Proof

Proof exists that if you have a vision, determination and a desire to help, you can change the lives of many. The Anurag Society, based in Lado Sarai, Delhi, started out many years ago as a place to give poor (see vulnerable) young women a basic education. What was unique about this school at the time was that it offered the girls vocational training as well – to be tailors. Almost three decades later the school has grown from a room that could accommodate only 30 people, to a middle and high school, a vocational training college and a pillar of transforming lives of the community through education. Some of its alumni are now at university and a few even teach at the school to help pay for their studies. Its an amazing place, full of that quiet commitment and unwavering conviction to do the right thing. My teacher colleagues in the U.K. and U.S. would be both inspired and appalled by the facilities and resources; we went to deliver a donation so they might install concrete blackboards on their walls because they would last so much longer - a far cry rom Smartboards and iPads. Such an inspiring place. Please support them if you are able.

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Street

I have not had much opportunity to wander Delhi as a street photographer yet. The iPhone and its omnipresent camera provide much of that view and those images are fun and form my primary wake as I sail through this incredible city attending to the day-to-day challenges of everyday life here. My NGO work is beginning which has been incredible for me, but life on the street is a project still in the making. I am reminded of the quote I have over on The India Journals.  “YOU CAN GO SIT ON A STREET CORNER FOR AN HOUR, GO HOME AND THINK ABOUT IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.” – Andrew Evans.

This is an almost indescribable country. My powers of vocabulary are limited. The country is breathtaking.

For good and for bad, you cannot adequately describe India. I need to let the camera do the talking.

Here are some extra photographs taken and developed on a mobile phone and posted on The India Journals.

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New Direction

It is said that in abundance we can get lazy but scarcity breeds innovation. This might well be true. I was happy photographing anything that came at me back in the U.S. and in a short period had a promising business under my belt. I focused on weddings in part because they are varied and exciting, as well as being pretty demanding – which I welcome. I had great plans, schemed big ideas and began to lay a wide net to catch as much business as I could. I wouldn’t say that I was becoming lazy – far from it – but I certainly sought abundance.

Just as things were taking off, my wife got a job here in India. It was a great opportunity for her to employ her considerable ability to some big issues. It has proven so far to be the right decision. Of course, it severed my business mid-flow long before we even arrived here and I have to admit that I have struggled to know how to take my photography forward. Were do I go from here? How can the business re-start once I get a work visa? Weddings and events in the U.S. self-defined me as a photographer and this mask, this identity, was just assumed and never questioned. Once settled here in India I quickly realised that I had never stopped to think deeply about my work, and what it means to me to be a photographer. I just set about growing the business in a way that would ultimately make me as much money as possible. Who am I as a photographer? What is the point of my business? I did not ask these questions of myself until quite recently.

I’ve had some time to reflect and figure out the type of work I wish I was out there doing right now, to think about what I really want to do with the camera. Weddings may be creatively and technically ablaze with photographic challenges, and they are fun; I want to continue shooting weddings, but perhaps in a more focused and selective manner. My past, though, is rooted not in the commercial world but in the public sector , especially education; I’ll continue to teach my classes, workshops and offer my photo-walks and seminars to bring the joy of photography to others. Most recently and for the longest period of time, I have worked with schools that work on the margins of cities to catch those who would fall through the gaps. Improving communities one person, one child, one house, one small group at a time. I asked myself, why am I not bringing my camera to this?

So I did, and here I am, in Delhi, suddenly happy that I cannot work, freed from the daily planning of elaborate marketing plans – which will return but now I understand, for a different cause – and able to volunteer my camera to help change the lives of people. However small my impact, I want my lens to have one. The classical music maestro, Gustavo Dudamel said recently in an interview with The Economist Intelligent Life magazine, that he believed that art can transform lives. I agree. Many things can transform lives and they all begin with making what you do, what you love, accessable and helpful to others. With this in mind I joined the American Welfare Association and their Outreach Committee.

My first meeting with the group was inspiring to say the least, and I was excited to go out with them on a site visit. Nervous too. We visited Nia Disha, a learning centre that helps kids who have fallen out of school. They feed them (perhaps their only meal of the day), tutor them, get them back up to grade level, inspire them to want to stay on in school and to value education, and then place them back into the city school system. This last point is of course a bittersweet moment, and often the kids return of their own accord to have extra lessons – which in itself is another sign of the school’s success. Changing the community through education is one of the most far reaching, sustainable and impactive ways of improving the world. I’ve seen it work in three countries now.

This post has been too long. But it is the first post proper of my own nia disha, of taking my camera and ultimately my business in this new direction. Innovating in my own scarcity, inspired by those who achieve so much with theirs.

Please support them if you can.

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This one works for photographers as well.

The previous post did not mention the creative imperative at all. It should have. When you’re not working it feels like you are locked in a cell in plain sight of freedom. Bukoswski had it down, though, when he wrote about it in the context of his poetry writing. The poem made me realise that it is the being (professionally) still part that is driving me insane, but I have not really stopped at all. The India Journals and the family photos keep coming, and so does a small but growing body of ‘real’ photographs of India. The sun burns in my gut. I just have to get out more.

so you want to be a writer?

by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

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Which Way from Here?

Photography for me has alway been a continuously evolving pursuit. Like most photographers it begins by discovering the joy of making pictures that look good. That’s the bedrock. It made me happy. Then something magical happens – one day you find yourself photographing someone or something for someone, and your image makes them happy too. This takes it to a whole new level and is a wonderful feeling. You start making photos for other people and they are all happy, and the feeling inside you just gets warmer. All the time your technical skills grow and the happiness cycle keeps heading upward.

At some point someone is going to voice what you have been secretly fantasizing about – that you should sell your work, that you should turn pro, that you could turn pro. In my case it took a few years for me to make that leap, but once I did I knew I had been working toward that moment all my life: I had arrived at the place I needed to be – rather later in life than most, but better later than never. But then nerves and anxiety creep in and the business requires you serve your calling in a different way and soon you  are immersed in worrying about client needs and reactions, as well as paying the bills. You start to take on some work you have to do but wish you didn’t. That’s ok, I reasoned,  I’m not collecting garbage, I’m still making photos, and I’m learning and growing all the time. It was a fantastic feeling.

For me everything changed when I had to give up my business to come here to India. It has cut me adrift from my work and that magical place of image capture and growth; I’m not making anyone happy. The camera is barely used. I’m busier than ever with childcare, overwhelmed by the nitty gritty of the day-to-day running of the house. India has a special way of sucking the time from the day and making things more difficult than they used to be. There are too few photos and many more demands of my time.

I guess I’m here at the keyboard trying to figure out where the photographer is today and how I can get back to that place of personal actualisation. The India Journals continue to sustain me: it’s great and creative and a lot of fun, but it’s not the so-called serious work I crave. More patience is required. This is evolution after all. I’ve only just got here. Rilke said:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

I’m not there yet.

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The Children

Tristan’s first birthday.

Tristan’s first birthday is a milestone for him and also for us all. We’re settling into our new lives here in India at the beginning of this lasting international phase of our lives – at least for my wife and the children. I have been a third culture person for some time now. These photos represent a moment in time when as a family we took a leap.

Touched down and settling in

We have landed and moved on into our lives here and are beginning to settle in. The old cliche about India being the land of every conceivable absolute contrast seems to be accurate. We are tired but immensely happy to be here and have been touched by the warmth and generosity of everyone we have met.

Given that the children and the mechanics of the relocation take precedence my photography has taken a hit, of sorts, but it has also moved in another parallel direction. The real photography, the art, the weddings, the new plans for fusion and video work, the portraiture and the pro gear have not broken out yet. It just cannot do it. If I am looking at a subject through the viewfinder then I am not looking at the children; if I am packing my gear then I am not moving house and home to a new world.

But I do have my iPhone 4s on me at all times, and I have my iPad on my lap during the evenings. So I have decided to keep a blog purely of photos taken and edited on an iOS device using only apps available to those devices. I’m hosting it here: The India Journals Tumblr seems to be the most appropriate place. Favorite apps at the moment are Snapseed and to a lesser extent (mostly for its frames) Camera Awesome (which is not really a fair word to describe it). Camera+ is genuinely awesome for its cost, especially on the iPad.

Is there a word for this? iOSgraphy? iPhoneography? Whatever it is, that is what the blog is all about. I’m going to have fun with filters, FX and gimmicks that have no place on this blog or in my professional work but are immensely fun and rewarding to play with.

The big camera will bust out of its dust proof bag soon enough, and the big computer will arrive with its RAM and software suites, and this blog and my website will grow with a more considered product.
The India Journals will be there for the dailies, and I am super excited to see how far it can travel, how creative and interesting it will turn out. It will be quite an adventure!

And now for something a little different…..

I am very sad to announce that I am leaving Colorado. I have enjoyed photographing its people and environment and shall miss it when I am gone. For gone I am about to be – away to the subcontinent of India for a wholly different kind of adventure.  My wife has been recruited by the Asian Development Bank to work in their India Mission. This is a great opportunity for her and it goes without saying the work she will be doing is important work that will change and affect the lives of many people living in poverty. I’m excited to live in the challenging cosmos that is modern India, the kingdom of contrasts. This blog and my website will reflect this change in my life and photography. I will (extrememly sadly) be unable to operate my business from Delhi, but I will not stop making pictures for myself and for people who want them.  What is most satisfying to me, in this last season of Colorado, is how my art and craft has grown and prospered technically, creatively and economically in the time I have lived in this incredible State. Now the pictures will need to adapt and allow themselves to be influenced by our new life on the subcontinent. India, the cliche goes, is a land of contrasts – but never more so in the super contrasty colors spasled over its clothes, arts and photography. I still need to work out how I’m going to tell my story, our story, but I will. It will be too rich an experience not to document.

Of course, we are not going blind – my wife has been recruited to this position for her expertise on India and I have visited Delhi, Jiapur and Chennai before. I’ll start posting a few of those images to get the juices flowing and to splash the color and amazingness of this new palette of mine.

Wow Indeed.

Hidden under the cottonwoods

Wow – I loved the location of this wedding. It is a cross between Dorothy’s farm in Kansas and the last soft home before the mountains. It was like a poem, set in gorgeous dry baked plains country. My wife would disagree, but I could have moved to this farm and grown old enough to lay down and look eternal at those high Rocky Mountains and those open and desolate praries (yes, they’d have to bury me north to south, but that would work). It was pretty. The soft light under lee of the mountains as the sun set over the divide made the dreamy food (to be honest, at some weddings the food is rather blah, but not at Lauren & Scott’s wedding. Lauren is after all a nutritionalist and the food was the best I’ve eaten all year, anywhere) and homespun ranch a bit of a photographer’s dream.

For this wedding I was seconding so I didn’t know Lauren & Scott at all. I hear other photographers complain about second shooting, but I love it. I second for Dennis Schroeder and so it’s fun and I learn a lot. This was also my final wedding in Colorado, and it was fitting that the people, setting, weather, food and atmosphere should come together today, for this was a true Colorado wedding and whole-heartedly American, so it was bitter-sweet that it was my last wedding here. Now I am preparing to away to India and the great dsyporia of Delhi. The next wedding will look a tad different.

You can see more over on my website, here

The Sands of Time

And so the wedding season draws to a close. I shot Amy & Kolton’s wedding at the Boettcher Mansion in early September. We got the gamut of Colorado’s weather – rain, ground shaking thunder and lightning, brilliant sunshine and a cool clear evening – but this couldn’t dampen the spirits of a close and wonderful family and community of friends. Head over to the my website for more pictures from this extremely happy day. The thing that touched me the most was when Amy & Kolton poured black & white sand into an hourglass; once a year on their anniversary they will turn the glass upside down again and the sand will start falling through another year of their marriage. In time the different colored sand will mix together and the two colors will become one. I love that.

There’s more photos here at markcowlin.com