essays and images from a storyteller

Again for the third time in 2016 I found myself crashing at a Buddhist monastery/nunnery in Thailand, this time soon after the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. During this period of mourning the media was asked by the government that all images be presented in black-and-white. Having started my lifelong passion in photography shooting Kodak Tri-X and Plus-X I was all too happy to comply. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was a man of many talents including a long interest for photography where he'd taken many beautiful images of a country he clearly loved. It was five in the morning when I heard the call of the morning bell. I dressed in my simple, brown layman's robes and walked silently to the main meditation hall with my Fujifilm X100T stowed away in a traditional brown monk's shoulder bag. While most modern cameras garner attention and occasional scorn the X100T with its classic Leica style that closely resembles the Konica Hexar rangefinder rarely gets noticed and I found i...

I started by life-long love with photography using a well-worn Pentax SP1000, an earlier incarnation of the very popular K1000, with an Asahi 50mm f/1.8 lens. Before that I did briefly use a Rolleiflex TLR (medium format twin lens reflex) camera but it was that 35mm SLR that was my real start into my journey into photography. While Kodak Plus-X and Tri-X were my "bread and butter" film stock because of their low cost, ability to roll my own cassettes and process the same I also used Ektachrome, Kodachrome and occasionally infrared. While Ektachrome was always a solid film that almost always captured a solid image and I loved the warmth of Kodachrome K-14 I was enthralled with the magic of Kodak HIE (High-Speed Infrared). Yes, it was very slow at ISO 50 or 100 and yes, it was very difficult to work with and yes, it was magic because it captured what the human eye couldn't see. Its images transported me away from the island in which I lived and incorrectly felt trap...

It's said you should never meet your heroes in real life because they'll always disappoint you yet many still foolishly seek them out. I never met Anthony Bourdain in real life, never wanted to and never had to because I knew who he was through the honest brutality of his words which he never minced. He'd be the first person to tell you he was the luckiest fuck-up on the planet. If it hadn't been for his mother who was an editor for the New York Times that helped him land his big break with the publication of "Don't Eat Before Reading This" in the New Yorker back in 1999, an article previously panned by a free weekly newspaper, it's most likely he'd still be dunking spuds somewhere or worse a long forgotten heroin addict that overdosed even longer ago. As someone that also doesn't subscribe to the "just world fallacy" where all one needs is hard work to succeed and if you fail it's all your own fault I also believe getting that ...

I had been in Thailand for a week soon after the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej where members of the media had been asked during this period of mourning to only present images in black-in-white when I took this photo. As I'll mention in the next article " Buddhist nuns chanting sutra. Pak Chong, Thailand " I took this opportunity to re-explore my black-and-white roots. I was heading back to Bangkok from spending a week in meditation at a monastery in Pak Chong when the bus I was on stopped for fuel and food. While I rarely ate Western food I couldn't help but to notice my Western friend in a traditional Thai pose of greeting. I could almost hear him saying "khop khun khap" the traditional Thai greeting. I snapped a photo and quickly hopped back on my bus heading to Bangkok and my flight home to Đà Nẵng. I was surprised by the strong reactions I received from this image. Clearly presenting it in black-and-white made all the difference as it seemed to ...

Entrance of Hong Kong Museum of Art in monochrome. Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. Fujifilm X-T1.  image: ©Brian Beeler

I had once again found myself crashing at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand with my trusty Fujifilm X100T in tow; a rangefinder-style camera that looked like something from the 1950s with a 35mm prime lens. We were lining up for our morning meal and I saw a moment I wanted to capture but the sun was directly in the shot, the bain of photographers. So I tried to make the best of the situation and stopped down to f/16, framed it up and took the image. People loved this highly flawed photo almost more than any other photo I'd taken before. But why was it so liked? As a photojournalist and landscape photographer I've always been keen to follow the rules of a good photograph which meant not over or under exposing an image and retaining a pleasing tonality. To try to capture a technically as close to perfect image as possible. But while following those rules I lost the passion and value of that fleeting moment. The above image is technically flawed but to the viewer it captured s...

Okay, sometimes having that really nice lens can make a difference. It's not that you can't capture a great image on a lens with a higher f/stop but sometimes having that f/2.8 lens is what's called for. I'll admit it: I'm a total Fujifilm fan boy. Not because of some misplaced loyalty and I'm not above criticizing them when they make a mistake which they do like the poorly fitting rubber door on the early X-T1 bodies or using a bayer array on the XF10 (pro-tip: get a used X70 instead) but I love the images their cameras can create. Images like no other camera in the world thanks to the X-Trans color array; an array much beloved by still photographers and much despised with good reason by videographers. Their old-school controls remind me so much of my early beginnings in film and their lenses are oh so sweet. Fujifilm had to make great cameras and lenses as they wanted to woo professional photographers away from the titans that are Nikon and Canon, both...

Without description you wouldn't be faulted to thinking this was created whole-cloth in a photo editing application but by the description as you can see it wasn't. So the questions are how and why. Let me address the latter first: why. Because only when you push your camera and yourself as a photographer can you become better. Clearly this isn't an image that the creators of my camera envisioned it would create but it did. I was out one day in a local forest looking to capture the feel of that quiet place but in the abstract. Fujifilm cameras using the Velvia film simulation render blazingly strong greens with many tones. Now the how. This is an extreme version of "dragging the shutter" or moving your camera using a slow shutter speed. In this case the shutter speed was 1/10sec and moving the camera upwards very quickly to retain the tree trunk on the right. an abstract but still reminiscent of a tree. In that long pause I captured a view of the forest that c...

I'd love to say I planned this photo but I didn't. I'd love to say I waited for hours for the perfect light, studied the area for the perfect angle and waited patiently for the perfect moment but I didn't. I was walking to my car from an appointment and was presented with this sight. Without hesitation I grabbed my camera from my car, quickly scouted the area and snapped a few images. Always having a camera with me and knowing how to quickly adjust every setting to capture the best image were the only requirements. "The best camera you own is the one you have on you right now." No camera, no picture. The moral of the story is always have a camera in your pocket. While smartphone cameras have come a long way and are amazing they are limited by their small sensor and lens size. A quality pocket camera will in general always capture a better image. While I love and would recommend the Fujifilm X70 any of the cameras listed in the video below will work just as...

For many years I've been in the habit of taking at least one photo every day. I do this not only to practice image composition but to better control the technical aspects of my camera. While the power of image editing software can't be denied what a photographer can create in camera is also very powerful and often overlooked. My preference is to shoot in "raw" format or save all of the unedited data from the image sensor and adjust the JPEG export settings as needed. This allows me the greatest flexibility to make adjustments like changing the exposure value or "push and pull" the image, film simulation, highlights, shadows, white balance, dynamic range, etc. while simplifying the post editing process to cropping and maybe a bit of sharpening. A word about my image creation and writing process. As a photojournalist for many years I had to balance quality and speed. A long time ago the photo editor at National Geographic had a sign on his desk ...

"Did they get you to trade Your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange A walk on part in a war For a lead role in a cage?" - Pink Floyd "Welcome to the machine" I wish this could be an upbeat essay with a happy ending but it's not although I do promise it's not a trend to be found in future essays. What I paint is a rather dark and dystopic future so, and no one would blame you, if you just couldn't handle that kind of trip today you would be forgiven for hitting the back button and losing yourself in a nice photo or pleasant essay but I would ask you'd read on as it's important to know the truth about our future. About how we've traded our right to privacy for the cold comfort of a caged society always under surveillance. While this essay is dark there is a dim light at the end of the tunnel. One of the apps used to check your "social cre...

Many Vietnamese suffer from an inferiority complex and they shouldn't. While many see their homeland as poor and still developing compared to the economically wealthy nations of the US and many EU nations I would argue they're using only capital wealth to measure its value. This yardstick is one created by capitalism and reinforced by the Western power of neoliberalism. I see the use of this measurement akin to worshiping a false and cruel god. I get it and saw it with my own two eyes having lived there for a couple of years. No doubt many Vietnamese struggle economically. Many live in homes that most in the previously aforementioned economically affluent countries would consider uninhabitable and most Vietnamese people can't afford the latest-and-greatest gadgets but there's more than these things that make a place respectable. To those in the West that would cast aspersions upon a place I love so very much I would remind them of the quote from Hamlet where he sai...

Let's make a distinction between happiness and being content. Happiness is a fictional story we tell ourselves to pass the moment we find ourselves in and being content is accepting that moment. The two are very different. Please let me address the latter. Go for a walk in a local forest, stop and look around. What do you see? Trees, no doubt, and maybe you hear a bird or two. If you're lucky you might even hear the flowing water of a nearby brook. Everything around you was made not by the predictable calculations of a machine but by the unpredictable calculations of nature where randomness is abound and not scorned. And it's beautiful but why? It's beautiful because everything around you is unique and novel. You're drawn in and you've become lost in this tiny sliver of paradise removed from the calculated world of today. You are content because you're not thinking of anything else. Not of yesterday or tomorrow. Not of past mistakes or future o...

Some images have to be worked very hard for and some just present themselves to you on a silver platter. While on an almost daily walk through one of my favorite parks I passed under a covered bridge to find this sight. The air was dry and a perfect autumn temperature. I'd like to say I spent hours adjusting every highlight, shadow and the color balance in post production but I didn't because this was the image straight out of the camera without so much as even any cropping. I simply selected the Velvia film simulation, dropped my EV to -2⁄3, set an infinite focus and captured the image. While smartphones can now capture amazing images they can't replace what you can record with a dedicated camera, especially the Fujifilm X-Series. While the Velvia film simulation crushes the blacks to me it's a small price to pay for its strong blues and greens. The best camera you own is the one you have on you right now. For me that's at least my Fujifilm X100T otherwise it...

Selling the morning's catch, Bãi tắm Phạm Văn Đồng, Đà Nẵng, Việt Nam in Velvia. Fujifilm X-T1 SOOC (straight out of the camera). image: ©Brian Beeler Let me just say it's hard to buy a bad MILC (mirrorless interchangeable-lens) or DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera these days. All have their pros and cons but all still capture an excellent image. Even budget friendly, entry level models with their "kit lens" have a large array of features, fast autofocus and in the hands of a skilled photographer can be coaxed into taking professional pictures similar to rigs that cost many times more. Add in that a model just three or four years old can be found at a reputable used dealer for half of its original retail we in many ways live in a golden age of photography. When choosing a camera please don't be swayed by MP which can either mean  megapixels or "marketing points." If you're final product is mostly shown on a screen or snapshot a...