NOTHING NEW

I really enjoyed this article from Saturday in the NY Times by Bill Marsh. It showed what I've been saying for years - that image manipulation isn't anything new and it certainly wasn't invented by Adobe's Photoshop. This ubiquitous software has become a verb more than a proper noun as people proclaim that they "photoshop" images meaning to retouch or manipulate them but this has been done ever since the invention of photography (it's just faster and easier now with this software.)

I always scratch my head in wonder at people that wax-poetic on truth and honesty in photography. As far as I'm concerned, it's all fake, every single picture. The moment you have chosen to use this particular lighting from this angle with this lens at this moment using this shutter speed and aperture setting you have already greatly manipulated the image, period. The very idea of translating a four-dimensional space (I'm including time) into a two-dimensional small rectangle is a very huge stretch of the imagination and is, by it's very existence, an abstraction and manipulation of "reality."

People don't want "reality" - they don't want to look as they actually do (belly and wrinkles and all) they want to look "good" or like the ideal of their image as they would like to perceive it. Likewise, my clients don't want to see a building that they have designed with garbage piled in front, broken down cars parked outside and scaffolding hanging on the facade - they want to see them at their best, as they envisioned them, and I'll do anything I can to facilitate that.

I guess I don't care if people look at my images and believe what they see - I just hope that they like what they see.

Faked Photographs: Look, and Then Look Again - NY Times

SMOKE AND MIRRORS - A TUTORIAL

Well, there's no smoke but there is a very small bathroom and a mirror...

I had to shoot this bathroom recently and there was really no room at all for the camera or lights. I set up the camera on the tripod literally touching the back wall and was only able to compose by using the Live View function of the Canon 5D MKII and my laptop. I taped a lightstand to the tile wall with gaffers in the only place it would fit (above the toilet), the problem was that it was obviously showing in the mirror along with the cable to the camera and the power cord to the head (image 1).

I shot the image like this then moved the light in front of the camera while being careful to not touch the camera or tripod. I did another shot with the light bouncing off the white ceiling in the new position (image 2).

Now all I had to do was stack these two shots together in Photoshop and create a layer mask on the second image so that the only part of it that was showing was the image in the mirror. Since this was a rectangular shape it was easy and took only a minute but this could have been done regardless of the shape - it would just take more time to create the mask. (images 3 and 4).

I shot these from outside the bathroom controling the camera with the laptop. Here is the final image after a little more work to straighten things up and after I retouched the cables out (image 5).

This is yet another one of those situations that I DO NOT think I could have done the shot with film - at least not as easily.

File info: Canon 5D MKII with Sigma 12-24 @ 15mm, 2 sec. @ f/14, Dyna-Lite 1000XL @ 1 pop

NY TIMES READS MY BLOG?

No, I don't think they do but I did find it very interesting that this recent article by David Pogue bore a striking resemblance to my post from June 29th.

Low Light Becomes a Highlight - NY Times

HELICOPTERS ARE FUN

A shot of me from Friday. It was a really clear day except for the hour that we were in the air - just one of the frustrations of shooting aerials. Pilot communication can be another. I can see why people that shoot aerials frequently like to work with the same pilots if they find a good one. All in all I was quite happy with the shots I needed to get though; it will just take a lot of time to go through them.

LIGHT BULBS AND ILLUSIONS

There was an interesting NY Times article yesterday about light bulbs. What does this have to do with photography? Well, if you photograph room interiors - a lot. Basically the incandescent bulb is not dead despite what you've maybe heard or read to the contrary. In fact, there is a lot of research and innovation going into the incandescent bulb to make it far more efficient. I'm very happy to read this because I hate compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs); I think they are awful and I will not use them. I don't like CFLs light quality, you can't dim them, their color is inconsistent (even from the same brand) and of course they contain mercury - that's not very "green."

I recently went to The Green Depot with some friends. There they have a booth with all different types of light bulbs installed. I think the idea is for you to turn on all the different options of bulbs to see for yourself what they look like so you can choose which one to use. Well, I walked out and exclaimed, without a doubt, I had found a winner - it was the standard incandescent bulb that I think was there merely as a comparison.

The problem has never been that the standard light bulb is a bad design, it's just never been updated to take advantage of modern materials and manufacturing to increase it's efficiency. I'm hoping this new generation of incandescent bulbs will soon compete with CFLs in both energy use and cost so that architects and designers will start using them ubiquitously.

On a completely different note, a blog reader sent me this link:

The blue and the green

This is a VERY cool optical illusion where the exact same color appears to be two total different colors because of how our brains work. I love stuff like this.