Catherine Karnow - National Geographic Photographer

[Manfred M]

I spent a couple of hours yesterday evening at a seminar put on by National Geographic Photographer Catherine Karnow where she discussed her style and some of the key drivers in her photography. The gist of the first part of her presentation dealt very much with her views on how to build a strong image. The second hour or so was spent on her analyzing some of her images and pictorial stories.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/c...herine-karnow/

She is completely self-trained and never watches photographic tutorials or reads books on photography. As she has been a successful commercial photographer for decades, she has developed a style and approach. If anyone gets a chance to listen to her, she is an excellent and entertaining presenter. Most of the images that she showed would have been savaged by the members of this site for various technical and compositional reasons. Her images that are published as editorial images are not staged, but all of her other work tends to be. Most of her images contain people.

I thought I would mention a few points that she made that I found might be of interest to the members.


1. She shoots virtually 100% of her work using aperture priority, using exposure compensation (usually +). She does not understand why people would chose to shoot in manual mode as that adds a level of complexity that takes away from composing and taking the shot.

2. She only uses a lens hood to protect from precipitation. If the sun is shining she will either allow flare to happen or shield the lens with her hand. She often shoots back-lit images because people do not squint when the sun is behind them. She does use a clear filter on her lenses.

3. She shoots Canon full frame cameras (5D Mk IV currently) and most of her work uses focal lengths between 28mm and 35mm. She does not like long lenses because of their weight and because they reduce intimacy. She suggests most of her National Geographic colleagues do the same.

4. Virtually all of her images contain people.

5. When she shoots landmarks or local icons (for example the Eiffel Tower in Paris), she will compose her images so that the landmark or icon appears in the shot, but is not the subject of the image. To paraphrase her, everyone recognizes the landmark or icon, but she tries to show what the locals who are used to seeing the icon do.

6. 100% of her work is Photoshopped. She does not believe in SOOC images. Editorial work can be heavily retouched so long as nothing in the image is added, removed or moved.

7. She works hard to get drama into her shots through dramatic lighting, dramatic skies, poses, etc.

8. She loves shooting throughout morning or evening "golden hour". She continues to shoot right through to the end of "blue hour". She said she never shoots indoors during those periods, assuming that the light is good.

9. She shoots a lot and will spend hours and even days at a specific location to get the shot that she wants. She engages with her subjects verbally and through physical gestures, even if she does not speak the local language. She does have a local guide along to help her with language / translation issues.

10. She will shoot hundreds of shots during a shoot. She does not check the rear screen of her camera during a shoot as she fears that she could miss a shoot.

11. She engages with her subjects and will always get permission to use the images. She will not always get permission to get the shot before taking it so as to not miss the moment. She finds that once she has gotten permission, people don't mind her taking more shots.

"Permission" in her view ranged from formally approaching someone to take pictures to getting a head-nod or wave acknowledging what she was doing. Model releases are something she gets as well if she fells that she has a "commercial" shot. She will only do this if the face of the subject is visible. If she gets a model release, she will get everyone whose face is in the shot, including recognizable but out of focus faces.

[Shadowman]

Not a lot to argue with, everyone has their own style and interestingly most of her choices are the opposite of mine. I tend to try and stretch my photographic behaviors just to get a different look at times and when I do review my work I often check to see what settings I chose and I found that I'll use P (5%) S (35%) A (20%) M (49%) but those percentages can change depending on the shooting conditions. Thanks for the link.

[NorthernFocus]

...She is completely self-trained and never watches photographic tutorials or reads books on photography...

Although the linked bio says she studied photography in high school?

Kind of ironic that she's not interested in what anyone else has to say but she leads workshops and speaks publicly about how she does things. Of course if people were willing to pay to hear me so would I. Just sayin....

One downside to reading/listening to technical aspects of how professional/famous photographers do things is that too many people don't consider context.

If there is something in common among successful pros(mostly nature/wildlife) that I've met over the years I'd say their success has as much to do with their personalities as with the quality of their images.

[rpcrowe]

First of all, congratulations Manfred for an excellent synopsis of the presentation and introduction to Catherine Karnow (of whom I previously knew absolutely nothing). After reading your post, I googled for images by Catherine Karnow and when I viewed the following images, I felt as if I knew Catherine.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cath...HZ3NAvUQsAQILw

The one thing I did notice in almost every photo showing Cathrine Karnow; was her wonderful smile. That smile would be an "ice breaker" in any situation, whether she knew the language or not. I wonder if that smile was present during her presentation?

The U.S. Navy once had (or still may have) a program in which they sent selected Navy photographers to Syracuse University for a year's immersion in photojournalism. As a Navy Cinematographer and graduate of an equivalent program at University of Southern California, I was privileged to work beside many Navy Syracuse Graduates. These men and women turned out to be excellent photojournalists. Of course, these were selected folks who were good photographers/photojournalists before they attended the program.

A way of making sure that a good program, like Syracuse, will develop excellent photographers is to be selective regarding who enters the program. The Navy not only reviewed the service record of each attendee but, required the submission of a portfolio as part of the selection criteria.

I noticed one commonality among the very best graduates of the Syracuse program. This was an outgoing personality and their ability to put strangers at ease and to make friends despite any language barriers.

IMO, only a portion of a photojournalist's job is the actual shooing of the pictures while another significant portion is that photojournalist's interface with both the environment and the people within the environment...

Here is an interesting aside which might be interesting, especially to Donald:
https://malt-review.com/2014/12/31/r...chard-grindal/

My dogs are telling me that it is time to eat, so I have not viewed the following videos. But, they look very interesting!

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...therine+Karnow

WHAT A COINCIDENCE I was acquainted with Catherine's dad, Stanley Karnow, during my time as a cameraman in Vietnam. I didn't make the connection until I viewed a video of Catherine in which she introduces herself and remarks about her dad in Vietnam.

A DOUBLE COINCIDENCEI am presently listening to her dad's excellent book: Vietnam, A History
https://www.audible.com/pd/History/V...ook/B002V0JWEM
This book, in my opinion, presents the best balanced survey of the Vietnam Conflict. It is one of the few coverages of that conflict that portrays both the good and the bad of each side.

I do a LOT of driving in connection with my dog rescue work and I enjoy listening to books on tape. The Karnow book is great but, I am disappointed that the narrator's pronunciation of Vietnamese names and places is so poor and since the book is often written in the first person, I have to keep reminding myself that it is not Stanley Karnow mispronouncing the Vietnamese names

[Manfred M]

Yes Richard, your connection is correct. Catherine was born in Hong Kong where her journalist father was based and she did mention him a number of times. One of the pictures she presented was an environmental portrait of him in his office.

A lot of her images were taken in Vietnam, a place she continues to visit and photograph. She said she goes back to Vietnam two or three times a year; something she has been doing for almost two decades. She showed some images from her first visit and some of her most recent ones. She is absolutely intrigued by the changes that have occurred in that country and how some of the people (often from the rural areas) have been left behind. A number of the images that she showed can be seen in the link you provided. She did spend quite some time on the images of the children who were affected by Agent Orange.

As for her very outgoing and animated personality and she was smiling a lot. That was certainly the case at the beginning of the presentation. It was less obvious from where I was sitting after the lights were dimmed. The session was held in a lecture theatre in one of the older buildings at the University of Ottawa, so it was more a case of either seeing her or seeing the images she was speaking to.

The one thing that was clear; the reason she chose the images she did was not for their technical perfection, but rather for their emotional impact.

[rpcrowe]

Manfred,

IMO, a photojournalists "meat and potatoes" is emotional impact. He/she leaves the artsy-craftsy stuff to the pictorial photographers and hits us in the face with RAW emotion.

This can sometimes be overdone. Eddie Adams said about his image of the Saigon Police Chief executing a Vietcong in captivity (who allegedly had murdered the family of one of the Police Chief's subordinates), that if he had realized the stir that the image would create, he would have thought twice about shooting/publishing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_...ile:Nguyen.jpg

On Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his famous photograph, Adams wrote in Time in 1998:

"Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. ... What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?".... This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn't taken the picture, someone else would have, but I've felt bad for him and his family for a long time. ... I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."

Of course, people's emotions are created by their inner feelings and preconceived beliefs rather than the stark reality of happenings. No one seemed to pay much attention to the thousands (yes thousands) of civilians murdered by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army in Hue at the same time as the Police Chief executed a single Vietcong fighter
http://ngothelinh.tripod.com/Hue.html

And of the piles of skulls from those hundreds of thousands murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the West seems to say, "Tut, Tut, wasn't that an awful shame!"