“So you want to be a photographer. Swell. But may I suggest a little homework first. Buying a Nikon and a roll of Kodachrome really doesn’t make you a photographer, regardless of what the clerk on the other side of the counter says.  Just like buying groceries doesn’t make you a chef.” – Al Weber

The stories and the lessons I wrote about in my book, Four & Twenty Photographs: Stories from Behind the Lens continue to swirl in my mind, many shared at our first workshop at Eloquent Light Photography Workshops.  A dentist from Seattle, a mortgage broker from Dallas, a retired Lieutenant-Colonel all converged in Santa Fe for a week of making photographs, exploring the light, trading techniques about Adobe Photoshop and trying to figure out just what makes a photograph great.  Regretfully a fellow from New Jersey was unable to make it at the last minute.

I love our new workshops at Eloquent Light.  We offer small groups with lots and lots of individual attention.  How some programs can offer a workshop for 14 people is beyond me.  Our students come away inspired with lots of great images for their effort.  It’s an amazing thing to see students progress throughout the week.  And because there are less folks in our workshops, a lot more learning takes place.  The workshop becomes individualized, with personal concerns about photography being more easily and readily addressed. Students come away with more and the instructor has a greater sense of having done the job well.  It is truly a win/win situation.

I have been teaching photography now for over 20 years which is why in part I decided to write Four & Twenty Photographs: Stories from Behind the Lens.  It gave me an opportunity to share, not only the stories that took place that lead up to a particular image (what the light was doing, what the exposure concerns were, etc.), it allowed me to share many of the lessons that I have learned over the last 35 years that have truly and sometimes powerfully influenced my work.  I’m not saying the lessons I have learned will work for everyone, but as the photographer Al Weber writes in his excellent book, Advice for Photographers: The Next Step.

“Given the average lifespan, we need to waste as little time as possible. If someone has done groundwork, and it is applicable, use it. Save time. Save energy. I love those little hermit crabs at the seashore that take up housekeeping in abandoned shells. They have been doing it for a long time, generation to generation. It obviously works.”

With this in mind, I present another excerpt from Four & Twenty Photographs titled “Moonrise Over Penitente Morada, Dusk, Late Autumn, New Mexico 1991.”

© Craig Varjabedian

 
Sometimes, to find a photograph (or for a photograph to find me), I get in my truck and drive. I follow the light and wait to see where it will take me. That’s how I found Cañoncito at Apache Canyon and that’s how I found this morada. [Note: A morada is a chapter meeting house of a lay penitential Catholic organization known as La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno or the Penitente Brotherhood.]

On a wintry day in April, I was driving into a small village north of Santa Fe. The road wound up and around a cluster of houses and brought me to the top of a hill overlooking the village and its fields. There I saw a building that I later learned was a Penitente morada. It was a large, simple, solid edifice, emitting a power and a presence. Three crosses stood beside it. A bell topped the roof, exposed to the elements. I sat quietly and let the stillness absorb me. I fell into a meditative state in which emotion seemed to take over perception.

The light and the sky were spectacular. Swirling clouds sometimes obscured the setting sun. Snow began to fall, stinging my face. The sun emerged from below the clouds; the light illuminated the snow shower so that it looked like millions of tiny shooting stars. The stars heralded night, and the symbol of the night, the moon, rose even as the sun was setting.

Spellbound, I watched the moon rise over the chapel. I followed its path with my eyes, its light flickering through the pockets of clear sky. And then, for an instant, time froze. The hills on either side of the morada, the three crosses beside it, the bell, and the ridge of clouds on the horizon were illuminated. The moon shimmered, a beacon in the sky, directly above the chapel. But the source of illumination seemed to me not the setting sun or the rising moon but the morada itself. I saw, in the midst of shapes and textures, a building glowing with its own inner source. This light gave warmth and peace, despite the cold and gusts of wind.

Afterward, when the light had disappeared, I walked away knowing that I needed to make a photograph that would allow me to share the depth and stark simplicity of this experience. But to do so, I had to be ready. I began to prepare. Starting in April 1991, I visited this morada monthly on the night of the full moon. I made diagrams showing where on the horizon the moon appeared and began its ascent. I noted the time when the moon was directly above the bell.



The building faces due east, the three crosses to its right, and is balanced between the slopes of the two anchoring hills. I wanted to make a photograph of the scene when the moon was directly over the bell, creating a tension between the two. My wife Kathy, Cindy Lane, and I searched astronomical charts for a time when the moon would rise sufficiently into the sky but when enough daylight was left to illuminate the landscape. We spent months charting and researching, consulting several sources for moonrise times because the point on the horizon from which the moonrise changes. The right conditions, we found, converged on only a couple of days each year.

While researching astronomical conditions, I also made exposure and development tests on various films and tried different photographic filters to determine the effect I wanted to achieve. I wanted to make a photograph that was consonant with what I had seen and felt the first evening I had been there.

I eventually figured out the right day and time to make the photograph: the twenty-first of November, at just about 5:00 P.M. The moon was almost full. I arrived at the site early. Around 4:00 P.M. I set up my camera. I had previously figured out all the exposure calculations, the appropriate filter, and where to place the camera. I stood waiting, along with Cindy and Kathy.

At first the sky was a clear pale blue. Then, as the moon began to rise, a thin veil of clouds started to move across the sky. These weren’t the dramatic clouds of that first visit but an obscuring haze. I watched it cover the horizon and thought, “Oh no, there goes my photograph.” I watched the moon move through the mist, vague and veiled. Finally it reached the height at which I had seen it that April night.

And just then it escaped the fingers of cloud into the clear sky. Poised over the morada, the moon seemed to answer the clarion call of the bell with it own sudden, remarkable clarity. I had thirty seconds to make the photograph before the moon moved out of position.

Now, because this is New Mexico, fifteen of those seconds were taken up in shooing away the two black Labrador retriever puppies who decided to join us and were romping through scene. Kathy and Cindy chased them, caught them, held them, and shouted, “Clear!” The moon stayed above the clouds, and I made the photograph. I yelled, “We’ve got it!” It was a wonderful release—we all applauded and cheered.

We drove home to Santa Fe with much anticipation. Once there, Cindy and I immediately went into the darkroom and developed the film. We looked at the negatives and smiled. All the calculations and hard work had paid off. If they hadn’t, we would have had to wait months to try again.

All the planning in the world can make for a wonderful photograph. And all the planning in the world can be useless when nature (or puppies) behaves independently of the photographer’s desires. This photograph was a gift. I planned for it long and thoroughly, but in the end I received a gift when the moon rose above the clouds and revealed a moment of serenity and joy.



Four & Twenty Photographs: Stories from Behind the Lens is available from your local bookstore and at Amazon.com. Autographed copies are available from the photographer’s studio at fourandtwentybook.com

LIGHT NOTES
A lot of photographic information comes into my studio.  I have decided to regularly add this short section of notes to my column to share a few of these gems.



1.  Al Weber’s little book with a big heart, Advice for Photographers: The Next Step is a real gem and a must have. Based on decades of teaching, Weber has collected and organized ideas and suggestions to aid those who would be photographers. A 72-page field manual, measuring 6'' x 4'', it will easily slip into your vest or camera bag.

Craft is ignored, but is assumed, as Weber hits on topics which have frequently hindered those attempting to practice the creative process: Time Management for the Self Employed, Dealing with Growth and Change, The Dilemma of Influence, Business Tactics for the Artist, The Power of Thought, Choosing Directions, Establishing a Plan, Overcoming Inertia, Common Obstacles and Demons, Exhibiting Work, The Tools, Teachers and Learning... for openers. There's more, much more. The chapters are brief, a page at most, similar to what folks say is Weber's own attention span. If you would like to order a copy, simply send $12.00 - cash or check only - ($2.00 S&H) to: Al Weber,
145 Boyd Way, 
Carmel, CA 93923.

I asked Al to autograph mine with any additional wisdom he might have for someone who is not quite as far along the photographic path as he is. He wrote, “To Craig, Watch out for the rattlers on the path. -Al Weber” How true.



2. Photography workshops at Eloquent Light are filling briskly even before our printed catalogue has been delivered. You can download a copy of our catalogue or sign up to receive one by mail on our web site at www.eloquentlight.com  In either case, if you are interested in joining us for a workshop that just might change your life, I invite you to contact us soon while there are still some spaces left.



3. One of our students, Dr. Bob, a dentist from Seattle, turned us on to the amazing Russell Brown’s web site, The Russell Brown Show. As Sr. Creative Director at Adobe Systems Inc., Russell Preston Brown maintains a vital presence in the digital design and publishing community, facilitating the exchange between the user and software developer that is so essential to Adobe's software development. With complete mastery and breathtaking style, Brown shows users how to work—and play—with Adobe software. He has given the world's leading photographers, publishers, art directors, and artists a strong grasp of the software tools that, by virtually all accounts, have led to Adobe's applications becoming the standard by which others are measured. Russell believes that "Learning about Adobe Photoshop should never be boring." Check out Russell Brown’s wacky web site at www.russellbrown.com

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ABOUT
Photographer Craig Varjabedian is widely acclaimed for his images that embrace the people and places of New Mexico and the American West. While Craig’s photographic career has spanned over thirty-five years and encompasses a deep grasp of the technical aspects of the photographic process, his gift is his intuitive ability to make authentic and compelling images full of light and life. A photographer and author of six books, Varjabedian received his Master’s degree in Photography from the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology and was formerly the director of the well-known New Mexico Photography Field School. Craig now offers hands-on photography workshops at the Eloquent Light Photography Workshops in Santa Fe.  His most recent book is the award-winning Four & Twenty Photographs: Stories from Behind the Lens, a collection of his best-known photographs and the stories behind them.

See Craig’s photographs at www.craigvarjabedian.com
Explore exceptional workshops at www.eloquentlight.com
View selections from his new book at www.fourandtwentybook.com

Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.