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By Martin Bailey, on March 8th, 2010
This week you’re going join me on my Snow Monkey Photography Tour and Workshop, from Jan 28th to Jan 30, 2010, as I discuss the trip along with looking at some of my images.
Prefer to listen? There’s an audio player at the bottom of the post.
This year was the first time I added the option to join me for a three day tour to photograph the Snow Monkeys in Nagano Prefecture, before we headed off to Hokkaido. Ten of the 12 people that had signed up for Hokkaido chose to join me for the Snow Monkey leg, and two more people that live locally had signed up just for the Snow Monkey trip, so we maintained our fully booked status and headed off to Nagano on a chartered bus, on the morning of January 28th. It took us the scheduled 4 hours to get over to Nagano, and we stopped for lunch just outside the town we were to stay in, and photography the monkeys.
To give us the most possible time shooting on this first day, we parked up and headed straight for the Monkey Park, which is about a 40 minute walk from the car park when the track is snow covered. For me as the organizer, this walk was the first hurdle, as we’d got some more senior participants with us this year, and I was a little worried that they’d all make it OK, but they were great, and although some of them took their time, we got into the park at Jigokudani, which basically translates as Hell Valley, including the few flights of stone steps up the mountain at the end, which can be pretty tiring.
It wasn’t that cold, probably around minus 2 degrees Celsius, or 28 degrees Fahrenheit. When you are dressed for standing around in the cold though, a 40 minute walk along an icy mountain track can generate quite a lot of heat, so most people were loosening their clothing on the way out. We arrived at the park just after 1PM, and the group started shooting straight away. Some of us shot the white balance card on the X-Rite Color Passport, to set a custom white balance on our cameras. Color balance and nailing exposure is something that I spend some time on, on the trip, especially as there is snow in many scenes, which makes exposure a little more challenging.
Here’s a photo of half of my group, around the hot spring pool in which the Snow Monkeys congregate. You can see just how close we get to the monkeys here. They are totally accustomed to us humans being right next to them as they warm themselves in the pool.
 The Group You can also see the wires strung across the side of the valley, across from the pool, and you can see how patchy the snow was, adding a little more challenge to the shooting, trying to get some nice backgrounds. I shot a few wide shots, but because the surrounding weren’t that attractive again this year, I didn’t share anything other than portraits of the monkeys.
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By Martin Bailey, on February 28th, 2010
 David Burren I’ve teamed up with professional Australian nature photographer David Burren to host a photography expedition to South Georgia and Antarctica from November 8th to 26th this year.
Today it gives me great pleasure to welcome David to the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast to answer questions on the expedition.
Note that David and I aiming to take a group of around 20 people. We’re already getting people signing up, and places are limited, so if you want to come, you’ll need to book SOON. The booking form is available at antarctica2010.com. Once we are fully booked, there will be a wait-list.
There is no transcript for this episode, so you’ll need to listen with the audio player below, or via iTunes or your favourite MP3 player. Links to all formats are at the bottom of this post.
You can see details of the Antarctica 2010 Photo Odyssey at antarctica2010.com.
 Zodiac in front of Iceberg (© Copyright - David Burren)  In the Zodiac (© Copyright - David Burren)  © Copyright - David Burren
Podcast show-notes:
Antarctica 2010 : A Photo Odyssey: http://antarctica2010.com/
More on David Burren: http://www.davidburren.com/
WebSpy giveaway: http://www.webspy.com.au/blogs/index.php/new-webspy-soho-giveaway/
Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/
Audio
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By Martin Bailey, on February 23rd, 2010
Today we take a look at the results of the January MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment, on the theme of Square Crop.
Prefer to listen? There’s an audio player at the bottom of the post.
The Square Crop assignment was much more difficult than I had imagined it would be to come up with something compelling, but many of you rose to the occasion, and as usual, posted some incredible images. Let’s look at the three images that amassed the most votes from their peers, as usual, in reverse order.
In third place, we have Super Digital Girl, real name Leslie, with a superb photograph, “Ballerina” (below). Leslie sent me a little information on this photograph, as follows:
This past year I have been working on more documentary style photography so I decided to take a workshop in Connecticut with Elizabeth Opalenik to get in touch with my creative side again. The focus of the workshop was using long exposures and movement to create an impressionistic image. It was a great experience. The dancers were wonderful teenage students from the ballet studio that we shot in.
 Ballerina (© Copyright 2010 - Leslie Granda-Hill) Well Leslie, I can tell that it was a great experience and you came away with some amazing images. The two bars that run through the lower third of the image form a nice divide, and the third horizontal line separate the floor from the wall. The floor being a slightly darker tone helps to anchor the image too. The obvious star of the shot is the ballerina, placed perfectly in the bottom right corner, and blurred from motion, as she dances. You can almost sense the movement here, despite this being a still photograph. I see from the EXIF data that this was a 1/5 of a second exposure, which turned out excellent. If the exposure was much longer, the subject would be too blurred, and if it was much shorter, the movement would be lost. The lighting and black and white processing you chose here, with a warm yet subtle sepia tone is masterful too. This really is one of the best photographs I’ve seen for a while. Well done indeed Leslie!
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By Martin Bailey, on February 18th, 2010
A friend recently forwarded me a link to a great post on his blog about balancing multiple passions. As many of you know, I have a busy full time job in Tokyo, outside of photography, and do a pretty good job of balancing the “day-job” with my photography related activities. It ain’t easy, and I touch on this below, but basically, I really enjoyed the article, and sent some comments to my friend about what he’d written.
First, you’ll probably want to read the article, Managing multiple passions- make most of your hidden talents, by Anuj Magazine, and then come back here and read my comments on the article, with some advice of my own on this subject.
And here are my comments:
I read your blog post with great interest. You write very well, and although I intended to scan over it, I ended up reading it fully.
I thought the part where you mentioned about being interested as opposed to committed is so very true. People often ask me how I find time to do my photography, including the weekly podcast and forum etc. while maintaining a busy full time day job. My answer is often that I don’t find time, I make time. People will always make time to do something that they love and they really want to do. If you aren’t able to do that, question your commitment to your passion, and not how others miraculously seem to have more time than yourself.
 Prioritizing what you attack first is also very important. I’ve never locked into the number three, but when I have a long list of things to do, I prioritize how I spend my time. I often quote the 80:20 rule. You can say that 20% of what you do will be responsible for 80% of your success. If that’s true, you can stop doing the other 80%, concentrate on doing your 20% really well, and excelling in those tasks, and your overall success will be enhanced even more. Of course, there are always going to be things in the 80% that you can’t avoid doing, but you don’t need to work on these as hard. I learned from an old boss, that sometimes good “enough”, is good enough. You don’t have to do everything to the best of your ability to succeed.
You also talk about creating time in your paragraph about White Space ・I have no white space! There is no time such as on a bus or walking when I am not listening to a photography related interview, or an Audible book etc. Even when I’m sitting next to my wife after dinner, enjoying our time together before I go to my computer, if we are not talking about something, I’m running through ideas and planning my evening’s activities or future plans. I do feel that I need to work harder on giving myself some white space to be honest. I am often so plugged in, that I can become over tired sometimes, to the point of making myself ill. Taking time off is important.
I like the idea of day tight or hour tight compartments. I generally learned a long time ago that I need to shut off one thought or problem to enable me to concentrate on the next. In my early twenties I would lose weekends worrying about something that happened on Friday, only to find that on Monday the problem had either disappeared, or was not such a problem after all. There are times though when I am not able to cut off feelings from previous incidents, and I’m not sure that we should. One of my bosses always praised me for being able to cut away from work easily though, and giving myself time for my photography, creating a nice balance in my life, so I’m probably doing an OK job of this.
The only thing in the article that I found a little difficult to read, or awkward was the double negative at the end. You say that we should not believe in ourselves, but then turn it into a positive, by saying that you should not believe in yourself when you think you can’t achieve something. This last paragraph is funny, as I’m sure you meant it to be, but it boils down to the fact that you need to believe in yourself to give yourself the confidence to proceed, but not to be over-confident.
Personally, I have a very easy philosophy around this. I never question my ability to do something when trying to decide whether or not to take on a new task or project. The only question I ask myself is whether or not I want to do it. If I want to do something, I will make it happen, no matter how difficult the undertaking. Of course, I realize that although I’d love to be able to fly unaided or go to the moon, right now that’s just not possible. You have to be realistic, although I do fully expect to go to the moon or into space at least once before I die.
Great article Anuj! Thanks very much for sharing.
If you enjoyed this, you might also be interested in episode #86 of my Podcast, in which I discussed Time Management and Photography.
By Martin Bailey, on February 18th, 2010
Finding time for photography can be tough when you have a day job. In this Podcast episode I talk about how I manage my time using theory learned in business.
This Podcast was originally released on the 14th of May, 2007.
Prefer to listen? There’s an audio player at the bottom of the post.
First, in the audio, you’ll here a message from a listener, Chris. This Podcast episode was my answer to Chris…
I have to say before we start that what I’m about to talk about is the things I bear in mind, from my own experiences and things I’ve learned in business over the years. Some things might work for you, and some might not. Take the advice that you think will help, and throw out the stuff that doesn’t click. Basically though, I have a day job that keeps me really busy here in the heart of Tokyo, and I get maybe two to three hours or so each evening away from my main job and most weekends are my own too. In that time I have to find time for lots of photography related activity and time to spend with my other half. A few months ago, in episode 78, I mentioned some of the techniques I use to plan my trips from a location perspective. Of course this means that I also need to find time to plan where I’m going, in addition to actually going. Once I get back, I have a whole bunch of images that I have to work through, selecting the best ones and post processing them. I create a smaller resized version for my Online Gallery at the same time, and it takes some more time to upload and caption those. I have to find time to keep up with the MBP Forum, and my email. I am still managing to reply to all mail I get from Podcast listeners for example, but it takes time. There’s a certain amount of work that I have to do to keep my Web sites doing the things they need to do, which often entails a little bit of PHP coding here and there. And then of course there’s finding time to write a transcription for each Podcast and then record, upload and publish each one.
These are the things that I have to do pretty much all the time to keep things ticking over. Once I’ve done all this and spent some time with my other half to keep me from being divorced, there are other things that I like to find time to do, such as reading photography magazines, books and going through things like my LensWork Extended CDs. Now, if you think through what I’ve just said in order, you’ll probably notice that I’ve prioritized my tasks. When we find that we don’t have time to do all the things we want or feel we must do, we have to start to prioritize our photography related activity in relation to everything else. Most people will have gotten to the point they are today with regards to photography as a kind of a natural progression. Where you are in that progression will probably determine how much weight you give photography against other things in your life. I’m going to talk about some of the theory I’ve learned that I learn that helps me.
In its early stages, photography is probably going to be a hobby, or even just a pastime. Now to me, what we call a pastime is exactly that. It’s something we do to pass the time. This implies that it will carry very little weight in comparison to other activities in your life. You’ll only do it, if you have nothing else to do and want to pass some time. If this is all photography is to you right now, then you probably don’t need to worry too much about managing your time around it, so let’s move on to the next stage. Naturally, as this <quote> hobby <unquote> starts to grab us, it very soon becomes what we might call a serious hobby, or a passion. Now when we start to call something a passion, we naturally want to indulge in it as much as possible, or at least as much as is viable. At this stage, you’re going to have to start to figure out how to find time to indulge in photography as opposed to a multitude of other activities that battle for your precious time. If you have another hobby for example, they’ll start to vie for your little free time.
For around a decade for example, I used to play golf. I still love the game of golf, but around five years ago, when I really started to put more time into my photography again after buying my first DSLR, I found that I wanted less and less to put any time into golf, opting more and more to go out with my camera. The other thing was that it is very expensive to play golf in Japan too, and the golf courses are all so far from home that it’s a 12 hour deal to go for a game. It took me so long and so much money that I had to make a decision. Do I continue to do both, or give up one for the other. Well, I obviously gave up golf. I simply didn’t have the time and didn’t want to continue to put my money into both. I had started to prioritize my activities and where I channel my money.
In the next few years, photography went from being a serious hobby, to a passion, and now, as I extend my reach into the world of photography, selling some of my work, and reaching out to you guys via this Podcast and the Web site, it has such as grasp on me that I really have to think hard about how I use my time. The things that I’ve mentioned so far are actually just the things that I’ve decided to do. There is a lot of other stuff that I still have to find a way to fit in, but have not yet managed to do, or have chosen to put off for one reason or another. We’ll get to that more in a short while though. For now all I can say is that everything on my list of daily or weekly tasks is there for a reason, whether it’s to help me build my profession as a photographer, to stop me from going insane from the pressure of my day job, or to simply prevent me from being divorced.
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