Have Pentax, Will Travel » craft

Visiting MoMA – Notes

charles — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:23:48 +0000

On December 28th, 2011, returning from visiting family in Virginia on an early flight, and having found myself recently intrigued by the collected writings of the artist Paul Gauguin, I was inspired to go to The Museum of Modern Art. These are my notes, scribbled into a miniature Moleskine notebook.

The place is packed with people. Many have inexplicably brought small children. I wonder how the museum is promoting itself if this is the demographic they attract. The kids are understandably bored out of their minds. The drone of voices in here is amazing, thousands of conversations unrelated to the museum or its collections. Most of these people should have gone to The Disney Store instead. It is difficult to read the descriptions of the art being hit by purses and strollers every few moments. Losing oneself in a study of the works is near impossible, [it's like being in a cafeteria line. Perhaps coming here during the holidays was a bad idea.]

I am surprised to learn that Ray and Charles Eames designed molded plywood products for the military during World War II, substituting the new material for metals, which were then in short supply.

Also of interest were many photos, like a solarized print of hands by Man Ray. I have a book of his work at home, but seeing an original print, even the same size as it would be in a coffee table book, is interesting. There is a retained freshness in the original print that does not come through in a copy. A print by Guy Bourdin, evidently of stained concrete or plaster, I have never seen it before. Finding it here felt like a vitamin booster shot recalling certain images in my Brera series. Third was an Avedon photo, recognizable as such from across the room, although the subject was uninteresting to me. The style of light and composition stood out.

Another area of interest was architectural drawings and models, most of which were concepts never executed. What struck me was how many brilliant ideas never make it off the drawing board or out of 1/100th scale. Like the Guy Bourdin photo, this energized me, to keep trying. So many plans, models, sketches, and eventually something gets built, or they lead to other kinds of projects, like Eames military glider noses leading to so much else. Hope?

Gauguin painted on burlap, Van Gogh painted with fury, piling pigments high, Munch is virtually doing watercolors with oils.

Cezanne though, the color, the effect at different distances, amazing. Another I didn’t understand from prints.

"Turnign Road At MontGeroult" by Paul Cezanne (1898)

"Pines and Rocks" by Paul Cezanne (1897)

"Still Life With Apples" by Paul Cezanne (1895-1898)

Starry Night is mobbed; every few minutes a flash goes off and a security guard yells. The [museum's] light on this canvas is intentionally dim. Are many of the gawkers? No one else is looking at the brush strokes.

Seurat was amazing. The pointalist thing doesn’t always work very well, but he knew how to do it. He really knew how to do it.

Despite the crowd and chaos, it was a good day. In fact, after recovering from vacation, I started painting again on Wednesday. Someone discarded an art projector in the hallway a few months ago and I am using it to paint from a photograph that didn’t quite work right. The idea of the image was right though, and that is what I hope to bring to life. My mind has been chaotic lately and painting melts it away. Seeing the Guy Bourdin print in the museum, combined with reading Gauguin and reading all this material on the other Impressionists, has restored some self-confidence. A friend has an art show coming up and I hope to show and maybe even sell a few new pieces. I need to get some lazy demons out of my head. Running modaCYCLE seems to run me into the ground a little too often. I love it, helping fashion designers tell their stories is amazing, but I need to also keep telling my own stories.

Art and Tools

charles — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:29:26 +0000

Even when I have the latest equipment I feel constrained by the limits of the technology.

Even if I got some sort of digital Super IMAX 4D rig, I’m not sure I’d be happy.

Part of being an artist is being never really satisfied with your tools or your last piece. If we get happy we stop.

Critical Lessons for Photographers 1.0

charles — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:24:14 +0000

I’ve been running the formal critique section of the forum on the Model Mayhem community site since it was started, and over the last few years I’ve identified several recurring issues. Here are my stock responses to some of the most common problems new and experienced photographers have.

EXPOSURE

Ansel Adams developed The Zone System decades ago as a reference for talking about exposure levels. It still applies today to digital images. Learn it, live it, love it:

—> The Zone System

CRUSHED BLACKS

Do you have a lot of crushed blacks in your images? Does it look like you’re forcing underexposure in post?

Wikipedia wrote:
A photograph may be described as underexposed when it has a loss of shadow detail, that is, the dark areas indistinguishable from black, known as “blocked up shadows” (or sometimes “crushed shadows,” “crushed blacks,” or “clipped blacks,” especially in video).

reference: Exposure Settings

You’re Asking For A Critique, But We Can’t See The Image Through Your Retouching

Photographers: Show the “camera original” images without retouching or processing of any kind so we can give you a relevant critique. Less Photoshop, more getting it right in the camera. If you’re a beginner or even intermediate, show us what you’re really getting, not what your polished or redefined images look like.

Retouchers: Show both the original image and the retouched version. This saves critics from asking a lot of questions before they can really respond.

Lighting In The Field

Your artificial light on the subjects often clashes with the natural light in the background. Work on blending your light sources. Sometimes that can be setting up another flash in the background to light up a tree, but usually it means less artificial light, setting what is on the model to only one stop brighter than the environmental sources.

Why?

The big question is “why.” What were you trying to communicate to the viewer? Does there seem to be a clear message or feeling or mood? Are there are too many distractions and is there no real subjective focus in the compositions?

Bad Styling Choices for Women With Curves

So many people on MM say they love women with curves and want to show their beauty, but then they dress them up in things that would look so much better on skinny teenagers. This is the lipstick on a pig approach. It isn’t flattering, it isn’t creative, and it really doesn’t celebrate what makes them beautiful. Instead of trying to “fix” the person with accessories, if you really want to celebrate them, photograph what is really in front of you. Tell the truth with your images and it will set you free.

Make A Decision And Move In Or Move Back

Either back away from your subject and use their bodies as an element in the composition, or close to point blank range and make their bodies the composition. Make a decision and carve the lines of your image from contrast and color. Take possession of the viewer’s perspective and communicate.

Think of a photo shoot as war, and remember that photography, like all art, is all about editorial choices. Either you’re in the trenches on the front lines, or you’re at headquarters planning the larger operation. The supply lines are important, but that’s not where you want to be if you’re going to be a photographer, because there is no opportunity to edit in that middle ground, it is stagnant space.

Your Entire Portfolio Should Be Trashed

Do you seem to be relying on a lot of cheap tricks, like simple Photoshop effects and props, but failing on lighting and communication, which are the most important things in any image?

If your camera is on an automatic mode, switch it to manual control. Get back to basics: look up information on The Zone System, learn about depth of field, and stop “setting up” shoots and just go photograph life for a while. I tell models this a lot: don’t pose, just be. So, to beginning photographers, don’t stage the action, just capture it. Concept is less important than tension and balance.

Until you’ve gotten some level of control over lighting and contrast levels, you shouldn’t be trying to plan anything that isn’t going on inside the camera. Master the tools, then build your vision.

A Composite Of Two Images Looks Like It’s Still Two Frankensteined Images

The foreground and the background should not clash to a point where the viewer loses their willing suspension of disbelief.

This is a common issue with fantasy images shot on a blue screen or green screen.

Make your composite as seamless as possible.

Make sure the shadows line up, make sure the color temperature is in sync, and make sure the model’s expression fits with the environment you want to put them into.

Most professional 3D rendering software lets you pick a lens to simulate. Set your virtual lens to be the same as your physical lens so the perspective is the same. Think about rendering the virtual background to match the actual photograph, rather than shooting a foreground element to go with an existing background element. Most digital cameras record your focal length in EXIF data stored inside the image file (go to the “File Info” panel in Photoshop and look for “camera data”). The virtual set is a lot easier to manipulate than an already shot real world image.

Try to master capturing real world images before you start playing with virtual sets and green screens, it is a lot easier to do all that if you have the real world camera fundamentals down to a science.

The models really need good direction more than ever when they can’t actually see their environment. It is also not a good idea to do this sort of thing with inexperienced models, they are fighting nerves in the first place and this sort of virtual world setup just makes it so much worse.

Use good judgment and don’t rush into a composting project if you don’t already have a firm grasp of the practical aspects of photography.

Scale Back Your Short-Term Ambitions

You’re trying to run before you can crawl. Shoot more, but it doesn’t have to be with models. Go out to a street fair, boat show, or something and shoot a crowd in daylight. You need to learn how to tell stories in one shot, and the best way to do that is to practice as much as possible and not worry about controlling too much beyond the camera. The hardest thing in the world to learn about photography is how to truly record what is right in front of you. Capture, don’t stage. Use your legs, not your zoom. You can stage once you know what you want.

The best lens for practicing like this is a 50mm prime (or 40mm on a cropped frame sensor). It’s the lens that best matches the human eye’s perspective, and therefore the easiest way to learn. If you’re looking at the world through a fish-eye or a telephoto lens, it is harder to learn composition, because it’s less natural for us.

Go out and deal with life and chaos, so you then know how to simulate it better. It’s like “write what you know” for photographers. You have to do your research.

Tell A Story In One Shot

A lot of people look at old Hollywood glamour portraits and say “I want to do that,” but they fail to realize that the actresses were smiling at their fans in the shots. If your model doesn’t already have fans, then what are you really creating? It’s very self-indulgent and not useful to you as an artist to just do that. That’s not really the material you need to look at if you want to create compelling images. Don’t just look at the glamour portraits, watch the movies. Pause the movies at important moments to study the compositions, make your images deeper than a model just looking at the lens all deer in headlights or a trollop gazing at a financial statement.

“I Can’t Find Beautiful Models Who Don’t Flake”

So shoot guys. Or horses. If you’re in a small community, once you’re doing good work of any sort you’re going to have people coming to you sooner or later. Just shoot.

Sometimes the significant others of beautiful women have a lot of insecurities and don’t want to share what they have. It’s immature and often quite ridiculous, but it happens a lot, and you can’t blame people for feeling insecure. Often both people in the relationship have to trust you.

You should really be focusing on your skills rather than a professional portfolio right now. Don’t try to be a rock star on day one, just be yourself and be a part of your community. You need the support more than anything else. Do what you need to do to be able to practice as much as possible, and socialize with bystanders while you’re doing it.

Runway

Rule #1: Always shoot runway shows with a monopod.

For NY Fashion Week / Milan Fashion Week I usually pack a 16-50mm f2.8 for backstage work, a 50-135mm f2.8 for most runways, and a 200mm f2.8 for long runways. However, I shoot Pentax and all of my dSLR cameras have a cropped frame sensor, so I get some magnification of the lens effect going on.

I’m the editor at an online fashion magazine and my runway team members who shoot with Canon lenses on full frame cameras favor the 70-200mm f2.8 and f4 models (L series?) for most shows, and a 300mm or 400mm for extremely long runways. That’s with shake reduction turned off, it interferes with autofocus when the camera is on a monopod.

I bring a flash just in case the designer goes absolutely nuts with insufficient lighting (only happened on one big show ever, the entire room was reflective black marble), but I only use it when absolutely necessary. If you see the house photographer mount a flash, follow suit. Otherwise keep it for backstage work. If you have 400 photographers in the press pit shooting with a flash, nobody is going to get good shots, because all the flashes will be overlapping and causing overexposure. If you watch fashion shows on TV or in movies you’ll notice they insert a flash “effect” to make the action more dynamic, but it’s really rare to see a professional runway photographer shooting a runway show with a flash, the Italians would beat the crap out of them.

I try to shoot runway at f4 1/500th ISO 400, but sometimes I have to go out to f3.5 1/250th ISO 800. A larger aperture will make your depth of field too small to focus on moving models, a slower shutter will lead to obvious motion blur, and higher ISO just doesn’t look as good.

If a show is in a nightclub or you look above the press pit and there aren’t at least 3000 watts worth of light punching down the runway, all bets are off.

Basic Composition

All the main focal points are in the center of your image, so in composition terms there is no reason to have the 50% or more of the image not in the immediate center. You should change the crop so you have clear compositional lines. This is a common problem in many of your images, you center your focal points in either one or two dimensions, making them inherently non-compelling. Symmetrical ain’t sexy. Google “rule of thirds” for more information.

Getting The Shot With Beginner Models

The photography is fine, but the model’s expression just dilutes the whole thing. He or she isn’t selling the shot. It seems to be a problem in a lot of your images, the models don’t know what to do. Work on your connection with the talent and try to improve how you direct them. It all gets lost if the subject is not compelling.

It’s technically and artistically strong, but you feel unsatisfied.

There are four basic universal concerns for artists:

A) Is it technically strong?
B) Dose it communicate to the viewer?
C) Is it profitable?
D) Is it satisfying?

If money isn’t a concern, it sounds like you have A+B+C but it’s not satisfying you to continue to create the same sort of work currently in your portfolio. If that is so, what do you enjoy and not enjoy about your process? What images by others inspire you which you don’t feel you’re approaching in skill level? How do you define progress right now? What do you want to create that you think you cannot or have not? Are there things that you feel are holding you back?

One way of breaking out of the holding pattern is to do something that scares you. Shoot with a 5 watt night light, steal a paperclip from someone and take 500 pictures of it before giving it back, be the model and spend a couple hours doing a study of yourself with no one else in the room, black out your camera screen and use a light meter to figure out your exposure, hire a prostitute to hold the reflector, skydive with a semi-valuable vintage camera, or intentionally shoot something so trashy your family would disown you if they saw it. Basically, take a leap without looking. Break the rules. When nothing feels right, change the universe.

Primal Hunting Instinct and The Lens

charles — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:31:37 +0000

I’m going through a lot of old magazines ripping out the photos I like and tossing the other 99.5% of the paper.

One thing I noticed in the stack of what I’ve kept, the models don’t look at the camera very often. I sometimes tell new models “don’t look at the camera unless you mean it.”

I look at all of these thousands of images in the magazines I’m tossing out, and I have a visceral reaction to compelling lighting, compositions, dances of color on the page. When I look at a photo in which the model is just standing there deer in headlights waiting for the shutter to click, supremely unconfident, no matter what is going on in the rest of the image, I have a strong dislike for the whole. If it is an interesting setting, I am even angry at the photographer for wasting it on an uncompelling subject.

To me, photography is only a rush when it feels challenging, and if the model just stands there looking at the lens, waiting to have their picture taken, it is uninteresting. I don’t like when they submit to the process, when they are having their picture taken rather than being interesting.

Unless you have the confidence to stare down the lens or tell a story, don’t go near it, the lens will know you are weak. The lens is predatory. To use it is always to be hunting for something. When the prey is immediately submissive, the hunt is dull.

thinking about arts and crafts

charles — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:53:00 +0000

Decoration is a craft. Art is an anti-science. The pinnacle height of achievement in a craft is the perfect modification of a material into a vision. The pinnacle height of achievement in an art is the perfect modification of a vision into a metaphor. Some things can be both. Art cannot exist without craft. Craft cannot exist without art. Yet there is a vast difference from the goals of artists and craftspeople. Craft has a finite goal, the production of something tangible. Art has an infinite goal, the induction of something intangible. Craft relaxes. Art excites.

art and science are the same?

charles — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:15:00 +0000

All art, like science, is hypothesis. There is an innate desire in humans to understand the world around them. Art is one attempt at an answer. Just as science seeks to find explanations through observation and experimentation, so does art.

It could be argued that science is an art. It could also be argued that art is a science. Whatever they are, they both involve testing ideas and looking for answers. They both involve curiosity.

Science is an art, in that creative leaps of faith are required to hypothesize. Science is nothing if not creative problem solving and a way of working to understand the universe.

Art is a science, in that when one is creating, one applies rules to carry out an experiment which might produce a result. In the process of the creation of a work, one tests these rules. Each choice is a rule. Are you going to use light blue for the sky? That’s a choice, a rule. You or someone else can later try another color and compare the results. Each work of art one starts is an experiment testing some hypothesis. The outcome is always uncertain. There are always unplanned results in complex rule systems. When the work is complete, both the final product and the memory of the process add to our knowledge of how things work.

Science and art are both linked at fundamental levels.

"High Fashion Photography" ???

charles — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:06:00 +0000

This question was posted to an online forum:

“What makes High fashion photography?”

My Answer:

The difference I think you’re reaching for is catalog vs. editorial style. In catalog photography you shoot the entire collection. In an editorial style you try to sum up the entire collection in a short series of images.

In real editorial fashion photography, at a purist level, you look at what is now and what is past and you create a very selective visual essay. It doesn’t always work that way. Most magazines want their advertisers’ products represented in the editorials, so what you see in Vogue etc. is not normally true editorials because the editors are influenced by a need to keep their employers happy.

“High fashion” is a bad translation of the French “Haute Couture,” which is a very specific kind of clothing, and actually translates to “high sewing.” Haute Couture is the very highest level of fashion in terms of craft and quality workmanship. They don’t sell it at Macy’s. They barely sell it at Bergdorf Goodman. It’s one of a kind pieces, usually made for a specific person. It is actually a legal distinction and only a small group of fashion design companies are allowed to call their work “Haute Couture.”

anyone remember Artbyte?

charles — Sun, 20 May 2007 21:19:00 +0000

Over the years I’ve been influenced by a number of publications.

In the early 90′s it was Wired. Kevin Kelly was driving the content and the world was changing. It was the multimedia revolution and each issue was a first class ticket from my east coast view of a lighthouse to the changing landscape of silicon valley. Every Nicholas Negroponte editorial changed something about the way I thought about the way things work or can work or should work. The first three years of Wired issues were really incredible.

After Wired I became an avid reader of Video Toaster User, which was a technical journal dedicated to the products from a company called NewTek. NewTek made 3D computer graphics affordable with Lightwave 3D. Through most of high school I was obsessed with computer animation and spent a lot of late nights setting up 5 second scenes that would take four or five days to render from small bitmaps and wire frame models to near-photorealistic clips. Video Toaster User was great for helping you figure out how to pull off complex looking effects with simple solutions.

When I was a freshman in college, I started reading 2600: The Hacker Quarterly quite a bit. Most media approaches the subject of hackers as if they’re all one thing or all another thing. In reading 2600, I learned about hacker culture, how complex it is, how diverse the community has become. From the humble beginning when a model railroad club at MIT started referring to modification of their models as “hacking” to the bizarre misconceptions portrayed in films and television to the modest gatherings of offbeat technology enthusiasts around the world every first Friday of the month. The magazine brought be into contact with the hacker community and I have a lot of great friends because of that association, but today the publication seems far less relevant and I now recognize what a small slice of the larger hacker world it represents. Am I a hacker? Yes. Do I know a lot about computers? Not really. All artists are hackers, and all hackers are artists. It’s just another name for explorers.

Then I found ArtByte. I think this was around 1998. Artbyte was about the crossover between art and technology. It talked about circuitry and robotics and multimedia and all those wonderful technological tools, but cross referenced those topics with the legitimate art world. There were reviews of light shows at the Guggenheim, long essays about where cinema was going, and just all sorts of exposes on how technology was being jammed together with culture all over the world. It ceased publication abruptly in late 2001. I don’t know why for sure, but I suspect their offices were near ground zero. That magazine was extremely content rich. The way the writers spoke about ideas was uniquely inspiring. I think of all the magazines I’ve subscribed to in the last decade and a half, it was the one I most looked forward to reading.

For a couple years in between there I subscribed to Weekly Variety, the distilled outside town version of Hollywood’s favorite trade publication, Daily Variety. I learned a lot reading it, but got busy and the back issues started to pile up without being even skimmed. It’s a very dense magazine, and getting it on a weekly basis, when it has to compete with The New Yorker for eyeball time and the subscription price is around $250, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Like Wired though, since the Indie revolution played out, Variety seems less relevant, at least to me personally. Instead I just watch Sunday Morning Shootout on AMC every week.

Now I get a lot of fashion magazines. Italian Vogue, Exit, and Icon are my favorites. Exit was what I picked up the week I decided to leave grad school to become a fashion photographer. I subscribe to a bunch and pick up others on the newsstand. I like Oyster, which is an Australian fashion magazine. I also subscribe to Surface, which is more of a design magazine, but the articles are pretty good. There are quite a few that I follow. They get expensive when you pile them up, so I’ve taken to flipping through before buying to make sure there are innovative images.

There is a magazine called Make, which is all about personal technology empowerment. The do it yourself bible for the 21st century. My friend Ryan O’Horo has had his creations published in Make a few times.

I don’t really have a favorite magazine right now. I keep waiting for the next early Wired or the next Artbyte to appear. Who couldn’t use a monthly dose of mind blowing inspiration?