I signed him up to do a special number on one of the Sundays
he wasn’t traveling. I can’t remember the name or
the composer, but the piece he played was variations on the nineteenth-century song “A Poor
Wayfaring Man of Grief.”
While David played, I closed my eyes to shut out the visual,
because I didn’t want to be distracted from the music. The arrangement was
beautiful, but it was David’s interpretation that touched my heart. I saw then
that he had an artistic soul.
At that time, I didn’t know what he did when he was traveling.
But when I opened this year's Kanab Arts Magazine, I found he was the featured artist because of
his photography.
I discovered that David has a photographer-touring company
called Action Photo Tours. I’ll send you to his web site later in this
posting, when you’ve discovered a little more about him. I’ll just say right
now that his own pictures are jaw-droppingly beautiful. I should have known that after
hearing him play. But more than that, he's dedicated to ensuring that people who go on his tours get their own jaw-droppers.
I asked David if I could interview him for Liz Sez, and he
graciously consented. At the end of the interview, he’ll talk about some of the
pictures on his web site.
So here we go:
LIZ: I know you graduated college
with a chemical engineering degree. That seems a stretch to photography. Is it?
DAVID: Photography is multi-faceted.
There is definitely an artistic side to it, but in order to express your
creative vision, you must also master the technical details. Having been an
engineer, the technical side of photography came very easily to me. I had to be
very detail-oriented in my previous career which is a necessity to be a good
photographer. In the semiconductor industry, I specialized in photolithography
and optics where we used state-of-the-art equipment to image the tiny circuits
on silicon wafers. With many direct analogs to photography, it was really easy
for me to understand photography and teach others. Even though I’m technically
oriented, I still have an artistic side. I studied music for many years in my
youth and I’ve always had an intuitive sense of what looks good and what
doesn’t. Finding good compositions is key to creating compelling images.
LIZ: I’ve seen your gallery on your
web site. Your photos are amazing! How did you manage to catch those shots of a
shaft of sun coming into the red rock cavern?
DAVID: There’s a lot of planning
that goes into most of these shots. You have to understand how the sun angles
change throughout the year. You need to be in the right place at the right time
and watch the weather and clouds carefully. There are many seasonal
considerations to be aware of as well.
For night photography, you must understand how the night sky changes
month-by-month and when particular features will line up with what you want to
photograph. Granted, sometimes you get
lucky and get a shot you hadn’t planned on, but most of my best work has been
thought out and planned in advance.
LIZ: I read on your blog that your
favorite animal to shoot is the bear. Grizzlies and polar bears both have
fierce reputations. Isn’t that a bit
terrifying?
DAVID: That’s just how Hollywood
likes to portray them. When you spend time with bears in the wild, they aren’t
nearly as ferocious as the media would lead you to believe. That being said, we
take careful precautions when in close proximity to the bears. We go in groups
of 5-6 people. By staying close together, we become the largest “bear” in the
area and they just end up ignoring us or moving away. Bears are not known to
attack groups of people of 3 or more. You never want to approach bears.
Instead, you hold your ground and if they want to get closer, they will. Most
will just move away. We also take special care not to surprise bears,
especially moms with cubs as that can be particularly dangerous. If you take
the appropriate precautions and have experience around bears, it’s rare that
you will have any problems.
LIZ: I lived in the Matanuska valley
in Alaska for five years and only recall a couple of times where the northern
lights were as vivid as the ones in your gallery. How can you guarantee that a
person on one of your photography tours will see northern lights? Ditto polar
bears?
DAVID: Polar bears are a guarantee
since they are always waiting on the northern Barrier Islands for the sea ice
to freeze in the autumn so they can go out and hunt seals. Northern Lights are
no guarantee. On our trip last year, it was cloudy every night, even though we
could see the aurora going like gangbusters behind the clouds. As with all
things photography, going to the right place at the right time of year will
dramatically improve your odds of seeing the Northern Lights.
LIZ: What’s your favorite landscape
to photograph?
DAVID: I can’t really say because I
like them all! You can’t really compare the Southern Utah desert to a place
like Mt Rainier with all the wildflowers. Any landscape is a joy to photograph
with spectacular light. I especially
enjoy doing night photography and long exposures since it’s one of the rare
times where images look better on the camera than they do to the naked eye.
LIZ: How did you happen to move to
Kanab, Utah?
DAVID: I was getting lots of demand
for photo tours in the vicinity, so it made sense to move down here. Kanab is
central to Zion NP, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Escalante, and the Vermillion
Cliffs.
LIZ: I know you take photography
tours all over the world, and you have people all over the world come to do
tours with you. How do you deal with the language barrier?
DAVID: Everyone I’ve worked with is
at least semi-fluent in English. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to find
or read my website very well. When I traveled to China, it was difficult to get
around without knowing Mandarin. I remember the first bus station we went
to. There were like 30 long lines at
ticket windows and each one had different Chinese characters above them. We had
no idea which one to go to to catch a bus to our remote destination. Using
Google Translate on our smart phones, we were eventually able to figure it out
with the help of other people. It’s all part of the adventure!
DAVID: I really enjoy it when
someone has that “ah-ha” moment, when things suddenly begin to click and they
really understand what we’ve been working on. I also love seeing people’s
reactions to some of the incredible places I take them to.
LIZ: I’m inserting a video of panting owlets that you took. Can you tell us how you happened to get this
video?
DAVID: These little owlets were just
up Johnson Canyon, close to Kanab. One of my friends told me about them so I
grabbed the long lens and headed up there. The first couple times I went I
didn’t get that great of shots. But the last time, all 3 were perched out in
the light and were all awake and attentive. After I took a bunch of still
shots, I thought a video would be best to really show what was going on.
LIZ: Here’s a link to your gallery.
Is there any picture that has a story you’d like to share?
DAVID: Here are stories from the
first 5 shots in the gallery:
#1: White Sands New Mexico. I got up
at 1AM and it was a very cold night in the winter (single digits). I went hiking out in the dunes and it took me
hours until I found the perfect dune. I setup external lighting and took this
shot during the blue hour with the nice accent light of Alamogordo in the
distance.
#2: Reflection Canyon is a remote
viewpoint of Lake Powell. I decided to go close to the winter solstice since
the rising sun would be aligned with the canyon. However, it's not easy to get
there in the winter. Most photographers hire a boat to get here, but that's not
an option in the winter. First, I had to drive nearly 60 miles on a snowy/muddy
Hole-In-The-Rock Road. From there, it was a 9-mile cross-country backpacking
jaunt with a lot of washes to cross. Since I did most of the hike in the dark,
I know I didn't go the most efficient route. The next morning it was cloudy and
I got some great shots of the canyon. But since I didn't get the sunburst I had
hoped for, I stayed one more night and was treated to clear skies the next
morning.
#3: While in Zion NP, there were
heavy clouds all afternoon and I seriously thought we weren't going to get
anything for sunset. However, I looked at the SunsetWX website and it showed very
good sunset potential, so my workshop group decided to hang out and wait. Sure
enough, the sun popped through about 5 mins before sunset and transformed a
dull, lifeless scene into one of the most vibrant displays I've ever witnessed. A couple minutes later the river began to
reflect all the wonderful cloud color.
#4: It was a stormy evening out at
the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Because the salt was so wet, I didn't dare
drive my truck on the flats, so I used my mountain bike to get out a good
distance out. I really didn't have much hope for sunset due to the heavy clouds
on the horizon. However, a small break appeared and the sun poked through for
just a couple minutes. Good thing I was
ready! And yes, it was totally worth
getting self and bike completely covered in wet salt.
#5: I wanted to get a high up shot
of Fly Geyser, but there isn’t anywhere you can get this vantage point from the
ground. Thus, we decided to build a very tall 20-foot tripod. Unfortunately,
this tripod was difficult to use since we had no way to gauge the composition,
leveling, exposure, or polarization state from the ground. For example, we
found that we had to offset the polarization by a quarter turn in order for it
to be correct higher up in the air. It took a lot of raising and lowering the
tripod to get it right. However, I was pretty happy with some of the shots we
got. For this shot, I used a neutral density filter to get a 5-sec exposure. It
took a few attempts since the wind kept blowing in different directions!
#6: Most people go on polar bear
trips in Churchill, Manitoba, where they see polar bears from the top of large
rover vehicles. It’s not the same seeing them from 20-feet up in the air. In
Alaska, we take boats out to see the bears and we photograph them at eye-level.
This allows us to get eye-level shots such as this one of a sub-adult cub
lounging on the ice.
LIZ: My thanks to David Swindler for
taking the time to do this interview. If you didn’t already check out his web
site, I hope you’ll go to www.PictureTheJourney.com and scroll through. There’s
contact information on the web site if you’ve always dreamed about going on a
photographic odyssey with someone who can coach you along to the best shot.
