OK. Reset. Explanation.

Yesterday I wrote "I've been taking photographs of people for nearly 50 years and I just realized exactly how I could've done better than I have. It's a deflating feeling, actually.  All those missed opportunities and all those wonderful people with whom I could've done so much better.  Bon.  On y va!  Thus begins a massive reset.  I hope to find wonderful people to work.  Again.  Anew."

Here is the explanation.

I've been a slow and stubborn learner.  When I was young I thought I knew everything.  When I was in middle age I thought I could buy the right gear to "get me there."  As I grow older, I realize how little I know.

The details are simple, really.

Starting with lighting, it's taken me 20 years of fiddling around with things to get to where I'm happy with what I know.  Rembrandt lighting?  Understood.  Chiaroscuro?  Understood.  William Mortensen's "Basic", "Dynamic", and "Contour" lighting.  Got it.  Know it.  Nailed it.

Moving to processing and coming into the Digital Age I've learned a lot about processing images.  I think I understand how and when to apply textures and when to manipulate a "straight shot."  I understand Edward Weston, Morley Baer, and Ansel Adam's imaging and processing techniques and can apply them at will.  I feel I can even digitally simulate wet plate collodion (which is not really all that easy to do correctly in the digital realm - Apple Apps don't really get it right).

Working with people has been difficult for me.  I'm an introvert and it really stretches me to reach out to people and to ask them if I can take their photo.  I feel a strong responsibility to them as I don't like wasting people's time (which is what I feel if I screw things up).  Yet, I have worked hard to overcome my shyness.

Looking at my portfolio I see many things that give me pleasure.  I feel I've been fortunate enough to have done things that remain perhaps uncommon.

So what's the problem?

Well, the problem simply is this.  Take a look at the following video and pay close attention to where M.Gimes places the lens.

Now Google any of the Old Masters and select "images".  Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vigee LeBrun.  Do you see what I mean?

The effect may at first seem subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world, and I feel I've missed this one single thing.  Joel Grimes does not give lens placement the emphasis I am, but he does talk about it.  He clearly understands and has understood the importance of lens placement for a rather long time.  I have him to thank for helping improve my understanding of image making.

So.  I feel the need to hike up my Big Boy Pants and get on with it.  Hopefully my images will improve.  Thanks for listening.

OK. Reset.

I've been taking photographs of people for nearly 50 years and I just realized exactly how I could've done better than I have.

It's a deflating feeling, actually.  All those missed opportunities and all those wonderful people with whom I could've done so much better.

Bon.  On y va!

Thus begins a massive reset.  I hope to find wonderful people to work.  Again.  Anew.

Going Soft ~ yet another look

In the last post I shared a few images of a wonderful bottle of wine.  I wanted to see how aperture affects the "feel" of an image and I used Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS and an old manual focus Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 to make the comparison.

In this post I would like to share images of a different subject.  Each year in February la porte de Versailles Parc des Expositions plays host to an old car show called Retromobile.  This year I found a wonderful old Bentley and, well, I wanted to see how images of it "feel" with and without the Nikon Soft number one filter.  I also want to see how processing affects the final outcome.

Take a look at the following.  If you find something you like, please take a moment and leave a comment as to which image you like and why.  Thank you.  I appreciate the feedback.


  #1
  #2
  #3
#4
Again, thank you for your time and comments.

Going Soft ~ another look

I think I like the Nikon Soft filter number one.  The effect seems to achieve the right balance between softness and sharpness.  After realizing this I wanted to see what effect aperture setting had when combined with the filter.

Dinner one night called for a new (to us) kind of bird and a new (to us) vineyard's wine.  Before opening the bottle I took out a couple lenses snapped a few images.  Here was the setup:

• Sony NEX-5T
• Sony 50mm SEL OSS f/1.8 at f/2
• Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 at f/3.5
• Tabletop tripod - to get as low as possible
• Bottle of white wine (cepage chardonnay) from Beaune

Here is the test subject, which, by the way, is quite good.

Jacky (a good friend of our's) and I found this vineyard after tromping the aisles of les vignerons independent and sampling only white Burgundian wines.  If you know white wine, you know of Meursault, Chassagne-Montrachet, and Pouilly-Fuissé.  At the salon we sampled everything we could, including wines from bottles costing well north of 50Euro.  Nothing came close to this little no-nothing-name vinters products.  Follow this advice with caution since I'm a beer drinker and really can't be trusted on things wine.

Oh.  Yes.  This image was made using the Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS at f2 (I must've hit the dial by accident as I wanted this shot at f/1.8 - by the time I found the error my wife and I were well into the contents of the bottle).

Here is a quick look at the label photographed without the Soft filter.

Here is the very same scene shot with the Soft filter.  I snugged up the highlights and shadows to match the scene contrast of the images made without the filter.  The Soft filter flattens the image contrast pretty dramatically.  In the future, when using the Soft filter I will try to remember to overexpose the scene and to do so without clipping the highlights.

As you can see, the Soft filter really does the trick it's supposed to do.  There is the softness it's famous for, but there's also something else.  Looking at the light to dark transitions (such as in the lettering) the Soft filter retains a surprising amount of "sharpness."  The effect is nothing like one gets with a nylon stocking over the front of a lens, nor is it anything like a shot made with petroleum jelly over a UV filter on the front of an optic.

Looking specifically at the Sony and Nikkor images shot with the Soft filter, you can see the edges of the bottle from the Sony 50mm falls off into a blur more quickly than the Nikon 55mm.  This should be expected as the Sony lens was shot at f/2 and the Nikkor was set to f/3.5.

The Nikon Soft filter seems to provide an interesting tradeoff between sharp and soft.  It could be interesting to use when deliberately attempting to recreate a late-1800's Pictorialist style.  I feel yet another project coming on.

Going soft...

I've been for a rather too long a time considering softer images.  I've owned a Portland, several Fuji SF large format film lenses, and enjoyed using the interesting Mamiya RB 150mm SF with softness control disks.  I'm not sure why, but I like the effect, but only when "done properly."

My wife and I visited d'Orsay Museum and had the unexpected opportunity to look at a few late-1800's, early 1900's Pictorialist style photographs.  There were three images that really caught my eye.  One was a page straight out of Stieglitz's Camera Work publication.  It was George Bernard Shaw's "Portrait of Alvin Langdon Coburn."  The online versions of this simply do not do the original justice.  The way Coburn was clearly, but softly in focus and the way the background dropped away into a subtle scene of the path overhung with branches of trees really pleased me.

Another wonderful image was a cyanotype of a woman in shadow that I'd never seen before.  The image was "Florence Peterson" by Paul Haviland.  How the photographer used light and shadow, combined with softness in transition areas was really quite nice.

However, the image that really took me by surprise as Paul Haviland's "Catherine Haviland".  The optical effects were subtle.  The depth of field was unexpected.  In current photographic practice wide aperture lenses are used to separate a very sharp in-focus subject from a very-blurred background by using exceedingly narrow depth of field.  The details of the Paul Haviland scene, again by comparison to current practice, were quite remarkable and extended across the image.  I'll say it again; online copies of these images, to me, fail to share the depth of beauty of original prints.

Back at the apartment I did (yet again) some research into soft focus effects in photography.  An article on Nikon's website told me something that I'd not carefully considered.  It was that early soft focus designs allowed for an optical effect that included sufficient depth of field to keep the important parts of the subject in focus.  This was exactly what I'd seen in the "Catherine Haviland".

I've avoided soft filters like the plague, feeling that they weren't somehow pukka to the craft.  But after reading the Nikon article I found one each Nikon Soft Filter numbers one and two on eBay.  They've arrived and, well, here's yet another comparison.

Using a subject that doesn't move very quickly on it's own, I set up a Sony NEX-5T with Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 non-AI on a tabletop tripod, set mode to "A", set the ISO to 100, set the self timer to two seconds, and took three images.  Here is the effect of the filters on one of my favorite subjects.

As always, pop on over to this image hosted on Flickr and take a look at the 100% file size version to see the subtle and not so subtle effects.




Thinking a bit further I realized I'd failed to see how the current state of soft filters might act on the same subject.  So I took the sharp image and passed it through the Gimp and several different softening effects.  All filters were left at their default settings.  No attempt was made to normalize the contrast ranges between images, nor was any attempt made to get the highlight/shadow tones to match.  While  I'm not entirely sure how close I could get to the Nikkor Soft Filter effects, I'm fairly certain I could sort it out quickly enough.  Having said that, the G'Mic Blur Glow filter at it's default settings is really quite nice.

John Berger on art and how we humans see things...

I've written many many posts about cameras, lenses, and on technical details of resolution and how the human eye interprets what we call sharpness.

I've also written about how image making has moved beyond traditional methods and on how cameras have quickly disappeared from our consciousness as imaging tools have become well integrated into networked platforms.

I've been reading Sally Mann and Susan Sontag to see if I can't understand their points of view on photography.  This is quickly followed by an artist friend's sharing of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" series of early 1970's TV broadcasts.  These are, for me, significant enough that I'd like to share them here.

Thinking deeply about these kinds of topics helps sharpen the mind and, hopefully, leads to stronger, clearer, more dynamic image creation.

Comparison ~ Sony, Sigma, Nikon 50mm, 60mm, 85mm

I remember a great blog entry from some time back that showed the Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS to be as sharp wide open as a Leica 50mm f/2 lens.   That link is unfortunately broken.  Searching around I found another site that effectively shows the same thing.

So, I couldn't help myself.  Attracted by the Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS (I'm getting old and shaky) and interested to see how it stacked up against my "reference" lens, the Sigma 60mm Art DN, I taped le Canard Enchaine to the wall and had a wee-peek at things.

My by now standard comparison setup -

• Sony A6000, "A" mode, ISO100, 2 second delay trigger, very sturdy tripod
• Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS - shot in AF mode
• Sigma 60mm f/2.8 EX DN E - as my standard reference shot in AF mode
• Nikon 85mm f/2 Ai - just because, shot obviously as a manual focus lens

Here is the scene -


Here are the comparison results (be sure to look at these at 100% over on Flickr)

My (yet again rather obvious) observations include -

The Sony 50mm f/1.8 SEL OSS appears to be a nice lens.  From wide open it controls aberrations quite nicely (particularly compared to the old Nikkor f/2).  The resolution seems adequate to just about any task.  And yet it simply doesn't match the Sigma in terms of hard resolution at f/1.8 or f/2 (apertures that the Sigma doesn't offer).  By f/2.8 the Sony and Sigma lenses are nearly indistinguishable.

Looking at the luminosity curve of the RAW files straight out of the camera reveals something interesting in the way these two lenses behave.  With the Sony I can see highlight regions spread the luminosity range more broadly than the Sigma.  The Sigma's file shows a distinctive bump toward the highlights and falls off like a cliff.  It's amazing to look at the differences between the two curves and remember how contrast is a very important element to understanding how humans perceive resolution.  And this right here is very likely why the Sigma looks to perform so brilliantly compared to other lenses.  It's how the optic passes contrast to the sensor.

The Nikon 85mm f/2 Ai is outstanding from wide open and corner to corner.  However the contrast is lower than the modern lenses due to spherical aberrations at wide apertures.  You can see the effect in this comparison.  Look carefully at the f/2 center square.  See how sharp the letters are, but how a light "fog" overlays the scene?  That's the effect of spherical aberration.  Things clean up a stop or two down from wide open and is indistinguishable from currently designed optics.

My by now standard disclaimer:
I've learned long ago that I can very nearly match image resolution between just about any lens set by making adjustments to the luminosity curve.  Rarely is a lens so bad that it's resolution would be clearly worse than a high quality modern lens.  So if all a person has or if all a person can afford is something old and manual focus, there's no need to fret.  No one will be able to walk up to a big print and say "well, gosh, you should've used a sharper lens."  Why?  Because no matter what a photographer uses, it's always Always ALWAYS the mind, the creativity, and concepts of a photographer that viewers (even "educated" fellow photographers) will respond to.  There is not a single person on Planet Earth who can tell you what lens made what image (except maybe the photographer).  It simply does not "work" that way.

Comparison ~ Sigma, Nikon, Sony fixed focal length and zoom

Before I sell the Nikon 80-200 f/4.5 N I wanted to see how it compared to my other optics.  Just in case I had a stellar lens on my hands and didn't realize it.

My by now standard comparison setup -

• Sony A6000, "A" mode, ISO100, 2 second delay trigger, very sturdy tripod
• Sigma 60mm f/2.8 EX DN E - as the standard reference shot in AF mode
• Nikon 85mm f/2 Ai - just because, shot obviously as a manual focus lens
• Nikon 80-200mm f/4.5 N Ai - up for sale, shot obviously as a manual focus lens
• Sony 55-210 f/4.5-6.3 SEL OSS - the one the focuses correctly, shot in AF mode

Here are a few family photos -

Here are the comparison results (be sure to look at these at 100% over on Flickr)

My (rather obvious) observations include -

The Sigma 60mm Art DN is incredible from wide open and corner to corner.  This is why it is my reference optic.

The Nikon 85mm f/2 Ai is outstanding from wide open and corner to corner.  However the contrast is lower than the modern lenses due to spherical aberrations at wide apertures.  Things clean up a stop or two down from wide open and is indistinguishable from currently designed optics.  I want to keep one of the three 85mm lenses I own.  All are up for sale, but I can't decide between the f/2 (more modern) and f/1.8 single or multi-coated very slightly software wide open but with nice swirly bokeh early Nikon designed optics.  There's no rush as none of these have interested buyers at this point.

The Sony 55-210 f/4.5-6.3 SEL OSS that focuses correctly looks like it's OK (adequate) at 55mm and 135mm.  It's not going to knock anyone's socks off, but it looks like a decently sharp optic that can get the job done.  My sample looks brilliant at 210mm's, however.  I can't believe it.  But there you have it.  A nice, cheap lens that can do what I expect it to do. This is a "keeper."

The Nikon 80-200mm f/4.5 N Ai used to be a rather expensive optic.  Nikon did a lot of design work on the series and their effort is apparent in the results seen here.  At 80mm and 135mm it's sharper than the new Sony 55-210mm all the way into the corners (where is looks pretty darned fine, actually).  At 200mm, however, there appears to be a bit of spherical aberration (or something) that clouds the image quality.  Still, for 80Euros this isn't a 1/2 bad lens.  Not by a long shot.

I've learned long ago that I can very nearly match image resolution between just about any lens set by making adjustments to the luminosity curve.  Rarely is a lens so bad that it's resolution would be clearly worse than a high quality modern lens.  So if all a person has or if all a person can afford is something old and manual focus, there's no need to fret.  No one will be able to walk up to a big print and say "well, gosh, you should've used a sharper lens."  Why?  Because no matter what a photographer uses, it's always Always ALWAYS the mind, the creativity, and concepts of a photographer that viewers (even "educated" fellow photographers) will respond to.  There is not a single person on Planet Earth who can tell you what lens made what image.  It simply does not "work" that way.

In the Age of Post-Photography - a few properties

I've written and rewritten this blog entry several times.  Nothing felt right.  Nothing expressed my thoughts clearly enough.  What I wanted was to expand on earlier thoughts of living in the Age of Post-Photography.

"... Post-Photography means having gone beyond traditional photographic image making.  It means the apparatus of photo creation has been subsumed and integrated into technologies in a way that the complexities of its use have been eliminated.  It means that the purpose of images in our lives has evolved to inhabit a new place.  We no longer see "cameras" as tools.  We see image making as part of a much broader, more highly integrated social experience.  We love to see ourselves..."

This description feels a little restrictive and more than a little negative.  Yes, a shocking number of photographs made these days are for narcissistic reasons.  But not all of us are in love with the image of ourselves, are we?  No, for many of us the exercise of image making remains a much broader experience.  I cast around for a way to organize my thoughts and tried to find words for my feelings on the topic.  

Casually reading Sally Mann's "Hold Still" I had to stop.  What was that I just read?  Did she really just say that?  Yes.  There it was.  The very things I failed to find words for.  There they were on page 151 of my hardbound copy.  It was a little over halfway down the page.  Written by someone I deeply admire.

"... How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality?..."

Isn't this exactly what some critics of news and reporting photography are fighting over?  Isn't this exactly what has caused such a problem for some people when they learned that Magnum and AP photographers "improved" their images through modification?  Wasn't it exactly this mistake that some people made when they looked at my images of Catwoman?  The wailing and moaning, for what? 

"... All perception is selection, and all photographs - no matter how objectively journalistic the photographer's intent - exclude aspects of the moment's complexity..."

This brilliantly states the case against photography as reality.

If photography is not this, then what is it?  One might need to be careful as asking these kinds of questions feel like an all too slippery slope.  Some of us might end up in a place we didn't expect and certainly might not like.  Photography might no be what we want to believe.

Guy Tal wrote in Lenswork Magazine #127 "On Sacred Cows and Roosting Chickens" about how we have a basic understanding of the differences between fiction and nonfiction writing.  We understand when we read a novel that what we read is not real in the physical, historical sense.  We accept this and still find reading novels pleasurable.  We expect accuracy and truth when we read nonfiction.  We can learn things about reality, truth, and the world around us.  In writing we accept these different styles and are comfortable with various distinctions.  Yet we have no similar understanding for how to engage photographic images.  There is no way of sorting what we see into fiction and nonfiction in a way that we can be comfortable, enjoy, and appreciate both.

I find it easier to think in terms of image making than it is to think about photography.  It's such a "loaded" word, photography.  I find it nearly impossible to use the word without bumping against the wall of assumed reality.  

What if we could acknowledge that the field of image making is a continuum of experience and expression that spans a much greater space than previously agreed to?

What if there is space enough for those who choose "straight" image making?

What if there was room enough for those who modify things in a way that match their vision?

What if there was yet more than enough room to include those who choose to use image making technologies to electronically draw or paint?

What if image making could cast aside it's assumptions of reality and fully embrace photography's true nature as an expression of creativity?

I find the phrase Age of Post-Photography allows me to move beyond this wall of photographic tradition and the trap of thinking something represents reality when very clearly it does not and can not.

In the Age of Post-Photography - where are we now?

We have entered the age of Post-Photography.

Post-Photography means having gone beyond traditional photographic image making.  It means the apparatus of photo creation has been subsumed and integrated into technologies in a way that the complexities of its use have been eliminated.  It means that the purpose of images in our lives has evolved to inhabit a new place.  We no longer see "cameras" as tools.  We see image making as part of a much broader, more highly integrated social experience.  We love to see ourselves.

A few days after I posted my initial thoughts on finding myself living in the age of post-photography, my wife, Judith, pointed me to a series of articles which feel directly related to the topic.  Following the links and references in the first article led me down an interesting rabbit hole of thought, analysis and critique.

The article that started the descent into the rabbit hole is a review of Sally Mann's book titled "Hold Still" where she writes "... Whatever of my memories hadn’t crumbled into dust must surely by now have been altered by the passage of time..."  I read this in Proust (who is mentioned in the article).  There is a hazy, golden, glowing feeling about the past that very likely does not match the facts of the experiences at the time people lived them.  Time reliably changes what's in our unreliable minds.  Unless, that is, we find something, somewhere that acts as a repository into which we place our memories.

An idea occurred to me that is best illustrated in the form of two examples.  Romans carved statues of their leaders and sent them around their empire so their subjects could see who ruled their lives.  Some of these still exist and we can know with a fair amount of clarity and certainty what someone like Julius Caesar looked like.

Similarly, painters were called upon to make records of important events.  David's Coronation of Napoleon is one rather minor physically enormous example.  In fact, our museums are littered with painted representations of people, places, things, and events.

We tend to call these works, these statues, these paintings art.  For us, culturally, the word "art" is loaded and charged.  It has a certain weight.  So it may be hard to see what I'm talking about, unless I tilt the discussion at just the right angle.  Could it be that what we call "art" started out as little more than repositories of memory?    Aren't museums places filled with memories, or more properly, repositories of memory?  Is "art", therefore, an expression of man's battle against our reliably changing unreliable memory?

It should be obvious that this has been the primary purpose of photographic image making.  Starting in the early to mid-1800's *click* snapped the shutter  *slosh* went the chemicals *et voila!* we had a record, a representation of an actual person, place, or event.  Not unsurprisingly traditional artists were nearly instantly put out of work.  Cameras and photographers took over from paints, brushes, chisels, and artists.

Entering the age of Post-Photography it's easy with the simple gesture of a digit to point a device, capture, and share.  With this simple gesture we can see ourselves.  We can recall our experiences.  We might even sense the ghost of our feelings at the time of making the gesture.  Suddenly photographers, too, have been put out of work.

This has caused all manner of trouble in the public discourse around photography.  The loudest voices have traditionally been the "straight out of the camera" photographers.  They've demanded that "true" photography is an unaltered image.  Anything else, anything even slightly altered, to their way of thinking, could not be considered "true" nor "accurate."  In other words, only the "unaltered" could be a proper and correct repository of memory.  They felt themselves to be guardians of reality unvarnished and to be protectors of untainted truth.

I find this particularly fun and interesting.  The Guardians of True Photography, the creators of our memory repositories, they themselves have been found guilty of the very thing they publicly despised.  The problem was found to be so pervasive that the major image distributors (Magnum, AP, etc) have declared that henceforth the only images they will accept shall be in jpg format "straight out of the camera."

Some of us have always the need to push against something, even if it's a straw man of our own creation.  For this I will never forgive St. Ansel of his diatribes against William Mortensen.  Adam's letter wishing Mortensen dead is particularly foul.  While the self-appointed Guardians of Truth can't/won't see it, the old photography edifice of truth and accuracy has collapsed.  Image making has evolved to serve a different purpose, thus rendering their old arguments about what is true and real quite irrelevant.

Susan Sontag wrote "... Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy..."  Perhaps she uncovered an important truth.  Look at the most common use of images today.  People create themselves, their persona, not as they are (the true, the real), but as they wish to be (the fantastic, the desired).

Narcissus' Mirror is used to engender a strong emotional response to something we want to see.  We want to see and to have the world respond to us.  Social media has revealed a great many humans to be in love with themselves.  Such is the power of the phenomenon of the "selfie."

Surely that is not all that's left of the old craft of photography.

To find the part that remains less overtly narcissistic I turn to the very area of the craft that the Old Guardians of photographic truth and accuracy hated to the point of wishing it to die.  It is that part of the craft that attempts to connect us, however mysteriously or not, with our hidden worlds, our hidden thoughts, our hidden emotions, our hidden ideals, and our hidden currents of being.  In the Post-Photographic world it is not the taking of an image, it is the creation of one that interests me most.

In the Age of Post-Photography...

Much is being made over the hard-right populist shift in First World global politics.  First it was the BREXIT, then it was the Coming of the Donald, and now the planets are lining up for a hard right shift in France, too.  I don't intend to talk about politics here.  Rather, I would like to borrow and adapt a phrase that has some weight and meaning on the matter.

Here is the phrase I'm thinking of:  Post-Truth

When using the phrase Post-Truth we understand what people believe and what influences people is no longer the truth.  What people want is something different from formerly broadly accepted facts, figures, accuracy, and well-educated and (hopefully) deeply knowledgeable authority.  If I understand the overall trend that has lead to Post-Truth, it is at it's most basic a cry for the individual to be seen and acknowledged.  For me, these are the key words - "seen" and "acknowledged."

I wanted to find a phrase that applies to the field of images and photography, and is ideologically linked to Post-Truth.  With this I would like to propose a somewhat parallel phrase.

Here is what I would like to propose:  Post-Photography

I came to this after following a thread on Facebook where an image I created was discussed and criticised.  The image was a shared effort between myself, a model (Mona Longueville), and my wife, Judith Turano.

I posted the finished work to my two (mostly in English) Facebook pages (personal and public) that I manage here in France.  A few days later Mona shared the work to her page and that's when the fun began.  The thread started out with a few positive comments, as such things commonly do.   But then someone piped up and said (I'm paraphrasing here, as the original French was filled with nuances that don't translate well into English) they didn't like it and that they expected more from the creative team.  A reply to the critique came quickly and another person suggested they didn't like the image either and that we could've done better.

Usually before a critique is offered in France there are questions about the intellectual and artistic framework of the art.  There are usually questions about a work's place in art history and the continuation of an art movement.  Typically people try to understand the context of a work of art so they can educate themselves as to the place and purpose of the thing they are viewing.  They want to know the background so they can respond appropriately.  It is one of the (very many) things I like about living here.  Life and civility tend to extend well beyond the individual to spill into the larger commons and shared spaces (both physical and mental).

Being an American and knowing full well things I learned in the States normally don't apply here in France I simply couldn't let things rest.  I replied that it was their turn to share their art so we could have a wee-look and pass along a critique in return.  The smart-ass that I am I suggested I looked forward to telling them their work, too, could've been better.

All Holy Hell broke loose.   People quickly discarded any attempt to understand the background of the image in question, ignored any discussion photography and photographic history, and set aside intellectual curiosity and accuracy in photographic arts criticism.  People defended positions.  Others said they didn't want to hurt the creative team by saying something negative.  Still others suggested that my response was a little thin skinned and that they didn't mean to hurt me.  In short, I needed to "get over it" and take any and all criticism like a man.

In the end, what the criticism came down to was that some people simply did not like heavily photoshopped work.  They preferred "straight" photography.  Furthermore, and this is very revealing and relevant to the proposed application of the phrase, they themselves feel they create and share "unmanipulated" images, and that, therefore, must be the preferred approach.  It was a matter of simple, unabashed personal preference with a strong subtext of shifting rationalizations and responses.  Could it be what the critics were desiring was to be "seen" and "acknowledged?"

Application of the phrase Post-Photography works on many levels.  A person can shoot to share in the classic photographic tradition what they consider to be unmanipulated images.  A person can choose to create heavily manipulated images.  Or, as is now much more common than not, a person can simply ignore the technology and make images and videos of themselves and their surroundings using their mobile phone.  In each of these areas current imaging practices has moved well beyond the traditional tools, approaches, and viewing responses.

Photography is no longer a means nor an end in itself.  For the vast majority of people imaging has become (to put it rather crassly) a tool of narcissistic self promotion.  In this Post-Photography world the tools of imaging are assumed.  They are integrated into our daily lives to the point they have all but disappeared from our thinking.  The primary impetus for making images or talking about them has narrowed to the point of the individual.

The individual is the shared link in my borrowing and rewriting the phrase Post-Truth into Post-Photography.  Where the individual is the most important element of a belief system and cultural structure I have to wonder what are the roles of conversation, sharing, listening, looking, and civility?

Have we fully have entered the age of Post-Photography?  I believe we have.

The Facebook critiqued image

that led to this blog entry

Indeed...

Indeed, there's something not quite right about the way my first Sony SEL 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS lens focuses.  As you may recall, I complained earlier on this blog about fuzzy dogs and racecars.

It took awhile to locate the problem.  First I tried to keep the Wide area AF points lit up over the subject and watched carefully to ensure this was the case when I had continuous AF enabled.  No joy.  My photos were sometimes obviously out of focus.  Then I tried selecting the center AF point only and found the images were no better in focus than with Wide area AF enabled.

I then photographed a static subject and found the areas behind the intended focus point(s) to be sharp, whereas the areas where the AF points lit up were obviously out of focus.  Further, this happened only at focal lengths greater than approximately 135mm.  I could replicate this behaviour on three different vintage Sony APS-C mirrorless cameras.  It was then that I drew the conclusion that the lens was at fault.


A suitable static, not moving, can't go anywhere test subject
I took the offending lens to a local camera shop and they told me what it would cost to have Sony repair open it up just have a look and, well, I was slapped upside the head with massive sticker shock.  Normally repair facilities will give a free estimate of repairs so that you can decide whether to proceed.  At least this is what I experienced when living in the US.  But no!  Not in France.  Well, not at this (Sony) camera shop, at least.  They want 100Euro just to pry the lens open.  I could do that with a sledgehammer for a lot less than that, right?

The camera shop had a new lens they were willing to let go of for 350+Euro.  Ouch!  I wasn't about to suffer Long Lasting Post Traumatic Stress over a second round of sticker-shock, so I walked out.

Taking a quick look around the 'net I could find nothing locally to test before buying.  That left the obvious option of having something shipped to me.  In this case my next Sony SEL 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS came from Japan.  It arrived today so I set about taking a look at it's AF behaviour.  Here is what I found.



The lens that just arrived focuses the way the gods intended.  I call this "Correct AF" performance.  That is, the portion of the subject nearest the camera is accurately in focus.  The "Incorrect AF" performance is still exhibited by the first copy of the Sony lens I have.  It's lack of AF accuracy is, even now, repeatable.

And speaking of repeatable, what you see above was repeatable in Wide area AF, Center, and with the single center "small" AF point enabled.  The new lens is behaving the way I would expect in every AF mode the Sony A6000 has.  I didn't have to spend a ton of money for my next lens, either.  It was separated from an A5000 kit ensemble, if the seller is to be believed, so it was being sold at a steep discount.  In any event, onward.  I have a sharp and properly focusing lens.  Yea!

That "vision" thing... again... some more...

Something crawled across my Facebook feed and I had to stop and take a look.  Normally I don't click through to see what FB "recommends" for my, no doubt, pleasurable consumption, but...

There was something about the way the photographer lit the subject and the way the artist appeared to have thought through the ideas and details behind the presentation.  The subject is the man's young daughter.  The theme is super hero super power.  The presentation is down right classy (to me, at least).

One of the local creative people I sometimes work with suggested we do a Catwoman shoot.  Casting about for ideas on how to best present the material, I found inspiration on 500px.com.  There seems to be a common image making approach shared between the super hero and catwoman series.

The subject lighting is classic rim light.  Sometimes there are two hard lights.  Sometimes one is hard and the other soft.  In most cases the front of the subject has details that catch the sidelights.  Little to no front fill appears to be used.  Processing is pretty straight forward composite foreground/background work.  The results are spectacular.

I find this kind of work rather fun and certainly inspirational.  I wonder where this might lead in my own imaging efforts?

Perhaps there's a little production issue with my version of the Sony 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS?

The dogs and cars I've been photographing are less than sharp where I think they should be and I was beginning to think Sony had done a terrible job making their 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS E-mount optic, but I wasn't sure the problem was with the resolution.

When I'd taken a recent look at the lens in comparing it with other optics I noticed the edges of the comparison setup were sharper than the center.  This got me to thinking.  Before I could do much about it we went to the US for six weeks to take care of family business and to attend our son's wedding.

Once home I used the "force" (Google) to research back-focus issues with this particular lens.  Over on DPReview I found someone talking about their experience with seemingly the very same issue.  What struck me were the responses where people said the phenomenon was impossible.  The thinking was that since the Sony A6000 has on sensor phase detect that the problem had to be with the user.  Said another way, PDAF supposedly _ensured_ accurate AF and there was no way it could fail.  Evidence led me to believe the problem was not mine, but lay with the lens, PDAF or no.

When I photographed cars and dogs I took to using the center AF point and kept that point right over the thing I wanted in focus.  Yet that part of the scene was seldom (never?) in focus, whereas the area a few feet (about a meter, maybe two meters) behind the intended focus point was always tack sharp.

At that point I decided to investigate the issue further.  I set up a simple test.

• Sony A6000 with phase detect (PDAF) as well as contrast detect (CDAF) AF enabled
• Sony NEX-5T with PDAF enabled, and then retested with CDAF only (in case the problem really was with PDAF)
• Sony 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 OSS SEL at various focal lengths and apertures
• Test target 1: Trees in front of a brick building at around 30 meters (give or take)
• Test target 2: Edge of a building with foreground and background sloping away from me

Here is test target 1.  As you can see, the tree has a bit of depth to it -

Here is test target 2.  This test concentrated on corner of the transition from lighter plaster to rock area on the right -

Here is the test comparison.  I share the f/8 results here as the f/6.3 and f/11 results are identical.  Open the link and locate the full resolution version of the image to verify differences between the various panels - 


In each image I ensured that the AF box(es) that lit were directly over the center of the scene.  With this in mind, what I see is that the camera did not matter and neither did the AF mode (PDAF or CDAF), the lens clearly focuses behind the point that the AF system tells me is being selected.  As confirmation of the condition and that I'm not loosing my mind, when I focus manually the intended focus point is achieved and the lens is actually acceptably sharp.  Lastly, the phenomenon is experienced starting around 135mm.  Focal lengths less than 135mm seem to focus accurately and correctly.
My copy of the lens is not behaving the way I think it should (understatement, I know).  So, I've written Sony France to ask if it might be repairable for something less than the cost of a used copy (which I of course would carefully test prior to purchase) off leboncoin.  I was in a little snarky mood when I wrote them so we'll see what they come back with, if anything.  
I'd purchased this lens as a used item at the Bievre camera swap and it's well beyond it's warranty period.  Sony really doesn't owe me anything.  Though I would much prefer a lens that can AF correctly, right?  I might have to go buy another and jeter this one into the recycling bin.

... and this may be why...

For years I've felt, as many others do, that high end cameras are little more than branding exercised by the companies that sell these kinds of products.  In short: Cameras as Bling.  Toys to impress strangers.  As if I needed any incentive to beat an already dead horse, along comes something interesting.

Frankly I had't thought things had progressed this far, and I don't really know the exact setup used in the following comparison, but... if these results are as they're advertised to be, I have to ask: Why spend MegaBux on a camera when a cell phone will do?  Yes, the devil is still in the details.  But it's hard to argue that cameras really matter anymore.

Just today I received my copies of the Lenswork Magazine "Seeing in Sixes" book project.  I'm very very fortunate to have a small project of mine included.  In talking with Maureen (at Lenswork) I learned that some of the work in the book was made using a cell phone.  I looked long and hard to find the artist's work she talked about and, frankly, I can't see it.  All of the work is of such high technical quality that whichever projects were created using a phone simply doesn't show in the finished results.  What matters not equipment.  What matters is truly something else entirely.

Here is the link to the PetaPixel article comparing an Apple iPhone7 to a Leica M9-P.  You read that correctly.  Maybe it's not the cost of your tools, but how you use them, right?  Is it any wonder that traditional stand alone imaging device manufacturers (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic) are struggling to compete in a declining market?  Google and Apple are their competition.  So how do conservative companies keep up with game changers?  At this point I see that answer as "not very well."

Read 'um and weep.


My friend, Vince.   He's an engineer and fellow photo nut.

... and then where...?

It's no secret that mobile phones have replaced Point and Shoot cameras.  It's no secret that the market for still cameras is rapidly diminishing.  And it's no secret that consumers will buy whatever appeals to them.

To me it seems Google and Apple are in a race to see who can become king and queen of the consumer imaging market.  This year I've seen Apple iPhone6 imaging ads all over Europe.  When we were in Lisbon I saw a town square filled with tall backlit screens filled with huge enlargements of work made with the mobile device.  Just this week Google announced a new mobile device that DXOMark rates as better than Apple's.  The pace of new product introduction between these two companies reminds me of the days when Canon and Nikon were trying to outcompete one another.

What do the traditional imaging companies try to sell us now that their battle has largely been settled?  Pretty much the same things we've seen for the past decade, or so it appears to me.  The pace of new product introduction has slowed dramatically in recent times.  Other than that, a Canon 5D Mk-whatever is pretty much the same as prior generations.  Even the small companies seem to have slowed their pace of new product introductions.  Sony's APS-C mirrorless product line is very slow to update.  Olympus and Fuji continue to bring incremental improvements to their product offerings.

No one seems able nor willing to keep up with Google and Apple.  There is nothing earth-shattering nor market-attention-grabbing coming from the old companies.  "Sizzle sells" and nobody has the "sizzle" like the two giant electronics network integration social platform foundation companies.

I like what Tony Northrup has to say about the death of the traditional imaging market.  His video seems to accurately describe the present state of things.

Front Ends of Old Cars - a two part image distribution

Following on the heels of the good news from Lenswork Magazine and my inclusion in their "Seeing in Sixes" book project, I thought it could be fun celebration to release another mini-project or two.

With this post I'm releasing "Front Ends of Old Cars" parts one and two.  As you will see, I'm somewhat taken with the six image approach to project sharing.  It hones my mind and forces me to say what I really want to say in a concise manner.

I love automobiles and have ever since my uncle used to give me his Road and Track after he'd read them back in the 1960's and 1970's.  Many of the vintage vehicles I've encountered in Paris are examples of the very cars I used to read about.  The experience of reliving my youth is a powerful one.  Every chance I get I head out the door with cameras in hand to watch my early dreams come true.

Here is "Front Ends of Old Cars" part one.

Here is "Front Ends of Old Cars" part two.

If you have any feedback for me, please feel free to drop me a line.  I'd enjoy hearing from you.

Good News... le deuxieme part

As I mentioned in a post from a couple days ago, one of my submissions to Lenswork "Seeing in Sixes" has been picked up and will be published. Here's what one of their editors had to say.

"Hello Christopher… Congratulations (again!) on having your work selected for “Seeing In Sixes.” This is a HUGE accomplishment, as we received nearly 1,900 entries. It was very difficult to whittle down from the 125 finalists; the caliber of work was that good. In the end, less than 3% of the entries – with a tremendous amount of photographic vision and diversity -- will make up the book."

 You can only imagine how thrilled I am to be published alongside 49 other photographic artists.  This is an honor and I can't wait to see everyone's work in print.

An interesting bit of history...

I came across this video on Nikon Rumors today.  It's a wartime film made late in the conflict from January to April, 1944.  Setting aside the film's script, I find it interesting to see how lenses are (or were) ground.  According to the comments under the video the factory was destroyed in 1945 when the Allies bombed the area.

Good news...

Finally, something to celebrate.

This morning I received news that Lenswork Magazine selected my Medieval Steel entry to be published as part of their "Seeing in Sixes" book.  50 photographer's work has been selected and of course I'm thrilled to be included.  It's always a pleasure to work with Brooks Jensen and his fine staff.