Photoessay: Colorlumpur

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Today, a slight disjointed set of wimmelbild-esque urban vignettes. I’m pretty sure at a subconscious level my attraction to these scenes was the variety of textures present in each; they also happened to make a good variety of test subjects in my usual preferred kind of hard light to to see if I’d managed to match the Z7’s SOOC JPEG curve tuning to the ‘normal’ workflow I’ve used up to this point. I think a little more work might be required to fine tune things, but there’s something quite attractive about how the lower midtones are being handled; the tonal richness is there. It was also a rare opportunity to shoot the old part Kuala Lumpur in this kind of light – I find it really makes you look at the city in a different way, especially if you can manage to disconnect a little and pretend you’re somewhere completely new. Turns out it isn’t that difficult to do if you haven’t been to this part of town in six months… MT

This series was shot with mostly a Nikon Z7, AF-S 70-200/4 VR and my color SOOC profile; there are a few other singles from other cameras I had sitting around that I could never quite coherently place in a set until now. Those were processed with Photoshop Workflow III.

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Ultraprints from this series are available on request here

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved

Comments

  1. Some great images. Love the lead image and the second image with a splash of light on the flowers. You have a keen eye. Keep up the great work.

  2. Alex Carnes says:

    Very nice! I’ve never managed to get what I want SOOC, but then I don’t suppose I’ve ever tried very hard.

    Also nice to hear you enthusing about photography, you seemed to lose interest a bit with your watch business taking off or whatever!

    • Actually, I lost interest with the attitudes of some seriously rude and entitled photographers/customers as well as senior management at DJI after they bought Hasselblad, but that’s another story…

  3. Dear Ming

    I noticed your Z7 SOOC profiles are (i) Z7 high contrast color and (ii) Z7 low contrast color.
    Why isn’t there a Normal contrast color profile – in case users prefer something in-between?

    Between the Low & High contrast color profiles, which did you mostly use for this series of very nice pictures?

    Thanks, john

    • They’re close enough that you don’t need one in the middle – buyers want fewer options, not more (else they’d customise their own).

      High contrast for this set.

      • Thanks Ming.
        I was also guessing it’s the High Contrast profile.
        It looks punchy enough without going overboard.
        Very well balanced.

  4. Aah,
    lovely!

    Where I’ve been in cities it’s rare to find a composition *both* in shape and colour in the same frame.

    Here there’s some colour “!” that catches the eyes in every photo, whether very discreet or in strong colour.

    I’ll certainly come back to these.

  5. The colours and tones in the first one are absolutely gorgeous. I like nr. 8 too: the plants stand out in a pleasing and accurate way, while their shadows still retain information – I think in that scene, my D800/E would have struggled (or at least would have required a very exact amount of underexposure)

  6. Extraordinary set Ming, well done! It’s nice to see that mirrorless has finally come of age here at MT and it looks like your GO-TO format these days? Next year upon release of the Z9 Pro Model, your D850 may very well be in the garage sale LOL!

    • I keep the D850 for the time being as the spare body, ice it’s cheaper not to sell and re-buy; if I did it would probably be a Z6 for the low light capability. I don’t need another probrick.

  7. Jean Pierre Guaron says:

    The page is not opening, Ming – I just get error 404 page not found

    On Tuesday, May 21, 2019, Ming Thein | Photographer wrote:

    > Ming Thein posted: ” Today, a slight disjointed set of wimmelbild-esque > urban vignettes. I’m pretty sure at a subconscious level my attraction to > these scenes was the variety of textures present in each; they also > happened to make a good variety of test subjects in my usu” >

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