I really liked this sentiment from Burd, a wedding and portrait photographer, who was responding to my question: “Are you images fundamentally created in-camera with little technical fuss, or do they require painstaking control, either in-camera or in post-production?”

I absolutely love Burd’s images, which bear witness to the fact that she is achieving the photographic ideal she expressed in her comment.

Burd’s wedding, portrait, head shot, and family photography consistently exhibit two wonderful qualities that work beautifully in harmony with each other:

• On the one hand, Burd’s images feel utterly casual in the in-camera picture making sense. There seems to be little fuss. The comfort of her subjects is palpable, and many of her best images feel like casual snap shots.

• On the other hand, it is clear that Burd is carefully crafting her images in post-production, giving them a modern, compelling aesthetic. Her use of techniques such as black-and-white processing, vignetting, saturating colors and employing localized focus ensure that her no-fuss images become much more than snap shots.

The best part of Burd’s work is that she doesn’t go overboard in post-production. This ensures that her images retain what is best in casual snap shots — intimacy and approachability — while also meeting the standards of excellent professional photography.

It’s hard to discuss images that don’t call attention to themselves, but do exactly what they are supposed to do: call attention to the people they document. So here, to represent themselves — and the no fuss, carefully crafted work that the photographer put into them — are four of Burd’s images.

I share this piece for all of you, who like me, came of age photographically working in darkrooms.

Smell the fixer?

I feel the sensation of unrolling wet film, eager-anxiously first glimpsing the images on my negatives. Now I’m opening the drying cabinet, dust my enemy. In an hour or five I will be back, and reach into the strands of film, ready to cut-and-sleeve, excited-nervous to hold the plastic sheets up to the light, beginning to carefully explore what sunlight has wrought in silver before I print contact sheets.

Squinting, imagining, I don’t need positive images or a light table and loupe to begin to wade through the potential of my film. This unique sensation — tactile in the fingers, images coming alive in the mind’s eyes — is a specific kind of visual exploration that has vanished with digital, something special that this video evokes for me.

Do you miss wading through your film?

I don’t — not really. But then, I sure can become nostalgic for it. For me working with film is like my childhood: the distant past I would not chose to return to, but which in so many ways I still know better than my world of today.

If you are not familiar with Jarvis’ blog, definitely take a thoughtful tour — even if Jarvis’ photography (or personality) don’t float your boat.

New Media Blogging?

I know. “New Media blogging” seems repetitive. After all, blogging is about as New Media as you can get, right? Actually, blogging is just a tool — a simple way to post content to the Web — and most of us Dead Tree Bloggers do not fully embrace the New Media spirit. Two critical ways Jarvis does is to:

• Constantly link out to peer content. Jarvis does much more than add SEO-friendly links to his posts; he features content from other creative professionals. This is good for him. In the blogosphere, the more you link out, the more people link back in.

• Makes the blogging experience interactive. This is no easy task: to make people feel involved in your blogging. One way Jarvis does so is by enticing people to comment on his posts, and then rewarding them with follow-up responses.

Popular in Flesh, Popular in the Blogosphere

Don’t try to imitate the way Jarvis blogs. Jarvis is Jarvis. You are You. The key to Jarvis’ blogging is that it is honest.

In person, Jarvis is more charismatic than most photographers will ever be (or would want to be). Jarvis once told me that in high school he was a popular jock but that he liked to hang with the nerds and outcasts — interested in trying to understand them, wanting to relate. Jarvis told me that he is utterly fascinated by popular culture.

Jarvis remains a popular center of gravity in most crowds, as well as a person interested in reaching out to others. He is also interested in the popular culture that a popular readership is interested in reading about. All of this is what makes him such a popular blogger — not his knowledge, interest or capabilities as a photographer.

Jarvis is a dedicated, feverish image maker and so most of his blogging content is about photography and, as he once told me, “the intersection of photography and popular culture.” But ultimately, photography is secondary to what makes Jarvis’ blogging about photography so enticing. What’s important is Jarvis’ natural ability to entice.

One thing I’m learning watching videos suggested by Vimeo is that — derr! — the spectrum of possibilities in video shorts is so broad that most pieces defy easy definitions. For example, Knight’s piece seems to go beyond the scope of music motivational pieces, and yet it fits the definition.

More than anything, I serve you up “Scattered Flurries” because it seems ideal inspiration for how many still photographers might want to proceed, at least at first, with video: avoid dealing with sound; focus on capturing wonderful images; tell a story in the editing; avoid crew and major expenses.

Frankly, I won’t be mixing any drinks soon (other than maybe a Fernet and Coke, so popular here in Argentina). Still, I share this multimedia reporting because it demonstrates a manner of sharing lots of information with crisp, inviting efficiency.

Rollover any of the 12 yummy images of featured drinks and “Click here for recipe.” This is where the presentation gets really good.

I can’t vouch for the quality of the recipes, but the New York Times has has mixed up truly intelligent multimedia by dividing each recipe into four distinct areas: 1) introduction, 2) large photo, 3) ingredients, and 4) preparation. (Also, prominant “forward” and “back” arrows keep us clicking through the drinks.)

This smart, tasty way to organize information using multimedia offers photographers a great example how we might present documentary reporting, portfolios or any other content — especially when trying to put all information in only one caption might make viewers want to . . . well . . . reach for a drink.

Sure, sure, we see video all time. And yes, since beginning to play with multimedia I’ve begun to pay much more conscientious attention to movies, TV, and commercials. But as photographers we also really need to be looking at shorter pieces, pieces made on low budgets, pieces made by photographers, pieces that are offbeat, fresh, geared for Web 2.0. and so. . .Vimeo is very promising for daily inspiration.

“You begin with on-camera flash and after one shoot realize how utterly terrible that approach is underground,” Bob Hower shares of the techniques he has developed over 35 years while recording mining operations. After beginning with Howser, Best of ASMP 2010 invites us into the worlds of Herbert Ascherman, Anne Hamersky and Jamey Stillings, then introduces us to twelve more photographers before ending with Matt Dayka, Tom Rossiter, Shawn G. Henry and Manjarmi Sharma.

The American Society of Media Photographers has given us a real treat with Best of ASMP 2010. Check it out!

Cairns’ sculpture is powerfully evocative and his sentiments about music and friendship in relationship to the visual artist’s life will be of interest to photographers. Although I can share all this about Cairns, I only know the artist through this five-minute video created by Richard Anderson. This speaks to the incredible storytelling power of documentary shorts. It is also reason to applaud Anderson for taking a great leap forward in his video-making pursuits.

Last month I reported that Anderson was just getting started in video by learning multimedia techniques by experimenting playfully. His latest creation, a personal project, proves that Anderson is getting great results — fast.

Check it out this video for inspiration from both Cairns and Anderson. Take particular note of how Anderson puts his photographer’s eye to excellent use. His framing of Cairns among his sculptures is fantastic and not typical of standard documentary interviews. And Anderson’s still images make wonderful b-roll that clearly reveal Cairns’ vision of impending disaster.

Seriously, this is some of the best photography I’ve seen in a long time, even if, um, I’ve seen all these photographs before.

I’m biting my tongue not to go on and on about my response to this wonderful work. I’d rather you enjoy a few minutes of pure photographic joy by seeing the “decisive Lego” in action here!

I say that the connection to Argentina’s revolution (and ultimate independence) is appropriate because of all the photographers I know personally, without a doubt, Gail Mooney is the most revolutionary- and independent-minded.

Since I introduced “Opening Our Eyes” in March, the project has taken much fuller shape. You can get a good sense of the trip at the main website. Keep in mind that a year ago Mooney hadn’t even thought up this trip. From initial concept to flying out of Newark airport today, Mooney and Kelly have orchestrated all details of this massive undertaking in only a little over six months.

Be sure to also check out “Journeys of a Hybrid”, Mooney’s excellent blog full of insights — from the personal and creative to the technical and business side — from a photographer who has lived her life to the fullest, and who seems to be just warming up.

Mooney, who has been in the business for 33 years, has focused primarily on still photographic coverage of travel assignments for magazines. However, she has also worked plenty in the commercial realm in partnership with her husband, Tom Kelly.

Mooney not only made a smooth transition to digital photography, but she is one of the new bread photographers who is fully embracing the possibilities of video and, just as fully, the exciting possibilities of Web publication and social media.

Good Lu. . .

Besides alerting you to Mooney’s departure (”hybrid” still/motion image-making storytellers are sure to find inspiration from her project), the driving force behind writing this post was to publicly say “Good luck, Gail!” However, wishing Mooney good luck seems a bit odd.

In forging the life that she has wanted to live, Mooney has never seemed to rely on luck. “I do really on serendipity,” she to told me yesterday, when I touched base with her by phone. Mooney has talked to me many times about serendipity, especially in regard to how she allows this force to help the stories she is covering to unfold organically, and in different directions then she might originally imagine.

Mooney’s comfort with serendipity will no doubt be a key to her success on this storytelling trip of a lifetime. As she reports in her “Departure Day” post: “Ultimately, we will be interviewing and filming 10 different people on 5 continents.”

What’s fascinating is how Mooney and Kelly will evolve the story as it unfolds, connecting each new subject to the previous in a way that reveals itself in a manner that no script can predict.

The Blessed Web

There are a number of reasons this trip is unique for Mooney — from traveling with her daughter and recording in still and video with a dSLR to covering so many individual stories on such a huge geographical scope. However, I cannot ignore that at the heart of the nature of this trip lies the new possibilities in media, a.k.a., Web 2.0 and Social Media.

Mooney free to create and publish at will. She has told me that it is the ability to publish video to global audience at basically no cost is what makes the possibilities in video truly exciting. It is not, according to Mooney and as many photographers seem to think, that dSLRs can capture HD video. Mooney has been capturing motion for years — first with 16- and 35mm, then with digital — but with each passing day she sees more distribution opportunities.

These opportunities allow Mooney to fly off today sure that she will be able to win an audience for the move she creates with her daughter, although she is not limited in worry exactly what this audience will be.

Beyond distribution, it is important to realize that the very evolution of Mooney’s thinking about and planning for this trip has taken form via the social media efforts that she has been engaged in. Although even just yesterday she mentioned missing the quality of hand-written, post-delivered letters, she clearly has been able to harness the power of developing technologies without losing site of what has always interested her most: connecting on the one-to-one level, learning about people and places and sharing what she has learned with her storytelling.

Lucky Us: A Great Writer

Yesterday, Mooney told me that almost everyone she has told about her journey expresses a “I-wish-I-could-do-that!” kind of jealousy. Well, I’m not jealous of Mooney’s journey, but I must confess to being just a bit jealous of her writing abilities.

More than once Mooney has commented on the fact that she is not a writer, and wished she had greater skills in this area. Well, she really doesn’t need them. She is a damn good writer, and she is one of the few people I know who can quickly communicate in writing as naturally and fluidly as she does in speech. And this is the key to what makes her blogs and her writing (about her life, her subjects and the craft and business of photography) so engaging.

Mooney has already proved herself a savvy, enticing blogger with her “Journeys of a Hybrid”, which no doubt helped get her in shape for “Opening Our Eyes.” Now that she is in great writing shape — and somewhere over the Atlantic en route to her first stop in Entebbe, Uganda — it’s nice to know that, with her characteristic drive to share the rich life she is living, Mooney will be keeping us updated on her adventures at “Opening Our Eyes.”