Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: seamus finn on August 24, 2010, 01:03:29 pm
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This is the Four Cats Bar, a Barcelona landmark since 1897, where Picasso, Rusiñol, and other artists used to meet and display their work on its four walls. A very young Picasso is said to have designed the restaurant's menu cover.
(http://)
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Seamus, It's a grand shot. As usual you pull your black point down pretty far. I'd have dodged the bartender's face a bit, like this:
I was going to include an example but there doesn't seem to be any way to upload a photograph in this new version of the software.
Well, scratch that. Evidently the photograph uploads when you click Save.
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See what you mean about the face, Russ. I processed the shot on my laptop but looking at it now on my main machine there's a difference.
Incidentally, when you talk about the black point (not for the first time re my stuff) do you think this is a technical flaw on my part, too contrasty, perhaps?
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It looks like a "find the hidden object" or "spot the differences" image. It's so busy and playful that I like it.
And if are up for it, Seamus, I'll make a game with it right here. Whaddya say? !
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Go for it, Haraldo! Knock yourself out.
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Go for it, Haraldo! Knock yourself out.
OK! Will try for later tonight; tomorrow latest.
Might start a new "Four Cats Bar Game" thread so people don't get confused.
Thanks Seamus. Gonna be fun. You watch! :)
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Incidentally, when you talk about the black point (not for the first time re my stuff) do you think this is a technical flaw on my part, too contrasty, perhaps?
Seamus, No. It's always a call shot how far to pull the black point down. I really like it in most of your shots. Unless you're shooting something like a fog scene you always need some clipping on the low end, and pulling the black point down fairly low tends to make the picture richer. But you do have to be sure you don't clobber important details. I was suggesting that the guy's face is an important detail, but, again, that's up to the printer.
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Seamus, After I made that last post I went out on the streets of my town for a while. Among about a dozen street shots I got this guy who, I suspect, was just passing through. The reason I'm posting it is that I dragged the black point down pretty far and then had to just touch his face with the dodging brush. It's a similar situation to your Four Cats Bar. Happily the dodging brush actually works properly in CS4 and CS5. I could have used a control point in Silver Efex Pro, but it wouldn't have worked as well since the background behind the face is fairly close in tone and even, in the original, in color. Opening up the 50mm prime to f/1.4 helped a lot with separation, though.
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Hi Russ,
I've been lurking for a while. I've read your recent comments, especially where you emphasize about getting the framing correct in camera and not relying on cropping afterward.
In looking your previous photograph, I am curious why you cut the man's feet off. Granted the main focus is on the man's face with something poking out at the back of his shirt (underwear?). But as I look him up and down, I stop abruptly at his feet, noting that they are missing.
It's just a curiousity question.
Regards,
Kevin
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If this was my image - which obviously it isn't - I would have framed/cropped just below the man's hand. IMO there isn't anything of interest there and the tighter frame/crop would focus on the man more and what he is looking at?
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Exactly, Russ. In my case, I'm always aware of the old chemical darkroom mantra: strive for a pure paper-base white through all the tones to a pure black (unless as you say, high-key is the objective). Considering your previous remarks about my darkpoints here and elsewhere, you had me thinking I had developed a heavy hand in this area. I use Lightroom a lot and admit to playing fast and loose with any button that can squeeze out the richest tones available through the range. One of my early destinations in the Develop Panel is the dark button - every time. Sometimes there may be collateral damage like an overlooked face in need of a slight dodge - a minor problem easily rectified.
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Hi Russ,
In looking your previous photograph, I am curious why you cut the man's feet off. Granted the main focus is on the man's face with something poking out at the back of his shirt (underwear?). But as I look him up and down, I stop abruptly at his feet, noting that they are missing.
It's just a curiousity question.
Regards,
Kevin
Kevin, You're right. I'd prefer to have been able to include the guy's feet, but I posted the picture as an exercise in black and white tone mapping, not as a good street shot. In order for it to be a decent street shot I'd have to have been able to identify something in the picture as the object of his gaze. He's gazing at something interesting to him, but what is it? I don't know and neither does the viewer. I came out of a narrow passageway to the left, saw him, cranked the aperture down from f/8 to f/1.4 to subdue the background, realized that he was beginning to turn away, raised the camera and shot. The B&W I posted is cropped (horrors!) because I didn't get the camera into a vertical position before I tripped the shutter. Here's the original. Now I'm beginning to think I should have left it as it was. But it's not a particularly good picture, so the question is moot.
The reason I posted the picture is that as in Seamus's bar picture the guy's face is in shadow. Once you convert the picture to B&W and use curves to make sure you have a complete range of grays between the clipped black at the back of his head and the clipped white where the sun shines against the wall in the middle of the frame, you've lost detail in his face. But just a touch of the dodging brush brings it back out. The range of grays in the final result is almost as good as the range of grays Seamus usually gets in his B&Ws, which I admire very much.
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If this was my image - which obviously it isn't - I would have framed/cropped just below the man's hand. IMO there isn't anything of interest there and the tighter frame/crop would focus on the man more and what he is looking at?
Stamper, All I can say is: "You to your fancy and me to my Nancy," as the old lady said when she kissed her cow. As soon as you start cropping, the sky's the limit. How about a crop that isolates his ear. Good abstraction? How about just the top of his head and his hat -- excluding everything but his eyes and the top of his ear? The possibilities literally are infinite.
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Exactly, Russ. In my case, I'm always aware of the old chemical darkroom mantra: strive for a pure paper-base white through all the tones to a pure black (unless as you say, high-key is the objective). Considering your previous remarks about my darkpoints here and elsewhere, you had me thinking I had developed a heavy hand in this area. I use Lightroom a lot and admit to playing fast and loose with any button that can squeeze out the richest tones available through the range. One of my early destinations in the Develop Panel is the dark button - every time. Sometimes there may be collateral damage like an overlooked face in need of a slight dodge - a minor problem easily rectified.
Seamus, Yes, I grew up with the darkroom too. No, I don't think you have a heavy hand at all. I admire the range of tones I see in your pictures and it's made me wonder if I'm not using too light a hand on the low end. That's what I was playing with in this picture. I wasn't too happy with the picture as a street shot but I was pleased with the range of tones I got when I used a heavier hand on the black point.
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I'd prefer to have been able to include the guy's feet, but I posted the picture as an exercise in black and white tone mapping, not as a good street shot. In order for it to be a decent street shot I'd have to have been able to identify something in the picture as the object of his gaze. He's gazing at something interesting to him, but what is it? I don't know and neither does the viewer. I came out of a narrow passageway to the left, saw him, cranked the aperture down from f/8 to f/1.4 to subdue the background, realized that he was beginning to turn away, raised the camera and shot. The B&W I posted is cropped (horrors!) because I didn't get the camera into a vertical position before I tripped the shutter.
You answered my question regarding his feet--thank you.
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Stamper, All I can say is: "You to your fancy and me to my Nancy," as the old lady said when she kissed her cow. As soon as you start cropping, the sky's the limit. How about a crop that isolates his ear. Good abstraction? How about just the top of his head and his hat -- excluding everything but his eyes and the top of his ear? The possibilities literally are infinite.
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I will add a little to what I stated. I read a while back about cropping that if you crop in the area of someone's feet it doesn't look good, so you should make it more drastic and crop nearer the knees so that it doesn't look as if you made a mistake.
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Kevin, You're right. I'd prefer to have been able to include the guy's feet, but I posted the picture as an exercise in black and white tone mapping, not as a good street shot.
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Russ you have been on here long enough to realise if you post something then the merits, or lack of them, of an image will be commented on in regards to all of the image and not just the contrast? All of it is fair game? Perhaps you have a really good image somewhere that has good black and white tone mapping?
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This is turning into an unconscious definition of what's wrong with digital printing.
All those sliders and things are there and simply demand that one use them - and often it isn't necessary. But how many times does a perfectly good, virgin, file leave the computer?
In the wet, it was different; I think people were more inclined to work by their reliable gut than by their (over-) educated brain.
Rob C
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I will add a little to what I stated. I read a while back about cropping that if you crop in the area of someone's feet it doesn't look good, so you should make it more drastic and crop nearer the knees so that it doesn't look as if you made a mistake.
It's an interesting opinion, but before I'd accept it as black letter law I'd like to know whose opinion it is. Even though I tend to agree with the opinion there are always plenty of exceptions to a "rule" like that one. At the same time I'd have to admit that the photo I posted isn't one of them.
Russ you have been on here long enough to realise if you post something then the merits, or lack of them, of an image will be commented on in regards to all of the image and not just the contrast? All of it is fair game? Perhaps you have a really good image somewhere that has good black and white tone mapping?
Stamper, I have to agree with you. It was a mistake to post that picture. There are always a few participants on here (To protect the guilty I won't mention names) who have difficulty dealing with the subject at hand.
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It's an interesting opinion, but before I'd accept it as black letter law I'd like to know whose opinion it is. Even though I tend to agree with the opinion there are always plenty of exceptions to a "rule" like that one. At the same time I'd have to admit that the photo I posted isn't one of them.
It's a pretty poor rule that doesn't have a truck load of exceptions.
Stamper, I have to agree with you. It was a mistake to post that picture. There are always a few participants on here (To protect the guilty I won't mention names) who have difficulty dealing with the subject at hand.
Russ, you get no demerit in my book for posting that photo (although I agree with the quibbles about the feet). For me the ambiguity of not knowing what the guy is looking at adds to the mystery and hence the interest of the image. It leaves something to the imagination. Very striking-looking guy.
Eric
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All those sliders and things are there and simply demand that one use them - and often it isn't necessary. But how many times does a perfectly good, virgin, file leave the computer?
Rob C - In the wet darkroom, I don't think I ever made a straigt print other than to find out what was wrong with it. On the other hand, I've more than once made a perfectly satisfactory print from a straight digital file. Interesting.
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Seamus, +1. For me at least, the first print in the darkroom almost always was a test, so I could really see what I was dealing with instead of trying to figure it out from a contact sheet. But I often make a good print first shot out with digital. Since I shoot raw I always need to sharpen, but an astonishing number of times that's all I have to do. Of course a well calibrated screen and a well calibrated printer pretty much can take the place of the old darkroom test print.
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I don't think we disagree.
In the wet, instinct knew where to draw the line; in the digital realm it seems so tempting to try just another tweak more...
And no, I don't think it is always necessary to use all the knobs and whistles that come with Photoshop of anything else. In neither case am I saying that a first printing is always, if ever, going to be right, but the temptation with digital will be to try something, just because one can, and yes I agree, many digital ones do look pretty good as is. The trick is leaving them there.
Having said that, since trying to stick to the ETR system, I find more messing about is required, always in the direction of cutting the apparent exposure of the RAW. Okay, that's possibly the price of getting more detail in the darker areas, but is still feels dumb overexposing in camera only to cut back in the computer. Even if it works!
Rob C
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In the wet, instinct knew where to draw the line; in the digital realm it seems so tempting to try just another tweak more...
Tempting, yes, Rob C. The big difference, however, is you can always simply undo that unnecessary tweak without wasting yet another half box of obscenely expensive paper - not to mention precious time. Anyway, what photoghrapher, artist, snapper (whatever you care to call the species) worthy of the name can resist just another tweak in tne eternal search for that elusive other level? It's just too damned irresistible, especially for those of us who spent the best days of our lives breathing in toxic fumes in the pursuit of print excellence.
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Well, having spent too long doing exactly what you describe (printing), and damn well too, if I may say so, I do not wholly agree about the temptation with real paper printing. I have to go back to my statement about that certain gut feeling: it was there as a confirmation that one had nailed the shot; the time to stop was just understood without any sense of maybe about it.
Neither can I agree with the thing about obscene costs of the wet medium. Okay, I'm clearly speaking of my time when I was doing all that darkroom stuff, which was really until the mid-late 70s, and cost was never a problem because a client was paying for it all. (Post late-70s I worked pretty well exclusively on transparency material.) For me, transparencies were not only the medium of necessity for reproduction, but specialising also allowed me to concentrate/hone my technique to suit it. I almost invariably used Kodachrome 64 Pro with a few Ektachromes when 6x6 was demanded, which was not often.
(There's a funny/sad tale associated with my b/w printing. I was invited to a soirée at the advertising offices of House of Fraser in Glasgow, one night, and as I was chatting to one of the design staff, I asked him who the author was of one of the shots pinned up on the wall. It was of my favourite model, looked amazingly good, and I wondered who had crept up behind me when I wasn't looking and had done such a cool job in nipping some of the work. The guy looked at me, said Rob, what a cheap way of looking for a compliment! Hell's bloody bells, it was one of my own shots and I didn't even remember having shot it or printing it! I felt an absolute asshole! Which just goes to show that there are indeed very good busy times in any business. If only they lasted!)
I have now made the jump to Word; I hadn’t expected this post to be very long. What follows will probably be somewhat disjointed because I can’t see your post any longer, as I don’t want to keep jumping from here to LuLa, which would be as awkward as just using the currently hopeless little box that marks the new paradigm of progress ;-)
As far as digital print tweaking goes, yes, you can undo what turns out to be a step too far, but the point is to know where that step lies before you feel obliged to take it.
Many people claim that their calibrated systems save them from having to do any testing beyond what they see on the monitor. This may mean two things: they have wonderful systems; they are geniuses. Myself, though the monitor is calibrated, even with b/w I have to tweak way beyond what looks optimal on the monitor. In other words, WYSInotWYG in my case! In the event, I probably, no, certainly end up wasting far more time and paper with digital print testing than I ever did with wet. And this time, there are no external clients: I’m in the mug’s game of being my own!
Not having researched equivalent paper prices for wet v. digital printing, I can’t tell you which is, sheet per sheet, the more expensive these days, but it would be irrelevant as I can’t realistically consume the water that non-plastic prints require for washing. But I tell you this: I would love to produce Kodak WSG 2D prints instead of these Hahne Rags that I do!
Have fun!
Rob C
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Well, having spent too long doing exactly what you describe (printing), and damn well too, if I may say so, I do not wholly agree about the temptation with real paper printing. I have to go back to my statement about that certain gut feeling: it was there as a confirmation that one had nailed the shot; the time to stop was just understood without any sense of maybe about it.
Rob, I spent nearly forty years as a newspaper editor, and saw photo journos making outstanding prints purely by that instinct you speak of - mostly in less than optimal darkroom conditions. They had the ability to weave a magic spell of burning, dodging and manipulation with the hands after just a brief glance at the image on the board. They were underrated craftsmen who made the job look easy. When I took it up myself as a hobby years ago, I found it wasn’t easy at all to achieve that ‘certain gut feeling’ although I suppose I managed to reach some level of instinctive competence after a good while learning.
I look back on those days with considerable fondness. It seemed great fun at the time. Many hours were spent in total isolation in my home darkroom up in an attic where the cares of the world never impinged. It was all about THE PRINT. The fact that it was damned hard work never occurred to me not did it bother me that I, and not a rich client, was paying for everything. . I was lucky that I could get chemicals, paper and the like at cost through the newspaper but it still wasn’t cheap. Later, I managed to sell a few prints here and there, take part in a few exhibitions, put on a few shows in local galleries and so on, but I never found the work getting any easier., especially when I got bitten by the chemical toning bug.
My home darkroom is still in place - a monument to nostalgia, perhaps. The other day, I went up and stood for a few minutes, recalling the many enjoyable/frustrating/exhilerating hours spent there. Then I asked myself the crucial question: would I do it now, forsake the digital world and go back to that place? Make that instinctive leap in the dark and nail that print by pure feeling. The answer was an emphatic NO!
OK, the mystique of the old darkroom workers may be gone, that sense of a magician emerging from the dark clutching an outstanding creation, but I believe the instinct remains as true as ever. Despite the digital tweaks, buttons, knobs and all, it still takes instinct to nail that print..
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In other words, WYSInotWYG in my case!
I long time ago, I read a spoof flyer for a new OS which boasted WYGIWYG, or "What you get is what you get. Want to know how your document will look when it's printed? Print it and look at it!"
Strikes a chord with me, certainly.
Jeremy
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Seamus - I don't really now what to say; there is nothing on paper that please me as much as a good WSG 2D print, but like you, I no longer have the strength of character to do it again. My current office was set up as an office-cum-darkroom, with running water and lightproofing - I even put in an air-con, the only one in the house. But, the reality of water scarcity coupled with hatred for multigraded plastic sheets stopped me in my tracks. As did a first heart-attack, which made pouring large trays of chemicals back into winchesters a fairly dumb expercise for someone suddenly left with minimal physical strenght!
Regarding newspaper photographers, I think that the talent that many had, which most amazed me, was the one for guestimating flash exposure in so many difficult situations. I always dreaded that sort of work; thank God is was always in b/w with plenty of room for winging it! In my case, at least.
I'll try to upload a shot here of one such assignment I did for the Scottish Design Centre in Glasgow, a shot that happened by the skin of its teeth, for having been booked to cover the visit (I did exhibitions for them) I was then refused entry by the security people until the PR man came rushing back to his office to escort me into the room, personally. Left hand, right hand...
Oh well, the pic seems to have loaded, but I popped the button too quickly to finish the post, the thread for which I seem to have lost.
Ah, yes, I’ve reread the post and now know what I was going to comment upon: the skills with the hands.
Though PS is pretty cool – I’d be the first to admit it allows tiny local tricks beyond a pair of hands (mine, at least), where hands did work better was in burning in or holding back parts of skies, corners of prints and general areas where a gradient is needed. It was so much quicker, too.
Here, I am thinking mainly in terms of b/w, which is my principal area of interest, despite the look of the website, which is mainly colour because it remains more true to the work that it represents than later games with conversion. But for pure pleasure, it is b/w every time (on paper) but that could well be influenced by my less than happy results with colour, particularly with reds, which always seem to be the Achilles heel of anything I do in that medium. For example, both the last shots in the two galleries depend on colour to work – I can’t print them to my satisfaction.
Perhaps photography should be thought of as a game of frustration, of attrition – a sort of personal punishment for the hubris of thinking one had talent!
;-)
Rob C