civilized ku # 1122-26 ~ food and a quiz

Wall of Fame ~ Primanti Bros. - Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Primanti Bros. sandwich ~ Primanti Bros. - Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Vincent's pizza ~ Vincent's Pizza Park - Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Sausage and Squid ~ Mallorca - Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Paella ~ Mallorca - Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenOne of the benies of travel is the opportunity to partake of regional cuisine. In the good 'ole US of A that means avoiding the ubiquitous ever-spreading-like-a-plague chain restaurants to be found everywhere.

While in Pittsburgh, the wife and I made it a requisite to indulge in 2 local specialties neither of which could be labeled "indigenous" inasmuch as they do not include any local/regional ingredients. However, they are prepared in what might be called a local tradition.

The most famous specialty - at least so across the US - was a Primanti Bros. sandwich, which is testament to their claim that " Man Does Not Live By (meat, cheese, tomato, coleslaw, fries and) Bread Alone." Primanti sandwiches feature absolutely fresh tomato, coleslaw (crisp and not "runny"), fresh cut and cooked to order fries (yes, in the sandwich), fresh Italian bread, and the meat and cheese of your choice. FYI, all of the freshness comes from the fact that the original Primanti Bros. is located in Pittsburgh's Strip District, aka: produce/market district.

Less famous nationally but, IMO, deserving of a ranking equal to the Primanti sandwich is Vincent's Pizza - a pizza to die for (caveat: eating one - and who can eat just one? - may hasten that death). Like a Primanti sandwich, fresh ingredients are featured and, because they go light on their very tasty sauce, the fresh taste of those ingredients comes through tasty and strong. And the crust, thin-ish and crisp except for the extremely thick edge crust, tastes like fresh baked bread.

Our pizza had 5 toppings - sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers and cheese which were piled nearly 3 inches high. A true artery clogging meal if ever there was one.

FYI, Re: the sausage and squid dish - the Spanish sausage arrived at our table en flambé and the squid was stuffed with Prosciutto and spices.

The Quiz The Pittsburgh sports hero mural - each Primanti Bros. location has one - features 13 athletes. Can anyone name all 13 without using the Google Machine? And, PS - the rest of the world take note, there's not a soccer (football is not played with a round ball) player in the lot.

civilized ku # 1111 ~ home sweet home

Fresh fruit and produce ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenThe wife and I finally arrived home from Pittsburgh late last Friday evening, a full week from the day on which we left for what was suppose to be a 4 day trip (Sat.-Tues.)

When I made an entry last Tuesday, we were scheduled to depart Pittsburgh that afternoon but, in fact, our departure was delayed for 2 more days by the wife's trial delays. She was scheduled to testify (as a witness) on Monday with a possible holdover until Tuesday. Then it was delayed until Tuesday. Then it was delayed until late Wednesday with a continuation through Thursday.

We left Pittsburgh late Thursday afternoon, stopped in Rochester that night, and continued on to Watertown (NY) where the wife had a date as a panelist at a seminar. At the end of the day we finally made our way home.

Our extended stay in Pittsburgh was incurred one day at a time with the need to stay another day determined late each afternoon. This was a colossal pain in the ass since it required that I pack up, check out of the hotel and load the car late each AM only to have to unload the car and check back in later the same day. By Thursday, the wife and I were beginning to feel like we were living a sequel to the movie Groundhog Day.

In any event, it was a delight to get back home and sleep in our own bed.

On Saturday, while we were out running errands - amongst other things we needed firewood since our furnace has not been repaired from the ravages of TS Irene, we both came home with a lot of locally grown fresh fruit and produce, to include a fresh chicken and a fresh baked apple pie. Yahoo, it's back to home cooking.

Aaaahhh, it's great to be back home (even though we're back on the road again this Thursday).

civilized ku # 1105 ~ gush-a-thon vs a different perspective

Ann Marie ~ Portrait of a close friend, circa 1982 - Bronica 645 ETRS / 150mm f3.5 Zenzanon Lens / Plus-X film • click to embiggenColor! ... Simply Wow! ... OMG! ... EXCELLENT! - those are just the tip-o'-the-iceberg of gushing admiration expressed for the pictures of Steve McCurry - see a National Geographic McCurry bio with samples - as noted on the recent TOP entry, Speaking of Great Color Photography. That entry linked to a video, re: Steve McCurry as the recipient of the 2011 Leica Hall of Fame award.

However, early on in the course of the chorus-of-adulation responses, there was a somewhat dissenting opinion put forth:

I think McCurry has a great eye for the beautiful, is a master of color composition and no doubt works his ass off. But given the time and resources that NGS has historically provided, how could you not hit a few hundred homers over the course of 30 years?

... to which Mike Johnston replied:

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just don't realize how incredibly obnoxious that comment is.

... to which the commenter replied with a much more detailed missive in which he reiterated and emphasized his opinion (expressed in his original comment), re: "I think McCurry is a great color photographer with a great eye for the beautiful, with beautifully composed and balanced images." He then went to explain in greater detail his original caveat - "... when I look at McCurry's work, and the work of other NGS photographers I see the job in it ..." - a caveat ("the job in it") with which I emphatically agree.

To wit, re: "the job in it", McCurry is most widely known and recognized, although not exclusively, for his work for National Geographic. Is there anyone in photo world or in a significant segment of the world at large who is not familiar with his now-iconic 1985 cover of National Geographic picture, Afghan Girl? That said his work has gained attention in many other publications. As the TOP commenter pointed out, there is no doubt that McCurry "works his ass off" and has been rewarded for doing so.

However, and this is not (in the working professional picture maker world) a bad thing, McCurry has adopted a style of picture making that is "job" oriented. He has most definitely clothed his picture making MO in the Nat Geo way of seeing the world - lavish use of brilliant/saturated color.

Nat Geo has, since it began to print in color - their first all-color issue was in February 1962, always produced a publication which is printed to some of the highest commercial printing production standards on the planet. The magazine's color reproduction is second only to a very few others. And, according to Nat Geo, it was "... the invention of the small, lightweight Leica camera and Kodak's 35mm Kodachrome film" which enabled them to "... publish more color in its editorial pages throughout 1962 than any other major magazine in the country."

It is no coincidence that McCurry's primary film of choice throughout his career to date was Kodachrome. In fact, Kodak honored McCurry's devotion to and successful use of Kodachrome (800,000+ frames over 40 years) by giving him the last roll of Kodachrome ever to be manufactured.

Therein is "the job in it" - Kodachrome (gives us those nice bright colors, gives us the greens of summers, makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah) + Nat Geo + Steve McCurry = a marriage/match made in heaven.

Now, let me reiterate and emphasize, in the commercial/professional scheme of things, this kind of marriage/match is, indeed, a good thing. Careers, fortunes, and fame are very often based upon such a relationship. Kudo's to McCurry for his success in that arena.

All of that said, my issue with (most) of McCurry's work is, in addition to its uniformly bright-color color-saturated Kodachrome look, is that, to my eye and sensibilities, his work is also uniformly shallow - too obvious, too easy to read, and the reading thereof tends to be heavily biased to the visual, the things that sit on the surface of the picture/print. All qualities which are much in demand and, in fact, demanded/required in the commercial / professional picture world. Short consumer attention spans demand pictures that get to their point in the quickest, most unambiguous, easily accessed manner possible.

IMO, McCurry makes pictures which could be made - not copies but pictures with similar visual effect and qualities - by quite a few other professional picture makers who might have been given the opportunities McCurry has enjoyed. That is not to denigrate McCurry's work or accomplishments but, rather, to put it in perspective. A perspective recently offered up on TOP, re: Ernst Hass (from the book, Ernst Haas: Colour Correction:

Ernst Haas is unquestionably one of the best-known, most prolific and most published photographers of the twentieth century. He is most associated with a vibrant colour photography which, for decades, was much in demand by the illustrated press. This colour work, published in the most influential magazines in Europe and America, also fed a constant stream of books, and these too enjoyed great popularity. But although his colour work earned him fame around the world, in recent decades it has often been derided by critics and curators as 'overly commercial,' and too easily accessible—or in the language of curators, not sufficiently 'serious.' As a result, his reputation has suffered in comparison with a younger generation of colour photographers, notably Eggleston, Shore and Meyerowitz.

Paradoxically, however, there was also a side of his work that was almost entirely hidden from view. Parallel to his commissioned work Haas constantly made images for his own interest, and these pictures show an entirely different aspect of Haas’s sensibility: they are far more edgy, loose, complex and ambiguous—in short, far more radical than the work which earned him fame. Haas never printed these pictures in his lifetime, nor did he exhibit them, probably believing that they would not be understood or appreciated. Nonetheless, these works are of great complexity, and rival (and sometimes surpass) anything done at the time by his fellow photographers. ...

One could easily and, IMO, appropriately substitute the name "Steve McCurry" for that of "Ernst Haas" in the first paragraph of the preceding quote.

Whether or not the substitution could be appropriately made in second paragraph, is open to question. IMO, very open to question inasmuch as I have seen little of McCurry's work that is "... of great complexity ... far more edgy, loose, complex and ambiguous—in short, far more radical than the work which earned him fame."

Update on Friday, September 9, 2011 at 08:14PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Colin Griffiths wrote: "On another point, that 1050mm lens you used for the potrait of Ann Marie must have been HUGE!"

my response: a 1050mm lens would have been huge and probably forced me to make the picture through a window from outside my studio. Fortunately, it was actually a non-typo 150mm lens.

civilized ku # 1091 ~ everyday stuff

Remains ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenWhy, some might ask, do you make pictures of this stuff?

Well, I think Jeff Wall stated it best when he said:

The everyday, or the commonplace, is the most basic and the richest artistic category. Although it seems familiar, it is always surprising and new. But at the same time, there is an openness that permits people to recognize what is there in the picture, because they have already seen something like it somewhere. So the everyday is a space in which meanings accumulate, but it’s the pictorial realization that carries the meanings into the realm of the pleasurable.

civilized ku # 971 ~ circles

Shrimps peelings and circles ~ in my hitchen sink / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenWhile I was checking on the baby birds who live in the vent above our kitchen sink, I looked down and saw a veritable cacophony of circle shapes in the sink. The you-must-make-a-picture alarm went off in my head so I went and got a camera.

Lurking nearby the sink was a plate of shrimp peelings that I had set aside last evening for future picturing purposes. Although, the wife made it clear I had an 18 hour window of shrimp peelings availability. Having already lost a plate 'o shrimp peeling the week prior, I took her at her word and made a shrimp peeling picture within the allotted time.

civilized ku # 936 ~ I'm about to become a pinhead

Beet and shadows • click to embiggenYesterday, I purchased a new hole for my µ4/3rds camera. A true impulse buy - I saw it and just had to have it.

After all, it's not every day that a such an attractive hole comes along. One that is made with such precision and attention to detail - most holes are rather crude affairs. On the other hand, this hole - it is perfectly round - is made with the same precision etching technology used to manufacture semiconductors. And, not only that, the hole has been extensively tested. What's more, the hole is made expressly for µ4/3rds camera.

What more could one ask of a hole?

I can hardly wait for the hole to arrive. My anticipation has risen to a fevered pitch. Full-frame µ4/3rds visions - f/96 @ 10sec - of dancing sugar plums are drifting in and out of the hole in my head.

civilized ku # 935 ~ the light

Rain + lightning ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenI'm not much for all those night-into-day pictures - the ones that are made in the dark of night but end up looking like day. And yes, I know they don't look exactly like day because there are always a wealth of details that give the game away. But that said, to my eye and sensibilities, my preference for night pictures are those that look like the night.

In any event, about an hour ago as I was out picturing an incredible rainstorm, lightning, for a split second or so, turned night into day.

civilized ku # 892 ~ pay attention, cuz I'm only gonna say this once

Before • click to embiggen
During • click to embiggen
After Redbreast Pure Pot Still Irish Whiskey, Irish soda bread and whiskey soaked raisins• click to embiggenYesterday was St. Patrick's Day. There was still a lot of snow on the ground, so there were no snakes to drive out of the yard. Consequently, in order to honor St. Patrick, I purchased a bottle of pure pot still Irish whiskey (Redbreast Irish Whiskey) and then made some traditional (only 4 ingredients - flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk) Irish soda bread.

I also purchased some raisins and soaked them in the whiskey with the intent of adding them to the soda bread mix. However, that would have not been "traditional" so I decided to use them as a side dish. The 3 women in attendance at my little bake-fest (the wife kept trying to give me baking advice) liked the raisin side dish but they strongly recommended that I put them in the soda bread for Saturday evening's Irish dinner.

That said, I'm guessing that, as much as you'd like me to give you my Irish soda bread recipe, you'd really like it more if I got on with the before-during-and-after show so, from the top picture down ...

FYI, the picture was made (with ISO bracketing) on my kitchen countertop - the same place I make all of my decay pictures - with soft directional window light.

Before - this is how the picture looked after processing it in my RAW converter wherein I performed highlight recovery, modest de-saturation, very minor WB adjustment, a tick of highlight contrast adjustment (+), and my normal sharpening.

During - this picture is a screenshot made during, but near the completion of, my PS work on the picture. As you can see in the Layers Palette, I had made 4 layers of corrections / adjustments:

Layer 1 - to make this layer, I made a selection - Polygonal Lasso Tool with 200 pixel feather - of the countertop (to include the 2 crystal glasses and soda bread to the right of the whiskey bottle) and then made a layer of that selection.

Using Curves, I increased the contrast of the layer, then set the layer blending mode to Linear Burn and adjusted the layer opacity to 52%. I then used the H&S Palette to reduce the blue/cyan levels in the countertop on Layer 1 and the the Background layer. This layer, together with the H&S adjustment to the Background layer, brings this area of the picture into better color and density/tonal balance relative to the rest of the picture

Layer 2 - this layer was made from a selection - Polygonal Lasso Tool with 10 pixel feather - of the whiskey rocks. Layer blending was set to Multiply @ 100% opacity. This layer adds density to and emphasizes detail in the whiskey rocks.

Layer 3 - this layer was made from a selection - of the foreground glass (without the whiskey rocks) - that was dragged into the working file from my -1 stop ISO bracket image file. Layer blending was set to Normal @ 93% opacity. This layer adds density to and emphasizes detail in the glass.

Layer 4 - this layer was made from a selection - Polygonal Lasso Tool with 10 pixel feather - of the soda bread cross section. Layer blending was set to Screen with 55% opacity. The Curves tool was used to adjust for too much red and yellow and the H&S tool was used to further reduce the read and yellow content. This layer brings the soda bread cross section into much better color and tonal balance with the soda bread cross section on the right.

Background - after all of the above adjustments / corrections were made, using the H&S tool, I made slight global de-saturation and +contrast adjustments to this layer. To my eye and sensibilities, this adjustment brought the entire picture closer to "accurate"/"real" color and tonality.

At this point in the PS processing proceedings, I saved the file (using a new file name) - with all of the layers intact - as my corrections / adjustments master file.

The next step was to flatten the file (Merge Visible) and take a long look at the picture, looking at global and local color, density / tonal information for "accuracy"/"realism". As is often the case - relative to my camera sensor and RAW converter combination - I decided to globally de-saturate the yellow content. In this particular picture, I also de-saturated the red content in the raisins and made a small global increase in contrast.

This flattened file was also saved (once again using a new filename) as my final full-frame master file.

Next, it was crop to square and move on to my normal vignette and border procedure. When that was completed, I took another long hard look at the picture after which I decided yet another H&S adjustment was needed. In this case, I made an ever-so-slight global de-saturation. At that point, I judged the picture to be a "final". That is, as always, subject to further / future consideration.

So, there you have it, my St. Patrick's Day gift to you - a start to finish look at how and why I process my pictures*. For those who are interested, elapsed time, start to finish, was about 56 minutes. Never having timed myself before, I would have to guess that time to be a bit above average for most of my picture processing.

FYI, on a soda bread baking note, you may have noticed the cross cuts on the soda bread crust. For wannabe soda bread baking purists in the crowd, it should be noted that cutting a cross into the top (continuing down the sides) of the pre-baked dough is an essential step in the process. It is the only way I know of to insure that the fairies will be able to get out of the bread.

It is also well worth noting that this entry is a prime example of how hard I work for my Landscapist readers. Not only as evidenced by the length, detail, and care that went into making this entry but also by the fact, if you look closely at the entry picture, you can see that I made this early morning picture before I even put my pants on.

*it should be understood that many of the hard numbers, specifically Polygonal Lasso Tool feathering and opacity numbers, are relative to my file ppi numbers and my eye - I use selection tool feathering numbers based on how they work and look with my 300ppi master files. My layer opacity setting numbers are done by eye. That is to say, I move the opacity slider until it looks "right" to my eye and sensibilities.

If you decide to use some of the techniques mentioned here, it's up to you to figure out what numbers work best for you. The only general "rule" I can give for feathering #s is, if your file ppi is greater than 300ppi, in oder to achieve a similar look, you will need to increase the feathering #. Conversely, if your file ppi is less than 300ppi, you will need to decrease the feathering #. In either case, the amount of increase/decrease is up to you to determine.