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Bry Cox at Photo Beijing China & Inner Mongolia (Part II)

Before leaving Beijing for Mongolia, I took a few hours between meetings to walk a few miles around my hotel. I quietly photographed people and the scenes around me. Here are some of my favorites, starting with some older men flying kites, something I hadn’t noticed in my previous trips to China.

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

And with Beijing being a city of 20 million people, there is a lot of variety in city life in just those few miles around my hotel. I hope you can feel a sense of what it’s like to visit this city from these photographs.

© BryCox.com, Bry CoxBryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_18© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox © BryCox.com, Bry Cox © BryCox.com, Bry Cox
© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox © BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

© BryCox.com, Bry Cox© BryCox.com, Bry Cox
© BryCox.com, Bry Cox© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

The complexity of the newsstands are interesting to me. And in this first image, you may not notice right off the bat, but the salesman’s face is behind the glass in the upper left corner.© BryCox.com, Bry Cox© BryCox.com, Bry Cox

After this photo walk I had a big dinner to attend. Then early the next morning we traveled to Mongolia, a long 12 hour drive. It was much colder up there and I had to make due with what little I brought with me as you can see in this self portrait overlooking a Mongolian Buddhist temple at sunrise. Some of my favorite images of the trip were created in Mongolia, and I’ll share some of those in my next posts.

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So until next time, America.

Bry Cox at Photo Beijing China & Inner Mongolia (Part I)

I just got back from speaking in China at Photo Beijing, 2015 where I was treated like a king. It was such a great experience and I’ve been anxious to share more about this trip. My hosts also asked if I’d be a photographic ambassador and visit Inner Mongolia as well, and I took a lot of great images there of the most interesting faces. I’ll share more about that later. For part 1 of this trip I wanted to start with Photo Beijing 2015.

BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_01

I wrote an article on street photographer Vivian Maier, which is getting compiled with other articles into a book being published later. Because of that article, I was asked to travel to China to speak on Vivian Maier. (I’ve also posted that article online for paying members of my photography training site for it’s insight into posing and reading people’s personalities.)

After speaking on the opening day, they had a big ceremony complete with red carpet where they had me walk while being photographed by a huge crowd of people. While walking amongst the camera clicks and flashes, they had television cameras too from CCTV, and I could even see myself projected on the huge screen in the distance as it cut from camera to camera. The whole thing was quite exhilarating.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_02 BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_03

I was so excited that I made this iPhone video at the top of the carpet, still on a high from the walk.

They also had these models wearing dresses made of photographs, walk the carpet the opposite direction.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_04 BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_05

At the top of the carpet, there were welcomes and speeches from government and photographic dignitaries.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_06 BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_07

And I had to get a photo with me with my friend Bing, who invited me over to China, and who I got to know years ago when I first went to China to speak in 2009. Her father is one of the most well-known photographers in China and was in charge of the event.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_08

After the red carpet ceremony, we were taken to a television theater and asked to sit on the front row for another opening ceremony event, this time we were entertained by amazing local dancers and singers. Again, this was all filmed by cameras from CCTV, which continually cut to cameras on us. Sometimes, the cameras were awkwardly close to my face, so close I couldn’t see over them to see the dancers.
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All of these images I’m posting were shot with my small Lumix point-and-shoot camera, which I love for it’s manual controls, retro look, and very small size. It was the best camera to take on a trip like this, giving me both control as well as a very small size and weight.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_11

The next day, me and the other speakers were part of a roundtable discussion. I was the only one from the US, and other countries represented included Bangladesh, Malta, France, Germany, UK, Indonesia, and many others. We all wore headphones with receivers capable of receiving various channels of audio from the translators. It was incredibly interesting to see so many people with so many backgrounds and languages, all connected by photography.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_12

Somehow when my name was translated from English to Chinese and back into English, it came out as “Bry Cox’s Bio.” So a few times throughout the event I saw my name written this way.
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I was also given some translators at this event, local college student volunteers that followed me around everywhere and made my life easier.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_14

When they asked if I’d come speak on photographer Vivian Maier, I had no idea how big of an event it would be. They had beautiful signs like this printed around town inviting the public to an exhibition of original prints shipped from New York.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_15

And here I am at the exhibition after I was done with my work and meetings, wearing more relaxed clothes. It was an incredible show. They had 50 original images on display, and they had made wall paper based on her negatives. It was all quite beautiful.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_16

Before this, I had only seen Vivian’s images in books. It was quite an experience to see them up close and in person, looking at real silver halide prints. The detail that close was incredible and the images were even more beautiful and inspiring.
BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_17

Of course in Beijing I went on some photo walks where I did some of my own street portraits that I’ll share in my next post, images like this cute little boy driving his motorized trike through the busy streets of Beijing.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_18

And later in Mongolia I was presented with custom made traditional clothing in a ceremony which I’ll get to in a later post. And while there, my hosts took me to photograph a Mongolian primary school where kids wrote in calligraphy with giant brushes, to a Buddhist temple at sunrise, and to a local farming village where the residents put on a parade for us. During all of this I created some photos that I’m really excited about, and I’ll share them in the next posts.BryCox_PhotoBeijing2015_China_19

So until next time, America.

New Hampshire Shoot

I recently got back from speaking on the East Coast in New Hampshire. While teaching, I demonstrated some various techniques on making women look great in photographs. Here are some of the images I created that day.

These images don’t have any finishing touches on them yet, and that’s because I was showing that they should look great right out of the camera. Any final enhancements later should only be slight as the images should be ready to print without them if you did everything correctly.

Some people think that great images come from having a good camera. That’s like saying  good songs are only written on good guitars when the truth is it’s the artist using the camera or guitar. Any good musician can write a great song on any guitar, and any great photographer can create great images on any camera.

Another misnomer is that that great images come from having beautiful models. This is also incorrect. A great photographer understands exactly how to make everyone look better and an average photographer will make even the prettiest person look worse.

I love teaching workshops because I really like helping photographers do better, plus it helps to raise the level of quality in the industry.

 

In New Hampshire, I was teaching how to create great images with any camera, and how to make all women look better using specific lighting and posing.

Here are two portraits of the same pretty girl in the same beautiful location. I shot her two different ways to show that a camera in the right hands will make her look better, and in the wrong hands she will look worse. Look at the two images and see if you can see all the differences.

In the first image, I used custom lighting and posed her specifically in a way that would be more flattering for her and her outfit. I took control of all aspects of the exposure which means her skin tones have great color right out of the camera. I separated her from the background and sculpted her using directional light at particular angles. Everything was set up and shot manually, nothing left to chance or to Auto functions.

Then I did another image of her the way most photographers would, with no specific poses, no control of light, and shooting the camera on Auto.

Notice how flat this second image looks. Her skin tones are green, the light on her face is coming from the sky rather than from any controllable or directional source, her eyes are dark, the background is too light, and the wrong camera angle and lack of posing and lighting make her look thicker. Again, NO woman wants to look thicker or heavier, and fixing it later on the computer isn’t the same as shooting it right.

This is why most photographers shoot so many images – they hope that with the law of averages they’ll get something decent that they can then spend tons of time on the computer fixing and covering with various effects.

This is why you need to hire a really good photographer with credentials – and why photographers need to get continual hands-on training from Master photographers.

So with a change of clothes, I continued to teach and shoot this model, walking around the town, making sure that each pose and lighting set up made her look great.

We ended up at this cool bridge which gave me some cool leading lines.

Well, if you’d like some great portraits, I know just how to make you look great, plus now is the perfect time if you like the fall leaves. Give me a call and book your appointment at 801-728-3317 and lets create something amazing for your wall.