If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Over the course of our lives, we hear hundreds of kernels of advice packaged up into pithy, well-worn adages like these.

You can probably reel off 10 of them without thinking.

Like stereotypes, these sayings endure for a reason.

But also like stereotypes, there comes a time when we have to just cut loose and live according to our own instincts and insights rather than the well-meaning advice that others offer.

Just this week, I had an encounter with an editor that left me thinking. I’d pitched him an article idea a couple months ago and initially received a cool reception. My first impression of the editor was negative–not because he wasn’t interested, but because of his lack of professionalism and his confident assertion that every story about my subject had already been told. I set aside my gut response, though, wanting to be convinced by a friend who knew him that “that’s just his style.”

With the friend’s advice, I recrafted the pitch and the editor rubber-stamped the idea. I wrote a draft, sent it in, and waited for a couple weeks–during which he was “really busy”–for some feedback. After reading the draft, he made suggestions that would have changed the piece completely. If I agreed to the changes, it would be his piece, idea, content, and style. If I stuck to my guns, it would be my piece. But, he hinted, if it was my piece, he wouldn’t publish it.

I sat with his recommendations for a month, mulling over whether giving in was worth it. A couple of friends urged me to revise– My piece would appear in a heavy-hitter publication!; The editor is an important person to know!; If I screwed this up I may never have a chance to pitch the publication again! What if I burned this bridge?

What IF I burned this bridge?

Life would go on.

When I quit my full-time 9-5 job four years ago, I realized that there are really only a couple of criteria I need to apply when making any decision: (1) Will my decision kill me? and (2) Will it hurt the people I love most? If the answers to these two questions are “No,” I’m fairly confident life will go on, burned bridge or no.

I sent the editor a message saying I’d chosen not to revise the piece and would understand if he, in turn, chose not to publish it. True to the character he’d shown so far, he sent a snippy, unprofessional reply, saying that indeed he wouldn’t publish it. He added he expected that if I continued to be resistant to changes, I’d have a short, unproductive career as a writer.

Oooh…. I was so worried I opened a new bottle of wine and toasted to the only adage that’s ever served me well but which I ignored for years: “To thine own self be true.”

Photo: Julie Schwietert Collazo (and no, those aren’t lemons. They’re passionfruit. And I didn’t make lemonade. I made passionfruit cocktails.)

In just a few days, Francisco and I will be headed to New Orleans, where we’ll be joining up with the Culinary Corps, “The Peace Corps for Cooks.”

Francisco will be forming part of the Corps’ chef team, working with local cooks, restauranteurs, volunteers, students, and community members, while I document the group’s work and share other stories from New Orleans.

In preparation for the trip, which will focus primarily on local foods, Francisco stood over the stove with a whisk and practiced his roux-making skills this evening. Roux is a mandatory skill for New Orleans chefs, and his first try–prepping the roux for a gumbo of okra, andouille sausage, and chicken–was a success, turning the color of a long-worn wedding band, just as writer Sara Roahen says a good roux should.

As each new ingredient was added to the gumbo, the kitchen was infused with a different smell, and after the ingredient had a chance to marry with the gumbo, Francisco crossed the length of the kitchen floor with a steaming spoon of the simmering Louisiana stew as I sat at the dining room table and typed. “Try it now,” he said, smiling a little bit bigger each time.

In the coming days, we’ll be posting some pre-New Orleans news, but in the meantime, be sure to visit Christine Carroll’s Culinary Corps website and learn more about this fantastic organization. If you are as impressed as we are by the passion and vision Christine brings to her work in New Orleans and the world, please consider making a donation of any amount to Culinary Corps by visiting Firstgiving.

Photo: Zeal Harris (creative commons)

Me? I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with photography (see previous post). I love a picture that captures the essence of a person or a place suspended in a particular moment, but I dislike carrying a camera on a trip, especially because I perceive it to be intrusive. In fact, I have few, if any photos, of most of my travels.

That’s why it’s good that there are people like Annie Griffiths Belt.

Griffiths Belt, one of the first female photographers at the National Geographic Society, didn’t own a camera until she was a 19 year old college student, but from the moment she picked up a camera, she writes in A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel: My Journey in Photographs, “I was a goner.”

A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel is the artist’s equivalent of a mid-career retrospective, with photographs from across the times and places that have marked the seminal points of Griffith Belt’s impressive career.

Much of that career, she has been accompanied by her husband, the writer Don Belt, and their two children, Lily and Charlie, and the book is as much a concise parenting manual for adults who love to travel and who share Griffith Belt’s belief that the institution of schools shouldn’t “get in the way of…education.”

Lily had traveled to 13 countries before she was even born, and Griffiths Belt expresses her gratitude and awe that her kids have become passionate multilingual travelers. One of the most moving photos in the collection is of her son resting beside two Bedouin men in Jordan. Charlie is wrapped in the crook of one man’s arm; his face is turned away from the men, but is illuminated by the sun and his own pure pleasure.

But A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel is even more than a career retrospective and parenting guide; it’s also a travelogue, coffee table book, essay on cultural understanding, and tip guide for photographers. Early in the book, when she’s describing the trajectory of her career, the reader feels as if she’s been let in on a delicious secret. Griffiths Belt’s descriptions of National Geographic meetings made me want to go bang on the Geographic’s door and beg for a job.

When she moves on to a discussion of her family’s life on the road, the text often reads like a letter from a family member. “We had quite a little celebration,” she writes about Lily’s and Charlie’s accomplishment of walking 100 miles around Jerusalem in the span of two months. Her writing isn’t dazzling, but it’s humble, honest, and true.

It’s also incredibly funny. She recalls an assignment on a ranch in the Midwest US. She awoke to a sunrise that had “ignited cornrows of luminous clouds over the horse pasture.” She grabbed her camera and ran outside, shooting passionately. It was only after she’d captured this fleeing moment that she realized she’d forgotten to put on any pants, and was photographing—in front of a line of cowboys—“in nothing more than… t-shirt and undies.”

As if all of these stories weren’t treat enough, A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel is incredibly relevant and timely, and the section about the Middle East is particularly moving, both in words and images. She describes Arab women as “some of the most misunderstood and misrepresented people on Earth,” and she helps build the reader’s understanding of Arab women and men by sharing the joys of her own experiences negotiating the diversity of Middle Eastern cultures and traditions. These are her best stories, and are among the many gifts she gives the reader.

I’m not convinced that the photos in A Camera, Two Kids, and a Camel are Griffith Belt’s best. There are some photos whose selection is puzzling, including a two page, largely blurry spread of a baseball field. But I’m also not convinced that including the best was the point. Each of the photos evokes memories and stories about human connection.

Ultimately, it’s what’s outside the frame—the moment when she’s watching a lunar eclipse and listening to cowboy poetry—the stuff she can’t photograph—that’s important, both to Griffiths Belt and to the reader. Even she says so. It’s the “constant miracle of my work,” she writes, that people “allow me to be with them.”

Throughout the book, Griffiths Belt offers tips to photographers: Quickly assess and relate to others. Be patient. Learn to listen. Transform “no” to “yes” by seeing a denied request as a “creative challenge.” Give each subject “time and sincere attention.” Griffiths Belt clearly shows, both in her photographs and in her writing, that she’s mastered all of these skills. Far from viewing the camera as an intrusive instrument or a barrier, Griffiths Belt uses the camera as a passport, business card, and invitation, and she does so with extraordinary grace.

Photo: kkfea (creative commons)

My friend, photojournalist and fellow writer Lola Akinmade, has written a great series of informative articles about how to take better photos.

Trouble is, I haven’t been able to use Lola’s tips.

I’ve long had an ambivalent, conflicted relationship with my camera. Fifteen years of travel–Costa Rica, England, France, Switzerland, China, Canada, The Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba– and I have few photos to show, much less photos that convey what my journeys have meant to me.

I’m always worried about exploiting people, making locals feel uncomfortable, intruding on someone else’s space, causing offense.

But more and more, I’ve needed to develop my own stock set of photos for various projects, so yesterday I decided to confront my conflict with the camera. I stuck her in my bag and hit the streets of Mexico City.

I started shooting tentatively, almost apologetically. I waited until people looked away. My courage faltered, and I pushed the camera back into my bag. I lost great shots.

And then I decided: It’s now or never. Click. Focus. Click. More than 100 photos later, I’d had great conversations with protestors, police, dancers, and shoe shine men. I’d captured some exquisite moments–a businessman falling asleep on a bench while waiting for a bus. A vendor with a mullet waiting to sell shaved ice. I was exuberant.

If you’re a conflicted camera-phobe, here are some tips for making peace with your camera:

1) Start shooting in a really busy place. Fewer people will notice you. They’re going about their own business and don’t much care what you’re doing. Crowded city centers are a great place to start getting comfortable with the camera.

2) Start with a goal. Nothing will make you want to send your camera back to solitary confinement more than searching for a great shot and not finding it. Instead, choose a subject and then pursue it. I started yesterday by photographing Mexico City’s old movie theatres. Bonus? I wasn’t taking photos of people, so I wasn’t feeling intrusive.

3) Set up some subjects. Once you’re ready to start photographing people, get your feet wet by photographing folks you know. I asked the man on the corner who sells car parts if I could photograph him. We talk every day, so I already have rapport established with him. While the shots were posed, I got a better feel for the camera, lighting, and what to focus on.

4) Walk your neighborhood. Stay in a familiar place. Capture images of the sites that have meaning for you. This practice will help you learn how to start seeing the familiar through fresh eyes.

5) Shoot from the hip. I learned this tip from Francisco’s son. Though I still don’t feel comfortable walking with a camera hanging around my neck like a tourist, when you do so, you can hold the camera at hip or waist level and shoot candids without others’ notice. Brayan shot a great series of photos of a man entirely without his realizing it. The photos are intimate but non-invasive portraits that would not have been possible had he asked permission first.

Now I can get back to Lola’s articles!

Do you have any tips for the camera-phobe? Share them in the Comments section below!
Photo: sergei.y (creative commons)

Our Friday night tradition, when we lived in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, was to sit on our balcony and toast our friends, Arturo and Violeta, as they sat on their balcony across the patio. Many nights, we’d eventually wander our way over to Arturo’s apartment or they’d wander their way over to ours and enjoy conversations about poetry, politics, and, of course, music, over a rich red Chilean wine.

Arturo Yepez, cartoonist for El Vocero, one of Puerto Rico’s national daily newspapers, is a man you can’t help but love at first sight, and we were fortunate to have him as a neighbor and a friend. Always smiling, always working passionately on a project, Arturo’s enthusiasm for life is contagious.

Catch Arturo in person a month from now at his lecture on tango music–one of his biggest interests–in Isabela, Puerto Rico. Arturo is a dynamic speaker, and he’ll be focusing on the influence of African music and culture on tango.

Interested? Hit the “Contact” button above and send us an e-mail to request more details about the event.

Can’t attend? Watch this great YouTube video.

For more from Arturo, be sure to check out his fascinating and funny book, Humor a Quien Humor Merece, (Humor for Whom Humor is Due), a fantastic and totally accessible study of the history of political humor in Puerto Rico.