You might get lucky and take a great photo but doing this over and over is another matter. There's a distinction between a good picture and a great picture. While the terms may be used subjectively, you can create good images by simply being proficient with the craft. In fact, we are inundated with good images but they are mostly meaningless. This is especially true in television, it's principal purpose seemingly being to awe, and distract us, dispelling any kernel of thought while keeping us transfixed. The blur of motion, color, impossible perspectives, and hypnotic slow motion has habituated us to expect more, an addiction to instant visual gratification. We've grown too impatient to linger on any one view or take. A few seconds is all we are allowed, lest we lose interest. Contemplation has become anathema to modern video.  Paradoxically, instead of being uplifted, you feel like you're getting bludgeoned. The effect is anesthetic. The vacuous stream acts as a central nervous system depressant. Your cognitive function is arrested. You are left empty and drained. In the wake of this torrent, a still photograph is an oasis of calm. There is far more to be gleaned from a single great image, than by a stream of empty visuals refreshing every second.  A really great image will maintain our attention because it defies explanation. Stripped of a verbal equivalence, we must rely on our intuition. The image becomes an experience onto itself, apart from the original subject. It's transformative. It may compel or inspire, or at best, completely still the mind. A few of the great photographers I think of are Jacques Henri Lartigue, Sebastiao Salgado, Irving Penn, Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen, Max Yavno, Gary Winogrand, Edward Weston, and Robert Mapelthorpe, among many others.

Bride, riding along the Malecon, Havana

I had the opportunity to visit Cuba in 2013 and spent a couple of weeks taking pictures, mostly in Havana. Despite the volume of photography that has already been produced in Cuba there is a wealth of material there, and you can quickly move beyond the photographic cliches that have become synonymous with the place. In hindsight, I actually regret that I deliberately chose to avoid one of these cliches, the classic cars from the 50's that Cubans have painstakingly maintained and kept on the road. There is really no cliche that can't be re-examined with fresh eyes and portrayed in a different or more revealing manner. Still, I chose to focus more on the people and the street life, and to some degree on the architecture, which in it's state of decay and neglect offers a rich tapestry that perhaps reveals more about this place than anything else.

Basketball game at a public park, Havana

In spite of the recent changes in the economic and political landscape Cuba remains a place where a certain authenticity has not yet been erased by the homogenizing effects of renovation and renewal. It's still a place where commerce, long kept in check by a moribund economic system, has yet to mar the landscape with billboards, messages, and sales pitches. You won't see walls whitewashed here, emblazoned as you might in Mexico with corporate brands such as Coca Cola or Pepsi. But the change is coming. It's already visible in the clothes people wear, with their designer labels and styles. Long suppressed by limited choices and scarcity, people are eager to express their individuality and freedom. This freedom is also expressed in the warmth and openness with strangers that one seldom finds elsewhere. People are friendly in Cuba. They haven't tired of outsiders, and don't mind if you take pictures. I found the best way to do this was to smile, say hello, and extend a hand. 

Woman leaning on a window, smoking

An impromptu chess match in the street

There's an immediacy to the street life in Cuba that's wonderful to photograph. Teeming with people, the streets are a theater of everyday life. The vibrancy of interactions between long time friends and neighbors, the habitual routines of residents as they go about their daily business was the subject I set out to portray. This is a place you can practice street photography almost at will. Even in the back alleys of poor neighborhoods, away from the tourist traffic, you can work with relative safety, confident that security is not a problem. I never felt like an unwelcome intruder here. No one was offended that I took their picture. With some sensitivity and understanding you can photograph the lifestyle here, meet new people and make some friends.

Child Development Center, Twentynine Palms.

Child Development Center, Twentynine Palms, CA

The look of architectural photography has completely changed due to high dynamic range, or HDR, in digital photography. Dynamic range refers to the difference between the darkest and brightest areas in a photograph. High dynamic range is the ability to render tones and detail in all areas of the image. Thus a photograph of a building at sunset will render both the burst of bright color in the sky while retaining all the structural and tonal details of the building and landscape in the foreground. A properly processed HDR image will also retain contrast in the mid tones, without which the image would look flat. This would have been impossible with film without the use of additional lighting to brighten the building in the foreground; the dynamic range of film was limited, especially transparency film. Photographers had to choose the brightness values they wanted to expose for, which were usually the mid tones and the shadows. You would simply let the highlights go. Windows and skies would go white, creating a light, airy look to photographs but sacrificing content that might otherwise have been retained.  Essentially, digital imaging now makes it possible to create photographic images that more closely resemble the dynamic range of normal human vision. If overdone, the technique can also result in harsh, otherworldly images. So it's a relief that the novelty of HDR has lost some of it's appeal; the technique is now used more sparingly, with nuanced results. 

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