Heavy cameras and hot chocolate

john klearman

My grandfather, Sid Dubinsky, was my family's photo archivist. And he played an important role in spurring my interest in photography. When I was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri it was rare to see him without a camera. He loved taking pictures. My grandfather took over 20,000 photos of family. That was an expensive endeavor in the day of film! He enjoyed fiddling with the equipment. He loved working in his darkroom. And he understood the importance of photography. He understood that making a photo of a moment in time created a unique artifact.

Photography is important. Photos allow us to look at and think about family members - to reminisce about the joy of a special occasion. The artifacts of photography can also help us heal from traumatic events. For doctors, photography's artifacts save lives.  

John Muir and Ansel Adams used landscape photography to convey important messages about the management and preservation of our wilderness.

Ansel Adams characterized wilderness as “a mystique: a valid, intangible, non-materialistic experience.”

A beautiful landscape makes me curious. I wonder how the mountains and cliffs and millions of trees got "there." I wonder what it might take to hike into it - to experience it in its full grandeur. I wonder if I'll encounter a wild animal if I march into that unknown!  I wonder where the sun will set and how the light will reflect. I wonder what color the land will be during that day's "golden hour." I wonder where I should stand to see it in a unique way - and in a way that I can share with others.

I love recording all of this for us. That's why I go out into nature, as frequently as I can, and take images of the mystique.

When I was a late teen Grandpa Sid gave me two Zenza Bronica medium format cameras. It was through the viewfinders of those cameras that I started thinking about looking at our world in the context of a frame, a perspective, a view - with special mindfulness of the conditions that created that view. I realized how much looking through a viewfinder slowed my mind and gave me the capacity to more deeply observe my surroundings.  I was in the moment.  I dragged those heavy cameras down into the bowels of the Grand Canyon thirty five years ago, down the Grandview Trail before there was a parking lot at its entrance, with the intent of walking forty miles and recording with awe and reverence everything I was witnessing. Limited water and food and experience made that intended hike much shorter. I was enthusiastic though, still alive after the experience, and I did get my first two "real" landscape images that I sold in a gallery in Reno, Nevada in the late '80's. I shot those images after fueling up with raw powdered hot chocolate - my only remaining food.

After a little success in my early career I chose to really get into photography! I decided to buy a retail photography store in Southern California. It was a cool place, with thousands of artists walking through, each expressing their own personal bent on why photography was important to them. Each had their vision and opinion of what made a great photo. I opened a Gallery in one corner of the store and we hosted world class photographers presenting their wares. I got to meet thousands of enthusiasts and professionals alike - some of the most recognized photographers in the world. Each brought their perspective. Frequently as it related to a photographic aesthetic, those perspectives differed - sometimes quite dramatically. After that experience I felt more strongly that if a photo engages you and makes you happy that is really all that matters.  

My primary goal in my own photography is to convey a sense of grandeur and reverence - through perspective, texture, contrast, color, and all the other tools in the photographer's toolbox. But Nature is the real image maker.  I just spectate and record.