So one of the virtues of "medium format" sensors is huge amounts of dynamic range. 15 stops! Holy crap.
Here's an serious question. What on earth do you do with that?
I know what I would do, which is to be even more slapdash with exposure than I am now, which is rather slaspdash. I'm pretty sure that's not what the people who buy digital MF systems are looking for, though. The point here is sort of the opposite of slapdash.
Output media are 10 stops, more or less at most. So you've got to map those 15 stops around a bunch, somehow. I guess you could do anything you like, but what do people actually do? Do you just fine-tune exposure in post, and then crush the extra stuff into the toe and shoulder rolloff, like film does for you automatically? Does it get rid of the "digital-looking highlights" thing for you for free?
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Friday, July 8, 2016
Philippe Halsman,
halsman on the
creation of photographic Ideas
Hat tip to Ming Thein for pointing me to this excellent, taut, little book. Creativity being an interest of mine I immediately went out and read it. Halsman is, among other things, quite funny. He also understands quite a lot about creativity and how to manage it. We now have Brain Science about all this stuff and can use our Nuclear Powered Brain Scanners, but apparently Halsman had a lot of it sorted out too, somewhat earlier.
Getting your hands on a physical copy of the book may be a bit of a challenge, if you choose to acquire one.
Anyways, he starts by stating the problem which is, essentially, how on earth am I to make a picture that stands out? To my amusement, he speaks of "a billion snapshots a year" and how one might emerge from this "ocean of dullness" which are familiar sentiments to us today, albeit a few orders of magnitude different. He's coming at this largely from the point of view of an ad man, trying to think up ways to express a product's concept clearly and powerfully in a single frame. This is perhaps the clearest and most obvious use case, so I applaud that, and note that Halsman did much more than that.
But to be clear, the problem that Halsman is trying to solve here is identical to Adams' "pre-visualization" problem, about which I have written at some length. The problem is how to get from a not-particularly-visual concept to an actual in-the-minds-eye picture.
While Halsman was most assuredly a major player in his day, he seems to have been to a degree consigned to history's dustbin. It's peculiar because his oeuvre contains iconic photo after iconic photo, but I think perhaps he was a little too much a cut-rate Man Ray to really be remembered as top-tier. Or perhaps he simply didn't have a very good PR man.
Then he has two sections, which boil down to "things to think about" and "things to do" by way of cajoling ones imagination into producing a good idea. He rightly treats the problem of converting an idea in to an actual picture as a separate and not very interesting problem, not worth that much (indeed, he explicitly goes through a story illustrating a case in which the idea was worth 90% and the execution worth 10%, and makes it clear he thinks this is about right).
Things to think about he terms "rules" for reasons which are unclear. They represent a sequence of things to test, mentally, against the specific photographic problem. Will a very direct approach work? What if I bring in some unusual technique? If that doesn't produce a solution, consider adding something unusual to the picture? Or removing something expected? No? Well, what if I were to do several things at once? If that still does not work, perhaps some sort of direct translation of an idea into a symbolic representation will work.
If you read Halsman too literally, in these Photoshop-infested times, you're likely to wind up with gimmicky looking "trick photography" pictures, unfortunately. What is perhaps more generally valuable is to explicitly write down a list of your "standard ideas" and keep that list handy when you're struggling with a problem. What tropes have you used successfully in the past? What approach is exemplified by some picture that you love? Write them all down, and go through the list as necessary. Yours might be:
It strikes me as perhaps wisest to especially note any techniques and tropes you have a hard time remembering. You probably have a few of those which slip out of your grasp just when you need them, "there was that one photo, what was it.. It did.. a thing.. damn it." Write that stuff down, and go through your list from time to time, especially when you're trying to visualize some picture. The end result, probably, is not that you get the perfect solution right off the list, but that the list stimulates the mind to produce a new and different answer.
The second half of the book is, roughly, things to do. These are specific actions you can take to stimulate the imagination. These boil down to much the same steps I've outlined many times before, plus one I have not.
The one I leave out is "talk to people about your problem" (brainstorming, in some sense). The ones left in are "think about the problem hard, look at things, look at photographs" and then finally try to recall your problem at moments of inattention, at moments when your mind is on other things. In the shower, as you fall asleep, immediately after waking. I've talked about this at length, this process of examining raw material in the form of photographs and other objects, of thinking very hard about your problem, and then of letting go so as to allow the subconscious mind to work quietly in the dark.
The new one, of talking to people, is quite wonderful and new to me. In hindsight of course it is blindingly obvious, but it had not occurred to me,
All up, I found it an interesting, and very amusing, read, and I learned a thing, so that's cool.
Getting your hands on a physical copy of the book may be a bit of a challenge, if you choose to acquire one.
Anyways, he starts by stating the problem which is, essentially, how on earth am I to make a picture that stands out? To my amusement, he speaks of "a billion snapshots a year" and how one might emerge from this "ocean of dullness" which are familiar sentiments to us today, albeit a few orders of magnitude different. He's coming at this largely from the point of view of an ad man, trying to think up ways to express a product's concept clearly and powerfully in a single frame. This is perhaps the clearest and most obvious use case, so I applaud that, and note that Halsman did much more than that.
But to be clear, the problem that Halsman is trying to solve here is identical to Adams' "pre-visualization" problem, about which I have written at some length. The problem is how to get from a not-particularly-visual concept to an actual in-the-minds-eye picture.
While Halsman was most assuredly a major player in his day, he seems to have been to a degree consigned to history's dustbin. It's peculiar because his oeuvre contains iconic photo after iconic photo, but I think perhaps he was a little too much a cut-rate Man Ray to really be remembered as top-tier. Or perhaps he simply didn't have a very good PR man.
Then he has two sections, which boil down to "things to think about" and "things to do" by way of cajoling ones imagination into producing a good idea. He rightly treats the problem of converting an idea in to an actual picture as a separate and not very interesting problem, not worth that much (indeed, he explicitly goes through a story illustrating a case in which the idea was worth 90% and the execution worth 10%, and makes it clear he thinks this is about right).
Things to think about he terms "rules" for reasons which are unclear. They represent a sequence of things to test, mentally, against the specific photographic problem. Will a very direct approach work? What if I bring in some unusual technique? If that doesn't produce a solution, consider adding something unusual to the picture? Or removing something expected? No? Well, what if I were to do several things at once? If that still does not work, perhaps some sort of direct translation of an idea into a symbolic representation will work.
If you read Halsman too literally, in these Photoshop-infested times, you're likely to wind up with gimmicky looking "trick photography" pictures, unfortunately. What is perhaps more generally valuable is to explicitly write down a list of your "standard ideas" and keep that list handy when you're struggling with a problem. What tropes have you used successfully in the past? What approach is exemplified by some picture that you love? Write them all down, and go through the list as necessary. Yours might be:
- Bare flash
- Ansel Adams black skies
- Macro
- Low camera angles
- Desaturated colors
It strikes me as perhaps wisest to especially note any techniques and tropes you have a hard time remembering. You probably have a few of those which slip out of your grasp just when you need them, "there was that one photo, what was it.. It did.. a thing.. damn it." Write that stuff down, and go through your list from time to time, especially when you're trying to visualize some picture. The end result, probably, is not that you get the perfect solution right off the list, but that the list stimulates the mind to produce a new and different answer.
The second half of the book is, roughly, things to do. These are specific actions you can take to stimulate the imagination. These boil down to much the same steps I've outlined many times before, plus one I have not.
The one I leave out is "talk to people about your problem" (brainstorming, in some sense). The ones left in are "think about the problem hard, look at things, look at photographs" and then finally try to recall your problem at moments of inattention, at moments when your mind is on other things. In the shower, as you fall asleep, immediately after waking. I've talked about this at length, this process of examining raw material in the form of photographs and other objects, of thinking very hard about your problem, and then of letting go so as to allow the subconscious mind to work quietly in the dark.
The new one, of talking to people, is quite wonderful and new to me. In hindsight of course it is blindingly obvious, but it had not occurred to me,
All up, I found it an interesting, and very amusing, read, and I learned a thing, so that's cool.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Mike Chisholm: Boundary Elements, revisited
This is a review of a book by occasional commenter Mike Chisholm. His wonderful blog, Idiotic Hat, is found here, and is worth reading.
Onwards.
Walker Evans pictures have this quality to them which I think of as "foursquare". They are frequently dead-on to the subject, and there are exactly no cute mannerisms. The camera is not positioned carefully to align this thing with that thing, there is no cutesy shadow play to add interest, there is no clever emphasis of foreground/background distinctions. The impression one gets is of a camera simply dropped into place to record something.
In fact, Evans was as fussy as anyone else about his camera position, and experimented widely. The results are excellent, but slightly puzzling because they are so foursquare, so artless. (see comment below re: "artless" for further clarification.) There is no gimmick visible, no cleverness, no flash of genius. And yet, they work. The pictures are pretty great.
Mike's pictures in general, and certainly in this book, have something of that flavor. Occasionally one feels a little cleverness (especially when two pictures appear of what is, upon inspection, the same wall with different framing), but generally the pictures have that same foursquare artless quality, and (this is important, obviously) they work. The subject matter is completely different, a sort of semi-abstract collection of scenes with certain graphical motifs repeated. It is, perhaps, a little like Evans doing his peeling paint/peeling posters thing, but with a quite different feel.
These pictures document certain semi-rural and, to my eye, quite British, rambles. At any rate, not particularly American, but perhaps by a process of elimination. It's too "small scale" to be west of the Mississipi, it doesn't feel like New England, and it's too cold to be The American South, so it's pretty much got to be either Pennsylvania or England. There's a real charm to the smallness of scale, in those pictures where scale is visible.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not bought the book. I kind of want to, but my budget is infinitesimal, and the pressure to not fill my house with yet more objects is high. I probably won't buy a copy, but I'm kind of on the fence.
Also, these are a kind of picture that I absolutely dislike.
Altogether too often we see these semi-abstract things as pointless exercises in form. In this case, though, Mike has convincingly persuaded me that this is a document of a path rambled, these are the things a roving eye might pick out. Very few vistas, a lot of little details. Each detail alone is a well-executed exercise in form, and by itself might be not much of anything. Taken together, they're a convincing document.
It's not a sprawling essay on Man's Place In The Universe, but it might be a diary entry on one man's place, in this season, this year.
So, while I dislike the genre, I quite like this book. You might as well.
Here's the link: Boundary Elements, revisited
Note that if you live outside the UK, blurb will (evidently?) print and fulfill as close to you as possible, so you're not paying to ship the thing from the UK, despite Mike's Imperial Residence.
Onwards.
Walker Evans pictures have this quality to them which I think of as "foursquare". They are frequently dead-on to the subject, and there are exactly no cute mannerisms. The camera is not positioned carefully to align this thing with that thing, there is no cutesy shadow play to add interest, there is no clever emphasis of foreground/background distinctions. The impression one gets is of a camera simply dropped into place to record something.
In fact, Evans was as fussy as anyone else about his camera position, and experimented widely. The results are excellent, but slightly puzzling because they are so foursquare, so artless. (see comment below re: "artless" for further clarification.) There is no gimmick visible, no cleverness, no flash of genius. And yet, they work. The pictures are pretty great.
Mike's pictures in general, and certainly in this book, have something of that flavor. Occasionally one feels a little cleverness (especially when two pictures appear of what is, upon inspection, the same wall with different framing), but generally the pictures have that same foursquare artless quality, and (this is important, obviously) they work. The subject matter is completely different, a sort of semi-abstract collection of scenes with certain graphical motifs repeated. It is, perhaps, a little like Evans doing his peeling paint/peeling posters thing, but with a quite different feel.
These pictures document certain semi-rural and, to my eye, quite British, rambles. At any rate, not particularly American, but perhaps by a process of elimination. It's too "small scale" to be west of the Mississipi, it doesn't feel like New England, and it's too cold to be The American South, so it's pretty much got to be either Pennsylvania or England. There's a real charm to the smallness of scale, in those pictures where scale is visible.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not bought the book. I kind of want to, but my budget is infinitesimal, and the pressure to not fill my house with yet more objects is high. I probably won't buy a copy, but I'm kind of on the fence.
Also, these are a kind of picture that I absolutely dislike.
Altogether too often we see these semi-abstract things as pointless exercises in form. In this case, though, Mike has convincingly persuaded me that this is a document of a path rambled, these are the things a roving eye might pick out. Very few vistas, a lot of little details. Each detail alone is a well-executed exercise in form, and by itself might be not much of anything. Taken together, they're a convincing document.
It's not a sprawling essay on Man's Place In The Universe, but it might be a diary entry on one man's place, in this season, this year.
So, while I dislike the genre, I quite like this book. You might as well.
Here's the link: Boundary Elements, revisited
Note that if you live outside the UK, blurb will (evidently?) print and fulfill as close to you as possible, so you're not paying to ship the thing from the UK, despite Mike's Imperial Residence.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Hasselblad Bag
So Ming Thein's mentioned in passing that Hasselblad's new X1D (XD1? DX1? Whatever) has a "system bag" by Billingham. It holds, I guess, the camera, and the two lenses.
I think I speak for all of us when I say,
HA ha haHAHAHHAHHAHAHA!
Is Oosting looking to take Hasselblad into the purse space? The man-bag space? B&H lists the bag, no picture, for $350.
A dedicated bag designed to hold the system and (one imagines) not much else, speaks to the complete unseriousness of this thing. It tells us that this thing is a status symbol, not a tool. While it is, obviously, a capable instrument, it's not intended to be purchased by people who will use it as such. Just as the Ferrari is a capable track car, and the Bottega Veneta purse can indeed hold your lipstick, this is a capable camera.
In my former industry, we distinguished between the "thing" and the "complete product", and in this case the thing is a superb camera, within certain parameters. The complete product is a bag, a camera, some lenses, and a ton of status. Mainly, it's status. At least, that is how it is positioned.
I think I speak for all of us when I say,
Is Oosting looking to take Hasselblad into the purse space? The man-bag space? B&H lists the bag, no picture, for $350.
A dedicated bag designed to hold the system and (one imagines) not much else, speaks to the complete unseriousness of this thing. It tells us that this thing is a status symbol, not a tool. While it is, obviously, a capable instrument, it's not intended to be purchased by people who will use it as such. Just as the Ferrari is a capable track car, and the Bottega Veneta purse can indeed hold your lipstick, this is a capable camera.
In my former industry, we distinguished between the "thing" and the "complete product", and in this case the thing is a superb camera, within certain parameters. The complete product is a bag, a camera, some lenses, and a ton of status. Mainly, it's status. At least, that is how it is positioned.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
The Critic
Nah, not Weegee's picture. Actual critics.
Ran across a comment on a thing elsewhere on the internet that suggested that a critic's job is to help the artist to improve. Now, I'm not going to judge a fellow on the basis of a single comment on the internet, so nevermind who or where, we can safely assume it was a slip of the brain. Still, it's an interesting notion.
Obviously no rational thinking human thinks this has anything to do with the job of a critic. Still, it's an idea that has its roots in the culture of camera clubs, where everyone sort of had the idea that they were educators. Now, a teacher does offer a thing called "criticism" which is related to the larger thing we think of as "criticism", but which isn't quite the same thing. And that thing is certainly intended to help the student improve. Some jerkoff in a camera club, or in these modern and degenerate times, a photography forum, is not a teacher. Anything they offer to "help the student" is unlikely to do that.
Modern forum/flickr/etc "critique" is about enforcing local customs. Pictures which fail to comply with local standards are shit, and the photographer must be gently, and then savagely, urged to comply.
This doesn't have anything to do with "criticism" as it is practiced by an actual critic.
Regardless of what philosophy of criticism you hew to, the job of the critic seems universally to be to react to the art, authentically, to record that reaction, and to also write down an understanding both of the art and the critic's reaction as informed by some reasonably wide basis for understanding that the critic has, with some labor, accumulated.
React. Authentically, and in an informed way.
The object here is to provide better understanding of the Art, and its place in both history and society, to whomever chooses to read the criticism. Possibly nobody.
This might provide a buyer with a rationale for buying, or not buying. It might provide a museum or gallery-goer reason to attend or skip a show. It might simply entertain or enrich the reader. It might do nothing whatever, and go unread.
If the artist is a fool, he or she might read that criticism, and thereby learn something, I suppose. All they are likely to learn is that what they put in is not always what comes out, and if they don't know that they are doubly a fool. Regardless, educating the artist is most certainly not the point of the criticism.
Ran across a comment on a thing elsewhere on the internet that suggested that a critic's job is to help the artist to improve. Now, I'm not going to judge a fellow on the basis of a single comment on the internet, so nevermind who or where, we can safely assume it was a slip of the brain. Still, it's an interesting notion.
Obviously no rational thinking human thinks this has anything to do with the job of a critic. Still, it's an idea that has its roots in the culture of camera clubs, where everyone sort of had the idea that they were educators. Now, a teacher does offer a thing called "criticism" which is related to the larger thing we think of as "criticism", but which isn't quite the same thing. And that thing is certainly intended to help the student improve. Some jerkoff in a camera club, or in these modern and degenerate times, a photography forum, is not a teacher. Anything they offer to "help the student" is unlikely to do that.
Modern forum/flickr/etc "critique" is about enforcing local customs. Pictures which fail to comply with local standards are shit, and the photographer must be gently, and then savagely, urged to comply.
This doesn't have anything to do with "criticism" as it is practiced by an actual critic.
Regardless of what philosophy of criticism you hew to, the job of the critic seems universally to be to react to the art, authentically, to record that reaction, and to also write down an understanding both of the art and the critic's reaction as informed by some reasonably wide basis for understanding that the critic has, with some labor, accumulated.
React. Authentically, and in an informed way.
The object here is to provide better understanding of the Art, and its place in both history and society, to whomever chooses to read the criticism. Possibly nobody.
This might provide a buyer with a rationale for buying, or not buying. It might provide a museum or gallery-goer reason to attend or skip a show. It might simply entertain or enrich the reader. It might do nothing whatever, and go unread.
If the artist is a fool, he or she might read that criticism, and thereby learn something, I suppose. All they are likely to learn is that what they put in is not always what comes out, and if they don't know that they are doubly a fool. Regardless, educating the artist is most certainly not the point of the criticism.
Monday, July 4, 2016
Vernacular Enigma
I present here some pictures all posted by the same person on a fairly popular internet forum. You're likely to react negatively to them, sorry about that. I'm going to ask you to slog through them before you read what I have to say after the jump. Titles and accompanying text as given originally by the poster. All copyrights yadda yadda, I am copying them here explicitly to discuss the work, which should cover it.
Alternate Universe
This Sepia was actually converted from the original using a mirror process to simply reverse the image vertically. He came up on me from my left to quite my surprise, and he actually did fit the profile for the shop and neighborhood to some degree, yet still he looks a bit out of place here. He had no clue I was photographing him. I like people shots, they're my favorites when it comes to photography; when I take them that is. Take and look and thanks for viewing.
Easy Street
'Hi Mom, this is me...' at work, outside, it's cold here. Did you notice Spuds Mackenzie in the background? I had a good time taking this picture. By the way, I just took it an hour ago.
The Tell Tale Heart
Oh, this really tickled me. This guy is getting sideways.
Near Phase
I got this and it looked the time around dark.
Critics Agree
Only in america
Parts and Labor
I think of this one like a postcard. I cropped the bottom off so as to not detect any sense of well being coming from a full sized photo. In fact, it might be missing more after all to the left, top and right, including the bottom. Who knows.
First Hand
Think about what it might be like to be another person. From a certain point of view, I take I have the situation under control.
The Third Reich
These guys got into it. A big fight. It amused me some so I took another picture. Not only had it been going on for awhile they were threatening one another. My ambition is for this little picture to make it all the way to the top so we can remember who they were.
This Sepia was actually converted from the original using a mirror process to simply reverse the image vertically. He came up on me from my left to quite my surprise, and he actually did fit the profile for the shop and neighborhood to some degree, yet still he looks a bit out of place here. He had no clue I was photographing him. I like people shots, they're my favorites when it comes to photography; when I take them that is. Take and look and thanks for viewing.
'Hi Mom, this is me...' at work, outside, it's cold here. Did you notice Spuds Mackenzie in the background? I had a good time taking this picture. By the way, I just took it an hour ago.
Oh, this really tickled me. This guy is getting sideways.
I got this and it looked the time around dark.
Only in america
I think of this one like a postcard. I cropped the bottom off so as to not detect any sense of well being coming from a full sized photo. In fact, it might be missing more after all to the left, top and right, including the bottom. Who knows.
Think about what it might be like to be another person. From a certain point of view, I take I have the situation under control.
These guys got into it. A big fight. It amused me some so I took another picture. Not only had it been going on for awhile they were threatening one another. My ambition is for this little picture to make it all the way to the top so we can remember who they were.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Internal Logic
I've had a thought, as I occasionally do.
Composition is an interest of mine, and while I'd like as much as anyone to discover a neat system of rules, or a way to draw and follow lines on the frame, or whatever, I have long since decided that this is not the True Path. All the lines and rations stuff is in fact nonsense. Kirk Tuck recently posted a portrait in which is becomes painfully clear that separating the subject of a portrait from the background with careful lighting is also something you might skip from time to time. It's familiar to all of us that any "rule" be it a stridently screeched rule from a forum hero, or a vague rule of thumb, is frequently honored more in the breaking than the following once you start looking at pictures that are actually pretty good.
If you get a little more serious, you can poke around at the ideas of graphic design, which appears to be a real thing, and there are rules of thumb, guidelines, principles, that can and are applied there. This is great if you want to make graphic designs, and render information accessible in an intuitive and useful format. What that has to do with Art, I cannot imagine.
And so it goes, any system seems to simply not apply a lot of the time, if you look around.
What, it seems to me, separates the good pictures from the bad ones is that the good ones have and obey an internal logic. The picture, or the group of pictures, sets its own rules, and then follows them. The logic might be inverted, it might be a logic of illogic, but it is nevertheless both present and obeyed. Which is maybe just a complicated way of saying "well, it works, doesn't it?"
One can imagine a sort of underlying concept for any picture. Whether there was one in the photographer's mind is irrelevant, the point is that we can try to imagine one. Pictures that work tend to have a clear underlying concept, and that concept seems to set rules, and a picture that works tends to follow them. Perhaps I have it backwards, that a picture that works follows the rules of its own internal logic, which in turn delineates a clear visual concept?
Anyways. Maybe there's a framework for thinking about these things, somewhere in there. Gonna noodle on it.
Composition is an interest of mine, and while I'd like as much as anyone to discover a neat system of rules, or a way to draw and follow lines on the frame, or whatever, I have long since decided that this is not the True Path. All the lines and rations stuff is in fact nonsense. Kirk Tuck recently posted a portrait in which is becomes painfully clear that separating the subject of a portrait from the background with careful lighting is also something you might skip from time to time. It's familiar to all of us that any "rule" be it a stridently screeched rule from a forum hero, or a vague rule of thumb, is frequently honored more in the breaking than the following once you start looking at pictures that are actually pretty good.
If you get a little more serious, you can poke around at the ideas of graphic design, which appears to be a real thing, and there are rules of thumb, guidelines, principles, that can and are applied there. This is great if you want to make graphic designs, and render information accessible in an intuitive and useful format. What that has to do with Art, I cannot imagine.
And so it goes, any system seems to simply not apply a lot of the time, if you look around.
What, it seems to me, separates the good pictures from the bad ones is that the good ones have and obey an internal logic. The picture, or the group of pictures, sets its own rules, and then follows them. The logic might be inverted, it might be a logic of illogic, but it is nevertheless both present and obeyed. Which is maybe just a complicated way of saying "well, it works, doesn't it?"
One can imagine a sort of underlying concept for any picture. Whether there was one in the photographer's mind is irrelevant, the point is that we can try to imagine one. Pictures that work tend to have a clear underlying concept, and that concept seems to set rules, and a picture that works tends to follow them. Perhaps I have it backwards, that a picture that works follows the rules of its own internal logic, which in turn delineates a clear visual concept?
Anyways. Maybe there's a framework for thinking about these things, somewhere in there. Gonna noodle on it.
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