pinhole # 7 ~ nothing wrong with a bit of fun now and then

A sign of things to come • click to embiggenA few entries back Scott Hussey, aka:scotth wrote:

I'm curious how the use of the pinwide fits into your hierarchy of photographic styles.

At this point, I am making pictures with the pinwide just for the pure fun of it. Despite that picturing approach, it is possible that a coherent body of work - most likely emphasizing the near/far extreme DOF characteristics of pinhole picturing - will eventually emerge. Only time will tell.

civilized ku # 957 ~ under the big top

Tent roof ~ St. Joe's campus - Philadelphia, PA • click to embiggen

single woman # 10 ~ standing in the safety zone*

Large earring ~ Philadelphia, PA • click to embiggenIn the entry single woman # 9, Sven W (no link provided) wrote:

Did you sneak make this image surreptitiously or were you talking with her beforehand? She appears to reading the screen on her cell very intently, so perhaps you could sneak a [short] telephoto shot.

Even though this question/comment was made, re: single woman # 9, it could apply to all of my single woman pictures.

Like today's single woman picture, all of my single woman pictures are made surreptitiously (sounds much better than "sneak", don't you think?). That MO is strictly enforced when it comes to making such pictures - I want the object of my eye/camera's gaze to be pictured in situ in an as unaffected manner as possible. That is to say, I most definitely do not want to picture a single woman in a posed or a self-consciously aware state.

If I were to use a "[short] telephoto" lens, getting the desired "shot" would be a much easier proposition than it is with the [long] wide-angle lens - 4/3rd 20mm lens (40mm, 35mm equiv.) - I am using. That lens typically puts me within a 4 ft. reach of my subject which, being a 6'3" / 235lb person, does not exactly allow me to be invisible. Consequently, I must use the hustle and bustle of a crowded environment / event to mask my picturing intentions - a time-honored street photography MO.

In any event, and to this point in the single woman picturing proceedings, the technique seems to be working. While I can not definitively state that none of my subjects - the texting single woman included, were aware of my presence and/or intentions, I can state that, if they were aware, they did not alter the "natural" attitude / behavior they were exhibiting when I first singled them out as a target for my picturing endeavors.

BTW & FYI, as I continue in my picturing pursuit of single woman, I fully expect that, without warning, me and my camera will get whacked upside the head with a purse at some point along the way.

*Standing in the Safety Zone is one of my favorite Fairfield Four songs and albums. I have been very privileged to hear these guys in person (in very small venues) a couple times. They are simply amazing and, when experienced as one of only a few white people in an audience comprised of predominately black women, it is an incredibly intense immersion (pun intended) into the southern (US) submersion baptism / tent revival meeting / black baptist church tradition.

FYI, the vinyl version of the Standing in the Safety Zone album is considered to be one of best ever recordings of the human voice. I have the CD and when heard through a hi-end system - my system has over $2K of wire alone - the soundstage and audial presence are spine-tingling / hair-raising.

In any event, you can listen to Standing in the Safety Zone - the album and the song - HERE. Take the time to click through to the FREE (no personal info required) listening. If you don't want to listen to the entire album, listen to tracks 6, 7 (Standing in the Safety Zone), & 8.

civilized ku # 956 ~ Q&A

Red shirt under The Egg ~ Empire State Plaza - Albany, NY • click to embiggenNow that I've had a couple days to settle in and do some pictures-made-last-week processing, I'm able to answer a few of the questions that have been asked over the past week. First amongst them are these 2 from life in pictures # 16:

Larry (no link provided) asked: I'm curious how your use of Photoshop composites fit into pictures "without resorting to "distortions" - cheap tricks, gear gimmicks, fanciful effects and manipulations.."

And, John Linn asked: Where do you stand on the use of polarizer and gradient filters?

In answer to John's question, I don't use a polarizer filter because I don't wear polarizer sunglasses. Consequently, I see reflections where ever they exist and, since I picture what I see, I don't use a polarizer filter.

Gradient filters are a whole nuther matter. I really, really, really, dislike them. Or, I should say, I really, really, really dislike the pictures made with them. Now, I'm not saying that a gradient filter can not be used with some degree of subtlety, but that is rarely the case. Most pictures made with gradient filters are grossly out of whack, tonal wise - foregrounds are always way too bright and open - looks like they were lit by a giant soft lightbox rather than by the ambient light from the sky - relative to the darker saturated skies typically found in these pictures. The result is a picture that, to my eyes and sensibilities, looks crudely cut and pasted together from 2 distinctly different images.

This whacked tonal look is especially apparent in landscape pictures which include water in the foreground (even if it's just puddle-sized) - the reflection of the sky in the water is always way too light relative to the gradient filter darkened sky. (HINT to gradient filter users - reflections on water are always darker than the reflected scene.)

Needless to state, I don't not own, much less use, a gradient filter. Why bother when you can achieve much smoother, delicate, and realistic results with PS masks and blending techniques?

Which brings me to Larry's question.

I do not consider my PS "composites" - I'm not entirely certain what Larry means by "composites" - to be distortions. Every step in my PS processing routine is undertaken with the goal of producing a result that is as close (as the medium and its apparatus allow) to the reality of what existed in front of my camera and as faithful (as the medium and its apparatus allow) to how the human eye would see it.

I am not interested in playing (as Sally Eauclaire wrote in her book the new color photography) the role of god's art director,

...their lust for effect is everywhere apparent. Technical wizardry amplifies rather than recreates on-site observations ... [D]rawing upon the Hudson River School's legacy in painting, they burden it (their pictures) with ever coarser effects. Rather than humbly seek out the "spirit of fact", they assume the role of God's art director making His immanence unequivocal and protrusive.

The only visual element I create in my PS processing, one which might be considered a "distortion", is that of the corner vignette - despite the fact that "naturally" occurring lens induced vignetting has been part and parcel of the medium since its inception, continuing to the present day. However, even that "distortion" is aimed at replicating the characteristics of human vision - when the unmoving eye fixes upon an object - a fixed stare - the only thing sharply defined is that which is in the center of the field of vision. That which falls in the peripheral field of vision is far less defined and "soft".

With characteristic of human vision in mind and with the notion that the camera is the ultimate "fixed stare / unmoving eye" device, I add the corner vignette to my pictures. Whether anyone considers that to be a "cheap trick / fanciful effect" or not, is up to the viewer to decide. However, it is worth noting that the only ones who seem to notice and/or care about the corner vignette are other photographers, especially the gear-heads and techno-freaks. For just about everyone else, the corner vignette is essentially invisible.

BTW, more answers to other questions coming tomorrow.

civilized ku # 955 ~ inside and outside

ODIN ~ West Village - NYC, NY • click to embiggen

single woman # 9 ~ she's not where she appears to be

Texting ~ Center City - Philadelphia, PA • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 954 ~ b+w from RGB

NJ Turnpike overpass ~ Secaucus Junction Station - Secaucus, NJ - • click to embiggenHere's another b+w picture made at Secaucus Junction. Unlike the first one, this one was converted from a RGB file, although ...

... what little messing around I have done with b+w conversions via PS Calculations and/or Channel Mixer functions has not exactly endeared them to the cockles of picture processing heart.

The primary reason for that outcome stems from the fact that those conversion methods have a zillion opinions / possibilities. Call me old school / film boy, but , when it comes to b+w pictures I like mine to be all of a piece - i.e. Kodak Tri X / Plus X look, Ilford FP4 / HP5 look, et al. That is to say, in film days of yore, most (serious) b+w picture makers settled in with one film + developer + paper combo and went with it for everything thing they pictured. At least that was so within a given body of work.

In today's digital / PS darkroom that is often not the case. Picture makers process their individual pictures with individual methodology resulting in - to the trained and observant eye - a mishmash of b+w looks. Not necessarily glaringly different, but noticeable to those who are accustomed to consistency of look. Although, that said, the notion of grain has been pretty much taken out of the equation.

Be all of that as it may be, my preferred method of b+w conversion is both simple and consistent - I convert my RGB file to LAB, discard the a and b color channels (which automatically discards the LAB channel), and retain the Lightness channel.

FYI, the Lightness channel is the LAB color space channel that contains all of the tonal information - the a and b channels contain the color info. And, on a side note, that is why all of my sharpening is performed on the Lightness channel in LAB color space. With that method. much higher levels of sharpewning can be applied without resulting in sharpening artifacts - only the tonal info is sharpened, not the color info.

Once the Lightness channel is isolated, I convert to Grayscale where I put the picture through my hi-end wringer. then, as my very last step - other than some sharpening in RAW convertion, all sharpening should be performed after all other processing is complete, I convert back to LAB for sharpening and then back to Grayscale.

This conversion method is very simple and it provides a consistent look to all of my b+w images.

The question was asked, why did I set my camera to monochrome when making some b+W pictures? I did so as a test of the camera monochrome function and I must say it passed that test with flying colors, or more accurately, lack thereof.

civilized ku # 953 ~ almost b+w

The big top under the really Big Top ~ St. Joe's University campus - Philadelphia. PA • click to embiggen