Going Back

Let's not kid ourselves. You can't go back again; to the same time, the same place, the same event – so don't bother trying. That being said, you can go back to the same place in different time, as a different person, for different reasons. I was in Portugal over fifteen years ago, in May of 2009, tagging along with my family. It was a whirlwind tour, but I saw enough of Lisbon to fall in love with the country, the people, and the culture. 

Fast forward to the current day, and I'm preparing to go back to Portugal, and to see the country with a different set of eyes. 

This ain't my first rodeo. I've learned a lot about traveling and photography in the ensuing years. My goal is to create a portfolio that tells a story of my visit, and to encourage others to go and experience a different landscape, to discover how much we shave in common with other human beings around the world.

 

Right now, our political climate is sketchy at best. I've always found that people the world over are unfailingly kind to each other, even when their governments are at odds, which is the case as I write this. Whether your favorite color is red, or blue, or whatever, on a personal basis, everyone understands the color green. We make a political statement when we choose to visit a foreign country, and when we spend money away or at home. We vote with our dollars. 

I have fourteen images from a previous visit to Lisbon, which will serve as the foundation for my new portfolio, which is already up on my website: https://www.patkofahl.com/Postcards-from-Lisbon. On this trip, I'll take several thousand images, which will be pared down to about a hundred which will be included in the portfolio. 

Every trip is an adventure. I invite you to join me, and come along from the (relative) comfort of cyberspace. The world awaits!

Not Every Image Makes the cut.

 I've talked about Ernest Hemingway before. Mysoginist, lush, hero, and one of the greatest writers of all time. Pulitzer and a Nobel for literature. He said a lot of things, a few of which have stuck with me over the years:

1. The first draft of anything is shit.

2. The only kind of writing is rewriting.

3. There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

A little dramatic, perhaps, yet anything but boring. It's how I put my portfolios together. I'll save the entire planning process for another blog post and skip to the outbound plane part. Take this last trip to Riga as an example. 

The first leg was a BA flight from Phoenix to Chicago, Then on to T5 Heathrow, followed by a brief layover and on to Riga. Arriving at Riga, I purchased a 24 hour transit ticket, hopped on the #22 bus and a half hour or so later found myself somewhere in Oldtown looking for my hotel. Shouldering my backpack, hefting my satchel with my backup camera body and telephoto, chargers, cords, converters, plugs, etc. and dragging my carryon, consulted my phone for directions to the hotel and set off. Oldtown Riga is pretty compact, and it wasn't too far to the hotel. There were actually three with the same name, and I tried to check into the wrong one at first. They kindly gave me directions to the second hotel which thankfully had my reservation, and next thing I knew I was up on the fourth floor in my new home away from home. I unpacked, hung up my jackets and hoodies and collapsed on the bed, and fell asleep. Id been traveling for over 24 hours.

If you have no idea whatsoever where to start in a new city, YouTube can be your friend. Or, you can book a bunch of tours. Both methods have their pros and cons. On tours, it always seems like there's hundreds of things to photograph, but not enough time, because the tour moves on. When you get back on the bus and realize everyone has been waiting for you for ten minutes, it's not a good feeling, trust me. On tours, you'll almost always have an informed, knowledgeable guide to give history, background info, interesting tidbits, and to show you stuff you might not otherwise see on a ramble about town.

YouTube, on the other hand tends to be about other people's rambles about town, giving their perspectives and insights, which can be valuable, but perhaps not as inclusive as a guided tour. Full disclosure, In Riga I didn't book a single tour. It's an amazing city, and I barely scratched the surface of recording all the things I wanted to. If you love art deco, it's not to be missed. If you're tired of over-touristed cities, you have to go. The currency is the Euro, plus Latvia is a Nato country, and pretty much everyone speaks English. The tram and bus systems are excellent, they have an Uber equivalent called Bolt, and there's tons of things to see and experience. Just do it!

Here is a link to a quick video of the city: 

https://www.patkofahl.com/Postcards-from-Riga/i-mWT7R9N/A

and here is the link to the portfolio:

https://www.patkofahl.com/Postcards-from-Riga

Enjoy!

About Buddy

Buddy and Stella

I love my dogs. Anybody who has ever been responsible for/owned by/caretaker for dogs/cats/ferrets/turtles/iguanas/fruit bats/T-Rex's  etc. understands this completely. I have a friend who unfortunately works for the Humane Society, and she keeps sending me pictures. Dog porn, the worst kind. Sweet, warm, cuddly puppies and dogs that needed a forever home. 

Normally I can resist, but my steely resolve melted when she sent over an image of Buddy, a five year old Queensland heeler. It was a weak moment; I was probably in my favorite browsing location (the can), when the image came over on my phone. I swiped out of Wordle, and was immediately overcome by feelings of love, tenderness, caring...in short, all the emotions that would make me the perfect mother caretaker. 

He fell out of a truck on the freeway? Fine. He had to have several teeth pulled? No worries. His right paw is almost twice the size of his left? Great. His chest is all scar tissue from multiple surgeries, and he has Valley fever? OK. It sounded like a perfect match, so the next day we met at the Humane Society, and it was love at first bite. Buddy was good natured, enthusiastic, and happy, despite all the trials and tribulations he'd been through. We left together, and I introduced him to Stella, my nine year old Blue Heeler. If they got along, great, otherwise it would be a deal breaker.

But they got along great. Buddy was a typical male. First at the water bowl, first in the car, first through the door. It wasn't personal. It wasn't that he just didn't consider Stella. He didn't consider me, either. Stella, sweet girl that she is, acquiesced. My plan was to give Buddy so much love and affection that he might start thinking outside the envelope of his own ego. 

We've made some progress, but it's slow going. What makes it all worth it is that Buddy persistently wags his tail in his sleep. It's a good sign. 

The Pain in Spain is Mainly in My Brain

 Veni, vidi, artem feci. I came, I saw I made art. It took a long time, over 18 years. I went to Spain, with friends. We traveled all over the country. Avila, Toledo, Madrid, Segovia, etc. I went back multiple times, to Barcelona and Madrid. I took thousands of images, and then they sat on my hard drive. I went around the world, making portfolios for each stop and putting them up on my website. But Spain languished, and I'm not sure why. 

All that changed a couple of weeks ago. I went back to that 2007 trip and looked at the images from the original trip, a layover from the Morocco trip, and a visit to Barcelona with my kids back in the day. I decided I had enough to put together a portfolio, and got busy. But first, I owe you an apology. Twenty years ago, digital photography was in its infancy, and so, even though optics have been around since before Galileo's time, sensor technology and processing software have improved by leaps and bounds. Long story short, I felt compelled to include quite a few images that I acquired with twenty year old technology. You may not even be able to tell, but you've been warned. 

Here is a link to the entire portfolio:

https://www.patkofahl.com/Postcards-from-Spain

Never mind that. just look at the images. I got to see Spain from a lot of different angles, from the pedestrian to the sublime. 

Love Among the Ruins

 I fell in love, and didn't even know it. It was years ago, in Spain, in Madrid. The house wasn't large, but the garden was elegant, and the rooms were tastefully decorated. The passion was irresistible, and I left stunned and dazed, basking in the warm afterglow of a life-changing encounter. I had experienced curiosity, lust, respect and awe. sometimes sequentially, sometime in a jumble of confused feelings. It was completely unexpected and overwhelming, and changed my understanding of everything I thought I knew.  And of course, it happened in a museum. Here is an image the object of my affection:

No, I haven't changed my affiliation in any way, but that being said, I found Joaquin Sorolla's work to be amazing, his color sense inspiring, and his compositions faultless. I was breathless in the presence of such a towering talent. Where had he been all my life? Sure, I was still enamored with Richard Diebenkorn, Rosa Bonheur, Artimisia Gentileschi, Georgia O'Keefe, Gustave Caillebotte, John Singer Sargent, Mark Rothko and others, but why oh why had I never heard of Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida? 

To begin with, he was never a member of the famous Parisian coterie that has come to be known as "The Impressionists," choosing instead to reign in Spain, which he did.

The Story Story, or Talking Trash

Catchy titles aside, our story begins, oddly enough, in a dump in Rome, not far from the Aurelian wall.  A couple of thousand years ago, the population of Rome hovered around a million inhabitants or so (it was the largest city in the world at the time). In addition to wine, pepperoni, and garum (fermented fish sauce), Romans loved olive oil. The demand for olive oil was much greater than the local supply. So, it was imported, mainly from southern Spain, but also from North Africa, Greece, and the Adriatic coast. Olive oil was imported in "amphorae," or terra cotta flasks. 

The issue with the imported olive oil was that it left a residue inside the amphorae, rendering them unusable and necessitating their disposal. And dispose they did – by the millions. Over fifty million, give or take. This colossal heap of discarded amphorae, known as Monte Testaccio, became the eighth hill of Rome, stretching over a kilometer in circumference and towering over 160 feet in height. A staggering 1.6 billion gallons of olive oil were once stored in these now-broken vessels! 

Fast forward about eighteen centuries. The challenge in Rome was that non-catholics were not allowed to be buried in consecrated grounds or churchyards, yet they continued to pass away. In 1716, a member of the exiled Stuart Court received permission from Pope Clement XI to be buried in front of the Pyramid of Cestius, next to the Aurelian wall. In 1821, Pope Pius VII forbade further burials near the pyramid. He set aside a plot of land surrounded by a high wall to be used as a cemetery for non Catholics. The spot chosen for the non-Catholic cemetery is nestled between the Pyramid of Cestius and Monte Testaccio – the dump.

 Sadly, my blog doesn't have the space or time to list all the notable persons whose last resting place is this cemetery. Still, they include John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Trelawney, and William and Emelyn Story, plus thousands of others, some incredible statuary, and dozens of cats! The Metro stop is called Piramide, on the B Line; it's easy to find. Go and see for yourself. You're welcome!

To see more images from Rome, check out my portfolio here: https://www.patkofahl.com/Rome

We Are All Photographers

There are over seven billion cell phones in the world, most of them smartphones. We spend about 4 ½ hours on our phones every day. We check our phones about 144 times a day on average. In addition, almost every smartphone has a camera. I'd venture to say that most of us use the camera and/or photo feature of our cameras on a daily basis. That's a lot of chaff, but some wheat as well. so, most of us are curators as well. 

The term "selfie" first appeared in an Australian online forum on September 13, 2002, less than 25 years ago. Now, it's a common household term, used all over the world, billions of times a day. The Oxford English Dictionary proclaimed it the "word of the year" in 2013, and shortly thereafter, it was even permitted to be used in the game of Scrabble, an even higher honorific. 

What is the meaning of this, other than the fact that we may all be slightly self-obsessed? My guess is that most selfies are subjected to a level of scrutiny not even accorded to the Mona Lisa, which Leonardo fretted over for decades. Further, if we find a flaw, shadow, wrinkle, booger or other distraction in an image we just took, we can fix it with a click, or delete it and take another, and another, and another, ad naseum. In short, we're all critics, and damned quick about it, as well. 

But I digress. Because of this phenomenon,  photography has changed, and, it follows that photographers have changed as well.  For every tortured Van Gogh-like soul who insists, demands, extolls, or begs the public to see things in a new way, there are a million shooters who keep pumping out the same tired old images. Those shooters who never follow the crowd on principle are controlled as surely as all the camp followers, happy to stand elbow to elbow at photo-sites all over the world with kindred spirits  turning out the same old pablum as the rest of the crowd. 

The truth is, beauty is everywhere. Amazing moments happen millions of times a day, and most, sadly go unrecorded, and unshared. Photography has the power to unleash a sense of wonder, to stir the soul, to record life-changing moments, if we are only willing to stop and see things a little differently.

Don’t Try This at Home!

 I thought I’d left my phone in the Uber on the way down to shoot the No Kings Rally at the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, but no such luck. As close as I can figure, it fell out of my pocket as I was getting out of the car to start photographing the event. Or not. I honestly don’t know. All I know is it was gone. But the rally was in full swing, and it was lit! Here's link to the portfolio:    

https://www.patkofahl.com/No-Kings-Rally 

I shot for several hours. By noon it was 108°, and I had 1200 images, so I decided to call it a day. I finally made it back to the gallery, collected the dogs and headed home. Grabbing my IPad, I opened up the "Find My" app and started tracking my phone, which seemed to be jumping all over the city. The next day, Sunday, I made three separate trips downtown in the blistering heat, knocking on doors, walking the streets around the phone’s location, but no joy. 

Monday came, and I went to work. By quitting time I was almost ready to brick the phone and use my insurance to get a new one, but decided to give it one last try. The GPS on the phone kept reporting that it was stationary in an apartment in one of the seediest, drug-ridden areas of Phoenix, and as I headed South on 15th Avenue, the thought occurred to me, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

I pulled up and parked on the concrete pad outside a series of older, run-down apartments, knocked on the second door and stepped back, not knowing what would happen next. Eventually, the door slowly opened, and I peered into the pitch black apartment. Suddenly, two things happened. A guy about my size and build who looked like he had just woken up (and not in a good mood) stuck his head out of the door, and a small dog ran out from between his legs and started wagging it's tail sitting at my feet. 

“I have a reward for a lost IPhone.”

“Is the case black?”

“Yes it is.”

“Wait,” he said, and closed the door in my face. 

After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and an arm slowly emerged with my phone. He mumbled something I didn’t understand, and I exchanged a bill with Ulysses S. Grant’s portrait on it for my phone. The feeling of relief that washed over me was difficult to describe. It was a combination of relief that I had found the right place, I had actually recovered my phone, and that I didn’t get stabbed or shot in the process. I was stunned that it had all worked out. 

“Wait a minute,” I said as we stood there in the uncomfortable silence. I reached in my pocket and handed over the other fifty that I had brought along, just in case. He took it without a word. The door closed, and the thought occurred to me that our paths would never cross again. 

Fair enough, or maybe not.

Perfecting Paris

Ernest Hemingway famously said that the first draft is anything is shit. He may have been wrong about a lot of things, but in that statement,  I think he may have been on to something. He also rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms (one of his most popular novels) 47 times. 

So, I went back to Paris. I was first there in 1998; the blink of an eye, really – a little over 27 years ago. Long story short, much has changed since then. Paris has changed, technology has changed, and the tools for processing images have changed. We came out of the darkroom and into the light. Lightroom, that is. Also Photoshop, Topaz Labs, ON1, DXO, and many more.  Here's one of the first images I took:

The bottom line here is that everything has to be redone. Everything. Thousands upon thousands of images need to be reprocessed using today's technology, to bring the images up to snuff, because you deserve it. Plus, as Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit." 

He was right.

Here's a more recent image, and yes, that's the full moon in the center of the Eiffel Tower.

And yes, those are cars' headlights and taillights whizzing past. You have to go where the shot is.

The Truth About Rehab: Yes, Yes, Yes!

 If you're a photographer, You have to include rehab in the places you must visit. Perhaps not in the literal sense (depending upon your inclination[s]) but A1, as Linda McMahon calls it, or AI as everyone else calls it, is transforming photography as you're sitting there reading this. In short, you have to rehab your images, to make them better. 

The truth is that AI does an amazing job of noise reduction. It also is great with sharpening. It can recover faces that were previously a blur, or a smear, or a shadow. Don't like an element in a picture? Get rid of it with the click of a mouse. People, places, things, dangling participles, you name it and POOF, it's gone, which leaves even the amateur photographer with a pithy conundrum: how much is too much? A famous saying circulating around the photo industry goes something like this: You can do anything you like, as long as nobody can tell you've done anything. 

Which inevitably leads us to a whole list of ethical issues for photographers: is it OK to stage shots? Take this one for example: 

It may look like it's staged, but as it turns out, It's not. Is one allowed to adjust perspective, or make horizons level? I do that all the time. Should you edit out stray pieces of paper or cigarette butts? I do, if I think they may be a distraction. Ansel Adams famously claimed that the negative was the score, and the print was the symphony. He dodged and burned his prints like a madman. I would hazard a guess that most photographers noodle their images, some more than others. My approach is that if an adjustment will improve an image, then it's fair game. Check out the images in my portfolios. some are barely touched, others are cropped, edited, adjusted, morphed and modified. If knowing this is disappointing, please get a grip. When you go to the movies surely you don't believe what you're watching is real. It's entertainment! 

So are my images. The are designed to make you, smile, cry, chuckle, laugh, ponder, travel, wonder, and react. I'm doing my best to entertain and tell stories. I hope I succeed. 

Down the rabbit hole On Russian Hill

On a gorgeous Fall evening years ago, the family gathered at A Stones Throw, a lovely and popular restaurant on Russian Hill in San Francisco. The views were spectacular. The sun was going down, and you could see the world's most famous bridge, the city marching away westward into the sunset, and Golden Gate Park, with tiny little kites fluttering high in the sky. 

Dinner was a delicious blur, full of laughter, drinking and eating with abandon, memories and celebration. We all gathered outside for a photographic memory of the event:

San Francisco was bathed with a spectacular fall light:

 

But then, just as we were getting ready to pack it in and head south to Campbell, We came upon a very curious curio shop:

To be continued...really!

All I know is that I know nothing.

 I love Australia and Australians. They're friendly, well-spoken, inclusive, laid-back, and love jokes. So, of course, I had to go back. I decided to go to Brisbane since I'd never been there before. It's a great city. I took many images, had a blast jet skiing on the Brisbane River, and took public transportation, yet I barely scratched the surface of this wonderful city that will host the Summer Olympics in 2032. 

I flew from Phoenix to LAX, had a short layover, and boarded a Delta flight direct to Brisbane, only 14 1/2 hours away. I slept some, and as we collected our luggage after landing, I said a few words to my seatmates and learned that the gent in the middle seat was an editor and his wife in the window seat was an artist! I realized that we could have had a rousing conversation if I had bothered to ask my question in LA instead of Brisbane. I asked for his top recommendation gleaned from an entire career. He smiled and said, "Don't self-edit." 

It was quite a blow since I seldom have someone looking over my shoulder as I select, edit, curate, and organize my work. I mulled it over as I shuffled through customs and immigration, collected my luggage, and headed to the train to the city. 

Fast-forward several weeks, and I was back home, assembling the Brisbane portfolio and curating the images to make the final cut. I seldom look at statistics, but I decided to take a quick peek and see what the most popular images in the portfolio were thus far. 

To my utter chagrin and horror, in curating the portfolio (I had taken over 3,700 images), I had already deleted the most popular image, which had garnered twice the views of the next most popular image! That's when the remark by my seatmate from LA came back to me with inescapable clarity: "Don't self-edit!" 

Hmm. Did he really mean it? 

Flower Power

 I've always admired the Impressionists. When I started Esprit Decor Gallery in 1985, I read that the De Young Museum in San Francisco was mounting a blockbuster show on the Impressionists, with artwork from all over the world. Museums, galleries, and private collectors had lent pieces for the show, and it would be a chance to see actual paintings that I had only seen photographs in Art History books. 

Naturally, the show was completely sold out, but I hopped on a plane, caught a bus from SFO to Golden Gate Park, grabbed a sign I found lying in the grass that said, "I NEED TICKETS," and within a minute, I was in the queue for the exhibit. 

The show was organized chronologically, with eight huge rooms corresponding to the eight impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886—the blink of an eye in the history of art but a movement that would change the world forever. 

Fast forward a century, and I was, mouth open, staring up at Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day," a genre scene of a couple under umbrellas near the Gare St. Lazare. I slowly made my way through the rest of the exhibition, awed by the magnificence of each successive image, and made a silent promise to myself that one day, I would go to Paris to revisit many of the paintings I had seen.

The movement that would set the art world on its ears took its name from an image by Claude Monet titled  "Impression, Sunrise," painted in April of 1874. He had moved to Giverny the previous year and would spend the rest of his life painting his garden and nearby lily pond. Millions of people worldwide have made the pilgrimage to this pastoral location in a tiny town fifty miles or so Northeast of Paris. I was one. 

 That was a long time ago, almost a quarter of a century. I've returned to that spot several times since then, by myself or with friends, to share the beauty of the setting that has produced some of the most beloved art in the history of the world. In these images, I hope to share it with you. To see the entire portfolio, click this link:  take me to Monet's Garden. 

I'm a Prepper – Sort Of

There is something to be said for prepping – not in a dystopian way, because that's a glass half full or even a glass soon-to-be empty philosophy, but in an "I probably should have a quasi-plan for whatever city I'm headed to." Recently, I went around the world with only an airline ticket to my first stop and a two-night hotel reservation. On the other hand, having every day planned out to the Nth degree can be fatal to the type of photography I like to do. As Iron Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth." 

Enter the internet, YouTube, tips from friends, Google Flights, and the bucket list. Language, coinage, mass transit, tours, cycling and hiking routes, and points of interest give a rough idea of where to stay and what each day might hold, whether a visit is a few days or a month. Plus, learning about a city before you show up can be an exciting prelude to the trip itself. 

Right now, I'm doing due diligence on Brisbane, Australia. I've been to Sydney, Melbourne, and Cairns, but Brissie, Brizzy, or BrizVegas is new to me. I also want to visit Perth, but that will be another trip. I've found Aussies to be friendly, cheerful, and always ready to poke fun at themselves and visitors, but in a nice way. They don't suffer gasbags, stuffed shirts, or poseurs but have a genuine affection for Yanks, so it's my kind of place. I'm headed there next month, and there's still lots to do!

A Bridge Too Far?

 It's not all glamour, believe me. Please don't get me wrong; I love to go, and I'm honored to go. It's my jam, and I pinch myself every time I wake up in a foreign city, a foreign country, a place I've never been before. It's all possible because of the continued support of my incredibly talented staff, both past and present, and our wonderful clients who have entrusted us with their family treasures over the last thirty-five years. 

Here's a short story about my recent trip to Bergen, Norway. Regardless of what kind of images I manage to get on a particular trip, I consider it an unqualified success if I get home with all the stuff I left with. This hardly ever happens. Keeping track of camera bodies, lenses, tablets, cords, chargers, toiletries, underwear, phone, passport, and all the other assorted paraphernalia that make travel photography possible. It never happens. 

I made it as far as Schipohl, Amsterdam this time before things started going south. I was flying Delta/KLM, which is good, but the departure gate for Bergen changed three times. I studiously noted and reacted to two of the three changes, but missed the last one. Consequently, I was sitting at gate A12 as my flight was departing from gate A9.  

KLM was nice enough to put me on the next flight to Bergen, which, as it turned out, was six hours later –In addition to the 3 hours and twelve minutes I had already waited. My luggage had apparently gone on ahead. The eventual flight to Bergen went off without a hitch, and we pulled in shortly after midnight. I was so tired I wasn't even tired anymore, which is a sure sign of exhaustion. 

I had booked an all-day Train/bus/boat/train/train tour for first thing the next day, and so cabbed it into town, skipping the light rail. I hauled my luggage, camera gear suitcase, and backpack up the hill to the door of the AirBnB, got down on my hands and knees, fiddled with the combination to the lockbox and got into the apartment. I unpacked, got ready for the tour, double-checked my gear, and collapsed on the bed for what may have been 3 hours of sleep.  

Up bright and early the following day, still jet-lagged and groggy, I rechecked my camera gear, shouldered my pack and hot-footed it into town to the train station. I grabbed a coffee and Danish at the little cafe in the station and stood on the platform, wolfing it down when my upper bridge became loose, and I either swallowed it or spat it out on the platform. 

Either way, it was a disaster. I had no upper front teeth, so I had to do the entire tour, 13 hours, with my mouth shut. I suppose my fellow travelers presumed I was a monk who had taken a vow of silence, and I replied to all polite inquiries concerning my nationality, trip length, purpose, etc., with a grunt, grimace, or shrug. Who said Americans were loud?

The tour finally ended, and it started raining. Bergen is the raniest city in Europe, and August was the raniest August...ever. I walked back to the apartment in the pouring rain with no teeth, but I had gotten some great images of the Fjords and the Norwegian countryside. I decided that what I really needed next was a reindeer hotdog.