Local photographer joins worldwide traveling journal project
Ryan Smith takes photos of Ben Lomond in Ogden on Thursday, April 16, 2015. To create his "phainting" style he brackets for three photos each exposing for a different element of the landscape and then blends them together in one image.
A photo illustration attempts to resemble Ryan Smith's "phainting" style by exposing several elements of the photo the same, adding contrast, saturation, darks and a warming filter. Ryan poses for a portrait with the traveling journal in Ogden after he took photos of Ben Lomond on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
"Photography's Traveling Journal: Wonders of the World" is displayed on Ryan Smith's coffee table at his home in Taylor on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
"Photography's Traveling Journal: Wonders of the World" is displayed on Ryan Smith's coffee table at his home in Taylor on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
"Photography's Traveling Journal: Wonders of the World" is displayed on Ryan Smith's coffee table at his home in Taylor on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
"Photography's Traveling Journal: Wonders of the World" is displayed on Ryan Smith's coffee table at his home in Taylor on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
Vonda Jensen, of Santaquin, holds one of the four leather-bound journals she's been sending around the world as part of the Photography's Traveling Journal project. Each journal goes to a selected amateur or professional photographer, who creates and includes photos, adds a journal entry, and sends the collaborative book along to the next photographer.
Vonda Jensen, of Santaquin, holds two of the four leather-bound journals she's been sending around the world as part of the Photography's Traveling Journal project. Each journal goes to a selected amateur or professional photographer, who creates and includes photos, adds a journal entry, and sends the collaborative book along to the next photographer.
One of Photography's Traveling Journals is photographed at Kanheri Caves, in Mumbai, India. The journal is currently with photographer Vinit Pathak.
Photography's Traveling Journal is photographed in front of a statue called "The Time Guard," at Jeita Grotto, Lebanon. The photo was taken by Egyptian photographer Hasan Amin.
Ryan Smith takes photos of Ben Lomond in Ogden on Thursday, April 16, 2015. To create his "phainting" style he brackets for three photos each exposing for a different element of the landscape and then blends them together in one image.
Ryan Smith poses for a portrait with the traveling journal at his home in Taylor on Thursday, April 16, 2015.
TAYLOR — If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what’s the value in taking a picture OF a thousand words?
While most people simply write in journals, Ryan Smith, a part-time photographer who lives in the small community of Taylor in western Weber County, recently became involved in a worldwide project to capture the actual images of journals. Photography’s Traveling Journal is a Utah-based project that is sending a series of four leather-bound journals to selected amateur and professional photographers around the globe. These artists photograph the journal somewhere in their state or country’s unique natural surroundings, add those photos to the journal — along with a written entry — and then pass it along to the next photographer.
This month, Smith is headed for the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, to add his part to one of these journals that is capturing the wonders of the world.
“I looked at her Facebook page and said, ‘Oh my gosh, I have got to be involved,” Smith said. “It’s such an amazing idea. I love her vision of using this journal to shrink the world, as well as to collaborate with other photographers.”
The project was created back in the summer of 2010 by Vonda Jensen, who now lives in the Utah County town of Santaquin. At the time, Jensen was living in Salina, in Sevier County, and had just begun entertaining an interest in photography. However, severe health problems — including a failing liver and several miscarriages — conspired to keep her from developing that interest in photography.
“I was really struggling with depression and health at the time,” Jensen said in a recent telephone interview. “I only had one or two days a week that I felt OK. I couldn’t really do much, including photography.”
While she was feeling sorry for herself, Jensen says an idea came to her late one night. If she couldn’t get out to photograph landscapes, she’d create a traveling journal that would be sent to 30 photographers all around the world. Each photographer would add photos and words to the journal, post to a common Facebook page, and then pass the journal along to the next artist.
“I decided to jump on it right then,” she said. “I worried if I waited until morning, I’d think it was a silly idea.”
Thus, in the middle of the night, the Photography’s Traveling Journal page was created on Facebook. Within a month, Jensen had lined up photogs from Iceland, Egypt and elsewhere around the world.
“I had photographers wanting to participate, and I didn’t even have a journal yet,” she said.
Initially, Jensen had planned on just purchasing any old journal.
“I thought I’d just get a journal from Walmart and pass it around,” she said. “But I realized that was cheap and tacky.”
Jensen finally got in touch with Rogue Journals, out of Mount Juliet, Tenn. The owner, Nicholas Daffinson, agreed to create a custom-made, oversized leather-bound journal for the project.
Slow process
That first journal has already traveled to about two dozen photographers around the world, and has about a half-dozen more stops to make. Jensen admits it’s taken much longer than she had anticipated.
“I thought, ‘Two weeks at each place,’ ” she said, laughing. “Now, here we are, five years out, and we’re not even near done.”
Jensen realizes now that these little “hiccups” were inevitable.
“There were family emergencies, where we’ve had photographers keep the journal almost a year,” she said. “And one time, the journal was accidentally shipped to a deli next door to the photographer in France. Nobody knew where it was for a long time. The neighbor had the journal, just sitting in the deli, not knowing why it was there.”
Still, Jensen is so taken with the idea that she’s started three more traveling journals of photography within the last seven months. One is dedicated to traveling about the country of Turkey — this journal has been stalled of late because of recent unrest in that country. A second is a U.S. journal, traveling to one photographer in each of the 50 states. A third journal, which just recently launched, is dedicated to the wonders of the world. Jensen shot the first entry for this latest journal down at the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. And this is the one Smith will be taking with him to Chichen Itza this month.
The 31-year-old Jensen says the traveling journal concept has saved her life.
“It gave me something to concentrate on other than myself being sick, and feeling sorry for myself,” she said.
Today, Jensen is feeling much better, healthwise, and she has a 2-½-year-old son who keeps her extremely busy. Her journal project has had a pleasant side effect.
“I’m surprised at how much I’ve grown and totally changed as a person,” she said. “I used to struggle with confidence, and I wasn’t outgoing at all. But I had to become confident to do this, and to talk to photographers all over the world.”
Eventually, as the journals are completed and sent back to her, Jensen will shop for a publisher. But she says the ultimate goal is to turn the Photography’s Traveling Journal project into an online magazine, connecting photographers from the far corners of the Earth.
The local connection
Three years ago, Ryan Smith was up in Wyoming, visiting the Grand Tetons and taking photographs of the picturesque mountain range with the camera on his cell phone. At the time, he couldn’t help but wonder why everyone else was carrying these huge bags filled with cameras, lenses, tripods and other gear.
“I looked around,” he recalls, “and thought, ‘What’s everyone carrying around all this equipment for? What are all these crazy people doing?’ “
Today, Smith is one of those crazies.
By day, the 35-year-old man works in medical sales. But in his spare time, armed with enough photo gear to choke a horse, Smith is a professional landscape photographer. He routinely schleps all over this part of the world in a quest for the perfect photograph. And he’s now represented by several galleries in the West, including in Denver, Aspen, Colo., and Jackson, Wyo.
“It’s just exploded into this ridiculous passion,” Smith admits.
Originally from Bountiful, Smith was more into athletics in his youth, and was a two-time state javelin champion at Bountiful High School. He did win a Reflections contest in grade school for a photograph of a waterfall taken on a family trip to Yellowstone — and he has a sister who became a successful portrait photographer — but other than that, Smith never really gave photography much thought.
Then, about two and a half years ago, Smith borrowed a digital SLR camera from his wife, Erica Lomeli.
“I was clueless,” he said. “So I started getting on YouTube to learn how to use it.”
Smith watched videos on a wide variety of topics, all aimed at helping him become a self-taught photographer.
“Through what I like to call ‘YouTube University,’ I learned how to take and edit photographs,” he said.
Today, he’s got at least three cameras and all the gear to make him one of those crazy full-time photographers.
Staying part time
Not that he’d ever quit his day job.
“I love what I do with medical sales; I don’t think I’d ever leave it,” he said. “I love that I can help people with my job.”
Smith says he knows it’s tough to make a living in fine art photography — “even if you’re amazing.” But also, he doesn’t like the idea of turning the thing he loves into a full-time job.
“In talking to people who do photography full time, they say you can lose the passion, because you’re forced to stress over it,” he said. “I never want photography to be stress for me.”
Smith calls his style of work “phainting,” or photo-painting. His digital images are heavily edited in an attempt to bring out the best aspects of each photograph.
“I like people to wonder if it’s a photograph or a painting,” he said.
Smith has already been brainstorming about his Chichen Itza entry to this fourth journal. He’s hoping to get permission to light the ruins after dark.
“My dream is to photograph the ruins at night, with the Milky Way above them,” he said.
Long term, Smith says he hopes to inspire others to try new things in life.
“Three or four years ago, zero percent of my brain was thinking about photography,” he said. “Now, it’s what? Eighty percent?
“People say, ‘Don’t tell anyone you’ve only done this 2 ½ years,’ ” Smith concludes. “But that’s the best part. I hope people will see the fact that it’s never too late in life to learn to do something.”
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.