Paul Light - Notes on Photography

Inkjet Printing Basics

2011-12-01T08:22:00.002-05:00

Inkjet printing is the most common form of digital printing. I began using this process in the 1990s with Epson printers. My current Epson printer is is an Epson 3800.

Before Editing

1 Set File Resolution to 300
2 Save as TIFF
3 Change Mode to 16 bits
4 Choose Paper
5 Convert To Profile

Editing

1 Crop
2 Adjust Brightness
3 Adjust Shadows
4 Adjust Highlights
5 Adjust Contrast
6 Local Adjustments
7 Retouch
8 Size
9 Sharpen

© 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

Establishing A Flickr Website

2011-08-11T17:35:00.002-04:00

Flickr has about 80 million users. Many non-users see Flickr as a site filled with visual junk. There is some truth to this, but I also know many long time Flickr users are serious about their photography and selective about what they post. Flickr is a sophisticated enough system that it quite easy to limit viewing to exclusively what one is interested in with a minimum of effort.

Creating a basic Flickr account is free. With a free account it is important to keep files small and selective. If more space or larger files are desired consider a paid account which is $25 a year.

1 To create a basic Flickr account go to the website

http://www.flickr.com

on a cell phone, mobile device or computer.

2 Click on the box "Sign up now". The "Sign in to Yahoo" window opens automatically.
3 With a previously created Yahoo email account, enter the complete email address in the "Yahoo! ID" box and the Yahoo password in the "Password" box. To create a new Yahoo email account click on "Create New Account" at the bottom of the window and fill out the form that appears in the next window. It is not necessary to create a Yahoo email account to have access to Flickr. Also in this window is the option to sign in using an existing Facebook or Google account.
4 Once an account has been created, it becomes possible to upload photographs. Each photograph that is uploaded can be uploaded as either a private or public photograph. These permissions can be changed as often as desired once the photograph is uploaded. Photographs can be uploaded by email or from the upload link on the website. For a full range of upload options see

http://www.flickr.com/tools/

5 Flickr will automatically build you a very basic website as you upload photographs. The index page/home page appears on the first page of the site in the bar above the page. An example of this would be

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/

Sizing photographs is very important with a free account. A size that works well is 5"x7"x72dpi. Photographs are easily sized in most image editing programs.

© 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

Beyond Digital Point-And-Shoot

2011-08-02T15:38:00.002-04:00

Point-And-Shoot cameras are wonderful. They are fast, accurate and capable of delivering 13"x19" prints. But then there is the problem what do you do if you want to make long time exposures, sweep panoramas or just simply be able to have full control of motion as well as what's in focus and what's out of focus. Micro Four Thirds cameras offer a partial answer and so do full sensor Single Lens Reflex cameras but neither offer a full solution. The Olympus PE series Panasonic GF series and Sony NEX series cameras are Micro Four Thirds cameras. Each line of cameras offer different features. The Panasonic camera probably offers the most for the money with it's ability to do 60 second exposures, having the most lenses available and being a smaller body. But the Sony camera with it's ability to only do 30 second exposures, having less lenses available and larger body may look like a lesser camera. I like this camera the best of the 3 for it's one unique feature - sweep panorama.

The fact that these cameras don't have a mirror making it impossible to have thru the lens viewing - a standard in SLRs and having no B exposure option making it difficult to use for night photography are both serious deficits making it difficult to use these as primary cameras with similar priced SLRs getting lighter and smaller with each new model. The third generation of these cameras are a good choice for anyone who's primary need is a small, light camera.

© 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

Photographing While In Water

2011-07-05T13:28:00.001-04:00

Good article about photographing while in the water

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/six-tips-for-aquatic-photos/?nl=technology&emc=techupdateemb1

DC3162 Trees + Land - Great Meadows

2011-05-25T20:59:00.003-04:00

DC3162 Trees + Land - Great Meadows ©2011 Paul Light

A photograph from this past April - early Spring. I walk in this area frequently. I know what it looks like. By altering it I get to see a familiar subject in a way that I have never seen it before.

Photomerge

2011-05-11T11:39:00.004-04:00

Aligning and blending photographs is the basis of the photomerge process. This is a very old process of combination printing that began in the 1850s to compensate for inabilities of the film used then. Two or more images were combined to provide a uniform whole. In the 1880s this became quite popular in England with the combination photographs of Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. New options were added by Jerry Uelsmann in the 1960s with his darkroom masking and blending techniques. Now we have Photoshop, Calico and Autostitch for digital photography.

I began this photograph by taking 3 vertical photographs that overlap by about 1/3. I then ran these images thru Photomerge in Photoshop and got a second broken up strange photograph which I rejected. I find there to be a lot of trial and error with both Photomerge and Calico.

I then ran the same photographs thru Calico and it accepted two of the 3 photographs. I could have stopped at this point and cropped off the uneven edge. Instead I went back to Photoshop and went to File>New and constructed a blank area slightly larger than what I imagined the final photograph to be. I used the Photoshop Move tool to take the merged Calico image and the rejected third image to merge them together. I completed the photograph by changing small areas with the Photoshop Clone Stamp tool and then cropping out the unused white space of what began as a blank area.

This photograph was done with an SLR camera on a tripod and a laptop computer. Variations on this technique can be done using any type of handheld camera or an iPhone with the app Autostitch.

© 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

Panoramic Photography

2011-04-02T20:57:00.005-04:00

The first panoramic photograph I saw was in 1970. It was a photograph made by Art Sinsabaugh using a very old panoramic banquet view camera. I have been struggling ever since to make my own panoramics. I have always thought the best way to make panoramics is to use a panoramic camera. Cameras I've wished to own, but do not own, include the Linhof Technorama 617
as well as a whole lot of other cameras that are no longer made. A second option is to get a panoramic tripod head. This is a lot less money and is a lot more complex to get to work right. A good one is the one made by Really Right Stuff

Then there is the software option. Sometimes it works it well, but not every time. Creating software that align and blend 2 or more images is quite difficult. Photomerge in Adobe Photoshop is a good starting point. I like Calico Panorama better. For Windows and iPhone photography there is Autostitch. And lastly some Samsung Galaxy phones, one of these being the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant, have software within the phone for making panoramics.

© 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

Multiple Exposure

2011-03-07T07:40:00.009-05:00

Multiple exposure is not an option available on all cameras. It is not a new option, but instead a sporadic option, that is been available on some cameras but not others. It has been available with cameras from the 1950s and earlier. My first multiple exposure camera was a very used Bolsey B2. With the Bolsey the camera was designed with a film transport that instead of the shutter release locking in place after taking a picture, the shutter release could be repeatedly pressed before advancing to the next frame. My more recent multiple exposures were made with a Nikon D80. The firmware on this camera has a double exposure and triple exposure option. Similar results to multiple exposure can be obtained with Photoshop or in darkroom printing using film sandwiching. What’s fun and unique about multiple exposures is seeing this strange imaginary image appear when the film was developed or in the case of a digital camera, appearing on the camera monitor within a few minutes of when the image was conceptualized.

Made with Bolsey B2
61-6A Man Waiting - Worcester Center 1974 ©1978

Made with Nikon D80
DC2897 Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach ©2010

text and photograph ©1978,2010 and 2011 Paul Light all rights reserved

PhotoMatters by John Sachs

2011-01-08T08:43:00.003-05:00

If you have the time and patience to pursue the basic technical aspects of photography here is a great site created by Jon Sachs that I was introduced to from a post by Lou Jones in Facebook

PhotoMatters

DC2107 Fence + Buildings - Lowell, MA ©2005

2010-09-25T08:13:00.003-04:00

The range of what can be done with a photograph just in the framing of it is absolutely amazing, but photographs limited to framing are dependent to some extent on travel. Altering a photograph opens up a whole new range of possibilities to subjects that have been photographed previously.

text and photograph ©2005 and 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6325D80

2010-09-13T14:59:00.001-04:00

In a circle I can redefine spatial relationships between different parts of the photograph in very different ways than I can in a rectangle, square, triangle, diamond or any other geometric shape. In the mid 1970s I did some work with 1:7 ratio panoramic rectangles as well as diamond shaped photographs. These projects went poorly and were terminated after a short period of time. While a circle gives me different options from some of the several traditional rectangles used in photography as well as from the square, the options are not so extreme as to confuse me in the way diamonds and extreme panoramic rectangles did in the past.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6156D80

2010-09-11T23:10:00.002-04:00

This photograph was taken in the Bear Lake Trailhead area of Rocky Mountain National Park. The national parks of the western United States were photographed extensively during the twentieth century by photographers like Ansel Adams and the many photographers he influenced. I made this into a circular image in part to show this in a different way than it is usually shown and also because I like how a circle within a black rectangle alters the perspective of any subject.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6551

2010-09-09T20:54:00.003-04:00

The reflections in a store display window will often have some of the same compositional characteristics as a multiple exposure. Reflections in windows often give me new ideas for multiple exposures.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6532

2010-09-08T19:46:00.003-04:00

I began making multiple images with a Bolsey B-2, a 35mm camera where it was extremely easy to make a multiple exposure of any number of exposures. This photograph was made with a Nikon D80, that has very minimal, but adequate controls to do double and triple exposures. This is a double exposure done in Rockland, ME.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSCN1887s52s52

2010-09-07T14:18:00.003-04:00

My early photography was primarily done in black and white. Although most of my current photography is done in color, I frequently return to black and white to explore the compositional options that are unique to black and white.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

John Ventrella

2010-09-02T15:19:00.008-04:00

Producing a portfolio is a difficult task for even an experienced photographer. John is a former student of mine from my early Summer 2010 photography class at Thomas Edison State College. This photograph from Pompeii, Italy was from a trip John took to Western Europe near the end of class. I like how John has pulled everything together in a well integrated style and has then pushed it further converting the photographs from color to black and white. The portfolio, as well as more of John's photography can be seen at John Vee

photograph ©2010 John Ventrella all rights reserved
text ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_3327D80

2010-09-02T14:59:00.004-04:00

This tree’s massive branches and the clear blue sky seemed like a good match for the circular format and it’s black background. This is a tree in the Boston Public Garden. I have photographed it many times in many different ways.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSCN1727s52

2010-09-01T15:48:00.002-04:00

Photographing store display windows begins with the photographs of Eugene Atget of Paris store windows at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the second half of the century Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander made outstanding contributions to this tradition. I began photographing windows on a trip to Amsterdam when I was new to photography. I had planned to photograph people on the streets of Amsterdam, but was too shy to do so, a problem I have since overcome. This is a window I found in Denver recently.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Lacey Nicholl

2010-08-31T15:55:00.002-04:00

This photograph is by Lacey Nicholl, a former student of mine from my Summer 2010 photography class at Atlantic Cape Community College. It is a photograph of her sister. I like this photograph because it has elements of an old photograph as well as elements of fashion photography. It looks like time has faded it and that the vignetting in the top left indicates a problem with the lens coverage, which was a very real problem with old lenses. I also like the way Lacey has posed her. This is a classic fashion pose for coats. I especially like the way her hands are positioned on the hood of the coat.

photograph ©2010 Lacey Nicholl all rights reserved
text ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6339D80

2010-08-31T14:19:00.002-04:00

In this photograph I have intentionally shot it in such a way that it is no longer fully descriptive. It is not possible to tell the size of the building. This photograph would not be a useful guide to finding this building. I have done so to emphasize the shapes, colors and textures more than would be possible in a photograph showing the entire building. By not seeing the entire building the viewer is free to become visually engaged with it’s component parts.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6407D80

2010-08-30T15:46:00.001-04:00

This is a photograph that has been repieced in Photoshop from 6 different photographs, each one showing a section of this photograph. Repiecing begins in 1907 with Cubism and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In 1970 David Hockney brought Cubism to photography thru his “joiner” series of photographs where he would photograph a section of a subject and then continue to photograph other sections and finally piece small prints of them together into a larger print.

I began to put sections of photographs together in 2005 in an effort to achieve a higher resolution photograph. I was in transition from 4x5 film view camera photography to digital photography. The camera I was using at the time I liked in many ways but was deeply disappointed with the much lower resolution results that I was getting with a digital camera. The digital photograph lacked the texture and spatial clarity that I had achieved in 4x5. I was trying to make a seamless realistic photograph that did not work. I did get the resolution that I was after, but I ended up liking the unexpected fragmented image. I was not thinking of Picasso or Hockney at the time, but since that day I have thought of their work frequently.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Lightroom Basic Worflow

2010-08-27T15:23:00.002-04:00

If you have given up on Photoshop, but still understand the importance of digital editing you might want to read the following straight forward workflow for using Lightroom instead

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/ten-photo-editing-tips-from-a-pro/

More Night Photographs

2010-08-27T14:30:00.003-04:00

Night Photography Basics

2010-08-27T14:16:00.003-04:00

My first influence in photography came from a painter, not a photographer, named Rene Magritte. In his painting L'empire des Lumières 1954 he combines daylight with nightlight. Although I still have a rather limited idea how to make a photograph like this, one of the aspects that originally drew me to this painting was I am not sure I had ever seen a painting showing night quite like this before. When I began photography I found it much more difficult to make any type of night photograph with the technical accuracy of a daylight photograph.

To take a photograph at night the equipment needed is a camera with manual shutter speeds that includes the speed Bulb and/or Time, a tripod, a remote triggering device or electronic cable release.

1 Place the camera on a tripod.
2 Autofocus and then switch from AF to M.
3 Set ISO to the lowest ISO number. Set the exposure mode dial to A, allowing the camera to choose the exposure time when working in low light. For full darkness, set the exposure mode to M and set the shutter speed to Bulb and the aperture to 16 or 22.
4 Set the self timer and press the shutter button for low light. For full darkness a remote triggering device or electronic cable release may be needed.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSCN1497s52

2010-08-26T14:07:00.002-04:00

This is an old display sign from a business long gone in Somerville, MA. The broken glass, the empty light fixtures of days gone past. In many ways I find it more interesting to photograph old decaying signs and building than new ones. The changes these decaying urban artifacts experience make them stand out from urban spaces with a sense of ghostlike mystery.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSCN1880s52a

2010-08-25T13:25:00.001-04:00

When photographing landscapes one of things that I think about the most is perspective. I was able to enhance the perspective in this photograph by shooting it as two overlapping photographs and then putting them together with Photomerge in Photoshop.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6353D80

2010-08-24T13:10:00.001-04:00

Drawing with chalk on a walkway is for most of us our first opportunity to create public art. Unlike adult public art it disappears quickly seen by only a small neighborhood audience. I like the contrast of children’s art against adult art in the background. I used a lens with 102° angle of view allowing me to show a large area of space. This would not have been possible with a more conventional lens.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Mollie Liguori

2010-08-23T14:34:00.005-04:00

This photograph is by Mollie Liguori, a former student of mine from my Summer 2010 photography class at Atlantic Cape Community College. It is a photograph of a friend who was surfing. I like this photograph because it is direct and the subject is not smiling or frowning making the photograph look more real.

photograph ©2010 Mollie Liguori all rights reserved
text ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6372D80

2010-08-23T14:16:00.005-04:00

This photograph was taken on a beach in Chatham, MA. I have spent a lot of time photographing trees since I became a photographer. Before that I’m not sure I really noticed trees much more than anyone else. Now I am always looking for new tree photographs that appear to me to be different than my previous tree photographs. I observed this from a variety of different distances and angles before choosing to shoot it this way.

All landscapes require extra care in choosing the lighting. The best solution is to shoot bracketed RAW images with a digital SLR camera and a high quality tripod and then blend them together in Photoshop or HDR software. Since this requires equipment that not everyone has access to and image editing skills that are not beginner level skills, there is a more basic way of dealing with this complex lighting problem. Shoot from sunrise to 2 hours after sunrise and 2 hours before sunset to sunset. Avoid shooting other hours especially midday. Also shoot on overcast days when possible. A sensor sees everything in much higher contrast than our eyes. Working with the above mentioned lighting is much easier for the sensor to capture as seen by the eyes.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6307D80

2010-08-22T12:12:00.001-04:00

I have always enjoyed taking candid photographs of people. I find it is important to shoot quickly so that people don’t start to pose for the photograph. I find it is equally important after taking the picture to be willing to talk with anyone who has happened to notice me. Sometimes after taking a picture someone who has been in the picture will approach me wanting to know why I took his or her picture. I will reassure them that I have not done anything that will offend them. I will often show them the picture and provide them with a way to get to contact me.

This is a photocomposite of 4 adjacent overlapping vertical photographs combined with Photomerge in Photoshop. The sky was modified by pasting an area of the original photograph into this image using the Crop tool for sizing and the Move tool in Photoshop.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6352D80

2010-08-21T11:19:00.002-04:00

This photograph was taken near Oak Bluffs, MA , which is a town on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. This is one of the gingerbread cottages in “The Campground“ area. This was taken with a handheld SLR and a wide angle lens. The lens created some distortion, but allowed me to photograph very close and still include a lot of this space. The original photograph was a little tilted. I did not realize that I was not holding the camera completely straight. In Photoshop I was able to use the Rotate option to straighten it. This is a great editing option because it allows the user to rotate a photograph a lot or just a very small amount.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

DSC_6155D80

2010-08-20T10:53:00.003-04:00

This photograph was taken near Estes Park, Colorado in Rocky Mountain National Park. In many ways this is a typical western USA landscape that everyone takes when they visit a place like this, but a few things about were intended to be different. The first is I used a high quality carbon fiber tripod to maximize the stability of the camera, resulting in a sharper photograph than most people were getting who were standing around me. I was also using an SLR camera, which has a sensor that is much larger than in a point and shoot camera, giving me lots more detail than is possible with a point-and-shoot camera. All SLR cameras outperform all point-and-shoot cameras in image quality. The circle was created using a lens hood designed for a much longer lens which when placed on this lens cuts off all four corners. I could see this effect while looking at the scene before I actually took the photograph. In the finished photograph there are often slightly gray areas in the black outer area. These were retouched to produce an even black border using the Brush tool in Photoshop.

text and photograph ©2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Inkjet Photo Papers

2010-07-27T16:12:00.002-04:00

Printing papers or maybe I should say printers are a problem for people who are new to photography. It is very exciting to produce a high quality photograph that is large enough to hang on a wall. The ideal solution is to have a high quality printer and high quality paper, but this can be very expensive. I’ve often wondered if you can’t afford both, which should you choose. I once thought the printer is the more important choice. After having seen student prints on Epson Watercolor Radiant White paper made on inexpensive printers, I have tentatively concluded that the paper is the key component, although a good printer is always nice too. Here are some papers getting good press. It might be interesting to see how these do on inexpensive printers.

http://www.pdngearguide.com/gearguide/content_display/features/e3iee0aa73a7e85d84b570f024cf1d8f04c

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

More On Editing

2010-07-21T18:36:00.003-04:00

When taking pictures it is important to think about where you are standing in relation to the subject, the quality of the light and perspective. Perspective is generally beyond the reach of people who are new to photography. Lenses that change perspective often cost more than camera bodies. This is further complicated by the fact that the lens cannot be changed on a point and shoot camera and the zoom lenses provided on these cameras do not really change perspective very much.

Photographers like Ansel Adams did all of the above, but in a way that is so subtle most viewers look at his photographs and have absolutely no idea how much went into each individual photograph. Very few viewers realize how extensively Adams modified each and every photograph in the darkroom.

This subtlety is also not apparent in the work of Henri Cartier Bresson. Cartier Bresson probably understood the importance of choosing a good place to stand better than any photographer who has ever lived. He could dramatically alter perspective by where he choose to stand.

With the photographs of Lee Friedlander it becomes quickly apparent how much of a difference a wide angle lens can make, although few photographers could probably get as much out of a wide angle lens as Friedlander does.

A photographer who has mastered Photoshop is Jeff Wall. The edits are extreme, but they are done so skillfully they are invisible to most viewers unless the edits are pointed out to them. His photography and especially the photographs where he has used Photoshop to make composite photographs has had a profound affect on the photographs of Andre Gursky where the use of Photoshop is more dramatic, but is generally impossible for the viewer to reconstruct.

Not editing work is a mistake. It is no more logical to not edit a photograph than to not edit written text, a film or music. Editing is what makes a work of art stand out from other work in the same medium.

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Creating A Portfolio 2

2010-06-25T15:25:00.002-04:00

I presently have 1 book – Nightwork Photographs 1.0, 5 portfolios of 13”x19” prints, 7 portfolios of 3.5” x 5” prints and over a dozen electronic portfolios. I have found the closer I move to a book the harder it becomes to edit the work. Beginning with an electronic portfolio is a great way to get started on this complex project.

Recently I began a revision of the book. The first book was self published using Blurb. It was very small – 10 photographs. The main objective was to test the quality of the printing which I felt was pretty good, but quite distant from commercial publishers of photography books like Phaidon. The revised second book will go thru a different editing process. It has more photographs and I will be showing it to people as a PDF file and use this as a way to edit it some more. I then plan to copyright it and give it out for free on a request basis. I will then again edit it, copyright the new version, get an ISBN number and begin to sell it as a paperback book and electronic book. It’s not a task I look forward to, so it will probably go slowly.

I like making PDFs. This has become my favorite way to show work – both my own and that of others. PDFs are fast and easy to make and look good on both a monitor and projection screen.

As stated throughout my blog I dogmatically believe in prints. This is the way I like seeing my work best as well as the work of others. I have 2 types of print portfolios – 13” x19” Itoya Art Profolio Advantage books and reconfigured rectangular plastic CD cases filled with 3.5”x5” prints. The small cases I limit to 10 prints. The portfolio books had been limited to 10 prints, but I am experimenting with a larger selection of prints.

Over the past few years I have experimented a lot with Flickr. I first used it as a teaching tool for my Thomas Edison State College photography classes. I had tried most of the other photo sharing sites and found them flawed in one way or another. I found Flickr very easy to use and began to use it myself as my first level of editing work. Before these sites I had helped students construct photography websites for several years and watched how hard this was for too many students. I like Flickr for it’s clear and straightforward display and how widely it is watched. Real buyers watch what’s posted there, then contact photographers and buy Flickr photographs directly from photographers for reasonable usage fees. Flickr does not allow photographers to sell work directly from the site. I like the options for creating sets and how easy it is to rearrange the order of display as well as edit individual images with their basic and easy to use image editing tools.

Putting work in a portfolio is a lot of work. Each level gets harder. But it clarifies for both you and your audience as to who you are and helps you make better future photographs.

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

In Defense of Printing

2010-06-09T16:13:00.005-04:00

When I began photography I was unsure about making my own prints. I found it a difficult and expensive process. This had more to do with my objectives rather than the difficulty of the process or the cost of the materials. I was continually interested in raising the quality of each new print, an objective I still maintain.

Shortly after beginning photography I became friends with Minor White. He convinced me of the value of making one’s own prints. His principal argument was that it was a contemplative process, where one would learn to take better photographs from printing, as well as think about photography as art and what that meant while being engaged in the activity of making prints.

A few years later I met Aaron Siskind. During our 10 year friendship we talked lots about printing and I got to see how his individual prints were the process of experimenting in the darkroom rather than just trying to mechanically reproduce the negative.

I realize that many of today’s most important photographers do not print, have no plans to print in the future and still produce eloquent prints with the help of a staff or a professional lab. I don’t think it is necessary to print to be a real photographer.

But if the choice of printing is made, the options today are pretty amazing. One paper in particular has got my attention – Epson Watercolor Paper Radiant White. This paper seems to work well on a variety of printers. What I am seeing in classes is students experimenting with this paper using inexpensive HP printers, as well as other printers, mostly the type of printer that is often thrown in for free when buying a new computer. The best results are from high end Epson printers, as would be expected. But the results from inexpensive printers are pretty impressive. This paper may damage the printer over time, but is this really not much of a concern with an inexpensive printer. This seems to be a worthwhile starting point for anyone who is new to making their own prints.

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Electronic Flash

2010-04-07T19:13:00.003-04:00

When working in very low light or very bright light, it often becomes necessary to add artificial light to complete the exposure. The most popular source of artificial light is electronic flash. Electronic flash units are often built into lower priced cameras. As more is spent on a camera, the camera will include a hot shoe and/or electronic flash cord plug. Cameras with either option make it possible to use a wide variety of external flash units. Good basic external flash units are made by Sunpak.

http://www.tocad.com/sunpak/flashunits.html

The first 6 years I did photography I did not use flash. Then I saw two photographs by Mark Cohen that changed the way I thought about flash. I bought a flash the next day.

Here are the two photographs

http://www.robertkleingallery.com/gallery/main.php?level=picture&id=1359

http://www.robertkleingallery.com/gallery/main.php?level=picture&id=1356

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Photographing Children

2010-02-10T14:04:00.003-05:00

When I began photographing children was definitely not a great art subject. There had been photographs of children that were considered great art, such as Gene Smith’s photograph of his children

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/smith/smith_children_walking_full.html

Henri Cartier Bresson’s

http://apphotnum.free.fr/images/cartier-bresson01.jpg

and Helen Levitt’s

http://magyar.mashkulture.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/helen_levitt_03.jpg

These were the exceptions. For the most part this was considered too sentimental a subject to approach as academic art.

And then came Gene Meatyard

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_423794977_324591_ralpheugene-meatyard.jpg

Emmet Gowin

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/images/full/gowin/gowin_twist.jpg

and Sally Mann

http://jerryandmartha.com/yourdailyart/images/mann.jpg

in rapid succession creating a visual foundation for photographing children as a subject worthy of museum exhibitions.

Today there are many photographers who consider themselves serious artists whose main subject is children. One of the most interesting of these photographers is Julie Blackmon. Her subjects are her extended family, carefully posed and edited by compositing in Photoshop

http://www.julieblackmon.com/Image.cfm?nK=312&i=3527

Posing and choice of background continue to be central issues in creating portraits that function as art rather than a sentimental record. This is a great time to photograph children as subjects for art.

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Adding Light

2010-01-25T16:19:00.003-05:00

There are 3 ways to add light to a photograph.

1 Place the subject by a window
2 Fill the shadows with a reflector
3 Add an additional light source like an electronic flash. Flash units built into a camera have a very limited capacity to light the subject.

Altering Perspective

2010-01-24T13:55:00.005-05:00

Altering perspective is important aspect of making strong photographs. This can be done by using a very short or very long lens, by using two or more frames of film in combination in a darkroom print, using various photo compositing tools in an image editing software program or using a tripod with a panoramic head and a photo stitching software.

Wide angle lenses are traditionally used to include more in a photograph than can be captured by a regular lens.In the 1960s Lee Friedlander, Pete Turner and Gary Winogrand changed the way photographers thought about lenses. Each of these photographers began using wide angle lenses in situations where longer lenses had traditionally been used to create a perspective where the distance between any 2 objects appeared to be farther apart than the way our eyes see it.

The way all lenses are designed is, as a lens gets shorter the distance between any 2 objects in the photograph appears to be farther apart. As the choice of lens wider gets this separation increases to the point that overall perspective becomes dreamlike and it is clear to the viewer that the perspective is different than the way our eyes would see the space.

Lens size can be measured in 2 ways . The traditional measurement is focal length. This gets confusing because what would be wide angle in one format might not be wide angle in another format. For instance a 65mm lens is a wide angle lens on a 4 x5 view camera, but would not be a wide angle lens on a digital SLR camera.

A second measurement is angle of view. This is the same for all formats. The way our eyes see the distance between 2 subjects is ~ 47°. If a lens was placed on the camera with a 90° to 100° angle of view the change in distance between 2 subjects would clearly look different to any viewer. The subjects appear much farther apart.

Using long lenses can also alter perspective. As the choice of lens has a narrower angle of view this separation decreases to the point that overall perspective becomes dreamlike, but in a different way than with a wide angle lens, and it is clear to the viewer that the perspective is different than the way our eyes would see the space. The subjects appear much closer together. If a lens was placed on the camera with a 3° to 8° angle of view the change in distance between 2 subjects would clearly look different to any viewer. The subjects appear much farther apart.

A second way of creating a wide angle image is blending. Fragmented images are faster. A good example of smooth blends are the photographs of Jerry Uelsmann. A good example of fragmented blends is Craig Barber.

A third way is to create a panoramic photograph. One way is to buy a panoramic camera. A second way is to create one with image editing software. This requires a ball head with a panning clamp and put together to or more photographs on the computer. There are different manufacturers making different types of panoramic heads. Going this route is more expensive than buying a wide angle lens.

Perspective can be altered simply by where one chooses to stand. Henri Cartier Bresson is proof of that. But lenses, darkroom masking and blending,Photoshop masking and compositing, panoramic cameras and panoramic heads provide more ways to do this.

© 2010 Paul Light all rights reserved

Camera Bags

2009-12-27T14:27:00.003-05:00

I have only had a few camera bags, but have always found them to be an essential piece of equipment. My favorite camera bag is a Tamrac backpack. It looks like a conventional backpack to some extent. This bag is no longer made. It is similar to Tamrac's model 750 and 752 Photographer's Daypack.

For days where I need to carry equipment for a long time I use a Pacsafe TrekSafe 100
that I originally bought for another purpose. I was planning a trip to London and read several reports on the Internet stating that London was filled with pickpockets and camera thieves. I did not want my trip ruined by a stolen camera, or actually a stolen memory card. (Cameras are easy to insure and replace. Photographs stored on memory cards cannot be replaced.) London is either not filled with pickpockets or the sight of this bag kept them away. The Pacsafe TrekSafe 100
is not a camera bag and should not be used by itself as a camera bag. The padding in the straps and the padding where the bag rests against my lower back is so comfortable I can’t see any good reason to replace it with a more expensive camera backpack. I put a smaller camera bag inside that can carry an SLR with a lens attached. This is where the camera is actually stored. It is a fully padded bag intended to protect a camera. This bag is no longer made. It is similar to Tamrac's 3536 Express 6 Camera Bag. The larger inner pockets in the Pacsafe bag are more than adequate for my camera accessories.

For trips where I want a computer and a camera in the same bag I carry a LoweproCompuTrekker Plus AW. I doubt it is as theft proof but is nicely designed to deal with the extra weight of a laptop computer.

For rain I carry a Lowepro Nova 2 AW Camera Bag. This has an all weather cover that makes it possible to carry in heavy rain. This bag can be uncomfortable to carry for long periods of time.

As you can see I like Tamrac and Lowepro bags. I find Lowepro to be the better of the two. When I bought my Tamrac backpack 10 years ago I thought it was the best pack of its type for the price. Over the past 10 years I feel that Lowepro has become the best camera bag designer.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Why Edit?

2009-12-01T15:41:00.004-05:00

Editing seems like something to be avoided by everyone new to photography. A successful photograph is one that is shot with such accuracy that nothing need to be done to it other than transfer it to the computer. This has never been true and is still not true. Cameras only approximate one’s vision. Ansel Adams was probably the first photographer to fully grasp this concept.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adams/adams_moonrise_full.html

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adams/adams_winter_sunrise_full.html

He used the best cameras available, high quality film (digital cameras did not exist in his lifetime), and the highest quality darkroom materials available.

Trained as a classical pianist, perfection as a photographer came easily to him. His photographs are highly edited. They are not edited because he made mistakes while shooting or his film was flawed in any way. He edited because he realized what we see and what the materials produce are different. He made a point to keep detailed field records of what it was he was seeing. He used a mathematical notation system where each significant contrast change was assigned a number. As he developed film and made prints he continued to track the contrast changes and readjust them to reflect his personal vision. The finished print does not look edited. His photographs have a sense of drama that he added thru edits rather than settling for the unedited image. And extension of this same type of editing can be seen today in Jeff Wall’s photography

http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/JeffWall3.jpg

This is, at least two photographs carefully edited to produce a scene that did not exist. The empty hole was shot in a studio. The photograph was edited in Photoshop using a process called photocompositing.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/24/arts/design/24wall600.jpg

In this photograph the edit is more subtle. Two photographs were put together shot from the exact same position. One exposure was exposed to bring out the room. The second exposure was exposed for the elements outside the windows. Before Photoshop, it would not have been possible to make a photograph like this due to the extreme differences in the interior and exterior light. The room would have to be shown very dark to capture the exterior or the exterior would have to be shown very light to capture the interior.

Editing is time consuming – even in Photoshop. Adams and Wall demonstrate why editing is important.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Towards Exhibiting

2009-11-30T16:53:00.004-05:00

Editing photographs for both technical quality and a unique point of view is the most basic step in putting together an exhibit. A good way to begin editing photographs is to transfer some from a desktop or laptop computer to an iPod or phone and show it to friends. Everyone thinks they know what photographs other people will like, but this is rarely true. It is not a good idea to be the sole judge of one's own work. Try showing 10 photographs to 20 people. Post the 3 most popular on Flickr or a similar site.

Flickr and similar sites look like they can provide a lot of feedback. Sometimes they do. Anything beyond direct contact with an audience will result in limited feedback. Try to put at least 20 photographs online.

Next – get prints made or make your own. To make prints requires editing software and a printer. Editing software suitable for printing includes Aperture, Lightroom, and Photoshop. With larger prints Genuine Fractals is a helpful Photoshop plug-in. Printers for photographs should have at least 6 cartridges.

Buy inexpensive frames and glass and hang them in a room where you live or in a room where a lot of time is spent. This creates the first challenge for quality. If you still like them after several days you may want to go public with your work. Some good places to get started are libraries, restaurants and colleges. This may require buying higher quality frames. At each step of the process the editing becomes more complex and the form of exhibition becomes more expensive.

If exhibiting in libraries, restaurants and colleges goes well the next step is a commercial gallery. This can get quite expensive. It is an investment for the gallery. All work is judged far more carefully than for libraries, restaurants and colleges. If they do not sell any of your work they will lose money. Compromises will most likely need to be made on your part regarding the quality of frames and the printer and in many cases even the camera and software you use. Galleries have contacts with collectors and museums that few individual photographers can establish on their own. The best way to make contact with a gallery is send email with an attachment of your best received photograph and a request to show them more of your work. They get a lot of email like this and may not respond. If they do, be prepared to send them a CD of your photographs or to show them a portfolio in person. A good inexpensive portfolio is the Itoya Art Profolio Advantage book. This comes in a wide variety of sizes.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Social Media Terms of Service

2009-11-17T17:30:00.002-05:00

The following post appears at

http://asmp.org/articles/social-media-terms-service.html

This is written by an attorney acting on behalf of the American Society of Media Photographers, a professional organizations that has a passionate commitment to protect all photographers.

Social Media Terms of Service
Best Practice Recommendations for
Social Networking Sites

Christopher J. Reese, Esq.

In response to member requests, ASMP commissioned attorney Chris Reese to undertake a review of the Terms of Service (TOS) of six social media sites and to prepare findings and recommendations. The sites included in his assessment are Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. This report presents recommended best practices, considerations, common terms used, and hypothetical situations photographers may face when images are posted on social networking sites.

Summary of Best Practices

1.

Decide why you are considering posting your images on a social networking site. Do you want a sample of your work to reach the largest possible audience for free? Are you trying to advertise your most prized photographs in the hope of selling a few limited prints? Would you mind if people made unauthorized copies?

2.

After determining why you want to post your images, read the Terms of Service (“TOS”) for the site. Make sure you have a good understanding of what the company and other users are legally permitted to do with your media. Look at other policies, such as the Privacy Policy, to see if they are relevant.

3.

Browse through the site to get an idea of its functionality. Are there settings you can choose which will provide you with some control over who sees your images? Are there settings you can choose which provides roadblocks to the easy-copying of your original image? View images posted by other photographers and see if it is possible to copy the photos and at what quality. Find out if there are ways to track who is seeing or copying or reposting your images.

4.

After reading the TOS and understanding the functionality of a site, including any attempts to provide copy protection, decide whether you have chosen the right social networking site. Every site handles these issues differently, sometimes markedly so. If you aren’t sure about it, consider other sites before making a decision.

5.

Once you decide that you want to post images, we recommend embedding each image with copyright, contact, and other information. This can be done in Photoshop. However, you should know that some sites, such as Facebook and MySpace strip that information as a result of the software they use to manipulate and post files. You might also want to consider adding an identifying watermark to your images. If one of the reasons you are posting images is to use the site as a marketing tool, then providing an identification that stays with an image might be a good idea. Others might have the right to repost images or have the ability to copy the image and use it on other sites or distribute via e-mail. If the image goes viral, it would be nice to have your name attached to it.

6.

If you don’t want people to have copies of high quality images, you can also consider posting only small, low resolution versions of your work.

7.

After posting your images, make it a point to review the TOS regularly to see if the terms have changed. Also, if available, check the data on how many people are viewing your images or spreading the word to others. This will help you decide if your initial reasons for posting the images continue to make sense.

8.

If you become aware of misuse of your images, contact the site and begin the procedure described in the site’s copyright violation policy. If warranted, take legal action.

Terms of Service (TOS) Considerations

As you decide whether to post images on a social networking site, you’ll have to keep in mind the great difference between legal rights and technological capability. Although we strongly recommend that you read the TOS for any site before you post any images, we want to warn you that the terms are only one consideration. Although they provide some shape to the legal landscape of your rights and the rights of the hosting company and other users, they are also limited in their practical effect for at least four reasons:

1.

Most of the TOS include language which gives the hosting company the right to make changes to its TOS without notifying you;

2.

Many of the TOS contain very broad language and it may be difficult to determine where the hosting company’s rights end;

3.

The TOS may not be clear enough about what one user is allowed to do with another’s content, and

4.

Many, if not most, users do not read the TOS. They simply click through. In those instances, the practical question is more about what people are able to do with the content than what they are allowed to do with the content.

These four limitations on the TOS are for the average user who generally wants to respect the copyrights of others. Unfortunately, if someone doesn’t care about infringing someone else’s copyright, then matters are even more difficult. As a matter of technological capability is concerned, anything that you can see or hear online can be copied by an advanced user. Certain functionality can make it easier or more difficult to make copies, but it doesn’t really constitute copy protection.

For example, the Photobucket service provides a default setting where others can freely copy media that is posted on the site. However, it gives you the option to uncheck a box, implying that others won’t be allowed to copy your photographs. However, the fine print on the site includes the following:

Uncheck this box to disable right-click save functionality on images and prevent anyone who views your albums from saving copies of your images or videos.

Note: If your images can be seen in a web browser, they can still be downloaded by advanced users. This option discourages viewers from saving copies, but it does not completely prevent it. Also, this option only applies to images when they are viewed in your Photobucket album. It is still possible to copy files that you share or embed on other sites.

Therefore, if there are images that you want to protect from copying at all costs, then you shouldn’t be posting them online. Our best practices recommendations are tied to your reasons for posting images on social networking sites and your comfort level regarding the risks of others making unauthorized copies.

Common Terms

Before offering our recommendations, it’s helpful to review the basic contours of the TOS. These are general areas of common ground, but you should review the specifics of each site’s TOS before posting.

1.

The companies acknowledge that they are not getting a copyright interest in any of your photographs. (When discussing photographs, unless noted, the same would generally be true for any media).

Representative example from MySpace:

MySpace does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post on or through the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain any such rights that you may have in your Content, subject to the limited license herein.

2.

However, the companies do get a royalty-free license to use the images posted until you either remove the content from the site or terminate your account.

3.

Most, but not all, of the sites allow you to have some control over who will be able to view your posted content. For example, Photobucket makes posted content available to everyone — even nonmembers who are outside the Photobucket services — unless you mark your content as “private” and then it is available only through the Photobucket services. Facebook allows you to be even more restrictive. You can limit your audience to only those fellow Facebook members you’ve allowed to be labeled as “friends.”

4.

Subject to any restrictions you may have chosen, the Companies can distribute their services through all media outlets.

There is also some common ground with respect to how the TOS discuss the rights of other users with respect to the content that you post.

1.

Users are prohibited from infringing the IP rights, including copyrights, of others.

2.

Users have a right to report copyright infringement to the company and the company has the right to take down infringing material and/or terminate the account of the infringer. (Termination is usually reserved for repeat infringers).

3.

The procedure for reporting and acting on allegations of copyright infringement is very similar across all companies and seems to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). (Several expressly state that they do comply with the DMCA).

However, in our view, many of the TOS could be more explicit in stating what others can and (more importantly) cannot do with the content posted by other users. Photobucket and YouTube are admirably clear in this regard. The Photobucket license provides a very broad licensing of rights using concrete examples:

Photobucket and/or other Users may copy, print or display publicly available Content outside of the Photobucket Services, including without limitation, via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content).

YouTube is equally clear in its more restrictive licensing of rights:

Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be downloaded, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior written consent of the respective owners.

The dramatic difference in the license rights granted by Photobucket and YouTube underscores the fact that you must read the TOS before posting your images.

Hypotheticals

To give you an idea of how your images may or may not be used according to the TOS, let’s pretend we have a photographer, Melissa, who has posted a photograph of a cow on top of a lighthouse.

A. Can the hosting company create a coffee table book called Stranger than Fiction, which includes Melissa’s photograph?

Photobucket — yes. Twitter — maybe. All other sites — no.

In our opinion, Photobucket TOS (as quoted above) creates a license that is probably broad enough for this kind of use by the Company. If Melissa changes her mind and places restrictions on the photograph, then further distribution would be limited to the Photobucket services (which would probably make the coffee table book a bad idea).

Twitter does not have the same kind of explicit examples that Photobucket uses, but it does have very broad licensing language:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.

As for the other sites, they all appear to state that the license given to the company is limited to the companies’ services and that Melissa would have the right to terminate that license at any time by removing the content or terminating her account. In my opinion, it would be hard to stretch the definition of their services to include the sale of a coffee table book.

B. Would a user, who owns a T-shirt company, be able to use Melissa’s photograph to create and sell a new T-shirt design?

1.

Photobucket — yes. Twitter — maybe. Same as in hypothetical A.

2.

Flickr and YouTube — no. Both sites specifically state that you cannot copy or use another’s content for commercial purposes.

3.

MySpace and Facebook — no, but not as clear. Both sites state that users may not infringe another’s copyrighted content. Unless there is express language (as with the Photobucket TOS), copyright law would not allow a user to copy a posted photograph and make a derivative work, like a T-shirt. However, the TOS are not clear enough. The type of infringement they discuss is primarily, if not exclusively, directed toward actions that take place on the site. For example, a user may not post Melissa’s photograph and claim it as his own. The lack of explicit language could create confusion as to what rights Melissa has granted to other users when she chooses to post an image for them to see.

C. Would a user, who thinks Melissa’s photograph is the funniest thing he’s ever seen, be allowed to launch an e-mail chain letter, which includes the photograph.

1.

Photobucket and Twitter — yes.

2.

Flickr and YouTube — maybe. I think that the negative implication of the language prohibiting the copying or distribution of content for commercial purposes, could give rise to an argument that Melissa has granted other users the license to copy and distribute her content for non-commercial purposes.

3.

MySpace and Facebook — still not clear. MySpace is the same analysis as above. Facebook might be even less clear because it seems to imply that once Melissa has chosen to share her photographs with certain people, they retain the right to keep it posted on their pages, thereby sharing it with others. Even though this might not grant them the right to send the photograph to others via e-mail, the TOS could be more clear.

In conclusion, it is important to map out your goals for social networking, understand your rights, and monitor conditions as you navigate the rapidly changing world of social media.

Basic Image Editing Comparisons

2009-11-17T16:56:00.000-05:00

Sensor Sizes Compared

2009-11-17T07:43:00.005-05:00

The size of the sensor is more important than the number of megapixels. Listed are the sizes of some various sensors

Nikon s52 > 4.31mm x 5.75mm
Nikon D80 > 15.8mm x 23.6mm
Leica S2 > 30mm x 45mm
Hasselblad H3DII-50 > 36mm x 48mm

The sensor in a Nikon D80 will yield pretty good photographs for a pretty good price. The sensor in a Nikon s52 will yield photographs that can be made into good 13" x19" prints but will not meet commercial reproduction standards. The Leica and Hasselblad cameras will make great prints and easily meet current commercial reproduction standards but these cameras cost as much as a car.

Selective Adjustments

2009-11-02T15:02:00.003-05:00

Most photographs need selective adjustments to parts of the photograph that are excessively dark or light making it difficult to view though photograph in the intended way. Examples of this would be a face that's a little dark or a colorless sky.

1 Select the Magic Wand from the tool palette

2 Click on desired area to edit. To expand the area, hold down the Shift key and continue to click in other areas. The area to be edited appears inside of a moving dotted line border.

3 Open Levels, Curves or Hue/Saturation and adjust the selected area.

The Magic Wand has isolated the selected area. The rest of the image will not be altered in any way by the selected edit.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Removing Straight Lines With Photoshop

2009-10-25T13:11:00.001-04:00

It is very easy to remove straight lines from a photograph using Photoshop.

1. View the photograph at 200%.
2. Click on the Clone Stamp Tool. Double-click on the third brush from the left that opens a Brush Options dialog box. Set a brush diameter. A very thin line might be 4 or 5.
3. Put the cursor close to one end of the line and Option-click.
4. Click the actual end of the line.
5. Shift-click the other end of the line. The line should disappear.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Sizing A Photograph

2009-10-06T06:17:00.002-04:00

Here's how to make a photograph smaller for online presentation

1 Open Photoshop

2 Go to the “Image” menu

3 Choose “Image size” and a window will open named “Image Size”

4 Go to the “Document Size box

5 If the size is displayed in anything but inches, use the pull down menus to change the width and height to inches and the resolution to pixels/inch

6 All 3 of the boxes below this should be checked

7 Change the long side to 5. This will change the other dimension automatically. So if you change the width to 5, the height will change automatically

8 Change resolution to 72 and click on OK

9 Save the file as a jpg.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Getting A Photograph Ready For Photoshop

2009-10-06T06:14:00.002-04:00

1 Transfer photographs to the computer
2 Make a copy of the file you plan to edit
3 Open the copy file in Photoshop NOT the original
4 Change resolution to 300 dpi
Under Image menu> select Image Size> Uncheck Resample Image Box. Change resolution to 300
Click OK
5 Convert to TIFF.
6 Assign a profile
Under Edit menu>select Assign profile>from pull down menu select the paper profile>click OK
7 Convert the file to 16 bits
Go to Image menu> select Mode> set for 16 bits per channel.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Levels

2009-10-06T06:12:00.001-04:00

To adjust the brightness and contrast of a black and white image, or to adjust the brightness and color balance of a color image, Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. "Levels" opens a complex window with several buttons and a graph. The graph is called a histogram and is showing the tonal range of the image with the shadows on the left, the midtones in the middle and the highlights on the right. The 3 little triangles running along the line below the histogram are referred to as the input sliders. The color of each one (black, gray and white) shows what part of the tonal range that each one represents. There are 3 boxes above the histogram showing the numerical representations of every tone in the image. 0 is jet black and 255 is paper white.

To the right of the input slider bar appear 3 eyedroppers. Notice once again that they are colored black, gray and white. Click on the white one which is the one on the right. When you move the cursor into the image you will notice it has changed from an arrow (or whatever else was the previous cursor shape) to an eyedropper. Click on the lightest area of significance. In other words, don't choose something like a bright white reflection off of a mirror or something similar. The image should look somewhat different after doing this and the histogram should change. Do the same with the shadows using the eye dropper on the left. For the midtones move the midtone input slider to the left to lower the contrast and to the right to increase the contrast. Ignore the midtone eye dropper. Click on the OK button to complete the procedure and then save the image.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Clone Stamp Tool

2009-10-06T06:10:00.002-04:00

The clone stamp tool provides a convenient way to remove flaws in a photograph, such as white spots or black spots. With enough practice even small objects or an accidentally included date stamp can be removed from the photograph. The way to use it is as follows

1 Access the Layers palette by going to the Windows menu and choosing Layers.
2 Make the Background the active layer by clicking on it. It should change color.
3 Go to the Layer menu and choose Duplicate Layer. A window will pop up titled Duplicate Layer. Click OK. The Layers palette should now show these 2 layers - Background and Background Copy with Background Copy being the active layer.
4 Go to the tool bar and click on the icon that looks like a rubber stamp. If the cursor is held over it without clicking a label will light up that says Clone Stamp Tool.
5 Hold the cursor over any part of the image area and a circle will have replaced the pointer arrow. This shows that the Clone Stamp Tool is ready to use.
6 Put the cursor over the area to be changed and adjust the size of the circle to a slightly larger size. To change the size of the circle, go to the 2 bracket keys to the right of the letter P on the keyboard. Clicking on { makes the circle smaller. Clicking on } makes the circle bigger.
7 On the top left there are several icons. The first shows the Clone Stamp and the next one to the right says Brush. The icon is a black circle. Click on the triangle to the right of the brush icon. When the window opens move the slider for Hardness to 0%. Click anywhere in the image and a message will appear saying, “Could not use the clone stamp because the area to clone has not been defined (option-click to define a source point). Click OK to remove the message.
8 Define the source point. The source point is an area to copy and paste over the area that needs to be changed. For instance, holding the circle over an adjacent area that does not have a spot can cover a white spot.
9 After being sure that the brush hardness is set to 0% and the circle size has been set to a slightly larger than the area to be edited, hold down the Option key. While holding down this key move the mouse close to the area to be edited. It is very important that none of the area to be edited is included in this circle. The cursor should no longer look like a circle. It should look like a target.
10 Click on the area to copy and release the Option key.
11 The cursor should now be a circle again. Hold the cursor over the area to be changed. Click over this area and it should change.
12 Repeat this process where needed.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Sharpening

2009-10-06T06:09:00.002-04:00

Sharpening should always be the last editing step.

1 Go to the filter menu and choose Sharpen
2 Select Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Start with
Amount 200
Radius 0.3
Threshold 0
3 Change if not sharp enough or overly sharp

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Bracketing

2009-09-28T14:44:00.001-04:00

Bracketing is a process of taking more than 1 photograph to ensure the likelihood of having an exposure that is of good enough quality to print. It is not real important for making photographs where the end use is a website or email attachment. This is a process of primary importance where prints are being made that are 8” x10” or larger. With printing there is always a gap between an image on a display screen and one on paper. It is very difficult to bring up the full contrast range and to preserve the richness of the colors when going from a display screen to paper. Bracketing makes this gap smaller, but does not close it entirely. I am not aware of any printing process that closes this gap entirely.

Bracketing can be done around exposure, focus, lighting or a combination of the 3. Exposure bracketing is the most widely used of the 3. With a digital camera bracket the exposure in .3 steps. A good starting point is to first exposure at meter setting, second exposure at +.3 and a third exposure at -.3. This can be extended to also include +.7 and -. 7, as well as +1 and -1. Full steps are adequate for black and white film – metered setting, -1 and +1.

How this is done with the camera varies. With an SLR this can often be done by holding done a button that has both a + and a – on it while rotating the command dial wheel. The settings appear on the display and change as the wheel is rotated. With a point and shoot camera there is often an exposure compensation scale running from –2 to +2 that can be controlled by the multi selector control. Some cameras have an automatic bracketing setting.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

ISO

2009-09-12T16:16:00.002-04:00

The ISO is an easy control to overlook. For most uses setting the ISO on a point-and shoot camera to “Auto” is adequate. Most, if not all, point-and shoot cameras will go to the lowest ISO possible when set at an ISO setting of “Auto” while automatically making a good choice of shutter speed and aperture. The result will be a technically accurate photograph – the best that the camera is capable of with totally automated setting. Choosing the ISO makes more sense with an SLR where the camera operator can choose to manually set the shutter speed and aperture. Choosing the ISO also makes more sense with an SLR, if “Program” or any other automated setting is chosen, since it can be observed as to what shutter speed and aperture the camera plans to use.

ISO does matter. The lower the ISO the brighter the colors and the less noise. I find the noise above ISO 400 on cameras costing less than $1000 to be unacceptable. What level of noise is tolerable is relative to output. My files are made into 13”x19” prints. If my intended output was only screen display, such as email, I could tolerate a much higher ISO.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Focusing

2009-09-04T12:57:00.000-04:00

Out of focus photographs should be carefully watched for. With today’s cameras focus often feels like a resolved issue. On view cameras this was an enormous issue requiring a high quality magnifying devise to accomplish the task. Autofocus on digital cameras has made this issue less significant, but not fully resolved. I have two Nikon digital cameras – an s52 and a D80. The D80 is clearly the better of the two cameras in terms of image quality, but with it the focus as at best pretty good. With the s52 the autofocus works great. I loose many more photographs than I care to loose from focusing issues on the D80, although this can always be corrected with a second shot if I have a chance to check the first shot on the camera monitor.

Focusing is changing the distance of the lens from the sensor to make the photograph appear sharp. Focusing becomes increasingly more difficult to manage with low light and/or longer lenses. For most photographs focus is important. Although since around 1990 there have been many photographs publicly displayed that were intentionally out of focus and were stronger photographs as a result of this technique. If a sharply focused photograph is the intended objective, this must be watched carefully.

A preliminary focus check can be made with the camera by using the control that magnifies the image on the camera monitor. On the s52 I check at maximum magnification. This is pretty accurate. On the D80 there are 8 levels of magnification. If it appears accurate at the 6th level, it is usually in focus. The most accurate way to check focus is after transferring the files to the computer view them on the computer monitor at 100% magnification in Photoshop or other image editing programs. If they are out of focus, there is no way to correct this with image editing software.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Work Prints

2009-07-07T18:03:00.001-04:00

The most important aspect of printing is to be sure the print is not too dark or too light. The best way to accomplish this is to make two or more slightly different prints on the same type of paper with the same printing method. It is difficult to impossible to judge brightness any other way. One way to reduce time and the cost of paper is to begin with work prints. A work print is a print that is smaller than the intended final print and may also be not completely edited. Work prints can often stop being made once the brightness is determined or can be continued with more editing. Work prints save a lot of paper and time.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Feature Photography/The National Portrait Gallery

2009-07-03T16:47:00.002-04:00

The National Portrait Gallery has a great portrait show right now. It features 6 photographers who work with magazines. These are photographers who are also involved in areas outside of magazine photography

1 Alec Soth works w/ Magnum and represented by Gagosian Gallery.
2 Jocelyn Lee teaches at Princeton and received a Guggenheim.
3 Martin Schoeller assisted Annie Leibovitz and was influenced by the work of The Bechers.
4 Katy Grannan went to Yale and is represented by Fraenkel Gallery.
5 Ryan McGinley is the youngest photographer to ever have a solo exhibit at the Whitney.
6 Steve Pyke is a staff photographer for the New Yorker.

My favorite photographs in the show are Jocelyn Lee's portrait of Robert Indiana. The large as life scale of the print, the confident stare back at the camera, the sage like appearance of black clothes, shoulder length hair, a full gray beard make this a great photograph. Lee has lit the side of his face closest to the camera is brightly, the rest of his face is in shadow. His clothes are a black shapeless mass, very little texture, two buttons are visible, a couple of folds of cloth.

Steve Pyke's portrait of Rem Koolhass is a small black and white darkroom print. The subject is dead center surrounded by a reflection of a concert hall that he had designed. He and the reflection blend together. To his right is his shadow on a wall.

This show ends September 27.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

From Snapshot to Art

2009-07-01T11:48:00.003-04:00

Many people who are new to photography quickly get lost in a maze of technical strategies in an effort to become better at photography. The concept of audience and the concept of being unique are intimidating and as a result are avoided. Not everyone wants to take photographs that look like those of Cindy Sherman or Jeff Wall. And no one wants to sacrifice his or her personal identity in the name of art.

Art at it’s best is about putting together one’s personal identity with a clear line of communication. This involves the confidence to feel that one’s identity is worthy of the respect of others. Art is about being technically competent, because this makes the visual concept clearer to more people. This brings in the concept of audience. Few people, maybe no people need an audience of thousands, but most people would enjoy having their audience go a little beyond family and few close friends.

Technical competence helps expand an audience. This can be seen in the work of Ansel Adams and Loretta Lux. Both of these photographs have made photographs that demonstrate an unusually high level of technical competence. Adams photographed breath taking western United States landscapes and Lux makes portraits of children that are placed in idyllic settings with careful editing in Photoshop. Many people new to photography want to make better travel photographs and better photographs of their children.

The objective should be figuring out which are your best travel photographs and which are your best photographs of your children. This becomes risky because for everyone, some of their favorite photographs will look plain to others. This will hurt. Rather than retreat into this hurt, take the ones people like and learn to integrate those qualities into future photographs rather than trying to find art subjects. There are no art subjects. There is only style and style is about showing who you are. Figure out your style and get this into more of your photographs. Audiences, both friends and strangers want to see your world and what makes it unique. No one wants to see how well you can clone the world of some well known art photographer.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Shawn Rocco

2009-06-24T13:54:00.001-04:00

Shawn Rocco is making amazing photographs with a cellphone. Making photographs as art with a cellphone is nothing new. I briefly wrote about this in my blog 2 years ago

http://paul-light---notes-on-photography.blogspot.com/2006/07/phone-cameras-and-cellphone-art.html

The thing that makes Rocco’s work very different is much of the cellphone art photographs out there aspire to be art. This is the real thing. Rocco’s work is well composed and reflects art styles that are presently being shown with other types of cameras. A detailed article about him appears in today’s New York Times.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/shoptalk-4/?hp

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Chelsea Photography Galleries

2009-06-08T15:47:00.001-04:00

One of the best ways to fully understand what photography as art is all about is to go a photography gallery. If you live near New York City you should visit the galleries in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. The Chelsea Gallery District is bordered by 29th street in the North, 13th street in the South, 11th Avenue in the West, and 7th Avenue in the East. Not all of the galleries are photography galleries, but there is enough photography to spend a full day there.

Seeing photography in a gallery is an exciting experience. Most photographs shown are many times larger than what is reproduced in a book. Although both books and photographs are printed on paper in most cases the paper used for an exhibit more clearly shows texture and color than what appears in a book. The work exhibited is the product of gallery staff people having sorted thru hundreds, or even thousands of portfolios from all over the world and exhibiting what they consider to be the world’s very best contemporary photography.

A complete listing of what is being exhibited in Chelsea can be previewed before your visit by going to

http://chelseaartgalleries.com

A partial list of photographs being exhibited in Chelsea can be found at

http://www.photographmag.com/exhibitions/#CHELSEA

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

What brand to buy

2009-05-18T14:49:00.001-04:00

Which is a better camera – Canon or Nikon? Which is a better printer – Canon or Epson or Hewlett Packard? Is Aperture better than Lightroom? These are questions I get almost every day. I use Nikon cameras, Epson printers and Lightroom. (I also edit in Photoshop CS4). Digital photography gets expensive when you feel you must have full featured equipment. The names mentioned are makers of professional equipment and software. So I would look at essential features instead. It is easier to edit a RAW file than even the highest quality JPG. So only consider cameras that have RAW file capability. Both Aperture and Lightroom are very, very different than the image editing programs that come free with computers. They both work great. And inkjet printers that use pigmented ink achieve a better tonal range in black and white. When making color prints the colors displayed are much more the way the camera file looks than those that use dye-based ink. So don’t buy dye-based ink printers. Those should be the real questions, not the brand.

© 2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Current Standards in Photography

2009-05-14T12:21:00.003-04:00

I produce photographs for both art and commerce. The end point for each of these types of photographs is quite different. For art it is the print. For commerce it is the edited image file.

I still consider museums and galleries as significant. They now share their importance to display cutting edge contemporary art and historically significant art with exclusively online sites like Flickr, but I don't consider them irrelevant. It is a very different experience seeing a Jeff Wall or a Jerry Uelsmann photograph in a museum or gallery than seeing it online. The difference is somewhat analogous to hearing music on an iPod vs. hearing the same music in concert. A file must meet extraordinary technical standards to yield a good print. This standard is many times higher than what is needed to post an image on a website or send it as email.

Digital cameras have had a huge effect on all of photography. One of the places where this change is most evident is in stock photography. Stock photography is creating images intended for commerce rather than as art and then leasing them for usage in a wide variety of products from greeting cards to advertising. Distribution is generally done thru companies that may represent the work of hundreds or even thousands of photographers. Thanks to digital cameras work can now move quickly from the photographer to the stock agency to the stock buyer with little to no verbal communication between the 3 parties. Again the file must meet extraordinary technical standards. The print is irrelevant in this fast moving distribution system.

Editing work has never been more important. Everyone knows what a photograph is. Almost everyone has made photographs. This makes it much harder to make original photographs that show a sense of vision.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Creating A Portfolio

2009-05-13T16:02:00.001-04:00

A portfolio only serves a limited range of purposes and is a waste of time if the objective is not to show it to other people. It is a lot of work and is never done. A portfolio should begin with the 2 best photographs you have ever made. One should be the first photograph and the other the last photograph. These 2 photographs will change over time, but the 2 best photographs should always be the first and the last.

A portfolio of 2 photographs is too small and should be filled in with 8 – 98 other photographs. The bigger the portfolio, the harder to keep it linked together. It should be linked together by a clear common element. This can be a style of working and/or a common subject.

The more photographs you have to choose from the easier the editing becomes. Showing it to everyone who is willing to look at it is also helpful. Replace photographs often. The world keeps changing and if your portfolio remains fixed, it will eventually look dated.

Presentation is important whether shown as prints or displayed electronically. Where possible work with a graphic designer or web designer. It is unlikely that you understand presentation to the extent that a designer does. Most important of all – keep creating new photographs.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Exposure Compensation

2009-05-05T15:41:00.003-04:00

Exposure Compensation is a control on many cameras. It is a +/- scale with numbers at each marking. It is often designated with an icon showing both a plus and a minus sign. Some cameras use the designations of EV or +/-. The markings are -2.0, -1.7, -1.3, -1.0, -0.7, -0.3, 0.0, +0.3, +0.7, +1.0, +1.3, +1.7, +2.0. 0.0 is the recommended exposure. The others numbers are there, because sometimes with complex lighting shadows or highlights can be compromised by shooting at 0.0. This is very difficult to see on even the best camera monitors. Positive values make the subject brighter and negative values make it darker. With complex lighting taking a picture at 0.0, +1.0 and -1.0 can greatly improve the chances of getting an exposure that needs a minimal amount of color correction editing. With extra time an patience try 0.0, +0.3, +1.0 ,-0.3 -1.0 or other configurations. It is not possible to do this with every photograph since some subjects have movement or fast shifting light.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Photo Inkjet Printers

2009-05-05T15:07:00.011-04:00

Canon, Epson and Hewlett Packard make the best photo inkjet printers. Epson makes wonderful printers. They have become the industry standard. The printers I recommend are

Epson Stylus Photo 1400 13" $200

The ink used is dye based which yields lower quality colors and is more likely to fade over time than pigmented ink.

Epson Ultrachrome K3 pigmented inks provide better colors, but the printers cost a lot more

Epson Stylus Photo R2880 13" $600
Epson Stylus Pro 3880 17" $1300
Epson Stylus Pro 4880 17" $2000
Epson Stylus Pro 7880 24" $3000
Epson Stylus Pro 9880 44" $5000
Epson Stylus Pro 11880 64" $15000

A good alternative to the R2880 is the R1900. It does not use K3 ink but the quality is better than the Stylus Photo 1400 . The ink used is pigmented ink. It is available from Epson for $450.

It is important to use all of the above printers with the very best photo quality paper that you can afford. Some good papers to get started with are Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte, Kodak Photo Paper Matte, and Staples Photo Supreme Matte. These are low quality papers, but all much better than general computer paper. Epson offers other higher quality papers.

Use pigmented ink and high quality paper if possible. This results in a better print.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Image Shrinking and Rotating

2009-05-03T11:05:00.000-04:00

If you are using Adobe Photoshop CS4 and a Apple MacBook and when you open an image it begins to unexpectedly get very small and/or turn while you are editing, there is a solution and it is free. Go to

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Disable Canvas Rotation Via Trackpad plug-in

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4337&fileID=4026

It’s easy to install and the problem will be gone.

Setting Up For Digital Printing

2009-04-27T18:16:00.000-04:00

Producing digital photographs that are of similar quality to 8"x10" darkroom prints requires a procedure that is significantly different than what is required to make photographs for email or a website. Every stage of the procedure is different. When using the camera choose the highest quality image and the largest image size. This will vary with the camera. If the camera offers a choice between High Quality JPEG and RAW – choose RAW. RAW is a higher quality image.

In Photoshop the editing choices that are analogous to the darkroom are

Levels > brightness test strips and contrast filters
Magic Wand > burning and dodging
Clone Stamp Tool > spotting

Photoshop can be confusing because it offers many more choices than a darkroom. Most people who use a darkroom would not use split toning , solarization, developing film in Pyro film developer, multiple printing or compound their own printing chemicals. These types of options in Photoshop are so much more tempting to even the most casual user. It is important to not let editing options be taken more seriously than composition.

Printing quality is determined by the quality of the ink and the paper. Printers that do not use pigmented ink and photo quality paper should not be considered. Canon, Epson and Hewlett Packard make the best ink and papers. There are also high quality third party manufacturers of pigmented ink and photo quality paper. Printers that use 2 cartridges produce lower quality prints than those that use 4 or more cartridges. The colors are less vibrant with 2 cartridges. Paper similar in price to standard computer paper should be avoided. The paper of choice should be labeled as photo paper. Too much of the ink soaks into inexpensive paper and tonal separation and color accuracy are the result. Buy the most expensive paper you can afford.

Making digital prints can be challenging, but once a procedure is established, it requires considerably less space than a darkroom.

©2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Varying Shutter Speed and Aperture with Point-And-Shoot Cameras

2009-04-27T16:47:00.002-04:00

Point-And-Shoot cameras have democratized photography. Having a camera that is low cost, easy to carry in almost any situation and allows the user to ignore all technical variables results in a camera where one can concentrate on framing, where to stand and the quality of the light. This is a wonderful way to make photographs. Technical variables should be secondary to composition, but by limiting one's technical options compositional options are also limited sometimes. Although it is not possible to turn a point-and-shoot camera into an SLR thru clever workarounds, these cameras technical options can be stretched a bit by working with ISO changes.

By varying the ISO the camera changes the shutter speed and aperture for any given situation. Changes in shutter speed make motion look different at different speeds. This is most evident when the motion is going across the frame. By taking several photographs one can watch how motion is rendered on the monitor giving the camera operator a little bit of ability to control how motion is rendered. It is not even closely equivalent to the options to vary how motion is rendered with an SLR, but it's better than nothing.

Changes of aperture can be obtained the same way, but the results are much less significant. The shorter the lens the less significant the change of aperture. The closer the camera operator is to the subject the more changes in aperture become noticeable with any lens. Point-And-Shoot cameras have very short lenses making it very difficult show variations from changing the aperture under any set of conditions.

Lastly – It is important to not loose sight of what the ISO control’s intended use is. It is for reconfiguring the camera controls to handle various lighting conditions. Typically in a sunny, open outdoor setting one might use an ISO of 50 or 100 and indoors use an ISO of 400. If on auto ISO, the camera would make similar choices. The larger the ISO number the greater the chance of the photograph having large areas of colored speckles. The technical term for this is noise. Also the larger the ISO number the softer the colors are and texture starts to fall off.

©2009 Paul Light all rights reserved

Photography Magazines Online

2009-04-18T13:18:00.002-04:00

When I began photography I read Aperture (USA), Camera (Switzerland) and Creative Camera (UK) as a means of keeping in touch with what was going in photography worldwide. This was 1970. There were no online magazines. There was no Internet. Camera and Creative Camera are gone. To the best of my knowledge Aperture has no immediate plans to offer their magazine online. There are lots and lots of other magazines online. I suspect most, if not all of them, are free. A list called “40 Amazing Online Photography Magazines” has appeared on Delicious. I am only familiar with a few of these. I look forward to looking at all of them. Having seen most of the major galleries and museums go online has greatly elevated the visibility of photography as art. However there continue to be magazines offering work that is truly amazing that hasn’t appeared in major gallery or museum shows yet. This is a great new way to see that art.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Tripods

2009-04-13T16:29:00.004-04:00

A tripod serves two functions - providing a support to allow sharp photographs at shutter speeds that are too long for hand holding a camera and for precise framing. My first tripod was a Vivitar tripod. It was the cheapest tripod in the store. After a year or so I realized why it was priced so low. All of the adjustments quickly broke down after about 100 hours of use. They sorta worked. Sometimes they needed to be stabilized with tape. My next tripod was an original Tiltall Tripod. The Tiltall name was sold several years after I bought this tripod and there were significant changes in tripod design since this tripod was made. This was what professional photographers were using at the time. The difference was evident within minutes. The adjustments were tight and precise and stayed this way without the aid of tape. This tripod worked very well until I accidentally destroyed it while using it by salt water after 16 years of near daily use.

I no longer use tripods as much. I’m not sure if it is due to using a lower quality tripod these days or if I just shoot differently now. I suspect it is a combination of the two. I currently use a Manfrotto/Bogen 3001 tripod + 3028 head, an old Davis and Sanford floating head tripod and a Gorillapod SLR Flexible Tripod. The Manfrotto/Bogen tripod is adequate for a lot of what I do and it travels well, but is not much of a tripod compared to my old Tiltall. I bought it as a substitute for a Gitzo Traveler tripod which is about $600. My Manfrotto/Bogen tripod was less than $150. With the Gitzo tripod throw in another $300 for a ball head and you really have a very nice tripod. I suspect if I had this $900 setup I would use a tripod much, much more. I rarely use the Davis and Sanford. It weighs too much. The Gorillapod is useful occasionally, especially for ground level shooting. Between Manfrotto/Bogen and Gitzo they have tripods that cover just about every shooting situation imaginable. If you can easily afford a Gitzo, get one. Gitzo is the current professional choice for tripods. Manfrotto/Bogen are no way near the quality of a Gitzo, but they are affordable and do an adequate job in many situations.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Repieced Multiples

2009-04-12T13:42:00.003-04:00

This was done in Adobe Photoshop CS4. This can also be done in Photoshop 6, Photoshop 7 and probably Photoshop 4 and Photoshop 5. It can also be done in Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2, and Photoshop CS3. It cannot be done in Aperture or Lightroom. It probably cannot be done in Photoshop Elements. I start by opening an edited tif file that is 16 bits and 300 dpi. I then go to the file menu and choose new. I choose a custom preset, choose the width and height that I want the final print to be, I chose a resolution of 300, color mode of RGB, a bit size of 16 bits, and background contents of white. If I know the paper I plan to use I enter it’s color profile otherwise I choose a color profile of Adobe RGB (1998). For Pixel Aspect Ratio I choose Square.

I go back to the first file and go to the Layer Menu and choose Flatten image since I use layers in most of my editing. I am careful NOT to save the image edited this way because I will be continually redoing edits on this file. I next crop a section of the image. I then click on the Move tool to drop a copy of this into the white new image. I then go back to the original image undo the crop, do a new crop and move that onto the new image. I continue this process with lots of variations. Each move is a layer and can be observed as controlled in the Layer menu. When the new image gets to 5GB or so I will flatten it and then do more editing rather than risk having an image that is difficult for the computer to process.

Text and photograph is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Manual Camera Controls

2009-04-11T16:36:00.003-04:00

All cameras once had focus, shutter speed and aperture as manual control mechanisms. Over time camera designers realized that by making these automatic, cameras could be sold for less money and more people would find cameras easy to use. More expensive cameras offer the option of both automatic and manual operation. Although it is often not critical to have manual access to these controls, having access to them opens lots of new visual possibilities. Placing a subject slightly out of focus or way out of focus can be interesting since this is not a capability our eyes have to the same extent. Being able to manually control shutter speeds makes it possible to freeze motion and blur motion. Changing the aperture changes how much is in focus other than the main subject.

Controlling the focus is done by moving the switch on the side of the lens from AF (or Autofocus) to M (or Manual) and rotating the lens barrel to the desired focus.

To change the shutter speed, go to the dial on top of the camera. This is called the Exposure Mode Dial. There are 4 adjacent settings. On some cameras it is P S A and M and on the rest it is P Tv Av and M. Choose S or Tv depending on the camera. This allows one to choose any shutter speed while the camera automatically chooses an aperture that allows the correct amount of light to hit the sensor so that the photograph comes out just the right brightness. On the top front of the camera there is a sub command dial. On my camera this is a small wheel directly in front of the shutter release button. At the top of the Digital Control Panel two numbers appear side by side. The one on the left is the shutter speed. The one on the right is the aperture. By turning the camera on and pushing the shutter release button half way down the panel should light up to show the shutter speed. By rotating the sub command dial the speeds should change. One and two digit speeds require the use of a tripod to get a sharp focus. One and two digit speeds will blur motion and three and four speed numbers will freeze motion. This is most visible when the subject is going across the picture.

To change the aperture go to the Exposure Mode Dial. Choose A or Av depending on the camera. This allows one to choose any aperture while the camera automatically chooses a shutter speed that allows the correct amount of light to hit the sensor so that the photograph comes out just the right brightness. At the top of the Digital Control Panel two numbers appear side by side. The one on the left is the shutter speed. The one on the right is the aperture. By turning the camera on and pushing the shutter release button half way down the panel should light up to show the aperture. By rotating the sub command dial apertures should change. Small numbers provide a minimal range of focus and large numbers provide a maximum range of focus. This is most visible at close distances. It is very important to watch how the camera chooses the shutter speed. If the camera chooses a one and two digit speed the use of a tripod is required to get a sharp focus.

A good way to simulate shutter speed and aperture changes is to go to http://www.photonhead.com/simcam/shutteraperture.php

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Harry Callahan Part 1

2009-04-08T20:59:00.017-04:00

I admire the diversity of Harry Callahan's photography. He worked in more stylistic areas than anyone I can think of. He may be the closest that photography has come to producing someone equivalent to Picasso. He moved back and forth between a wide variety of cameras and lenses, color and black and white, straight photographs and altered photographs.

First his series of his wife Eleanor

Eleanor Chicago 1947

Eleanor Chicago 1949

Eleanor in Hugo Weber's Studio, Chicago, 1950

Eleanor Chicago 1951

Eleanor Chicago 1952

5 photographs in 5 years in Chicago. Each of the same subject in styles so diverse it could be 5 different photographers.

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

2009-04-07T21:35:00.005-04:00

When I first read about HDR imaging in George DeWolfe’s “Digital Photography Fine Print Workshop” I was very impressed at what it could become. Now that we have Photomatix, I am less impressed. HDR began as a tool in Photoshop. It was designed for situations where the contrast range of an exposure was too long to capture both the shadows and the highlights. The solution was to take a photograph for the shadows and a second for the highlights and combine the two images in Photoshop using Photoshop HDR. At the time DeWolfe's book was published, there was a Photoshop HDR plug-in called Optipix which was easier to use than Photoshop HDR.

Much of the HDR work I see just doesn’t look real. Enhanced would be the wrong word. It’s too clean and too dynamic to be appealing. I look at Ansel Adams Moonrise Over Hernandez or Winter Sunrise from Lone Pine , I am deeply impressed by the tonal range. When I first read about HDR, my first thought was Adams would have loved this. Now I’m not sure. But there are people who are using this well. I think that Clearing Clouds: Mount Robson, British Columbia by Mark Houtzager is a really good use of HDR and hope to see more photographs like this in the future.

The following video offers a clear and concise explanation of High Dynamic Range image editing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBETWrA9tps&feature=youtube_gdata

A good article about HDR basics in the New York Times
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/a-technique-for-photos-real-and-surreal/?nl=technology&emc=techupdateemb1

Film Formats

2009-04-07T15:11:00.003-04:00

In digital photography format is a lesser concept than with film. Due to the costs of medium and large format digital cameras few photographers use medium and large format digital cameras. Medium format digital cameras are often $20, 000 or more making them impractical for most people.
This is not the case with film formats.

There are cameras that shoot film larger than 35mm. These can be divided into two groups - medium format and large format. These cameras cost more than 35mm cameras.

Medium format cameras have some similarities to 35mm cameras. Some of these cameras look like oversized 35mm cameras. Like 35mm cameras, these cameras use a roll of film. Film is available in two lengths - 120 and 220. A frame of film from a medium format camera is 4 times larger than a frame of film from a 35mm camera. This means that an 8''x10'' print from a 120 frame of film will have the same print quality as a 4''x6'' print from a 35mm frame of film. There are also cameras that have reshaped the frame. The size of these is referred to in centimeters making a traditional 2 1/4'' x 2 1/4'' frame of film into 6cm x 6cm or simply 6x6. Popular alternative frame sizes include 6x4.5, 6x7 and 6x17.

Large format cameras, also referred to as view cameras, are quite different than 35mm cameras. They use sheets of film instead of rolls. Each sheet can only be used for one exposure. The sheets of film come in many different sizes. Two of the most popular sizes are 4''x 5'' and 8''x10''.

Each film size requires a separate camera designed to shoot only one size sheet of film. Almost all large format cameras require the use of a tripod. A sheet of film from a 4x5 view camera is 4 times larger than a frame of film from a medium format camera. This means that a 16''x20'' print from a 4x5 sheet of film will have the same print quality as a 4''x6'' print from a 35mm frame of film. A sheet of film from an 8x10 view camera is 4 times larger than a sheet of film from a 4x5 view camera. This means that a 32''x40'' print from a 8x10 sheet of film will have the same print quality as a 4''x6'' print from a 35mm frame of film.

View cameras are generally cheaper than medium format cameras, but medium format cameras can be easily used in a wider variety of shooting situations than view cameras.

Large format film cameras play a huge role in the history of photography. Ansel Adams, Walker Evans and Edward Weston – 3 of the most important photographers in the history of American photography all used 8x10 large format cameras. They didn’t use them for everything, but much of their best known work was done in 8x10. I’m not quite sure anyone has really determined what 8x10 film is in megapixels. My best guess would be at least 800 megapixels. I guess we will all know for sure as bigger sensors get cheaper. As things stand now you cannot make a photograph like “Moonrise Over Hernandez” with a digital camera.

As film photography moves into the background of mainstream photography I hear more and more students concluding that “Moonrise Over Hernandez” was made with 35mm black and white film. Film may not stay around for a whole lot longer, but for now the most practical way to produce large high resolution large prints remains film larger than 35mm.

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2009 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Paul Graham

2009-04-06T13:48:00.003-04:00

The photography of Paul Graham is currently on exhibit at MoMA in New York. I think that he considers himself a documentary photographer judging from his introduction on his website.

http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/introduction.html

I suppose I am not sure in some ways because the definition really broadens out a lot since Robert Frank’s seminal publication of The Americans in the 1950s. Like Robert Frank, Graham is first and foremost a museum photographer not a photojournalist. (Is museum photographer the real category? Fine art photographer sounds pretentious. I’m not sure what the proper term is for using museums and other fine arts display areas as a means of disseminating this type of work rather than thru news magazines). Also like Robert Frank, Walker Evans is a huge influence. The body of work on display shows groups of photographs dependent on repetition, narrative and viewing images as a group instead of a single image to show a single visual concept. The photographs fill a gallery and are sparingly displayed giving each more impact than if more groups were shown. Each of the photographs in each group are displayed in individual frames. I like the similarity to Robert Frank’s work in that Paul Graham choose to wander around the United States as an outsider trying to get an idea of what makes the United States what it is. Graham grew up in England. For the most part, the people in the photographs appear to have difficult lives. It was hard for me to get accustomed to seeing a concept expressed in a small group of photographs rather than a single photograph and on Graham’s website I found this type of display for this particular body of work made no sense to me at all. This is a new and exciting way of making documentary photographs.

Photoshop vs. The World

2009-04-03T12:11:00.006-04:00

There is absolutely no doubt that Photoshop is the best image editing program currently available. But the price is a problem for non-professionals. Also it is complex - very complex. It is the type of program when opened it can fill one with fear rather than joy. This is a program that is not for everyone. Without Photoshop I would not have been able to create photographs like

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/2564806251/

Thank you Thomas Knoll. Thank you Adobe.

All photographs look better edited. But quite often all that is needed is basic darkroom stuff - brightness, contrast and selective adjustment of brightness and contrast in a few specific areas. Photoshop does this perfectly but simpler programs like Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Aperture and even to some extent Gimp are more than adequate.

Epson 3800 Work Prints

2009-03-05T11:22:00.002-05:00

6 work prints on 13x19 sheet

Before putting the paper in the printer for the first time facing printer mark the back of the top left corner. This will correspond with the top rt corner in the layout on the computer.

set print layout in horizontal mode

w/ Epson driver 2 (MCC printer)

image #1 position is top lt in Layout
image #2 position is top ct in Layout
image #3 position is top rt in Layout
image #4 position is bottom lt in Layout
image #5 position is bottom ct in Layout
image #6 position is bottom rt in Layout

w/Epson driver 3

image #1 position is bottom rt in Layout
image #2 position is bottom ct in Layout
image #3 position is bottom lt in Layout
image #4 position is top rt in Layout
image #5 position is top ct in Layout
image #6 position is top lt in Layout

The Blue Room – Eugene Richards (Phaidon 2008)

2009-01-28T17:18:00.003-05:00

For many years Eugene Richards has brilliantly combined the raw emotionalism generally only seen in war photography with the formalism seen in museum art. In "The Blue Room", Richards is working in color. Even though this is his first book in color, it has the look of somebody who has worked in color for a very long time and now works with it as naturally as breathing.

These photographs were taken on a series of road trips thru small communities in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas and Wyoming between May 2004 and October 2007. There are lots of abandoned houses. Some of it was financed by assignments with National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine.

This book is filled with so much sadness. Richards may be the strongest American documentary photographer since Eugene Smith. I feel like I am seeing this odd synthesis of many of the things I like in William Eggleston’s photographs and James Nachtwey’s photographs.

William Eggleston

2009-01-11T12:46:00.003-05:00

I recently had the privilege of seeing the William Eggleston show at the Whitney. In the mid 1970s Eggleston along with Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore transformed color photography from a snapshot medium to museum art. Each photographer worked independently. Shore and Meyerowitz used large, heavy, tripod mounted view cameras slowly shooting sheets of 8"x10" film. Eggleston worked with a variety of cameras, mostly 35mm. He made color slides. He does not bracket, crop or edit. He has professional printers print his work. He has had printed for him every photograph that he has ever taken. Many of these are 11"x14" or larger Kodak dye transfers, a slow and expensive printing process, which Kodak no longer makes materials for. More recent prints are digital print processes. The most recent being pigmented inkjet prints.

The content has much in common with the black and white photographs of Lee Friedlander, but in color and less compositionally and technically exact. He photographs everyday subjects - land, buildings, and people. They are for the most part the places and people of his daily life - no national parks or celebrities. Recent photographs shot in Japan; shot in this same style as his earlier work reveal more about the photographer than the actual place. It is not uncommon to see an out of focus piece of furniture or a person's elbow in the corner of the frame making many viewers come to the mistaken conclusion that they are merely seeing over rated large snapshots. They are not snapshots. The composition is well thought out. The subject matter is often amusing - an abandoned tricycle, a light bulb strung to a bright red ceiling, the inside of a freezer, and underneath a bed. The emphasis of the Whitney show was on past work, which is appropriate. The most recent work was from Japan. I would have liked to see lots more of this and will try to do so in the future.

Camera Data

2008-09-26T14:15:00.004-04:00

When you open a file in Photoshop, regardless of whether you have a point and shoot camera or an SLR, you can see what your camera has done. Go to the file menu and choose “File Info”. A window will open with the title of the file. In the left hand column choose “Camera Data 1”. This shows the shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focal length of the lens.

Workflow Epson 3800

2008-09-25T16:24:00.014-04:00

This is a workflow for use with an Epson 3800 printer and 13” x 19” Epson Watercolor Radiant White paper.

1 Shoot in highest resolution and at the lowest ISO
2 Transfer photographs to the computer
3 Make a copy of the file you plan to edit
4 Open the copy file in Photoshop NOT the original
5 Change resolution to 300 dpi
Under Image menu> select Image Size> Uncheck Resample Image Box. Change resolution to 300
Click OK
6 Convert to TIFF
7 Assign a profile
Under Edit menu>select Assign profile>from pull down menu select Pro38 WCRW>click OK
8 Convert the file to 16 bits
Go to Image menu> select Mode> set for 16 bits per channel.
9 Adjust file in Levels

To adjust the brightness and contrast of a black and white image, or to adjust the brightness and color balance of a color image, Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. "Levels" opens a complex window with several buttons and a graph. The graph is called a histogram and is showing the tonal range of the image with the shadows on the left, the midtones in the middle and the highlights on the right. The 3 little triangles running along the line below the histogram are referred to as the input sliders. The color of each one (black, gray and white) shows what part of the tonal range that each one represents. There are 3 boxes above the histogram showing the numerical representations of every tone in the image. 0 is jet black and 255 is paper white.

To the right of the input slider bar appear 3 eyedroppers. Notice once again that they are colored black, gray and white. Click on the white one which is the one on the right. When you move the cursor into the image you will notice it has changed from an arrow (or whatever else was the previous cursor shape) to an eyedropper. Click on the lightest area of significance. In other words, don't choose something like a bright white reflection off of a mirror or something similar. The image should look somewhat different after doing this and the histogram should change. Do the same with the shadows using the eye dropper on the left. For the midtones move the midtone input slider to the left to lower the contrast and to the right to increase the contrast. Ignore the midtone eye dropper. Click on the OK button to complete the procedure and then save the image.

10 Edit image with clone stamp tool
11 Sharpen
Go to Filter: Select Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Start with
Amount 200
Radius 0.3
Threshold 0
Change if not sharp enough or overly sharp

12 Go to the File menu. Choose Print. A dialog box will automatically open titled "Print"

13 In the "Print" dialog box make the following choices

* for Printer select Epson 3800

* Moving to the upper right you have the options "Color Management" and "Output". Choose "Color Management"
* below this the Document radio button should be "on" the Profile should be Pro38 WCRW

* Click Page set up

Choose from the Format for tab and set it to Stylus pro 3800
Choose from paper size Super A3 (Manual - Rear
Click ok

14 Choose Horizontal on the bottom of the picture box.

15 Uncheck Center Image

16 Click Print

17 Change printer to StylusPro 3800

18 Click on Copies and Pages then scroll down to Print Settings

19 Change Media Type to (Watercolor Paper-Radiant White)

20 Click on Copies and Pages

21 Click off on Printer Color Managment

22 Click Print

Photographer As Director

2008-08-03T11:36:00.001-04:00

Traditionally photographers operate the camera, control the light and direct the action. This is changing.

In the case of Chuck Close, he has an assistant who manages equipment. Close does the direction. Close's vision comes thru clearly. Kahn and Selsnick work as a team to produce amazing fictional narratives. Gregory Crewdson leads a group that operates more like a movie production group than a still photographer. For now the photographer is remaining the director in art photography.

In commerce photography, the photographer might work with one or more camera assistants to keep fast paced shooting situations running smoothly. In commerce photography the photographer might be co-director or a member of a directing group. In terms of new production techniques commerce photography holds the lead over art photography in terms of exploring broad new technical solutions. Many commerce photographers work as small production teams managing complex technical shoots that could not be managed by a single person.

In the late 1970s Joel Meyerowitz began exhibiting his Cape Light series, which was printed by a lab with the same name. At the time it was unusual to see a museum exhibit not printed by the photographer. Today it is commonplace. Perhaps a similar future lies ahead for art photographers as directors only.

Barbara Bosworth

2008-07-26T08:05:00.001-04:00

From at least 1998 with "Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming" until at least 2002 with "National Champion Elliota, Georgia" - Barbara Bosworth has produced a series of landscapes with an exciting unnatratural panoramic perspective by exposing 2 to 4 sheets of 8dx10 black and white film in sequence and contact printing the results. The photographs glow with rich textures from this grainless printing process. Tonal scale and the formality/informality of the composition vary a lot from print to print.

The "Songbirds" series begins with a very simple snapsot composition as seen in "Indigo Bunting 2003" - the main subject is dead center with a very sharp focus. The background is out of focus - a dark blue sweater or jacket, a woman' hand holding the bird, green growth in back of her. The size of the print brings the bird up to life size. The resolution of the print is so high and the color so accurate that the bird almost looks real enough to touch. This emphasizes how frail a songbird is. This same composition appears in "Grackle 2004" and "Black-billed Cuckoo 2005". The 2 series are very different but equally as interesting.

Richard Misrach's "On the Beach" Series

2008-07-23T22:18:00.007-04:00

It is easy to forget the power of 8x10 film living in a digital age. And then there is Richard Misrach's "On the Beach" series. This is the result of thousands of shots at 30 dollars a shot. "Untitled 166-02" 2002 has the spontaneity of a photograph made with a handheld digital camera but the clarity of what one might see if a 900 megapixel camera existed. Where the people are placed in the frame appears to be a product of the expertise he has acquired having spent many years shooting in the desert with an 8x10 view camera. The extreme aerial perspective makes the people appear dream like. The very large prints are critical to seeing the details of the people - expressions, body type, clothing and activities are crystal clear. This is abundantly apparent in "Untitled 1132-04" 2004. The people are in large neutral spaces of sand, water, or a combination of the 2 - never sky. When I was in the gallery that contained only 3 prints - areas showing only water without people - under 3 types of lighting - other visitors passed thru quickly to see more photographs of people. "Untitled 642-02" 2002 with just a tiny pair of legs in a huge area of water clearly demonstrates what a great job Misrach has done on this project. The book is disappointing. Printed very large; very high quality - the book pales next to the actual prints - the images are much too small. Misrach is represented by Fraenkel Gallery and Pace/MacGill Gallery

More on Black and White Digital Prints

2008-07-22T11:09:00.002-04:00

I don't do very much black and white digital printing. One of the reasons is that it is much more difficult than making color digital prints. Tim Grey, who has lots of great solutions to the complexities of digital photography, recently posted the following in his free email service Digital Darkroom Questions. I've haven't tried this but it looks pretty good to me and I hope to try it.

Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ)
July 22, 2008
by Tim Grey
www.timgrey.com
tim@timgrey.com

Books: www.timgrey.com/books/index.htm
Blog: www.timgrey.com/blog

##########

Gradient Map, how do you apply this technique? I was at a workshop not long ago and watched the instructor apply this technique to enhance the B&W image she was working on. This particular step seemed to give the image the tonal qualities that I desire to make a beautiful B&W print. Unfortunately, this step went to quickly for me to take notes on. I'm coming from a darkroom background and find that I'm still not really satisfied with my digital B&W prints. I still can't get the whites I desire and this step, Gradient Map, seemed to afford this printer the benefits that I desire. Or, maybe you have a better tip for tonal qualities in achieving a truly beautiful B&W print. I should note that I primarily photograph people, and therefore am looking for the skin tones that I miss from working in the darkroom.

==========

The Gradient Map adjustment literally maps tonal values in your image to specific color (or tonal) values based on the gradient you define. To get started, simply click the Create Adjustment Layer (the half black and half white circle button at the bottom of the Layers palette) and choose Gradient Map. This will bring up the Gradient Map dialog box. You can choose one of the pre-defined gradients from the dropdown. For example, by choosing the black to white gradient you'll produce a black and white version of your image. While there are some interesting results you can achieve with the preset gradients, it is more interesting to create your own custom gradient. To get started, click the gradient preview area for the dropdown in the Gradient Map dialog box. This will bring up the Gradient Editor, where you can define a custom gradient for the color (or tonal) values to be mapped to the tonal values in the image.

To customize the gradient, click in an empty space directly below the gradient preview in the Gradient Editor dialog box. Then double-click on the "handle" for the new point you've added to bring up the Select Stop Color dialog box. Select the color (or neutral shade of gray) to assign to the point you selected on the gradient, and click OK. You can then drag the handle left or right to refine which tonal value in the image should be associated with that color. The colors you define will be assigned to your image based on tonality, resulting in a map of colors based on tonal values (and thus the name of this adjustment).

The Gradient Map adjustment allows you to create customized grayscale interpretations of your images, but also enables you to create very interesting creative interpretations by blending a series of colors to the various tonal values within the image.

##########

Lee Friedlander

2008-06-10T14:31:00.002-04:00

In 1972 I saw Lee Friedlander's book "Self Portrait". I found it a strange but amusing book. It reminded me of Robert Frank's photographs in some ways - handheld, 35mm Leica, spontaneous photographs. These were much more lighthearted than Frank's photographs. Many of them had this great deadpan humor. I liked how much of his work had a dreamlike quality that was attained in the shooting of the photograph, not the darkroom. They had a documentary quality to them, yet they didn't look anything like what you would see in a newspaper or news magazine. The book had been published in 1970 when Friedlander was 36 years old.

His work has been shown extensively at the Museum of Modern Art since 1967. They began collecting his work in 1964. By 2000 when Friedlander was 66 years old the Museum of Modern Art had over 200 of his photographs in their collection. At this time they purchased 868 prints as well as the right to select 132 future prints.

In 2005 when Friedlander was 71 his work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in a show that was hundreds of photographs and spanned several large galleries. A 469 page catalogue accompanied it. This is a very large heavy book filled with amazing photographs.

Friedlander works with exceptionally accurate equipment - Leica and Hasselblad cameras and lenses. He works in black and white not color. He works with film not digital files and a darkroom not Photoshop and an inkjet printer. His range of subject matter is huge - spaces on the street, candids, portraits, self-portraits, nudes, landscapes, and still lifes. He works indoors and outdoors. Common to all of this work is a mastery that shows no signs of waning. Friendlander will take very common situations and show them to you in a way you could never imagine.

He does not have a website which is too bad. At 74 he remains one of the most important voices of contemporary photography. A small selection of his photographs can be seen at Fraenkel Gallery and Janet Borden.

The Mystery of Sensors

2008-06-04T14:33:00.003-04:00

When I used film I did not always find it possible to fully understand all of the technical data, but enough of it to choose film without too many surprises. The sensor in a digital camera is the digital equivalent to film in many ways. With the right sensor most photographs look technically accurate. But what should be watched - megapixels or the size of the sensor? Sensors are measured by diagonal size. Most point and shoot camera sensors have a diagonal length of 7.7mm. An SLR camera might be 25mm. To make matters worse there are "Bayer pattern sensors". There are two types of these - CMOS and CCD. And then there are Foveon X3 sensors.

If you have a 10 megapixel camera with the smaller sensor the pixels are smaller and of lower quality than a 10 megapixel DSLR. This is one of the principal reasons point and shoot cameras don't always produce photographs like those made with larger sensor SLR cameras. Sensor size is more important than the number of megapixels. The best choice would be a large sensor with lots of megapixels.

I work with both a SLR camera and a point and shoot camera. I have found that with the point and shoot camera if I work in low contrast light and keep the ISO at 100 I get some pretty accurate photographs. For more technically demanding situations, of which there are many, I use the SLR.

The New Photomontage

2008-04-16T07:29:00.004-04:00

In the mid 1970s Stephen Shore and Nicholas Nixon sparked an interest in 8x10 view cameras. After seeing there work countless photographers abandoned their 35mm cameras for 8x10 view cameras hoping some of the magic would rub off on them. Many of these new converts quickly discovered it was Shore’s and Nixon’s vision, not their cameras, which made their photographs so unique.

Today we see a similar phenomena with Photoshop. In 2001 Andreas Gursky’s photographs were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. Once again countless photographers began working with Photoshop much like photographers bought view cameras in the 1970s. I suspect the outcome will be somewhat similar. Unlike view cameras where the technique was clear cut – go to the store and buy an 8x10 view camera, it is much less clear cut with Photoshop. I suspect the technique Gursky has used in photomontages that look real like 99 Cent or Shanghai is similar to the technique described below in a recent column by Tim Grey.

Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ)
December 5, 2007
by Tim Grey
www.timgrey.com
tim@timgrey.com
Books: www.timgrey.com/books.htm
Blog: www.timgrey.com/blog
##########
I have created a photomontage using layers of several photos of my recently deceased golden retriever. The borders of each image are of course sharp. I'd like to be able to fade and blend the borders into each other and be able to play with this effect until there is a continuous flow from image to image of each background. What technique would you suggest?
==========
This is actually one of those situations where I don't consider there to be an ideal solution. Well, at least not one that I know of (so if a reader has a great solution within Photoshop, let me know).
The first thing I would do is try to make my work as easy as possible by first assembling the image as a montage within Photoshop. The basic steps for this are:
1) Open the images you want to include in the final montage, and create working copies that are flattened via Image > Duplicate Image with the Duplicate Merged Layers Only checkbox selected.
2) Resize these images to the approximate output size you want them at the final output resolution.
3) Create a new document (File > New) sized to the output size you desire at the appropriate output resolution.
4) Use the Move tool to drag each image into the new empty document you created.
5) Continue using the Move tool to change the position of each image in the montage, changing the position on the Layers palette (by dragging up or down) to define how the images should be "stacked" in terms of topmost to bottommost.
6) Use the Scale option of the Transform command (Edit > Transform > Scale) as needed for the individual images (select the desired image on the Layers palette first) to resize the images as desired. Hold the Shift key and drag a corner of the image to resize, pressing Enter/Return to apply the resizing. Try to keep resizing operations to a minimum to maximize final image quality.
Once you have a basic montage created, the real work begins. Here's the approach I use:
1) Select the image you'll work on first (you'll repeat this process for all images). You'll want to have some logical order here, starting perhaps with an anchor image and working your way out, or starting in one corner and working your way across the montage.
2) Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to create a basic selection that fits a bit inside the edge of the image. This will define the boundary for blending the edge of the image.
3) With the selection active, add a layer mask to the image by clicking the Add Layer Mask button (circle inside a square icon) at the bottom of the Layers palette.
4) Make sure the layer mask, not the image, is active (click on the layer mask thumbnail if you're not sure) and apply a blur to the mask (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur). Make sure the Preview checkbox is selected, and then adjust the Radius setting as needed to get the desired effect. I recommend erring on the side of slightly too much transition, as that is easier to correct later than not creating enough transition. Click OK when you have the effect applied as close to what you want as possible.
Once you've repeated this process for all images in your montage, you'll have a good starting point. Now you're ready to fine-tune to perfection. You'll basically perform two adjustments to fine-tune. One is to resize the layer mask to change which area of the image is visible, and the other is to apply an adjustment to the layer mask to alter the distance over which it transitions.
To resize the layer mask, click the chain link icon between the thumbnail and layer mask icon on the Layers palette for the appropriate layer to unlink the two. This is so you can resize the layer mask independent of the image itself. Next, select Edit > Transform > Scale, hold the Shift key, and drag the bounding boxes to resize the mask. You'll see the effect as you adjust the size of the mask. Be sure not to drag so far outside the image that you get a solid line, eliminating the effect of blending you created. When you have resized the layer mask as desired, press Enter/Return. When you're done resizing the layer mask you can click the space between the image thumbnail and layer mask thumbnail to re-link them, so if you resize again the image and mask will resize in unison.
To change the edge effect of the mask, click on the layer mask thumbnail on the Layers palette for the desired image, and then choose Image > Adjustments > Levels from the menu (I know I've conditioned you to use adjustment layers for all adjustments, but in this case that isn't possible). You can now use the three sliders for Input Levels to adjust the shape of the mask. Use the Black slider to make the transition more abrupt by pulling the outside of the transition zone inward. Use the White point to make the transition more abrupt by pushing the image outward. Use the mid-tone slider to expand or contract the visible area, effectively moving the transition area in or out relative to the center of the image.
For those of you using Photoshop CS3, you might be tempted to use the Refine Edge command (Select > Refine Edge) when you have created the initial selection for each image before creating a layer mask. However, I've not been happy with the results using that tool, so I bypass it and work with this slightly more "manual" method.

Another really great article about this technique is the following link

http://photo.net/learn/collage/

Ansel Adams

2008-04-14T19:20:00.002-04:00

Although most people have a camera phone or a self contained camera, very few people think of a camera as something to be used to create art. The typical function of a camera worldwide is to record special moments - standing in a place you can't believe exists or broad smiling photographs of friends or family enjoying special moments. We are all also aware of how cameras are used as a way to record news, make calendars and cards and to make illustrations for advertisements. In the early 1900s a failed concert pianist from San Francisco picked up a camera and changed the way many people now see photography. His name was Ansel Adams. His most famous photograph is Moonrise Over Hernandez which during his lifetime brought in one million dollars in sales of this single photograph. It was made in 1941. Many things make it very different than other photographs of majestic landscapes of the Southwestern United States produced by people daily with camera phones or handheld cameras.

The first was that he chose to use a 50 pounds plus camera that could only be operated with a tripod. Also he chose to use black and white film rather than color film. He had to use film. There was no digital photography before the 1990s. The camera he chose shot single sheets of 8” x10” film. This particular camera was so slow to operate. He only got to take one photograph. The sun was setting and by the time he got the photograph the light was no longer what he wanted. He chose black and white film because he found that it was much easier to control the contrast. At the time color film was difficult to use. You had to make sacrifices in either the shadows or the highlights and he didn’t want to do this. He found with black and white he had more control of the shadows while taking the picture and more control to render the highlights the way he saw the photograph in his mind than would be possible with color film. Film and digital sensors see a greatly reduced contrast range compared to how your eye sees things. Fighting with light becomes the most difficult at midday on a sunny day. This is less of a problem on cloudy days and is least problematic in the early morning or late afternoon.

Adams was much more than a clever technical photographer. He worked long and hard on choosing where to stand, aware that how close you are to the subject is the most important factor in making a photograph. Adams worked more like a painter when taking photographs. He looked at what he wanted to photograph from more than one position before choosing a final place to stand. He considered the edges of the photograph very carefully not just the center. He found that shooting a huge area of space like Moonrise needed to be shot from a high place to give it the strongest composition.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 was unavailable in the 1940s. Adams very much wanted to do digital photography. He could see it coming, but died before it reached the market. Instead of using Photoshop he used a darkroom to create this very dark sky, to make the moon stand out, to make the clouds so bright and to make the grave markers in the foreground stand out. This would be slow in Photoshop and be something clearly beyond the grasp of any new Photoshop user.

This photograph was one of the first photographs accepted as art. Museums that own copies of this value it as much as any of their paintings. It took tremendous analytic skills in both the shooting and editing to make it look like this and over this semester I will introduce you to some of those skills. You have explored the most important element in making photographs as art – choosing where to stand.

More about Ansel Adams

http://www.pimzlo.com/movies/ver8movies/070702_GEH_Verhulst_Ansel_Pod.html
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adams/adams.html

Basic Editing in Adobe Photoshop

2008-03-31T21:27:00.009-04:00

This is a photograph from a series of photographs that I started working on the first month I began photography in 1970. This particular photograph is of a store window on Madison Ave. in New York City. I have been photographing windows on Madison Ave. since the early 1970s. Over time I have expanded this series to other cities. Some of the other photographs in the window series can be seen at

http://www.lightwavephoto.com/plurb3.html

and

http://flickr.com/photos/paullight/sets/72157603591586110/

It began with a photograph shot on a rainy day. The camera was protected from the rain by an awning over the storefront. The camera used was a Nikon s7c. The ISO was set at Auto and Image Mode was set to High. The file was transferred to an Apple Macintosh computer for editing.

I began the editing process by placing the file on the desktop and duplicating the file. I duplicated it by clicking on the file. It appears highlighted. I then went to the File menu and chose the option Duplicate.

A second image appears on the Desktop with the same name and the word copy added to the original file name.

It is important to do the editing on the Desktop rather than opening the file from a CD or flash drive. Sometimes when editing is done on a CD or flash drive the file becomes corrupted.

I then went to the Edit menu to assign a profile

From the Assign Profile window I clicked on the radio button Profile. I then scrolled down the profile list using the navigation arrows on the right side of the Profile box and chose a profile to match the paper and printer that I use

For this print I used Epson Watercolor Paper Radiant White and an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer. The profile code is Pro38WCRW.

Next I open the duplicate file and go to the image menu and choose Mode. From the Mode submenu I change the file from 8 bits to 16 bits. This will give me more error room in the editing. This step probably isn’t necessary if your objective is to post a photograph to a website.

To edit any photograph in Photoshop, it is important to change the resolution to 300. This is done by going to the Image menu and choosing Image Size.

In the Image Size window look at the resolution box.

If the number it shows is less than 300 make sure that the Resample Image box is unchecked and then once it is unchecked change the resolution to 300.

My camera actually defaults to 300 not 240. I have changed this for the example since many cameras default to a resolution less than 300. What you are doing by unchecking Resample Image is you are changing the height and width of the image with the resolution. This keeps the file size the same. If you accidentally make the file larger it will not print as clearly as it does when the file size is not changed.

Next I convert the file to the TIFF format. This is a better format for printing than JPEG which has a more limited color range. Go to the File menu and choose Save As

From the submenu I choose TIFF

I have stopped working on this post and will probably not complete it. I know some people have found this helpful as is so I will leave it up incomplete.

James Welling

2008-03-26T06:49:00.005-04:00

While recently in New York I went to the Whitney Biennial and saw some photograms by James Welling. A photogram is a cameraless photograph. The process begins at the printing stage. A simple photogram would be to take a leaf from a tree into the darkroom, place it on a sheet of photographic paper, expose it to the light of an enlarger and then run it thru darkroom chemicals. Other variations on this process are to place objects between two pieces of glass and put them in the negative carrier of an enlarger, use alternative darkroom processes such as cyanotype, gum bichromate, platinum printing or using a large sheet of film to print the objects on and then contact printing them. The digital equivalent would be to place this same leaf on a flat bed scanner, scan it and print the file on a ink jet printer with photo inkjet paper. This is not just a trick to be used by people who are getting tired of their cameras limits. Significant bodies of work with photograms have been crated by Joan Fontcuberta, Adam Fuss and Abe Morell.

Welling’s photographs at the Whitney are from a series called “Torsos”. He took aluminum window screening and shaped it in such a way that when placed on color photographic paper in a darkroom and then processed in darkroom chemicals the end result is a photograph that does look like a torso. Why do this when you can photograph a torso? I don’t know Welling, so I can only guess at this. Much of making art is trying to create something visually that never existed before, but is close enough to existing art that it gets a viewer’s attention. This work got my attention. A very informative article about Welling appears in the current version of Aperture (#190 Spring 2008).

All text unless otherwise noted is ©2008 Paul Light. All rights are reserved.

Henry Wessel

2008-03-24T21:54:00.001-04:00

Today I’ve been thinking about a photographer who has had a tremendous influence on contemporary black and white photography. From his choice of everyday, almost snapshot-like subjects to his luminous use of grays in prints, his imprint is seen in much of contemporary black and white photography. You may recognize the style, but unless you live in San Francisco you’ve probably never heard of him. He rarely exhibits outside of California. His name is Henry Wessel.

Wessel can take an ordinary space and make it look amazing, because he knows just how to position himself relative to the subject. Take a look at this photograph.

http://www.renabranstengallery.com/Wessel_SF1972.html

It’s merely a photograph of well trimmed bushes but they jump out of the photograph as mesmerizing sculpture due to where Wessel chose to stand. Choosing where to stand is the principal shooting strategy of contemporary photography, as seen in modern masters such as Lee Friedlander.

In 1974 Henry Wessel's photographs appeared in Aperture (Volume 19, Number 1 - The Snapshot). The photograph I remember most is a photograph of a man in a suit standing on a beach with his back to the camera.

http://www.renabranstengallery.com/Wessel_RBG_017.html

The photograph is shot from an odd perspective; the camera is held low, making the man look like a towering figure. Also, the photograph shows only the man’s back, so it is very mysterious. Why is he wearing a suit at the beach? Why is he holding his arm in that position? Why is the beach so empty?

If you’ve never seen Wessel’s work, you should definitely take a look at it. Even if you have seen it, it’s worth a second look. A good starting point is a feature that public TV station KQED created about him. There’s a short profile, some links, and a great video about him.

http://www.kqed.org/arts/people/spark/profile.jsp?id=17900

Toward A New Definition of Art Photography

2007-12-10T14:25:00.000-05:00

I began photography when even famous photographers exhibited 8"x10" black and white darkroom prints. I could lament about this, but I would prefer to be part of the future not the past. Andreas Gursky's 6 ' 9 1/2" x 11' (81.5" x 132") "99 Cent" ©1999 pushes all of photography in a new and expensive direction.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/gursky/

We have become the new painters. The rewards will be wonderful, but the challenges immense. Some photographs have sold for a million dollars. Many are selling for $10,000 or more.

But let's go back to how Gurksy has changed the future of photography as art. In all fairness Jeff Wall's work must also be acknowledged as part of this new direction - huge, amazing light boxes slowly crafted to perfection

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/jeffwall/

Let's address 40"x60" prints - something that is becoming commonplace in gallery and museum shows and appears to be an offshoot of Gursky type large scale prints. With matting and framing the production costs are about $2000 per photograph when working with print and framing services that operate by gallery and museum quality standards. A photographer with the means to make their owns prints and do their own matting could lower the price significantly if able to afford a $5000 Epson 9600 inkjet printer or an equivalent darkroom setup.

So far the issue is not darkroom vs. digital but one of scale. I recently went to an exhibit with 20"x30" prints and 40"x60" prints. The smaller prints could barely hold my attention. I have no idea how young photographers or even older photographers will be able to operate in this atmosphere. It will be expensive. Perhaps 17"x22" prints and smaller will become the new "work print" and careful selection will be made in choosing what to make into gallery size prints. Perhaps there will be a negotiation process between buyers and/or distributors, which begins with the smaller print and with an offer of a negotiable advance where the photographer offers a significant discount in exchange for the advance. I like the idea of photography becoming the cutting edge of museum exhibits. It is an expensive, but bright and exciting possibility.

Some Thoughts About Portraits

2007-09-21T16:47:00.000-04:00

The strongest portraits are those that are well posed and/or have a good background. Portraits don’t always need backgrounds to work.

It’s not always a good idea to have people smile. It’s also important that they don’t frown. The expression must convey a feeling of who they are as a person. This is best done by directing the subject. The directions don’t need to be complex, but they do need to put the subject at ease so that they don’t smile excessively or frown excessively.

Some favorite portraits of mine

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/callahan/callahan_eleanor_chi47_full.html

http://del.icio.us/paullight/portraits

http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/photographers/arnold_newman_01.html

http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/photographers/nicholas_nixon_01.html

http://www.lightwavephoto.com/student8.html
http://flickr.com/photos/84109547@N00/460710940/
http://flickr.com/photos/84109547@N00/416976533/

The New New Documentary Photograph

2007-08-26T14:21:00.001-04:00

In 1967 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) introduced the world to Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand under the banner of the show “New Documents”. It was presented as a new way to do documentary photography. I am not sure whether the aim was to redefine or broaden the definition of documentary photography. I hope the objective was to broaden it not redefine it. In 1976 the Museum of Modern Art did a major show of William Eggleston. This show legitimized color photography as art. Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand brought Eggleston to the attention of the MoMA curator of photography John Szarkowski. The huge effect of these exhibits ripples thru photography’s history to the present day.

In 1990 Thomas Knoll invented the computer image editing program Photoshop. He sold the program to Adobe Systems and he continues to work with Adobe in a lead position on each new version of the program. It has become Adobe’s flagship product and is as central to computer image editing as Microsoft Word is to word processing. This has been a tough direction for experienced photographers to follow. There has been a heated debate as to where this computer program fits properly within art photography.

Over the past 6 years MoMA has presented 3 exhibits that seem to be showing a significant new direction in photography that involves the use of Photoshop. Beginning in 2001 with the Andreas Gursky and in 2007 with the shows Jeff Wall earlier in the year and the current show of Barry Frydlender. Between them they are creating a new type of photograph that at first glance appears to be a documentary photograph. Instead it is a photograph that has been carefully pieced together in Adobe Photoshop to create a reality that never existed in the real world. This new working method was created at by Jeff Wall. It will be very interesting to see how this affects photography over the next 10 years. Will these photography change photography to the extent that Arbus, Eggleston, Friedlander and Winogrand have changed photography? Frydlender sites Wall and Winogrand as his principal influences. I suspect Gursky was familiar with Wall’s work before he developed his current working method. Frydlender's work can be seen at MoMA thru Sept.3. Although this exhibit is disappointingly small this is the best photography exhibit I have seen this summer. This is an exhibit that should not be missed.

The Lee Friedlander photographs on the Fraenkel Gallery site cannot be accessed directly. Go to the site. Click on Enter. Click on Artists. Click on Lee Friedlander.

Aaron Siskind

2007-06-27T15:13:00.000-04:00

When discussing Aaron Siskind, he is a difficult man to classify. He is best known for his extraordinary photographs of wall details. It is no accident that his photographs have similarities to the Abstract Expressionist painters. He was an Abstract Expressionist, but instead of using a paintbrush he used a camera. Franz Kline was a close friend. Wilhelm De Kooning sites Siskind as a significant influence. Like Ansel Adams Siskind’s photographs are very precise. Unlike Adams Siskind seemed to be more concerned with the concept of pure space rather than any individual subject. Adams and Siskind are of the same generation and each man’s influence on contemporary photography worldwide is huge.

The photographs

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424136502/118598/aaron-siskind-lima-57-1975.html

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424136497/118598/aaron-siskind-chicago-25-1957.html

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424325014/357/aaron-siskind-jerome-20.html

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424136499/118598/aaron-siskind-gloucester-1h-1944.html

http://www.eastman.org/ne/str091/m197300280002.jpg

http://www.photoarts.com/auction/images_old/siskind1.jpeg

The Trouble with Point and Shoot Digital Cameras

2007-05-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

I have long enjoyed Digital Photography Review. They recently wrote the best article I have seen as to why digital point and shoot cameras are so difficult to get consistently good photographs from. The article is Compact Camera High ISO modes:Separating the facts from the hype by Simon Joinson

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/compactcamerahighiso/

I am determined to continue to use point and shoot digital cameras no matter what their shortcomings are. This article makes it a whole lot easier to know when I am in a situation where my camera is going to produce very inferior results from what I am seeing.

Photography at the DeCordova Museum

2007-05-29T15:47:00.000-04:00

If you live anywhere near Lincoln, Massachusetts you should head for the DeCordova Museum. This small museum has started to show some of most exciting and innovative photography that I see in any given month. In the remaining days of May you can get in for free with a Bank of America ATM card. My favorite work on view right now is by Elke Morris

http://www.decordova.org/decordova/exhibit/2007/2007annual/morris.html
http://www.millerblockgallery.com/artists/Group_exhibition.shtml
http://www.bates.edu/Images/morris-elke.jpg