Getting Out There

Provided by: David Hessell

For me, photography is more than recording light on film. No, that is only one small part of photography. I love getting out there and doing what I enjoy doing. At the same time, being a photographer is what gets me out there in the first place. It is a vicious cycle. One passion drives another until they actually become one.

Let me explain. I love to travel. I like to travel by motorcycle. I enjoy photography That pretty much sums up what I like to do when I have the chance to it. The best part is that, as a teacher, I do have time to combine my passions and get out there and do all three things at once.

Summer.

During the school year, I work as an Special Education teacher at a middle school, teach a Black and White college photography course at the local Community College, and free-lance as a photographer for OUR STATE magazine, the state magazine for North Carolina. I keep busy. I love what I do and also enjoy my time at home, with my wife and our (her) five cats. I also spend the school year dreaming up trips and adventures for the up-coming summer. That is what I do. My wife, Cindy, is also a teacher, an art teacher that shares my passion for travel and art, not so much the motorcycle thing. She understands passion. She understands me.

For the past five or six summers I have worked with a few motorcycle touring companies, and motorcycle magazines, to photograph and write articles on the different areas of the world they explore on two wheels. Perfect. I have taken motorcycle trips for thirty years, been a photographer for about twenty, and a writer for five or six. Works for me. I combine my passion for travel with photography, throw in the writing aspect, that is new to me, and come up with a wonderful way to spend the summer. I joke and tell my middle school students that I work during the summer to get as far away from them as possible. Italy. Norway. James Bay. Slovenia (I like that one, none of the kids has even heard of it). The Copper Canyon. The Grand Canyon. Moscow. Life is good. No, I don't use the same line with Cindy, that would kill the passion, I'm sure.

Getting out there. That is what drives me, and in so doing, it is therefore the driving force behind my photography. Think of photography as a visual passion, one that moves you, and you will begin to understand what photography means to me. The camera is a tool. For me, photography is getting out there, doing something, being involved, working at being an artist, expressing yourself. Period.

This past summer was going to be special. Our 20th "Honeymoon", a two week adventure in Australia, and the chance to capture it all on film. No motorcycle, but what the heck. Getting out there is the key, how I get out there is open for interpretation. Again, it works for me.

One slight problem. Cindy, who, in her spare time, is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve, had the honor of being called up to serve her country in a time of need. Luckily, her work deals with training new recruits at Fort Jackson, SC, a mere three long hours away. No, she is not a Drill Sergeant, she is the one who makes sure the Drill Sergeants have what they need, when they need it. Don't tell her K-8 art students that, it would ruin the image.

The Land of OZ was replaced with Boot Camp. No problem, we adjusted. After all, that is what life is all about. I just made other plans. The summer turned out to be pretty darn good.

It also happened to be the 30th anniversary of my first cross-country motorcycle tour, an adventure that took me from Pulaski, NY to Douglas, AZ two weeks after graduating from high school. Thirty years ago? I was overdue.

My "other plans" included getting back to Arizona. I hooked up with ROADBIKE magazine and Chrome Caballeros, a motorcycle touring company, and returned to Arizona and southern Utah for a week long motorcycle camping tour through some of the most scenic countryside in North America, if not the world.

Including the organized tour, I took a month to explore the Four Corners area of the Southwest and then spent a month with my wife in Columbia, SC. It was a great summer. 8, 388 miles, 60 rolls of film, 22 National Parks or Monuments, plus Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon, both within the Navajo Nation. That was only the first month.

The second month brought me back to another anniversary of sort, that of being a military photographer. Yes, ten years prior, I worked as a photographer at Fort Knox, KY. Unreal. Funny how things work out. I loved it. I missed it. I enjoyed it. Another 15 rolls of film, more batteries, hiking, sweating, early morning wake-up calls, working, working, working. Great summer. And... I got to spend time with my wife. Mostly in the field, in the rain and the mud, but quality time just the same. I was a Marine, I understand. Life is good.

That is photography. That is being an artist. That is getting out there.

Actually, it has very little with photography, and that is the point. Remember, the camera is just a tool. Letting light reach film, or a digital sensor, has very little to do with being a photographer. True, it is photography in a nutshell, but it is only a small part of actually being a photographer, an artist. To me, photography is passion, and that is what makes, or breaks, the final product.

Driving through Arches National Park before sunrise is an experience that is special. A full moon, the twisting, smooth, empty road, the chill in the air, the vastness which encompassed me, the magnitude of the place. That is what I remember. That is what I wanted to capture, that is what drove me, not my motorcycle. It was awesome. Words, my words anyway, can not express how I felt. That is why I carry a camera. That is what I was out there for in the first place. Experience it first, capture it on film second. It can be no other way. That is photography. That is being a photographer. That is what I mean by getting out there.

National Parks are National Parks for a reason. They make being there seem like an easy choice to make. On the other hand, standing around in the pouring rain, in the middle of a huge sand box with pine trees, surrounded by men and women with green and brown painted faces, is not such an obvious choice. I loved it. I made a point of being there, staying there, working there. In the rain, I just brought out my small, point-and-shoot Canon underwater camera, put on a rain jacket, and kept on shooting. I loved it, the recruits loved it, and again, I was spending time with my wife. She is tough. She didn't even have a rain jacket. I offered her mine (it was military issue), but an Army officer in a Marine jacket just didn't seem right, you know, in front of the recruits and all. She did her thing, I did mine.

Now, were all the pictures I took in the rain great pieces of art? No. Once more, that is not the point. Being out there, rain or shine, is the point. Point-and-shoot camera? Not the point (I like that one). The point is getting out there, experience something that moves you, and record it the best way you can.

Experience is the key to becoming a better photographer, and by that, I mean more than just taking pictures. My background of being a Marine, a photographer for the Army, even the fact of buying a small water-proof camera for my motorcycle trips years before, all those factors played a major role in me being where I was, when I was, doing what I was doing. Every photograph one takes is a building block for the next image. It is also true that everything you do in life makes you a better photographer, camera or no camera. Simple as that. We are who we are due to our past. We are the artist we are, for that very same reason. Get out there.

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