In August our routine was to get up around 5am and to be in place with the cowboys at first light. We basically tried to shoot and illustrate various things the cowboys were doing. Working with the horse, herding the cows, etc. We would shoot until about 10am as it gets very hot in the middle of the day. The cowboys don’t do much outdoor work during the heat of the day. During lunch we would download cards or review images. At 3pm we were back out with the cowboys for that late afternoon sun.

It was a breath of fresh air to get out and make this kind of storytelling imagery again. It reminded me of the things I loved about journalism and why I stayed in journalism for so long. I felt like I had found my roots again and re-awakened a deep passion inside me. I loved every minute of it.

The trip has reinforced in my mind how important personal project are to photographers and other creative people. There has to be a certain amount of work to pay the bills, but you have to find some time to keep the creative fire burning inside. I always knew it was important to do personal projects, I just never found the time to fit them in. I had sort of reached that point in my life where I worked to live, not live to work. I had stopped looking for projects like this. I’m so glad that Duda connected me with Izan and we have been able to spend this time working on this project.

As a result I have taken a new energy and creativity into my weekly wedding work. It’s very easy to fall into a rut in anything you do. I don’t think I had reached that point in my wedding photography but I could feel that I needed a new creative challenge. I think that I did some of my best wedding work ever this past fall, much as a result of my experiences and creative recharging in Brazil. In fact, one wedding in particular is one of the best I’ve ever done. It was for photographer Justine Ungaro. We’ve put up some pictures from this wedding on our blog along with a slideshow. You can also see more of my images from The Pantanal here, here, and here.

The other side is that you can always learn from other photographers. I’m 46 years-old and I have had a very diverse and successful career. However I still keep my eyes open for new approaches and ideas. I learned a lot from working with Izan. He has a very different way of seeing. He is very aware of color and texture. His images are often very abstract and artsy. It is a very different approach from much of the straight-forward documentary photography I have been accustomed to. It was a refreshing viewpoint to see, and I have tried to integrate some of the things I learned from Izan into my own work.

On the flip side, I think Izan learned a lot from me also. I think he found a new appreciation for fast lenses and shallow depth of field. I also reintroduced him to black-and-white imagery…so much so that he changed the focus of a book he was working to an all black-and-white presentation.

As a result of my experience in Brazil I am doing a two-day road trip after WPPI with Australian photographer Marcus Bell and U.S. photographers Parker Pfister and Joe Photo. There is no agenda. Just hit the road and photograph whatever we come across.

I was connected with Izan Petterle through Duda Escobar, the show manager for PhotoImage Brazil and the reason I’d come to Brazil in the first place. She invited me down to give the keynote address on wedding photography.

During the planning she asked if I would be interested in teaching a post-convention workshop with Izan in a Brazilian wilderness area called The Pantanal. I didn’t know anything about Izan and was a little nervous about jumping into something unfamiliar in such a remote area. I was also concerned about leaving my business for almost three weeks in August. Initially I declined.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided it was a great opportunity to get out and see a very remote part of a beautiful country. And after speaking to Izan I was completely at ease. Izan has been doing PhotoExpeditions for years and he is a wonderful, kind person. We decided to proceed with a PhotoExpedition after the PhotoImage Brazil conference.

Because I was so late agreeing to do the expedition, there was precious little time to promote the workshop. The day I left for Brazil, no one had signed up yet. Izan and I almost canceled the trip, but he kept assuring me that Brazilians are spur-of-the-moment people. He felt certain we would get some students.

In the end we decided to do the trip with or without students; it was a great chance for both of us to stretch our creative legs a bit. Since leaving journalism in 2000 I have mostly photographed women in white dresses each Saturday, and it was time to do something new. Sure enough we ended up with three students, all of whom signed up just a day or two before the start of the expedition!

Izan had a loose idea about going to some ranches and photographing the cowboys at work. It turns out that the owner of the first lodge we stayed at, André Thuronyi, is also the marketing director for the local cattleman’s association. André had a short-term idea of producing a calendar for the cattleman’s association but a longer-term goal of producing a book documenting the Panteneiro cowboys, their horses, and the land. The Pantanal is a unique farming area, a wetlands where the grazing areas are under four feet of water for a good portion of the year. Much of the cowboys’ work is done in the water, which, by the way, is filled with caiman (the Brazilian version of crocodiles), snakes, and other critters.

Like farm and ranch life in the United States, this is a very traditional way of life that is fading as more money and technology come into the area. André wanted to see this life preserved, at least in documentary form. He asked Izan and I if we would be interested in producing images for a book and calendar. We told André we were interested and were willing to do some exploratory research if he could hook us up with some ranchers and farms. He connected us with several great places to photograph.

On that first expedition, we made a ton of great pictures in just four short days. Needless to say we found out there would be plenty of material for a book project. Izan and I did a second PhotoExpedition in November, and I actually went a week early to spend some time photographing the cowboys in the Pantanal before we brought our students along.

André felt that the cowboys, the horses, and the water all connected spiritually. It is also important to us to capture the change of seasons, which has a big effect on the landscape. When we were there in August it was the dry season. Although it was dusty and brown, we had wonderful light to work with. Every day there was a beautiful sunrise or sunset with the most crisp, colorful light you can image.

In November, it was the start of the rainy season so the area was much greener, but the colors were more muted since there were low-lying clouds on the horizon every morning and afternoon. Without that crisp light from before, I think the pictures from the second time around have a more intimate and personal feel to them. We did more behind the scenes types of pictures and got to see more of how the cowboys live off the horses. You can see more of my images from The Pantanal here, here, and here.

We are planning to go back in April/May. That will be the wet season when all the farms are underwater. I hear that is a spectacular time in the Pantanal, and I’m looking forward to seeing it and documenting it.