My Worst Trip Ever

Establishing shot in Windhoek

In this issue:

• Announcements
• Next Time in Cameracraft Magazine
• My Worst Trip Ever

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Announcements

• Sony A6700 Ebook is just a couple of weeks away from being completed!  You can pre-order your copy at a discount before it's released.  It will be available in all the usual formats.
• Version 2.0 of the Friedman Archives Seminars will be hitting the road soon.  (More details next month.  Let me know if your local photo club would like to bring me over at no cost!)
• Wanna use your camera on an African Safari?  I'm currently looking into arranging a photo safari for November 2024.  Come give your high-end equipment something to do and shoot with me!  (Email me for more info... Gary at Friedman Archives dot com.)

Next Time in Cameracraft Magazine

SEBASTIAO SALGADO - Peru 1977. 
 Image originally appeared here.

Pako Dominguez tells the story of a famous photographer who angered him to the point where he got up and did something about it.  "It was a photo taken in Peru by Brazilian economist and French photographer Sebastiao Salgado that I didn't like which was the trigger for this journey."

"Actually, the photograph was perfect, as was most of Salgado's work. What I didn’t like was how the observer would read it. The photograph shows some tenderness, but what it screams is poverty. It is the view of someone who comes from a highly developed western perspective looking down at the subject of his photograph. That photo motivated me to work on my own vision of life in the Peruvian Andes."

See Pako's impressive and timeless anti-Salgado images in the next issue of Cameracraft Magazine, to which you can subscribe here. 

My Worst Trip Ever

Split tree sunrise.  Got up at 4AM to take this.

Lots of people ask me “Where’s your favorite travel destination to take pictures?”.  (To which I usually give my standard but truthful answer, “Wherever I am!”)  But nobody ever asks me, “Hey, Gary, where’s the WORST place you’ve ever traveled to?”

Well, I’ll tell you anyway.  It was Namibia.  In the middle of the African continent.  And my negative experience had more to do with me than it did with the country I was visiting. 

I was there in 1997 as part of a cadre of photographers to help document the country just seven years after gaining its independence from South Africa.  My customer was the Namibian government, who would use the pictures to help promote tourism.  We were granted access to diamond mines, 5-star eco-tourism hotels (they weren’t called that then, but that’s what they were), and the best of what the country had to offer.  But as much as possible we tried to get away from the official tour and hang out with the populace to better learn what things were really like.

Ships in Namdock early morning

Namibia is actually a beautiful country, and like any place that’s different from what you know, you have to develop an appreciation for what it offers.  But at the time I didn't think highly of it at all.  My first jarring realization was that although it stopped being a German colony back in World War 1, the Germans continued to run the place.  German companies owned the gem and rare metals mines; they owned most of the major businesses, they heavily influenced the local education, and they seemed to do their best to suppress the native culture.  The politicians were all German, as was the food served at the hotels.  The entire trip I kept thinking to myself, “How dare they rape another country and treat the indigenous people like dirt![1]”

One of the eco-tourist hotels – about a dozen domes in the middle of nowhere.

Lesson #1: What’s worse than being judgmental?

Lesson #2: That was a rhetorical question; the answer is “The only thing worse than being judgmental is being judgmental while imposing a foreign set of standards from another culture.   With an arrogant and self-righteous bent.”  Yeah, that was me.  I’m not proud of it.  I'm sure the German leadership felt that they were doing good for the country.

Being judgmental is not a good way to behave – either as a traveler or as an ambassador.  Even if my observations were accurate.  One of the reasons Americans have developed a bad reputation over the years is their expectation that everywhere they go will be just like America, or everything will be judged relative to what they’re used to in America.  Well, just like pixel-peeping is not a valid way to evaluate picture quality, neither is comparing other, less-well-off countries to your own, either in lifestyle, politics, or values.   It is what it is.

Another eco-tourist hotel - Nkasa Lupala lodge in the Namib desert.

The other valuable lesson for me was the understanding that I’m responsible for my own moods – nobody else.  This lesson was a result of one of the other photographers I was traveling with – while most of them were outstanding human beings, there was one just rubbed me the wrong way.  He was self-centered, verbally abusive, had a short temper, and was very demanding of the native help.  His flare-ups made me angry on several occasions and more often than not would serve to ruin the trip for me.   Had I been wiser I would have applied Lesson #3, which is “I’m in charge of my own mood – nobody else.  I will not give anyone else permission to sour my mood; if it happens then it’s my own damn fault.”  Life for me got much better once I figured that out – you just can’t give other people -- especially other strangers -- permission to futz with how you feel. 

A family going to town in Hardap.

This rule can be extrapolated to, “Happiness is a choice, and I’m completely responsible for my own happiness.  My happiness cannot be conditional upon the actions of others.  If others are incompetent or in a bad mood then I feel bad for them but that has nothing to do with me.”  Later I learned that all the great spiritual teachers herald this in one form or another.  Once again, I re-invent the wheel. 

The equipment I brought with me was state-of-the-art at the time: Minolta Maxxum 9000 and Maxxum 700si, along with three lenses: Minolta 80-200 f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8, and a Sigma 18-24.  Everything was shot on Fujichrome slides (50, 100, 400 ISO). 

More of some of my favorite images from that trip are below.  As always, click on any of them for a larger and sharper version.

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[1] A second thought occurred to me as well on more than one occasion: “How dare they do to Namibia what they accused the Jews of doing to Germany during WW II!  What hypocrites!” (Cue the hate mail from Germany in 3...2...1...)

The sands really were red... I intensified the effect by shooting
at dusk and underexposing.

This used to be a luxury home before the town was abandoned and it was overtaken by sand.

Mine workers after a long shift.

Cuteness.

Trees lit by a 25 watt light (10 minute exposure) 

Until next time...

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman