project blog — 10,000 Hours Photography

Napa is an interesting place and even though I used to live only an hour away, it always took forever to get to the wineries, which are tucked away along back roads and spanning the little towns of St. Helena, Yountville, and Calistoga. It's especially problematic when tourists want to take in the view but don't want to hire a car service, so they slowpoke along on a 2-laned road while all the rest of us are dying slowly and miserably behind them at well below the speed limit.
Even though Napa is perhaps the first place that comes to mind when one thinks about American wine regions, it's actually one of the smallest by area and only 4% of the wine produced in California comes from the Napa Valley. I still argue that it's quality over quantity in this case. There are 15 sub-regions within the Napa Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA) and they span all different elevations and soils. I find myself partial to volcanic, loamy, mountain soils of Atlas Peak, Stag's Leap, Howell Mountain, and Spring Mountain... consistently, I'll taste and pick out wines from these areas because they're so bold and tannin heavy.

We started off our morning with wine blending at Conn Creek, this awesome activity of trying 15 different varietals of Cabernet and mixing them along with 4 other wines (Merlot, Cab Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot) to create a red blend. Since I was still recovering from the raucous night before and having done wine blending at Conn before, I just went straight to my favorite regions and tried a blend. First time ended up being the charm and I ended up bottling that one. Despite being in pain all morning, I still got some great pictures and had a blast - probably a function of the company I kept.

The rest of the day was actually not as fun - it was an exercise in trying not to tell off everyone - from the pretentious asshole that we kept running into or the crap service we received during lunch and at a later tasting. Even though I may look young, I have no problem dropping major dollars on wine and I have absolutely done just that before on pretty much every excursion to Napa without batting an eye. But since the service was so awful, I passed this time. Oh well, at least we'll always have the pictures.

Ready to blend away!

Those are some big barrels

Bottling the winning blend

Corking's a workout!

Through the looking glass

Soon... sort of.

Hours to Date: 32

I've been avoiding portraiture up until now... for good reason. Personally, I find portraits to be the most difficult kinds of images to capture well. The whole point of a "good" portrait is not only to convey the likeness of a person, but more importantly, to capture the personality, mood, the very essence of the individual. Any powerful photo (of a person or not), should make the viewer feel something... my gut check is that if my reaction is simply "that's nice," it's a snapshot, not a photo. And it's vastly easier to capture the feeling of a landscape or a still life that doesn't move while you're adjusting camera settings and composing the photo.

Not to mention the fact that we as humans are biologically pre-programmed to recognize and examine faces. Newborn babies demonstrate a preference for looking at faces or face-like images. There's even a specific brain area called the fusiform gyrus that is heavily involved in recognizing faces. Several studies have associated damage to this area with the inability to recognize faces - a condition common enough to have its own name and Wikipedia entry - prosopagnosia. But the psych major in me digresses.

All that said, the face is ultimately where human emotion is expressed. According to psychologist Paul Ekman (one of my heroes in the field), there are 6 facial expressions that are universal to humans regardless of cultural upbringing and correspond to the following emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise... and capturing these emotions genuinely and powerfully is really what a good portrait is all about.

Another added level of difficulty is that portraits are generally posed and most people develop a sort of anxious air about them while they're waiting and wondering what they look like and if their muffin top or wrinkles or whatever their chosen insecurity is showing. Thus, as the photographer, I'm simultaneously adjusting aperture, shutter speeds, and composing the photo all while trying to engage the person in conversation to keep them distracted and natural as possible. No wonder many photographers work with assistants to distract their subjects.

In any case... attempt #1 in portraiture yesterday afternoon was pretty weak by my reckoning. I still consider these to be snapshots, not real portraits, but at least they're good snapshots of Niki and her pup, Woody!! Thanks, Niki, for being a willing subject!!