

I've recently attended a few performances where this was intentionally ignored.  It's unbelievably annoying to see flashes going off inside a dark theater- for ALL of us.  In a dark theater, one flash is blinding.  I've seen performers fall after flashes go off.  As a videographer, the flashes interfere with the video I'm making for all the other parents. It's a really bad thing to use a flash in a dark theater!  But instead of continuing this post in the form of a rant (which is not helpful), I shall now turn to a set of tips intended precisely to be helpful.  

Here's how you can make excellent photos at your child's next performance without using your flash:

1. First, turn your flash off.  Sounds simple, but sometimes you have to know how to do it.  If you're using a DSLR, do not use the fully automatic mode (the green square with rounded corners on a Canon), as this mode will pop up the flash in a dark room.  Put it on P or "Program" mode (I say the P stands for "Professional") if you still want to have the camera do the exposure settings for you.  There are other settings that will work as well, but P works fine.
2. Crank up your ISO.  ISO controls the sensitivity of your camera: a higher ISO setting means less light is necessary to make a good picture.  There's a trade-off, though: higher ISOs mean you can use a faster shutter speed (less of chance of a blurry shot), but it also means more noise.  Try not to go higher than 1600 ISO. 
3. Now, you're about to experience the best part of the whole process.  You're going to make better pictures!  Here's why: for most theatrical productions, lighting designers pay a lot of attention to the way the lights are pointed at the people on the stage.  Good lights throw flattering light on the actors' or singers' faces and cast gorgeous shadows across the rest of their bodies.  With your camera set to the modes above, you'll be in a position to capture that lighting and see the way the directors want you to see them.  Try it!  It might take some practice, but you'll figure it out quickly.
4. Have you ever taken pictures (using your flash) where the people in the foreground that you didn't care about are well lit, while the people on the stage are in the shadows?  That's because even a very powerful flash unit has a very short throw.  Your camera adjusts to expose the objects the flash can reach rather than the subject of your photo.  It's rare that a flash can project very well past about ten or fifteen feet.  Have you ever been to a concert or football game where people in the stands are taking flash pictures of performers or players down on the field?  It's pointless.  There's no way the flash can reach that far.  
5. Final tip: if you decide to invest in a cool new accessory for your camera, get a "fast" lens.  A fast lens is one that lets more light in.  The thing to look for is this: what is the lens's widest f-stop?  Most consumer zooms are somewhere around f4.5 to f5.6.  Get one with the lowest number you can afford.  I have a 200mm f2.8 that makes wonderful pictures.

But before you spend any money, start this exercise by turning your flash off and turning up the ISO setting.  Click away at your child's next performance.  That flash wasn't doing you any good anyway, and it was annoying everyone else in the theater.  You'll notice immediately that people around you are less angry, your are loved more, and, best of all, you have much better pictures!

I've already started working on my speech for the Nobel Peace Prize which I'm sure I'll be awarded if you help make this blog go viral.  There's a pretty handsome cash award for the Prize, which I will of course use to buy lots of cool new photo gear!  But for the love of God and humanity, please turn those flashes off and take some great pictures!

The Wailing Wall is the last and only remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.  It is actually not part of the temple itself, but a retaining wall that supports the now-level platform that once held the great center of Judaism almost 2000 years ago.  It is a center of devotion for Jews around the world.

It is easy to find amazing subjects for photography in the courtyard and at the Wall itself.  With a plethora of tourists, and on the days in which Bar Mitzvahs are being celebrated, the people there are not the least bit self-conscious as cameras surround them.  I tend to be fairly shy with mine, not wanting to intrude on someone's privacy.  So if I am going to get good photos of people, I have to push past my own limits. At the Wailing Wall, no one seems to care if there's an American guy standing nearby, snapping away.  It makes it easier to simply concentrate on the subject.

I had noticed this man on a previous visit here.  He is like many who become recognizable features of this place.  But by his appearance, his clothing, and his intimacy with this sacred place, he clearly has a story to tell.  

I hope this photo, one of a sacred human being in a sacred place, itself tells a story.

Any job is possible if you have the right tools.  Sometimes those tools are referred to as toys, but I prefer to call them what they are.

I have been toying with infrared photography since the early 1980s.  Then, the tool was Kodak HIE roll film loaded into my Canon AE-1 camera with a dark red filter slapped on the front of the 50mm stock lens.  HIE was difficult to handle: you had to keep it refrigerated, then load it into the camera in total darkness as light leaks into the canister were common.  Even the heat from your hands could fog the film.  

Many photographers felt that infrared was too gimmicky to be taken seriously.  But I always loved it: green vegetation appeared snowy white; blue skies turned dark as night while clouds glowed in a mysterious, spiritual way.  And if you overexposed it (which I loved to do), everything had a glowing aura around it which added to its spiritual quality.  The grain, too, was magnificent, huge and sharp.

I took several rolls of HIE with me on my first trip to Germany in 2004, shooting "Theologians Under Hitler."  Some of those images appear in the film and on the DVD jacket.

With the conversion to digital photography, this all became difficult once again.  However, some enterprising photographers figured out how to hack a normal camera, which is made in such a way as to prevent any practical method of obtaining infrared-only photographs.  The folks at lifepixel.com found that by removing a digital camera's infrared-blocking sensor covering and replacing it with one that blocks every other color, you could once again obtain the kind of photos possible only with Kodak HIE.  

There's a bit of a difference, though.  Yes, the clouds appear magical, and foliage comes out snowy white, but the beautiful glow and grain have to be added in post-production.  That feels disingenuous to me, as the goal with any new artistic tool would be to learn its own unique qualities and abilities.  Digital infrared, then, holds its own possibilities, distinct from methods used in the past.

The photo above is one of my first attempts at using this new tool, or toy, of mine: my old Canon T2i Rebel converted to infrared-only.  Taken on a stroll on Capitol Hill, I took advantage of a wide-angle lens, good cloud cover, and a reflecting pond I had never noticed before.  The image was converted to black and white using Nik Software's Silver EFX Pro, and the image was finished in Photoshop by adding a bit of Unsharp Mask.  

This is a photo I have felt has a lot of unrealized potential.  I took this at the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem in June 2011.  I took several pictures of kids who were curious about our presence, but did not seem interested in being objects of my curiosity.  This photo is really more innocent than it appears: even in a refugee camp, they were happy, playful kids.  

But there was something about the way they look in this photo that speaks to their plight.  By now they are the third or fourth generation to have grown up in this camp, formed after the "Nakba" (catastrophe) in 1948.  If they leave the camp in hope of a more prosperous future, they lose the right to return to their homeland if a peace accord is ever signed.  They are trapped between the past and the future, as are their parents and grandparents.  

Until now I had rendered this photo as a stark, contrasty black & white.  Today I looked at it again as I took it, without modification or enhancement. It seems to speak clearly just as it is.

Well, it's time for Steve to go on the road again, or rather, in the air.  I'll be taking another trip to Israel in a couple of weeks, and while it's on my mind,  I thought I'd hunker down and share a few of my observations after years of travel... with gear in tow.  I have it down to a bit of a science, so here goes.  Bear with me if this stuff is common knowledge.

1) Make sure your case fits international carry-on standards.  If you haven't flown with your camera bag, look up the maximum size of carry-on luggage, and make sure yours will fit.  Not planning on traveling internationally any time soon?  Check those sizes anyway, as they tend to be slightly smaller than domestic.  You never know when you will get the urge to head overseas, and you want to be ready.

2) Choose your seats carefully.  You don't want to have to check your camera bag, right?  Then make sure you won't be forced to gate-check it when you get to the plane either.  I have a ThinkTank Artificial Intelligence 15 v2.0 bag.  It's amazing- lots of space, sturdy, has both rollers AND backpack straps (neatly concealed when not using them).  It conforms to international carry-on standards and easily fits in the overhead bin on big jets.  But what about the commuter jets that take us to hub airports?  BE CAREFUL: a bag like this won't fit in the overhead bin on a commuter jet, but good news: I've never had trouble fitting it under the seat as long as I'm on the aisle.  Embraer RJ45 jets usually have three seats across; make sure you pick the aisle seat on the side of the plane with two seats.  Otherwise it's not likely to fit.

3) Pack a change of clothes in your carry-on.  Do you want to hear about the time I flew with my family to Italy and the airline lots all of our luggage for six days?? Naah, I didn't think so.  The old rule still abides: pack some extras in your carry on.

4) Don't voluntarily open your camera bag in the security check.  This one seems counterintuitive to me.  For years I traveled with a mid-sized professional video camcorder.  I would dutifully come to the security check and pull the camera out of the bag and put it in a tray.  Nearly every time my bag would get pulled out, swabbed for explosives, unpacked, etc.  One day I decided to send the whole bag through, leaving the camera in.  I figured, "If they want to look at it, they'll pull it out anyway."  Nothing happened.  Ever since I've put my whole bag through the x-ray machine, and only once (just before 9-11-11 at Charles DeGaulle) have they pulled it off to check it.  You still have to remove your computer, etc., but give it a try next time.  Believe me, they'll pull it off if they want to.  But if they don't, you've just kept yourself from having to repack your expensive toys.

Enough for now.  If you're hungry for more, I'll write a second installment to this series.  Leave a comment and retweet if you find this helpful.

Winter is not my favorite season.  This year, the weather has been especially rainy and gloomy.  Yesterday we awoke to a BEAUTIFUL spring morning, but the clouds slowly gathered into another gray afternoon.  We went on a walk and I snapped this picture that seems to say it all.  Finished in SilverFX.

A life of traveling to exotic countries sounds terrific, right?

Last fall I spent a week in Morocco gathering material for my upcoming documentary film, "Islam in America Ten Years After." It's always a good idea to get plenty of "eye candy" when making a film, and there's no shortage of it in Morocco. 

I landed in Casablanca with high expectations. How can one go there without expecting to see Humphrey Bogart and hearing piano music filtering through the air? Instead I found a city that felt tense and dark. It also needed a good coat of paint.

I struck out one morning to gather images. About a block from the hotel a man struck up a conversation with me and volunteered to take me around town and show me a few things. Usually people in these cities do so expecting to gather a fee when it's all over, and I was under no illusion that this man was any different. But I needed help in this intimidating city, so I continued the conversation.

We went through the fish market at a brisk pace and continued on to places he thought I might find interesting. We approached a market in what appeared to be a more affluent part of town and walked through the gate. A few moments later two well-dressed men approached us and started asking questions. They focused on my new friend, switching to French knowing that I would not be able to follow the conversation. What had I walked into?

The two men were plain-clothes police officers, and a classic good-cop-bad-cop routine was unfolding. I was taken away with the good cop, my friend with the bad. 

My escort then asked if I would like a tour of the market. I stammered in protest: my friend was doing nothing wrong. I had not hired him, nor had he requested money from me. I explained to the officer that I was quite shaken by this encounter. "No, we know you did nothing wrong," he explained. "Come, let me show you this market. Do you like pastry?" he asked. My head was spinning. I was already off-balance enough by being in this place. Now I was getting a tour from a police officer while my companion was being shaken down. This was not fun.

My tour went on for thirty minutes. I snapped photographs of this beautiful market with many architectural features unique to Morocco. By government host brought me to a small shop crowded with people buying pastry for the end of the day (it was Ramadan and most people were fasting until sundown), where he filled a bag with all kinds of goodies and handed it to me, refusing my offer to pay him. 

We sauntered back to the place where we had our first encounter. There was my friend, sitting on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. I couldn't understand his French, but it was clear he was distraught and pleading. The "good cop" informed me that they believed he was giving a tour without a license. They asked me if he had, at any point, mentioned payment. I truthfully told them that he had not. They scolded him and released him.

Crying, my friend kissed my hands as I apologized for this ugly incident we both, presumably, walked into unwittingly. He went on his way and I quickly fetched a cab back to my hotel. My wanderings were over for that bright Sunday morning.

Earlier that morning my friend and I discussed relations between Americans and people of the Muslim world. I told him that I believed Muslims were not my enemies, and even if they were, Jesus demands that I love my enemies. He said, "I can see that you have a white heart!" While I'm not exactly sure what he meant, I'm guessing that a white heart is a good thing. 

I'm pretty sure he was the one among us with a white heart.

I consider Alex Ward as, well, one of mine. I worked with his dad for seven years at First United Methodist Church in Oak Ridge, and Alex was one of the most talented kids in the youth choir. My son Chris became friends with Alex on a couple of choir tours, and that makes him part of my extended family.

Alex came to us by invitation because we needed a few more handsome guys in our portfolio. This shot was taken at an abandoned factory on Warehouse Road where there is a lot of good rust and decay to play with. It was a crystal-clear winter day, usually not the best for shooting, but we were there at the "golden hour," when the sun was setting and the light was more than perfect. The unedited versions of this photo have a golden, warm, even pinkish light which is spectacular- but I decided to go for a black-and-white rendering of this photo. It is now one of my favorites. It looks like old Hollywood to me.

So, this photo was taken with my Canon 5dMkII with a Sigma 50mm f1.4 lens just as the sun was about to set. The photo was rendered in black and white in SilverFX Pro.

Tony, our creative stylist, emailed a note with the subject line, "Titans Cheerleader!!!" Anne, a friend visiting over a long weekend, spent a Sunday afternoon with us on a remarkable shoot. Yes, she's a cheerleader for the Titans, our NFL football team here in Tennessee. It's not every day you get to do a photo shoot for someone of her stature! She had every reason to be a Diva; instead, she was warm, friendly, fun, and very professional. 

Here she is at one of our favorite local spots to shoot. We all love this image because of the way it portrays power, grace, beauty, and form. We hope you agree.

The so-called "Security Wall" around the West Bank is one of the most stunning features anyone will ever see. It is a winding, snaking concrete wall that stirs the mind and breaks the heart.

So, tonight I'm not going to get all political on you. To be honest, I am completely fascinated by this wall. I find myself drawn to it in the most mysterious ways. This photo was taken one afternoon shortly after arriving in Bethlehem. A friend and I went out to walk as much of the length of it that we could. Of course, I snapped pictures all the way, and this is the image I keep coming back to from that afternoon. To me it says something about the fascination with horror, the beautification of humanity's most destructive tools. Perhaps it's wrong to do this. But it's a statement of how I view that wall- with complete disgust, and complete fascination.

This photo has a fun story attached to it. This was taken during our surprise trip to London last year. My family was set to go to Tokyo, thanks to some free travel vouchers and some outrageously low fares, and the tsunami hit three days prior to our departure. We quickly reconfigured our travel and wound up having a really great week in London instead.

While visiting Windsor Castle we stopped in St. George's Chapel on the castle grounds. If you have never visited it, it is one of the most stunning examples of late Gothic English architecture I've ever seen. Problem is, they don't allow photographs in the chapel. Bummer.

So how did I get this photo, you ask? By sitting down on a bench, setting my lens to its widest setting, balancing the camera on my belly, and snapping this one shot. As luck would have it, it turned out to be one of my favorite photos from that trip. 

The moral of the story? Fight the power! Snap surreptitiously!

There are those situations when I see something and instantly grab my camera, saying, "Steve, don't screw this up." And then there are pictures that don't seem the least bit special when I'm taking them. Only when I get some emotional distance from the place where they were taken do I see how special they are.

This photo was taken in November of 2010 when I accompanied a team of church officials to Nigeria. I was just then getting interested in taking photographs of people; until that point most of my work had been of landscapes and architecture. On the day we arrived in our destination of Jalingo we went to the market to buy gifts. The men in our group were buying fabric for their wives back home in Zimbabwe and the Congo. 

I turned in the other direction and saw some curious boys coming to take a peek at the "Bature," the somewhat respectful-but-derogatory word in the local Hausa language for "white man." I pointed at my camera, then at the boys, and made a motion as though I was asking if I could take their pictures. Reluctantly curious, one by one they let me snap a few. Each time I turned the camera around to show them the picture, and this of course encouraged them. 

These young boys were not interested in smiling for the camera. I have lots of pics of them looking as tough as they could. But this one has always stood out for me: there's something quite haunting in this boy's eyes. Beautiful, but haunting.

A Complicated Scene

This photo, taken in June of 2010, continues to get peoples' attention. I'm never sure what attracts people to various photos: perhaps it's the colors in this one, or the shapes, or the surreal look produced by the High Dynamic Range (HDR) technique I used to take it. 

Some good photography happens by accident. I was with a group learning about what I now consider to be the epicenter of the worst religious conflict in the world in Hebron. We were walking down the infamous Shuhada street, a once-bustling market street in Hebron that now acts as a barrier between the locals and the Jewish settlers that have moved into the Old City. The street is lined with the steel doors of closed Palestinian shops. It is true that the creation of barriers that separate settlers from their surroundings has decreased violence in the city. But to me it was a symbol of death.

I was completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing and experiencing. When overwhelmed I just shut down, saying nothing and forgetting to look around. But as we walked the street, I realized that the closed shops would make some interesting HDR shots. I set my camera to snap three bracketed photos in rapid fire. Some of the frames look better than others, but the walk revealed some of my favorite photos from all of my travels.

The shot above seems to have accomplished what I was going for: a photo of great color, shape, and beauty, of what is a completely horrific place. This photo hangs above my desk at my office. Even after seeing it every day for over a year, I still get sad when I look at it.