Veteran Nat Geo photographer Steve Raymer on his career and shares tricks of his trade

The audience was made up largely of young, enthusiastic, eager-to-learn photographers. Speaking to them was Steve Raymer, who after working for more than two decades as a staff photographer for National Geographic, has attained a kind of a hero status among those listening to him.

But rather than talking about f-stops or ISO speeds, Raymer began to impart life lessons which, he says, are even more important than technical know-how.

“Be mindful of how you spend your early 20s because that time hugely imprints upon you for the rest of your life,” he says. “That is another way of saying to make sure something happens to you in your 20s and don’t just float through them.”

Raymer was in Dubai last weekend for the third annual ING Creative Festival. He was one of 22 professionals from 15 countries, who not only came to speak about their chosen field in the creative industry, but also host hands-on sessions at which they could pass on their practical and invaluable knowledge.

Raymer led two Shoot Like National Geographic workshops and gave a talk about his fascinating life and career. He showed several images, taking the audience across continents and generations, and accompanied them with some pearls of wisdom.

“Much of the audience here are young professionals either interested in photography or already photographers,” he says. “The common thread is that they are young, well educated and keenly interested in the state of visual journalism today.”

It makes sense, then, that Raymer would talk to an audience in their 20s about the importance of using their time wisely.

When he was that age, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a young officer in the United States armed forces fighting in the Vietnam War. Upon being hired by National Geographic, he was sent back to photograph the closing stages of the conflict.

This had a massive impact on his life and several of his biggest projects throughout his career centred on South East Asia.

During our conversation, he takes twists and turns, telling stories of being medically evacuated from Cambodia in 1974, documenting the minority Muslim population in Thailand in the 1990s, and returning several times to Vietnam to teach.

With an uncanny memory for dates and impressive attention to detail, Raymer is a storyteller first and photographer second. This, it seems, is the real secret to his success.

“The first thing is to have something to say,” he says. “The camera is just a means of doing that.”

While there are, of course, several tools of the photographic trade he relies upon, as well as an almost innate sense of the qualities of light, Raymer says the primary prerequisite for the job is a way of thinking.

“What editors are looking for is a distinctive way of seeing the world; they are looking for people with ideas and passion,” he says, recalling that at the time he was hired for National Geographic, he had never taken a colour photograph before.

Nowadays, he tells his students he could shoot a National Geographic assignment with his phone, provided he has the right vantage point.

“I am the first one to say that taking the picture is probably the easiest part of the job,” he says. “The hard part is getting yourself in the right place at the right time, where there is a moment and something intimate that others can’t see.

“You need to always remember the audience. You are showing people – at close range – something that they will never see with their own eyes. That is what makes a good photo.”

During the workshops, Raymer spent about an hour introducing the main lessons for becoming a successful photojournalist – being persistent and adding meaning and context to stories – and then sent the participants out into Alserkal Avenue, where the festival took place. They were armed with their cameras and tasked with finding a “moment” to photograph.

Here Raymer uses the words of master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who famously published a book in 1952 called The Decisive Moment, and encourages his students to think about what he was talking about in this book.

After shooting their images, the students came back into the workshop and worked with Raymer to review their results.

"I treated it as if I was the editor at National Geographic," he says. "We were looking for images that can be used for publication and website."

This kind of hands-on training for aspiring young talent can have a life-changing effect – and is part of the reason for the success of this small, well-organised festival.

But it is not only a one-way street. Raymer says teaching is something that gives him great pleasure.

“If you stay in this business long enough, you are going to have friends who will be killed,” he says.

“I am not just talking about doing combat or conflict stories, but doing aerial shots, too. In the 1980s, I had three colleagues killed over four years in helicopter crashes.

“My best friend, Gordon Gahan, survived the war in Vietnam, but was killed in a crash on the Virgin Islands shooting tourism. You never know when your number is up.

“So, in that respect, I am really lucky. I’m 71, I have had just about every imaginable disease and every bone in my major extremities broken on assignment.

“But I am still here and I think if you are still alive, you have some obligation to pass on the knowledge and skills you have.”

artslife@thenational.ae