7 Questions with Terrel Bailey
“In Genesis, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.”
I’ve been taking pictures for a long time and, over the years, I have had the privilege of meeting and befriending many like-minded souls, other photographers from all over the world with whom I’ve been able to discuss art, work and vision, and from whom I’ve drawn inspiration.
One such unsuspecting victim is Terrel Bailey (aka Lifted Spirit). Terry and I are part of an online photography group, where we and several other photographers share thoughts, ideas and feedback on this craft we love so much. As is often the case with a large group of people, one makes a connection with a few individuals in particular, perhaps based on shared values, a common vision or a similar approach. Perhaps all of the above, or perhaps something else altogether. With Terry, what drew me to his work at first was a similar instinct through the viewfinder and approach to composition, but what kept me there, as I started knowing him better, was his unselfishness, honesty and humility, both as a person and as a photographer. He lives in Colorado, with the Rockies rising virtually from his backyard (we in Bangalore have Nandi Hills. Ha! Take that, Terry! They might not be covered in snow in the winter, but that shroud of smog makes for some fairytale images), so whenever the mood strikes him, he just has to drive around the corner to return with a bunch of beautiful pictures.
While I am a photographer exclusively in the digital domain, I do all my processing using Lightroom and Photoshop, and I get my work printed by a professional printer who knows what he’s doing, Terry’s art has dimensions that make me feel like a schoolboy on his first day in the chemistry lab. In additional to digital photography, Terry works with different types of film, and does his own developing and printing, something which provides a look and feel to his images that digital will never be able to replicate. We’ve had multiple discussions online and in emails to each other, and I thought it’s time I subjected him to a few of the questions from the list I had put together while on a 16-hour flight halfway around the world.
Here we go, then.
SD: If you had the opportunity to sit next to another photographer on a very long flight, who would you wish that photographer was? Why? What is the number 1 question you would want to ask him/her? How has this person influenced your thinking and photography?
TB: Sebastião Salgado.
A while back, I was looking online for an interesting video related to photography and I found a documentary film about his life called The Salt of the Earth. I’m a landscape photographer and he did more documentary-style photography, so he really wasn’t on my radar at the time. But I watched because he was Brasilian, and I was at one time married to a Brasilian and love many things about the Brasilian culture. The opening of the video showed his work about gold mines in Brasil. The sense of scale he captured was incredible. His use of shapes and line in these masses of people really intrigued me. But he also got up close with his subjects. He told a story incredibly well through his black and white film images. His books Workers and Gold document workers around the world as well as the gold mines, respectively.
After some time documenting the stories of wars and unrest throughout the world, he became so disgusted by humanity that he took seven years to go where humans weren’t. He taught himself how to do landscape photography in the most secluded places of the world. This resulted in a photo book called Genesis, and you’ll notice his use of shape, contrast and line in many of the landscapes, along with his ability to get close to wildlife. At this point he started to shoot digitally. He states it took him and his staff two years to figure out a way to have his digital images take on the character and nuance of the film he’d shot.
Not only is he an incredible photographer, but he returned to his grandparents’ farm in Brasil, which had changed from a lush region in the country to completely dry and arid. He took steps to plant trees on the hillsides to avoid erosion of the topsoil, incorporated methods for the land to naturally keep what little moisture they had, and the land returned to its once lush habitat. He then turned it over to the country as a National Park, and as an example of how to restore land that’s been abused and ignored, into its original habitat. As someone who spends time trying to bring awareness to conservation of the environment and nature, I feel a deep kinship to what he’s done and continues to do, and what I’d ultimately love to be able to do in some form.
The one question I would ask him is, “What are the steps you take to get more of you into your images.” When I look at his work in his Workers project, in Gold and in his war and refugee work, I see a great sense of empathy that he has for his subjects. His landscapes have a sense of reverence and respect for the land. It is what separates his work from many others who merely document and photograph to get an emotional response from the viewer.
When you look at Salgado’s Genesis work, he tells a story of what the place was about. Many people see penguins and put on their long lens to fill the frame with the penguin. He also shot wider, further away to show the line of penguins in the massive scale of the Antarctic landscape. In that sense, I’ll often stop every hundred meters or so and look around, smell the air, observe the light and listen. I’ll ask myself what is this spot about, and what does it say about this path I’ve been on? And then I’ll look for something interesting, that to me indicates what the place is about. I may then look for a composition and the light, or it may be that I continue on. But I find it more interesting and compelling these days to tell the story of a location than to solely photograph grand vistas in great light.
Sebastião Salgado, Penguins in Antarctica (Genesis)
Sebastião Salgado, The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska (Genesis)
SD: What do you think makes a great photograph? Of the pictures you’ve taken, which one is your favourite and why?
TB: A great photograph must create a strong negative or positive emotional response in the viewer. I can’t recall a time I’ve ever looked at a photograph that didn’t create an emotional response in me and wind up thinking it was a great photograph. I think by peeling the layer off the onion, the question we really want answered here, is how does one arouse strong emotional responses in the viewer via photography?
First of all, there must be an emotional response in the photographer – not only at the time the image was taken, but also throughout the post processing of the image. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve processed away the emotions from the image. The processing has to enhance that emotional response as opposed to distract from it or remove from it.
Secondly, there must be an element (or a combination of the following elements) of drama, wonder, subject relationship and line, shape or color. Drama can be accomplished by the light, contrast, subject(s), etc. Wonder can be felt by the sense of scale, negative space, expressions of subject(s), etc. Subject relationship can be manipulated via composition, focal length and aperture and may in itself tell a story while line, shape and color are all affected by light, subject and obviously the colors of the scene. When enough of these boxes are checked, the potential for a great photograph exists.
My favorite image is The Incoming Storm Over the Valley. It’s an unbelievable view, made more incredible by the storm moving over the valley. You can see forever, (the rock structures in the distance are about thirty-five kilometers away) so I stood on this ledge watching the storm move in and then over the valley. It started to snow after about an hour. This image has much of what I mentioned above: it evokes an emotional response in me; there’s drama in the obvious storm clouds over the valley; there’s a sense of wonder in how vast the scene is – the scale, but also in the sharp ridges of the landscape below, leading the eyes into the scene; there are lines galore in the lines of the ridges cut through the rocks over the years, the river flowing at the bottom of the canyon and the silhouettes of shapes of the rock structures in Monument Valley in the distance. But, this image also happens to be taken from Muley Point – a location that was once protected as part of Bears Ears National Monument. It’s become a long-term project of mine to photograph the 1 million acres that have since been removed from the monument in order to allow energy companies to drill for oil and gas as well as mine for uranium. So not only is the image of a beautiful moment in a beautiful scene – it’s a scene that may very well end up being lost due to our energy consumption and the greed of energy corporations and politicians in the United States.
Terrel Bailey, The Incoming Storm Over the Valley
SD: What are your photographs about? What is it you’re trying to say through your pictures?
TB: When I started, my images were about beautiful locations, and that’s about it. As I’ve grown as a photographer, I notice a few common themes in my work: solitude, serenity, humility and awe. As a recovering alcoholic, solitude is a very familiar feeling for me, so I have a fondness for feelings of solitude. It’s both sad and comforting for me. Serenity is a reminder of how good my life is, but also a reminder of the opposite that’s only a slip of the mind away. I’ve learned on my path through sobriety that humility is the key for me to stay sober and hence I have a love of scenes of grand scale to remind me how small I am in this world, and to remind me to remain humble.
As I’ve taken steps and worked on projects related to conservation, I’ve learned a great deal about the natural world we live in. I’ve seen many people’s reactions to both the setting aside of land for conservation and the lack of conservation. I’ve watched our usage of energy as if it’s a never-ending resource. A goal of my photography now is to entice people to love nature enough to want to save it. This will entail taking steps back from our lives of comfort, so I’m already behind in this regard.
Finally, as mentioned above, I spend a lot of time trying to explore what a particular location is about. I’m trying to capture images that tell a story of a place, rather than just documenting a beautiful moment. How can I adjust that beautiful moment to incorporate more of the story of the place? A beautiful wildflower in great light is a wonderful image, but says nothing of the place it exists in. Back up or use a wider lens to now show the forest ravaged by fire behind it and we know more about not only the story of the flower, but the story of the location.
A great photograph must create a strong negative or positive emotional response in the viewer. I can’t recall a time I’ve ever looked at a photograph that didn’t create an emotional response in me and wind up thinking it was a great photograph. I think by peeling the layer off the onion, the question we really want answered here, is how does one arouse strong emotional responses in the viewer via photography?
SD: What is one aspect of photography you wish you were better at? What have you done about it?
TB: Slowing down.
I have a hard time slowing down my brain. So I may happen upon something I find interesting, whip out the camera, explore a couple different focal lengths, explore one or two different compositions, snap images and head out because there could be something amazing around the corner, or I need to get to my final destination. That, sadly, used to be my standard operating procedure.
I do a few things in an effort to slow myself down and I’ll list them in the order of the impact they make on my images from least impact to most impact.
I no longer carry my camera around my neck when I’m out in nature. It forces me to have to take my backpack off, get the camera out, select the lens (or lenses as I shoot with prime lenses as opposed to zooms) I think is best for this image and then make my composition. This gives me more time to think about the image I’m about to make.
I also ask myself some questions now as I’m thinking about the image. What is the subject? How can I represent it best? What in the scene is distracting from the subject? Will the light be better in a few minutes? What if my point of reference can be changed to maximize the subject? What’s the story of this place and how does the subject fit into that story? The problem is, I still often forget to ask myself these questions and fall back into my old habits.
Another thing I do, and I’ve found this to be most helpful in this regard, is photograph with film – particularly a camera without a light meter. Now, not only am I taking off my backpack, getting the camera and lens out, etc., but now I have to meter for the light in the scene to get the proper exposure. This allows me to look at the light more closely in the scene and see if there are other compositions that may work better from a light perspective. Film also causes me to really check the composition, the edges, the background vs. the foreground/subject. It’s expensive to develop and purchase film, so there’s a double and triple checking that goes into each photo taken. Additionally, I have a limited amount of exposures with film, whereas with digital I have a seemingly endless number of images I can make on a given trip. And I find the more I go out to shoot with film, these techniques of slowing down and thinking more deeply are further engrained in the thick skull of mine the next time I go out shooting with my digital setup.
Terrel Bailey, Snowy Morning on Antelope Flats
SD: You have been doing this for a long time. How has photography changed you as a person?
TB: I’m a much more inquisitive person. I’ve taken numerous images of things I had no idea what they were – only to have to look them up later. I can’t tell a story of a location without knowing a little about the place’s history. When I photograph my favorite forms of wildlife: moose and bison, I really should know a bit about the animals, they’re tendencies and when they’re aggravated. And an odd thing happens with a bit of knowledge – your inquisitive nature latches onto something you’ve just learned, which takes you down a different path of learning.
At the same time, I’ve become somewhat disillusioned with humanity. There are so many people that have such a casual attitude about the environment and nature. They don’t see how our loss of nature affects them and therefore don’t care. If only they could see that it truly does affect them, and their decisions at this moment have an impact on their very lives in the future. It’s sad, but the only thing I can do is try to keep influencing people to care.
Terrel Bailey, Winter Clouds over Dream Lake
SD: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you first started taking pictures?
TB: I think the most important thing anyone should learn in photography, or any visual art for that matter, is the visual language. The visual language I’m referring to is how does contrast make you feel as the viewer, what does a vertical line represent or make you feel versus a horizontal line versus a diagonal line? What does a high-key or brighter image say versus a low-key or darker image? How is it that we communicate to the viewer via the visual art?
I read a book called The Art of Photography by Bruce Barnbaum which really helped me to learn and understand this visual language. I think it’s extremely difficult to be able to represent your vision artistically – to say something with your images, without understanding how first to talk via your images. And that book, along with looking at numerous other genres of photography and art in general, opened up that world for me.
If I had this knowledge earlier on, I would have made much stronger images from the get go.
Terrel Bailey, Reflections
SD: When is your next trip to India?
TB: Well, my next trip to India would be my first trip to India! 😊
There aren’t a whole lot of places on my bucket list, but India is certainly one of them. Most of the photographs we see from India entail street scenes or the Ganges River. But you have shown me some amazing landscapes that exist in your country as well, and I would LOVE to see and photograph some of those locations!
As a photographer who rarely shoots street scenes or people, India would be one location I would find it fascinating to do so – the colors and energy on the streets there seem amazing.
I absolutely adore Indian food, and love learning about different cultures.
So, India is high on my list, and you’ll be the first to know when I have such disposable income.
So, there you have it, folks. Terrel Bailey. You can find more of his work here or @lifted_spirit_photos on Instagram. Thanks for checking in.
