Mike Aviña seems to be the photographer we would all like to be…the photographer’s photographer. He is smart, informed and damned good at street photography. It is Aviña’s ability to constantly challenge himself that makes his work so exciting. He takes us along on his journey of self discovery and shares his “ahah” moments with us providing a source of inspiration for our own work. Many of his photographs have a gritty, urban feel and he seems to be uninhibited about pointing his camera at any subject. I wanted to learn more about his methods and motivations. Mike was kind enough to answer a few questions. (click photos for larger)

Will you please tell us your age (by decade) and where you grew up so we might have an idea of your cultural influences?
I’m just entering my forties. I grew up in California, and moved around quite a bit. It’s a big state, with vast cultural differences from north to south. I love and hate California. I feel like it is a bubble, or dream world of sorts–but full of contradictions, perfect for photography.

If you have a career, what is it? Where do you live and work now?
I’m an attorney and environmental planner. I work on environmental review of public and private projects. Working on the policy side of project review sometimes helps one see how particular people are situated in larger issues.

How did you get into photography?
I became interested in photography completely by accident. I started shooting regularly with a phone camera—taking pictures of everyday things for fun. Suddenly the plastic tumbler at a diner or peeling advertisements on a building were interesting because I was able to take usable pictures of them easily. I started digging in and reading about photography–I stumbled on Winogrand’s shot of the Los Angeles street scene, the one in Hollywood with the long shadows. Suddenly I realized there were these amazing scenes in the everyday world and you didn’t have to go to the ends of the earth to find them. I think that picture changed my idea of how and where photography might happen.

Did you start out doing street photography or come to it from another photo genre? Do other subjects interest you… do you shoot other types of photos now?
I started out just taking pictures with a phone as I mentioned and I started doing research on photography. I had no guide posts to speak of, but I read the article everyone has seen about Alex Majoli using point and shoot cameras, I saw Winogrand’s street work, I circled back to the big photographers I already knew about and saw their work in a fresh way, both documentary and more “street” oriented photos. I was of course, aware of landscape photography, studio portraiture, and other approaches but somehow the convenience of little digital cameras and the richness of everyday life became the main event. This led to shooting film and the realization that strong images are hard to make, but once hooked, there was no going back, so I am primarily interested in documentary and street photography for my own work. There are of course, fresh innovations that are worth following—Simon Norfolk’s landscape work comes to mind.

You seem to be well informed about photography in general, have you taken courses or do you have a good library? Do you spend much time looking at other photography online? How does other work affect yours? Name one or two established photographers who have influenced your photography.
Looking at the work of significant photographers is critical. Visual literacy gives you a palette of ideas and ways of shooting and also shows you how high the bar really is. Photography is so accessible now, you can absorb a good survey on the web. That said I’ve made a point of going to the local university library and spending time in the stacks just looking at photos to absorb different ways of working. Seeing how people sequence images in books and on the web teaches you about the meaning that emerges in the different ways images are combined.
Personally, Bruce Davidson and Eugene Richards are very important for me. Their method of working close to the subject, of confronting the viewer with the gaze or dignity of the person in the frame is superlative. Harvey Stein is also a significant influence. I took one of his workshops at ICP. He is a quiet, tall, fellow that often engages the people in the photo and uses wide-angle lenses like Davidson and Richards. He just published a book with 40 years of images from Coney Island. Between the three of them, I think they cover the waterfront of human experience, all using broadly similar methods.

Does travel to another place get your creative juices flowing, or does your home turf provide sufficient inspiration and subject?
I love to travel but I think the ability to find the interesting frame right in front of your nose is the mark of a good photographer. Learning how to organize the shapes in a rectangle into something interesting, can, to some extent be reduced to a formula—rules of composition, etc. (which of course should be abandoned whenever necessary). Seeing the universal or significant situation in front of you is harder. So I guess, I’m happy to shoot anywhere–having enough time is more important than being in a particular place. The puzzle of the local and immediate world is always more rich than we imagine at first, certainly more rich than I ever imagined before I became interested in photography. That said I would love to travel more, the exhilaration of shooting for 12 or 14 hours and being dehydrated and disoriented is the best kind of day in photography as far as I’m concerned.

Looking through your Flickr photostream, you often know a lot about the people you photograph. Do you prefer to engage your subjects and if so, do you “arrange” them in any way other than changing your point of view? Do you shoot first, then talk or the other way around?
I talk to people I shoot, sometimes at great length. I just like working that way — people interest me. While pictures can become their own reality, I think it is easier to make strong environmental portraits if you try to match the feeling of the frame to the inner state of the subject–this requires engaging people and finding out about them. I avoid directing people but once they know you are there they may be reacting to you slightly, so it’s not always literally candid. I experiment with a lot of different approaches–I think it is good to have a well-stocked toolkit of options, but it is best to really dig in and try to advance on one or two particular methods, so I grab frames of people moving and that sort of thing, but I want to continue to work on street portraiture in particular. Of course, the more people become comfortable with you and the better you are at finding a way to be in their world with their permission, you can also get back to doing candid images once they forget about the camera. That’s also a method that I want to explore.

It seems to me that you are the quintessential student, always trying out new ways of seeing. What are your personal goals in photography? Has your work been exhibited or published?
I’d be happy to make a few photographs that have abiding relevance in the sense of showing how the places and people I photograph feel, and complete a few significant long-term projects. Beyond that, photography is a way of life, a compulsion and interest in the world that once awakened, is its own end. California Northern, a local regional journal, published a few of my images, and some other shots have been used for academic papers about transit. I did almost all 52 weeks of the Street Photography Now Project and had images chosen by the instructors and managers of the project. I would like to organize a coherent photo essay soon and publish it online–I just never seem to feel like it is finished. Maybe the best thing is to decide when you have enough for an installment and then do an edit and try to publish it, and then keep shooting.

You shoot both film and digital, is that because of the quality of your final image, or because of the way of working?
I’ve tried both film and digital just to compare them. I don’t like being precious about either — the critical thing is knowing what film and digital offer. With careful exposure and processing, digital, even point and shoot digital, can offer sublime results. Film is more forgiving in terms of exposure and dynamic range but is more labor intensive.

Do you have a darkroom and do your own film processing? Do you make silver gelatin prints or just scan film to digital?I only really know how to develop film in Rodinal and scan it–I’ve never made prints except from scans. If I have a really good frame in a negative I sometimes pay for a scan with a Hasselblad scanner–from which very fine prints can be made on good printers. Most of my film is scanned at home on a flatbed and processed digitally. This provides some of the benefits of each of the different media, the richness and dynamic range of film and the convenience of digital processing–the ability to refine an image without making print after print to get it right. I’m eager to try out the new digital silver printing processes that allow you to take digital files and print them photographically–you can put a digital file back into silver.

What kind of camera gear do you use? What do you usually carry when you go out shooting?
It all depends on how much time I have. When I’m on a mission to try to get something strong I often shoot film, with an old rangefinder and a 35mm lens. That said, I make a point of having a camera at all times—something small and light, for those shots on the way to lunch. Being open and ready at all times is important.

Can you show us a couple of your best photographs and tell us why you feel they were successful?
These three black and white frames are from downtown Sacramento, California. The wildly variable light and melancholy underneath the facade of California fascinates me — the sun is often quite bright and the shadows are therefore sharp and deep.

Any advice for photographers?
Be open to the world, find what interests you personally and keep shooting until you discover the right method for your subject and your own disposition. Take more pictures and spend less time fussing about your particular gear or the limitations of what you are given to shoot. Make your own project based on your own passions and the issues right in front of you.

more…

www.calnorthern.net
www.flickr.com/groups/52weeksofspnp/pool

Sometime in the early 1980’s, after shooting classic-style street photography (b&w, focused on people) for 15 years, I started photographing scenes that had interesting lines, shapes and shadows. At first, people were a part of these pictures. Eventually, it didn’t matter if people were in the frame at all and I spent most of the 1980’s shooting what I called, “Found Graphics”. There were two pivotal photographs that pointed me in this new direction: “Caneman” (above) and “Waiting for a Bus”. I wish I could say that I planned these images, but I didn’t, they just happened. I suppose it is exactly that kind of serendipity that fuels the creative process and opens new areas of exploration for us. Something catches our eye, an incident opens a new understanding of a part of our world or sometimes it is nothing more than a happy accident. Seizing and applying the inspiration is what’s important.

I really enjoyed shooting photos on the street and in many cases OF the street…and sidewalks…and railings and stairways, although today I am not sure how those images fit into my body of work. I remember my painter friend Thorvald Sanchez commenting on an image of a palm tree shadow, “I have never seen a shadow walk down the stairs like that!” Whereas street photography involving people as the main subject can be intense and exhilarating, found graphics are contemplative and peaceful. Rather than chasing the ultimate moment of human behavior I began looking for bold lines and shapes. One thing that I never did was refer to those photographs as “street photography” and that ties in to an earlier post, “Please Don’t Hijack the Genre”

_{TOP: Caneman, West Palm Beach 1980}

ABOVE: Yucatan Stairs, Merida, Mexico 1983

Miami Beach

Knowing full well where the beach was, I asked the man in the wheelchair, “Is the beach down that way?” He told me it was at the end of the block and said, “You look like a pleasant sort of guy”. I replied, “I am”.

Ronny is from Roanoke, Virginia. He is going through a bad time. He said he didn’t understand how people could give money to someone on the street for alcohol and not give him anything for food. I told him I would help him out. He had been a short order cook in Virginia. I told him that in the early 90′s I used to fly into Roanoke and drive to West Virginia to do conventions at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs. “Do you know where that is?” I asked. “Oh yeah” he said, “I cooked there for two years. That sure is an espensive place.” I agreed, but told him I was lucky because someone else paid my way.

Ronny’s left leg was amputated below the knee. He had taken a job doing cleanup in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina and said that he stepped on a nail one day. Two days later his leg looked “like a rainbow” according to Ronny. “It got gangrene and they had to cut it off.”

I asked him how come he was living on the street. “My wife left me and took all my money. Cleaned me out. The worse thing is, I don’t know where she is. I don’t really hate her. I don’t hold no grudge or anything. I’d just like to see her so she could tell me why she left. She just left, no explanation. Took all my money outta the bank.” I commiserated and agreed that it was always hard to forget about the one who got away. That she took his money was a real pisser.

I told him I wanted to take some shots of him with the people passing by and he said okay. At one point he flagged down a young girl and said, “Let him take my picture with you okay?. She said she was late for work but we persisted and she posed along side him. He was pleased and I told him he picked a real cutie.

Knowing that he probably was, I asked him if he was a god fearing man? He said he was. “So what do you think of all these natural disasters the past couple years…tsunami in Indonesia…earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand, Japan?” Ronny replied that it was the Book of Revelations coming to pass. He quoted a few bible references to corroborate his reply. I told him that I was not really religious but was open minded enough to consider any possibility. Ronny is a big man and I expect was not easy for him to depend on other prople to get by. Yet in spite of his situation, he was not bitter and had a fairly positive outlook which I attributed to his faith.

His bedroll was alongside his wheelchair and I noticed a nasty sandspur stuck in his right sleeve. I asked if the cops hassled him about sleeping on the beach. He said no. But it was hard to find a place to stay when it was raining. There was an abandoned hotel nearby that a black man owned and the man let Ronny stay there when it rained. He was hoping that if he could find his wife and get some of his money back he could get a room somewhere. But neither of us thought that was likely to happen, especially since someone stole his cell phone. I wanted to ask him about the ugly scabs on his good leg…whether people took advantage of him because he was handicapped and homeless. But I decided that I didn’t want to know.

I gave him four bucks, shook his hand and wished him a good day. “God bless ya’ Ronny” I said as I walked away.

^{Originally posted to Flickr on March 22, 2011}

As we near the end of 2011one thing I look forward to in 2012 is an absence of hassles for taking photographs in public places. This year I had no less than three incidents with authorities:

• At Sun Fest, a complete stranger accused me of taking pictures of women and children. I was detained while a security person called a police officer and I was questioned. This incident is detailed in a post on Flickr (click photo at bottom).
• I was told by a security person that I could not photograph children playing in Centennial Fountain without permission from their parents.
• A sheriff deputy asked me to stop taking photographs of the county courthouse. He said I could do so from the public sidewalk, but not while on courthouse property. (is that not public property?)

With the popularity and accessibility that digital photography offers society, it seems that everyone is taking photos of someone or something. Is the ubiquity of photography causing people to be oversensitive? While this has been discussed frequently on photo sharing websites, my own observation has been that other than one’s demeanor, the ability to freely take photos of anything anywhere seems to depend on where you are. SOme cities are photo-friendly while others are downright hostile. Suburbs and mid-sized or small cities seem to be the worst places. I was in New York this summer and spent six or seven hours taking pictures in the city and was barely noticed. Other than a dirty look from a couple women, no one even acknowledged me. In the past, I have never had any problems photographing in rural towns either.

It does help to know your rights. The American Civil Liberties Union has been circulating pamphlets outlining photographers’ rights. The piece of information that I found most helpful was:
If stopped for photography, the right question to ask is, “am I free to go?” If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal.

Here are some additional resources for photographers.
• ACLU Photographers Rights
• Photographers Rights, Bert P. Krages III attorney
• Know Your Rights (UK)
• Photography is not a Crime

Now get out and take some photographs…you have every right to!

_{TOP: New York City street corner 2011}

ABOVE: Sun Fest incident, West Palm Beach 2011

Today I noticed that another one of my Flickr contacts has put aside their digital Leica M9 in favor of a film Leica M7. I can quickly think of at least a dozen contacts, who either shoot both film and digital, or have totally given up digital and shoot film exclusively. Some use expensive cameras, some use inexpensive vintage rangefinder or SLR’s, and some even shoot medium format.

When I mention to local photo buddies or other acquaintances that film photography is in no danger of disappearing and tell them that there are huge numbers of film users at online photo sharing websites, I am usually met with open mouth and a stare of disbelief. Here in the outlands, people shoot digital, although Jamie at my local photo lab told me that the students from the School of the Arts are required to shoot film. While film photographs do have a distinctive look of their own, I think investing time into working with software plugins and presets could yield indistinguishable results using digital raw source files. Some of the comments I hear remind me of the arguments heard when audio CD’s first came on the market and threatened the dominance of vinyl LP’s. In a conversation, that “warmth” thing always came up. “Vinyl just has so much more warmth to the sound than the cold and literal digital media.” Of course, let it be known that records also had scratches and maybe it was those clicks and pops that were perceived as “warmth”. Negatives can also have scratches especially in the hands of newcomers to the media. One contact posted a few shots taken with a Rollei that were streaked with processor roller marks that he hadn’t noticed. Some of these new film devotees are taking their shots to the local CVS and getting a disk of low res scans. Not what I would be doing if I valued what I shot.

I suspect that more than any magic quality of a photograph taken on film, it is the way of working that holds an attraction. It is akin to fine art photographers picking up a plastic toy camera to create fine art with. Imposing limitations can force us to see more critically. Having only 36 shots (or 12!) on a roll rather than an unlimited number on a flash media card can makes us think twice before pressing the shutter (not to mention the cost). The real reason for these legions of new photographers picking up film photography is a search for truth. Those who have come to photography in this digital age want to know what they missed. They want to pay their respects, gain an understanding of what their elders knew. It’s like an Elvis fan making the pilgrimage to Graceland.

I have certainly closed some doors to old technology but film is not one of them. I still have two 35mm film systems and all of my darkroom equipment. But I shot film for forty years and for right now I have no plan to give up the convenience of digital imaging to go back to film. I won’t say never though!

^{TOP: We Don’t Play, West Palm Beach 1973. Leica IIIb w/28mm f3.5 Nikor, Tri-X at ASA 400}

ABOVE: As romantic the notion of film may be, it has limitations. I could never have taken as clean a color image on film. Nikon D7000 w/24mm f2.8, ISO 3200; West Palm Beach 2011

The broad “place” is the hardwood forests of the northeast. Zooming in a bit focuses on New Hampshire and even closer, to Franconia Notch. During the 1970’s I went to the Basin on the Pemigewasset River and photographed the same place in different seasons. I went again in 2002 and repeated the same photograph but this time with a digital camera. These mountains, rivers and forests are so timeless, so solid, so permanent. While the stock market crashes and the Arab Spring overthrows brutal dictators the river keeps flowing, wearing the rock surfaces smooth as porcelain. Scandal pervades the political scene and it seems as if morality is on the verge of extinction, but in the autumn the leaves of the hardwoods in New Hampshire turn fiery orange and fall to the ground to nourish another season of growth the following spring. Just as they always have. I see people at the mall, at the airport, addicted to the technology in their hand. The genie has been let out of the bottle and it has changed the world forever. But, I can look at the photos from Franconia Notch and feel snowflakes as they fall on my face, feel my fingers slightly numb through wet wool mittens, and smell the piney scent of hemlock branches as I walk through the snow blanketed woods. We look for sense in our manmade worlds and there is little to be found. Yet perfection abounds in the natural world. There, everything is in balance, everything is as it should be. If there is a god, you can find him in those woods up there.

_{TOP: The Basin, Franconia Notch, NH – November 1976}

ABOVE: The Basin, Franconia Notch, NH – October 2002

See a set of seven New Hampshire images here.

Last Wednesday marked the 46th anniversary of the Great Northeast Blackout that darkened New York City overnight. I was there. I graduated high school the year before and was working in the city at a graphics studio while attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn three nights a week. What a different life I would have had if there had not been a war in Vietnam and a draft.

The power went out just about quitting time. The offices I worked in were on the 13th floor but they called it 14th. You know how that goes. I commuted 40 minutes into the city every day on what was then, the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. The trains ran on electricity so I had no plans to try to get home. A few co-workers lived uptown and decided to walk down the stairs and try to find a taxi home. That was the same thought that thousands of other office workers had so an hour or two later the men were back. Thankfully they brought sandwiches.

We had no lanterns or candles so being resourceful, we decided to try lighting the end of a grease pencil china marker. A few of those provided some light and as we later learned noxious fumes as well. I had only been doing photography for two years or so and the fact that I was able to get printable negatives of what was essentially, pure darkness, surprises me even today. The camera used was my first “good” camera; a Miranda F with 50mm f1.8 lens.

There was and has been much discussion after the event about “what we learned” and what could be done to prevent such a thing happening again. I am sure that systems and procedures were revised immediately after the failure that left 30 million people in the dark. In this computer age we have far more sophisticated systems in place to prevent such catastrophes. Yet there are more people and we all are more dependent on the services that electricity provides. With the capabilities of computers also come the vulnerabilities. The wars of the future will likely be fought on computer networks, not battlefields.

Hopefully today will be a better day at work than yesterday. Our DSL line was on and off all day.

David Bowie from the album “Heroes” – Blackout

Welcome to the age of robots. You may not have noticed, but they’re here. Everywhere. I am not referring to the ones that build automobiles in factories or the ones that Roomba® in your home. I am referring to the ones that technology has so gracefully and gradually slipped into our lives that we haven’t even noticed. Like a 1950’s sci-fi movie, had they come from another galaxy they would have already conquered the earth. But who would have thought they would have no arms or legs and fit inside a pocket?

I have a stupid phone. Although it probably does things that I don’t use it for, it fits in my pocket and makes telephone calls very easily. If I did have a smart phone I would probably train it to reply to “am I loved?” and “am I needed? Judging from the compulsive behavior exhibited by people at malls and airports, that seems to be the primary function of these devices. Don’t start lobbing rotten tomatoes at me. I too can be compulsive when I have uploaded an especially good photo to Flickr. Throughout the day I check comments far more often than I need to. But when I leave the house the Internet and email stay behind and I treasure the separation from connectivity. That is especially true if I am on a pleasure trip. I am really not important or needed enough to have to be available at all times. Man, am I happy about that~! There are times when I feel like grabbing the phone out of the hand of some boorish idiot in front of me in the checkout line and smashing it to the floor. Sorry, this wasn’t meant to be a device bashing post. Let’s get back to the robots.

When I saw the commercial for the iPhone 4s it struck me that this was more than a phone or even a pocket-sized computer. With the advanced capabilities of voice recognition it has become a personal assistant. How cool is that? And she fits in a pocket and goes with you everywhere. If I were twenty or thirty years younger I would be so into mobile technology. Just the ability to carry my whole commercial photography portfolio as a multimedia presentation on a tablet the size of a magazine would close the deal for me. And it surfs the web and does email too…and more!

There is certainly the seed for a science fiction movie in all of this. Some Blofield-like maniac bent on ruling civilization could devise a way to take over smart phones the world over and control people’s minds…or their bank accounts! I have reached a point in life where I accept almost anything as being possible but don’t believe it unless I see it. So I advise you, it is not too early to start thinking about robot insurance.

I walked over and started talking to this guy at the train station near the Lake Worth flea market. He was obviously homeless. He said he had just gotten out of 30 days in jail for panhandling. He told me that he had a thousand dollar prepaid Visa card when he went in, but didn’t when they let him out. The cops had hassled him over it when they booked him suggesting that he had stolen someone else’s card despite him pointing out, “see, it says ‘Gift Card’ on it!”. You never know what is truth and what is fiction and I try not to decide. I just listen.

He said he had lived in the area most of his life, went to LW High School. Tossed out a local address where he said his house was. Now he slept at Dreher Park most nights. He said he was a brick mason and could build a house from the ground up. Among other professions, he had also been a pilot smuggling marijuana out of Colombia in the early 80′s. He said he didn’t do any drugs and I believed him. “I’m a beer and cigarette man” he said as he took a drag on the stub of a hand rolled cigarette. “I’ll smoke a little weed if sombody offers it” he added.

I asked him his name and he told me it was Greg. The irony of that coincidence brought the uncertainty of life closer to home. We all walk a very fine line between comfort and discomfort. A simple incident can change our lives forever.

I didn’t ask why he was on the street, but I wondered what kept these people, who live such a hard life, going. Like Ronny who I photographed in Miami Beach, Greg was hoping to get back together with his wife who now lived in North Carolina. He had a cell phone but it didn’t work so I wondered how that was going to happen. He told me that he still attended the church in town that he always had and that the pastor invited him for Christmas dinner a couple years ago. I told him he was lucky to know someone so thoughtful. It was evident that faith, hope and charity were important to his survival.

For a 51-year old, the years of life on the street made him look older. He rolled up his sleeve to show me what looked like old scars from days when he might have been able to pay for them. “I’ve got skin cancer. That’s why I wear a long sleeve shirt. Each one of these cost me $2800 to laser off…I never had any insurance. I know I’m dyin’. I just want to build a house on five acres of land in North Carolina and spend the rest of my life fishin’ and huntin’.”

Long time ago I saw an interview with Steely Dan. Donald Fagen was asked how he created his often, abstract song lyrics that offered little for concrete interpretation. He replied that he chose words for the way that they sounded. That may have been flippant, but if we think about it for a minute, it seems entirely plausible. It is no different than scat singing. Maybe “King of the World” from Countdown to Ecstasy doesn’t have anything to do with the last man left on the Rio Grande. Maybe it is just a tone poem with enough of a lyrical structure to allow listeners to draw their own conclusions?

When this type of device finds its way into photography, I find that it is often unappreciated and misunderstood. A photo can work solely because of the way the shapes are arranged in the frame. It really doesn’t matter what the shapes are…they just may happen to be people…or the corner of a building, or shadows creeping down a stairway. Our notion of photography as a literal art capturing a truthful depiction of a scene or event makes us look at photographs subjectively. Even if it is “photoshopped” to represent a fantasy, we still look at it from a factual point of view. Note, there are photographers who shoot abstracts. There always have been. But most photography is viewed trying to understand what the photograph depicts. Looking at a photo of a street full of people merely as shapes is not easy. Yet an art critic reviewing a Delacroix painting will certainly cover the placement of the figures in the composition and the reasons and symbolism behind that composition.

_{TOP: The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, West Palm Beach 2011}

ABOVE: Asian Characters at a Polish Wedding, Chicago 2007

the Bobs