Break the Reflection

I read Ken Rockwell's writing not for the tech reviews, but his hilarious musings about art. He has a distinct style that reminds me of the spirit of Voltaire's writing in that he oversimplifies concepts for comic effect, among other things. It takes a sophisticated reader to understand a lot of what he's talking about; he is not, by any means, dumbed down.
His latest article exemplifies a concept I learned years back and couldn't really put into words.

Composition is one of the most important elements of a photograph, or any 2D artwork, that separates a snapshot from something truly artistic.

I'm guilty of it myself. Though I've never tweaked things endlessly in Photoshop, I have taken hundreds, if not thousands, of photos that only make sense to me: they have some sentimental value in the subject matter, or an interesting color, or some other isolated portion that excited me, but anyone else would look at the photo and really think nothing of it.

Take this photo from June, 2008, for example.

I took this photo because I loved the colors. the contrast between the bright yellow of the gas station with the eternally grey Puget Sound sky. It reminds me of the first time I explored Seattle's Capitol Hill during the day. And I'm sure, in the 24½ century when Broadway is lined with shimmering Space Needle-esque Jetsons buildings and automobiles fly through they sky powered on liquified Hydrogen, this will be an amusing historical photo, much like the print I have of the same intersection nearly 100 years ago (which I didn't take).
(Note to self: do not speculate on future-Seattle)

There was a turning point somewhere when a much greater proportion of photographs turned out to be 'winners' : that is, they were of some appeal to someone who didn't have sentimental ties to Seattle or Shell Oil, etc etc.
The ability to compose a scene in a visually appealing manner is perhaps the universal qualification of being a so-called 'artist'.

Last time I was in Seattle, I headed up to Capitol Hill and shot through a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 at night. I love that film.
Something I always worry about when shooting film is blurry shots, since, unlike digital, I can't simply change the film speed shot-to-shot. so here's a film that's guaranteed to be fast enough, and has beautiful grain on top of it.

When I'm photographing, I alternate through bouts of shyness and gregariousness. Partly my shyness is a fear of disrupting the scene at hand. I saw this one and immediately had to photograph it.



the problem:
too much stuff. too far away. Bleh. As Orson Welles might say, it's a "very wearying one".

The solution:
Get closer. that's all there is to it. Can't hide behind a long lens (which often scares subjects more than your presence); just get in and really show who they are.


I shot this with your standard 50mm lens on a Nikon F6 (very quiet camera, I have to say). Sure, I could have used my lovely 85mm, but I wanted to show some of the surroundings and juxtapose them with their surroundings.

I find that I go through periods where I alternate between fervently shooting digitally and passionately shooting film.
For the time being, I'm obsessed with film. Black and white, particularly. Digital just doesn't give the crunchiness of Tmax 3200 or that buttery smoothness of FP4.
But it is great for shooting lots really quick.

Yesterday, I popped a 28mm lens, one I didn't even know I had, onto the digital camera and went out wandering south of downtown Boston, mostly taking architectural detail shots.
This scene interested me. the men along the wall were silent, but the man in the fur jacket was loudly speaking Chinese to nobody in particular. he had a huge grin on his face, and was leaning against a phone booth.
Out came the camera, which turned heads (it's hard to miss a Nikon D3).
Now here's the kicker: the man turned towards me and slowly walked after me, flapping his arms and babbling. The other men, unfazed, stood silent.

Having worked in photographic retail, I've found there are three general types of camera collectors.
First is the guy like me, that has a box full of old gear that people dump on when unwanted. These people collect them as sort of a 'hey, that's pretty cool' or 'that was my cousin's/sister's/grandfather's camera' way. They actually use them.
Most of the people that fell into that category were serious photographers who happened to like owning a little piece of history in the form of a glorious old Nikon F3 or Olympus OM-1 (both spectacular cameras).

The second would be the obsessive historical collector that has to have a complete set of all commemorative Leica bodies, rare parts, and the like. These people generally are not really photographers and snap off a couple of photos here and there with a state-of-the-art Canon EOS digital here and there, mostly to document their collection. The old stuff stays inside boxes, hermetically sealed and in a climate-controlled basement never to be seen, lest they lose their collectors' value.

And the last is an enigma to me. The kind of person that knows every fact about obscure cheap junk and hoardes it. I recall seeing one guy come in and buy a couple of beat up Pentax K1000s, a Kodak folder with holes in the bellows, and a truckload of Carousel slide trays. For his collection. Hey, a sale's a sale to me.

The second group slightly angers me for the moment. As a street shooter, I've found that, when photographing in close quarters in low light, a rangefinder camera and a roll of Delta 3200 is indispensable. I've had a Voigtlander Bessa-R that's worked spectacularly.


Unfortunately, it's not the world's sturdiest camera in the world. The rewind crank broke and not only is there no way to fix it, but no way to buy a new one. C'est la vie.

A while back, my father and I were talking about when his hobby was photography and he shot with a Leica M3 and hand-held meter as a university student before trading it in for a Nikon FTn years later. I remarked on how unfortunate a trade that was, and wondered how a university student could afford a Leica in the first place. He didn't follow. I mentioned that a used F goes for a couple hundred nowadays, while an M3 is a couple thousand and watched him grow pale.
Well, turns out that a Leica wasn't such a big deal 40 years ago. At least not as much as it is now.
A Leica rangefinder was top notch in comparison to contemporary Nikon and Canon rangefinders, but within reach of the hobby photographer. The collectors - group #2 - are to blame.
Why this is relevant: I have been perusing the web looking for a suitable used rangefinder to replace my poor Bessa. The Bessa R3a and Leica M5 struck my fancy.

Apparently, among Leica enthusiasts, the M5 was the 'ugly' model. Big, oddly designed, and with a spot meter mechanism with a history of occasional failure. One would think an M5 could be found for a reasonable price.
Well, the M5 never sold well, so, of course, it's worth value on eBay with headings like RARE VINTAGE LEICA L@@K MUST BUY at around $1200.
Eh.
So much for that.

aaahhh, here's an old one.



I took that back in October. Set it as my computer's desktop and forgot about it.

As you probably know, I love doing subway trips. Photographing people on the train. Photographing whatever's around the train. etc.

http://www.bluejake.com/

These are simply wonderful.
I'm considering heading down to NYC for the weekend just so I can hit Willett's Point and Flushing Meadows Park.
The latter was the location of the 1939 and 1964 Worlds' Fairs (and the 'ash heap' mentioned in The Great Gatsby) and is now almost completely grown over.

...And I'm live from a brand-new MacBook Pro, replacing my ancient iBook G4 and supplementing my G4 tower (which will now be used for more...mundane things. it's a beautiful machine, but...okay, dual 1GHz G4 doesn't even begin to compete with dual 2.5 GHz Core 2. Not to mention I can run Aperture 2 on it.
About that: first off, I'm not used to a drive slot in front and tried to put the disk into a Firewire port. Second, I don't care what computer snobs say about my G4, it runs Adobe Lightroom, my photo software just fine. More than fine. I just don't LIKE Lightroom. It's plenty powerful, but can be terribly confusing. Back when it was free for testing, it came with no instruction manual: Adobe figured it was simple and intuitive enough that anyone familiar with digital images would understand it just fine. The tools, like retouching, changing tones, and so on, are the same as any other, but the real reason I use it is to manage thousands and thousands of digital images.
That application, with its bizarre and non-graphical way of organizing 'collections' and 'folders' and the like gives me a headache. I'm a visual person and text bothers me.
Aperture, on the other hand, is very well documented, icon-oriented (I like icons!), and all around easier to use. Again, it's something new to learn, which is always a pain, but it all comes down to a matter of personal preference. I see too many reviews online "THE DEFINITIVE BATTLE: LR VS APERTURE!"

...But I shouldn't get into that.

More importantly, it's a fun computer. Widescreen, built-in iSight, blazing fast, just generally pretty. And that's a good thing when working with photos.
I'm happy.

Don't you just love it when things don't work, right when you need them to?
A week ago, I gave a documentary slideshow/lecture presentation with 100 images, and probably everything that could go wrong leading up and during it did. Or so I thought: I was told it was a hit.

Keeping this post brief, I'm testing out a lot of new things. MacOS 10.5, iPhoto and iWeb '08, and the spectacular Nikon D3, example included.
There are really three things that make this great: brilliant colors that make me want to shoot in color (again! note the mixed fluorescent/compact fluorescent/incandescent lighting), the ability to shoot with my existing wideangle lenses (this was shot at 17mm, probably my favorite length), and the sheer versatility of this thing that goes from great street-shooter to portrait to sports camera.

Also, I'm on Flickr now as Emerald_Images. The versatility and sharing abilities of this site simply kill Photobucket.

Last night I brought back a boxload of film I had processed and digitized. some of them were recent, and these two were from fall of 2006 at the Crank Brothers Cyclocross USGP race at Ft. Steilacoom Park in Lakewood.


I have no idea what's going on in this one.



( one more )

It's scary. Terrifying, actually.
I came across this clip at The Online Photographer. This is an issue any photojournalist and almost every serious photographer and filmmaker run into: the legality of outdoor photography.
Two issues come into play here: The law itself, and the ignorance of the law.

THE LAW
The beauty of living in the US, Canada, the UK, and other nations with freedom of speech law is that we, as photographers, generally have the freedom to take our cameras outside. Essentially it boils down that anyone and anything outside is fair game. Obviously, there are exceptions. Government stuff is off-limits. As is private property (nobody can stick their lens in your home for no good reason). And so on. I won't go into detail. The key here, however, is that our freedom is what makes journalism and artistic freedom possible.
It works both ways: as illustrated in the above clip, we're all free to photograph whatever we want outside, and so we ourselves are open for the taking. the UK is known for the massive amounts of government security cameras in public places.
Some editorializing ahead: I don't see anything critically wrong here, provided the video footage is used legitimately: that is, for crime prevention and prosecution. NOT for harvesting data, blackmailing citizens, etc. Unfortunately, that has been the case in the past and as such spawned fear, paranoia and distrust of any sort of surveillance.
Which leads me to the other point:

IGNORANCE OF THE PUBLIC
Often our first amendment is manipulated to mean what we please. And conversely, often because of the fears stated above, we try and hide from it. Understandable; the general public's knowledge of the first amendment is somewhat vague, usually known only as "freedom of speech/expression," though it is lot more than that.
And so, our knowledge of what and what isn't legal to photograph is often just as vague. Fears of terrorism and invasion of privacy (just as vague a term as freedom of expression) come up. Problem is, neither the Patriot Act nor any other legislation makes it illegal to take photos of or from a public street.
What scares me isn't the prospect of someone (gasp!) photographing me on my stoop, but wrongful persecution on behalf of the local authorities. As the neighbor of a police officer, I certainly admire the dedication of these fine folk, but, as we all do, they get caught up in the heroic moment.

In my own experience, the most terrifying experiences as a street photographer, up there with muggings, is vigilante justice.
Within the last year or so, Igor, my fellow street photographer, and I were photographing street musicians near Westlake Center in downtown Seattle. Westlake Park is the hangout of lots of different sorts of people, and, much like the bridge in Tokyo's Harajuku, plenty of people waiting to be photographed, quite literally.
Walking back towards the waterfront, I heard the unmistakable click of a 1970s-era camera, followed by two distinct screams. I turned around to see a man carrying a Canon A-1 being chased by two young teenage girls, screaming "TERRORIST! PEDOPHILE! THAT IS ILLEGAL!" He ducked into a Borders bookstore while the two called police outside.
Igor, always the talkative one, approached them and introduced us as photographers and asked about the circumstances. Though we never caught up with the photographer, their side was surprising. According to them, they were 13 and, as minors, having a camera pointed at them was therefore illegal. Furthermore, they alleged that his behavior was suspicious, since taking photos of anyone without written permission is highly illegal. Neither of us explained their misconceptions in detail, but rather walked away and tried to distance ourselves from it.
As I was saying, if the photographer was interrogated by police, chances are he would be pressured to destroy his film under threat of confiscation of his equipment.
That just ain't right.

Now I'm not advocating putting yourself in sketchy situations in order to defend yourself. That's boneheaded.
However, this PDF is definitely something to be familiar with and keep with you.

Might I say that it is slightly embarrassing when you go into a photofinisher to drop off some film and they inform you that you have a roll waiting since August.
Getting them back was certainly a treat; A good portion of the roll was from an evening walking around the Chambers Creek Estuary, near the former Boise Cascade recycling plant. A good chunk of those have been posted on the abandonedplaces LJ community.

The rest brought back memories of a historic bus trip gone bad; taracor and I attended a night tour of Seattle's more prominent electrified bus routes. After a loop out through Beacon Hill and South Seattle, it headed to the Seattle Center for a quick rest stop. Neither of us made it back to the bus in time and I ran down several blocks chasing after it and then found myself in a foreign (to me, at least) neighborhood.


One I'm particularly fond of. This and the following were taken from a bus window stopped at traffic signals; this one was on the south side of the 12 Av S. bridge over I-90.



And another taken from a window. Not a fan of the colors, but I still like it.

And finally, one from our ill-fated 'rest stop' at Seattle Center.

I fell in love with these.
The architecture of the Seattle Center and the surrounding areas is amazingly diverse, ranging from Victorian rowhouses to brick walkups to 50s modern apartments and so on. I could go on and on about it, but I'll save that for when my rolls from an 'architectural walk' around the area come back.
Anyway. Between the postmodern glass-and-steel McCaw Hall and the original 1962 Seattle Center Coliseum, now known as KeyArena, were these neon sculptures mounted on standard SDOT lampposts.
I love neon art. If I could, I would take these home.

The wind is keeping me up, but in my late-night haze, I picked out this little gem from an article regarding fisheye lenses and digital camera sensors:

"Historical note: Most people think the Chief Ray effect is named after the optical term for the ray which goes directly through the center of the lens, the chief ray. In fact, the Chief Ray effect is named after its discoverer, Oneida Indian Chief Ray "Howling Wolf" Natisquonk who first documented this effect in the early 1800s near Syracuse, New York. His work involved characterizing the effects of light as it passed through patterns of sequins as applied to cloth."
--Ken Rockwell

It came complete with a link to the Oneida Nation webpage.



On a lesser note, buried in mostly meaningless tech specs:
"Index of refraction: I don't know, I didn't measure it."

Between mailing portfolios and sending/receiving items on eBay, I've got a small mailroom in the corner of a room. Handling UPS, FedEx, and USPS shipments and managing on my (yes) Newton. It gets hectic.


That said, I've really become acquainted with FedEx Express in recent months, sending out portfolios across the nation for various purposes.
I'm proud of my compilations, yet...never quite satisfied.

Some of my more postcard-y photos are up on dA now and certainly received a lot of attention.


Pilot by ~takkunmonsoon on deviantART

( take a look )
and a whole lot more at my dA page

If we talk often, I'm sure you've heard my nonstop ramblings on my new computer.

Two weeks ago, I was browsing around online at computer displays. A 14" iBook wasn't cutting it. PowerMax, outside of Portland, Ore., had a lightly-used Apple Cinema Display, 23" HD, for a screaming $260. That would be a dream to work on. I grabbed it.
Then it occurred to me that I needed a computer to connect it to; my iBook only outputs a medocre VGA video signal. Besides, the keys were coming apart, there were power supply issues, and the thing just wasn't fast enough to run my big stuff, like Photoshop and Lightroom, despite the 1.4GHz G4 processor.
I needed a big, meaty desktop. That Sunday, I needed to compile and FedEx a portfolio to NYC. I was literally up all night waiting for data to process.
( some Macintosh-y stuff )
The bottom line, especially for you graphics people out there: THIS THING IS A MONSTER. It did the job just fine then, it does it now. Max out your memory and it'll run MacOS 10.4, Photoshop, Lightroom, and more, no problem. Why do people buy the brand new 8-core Mac Pro at several grand a whack? Either for bragging rights or for video. You can never have too much speed for video.
But for my workflow, the G4 is great.
It arrived last Tuesday, something I had eagerly anticipated. I cleared off my desk just to make room for the massive display, which sat there, staring me down blankly, every time I passed it.

( yes, I took photos when it came )

I can't even begin to explain how fast this is, how much screen I've got to ogle, and so on. the iBook still gets used, but now doing things online isn't a chore.
Many times I promised to update more often and that hasn't happened a whole lot. Part of it is the insane amount of time required by other projects that, frankly, won't go away until at least April or May, at which point I may be leaving for Kyoto.
In the meantime, working on my photos is now FUN. Not something I have to do because I have to do it (as you know, I love photographing; editing, not so much) out of work.
In case I haven't mentioned it before, I hate gadgets and only have a working knowledge of computers. I get by with MacOS just fine! My hyperactivity was more a photography-oriented rather than computer-oriented interval.

Spent much of this weekend compiling more portfolios for NYC and San Francisco; after I eat I'll get to work web-ifying them! Photo-wise, not a whole lot of new creations, but I dug out several digitized slide rolls that are DRIPPING with Velvia goodness!

Port of Seattle and stadiums, Seattle, Wash.

Lately I've been finding solitude on late-night ferry runs between downtown Seattle's Colman Dock and Kitsap County across the Sound. They're very peaceful and quiet and I get some writing done, provided the boat's not vibrating too much.

I shot this on the massive, Jumbo Mk. II-class M/V Tacoma's sun deck while waiting for vehicles to finish boarding below. Suddenly, the sky went from a deep blue-black to a pale pink. All day I was carrying two camera bodies and...my new 17-35mm wideangle zoom.
I'm absolutely in love with it. Not only is it fairly wide on digital, but it's absolutely amazing on film.  Though there's something to be said about the simplicity of a 'standard' lens, extreme lenses like this one or telephotos really make things stand out because it's so different from what our eyes are used to seeing. Back when I got the lens, I went through 4 or so rolls the first full day I had it!

Ken Rockwell on the subject:
"The correct way to use an ultrawide is to jam it into whatever you are photographing, which effectively rubs the viewer's nose in your subject. Ultrawides are for jamming into the face of an enraged wino brandishing a feces-covered broken bottle to exaggerate his crazed anger and his crude weapon. Ultrawides are to suck the viewer into the middle of an intimate landscape or situation."

That's what I'm talking about. This lens stays on my F100 almost all the time now, when I'm not photographing people.


The subject matter of this photo really fascinates me. I love photographing industrial implements. Factories, grain terminals, rail terminals, etc. I've photographed a number of abandoned industrial structures (I've yet to have my slides of the abandoned flower factory in SE Tacoma processed!), but one of these days I'm going to load up with film and wander up and down SoDo (South of Downtown Seattle), the district pictured above. There's no end to the neat things you can find.

And, if you ever get a chance, ride a KC-Metro or SoundTransit bus through the SoDo Bus Way. The backs of the adjacent warehouses are painted with some amazing murals!

(Nikon F100, AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.8, Kodak Ektachrome E100G)

I've been shooting transparency film.
As my co-worker, Jeff Mitchell said, I've been bitten by the chrome bug.
Slides, my friends. I'm addicted.

If you've ever looked closely at your images shot with a digital camera, you may notice that light areas in the image tend to go completely white and lose detail easily?
That's something digital does. Slides do it, too. Limited exposure latitude. Print film is much easier to get a 'correct' exposure, but there's something it's missing:
Colors.

Color print film is nice, but you really haven't lived until you've seen a roll of Fujichrome Velvia come out. It's magical. The colors are just too vivid. More than real life!
Artistically, black-and-white photography focuses on composition and exposure. Color photography is nothing without, well, color effects. Slides just seem to amplify colors.  Remember the old Simon and Garfunkel song?

I've had my Velvia scanned and I'm in the process of editing my photos, but please enjoy the Kodak Ektachrome image above.

if you want to play around with colors, my suggestion is get up early in the morning or go out some evening and photograph whatever you see. The grass. A pile of logs. Maybe your friends. There's nothing like the 'golden hours' in the morning and evening to brighten up things.

Don't worry, I'll still be Takkunmonsoon/Emerald Images!
I've been in the process of moving operations to an expanded workspace at 508 6 Av, still here in Tacoma.
Looking forward to processing and printing my own BW film again. I shoot mostly film, and a good chunk of it is black and white. I don't mind having my color film and really big enlargements done at a lab, but I enjoy the process of printing 8x10s and 11x14s. I scan the rest.
I'm also experimenting with studio and macrophotography. Expect to see some of these once I get settled in.

Of course, if you're reading this from the South Sound, you can see that this weekend's not the best in terms of weather so far. So that naturally means I did no shooting yet. Here's to hoping tomorrow's different!

In other news: I wrote a review of one of my all-time-favorite cameras, the Nikon F100 for a website the other day. On the site I wrote the review for, I saw another for the F100. It included an interesting anecdote about a friend who had bought one and set it on a table before the legs collapsed and damaged the camera. He mentions that the next time he saw the friend with the camera, he was eating a drippy ice cream cone over it.
After writing, I took a peek at the F6, Nikon's only current production automatic film SLR. VERY SNAPPY. This beauty of a machine integrates the power of the F5 with the brains of a digital camera and the size of the F100, all wrapped up in the utilitarian-yet-handsome Giugiaro (of DeLorean, VW Golf, Saab 9000 and Maserati 4200 fame) body package. The buttons and rear LCD panel comes straight off of another admirable camera, the Minolta Maxxum 7.
Now the price tag? that's another thing. Hehe, this is certainly a camera I dream about, not unlike the Leica M7 and Contax 645.


However, the camera does not make the photographer. Another interesting article I read today was Ken Rockwell's "What is Photography?" rant. He makes a very good point.
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people hate Rockwell, much like how many hate editorial columnist Ken Schram.
Nobody seems to rationalize the hatred for either of them, though here's my guess. Both have a biting sense of humor, laced with subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) sarcasm. It's especially hard to pick this up from reading.
Rockwell also writes plenty of articles like the above. Few people realize he is primarily a large-format shooter that used to shoot 35mm, but has since shifted media. he is instead derided for his usage of 'amateur' cameras like his Casios and Nikon D40s, which are, well, just for snapshots and the like. His philosophy makes sense: if you're an oil painter but do the occasional pen sketch, would you spend as much money and effort in your 'secondary' field?

I think that philosophy really irks the techheads who are more interested in owning the latest in electronics rather than making art.
Since the advent of the affordable digital camera, photography has shifted from an art form to instead a hobby practiced by electronics enthusiasts. I'm trying to think of a parallel, but instead here's some proof: walk into a big-box electronics store. There's a "photography" section, where you can pay extraordinarily low prices for the latest in DSLR bodies and camcorders. Ask a staff member for some help choosing, and they'll say, "go for the Canon 5D. It has a lot of megapixels." Ask for a lens, and they'll gladly give you an EF 28-80mm lens. In fact, you'll have to take it: it's all they have! But don't fret, you've just bought the latest in hand-held gagetry. Time to go home and connect it to your computer. Heaven forbid you might go out and take photos.

Wow. Sorry. Didn't mean to sound so bitter about it. But my only advice is buy a camera for your abilities and interests, not as a shoulder trophy.  And please please, go to a camera store. They'll fix you up with your perfect match!

Okay everyone, have a good weekend, I'll be working...!

I came across this today while on a photography messageboard.
WOW.
I've had my D1x fall a couple times, no scratches. My Canon 7n fell down the steps of a bus in 2005 and just bounced.
Nothing like this!
Then again, I didn't have the massive 500mm telephoto lens on it.
I know that Canons have thin-skinned outer shells on their bodies, but I wonder what would happen to a Nikon.
I'm not going to try and find out myself. Maybe do a little web research first...

Last month I visited the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and came across something I'd been searching for: a used Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 lens. I just picked it up yesterday!
Amazingly light, sharp and bright for a low price. EVERYONE ought to have a 50mm lens! Honestly, they are a lot more effective than the cheap kit zooms that come with digital cameras these days: just spring for a lightweight prime and 'zoom with your feet'.
I've got a great zoom, the old AF Nikkor 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5, but it really isn't bright enough for available-light work when it gets dark. And I'm not spending $1400 on an f/2.8 zoom when I could just use a prime. They're really underrated these days because everyone wants zoom.

I took the day to explore some of my favorite neighborhoods in Seattle with my F100 continually by my side: Ballard, Wallingford, U-District, First Hill, and the waterfront. I wish I'd seen some new places, but I really didn't want to get lost on Cinco de Mayo.

(Shoutout to Dan, who I ran into [or rather chased after] on University Way near UW!)

So here's a few of the shots I took with my digital camera after I ran out of film.



( Jet City )

Hehe, I discovered today the photography comic, "What the Duck" today. A little distraction is in order!

Tomorrow, expect some photos! I've been working on a gallery project and dug up some old stuff...

oh, here's one more I get a lot: