blatherings

Right Up My Alley

2009-11-19T05:33:00Z

Obviously, there's not been a real entry for a while. I'm hoping to change that soon. Lots of things to scan and a crappy scanner to do it with. Till then, I found this website, which is pretty close to my sensibility with regards to technology:

Analogue Digital Clock

Test Shots

2009-09-23T04:20:00Z

My Kodachrome portrait project is crawling along. It's happening, but VERY slowly it seems. One nice thing about doing the digital backups is that I'm also able to test the lighting setups before committing them to film. Sometimes these test results are actually better than the "real" thing. For example, here's a couple from my session with Sten and Rebecca:

The Test Shot

The Real Shot

In the test shot, they are not posed and are carrying themselves normally. Then I intervened and screwed it all up. They look great in the test shot. They look uncomfortable in the real shot. Unfortunately, I kept them in that forced pose for the film shot. Ugh. Then again, I think I underexposed those shots on film anyway, so there's probably nothing but a black blob on the frame. I also learned that black is not a colour to be worn for this kind of night time shot. Sten sort of fades into the background.

Sometimes the test shots actually are bad though. Here's two from my session with Ryan and Coleen:

The Test Shot

The Real Shot

While the test shot actually has some humour to it in that it looks like alien spaceships descended upon us during the shoot, it wasn't at all what I was after. I didn't have a choice here but to white balance for the main subjects and not the background. The test shot shows the opposite. With this set up, I didn't even bother shooting any film frames because I knew they'd look all weird due to the mixed light sources. Next time I need to bring colour filters for the strobe!

I've got about 6 shots left on the first roll of Kodachrome and it appears that the remaining three are the only ones I'll have left to experiment with. I'm getting anxious to send off this first roll for processing though. I want to see what mistakes I've made with it. But it really feels like the old days since I'm waiting to "use up" the roll before sending it in. Normally, I'd just eat the fact that the roll had more frames left, but these four rolls will be an exception to that policy.

I'm still actively searching for volunteers for this project. Let me know if you are interested.

Retouching: Fantasy vs. Fact

2009-08-23T06:27:00Z

When I first learned about the alteration tools available in Photoshop, there was no discussion of why one would choose to use them. At its most basic level, the software enables you to do the types of things you would do in traditional darkroom work. Examples are contrast and global colour adjustment. The difference is that computers allow much more specific detail work to be done. Enter the clone stamp tool. It is this tool that cemented Photoshop's reputation as THE way to do image "corrections." I put that in quotes for a reason. When do you draw the line between "correction" and "alteration?" The clone stamp tool is similar to an airbrush from the old days, but instead of using a single colour of paint to mask a portion of a photo, you select pixels in the photo itself as the virtual paint. The image below is a close up of some of my recent Food Porn from Facebook. On the left is the original image and the right shows how I used the clone stamp tool to cover up a stray piece of couscous. I could have, instead, used a painting tool to colour over the part I wanted to eliminate, but I wanted to keep the variations in tone and the consistency of the line so the rim of the bowl would appear unbroken. The clone stamp tool allowed me to select areas around the couscous as a source for covering it up. You now see bowl where there was once couscous.

As my class learned more about the clone stamp tool, we were never encouraged to think about the ramifications of its use. This was particularly egregious, in my opinion, when it came to the issue of retouching a portrait. I wrote about this in an entry you can read here. We were simply directed to begin changing things about the faces before us. The actions were presented almost as facts. In other words, it was assumed that this was the proper, industry standard of how to properly prepare a photo for use. As I tend to, I balked at this manner of thinking. I never like to do anything without the value of conscious thought and retouching seemed like something only cheaters or non-thinkers would do.

Since then, my feelings about this kind of retouching have softened quite a bit. I'm still not keen on it, but it's not evil. Overall, it's vastly better to get it right in the camera. It would have been far easier to solve the stray couscous in real life, but the "fix" doesn't change the essential character of the subject. And if the purpose of the photo is present the subject in an attractive way, seeing the it messy and sloppy does not do that. In this instance, I don't think I would be doing my job as a photographer if I didn't cover up the error. That said, if the purpose of the photo had been journalistic in nature, it would have been a huge violation to change it. Read here about the whole Edgar Martins fiasco from the NY Times a while back.

Photographer and Photoshop guru Scott Kelby, in response to the recent controversy regarding a magazine cover featuring singer Kelly Clarkson, makes a much more concise argument here in favour of retouching. In sum, he correctly points out that the composition, lighting, make-up, and clothes all should be used (and often are) to affect the way the person looks well before the image gets put through computer retouching. And more importantly he points out something that should be obvious, but tends to get forgotten: that when you put a person on a cover of a magazine, you are highlighting every feature they have. Flaws you wouldn't notice at all in person become exaggerated as a result. Is it entirely unfair to make them look as good as possible?

The bad part of retouching can be seen all around us, of course. For some REALLY terrible examples, check this page out. The work this man does goes WAY beyond just simple nips and tucks. He constructs an altogether alternate (and often ugly) universe. Yet as a wanna-be wedding photographer, I'm feeling the need to embrace some greater degree of retouching. There's a fantasy element to a wedding. People want to feel beautiful on that day and there's no reason why the photos shouldn't show them at their best.

So, in sum, retouching is part of the photographic process no matter how far it's taken. Every photo by itself is already a selected view of a subject -- the photographer uses focus, composition, and light to emphasize or de-emphasize elements in the story. A photograph is already a "retouched" version of reality. It only really crosses a line when the fantasy is presented as fact.

Home & Kodachrome

2009-08-14T02:04:00Z

As soon as we landed on Sunday evening, all I could think about was where we were going to go next. That's how it is when I travel. I have often told people that if I had discovered touring (for theatre) when I was 22, I would still be doing it. I'm very good at traveling. But life beckons to be dealt with and your friends will only let you stay at their place for so long before it just becomes weird (and hotels are so expensive these days). So we are home for a while now. Another jaunt to Hawai'i is the next most likely candidate. That would suit me fine and get me ever so enticingly closer to hitting the "elite" level with my frequent flier miles on Continental. And I'm actively fantasizing about my 40th-year world tour. Yeah...that's right...40. If you are the same age as me, just get used to the idea that it's coming and coming fast. I want to do something big for it since I've skipped over doing anything special for most of the other major milestone birthdays. Destinations so far include India, Vietnam, New Zealand, Japan, Korea (again), and China.

Anyway, for the immediate future it's all about taxes and business plans. Well, almost...

During our short upstate NY visit I started a project that will use some of my small stock of the remaining Kodachrome. I've never before used it and have in fact only shot one roll of positive film in...well...I can only remember the one other about ten years ago (and it was a fiasco). So this brings me to my third roll ever. The aim of the pictures is to do some nice portraits of people. That's it really. I wanted to start it off in Rochester since that is where Kodak, what is left of it anyway, is based. It seemed fitting to use some of the last remaining stock of one of their signature products in their own back yard. I hope George Eastman approves.

As for the portraits, I'm presenting them in pretty basic way. In addition to using the Kodachrome, I'm using the project as an excuse to get some more portrait and lighting experience. Hopefully I won't screw up the exposures on the Kodachrome, but I won't know for several weeks yet. Not only does it take a while to get the stuff processed, but I didn't get to shoot as much as I was hoping. I still have about 10 exposures left in the camera. I'm now actively searching for volunteers in the NYC area. Once I get back this first roll, I want to do more of these.

Here's a few digital versions I took as back up and for light tests. If I did screw up the Kodachrome versions, I didn't want the experience to produce nothing of value and waste everyone's time.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered for this. If I didn't get to you this past visit, expect me to try again on the next one.

Also thanks to everyone who we saw last weekend. It was a great time and we can't wait to see you again!

Film vs Digital: An Image Comparison

2009-08-04T06:18:00Z

Over a year ago, someone (Chuck) commented that he'd like to see a comparison between digital images and film images. Curious myself, and not ever having seen it done, I decided to test this out. Since my mornings at the time consisted of walking K around the neighborhood for an hour or so before 8am, I figured this comparison could be easily done in that time behind the stroller. After about two weeks, I finally had enough images to compare. I was surprised that I while I saw a big difference, it was not one that I cared about much. I wasn't swayed enough to give up using film, but the digital files were more than adequate for everyday use and looked much closer than I'd expected. Once I finished, it was my intention to do a full display of the high res images on my website to give people a real chance to compare the two types. Life took over and the whole thing got shelved.

Since getting back to the US, I've been madly trying to clean up and organize various harddrives and directories of old photos. Then recently someone asked me if I'm a "purist" as a photographer. It got me thinking once again about this delayed project. Not wanting to put it off any further, I'm now presenting this scaled down version of the comparison shots.

My parameters were basically this: as much as possible take the same shot with the two different cameras/formats. This included perspective, composition, and exposure settings. This comparison could have been more representative if I'd had cameras that matched up better in their features. On the film side was unfiltered Fuji 160S in my Bessa R2A rangefinder. I usually put an 81B filter on this film to warm it up, but I didn't plan on doing that for the digital, so I opted for no filter. The digital images were done with my Canon G9 set to ISO 100. I typically pull a half-stop on the 160S anyway, so while this too wasn't a straight one-to-one comparison, it seemed pretty close. While I have a deep affection for both cameras, the built-in lens package on the G9 is optically inferior to the lenses I can put on the R2A. This is the most obvious difference between the images. If someone ever makes a decent digital rangefinder, I may redo this experiment in the future. Or if I ever buy an older Nikon SLR, I can put whatever lenses I end up getting for my D700 on it. Sharing the lens at the same format size and ratio would have been a better comparison. Given these differences, I did have to do some cropping on the film images to make the composition align more closely with the digital version. Other than that, there has been no adjustment to either set of images. I could have tried to match the colour better, but that just seemed boring.

If I were fancy or smart, I'd put in some kind of radio buttons and let you choose which is film and which is digital. As you might guess, that feature is not available. If you are curious, email your guesses to yoshi@demandingrobot.com and I'll send you back the results. That's as sophisticated as I can get right now.

Korean Baseball and TV Screens

2009-07-25T06:20:00Z

I think the mark of a good travel experience is leaving a place with feeling like you've barely had a chance to go anywhere or do anything. I spent seven weeks in Korea and did a lot while there. But I want more. It's a place so different from my everyday life and by the time I get back there it's likely to have changed. There were so many places and people I didn't get to photograph as much as I would have liked. I look at what I did and I think about all the holes in the record. Plus we seemed to have been there during the period of the year when there are almost no national holidays or festivals (at least according to the guide books). So, I can't stop thinking about it for the moment. There's still a few lingering blog entries to come about it.

Baseball

While in Korea, I had the chance to go to a professional baseball game. I don't often get to see live sporting events and have never seen one in a foreign country. It was a little hard to tell how the quality of play compares to the US, but for entertainment value it was one of the most fun games I've ever been to. I've never left a baseball game in the US with my ears ringing. I only got through the 7th inning of this game between the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins, but the entire affair was so loud that it took a long subway ride home before I could hear well again. And oh my god the headache! I had 7 beers at a Yankee game last year and not one at this game, but the noise left my head pounding! Even more impressive about the noise was that the stadium was only about half full and the game was pretty meaningless in the standings. I can't imagine how loud it would have been if there was something important on the line with full crowd there.

The KBO teams are all owned and named after the major corporations (Doosan is a large conglomerate with dozens of divisions and LG is an electronics maker). I'm not sure how the fan loyalties develop since these two particular teams both play in Seoul. There's even a third team in Seoul that plays in different stadium. The Bears and Twins both play home games in the stadium shown in the video. These teams are somewhat like the Yankees and Mets, with the Doosan Bears playing the role of the Yankees. When I was buying my ticket, the sales person was trying to give me an option, but I wasn't able to understand what the choices were. Once I got into the seating area, I understood that she had offered me the choice between the Doosan side or the Twins side of the stadium. She gave me the Doosan side after I told to just give me whatever she thought was best. I can't see that it mattered much since I don't follow the league anyway. I'm sure I would have had just as good a time on the LG side.

Anyway, here's some footage of the game. It hopefully conveys the experience better than I can describe it. (If you are reading this on Facebook, you probably can't see the video and will have to come directly to the blog. Sorry. You might try Youtube too.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TVs

The Koreans love their TV's. It's not hard to understand why. Not only are they a tremendous source of income (and probably pride) for the country, but they offer a little privacy for a people who don't get too much. It took me a while to notice, but I finally realized that they have TV's everywhere you look. Dozens of them. I tried videotaping them to make a compilation, but it was too much work to get them all. Missing from this video are the 30" flatscreens in the conveniences store windows, the 5" LCD's running sales ads in the aisles of E-mart and Lotte Mart, the really small LCD's in the credit card machines at most check out counters, the 10" and 15" screens spread out in most subway cars, and the 7" LCD's in cabs that have GPS and live TV feeds (for the important baseball games) just to point out a few I missed. So this video mostly shows the billboard size TV's, of which there's lots. Almmost every large corner is a small scale Times Square.

The content on these screens is pretty entertaining too, but I REALLY didn't have time to take a sampling of that. Suffice to say that there is some weird stuff on Korean broadcast television.

Click here for the blog, here for the Youtube

Korea Through a Pinhole Camera Part 2

2009-07-24T02:24:00Z

I got back the colour 4 x 5 pinhole negatives from the lab this week. I'm generally happy with them. I knew there would be some framing issues (the negative was slipping in the frame holder and I wasn't very familiar with the angle of coverage). I think I only lost one negative due to the entire frame holder slipping out of position and falling toward the front of the camera at an odd angle. I was mostly concerned with my process of determining exposure and that seems to have held up. I'm also happy that in the images with human figures, those figures draw the eye in a way that the digital images don't (the digital ones have too much detail and contrast for this in my estimation).

The following are 4 comparison views. The top is the pinhole image and the bottom is the reference digital image. There are differences in the colour values between the two in part due to my cheap flatbed scanner and my general hack job of scanning. None of the images have been prepared in any kind of "final print" kind of way. These are just straight off the cameras.

Korea Through a Pinhole Camera

2009-07-15T16:51:00Z

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. I've been wanting to blog about several things, but our trip to Busan and return to the USA have made for very little extra time. And now that we are back home, there are SO MANY things to do. Taxes, dishes, potty training, job research, classes, more travel (to Upstate NY), etc., etc. Of course, what I'd really love to do is get into the darkroom to work on some things.

While in Korea, I managed to squeeze in (barely) a whopping 28 pinhole frames. This may not sound like a lot to those of you familiar with shooting 35mm negatives at 36+ frames per roll, but believe me, this took a great deal of effort and planning to pull off. It involves loading and unloading in a dark bag. There is also the challenge of finding appropriate subject matter. I was hoping to have some images with human figures in them, but this involves finding someone who is stationary for at least 6 seconds minimum (and sometimes as long as 45 seconds). I'd hoped to do at least one per day, but the necessities of daily life made that pretty hard. Towards the end, I was managing up to three a day. Then I made the mistake of trying to do some Sugimoto style images on the rainy beach at Busan. So much for the paperboard pinhole camera body. It's served me pretty well and was pretty cheap to construct, but it was already starting to show more wear and tear than it was designed for. The massive amount of rain water put it over the edge. I never even took any photos of the thing just to remember it. Now it's gone and I must build a new one.

Since there isn't get much in the way of meta data when using a 5 x 7 pinhole camera, I decided to start taking a reference photo with the G9. And since I've had a few malfunctions with the pinhole body, I wanted to have some kind of back up of the image. This way I could at least remember what I was intending to take if indeed it comes to pass that the negative is crap (it's sometimes several months before I can process film). I'm anxious to see what the 5 x 7 negatives will look like in comparison to the references because I actually ended liking some of the reference pics on their own. Now if I can find time to get to the darkroom...

Here are some of the B & W 5 x 7 reference photos. They are conversions to B & W and the subject matter is mostly the same as what was shot on film. I also did eleven 4 x 5 colour shots, but I've not worked any with those images yet.

5 Black & White, 5 Colour (Korea, Beginning Week 6)

2009-06-28T13:49:00Z

Not much time for a real entry right now. Trying furiously to write as many postcards as I can before leaving Seoul. Also trying to figure out our plans for next week. I think we're going to Busan for a week and doing some day trips around the south eastern region of Korea. It's the next easiest thing to do aside from going to Jeju Island, which we're not overly keen on (it's a lot like Hawai'i according to the books and also swarming with tourists in July and August). Been spending the last two afternoons walking along Cheonggye Stream with K. It's relatively cool late in the day and it's one of the few open spots she can walk around in that is both close to us that doesn't have motorcycles zooming on and off the sidewalks every few minutes. We also went to a library last week, the Yongsan Public Library (Yes, Adrienne, there is a photo and it will be on Flickr within a few days). There were some English books for kids and a nice reading room, but holy cow do the Koreans take the quiet in their libraries seriously. And there's been lots of visits to the children's playroom, Little Orchid, on the 6th floor at the Doota Shopping Mall. Finally, I'm trying to compile a number of little video shots to string together for some other entries, take more silly photos, take more pinhole shots (9 so far), and take more of the kind of stuff below. I've not shot as much as I was hoping, but I've done alright. Actually will be going to Chungmuro this week to buy some more film (hopefully I can even score a little bit of Kodachrome).

Wait, this is turning into a real entry. I don't have time for that. Here's some random negatives I got back this week:

Whitey's Wanderings and Ways With Words (Korea Week 5)

2009-06-23T11:51:00Z

Note: Video finally added below. You may have to wait for it load because it's somewhat big. I need to figure out a better way to do this. Photos added now too.

Lots happening within the last week or so. Been one of those weeks where I've been feeling a lot like whitey.

Father's Day came a day early due to H's production schedule (not because we are SO in the future). She scoped out a restaurant that serves a Western-style brunch called The Flying Pan Blue. It's run by a couple of Australian sisters, or so the searches on the interweb tell me. It's in the neighborhood of Itaewon, which is very close to the US Army's base for the Yongsan Garrison (thanks again to the interweb for this info). Itaewon also generally seems to be the neighborhood that foreigners living in Seoul reside in. There's lots of eclectic cuisines to be had and several US chain restaurants to be found. H, K and I had been there once before and went to a Pakistani place that was deserted save for us. While the neighborhood seemed very busy both days we went, it was not really our speed. It just seems, well, gross...like it caters to a very low side of people. We only really explored a few blocks, so maybe I'm too quick to judge. Still, it just had a bad vibe for me. I can understand that people living far away from the US who didn't really want to leave might like a taste of home. Since I'm here by choice, I don't want to spend time on things that I could easily get at home, particularly food. Once was nice, but I think we'll be exploring other parts of Seoul for the rest of our time here.

Itaewon was also one of the few times we'd seen any other white people. Occasionally we'll see one on the street or in the hotel lobby. Not always Americans, but definately not Koreans. In general I'm enjoying the anonymity we have here (or at least as much anonymity as I can have with a baby strapped to my back in a big red bag). So I try to avoid contact with white peope whenever possible. They cramp my style. It's like they are going to reveal me somehow and I don't want to be found out. And whenever there's a white person around who is acting...white, it just makes me feel bad. I don't want to be lumped in with all those people who don't bother to learn any of the language or customs of the place they are in. Note to people who may be traveling against their will: not every place is just like America. Just get over it.

But I guess I'm one to talk about the language. I have tried and I could try harder, but I've found Korean to be completely impenitriable. The phonetic description of words in the books seems to be of no use, although I never did put in the time with the CD's like I'd planned on. I'm okay when I can combine the written phoneticization with hearing it, but totally lost otherwise. We've had K befriend the little boy of one of H's colleages and try as I might, I just cannot remember his mother's name. And we've spent an entire afternoon together, mind you. I just have no hook with it. I did manage to pull the word "photographer" from the phrase book and nail it on the first attempt, but that has been my only true victory. So far, aside from some food words, I know how to say yes, no, hello, goodbye, thank you, fish, water, slowly, good work, and one-and-a-half (people always ask how old K is). Of those ten phrases, I use at least four of them incorretly in terms of context, but I decided I don't care because at least it's something close that people will understand. Close doesn't not cut it when it comes to this language.

Oddly though, the language differences have become a kind of safety for me. This is only the second time in my life that I've spent a considerable amount of time in a place that the language, both spoken and written, is totally different from my own. The first week was a bit nerve-wracking and the second felt very isolating. Now it's pretty relaxing. For as much noise visually and aurally one experiences here, it's nothing that I really understand. I'm not distracted with haivng to decipher anything. The vast quantity of signs pull my attention with their colours and shapes, but they are totally meaningless to me, just objects. And people are always staring at K and talking to us, but since I don't know what they are saying, I can just smile and walk away if they get weird.

ummm...back to what I was talking about...

H also had Monday off here and we decided to take our first trip outside of Seoul. We opted to go the island of Muuido. This is a small island off the coast of Incheon and loacated right next to Yeongjongdo, island home to Incheon Internation Airport. It's about 3 hours door-to-door and requires taking two subways, a bus, a ferry, and a walk to get there. Oddly, the ferry takes the least amount of time clocking in at all of five minutes. There are a couple of beaches and some hiking trails there. Only about 600 people live on the island and near as we could tell, only one of them spoke a lick of English. This was nice, only until we realized that the "country-bus" driver was not the one. After a visit to the beach, we took said bus from our hotel in Silmi to Hanagae Beach to find some dinner. As we departed the bus, we thought we confirmed that it ran until at least 8:30. After dinner, as 9pm approached, we found out it stopped at 7:30. But the travel gods took pity upon us poor hapless three. After some embarassing cell phone calls and confusing rounds of hand gesturing, someone came along and offered to drive us back to Silmi. This saved us a good two hour walk back. K will never know how lucky she was in that she didn't have to carry me back through the cold, dark night. The rest of our short visit was spent hiking along the road the next morning. Here's a short compilation video from some of what we did (this is a new thing I'm trying out so bear with me...):

Back in Seoul now for two more weeks. K gets another visit from our Phillipino nanny, Dell, on Friday. She lives in Itaewon, as did the other nanny we interviewed. I may try to shoot some that day or get a massage at Dragon Hill Spa. K's week will also be busy with our first trip to the Namsan Public Library, which apparently has lots of children's books in English. We'll also be going back to the Coex Mall Aquarium and the Seoul Grand Park Zoo. And I'll be cooking more Bibimyeon, Wanjatang, and trying out Seogogi Kamjatang (all from the cookbook I bought at the international bookstore, The Very Best of Korean Cooking). Finally, there's likely to be at least one more Emart trip in our future. I'm beginning to hate Emart.