Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

5 Camera Bags

 

5 Camera Bags

Most working photographers that I know are strangely ambivalent about our cameras. Yes we will debate the merits of one system over another but at the end of the day we recognize it is the photographer who makes the picture not the camera. Nikon, Canon, Leica, Olympus, Sony… it is all good, a professional is going to make the tool at hand work. 

Want to get us fired up? Ask about camera bags. Cameras are somewhat impersonal, but the bag isn't. I spend more time thinking about the way I carry a camera than the camera itself. I am not alone. One famous Magnum photographer I know goes on assignment with one camera and one lens, but back in his hotel room there will be 10 different camera bags… true story.

So in the spirit of the season and shopping for your favorite photographer, here are 5 different camera bags I’ve used this year. Add your own favorites in the comments.

 

CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning interviewed me about this picture that I shot in Oman. It is part of segment they are doing on the new National Geographic Image Collection book (reviewed here). 

One of the questions was how does it feel to be included in this book. Not sure how I answered, but the truth is its an honor to be in a book with my mentors and heros. 

The piece airs this Sunday Nov. 29 at 9am eastern. Personally I'm going to tivo it 9 is a bit early for a Sunday.

-Stephen Alvarez

 

Madagascar's Stone Forest interview on WAMU / Animal House

© Stephen Alvarez/National Geographic Magazine

This morning WAMU's Animal House airs an interview with me about the Stone Forest story in the November National Geographic (interview here). 

-Stephen Alvarez

There is a post that shows about getting there here

A Quick Note about The Americans from Pradip Malde

A Quick Note about The Americans and Robert Frank from Pradip Malde, Professor of Fine Arts at Sewanee, to compliment the 10 Photo Books of 2009 List. Be sure and check out Pradip’s evocative Haiti Portfolio. Pradip leads a documentary photography class there most summers. From Pradip:

Robert Frank's 'The Americans' has become one of several commentaries on American culture and politics that is insightful, cautionary, and almost prescient. Others that come to mind in this cluster are Alexis de Tocquevile's 'Democracy in America' (1835 and 1840) and Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' (1951). Frank travelled across the USA for some two years during the mid-1950s, generating almost 30,000 exposures. The resulting edit of 83 photographs was published in the USA by Delpire Press in 1959. Fifty years on, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Sarah Greenough, presents us with an incredible reconsideration of Frank's work. 'Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans - expanded edition' maps out the relationships between the creative processes of an artist and the culture of a nation, the tensions between expression and commodity, and the rigors of doing documentary work. All of this with essays and, most important, hundreds of richly reproduced archive images, work prints and contact sheets. This book, the expanded edition, should be issued with every new American passport.

 - Pradip Malde

(Buy The Americans)

 

[Note that 'Looking In' is also available in a more condensed version and is substantially different from the expanded edition.]

Guest post by Glenn Campbell Band aids in Bangkok! from the f8 Workshop

I thought it would be interesting to get a student's perspective on the f8 Workshop led by Mike Yamashita, Ira Block and David Alan Harvey. Thanks to Glenn Campbell for weighing in.

-Stephen Alvarez

Band aids in Bangkok!

by GLENN CAMPBELL - 

Bangkok day 3 © Glenn Campbell 

The opening riff, 3 national Geographic photographers, over 30 years experience each...thats around 100 years of pointing cameras at some of the most extreme, beautiful and confounding places on earth, only 3 other photographers have as much experience, 2 are semi retired and the other spends his time underwater.

10 Photo Books of 2009

 
 

So many choices this year – so here’s the random 10. Frank, Eggleston, and Anderson were clearly trending among the picturati. (Thanks to all of you who graciously weighed in.) And yes Chris, Stephen still owes you a print…

 

Consequences by NOOR, Kadir Van Lohuizen in Brazil

The agency NOOR continues its excellent coverage of climate change with Kadir Van Lohuizen's Amazon work (here). See the whole group project here. 

Agencies like NOOR are in a unique position to replace -in some cases- traditional media. You take a group of incredibly talented, hard working photographers and let them loose on a subject, the results are stunning. Why do you need a magazine as the distribution channel?

-Stephen Alvarez

 

Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Balance

Tsingy de Bemeraha 2009, Madagascar ©Stephen Alvarez/National Geographic Magazine

The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar is coming up December 3-5 and I have to get my presentation ready. I think I am going to talk about one of the real arts of a long professional career: Balance

A weekend with the compact Canon s90

above Canon s90 at iso 200 

My friend Ben picked up a Canon s90 camera (now $399 order here) in NY last week and was nice enough to let me look at it for a weekend. I had almost bought the same camera on my way to Sudan the month before but had resisted temptation in favor of a new microphone.

A good point and shoot is just something that you should have as a photographer. I’ve said it before but it bares repeating, it doesn’t matter how good your camera is if you don’t have it with you. If your hulking 25 megapixel behemoth is in the hotel room you aren’t going to make photos…

Notes from the f8 Workshop in Bangkok

© Jook Leung

After four intense days here in Bangkok, Dave Harvey, Mike Yamashita, myself, and workshop leader Kris LeBoutillier can finally take it easy. Our students were really rocking the last day, putting to use all information we pounded in their heads the first two days.