First off, this is by far the best present I have ever received. Hats off to my wife Vicky for finding something for me that really hits the mark. The bar has been raised and I see some fine piece of jewelry in her future.
I was immediately intrigued when I first read the description for the Advanced National Geographic Photography Workshop in San Francisco. It was just the sort of thing I was looking for. The workshop was described as an opportunity to learn how to tell a photo story they National Geographic way, with an emphasis on travel story telling. Wow, who could resist that?
So I signed up. I did research on photo story telling, San Francisco, the workshop photographer Catherine Karnow, and everything else I could think of. I acquired some new equipment – but not much since I already had pretty much everything that I would need. They say anticipation is half the fun of an event such as this and I anticipated the hell out of it.
The schedule called for trips to San Francisco’s Mission District (to shoot photos that provided a “sense of place”), the Farmers’ Market at the Ferry building (to capture the character of the market and the location), North Beach (the old beatnik part of town) and a final trip to Cissy Park which lies beneath the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. It sounded like fun and it was.
The Workshop kicked off with a brief welcome slide show by Karnow and dinner at a local restaurant to give the dozen or so participants an opportunity to meet and get to know each other. We were a diverse group. Originally there were 16 of us along with Catherine and her assistant Tricia. One fellow dropped out after the first evening apparently because he felt that the workshop was too advanced for him. Three of us were women and we came from all over the place; Texas, the east coast, Seattle, the mid west and several were local folks from San Francisco. One fellow came all the way from Hawaii.
It was billed as a four-day workshop but in reality it covered two and a half days. Day one began with a talk by Karnow about how she does her work for National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler Magazines. She showed images she had made over the years to illustrate key points. She and Tricia spoke of the logistics that go into travel photography, some of the challenges – and not just the language barriers – and how they go about solving the many problems encountered on site. This was an advanced photo course and very little was said about equipment, exposure settings and other technical topics. We were expected to know all that already.
After the opening lecture, we were given our first assignment, issued BART passes and then sent to the Mission District. One of the major features of a workshop such as this is the opportunity to be in the field with the instructor where they can answer questions, offer advice and point out potential photos. A lot of the class took advantage of this, but not me so much. I like finding my own subjects and telling the story my own way. That isn’t to say that I didn’t hang around with Catherine or Tricia when the opportunity presented itself, but I didn’t necessarily want to shoot what everyone else was shooting. That said, I will admit that I misunderstood the first assignment slightly and missed a whole angle of it that I would have gotten if I had paid more attention or hung around with the instructors.
At mid afternoon we were to be back at our hotel to download our shots into whatever system we used – most of us were using Adobe Lightroom – and narrow our selected photos to 10. Then Catherine or Tricia would go over them with us and narrow the selections down to three or four. We were discouraged from applying any post processing to the photos. The idea was to present the images just as they had come out of the camera – a philosophy I heartily endorse. This process took a bit over two hours. Our selected images were then collected and transferred to a central computer and projected on the screen at the front of the classroom while both Catherine and Tricia told us what they thought about the images. This was instructive and probably the most valuable part of the class since we learned by achieving or failing to achieve the stated goals of the assignment.
During this time we all trooped down to Union Square where we had a group picture made before the sun set. It was a breezy afternoon and we gathered around a public art piece depicting a large heart. I am glad to say that I was not the only one with flying hair. After returning to the hotel and looking at our results of the day, we received our assignments for the next day and then went our separate ways for dinner.
Day two found us meeting on site at the San Francisco Ferry Building to shoot the Farmers’ Market. I walked the 12 or so blocks to the docks and a pleasant walk it was. I arrived about half an hour before the market was slated to open and got some pretty good photos of vendors setting up for the day. Occasionally I would run into one of my fellow workshoppers and we would either stop and compare notes or ignore each other. Shooting the Farmers’ Market was very similar to many of the assignments I had back in my old newspaper, photojournalism days and I quickly found myself reverting to my old form. I would shoot a scene, talk to the people involved, get names and some background info, and then move on to the next photo. In short it was mucho fun.
Part two of the morning assignment was to travel to North Beach to capture the changing character of that famous San Francisco neighborhood. Like the Mission, North Beach is undergoing “gentrification” which means that the old, established families and home owners are being supplanted by younger, techie hipster types. Silicon Valley has generated a raft of young millionaires and many of them seem to be migrating to San Francisco. By all accounts it is a real problem and not going away anytime soon. Shooting this aspect of North Beach is a bit more difficult than in the Mission District because it is less obvious and North Beach has more of a tradition of change. Also, it has long been a mecca for tourists and so many of the shops and eateries along Columbus Avenue have changed hands many times over the years.
We were to meet up at Café Trieste, one of the first coffee shops in the country. It has withstood the test of time and is as popular and vibrant today as it has ever been. I walked around the neighborhoods, shooting the inside of an incredibly packed music store, a literal hole-in-the-wall coffee stand, a legendary book store and other sights. North Beach is one of those neighborhoods that one can see themselves living in. It reminds me a great deal of sections of Washington D.C. when I lived there. I hooked up with a couple of the guys from the class and after a while two of us meandered our way back to the hotel via Chinatown, shooting as we went. The riot of color and numbers of people and vendors in Chinatown is incredible. Everywhere you look you find a picture. One could literally stand in one place and rotate 360 degrees and never fail to see something worth shooting.
Back as the hotel around noon we again downloaded our take for the morning, found 10 top photos and went over them with one of the instructors. This time Tricia and I looked at my selects and narrowed them down to five. She was very complimentary and I felt that I had done better with this assignment than I had with the first. Again our best was gathered into a show and then displayed for the group to see.
Following that we had another chance to ask questions of Catherine Karnow for an hour before breaking to change for dinner. As a group we went to a restaurant just off of Market Street and this proved to be one of the biggest disappointments of the entire workshop. Originally we were to eat at a French/Vietnamese place but inexplicably we ended up at a place called Farmer Browns. The food was pedestrian, the ambiance was noisy pub and the service as lackluster. Considering the large extra fee I had paid to have Vicky join me at this dinner, I was hugely disappointed.
Sunday morning – Day three – we gathered in the lobby and then boarded a shuttle which took us to Cissy Park beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. We were to shoot environmental shots which used the bridge as a backdrop. It was easy to get a cliché photo of fishermen on the pier and another of a girl reading a book while setting on the sea wall. A 10-k race was being run along the quay and I spent a fair amount of time shooting runners with the bridge in the background. The early runners were in costume (they do like to dress up in San Francisco) but the latter runners/walkers were simply attired in running togs. It made for boring photos but an interesting exercise nonetheless.
Then it was back to the hotel for a final slide show and reluctant good byes. No one seemed to want to break up. We were given our “graduation pins” a small gold National Geographic rectangle, traded contact information and then all stood around looking forlorn. Not being a fan of extended good byes, I went around shaking hands, saying farewell and then Vicky and I returned to our room to finish packing and check out.
I’m writing this about a week after the workshop as I wanted the experience to cook inside my head for a while. I have reviewed the many photos I took during the trip – both those taken as part of the workshop and those taken as a tourist – and I am generally really happy with what I returned with. I think I really did succeed in capturing what it was like to be in San Francisco during that week. And Vicky and I both had a blast. Will I partake of another National Geographic Photography Workshop? That would be a definite yes.