FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Tom Walker
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Tom Walker, a Southern California–based fine-art photographer best known for cinematic sailing and regatta images, alongside street, infrared, and storm-chasing work that leans hard into light, wind, and atmosphere.
You can visit Tom's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
When I got back, I noticed about a week later my camera and uh at the time I think I was shooting with a D eight ten, uh, the lens had and camera had all these little white pits on it. And then I realized, oh no, it's from the acid coming up off the ocean.
SPEAKER_04This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and and today, folks, I want to begin just a little bit differently. I want to begin with a little bit of imagination on your part. Those of you out that are listening to this, imagine a seashore. And imagine waves coming into the shore, but you know, not little gentle honeymoon waves. We're talking waves of some size here. And you know, put some seagulls in the background to your imagination and that kind of stuff. And and while you're imagining the seashore, add in, oh, let's say an erupting volcano. Um so we got you know, we got these two things going on there. And and now let's add in, you know, maybe some drag racing. Okay. So so we got we got the seashore, we got volcanoes, we got drag racing. Uh, throw in uh maybe a little symphony somewhere over there on the right-hand side and the right channel. And you know, they're playing, oh, you know, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, something big. And if you can imagine all of these things at the same time, then you are just beginning to imagine the world that our guest today works in. We're talking today with Tom Walker. Tom is a magnificent photographer, specializing mostly in sailing these days, but you look at his portfolio, man, and I don't know if I have ever been more envious uh in the world a photographer works works in than I am with Tom. We're talking thunderstorms, we're talking volcanoes, we're talking sailing, and you know, there's I full disclosure, there's a little bit of sailing in my own background here, so a lot of sympathy. And this work is when I say technically challenging, I don't mean only F-stop and you know, aperture and exposure and ISO. I'm talking about staying alive. I'm talking about staying upright while you're doing your work. This is inspiring work. It's beautiful, beautiful, stunning work. Um, and it's the kind of photography that a lot of us look at. And yep, in the back of our head, there's just that little bit of, oh, damn, I wish I was doing that too. Tom, well, welcome to the podcast today. How are you doing? Hi, Scott.
SPEAKER_02I'm uh very excited to be here. And wow, what an introduction. Um I feel um very humbled by your description.
SPEAKER_03You know, I I every now and then I wish we had theme music for these podcasts. And I don't know what I would have chosen today, but it would have been the Mission Impossible theme or James Bond or something like something adventurous, because man, what a world you are working in there. And and and I'm gonna start off with something you know a little bit other odd as well. Um I was redoing my research, I was reading about you, and I see that you know you you've taken uh a number of workshops with a number of people. Moose Peterson is out there, Phil Penman's out there. Um, and and Phil, as most people know, is a good friend of Frames Magazine. He and I know each other. Uh so I wrote to Phil. I said, Phil, you know, give me some backstory here. This is you know, Mr. Adventure photographer here. And and I wanted Phil to tell me a story like, you know, you dropped a camera in the East River or you know, you got food poisoning someplace. Yeah, and and no, Phil writes back and he goes, Tom's a hard-working photographer who I've had the great pleasure of working with on a number of occasions around the world, a keen eye for composition and lighting, and is never afraid to try new things. And and man, you you talk about an endorsement for a lifestyle. There it is. You got started in photography early. I mean, you you studied film photography in high school. When when you were six and seven, were you the kid with the instematic in your hand? Or I mean, how did the camera itself come into your life?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's really interesting to me. When I was younger, I was always into gadgets and stuff. And my dad bought a um Minnox C camera. And you may remember that from the old man from Uncle James Bond TV series that they had these tiny little spy cameras. And uh, I was just fascinated by it. And so that kind of got me hooked into um the ideology of photography. And I was more into it for the coolness of the gadgetry. But as I grew older, I wound up getting a brownie box camera uh that I used and played with. And when I got into high school, I had to take an elective, and um just by happen chance, they put me into film photography. And from there, I think my first camera was a Pentax that uh I only had a 50 millimeter lens. And uh at the time I wasn't into yacht racing photography at all, but uh I was into cars because I was 15, 16, and Southern California is a car culture area. So I um started taking pictures at the local drag racing strip, which was Orange County International Raceway. And back in the day, I think for a buck you could get a pit pass and you could actually go and sit on the pit wall and nobody would bother you. Today, there's no way they'd let you do that. And then from there, I I decided, well, I'd like to try something different. So I started going out to Riverside Raceway, where they did a lot of the old Can Am car series and the same thing. And it was just fun, and I was able to take pictures that other people weren't taking.
SPEAKER_03And from was it just the access that you were getting, you know, a little bit closer to the smoked up tires and stuff? Or what what how did you know the shots were any good?
SPEAKER_02Well, they probably weren't, um by today's standards. Yeah, okay. But it was fun, and it was the ideology of I was able to get access, as you say, and just by being there, it gave me the opportunity to create a technical image that other people wouldn't really see. And I I guess looking back, I I I've always been really good on the technical side, being able to create a good, clean technical image and then take it into uh the digital dark room. But from there, I I wound up going. Um, my sister was going to school in Monterey, California, which is about a six-hour drive from here. And lo and behold, there's Luna Seika racetrack up there. So I'd I'd go up and visit her and go and shoot Laguna Seika and the same kind of thing. And so it kind of grew from there. And I I studied into um when I went to college, I had to take an elective, so I took photo uh photography again, did the uh film lab, and then I kind of put it down for a while. And when my kid decided he wanted to start sailing, he was about four. Um I wait, wait, you decided the ones called sailing at four? Yeah, he was well. I grew up surfing and sailing in Southern California, and junior sailing is a really big in this area. So he was four and he wanted to learn how to sail, and they have a lot of sailing programs here. So we put him in a sailing program, and and I thought, okay, what am I gonna do? I'm I'm standing on the dock with all these parents that are like soccer parents and they're all screaming at their kids. And I'm thinking, this isn't for me. So I went home, dusted off a camera, and just started taking pictures. And next thing I know, parents would ask me, Hey, can you take a picture of my kid? And then one of the the yacht club people said, Do you want to go out in the water? And it's well, uh yeah. So um, let no let's back up a little bit though.
SPEAKER_03When you're still doing the cars, you know, the drag racing and the can Am stuff, were you showing the work? Was anybody seeing this?
SPEAKER_02Uh a little bit. You know, I'd show it with friends, and I had um people, a few friends would say, Hey, can I buy that print? You know, they'd give me like two bucks for it, and um, you know, I'd print it in the dark room. And um, then I kind of got into life and getting married and all that good stuff, and the the car racing kind of went away. Although always into the car culture here. So we have some cool museums here, car museums that I would every now and then go and photograph, and we've got a a vintage aircraft museum. So I would I I kind of kept my fingers in it, but not real deeply. Okay. On your on your website, you say in college you were doing landscape work. Um, I was. So uh when I was at in college, I got into uh mountaineering club. We would go up to Yosemite and we would go to um uh Mojave Desert to Joshua Tree, and I'd take a camera and photograph uh just the scenery and nothing real serious, but you know, by even by today's standards. Um, but it was fun. And most of my work when I was younger, it was all black and white. And I still to this day love black and white photography. It just speaks to my heart.
SPEAKER_03But you know, there's a big adrenaline difference between drag racing and a cactus.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Unless you back into one, then back into either of them, you're in trouble. Um, but so what what was there something similar feeding you about both?
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, I think when I was in my college years and even in my teens, probably like most teens, uh I was searching, kind of figuring out what do I want to do. You know, you see the world, you start to get some uh freedom. And it just kind of evolved in it was part of the journey, I think, that I took that wasn't so much the adrenaline of it, it was the actual art of taking a picture. And from very young, when I would print, and I really like to print, there's just something very cool to me to hand someone uh an image and have them take it in their hands and touch it. It's so tactile. I would give away a lot of prints, but few people would buy them. But between the two, it it just kind of fed my itch at the time.
SPEAKER_03So you're but you're back on the beach or the on the on the pier. Um you I have to, you know, when my kids would go to like the soccer camps and stuff, there was always three or four commercial photographers already there. You know, they take the team picture, the individual pictures, you know, that kind of stuff, and then you sell you the package as you're leaving the tournament. Um, that does or doesn't exist in the sailing world.
SPEAKER_02Not so much. Um there's probably I'll say a half a dozen of us on the West Coast that really focus in on yacht racing. At one point I thought I wanted to be a headshot photographer, and then I realized I I live in LA. Um, I took uh studied a little bit with Peter Hurley, who's also a sailor, and got to be friends with him. And then I realized, hey, I live in LA. There's thousands of headshot photographers that'll do a headshot for 20 bucks out here. And so I thought, no, that's not what I really want to do. Uh but in the sailing world, there's there's a much smaller cadre of people that uh do what I do. And you know, part of it is I'm when I'm out there, I photograph in what most people would say are really icky conditions. I do bad things to cameras. I take them out in the ocean, I'm out in the middle of the day. It's broad sunlight, hard shadows, and I'm in a boat that usually mime wet, the boat's wet. Uh, there may be water splashing around. Not a lot of people like to do that. The first couple times I actually went out in the ocean looking through the viewfinder, and I I grew up on the water. Um, I got seasick real quickly, and it took about six months just to be able to look through the viewfinder and not have a queasy stomach. So um, the people that do it, we're all friends. It's a great lifestyle. I love what I do.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's talk about the world of sailing photography here, because this is not setting up a tripod on the beach with a you know 30 million millimeter lens. Um, you know, you're you're out on the water. So, first of all, you're going up and down left and right yourself. Your subject, whether it's a four-year-old or a 40-year-old, they are going away from you as quickly as they possibly can. And you can't get in their way. You can't get in front of them and say, you know, smile. Um, it it it just for even before you press the shutter release, the simple positioning is extraordinary. And how you get yourself into position for a shot that is illuminating, that shows you know what's going on in the boat and the faces, but also, you know, illuminating, and this is what, for people that know what's going on, you know, this is what the boat is doing, here's what's really happening. How do you approach simply being present when everything is in motion and everything is sort of conspiring to make the photograph impossible?
SPEAKER_02That's an interesting question. I think a lot of it has to do with um being comfortable on the water. And most of the times I drive myself, so I don't have that.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02I don't have a driver driving me. And as soon as I get out to the race course, and these courses are pretty um universal. It's usually a triangle type shape or a trapezoid, or it's uh sail into the wind, go downwind and back up. So there's some commonalities in terms of how they set up the courses. And I'm I know all the the course officials, and I have their permission to be out there, and they're very open to having someone participate as long as you play within their sandbox and their their rules. So when I approach um uh a regatta and I I had uh two this weekend, um, one was small boats, one was large boats. You kind of look for where the angles are. And for me, my philosophy is I like to include people because that's where the stories are. The boats are beautiful and they're cinematic, but I like to get people's faces and the action of what they're doing. There's lots of gesturing going on on the on the um people on the water. But then you wind up having all these things like wires and ropes and um masts and sails get in the way. So you you kind of have to figure out where the wind is going to be and where the best position is for the boat where you can get in close enough without interrupting them. And um it uh um it is definitely an acquired skill. And that's one of the reasons why I started to do some studying outside of the um photography world that's sailing. There's not really any sailing workshops you can go to that there's just not enough of us photographers to do that. So I went outside and studied some street photography, landscape, some uh fine art photography. And it gave me an insight into seeing a little bit differently and be able to anticipate. There's a lot of anticipation going on because you need to know where that boat's going to go, or you may want to scoot over someplace and be able to get them framed in just the right place so that when they turn, we call it tacking, um, they will be in the right position so you get a pretty picture. Um, of course, sometimes everything goes awry and you wind up with um, you know, a meh picture. But there's there's a lot of geometry going on in my brain as to where I want to be and and where the light is, where the action is going to be, and how to maximize that and what colors are going to really pop in the picture.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. I mean, Tom, I'm trying to get, you know, and again, because I know a little bit about sailing, yeah, I'm trying to just imagine all the dynamic uh currents going on in your head. Yeah, there could be two or three buoys on the course, but depending on what the wind is for these five minutes, you know, they could be tacking, they could be doing something, they could decide to come about it at a certain time. They have to go around the buoy, but how they do that is pretty much up to them. And, you know, you've got to be in a space um where you're watching shifts in the wind. I mean, you're watching the ripples on the water to anticipate a shot. I don't think any of the rest of us do that. You know, you know the rules, you know, you know what they've got to do versus what they are doing, but still, I mean, what you can't be that close. What kind of a lens are you using out on the boat?
SPEAKER_02So I used to um use the Nikon D system. I shot with a D4 for a long time. And um that I shot with a 500, and it was a beast. It it was just big and heavy. And when the Z system came out from Nikon, I switched to the Z system. And I have two um standard go-tos. Um I use their 28 to um 400, which is right a great little lens. It's lightweight. And then I also use a 100 to 400 with a 1-4 extender. So I can get really, really close.
SPEAKER_03Um even with Ibis, you're on a pitching boat. I mean, how do you how you know are you shooting at 4,000th of a second? Or how how are you getting anything stable?
SPEAKER_02So my the way I set up my camera is I'll shoot a minimum of one two thousandth of a second. Um, F9, I I set the uh um uh it's it's set manual mode, F9, and then I let the ISO uh pretty much float because I'm out there broad daylight. I it it's it's always going to be pretty low. I don't have to worry about noise. But the big challenge is you you just kind of get this muscle memory after doing it where you can start to hold the camera and be able to keep it relatively stable, uh, even on the pitching boat. I've been in some cases where uh there's four or five foot seas and the boats pitching up and down. I was in Santa Barbara several years ago, and we were photographing a um a small dinghy called a laser. Yep. And it was a a six-foot sea. We were going into the wind, and these these boats were coming sailing, going, hitting the top of the wave, and we were looking up at them. And one of my most favorite and most popular images is of um actually a friend of mine that I photographed at the top of the wave, and we were in the trough at the bottom, and you just see him with a sky. It's it's a a really cool shot. But you just kind of get used to it and anticipate it, just like any type of photography.
SPEAKER_03You ever think of investing in one of those gyroscopically stabilized, you know, body rigs you see people wearing sometimes?
SPEAKER_02I see people using it with the video cameras, but the the challenge is I'm usually in a small boat. So there's a big uh challenge to keep myself in the boat. And you know, typically I'm offshore, so I may be a mile offshore, maybe 500 yards off the beach. So I don't want to have anything too clunky. I wear a life vest. That was kind of a rule that my wife said you can photograph anything you want, but you gotta wear a vest if you're in the ocean.
SPEAKER_03It's is is there any interesting gear at the bottom of the bay there that has your name on it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, there is. There's there's at least one D300 from back in the day. And um uh a few things have have fallen off the boat, but at the end of the day, not too much. I I I really work on staying safe um on the boat.
SPEAKER_03I I'm chuckling because a long time ago I interviewed a um aviation photographer who you know shoots with an open door in an airplane, and he talks about there are lens caps all over West Virginia that if anybody finds.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, lens caps all everything gets put into um, you know, it's funny because I started out with a um backpack style case, and I learned quickly that's not so good. Uh so I've used everything from a cooler, you know, the plastic uh cooler to backpack to just um throwing towels over cameras to keep them from getting uh uh wet. But by the end of the day, um, you know, my hot shoe is encrusted with salt, and uh I when I send it back to Nikon uh Pro Services, sometimes I get notes as to what did you do to this camera?
SPEAKER_03Um one bit of just really small advice I'm suddenly wondering about though, you must have the polarizer from hell on the end of whatever lens you're using. So I do not use a polarizer. Wait, you you're out on the water in bright sunshine and you don't?
SPEAKER_02I don't because um I usually don't have time to adjust a polarizer. Okay. Uh and many times I wind up shooting with the camera into the sun, or the next shot may be completely 90 degrees opposite. And uh if I'm shooting, if I'm photographing big boats, I photograph one regatta every year in Long Beach. And it's uh four days of long hours on the water and it's nonstop action. There's probably eight different fleets and two different race courses, and you just don't have time to um to adjust a polarizer.
SPEAKER_03Is is there a difference in in in In the way you approach anticipation or composition between something small like a laser or something big. Let's say you were doing the America's Cup. I mean, did does the size of the boat and its relationship to the scale of the people affect how you think about composition?
SPEAKER_02So, yes, I was fortunate enough to photograph the America's Cup when it was in San Francisco, uh, and they had the catamarans through the St. Francis Yacht Club there. And there is uh with um uh one of one of my, you know, we all talk about what's our look. And I think one of the things that that kind of forms my look is I tend to like to shoot from a very low angle. So I I tend to be in small boats and I like to get real low to the water. And in so doing with dinghies, that allows me to get under the boom. And for the folks listening, the boom is the bottom part of the sail. There's a uh usually a wood or a metal piece there that um helps give it stability. And that way I can shoot underneath the boom and get their faces. With big boats, I look at two ways that I generally like to compose. I like to get the big view of uh think of a wide angle view, and then I like to really drill down and get action shots of showing people and the gestures they do when they're working the lines or um working the winches. I have a series that I've been working on for a while, and it's called The People of the Bow. Yeah. And on sailboats, they have larger boats, they have one person dedicated just to the front or the bow of the boat. And I get some great silhouettes of those folks through uh the sails that are on the front of the boat. And there's a series there, and I think there may be a book, but it it's still in development.
SPEAKER_03Talk to me in your world the difference between being a documentary or being a fine art uh photographer. I I know that they sort of bleed together, but did does one control your instincts more than the other?
SPEAKER_02I think so. You know, growing up as a kid, I was very much uh into cinema and movies. And I think my mind sees and thinks more as what's going to be a cinematic image. Kind of my job is when I do these regattas, I'm part-time street photographer, part-time event photographer, part-time editorial photographer. I tend to focus a little bit more to, okay, how can I take this image and make it into something that's more than just a newspaper image uh or more that more than an image that someone's going to put in a release. So I really look for light and color and reflections. So if I see sun reflecting on the water, or if I can see colors of the sails reflecting on the water, I really am drawn to doing those kinds of images. And then, of course, if I can get cool images of people working on the boat, um, one of the beauties is most of the hulls and the decks of the boats are all white. So you have these great reflectors that just bounce light up into people's faces. So I don't have to deal with shadows too much. But yeah, I think of it more in terms of how can I make a cinematically beautiful picture.
SPEAKER_03You say on your website, you know, one of the things that helped you get to uh a cinematic understanding was that you went beyond sailing into, and here we have the adrenaline shift again, choral, choral music. So you seem to miss this middle ground here, Tom. Extreme one way or the other. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um what took you to choral music? So I've always been very interested in audio, and I always have thought of myself as a burgeoning audiophile. I love music. Growing up in Southern California, we had the LA rock scene in the 70s, and so I was influenced by all of those bands: the Eagles, um, Jackson Brown. Um, when I went to school and college, uh, they had a gym and we were right down the street from the forum. So um they had a lot of the bands would put on a concert and use it as a practice uh at Loyola, the school I went to. So I got to see some really incredible bands, and it just kind of stuck with me. And then as I got older, we were uh I had just gotten married and we'd found out we're pregnant. And my wife and I looked at each other and and said, you know, maybe we should think of finding a church to go to. And so we we did, and they were very big into choral music. Um, they found out I could photograph, and so they invited me to take some pictures. And one thing led to another where one of the local universities asked me, would you like to come and photograph our Christmas Fantasia Festival, which was a combination of rock, classical, jazz. Um uh you name it, it was described to me as all music you can think of in a kitchen sink for Christmas. And so I did that, and then um uh local high school uh asked me to photograph their theatrical stuff. So it just kind of was one of those opportunistic things that um it was just fun, and and I get to go and be in these great venues, and it's different from the sailing, but it's not different because there's a lot of um storytelling with people's faces and expressions and how the scenes look. So it was wasn't planned, it just kind of happened.
SPEAKER_03Oh, and and those some of those images are are really, really cool. Oh, thank you. But there is a huge, I mean it a choral singer's face, the expression there is really nuanced. The, you know, the picture of somebody at the wheel or the tiller of a sailboat, perhaps it's not as subtle. Um, so I mean you had to learn an awful lot of human character um to make those pictures sing.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you. Um yeah, uh it's interesting because uh when you're photographing boats, you've got to it's kind of like photographing using Sam Abel's philosophy where he parks someplace and the scene develops before him. When you are doing choral work, well, it's there, but you have to hunt and find and look for where that interesting face is, where the lighting is. There's there's a lot of different aspects of it to be able to catch uh a picture and be able to tell a story. So it's a lot more thinking for me when I do that type of work.
SPEAKER_03Somehow you wind up in a volcano.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, that's uh another interesting story. Um through uh um uh through some friends. Uh we when we go on vacation, we we usually go to Hawaii. And uh through some friends, I met a couple of guys over there on the big island, and uh they were photographing the Kilauea volcano. Uh, and they started by just selling their pictures on the side of the road. And it grew into something really big. And so one day, Bruce, my friend, called me up and said, Hey, we're gonna get together about five guys and girls uh to go and do a week of volcano photography. We're gonna do air, doors off helicopter boats. We're gonna go up to the volcano, hike out on the lava fields. Would you be interested? And I looked at my wife Robin and um said, What do you think? And she goes, as long as you get uh life insurance, I'm good. So I I I did and um had a fabulous time. It it it until you see Earth being born, it is such a an amazing sight. Uh, I still to this day, I was over in April photographing Kilauea going off, and it was um fantastic. It's it's technically the most challenging photography I've ever done. You don't think of lava being extremely bright, but it is really bright. And to you've got heat waves that are flowing over the lava and focusing. There's no autofocus, it's all manual focus. Uh, and then from there, you've got situations where most of the time where we were photographing, uh lava rivers are flowing underneath us. So you had to be very cognizant. We also wore gas masks uh in case uh the lava was flowing in the ocean. So it creates sulfuric acid, and you get these clouds, and um it was amazing. The still, I think, you know, other than seeing your child being born, being married, you know, your wedding, seeing uh um and photographing lava is the most exciting and amazing thing that I think I've ever photographed.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_03And there have been in the history of photography just some gut-revealing, magnificent pictures of volcanoes. And what the hell am I gonna do? Um, you know, the the fear of the cliche would be nearly overpowering for me. Then the same thing for you know, musicians or or um drag racing. How do you avoid not doing slightly less than what other people have already done?
SPEAKER_02That's a good question. And fortunately, my friends uh in Hawaii, they treat you like family. And once you go and photograph with them, you become a bratta. They just look out for you. Uh, you become part of their family. They prepped us and, you know, they were looking through the viewfinder, telling us, okay, here's what you want to think about, look at this. And they really guided us to really start to develop the style that we wanted. And you kind of walk up with um no expectations. And the first time I did it, uh, we walked, we had to walk about 45 minutes, and you know, they pick you up at midnight. And so we drive out, it's about an hour to get out to the lava fields. Uh, we walk out for another 45 minutes, and it's pitch black, and you know, you're in Hawaii, the weather's warm, a little rainstorm comes through, and it's it's just magical. And then you start to see the glow of the lava erupting. And as you get closer, you start to hear this hiss, which is the lava flowing into the ocean. And this glow um just expands to the point where you walk over this hill and it's boom, you're just hit with it, and it just uh is just hits you right in the face that all of a sudden you are here watching earth being born. And whether you're spiritual or not, it is probably the most visceral and amazing thing you see because it really is. You're watching Earth being born that's never seen air or light before. And uh the lava that we photographed the first time was very slow moving. And then you realize that it's actually flowing underneath you and and it it is, it it looks alive, it feels alive, it sounds alive. We wound up, um, they wound up taking us to what they call a window, yeah, which is really a lava cave, and you can see the river of lava flowing through this window. And we got to about a hundred feet uh to the window, and all of a sudden, my I smelled something burning, and it was the hairs on my knuckles. It it didn't even it didn't even hurt, but it was it you don't even realize that. And of course, you're really pumped up, you're excited, and you're worried, do I get images? And you just shoot 3,000, 4,000 images, and it's well let's go back to gear for a second. How is the thing not melting in your hand? So I don't think it was hot enough to for the camera. I didn't get any over um heating messages, yeah. Yeah, no, no overtemps uh messages on the camera. Uh we were using tripods, and uh, I I think at the time it was my first carbon fiber tripod, and it it didn't feel hot, but it just was all of a sudden I smelled something and I looked down and I thought, I need to back up. Then of course, Bruce and um Tom, the guys who uh were our hosts, uh, they were very cognizant of us. And of course, uh I had on um uh my wife insisted I get a um flame retardant t-shirt. So I had this this flame retardant t-shirt, and it it was um it was dark gray when I went out there. When I came back, it had been bleached white by all the uh really yeah, just from the the sulfuric acid that's created from the lava as it enters into the sea and it just floats up over you.
SPEAKER_03Um but that's got to ruin every bit of kit you've got in your hand.
SPEAKER_02Well, when I got back, I noticed uh about a week later my camera and uh at the time I think I was shooting with a D810, uh, the lens had and camera had all these little white pits on it. And um, then I realized, oh no, it's from the acid coming up off the ocean. So I sent it into Nikon, and that was the first time that um uh I got an um email back saying, what did you do to this camera and this lens? But they were kind enough, and I thought, oh no, this is gonna be a really expensive fix. And and it was not bad at all, but they it came back looking like new. But I bet you they have parts sitting there.
SPEAKER_03They have they have a whole wing dedicated to your work, isn't it? And you know, I I would be most worried that the SD card would become permanent internal storage, that it would say that that little plastic shell around it wouldn't last. Oh, yeah. Um but you okay. I'm I'm detecting a a pattern in your life here because okay, you you you are you're doing volcanoes now, and suddenly COVID hits. Okay, that that you know messed with everybody. Um, but you wind up taking a class with George, and help me if I mispronounce his last name, Nobeki? Nob Nobichi? How do you say it? So George Nobecchi. Umbechi, okay so a multi-year class on Japanese aesthetics and metaphors.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was yeah, go figure. Uh, you know, COVID, uh, who knows what the vaccines did to us, but um, it was um uh uh through a friend of mine, um, I think it uh was Michael Clark, who's an adventure photographer. He had mentioned that uh George was putting on a series of evening with master photographers. He had a lot of the greats there. He wound up putting uh uh a Sunday night is photo class uh for anybody. And he taught it. And so every Sunday, and I and I thought, well, I always like to I view myself as a better technical photographer than um a creative photographer. Sometimes I really have to stretch to get that creative and get that emotion into the image. And I thought, well, this might be a really good thing for me to start to expand and get in touch with my inner self. And so I did it, and it was really interesting. It was all about how Japanese aesthetics uh flow into photography. And when you look at George's work, I look at it and I go, wow, I wish I could take pictures like that. So I did it, and then from there they had uh version two, you know, uh 201 and 301. And then um uh it it expanded into a class that Brett Erickson taught through Nobuchi Creative. And he really got into symbolism and metaphors. And at the end of the day, it made me a better photographer, taught me how to see a little bit differently, not be so clinical, look for comparisons in imagery. And I think it's probably the biggest growth uh feeder for my work. I think I think I grew more taking the that class and and Brett's classes afterwards.
SPEAKER_03Can you give me a specific example of of an image where this is sort of evident?
SPEAKER_02So what I wind up doing is um uh Brett really focused on symbolism and metaphors. So I'd started to look, I started to look at comparisons. So when I now when I photograph, I like to put things in perspective. And you might look at some images and there's a orange triangle in the water that um uh is uh a boat is is heading to. And many people would be going, why do you put a an orange? What's that why is that there? You know, couldn't you have photoshopped that out? But contextually in the sailing world, the people that are my target demographics, they look at that and they know, oh God, that's great. It's there's the mark, there's a sailboat is coming to that mark, and I can see it it adds an anchor to the image, and it allows people to kind of look at it and compare um it to things in their life. So I started doing that. Um, the other things I did was you know, a lot of a lot of people like really clean images on the sides. I started adding, um, uh Brett and George taught me there's nothing wrong with putting an element on the side to give it tension.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And in sailing photography, to, you know, sometimes it looks like a flat pond, and you know, you're doing, you know, say smile so I can have some action to sailors. But other times you have lots of crashing and splashing. So I started to add um uh other contextual images that maybe the bow of a boat chasing another boat than the the the main boat is in the in the frame, but there's a bow of a boat coming up on the boat's back or stern. So you start to see this tension of they're being chased, things like that.
SPEAKER_03And and with the long lenses, you get the benefit of the compression too, to make everything seem uh much more and collision is much more imminent than perhaps it really is.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Yeah, I I I I've learned how to use um uh long lenses to my advantage. And uh lot of times I am close, but I'm also you know, typically I'm anywhere from I'll say 10 feet to maybe 50 to 100 feet away from the boats. Um, but most of them, most of the the the big sailors know who I am and um are confident that I'll get out of the way before there's any issues. And so far, knock on wood, I haven't had any issues.
SPEAKER_03That that's why I'm really surprised you're your own driver, because if you know if I were in your shoes, I I would want somebody equally understanding what's going on on the course, um, handling the boat that I'm in so that I don't have to be thinking about that as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's it's interesting because I I do have regottas that I have people that drive for me and they've driven for me, and they're really solid racers or sailors, and I can trust them implicitly. Um, one of the most interesting ones was I was photographing a regatta, and the guy who is driving the boat um on the boating world, they pay uh typically a uh a guy who has a small boat to bring, he has a scuba rig, he'll come and scrub the dirt off the bottom of their boats. So um I had a boat bottom cleaner driving me one time, and he had no idea what to do with a sailboat. His only knowledge of a sailboat was what he the ones he had cleaned the barnacles off the bottom of it. So I just kind of matured that way where I got comfortable driving myself and I see the angles in advance, and it just works for me.
SPEAKER_03I would say you you would need somebody that understands sailing and And water, and you know, the currents and the drifting, and composition, and where the sun is, and and and yeah, there's a lot of moving parts to getting uh an image right in the sailboat world. So Tom, I'm looking at your portfolios here, and and there's so much that we could still talk about. Um you've got thunderstorm photography, you've got infrared, you've got cowboys and um, you know, vintage wooden boats. Which of these do you think is, you know, if someone were to look at your other than the sailings, you know, we've been there. Other than the sailing, if someone were to get an introduction to your work, where would you want them to start and why? Ooh, that was a question I didn't anticipate.
SPEAKER_02Um of my favorite work is the thunderstorm work, which grew out of my friends in Hawaii who one year called me up and said, There's no lava going on. I'd like to put together a group and go chase thunderstorms. We have a meteorologist that wants to go with us. And I did. And so that is probably my most captivating work, I think, personally. Um, it's not my work is diverse, and so it can be challenging or confusing for people to get their heads around what I do. But the thunderstorm work, I think, is one that is very vast and it is um unique. The um the infrared work I I got involved with just on a whim, I saw some false color infrared images, and then I saw some uh black and white images, and I always love black and white. So I was gonna ask you about that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I thought, I'm gonna try this. And and it's way more technically challenging than I thought it was. So I'm not sure I answered your question, but well, well, no.
SPEAKER_03I mean, there you are clearly drawn to the dynamic. Uh sometimes it's really subtle, sometimes it's you know, triple forte, but there's something about kinetic energy in your work that I think defines it. And sometimes that's not composition, sometimes it is black and white or infrared, you know, it's a technique. Other times it's entirely how do I get this superly loud volume world that I'm looking at into some kind of one four thousandth of a second that makes sense. And and it's it's a hell of a project you set for yourself. What are you working on now?
SPEAKER_02Well, right now I'm getting ready to uh go to the consumer electronic show. Yeah, go figure. Right turn. Um and so I have a project that I've worked on uh for that for several years. It's called the People of CES or the People of Consumer Electronic and show. Yeah. And it's the easiest way to describe it is it's street photography at a very busy trade show. And I have another trade show right after that, uh, the NAM show, which is a music industry show that I have an equal project, the people of NAM. So those are the two projects that I'm going to be working on right away. It's all done in black and white.
SPEAKER_03How how do you get, I mean, I mean, people at a trade show, they're going to be grinning or grimacing. I mean, you know, you got that that that's the range of emotion you've got when someone's standing at a booth. How are you finding a compelling image with that kind of limit?
SPEAKER_02So I don't really focus on uh it's not booth photography per se. I'm looking for people that um maybe have been there and they've partied too hard, uh, they've stayed up too late. The CS show is just sensory overwhelming. It's just overstimulation. So I'm just wandering around looking for an interesting face. At the NAM show, it's very different because it's the music industry and it's the only trade show I've ever gone to where when the doors open at 10, they're serving Bloody Marys. So um, and there's there's a lot of people that are uh very um uh say rock and rollers still from because they're so close to Los Angeles. So there's a lot of people walking around that show that are kind of quirky looking or they're very individualistic. And a lot of times I'll just stop them and say, Hey, I'd like to make an image of you. Do you mind? And they all say yes. Uh and so I get these really interesting kind of facial portraits. Sometimes I'll run and gun if I see some interesting things. Um, but those are the two that are coming up, and then the regata work kind of slows down right now. But um I will be heading off to the British Virgin Islands, I think, in February, for um uh with some photographers to uh photograph on a 150-foot sailing schooner.
SPEAKER_03Um my heart bleeds for you, Tom. Just so you know. Someone's gotta do it, right? Someone's got to, yeah. Well, man, I mean, I'm I'm looking through your stuff here, and you have a way of taking something as over-photographed as the Washing the monuments in Washington, D.C., to vintage wooden boats, too. I mean, you are finding the life in everything you point your lens at. So I gotta ask you, just because of all the adventurous stuff there, but tell me a story. Tell me two stories. One where you know the heavens opened and the perfect picture just sort of was delivered into your lap. And tell me a story where everything just went to hell and it didn't matter what you did.
SPEAKER_02It's funny on the um perfect story, I was out photographing um lasers. Uh, I think it was last year off of Long Beach, California.
SPEAKER_03And just to remind everybody, that's a small sailboat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's about a 14-foot sailboat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We had had uh some rain in Southern California. One of the few times we do, usually I photograph in a bald blue sky, but we had these great storm clouds, and the sun was peeking through, and there was a fleet of these sailboats, and uh, they all have a really very triangular-shaped sail, but the sun was hitting the sails of the sailboats, and the clouds in the back were just pitch black dark. And it was just before it was just gonna unleash, and it's just one of those images. It reminds me of um Ernest Haas did a photograph of some sailboats off of Santa Monica, and it just shows this energy, and so that's kind of my Ernest Haas shot, but it's one of my favorites, and as far as something just not going right, um I was photographing a um large regatta uh off uh the Southern California coast, and it was from um Newport Beach to Ensenada. And um, that one I had a driver, uh and there was about 80 boats, and my job was to go out and document them. I go down, they tell me which boat, go down, and this guy swaggers down on the dock. He's got a bloody Mary in one hand and a margarita in the other. And those weren't his first wing and wing, okay. He was winging winging it, and and he had been wing and winging it. Um so he's like half in the in the in the glass, so to speak, and yeah, um, just going out where we just couldn't get to the right boat at the right time or the right place. And I think I walked away with like maybe 20 images of all these and just one of those things that that happens. But I've also had instances where I've never had a situation that I forgot a memory card or I had a memory card die. But I I I have had a camera die on me. And so um now I carry at least two. Um, but I haven't really had one of those just complete meltdowns. Well, actually, I did, uh now that I remember. I was photographing for a um boat broker, and for those listening, boat brokers are kind of like real estate brokers for boats, and he wanted some drone work. And so I also fly drones. I'm a FAA certified drone pilot. And we were off a town in uh near our home called Laguna Beach in the ocean, and I had the drone up. He had never driven a boat for someone operating a drone before, and his job was to keep the boat in one place. Well, unbeknownst to me, I've got the drone up and he takes a phone call. I'm landing the drone, and the boat drifts and moves, and it's just almost right out of my reach. And I do the thing that I'm sure I'm not the only person that's done this. I reached out and grabbed the drone, nicked the top of my finger, my um uh knuckle, blood everywhere. And um he's he's still on the phone, and I'm like going, Oh, crud, what do I do? And so I I got the drone in the boat off. It's covered in blood. And so I think, well, uh, so I take off my sock um with my uh I had running shoes on, but I they were thoroughly soaked with salt water. So I wrap my finger up in a sock. And um uh we go back in. I call my wife, I said, Are you doing anything? And she goes, No. I said, Would you meet me over at urgent care? And I knew I was gonna catch it from her. So I go in there and and um have it stitched up. But yeah, that was that was the that was the meltdown.
SPEAKER_03And you know, I I I can imagine you are you doing anything? The way the word no can be elongated, are you doing anything? No. Like what's what's coming next? I I know that I know that. I've said it myself too.
SPEAKER_02So um, what I won't do is I've done one wedding, and that was with my niece, and she gave me the puppy dog eyes. And um I I realized I am not a wedding photographer. Yeah, there's just no way people that do wedding photography are absolute saints. I do not know how they do it.
SPEAKER_03I have I have said before, they're my heroes because you have no room for error anywhere in there, uh, at any level.
SPEAKER_02The the stress just winds you up. And and um I did it for her because you know, you the pictures came out great, but um now I always refer that out. I just won't do that.
SPEAKER_03Well, Tom, I gotta admit, I'm a fan. I'm I'm looking at this work, every single bit of it. And and a lot of times I wish I was you. I wish I was there uh on the water or in the volcano or wherever. This is deeply inspiring work. Oh, thank you. Um thank you. I and I have enjoyed this conversation very much.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Well, I I sure appreciate being on your podcast, Scott. And if you ever wind up in Southern California or you think you are, let me know. I'll be happy to get you out on the water and uh you can uh have your own shot at it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, it's a date.readframes.com