livebooks blog

Check out the rest of this series from Chris Linder, who went from writing grants as an oceanographer to getting NSF grants to visually document scientists. His insights range from grant writing to this post about packing for the extreme conditions of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Also, you can register now for Chris’s upcoming webinar live from the Bering Sea.

As Chris explains, this is why he uses hard cases for his gear. Photo by Chris Linder, WHOI

The simple answer to the question, “How much gear do you take?” is, “As much as I am allowed.” Each expedition has presented a different sort of logistical challenge. For a ship-based expedition, like the trip aboard the Swedish icebreaking ship Oden, there was really no limitation to what I could bring. A 400-foot-long icebreaker is like a small floating city, and typically you can walk your gear right onto the ship.

For other trips, like shooting in remote Antarctic field camps, I was severely weight-limited. Everyone traveling to McMurdo Station (the largest U.S. base on Antarctica) is allowed only 85 pounds of personal luggage on the C-5 flight from Christchurch to McMurdo (not including carry-on). When you factor in the heavy weight of parkas, cold-weather gear, and boots, there isn’t much room left for photography equipment. So for that trip I loaded my heaviest gear into a small carry-on backpack and packed the rest of the lenses, tripod, and accessories into socks, long underwear, and parkas, and stuffed them into a combination of hard and soft cases.

Generally, while traveling I carry a small backpack with essential camera gear plus two hard-plastic Pelican cases—one for laptops, chargers, and hard drives, and the other for extra photography and communications equipment. Often the cases will be sitting out in the rain or snow for hours at a time in transit, so waterproof hard cases are essential. On a typical expedition, I will bring:

• MacBook Pro for photo editing
• Dell laptop for Iridium satellite data communication (if necessary)
• two 320GB Lacie rugged hard drives for photo storage
• assortment of cables and chargers
• two Nikon camera bodies (D2Xs and D300)
• assortment of lenses (10.5mm, 12-24mm, 17-55mm, 70-200mm, 105mm macro, 300mm)
• accessories (1.4x teleconverter, strobe, gels)
• communications equipment (Iridium satellite phone or BGAN Inmarsat, data modem, chargers)
• carbon-fiber tripod and heavy-duty ballhead
• small collapsible reflector/diffuser

On location, I prefer to work out of a waist-belt system made by ThinkTank. I carry one body with two lenses in a Digi Holster 50 and the rest in lens cases strapped to a heavy-duty waist belt. This system allows me to quickly swap lenses without slowing down, while also preserving my spine. Since 99% of my photographs are not posed, being ready to grab a shot at a moment’s notice is critical.

Be Part of the RESOLUTION: What’s was the hardest lesson you ever learned about packing or traveling with gear?

A father with his young daughters at the Hadj pilgrimage. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: Maybe we can talk about a couple of the images. I’m looking at number 6. There’s a father taking a picture of his daughters with a little camera.

NT: That picture was taken around 2am. At night many people are sleeping, resting from the long day. But it’s also less busy so some people take the opportunity to visit the Grand Mosque when the crowds have left. While wandering through the corridors of the Mosque, I met this family. The father was with his four daughters who were dressed up in Hajj dresses, and I thought they were so cute. The father was so excited to be there, sharing the moment with the family. When he started taking pictures of the girls, I thought this was a nice moment to capture. Generally Muslims are too often portrayed as large groups, not individuals. The picture of a father being happy with his children hopefully shows that there is fun and happiness out there.

MJ: I haven’t seen a lot of pictures of families there; usually the images are of crowds. There was another one in a hospital. I thought that was interesting because usually pictures of Hajj are outside with beautiful buildings.

Pilgrims inside a hospital during Hajj. © Newsha Tavakolian

NT: Hajj is expensive. To go there and come back you need at least five thousand dollars. Because when you go on the pilgrimage, you have to return with gifts for all your family members. There are cost for hotels and transportation. People from countries like Yemen or Bangladesh spend so much money to buy tickets to get to Saudi Arabia and Mecca that they want to stay a long time. They don’t want to just go there for 4 days; some people who go there stay for one month. So it’s an expensive trip. Not many young people can afford to go there. Many people who go are old and have saved up for a large part of their lives to do the pilgrimage.

Some even pass away while they are there. I saw over 20 dead people on the street, wrapped up in white sheets. They died because they were too old, from heat, from pressure. This gave me the idea to spend one day only in the hospital and take pictures. Also National Geographic magazine supported me on this trip and they had asked for behind-the-scenes images of the pilgrimage.

I also want to point out that many Muslims want to go to Hajj, but the Saudi government cannot handle all of them, especially because Mecca is a small town. The authorities say they cannot deal with more than 2 million people, and point at disasters in the past in which pilgrims died in stampedes or giant fires in the tent camps. So you have to apply to come to Mecca during the Hajj. Your country has to submit your name, and you wait until it’s your turn. For example, if I were to submit my name as a pilgrim, it would take 17 or 18 years until I could go. As a photographer, different rules apply.

Newsha's Hajj dress hanging in her Tehran apartment. © Newsha Tavakolian

MJ: Maybe we can talk about the last photo, of your white dress hanging up in the window. It’s really poetic. I wonder if you have any special feeling about it.

NT: One of the special things about Hajj is the dress. Everybody wears the same dress, all in white. That is quite impressive. The idea is that everyone is the same in front of god, it doesn’t matter where you came from or if you’re poor, rich, black, white, or yellow, you all look the same in the same dress. That was why I took the opening picture of my ironing board and the Hajj dress; the clothes were the main symbol of the pilgrimage before I started the trip. When I returned, I hung the dress at the window, as a souvenir. The next evening, when I walked into my workroom, the image suddenly struck me and I knew that the dress pictures would be my opening and ending shots.

Before I went to Hajj, I decided to mix my work with the intimacy of my personal trip there. Since I work with Polaris news agency, most of my work has been straight photojournalism. Being a photojournalist in Iran, where I work and live, poses certain challenges, so I am now focusing on documentary series, which I really enjoy.

Non-Muslims cannot enter Mecca, so I decided that I wanted to show the pilgrimage like the journey that it is, close to the people, seen through their eyes. I hope my images give people a realistic idea of what it is like to be there.

A local woman at the Amber Fort in Jaipur poses for money. "Such a bummer," Ed says. "It reminds me of how the world has become spoiled." ©Ed Kashi

1/6/09

What strikes me about being in India is the growing gap between village and city life. City life is dirtier and more chaotic. People are drowning in their own excrement and sullied air. The calm of silence is hard to find, and the constant blaring of horns and the sounds of a civilization on it’s out-of-control march towards modernization leave me questioning the future of mankind.

Rural life is simpler, often set in magnificent landscapes and rich environments, yet impossibly poor by first-world standards. There are too many children, not enough education and health care, and a toughness to daily life that leaves me feeling as uncertain about the fate of man as the city does. If India represents the future of human civilization, an emerging economic superpower, I fear mankind is doomed on this earth. The common denominator between this imbalance and the one I’ve witnessed so graphically in the Niger Delta is a clear lack of sustainability. The more I travel the world with my peering eye and my questioning mind, accruing a privileged wealth of firsthand knowledge, this lack of sustainability is my overwhelming impression.

A Hindu god immersed in rose petaled water. ©Ed Kashi

From my upper-middle-class-but-progressive New Jersery neighborhood to the oil-spoiled countries of Africa and the Middle East, to the overpopulated India and China, to the dirt poor communities across the globe, particularly in the southern hemispheres, we have created an international human community that is in imbalance and cannot possibly sustain itself from the point of view of resources, pollution, overpopulation, and the associated social, economic, and environmental strains. Unless we change our ways fast, failure seems to be the only outcome. Maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually.

These thoughts leave me less than sanguine about life, yet on a daily basis I also witness the spirit of human ingenuity, the life-sustaining power of people’s survival instincts and the glimpses of solutions, both on a small community level and at a global level as practiced by the most progressive corporations and institutions. Take for instance an initiative we learned about, which preserved and developed medicinal plants and herbs native to this Rajasthani community. They have created a nature preserve dedicated to this cause, thereby providing income for the community. While being a photojournalist can be damaging to one’s sense of hope and drive you into a deep hole of despair, there are also uplifting moments and glimpses into how people survive and help one another. It’s this constant cycle of destruction and renewal, part of the life cycle, which I get to witness on a constant basis through the privilege of my roving observations.

Students on assignment at the National Geographic Photo Camp in Rajasthan, India. ©Ed Kashi

Every National Geographic Photo Camp I’ve worked on has impressed these notions upon me, and as I get older, the need to receive and give nourishment and cross pollination becomes essential. Being in this rural community in Rajasthan makes me wonder if the future of sustainability, or at least any hopes of survival, will come from the simple, centuries-old agrarian lives people here live. They are not greedy, they live within their means, eat fresh food and all seem to have one need. Yes they could use surer, cleaner sources of water, more reliable electricity, stronger houses, much better education and health care….all the extraordinarily important elements of a healthy life. But at least they live within their means while the developed world lives far outside of theirs, relying on a structure that is unfair, destructive to the earth’s environment, and self-serving.

I am eager to teach, give information to, even lecture my children because I want them to learn what I’ve learned — sooner rather than later. Maybe they’ll be able to take advantage of the information and avoid some of the mistakes I made growing up. This desire also holds true for the photo students I encounter in my workshops. Photography is so much more than image making, particularly photojournalism and documentary work. There are deeper responsibilities and moral and ethical issues connected to your work when you are given permission to enter people’s lives intimately to witness their pain and joy. We photographers become agents of communication, bridging worlds, charged with healing as well as slapping our viewers in the face with information they must know. Students and young photographers must learn this as early as possible to better serve the purpose of this work. We must learn to make the world a better place by shedding light on dark places but also by providing solutions and hope. It took me years to understand this, having spent so much time just trying to make my mark in this profession and struggle with making a living and gaining influence to get my stories out. I want my students to understand these critical elements sooner rather than later.

Chris's favorite shots are the result of careful planning, like knowing exactly where to stand to capture this dye release into a glacial river. Photo by Chris Linder, WHOI

My first Arctic expedition was also my first foray into digital photography. This was 2002. The D1, with a whopping 2.74 megapixels, was Nikon’s flagship camera and lower priced bodies like the D100 had not yet hit the market. But the premise of our project was that we would be updating a website daily with images and text, so Woods Hole sent me out with a 5-megapixel Nikon point-and-shoot as a supplement to my film SLR gear. I had never used a digital camera before and had only rudimentary experience with Photoshop. The learning curve was steep. I practiced with the camera before the trip but there were huge limitations compared to using an SLR system: the zoom lens had a small range of focal lengths, creative control of aperture and shutter speeds was limited, and, perhaps worst of all, the camera responded very slowly (both in terms of shutter lag and frame rate).

Yet, shooting with that first digital camera opened my eyes to the power of digital. I could see my results immediately — I knew when I had the shot or didn’t. Using a small point-and-shoot with a tilting LCD also allowed me to get some really candid shots that would not have been possible with a huge DSLR. The following year, I upgraded to a D100 and said goodbye to film.

Doing his research allows Chris to anticipate where to stand not only to get the shot, but also not be crushed by equipment or swept overboard. ©Chris Linder/WHOI

A more important lesson I learned (and continue to learn) was how to photograph scientists. This may be patently obvious, but scientists do not have training as models. A surefire way to destroy a really intense moment, like a group of researchers discussing a recent result, is to wave a huge SLR in front of their faces. More than anything, I learned how to get the shots I needed while at the same time preserving the scientists’ respect and trust. Remaining unobtrusive is key. I always keep in mind that the fieldwork I am photographing is the result of years of hard work to get funding and prepare for an expedition. Time is a precious resource when you’re in the field, so I make it a point to never interrupt their work to stage a scene.

Everything I shoot is completely natural and unscripted and sometimes quite raw. Which isn’t to say that I wander about aimlessly hoping for lucky shots. I apply the same patience I learned from the grant writing process to carefully researching my subjects. This means I know what is going to happen (like when and where an instrument will be brought on deck) and will wait for the players and light to come together, sometimes for hours. I usually spend this observation phase with the camera ready but down, out of sight. As the hours and days go by, I eventually fade into the background, and voila, I’m invisible. Of course, it’s also essential to do your share carrying boxes, washing bottles, making dinner, or otherwise showing that you’re part of the team and not afraid to get your hands dirty doing real work. When you’ve earned the respect of the team—when you become a member of team—it’s a lot easier to get the shot.