These images of Mt. Everest are being shared on this Xmas eve 2011… Interestingly, these were both taken on Xmas eve 1983 for an article on Mt. Everest for the  National Geographic.

Happy Holidays

Please be sure to visit our Photo Adventures page!

Each day is a ph0t0 adventure whereby every participant will work with me personally to learn to see through the eyes of an ex-National Geographic photographer.  But this adventure is not just for the experienced photographer.. it is an adventure in learning to see and perhaps see differently.

Please visit my site PhotoAdventureVietnam to see imagery and read in detail about this photographic learning and traveling experience..

The fact that I do not have to bring a camera to my face in crowds of peoples changes the nature of being a “participant observer” in anthropological terms. I can recede into the social landscape and I can make images that are intimate albeit thoughtful and sensitive. Looking down onto the little window of life that the camera provides is wonderful. I wish during my 12 years as a National Geographic photographer I could have had a camera like this. Another aspect of this camera is that for virtually nothing I can and have adapted lenses from old Olympus OM days – the beautiful tiny and super sharp and FAST lenses – to the NEX-5.

I also have adapted my Contax Zeiss lenses (Contax G 45mm f2, Contax G 28mm) as well via a 35 dollar adapter. I now have a collection of tiny super sharp lenses that cover the entire range that I need without having to buy new glass (although it must be noted that Sony glass and optics are terrific in their own terms). In any case, the freedom that the size alone offers is magnificent, the images are all I can ask them to be and I can accomplish the vision that is uniquely mine far more easily that with this camera’s larger brethren. I am excited about this new tool and the upgrades that are shortly to be on the market. It must be kept in mind, that despite my appreciation of this tool, cameras do not take pictures…People do.

Camera handling, f stops and shutter speeds can be learned in a day or two but seeing, the act of visual intuition, is the thing that does not happen instantly. What this particular camera does for me is creates a much closer relationship with the my brain and heart and the content of my image. That for me is BIG STUFF. I will post a few images to show the work done with this piece of equipment.

I find it fascinating to wander through my life-time of images. It is through these photographs which essentially measure my life and fundamentally define who I am.

One of the most exciting and interesting stories I did for the NGS was for the 100 year anniversary issue – Exploring the Earth. The National Geographic and the Boston Museum of Science invested 10 years in defining and creating commitments to allow the overflight of the top of the world and given that one-half of Everest is in China this was a touchy and difficult negotiation. I was lucky enough to have been the one to do the image making. Two aircraft were utilized: a Swiss Pilatus Porter turbine engined small plane, and a Lear Jet from Sweden that was especially outfitted for oblique image making as well as map making. The project was many months in the process and a fantastic experience. It was exciting and dangerous.

The magazine came out with four page fold outs of my imagery and then it was over. The many thousands of images of Everest were put away in one of 26 file cabinets and not looked at again until recently. And, what a pleasure it is to look at the extraordinary once in a lifetime images. I have now reprized them and had gallery shows and have given a number of presentations discussing the adventure… and it was an ADVENTURE. I gave a talk at  Ramekins in Napa, California which covered both the project I did for the National Geographic article on the Kathmandu Valley (I lived in Kathmandu for 3 years) as well as Everest. The point of this rambling however is to note what a great adventure it is now to re-discover these images and show them to the universe.  Images which that to this point in time have not been taken again given the difficult and geopolitically sensitive nature of the Chinese/Nepalese/India borders.

Images are vailable for sale at the EliRidgway Gallery in San Francisco, Calif or visit my website for more information.

Below is an image of one wall of a recent show… the prints were created on handmade water color paper from Germany… beautiful texture sensitive to the nature of the images themselves.

I stayed away from all the add-on tools that one can buy… I had an assistant part of the time but the imagery was created often on the go without a lot of pre-planning. I used the cameras’ monitors to focus and the sound was brought into the cameras as well (there are noise issues but it has more to do with the air conditioning and other mechanical “gray sound” in the background and I didn’t have the time or inclination to do something about it given the time constraints). Tools do not make great images or film obviously and I am not suggesting that this is great work. What I AM suggesting is that the tools were easy to use as always, substantial in terms of ergonomics. I never had to worry.

What more could I ask. In fact, I also use these same tools on my large commercial shoots – TV Commercials and Videos for clients such as Intel and GE – but with a ton of wires and Marshall monitors and external sound capture (sound guys, lighting geeks and so on). The great thing, however, is to have fun in the process of building a website or a video or a still that communicates. These tools were essential to the process and because of their ease of use I was allowed to stay totally focused on content. I do not want this to be construed however that the cameras were key to any of the success in any of my work, they are not, they are adjuncts. It is just that these are necessary adjuncts and good ones at that. I am not nor will ever be an equipment monkey in any form, however I did want to note that these tools effectively fit into a very skinned down approach to the work that I had to accomplish in short periods of time.

So, peruse the website. (http://www.questu.ca/) It isn’t finished at this moment deeper into the site but the critical part that has to do with “recruitment” is clear and clean.

Baer Ridgway Exhibitions is pleased to present EVEREST, a selection of Mount Everest aerial photographs taken in late 1983 by William Thompson on assignment for National Geographic Magazine. These photographs represent the first and only complete aerial imagery ever taken of Mount Everest.  These images were created in the cauldron of an on going geopolitical intrigue.  To overfly Tibet required a delicate and difficult navigation of the political, social and religious landscapes of China, India, Tibet and Nepal.  This was accomplished through ten years of building partnerships and personal ties through the efforts of the Boston Museum of Science and the National Geographic Society.

The sublime beauty of these images illuminates that while this is some of the most perilous terrain on the planet it is also some of the most architecturally beautiful.  The peril exists not only for the mountaineer who climbs these peaks but also for the photographer (and pilots) as the process of making these images at extreme altitudes was enormously dangerous.

These images represent a fresh and rare view of the border between emerging superpowers and their often vulnerable smaller neighbors. In this geopolitical scenario, each player has greatly varying perspectives, histories and agendas. It is this composite and comparison of the unflinching beauty, danger and immensity of the natural world within such a politically contested landscape that makes these photographs so compelling.

Thompson holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Oregon, where he wrote his dissertation on Visual Learning and the process of making visual value judgments. He received his BA in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Painting from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Thompson worked as a photographer with National Geographic for 12 years covering such stories as the extinction of the world’s elephants, Bhutan’s people and geography, the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, and Alaska’s powerful unrelenting wilderness.

More information and images can be viewed on our website: www.baerridgway.com

BRX located at 172 Minna (between 3rd and New Montgomery) in downtown San Francisco, next to the SFMOMA. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00am to 6:00pm.

Kent Baer and Eli Ridgway

Baer Ridgway Exhibition

172 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

info@baerridgway.com

415.777.1366

I presently have a gallery show entitled Seasons of the Cowboy.  I have included 11 very large images.  You can walk up to these images (see below, click on them and they will become much larger) like “Tommy, the cowboy” or Kate, “the Aussie Cowgirl” and simply feel the presence of these individuals.  Cowboys are an anachronism, or are becoming one, in our culture.  The west as we understand it was formed around this iconic figure and in fact, I photographed the Marlboro Man for 18 years contributing a different slant to the icon.

In any case the icon and his ranch environment is disappearing into the dust of history as the large ranches, those not owned by movie stars and other magnates who can pay the taxes, are being converted into ‘ranchettes’ or little pieces of a ranch.  The landscape of the Madison Valley in Montana, for example, was once a gorgeous flow of land, and grasses and trees.  It is now becoming a sea of little houses for vacationers.  The history of the west is changing quickly.  The cowboy is disappearing yet the icon remains, and it is my belief that all we are going to have in a few years is the icon.

I have taken much of my lifetime  defining and exploring these characters, the land upon which they live and work, their history as well as their very being.  It is a texture that has its own dimensions and it is very hard for people not raised in this challenging environment to fully understand and appreciate.  The environment that the cowboy framed his character on and within is what we in American understand, but generall  take for granted as our beautiful WEST.  There are few places on the planet that are as appealing and extraordinary as our mountains of Wyoming and Montana, or our deserts of the southwest and the great plains of North and South Dakota.  We have Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons and the Grand Canyon and it is, at times seemingly an endless variety of wonderment and wilderness.  The seasons in these landscapes and human environments range from incredible heat to deep snow.  It is here that the character of the cowboy and cowgirl was formed and it is a different character indeed.  My camera records and continues to record tiny fragments of this life, and the amazing spaces.  I trust that someday the vastness of it all can be reflected in this work…

Canon 5D Mark II and its video capability: On a recent shoot for Intel which I was directing (and shooting as I like my images to look the way I want them) I employed the new Canon 5D Mark II its video mode.  The Canon images were shot along with two JVC video cameras.  The JVC imagery is excellent and very sharp, but unfortunately the ability to creatively use depth of field does not exist.  When we finally completed the edit using imagery from all three cameras, the Canon images were the most widely employed.  In a sense, they were almost awesome in character.  It is also a wonderful aspect that the files from this camera can be dropped directly in the editorial timeline with particular relevance to the fact that we were using Apple Final Cut Pro.

The Canon is not a flexible video camera because it difficult to focus and other issues such as the fact that defining the F-stop is almost impossible in a practical, on location, actual shooting environment.  However, all that being said, the images from the large chip were exceptional.  We loved the look, we loved the abililty to use the excellent Canon lenses.  I will say that in my commercial applications I will use these Canon 5D Mark II bodies on every shoot.  I also intend to make a film completely with this camera, with the appropriate amount of time I feel it could be excellent, the biggest issue being sound which while the camera can record, the quality leaves a lot to be desired.  If I could change anything in the camera it would have a flip out monitor as some other cameras (The Olympus E-3 and others) so I one would not have to crouch behind the camera to see the content.  I would also love to have it be able to autofocus in a more reasonable fashion that it presently does.

The idea that one needs a huge camera with a billion megapixels to create wonderful images is nonsense.  I took two cameras with me on a adventure of trekking and exploring North Vietnam.  A little Canon A640 and an Olympus OM-4T.  As we trekked through the Hmong Villages and landscapes, walked the streets of Hanoi and ventured on a Junk in HaLong Bay I shot with both but these images were taken with this little camera bought at Costco.  I could post hundreds at this level and quality and have made many prints of the them as well.  Again, the idea that what we photograph and its qualities have virtually nothing to do with the equipment in many cases.  The “story” image is something that our mind, in a fleeting moment, discovers in the 360 degree cacaphony that we live within each moment.

My big Canon 5D Mark II is a huge asset in the commercial world.  But in many ways, its sheer size and bulk makes it a deterent to the images that one find at any particular moment.  The idea is to have the freedom to quickly record an idea…. the small, facile cameras such as the Olympus OM-4T (a film camera) with its tiny jewel like super sharp and fast lenses is one option, but in this case as we struggle through the jungles and floated on the junk the ease of the use of the small Canon A640 was a joy with its flip-out viewfinder.  My perspective is this:  The only thing that Henri Cartier Bresson didn’t know how to do was to put down his camera….

The direction for cameras for the traveler and the journalist in my view are incorporated in the work being done by Panasonic and Olympus.