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Master Photographers Tell You How

Catherine Chalmers - Nature Photographer - Interview by Frank Lovece Article rating: 7.50

TakeGreatPictures.com (TGP): What is it about insects and other small creatures that's so compelling?

CC:  Well, I'm an artist -- I started out as a painter -- and my interests are where the natural world and the cultural world cross. And so insects are one place that becomes interesting in that nexus. But I've worked with amphibians and reptiles and mammals as well: "Food Chain," the project before the cockroach work, was with tomatoes and caterpillars and preying mantises and frogs and tarantulas and snakes. In the video "Safari" at ICP [the International Center of Photography, where Chalmers is part of the group show "Ectopia" through Jan. 7, 2007]), there are 20 different species that I raised for the video.

TGP: Growing up in San Mateo, California, were you interested in photography?

CC:  No. I only became interested when I made the jump from representing animals in paintings. It seemed like photography was a more direct access to them, as opposed to painting. I didn't major in art -- I majored in engineering [at Stanford University, where she earned her B.S. in 1979, followed by an M.F.A. from London's Royal College of Art in 1984]. I was in a subset of the mechanical-engineering department that focused on design; in a sort of classical sense they were trying to teach us to be inventors. I think as an artist I'm pretty much doing the same thing. It's just that in engineering there had to be a practical application for it, where in art I can follow whatever my head wants to do.

TGP:  How did you learn photography technique?

CC: Technique I had to scrounge. The first photography project I did was photographing houseflies. They're small, they move fast and it's not the easiest place to start.

TGP: So why start there?

CC:  Because I was interested in houseflies! (laughs) They live a parallel life in our own home -- they're called "house" flies. They live with us, and we ignore them and try to kill them, yet they carry out their life-cycle mainly around us. I was interested in an alternate point of view of our shared space.

TGP: What were the challenges?

CC:  The challenges are almost like thinking you want to be a doctor and just deciding to carve into somebody's brain. (chuckles). That's what it seemed like to me. I didn’t really have a camera, I didn't know what an aperture or an f-stop was, I didn't know what a strobe was, I didn't know anything. I mean, I'd heard these words, but I didn't know anything about them.

TGP: You didn't let that stop you.

CC: Well, I was determined. (laughs) But I also had a lot of good luck because my next-door neighbor at the time was a commercial photographer who had loads of equipment and who had taken on what he called "projects" before -- people interested in photography. So he guided me through the whole thing and lent me equipment. There were things that I could've done on my budget [without that help], but to have three power packs and five light heads and a macro lens that's good enough to see the wings of a housefly … I probably used $50,000 of equipment just to test out the idea. After I figured that there is something here and I did have some more ideas in this vein, then I started trying to acquire used equipment.

TGP: Is shooting insects and the like something that serious hobbyist could do?

CC:  I think anybody can do it -- anybody who wants to walk on a hiking path and take their camera and start taking pictures. In some ways, besides your family, what better to point your camera at than nature? Just go out, have fun. The technology you can learn as you need it. You don't need to know everything about photography -- you just need to know what you want to do.

If there's something you want to do and nobody seems to know [how to do it], you figure it out. You go into a photo store and talk to somebody, or go on a chat line and ask somebody, 'Hey, how do I do this?'  Just don't be afraid. [Nature photography is] a way to interact with the world. And ultimately the interaction with the world is what's most important. The picture's secondary.

TGP: You're obviously shooting on a professional level that most people don't. Are there lessons that, say, a chameleon or iguana owner could learn from your studio technique?

CC: Reptiles see the camera eye, or at least [my chameleon] does, as the eye of a predator. He's very uncomfortable having the camera look at him. Very uncomfortable. You can clearly see he's getting stressed, and chameleon don't handle stress very well. If you stress them out enough they'll die. So you have to be careful.

TGP: That's a trenchant point. Most people probably think, 'Oh, I'm just taking a picture, the camera's harmless.' But I guess animals don't necessarily see it that way.

CC:  They're not human beings and you have to listen to them, and then therefore you understand another point of view about life. [My chameleon's] very slow, very deliberate, and when I'm around him, I feel like a hyperactive primate.

TGP: So if the lens makes him uncomfortable, what do you do? Acclimate him?

CC:  No. You try to get it over with as soon as possible. The reason it was possible for me is I was using a lipstick lens. This is for video, not still photos.

TGP: But overall idea is still applicable. Describe this lens.

CC: It's about the size of a tube of lipstick, it's on a long cord and it goes into my main camera and the camera records. It's basically a very small, remote lens. And I handhold it [rather than have a tripod near him], so the whole thing's less disturbing for him. When I tried to film him with the main camera, he was just not happy.

TGP: What camera do you use?

CC: A 35mm with a macro lens. I do everything handheld. The animals are moving around -- with some of them it's like a sporting event you're trying to shoot -- and if you're handholding and using macro, where you breathe and you're out of focus, the camera needs to be small and light. Nothing stays still for very long and you need to react and just zero in and take a picture. But I'm using strobe lights, so even if I'm still moving and they're moving, [the strobes] stop the action.

Whatever you decide to do, do what you want, have fun, try it out, play with it. Don't worry about taking a good picture. Just take pictures.

HER EQUIPMENT

Contax SLR  with a Zeiss 60mm and 100mm macro lenses.

Those are a dream. They're just so clear.

Fuji Velvia film, ASA 50

[It gives you] a really saturated, lovely, turquoise, and [ASA] 50 has no grain at all, which is why I've been able to translate them up to large [poster-sized] prints.

For front lighting: Nye Box

It's such an amazing front light. It was hand-built by Albert Nye and it looks like a little tank. I got it from a photographer who was going out of business. My neighbor told me, "Oh, you should buy it, you should buy it." So I bought it, not knowing anything, and this front light turned out to have a lovely quality to it, and I love it, I'm attached to it, it's the greatest.

For back lighting: Profoto strobe lights and flash generator

"It's their big studio model; I don't know the model number."

Software: 
Photoshop

Printer: 
Lambda

Scanner: 
Professional Photo Lab

Video Camera: 
Sony PD150

Point & Shoot: 
Canon Power Shot SD500

Monitor: 
Apple

Lighting: 
Profoto

Archival Materials:
Film

Computer: 
Mac G5

Storage: 
Tape back-up

Paper:  
Fuji Crystal Archive

Film:  
Fuji Velvia 50 asa

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