When Mt. Airy photographer Nick Kelsh shoots, he scores

by CAROLE VERONA

Mt. Airy resident Nick Kelsh was one of 125 military and civilian photographers chosen to shoot more than 250,000 pictures of military personnel during a 24-hour period on October 22, 2002. The images were for a book, A Day in the Life of the Armed Forces.

Nick’s assignment was in Guam, “the first place in the world where the sun would rise on U.S. military personnel that day.” His thought-provoking, mysterious photograph of a Navy SEAL, whose face was partially camouflaged by water, was flashed across television screens worldwide only hours after it was taken. Nick’s memory of the experience is as sharp and clear as the photo itself.

Nick was instructed to arrive at a specific location at 3 p.m. “Just trust us, somebody’s going to meet you there,” he was told. “So I got there, and this Navy SEAL just showed up. He had all this stuff on him … hand grenades, a pistol, a rifle and swim fins. He was wearing headphones and all this electronic gear. I asked him if he could get in the water with all that stuff, and he walked right into the ocean.

“I was told we couldn’t show his face, so it was his idea to submerge it in the water. My wife Anne, who accompanied me on the trip, was in the water with us holding the lights. Imagine all three of us in the water. It was a funny scene! I was with the guy start-to-finish for 20 minutes. That’s pretty short for a photo shoot. I took the picture. We were done. He was gone. I never knew his name.”

Knowing it was a great photo, Nick e-mailed it right away to the publisher in New York. Ten hours later, while Nick was still in Guam shooting, the image of the Navy SEAL was seen on the national morning news.

It’s a long way from Fargo, North Dakota, where Nick was born and raised, to Mt. Airy, to photo assignments all over the world. It all began when a photographer came to do a show-and-tell for Nick’s ninth grade science class. “I knew then that I wanted to be a photographer. All through high school, all I wanted to do was take pictures.” Nick went on to study journalism at the University of Missouri. By then, his style was pretty much defined. “I tried to do whatever other photographers weren’t doing. Even now, if I’m doing a predictable assignment, I always try to put a twist on it.”

He worked at several newspapers around the country and ended up as a staff photographer at The Philadelphia Inquirer in the early 1980s. He left in 1986 to form Kelsh Wilson Design with a colleague from the paper. The company provides a full-range of communication services to businesses and schools, including branding, design, writing, photography, web development and project management.

In addition to A Day in the Life of the Armed Forces, Nick has traveled the world to shoot pictures for other books in the series. He’s been to China, Thailand, Israel, Italy and Africa, to name just a few.  Many of his shots have been chosen to grace the covers of the book series. This is a very impressive honor considering that he’s competing with hundreds of other world-renowned photographers. “The fact that my shots are often chosen for the cover says something about how I shoot. I tend to shoot, simple, bold images,” he explained.

“The publishers give you ideas, but when you get there and put your feet on the ground, some of it works and some of it doesn’t. You have to be confident about your own work and about what you know. I learned to stick to what I’m good at. So whenever I go to one of these countries, I dig back into my Fargo, North Dakota roots. I’m a white, middle class guy. I just photograph everyday, normal life: people sitting down to eat together or kids going to school—although I always try to put my own spin on it.”

Nick has also collaborated on two books with Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Anna Quindlen. “At work, there were five employees with young babies. I took ‘artsy’ photos of the babies and realized there was enough material to do a book. Several women suggested that I should get Anna Quindlen to write the copy. I did all this detective work, got Anna’s home telephone number, and cold-called her,” Nick said. “I was on the phone with her for less than a minute. I said, ‘I’m a photographer, and I have this project.’ She said, ‘I don’t have time… I’m sure they’re very nice pictures, but I’m too busy.’ I said, ‘Do me a favor and just look at the pictures.’”

After he hung up, Nick realized he didn’t tell her about the subject matter. That’s how short the conversation was. But when Quindlen saw the pictures, “she completely got it” and agreed to write a series of essays for the book, Naked Babies.

During the course of working on the book, Quindlen suggested that Nick prepare himself for the publicity that would ensue. So he sat and wrote a list of 18 things he’d learned about photographing babies. The list received a lot of national coverage and, on the basis of that, he was invited to appear on Oprah. “Babies were crawling all over the set, and as I took a picture it was flashed on a big screen behind us. Talk about a white-knuckle flight!” Following his appearance on Oprah, Nick was approached by a publisher and has since written: How to Photograph Your Baby, How to Photograph Your Family and most recently, How to Photograph Your Life. He also collaborated with Quindlen on a second book called Siblings. “Anna and I are both one of five children, so we had a lot of experience to tap into.” Thumbing through the book, you’ll find photos of Nick’s friends, neighbors and acquaintances, many from Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy.        

Nick is a persuasive proponent of digital technology. “Today, you can buy an excellent digital camera for less than $300. The quality is so good, your jaw will drop,” he said. “People have been asking me for years… when’s a good time to get a digital camera? The answer is now. A digital camera is as good as film, and it’s so much fun to use. You get to see your pictures right away, and you can easily e-mail them to others.”

However, a camera is just a tool. “What really counts is your vision, the way you look at things. The main difference between a professional photographer and an amateur is that the professional photographer plans and composes the photograph in the brain before putting the camera to the eye. It’s all in the editing … it’s getting to the important stuff. It’s hard for some people to do this because they’re visually overwhelmed with the clutter of daily life. They can’t distinguish between what is happening in the background and what is happening in the foreground. I spend about half my time simplifying the composition. In the end, you’ll find that the simpler the composition, the greater the impact.”

In How to Photograph Your Life, Nick expands on the above, giving rules and examples of how to compose and shoot dozens of life events. He talks about the use of flash, the best time of day to take outdoor pictures, and even gives you “out of the box” ideas for photographing everything from the birth of a baby to a picture for a personal ad.

What’s next for this world traveler? “I’m pretty happy here in Mt. Airy, sitting in my house, with my family. An idea is percolating in my brain. I’d like to turn one of my rooms into a digital art room and make big, beautiful art prints.” 

If he takes his own advice—“when good things are happening in front of your camera, keep pushing the button”—chances are we’ll be reading about the process and seeing the results soon in another Nick Kelsh best-seller.

Nick Kelsh will share photography tips on The Living Network's Survival Guide (episode 109) that will air several times between November 30 and December 20. For show schedules, go to www.fineliving.com

His web site is: www.kelshwilson.com