Which, of course, brings me to my story of a mountain biking trip to Fruita I recently went on with my wife, Carin, last month.  We were only planning on doing a little mountain biking and heading back to Breckenridge, but an afternoon storm caused us to cut our plans short.  Rather than just give up and leave, we took a drive in to Colorado National Monument hoping to get some photos of the sun setting just as the storm was clearing.  I always have my camera bag in my car, but couldn’t find my tripod.  I tore the car apart before remembering that I left it in the studio.  So here I was, the king of tripod advocacy, without my tripod.  To make matters worse, the weather and light came together for some incredible views.

I realized the only way to get a decent photo was going to be to place the camera directly on the ground, but if I do that, I need to make sure there was an interesting subject in the foreground.  After a little searching I came across a depression in the sandstone that had filled with water from the afternoon rain.  Using my hat, and some nearby stones, I was able to prop the camera up in front of the puddle to compose the shot.  I also used the mirror lock up and self timer in order to minimize vibration.  The image below was the result.

Sunset in Colorado National Monument

Related posts:

1. Look to the Desert (From Summit Daily News, May 16, 2007)
2. Rose Taguchi Wedding
3. Faces of the Himalaya Show January 9th, 2009 at Altitude Gallery.

Out of the last year, I’ve spent over four months travelling in order to photograph.  I spent a month of that time in Tibet, where I was able to stay in guest houses sipping yak butter tea while watching the sun rise on Mount Everest.  I spent two weeks on a road trip to California with my wife, during which time, I alternated between days of photography and rock climbing.  For nearly two months I explored New England during the peak of the fall colors. I have photographed 2 weddings in Nepal, one in Washington D.C., another on the beach in Southern California, not to mention countless weddings across Colorado.  This to me is what living the dream is all about.

Sometimes, I need to remind myself of how this is all possible.  Part of that is realizing that photography is only a small part of the equation.  There are many things that most people don’t know about that are required in order for me to be a successful photographer.  So much time is spent on budgeting, it borders on ridiculous.  For instance, when I traveled to Asia this past year, I incurred a lot of expenses.  I had to weigh the option of having a magazine pick up the tab, or paying for the trip myself and having more freedom to photograph what I want.  Then there is the question of whether or not I could pay for the expense with income earned from the project.  This is an exceedingly impossible task due to all the variables involved.

Also, there is this illusion that photographers are self employed.  People say that it must be great to make my own hours.  A lot of time it is, but I also work pretty hard.  It isn’t unusual for me to work 20 hours each day when on a project or photographing a wedding.  With wedding photography there are no second chances, do overs, sick days, or good enoughs.  It has to be perfect the very first time.  With each wedding, I photograph, hours of time is devoted to planning every detail ahead of time, because I know expectations are nothing less than perfection.

That all being said, I do love my job.  I am getting to live my dream, but sometimes I need to remind myself of all the work that goes in to it, because the last thing I want is to become complacent.

Related posts:

1. My favorite wedding
2. Walton Ward Wedding
3. Rose Taguchi Wedding

In spite of living in relative poverty, the people of Tibet were friendly and open.  They had a sense of humor about life that I was immediately inspired to photograph. The same held true for the people of Nepal.  And although I was there for a relatively short time, I ended up returning home with hundreds of portraits of the people of the Himalayas.

Returning with all of these images made me feel like I had took something of value from the Himalayas without having given much back. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit a school for the blind built by Braille without Borders. It was amazing how little money it took to put a person through the school in Tibet. Equally amazing was just how much it could change a person’s life there. In a country like Tibet, a disabled person has few opportunities outside of begging.

My doctor here in Breckenridge had often told me about a clinic he had helped to build in the Langtang region of Nepal while he was there.  And although I didn’t have time to travel there myself, I decided to donate the purchase price of the portraits I created to help benefit the school and the clinic he had built through Doctors to the World.  The show, Faces of the Himalaya, has travelled to other galleries before finding its way back to Altitude Gallery this January, 2010.  The sale of just a single print can put a student through the school for several months.

Event Information:

For more information, visit www.altitudegallery.com

Related posts:

1. Faces of the Himalaya
2. Living the Dream and Remembering to Work
3. Tripod Trepidations

Last spring I had spent a few weeks in Nepal.  One morning I went on a tour of the small village of Banepa.  Afterwards, instead of taking the bus, I decided to walk with our guide back to the town of
Dhulikhel, where I was staying.  He returned to the hotel, and I decided to head back to the main area of town to use the internet.  As so often happens in Nepal, the electricity was out, and the internet cafes were closed.  Since I had my camera with me I decided to make the most of my time and explore some of the back alleys of
Dhulikhel. Once I got off the main street with the never ending auditory assault of the constant car horns, things became much quieter.  I could hear some people playing instruments down another alley and I decided to investigate.

When I found the source of the music, I wasn’t sure what was going on. There were about a dozen musicians dressed in red in the street, and maybe another 100 people in the yard of a large house. I didn’t speak much Nepali.  And what I did speak was mostly limited to arranging a hotel room or ordering a meal.  So, I looked for a someone who looked like they were school aged.  When traveling abroad, I have found that most people have studied english in schools, but tend to forget it as they get older.

I met a boy who told me that there was a wedding happening, and he then introduced me to his father.  It turns out his father was related to the groom, and he invited me to join the wedding party.  It was really a huge honor to find myself in a small town in a country that I had only just arrived in, being allowed to join in such an important moment in this family’s life.

One of the best ways to experience another culture is to actively participate in their lives and ceremonies, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a better way to do this than to be involved with a wedding. My favorite thing about photographing weddings is being allowed in to one of the most important things that two people will likely experience together. However this wedding was truly a new experience for me.

Weddings in the West are typically happy affairs in which the couple has known each other for years, and they can’t wait to finally get married.  I had found out that this couple had only met a few weeks before the wedding, and only briefly.  The groom looked nervous the entire time, and the bride was practically in tears during the ceremony.  It was a little unnerving to say the least, but I tried to keep an open mind. A few days later, when I met up with some Nepalis my age, they were able to better explain what was going on.  First they had explained to me, how much they appreciated their families finding there spouses for them, and how terrifying it must be to have to find our own here.  I hadn’t really thought of things that way before, and I recalled how terrifying it was to propose to my wife.  They also explained the crying bride.  In Hindu culture, when a woman is married, she ceases to become part of the woman’s family and becomes part of her husbands family.  So, her not being upset at the wedding would be a sign of disrespect to her family. In fact the woman is usually very happy about the marriage, but showing happiness on the wedding day is considered unacceptable.  I did get the chance to see the same thing at another wedding I was at in Nepal a week later with a better understanding of the culture, and it was a lot different.  Particularly because I was able to meet the bride the next day, and could see how happy she was compared to the day before.

I would have to refer to this as the “ultimate destination wedding.”  At least it was for me. This wedding really let me experience the culture of Nepal first hand.  I got to meet people and see things that I might not have otherwise had the chance to.  The family welcomed me like I was one of their own.  I got to experience traditional Nepali food (the taste as well as the consequences,) as well as the local homemade liquor, roxi, which not surprisingly after tasting it was brought to the wedding in plastic bottle which looks suspiciously like antifreeze containers.  Best of luck to the Srestha family who really made my first few days in Nepal ones to remember always.

Related posts:

1. Rose Taguchi Wedding
2. Living the Dream and Remembering to Work
3. MJ and Pete’s Wedding – Laguna Beach California

During the spring of 2009, I travelled to Tibet and Nepal to work on a documentary portrait project.  For six weeks I photographed people living in the Himalayas.  While I mostly worked on portraits, I also went about photographing people in their day to day lives.

This 10 minute slideshow, available in HD, is a small sample of the images I made while travelling over the roof of the world.

Related posts:

1. Faces of the Himalaya Show January 9th, 2009 at Altitude Gallery.
2. Living the Dream and Remembering to Work
3. My favorite wedding

    I’ve been spending the last week or so gearing up and preparing for a 6 week trip to China, Tibet, and Nepal.  Hopefully I will be able to post photos from the field as the trip progresses.  If not, I’ll have a lot of updating to do when I get back.

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Death Valley National Park.  I used a wide angle lens to accent the shapes in the salt flat, and a tripod in order to maximize depth of field.

 I made this image of my buddy Rob climbing in the Buttermilks just outside of Bishop, California.

Rob spotting Kevin while climbing in the Buttermilks.

Rob climbing at sunrise.

Rob just finishing a climb before sunrise.

Rob carrying my crashpad across a stream.

Kevin finishing a bouldering problem.  I needed to climb the boulder first, and then have someone throw me my camera.

Dusk at Mono Lake near Lee Vining, California.  The mist was created by using a slow shutter (several seconds) and a tripod.  The strange formations are called tufas.  They are created when the water level drops to reveal the hardened material around springs.

Sunrise on the Sierra Nevada with Mono Lake in the foreground.  A graduated neutral density filter was used in order to balance the exposure on the mountains and the exposure on the tufa.

More sun on the tufas.

We climbed Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in the dark in order to be on top for sunrise.  This is a self portrait I made using a tripod.

Kevin reaching the top of the cables on Half Dome a few minutes before sunrise.

The glove pile below the cables on Half Dome.  Leather gloves are provided to protect your hands while climbing the steap cables.

Rob climbing the cables up Half Dome as the sun is rising behind him.

A hiker on the Mist Trail in Yosemite National Park.  Waterfalls like these are formed any time you have the sun to your back and water droplets in the air.  I used a polarizer to add contrast.

The moon over Tenaya Peak and Lake in Yosemite National Park.

Rob climbing on Lover’s Leap in Lake Tahoe while Karen belays him from below.  In order to photograph climbers, I have to climb the route ahead of them with my parter and then anchor myself to the wall.

Rob climbing Lover’s Leap.

Karen climbing with Lake Tahoe in the background.  For this, I actually rapelled down a fixed line next to this route and hung in my harness.

No related posts.

In my opinion just about all photography involves a certain amount of risk to personal safety.  There is always an element of risk versus award in photography.  War correspondents put their lives on the line every day in order to reap the reward of a meaningful story-telling image.  Luckily for me, my line of work doesn’t require that much risk on a daily basis, but it does have a certain element of danger.

My climbing and ski photography certainly has elements of risk, but even more routine subjects can be dangerous.  My wife, Carin, broke her back in a car accident last summer, while accompanying me on a pretty routine and safe shoot for National Geographic Adventure.  It just goes to show that even in the most mundane subject there can still be elements for serious risk to safety.  In the accompanying in image, in order to photograph the climber, Kevin Kaminski, I needed to free solo (technical climbing without a rope or protection) an adjacent easier, but equally high, route while carrying my equipment. 

As photographers we must constantly ask ourselves if the resulting image is worth the risk.  How far are we willing to go for the image?  What are we risking?  How will it affect us and the people in our lives?  These are deeply personal questions, and no one can answer them for us.  We each have to answer that question for ourselves. 

  Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who helped make my print exhibition opening a success.  I’d especially like to thank my wife Carin and her brother Steve.  And of course, Sandy Greenhut and the Summit County Arts Exhibition Committee for inviting me to display my work. 

Timothy Faust is an award winning photojournalist living in Breckenridge. If you have a photography question you would like to see answered in this column, please send it to questions@timothyfaust.com. View his work at www.timothyfaust.com.

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People always tell me how lucky I am to be living in such a photogenic place; and they are quite right.  I am really lucky to be able to live in the mountains of Colorado, but even up here I can go through spells of feeling uncreative and out of ideas, a sort of “photographer’s block.”

Over the years I’ve learned a few tricks to keep the proverbial creative juices flowing.  One thing that keeps me going is by constantly changing up the kind of work I’m doing.  For instance, in June, I’ll be photographing a outdoor sporting event in Vail early in the month, then doing some editorial work during a climbing trip, and shooting a few weddings.  Changing it up all the time is definitely my favorite way to stay motivated and creative.  I also find that things I learn while photographing climbing on Mount Shasta make me a better wedding photographer and vice-versa.

When I’m not as fortunate to be this busy, I find giving myself little projects or assignments can be very stimulating creatively.  Next time you are wondering what to photographer, or just aren’t feeling motivated to pick up the camera, try to give yourself an assignment to finish.  Try to keep the projects simple.  Concentrate on a place that’s local to you, and a task that is attainable.  For example, deciding you are going to stay in your backyard until you have photographed ten different species of animals is a lot more attainable than deciding to hike until you find a bear to photograph.  Also projects like these train your eye for more difficult projects later.  The key to self assignments is to set definite goals of what you want to achieve.

I am a firm believer that creativity can be learned, taught, and most importantly improved upon.  One of the best ways to do this is by taking a photography workshop.  Workshops are a great way to learn in small groups from an expert and to interact with other people that our passionate about photography.  Workshops are available for every budget and skill level.  They range from small Sunday morning camera walks to month long expeditions to the Antarctic.  A simple internet search can help you find the workshop that’s right for you.

Try these ideas:

Self Assignment Ideas:

• A day in the life of your neighborhood
• Backyard safari
• Sit at a café and people watch (and photograph)
• Turn a day hiking/biking with friends into a photo shoot
• Photograph a parent and child playing (get permission)
• Tell a story in less than five images

Related posts:

1. Images with Meaning (From Summit Daily News, May 16, 2008)

Press Release

Timothy Faust of Breckenridge, CO, has received special honors in the WEDDING & PORTRAITPHOTOGRAPHERS INTERNATIONAL (WPPI) 2008 Awards of Excellence 16×20 Print Competition.

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