Uwe On HDR

May I draw your attention to Outbackphot and the excellent efforts of Uwe Steinmuller. He's given a 65 minute lecture on High Dynamic Range Shooting and Image Making that is well worth listening to - at Google lectures.

Check it out.

A newer note on Outback Print is Uwe's and Jack Flescher's comments on Harman Gloss Baryta paper which they feel is the best yet in the "I wish I was glossy dried matte" competition, at least on the Epson 3800.

My efforts with the Canon 5000 have failed miserably, annoying since I had specifically purchased it for use with the new gdm (glossy dried matte) papers. Between defective surfaces and gray papers and the ink on the Canon being so glossy it shows gloss differential on all the papers, it's been a complete bust.

I'm not going to rush this time, but if the paper does hold up for other reviewers as well, it could be worth going back to an Epson printer. I even tried some of Canon's semi gloss paper - it too wasn't as shiny as the ink on the 5000, so for now I'm totally back to matte. We'll see. Sooner or latere there is going to be a paper and printer combination that will work.

More From Museum Of The Regiments

Not exactly high art, but fun none the less and that great sky was ideal. I even had some choice on the light as a storm was blowing in and the sun came and went for several minutes as I was shooting.

Akvis Enhancer was very helpful in producing the image with the support base while manually blending multiple exposures and then enhancer helped the image from under the plane's belly.

On A Personal Note

Life has been interesting, to say the least. It started back at the end of June when we arranged to have our house painted for the first time in too many years. It fell to me to trim back all the trees and bushes near the house (you should understand that we live in the middle of the city but have let things grow pretty wild over much of the property and have 40 mature trees in our back garden alone).

Needless to say then, said trimming was fairly strenuous and between rather dull loppers and a pruning saw, I did the job over a couple of days and completely filled a large stock trailer twice over, hauled the loads to the dump and emptied them.

A couple of weeks later I started to get some pain in my left shoulder and at the time didn't related it back to the tree trimming. Another week or so and the painters were here and needed one more bush trimmed and I grabbed the loppers, went to lop, and yelled out - I thought I knew why my shoulder was sore.

As by now the pain was significant and it was waking me in the night, sometimes several times, I headed off to the doctor who diagnosed infraspinatus tendonitis and recommended physiotherapy (which being a good patient, I didn't get round to doing).

All this time, I was playing tennis almost daily and walking the dog at least a mile and a half daily, even being pleasantly surprised that I could hoof it up a steep hill without collapsing or getting angina (I'm 57 and sig. overweight).

Advance another week or so and one Wednesday I played a little warm up singles with my friend, then went to the indoor facility to play my usual Wednesday doubles, and for the first time ever we played singles for the first hour - we had a great time, but by the end I was fairly tired.

I came home to a very sad dog, no one had taken him for a walk. We went for a walk, I almost didn't make it back. Now this was not a combination I hadn't done before but I figured that second set of singles is what did me in, so didn't think too much of it at the time.

Over the next week though a few more walks were brought almost to a halt with a combination of weakness and general soreness - this was getting a little bit odd, not to say worrying. Another week and it didn't take tennis or walks to make me sore, I was getting sore all over and specifically in my hands, now both shoulders and hips. One last rather pathetic tennis game and I had to tell the boys to find a replacement, I couldn't run for the ball.

Off to the doctor a second time and we discuss rheumatoid arthritis but hope it's just something post viral. My theory that it was just a fat old guy pretending to be young didn't seem to have wings.

Lab work was positive - at least I wasn't being a wimp, but on the other hand, now I had something and it was looking suspiciiously like rheumatoid arthritis. One Sunday the symptoms were quite minimal and I had a good walk at a reasonably brisk pace and felt even better the next day and entertained the possibility that I might be able to return to tennis within days. The next day was bad again and over the last two weeks things have got worse on almost a daily basis. A specialist classmate confirmed the diagnosis and started me on Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine).

By Thursday I was bad enough I was worried about my job and wrote a note to the specialist outlining the change in my symptoms. She called me back yesterday by which time I could barely walk and recommended a little cortisone by mouth and to start methotrexate.

This latter is a little bit creapy as it's an anticancer drug, big guns, with potentially dangerous side effects, but possibly quite helpful and usually reasonably safe. Last night I saw my family doctor who was very supportive but who felt that the little bit of cortisone was way too little when my job, sanity, and ability to move were on the line. Shortly before going to see him, the phone had rung, and for the first time, I was completely unable to get off the sofa, my wife had to put the phone down, come and haul me off. My doctor put me on 5X as much prednisone, suggesting a large dose for a short period of time to get me going.

Twelve hours after taking the first dose, I was 50% better. It didn't take 3 attemts to get out of bed, I could reach the floor, I could dry myself after the shower - it was a miracle. By 18 hours I felt 80% better and went off for a mile and a half walk at normal pace, and this afternoon even slung my camera backpack on for a short photo excursion. I'm not perfect, my tendonitis in the shoulder still bothers me, but everything else is wonderfully, dramatically better. I don't know if it's going to last or if the methotrexate is really going to work, but these days there are even better drugs that can be used if it fails - there may be life after all.

It's been a couple of weeks since I could pick up my camera on the tripod, getting out this afternoon was very nice.

Oh, the plane, it was at The Museum Of The Regiments, about a mile from my house, here in Calgary, the plane was mounted by two black pillars reaching up from the ground at an angle to the exhaust ports of the jet, giving it a dramatic angle, just great for photographing. Didn't get a chance to read the plaque and identify the plane before the rain started.

Sketches Of Frank Gehry

I've just finished watching the documentary, "Sketches of Frank Gehry", about the architect of Guggenheim Bilbao and Walt Disney Hall, of the building featured in the latest Lenswork, # 72. Absolutely fascinating and I think offering some things for photographers to think about as regards creativity, self doubt, where ideas come from and other relevant issues. Highly recommended. I have got to get myself to Bilbao, somehow, before I die.

Frank Gehry is not admired by all, some feel that the Bilbao museum is so 'out there' that it detracts from its function which is to show off the art. But really, if somehow that building could survive a thousand years or more, what better message could we leave the future to say, we were here, and this is what we could do.

Image above is copyright The Telegraph Newspaper, U.K.

Architecture As Subject

The latest issue of Lenswork (#72) has some lovely images of Walt Disney Hall, designed by the famous Frank Gehry (he of the Bilbao Gugenheim). The other day I saw a lovely image of a spiral stairway and my first reaction was, what a wonderful photograph. My next reaction though was to note that it was clear the architect set up this view deliberately, the sweeping curves were there to be recorded.

So how much credit goes to the architect and how much to the photographer?

Bruce Barnbaums wonderful cathedral images only show what was built by artisans sometimes almost a thousand years ago. Should they get most of the credit? Well, I have been seeing cathedral pictures in one venue or another my whole life, from TV and magazines to photo books, and Bruce's are outstanding - so if most of the credit went to the builders, how come we didn't see the kind and quality of Bruce's images in the work of most of the photographers?

Frank Gehry chose that brushed stainless steel specifically for it's light reflecting properties. He'd already used it in previous projects and knew exactly how it would photograph - so do we discount entirely the images of Bilbao and Walt Disney Theatre?

Obviously there is technical skill in recording the images, but what about the framing of the image - deciding where the borders go, and what to focus on, where to stand and how to line things up? Does the photographer get any credit for choosing the perfect light and for making a rich image of wonderful tonalities? The architect makes an interesting three dimensional object and the translation into a really good two dimensional image of finite edges is a whole other art and I suspect that once a few obvious views of a building are made, anything new and good is likely to have earned a goodly share of the credit for the photographer.

What are your thoughts - is photographing architecture a poor cousin to real photography?

Reply From Zenfolio

Here's the response from Zenfolio - nice that you can contact them directly and they respond quickly.

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Zenfolio and for bogging about us.

We do have a Premium plan in the works that will allow you to set custom prices, assign watermarks, and remove Zenfolio branding, among other things. We do not have a date to give out when this will be available, but it is something we had in mind all along so it will not take longer than a month or two.

Let us know if you have any other questions, we are here to help.

Regards,
Zenfolio Customer Support

Badlands 3

It took 4 13X19 prints and 3 uploads until I was reasonably happy with this image. I played with cropping, I did some burning, then I noticed that the top of the cave was lighter (it actually opened up but looked like a poor dodging job, so more burning, then I saw that while I had cropped some grass at the bottom which weakened the left bottom corner, one blade stuck up in front of the rock, some cloning fixed that.

All of this of course was after hundreds of changes made to bring the tonality of the image into line. Included in those changes was something I'd not done before. I had difficulty deciding whether I preferred a blue or a yellow filter, both seemed to add something, but to different parts of the image. The solution, do both. I created a duplicate image layer then did a black and white conversion on both, then used a black mask on the upper image so that filter didn't have an effect, then painted in the effect as and where needed - worked a treat.

The original image is below. I had found it too cluttered and couldn't see a worthwile image in it when reviewing the images in Bridge, but watching a movie with my wife that I'd seen before, I got out my Epson 2000 portable storage device and flipped through images until I came across this one. The Epson tends to darken images which sometimes shows you things that look a bit washed out when viewed properly in Bridge. So it was with this image.

Zenfolio

Aware of the limitations of my using smugmug to host my photographs, I'm always on the lookout for a better solution. Smugmug has worked well for me but it isn't exactly elegant. My wife was talking with our vet (who's into photography) and he gave her his website, which turns out to be hosted on Zenfolio and I was impressed with how clean it is, how one can navigate through the images with the cursor keys and how it resizes nicely for individual screens.

Downsides so far seem to be that Zenfolio is fairly prominent on the sites so you know you are using a hosting service, not your own webdesign, and also I don't so far see any way to have text pages.

That said, it seems worth keeping an eye on and perhaps for a larger fee in the future, more customization is possible.

Oh, and image access is commendably fast.

And Another

Badlands Revisited

From earlier this year. The image isn't super sharp - seems that IS only works on short exposures, not long ones like 0.6 seconds - live and learn - I knew you could use it on tripod but I guess they meant for 1/30 and such. Hope I can reshoot this in the new year as even with agressive sharpening, it isn't ideal.

I quite like the image though so hope can can reshoot it. It was shot at 75 mm. so reshooting with the 90 ts-e and stitching would be the obvious way to go. I remember roughly where I was when I shot it, so...

Another Web Gallery Style

Uwe Steinmuller suggested I check out the Lightroom templates of Matthew Campagna at Turning Gate. You can link to the same Deadwood Portfolio images but in a different style. This one can be navigated by using the arrow keys on the keyboard, very nice.

Deadwood Portfolio

I'm experimenting with the web gallery feature of Lighroom and have uploaded a portfolio of images that I'm considering submitting - where hasn't been decided. Anyway that led to wanting to show you the images and so to lightroom rather than simply adding them to smugmug - I wanted a cleaner interface. I gather there are already some nice templates available but this was one of the ones built into Lightroom, with colours changed.

You can view the portfolio at Deadwood Portfolio

Persistence

The other night I showed you the pathway within two hours of shooting it. With a bit of time, I used the slideshow feature of Bridge to look at the images, giving stars to those with potential, eventually including this version which is better than the original in two ways - the sun has moved round a bit and is just barely shining on this side of the concrete. Instead of a single cyclist in the distance going away, now I have two cyclists, one in each direction and significantly closer.

I stayed with the walkway shot for the better part of half an hour. I grabbed the first shot less than a minute after pulling up - afraid something would go wrong with the light.I later moved a bit closer and switched to a shorter lens to get a less obstructed view of the bottom of the walkway at the near end. I took a number of shots, adjusting exposure as I went and watching the histogram for blown highlights as I went. A couple of cyclists decided to stop on the pathway near the bridge, spoiling the clean lines of the composition. They were a bit far away to ask them to move and I waited them out for more than 15 minutes before they slowly got their act together and rolled off. Fortunately I still barely had the right light and was able to catch this image within seconds of them leaving.

Exposure was 1/50 at f10 Of course I'd have liked to use f16 for maximum depth of field but that would have involved too slow a shutter speed. I could have raised the ISO of the camera but my 1Ds2 is fairly noisy at higher ISO's and even 400 is a compromise. The other issue is that in the failing light I was having to adjust things - a camera with a dial in ISO selector sure would be nice - there was no time after the layabouts finally moved off to fiddle with menus.

Anyway, the image worked, it makes a nice print and if the furthest pillars aren't absolutely crisp, it hardly matters. It's actually pretty amazing how well the cyclists turned out for 1/50 second, the joys of them moving straight at and away from the camera.

Peeling Billboard

So, Just How Good Are You Anyway?

Over the years I have spent way too much time worrying about whether I'm any good as a photographer and I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of you have too. It doesn't matter what recognition we might receive, we keep on worrying - ok we know we are good enough to get in a magazine, but do we have a place in the history of photography, do we add anything meaningful to the art, will anyone remember us after we're gone, just how do we compare to famous photographers we can name?

In my article on assessing your level in photography, I gave broad categorizations with the idea that they strictly be used to help you figure out what you need to work on to move forward. It certainly wasn't designed to 'rate' yourself.

Let's imagine that someone (it won't be me), took my concept of levels a whole lot further and actually developed a rating scale, zero to one hundred, rank novice to supreme almighty. All manner of questions arise, not the least of which is why bother. But you know the internet, you can rate your IQ, your personality, the kind of lover you are, who you should marry, what job you are suited for, so it isn't very far fetched to imagine someone coming up with such a scale.

Here's the problem, well actually a whole lot of problems.

1) Even assuming such a scale were 'accurate' in any fashion, so what - does it really help you or anyone else to know that you scored an 87 while some famous photographer scored only 86. It won't make you more famous, I suppose you could advertize your score in your ads in "Black and White" but can't imagine anyone using it to decide if they like your work. It doesn't tell you how to move on.

2) Any rating scale has to take on the likes and dislikes of the designer of the scale and who the hell made him God of values? Can you imagine someone who doesn't like jazz coming up with a music rating scale?

3) Perhaps the biggest concern is that even if somehow we overcame the above problems and could with reasonable accuracy tell someone "this is how good you are", is it actually helpful to know? Would it make a difference to know that you are at the 87th percentile (better than 87% of all photographers). I mean, if that included the millions of snap shooters, it would hopefully be a given, if the rating placed you on a skill rating rather than a population position, would knowing you are an 87 help?

Perhaps someone might find out they are better than they thought, and therefore might make more effort to get their work out in public, but I don't see it making them a better photographer. What if the opposite happpened and you scored lower than you thought you should - you could get defensive, or give up trying to get your work out there, but again, it won't help you improve.

The real answer is that worrying about our "place" in photography is a chumps game - completely unproductive - really, we are only as good as the next image we take, and our limited energies should be brought to bear on making that image every bit as good as possible.

A photographer might have only one or two really good images in him, the rest being quite mediocre and he doesn't know how he managed those two images. But the fact is, he did manage those and presumably can therefore do it again, sooner or later, and if he can learn from his successes, is likely to produce strong images at an ever increasing rate.

A photographer might have several portfolios of great images, but that's no guarantee the next one is going to be even passable.

No, it's time to stop worrying about how good we are, open our eyes to the world and get looking for interesting possibilities.

More Modern Concrete

Shot at 7:32 this evening, uploaded to Blogger at 9:19 - ain't technology wonderful.

Good News and Bad News

Well, got an email today from the publisher of

Take Your Photography To The Next Level

indicating that my concern about time frame was correct, we'll need to put the publishing date back to mid November. The good news, hey, it's listed on Amazon.com, now that really makes it feel like it's happening.

The link above will take you to the amazon.com page, hey, I'm excited.

Youtube Is A Photographic Resource?

have been checking out youtube for a variety of things from sailboats to Paul Potts to photography - there was a good interview with Michael Kenna and a multipart series on the history of photography including film of Edward Weston in the darkroom - called Exposures. Some of the stuff is pretty low quality, but other material is enough to make you look up better copies of the images you see. Check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Doubt

Doubt creeps into photography everywhere, from thinking that you won't find anything today, to pessimism over the weather, to thoughts about the quality and volume of your photographs, to how you think others will perceive our work. Doubt can literally keep us home when we should be out shooting, or giving up, just before the sun finally breaks through and highlights the subject.

Doubt makes us abandon working on an image. It keeps us from showing our work to someone else, afraid it won't be good enough.

Doubt in fact causes a hell of a lot of damage. I suppose there are a few positive things you can say about doubt - if you don't ask, you won't be put down, and if you doubt that there's anything worth photographing, you might be right, but look at the cost.

How many times have you set off in less than ideal light, with no prospects of it improving, only to find clouds blow in or you find a ravine in shade so it doesn't matter that there are no clouds, or the high sun works for the image.

If the answer to the above question is never, then I suspect you don't get out enough. Some of this comes down to luck but if you don't go out at all, you will never be lucky, so the fellow who is prepared to be lucky is the one taking home the great images.

If you genuinely think your images aren't very good, well, you're probably right, and you have work to do - the worse the images, the easier it is to make big strides in quality. If on the other hand you compare your images to well known photographers and feel they hold up, but are simply afraid that you might get rejected, well, the sooner you put those doubts behind you and go for it.

If you are good and fear you aren't, testing the waters by submitting your work or showing it at a workshop is a great idea. If you think your work is good, and it isn't, because you haven't yet learned about the ways in which it could be better, well, that needs found out too, and the sooner you get it over, the sooner you can start improving.

Customers

As artists we are supposed to be above mundane things like actually selling our images, promoting our business, advertizing and encouraging sales, but in the real world some of us at least hope to support our craft through sales, and a limited number actually need the income, lacking any other source.

This means that some of us, perhaps a lot of us, are going to have to come in contact with customers.

Customers are an odd breed and it won't do you any harm going in to know a bit about their peculiarities, foibles and predilections.

I base my experience largely on selling at the local farmers market, admittedly quite different from a high end gallery, but I don't suppose that's where you personally will deal with customers anyway.

So, with that in mind, here's some observations about "the customer".

1) Some customers see something they like and within seconds out comes the money and they're off before you can say thank you.

2) other customers spend literally hours trying to decide which image they want - then just as you're back is turned, they disappear and you can't believe how much time and effort you spent showing them images only to not get a sale. The good news is they often come back - sometimes months later and make that purchase.

3) Many customers are looking for decoration more than fine art, and it's important that the image fit in both shape wise and colour wise with their decor.

4) Some customers need really large prints but you are unlikely to sell many of them until you have enough of a reputation selling smaller ones - my advice is to hold off on buying a larger printer until you can pay for it out of profits.

5) Some customers need long prints so having the occasional panorama can help sales.

6) Customers like choice, but too much choice can make it difficult for them to decide. Displaying around 50 photographs works and more can be in a catalogue book or on a computer.

7) Sometimes customers want a series on a theme and so it's good to have available a series of images on a subject.

8) some customers can't decide and need help, a few can't even then. I have been known to suggest they pay for one with a visa card and take two or three home and return the ones they don't need. Never been ripped off yet.

9) You don't sell enough small cheap prints to make any real money, but it does get people looking and when they see the larger prints, they are impressed and you will sell those because of having the small ones on display.

10) customers spend as much time reading the blurb that comes with the print as they do looking at the images - so make a point of supplying a 'history' with each image describing the circumstances and location, but don't bother with technical details, that's not what interests them - few care what lens you took it with or what f stop. They do care about how you found the image and where it was shot and any anecdotes you can tell about the circumstances really help.

Anyway, there's a few thoughts on customers.