urban ku # 171 ~ can you say d-e-l-e-t-e?

Misted window and red car • click to embiggenI am reading through P.H. Emerson's Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art thanks to a link to the complete manuscript provided by TOP. The book contains a wealth of very good and timeless advice.

How about this challenge? - The fact of the matter is nature is full of pictures, and they are to be found in what appears to the uninitiated the most unlikely places. Let the honest student then choose some district with which he is in sympathy, and let him go there quietly and spend a few months, or even weeks if he can not spare months, and let him day and night study the effects of nature, and try to at any rate to produce one picture of his own, one picture which shall show an honest attempt to probe the mysteries of nature and art, one picture which shall show the author has something to say, and knows how to say it, as perhaps no other living person could say it; that is something to have accomplished. Remember that your photograph is a true index of your mind, as if you had written out a confession on paper.

Or, having trouble editing your pictures for a book? Here's some good advice - Thus it will be seen how difficult it is to produce a picture, even when we have thoroughly mastered our technique and practice, for, to recapitulate, in a picture the arrangement of lines must be appropriate, the aerial perspective must be truly and subtly yet broadly rendered, the tonality must be relatively true, the composition must be perfect, the impression true, the subject distinguished, and, if the picture is to be a masterpiece, the motif must be poetically rendered, for there is a poetry of photography as there is of painting and literature.

Never rest satisfied then until these requirements are all fulfilled, and destroy all works in which they are not to be found.

There you have it. Now get to work making that one picture, and, of course, delete all the rest.

civilized ku # 77 ~ naturalistic photography

Valentine tulips • click to embiggenOne of the single most mentioned 'critiques' of my ku and related pictures is about the corners of the pictures - what's with the vignette / blur/ darkness? ... you should use a smaller aperture for more edge sharpness ... or, the ever popular, I like everything but the corners. These observations come almost exclusively from the ranks of photographers, virtually never from the 'public' who view my work.

As I have explained a number of times, the corner blurring / darkening, aka vignette, is created in Photoshop by a series of actions that produce what I have labeled my Holga effect. The reason that I started to do this is both simple and complex;

1. simple - I like the results that the Holga camera produces (but not the extreme limitations of the camera itself).

2. complex - human vision is 'centrist' in nature. When the eye is motionless and fixed on whatever is in the center of the field of vision, all that is in our peripheral vision is very indistinct. We can see / sense changes in light, objects in motion, etc. in our peripheral vision but only with a very low degree of acuity.

The camera's gaze tends to render everything within its plane / field of focus equally distinct and sharply rendered no matter where it resides in the frame. This is especially true with digital cameras that use smaller than full frame sensors which effectively create extended DOF. Coming from a life of film and a variety of camera formats where DOF is narrow and selective focus is a technique that helps lend emphasis to the object of the camera's gaze, I wanted to use a technique that mimics some of the traditional film camera capabilities of selective focus / narrow DOF.

After a bit of screwing around (and thinking about item #1), my Holga filter was fait accompli. Since then, I have applied the filter in exactly the same manner and amount to all of my ku pictures.

You can imagine my surprise, when a few years later, I discovered that I had reinvented a very old wheel. While reading / researching the history of the medium, I came across a fellow named Peter Henry Emerson (I have mentioned him before), who, in 1889, in his Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, championed an approach to photography that was remarkably like my present day Holga filter.

He wrote, "... as has already been shown, the eye is very imperfect, and its images are not therefore perfect, and it could not form theoretically perfect images, even if the atmosphere were pure ether and nothing else, for there are other facts in nature which prevent this ... (a) central spot is a most important factor in the Fovea study of sight and art. For though the field of vision of the two eyes is more than 180 laterally, and 120 vertically, yet the field of distinct vision is but a fraction of this field, as we can all prove for ourselves ... the field of distinct vision depends on the central spots for the reason that the central spot differs anatomically from the rest of the retina by the absence of certain layers which we need not specify here. The absence of these layers exposes the retinal bacillary layer to the direct action of light. Helmholtz says "all other parts of the retinal image beyond that which falls on the central spot are imperfectly seen/' so that the image which we receive by the eye is like a picture minutely and elaborately finished in the centre, but only roughly sketched in at the borders".

For Emerson, the net result was that he made a lot of pictures with unsharp edges and corners.

Apparently, like Emerson, I want my pictures to mimic the human act of seeing and looking at that moment when the eye is fixed upon the thing it wants to see. For me, this is so because I want to draw attention, not only to what is the object of the camera's gaze, but also to the very act of seeing and looking itself.

That is, 'seeing and looking' as a human act, not as a photographic one.

decay # 10 ~ Kent, the plate and floor are back + more POD stuff

Assortment of decay • click to embiggenA question about the most daunting challenge of making a book from Tom Gallione; How about a little advice on editing? I have a project with far too many images ... I'm struggling to cut the portfolio to under 100 ... Beyond the obvious guidelines, i.e. only show your best work and ideas relating to whether or not an image fits in with the theme reflected in the statement, can you offer any advice?

Editing your own body of work down to just a select few pictures - to even as many as 100 out of a very large body - is a daunting and sometimes exasperating task. Most photographers have an 'attachment' of one kind or another to all of those pictures they have designated as 'keepers'.

At the very least, there was a reason why the pictures were created in the first place, not to mention the work invested after picturing to make prints (even if you only viewed them on-screen). It's only natural to like them all ... but, truth be told, they are not all 'winners'.

The only way I have been able to figure out the winners from the also-rans is to make prints and see if the 'magic' is still there. I find that the key to judging your own work is to clear your head of all the whys, hows, what-fors, and where-with-alls and just look at the pictures as if you were seeing them for the first time.

This is not the easiest thing to do, but it can be done. Repeated viewing of the pictures over time seems to help cool your memory / emotion of and for the making process and focus it on the thing you have created. Again, over time, some pictures just seem to seem better and better while others seem less so by comparison. "Less so" does not mean 'bad' - the 'cream' just separates and rises to the top.

DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS ON A MONITOR. MAKE PRINTS. The prints should be small work prints that you can literally throw into piles - 1 marked IN, the other marked OUT. Live with the results for awhile (repeated viewing) and rearrange as needed.

Caveat; YOU WILL NEVER BE COMPLETELY SATISFIED WITH THE SELECTION. NEVER, EVER. There will always be doubts and what-ifs, but, if you ever want to end the editing process, the key will be to figure how to handle and live with the doubts.

urban ku # 170 ~ more POD info

Deer Meadows neon • click to embiggenA typical issue with some POD printers goes something like this (from Paul McEvoy); I had a book done with Blurb and I have to say that the quality was really awful. Printing wise it was not acceptable to me ... Pictures were very grainy, on files that had no visible grain. There was a color cast issue ... The paper cover they include with the hardcover was extremely cheap looking.

There is absolutely no question that some POD printers are better than others. Some are a whole lot better. Even though they all tend to use the same equipment, the results can vary greatly. As in all things, attention to detail matters. Some POD printers work on the volume principle, some on the quality principle. And, there is almost always a direct relationship between price and quality.

That said, it is worth noting that a reproduction of a picture will never match the original picture. Traditional offset, sheet-fed printers using the best of modern equipment (to include 8-color presses), techniques (stochastic printing), and high quality paper can come very close to matching an original print. Of course, in order to use this printing technique for a moderate sized book, you will be buying a minimum of 1-2,000 books and you should have at least $40-50,000 to burn.

As I have mentioned before, some of the best POD image quality I have seen in my experience is from shutterfly.com (as long as you turn off their ViDPic[?] effect). They are also amongst the lowest cost POD printers. Where they save on their costs is with paper - decent but not the best in class, and cover and binding materials - again, decent but not the best in class.

To be certain, shutterfly.com's paper and cover / binding is very good. I have had only one problem - on one book, the paper on the inside of the front cover bubbled. I returned the book and they replaced it PDQ without any hassle.

In my experience, if I had to use just one POD printer, it would be shutterfly.com. If they upgraded their service with better / more paper choices and better cover / binding materials (for which I'd be happy to pay a premium), I would use shutterfly.com as my only POD printer.

BTW, FYI - my experience with shutterfly.com and sharedink.com is with RGB jpeg images files saved with the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile.

So, when can I expect to see some books?

Update on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 05:11PM by gravitas et nugalis

questions, questions, questions - there are no bad questions

Jim asks; I was looking at shutterfly and they do not give you recommendations for image resolution and type. Do we size the images to the size we want, at 300dpi, jpeg, adobe 1998 colorspace?

Dennis asks; I'm just checking to see if I understand the strategy:
Each page is a file
Each file is a RGB jpeg in the Adobe 98 space
Is each file sized to the actual size of the physical page? and presumably minimum compression?

So, if I want a 10 inch square page I start with a new file of that size and then place the desired image and anything else (text, whatever) on the page and saved as a jpeg.

Is that it?

answers, answers, answers

Jim / Dennis - each page is a file and that file is 'to size' @300 dpi - 10×10 inch page = 10×10 inch file @300 dpi - always @300 dpi. After placing any size image (or more) where you like on the page, and, after placing text / graphics where you like on the page, save the file as a psd. with all the layers intact (text, images, graphics) as a 'master' for later editing if needed.

When you're satisfied with the result, again save it with all layers intact, then merge the layers and flatten the file and save a 'highest quality' Adobe RGB (1998) jpeg for uploading to the printer's site.

FYI ~ making a photo book

On the subject of making / designing photo books, much is currently being written on various blogs. None of it seems to be coming from anyone with actual experience in the field of graphic design, so it's not surprising that there is a lot of noise and not much signal, so to speak.

It has been assumed that designing a book, specifically a photo book, is akin to rocket science when, in fact, it's relatively simple to achieve a very satisfactory and pleasing result. In a very real sense, a photo book is one of the easiest design tasks.

The operative rule is simple - keep it simple. A simple layout /design. Simple typefaces.

Unlike the cookbook that I designed (and created the photography),
Keep it simple and 'clean' • click to embiggen which had a host of information and categories, a photo book has one simple purpose - to showcase pictures. Unless you have lots of text that accompanies your pictures, a photo book will traditionally have lots of white space - think of it as white mat board - against which the pictures will work along with simple titles and captions / descriptions.

The front of the book will have a title page, an intro page, and an artist statement. Again, use a simple typeface(s) and lots of white space - don't crowd the edges of the page.

As far as picture arrangement goes,
It's about the pictures • click to embiggenunless you are telling a story that requires a specific story line sequence, just let the pictures flow in a pleasing manner. Use the same 'eye' and sensibility that you used to make your pictures to get to what 'feels' right. This will take a bit of playing around - and remember that it is playing around, not some life-or-death exercise. Make some small low res prints and order and re-order them in a pile and keep shuffling them around until it looks and feels right. Remember, there is no right or wrong here, its your book, your statement - just like they're your pictures.

On the subject of what software to use, with the current state of POD printing, you will be submitting all-in-one jpegs to the printer. Text and pictures will be in a single file, which means that pro-design software like InDesign or Quark are simply not required. The biggest advantage of pro design software is their sophisticated type capabilities and the ability to handle large projects like a book in a single file.

Neither capability is needed for a POD photo book.

In the printing world, type is vector based art as opposed to bitmap images. Since you will will be submitting jpegs, the type will be rasterized to bitmap so there is no advantage to using software that uses vector based graphics. Type/text created on a type layer in Photoshop is as good as it gets in this POD case.

But what about pro software that handles big projects like books? Again you will be uploading single page files to the POD printer and placing them in page order on their site. So again, one of the capabilities of InDesign or Quark is not applicable here.

Photoshop, with its type tool, is the way to go.

FYI, I will answer any questions you may have on the matter at hand. Please ask them on this entry, not in an email, so that everyone may have access the info.

Let's get going.

urban ku # 169 ~ flaunt it

Conspicuous internment • click to embiggenDespite the age old admonition that says you can't take it with you, during my recent Syracuse cemetery exploration I was reminded that, if you had it, you can still flaunt it after you're gone. And, if you use enough granite or marble, long after you're gone.

FYI ~ the beat goes on

You'd think he has a PR agent (he doesn't).

Italy
Turkey
China

And, this week he's in Europe for his solo exhibit opening in London.

Don Gregorio Anton ~ mystical retablos

Retablos • click to embiggenWhile I was in Syracuse, I visited Light Work, where I viewed the work of DON GREGORIO ANTÓN. Anton is most definitely an artist who uses photography.

From the show description: Don Gregorio Antón creates mystical retablos that look like sacred objects. They are intimately small and sit on stands to be viewed individually. Each retablo is one of a kind. Frida Kahlo described retablos as the truest representation of the people’s art. Also called ex votos, they have been part of Mexico’s tradition since the seventeenth century. They were originally hung behind the altars of Catholic churches, and remain a tradition to this day.

Antón uses the visual language of the retablo to create existential tales of human existence that speak of spiritual searching, suffering, hope and despair, life and death ...
Close views • click to embiggenAntón’s work is likely to provoke a different response in every viewer. The retablos can be appreciated for their mysterious beauty, their haunting narratives, and their intense spirituality. Where we find ourselves in our lives may be where we find ourselves in Antón’s retablos.

The Catholic altar boy in me likes the use of the monstrance and the small prints (translucent images on copper) also take on the appearance of scared objects / religious icons. My only issue with the work was that the narratives where very difficult to read.

Check out the link to the show and let me know what you think.