Back Photographing Logs

Not really all that different from the images made the other day, but it never hurts to have a choice. I was dropping off a couple of prints for the business so decided I might as well see what I could shoot.

You don't want to be standing on the road photographing - the special lifts come flying round the corner carrying half a dozen sixty foot poles at 20 miles an hour, I was very careful to stand on the grass and back off any time I saw the loader coming anywhere near.


I used my 70-200 as well as my 300 mm. lenses for these shots, using focus blending with Helicon Focus for depth of field.

As Good As Your Heros Without Copying Them

Who wouldn't like to produce an image every bit as good as something one of your heroes made, without simply reproducing it? It's a bit like the "How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall" anecdote. But is there a way to make an image of this quality without simply waiting for it to happen naturally and over time?

I think that if you have the competence to get focus right and produce sharp images and know how to make prints with rich tonality then it should not be that difficult to make an image as good as one you admire. Now, it might not have that little extra magic ingredient that takes an image from admirable to wonderful as I wrote about in my book, but most of us would settle for admirable images on any given day.

So how would you go about making an image as admirable as the one you admire?

Consider the following attributes of the image you admire:

Subject matter - well, you can certainly copy the subject matter since no subject is new, although perhaps you can find an analagous subject which you could treat in a similar way.

I'm at the office and have no access to my files, and perhaps I shouldn't use one of my images as an example, but here goes anyway:

My "ship's bow" images, both the black and white and colour one are often admired so how would you go about making another image as good (hey, I struggle with that too, guys and gals)? The towering ship is about power and threat and force - perhaps you could photograph a locomotive or truck, a building or a machine with similar attributes. Hell, you could even find a person who represents those feelings and photograph them in a similar way.

These two images of mine have particularly strong, simple, bold design - well you might have to do some searching to find a subject that fits the first criteria and now matches these requirements. I didn't say you could pull it off on a 15 minute coffee break.

SO if you found a powerful imposing, threatening, looming machine in which you could photograph it in a bold simple design - you'd be well on your way to producing an image as good as mine.

If you further could do so with a limited colour palette or interesting tonalities in black and white you'd really be cruising. Add some shadows of interest and you have a winner.

Now, wasn't that simple? At least in theory? Assuming you could find such a subject?

I actually don't think it would be all that hard to get most of the elements solved. It might be the local garbage truck or maybe the air conditioner on top of your apartment, or maybe a local weight lifter carefully lit. The looming object might even be six inches high and you just made it look like it's looming. Of course most of us just see the container ship and sigh for a lack of opportunity to shoot the same thing. Maybe the container ship isn't in fact the important part of the image that we want to copy.

What Photographs Do

Perhaps you haven't thought about what your photographs actually do. OK, I know they just sit or hang there, but the image has a relationship to the original scene so one could say that the image does something to the original scene.

Let me explain:

an image could be illustrative - it simply shows what was going on. It can evocative - that is it represents a whole class of things and reminds you of them - for example the expression of a child with a hand in the cooky jar - it doesn't have to be your kid yet we make a connection with that scene.

An image can be explanatory - showing how something works or why it's there or how it got in that condition. It can be interpretative in that the scene means something to the photographer and what he photographs is that meaning more than the scene itself. The image could show the risk or pain, fear or pride.

The connection of an image to the scene can in fact be quite loose as the photographer simply uses the scene as raw material for a creation, which through framing, editing, blending or whatever results in an image with very little connection to the scene.

Do you know what your images do? Do you even care? Is this similar to how you see images you admire? If your images are illustrative and the ones you admire are interpretive, just maybe this might explain your frustration with your own images, or why you haven't been published.

Why don't you look up some of your favourite images by the greats and ask yourself what those images are doing and see if your images are doing the same thing. Might just be interesting and informative.

Wokring The Scene

It's a bright overcast morning today, quite warm for November and very little wind - ideal photographing weather. I decided to start out by photographing the dead plants in my own back garden. I was attracted to the light iris leaves lying in interesting patterns and tried several compositions. I think they are ok but am bothered that the patterns aren't as strong as I would have liked, nor the image as uncluttered as would photograph best - a matter of the eye and brain being able to ignore the unimportant while the camera pays equal attention to all.

The other thing against these images is that frankly, it isn't very original and even if technically competent, the images don't have a huge amount to offer. The grasses in an old oak barrel with the horseshoe of snow I found more interesting, more original (remembering that nothing is ever totally original in photography). I'm not sure that the image doesn't need more contrast - it looks a bit flat in my web browser, but it might print very nicely = time will tell.

Anyway, not a bad start to the day.

Lenswork News

Big news from Lenswork with the return of their special editions. You may remember that in the past Lenswork made selected images available inexpensively - they took original photographic prints and scanned them, made digital negatives from them and then contact printed onto silver paper to produce high quality silver prints which were a close match for the original print. Over time the materials and expertise to make the digital negatives disappeared and so we haven't had Special Editions for a few years.

Brooks Jensen has brought back the idea only better and cheaper. Now what Lenswork is offering is a folio of images, anything from 5 - 20, inkjet Epson K3 on Harman FBAL glossy (mostly) paper enclosed in one of his lovely folio cases he has developed for his own work.

The absolutely amazing thing is that he's selling the folios for anything from $95, that for a 10 print folio - that's $9.50 a print! Keep in mind that if the photographer shoots digitally (or if he even prints digitally) these are as original as the prints he or she normally sells, presumably for a whole lot more.

Photographers might not include their most famous images for use in folios but to get a chance to own, admire, learn from and compare top quality images from great photographers is a wonderful opportunity.

Even impoverished students can afford images - several could get together and share images if they are really broke but lets face it, $95 is the cost of a single concert these days.

Frankly at this price, even if the folio only included one image that you particularly liked it would be worth it, and besides, the other images in the folio have been selected for their quality and perhaps it would be a good idea to study them to see why others think they are good - you might learn to like them, you will almost certainly learn from looking at them.

And guess what, Lenswork are even doing colour images - of course there's no reason not to but it will be interersting to see what this means for Lenswork accepting colour portfolios. Don't forget that Lenswork Extended already accepts colour work.

Many Logs

A 5 image stitch (camera was horizontal since I was already at 200 mm. with my zoom).

Cropping And Framing 2

I thought I'd take you some of the issues with this image involving framing and cropping. First off, you'd be absolutely right if you thought I should have done this all in camera - but I'm nor perfect, and fair chance you aren't too, so more than likely you are going to face the same issues - besides, the same issues exist whether framing in the camera or cropping after - thus the title.

First and most obvious is the fact that the final image isn't the same ratio as the captured image - something that couldn't be handled in framing unless I stitched. In fact many of the images from the morning were stitched, just not this one.

The next issue is the large amount of sky. I don't remember why I selected so much sky and didn't choose more logs at the bottom - I presume that must have been the bottom of the pile or there was something in the way, but regardless, there is too much sky - it doesn't add to the image. Sure I could filter it and increase contrast and make it dramatic but this image isn't about sky so frankly I think it would be distracting.

On the right side, the top log on the right looks like an afterthough - just a small part of the log showing - I felt that either more should show - too late for that - or less - so I cropped the right hand side.

On the left, I was disturbed by that big black hole in the pile of logs - I hadn't noticed it when photographing but now it bothers me so I cropped the left hand side. This was a compromise decision because it meant that I would have less of that diagonal log with snow touching the left hand edge of the print - but enough would remain I felt and I really wanted rid of that black space which isn't balanced by anything equivalent on the other side of the print.

Don't get me wrong - when "balancing" a print - it isn't a matter of "weighing" the amount of black - conceivably a small black area on the right could balance a much larger one on the left, but with nothing over there...

Finally, though I was quite pleased with what I had, I also recognized that what makes the image is the bright orange log end and the blue snow covered logs on the right and that the number of stacked logs along the bottom isn't all that important to the image and more isn't necessarily better. I made a final crop along the bottom. I still wasn't sure this was a good move so used the do/undo a dozen times or more flipping back and forth from cropped bottom to not cropped and in the end felt the cropped version is stronger.

Do I wish I'd seen this before shooting? Darn right I do - by cropping on all sides I have reduced the size of print I can make - but a small print is better than no print. This is, I confess; one of the nice things about having a camera with lots of pixels - you really do have options and rescues.

More From Yesterday

Grain Elevator

Photo Excursion

We had plans for where we'd shoot today, but in fact on our way to our planned spots, we found other things more interesting. A local utility pole company were good enough to let us photograph from the edge of the property and here's the first of the images that I like. Others are blended or stitched and it will be a while before I see all the possible images from the shoot, but I'm quite happy with this one.

Voting With Your Wallet, Or Not

Perhaps I'm unique (though experience suggests not) but there are a lot of images I admire that I am not necessarily willing to pay for and there are very few images out there that I would be willing to fork over large sums of cold hard cash for, and of those most are just out of my price range. Yes, I could in theory purchase Pepper # 30 for $10,000 - a print made by Cole Weston, still currently available even though he passed away a few years ago, Edward of course having died in the 1950's. I'd have to forego the repair to our back deck, the one with the holes in it, that has needed replacing for several years, and no doubt my wife would kill me - so it won't be happening any time soon and the price seems to magically go up as I earn more, always just a little out of reach.

But getting back to images which remain affordable, which I could purchase without going to the bank first - why is it I don't buy one of these every few months over the years so that by now I have a collection of perhaps 100 fine images.

Well, I could make the argument about lack of wall space - but I could always rotate the prints. The cost of framing is an issue and storing framed images is frankly a pain - they are so easily scratched, but these are really excuses. The truth is that I don't have an especially strong desire to OWN most of the images I admire - it's enough to see them in print.

What does this say to my commitment to photography? Does it mean I really don't have my heart and soul involved with photography? I don't think so. Knowing that most photographers own few images I suspect I am in good company.

If this is common, then what does it mean when we value great images so little that we are unwilling to spend money to own them? I think there are several things going on here.

1) variety
2) got it, now move on
3) repeat rather than continuous
4) quality of reproduction and the nature of photographs

Truth is, it doesn't take long to "get" a photograph - we are incredibly visual creatures and we can get most of what an image offers in a split second and 99% within 15 seconds - so why would we want to linger? It's like reading a joke, you get it and you move on.

We crave variety - we want to look at other images - in most situations we can come back to the ones we particularly like. Most photographers would find it pointless and probably painful if they "had" to look at an image they like for fifteen minutes straight.

I have written in the past about how sometimes when you are photographing, the first recognition of the image is exactly the right one and no further positioning and fiddling will improve the initial seeing. While this happens only occasionally when photographing, it happens all the time when looking at images - after all, it's too late to change anything, what's in the image is all you get - and you get it in that same quick glance, recognizing the rightness of the image - even though it could take you some time to analyze why it's right.

There are problems with purchasing an image apart from the pain in the pocket book. Buying an image implies that you are not allowed to change your mind, not just about the photographer, but about which particular image is best. The best image may only be best this afternoon. Tomorrow in a different mood I may have made an entirely different selection - but of course I only purchased one image. Often it can be so difficult to decide which image to buy of a handful of favourites, that if you can't have all, it's better to have none (and see them in a book or on the web or whatever).

And let's not forget the baser motives - like most of us would rather spend money on a new camera or lens than a print and lacking infinite funds so we can do both, well...

From a practical point of view, we can buy several books containing hundreds of images for the price of a single print, which hasn't yet been framed.

Would it be reasonable to take all of the above to it's absurd end and decide that no photographers should purchase any prints? I don't think so. Having a dozen or so really good prints around from our betters is a very good idea. Sure book reproduction is much better than 20 years ago, but having some prints as a reference point is a good idea. It's also good to support fine art photographers, especially people who have helped us - often we purchase prints when attending workshops. Paying for some prints also says something about your commitment to your art but I doubt that purchasing 27 really says a whole lot more than purchasing 15.

Graffiti

Found this door on my meanderings in Germany. Of course it raises questions of originality when the painting was done by someone else. Arguably the painter didn't anticipate the passage of time and the stripping of paint especially noticeable in the dark areas but really, is that enough? I console myself with the knowledge that photographers have been shooting graffiti for years. Ansel himself was known to do it as was Walker Evans and many of the greats.

Perhaps the best way to think about it is that when photographing a flower, I cannot take credit for the beauty of the flower, only for how I posed, lit, framed and printed the image, which is what I did here. Gee, maybe I can stop feeling guilty.

Photographic Education

I was asked:

I would be interested in defining what "better educated" means. Are we talking art history classes, more time at museums, more time just looking at other photographers work?.

The obvious answer is all of the above but I thought I'd give some thought to just how and where one can improve one's "education" Of course I'm not talking about going to school, though if you have the time or are young, that's not unreasonable too - especially a fine art photography programme as opposed to a commercial photography bias.

a) Books


Books can be of or about photography. Firstly books of photographs. If you don't own 100 books of photographs then you aren't educated. OK, maybe you can get them from the library but you need ready access to lots of images that others consider among the best.

The following list is highly biased to my interests in black and white and landscape but hey, it's my blog, not yours, so take it for what it's worth - oh and it's also biased to who has been recommended to me by English speaking north americans for the most part, so it's a bit isolationist. Feel free to add names from your neck of the woods. But with that said, I'd recommend any library at least include the following:

Edward Weston
Brett Weston
Paul Strand
Ansel Adams
Michael Kenna
Huntington Witherill
Ryuijie
David Plowden
Andre Kertesz
Henri Cartier Bresson
Bruce Barnbaum or John Sexton
Joel Myerowitz

and I'm absolutely sure I have missed many great photographers, but it's somewhere to start.

Books On Photography

well of course you have to start with my book (hey, I did say it's my blog) so
Take Your Photography To The Next Level
I highly recommend the books of Freeman Patterson
I have not read but understand that the books by Michael Freeman and Bryan Peterson are considered good.
The classic Looking At Photographs by John Szarkowski is considered a classic although I find it spends sig. time on alternative processes. The Photographer's Eye is a classic also by Szarkowski though is just images.
I highly recommend Art And Fear
On Being A Photographer - Hurn and Jay - essential for anyone who dreams of becoming a pro
The Photograph: Composition and Colour Design by Harold Mante I recommend with reservations - the images are great and laid out in a sequence which can teach you a lot about colour and design however the text is philosophical, difficult to read and not very practical - if you like reading philosophy books then... But the images are good enough on their own that I can still recommend the book and predict you will learn from it.

Magazines

Lenswork - and I'd highly recommend you invest in as many back issues as you can afford. Alternatively you can get all on a CD.
Black and White
Black and White Photography (U.K.)
Phot'Art
Silvershotz

Workshops

Not all great photographers can really teach you to see better. Freeman Patterson is one. Craig Tanner who used to do Radiant Vista is another. Do remember that the field sessions in most workshops are fun but not especially educational while the lectures in many are basic and often covered in the writings of the photographers doing the teaching - for those too lazy to read the book, this is ideal, for the rest of us...

Sometimes art galleries offer workshops or clinics or simply lectures on photography. I took a photographic appreciation course which was fundamental to my growth as a photographer but I don't see courses like this listed very often.

Mentoring - going out shooting with a more experienced friend can be a good idea but of course depends on their generosity in sharing and their skills in communicating ideas.

Exercises - some books and magazines and websites offer exercises and assignments and even if you don't normally like photographing cabbages, you are likely to learn from the experience. I confess I tend to be too lazy to photograph things I don't particularly like but there's good evidence that they work if you are willing.

Gallery Visits - if a gallery is willing to show the work of a photographer, they are basically puting their reputation on the line and you would do well to study the images even if your first impression is that they are junk. In fact the more you dislike the images, the more it would be worth while talking to the curator of the show to find out what he or she sees in the images that you do not - you might just be surprised at how your own attitudes change.

Portfolio Reviews - in truth it is extremely difficult to provide meaningful feedback and direction to a photographer when reviewing their images. Feedback along the lines of "like it, don't like it..." are essentially useless. Advice about how I would have done it differently or if only that rock had been 10 feet to the right are almost as pointless. It takes skill and tact and experience and teaching ability to look at a series of images and formulate suggestions which will help the photograher move forward. Such talent is unfortunately uncommon (aren't most good things in life?). The only way to know is to do enough reviews that you begin to recognize the good ones from the bad, or at least to ask other photographers if their reviews actually changed anything. Sometimes all you need is a sense that you are heading in the right direction and to keep on trying - which doesn't in fact change anything, yet the message can be critical at times when you are full of doubt. That kind of feedback can be great but you need to know if in fact the person giving the advice is simply being nice or actually sees something in your images worth developing.

The above suggestions are based on personal experience or recommendations of others I respect but is very much incomplete. If you have personal experience of educational methods, books, etc. that have helped you, do add your comments below.

Enjoying An Image On Many Levels

Yet again I'm going to foist a music analogy on you to make a point about images. there are many levels on which one can enjoy music - at a most fundamental level it can be a jolly good tune - the kind of thing you find yourself humming in the shower after hearing it. It can be stirring, possibly without even knowing why. Amazing Grace on the bagpipes does it for me and interestingly it does for a lot of others who unlike me weren't born in Scotland. The 1812 Overture rouses most people and Beethoven's 6th, the Pastoral Symphonie does relate to the countryside, both peaceful and stormy. (different sections though).

People more educated than I in the art of music can appreciate music on other levels - the mathematical progression of Bach, the inversions and complementary notes and such of other composers. I'm sure if I knew more about music I could describe more levels of appreciation. I quite enjoy listening to conductors and musicians talking about their music, even if I don't always understand their explanations of the subtleties and intricacies of what they are talking of.

People viewing our images come with varying levels of visual education. Some can inherently appreciate a really well composed image while others look only at the subject. Some may appreciate the composition even though they don't understand why, others don't get the point of careful placement, framing and relationships to other objects in the print. Lots of people don't get the subtleties of tonality or fine detail, our efforts in that direction wasted on them. Some are both very visual and educated and are capable of seeing what I wanted to do in a particular image and can tell me about it.

As photographers we are presumably the most visual, the best educated in the photographic process and techniques and artistry and therefore presumably the most fussy about what we see in images - is it any surprise that when flipping through the work of another photographer, perhaps only 10% of the images do anything for us and something like 1% get us excited, and that's of really good photographers. We're just so damn picky.

So is this a philosophical discussion or is there a point to this and a practical message someone might take home and apply to their photography?

1) We need to be more visual and better educated than our audience. If you are hoping to persuade a magazine to publish your work, then you are sending your images to someone who is likely very educated in the visual arts and very visual themselves. For this person, a good tune is not likely to be enough and while you might get lucky with an image, it would be not unreasonable to assume that you need to be as educated, as visual, as experienced in the myriad of images out there, and who the greats are and what their work is like in order for you to produce images of a quality which will satisfy the editor.

This goes a long way to explaining how it is that friends, neighbours and relatives can praise your images and mean it, yet getting published is a whole other story. Of course it also helps if what you are submitting is a bit different from what has gone in the magazine before. You don't have to be original to be good but if an editor has two choices of equal quality, one with a fresh viewpoint, can you doubt which the editor is likely to choose.

2) The better we get, the more selective we are - so while with our experience we may see images where someone else does not, we also bypass a whole lot of potential images because they don't offer us enough - they work on one or more planes but clearly don't in others and it isn't enough for us.

3) while to some degree we can create on various levels without actually thinking about them, it wouldn't do any harm to actually enumerate the possible levels on which an image might or could work - interesting subject (a good tune), well composed (good orchestration), offering interesting detail on top of the big picture (intricate melodies).

Next time I'm going to discuss what those various levels might be above and beyond the ones mentioned above.

Birch Tree

Several tree stitches have not worked out - just because one side of a tree looks good does not mean that more of same will be better. I quite like this tree however. I can see that the image needs work - areas that should be darkened in the dark gray for example but as it looked better before shrinking it for the web, the next step is probably to live with a print for a day or two before making further changes. This is a 17 image stitch, now that it's trimmed and flattened it's 7000X5000 pixels - 16X23 inches at 300 dpi.

My biggest fear with such complicated stitching is that after hours of editing and flattening, I'll find a flaw in the stitching. I have gone over the image carefully but am well aware that I could very easily have missed something. Mind you, I did save the unflattened 17 layer image (1 GB).

More Trees

This is a local Laurel Leaf Willow, most likely planted in the 1960's and now about two feet in diameter - pretty good for Calgary, not known for growing big trees. Oddly even Edmonton, 200 miles north grows trees a whole lot better because of the snow cover and less violent swings in temperature during the winter.

As you can see, this isn't a 360 degree stitch, more like 120 degrees, limited because of branches coming out and because this was the more interesting side.

The jury's still out on whether this is a viable source of portfolio quality images, but I will explore further and look harder for interesting trees. So far one is in colour, the other black and white - so I'm not sure which direction this will eventually lead - instinct tells me black and white, but we'll see.

How are you coming along with your current project? Do you even have one - I know it can be pretty frustrating when you really don't have a clue where your next interesting image is going to come from - a sense of desperation creeps in - hardly conducive to creativity. Remember that like my idea, at the beginning you really won't know whether it's going to fly and it might take considerable time and effort before you know - but what the hell else are you going to do?

Another Medical Analogy - Response To Images

If you get excited with your images, there are almost certainly other people who would feel as you do. Of course you may not have met them yet!

I treat Attention Deficit Disorder and use Ritalin and Dexedrine. They are both stimulant medications, far more alike in their effect and side effects than they are different, yet the individual response can be dramatically different. One person can find one useless and the other great, while the next person finds the exact opposite. I don't have a good explanation for this other than to say that everybody's different, and some of you (us?)are more different.

So it is with images. One person will really get your images while another person is left completely cold by them, so much so they can be quite rude about the quality of your images. If you don't believe me check out some of the comments on my book at amazon.com.

It can certainly be frustrating when you receive such negative comments about your work but if we can please some of the people some of the time, well, we're doing pretty well.

If you have not found an appreciative audience yet (mum doesn't count), then it doesn't mean you have to give up what you are doing, but perhaps you do need to fine tune your seeing, selecting and editing, without dropping your subject or your style. Maybe you just need to shoot more and be pickier. Lots of photographers have overly high expectations of their success rate and perhaps should be happy to get one or two really nice images a year, or go out shooting a lot more often.

Pixels

I was listening to a medical lecture and the doctor mentioned a study which showed that women had statitically fewer hot flushes on a particular medication but that it didn't make the women exactly pleased about the difference - the change? they had 11 hot flashes a day instead of 12 - but hey, it was a statistically significant difference.

This reminds me of some of the pixel wars and differences in number of pixels from one camera to the next. Anything less than a 25% difference and you probably can't even see it in tests and in real world shooting it's totally irrelevant - eg. the difference between 10 and 12 megapixel cameras, or for that matter, between 12 and 15 megapixels. Of course we know that to double print linear size (ie. 16X20 instead of 8X10 requires 4 times as many pixels for the same nose on print resolution (you are dealing with both length and width).

DPReview has just released their review of the 15 megapixel 50D, saying that in their opinion, the 50D is not sig. better than the 40D and in some ways not as good. Now, I couldn't quickly tell what lenses they used but it was clear from the examples that whatever lens they used, it wasn't good enough to take advantage of that many pixels. Additional sharpening might have made things look better but would not of course have added any more information to the images.

This finding, if it is replicated by other reviewers, will have profound influence on the future of the industry - specifically because it suggests that cameras which extend the pixel density of the 50D to full frame will be pretty much at the limit of useable pixel density. Frankly high resolution lenses which are only high when used at 5.6 and wider are not much help to a landscape shooter (or industrial or architectural).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It would seem that the limiting factor is diffraction but if that's the case, why is it that you can take the tiny sensor of a Canon G10 with 14.7 megapixels and produce decent images yet the far larger sensor of the 50D struggles - odd that. But how else can you explain that 60 megapixel medium format sensors can show improvements over the previous 39 MP backs.

I'd like to think that somewhere here is a loophole which will allow ever higher resolution ina 35 mm. format camera. Perhaps if the resolution is high enough we won't need fuzzy filters to avoid moire patterns but a recent interview with the head of Canon development suggested they aren't going to get rid of them any time soon. The assumption seems to be that medium format users are willing to take the time to shoot a reference colour card, to use software to fix moire etc. but that 35 mm. users aren't. There may well be some truth to that but for us landscape shooters it sure would be nice to have the option. Then there are those of us who'd seriously consider buying a full frame high pixel count camera that had no colour filters at all, ie. a full frame no bayer black and white sensor of 21 megapixels. Now that would be cool!

Tree Trunk

Not sure if this is going to be a good idea but I will explore further. I photographed a large old tree nearby - 23 images as I circled the tree, trimming each image into a high narrow slit and then stitching to produce the equivalent of peeling the bark and laying it out flat. Clearly some trees are going to be more interesting than others but we'll see. Stitching had to be done by hand in Photoshop as neither Photoshop or PTGui could deal with the change in position and viewpoint.

A Small Walk Around Camera

With the publication of Michael Reichmann's review of the Canon G10 and Nikon P6000, it might be a good time to consider the whole genre of small portable cameras - something small enough to fit in a coat pocket or smaller, one not to be used with a tripod, with no interchangeable lenses to worry about or carry, yet capable of producing a decent 13X19 print. I'm not going to get into a discussion of which is better than what - I haven't tried most of them - but I thought it might be worth considering how such a camera might be used.

My experience at home and while travelling is that every single landscape or architectural image I was able to capture hand held would have been better had I a tripod and I have gone back and recaptured the image where possible, with tripod.

It seems to me that a small unobtrusive camera would be best for people pictures - fast moving or developing situations in which a tripod would not be practical, even if you were willing to carry one.

This would suggest that maximum resolution and quality at low ISO's are of significantly less importance than they might be otherwise. Things like fast accurate focusing become a lot more important as do things like shutter lag and how fast you can take a second shot after the first. I don't need continuous fast shooting, but I'd sure like to be able to take three consecutive pictures without the camera getting in my way - something that many present small cameras cannot do.

Interestingly I have noted a real trend in small cameras - they can capture fine details in a landscape but often do a terrible job reproducing a face with any kind of resolution - I think the problem may lie with being unable to use edge sharpening to capture soft rounded faces and low contrast detail in the eyes but admit that's shear guesswork.

Quite frankly, my Canon 40D is pretty close to ideal for this kind of shooting apart from being a bit large and needing at least two lenses to cover a decent range of focal lenghts - it focusses fast, can take multiple images in a hurry, has relatively small zoom lenses in black which don't stick out a mile and aren't terribly noticeable (the 55-250).

It will be interesting to see how effective people find cameras like the G10, P6000 and LX-3 are for people imaging. I look forward to reviews which stress these aspects of the cameras.

In the mean time, I'll trouble to change lenses and use my 40D where someone else might consider a G10.

Success

The other day on the radio, some interviewer asked his subject, a musician, which they would want most, a million dollars, huge popularity or respect of the critics. The musician pointed out that critics often don't get it right and can't predict future success so were not to be sought, being popular was nice, but money sure was handy, artists typically being short of same.

Arguably money is a very good marker for the greatness of your images - it's one thing to say nice things about your pictures, but to actually lay out cold hard cash to acquire them, well that puts things on a whole other level.

The problem with this thinking is that financial reward is often a matter of luck but it's hugely connected to marketing yourself and most photographers are not marketers, by inclination, energy or resources. The small number who are marketers, who push their work every opportunity and sometimes when there isn't one, who spend far more time selling their work than making it, who have absolute confidence in their ability and have the balls to persuade everyone else of the value of their work, even in the demonstrably clear evidence to the contrary, well they are the ones who sell individual large prints made by someone else and for huge sums of money.

Who wouldn't want to sell a single print for $30,000? After all, it really doesn't take any more talent or even effort to make a large print than a small one these days, with inkjet printers. But do you really want to give up creative time for marketing - yes, that's the problem.

To have the critics keen on you - well I'd guess it would depend on who the critics were, what kind of work they like and what their track record is. to have a single critic enthusiastic doesn't really mean a lot but what if most seem to like your work? I'd guess it would make a difference why they like your work - whether for originality or strength of seeing or just because you photograph the hot topic of the period.

Popularity is unquestionably nice - there's not a photographer alive, not even the hermits, who doesn't like someone admiring his or her work, but let's face it, some of those people buy black velvet paintings on street corners and only like the pretty pictures, not the ones you put your heart and soul into.

Perhaps the greatest appreciation comes from fellow experienced photographers, who can recognize the effort, see the tonality, appreciate the compositional efforts and get the message. But if the admiration comes from novice photographers who are only impressed with how expensive your camera is and how many pixels are in the image, then give me an informed non photographer audience every time - someone who may not appreciate the toning and paper surface and printer quality but who has an eye and can see and understand images. Someone who likes black and white and who likes images other than pretty landscapes and baby pictures. I have been impressed that these are not that uncommon. Among my patients there are a number who can tell me what I was trying to achieve in an image, who see what I see. I was back at the lime plant on Friday and took a copy of my book and they thumbed through it and the comments on images were perceptive.

Bottom line is we take our kudos were we can get them, but some are appreciated more than others.

Where Things Go Wrong

I've just finished judging a photographic contest for medical residents (doctors in post graduate training). Not uncommonly I get asked to evaluate photographs and I look at the photographs of photographer friends.

Often I can see what they are getting at, what attracted them to the scene, yet somehow the image is lacking. It isn't a matter of compositional "tricks", lines that cross, things that go to corners, etc.. Rather the problem appears to be that the message is masked by extraneous detail, distracting elements or perhaps most commonly the sin of taking on more good stuff at the price of complicating, not to say muddying of the message.

So, if your images aren't as strong as you'd like, go through your images and see if you have committed some of the faux pas listed above. Have you been guilty of adding the fifth fence post only to accept a tree that spoils the repetitive pattern, did you add that lovely rock on the left only to get a distracting bright sky through the trees in the background, or did you find something interesting but not find a position from which to photograph it that is uncluttered?

Unfortunately sometimes you won't find the ideal view and then you have a choice - shoot the image anyway or walk on. When I'm shooting, if I'm not sure about the strength of an image, I might well shoot it anyway. If I know that there is a fundamental flaw with the image and I can't think of a way to overcome it in the field or in post processing, then it's time to walk.

Quarry

Back out at Graymont yesterday and took them prints from the first venture two weeks ago. They suggested I might want to see the quarry and quickly I was driven over to it by Wayne and taken to the top of the working (hundreds of feet higher and a quarter mile along) and given a as much time as I wanted to photograph. It was one of those dial-a-light days with clouds alternating with sun. The only thing I couldn't do was easily stitch since the light was changing rapidly in the strong wind but I could literally decide did I want the light on the foreground or background or middle, or some combination and with a modest wait get what I wanted.

I finished back at the plant and some rail cars were parked for loading, the ground and the tankside covered in limestone dust.

Aachen Dom

Last night I decided to go back through the images I made during our trip to Germany and Prague. I had thought I'd pretty much mined the files for useable images but decided to be a bit less critical and see what I could do with what I'd taken - after all - I'd gone to the trouble to take the images in the first place - so what if the thumbnail didn't look useable.

In this particular shot, I was trying to capture the sense of fine detail - layers upon layers of it which the builders had created hundreds of years ago. It's hard to capture the ousides of cathedrals - they tend to be tightly surrounded by other buildings and a shot of the whole thing looks more illustrative than artistic and besides the whole is what the architect designed - if I want to bring something to the image I need to use light, shadow and composition to bring a fresh point of view if possible.

From a practical point of view, many of the angles are spoiled by awkward composition, or a bright bit of sky showing through or poor lighting and so on. The whole business of perspective with the building falling backwards as you point the camera upwards is problematic. It seems to work inside when there is no edge to the building and the receding lines show more of the ceilings but ouside it's a bit more difficult.

I elected to correct rotation and vertical perspective (and if need be barrel/pincushion) via filter/distort/lens correction in Photoshop. I liked what I saw. Many cathedrals suffer from millenia of soot and are almost black - Cologne was disappointing in that way - but they'd been working on the Aachen cathedral and sig. parts of it showed very nicely. This particular view avoided much of the black stone seen elsewhere.

I like the gradual ranking upwards and to the right of the spindles tops while the background building lines slope down to the right. These opposing lines often work well together and are to be sought.

There is a glow to the light stone to the right of the window and some judicious lightening of some of the other stone results in a richly toned yet balanced image.

I particularly like the lines of the corner stones in the top right, 1/3 from the bottom on the left and at the bottom 2/3 of the way to the right - they feed off of each other.

You might well ask how much of this I saw squinting through the viewfinder and the answer is not much - I simply saw a sense of "rightness" about the image and much of what I have explained above has been discovered after the fact. You might think that this is a bit strange and perhaps has more to do with luck than skill but if that's the case, I'm awfully damned lucky.

Let me illustrate. You see someone across the room who is really attractive. Lets simplify by saying you only see their face. Now stop and think about this - did you analyse the shape of the nose, carefully consider the cheek bones, check out the profile - of course not, you simply looked and found the whole appealing. It's quite possible that in fact if you break down the face, the parts themselves are unremarkable, it's the whole package that somehow works together in a way that appeals to YOU. You know damn well that others might well be admiring someone else in the room, that you might be the only person there who thinks this person's face is wonderful. With one glance at the face and no analysis, you might well already have a sense of this is someone you want to take to bed, or introduce to your mother or simply to get to know.

Going back to photographing and simply seeing a composition that "looks right", the analogies are pretty close. Not only do you see something appealing, you may well infer some feelings about it in the same way you inferred the personality of the face you saw across the room. That feeling may be of fragility, delicacy, endurance, strength, magnificence, reverence, or any number of inferences. All of this is entirely personal and that is what you bring to the image, even though you are photographing the creation of someone else. When others look at your images, they see your viewpoint. Either they are going to find it interesting or not - you can't control that and to some degree it doesn't really matter if you enjoy the images. Odds are though, that if you get the technical issues behind you and if you learn to effectively present your viewpoint, some others will appreciate it and you will acquire an audience. Whether they throw money at your feet or just kiss them is a whole other matter.

In the end, it's still just a picture of a building but I do think it goes beyond the ordinary postcard.

Bow River and Rockies Edited

Do remember to click on the image to see it at a half decent size.

Editing Images 1

In the sequence above you first see the unedited colour image straight from stitching. Next is the result of a black and white conversion with the default settings in the Photoshop BW conversion adjustment layer.

Next is the result of a major lightening of the yellow at the same time as doing a significant darkening of the blue. While this is somewhat akin to shooting the original with an orange filter, it's not quite the same, and of course is infinitely adjustable via the sliders - who'd go back to film?

The last image is the final edit of a few days ago that I previously showed you - in which the mountains have been brought out somewhat (though not enough according to Chuck and he might well be right), darkening of the lower right corner and of the left side, and not quite so much lightening of the yellow - I kinda like the even lighter yellow of the "filtered" adjustment shown above.

Note how wishy washy the bluffs on the right are after the filtered BW conversion. Much improved after a few extra masked curves darkened them more and more.

Just to see if Andy (note, I'd earlier mistakenly put Chuck down for the suggestion on the mountains) might be right, here's a crop of the mountain range before and after a quicky contrast adjustment via a masked curves layer.




Looks like Andy's right - significant improvement - I'd been afraid to push things this far but hey, I like it.

This brings up the point that images are always a work in progress - when requested to make a print after a few months, I often make further adjustments and sometimes go back to an earlier save so I can redo the further steps. I don't always prefer the new version, but sometimes I really do.

Rich Tones In Black And White

Quite often I'm asked how I manage to get the rich tonality in my black and white images and photographers indicate this is an area they struggle with. Without going into an entire workshop on black and white workflow which may not in fact answer the question, here are some points to consider if your images look either flat or in fact harsh.

1) choose your lighting carefully. While harsh lighting can be to some degree compensated for with HDR techniques, I still find it's a lot better to photograph just before sunrise or just after, or to catch the subject just before the sun pops out from behind a cloud.

2) It's hard to get lovely tones in an image if in fact it's full of small details which alternate dark to light - eg. branches against the sky. Other subjects that have fine patterns of dark and white are also difficult. Ideal are relatively smooth objects which have nice gradations from dark to light (or to which you can add the gradations in the editing). Bottom line, some things photograph better than others.

3) Even well known photographers continue to claim they can manage without doing a lot of editing in Photoshop. While Lightroom 2 does have some basic local editing tools, it's a bit like building an entire house with a single hammer and saw - it's possible, just not convenient, efficient, or most effective. I spend hours working on each image in Photoshop to balance the tonalities and to achieve those subtle highlights and shadows. Perhaps you are trying to do it the "easy" way and shortchanging your images.

4) I think a lot of people tend to think of image editing as a "correcting" process - ie. fixing the deficiencies in the image. That's good enough for novices but that's like telling a painter he can't use his imagination, no interpretation, brush strokes or choice of colours - painters won't accept that and I would suggest that if you are serious about the fine print, you shouldn't either. Perhaps the single most important reason that people comment on the tonality of my prints is how I go beyond accurate to creative in my print adjustments. This can start with my choice of colour settings in the black and white adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 and extends to the creative use of the curves adjustment layers, used of course with masking to control both where the effects are applied and the degree to which they apply.

In the next week or so I will show you some examples of the straight recorded file as it comes out of Camera Raw and what the final image looks like so you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Bow River And Rocky Mountains

We were on the way to Jura Canyon and my friend Lawrence wanted to show me an outlook on the Stoney reserve with public access. The view was wonderful, the light nice, if not perfect. In colour the image lacked power but in black and white and careful handling of contrast the result is pleasing. - 6 images stitched with the 1Ds2, 70 mm. with the 70-200 mm. lens, hand on camera even though using tripod because of a goodly breeze. I took the lens hood off since it increased vibrations as it caught the wind.

Jura Canyon Again

It can be challenging revisiting a site, especially a site which had some pretty obvious views such as this narrow twisted canyon.

I made an effort to look for alternative views. Previously I'd centred the canyon opening and decided this time to heavily bias the left hand side. I had doubts about adequate depth of field but as I was stitching, I didn't want to both stitch and blend for focus. In reality the depth proved ok at f16 and 17 mm., mind you I have noticed that this lens (17-40) tends to have a curved plane of focus, that is the edges focus nearer than the centre so it actually worked to my advantage.

Graymont Lime Plant

This plant crushes limestone then cooks out the CO2, leaving corrosive Calcium Oxide. It's then hydrated to reduce corrosiveness and then the final product used largely in mining (especially uranium) and in the oil industry. Lesser uses include whitening paper and making the Hydrocal that model railroaders use for tough as rock scenery.

Much of the plant is covered in white limestone powder and I wanted to emphasize the whiteness.

I hope to go back and spend more time photographing the plant. The staff were very supportive - in fact Michael Schultz had been there three weeks ago - odd really, I'd not heard of him but my friend Lawrence Christmas (known for his images of Alberta miners and the book made from same) had mentioned his name last weekend. I'll be interested to see how Michael interprets the plant.

More From Trip 2

More From Trip

Photographing The Photographers

here's an idea for a project, hardly original but I think with a lot of potential - especially if you are photographing the happy snapper as opposed to the posing artist.

This happens to be a sculpture just below Cologne Cathedral and right next to the railway station.

Prague

Sadly I don't have vast experience of the most beautiful cities in the world, but none the less Prague was absolutely wonderful - with literally miles of preserved buildings and narrow alleyways, attractive buildings, cobblestone streets, the river and the hills. We were only there for three days and have already promised ourselves to come back to Prague at the first opportunity.

Photokina

Just back from our trip and thought I'd jot a few notes about experiencing Photokina. Much as it's a big circus - it's a well run one. 10 buildings, multiple connections, lots of walking, goodly sized isles, too bad about the smokers lined up along the sides and at the doors.


I enjoyed looking at hundreds of exhibit images from historical to student work, some of it excellent. There was a display of 1930's movie theatre photographs, made on 8X10 and printed digitally on Epson Traditional - they looked wonderful though I discussed the display with the owner of the studio which had the negatives and he still felt that an 8X10 contact print was dramatically better than een these lovely scanned and inkjet printed images. I must check into this paper now that I'm home.

Didn't bother getting near the Canon 5Dii display and what would have been the point in touching it - not exactly a religious experience. I did on the other hand have a look at the Panasonic G1 since I feel that electronic viewfinders are the future and mirrors bouncing is history. I was very impressed - nothing like your typical didicam EVF - it was bright (brighter than real life which didn't hurt shooting indoors, focused confidently and fairly fast, and panned beautifully (which previous EVF's never did). This is the future, people! As displayed the camera was still fairly bulky and I can't see anyone rushing off to replace their DSLR but see no reason why small lenses and a slim body can't be made.

Leica had a nice wooden S2 on display - wonder if it comes in light oak?

Guess Where I Am

I'm at Photokina in Cologne, soon to be on my way to Prague to photograph for a few days. The trip was complements of my publisher and it has been interesting meeting the various authors, including some who have 30 or more years experience teaching photography at university level - eg. Harald Mante, who is a photographer of incredible sense of colour and composition.

Not much chance for serious photography but the image above is a hand held ei. 800 image from the Aachen Cathedral - home to the throne of Charlemaigne - yes, that one!

By the way, it's really dark in there and you can't see this much detail by the naked eye.