A few thoughts from Sam Abell.

Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized

I made the 6 hour road trip with Travis, Kainaz and Jenn down to Western Kentucky yesterday to hear Sam Abell speak. 12 hours of singing(OK shouting) at the top of my lungs for 2 hours of inspiration. Not a bad deal.

I posted about Mr. Abell and one of my favorite pages in The Photographic Life earlier this year. It was great to finally hear the story of the letter and about his work in person.

A few things I took away from Sam:

Hold yourself to the photographic greats. The people we all idolize. Hold yourself to that caliber of work. (No excuses.)

Fine tune the setting not the subject. (Sam is big on working the setting hard.)

Sam approaches his photos with three things in mind. (He approaches it in reverse order too with the setting being the element he regards first. He’ll find his composition first and just wait for the elements to fall into the place. He stresses the importance of setting a lot. I like to call it setting the stage and waiting for your characters to complete the set.)

1. Expression
2. Gesture
3. Setting

Light matters.

No education for seeing. You either see or you don’t. Who teaches you how to see?

First love is black and white. Which will last longer color or black and white? (Was surprised to hear that black and white is his first love since his color palette is always stunning.)

Color or black and white? Which is more compelling? More involving? He hasn’t answered the question yet. It’s a lifetime question.

Why did you hire me as an intern? A question he posed to Bob Gilka at Geographic after being hired as their summer intern. Gilka’s reponse? Promise.

As the intern there he didn’t know what to do so he did the only thing he could do and that was work hard. (Something all us summer interns should strive for.)

He talked about photographer’s block, being lonely and not being able to leave his hotel room for 3 days straight. (I could relate to that one after having gotten my first taste of it out on my magazine shoot. The only thing I wanted to do at times was just stay in the comforts of my room and eat Red Vines.)

Everytime a photographer takes a picture they’re saying stay this moment.

Why live the photographic life? Cause if you’re faithful to photography you’ll become yourself.

Do you live the photographic life?

A few thoughts from Sam Abell. sam30summit
A photograph of Sam’s wife Denise Myers taken on the summit of Mauna Loa in 1978.
Denise and I were married in 1978 and this picture symbolizes the life we wanted
and had together as travelers. It was not always mountain top experiences but this
picture does not overstate the spirit of our life together.

Find more of Sam’s work here along with a nice interview and more of his thoughts.

Further Reading:

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Permalink | February 29th, 2008

2 Responses to “A few thoughts from Sam Abell.”

  1. Amanda Says:
    February 29th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Wish I could have been there. But, the POYi website leaves no time for breaks. Thanks for sharing. It’s worth checking out Feature Picture Story. http://poyi.org/65/21/ae01_01.php

  2. Tim Gruber Says:
    February 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Hope you’re staying sane there Amanda. Nice to see Skatopia doing well. I was hoping it’d place for Travis.

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