I was thinking that the blog layout was kind of cluttered, so on a whim I started working on a totally new layout. I wanted to focus on having good whitespace (err… Greyspace) and a generally minimalist/ clean feel. I liked the shade of grey look, I think the photos look good on grey.
Anyway, pretty happy with it overall. Next up is a dedicated/personalized client area coming soon.
You may have already seen it on the “What’s the jackanory?” blog, but I felt remiss if I didn’t at least mention the BBCs recent piece on fashion photographer Rankin reproducing 7 of the most iconic images by some of the masters of fashion photography. It’s a really wonderful piece, with a lot of fascinating insights… worth the watch:
part 1:
part 2:
part 3:
part 4:
part 5:
part 6:
part 7:
part 8:
This series of images has been making its way through the blogosphere recently, I thought it was rather clever actually (setting aside the moral issues of vandalism/graffiti). In case it isn’t obviously what it is – some clever soul took decals made to look like various Photoshop panels/tools and pasted them over public posters of celebrities/starlets… Presumably to critique the “phony” image that these (presumably Photoshopped) images portray.
and it got me thinking about one of the endless debates that rages eternally in the photo world – right up there with Canon v. Nikon, film v. digital, etc…
The ethics of Photoshop.
The question of photoshop is really the old philosophical question of “truth in photography”. Must an image be “true” to be a photograph? If so, how much can it be manipulated/changed/edited before it ceases to become a “photograph” an becomes something else altogether. This is a debate that has raged from the first time a enterprising photographer dodged/burned/cropped a photograph in the darkroom to bring it more in line with his (or her) artistic vision. On the one hand if we trust a photograph to be a direct representation of reality, then manipulating that image to any degree violates that truth by distorting the portrayal of reality. On the other hand, we can argue that a photograph is never a “true” representation of reality by it’s very essence – it is inherently subjective and thus up to the photographer to use whatever tools are available to bring the image as close to their “vision” of reality as possible. Quite the conundrum!
In short here’s how I see it - It depends on what the purpose of your photography is. For something like photojournalism, which is generally trusted as a direct, non-editorialized portrayal of reality, the “Truth” of the image is paramount, Hence the stringent regulations against *any* level of image manipulation in the journalistic world, and the severe penalties issues to those who violate said regulations. Of course the counter argument to that is the fact that any photograph is inherently subjective – simply by choosing what to include or not include in the photo, the photographer editorialized and “manipulates” the truth to some degree. In the end we must simply come to a point where we say “close enough”.
However, outside of the realm of journalism, I believe that photography is art and, like any other form of art, is an expression of the artist’s unique vision. To that end, I believe that manipulation is not only acceptable, it is desirable – the more tools available to the artist, the more fully his or her vision can be realized. Fundamentally I consider myself an artist, and as such I love the freedom of expression that digital manipulation brings to my work. I am able to conceptualize an image, create the groundwork for it with a camera and then manipulate it to fully realize my vision. It is merely another step in the process of concept->product.
Now on the other hand, when dealing with the type of glamor and fashion images portrayed in the above ads, there is a whole ‘nother ethical issue to consider, namely the image that said advertisements are portraying to their clientele. Of course answering this begins to delve into the realm of personal politics, which is strictly off limits for this blog 
In the end, as with many philisophical questions there is really no “right” answer – so what do y’all think of said ads and their critique on image editing/manipulation?
I didn’t originally intend for THIS ARTICLE to be a multi-part series, but THIS POST by none other than David Hobby got me thinking about it again.
DH talks about the “first frame” contest he and other sports shooter would play – in short each shooter would take the first frame on their roll (whatever it was) and whoever had the best action shot (this is sport shooting after all) would “win”.
Now this resonated with me because it touches on a skill that I think is very much related to my whole “taking fewer pictures” rant – and that is anticipating the shot.
The whole “first frame” contest is intriguing because it is a balancing act – snap too early and you might wind up with a boring shot, when there are more interesting ones down the pipe. Snap too late, and you may miss the shot of the day. The skill lies in being able to *predict* when the action will happen, and where it will be – and nail it with your first shot.
Even if you aren’t a sport’s shooter (and I certainly am not), unless you are shooting food or still-lifes, your subjects are most likely dynamic – constantly in motion. People certainly are, from street to fashion photography – they are constantly moving, walking, jumping, expressions changing etc… Even landscapes have a dynamic component – clouds shift, sunlight changes, trees blow, waves crash. Pretty much anything you can think of to photograph is in s constant state of flux.
Part of the art of great photography is learning how to track this ever changing motion and pace your shots accordingly. Just seeing a great photo is not enough – by the time your brain has registered “oh that is a great shot”, sent the message to your hands which then have to aim the camera, focus and release the shutter, – chances are you’ve already missed “the decisive moment”. The trick is to *know* when that moment *is about to happen*, so you are prepared – when “the shot” occurs you are already squeezing the shutter – without even having to think about it. This applies from everything from anticipating when the sun will peek out from behind a cloud to when a model will turn her (or his) head to *just* the right spot – then *bam* you nail it.
Now I don’t claim to be an expert at this by any means, but I feel that it is a fundamental skill in the Art of photography that is in danger of falling by the wayside as more and more photographers fall back on the 10fps machine gun approach. For me it is yet another thing that I try and practice every time I shoot, to make myself a better photographer.
Just more random musings…
I’ve been a fan of Moo.com’s “mini-cards” for a while. I feel that as a photographer, why would you limit yourself to a single photo on your business card, when you could have 5 or 10 or even 50 different designs… The problem with the mini cards is that they were kind of awkward, being a non-standard size and all. They didn’t fit well in a wallet/business card holder and tended to get lost in a bag etc…
So when I heard that Moo now has normal sized cards, I was quite excited and ordered a batch immediately. I just received my first order, and I’m impressed. The colors are excellent, a tiny bit dark, but still quite good. Image quality is excellent too (although how hard can it be when your print is 2″x3″! The cardstock is the same as the mini cards, it’s a very satiny matte surface, almost plastic-y (in a good way) and the stock is very heavy. The card really has a substantial presence in the hand which I like – obviously not a flimsy “print it yourself” dealy… The cards also came with a nice little slipcase that holds 50 cards, with little dividers to separate your cards from other’s cards that you get – a nice touch, it will be easy to throw in the camera bag!
All in all I’m very impressed with the quality of the cards. The ordering interface was very straightforward (upload images, drag around to crop to size, layout the text on the back either with a premade template or upload your own, and done). They are a bit more expensive than your normal run of the mill cards (about 80 bucks with shipping for 200 cards) but I think it’s worth it, as I’ve always gotten a favorable response when presenting them – people like to look through them and pick one, instead of just handing them a generic card. It’s also a little mini-opportunity to show off some of your work, which is always good!
I wanted to start off this series with one of my favorite images, which was actually relatively simple to make. The piece is titled “Sunshine in the Rain” and began with a concept and a rainy day.
I don’t remember exactly where I came up with the idea for this shot, but it was something that I had been kicking arond for some time. I had a vague notion of how I wanted to juxtapose the rain and “sunshine” with the umbrella by making it look like light was shining out of it. As I recall, it had been raining for a while and Vicky and I were stuck at home. I was itching to shoot, so the idea just popped into my head and started to take shape. I was envisioning the model stainding in the park with rain pouring down all around while holding an umbrella with “sunshine” coming out of it.
Challenge #1 was how to get the light to “shine” out of the umbrella. I thought of using a standard silver photo umbrella, but 1) it didn’t have the right “look” and 2) I had no idea if it actually was waterproof I ended up taking a plain ol’ large rain umbrella and lining it with foil (taped in with duct tape). I used a cord to tie the strobe to the shaft, high enough to be hidden by the curve of the umbrella. Since I didn’t have a park handy, I decided a cityscape background would look good as well. I knew this place around city hall that had some open space with not a lot of foot traffic to get in the way of the shot. We ventured out (in the pouring rain and set up. I was using a 35mm equivalent prime to get a pretty big FOV, as I knew I wanted sky in the image, as well as the ground with the light shining. The scene was metered for ambient, and the strobe was fired wirelessly in TTL mode. Played around with a couple of shots/angles, but I wound up liking this framing with city hall framed between the two buildings.
(note – that is the actual raw file, directly converted without any processing whatsoever.) Pretty rough, huh? I knew it would be a bit of work to get to the final product. Most notably the “pool” of light on the ground is fainter and ill-defined. I knew that this would be a compromise going into the image. Because of the inverse square law (light falloff), given that her face was so close to the light source, if I had exposed for the light on the ground, I would have gotten a totally blown out face, but If I had exposed the face properly I would have gotten no light on the ground at all. I compromised by overexposing the face a bit (recoverable) and underexposing the ground a bit, and planning on fixing in post. Normally I like to do as much as possible in camera, but his was a case where I knew I would need to enhance it in post from the beginning.
With my concept in head, there were a few things I needed to do right off the bat – firstly to clone out the areas where light had leaked through cracks in the foil. I wanted to keep the umbrella “solid”. First the image was straightened and the overall exposure adjusted in lightroom. Then it was exported to photoshop. Since I knew I needed to do a lot of selective darkening and brightening, created two dodge and burn layers. In short this is a layer in “overlay” mode filled with 50% grey. By painting into this layer using either black or white you can selectively lighten or darken areas of an image (like dodging and burning in the darkroom). White dodges (lightens) and black burns (darkens). I made 2 separate layers, one for dodging and one for burning. I burned in the outer edges of the pool of light while simultaneously dodging the inner area to create a more defined circle of light to enhance the “streaming out of the umbrella” effect. I then lightened up some of the dark areas in the foreground and darkened the sky /lighter areas to give the overall ambient exposure more balance. Once I was satisfied with the lighting I created a new layer, and cloned out the light spill in the umbrella Finally, a HSL layer was added to give the colors a bit more “pop”, masking out Vicky to prevent oversaturating the skin etc…
in the end the layers looked like:
and the final image:
Amazingly that was pretty much it for processing. You can really do a lot with just dodge and burn techniques. although the image was relatively “simple” I think it works well, and is to date one of my favorites (if not my favorite) in my portfolio.
So I was going to make a quirky pun on new years resolutions and camera resolution, but I’m just not that witty… 
…but as for resolutions, I do have a couple – one of which being a new feature on this blog I’m tentatively calling “Making the Image”. Basically I’ll take one of my shots and break it down, from concept to lighting setups to execution to post processing – detailing the how and why for each step, and then obviously the final product. I know I always find such things useful (seeing the breakdown of a shot/shoot), so hopefully some of y’all will find it helpful as well!
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