Posts
I tried blocking the reflection with my hat but liked the version with the reflection. The dark circle bottom centre is not my head - it's the front of the 17-40 mm. lens and camera body. The lens was touching the window.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Heating Plant Reflection
I tried blocking the reflection with my hat but liked the version with the reflection. The dark circle bottom centre is not my head - it's the front of the 17-40 mm. lens and camera body. The lens was touching the window.
Snow Plow
You may know that I like trains, both model and full size. Was in Banff with our office staff and had a couple of hours free time. Not art, just interesting to me.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Book Sales
Sales of "Why Photographs Work" have been very good with only 780 of the books left at the distributor. I sent off the proofs for the second printing, different printer.
For about half a day, the book was # 430 at amazon.com and # 4 photography book and in Canada, amazon had it at # 76 overall for a day., all this without any major online promotion other than the amazon reviews, which have been excellent, 6 fives, 1 four, and one 3 (he thought too simple).
I think I got it just about right - pleasant to read rather than work, yet informative. Sure the best read photographers are probably only going to pick up a few points in the whole book, but hopefully even they will enjoy reading it.
Remember that the book is meant to be enjoyed by non photographers too, and that also seems to be the case.
Happy New Year
For about half a day, the book was # 430 at amazon.com and # 4 photography book and in Canada, amazon had it at # 76 overall for a day., all this without any major online promotion other than the amazon reviews, which have been excellent, 6 fives, 1 four, and one 3 (he thought too simple).
I think I got it just about right - pleasant to read rather than work, yet informative. Sure the best read photographers are probably only going to pick up a few points in the whole book, but hopefully even they will enjoy reading it.
Remember that the book is meant to be enjoyed by non photographers too, and that also seems to be the case.
Happy New Year
Getting Some Exercise
While the obvious thing to do is hike with a large backpack, it is -20 C and I work for a living and can't always be out photographing - this business of writing books consumes a lot of time, which reminds me, the publisher wants me to do a second edition of "Take Your Photography To The Next Level".
I refuse to do that if there isn't significant new content, more images, new and useful text and improvements well beyond fixing the odd typo - so many hours of work.
Anyway, I thought I'd tell you of my latest purchase, an eliptical. I spent a bit more than I wanted to and a lot less than I could have, but it's solid, went together beautifully, and I'm wiped and sweaty after my first workout. Actually it was really the third workout - the first being getting the thing into the basement, the second assembling it.
It's a Horizon CE 9.2 - which comes from Canadian Tire - and is roughly equivalent to the Horizon EX-79, albeit with a heavier flywheel (23 lb. instead of 17).
The real test will be to use it regularly - a treadmill I purchased years ago quickly became a clotheshorse and progressively a cause of marital friction.
Wish me luck, and check in a month for a report card on both machine and progress - that should motivate me.
I refuse to do that if there isn't significant new content, more images, new and useful text and improvements well beyond fixing the odd typo - so many hours of work.
Anyway, I thought I'd tell you of my latest purchase, an eliptical. I spent a bit more than I wanted to and a lot less than I could have, but it's solid, went together beautifully, and I'm wiped and sweaty after my first workout. Actually it was really the third workout - the first being getting the thing into the basement, the second assembling it.
It's a Horizon CE 9.2 - which comes from Canadian Tire - and is roughly equivalent to the Horizon EX-79, albeit with a heavier flywheel (23 lb. instead of 17).
The real test will be to use it regularly - a treadmill I purchased years ago quickly became a clotheshorse and progressively a cause of marital friction.
Wish me luck, and check in a month for a report card on both machine and progress - that should motivate me.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Mea Culpa - on Profiling
Oops - sure I had all the right settings in print setup - but I forgot to turn off Photoshop does colour in the main printer dialog box. Shit...
I'll reprofile the Hahemeule in the next 24 hours and publish the results.
Hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Had planned to post a Christmas Card, but yet again blogger can't upload images - this has been more down than working over the last several months and they still don't have it working - Mac and Firefox for me. I'd switch but then I'd have to maintain all the archived articles, all > 1000 of them.
I'll reprofile the Hahemeule in the next 24 hours and publish the results.
Hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Had planned to post a Christmas Card, but yet again blogger can't upload images - this has been more down than working over the last several months and they still don't have it working - Mac and Firefox for me. I'd switch but then I'd have to maintain all the archived articles, all > 1000 of them.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Print Darkness/Contrast/Tonality
Don't know about you, but for every time I have worried about print colour, I have worried 100 times more often about the brightness of print tones and even more. This was a problem with canned printer profiles, it remains a problem with home made profiles using my Color Munki - and although I don't have the $2000 to test fancier profiling equipment, I fully believe it will be a problem with the big guns too - after all that's what was used to make those profiles supplied by the printer and or paper manufacturers.
My 'standard' paper is Epson Enhanced Matte (Ultra super duper - or whatever they are calling it this week). it is so because it is easily available, not to stiff for stacking up multiple sheets in the feeder, has a good surface and behaves well. It even lets me pin up several prints in a stack on my examining room walls and I frequently catch my patients checking out the latest images and what's underneath as well - and that's just fine.
Yes, glossy paper can look nicer, especially if there are a lot of dark tones in the image, but with modern inks even matte papers look darn nice and are a heck of a lot easier to look at without dealing with spurious reflections.
Behind glass, 90% of the difference between matte and glossy paper disappears anyway (and I'm not talking frosted glass here).
Today I had to make some prints for sale. Although enhanced matte looks fine, it is thin and tends to warp over time behind the matte and I prefer to use a proper art quality paper when I'm selling a print. I happened to be out of my usual Moab Entrada Bright White and found a box of Hahnemeule Photo Rag. I ran off a profile test on it (version 2 icc profile to keep my mac and snow leopard happy - Color Munki lets you default to version two type profiles in preferences).
I was careful to set color matching to epson from colorsynch and then turn off epson adjustments in printer settings and had no diff. making the profiles.
But wow, the prints were way off - not in colour - that looked spot on, but in contrast and overall darkness - way too much of both. I'd had no trouble with Entrada, no trouble with enhanced matte, and only a little trouble with Harman FBAL gloss but this was unuseable results.
I eventually approximated the right tones through use of a compicated curves layer, customized to each print - but this shouldn't be necessary.
So, how do problems like this happen?
1) the monitor is too bright - this is far and away the biggest problem for many people.
2) double profiling - somehow both photoshop and the printer are adjusting the colours, instead of the correct strategy of letting photoshop doing it - but I'd been careful about that (see above).
3) too bright a viewing light - you can buy proper viewing lights but they are typically at least twice as bright as room light which is just plain wrong, and besides, the light is usually the wrong colour. It isn't standard, or warm fluorescent bulb temp, nor north window. It often is closer to sunlight, which we go out of our way to keep our prints away from. It rather depends on whether you believe it is better to be consistent and always wrong or random and occasionally wrong. I happen to view my prints by fluoresent because the bulbs match my office where I do most of my print viewing anyway. When I used to sell prints at the farmers market, they were being seen by mercury vapour (which oddly didn't seem to hurt the images, but made cream paper look downright yellow).
5) using the wrong paper setting. When in the printer dialog box you go to printer settings and change from glossy to semi gloss to matte to fine art - what you are changing is the amount of ink that is laid down - some surfaces can use more ink than others. Overall, while this does affect the brightness of the print, there should not be a problem if the setting you used for making the profile matches the setting you use when making your real prints. Of coures, if you are using a canned profile, it is absolutely essential that you match your paper setting to the one used in making the profile - and paper manufacturers are not always very clear about what that should be - though it is better now than a few years ago when it didn't seem to occur to them to bother mentioning such a crucial piece of information - and you wondered why people started making their own profiles).
6) you are printing black and white and using the advanced black and white driver for your Epson printer - as this totally overrides your profiles, you might as well have not bothered. There's a good reason they offer light, medium, dark, darker and bloody damn dark - it's because you have no control over the tonality without using these settings.
and more)of course, if you haven't profiled your monitor, all this is moot and you are a lost cause.
Assuming you have not committed and of the above faux pas - then so far, the only practical solutions I have found are the following.
1) pick papers that behave well for you - the Hahnemeule didn't for me - not that it can't make beautiful prints, it can - but was far more work this morning than it needed to be. Your experience is likely to be entirely different - you MUST do your own testing - this could be the perfect paper for you. These are papers that when you run test images after profiling, require the least possible adjustments in brightness to get a good result.
2) take advantage of printer proofing in Photoshop (under the View menu) to see what you are goijng to get - with most papers it has been very helpful in predicting the final result.
3) no matter how good your profiles, how careful your procedures, how expensive your equipment, if you are fussy about your results, you will have to make multiple prints to get an image of the right brightness. The closer your profiling can get things right, the fewer 'test' (read throwaway) prints that you will have to make. I can generally get it right in two or three prints - ie. the third print is what I want - this of course after making hundreds of changes to an apparently good image on screen before I even get to the printing stage. Rarely I get it in one, occasionally it takes half a dozen prints to really get a print that matches what I have on screen - not because my equipment is bad - it isn't, but because I care about the results (read fussy, ok, very fussy).
It is possible to create a curve to make adjustments, but my experience is that no single curve works for all images on a single paper.
Remember that no one will ever care as much about our print quality as we ourselves do, both as an individual and as a group of photographers.
Typical customers can't even see the difference between warm and neutral papers, never mind the difference between ultrachrome and ultrachrome K3 and Ultrachrome Vivid. We sure know though.
I'll be interested in how others have solved the brightness and contrast issues.
My 'standard' paper is Epson Enhanced Matte (Ultra super duper - or whatever they are calling it this week). it is so because it is easily available, not to stiff for stacking up multiple sheets in the feeder, has a good surface and behaves well. It even lets me pin up several prints in a stack on my examining room walls and I frequently catch my patients checking out the latest images and what's underneath as well - and that's just fine.
Yes, glossy paper can look nicer, especially if there are a lot of dark tones in the image, but with modern inks even matte papers look darn nice and are a heck of a lot easier to look at without dealing with spurious reflections.
Behind glass, 90% of the difference between matte and glossy paper disappears anyway (and I'm not talking frosted glass here).
Today I had to make some prints for sale. Although enhanced matte looks fine, it is thin and tends to warp over time behind the matte and I prefer to use a proper art quality paper when I'm selling a print. I happened to be out of my usual Moab Entrada Bright White and found a box of Hahnemeule Photo Rag. I ran off a profile test on it (version 2 icc profile to keep my mac and snow leopard happy - Color Munki lets you default to version two type profiles in preferences).
I was careful to set color matching to epson from colorsynch and then turn off epson adjustments in printer settings and had no diff. making the profiles.
But wow, the prints were way off - not in colour - that looked spot on, but in contrast and overall darkness - way too much of both. I'd had no trouble with Entrada, no trouble with enhanced matte, and only a little trouble with Harman FBAL gloss but this was unuseable results.
I eventually approximated the right tones through use of a compicated curves layer, customized to each print - but this shouldn't be necessary.
So, how do problems like this happen?
1) the monitor is too bright - this is far and away the biggest problem for many people.
2) double profiling - somehow both photoshop and the printer are adjusting the colours, instead of the correct strategy of letting photoshop doing it - but I'd been careful about that (see above).
3) too bright a viewing light - you can buy proper viewing lights but they are typically at least twice as bright as room light which is just plain wrong, and besides, the light is usually the wrong colour. It isn't standard, or warm fluorescent bulb temp, nor north window. It often is closer to sunlight, which we go out of our way to keep our prints away from. It rather depends on whether you believe it is better to be consistent and always wrong or random and occasionally wrong. I happen to view my prints by fluoresent because the bulbs match my office where I do most of my print viewing anyway. When I used to sell prints at the farmers market, they were being seen by mercury vapour (which oddly didn't seem to hurt the images, but made cream paper look downright yellow).
5) using the wrong paper setting. When in the printer dialog box you go to printer settings and change from glossy to semi gloss to matte to fine art - what you are changing is the amount of ink that is laid down - some surfaces can use more ink than others. Overall, while this does affect the brightness of the print, there should not be a problem if the setting you used for making the profile matches the setting you use when making your real prints. Of coures, if you are using a canned profile, it is absolutely essential that you match your paper setting to the one used in making the profile - and paper manufacturers are not always very clear about what that should be - though it is better now than a few years ago when it didn't seem to occur to them to bother mentioning such a crucial piece of information - and you wondered why people started making their own profiles).
6) you are printing black and white and using the advanced black and white driver for your Epson printer - as this totally overrides your profiles, you might as well have not bothered. There's a good reason they offer light, medium, dark, darker and bloody damn dark - it's because you have no control over the tonality without using these settings.
and more)of course, if you haven't profiled your monitor, all this is moot and you are a lost cause.
Assuming you have not committed and of the above faux pas - then so far, the only practical solutions I have found are the following.
1) pick papers that behave well for you - the Hahnemeule didn't for me - not that it can't make beautiful prints, it can - but was far more work this morning than it needed to be. Your experience is likely to be entirely different - you MUST do your own testing - this could be the perfect paper for you. These are papers that when you run test images after profiling, require the least possible adjustments in brightness to get a good result.
2) take advantage of printer proofing in Photoshop (under the View menu) to see what you are goijng to get - with most papers it has been very helpful in predicting the final result.
3) no matter how good your profiles, how careful your procedures, how expensive your equipment, if you are fussy about your results, you will have to make multiple prints to get an image of the right brightness. The closer your profiling can get things right, the fewer 'test' (read throwaway) prints that you will have to make. I can generally get it right in two or three prints - ie. the third print is what I want - this of course after making hundreds of changes to an apparently good image on screen before I even get to the printing stage. Rarely I get it in one, occasionally it takes half a dozen prints to really get a print that matches what I have on screen - not because my equipment is bad - it isn't, but because I care about the results (read fussy, ok, very fussy).
It is possible to create a curve to make adjustments, but my experience is that no single curve works for all images on a single paper.
Remember that no one will ever care as much about our print quality as we ourselves do, both as an individual and as a group of photographers.
Typical customers can't even see the difference between warm and neutral papers, never mind the difference between ultrachrome and ultrachrome K3 and Ultrachrome Vivid. We sure know though.
I'll be interested in how others have solved the brightness and contrast issues.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Dis and Dat
Why Photographs Work is now out and orderable from the major online booksellers and instore at real ones too. It's gathering excellent reviews so apparently we're not the only ones who think it's a beautiful book. We're scrambling to arrange a reprint asap.
Mark Dubovoy had written an article for Luminous Landscape promoting the use of medium format. I don't disagree with what Mark says, but I do think there are some points that are important to make.
Pros use medium format because:
1) they often are asked to make huge prints
2) paying customers like to get noseprints on detailed lanscape pictures
3) the equipment is tax deductable
4) the equipment differentiates them from the masses - an important marketing tool (as opposed to an ego boost - pros are too busy for that nonsense)
And there are other reasons. Those of us who do photography for the love of it instead of putting food on the table can afford the time to stitch and blend our way to good photographs, and if the images look better at 13X19 than 40X60, who cares. That said, more than a few serious amateurs are going to be looking at the Pentax 645D.
One of the most useful and powerful tools for doing landscape and industrial photography is live view - totally absent from medium format. Mark talks of the problems of camera misalignment, yet he has to squint into a tiny ground glass if he wants to focus and tilt - while I simply move the magnified view to the corner and check the focus on the sensor, not a substitute - using live view. I think in a few years people will find it hard to believe people ever struggled with substitutes.
We live in interesting times - DPReview has rated the Pentax K5 as the top medium priced dSLR, topping both Nikon and Canon - we live in interesting times.
It's holiday season, Christmas for some of us. May you all thrive and find the images you want.
Mark Dubovoy had written an article for Luminous Landscape promoting the use of medium format. I don't disagree with what Mark says, but I do think there are some points that are important to make.
Pros use medium format because:
1) they often are asked to make huge prints
2) paying customers like to get noseprints on detailed lanscape pictures
3) the equipment is tax deductable
4) the equipment differentiates them from the masses - an important marketing tool (as opposed to an ego boost - pros are too busy for that nonsense)
And there are other reasons. Those of us who do photography for the love of it instead of putting food on the table can afford the time to stitch and blend our way to good photographs, and if the images look better at 13X19 than 40X60, who cares. That said, more than a few serious amateurs are going to be looking at the Pentax 645D.
One of the most useful and powerful tools for doing landscape and industrial photography is live view - totally absent from medium format. Mark talks of the problems of camera misalignment, yet he has to squint into a tiny ground glass if he wants to focus and tilt - while I simply move the magnified view to the corner and check the focus on the sensor, not a substitute - using live view. I think in a few years people will find it hard to believe people ever struggled with substitutes.
We live in interesting times - DPReview has rated the Pentax K5 as the top medium priced dSLR, topping both Nikon and Canon - we live in interesting times.
It's holiday season, Christmas for some of us. May you all thrive and find the images you want.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Amazon Have 'Why Photographs Work'
At last, Amazon list the book as in stock, albeit with a warning about taking an extra day or two - I think they are actually between the distributor and the amazon warehouse as we speak but that means that people should have the book within the week.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Books Are At The Distributor
Have just heard from Rockynook that the books are now at the distributor. They then pass the books onto the various retail outfits, including the biggies like Amazon. Don't konw if this will result in a change in the status on Amazon but they should have the books within the week.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Why Photographs Work - The Book Has Landed
Good news. The books cleared customs in New York earlier this week, a few days late but are already on truck on the way to the distributor. It will take a week at the most to get to Amazon and other retail sellers, so, it should be possible to get a copy of the book just in time for Christmas. Hopefully Amazon will update their release date info within the week.
As of now, no one else has read the book, not even the photographers, who only got to see thier own section (ok, the editors have), so I am both excited and scared, waiting to hear what people think of the book. Those who have flipped through the book agree it's beautiful and I feel good about the images I chose for the book. About my writing I'm less secure. I think it's good, that I have useful insights into the images and what makes them work, but it's a bit like introducing your new bride to friends and family, you so desperately want them to think well of your mate, or in this case, my baby.
As of now, no one else has read the book, not even the photographers, who only got to see thier own section (ok, the editors have), so I am both excited and scared, waiting to hear what people think of the book. Those who have flipped through the book agree it's beautiful and I feel good about the images I chose for the book. About my writing I'm less secure. I think it's good, that I have useful insights into the images and what makes them work, but it's a bit like introducing your new bride to friends and family, you so desperately want them to think well of your mate, or in this case, my baby.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tomasz Gudzowaty
thank you to Marcin for pointing out the work of Tomasz - well worth exploring his site and images.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Paul Caponigro Portfolio
The entire current View Camera magazine is a single portfolio of 59 of Paul's images, reprinted with excellent quality. A must have for any serious photographer. I just hope the magazine printed enough of them.
You need this issue.
You need this issue.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Date Of Publication for Why Photographs Work
Below are the two emails I received earlier today from my publisher, first confirming our most up to to date shipping information - sounds like the shipment of books is somewhere mid Atlantic as we speak.
The second attempts to explain the reasonable caution that amazon takes in predicting availability dates - I think they are entirely right to do so - so, with a little luck they have in fact been overly cautious and within two weeks (as I predicted) they will be emailing everyone to say that a definite shipping date is on and the books will arrive in time for Christmas after all.
I do so wish I could share it with you know, but those two chapters on amazon will just have to whet your appetite.
Best,
George
Hi George,
We just heard from the freight forwarder and the shipment is due to to arrive in the harbor on Nov 25, and at Ingram by Nov 29/30. Our December release date looks secure. I don't know why in the world Amazon would send such a notice. The due date on Amazon is 12/28, but we hope the books will be shipping to customers by the 15th. I am going to contact the O'Reilly sales rep for Amazon to see if he can shed some light on this.
Thanks,
Joanie
I just got off the phone with John (O'Reilly sales rep for Amazon). He said that is supposing the following:
– The due date had slipped at one point from Oct to Dec. Amazon's algorithm notes a loss of confidence.
– With the holiday season coming up, they want to under-promise and then hope to over-deliver.
– Once the book is in stock, they very well may send another email saying "good news, the book is in stock and is on the way".
Basically, what Amazon does is out of our control. I am just happy that the book will ship in December regardless of what Amazon predicts.
This is a pretty lousy explanation, but that's the best we can get.
Joanie
The second attempts to explain the reasonable caution that amazon takes in predicting availability dates - I think they are entirely right to do so - so, with a little luck they have in fact been overly cautious and within two weeks (as I predicted) they will be emailing everyone to say that a definite shipping date is on and the books will arrive in time for Christmas after all.
I do so wish I could share it with you know, but those two chapters on amazon will just have to whet your appetite.
Best,
George
Hi George,
We just heard from the freight forwarder and the shipment is due to to arrive in the harbor on Nov 25, and at Ingram by Nov 29/30. Our December release date looks secure. I don't know why in the world Amazon would send such a notice. The due date on Amazon is 12/28, but we hope the books will be shipping to customers by the 15th. I am going to contact the O'Reilly sales rep for Amazon to see if he can shed some light on this.
Thanks,
Joanie
I just got off the phone with John (O'Reilly sales rep for Amazon). He said that is supposing the following:
– The due date had slipped at one point from Oct to Dec. Amazon's algorithm notes a loss of confidence.
– With the holiday season coming up, they want to under-promise and then hope to over-deliver.
– Once the book is in stock, they very well may send another email saying "good news, the book is in stock and is on the way".
Basically, what Amazon does is out of our control. I am just happy that the book will ship in December regardless of what Amazon predicts.
This is a pretty lousy explanation, but that's the best we can get.
Joanie
Thursday, November 11, 2010
I Have The Book
Amazon.com has a 'look inside' of the first two chapters.
It should be in book shops in about three weeks and is orderable now.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Cave Roof
Another image from Writing On Stone. This one was a focus blend, tripod mounted, me wrapped around the tripod and inside the cave. Later I took some handheld shots because I couldn't get the tripod close enough to the side of the cave. Focus blending in Helicon Focus, local contrast enhancement over a small part of the image only via Akvis Enhancer, colour tinting by Layers, solid fill, colour blend mode.
Writing On Stone Provincial Park
Friday, October 15, 2010
Nighttime Street Scene In Victoria
This would have been crap in colour, crap during daylight, but nice with a bit of editing and judicious use of two black and white conversion layers to get the two doorways left and right to roughly match in tone. Akvis Enhancer lightened the image and increased local contrast so I darkened it after (after all it was supposed to be a night scene). The sidewalk was way too dark compared to the rest of the image so I lightened it. I opened up the dark upper right corner again to blend well.
Below is the original image as recorded.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Stats On Photographs And Photographers For Book
Here's some statistics for both the photographers and photographs for 'Why Photographs Work'
Age:
the youngest photographer is 29, the oldest 85, the majority of the photographers are in their 50's and 60's and several are within 4 years of my age (61), which I didn't find out until after selecting the images. Three were born the same year as me (1949).
I have met only 7 of the photographers.
The newest photograph was made in 2009, the oldest in 1958
11 images were made with 4X5
3 images were made with an 8X10
1 image was made with a 5X12
4 images were made with 35 mm. film
1 image was made with a Polaroid SX70
1 image was made with an iPhone
14 images were made with a digital camera, inclluding one that was medium format digital
13 were made with medium format film
1 was made with 6X17
1 image was made with a flat bed scanner and NO camera (at least in the usual sense)
1 was made with a home made camera AND lens
24 images were made in colour, 28 in black and white
about a third of the photographers have significant musical background, but two thirds DO NOT
most of the photographers make most of their income from photography - either print making or teaching
8 of the photographers are women
countries represented include:
USA, Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria
14 images include people (if you include ghosts, 13 else)
6 of the images are constructed of multiple images - stitched or placed or overlaid
2 of the images are multiple exposures, both onto film, a third is a sandwich of two 4X5 transparencies.
All of the photographers for this book GAVE their images without charge, also their time and their writing and I am profoundly grateful for their generosity.
Only two photographers had to drop out of the project, one because of other very time consuming commitments, another over a misunderstanding brought about by a lost email. Only one photographer refused outright to participate and to be fair it was his assistant who thought the project unworthy - I think he was wrong. One photographer dropped out when he found that there was already an image using similar techniques to be in the book and he didn't want one of his older images to represent him.
The vast majority of the photographers let me make the entire decision about which image to choose, a few had preferences and NONE dictated which image I should use.
Some of the images are iconic, extremely well known. Others I'd be surprised if you have seen.
Six of the photographers frequently work in platinum/paladium.
A good number of the images are not what I would consider well within my comfort zone, yet each and every one has been fascinating and even the effort to select images and then write about them has broadened my own horizons, widened my tastes.
Age:
the youngest photographer is 29, the oldest 85, the majority of the photographers are in their 50's and 60's and several are within 4 years of my age (61), which I didn't find out until after selecting the images. Three were born the same year as me (1949).
I have met only 7 of the photographers.
The newest photograph was made in 2009, the oldest in 1958
11 images were made with 4X5
3 images were made with an 8X10
1 image was made with a 5X12
4 images were made with 35 mm. film
1 image was made with a Polaroid SX70
1 image was made with an iPhone
14 images were made with a digital camera, inclluding one that was medium format digital
13 were made with medium format film
1 was made with 6X17
1 image was made with a flat bed scanner and NO camera (at least in the usual sense)
1 was made with a home made camera AND lens
24 images were made in colour, 28 in black and white
about a third of the photographers have significant musical background, but two thirds DO NOT
most of the photographers make most of their income from photography - either print making or teaching
8 of the photographers are women
countries represented include:
USA, Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria
14 images include people (if you include ghosts, 13 else)
6 of the images are constructed of multiple images - stitched or placed or overlaid
2 of the images are multiple exposures, both onto film, a third is a sandwich of two 4X5 transparencies.
All of the photographers for this book GAVE their images without charge, also their time and their writing and I am profoundly grateful for their generosity.
Only two photographers had to drop out of the project, one because of other very time consuming commitments, another over a misunderstanding brought about by a lost email. Only one photographer refused outright to participate and to be fair it was his assistant who thought the project unworthy - I think he was wrong. One photographer dropped out when he found that there was already an image using similar techniques to be in the book and he didn't want one of his older images to represent him.
The vast majority of the photographers let me make the entire decision about which image to choose, a few had preferences and NONE dictated which image I should use.
Some of the images are iconic, extremely well known. Others I'd be surprised if you have seen.
Six of the photographers frequently work in platinum/paladium.
A good number of the images are not what I would consider well within my comfort zone, yet each and every one has been fascinating and even the effort to select images and then write about them has broadened my own horizons, widened my tastes.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Why Photographs Work - The Printers Are Rolling
Just heard today, the proofs look great and the printers are cranking up. I'll go into more detail about book content when it actually becomes available, but for now, here is the introduction I wrote for the book explaining the why and the wherefore.
Why Photographs Work
by George Barr
Introduction
Why this book, why now, and perhaps most importantly why me? Who is (and who isn’t) the book designed for? How did I select the images and is there a strategy to the book?
I wrote this book for me, as if I could go back in time to when I was starting out as a serious photographer. This is the book I wish had been available then, to explain great photographs, to point out what works and how these images are planned and composed, how tones should be printed, how subjects explored. Not coincidentally, these are the same issues that help someone who already enjoys photographs learn to appreciate them more, and to open themselves to more genres of photography.
Looking At Photographs by John Sarkowski was an important book in my self-education. It is still available and still very worthwhile to read. It does, however, have a couple of shortcomings. It has no color photography, and as a curator and historian of photography, Sarkowski brings to the book a bias toward talking about processes as much as images—useful perhaps for a student of photography, and even a collector, but not as important to someone who simply wants to make or enjoy photographs.
With digital imaging vastly expanding the interest in photography, more people than ever are taking photography seriously. While much of the book is in color, there is still a need to show the power, the subtlety, and the beauty of black-and-white photography to a new crowd whose cameras shoot color by default. There are many ‘how-to’ books and even ‘how I did it’ books. But there are not many books available that discuss why photographs work from a practical rather than theoretical or philosophical point of view.
I’m the one writing the book both because I can and because I feel the need. I can because of the success of my previous two books—the publisher is willing to run with this idea. I can because I have experience writing about photography in clear, relaxed, and comfortable terms—terms that the average person can relate to. I won’t claim there is no art-speak in this book, but I do assure you that you won’t need an art degree to understand, appreciate, and take advantage of it.
This book is for any photographer who wants to make beautiful photographs. And it is for anyone—photographer or viewer—who wants to understand why some photographs stand out from all the others. It can certainly be of value to students of photography, but probably not by those specifically studying photography criticism, where art theory and history, philosophy and culture become more important than whether the photograph is beautiful or powerful or meaningful.
In choosing photographs for this book I used as my own source books (I have more than 100 books of photographs in my personal collection), magazines (hundreds of issues of those magazines which celebrate wonderful images), the internet, and my own life experiences meeting other photographers and hearing their suggestions of still more photographers to consider. As such, it is unashamedly biased toward Canadian and North American photographers simply because I am more familiar with them.
I have tried to push past my own comfort zone in photographic subject and style, being inherently a photographer of fairly conservative tastes. After all, I am a middle aged white guy from Canada. We’re known for our niceness, not our pushing the envelop of modern tastes (OK, we wear weird hats called touques, but I don’t think that counts). I want to open readers to new ideas of photographs that are not ‘traditional’ or ‘straight’.
My own tastes are firmly based in the highest image quality; that concept does not trump craftsmanship; that being radical is not an end in itself but rather a tool to express ideas that are difficult to express in more traditional techniques. I’m an experienced photographer, with high standards for both my own images and the photographs of others. I have had some success being published and in selling my photographs and it is with this background I chose the images for the book.
This book is about great photographs rather than great photographers. Some of the images I have chosen are by relatively unknown or even less experienced photographers. Some of the photographers are famous, others are not. Some of the photographers have literally thousands of strong images and many books to their names, while others have only made a handful of great images but are poised to make many more.
I have made an effort to search out international photographers and there are some, but not as many as I would like. Women photographers are not equally represented simply because I know fewer women photographers. Some of the photographers were completely new to me, and discovering their work has been a delight, while others are long time friends of mine.
The book is about photography as art. Many common genres of photography are either sparsely represented or entirely absent. You will find no sports photography, no wildlife, and almost nothing of reportage. Each of those subjects has certainly been responsible for many great photographs, but in those images, the subject and the story predominate over the image as art, and quite frankly I don’t feel qualified to comment on them.
Enjoy this book as a collection of 51 wonderful photographs. Some you may well know already, but I trust there are enough new images to surprise and delight you. Feel free to flip through the book to simply enjoy the images, but sooner or later, do read about each image, about what I think makes each work, about what the photographer was thinking in making the image, about who the photographer is and how they came to see the way they see.
George Barr, Calgary, July, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
And Yes, I Also Did Some Colour
Again, straight from the raw processor. This was a propellor, lying near a path and next to the inlet, large, rusted, covered in graffiti and making for a wonderful hour of working out compositions.
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