civilized ku # 2031 ~ Happy New Year / if only
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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..
>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.
BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES
BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS
In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes on • Life without the APA • Doors • Kitchen Sink • Rain • 2014 • Year in Review • Place To Sit • ART ~ conveys / transports / reflects • Decay & Disgust • Single Women • Picture Windows • Tangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-gallery • Kitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)
Green pepper ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenAs expected, making pictures with the new 45mm lens (90mm - 35mm equiv.) will require a slightly different manner of seeing, pre-visualization wise. That is to say, seeing in my mind's eye how the referent will appear on the 2D surface of the print.
That said, I don't actually "pre-visualize", as it might be commonly understood, anything - I just respond to what I see and picture it, knowing how it will appear on the surface of a print. My "knowing" is based upon the fact that in most picturing cases, I have been making pictures (for a few years) with a single focal length lens - a 20mm lens (40mm, 35mm equiv.), although I occasionally use a very similar 17mm focal length lens which really doesn't require any pre-visualization adjustment. However, the 45mm lens is an entirely different story. Its narrower angle of view together with the moderate tele compression look of its pictures does require a rethinking of how pictures made with it will appear.
So, over the past couple days, I have been responding, as usual, to some picture making opportunities (which I would normally picture with the 20mm lens) by picturing the referent/scene with both the 20mm and the 45mm lenses. Upon my return home, I will process and compare the results. If you all are interested in viewing those results, I'll be happy to share them here.
This little exercise is really just for fun and to get a feel for the lens because I have no intention of changing my normal picturing MO, re: seeing and then picturing with the 20mm lens. My thoughts on the purchase of the 45mm lens were centered around, albeit very vaguely, the notion of getting into a different picturing zone with the use of that lens, most likely people-focused.
To be absolutely certain, I have no intention whatsoever in mixing pictures, made with different focal length lens, in the same body of work - never the twain shall meet.
Things that live on the speaker ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenSanta came through with the Zuiko M 45mm f1.8 lens as featured on my wish list. Quite obviously, I have been nice rather than naughty.
The first thing I did was to put the lens on one of the E-Ps and make the things that live on the speaker picture. I was able to make the picture without leaving my present-opening chair but I promise that, in the next few days, I'll be posting pictures which took a bit more effort to make.
FYI, I'll be making those entries/posts while on the road again - South Jersey (the wife's family), Baltimore (the National Aquarium and the B&O Railroad Museum), and (yet to be determined) NYC (skating at Rockefeller Center).
PS - I hope Santa was as good to you as he was to me.
Art Gallery with Adirondack Views ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIt has been stated, by some here in the good ol' US of A, that Australians are lucky because, in their country's formative years, they got the convicts whereas here in the good ol' US of A, we got the Christians, aka: Puritans.
As part of our legacy, we here have to put up with those so-called Christians who, every holiday season, start whining like stuck pigs about the "war on Christmas". Their favorite article of prima facie faith of the waging of that war is the phrase, Happy Holidays (or some variation thereof), which, in their truncated / self centered / self righteous world view, is a pejorative form of greeting meant solely to insult/offend them by "taking the Christ out of Christmas".
Again in their truncated / self centered / self righteous world view, it apparently never occurs to them that there are many on the planet who celebrate the holiday season from an entirely different perspective - religious, secular, and/or otherwise. Consequently, in recognition of and out of respect for that diversity, for virtually all who use it, the Happy Holiday greeting is meant to be an inclusive form of greeting, not an exclusive one - as those-who-need-to-feel-persecuted (martyrs, one and all) need/want to believe.
And, as an added feature of their insular thinking, they totally miss the irony that is part and parcel of their insistence that "Merry Christmas" is the only acceptable greeting for the holiday season. To wit, this insistence almost always comes from those who also scream, loud and clear, against (in their belief system) so-called leftist / feminist / gay / et al "politically correct" speech. BTW, I think the bible has something to say about hypocrites.
In any event, I and mine would like to wish everyone (even Canon and Nikon users) Happy Holidays / Season's Greetings, however you celebrate the season.
*I am referring to art which seems to be referring to itself.
Steps, tree, parking lot - Montreal, CA • click to embiggenIn yesterday's entry, civilized ku # 2025, John Linn stated/asked:
First, why is it that so many of your pictures that feature sidewalks or other man-made surfaces look so perfect? ... those surfaces looked painted-on, or bleached, or unreal.
In answer to John's point, re: "pictures that feature sidewalks or other man-made surfaces look so perfect", I am somewhat stumped. I do not give any special treatment to such surfaces other than my usual (but not always applied) "hidden cyan" adjustment when I deem it necessary. As John mentioned, I do not, under any circumstances, fix any found and recorded imperfections in such surfaces.
What John may be reacting to is the fact that I do try to identify elements in my pictured scenes which have, to the best of my recollection at the time of picturing, in the neighborhood, color wise, a neutral gray appearance. In the RAW conversion and processing thereof, I pay close attention to protecting their neutral grayness, although it must be noted that not all grays are perfectly neutral. Most grays have an ever-so-slight tint and I try to identify and retain those subtle tints.
However slight the tints may be, IME, most viewers of my pictures usually perceive those grays as being neutral. What this does, perception wise, and especially so with pictures containing man-made concrete surfaces, is to give the visual impression that other colors in the pictures as being very "bright" and "pure". Simply stated, there is nothing which makes a color (any color) "pop" than when it works in contrast to a neutral gray - any shade thereof, to include black.
IMO&E, the reverse is also true - a neutral or near neutral gray looks all the more "pure"/neutral gray when it is surrounded by other colors. Its "grayness" is, if anything, intensified as a result of being a visual/color counterpoint to any surrounding field of color.
All of that said, one of the most important things I learned in my early color print making days was how much "cleaner"/more "pure" color could be in a print with the even smallest change in printing filtration. As long as your color processing chemicals were properly replenished and maintained at constant temperature (+/- 1/2˚ or better), a printing filtration change of as little as +/- 025M/Y could make a very perceivable difference in the appearance of a print.
A very small filtration change could remove a very subtle color cast which, in doing so, allowed all of the colors, including "neutral" grays, to really "pop". Of course, a very small filtration change is only noticeable when 2 prints are viewed/compared under 5000K illumination (pre-press standard), preferably in a color viewing booth. That being the case, in my studio/office, I view and judge all of my digital domain prints with my very own 5000K illumination set up.
All of that said, I believe what John is seeing/perceiving in my pictures which contain man-made surfaces (especially concrete surfaces) is the result of my attention to color detail, down to the most minute detail. It's all about very "clean"/"pure" color - inasmuch as the medium and its apparatus allow.
It's as simple, yet as complicated/involved, as that.
Walkers and steps ~ Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal - Montreal, CA • click to embiggenOn the subject of blue/cyan Colin Griffiths wrote (in part):
... I've never been quite sure whether the particular camera sensors I use boost cyan somewhat and that it then looks unrealistic/unpleasing to my eye on a print, or whether it's just a preference of my own ...
I can not state, with any certitude, whether or not digital sensors of any stripe "boost" cyan. However, I would assume that one of those camera review sites out there might just have that info on various camera/sensor combinations. That said, I would also suggest that differing RAW conversion software also contribute to how cyan as well as other colors appear. So, IMO, sensor/software variances with respect to cyan (or any other color) is what it is and the real trick is developing a conversion / processing methodology to deal with it.
Sensor/software issues aside and in my experience (IME), the real issue with cyan and, to a lesser extent, blue is the fact that under certain natural light conditions - cloudy overcast and bright blue-sky days, to name just 2 - there is a lot of "hidden" cyan/blue light lurking about. That is to say, "hidden" in the sense that the human eye doesn't see it, at least not in the way an non-human sensor records it.
That being the case, I am always on the look out, when converting / processing my pictures, for what I would call a cyan/blue bias. That is to say, cyan/blue that is out of whack with the way the human eye - my human eye - saw a scene. When that bias is detected, I most often apply a bit of selective cyan/blue correction to those parts of the picture in which it is visible. Rarely do I ever attempt to correct the bias with a global WB adjustment.
The reason why I choose to perform local corrections over global corrections is simple - IME, I have found that applying enough global WB correction to correct the cyan/blue bias most often creates another color bias, usually in the red/yellow spectrum, which is as equally unacceptable to my eye and sensibilities as is the cyan/blue bias. Case in point ...
... the walkers and steps picture in this entry was made on a dark overcast day with lots of cyan/blue content to the light. What this resulted in was the camera/sensor recording a rather extreme cyan/blue bias in the new construction - the stairs and foreground walking surface - part of the scene relative to the old construction - the building facade - part of the scene. Trying fix this bias with a simple global WB adjustment in the RAW conversion software resulted in the facade appearing considerably too warm.
There were a couple of ways I could have handled the issue. I could have converted the file twice - one conversion with WB for the steps and foreground, the other with a different WB for the facade - and then blended them in Photoshop. This solution would have been relatively easy to execute because the the blending step would not have been very difficult given that the dividing line between the warm and cool segments of the scene was not very complex.
Or, in the RAW conversion software, I could (in fact, this is exactly what I did) find a reasonably balanced WB setting, albeit a little too cool in the foreground and a little too warm on the facade, and also make (again in the RAW conversion software) a few color curve adjustments to mitigate, but not eliminate, the cool/warm color imbalance. After the conversion, in Photoshop I could then make a feathered selection which separated the cool zone from the warm zone and go to work on each zone (one after the other) with a combination of light color curve corrections together with a bit of de-saturation adjustments in order to bring each zone into a correct color balance.
QUESTION Why go to all this, what some my call, "trouble"?
ANSWER My printed pictures* are highly regarded, amongst other considerations, for their color characteristics - clean natural color which mimics, inasmuch as the medium and its apparatus allow, the manner in which the human eye sees the real world. I did not come by the expertise to accomplish this overnight.
That skill came from decades of making color prints in the wet darkroom, color prints made to very high commercial client standards and demands. Most of those color prints were intended for reproduction on a printing press, so part of my learning experience was also devoted to making very high quality prints which were well suited to the demands of the reproduction process (I spent a lot time in pre-press departments). That color print making skill was most often different from the skill required to make color prints for display / exhibition. In either case, knowing color and how to print it accurately for the intended end purpose is of paramount importance.
Needless to state (why is that phrase used when, in fact, something is about to be stated?), all of those skills are very applicable - minus the wet stuff - to processing files and making prints in the digital darkroom. Consequently, I was able to make the leap from the analog domain to the digital domain like a virtual duck to virtual water.
In any event, and all of that said, my point in all of this is simple - a part of making good pictures is understanding the fact that a printed picture, whatever its noted referent and connoted meaning might be, is an art object in and of itself. As an example, while I am not partial (with reservations and exceptions) to Sir Ansel's B&W pictures (although I do respect them from an historical perspective and, FYI, I really do like his color work), I would love to own one of his B&W prints because I am certain that, every time I looked at it, my eyes would water/bleed (in a good way) due to the sheer beauty of the object itself.
So, if you consider yourself to be a serious picture maker but you're not serious about making prints (that is, learning and implementing the craft of image processing and print making) or (worse yet) do not make prints at all, IMO, you're not a serious picture maker.
•what you see on your screen may or may not approximate (at best) what one of my actual prints looks like. There are just too many variables inherent in the screen viewing world - monitor calibration or lack thereof, the color temperature and the intensity of the light falling on the screen, or even the color of the walls in the room where the monitor is located, to name just a few.
Mark Hobson - Physically, Emotionally and Intellectually Engaged Since 1947