On Tuesday, November 11, I attended a conversation with Sam Abell, retired National Geographic photographer, held at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. Before the talk began, I introduced myself to him again since I met him when he was here speaking at the Art Wolfe Gallery. I told him that I had planned on attending his class called The Next Step, but it just wasn’t going to work out. He said to come on by anyway. Imagine my surprise.
So, on Friday November 14, I went down to the Art Wolfe Gallery and told the gentleman at the front desk that Sam told me to stop by. He looked at me as if to say, yeah right. Well, Karen, the manager at the gallery walked up to me about five minutes later and lead me back to the classroom. Sam gave me the approving nod and I got to participate. Sam was just about to walk through some of his images; why he took them, what he was looking for, why he thought one was better than another. It was very cool. One of the images, of Safeco Field from his hotel room, will probably be in his next book on America.
Then, the class broke for lunch. Sam then asked me to chat and if I had brought any work with me. I did, of course. I showed him a few images from my Zero to 255 show (which is still up through November 30 - http://www.kariquaas.com/0_255.html), my 20 greeting cards and then the images on my camera. We had a lovely discussion and I’m still giddy as a school girl thinking about the fact that Sam Abell critiqued my work. He liked quite a few of them, which pleases me to no end. I said that he could take any of the cards and he chose the Elephant Car Wash.
I bought his book, The Life of the Photograph, which he then signed, and you can see the dedication below. The man has beautiful handwriting.
Anyhow, I’m still buzzing from this experience and feel very lucky to have spent just a wee bit of time with an excellent photographer, a true gentleman and an excellent teacher. I hope that I’ll get to take one of his classes in 2009. He generally does two - one in Coupeville and one in Seattle.
And just so you know, his bottom line for photography is that “thought matters.” Photography should be driven by your thoughts.
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