NIMBY

Colour Management for Photographers 2

2006-10-09T10:55:00.000+00:00

This is the second instalment of a series on colour management. The index of the sections is shown below, and the links to all completed section are active.

Section One – Why Colour Manage
- Part One – In the context of the world we live in
- Part Two – Why is our workflow important? (below)

Section Two – All About Colour Spaces (coming soon)
Section Three - Capture, Display and Working Management (coming soon)

Section Four – Output Management (coming soon)

Section One – Why Colour Manage? Contd…

Part Two – Why is our workflow important?

So from the first part of this section, we should now roughly see why it is necessary to colour manage at all. This second part will discuss why it is necessary to include colour management in our photography workflow. In an ideal world, once we have taken care of the lighting and colour of our subjects at the shoot, our concerns over colour accuracy would stop there. Unfortunately reality is far from that ideal, and we need to discuss a little bit why there is a need to colour manage through each step of our workflow.

I really want to keep these articles down to a bare minimum of information, and it is quite tricky to do so, as the subject is huge and complex. I think it is important to include enough information to really understand what is going on with colour management rather than just having people repeat parrot fashion and not really understand why it is they are doing it. This limits your ability to adapt when and if things go wrong and decreases your confidence of using it. The simplest way I can think of to demonstrate why our workflow needs colour management is to use an example of where things can go wrong if it is not used.

A Prime Example of Lacking Colour Management

Our example is going to take a person that either is not aware of colour management or decides not to use it. This person has recently gone out and bought a top-of-the-range dSLR and all singing and dancing photo inkjet printer. Obviously being quite interested in photography they choose to shoot RAW and import their RAW images into a raw converter. The first thing they decide to do is set white balance (a good place to start). Along with probably the majority of people, they set their colour balance by eye-balling the image. They adjust the sliders around to get the colour in the shot to look pretty damn close to how they remember the scene looking. Happy that the WB is set correctly they move on to completing their edits, maybe a little playing with saturation, setting the overall exposure and the black& white points. At this point they have the image spot on and are ready to get there super new printer to spit out a nice 18” print. The printer does it stuff and they go to make a cup of tea. A few moments later they come back and the print is finished, so they pull it off and hold it up to the light. They then stagger two paces backwards as the printer has products the most disgusting distortion of colour and shades possible. Everyone in the photo looks like they have applied copious amounts of Duotan and the sky is green. Their first and natural reaction is to be rather disappointed with the printer they just shelled out so much money for. In fact I read that the majority of complaints that printer manufacturers receive is from just such cases.

The fact that they blame the printer is understandable, their logic being that the state of the art camera surely is doing its job – they have seen wonderful images from other people with that exact same camera - so they assume the issue must lie with the printer. A certain degree of the problem may lie with the printer – but in most cases it isn’t the printer at issue. All through the process they assumed their monitor was showing them the correct colour.

Now let’s adapt the situation slightly. Say they shot the same image in JPG in the camera. They did not touch the photo in any software, just sent it to print. In all likelihood the image would print pretty well, certainly a lot better. Hmmm.

The facts here are that by and large the camera manufacturers turn out pretty accurate capturing devices, so they record the scene pretty well. In turn the printer manufacturers, certainly in the case of printers marketed for photo printing, turn out fair accuracy on their printers. The result is sending one directly to the other results in a pretty close colour match. What most people fail to consider is that when they view the image from the camera on their screen they are seeing the original file how the screen decides to show it. Most people do not go and buy “photo” monitors – for one thing they are expensive and seem unnecessary (usually they are unnecessary), they are quite happy with their screens and don’t give it much thought. A big mistake. Monitor manufactures are not really in the limelight when it comes to colour accuracy. That is because most people don’t really care that much, as long as it is in the right ball park you are good to go. You probably should expect reasonable accuracy though, and *may* even have it, but way back when you first got your monitor maybe you forgot that you played a little with the controls to get the brightness etc. Just how you like it…. The result being that the image may have been spot on in the first place, it just looked rubbish on your screen, so you adjust it to look right on your screen; in turn make the actual file rubbish!

Of course there are many many reasons why a monitor may fail to show good colour accuracy. Up till now we have only spoken of monitors, but the fact is that to lesser or greater degrees all devices will suffer some inconsistencies that effect accuracy. You might be sitting there saying, “Well I paid a lot of money for my monitor, and I never touched the controls, so it should still be spot on”. Well you can think that if you like, but look through some examples below of why any device may cause colour inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

Manufacturing Process

Every device you buy is mostly likely a combination of many components coming from various manufacturers. Perfection in electrical components is neither achievable nor practical. Therefore components have a tolerance value, a level in inaccuracy they are permitted to fall within in order to be deemed acceptable. So even if your buddy down the road has the exact same monitor, and all the controls are set exactly the same as yours, it is likely that the colour it displays is slightly different. There is of course even more disparity if he owns a different model, and even more of from a different manufacturer. If they are using different components, and maybe even different technologies you are really expecting a lot for them to produce nearly identical results. Of course, I keep using monitors as an example (as it is the most common error, and also the easiest to fix – as we shall see in future instalments), but the same applies, and probably in many cases even more, to all devices.

Natural Degradation

As with all things, devices age, and with that aging process changes to their output occurs. So even if your device was truly accurate a year ago, the likelihood is that the components responsible for the imaging are now producing different results. This fact is true even once you take on boards colour management techniques, and requires that you continually carry out steps to remain in a good colour managed workflow.

fig.2 - Although getting ahead of the game a bit, and in the next instalment we shall talk more about colour spaces, this shows the gamut (available colour palette) on the Epson 1290 inkjet printer (custom profile by nimby) as the solid shaded area. This is a 3D representation, and you are seeing only one side here (magentas and yellows). The concept is that the 1290 can produce all the colours that are inside this shaded area, but cannot produce any colours outside the shaded area. The dots sprinkled around are a representation of all the colours that make up the photo at the top of this page. As you can clearly see a large number of these dots (colours) fall outside the shaded area (gamut) of the 1290 printer. That is to say that the 1290 printer CANNOT print those colours....(graphic copyright of nimby)

Inability

Up till now we have just assumed that our device is actually capable of producing the required colour. Actually in reality this is a long way from the truth and is a huge reason for the need to colour manage. In the next instalment we shall discuss this in more depth, but for now it can just be said that NO monitor can produce all the shades and tonalities that a camera can capture, and neither can any printer. Further, NO device can fully encompass the human eye’s range of colour. Fig.2, above, demonstrates a prime example where a device's colour capabilities prevent it from reproducing the true colours as they were in the scene.

Methods of Visibility

This is a tricky subject. It is huge and complex, but I will attempt to summarise it in ~~quite~~ a few sentences. It can be said that the human eye receives colour from two methods of source. The first is transmitted light, a good example of that is the monitor you are looking at now. It is its own light source, and that is why you can see it in a dark room! The method by which you see colour from your monitor is that the monitor transmits light to your eye in colours that your eye is sensitive to, as shown in fig.3, below. To give a simple example to demonstrate, let’s say you have a photo of a pure green apple, lit with white light on your screen. Your screen will transmit green light and the eye, being sensitive to green (along with red and blue) sees the apple as green. All good.

fig.3 - A graphical representation showing the concept of transmitted (a.k.a emitted) light's ability to give colour. A simple real life example would be red, green and blue coloured glass. When white light (a mixture of red, green and blue light) is shone through the coloured glass only parts of the spectrum pass through, the others are absorbed. In the case of red, as shown above, the green and blue parts of the spectrum are absorbed, leaving only red passing through - so we see the colour of the glass as red. Naturally, if we were to mix red and blue to make a magenta coloured glass, this would allow both red and blue to pass through, giving a magenta light (this is adding colour - an additive process). If we mix all three, red, green and blue to make the glass, it would allow all of the light to pass through and we would see white. (graphic copyright of nimby)

There is however another method of visibility and that is reflected light, see fig.4, below. Anything which is not its own light source relies on reflected light for you to see it. (There are of course overlaps, but let’s keep it simple.) Let us take that same green apple as it would have been before we photographed it. It was sitting on a table being lit with white light. It does not produce its own light therefore it must reflect some of the light being shone on it for you to see it. The reason it appears green to the eye is that it does not reflect all of the white light shining on it. In this case it absorbs all of the red and blue parts of the white light, leaving only green which it reflects and hence you see it as green.

You might be wondering what this has to do with colour management. Well consider for a moment that if you ever print any of your photographs, you are changing their method of visibility from transmitted (what you saw on your screen) to reflected. The print is not its own light source (unless back lit….) and so must rely on reflecting the light it is being viewed under. Of course these are very different techniques by which we see, so differences between them are all too easy.

fig.4 - A graphical representation showing the concept of reflected light's ability to give colour. Where the object does not possess its own light source it relies upon reflecting light to be seen. As shown in this graphic a cyan coloured object, when lit with white light (a combination of red, green and blue) , will absorb all of the red in the white light, reflecting only green and blue, which, when mixed, give cyan. The other main difference between this and transmitted light, as shown in fig.2, is that it is a subtractive process. If we were to make an object blue in colour it would be a mixture of cyan and magenta. The cyan would absorb the red from the white light, the magenta would absorb the green; leaving only blue being reflected. It is only a small step from there to add yellow into our object to remove the blue and our object would absorb red, green and blue and so reflect no light. That would make it appear black. (graphic copyright of nimby)

The last thing I need to say about reflected and transmitted light is specifically related to prints. It is a major factor in why we can get differences between screen and print. It is just a closer examination of the difference between the two methods of visibility, but is especially important to understand. If we consider that transmitted light is a mixture of red, green and blue (which visible light is – as of course is your monitor), and that if we mix all of the together to their maximum values we get white (as discussed in part one section one) then how does this work for a print? After all the paper is white already, so if we then mix red, green and blue on it we just get lighter colours! Enter cyan, magenta and yellow, or CMY. What is clear is that a white piece of paper, before printing on, is reflecting all parts of the spectrum (RGB), hence it appears white. What we really want to do, as in nature, is to remove parts of that white light and reflect the remaining parts of the spectrum – hence giving colour. It is by no co-incidence that if you look on a colour wheel, as in fig.1, you will see that cyan is around the opposite side to red. Ditto magenta to green, yellow to blue. What this means is that cyan absorbs ALL red light, magenta absorbs ALL green light and yellow absorbs ALL blue light. Now we have a method to control which parts of the visible light spectrum are reflected, and hence we can cause any combination of RGB to be reflected by CMY. Simple eh? The CMY process is what is known as a subtractive process (RGB is an additive process), because as we have seen it removes parts from the visible light – therefore if you mix CMY together you remove red, green and blue from the spectrum. Which leaves you with…. nothing. As visible light is made up from a mix of RGB, if you remove all the RGB you are left with no light or black as we like to call it. So in theory to get black on your print you mix cyan, magenta and yellow together. In reality it doesn’t quite work out like this (surprise!), as it really isn’t possible to get inks so pure that when CMY are mixed it reflects nothing. Usually it looks kind of muddy brown. To get around this we add a real black ink to the mix, which by itself absorbs all light and appears black. This gives us the CMYK printing process which is the basis for just about all colour printing in existence. (K as in blacK, B is already used for blue).

Summary

So these are just a few examples of why different devices see colour in varying ways, and of course there are many more which I wont detail such as temperature, viewing angle, light conditions; the list goes on. The important thing to understand that without some intervention all devices, even if basically using the same principles, will display the *same* colour differently. This puts you in a position where you don’t know if what you are seeing on your screen is really what the printer will print, or even if it is the same as the camera saw. This is not a good situation to be in if you are interested in high quality output.

In the next instalment I shall discuss the methods by which we bring this all under control, the actual activity of colour management.

nimbyref:091006a Photo: Pad Prik Kaeng (Fried Spicy Curry) - by nimby. Canon EOS 5D.:endnimby

Split Toning In Photoshop

2006-10-04T18:09:00.000+00:00

For some bizarre reason, I feel some sort of need to contribute my split toning technique to the internet. I promise to keep these random inputs as rare as possible!

Below you will find a screencast that takes you through my technique and although with the compression needed to fit it in here it is quite difficult to see the details, you should get the gist of what is required. During the screencast I also record an action, which you can download here. This will allow you to run the technique on any of your own images, and also if it is not clear from the screencast you can open up the action and see the steps involved.

One note, the embedded screencast is in MS WMV format, as this provides a nice small file – so if you are unable to view WMV files… sorry.

nimbyref:051006a Photo: Derwent Reservoir, split toned using the technique in the screencast below - by nimby. Canon EOS 5D.:endnimby

Get It Whilst You Can

2006-10-02T09:37:00.000+00:00

After a slight break in posts, due to being busy with activities that actually generate some income, I am attempting to bring some service back to the blog, or kill it. For the time being I have decided not to kill it, as it still provides a way for me to get things off my chest, but as this doesn’t happen every day then the posts will become sparse. To fill it out I will continue to add random ad hoc BS and maybe even finish the colour management series.

The title of this post doesn’t, however, refer to the thread on which the future of this blog hangs, but rather something of much more worth, the passing of greatness in a sport I hold dear. Michael Schumacher has not died, but his choice to retire at the end of the current season is seen in my eyes as a severe loss to the Formula One slice of motor sport.

Many people loathe the man, but it should be clear to most people his accomplishments speak louder than any conceived ideas about his personality or nation of origin. For me being a racing driver isn’t about driving a car fast around a track – that is a given – but it is the absolute commitment to winning, where every meter of advantage should be fought and seen as a victory in its own right. Sadly, and this feeling is at the core of my sadness to see Michael go, there are very few contemporary drivers that show such determination.

Sure, on occasion Michael has taken it too far, but that will always happen when the desire is so great, the boundaries are gone and split second reactions that are driven by absolute focus to win seldom take into account being a nice guy or maybe even doing the safe thing. Let’s get something straight, motor sport isn’t safe. It may be a lot safer that it ever was – and that is a good thing – but the whole essence of it is danger. As I often say to comments made by the whinging Coulthard, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen; for there are many skilled cooks who love the heat waiting to take your place. It is all part of the deal when you decide to become a racing driver; you should relish it not shy away from it. Of course this will explain the long and mostly mediocre career of David Coulthard.

In years gone by the rarely over aggressive tactics of Michael Schumacher were how cars were raced. If you look back at any of the great racing drivers of all time they all used pretty dirty tactics to get an advantage; it is part of the game. Jack Brabham’s favourite trick was to drop a couple of wheel on the dirt exiting a corner if he had someone close up behind him, to kick up some stones are other debris into their face. Back in that day, the dirt at the side of the track was real dirt and the helmets had no face protection, I bet it hurt. You don’t even have to go that far back to see two greats racing at the same time with the same absolute winning mentality. Just look at the fiascos caused by Ayton Senna and Alain Prost in the 1980’s. That’s how races should be contested, winner takes all. There are old and revered quotes from racing, such as, “second place is just the first of the losers” and that is how I see it.

The issue is that the majority of the new drivers may subscribe to such statements, but they don’t practice them. Bringing the car home in a nice safe third place to secure championship points is not exactly living by the sword. You certainly will not see Michael Schumacher doing that, even if it might be the most “sensible” option. Michael will fight for every meter of track position, as if it were the championship itself, he has hardly ever let another driver pass him just because it is less risky to do so, and the points are good enough. A prime example of this was in Hungary this year, where in mixed weather conditions Michael lay in second position, but on heavily worn tyres and close to the end he chose not to pit and change tyres. He knew that if he pitted that he would lose any chance of first place and lose the second place he was in – but if he wrangled that car around the track for 8 more laps he might take victory. You know the real great thing about that decision, his only rival in the championship was out of the race!! Alonso had already retired, so Michael could have easily pitted and changed tyre to come in a safe 3rd or 4th and take the bulk of the points from Alonso. That is what I want to see, Michael just wants to win and if it is impossible to win then every meter of gain is worth having. As it turns out his decision was to cost him more than 2nd or 3rd, as the car became impossible to drive in the last few laps, he lost some places and would have probably score more points if he had pitted for new tyres. But who cares? I don’t, what he gave us were 10 memorable laps of car control in adverse conditions and the sight of a man driven to win. Give me that any day than the Jenson Button’s of the grid (who won the race).

Looking at the contenders I really don’t see a lot to get excited about with the departure of Schumacher. Most of them are “drive for the points” types, who have already proved their lack of attraction in races where Michael hasn’t featured. Sure they are all fast drivers, they all qualify well, but there racing skill and determination – hence entertainment – are not there. I recall a race a couple of years ago where the leading 4 cars were within a second of each other for the last 20 laps of the race. I can’t remember who was in there other than Button and Alonso, but you can insert any two other boring driver’s names. There was not one single attempt to overtake in those 20 laps. They had all patently settled for their position, and just hoped the car in front will break. Jeez – racing by reliability. Maybe I am being harsh, but can you seriously imagine that if Michael Schumacher had been one of those drivers that he would not have tried an overtaking move?

Some people may think I am underselling Fernando Alonso. The thing is he is world champion, but look how he got there. I am not taking away from him that he is a talented driver, and there may well be more to him than I have seen but he had a car last year that just drove better than any other. That together with the fact that he is a very fast driver put him at the front of the grid on most occasions, allowed him to get in the lead and never require him to actually overtake (what I like to call “race”) anyone to win the race/championship.

To emphasise my point about the superiority of Michael Schumacher (do I need to?), you can just look at his record over the last 16 years. In basic terms 16 years worth of drivers coming and going could not ultimately find a better racing driver – many have come and gone, the opportunity for the best in the world to come and take his glory has been there for 16 years!

Do I think Michael Schumacher is the best racing driver of all time? It’s very difficult to say without pitting (pun) them all against each other. One thing is undisputable, he is the most successful. He does share with all the greats the sometimes uncontrollable desire to win, and is his car control in mixed conditions show that he has the skills to drive the older cars with less grip, so I would be pretty confident that if he were racing in J.M. Fangio’s era, along with Ayton Senna, Alain Prost, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Gilles Villeneuve, Nigel Mansell he would be certainly swapping podium positions and panel damage with them. If only it could be!

In all this gloom of loss, I find solace in two things. First is that Kimi Raikkonen has the potential to be a great driver. I noticed yesterday that upon his car breaking for what seems like the millionth time, he had no emotions one way or another. In earlier times when the car broke he threw the steering wheel out, kicked the car and skulked away. I guess that he just waits for it to happen now, and when it does he may even be surprised how long the car lasted. Next year though sees him in a Ferrari, and even though they have had their ups and downs in terms of performance, they have a good reliability record. I truly believe that Kimi will be showing the way next year, and I hope he proves me right about his inherent racing skills. The second form of solace I find is that I know there are other great racing drivers out there. Sooner or later one of them will be found, and will overcome the obstacles of getting into Formula One.

Until then though, there are two races left of this year’s season and it could not be better. The points position is that Michael Schumacher has brought Alonso’s 25 point lead down to zero – so what you are effectively seeing is a two race sprint to win the world championship. I don’t know about you, but in this do or die, winner takes all situation, my money is on a certain Mr. Schumacher. In my dream world they would somehow be tying on points as they enter the last race. If that were the case I would expect you too witness one of the greatest races of all time. Of course that mathematically cannot happen, but even as it is though, reliability aside, it is likely that the last race will decide it.

So, like him or loathe him, you have two Formula One races left to witness the most successful driver of all time ply his trade. Not only that you see him in a position where if he gives it his all and has a little luck on his side he will walk away world champion for the 8th time. Of course, Schumacher giving his all is guaranteed, and I suspect that it may lift the best from Alonso too, which is another aspect that we shall be losing – greatness inspires greatness – and Alonso will really need to dig deep into that historic book of dirty tricks. Bloody hell, how can you miss that!

nimbyref:021006a Photo: No not F1, but A1. A nice concept Formula - by nimby. Canon EOS 5D.:endnimby

Zinnie - Day One

2006-09-21T15:32:00.000+00:00

Snug as a bug in a rug. Zinnie and his buddies have been installed in their new pad, and have been given the necessary H2O. So, now, er, just wait I guess.

This plant business is not exactly fast paced stuff, but then that was the idea.

On a sanity scale between 0 and 10 (just like the zone system…), where 0 is white single sleeve jacket time, I feel I am around a 4 at the moment. Others would argue that I am already a danger to society. I beg to differ, as there is worse to come, and I need the scope to move into.

nimbyref:210906a Photo: Zinnie settling in. nimby. Canon A620.:endnimby

Meet The Gang

2006-09-20T13:08:00.000+00:00

And so it begins. Of course many photographers have photographed birth in the name of art and understanding, and still many more photographers have photographed the point of conception, in the name of the ~~porn industry~~ biological exploration. Luckily these two types of photographer’s come from different, er, fields, so I know of few that have photographed the conception and then gone on to photograph the birth. So to speak.

I actually thought that Zinnie was already lounging in his soil breeding ground, until I opened the box and found that he was in fact residing in chez foil packet. I was also quite surprised to find that Zinnie comes with some friends, so I guess all this goes to highlight just how little I know about pot plants. (That’s pot as in container, not the ice breaking variety – just in case any of my recently installed military regime are listening.) Strangely we are not given the names of the associates that are in the packet, I assume they are the nameless, behind the scenes workers; agents and the like.

So, I guess next step is to install Zinnie in his spacious new residence, through some water on it and get the camera ready.

nimbyref:200906b Photo: Zinnie with associates – That’s Zinnie front centre, with the rather more anaemic complexion. nimby. Canon A620.:endnimby

Say Hello To Zinnie

2006-09-19T11:32:00.000+00:00

I stand accused of this blog being too geeky. I stand, and I find myself guilty. What to do? Make it geekier (yes that is a real word) of course! Although I don’t think geeky is the correct word. For example I would accuse pixel peeping with discussions of lines per millimetre resolving power and Bayer matrix interpolation as geeky as they have very little to do with the actual act of taking or making an image, and revolve purely around the technical. I do however get the point – and choose to ignore it. The thing is that this previously mentioned pixel peeping is so rife across the internet that there exists an imbalance of items on the actual important aspects of photography, the images. Shock. I am feeling the pressure of nature’s desire for balance.

The thing is that there are some fairly plain and indisputable facts when it comes to the technology behind image construction, which makes it a lot more objective and definable. Of course there is still room for point of view and personal preference, but within much tighter boundaries. The actual product, the images themselves do not live within these boundaries, and their appeal lies purely in the viewer’s conscience.

If you look at photographs as much as I do, you would soon become bored with the obvious, the unchallenging. As many of my previous posts indicate, your average everyday photograph, no matter how pleasant or well executed it is, provides little interest beyond a two second glance. There is rarely any opportunity to spend more time with the image, and delve beyond face value, as face value is mostly all there is. The thing is that the majority of people from the same culture will all agree that a good landscape is a pleasant image and that is fine, a great deal of my images are landscapes (arguably good), but even though I enjoy taking those images, I don’t really enjoy looking at other peoples. Self-centred? Maybe.

I am not the first either, nor probably even the millionth, to find this dissatisfaction with the obvious in photography. The issue is: where do you go to find satisfaction. A number of photographers and critics through time have reached the conclusion that there is nothing left to be photographed. A prime example of this would be Sherry Levine who believes that original photographic subjects have been exhausted and she expresses this by photographing other people’s photographs. Thankfully I have not reached that point yet, although I can certainly pass by 90% of the photographs I see.

So what is my point? Well, it is in some way to justify what I write here. I am interested in finding photographs that do ask some questions or provide something deeper than aesthetic consumption, and this is a deep and purely subjective subject. Posting it here provides me a way to further explore how I myself see, and what I get from, photographs, and also provides this insight to my thoughts to anyone who may stumble across the blog. If anyone ever reads this and finds them self looking at a photograph to see if they see what I see in it, or to ask themselves what they see that is different, then this blog has succeeded on another level.

Alright, you say, but what the hell has the image posted got to do with it, and who is Zinnie?

Actually, I have no idea who Zinnie is. The photograph at top is a pre-packed seeded pot, and I can only assume that the flower that may or may not be produced from the seed inside is called Zinnie. Zinnie is my new project…

In the 1950’s a writer named Italo Calvino wrote about a fictional photographer called Antonino Paraggi in an essay titled “The Adventures of a Photographer”. The essay deals with Antonino’s grappling with the essence of how we should photograph, and his distance from the conventional thinking that initially prevented him from taking photographs through to his obsession with single subjects and finally to where he believes he finds the true nature of his photographic desires. A number of Antonino’s feelings on photography have been borne out by real life photographers and have been cited by high profile theorists, and it is these overlaps which interest me. I think the beauty of Antonino being fictional is that his thoughts can be expressed truthfully, whereas many living (and even more, dead) photographers we can only guess at their state of mind through their images. Maybe “guess” isn’t the right word, and I expect that critical theorists (that’s art critics/philosophers to me an you) would rather I did not use the word to summarise their analysis.

Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, among others, believed that all photographs suggest death, to a greater or lesser degree. It sounds a little absurd initially, but there is truth in them words. In addition to this, nearly every writer on photography agrees that there is also a lot of possession involved in photography. (It is the primary reason/motive behind advertising images.) I expect that right now you really don’t agree with me, or more accurately them, so hopefully to bring us a little more in line I want to quote from Calvino’s essay about his fictional photographer Antonino:-

“The minute you start saying something, ‘Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!’ you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost…”

The reaction is quite common, but rarely do we think about the psychological motive behind it. This relates both to possession and death or certainly non-existence.

The problem is that if one strays too far into this realm, problems can arise. Antonino continues, “…as if it never existed, and that therefore, in order to really live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity, the second to madness”.

Ironically, Antonino later “became obsessed with a completely empty corner of the room, containing a radiator pipe and nothing else: he was tempted to go on photographing that spot and only that till the end of his days.”

OK, so Antonino was a fictional character, but consider that between 1978 when Garry Winogrand moved to Los Angeles and his death in 1984 it was discovered he shot over a third of a million photographs that he never looked at. After his death over 2500 rolls of exposed but un-developed film were discovered, in addition 6500 rolls were developed but no contact sheets had been made and a further 3000 rolls had been contacted printed, but not even marked for any selections.

To the point, I will get. The essence of this is that to really photograph something completely, you need to photograph it continuously. Now seeing as I have yet to sink to the madness Antonino describes I don’t really want to go to the extremes where he says, “…the only coherent way to act is to snap at least one picture a minute”; but I would like to experiment with documenting an entire existence. The solution is to document something where the time intervals are less demanding – hence Zinnie.

Of course, I am only covering part of it here – as to do it fully I would have to photograph at all angles, but it will be an interesting exercise none the less (subjectively ;-)). Starting from today, I will take one photo of Zinnie each day, as hopefully the seed germinates and produces something – although with my history of growing things it maybe a single blog entry!

I have no idea what this thing will look like, if it ever shows itself at all. And the one thing that you can be sure of, no matter how beautiful a flower Zinnie turns out to be, it will die. I will make sure of that. The real worrying thing is that if Zinnie does flower, I will be adding yet more flower photographs to the internet. But I can rest assured that the pixel peepers will have little interest, I will be shooting the images with the blog cam – nothing to see here, peepers.

nimbyref:200906a Photo: Zinnie, wrapped, dormant…, nimby. Canon A620.:endnimby

Colour Management for Photographers 1

2006-09-07T08:35:00.000+00:00

In a slight departure I am going to do a short series (I hope it will be short) on colour management. Why you ask? Well, I am not a spectral scientist, but I do have an extensive background in radio waves, of which of course light is such. I also have a number of years empirical knowledge when it comes to colour management in photography and it is probably the thing I find myself explaining most to the uninitiated. The motivation for putting it up here, on my blog, is that I have not found a concise one stop shop article (or series) on the internet that describes what you need to know. Sure there are probably millions of articles on the subject, but most deal with certain aspects, only skim the surface or delve to deeply into the science behind it. In the worst cases I have read a number of articles which are just plain incorrect, and for what is already a confusing subject for some, misinformation just confuses the situation. In fact it was upon reading an article recently that was so erroneous in its comments on colour management that I finally decided to write my own. If you want to explore the scientific details of colour, then this isn’t the article for you, and that is an interesting subject in its own right. If however you want to know enough to successfully colour manage your photographical workflow, this should provide a solid reference.

The article in its entirety is broken into four main sections, as shown below, however as an ongoing part of my attempts to keep posts to a digestible and punchy length, I will split these sections further, into parts. The first part of the first section is below; the remainder will be posted in the next week or two, at incremental periods. As each is released I will update the links below to provide a method of jumping between the parts.

Section One – Why Colour Manage
- Part One – In the context of the world we live in (below)
- Part Two – Why is our workflow important?

SectionTwo – All About Colour Spaces (coming soon)
Section Three - Capture, Display and Working Management (coming soon)

Section Four – Output Management (coming soon)

So, let’s get on with it before my word quota runs dry.

Section One - Why Colour Manage?

This is a double edged question. The first is why we need to colour manage in the context of the world we live in and the photographs we take, the second is why that then requires that we need to develop colour management in our photographic workflow, in order to satisfy the former. This first part will explore the former and the latter will be the subject of the next part.

Part One – In the context of the world we live in

As I am sure that anyone reading this with an interest in colour management will already know (being a photographer you ought to!), visible light is a mixture of various different colours, and when combined equally and completely they create white light. However, this theoretical complete and equal mixture rarely occurs, if ever naturally; and so we are left with slight imbalances where one part of the visible light spectrum is more dominant than the others. (It is possible that two parts of the spectrum can dominate, such as in mixed light scenarios, but that is another discussion.) To take an example, let’s talk about midday light. While this can vary too, it is normally accepted that the overall mix is quite evenly balances, with a slight bias towards the blue part of the spectrum. What this means is that we get generally neutral light (and even mixture of all colours) with a slight hint of blue. To show how this changes, think about the light towards the end of the day, in the golden hour. It comes as no surprise that it is known as the golden hour as the light has a golden hint to it, possible quite a strong bias. This is due to the fact that the bias in the mixture has moved to yellow, with more yellow in the mix the result is a yellowy or golden light.

Although it is not strictly anything to do with colour management, I want to discuss briefly about white balance, as it has a huge effect on the colour of light – and so is instrumental in why we colour manage. Unfortunately to talk of white balance, we also need to talk about how the colour of light is defined. There are misconceptions about this all over the net, so I think it is worthwhile delving into for a moment.

Let’s get the classification of light colour out of the way first. Everyone is most likely to have heard of the Kelvin scale, and it is this scale that is most popularly used to define the colour of a particular light. One of the errors I see most is getting the Kelvin scale the wrong way around, and there is a good reason for that, and it initially confused me too. So to provide a way of clarifying the Kelvin scale (where it applies to light colour), I will state how it is arrived at and why it is used. Ignoring why it is called the Kelvin scale and any references to absolute zero, (you can read about that elsewhere) the Kelvin scale is just another measure of heat, such as Celsius or Fahrenheit. If we were to take a solid bar of pure iron and heat it up, eventually it would start to glow, and if you have ever seen metal getting hotter and hotter you will know that it starts out with a red glow. As you increase the heat of the bar that glow will change to yellow, and as the heat is increased will turn white and if the temperature is increased further it will turn to a blue glow. I think you see where I am going with this!! If we want to find the “temperature” of a colour, we heat the iron bar until it matches that colour and note to what temperature (in Kelvin) the bar was to get the match. Thankfully we don’t have to do this, someone already did. Below are a few points of the Kelvin scale for colour.

For interest, 5000K is 4726.85 degrees Celsius or 8540.33 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you were to take your iron bar and heat it to 4700 odd degrees C, it would be the same colour as midday sun light, give or take a bit.

But wait a minute, I hear many of you saying (OK I don’t, but anyway), that’s the wrong way around! On my camera, or in my RAW or editing software when I set a lower colour temperature, say 3000K I get a blue image, and when I set a high temperature, say 8000K I get a yellow image. And this is where the confusion I spoke of earlier comes in, and where many mistakes are made. The explanation is simple – if you apply a colour balance to a RAW image, for example, and you set it to 3000K, what you are saying is that the original scene was lit with 3000K light, which as we know now is yellowish, so what the software is trying to do is NEUTRALISE the light colour by adding the opposite part of the spectrum, blue. Aha, I hear you say (OK, again I don’t.). This really serves to confuse, but the easiest thing is to remember the true definition of the Kelvin scale being the iron bar getting hotter and hotter. The other thing which fuels the confusion is that we talk or warm and cool light, and just to be really difficult warm light has a yellow hue and cool light has a blue hue – but on the Kelvin scale blue is hotter than yellow, so how can blue be cool!!!! Well I am afraid you just have to live with that. Normally we view warm things are yellow/red, as generally they are – but when super heated they turn blue – we just don’t get to see that very often.

So now that we all understand the Kelvin scale, let’s get to white balance, which is usually measured in K (degrees Kelvin). The reason why we are talking about white balance, and hence the Kelvin scale, in an article on colour management is that it is that very colour of light we want to maintain through to output. The last thing we want is to work hard on taking photos in the right “quality” of light, and then to have part of that quality, the colour, changed when it is output to print for example. Which leads me to one more thing I would like to say abut white balance, which really, really has nothing to do with colour management, but I think it is worth stating anyway. Since the advent of digital photography the photographer has an almost infinite control over white balance, i.e getting the colour of the light captured to match what was there. In the good ol’ days photographers selected the appropriate film (mostly daylight balanced) and then if needed used filters to adjust for any bias. These were generally only used in extreme circumstances like neutralising incandescent or fluorescent lighting. The problem now is that with RAW, especially, the photographer needs to set the white balance himself, or use techniques and tools such as the expo disc etc, and most of these techniques are based around neutralising the light colour. That’s fine, if what you want to do is ensure that the subject appears as if it were lit with white light, such as product shots where getting the true colours is important, but if what you mean to do is capture the golden hour light, why on earth would you then try to neutralise it? Sounds logical, but there is so much emphasis on getting a neutral white balance in photography these days that a lot of people are spending time and money on loosing the quality of light that existed in the actual scene. Just something to take into consideration when selecting white balance – set the white balance to ensure that the light colour presented is as it was, or as you interpreted it; and remember that the Kelvin scale in your software is working in the opposite direction to reality, in order to compensate.

Up until now we have discussed only the relevance of colour management on white balance, or the colour of the light in the image. We are now going to talk briefly about the other, and more general, reason we need to colour balance; and that is the intrinsic colour of the subjects in the photograph. The two overlap, as the colour of the light lighting a scene effects all the colours in it (hence it’s important and why it was discussed at length above), but if we imagine for a moment a scene lit with perfectly white light, as may be done in a studio, then every part of the scene will still have its own colour. Flash tones are notorious for being troublesome in this area. Incorrect flesh tones will absolutely destroy and image, but to a certain degree so will every other error in colour representation. If there is a green apple in your scene, you would generally want the image to show that the apple was indeed green, and that the shade and brightness of green are accurate. Its actual shade of green will of course vary as the colour of the light is varied, but we still want that overall colour represented accurately.

So, to summarise this part, we need to colour manage our photographs to ensure the true colours as seen when captured (or as adjusted in our interpretation) are faithfully reproduced when we view the photograph on any medium, be that computer screen or print.

Of course, it is not as simple as making sure what we capture is colour managed, as from capture to print there are a number of steps along the way, such as camera, monitor and printer, all of which need to maintain the colours. And this is where that actual need for colour managing our workflow comes in, and will be the subject of the next part of Colour Management for Photographers.

nimbyref:070906a Photo: Lake Coniston Jetty, nimby. Canon 5D.:endnimby

Images At A Decent Size Contd..

2006-09-05T06:47:00.000+00:00

Grrr, see that's the problem, once I have decided that something needs to be a certain way I can't stop. I am like the Terminator (no, really!). Once I had decided that the main images on this blog needed to portray the images in a half decent way, I am afraid hell would freeze over before I stopped attempting to accomplish it.

Yesterday I succeeded in getting the images to a more suitable size by using the fact that blogspot always stores a full size version on their server, even if they don't let you use it. I thought that would be and end to it, trouble is though that as you will have seen on yesterday's post update, I then noticed just how terrible the quality of these full size images are. Blogspot uses some heavy compression to keep the file sizes down, which results in a really mushy image - no good for a blog themed on photography me thinks.

So an alternative had to be found. Of course I could just link to proper images somewhere else but there are three problems with that. Firstly I want to keep it slightly automated, so that I don't have to frig around too much to make a new post. I want the intelligence in the template to do most of the work for me. Secondly, by just inserting the image in the post, the image would still need to be 400px wide max, as the posted data can only take up that much room to fit in the page design. Thirdly I don't want to hold the images on my own hosting, I want to keep this blog anonymous - hence nimby.

I solved the first two problems yesterday, I thought. By using data already created by blogspot I made the template work out where the full size version of each post's image was and displayed that full width. It also prevented any problems with the third issue. But, as discussed, the blogspot images are rubbish. With a capital "R". The only way to get around that is to host the images somewhere else. That not only presents issue three, but also then re-opens issues one and two.

The solution to where to host is pretty simple and quite interesting, for me. A quick search on free hosting brings up some amazing resources, it is unreal what you can get for nothing on the net. I plumped for 110mb.com which is quite outstanding, or appears to be so far. For free you get web hosting, you can also point domains there if desired, you get ASP, PHP, FTP etc etc etc. Basically everything you could want from a host, for nothing! There is a file size limit, but at 10MB that is not going to be an issue for this, and they are talking of increasing it to 150MB anyway! Loads of bandwidth, really seems too good to be true. We shall see how it goes. I may even host my next customer web site there, ya know so I can rake in a bit more profit.

So that was issue three resolved, again. Issues one and two were then just a question of thinking how best to automate the image being displayed. To keep it simple, you will now see a little section of text at the bottom of each post. This tells the template where to pick up the image from and displaying it full width is just a slight modification of the original javascript I did yesterday. I had to include some extra intelligence, so that it does not cause problems with my older posts which will not have the data to display the big image.

So, hopefully job done. And all well before hell froze over.

nimbyref:050906a Photo: Tank by Moonlight, nimby. Canon 5D.:endnimby

Images At A Decent Size

2006-09-04T18:55:00.000+00:00

Photo: nimby, Canon 5D

nimby, now with bigger images!!

Ok, so no big deal, but it had always bugged me that for a blog centred around photography (mostly), that this blog template was limited to images 400 pixels in their longest dimension. Landscapes were just about viewable, but upright images were too small. I finally decided to do something about it after posting the vacuum cleaner photo the other day. It really just doesn't work.

So then it took me another few days to actually get around to doing it. Now it is done. Sadly, with the way the blogspot works, I still need the usual image displayed too, so you get a big one and a little one of everything now, bonus! Also, as I needed to keep the image within the overall size of the blog, old images may be a little too big, and require scrolling, but images from now on should work much better.

And just in case anyone is interested, blogspot doesn't make the posted images available to you in your template. You need to be a little creative to find it and display it at the original size. If you wanna see how I did it, view the source of this page and the javascript is there for you to steal. There is no JS on these blogspot pages normally, so it is the only JS there.

UPDATE:-
Blimey! The JPG artifacting is pretty terrible. Nothing I can do about that, seems blogspot compresses them way down.

Photo Of The Week, By Other People #2

2006-09-01T09:33:00.000+00:00

Photo by Chris Weeks. Used here for editorial purposes.

Now we’re talking! In my opinion street photography is the holy grail of all photographic pursuits in terms of mastery. To get great street photos you need to be close to mastering ALL aspects of photography, and then be able to put them together in an instant. Doesn’t sound difficult? Try it yourself. However, to get even to the point of trying you have to overcome the awkwardness of intrusion, the embarrassment of being a voyeur (not literally on every occasion!), which is a tough hurdle to begin with.

OK, so that’s one paragraph burnt up in my new keeping it short ethos, treading carefully.

The photo above is a good example of what street photography is, but it is selected here not on it’s own merit alone, as there are surely better street photos out there, but because it was taken by Chris Weeks. Chris Weeks is a very successful PJ, but who’s true love lies in street. He has written an interesting ~~article~~ ~~treaty~~ ~~in your face account~~ essay on street photography, which can be viewed from the link below and is the subject of this ~~rambling~~ post.

Street Photography for the purist - by Chris Weeks

(You will need to click on the download link there to get the PDF)

I just want to give a few of my comments to his essay here, so as it is not seen that I agree entirely with what he says, for some of it is ~~an ego trip banter.~~ is not entirely in line with my feelings on the subject.

For a start, I would suggest you ~~should~~ could skip the forwards written by various other street photogs. They are pretty dull and all mostly say the same thing smacking of someone being rather chuffed to have been asked to write a forward and in their excitement wrote something very nice that says nothing. That will take you to page 49. ~~(Holy cow, that’s a serious amount of “Forwards”)~~

In fact even page 49, which is Weeks’ preface doesn’t get into the full swing of his in ya face, stuff it down ya throat style which Weeks’ adopts from page 50 onwards.

So, page 50 onwards is where it is at. Weeks’ style of writing here is almost prose like, and for me really works here. It gets quite rhythmic… ooops, starting to get into wind of a long nature again.

So, to keep it short, I agree with everything that Weeks’ says.

OK, so I don’t, and it won’t be that short. What I will do to keep it short ~~and oh so sweet~~ is tell you where I do not agree with him, or find something that I can ~~nit-pick~~ observe, or that I think is poignant.

For a start, Weeks’ theory that to take meaningful street photos you need to have an empathy with the subjects, “Because you have to love people. Street Photography is about sympathy, not hate. It is about community”, as Weeks states. Well, yes, I agree with that sentiment, but then I find that Weeks’ personal view of others is somewhat less understanding. “Trust me. Or don’t. Again, I don’t really give a flying fuck.” Hmmm, doesn’t really smack as a caring and sharing, sympathetic type?

One analogy he uses which I think is perfection is that of comparing street photography to golf, “Golf cannot be forced much like street photography cannot be squeezed as juice from fruit at will.” There are so many similarities between golf and photography in general, it is shocking. It is something that takes a lifetime to never master. It is fickle and usually lets you down when you need it most, and often delights when you least expect. I also found one line particularly humorous, and pretty much sums up how I ended up feeling about golf after my dabbling, “Like I had five hours to waste on a golf course with my friends getting all fucked up.” Bingo.

Right then, back to ~~slagging the man off~~ discussing some of my more negative criticisms of Weeks’ piece.

I think there is a fine line between what tool works best for a job and what tool you have to use to get the job done. Weeks repeatedly claims that you cannot participate in true street photography unless you are using a rangefinder, and goes on to say that the rangefinder better damn well be a Leica. I disagree – in a way. I understand his point, but I think it would be more accurate to say that using a rangefinder will result in a lot more successful street photos, and basically makes the whole process much easier. I don’t agree that you cannot take true street photos with anything else; a good street photo is a good street photo no matter how you get there. The points he makes as to why he believes that the rangefinder is the only tool for the job are spot on, for example the controls on rangefinders permit setting AND shooting from the hip, zone focusing (although older SLR lenses had them too ~~- why the bloody hell not now?~~) but I think that they just state why the rangefinder is a better tool for the job rather than showing why they are the ONLY tool for the job. To go into the Leica territory, in terms of taking photos, there is little to separate them from any other rangefinder with equal function (ignoring lenses, as I don’t really consider anything without an M mount worth considering). However, they are quieter and more robust than anything else, but that has little effect, in most situations, on the outcome of the photo. To be fair, Weeks says pretty much the same thing when discussing non-Leica rangefinders. He also gets wound up by digital photographers, “pumping the fuck out of your contrast is ugly and proves you don’t know what you’re doing…” suggesting that pumping up contrast of an image deteriorates its validity as a street photo. Hmm. If done correctly, I see little difference between that and choosing a high contrast paper to print from film onto or pushing/pulling the exposure/development, the overall result is the same and looking at most of Weeks’ photographs I would guess that most are the result of traditional darkroom techniques to increase contrast. (I deduce this from the fact that he mostly uses Ilford Delta films, which are not by their nature as contrasty as the resulting images.)

All in all though, a great read; especially if you are interested in street photography. Sections like his beating up on “fondlers” or “pixel peepers” rings so so true; or maybe it is just that I share his ~~downright contempt~~ negative feelings on such people. When he talks of the “fondlers hero” I assume he is referring to a certain Leicaphile whose surname is also linked to golf, ya know those little shots that you do near the whole, and for all the great work that this guy does in lens testing, somehow in the context of photography it all slips into place when Weeks says of him, “I think that the award for making hot Dutch girls look like shit should be awarded to this guy.”

Go read it.

~~Damn damn damn – that was too long again. Must try harder~~

Oh, and to make this post EVEN longer than it already is, I am going to post something else!!! In fact I might make this a regular addendum to my posts. It is called “What the Duck” and if you are photographically orientated it is superb. Check them out on Sweet Jelly.

Yawn, A Product Shot

2006-08-28T07:02:00.000+00:00

Taken with Canon 5D

I have been aware that my posts are steadily increasing in length, and I want to address that. Part of my reason in writing these posts is to understand the concepts I am discussing myself, and quite often writing them down tunes ideas that I have and provides me with a better understanding of how I view things. The downside is that through this written exploration there are often many avenues that I need to explore to conclude. This can end up looking ~~like waffle~~ too drawn out, so I shall instead ~~cut out all the shit~~ edit more carefully after the facts and conclusions are closer to being arrived at. Promise.

One of the other functions of this blog was to post the photos that I am taking of the moment. So the photo shown here is what I have been shooting recently, sadly that means it is a rather dull product shot, but that is what I have been shooting.

Now that I have posted my own shot, I am satisfied that the balance of my shots.vs.others has been kept, so I can now ~~do what I wanted to do but felt guilty for not posting my own photo for a long time and~~ get on with posting part two of “Photo Of The Week, By Other People”.

Photo Of The Week, By Other People #1

2006-08-21T08:06:00.000+00:00

Photograph by Paul Bishop. Reproduced here for editorial Purposes

The human psyche is a very strange thing when it comes to likes, dislikes, tastes for and objections against. Our preferences for certain things are a mixture of traits we are born with, together with experiences we have had, and as such they are generally outside of our conscious control giving us little idea why exactly it is we prefer this thing over that thing. If we stop to think about it logically (which we really don’t very often) we can rarely link any objective and logical reason why we like something, it just is that way. The interesting point in this is that we then believe it to be illogical if someone else does not share our taste for something, and the illogical does not sit comfortably in the human world of categorisation; it doesn’t fit neatly so there must be something wrong. This usually leads us to challenge the illogic.

To take an example, I really do not like apricots and although the simple statement, “No thank you, I don’t really like apricots.” should be enough to convey to someone offering apricots that I don’t enjoy eating them and I don’t want to eat any now, it rarely seems to finalise the conversation. The person offering will, on frequent occasions, find this illogical; they like apricots for no good reason so how can it be that another person does not like apricots for no good reason? This will result in a human knee-jerk reaction of them challenging you, “They’re lovely, just try a piece, you might really like it.” The issue here is not so much that you don’t like apricots, but that it seems illogical to not like apricots. Luckily this does not develop into a brawl whereby the challenger attempts to stuff apricots down your throat because the challenger then falls back on prior experience to provide some logic. The experience is that, although it is not in itself logical, some people just don’t like the same things as you and this knowledge provides a logical enough explanation to back down. To illustrate this point, have a think about younger children; who are yet to learn this knowledge. Children can treat with absolute horror another child (or adult for that matter) who does not share an instinctive or sub-consciously learned taste with them. Their incredulous reaction to this can last for long periods of time, and they will usually find it necessary to communicate this to others, and to treat the victim as if from another planet.

To put some context in all of that, I am going to write a little about a minor debate I had with a friend of mine a few days ago. The origin of the debate was a Google group thread on the photography of Rineke Dijkstra. The thread itself was not all that interesting (surprise), and contained the usual assortment of those that hated Dijkstra’s work and those that thought it was inspired, none of them bothered to really discuss why they had such opinions; and a number quoted some other peoples descriptions of the work. The fact that there were opposing views comes as no surprise because, as I discussed at the start of this essay, each person has their own opinions. What was quite thought provoking, or more - added weight to an existing notion I had, was that my friend thought that Dijkstra’s work was “bland”. The thing here is that I think it is important to separate the photograph from the photographed, is it the photograph that is bland or the subject of the photograph? Maybe I should set a reference of what bland means to me, and that is something which is lacking flavour, character or interest. In the case of Dijkstra, I think it would be hard to argue that her photographs are bland as they certainly have flavour; large sections of her work show a style which is instantly recognisable; and of course the style is a characteristic of her work. The fact that her photographs generate discussion, such as that particular thread, proves that her work generates interest. So what about the subjects? Probably her best known images are photographs of people taken on beaches, with strong front fill-lighting. Again, I don’t think any person is completely lacking character, and if anything these photos seem to show more insight to the subject’s character than a cheesy smiling portrait, which ultimately make everyone look the same. I don’t think anyone is fooled into believing that people spend their whole lives smiling, therefore cheesy smiling portraits are not particularly portraying an accurate image.

I really don’t want to give the idea that I am finding fault with stating that the images are bland – as I fully understand what my friend was trying to say to me. For what it is worth, Dijkstra’s photographs don’t do a great deal for me either, but describing them as bland doesn’t seem to fit well – and that interests me. It interests me on the level of thinking how it is best to describe photographs. One criticism I do have of many people viewing photographs is that they do not spend long enough looking at them before making their final judgement. As with so much of contemporary life we are looking for instant gratification, and are pretty impatient if it is not immediately forthcoming. I described in an earlier essay how I have become bored with typical “pretty” photographs. I think it is that immediate prettiness that so many people look for in photographs, and if it is not there they quickly move on. This further boils down to what purpose photographs serve to different people. If prettiness is what is required, what purpose does that serve? Is it a form of escapism, to view images of places or situations you would rather be in (this is the basis of nearly all advertising photographs), and hence the photographs that are too close to general actuality don’t server that purpose and are rejected? This might be the case but for whatever reason I find it unfortunate that a very large percentage of great photography is not given the time needed as it does not deal with the pretty.

There is another criticism I have of threads such as these, and this is that they are quite often based from images displayed through the internet. In the case of this Dijkstra thread this is particularly acute, as most of the images I found from Dijkstra on the net are very small, in fact only really categorised as large thumbnails. Now I am not saying that to appreciate every photograph you need to see large prints, but they do need to be of a size where you can get absorbed into the image, and really start to feel it. The necessary size of the print varies from image to image, some only work well if printed large, some work better a smaller size, but I would say there isn’t any photograph taken that doesn’t need to be viewed at least 12x8”. How one can draw conclusions on portraits where the expression on the face is not even visible is beyond me.

So what am I comfortable with, as a means of describing images such as Dijkstra’s? Well as I have already said, they are not pretty. I think that is fair. A word commonly used in photography criticism is “banal”, which although quite similar to “bland” in daily usage has some important differences when it comes to discussing the subject of photographs. By “banal” I mean something which is dull and unoriginal. Note that I am talking in this case of the photograph’s subject and not the photograph in its own right. In fact most of the photographs I am drawn to are of banal subjects. At the risk of edging into a discussion over “What is Art?”, which is a question without an answer, as it is different things to different people, as different times of the day; I think it is accurate to say that art, and particularly realism of which photography is a part (generally), can be made from bringing a focus or meaning to something which it does not, or is not seen to, have in every day life. These types of subjects are quite often banal and the more banal they are the more impact they have when put in a new perspective by juxtaposition or other creative intent. There is of course room in there to have banal photographs of banal subjects, and to draw a closure on my feelings over Dijkstra’s work, for me they are banal photographs of banal subjects. I find them unoriginal photographs as they seem to close to the work of Diane Arbus, but do not generate the same feelings or interest. They also, for my tastes, do not display the technical ability of Arbus.

All of which brings me to the photograph show at the top of the page. From an aesthetic and emotional perspective I enjoy this photograph for the tonal range, and the graphic nature. Although the photograph contains a lot of dirt and grime, the execution of the image is very clean. This is something that appeals to me and works hand in hand with the graphic lines; noting the majority of my own photographs are very graphic in nature. The lighting is superb, with the large area of deep shadow reduced to black and the touch of light on the wall behind giving the photograph depth and separating the vacuum cleaner from the rest of the image. You will notice that was the first time I mentioned the obvious subject, the vacuum cleaner. It is a banal subject, but by the way it has been photographed here it has been taken out of its usual context. There is also a touch of irony going on, a machine which sole purpose is to clean is found here in anything but a clean environment and itself covered in dirt. The cleaner also conjures up memories of a time when vacuum cleaners looked this way. A fairly obvious statement, but then think how differently they look now.

On a technical level I also appreciate this photograph. The exposure is absolute perfection, this is exactly the sort of light you would get in such a location, and immediately makes me sense the damp smell of the place. The depth of field has been considered to ensure that the background wall that adds so much to the image is sharp as well as the vacuum cleaner. As with many photographs of this type, the detail is all important, the human brain likes to wander around details. The sharpness and detail in the vacuum cleaner and the debris covering it give us the feeling that this cleaner has served well. The overall composition balances well, there is around half the frame in shadow and half in light, and the consideration to the composition is what has resulted in the graphic lines I spoke of before; the line in the floor leading in to the shadow, the handle of the vacuum cleaner picking up from there and leading us to the background.

All in all I think it is a nice, pleasing and well executed photograph. Sure it is a banal subject but, in my opinion, it is far from being a banal photograph – and it could never be bland. Naturally others will see it differently, some will find it bland or banal or both; that’s all good and to be expected. Luckily, through the experience that I wrote about earlier in this essay, I understand that it will not be to everyone’s tastes but I wont challenge that and it doesn’t alter my interest in it. This mentality also carries through to my own photography; the fact is you can’t please all the people all the time, and in trying to do so will most likely produce banal photographs. The reality is that there is really only one person you can be assured by pleasing with your images and that is yourself. By targeting that audience you are assured to please at least someone, and that makes the photograph taking exercise all the more enjoyable. It is quite likely that if an image pleases you, it will also appeal to others sharing that taste. My only request is that viewers take a few moments to really look at this, and any other photograph, rather than dismissing it with a fleeting glance.

Sadly due to my limitations on this blog I am contributing yet another undersized reproduction of the print, but in this case I think the size is just large enough to make the image work. A slightly larger version can be seen by clicking on the image.

Early on in this essay I suggested that tastes also vary with time, I cannot say whether I would have always liked this photograph, or that I always will. I think it is likely, but time changes many things. Who knows, I may one day develop a taste for apricots.

iView Catalogued Date Script

2006-08-16T10:45:00.000+00:00

iView Cataloged Date Script (for the US). As a slight break from the usual format of this blog, I am going to do something to actually benefit others, well have the slightest possibility to. The reason for this is that there maybe a number of other iView users out there wishing to have this functionality in iView as I wished, but are unable to find an existing solution on the internet ; as I did. Hopefully by leaving this here it will get picked up by the search engines and provide a solution to those seeking it.

The Problem
I used to use Extensis Portfolio for my digital asset management (DAM) and found that while it provided a very broad range of functions, its overall UI was poor and not particularly pleasant to use. Most of the dialogues reminded me of software circa Windows 3.1 – development took the form of adding function through yet more nasty dialogs. None of this made its operation particularly intuitive and, although improved with V8, I was still not all that impressed with it. I tried out iView mediaPro and was immediately more at home with its UI – and its common sense approach to layout and dialogs; it is just fairly apparent how to do something and doesn’t require delving through various nasty dialogs to do so. So I migrated.

Those 3 words, “so I migrated”, wrap up about 2 days solid work on devising a way to export the Portfolio database and import it into iView mediPro. I am not going to get into that here as it is a painful memory, but as I remember it I did eventually create some XML and VBA scripts to convert one to another. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I will dig them out.

So, anyway, back to the point. There of course are some disadvantages to iView; as with all competing software the ideal seems to require a mixture of all offerings. Initially iView’s biggest disadvantage was that of speed, but this seems to have been greatly improved with the releases up to 3.1.1 to a point where it is now fine. There were also some scrolling issues but I have not witnessed these since installing v3.1.1. These afore mentioned issues are more generic to the package as a whole compared with Portfolio, but there are some functionality issues too. I found that iView’s auto cataloguing features far inferior to that of Portfolio. Initially this may sound trivial, but it can be a real pain. Let me explain. In Portfolio I could set the software up to automatically update specific folders and sub-folders which avoids the issue of forgetting to do so manually. iView is also capable of the same function, however the difference comes in the visibility of exactly what it has done whilst you were not involved. Portfolio offers a number of tools to see what cataloguing activities have been carried out, so allowing you to complete any metadata work on them. iView doesn’t offer any way of seeing what it has catalogued, other than the fact that by default it appends all new (automatic or manual) catalogued images to the end of the thumbnails. This is risky, in that if you manipulate the library or re-sort, those newly catalogued items will find their way to their correct location in the library – making it extremely difficult to find. For this specific reason I felt unable to allow iView to use any automatic cataloguing; instead having to carry out all the cataloguing manually and step by step so that I could keep track of what it was importing. This turned into a bit of an issue, as I was forgetting to update some files and folders. I decided that I had to find a way of letting iView import any and all new items in my main image folders, but still be able to find them and work with them at any time. Portfolio offers a fairly simple mechanism to do this, with its more advanced search dialogue you can specify to show items catalogued between two dates; and that is all that was needed. Upon looking in iView for similar functionality I found that while it does offer to “Show Last Import” this only shows the last folder catalogued. This means that if a number of folders were updated in an auto import then you will not be able to highlight any but the last. iView also offers a search key based on catalogue date, it only allows searching for items catalogued on, before or after a specified date. This doesn’t work for my purposes as if I wanted to show all items catalogued in the last week, there is no way to do that. One ray of hope that this dialog did provide however, was that each item in the database must be date stamped with the date, and hopefully time, that it was catalogued.

The Solution
A quick look in iView’s object model reference showed that indeed it does store, for each item, a catalogued date/time stamp. So it was just a question of writing a script that would look at each file in the library and see if this stamp matched a set of criteria that I could specify, and then do something with those files so that I could immediately identify them and allow me to work on them.

So that I could confidently capture any automatically catalogued files, I needed to allow the script to find files catalogued over various time frames, as only looking back one day might miss some catalogued the previous day, but there would be times when I really only wanted to see that last set of items catalogued.

I also wanted to do something other than just select the files it found matching the criteria. This would work fine and allow me to do what I needed with them manually, but if I was writing an automated script it really should extend to cover all functions that can be automated. I decided that a perfect solution would be to create a new Catalog Set specific to that search and add the matching items to it.

The screenshot at the top shows the end result of running the script. It has created a new Catalog Set named with a date/time stamp and how far back the search went. From here these can be worked on easily without fear of losing track of them, and then the Catalog Set simply deleted once you are happy they are complete. (The files themselves remain unchanged.)

Once the script is installed (see below), it can be run on any catalogue and will initially ask you the time frame over which you want it to match criteria. It will then run through the entire catalogue and if the item’s added to catalogue date falls within the criteria it selects it, if it doesn’t it deselects it. It is necessary to deselect so to avoid any items selected prior to running the script turning up in the results. Once it has finished it will ask you whether you want to add them to a new Catalog Set, I don’t know why you wouldn’t but the option is there. Note: You will need to have Catalog Sets visible in the Catalog Fields section to see and work with any Catalog Sets.

And that is it. Feel free to do with it as you wish.

Install
The script is written with VBS, so Mac users might have to convert it to JS or AS. To install it simply create a new folder in the iView plug-ins scripts folder (nominally C:\Program Files\iView MediaPro3\Plug-ins\Scripts\ on a Windows platform, Mac will be much the same) called My Script (or anything you like) and save this script file into that new folder. Upon restarting iView mediPro, this new folder will appear under the Scripts menu item, and the script will be available. Just click on it to run.

Finally, for any coders, I know it isn’t that clean. Don’t bother me about it.

Gotta Love Photography

2006-08-14T15:46:00.000+00:00

Taken with Nokia N80 Phone Camera

Right, let’s get this back on track. After spending a number of days in the company of others, the risk of social integration was a real one. The solution was simple, bugger off for a few days solitary confinement in a car, with only a camera and laptop for company.

The further you travel, the better your photography. It is a fact – written in stone. Everyone knows it, no-one disputes it. Some say it is due to putting yourself in unfamiliar surroundings allowing you to see more clearly the natural beauty of your surroundings, which, in your usual habitat go unnoticed by your disregardful oblivion. “Bollocks”, I say. It is clearly due to the fact that after travelling for a full day with the express purpose of taking photographs, then spending 48 hours alone in a car with your equipment, with nothing else to think about other than taking photos, you are in a pretty good shape to do so – and you are going to be pretty sick upon failure.

Sadly failure in this case is almost a certainty. Old Murphy was probably munching on a cheese and pickle sandwich, chuckling over the dreadful outcome of some works he had previously been sticking his oh so broad spanner into, when he noticed me on the M1 motorway. Him with the all seeing eye of disruption was instantly aware that I was on a mission. It was as plainly obvious to him as a coal miner in a Tipp-Ex factory. He spotted the gas stove, the camera, the tripod, the sleeping bag, the look of anticipation on my brow, my general happy-go-lucky – whistling to the radio – this is what life’s all about demeanour. For old Murphy, it was like a red rag to a bull, I had to be knobbled. The only question was how?

Meanwhile, there I was the unknowing focus of Murphy’s wicked attentions and joyfully heading towards some dramatic landscapes. The radio reminded me that this was officially the hottest July on record shortly after I had stocked up with water. The food supplies were sorted, the water was sorted and the agenda was open – I had no reason to return to civilisation for days.

I reached my first potential location late afternoon, and it was looking good. The sun would rise and once clear of the surrounding hills would light my chosen scene perfectly. Hell, I might even get a bit of ground mist for good measure. This was it; I was going to be rewarded for my effort. There were a good few hours left of sunlight so I continued the location hunt. Finally with the sun saying its farewell for the evening and having my location for the AM set I decided to set-up for a potential sun-rise shot. You know the kind of thing, lots of colour in the sky, partially silhouetted, really over done cliché stuff. Still why not – it was there and I had nothing better to do. With that in the bag, it was time to eat and get some rest.

Driving back to the location I had decided to sleep, due to its close proximity to my early morning shoot location, I couldn’t help notice how different it looked when the light was gone, and so too were all the people. In fact as I approached the sleep location I realised that there probably wasn’t another single person within a 5 mile radius. It looked different alright. Once parked up I generally sorted out the living quarters, which involved moving all the camera equipment to one side to allow enough room for the sleeping bag. Next on the agenda was some food. When all you have on your mind is getting photos, food ranks down there with breathing. Yep you need it but as long as you get it, who cares? So the supplies taken were 10 MRE packets of baked beans with processed sausages. This didn’t make the choice of what to eat a problem. The stove was quickly assembled in the pitch black, with the assistance of a Maglite (surely there should include some sort of teeth handle with these?), and the MRE thrown into the pot. It was just at that point that I realised again that I was miles from anywhere, in the middle of a forest, and I couldn’t see further than my hand. I probably spent as much time looking over my shoulder as I did at staring at the pot of water – which of course appeared to take the sort of time to boil that new species take to evolve. I was mighty glad to get back inside with my tepid MRE, throw the food down my throat and get in the sleeping bag. I feel asleep, sometime around 12AM, wondering what the strange scratching noises were.

The alarm went off at 3.45AM, and I couldn’t believe it but I actually felt comfortable. The Spork stuck to the side of my face was barely noticeable. I remembered falling asleep to the sound of scratching, but now there was another sound - a sort of dripping sound. No! I couldn’t be! Sure enough, Murphy, spurred on by the fact that we were in the middle of a heat wave, had decided to drop some rain on me. How could the weather change so much in 4 hours, when it hadn’t changed at all in the previous 4 weeks? I immediately jumped out of the sleeping bag, threw on some clothes (the clothes) and crawled from the car to asses the situation. Yep, it was bad. No stormy clouds, just a heavy blanket of off white grey. Surely it would clear? I made my way down to the shoot location and set-up, hoping that there might be some breaks in the cloud – hell it might even work out good. It was getting lighter, as one would expect, but the thick clouds were just getting brighter grey. I knocked up another MRE of beans and sausages, cup of tea to go with it, all piping hot this time with the comfort of light. Still no breaks in the clouds. I guess I waited there 2 hours, certainly enough time for two more cups of tea and even enough time to ponder about another helping of beans and sausages. It wasn’t looking good. I shot off a few frames (well I was there anyway) and eventually decided it wasn’t going to get any better.

Still optimistic I decided to pack up and drive around looking for other locations. The more I drove the worse the weather got. At one point I actually drove up into the clouds. I was feeling the onset of slight disappointment. The only thing for it was to head north to a completely different location and hope the weather cleared on the way – maybe even get some evening shots and certainly get ready for morning shots the following day. So, with hopes in hand I headed for the Lake District.

By the time I reached Windemere the weather was showing a better side. In fact it was almost perfect, nice fluffy cumulous. The routine began again, scouting for locations. I was a little quicker to get parked up, and although I had spent all my time scouting and didn’t capture any shots, I was ready for the morning. Another MRE and lights out at 11PM.

I decided to not open my eyes when the alarm went off, instead just listened. Nope, not a sound of rain. So I had a little pear out. Hmmm. Difficult to tell, only the barest hint of light. The gas stove cringed when I stuck another pot of water containing a baked beans and sausage MRE on it, then I walked down to the shoot location. What light there was confirmed that the cloud was back. It wasn’t quite as business-like as the previous day, so maybe it would offer opportunities. The MRE was consumed, the tea was brewed and decanted into an insulated bottle and the camera gear was picked up. Back at the shoot location I set-up and tucked into the tea – and waited. I waited some more, and finally, for about 10 seconds there was the barest break in the clouds. I shot off two frames and it was gone.

I decided that I was not really going to be rewarded for my efforts and patience, so I packed up and decided to take a scenic route on the way home. The weather never really did break, although through continued patience I did manage to grab a couple of shots in the brief moments when the sun penetrated the clouds.

Murphy 3278 : Me 0

(Some shots from this trip are on my main site)

Hats Off

2006-08-11T16:18:00.000+00:00

Taken with Canon 5D

I have watched the Tour de France on TV probably about as much as the next person and I suspect my level of cycling experience falls in the lower bracket of the average group. So let’s say that cycling doesn’t find a place in my own personal nirvana – and it would probably take me a while to consider taking it up even when I have conquered the vast array of interests currently floating around in my grey ether. Having said all that, I have a great admiration of the kind of raw determination that saw Scott reach the South Pole. (The fact he didn’t make it back is irrelevant – as in Scott’s words, “But we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen”.)

I am sure you will agree that you could not appreciate the hardships and extreme circumstances Scott had to endure unless you had been there – and if you had been there you would not be reading this now (for a number of reasons…). Being there is in no way substituted by media portrayal or imagination.

What first struck me as we idled up to our viewing location at the base of L’Alpe d’Huez was the atmosphere of competition. Apprehension hangs in air like tropical humidity; you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t hear it but boy, can you feel it. It’s as if the pinpoint focus of thousands of people sweeps you along like a current towards one point – the finish. When I looked in the direction from which the riders were coming I felt uneasiness, as if I was trying to go against the flow, which unconsciously forced me to turn around and look up, and up, to the finish. Strangely, from where I was located I couldn’t even see the finish but I knew it was there, it was an unseen beacon of accomplishment.

It was a baking hot day, the kind of dry heat that seems to wick all the moisture from your mouth with every spoken word. We were settled down in our position around midday, which meant that the sun was high in a northern hemisphere summer sky beating straight down, forcing us to stand flat backed against a wall in an attempt to stay within the thin line of shadow it afforded. Ever since I had a camera failure in Malaysia from sweat running down my finger and into the shutter release I have been cautious in hot and sweaty situations. This was one of those situations – we had driven 4 hours in an air-conditioned car and after 30 minutes in this heat the sweat was running. It was about this time I re-calibrated my respect for the guys who had covered a similar distance that morning, in the same conditions, by sheer muscle power, driven by their determination to reach the objective.

Anyone who knows me will most likely admit that I am not the fittest person they know; in fact talk of my fitness may even bring a smile to their face. The fact that my brother was one of cyclists this day brought even closer to me what extreme levels of fitness and determination are necessary to run with this crowd. I am aware of the levels of training that were put in, not only for this particular event, but in general for the years prior. I can quite honestly say I cannot really imagine fitness at these levels. More important than that though is the level of determination I know my brother possesses, just one look at him would have terriers conceding defeat in a rabbit tug of war. Like I said, I knew this beforehand but to be put in the context of this event and to get a taste of the stuff required filled me with pride.

My role was to photograph, and photograph I did. I have around 100 great shots of cyclists I have never met before and am unlikely to ever see again. Then, as Murphy would have it, I was distracted the exact moment my brother cycled into view and to make matters worse he was one of only a handful of cyclists that rode directly behind another rider in relation to where I was located. By the time I got a clear shot, and had re-zoomed, re-focused and flicked the shutter speed up he was directly opposite me. Unfortunately I hadn’t had enough time to zoom out fully and at this point was still too long and so I caught an interesting crop! Somehow it didn’t seem to matter that I hadn’t caught “the shot”; I was there and had felt it.

It is highly unlikely (on the same scale as Elvis really working in a fish shop) that I will ever attempt any such display of effort, or even consider it; I am just not made of the right material. All the same, being there, wrapped in that atmosphere and feeling that heat that I found a new level of respect.

My hat is off to you.

In Betweens

2006-08-02T08:43:00.000+00:00

Taken with Canon 5D

I am writing this in transit back to the HQ, where the relative level of activity will drop so severely as to mimic that of someone suffering a fatal heart attack during a particularly boisterous session of sex. To maintain some resemblance of order, I will continue the posts as they were planned during the remainder of my stay in Europe. I had organized in my head each post, although sadly time (and internet access) was too limited to actually get the posts done.

A particular phenomenon occurs when visiting the mother land, which I believe is common to all. That is that unless you are doing something specific, you have nothing at all to do. You don’t really feel this when you are on holiday, as they are usually taken for the specific purposes of doing little, and you usually find yourself in suitable places to do nothing in. However, when you are a visitor to your own country, times arise when you are in between planned activities and you find yourself at a loose end. You don’t own any property so you are not surrounded by little things that would otherwise absorb this time, and most people are unavailable due to work responsibilities. Sure, you can spend these times shopping, or visiting galleries and so on, but there are days when that just doesn’t fit the bill.

After returning from Dartmoor, and before heading to France, I had a couple of days such as this. So what do I find myself filling this time with? Well, inspired by new regulations on passport photographs that I had read during my own application for a new passport, I set about trying to make a set of self-portraits in a passport style that would be so ridiculously unsuitable as to cause offence. It may sound strange, but there are people out there, whom are quite content to blow a couple of hours playing with off-camera flash, and I am one. I am so pleased with the results of my little shoot I am considering sending them in with a bogus passport application.

I also had time to consider some things that strike me about my country-folk. One thing that immediately stood out is they way that even in a very busy street no one ever looks at anyone else. It is as if nobody is aware that there are any other human beings around, there is no eye contact, and people march around with a sense of purpose as if contemplating life changing decisions – permanently. It is a strange contrast to what I am used to where, almost in stark contrast, people can be annoyingly interested in you as you walk down the street. Quite often the exchange ends with a smile, but even when no smile is forthcoming, you are left with the feeling that you are sharing that part of the universe with other human beings, who recognize your existence.

So, with an obvious over abundance of time on my hands, I began to prepare to head for

France

, to take in a photographic overload of potential shots, and unfortunately be unable to take hardly a shot.

The Other Escalator

2006-07-14T23:34:00.000+00:00

As much as I like certain parts of London, it is not the city I think of when feelings of home tug. Although I spent only a few days a year in Somerset and Dartmoor when I was a child, these areas and coastal towns instil in me feelings of being at home and comfort. The photograph showing part of the seawall in Lyme Regis is so quintessentially English it reflects all the images that my mind conjures when seaside towns are mentioned; which is odd as I had not previously been to Lyme Regis.

However, before my fleeing from London occurred, I had some other city type things to take care of. First on my list was a trip to the Photographers’ Gallery, to take in the two exhibitions currently running there. As mentioned in my last post, none of the exhibitions currently running really grabbed my eye or generated high excitement but the fact that it was possible for me to visit any exhibitions was reason enough to feel chirpy to do so.

The first of the exhibitions running at the PG were photographs by Czech photographer Markéta Othová, entitled “Pardon?”. Erm, I am assuming that the “Pardon?” refers to what she said on the phone when the show was being arranged, and the organisers believed that was her title, because the photographs, mostly, look like that from someone who has no idea what to produce. Of course I am being a little facetious here, and no doubt a great deal of purpose is involved in producing these photographs, but I can’t help feeling that it is another example of trying so hard to avoid beautiful but clichéd landscapes that results in photographs which are just plain dull. It is quite a small exhibition and the majority of prints shown are these exceptionally boring black and white landscapes of non-descript fields, produced in low resolution then printed fairly large, leaving you with soft, muddy (tonally rather than brown stuff) scenes. To exaggerate the feeling of drabness (from my point of view, I suspect there is a more heroic meaning) the prints are not mounted in anyway, with the paper itself being nailed to the wall with small tacks. Mixed in with these landscapes are a few photographs of other subjects which are genuinely interesting, and to my eye so much more receptive to the fuzzy B&W treatment. One thing I did notice was the speed at which other gallery floaters passed through, with none really stopping to take in the prints for any amount of time. I did scour each photograph to try and find a hook, but failed.

Moving next door, the offerings took a couple of large steps closer to what I think are interesting and appealing photographs. A good selection of prints from Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi are nicely block mounted at the front of the gallery, while in a separate media room at the rear a looping projected display shows other images, accompanied by music written and played by a friend of Miss Kawauchi. By necessity you look at the mounted prints (you could of course walk past them blind-fold to the media room, but why?), and while none are really earth shattering from an originality point of view, they are very well executed images with interesting composition. The photographs hanging either side of the entrance corridor are generally crisp and saturated still lifes, some fairly close up, but all sharing a feeling of equilibrium in nature, and the Zen-like we are surround by. One of the prints is larger than most of the others and shows a turtle swimming in crystal clear dappled water. Although hardly earth shattering from a subject or composition point of view, the lighting and colour are extremely attractive and make for a pleasing photograph. From here on in, the material starts to lose my interest. The back wall supports a collage of smaller images, which appear to have no coherence at all, which would be fine but the subjects and style are so wildly different as to make you wonder if you are observing the whole collection of photography from Miss Kawauchi’s life on one wall. You can almost see the progression of here photographic experience, and a style forming which develops into the style seen in her larger prints. This feeling of progression is lost when you pass on into the media room with the projected images and musical backing. To put it boldly these are the images of someone’s family over a fairly lengthy period of time, that only really offer any interest as it happens to be a Japanese family, not something most visitors to the Photographers’ Gallery would find everyday. Of course the photographs are probably better composed than the average family member would produce, as the photographer is somewhat more proficient, however in some way I find these types of photographs more interesting when the composition is more wild and unpredictable. I have no idea if it was intentional, but after sitting through the entire loop (around 20 minutes) I noticed that there did appear to be some reference to the cycle of life. There were a number of pictures of an elderly male family member, during family gatherings, later in a hospital bed and finally photographs showing his funeral. Mixed in with these images were photographs of young born children, which, as the presentation appeared to be in random order and following no timeline, provided an interesting balance. I maybe being a little harsh of this presentation, as it is stated by the photographer that these are nothing more than personal photographs of her family, and although they did provide some interest, I think I may have kept them private.

So, with a few galleries in the bag, and a re-acquaintance with some of the lovely photo equipment shops in London (and impressively little money spent), it was time to hit the roads and head for Dartmoor. If there is one feeling that I am always left with when visiting Dartmoor, it is that I would like to spend the rest of my life photographing it. I only wish I could.

Looking For A Way Out

2006-07-06T01:14:00.000+00:00

There comes a time in every ex-pat’s life when a trip to the motherland is called for. Apart from the hideous amount of funds this can absorb, I find it less traumatic than many other ex-pats with whom I have spent time jousting Blighty from afar. My time is now. (In a factual rather than prophetic way.)

Somewhere near the top of my list of things that I feel I miss out on while out of the oh so developed world, are photograph galleries. I tend to buy very few magazines these days, as photograph magazines are, by and large, full of regurgitated articles on digital sharpening; and non-photography magazines tend to just make me want to spend money. My one exception is Black and White Photography magazine. Apart from being an exceptionally good ol’ mag, it includes a comprehensive listing of exhibitions, shows and galleries, which every month makes me think how nice it would be to go and see some photographs how they are meant to be; printed big and hanging on walls. Naturally this trip would be my chance to get in some gallery action.

After surviving the journey that just seems to last forever, and never gets any easier, a quick trip to the local magazine pusher landed me a fresh copy of B&W. I immediately turned to the exhibition pages to plan my attack of the galleries. It turned out Mr. Murphy, the patron saint of mucking things up, has been up to his old tricks again. During the times that I am thousands of miles away from any possibility to take a quick peak at the ever so interesting exhibitions sprawled across the pages of B&W magazine, there are oodles of compelling shows doing the rounds. Now that I am within a 10 minute tube ride the offerings are somewhat less appealing. It’s not that I am not interested in going to see some unknown (to me) photographers work, but I was hoping for maybe just one big name to go and pay homage to. Still, there is plenty on offer to see what’s doing the rounds.

First on the list (read closest) was “Nonsuch”, an exhibition of photographs by Steffi Klenz, presented at Photofusion in Brixton. Now, I am going to digress a little here, so bare with me. I would classify myself as quite well travelled, having visited and lived in most corners of the world, some of which have less than perfect reputations for safety. So I found it rather difficult to swallow that of all these places, including those where bandits with machine guns are commonplace, Brixton would rank up there in terms of unease. I guess that it is a little unfair to wash Brixton with this statement and I am sure that, just as any district, I was just unfortunate to walk the street having the bad hair day. I did find it rather ironic though, to feel on edge so close to my home after returning from locations so widely viewed as dangerous.

OK, digression over. Back to “Nonsuch”.

The background information sheet states the following regarding this Steffi Klenz exhibition: “At first glance, these seemingly unexceptional images could be mistaken for a documentary portrayal of an ordinary town.” I would have to agree with that statement, and would say further that the opinion stays firm after the second and third glance. However, when you are looking at these photographs, printed fairly large, you feel that something is missing; and it is. There are no people or even signs of human existence in these photographs. The subjects of these photographs are the buildings of Poundbury, which is a newly created town in rural England. It may be that many of these buildings remain empty, as it is clear from the photographs that the construction has only recently been completed. With this type of subject, especially when printed large, I would really liked to have seen a good technical approach, but for my eye these photographs left something to be desired. The depth of field is quite shallow, and the fine detail in the prints is left wanting. I am not sure what type of camera was used, but these do not appear to have been taken in a large format which would have permitted movements to provide front to back sharpness and also provided the fine detail seemingly missing. So what I was left with were some fairly average photographs of residential dwellings, minus the people. I assume the message here is the lack of human evidence but, for me, that alone was not enough. It would be interesting to see some further development on the theme, with residents being photographed with their new homes. I believe this would make an interesting statement on how all the buildings were made equal, whereas their occupiers are an eclectic mix. It maybe that Poundbury attracts only people of a similar type, again this would be interesting to see. Empty streets do not say much to me – except that they were probably taken in the early morning, which the lighting bares out.

After rather quickly legging it back to the train, I got caught up in the mass exodus that is rush hour. It should be noted that having so recently come from such a different social environment, that the extreme contrasts make any observations all the more prominent, whereas in reality the differences are probably not so stark. That said I find city life here quite formulaic. Life seems to be a means to an end and to be travelled as efficiently as possible. Of course I know that this is only an image portrayed by the way the underground train forces its passengers to act as if under a spell, the trance like state in which they embark and disembark the train, the temporary hibernation as they are gently rocked and the up-tempo march towards the exit upon arrival. It makes you wonder how many are looking for a deeper way out than the sign suggests. No? Well it made me wonder, so I took the photo.

Amano a Amano

2006-06-23T17:38:00.000+00:00

Section of new 30 Gallon Tank, 3 hours after planting. Canon 5D

“…a deep love for Nature, natural scenery, and the desire to have a piece of it in ones home, is a concept that exists in all human beings, irrespective of culture. The Nature Aquarium began as an aquaristic response to this desire. It is an art form, like painting, gardening or photography, in which it requires a person to create a natural ecosystem, in all its natural beauty and efficiency, in a glass aquarium.” – Takashi Amano

If I had to name the two things which I spend (waste?) the most time pondering, wondering, dreaming, planning, reading and generally absorbing my life they would be photography and aquascaping. It wasn’t until I read this statement above by Takashi Amano, a man who holds an almost god-like status in the planted aquarium tank world, that I realised how closely the two are related.

I believe that Amano says it pretty completely in his short statement, but what really struck me was not the passing commonality, but the almost identical motive, thought process and production of photography and natural aquarium keeping; the only real tangible difference being the medium. Cameras are also a lot easier to keep – they tend to survive quite well in a bag with no food for weeks on end. I guess I should clarify by stating that I am referring to landscape photography, as other forms of photography have other motives; but for me the whole purpose of landscape photography is to capture a slice of our environment, in its most emotive light and composition. Once captured I can view this photograph within my own dwelling at any time I chose and re-experience the feeling of being there, of witnessing the beauty of the natural environment. The motive and desire to keep a nature aquarium is almost identical. There are similarities too in how fastidious the photographer and aquarist are in ensuring that the lighting correctly mimics that experienced in the wild (only bad lighting in a photograph is rarely life threatening) and that the composition accurately portrays the slice of nature that is the subject. Photographers often “garden” a shot to remove (or add – yikes!) items from the field of view to ensure the right balance and message. (Of course there are others who strictly refuse to make any changes, Steve Johnson for example refused to remove a Coke can from a mountain scene in one of his huge scanning back images. In my mind a step to far in ethics). Even the final result of each activity are not dissimilar – the photograph hanging on the wall, the tank sitting against the wall; both very often rectangular, only one is live and multidimensional.

So with this realisation of association in hand, you would imagine that a lot of aquarists photograph their tanks – and they do, only badly in most cases. The reason for this is that it is not as easy as one would think. I have taken a number of aquarium shots – and can verify that unless you use the right equipment and techniques you are on to a loser. In ye olde days of film it was considerably more troublesome due to colour balance. Planted aquariums quite often use unusual lighting to promote growth – with colour temperatures varying it is tricky to balance daylight film with the lights available. The arrival of digital has eased this with the ability to balance the colour temperature after the shoot, but still requires careful filtering when mixing strobe and ambient light. Amano takes most of his own photographs, and is also very talented in this field. I would in fact go as far to say that his photography has done as much for his aquascaping business as the aquariums themselves; after all this is what most people see. His extremely successful equipment company, ADA, has afforded him the large format and strobe equipment he uses to produce his superb aquarium images. This is a man for whom anything less than perfection is unacceptable.

Although I do not possess the experience or equipment of Amano, I do however hope to get a lot more practice in, and see how close I can get to his standards. I am in the middle of arranging a deal with an aquascaping company to provide photography and a web site for their products and services, with the photographs also being used in their catalogue. So even if I cannot afford to buy all the Amano gear they sell, I can hang a photo of it on my wall – and give the fish something to dream about.

And On The 7th Day I Created The Universe!

2006-06-13T14:15:00.000+00:00

Earbud photo taken with Canon 5D

A few months ago I was laying in the bath reading a magazine (as one does), the title of which escapes me, when I noticed a photograph of an iPod with the "earbuds" lying on top. It suddenly struck me how much an earbud resembles the USS Enterprise...

This kind of quirkiness is right up my street and I immediately decided I would photograph an earbud and put it in a space setting. As I mentioned, that was a number of months ago and although doing other things in the meantime, the idea has stayed with me. The main reason for not doing it earlier was a need to create a suitable space backdrop - as I don't have access to the Hubble Space Telescope!! Whereas, taking a photograph of an earbud is not all that challenging.

In the end it proved to be the case that creating a realistic star field with all the trimmings is not all that trivial. Although not counting, I would estimate that it took about 5-6 hours Photoshop work to complete the space scene shown above. Another slight issue was that I decided that I wanted it BIG. I knew I could take a large image of the earbud - and I wanted to be able to print it up to about one meter square - only at that size can you see the detail in the background. This meant working with a canvas size of 10,000x10,000 pixels. Needless to say on occasion this reduced my PC to a crawl. As this was my first attempt at a deep space location, I scanned the Net for various real images from space, and duplicated what I saw in Photoshop. I also ended up scanning a leaf to create a texture brush for the main planet. It is strangely pleasing to create whole galaxies, in a megalomaniac kind of way!

Then came the easy part, photographing the earbud (kindly donated by my girlfriend). The only tricky part there was keeping sweat away from the camera and subject as it was a baking hot day (around 40°C) and the air conditioning could not be used as it blew the hanging earbud all over the place. It was also the first time I have shot tethered with the 5D - which turned out to be a godsend, not having to hunch over the camera I could hold the reflectors in place and trigger the shutter at the same time - note the lighting, adjust without having to move.

Some more Net crawling in the land of Star Trek (it seems the internet was created for Trekkies) to check out how their engines "work", and some time re-creating in Photoshop. Actually that was harder than expected, due to the fact that the cable had to be cloned out (I doubt my cutting the cable would have met with enthusiasm), and the inner engine bay created. It can't really be noticed here, but when printed the inside of the engine bay can clearly be seen, so something had to be done. Making that more complicated was the fact that when I created it there was no light coming from the engine, so I had to make it just dark enough to have detail that would then be brightened when the engine flame was added. That done it was time to add the actual flame - in true Star Trek blue.

Then it was just a case of font matching and adding the text - and to try to see if a motion blur worked. Still not sure about that, but decided to leave it in.

The things I do!

Ultimate Convergence

2006-06-04T08:40:00.000+00:00

Quite by coincidence the subject of my post Epiphany #3012 has also been the subject elsewhere in the internet since writing.

First up came an article by Michael Reichmann entitled "When Pretty Isn't Enough". Having been a long time admirer of Michael's photography and his writing at the Luminous Landscape, I feel somewhat satisfied in my own conclusions - even though his photography is much more accomplished than mine.

In addition to Michael's article, and again I believe not related directly, there have this week been some related posts at Mike Johnston's site, The Online Photographer. As with Michael Reichmann, Mike is a superb writer of photographic pursuits and, although possessing a somewhat more educated eye in the world of the arts than I, appears to be a kindred spirit in terms of views on photographic subject. Although most of the postings, and uncommonly even most of the comments, are very well thought out and put together, there are two that relate specifically to my earlier post mentioned above. The first was contributed by Paul Butzi, entitled "Distrust of Beauty", which presents his concerns for the extreme reaction to the reluctance to shoot typically aesthetic scenes, in other words the trends of only shooting the un-attractive. Mike himself made a post, entitled "And Speaking of Definitions" a few days after Paul's, in which he expresses his opinion on the importance of truth and honesty rather than some indefinable beauty.

My point here is not to proximate myself with these guys, as all of them have infinitely more experience in writing, the photographic business and as photographers, but it in some way confirms to me at least that I am not alone in my beliefs and that the subject is one worthy of discussion.

Empty Deck Chairs

2006-06-01T10:49:00.000+00:00

It’s strange, I live in a beach town and yet there is hardly anyone to be seen on the beaches. In fact the people that you do see there are usually locals, munching on chicken bones before tossing them onto the, already grey with grim, sand. Yet, it is amongst the most highly foreign populated areas in the world – so where are they?

Grossly over-generalising, for the purposes of explanation, there are a number of ex-pat types residing here:-

There is the fifty-something (upwards) type (Type 1), who landed here in search of pleasant climes, the ability to live out their days in a far more grandiose manner than their savings would have allowed in their originating country together with the opportunity to meet a lady who will genuinely make them believe they are cared for. Admittedly a more pleasant prospect than bingo on Tuesdays; while sharing anecdotes with the blue rinse brigade about how little you get for your money these days.

Continuing my gross over-generalisation, the next type (Type 2) is the 25-50 year old age group, who arrive after earning what appears to them to be a stack of cash, and an over-inflated idea of themselves. As a friend commented last week, “They arrive at the airport talking telephone numbers, then after 3 months are broke.” These are the types who brag about their ability to spend ridiculous sums of money in bars each evening, and of their female conquests; then progress to “investing” money in properties. A few months down the line, that stack of cash that seemed so bottomless has migrated to the pockets of various bar girls, or more specifically their families and the solid and wise house investment turns out to be just that, for the luck lady whose name it was purchased under.

My last type (Type 3) is that of the more savvy ex-pat, who may have even made money in the home country legitimately. This type transcends the other two types, but manages to rarely lose sight of the traps laid out, investments are carefully planned and ownership strictly kept by any means possible. For as many establishments available to the former two types’ entertainment, there is a proportionate amount of establishments for this type; higher class bars, very accomplished restaurants, even Rotarian membership beckons.

There are of course plenty of ex-pats here whom do not fit neatly into any of these types, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Whether my analysis is accurate or not, one thing seems for certain, the place traps people. As with every ex-pat community in the world, the talk is generally of complaint for their living circumstances – and yet few manage to liberate themselves from their self-imposed exile.

So you see everyone is catered for here, no wonder the deck chairs are empty.

So where do I fit in, and if I am so scathing why do I choose to stay? Well due to the circumstances in which I found myself here, and actually being in a paid job at the time, I was lucky enough to learn from type two’s mistakes, without making them myself. Since leaving the comforts of a relatively stable paid employ, I find myself drifting into the Type 3 mould, but without the desire to be entrenched in local activities; be they social or financial. Of more concern is that now the intangible tentacles have entangled me, only time need be added to complete the metamorphosis into a Type 1.

“The sad engineer would never go back to

England

; he would become one of these elderly expatriates who hide out in remote countries, with odd sympathies, a weakness for the local religion, an unreasonable anger, and the kind of total recall that drives curios strangers away.” - Paul Theroux, 1975.

Epiphany #3012

2006-05-22T08:46:00.000+00:00

One of the more interesting aspects of living through your thirties is the fact that you keep experiencing great moments of realisation – or at least personal conclusions that come to you in a flash.

Humans have a desire to label everything, fitting all things physical and psychological into a nice neat box. Your early years are filled with learning all the labels which have been pre-defined for you, by those who came before. Your teens and early twenties are filled by challenging these accepted labels – to pretty much find out that they are beyond challenge. Then come the thirties. And this is the time where you start reflecting on those things which remain without label – and a great deal of those things reside within your own personal character. The beauty of this is that, unless you specifically request it, nobody is going to challenge you on your beliefs about yourself. I would imagine that this stage continues until your forties, at which point you have labelled everything you consider worthy and are at a point of comfort. This probably lasts until your fifties, at which point you have no desire to label anything any more – and just accept. I will let you know.

So back to the ever so deep, introspective thirties and today’s epiphany. Actually it is not today’s epiphany at all – the realisation came to me some time ago, but I want to state it here, as it is a major reason why I am continuing this blog.

When I started taking photography more seriously, and by that I mean creating an image as I pre-visualised it rather than spontaneously recording a moment or scene, I was drawn to it and influenced dramatically by photographs taken by others. I believe this is a perfectly normal place to be and, other than those bursting with a desire to express themselves on any media available, is probably the most common point to begin. You are drawn to pretty pictures, of the postcard type as they instantly satisfy the aesthetic thirst inside everyone. What follows is that you measure every photograph, whether taken or not, with an internally stored database of photos you have seen and which have appealed to you previously. Over time as you explore the photographical world deeper, this database expands, and so your photographic abilities expand. The result is you are still seeing your photographs as being successful or not based on whether they conform to a pre-defined set of acceptance criteria – all based on what you have seen before. This happens subconsciously to the point where you truly believe you are creating your own work; but the fact is that it is just a more complex formula fitting the criteria of what you know to be successful from other people’s photographs.

To some degree this has its uses. Attempting to replicate others work allows you to learn the technical aspects of photography. Even though you are not exactly copying another photograph, you are looking at styles of others, composition and some of the “rules” and in so learning the fundamentals of how things are achieved. However, once you are technically capable of producing a feeling as desired within a photograph you then fall into a slumber. You are in fact not really expressing yourself, just re-expressing what others have expressed previously.

The epiphany in all this, for me at least, was realising that I was taking pictures for others – and in each of my photographs I was grading its success on how it fitted in with other photographers’ successful work. It was quite an easy realisation, as I stopped enjoying taking photographs – I became bored with the facsimile type approach and realised that I don’t really care what others think of my photographs. Praise for your work is always a very pleasant experience; however for as many people who enjoy one of your photographs, there will be many who do not. The solution here for me is to ensure that I take photographs that I enjoy. By the law of averages there will probably be others who also enjoy what I see in it, and even if there isn’t, at least I can enjoy my own work. That enjoyment is now based on the actual content of that photograph, not how it measures against any other photographs previously taken.

This has completely changed the way I take photographs. Right now I really could not give a damn about how aesthetically pleasing a shot is, but if the photo tells a tale about an emotion I have at the time, or reflects some notion in which I believe or makes me smile – then that is what I want to capture.

With this realisation in hand, another realisation becomes clear – I am in my teens to twenties within my photographic life.

Finally, the reason why this is relevant to this blog is that this blog is the only way I can share these photographs. I have shot, and will continue to shoot for stock, however the type of photographs I am describing here are in no way suitable for stock, unless by coincidence. An online gallery also does not seem the correct way to host these photographs as there is no room for comment, even comment from within the photograph. So this is where they shall reside.

I Blinked and I Missed It

2006-05-16T06:05:00.000+00:00

After 4 weeks of contract negotiations, with the issues still not settled but on good faith, I decided to fly to Bangladesh. If only it had been that simple. First attempt resulted in my credit card being blocked for fraud prevention reasons, leaving me with no way to pay for the ticket. That was the first in a catalogue of errors.

One week later I find myself back in Thailand, after one failed trip to the airport to fly, followed by 4 days of more contract negotiations, followed by an actual departure and arrival. Upon arrival things went from bad to worse and the appropriate course of action seemed to be calling it a day - which I did - and after 2 days in Bangladesh flew back to Bangkok. So, that chapter is closed before it was written - and leaves this blog in a kind of limbo. It was, after all, the purpose of this blog to track my time in Bangladesh!!

Whilst I decide what to do with this blog, I will leave you with this, which is amongst a very small number of observations of Bangladesh, within my even smaller amount of time there.

Why is it that the less appealing a country is to enter, the harder it is to do so?

I have never in my travels come across a larger nor more complex immigration card (a fully fledged form) than the one needed to enter Bangladesh. Having to state the exact weight of gold you are carrying is quite straight forward for me, none. Ditto silver, gems and chickens. Detailed precisely on the form is what is permitted and from this what is not. For example, a 19" television is OK, 21" a definite no no.

One of the benefits of such bureaucracy is that it is so impractical that nobody ever bothers to check it fully. Not so in Bangladesh. One of the questions, and admittedly not an unusual or unfair one, was to state in which hotel I would be staying. Now here is the crux - I was not staying in a hotel, I would be staying in a guest house provided for me, the name or address of which I had no idea. To try and explain this on the form would have been impossible (the space reserved for each of your answers prohibited anything more than three letters), and to try and explain it to the immigration officials would certainly be a headache. What do you do in these situations? Lie of course. I have never been quizzed on this before; a believable hotel name is usually more than acceptable.

In actual fact, had I been more astute I would have been fine, but I tried too be to truthful. I had heard that other people I knew were staying in "The Manhattan Hotel", so that is what I put. The problem being is that I had made a mistake, and there is no "Manhattan Hotel" in Dhaka; a fact the immigration officials knew. I would have breezed through had I put "Sheraton" (always a good assumption), but that fact that I had put a hotel down which didn't exist was cause for great concern.

After being quizzed about this for a few moments, I realised the best way out of this was to lie a bit better. I successfully managed to convince them that the Manhattan was another name for the Sheraton - and as it sounds quite similar in Bengali (oh yes it does) - they were quite happy with this. In fact things started going much better after the mere mention of the word "Sheraton".

Naturally after they checked my baggage for 21" televisions, I was free to enter... and then leave again two days later.

Strangely Reflective

2006-05-04T19:22:00.000+00:00

You need to be inside my head to see the relevance of this photo.

Maybe you want to give it a go and see in how many ways this photograph reflects my current state of mind? It aint pretty - but pretty pictures are boring - and ever so easy. Crap pictures are even easier - but it is quite satisfying to take a crap picture, that is exactly as you fell at the time.

As a side note, this is the first post from my new dedicated blogging computer. That may be stretching the truth somewhat - as I dare say I will be forced to use it for less stimulating tasks (in the name of chasing the cash cow) - but I dare say myself and my electronic blogging compadres will experience some choppy times ahead.

Departure 10:30AM - Saturday 6th May 2006. Can't wait.