Articles – Ming Thein

A concise city travel guide for photographers

September 10, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’ve been to a lot of places both in the course of my previous life as a wandering professional, as well as more recently as a photographer and occasionally as a tourist. I’ve visited most as a business traveller first, but with a constantly vigilant eye for photographic opportunities. On the whole, some places are more photo-friendly than others; however, every city has its interesting places. What follows is a very brief photography travel guide to some of the more interesting places I’ve been to. It’s organized by city, in alphabetical order. MT

Auckland. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 OSS

Auckland, New Zealand
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 4/10
Most of the activity in Auckland centers around the waterfront; be it related to boats, life, the harbor, watersports, or the sea itself. Kiwis are extremely friendly people, and generally don’t mind having their photo taken; however, note that everything downtown goes dead after about 6pm as businesses close and people retreat to the suburbs, so there isn’t a lot to photograph. There is some interesting architecture and light provided by lots of modern glass buildings around Quay Street and Queen Street. The North Shore is also an interesting area of pavement/ sidewalk cafe life, as well as being a good place to spend a sunny afternoon. Needless to say, one of the biggest events is when the America’s Cup visits the city; great for photographic opportunities, bad for the wallet.

Bangkok. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

Bangkok, Thailand
Photo friendliness – 6/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
Bangkok is so different to most other places – even within Asia, to some extent – that there’s bound to be something different for the traveller to capture. Within Bangkok there are plenty of districts; avoid the places with multi-lane avenues and low pedestrian-friendliness like Rama V, Sukhumvit and Wireless; it’s difficult to capture anything there. Far more interesting is the temple area by the river, around Wat Arun and Wat Pho; there’s also a warren of small streets and bustling city life around Thanon Yowarat in Chinatown. You could easily spend days walking around there and not manage to see everything. Note that whilst most Thais are friendly, a lot do not like having their photograph taken, so please remember to respect cultural sensitivities. The outskirts of the city are likely to provide more photographic opportunities of the rural sort. Note that Bangkok’s famous floating market is not actually in the city, but around two hours’ drive north.

Barcelona, Spain
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
Architecture, culture and people are the three things that stand out in Barcelona. Visit in spring or summer; winter is depressing and can be cold (I actually got stranded at the top of a hill in a snowstorm once). The Barri Gotic, or Old Quarter, is the best place to go exploring on foot; the seaside promenade near the Hotel Arts is also full of interesting characters and is a great place for street photography. I actually don’t like Parc Guell much; yes, it’s interesting from an art point of view, but for photography the space is too open and full of tourists. You might get some interesting detail shots of Gaudi’s handiwork, but the Sagrada Familia is much, much better for that. There are plenty of tourists roaming the streets, so another photographer mostly goes unnoticed; some Catalonians don’t like being photographed, though. If you have extra time, the monastery of Montserrat is worth visiting for its architecture. Sadly no photography is allowed inside the cathedral, though.

Cambridge, England
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
It’s often said that the difference between Cambridge and Oxford is that the former is a city inside a university, and the latter is a university inside a city – the reason being that Oxford town came before Oxford University, and both came before Cambridge. The difference is felt in size: Cambridge feels much roomier and more spread out than Oxford; a lot of the colleges are far away enough that you need at least a bicycle, and might even want to consider taking the bus. Still, there’s plenty of interesting architecture and mediaeval alleyways to explore, as well as the river Cam; don’t forget to pick up some Fudge at the Fudge Kitchen.

Canterbury. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Canterbury, England
Photo friendliness – 7/10
Photo opportunities – 6/10
Most people visit Canterbury for one reason only: the cathedral. A masterpiece of Gothic engineering, it’ll keep any architectural photography fan engaged. Photography inside is allowed. There’s a small network of old streets around the cathedral that can be an interesting backdrop for street photography, but note that most of the old shops have been replaced by modern chains – though some of the frontages etc remain the same. There are some interesting Roman ruins – the city wall – and a Norman castle, though these do not make for particularly arresting photography, unless you bring your own subject – I suppose one could probably do a fashion shoot there.

Geneva. Nikon D800E, 28/1.8

Geneva, Switzerland
Photo friendliness – 5-8/10
Photo opportunities – 5/10
I find the personality of Geneva depends very much on what time of the year you visit: I went once during winter, and it was both miserably weathered and full of surly, unfriendly folk; however, during the summer, everybody seems to be in a good mood the moment the sun shows. The city itself transforms, too; the old quarter, on the opposite side of the lake to the train station and behind the main drag of Rue du Rhone, is full of charming buildings and streets, that create interesting pockets of light as the sun starts to drop. Watch fans will also find the Patek Philippe museum of particular interest. Several years ago, they allowed photography of the exhibits, but I’m not sure if that’s changed in the intervening period. Outside Geneva are plenty of opportunities for landscape photography – the Vallee de Joux and the Alps are obvious choices.

Hanoi. Nikon D3, 70-300VR

Hanoi, Vietnam
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 9/10
Hanoi’s photographic friendliness is reduced a couple of notches solely because of personal risk: you really need to watch out for the city’s thousands of motorbikes. Chimping while crossing the street is a sure way to get run over. That aside, the city itself has various quarters that each have a distinct feel; post-Soviet communist concrete block, French, and Asian. And in between those, there’s a temple on an island in the middle of the lake. In the Old Quarter, all of those elements come together (though with much less concrete block) to create a very unique atmosphere – think French cafe, but with the chaos of Asian wiring, street stalls, and just a little bit of decay to add texture. It’s a photographers’ paradise – and the Vietnamese don’t mind being in your frame, either. Cheap and good pho noodles and banh mi are icing on the cake.

Hong Kong. Olympus OM-D, 45/1.8

Hong Kong, China
Photo friendliness – 6/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
To me, Hong Kong has always been divided up into districts with distinct photographic personalities: Central, for architecture and some light people-watching; the Peak, for that one evening shot across the harbor; Tsim Tsa Shui for neon, glitz and a little bit of transitional Hong Kong; finally, Mong Kok for absolute chaos and the grittier old city. It’s almost as though things get less developed as you head further north and into China proper. If I’m to be honest, the locals aren’t the most friendly bunch, though this is changing with the younger generation. Be careful where you point your camera. Acting like a tourist will usually let you get away with a sneaked-in street shot. Though I’ve been several times on my own, or with non-residents, the best way to see the hidden parts of the city is definitely with a local – there are some hidden photographic gems to be had.

Kamakura, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
If you can’t take a photograph in Japan, then the chances are if that same situation arose anywhere else in the world, you probably wouldn’t be able to, either. Kamakura is full of more Japanese tourists trying to find their cultural heritage than international ones; everybody has at least one camera. It’s not a very big town, and there are many cultural heritage things of interest here: the big Buddha statue, or daibutsu, multiple temples, including the famous Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū and the seaside portion of the town; many of these places are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Come here on any festival day – if you can find a place on the train – and you’re assured of plenty of photojournalism material.

Kathmandu. Nikon D700, 85/1.4G

Kathmandu, Nepal
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
It’s clear from the moment you step out of the airport that visiting Nepal is going to be completely unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Not only is there nothing resembling a highway leading into town, the road itself doesn’t really much resemble a road, either. Thanks to fuel shortages, there are long blackouts during the day (make sure your hotel has a generator, and carry plenty of spare batteries) and few streetlights; I’d say that Kathmandu is very much a daytime photography place. Try not to go during a martial law strike, either; you can’t go out on the streets without a permit, and the place is crawling with heavily armed police. That said, the Nepalis are some of the friendliest people around, even if their country is firmly in the ‘developing’ category; like most photographically interesting cities, it has a characterful old quarter – Thamel and plenty of cultural heritage sites (Bodhanarth, Swayambhunath, Patan Durba, Singa Durba, the Narayanthi Museum etc.). It’s also a very cheap place, which explains its popularity with backpackers. Travel a bit outside the city to Nagarkot, and on a clear day, you’ll be rewarded with a magnificent view of the Himalayas.

Kuala Lumpur. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Photo friendliness – 8/10?
Photo opportunities – 7/10?
It’s very difficult to be objective about your own home city; I can’t say how inspired a foreigner might find the place because it’s always been familiar territory to me. I know exactly where I’d go to shoot what, what kinds of people probably aren’t a good idea to photograph, and what I can get away with. For a visitor, there are a few things worth seeing – Chinatown/ Petaling Street, before the government tears it down for a mass transit station (ironically, to serve the part of the city which will no longer be there after the station is in place); Bukit Bintang, to shop and people-watch; Brickfields, or little India; the Batu Caves, especially during the Thaipusam Festival in late Jan/ early Feb; Merdeka Square, and some of the more interesting architecture. KLCC and the Petronas Twin Towers. If you’re feeling particularly bored, or want to see a whole load of artificial trees, then there’s i-City in Shah Alam by night. For the most part, the residents are friendly, the food is good, and the beer is cold. Although prices are rising, we’re still not as expensive as say Geneva or Hong Kong (and I really feel it in those cities). What’s not to like?

Old Kyoto. Nikon D200, 17-55/2.8

Kyoto, Japan
Photo friendliness – 9/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
If you like temples and architecture, then Kyoto is your city. I couldn’t help feel that the atmosphere was a lot colder and more reserved than Tokyo, however; there are also a lot of broad, featureless expanses of urban sprawl between attractions that are pretty much photographic deserts. There are a few must-see places on the list – the big temples like Kinkaku-ji, Kyomizudera and slightly outside, Fushima-Inarii; Gion, the Geisha District; and the portion of the town down by the river, which I believe is called Ponto-Cho. There’s also the Imperial Palace, but aside from some extremely open gardens, there isn’t a lot of interest here. Curiously, Kyoto station itself is a very interesting piece of abstract modern architecture; in some ways it’s at odds to the rest of the historical city. The best way to get around is either by subway, or the tourist buses that run in loops from outside the station.

London. Ricoh GR-Digital III

London, England
Photo friendliness – 5/10
Photo opportunities- 7/10
Thanks to overzealous police, one has to be a bit careful when photographing on the streets of London – sad to say, especially if you look a bit ‘ethnic’. Smaller cameras are definitely the order of the day, and be careful where you choose to set up a tripod. The locals in general aren’t particularly camera-friendly, either. That said, there are a number of good places for people watching – the courtyard of the British Museum is one of my favourites, along with the Piccadilly Circus to St. James and Jermyn Street stretch, Trafalgar Square and the surrounding areas. The City can be interesting but also harried; Canary Wharf was good for some architectural abstracts, though on my last visit security tended to eye every camera with suspicion. The area around City Hall on the south side of London Bridge has a nice open plaza and plenty of human activity, especially if it’s sunny. There are still a number of museums which allow photography inside – this is interesting not so much for the exhibits as the spaces and people – the British Museum is by far the best, though Maritime Greenwich, The Tower of London, the Science Museum’s hangar floor and the Tate Modern are also excellent. Aside from photography, there are plenty of other things to do, so don’t feel as though you have to get postcard shots of all the sights – that’s what postcards are for.

Macau. Olympus OM-D, 45/1.8

Macau, China
Photo friendliness – 7/10
Photo opportunities – 9/10
Thanks to a densely-packed warren of streets, Macau seems a lot larger on foot than it does on a map; the area around the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral are especially rich with photographic opportunities. And the locals seem so immune to tourists that it’s also a very safe environment to pratice street photography. The casinos are a different story, however – external photography is fine, but I’m pretty sure if you pull out a camera inside, you’ll have a bunch of armed guards on you in no time. Oh, and don’t forget to try the famous egg custard tarts.

Malacca night market. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 OSS

Malacca, Malaysia
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
There are two areas of interest in Malacca – the stretch leading from St. Paul’s church to the fort ruins on the hill during the day, and the area across the river known as Jonker Street – especially on a Saturday night when the market is in full swing. There are also a number of old clan houses that feature traditional decoration and architecture; some are still inhabited by their respective clans and offer historical tours. Most allow photography. Like the rest of Malaysia, Malacca is fairly photo friendly; unlike the major cities, it’s also fairly pedestrian friendly. Local specialities include the cendol with gula melaka and chicken rice balls; pass on the latter, but the former can be a life saver during a hot afternoon.

Nara. Nikon D3, 24-70/2.8

Nara, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 9/10
A bastion of old Japan, and a daytrip out of Kyoto, Nara is home to a large number of temples – in fact, so much so that one wonders where the residents actually live, and perhaps even if there are any permanent residents to the city at all. There are also a surprising number of inquisitive deer, and stalls lining the avenues between temples serving some of the best takoyaki I’ve eaten. It’s one of the few cities in which I felt I could freely photograph everything I wanted, and I did so; however, once you get tired of temples, there’s not much else and it’s time to get back on the train to head back to base.

New York, USA
Photo friendliness – 5/10?
Photo opportunities – 8/10?
I’m guessing somewhat at these numbers, because it’s been a very, very long time since I was last in New York, and that was in the days before I had a camera surgically attached to me. But I definitely felt like it wasn’t a particularly open or friendly place; it probably didn’t help at all that I was there in the middle of winter. However, it is one of the spiritual homes of street photography, and home to numerous galleries and art collections, plus no end of skyscraper architecture. At least if you feel too intimidated to shoot people, there are buildings, or other inspirations to be had from other artists. I really need to get out here again at some point in the near future.

Nikko. Nikon D3, 24-70/2.8

Nikko, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
Nikko is a cultural heritage city much in the same vein as Nara and Kamakura; there are lots of temples, plenty of scenic things buried in dark, damp forests, and curiously little life outside that. And once again, like the other two cities, feel free to shoot away at anything and everything; but you will get bored of temples eventually. Once again, a day trip from Tokyo will suffice for most.

Niseko. Nikon D700, Zeiss 2/28 Distagon

Niseko, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 6/10
Niseko is a place for skiiers during the winter and outdoorspeople during the summer; photography is almost entirely of the landscape variety. You’ll probably get bored of views of Mt. Yotei, but there are plenty of other interesting vignettes around – the trouble is, you’ll have to find them, and without a car or bicycle (not recommended because the place is a lot hillier than it looks) it’s difficult because things are fairly spread out. Hokkaido is probably the only place in Japan that actually has space. Personal pick – the onsen at the Hilton Niseko is outdoors and offers a fantastic view of the perfectly-conical Mount Yotei; it’s a great place to relax at the end of the day.

Oxford. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Oxford, England
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
Another one of my familiar hunting grounds (I spent several years here as a student). Curiously, I didn’t shoot that much at the time; mostly to do with the fact that film was expensive, and consumer digital was still some years out. Nevertheless, I returned later on, better armed and photographically somewhat wiser. Much like Cambridge, Oxford is about history, architecture, and drunken students. (I would say learning, but the public really doesn’t see much of that going on; it’s behind closed doors). The city’s main attractions are small; you could get off the bus from London at High Street, walk past the Radcliffe Camera, around Radcliffe Square, through Broad Street, and down towards St. Giles and cover most of the interesting bits. There are a number of good museums – the Pitt Rivers is probably the most interesting of the lot – which allow photography, but they’re rather dark to preserve the artefacts. Good high ISO and fast lenses are a must. Note that most colleges allow entry during the day with a fee, or for free if you have somebody on the inside to take you around. The river Cherwell is worth punting down during summer, but beware drunken students in other punts colliding with yours…

Paris. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Paris, France
Photo friendliness – 5/10
Photo opportunities – 8/10
Another spiritual home of street photography, Paris’ grand avenues and boulevards provide a fantastic backdrop to the lives of its inhabitants. Sadly, those inhabitants aren’t usually that friendly, and I’ve received my fair share of abuse and rude gestures when trying to photograph them. (Curiously, I’ve also had a guy on a bicycle yell out ‘Nice Leica!’ from about 30 yards away). Aside from the huge number of museums – it’s a great place to see both traditional art masterpieces, for inspiration – there are also a lot of small galleries and bookstores dotted around the city, many of which specialize in Photography. There’s plenty of old architecture, and a concentration of newer stuff at La Defense; the Ille de la Cite during summertime is a particularly nice place to shoot street, as are the artificial beaches along the Seine (Paris Plage). I’m told there’s also an excellent aviation museum out at Le Bourget, but I’ve never gotten around to visiting it. Particularly interesting districts are the left bank, and Montmartre.

Penang. Nikon D3, 24-70

Penang, Malaysia
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 5/10
I personally didn’t find that much inspiration in Penang; it’s a pleasant city, but in many ways somewhat provincial and small. There’s some interesting street life – especially along Gurney Drive as the sun sets, near the food stalls – but for the most part, people come here to relax (though curiously not when driving. If you had to choose between Penang and Malacca for a day trip from Kuala Lumpur, there are far more photographic opportunities in the latter city. Penangites are perhaps the most aggressive drivers in the country). There are reasonably nice beaches further north near Batu Ferringhi and beyond. The western side of the island is mostly undeveloped and covered in rainforest. Personal favorite – afternoon tea at the E&O hotel.

Prague. Olympus Pen Mini, 45/1.8

Prague, Czech Republic
Photo friendliness – 7/10
Photo opportunities – 9/10
I came not expecting very much. I left wanting to go back – Prague is perhaps one of the richest cities in Europe for street and urban photography opportunities. The city is divided by the river Vltava; on the western shore, you’ve got the Malostranska, Prague Castle complex, St George’s Basilica and a network of narrow old streets; the other side of the Charles Bridge is the new, commercial center of town, with broad avenues and the old town square, which contains the famous astronomical clock, several churches, a few excellent cafes, the sex machines museum, and a tower which you can climb for excellent sunset views of the city. It’s also one of the cheaper places in Europe to visit; this must have something to do with the fact that the currency isn’t the Euro. In fact, it didn’t feel much more expensive than staying home in Kuala Lumpur. There’s something about the atmosphere here that just makes it an extremely pleasant city to walk around with a camera. We spent four days here, and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. The illuminated buildings and well-lit streets are great for night photography, too.

Sapporo. Nikon D700, Zeiss 2/28 Distagon

Sapporo, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 5/10
Sapporo may be the capital of Hokkaido, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it felt a lot like midtown New York – with its broad, grid-like streets, modern buildings, and odd combination of density and open green spaces. The issue here is that it just doens’t feel very conducive to photography; the place somehow lacks character. However, the food is especially good because a lot of it is locally grown – seafood and corn come highly recommended. But don’t come expecting it to be like Tokyo; it’s a lot more laid back.

Singapore. Panasonic TZ3

Singapore, Singapore
Photo friendliness – 8/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
Singapore is another city with distinct districts where one can go to shoot certain things; unlike many places in the world, people don’t mind you taking photographs inside shops; I suppose they’re savvy enough to realize that any offshoot internet publicity is good for free PR. I actually like shooting in Singapore because of the rich variety of modern architecture; there’s a few good pickings around Orchard Road, especially Ion; more downtown near Raffles Quay, and even more at Marina Bay. There’s also the new Botanic Gardens building, which promises to be interesting. On the other hand, more traditional scenes can be found around Chinatown, Club Street and the Mustafa complex; there’s a beach out at Sentosa if you like wildlife. Oh, and the Jurong Bird Park has a large and extremely well-stocked aviary – it’s a good place to practice birding. Much like Malaysia, people here think it’s normal to slip an SLR around your neck before heading out of the house. Snap away.

Tokyo. Nikon D3, 24-70

Tokyo, Japan
Photo friendliness – 10/10
Photo opportunities – 10/10
Tokyo remains my number one place for photography. It’s a combination of a few things – the huge cultural differences between Japan and the rest of the world; the sheer size of the city, meaning that there are plenty of districts of distinctly different ages and characters; and the fact that it’s possibly the most photography-friendly city on earth. After all, most of the world’s cameras are designed in Japan…Nikon, Olympus, Ricoh, Canon and Leica all have flagship stores around Ginza, some of the most expensive real estate anywhere. In fact, that portion of Tokyo is so well lit that you can shoot ISO 200 at night and still get enough shutter speed to handhold. Aside from the usual places – Harajuku’s Takeshitadori, the Meiji Shrine, Akihabara, Omotesando, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Tsukiji – there are hidden pockets of photographic opportunity anywhere and everywhere you care to look. And the chances are you’re going to feel more inspired about being here than anywhere else, because everything is so different you feel you have to capture it. The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography out at Ebisu is worth a visit; they often have great exhibitions on. There are also a large number of small, one-room galleries all over the city which offer a good introduction to local Japanese photography. Totem Pole Gallery is a good example. Note that Kamakura, Nikko, Odawara (castle) and Hakone (Fuji) are all day-trippable from Tokyo thanks to their fast train network – though I happened to be there in December 2008 when a computer glitch somehow brought the whole thing grinding to a halt. Tokyo is one of the few places I can go to now and actually feel like I’m in a completely different world; I’m very much looking forward to going back in a couple of months for the October Workshop. (There’s still one place left, if any readers would like to join).

Venice. Nikon D70, 24-120/3.5-5.6

Venice, Italy
Photo friendliness – 7/10
Photo opportunities – 9/10
Like Tokyo, Venice is one of the few cities left on earth that’s a true unique place unto itself – this providing a never-ending series of photographic opportunities, though you might get a bit sick of canals and museums after a while. Murano is worth a visit to see the glassmaking factories, and photograph a slower pace of life; though the Campanile is going to be crowded, ascending at sunset is recommended. Don’t go in winter, it floods and the locals are miserable – spring is probably the best time of year to visit; it isn’t oppresively hot, the locals aren’t sick of the tourists, and the place isn’t as crowded as during the peak travel season. Carnivale is of course another great time to go, from a photographic standpoint – but already expensive accommodation and food (everything comes in by boat) gets even more exorbitant.

Vienna. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Vienna, Austria
Photo friendliness – 7/10
Photo opportunities – 7/10
Vienna is a pleasant city. It has its historical landmarks – Stefansdom, for one – and plenty of newer, more modern, post-war concrete blocks. It’s a much smaller city than it appears on the map; everything is walkable. The Stilwerk building (designed by Jean Novel) is quite an interesting piece in its own right, especially the view from the top floor (and its seemingly frameless windows). Vienna’s highlights for the photographer are its museums and galleries: aside from the painters and artists (great permanent collections at the Belvedere and Kunsthaus; Schonnbrunn is worth a visit too), there’s the Westlicht Gallery, which has year-round photographic installations (a Weegee retrospective was on when I was there). It also happens to be neighbours with the Leica Store – the second hand equipment selection there is mind-boggling. Food is also one of Vienna’s strong points: the Nachtmarkt has great fresh produce, and a few simple eateries that make the most of that; there’s also a good selection of high end, with the two-Michelin star Steirereck being one of my favorite restaurants anywhere.

Remember to travel safe – don’t go out of your way to attract attention, and keep copies of important documents back at the hotel. Figure out the bare minimum of equipment and carry no more; the less gear you have, the more you’ll experience the city rather than worry about which lens to use, and in turn, the better images you’ll capture. Oh, and don’t forget a good pair of walking shoes. MT

For travel equipment suggestions for 2012, have a look at this article.

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Thoughts on modern wedding photography: the wrong way, and the right way

September 8, 2012 by Ming Thein

Disclaimer: I’m not a wedding photography professional, I never have been or claimed to be at any point, nor is it likely that I ever will be in the future. So take this with the intended grain of salt as written from the position of an external observer. The images illustrating this post were shot as a guest at the various weddings I’ve attended in the past.

It seems that in the last twenty or so years – perhaps even less than that – wedding photography has moved from ‘capturing some memories of your (hopefully) once in a lifetime event with family and friends’ to ‘create an overprocessed hollywood epic composed of thousands of pictures with you and your other half in unlikely, impossible and completely out-of-charachter poses in which none of the protagonists at all resemble each other!’. How? When? Why? More importantly, doesn’t anybody who’s actually paying for the images realize that in twenty years, if you look at the images again at all, the first thought entering your mind will probably be ‘ugh, what was I thinking?’

One from my own wedding. I grabbed my friend’s M8.

This opinion piece aims to deconstruct the modern wedding photography genre, and figure out whether there’s still any room for somebody who wants to do it right – the best term I can use is honestly.

I have actually shot my fair share of weddings over the years – once or twice as primary photographer, nowadays under the condition that the couple hires somebody else, I’ll bring a camera along to the events I attend, and I’ll shoot like I normally do. Invariably, their print album and the images they share land up being the ones I shoot, not the ones they paid for. Why is this?

Firstly, I make sure I don’t get in the way of the proceedings; in doing so, I’m forced to find unusual angles or work from the point of view of the guest as observer – so the documentary takes place from a slightly different viewpoint. I shoot as a photojournalist, not an event photographer; I look for emotion and context. Finally, I don’t shoot weddings commercially. I recognize that isn’t one of my strengths, and it wouldn’t be fair to any potential clients to do anything less than a perfect job on an occasion which simply isn’t repeatable. (“Excuse me, could you walk down the aisle again please? My flash didn’t fire” doesn’t quite cut it, does it?). I do them for very close friends and family; instead of buying a gift that might well be your fifth toaster, I might as well give you something unique and which actually requires some effort and thought to produce – and I know will be appreciated later. But I digress.

The reason why I don’t shoot weddings is threefold: one, they scare the crap out of me: I can’t be in twenty places at once, capturing each and every single little emotional moment – there are bound to be many – but at the same time, I can’t hire secondary photographers because I can’t guarantee quality. And having assistants in itself brings up a whole new set of issues, which I’ll get into later. Secondly, the market is dire. Either you compete on price – a thousand shots for just US$200! Or you compete on extravagance – pre-wedding shoots in a hot air balloon at dawn shot from a helicopter over the Himalayas! And neither market is sustainable, for obvious reasons.

However, the most important missing element for the hired gun is almost always the emotional connection: as a friend of the couple, or family, you probably know most of the other guests – that being the case, they feel comfortable around you (and know you’re a photographer); this means that what you get to capture are genuine, unguarded emotions. This is the ideal of the serious wedding photographer, and something that almost none of them manage – because they’re looking for the significant action, or the interesting perspective, or some technical showcase, not the emotion. And I know that it’s nearly impossible to do this when you don’t know the guests personally – they just don’t open up to you.

I can understand the desire for a couple, and their families, to have the big day properly documented for posterity. I went through the same issue of trying to figure out who would shoot my own wedding several years ago – in the end, a photojournalist friend and my brother did the bulk of the work, and I provided first-person filler thanks to a compact in my suit jacket and a borrowed camera. I edited the 8,000+ raw files down into a storyline of about 150, and did the processing myself. The result was a remarkably consistent look and feel; most of it was processed in a traditional B&W photojournalism style (which I may later come to regret, but at least I have the raw files) which fit the way the images were shot, and the style of the photographers.

But it seems that today’s trend is to go for the most over the top production you can find – the output shown (usually on a slideshow at the wedding banquet) is often so ridiculous that if you know the couple, you also realize that the photos are in no way representative of their personality, or even physical appearance, most of the time. Perhaps this is only a trend in Asia; I don’t know. But I’ve seen enough ultra-wide-from-the-tail-of-the-gown-in-forest-ruins-with-studio-strobes shots to suggest that this may be an international thing.

I think what bothers me the most is the lack of integrity about it all – I do know that a lot of couples select options like this because it’s either what’s socially acceptable, or because they don’t know any better (and it most certainly isn’t in the interests of the photographers to educate them otherwise). What has become a relatively minor expense in the whole scheme of things has now turned into something that can consume 10% or more of the entire wedding budget. What I don’t know is how many of these couples are actually happy with the output – Asians tend not to complain unless something is vomitoriously bad – but I do know that a lot of the wedding photographers don’t actually care, because repeat customers usually aren’t an issue – there’s always somebody else going to get married.

One of the biggest sins that almost all wedding photographers commit is getting in the way. At a recent family wedding I attended, the photographer and his two assistants continuously hovered in front of the couple, machine-gunning away with flashes. The problem here is that a) quarters were pretty tight, as with Asian weddings a portion of the ceremony is traditionally at home, and most homes can’t easily accommodate the hundred or more invited guests; b) as a family member or guest, you can’t see anything. For starters, this pisses off your family; not to mention feeling like you’re being mobbed by paparazzi. As a couple, ask yourself: is this wedding for us, for the family, or for the photographers? Because as an external observer, it sure as hell feels like the latter.

And that’s not the only trespass. Over the top airbrushing, or use of hideous filters – think applying the entire Instapop or Hipstagram or whatever repertoire to every image – to hide fundamental compositional sloppiness or focusing errors at critical moments – is de rigeur. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a single wedding banquet slideshow which contained anything approaching a natural looking image – and I’ve attended dozens of weddings in the last couple of years. Do you really need thousands of crappy photos instead of perhaps fifty, or a hundred, perfectly-timed, natural, emotional ones?

Of course not! But that’s difficult to produce, and thus makes for a very poor business model, so nobody does it. Which is a shame: the ideal wedding photographer could exist, and with some customer education, do pretty well. What attributes should such a mythical creature have?

1. Don’t get in the way. The wedding is for the couple and the family, not the photographer and his assistants.
2. Don’t miss critical moments – you don’t need twenty cake cutting shots, you just need one or two well-timed ones.
3. Look for emotion, and capture only emotion. Preserve the atmosphere and the feeling. We are human. Your audience is human. Your clients are human. They’ll look at the images and instantly feel that connection to the subject when looking at the images afterwards.
4. Less is more: spend some time curating, and you’ll find that you now have time to process each image individually instead of running them all through the SuperSoft-Crayolamatic-HDR filter.
5. Know who the key players are: you don’t have to get headshots of everybody, but if you miss the tearful mother of the bride hugging her daughter because you thought it was her kindergarten teacher, your clients probably aren’t going to be happy.

6. Be prepared! Don’t miss a shot because something wasn’t set right or malfunctioning or you weren’t paying attention. Get the program beforehand. If in doubt, shadow the bride. Doing otherwise is a cardinal sin.
7. Images don’t take a month to deliver, especially if you’re running them through filters or delivering JPEGs. There is NO EXCUSE! If a guest can find time to process each shot individually and deliver in a couple of days, and it isn’t even his job, then as a ‘professional’, it’s just embarrassing.
8. Break out of your stylistic silo occasionally – there are a lot of big-name society wedding photographers here who have a compositional repertoire that can be counted on less than the fingers of one hand.
9. Don’t overdo the output.
10. Be reasonable about what you charge – this goes in both directions. If you’re good, don’t kill the market for everybody (and yourself) by undercharging. Similarly, if you’re crap, don’t rip clients off. Steer them towards quality instead of quantity and location productions if they can’t afford it – ultimately, they’ll be happier, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this will in turn be good for your business.

Most importantly, as a photographer, make sure you have integrity in what you do. It might just be work to you, but it is a once-in-a-lifetime day for somebody – you’ve been hired to do a job, don’t mess it up. This is the number one reason why I probably won’t ever shoot weddings – playing it safe doesn’t deliver that something extra; but at the same time, taking risks is also a no-no in case you miss the shot. And I wouldn’t want to fall short on either count for the client.

As a consumer, be educated: know what you want in terms of style, deliverable, and how much it should roughly cost – see the work of many people and get quotes before you make a decision. Ask a photographer friend for an opinion if in doubt. The more informed you are, the better a product you’re going to get. Don’t be bridezilla, either. MT

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Street photography in context: diversion, documentary or nuisance?

September 6, 2012 by Ming Thein

The Police are everywhere. Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

After spending some time thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that street photography – I prefer to think of it as ‘reporting on life – is an increasingly popular genre of photography for several reasons:

1. It’s easy to do, and accessible to all – the barriers to entry are low. Wildlife or say automotive photography, for instance, is not. There isn’t any setup involved beyond remembering to take your camera with you when you leave the house, no matter where you live.
2. The definition of the genre is extremely broad; to the point that you could probably almost say there was no definition at all. This means it’s both open to much creative interpretation, and also an excuse for anybody whose generic images have no specific idea or subject in mind.
3. As humans, we are psychologically drawn to other people: no man is an island. Street photography lets us get our fill of humans without having the tread the social minefield of heaven forbid, actually having to interact with them. (It’s a bit like the internet in this regard.)
4. Everybody likes to play documentary photojournalist once in a while.
5. Building on from #4, some photographers have a burning need to record everything and everybody around them – I’m one of these people – and sometimes we just shoot out of compulsion, because our compositional minds just simply do not turn off. Having trained yourself to see workable frames in the most unlikely of places, it’s difficult to un-learn this skill (or curse, depending on whether you’re the photographer or the one waiting for the photographer to hurry up).

I believe the sum of these things is that street photography falls into one of three categories for the vast majority of photographers and audiences – diversion, documentary, or nuisance.

Diversion
For the unafflicted photographer, it can be a nice genre to experiment with when you have the desire to shoot something, but you have no clear subject in mind. Taking a walk with a camera allows you to go in with a blank but receptive mind, and just wait for an endless parade of subjects to pass you by. They’re all time-sensitive, however; if you don’t react fast enough, they’re gone. This doesn’t matter, however, because there are always more subjects where they came from, and you weren’t going out shooting with something specific in mind anyway. Serendipity is probably the best way to sum up your overall attitude towards it.

Similarly, for casual viewers, street photography can provide an interesting window into the lives of others; an unusual or otherwise missed moment preserved for posterity. You see it, appreciate it for a little longer than the actual fleeting instance of the moment, and move on. It doesn’t really stick in your mind.

Of course, this all depends on the strength of one’s compositions; of chief importance for all images, street or otherwise, is having a prominent subject and a clear idea of what the image is supposed to achieve or say. Purely aesthetic images are fine, too; but the execution must obviously support the idea.

Documentary
Those who take street photography a bit more seriously start to tip over into the documentary category – they view the images they capture as preserving a slice of life, or singling out an interesting instant from the constant flow of life around them. This is of course a continuum; you can be looking for just that little bit more over your normal street photographer, or you could be very, very serious about the decisive moment like HC-B. These photographers don’t always have a clear idea of what they want in an image, but they recognize an interesting scene when it happens and are ready to respond and capture the shot.

I think I fall into this category. Whilst I still make some images that I consider to be aesthetically pleasing rather than saying anything strong or documenting a particular moment of life, I do look for something out of the ordinary in my images; I think it’s probably the natural progression for all street photographers as they eventually land up with far too many ordinary looking images. This leads to seeking the common theme that separates out the strong images from the weak ones – and it always comes back to idea, subject, and execution (which covers framing, light, processing etc.)

To some extent, as a competent photographer, I feel that we have a moral duty to record life for posterity – especially so in fast-changing environments such as developing countries. I’ve lived in the same neighbourhood of downtown Kuala Lumpur for the last seven years; in that time the landscape and flow of people has changed so much that there are things I don’t even remember seeing, much less capturing, in my old images from just a few years ago. If we, the first hand observers, don’t even remember – how are any future generations going to manage? I’ve shown images to fellow residents, and will inevitably be told at least once or twice something along the lines of ‘I’ve never seen that before’, or ‘Where’s this? So nearby, really?’.

The observer must therefore be an impartial one, with an abstract but fixed idea of what is ‘ordinary’ in their minds. This is something that gets harder and harder the longer you live in a place, or the more familiar you get with it; the foreign soon becomes the commonplace and soon you won’t notice anything at all. Observation and recognition of differences is an innate human skill; but continuous observation and attentiveness is very much a trained one.

The nuisance
In trying to be both observers and recorders, we must endeavour not to become public nuisances. In a previous article, I talked about the ethics of street photography and the importance of maintaining basic human standards of politeness and courtesy; something that many modern photographers choose to ignore behind the pretence of anonymity, or simply choose to ignore. It’s true that we feel less inhibited as photographers when we are not in our own comfort zones or cities of residence; at the same time, this is when we are also at our most observant and probably least culturally sensitive state. It’s worth remembering that what we might not find culturally offensive at home could well be the opposite overseas.

Often, the most interesting things happen well within the boundaries of polite personal space; intruding that makes me (personally) feel uncomfortable; it’s important to remember that we as photographers have both our personal and group reputations to maintain – it certainly won’t help anybody if street photographers are eventually perceived as being at the same level as paparazzi.

So where does this all leave us?

My personal opinion – and I stress this is highly subjective – is that those of us who have the ability and inclination, should go beyond the realm of causal snapping and treat street photography as social documentary/ reportage; try to say something with every shot, but at the same time, do this in an ethical way that doesn’t intrude on the privacy, rights or personal space of the subject(s). The overarching goal should be to preserve these little vignettes on present-day life for posterity; this also means making the work accessible and viewable to as great an audience as possible, which is one of the reasons why I use flickr.

I’ve noticed that my personal street photography style has evolved over the years from – get a worthwhile composition, to get people in frame, to get as close as possible, to cinematic style with plenty of OOF areas, to get close but retain context. It seems that today I’m working towards a style that documents man in the context of his environment, natural or built; I don’t specify a man and his individual, personal characteristics as much as use that figure as an abstract for the idea of humans in a particular situation. Where you choose to take it (and if you even bother with street photography or reporting on life) is very much a function of personal style – something you will have to discover and define for yourself, if you haven’t already done so. I just thought it might be interesting to throw another perspective out there. MT

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My thought process when shooting

August 29, 2012 by Ming Thein

One of the more common questions I’ve been asked recently (aside from what my Photoshop workflow looks like) is what my thought process is when shooting. This basically breaks down into two streams – am I in control of the situation photographically, or not?

By that I don’t mean whether I’m out of my depth or not; it’s about whether I have the ability to direct exactly the elements in my frame. The order doesn’t mean that one item is hugely prioritized over another; it isn’t. It’s more a case of if I have no choice,then which comes first?

In a controlled setting – studio, tripod, portrait, macro, landscape etc
Lighting
Perspective
Framing/ composition
Subject positioning
Reflections/ specular highlights
Edges
Exposure
Focus

The first things you’ll notice is that the subject doesn’t even enter into the equation – why? Well, it might as well be taken as given the there will be a clear subject to the image if I’m going to bother setting up lights to photograph it! This too, is the main reason why one would work in a controlled setting – the ability to perfectly light your subject, as well as control the composition precisely. You’ve got all the time in the world to perfect focus, and the exposure you select falls out of your lighting choices; this is why some minutae like reflections and subject positioning take precedence: simply because they can.

Perspective comes before framing, because you’re working in a situation where you have the luxury of choosing and fine tuning your perspective for every shot – no matter if that requires a ladder and telephoto. Your subject and light will wait for you.

It’s also worthwhile nothing that the processing I do in Photoshop for controlled images is very different to uncontrolled ones; I don’t have to use gradients to even out light; I don’t have to do shadow/ highlight recovery to control my dynamic range; I don’t have to spend time getting the color balance perfect. It simply isn’t necessary, because if you know what you’re doing, you should have gotten it right in camera in the first place.

In a non-controlled setting – photojournalism, street, travel
Lighting
Subject (interchangeable with lighting)
Framing/ composition/ perspective
Edges
Secondary subject
Exposure
Focus
Shoot a burst
Reset camera settings to a neutral position

Without light, your subject is invisible. And without a subject, framing is pointless; if your composition is poor, then the edges don’t matter; if you don’t have a clearly defined primary subject that’s supported by strong framing and well lit, then secondary subjects are meaningless.

There will be situations in which you’ll see the shot, and have not much time to react; this is where having a strong working process helps. I shoot aperture priority; I’m always adjusting aperture, exposure compensation and focus distance on the fly (if I’m using a manual focus camera) depending on the lighting conditions. When it gets dark, I frequently kick over to manual mode, take the camera out of auto-ISO and rely on my internal light meter. It’s not that difficult to get a consistent exposure when shooting manual; do it enough and you can usually judge the right exposure by eye – more often than not getting within 1/2 stop or so of the ideal exposure, which is well within the post-capture adjustment latitude of digital. This continual ‘fiddling of the dials’ does have the downside of making it look as though I’ve got some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it does result in my camera always being ready to shoot – and this makes me pretty quick on the draw.

This is why I place the technical execution – exposure and focus – last, because a strong composition will always be a strong composition, regardless of whether it’s tack sharp or somewhat grainy. If you capture something amazing, nobody will care what it was shot with because a) they’ll be too busy looking at the subject, and b) it’ll probably make the rounds via the internet, which as we all know, isn’t exactly a high-fidelity reproduction medium. When photographing under conditions where you are continually responding rather than being proactive, it’s better to get a shot with a strong idea rather than one with strong technical qualities but no idea. Nobody ever criticized Robert Capa for camera shake; but by the same token, I don’t think Annie Leibowitz was ever rushed on a shoot, either.

I want to add a note on the framing/ composition/ perspective portion – I do the majority of my work with just one or two focal lengths – 28/85mm; especially when it comes to travel and reportage. The simple reason is because I’m so familiar with the perspective and field of view of these lenses that I can frame without having to bring the camera to my eye; it’s as though I’m always walking around with the frame lines suspended in my field of vision. Sticking to one or two lenses and training yourself to see this way can also hugely improve your response time – being able to previsualize/ precompose the shot hugely improves your reaction time, and avoids having to waste time in framing. I then usually take a burst of a few images both to alleviate camera shake (the middle one is usually sharp because your shutter finger isn’t moving) and to perfect composition, especially around the edges.

In summary, controlled situations are all about getting the picture perfect – because you have the control and ability to do so. Reactive situations are about being always prepared and ready to get the shot – some things can be done in advance, such as setting exposure and anticipated subject distance, some things can be done in parallel, like looking for light, subject and framing; others you have to adjust for afterwards, for example, uneven exposure across the frame – there are gradients in Photoshop to take care of that.

How you choose to take care of the details is up to you; but the general advice is to make sure you take control of the things which have the biggest impact on the audience of your image first. MT

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10×10: 100 ways to improve your photography

August 26, 2012 by Ming Thein

This article was originally posted in a series of 10 mini-exerpts back in the very early days of the site; Google Analytics tells me that it was hardly viewed, which is probably a shame – so I’ve re-packaged, updated and re-presented it again here as a monster all-in-one reference. Enjoy. MT

Disclaimer: I’m assuming you already know the basics.

Part one: Compact cameras

Pretty much everybody has a compact, even if it’s only the one built into your phone. It’s no good for serious photography. Or is it? You might find yourself using it more if you try some of these ideas…

10: Carry spare batteries. One in the camera, one in your pocket or one charging. This lets you keep going – especially important since compact battery life is often terrible.

Crossing thoughts. Ricoh GRDIII

9: Use the hand strap. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many people don’t, and then land up having to buy new cameras.

Car reflection. Ricoh GRDIII

8: Shoot bursts, if you have a useable buffer. Without the buffer, you’ll just have to rely on timing and counting shots – think of it as a revolver rather than a machine gun. The same rules about the middle shot being stable and sharp in a burst also apply to compacts.

Zoom. Ricoh GRDIII

7: Keep ISO as low as possible, and make use of the stabilizer. Most good compacts have stabilizers; this is because even with the 1/focal length rule, there’ll be enough camera shake to blur things – you’re holding a light object at arms’ length and trying to keep it still. Granted, there’s no mirror slap, but there’s also nothing to brace against, either. Keeping the ISO as low as possible lets you maximize image quality. There’s usually a big difference between even base ISO and one stop up; know the limits of usability and don’t exceed them.

Crossing, London. Ricoh GRDIII

6: Look at the whole frame. I’m not sure how to say this more succinctly: there are things compacts can do that larger sensor cameras can’t – think of telephoto/ compressed perspective shots where everything is in focus, for example – and vice versa (shallow depth of field, wide FoV). Look at the whole scene, and see how you can use these strengths to your advantage. Images shot with compacts that work actually force you to have a much stronger composition, because you cannot rely on the crutch of bokeh or let the lens do the talking.

On set in the afternoon. Ricoh GRDIII

5: Spot meter. Dynamic range on all compacts is limited because the pixels are small. This means losing the shadows or the highlights is inevitable under most situations; you need to decide which one is important. The spot meter (and a half press to lock exposure) helps you to do that. High key = keep the shadows and lose the highlights; low key = keep the highlights and lose the shadows; most important however is making sure the subject is properly exposed – use the spot meter over faces, for instance. The other alternative is to use the spot meter on highlights and add a stop of exposure compensation – the meter will try to average a middle gray exposure out of whatever you place the box over; you know the camera has a little more tonal range in it if the highlights are at middle gray, so you can safely add some positive exposure compensation. This generally makes the rest of the image a little dark – especially under harsh light – but it also has the side benefit of making the colors richer.

The fountain of capitalism. Ricoh GRDIII

4: Use P mode. I’d say leave it in full auto, except most of the time that doesn’t let you control exposure compensation and metering – those are important. Why not use aperture priority, as I’d recommend with a larger sensor camera? Simple: there’s no point. The real focal length is so wide and the lenses usually so slow that DoF is enormous, and changing the aperture isn’t going to do anything other than reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor. Great if it’s bright, but if you stop down too much, you’re going to to induce diffraction and just land up with soft images.

Affection waiting for the bus. Ricoh GRDIII

3: Keep the lens clean. I’m constantly surprised by how many people have dirty lenses on their cameras and then complain that the images aren’t sharp, or that they can’t see anything in the finder – but there’s fingerprints all over it. It’s especially important on a compact as the small sensor and high pixel density are very demanding of lenses; the more aberrations you have on yours, the lower resolving power is going to be.

After prayers. Canon SD780IS

2: Prefocus. Although focusing speeds have improved dramatically, what’s really nice about most point and shoots is the half press to full press lag is actually quite low – but you need to be prefocused first. In any case, the huge DoF will cover any minor focus errors. Most fleeing moments can be captured with a compact and a little anticipation.

Break. Ricoh GRDIII

1: Set up your camera to either shoot raw, or output as neutral a jpeg as possible. If you can’t get a raw file, there’s still a lot that can be done with a good jpeg – what I usually do is reduce contrast to minimum to preserve the highlights and shadows; turn saturation down, and lower (but not zero) sharpening. Reason being that if you zero sharpening, you do generally lose some detail on compacts as this step is applied to the raw data in the imaging engine before being saved as a jpeg. You’ll be surprised how much you can do with one of these files afterwards in photoshop. Similarly, avoid those fake HDR or extended dynamic range modes; they might appear to help but what they actually do is make highlights look very unnatural because the tonal values overlap with other parts of the luminance range.

Vehicular architecture. Apple iPhone 4

See more of my small-sensor compact camera work here on flickr: click here

Part two: DSLRs

Disclaimer: I’m assuming you know the basics already, but want to get serious.

10: Control your view. Use the viewfinder when you can; there’s less lag, you can brace the camera against your face to increase stability, the dynamic range and resolution are higher, it’s a more direct connection to your subject and it saves power to boot. But why not use live view if you’ve got it, especially coupled with a swiveling screen? For critical focus, odd angles, and video, it’s actually pretty handy. Though I personally avoid it like the plague unless i have no choice.

The big brass band. Not strictly an SLR shot, but live view did help me to get this angle without sticking my face on the floor. Leica X1

9: Shutter button technique matters. You’d be surprised how many people just jab the button and wonder why the camera isn’t responding. Firstly, don’t jab. Roll your finger gently to reduce camera shake. Secondly, prefocus; the shutter button has two stages – the first activating autofocus, the second, shutter release. If you have focus already going, then your lag is going to be much, much shorter than if the camera has to do all the work when you press the button – even on the fastest cameras. Finally, you’d be surprised how many people use the horizontal release in portrait orientation even if they have a vertical one – don’t. It’s less stable, and frankly you just look silly.

Night party. It looks bright, but the EXIF will tell you otherwise. I needed every single trick in the book to get this shot: stratospheric ISOs, low shutter speeds, and a fast f1.4 lens wide open. Nikon D700, 24/1.4.

8: Turn the in-camera sharpening and contrast up to maximum. What? Why? There’ll be haloes! I can hear the cries of incomprehension and derision already. First caveat: you must shoot raw. Second caveat: use a raw processor that ignores the camera’s proprietary processing tags, e.g. Adobe Camera Raw. The reason why you want to crank both of these things up is that the camera’s preview engine generates a jpeg based on these settings; if your exposure is okay with the contrast at maximum, then you know you’ll have more shadow and highlight latitude. And high sharpening accentuates the differences between in focus and out of focus.And it also accentuates noise; basically, the combination of these settings makes it easier for you to tell if you’ve nailed it or not.

Work that perspective. Nikon D3, 70-300VR

7: Don’t let zoom lenses make you lazy. Select a focal length based on perspective, not angle of view: in other words, don’t use a wide lens because you want to get more of the scenery in, or a telephoto because you want to get closer. Instead, wide is for accentuating perspective, telephoto is for compressing it.

Action. An interpretation of the famous first series of motor drive images that showed a galloping horse’s legs do in fact leave the ground simultaneously. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

6: Shoot in bursts. Events evolve. The first shot may not be the best, or you or your subject may move. A burst is insurance, and if they’re all perfectly focused and exposed, then it lets you select the best image – say for minor variations in facial expression of a portrait. Note that I don’t mean machine gunning the shutter until your buffer is full; three or four shots is usually plenty.

Fire. The balloon was firing on and off unpredictably. It would be a lot more difficult to get this shot without auto ISO. Nikon D3100, 85/1.4 G

5: Use auto-ISO, but only if it’s configurable. If the minimum shutter speed is not configurable, you don’t know at what shutter speed the camera is going to start bumping the sensitivity; if it’s too early, your images will be grainer than they need to be. If it’s too late, then you may not have enough shutter speed for a sharp shot.

Cheers. Tough lighting; how do you know what your camera is going to expose for if you haven’t tried it out? Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

4: Know what your camera is doing: AF, metering, auto-ISO. This is actually very, very important. If you don’t know how your camera responds under a given situation, how do you know if you can get the image or not? There’s no shortcut to this other than a lot of practice and experimentation.

Alien. I prefocused on the spot where the man would be when the light was exactly behind and over him, then waited. Nikon D3, 24-70/2.8 G

3: Have some way to control your AF: either use AF-ON or AF-L, together with continuous focusing. Autofocus is an aid, not a crutch. Auto-select point systems will seldom select the point you want; they’re useful, but only in an environment where you have a lot of randomly moving subjects and need to pick the closest one. When you have something a bit more sedate, tell the camera what to focus on. Use continuous autofocus, because everything moves, if only slightly; the larger your aperture, the more this will matter because depth of field is shallower and probably won’t be sufficient to cover subject movement. I prefer to have AF activation on the shutter button and an AF-Lock button configured under my right thumb – this is so I know I can just press one button and have a high chance of getting the shot – but I also know of plenty (most sports shooters?) who configure AF-ON under the thumb, and the shutter button to capture the image only. AF Lock for that configuration is of course done by releasing the AF-ON button. Try both and see which works for you.

This was actually shot in a well lit carpark, but with a stopped down lens and fast shutter speed to eliminate ambient and have nearly 100% of the exposure provided by the flash. If I’d shot aperture priority, I’d still be able to see the surroundings. Nikon D700, 28-300VR and three SB900s.

2: Shoot aperture priority, except for flash. This is the easiest way to maximize control of your camera: aperture priority to control depth of field, manual mode if you need to balance flash and ambient lighting.

Watching the world pass by. Imagine this frame without the edge intrusions: it’d feel pretty different, wouldn’t it? Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

1: Watch the edges of your frame. I’ll say it time and again: what usually makes or breaks a photo, or the difference between an excellent image and an outstanding one, is how well the subject stands out. This is both a function of subject lighting, positioning and focus, as well as the inverse: what other things are there in the frame that take attention away from the subject? Intrusions into edges are one of the main ones. Conversely, there are also compositions where edge intrusions are welcome, or even make the image: they suggest things that might not be there, or leave things to the imagination of the reader. Use with care!

Part three: Mirrorless cameras

Mirrorless: the middle child? Maybe. But even a diehard sceptic like me has discovered that these things have their uses –just be clear about your expectations.

10: Spare batteries are an absolute must. Due to the large sensor, LCD and high demands from lens focusing motors, stabilizers and the like, mirrorless cameras have the highest power draw of any type of camera (other than medium format digital, it seems). Make sure you have at least two to get you through a day, maybe with an additional spare.

Moon over Prague Castle tower. Olympus E-PM1, 45/1.8

9: When selecting a camera, look at two things: useability (including lens choices) and raw sensor quality. I’ve tried the Panasonics, Sonys, Fuji and Olympus systems; of all of these, only the Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini stayed more than a month. Why? Because it’s the most responsive and configurable of them all. The Panasonics are very configurable but not very user friendly. The Fuji X100 has the best image quality, but the firmware is a disaster and it’s slow as molasses. The Sony is reasonably responsive, but not so easily configurable and the lens choices are pretty limited. And the NEX-5 I owned had a strange color palette. And don’t pick one so big that you might as well take your DSLR.

Lange Datograph. Olympus E-PM1, Panasonic 20/1.7

8: Use a hand strap instead of a neck strap. If it’s in your hand, you’ll be ready faster. And more likely to use it. And the weight/ size aren’t so bad you need to hang it around your neck or shoulder for relief. It also takes up less space in your bag when you have to store it.

Reflections. Olympus E-PM1, 14-42 kit lens

7: Adaptors are useless. Although they seem like a good idea, mirrorless systems are optimized for telecentric lenses with very short back flange distances; conventional SLR or RF lenses aren’t designed like this and thus don’t work well on mirrorless cameras. It’s quite well known that RF wides have numerous issues like cyan/magenta shifted corners, increased CA and vignetting. Adapted lenses are also bulky and lacking in automation – no AF, no aperture control, no stabilizer. And accurately manually focusing something held at arms’ length is near impossible.

Burlesque. Olympus E-PM1, Panasonic 20/1.7

6: Remember the lag. Even though release lag may be in the 30-40ms range, you’re going to have another lag induced by the LCD itself – the best models refresh at 60hz, which means you’re looking at least another 15-20ms (or more) of additional lag as the screen refreshes to show the current scene. Practice to get a feel for the rhythm of the camera.

Garage classic. Fuji X100

5: Avoid continuous AF. Contrast detect AF systems still aren’t good enough to track moving subjects – with the exception of the hybrid system in the Nikon V1 that also has phase detect photosites built into the sensor – so either prefocus and anticipate, or cover with DOF.

After school in Kathmandu. Fuji X100

4: Carry it everywhere. No point sacrificing image quality if you’re going to leave it at home like the full size camera. This is also why I’m drawn to the smaller, more pocketable mirrorless cameras like the Olympus Pen Mini. I’ve put it on a hand strap and use a pancake lens most of the time; it’s not a lot bigger than a compact but produces vastly better image quality.

Mosque architecture. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 kit lens.

3: Use the EVF if you’ve got one. Like any optical finder, bracing the camera against your face helps stability immensely. I’m not recommending going out and buying an add-on finder; these are usually flimsy, unwieldy and dramatically increase the size of the camera – defeating the point of mirrorless in the first place.

Before prayers. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 kit lens.

2: 1/focal length rule doesn’t apply anymore. Why not, aside from crop factor? Because most of the time you’ll be using live view and holding the camera at arms’ length – this means increased propensity towards camera shake. Double, or even triple that for critical shots or action. Or use a flash. And while stabilizers help, they probably bring the safe speed into the 1/fl rule or maybe very slightly better.

Arch. Sony NEX-5, 18-55 kit lens.

1: Compose like an SLR, shoot like a compact. They’re hybrids, right? Treat them as such. You get the DOF of an SLR – which means you have to watch your focus point, and take care in choosing perspectives. But you also have the limitations of a compact – so remember to watch your exposure/ highlights/ shadows; prefocus; don’t expect it to be able to track moving objects. Remember the limitations of both, and that should give you a good idea of how to get the most out of your mirrorless camera.

Hitchcock scene, Vienna. Olympus E-PM1, 45/1.8

See more of my work from the various large-sensor mirrorless cameras here on flickr: Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1; Sony NEX-5; Fuji X100; Leica X1

Part four: Rangefinders

10: Timing, timing, timing: shoot lots and get to know the lag rhythm of your camera. It might feel instant, but it isn’t. That split second can make or break the difference in a critical shot, especially during a fast-paced situation – that fleeting expression, or arrangement of people.

Entranced. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

9: Get to know your lenses: There is no such thing as the perfect lens. All of them have idiosyncrasies, be it focus breathing, focus shift, curved focus planes, flare under certain conditions, or maybe the ability to produce brilliant 14-pointed stars from point light sources at f16. (Don’t laugh, the Leica 21 Summilux ASPH does this.) The better you know your lenses and the way they draw, the more you can exploit their properties to help your pictorial rendition of a given situation. It’s also why I’ve got eight ways to get to 28mm – there’s a huge difference between the Zeiss ZF.2 2/28 ‘Hollywood’ Distagon and the Ricoh GR-Digital III, for instance.

Gluhwein time, Vienna. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH

8: Use a soft release and thumb grip (and maybe front grip). Anything that can make your grip more secure or comfortable, and your shutter release action more gentle, is your friend. I like the Thumbs Up, personally.

Seeing the wood from the trees. Leica M9-P, 21/3.4 Super Elmar ASPH

7: Don’t limit your subjects to the center focus point. You can focus and then recompose. But remember that most lenses aren’t flat field (especially rangefinder designs, which are usually non-retrofocus and spherical) so a little tweak to the focus ring is required for edge subjects – usually to make the focus point slightly closer, as the focal plane will be curved slightly around you. Experience is required to determine exactly how much and when to shift – this is why I also highly recommend using fewer lenses but knowing them well.

Morning mass, Stefansdom. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

6: Use the DoF scales to prefocus. Especially useful with wide lenses, whose large DoF means that you might even be able to shoot hyper focal and not have to focus at all: especially great for being fast and reducing time between seeing the shot and capturing it. Very important skill for street photography and photojournalism. You can practice this by estimating distances and setting your lens with the camera at waist level, then checking in the finder.

Self portraits. Leica M9, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

5: Pay attention to the edges. The frame lines are a suggestion: there will be more included. With experience, you can push the composition a bit and still get everything in.

Color wall. Leica M9-P, 50/2 APO

4: Shoot with both eyes open. The nice, bright, high-magnification finders are great for letting you a) see what’s outside your frame and might make composition better or worse if included or excluded; and b) you can keep both eyes open to enhance your peripheral vision. It’ll also stop you from getting run over.

Tea time. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

3: Know the limitations of the system. By their nature, your finder will probably only cover 28-135, and not be very accurate for 90 and 135. So really, the strengths of the system lie in the 28-75mm range; don’t try and do birding with one of these things and wonder why your results aren’t up to par. (Note: I do use my M9-P for macro work, but that’s a different story entirely.)

Bangkok. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

2: Less is more. Rangefinders are small and light: why burden yourself and turn photography into endurance sherpa-ing? Try reducing your regular kit to two, or better yet, one lens. Either something which provides to distinctly different perspectives, or perhaps something in-between. I choose 28/50, after a long time trying to make the single 35 work for me. It just didn’t agree with the way my eyes worked, which is a shame because the 35/1.4 ASPH FLE I had was easily one of the best lenses I’d ever used, period.

As above, so below. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

1: Check your rangefinder calibration. There’s nothing worse than shooting an entire series at f1.4 and thinking you nailed focus – or at least remembered doing so in the finder while shooting – then being horrified as you open up the set only to find your subjects’ noses in focus and their eyes a distant plane away. If you know how to calibrate your rangefinder, great; if not, it might be the subject of a future post here (but I take no responsibility if you damage something or void your warranty). If you don’t dare, send it in to your dealer. The best thing you can do is have your body calibrated to match all of your lenses – so send them all in at the same time. The next best thing is to have it calibrated for the lens with the shallowest DoF; the one exception is if the lens suffers from focus shift. Then you’ve got no choice but to calibrate for your most frequently used lens and remember which direction to adjust for later. Check calibration often and if you get a new, shallower DoF lens. One last related point: make sure all of your viewfinder windows (VF, RF patch, frame lines, front VF) are clean – you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to focus!

Bonus for Leica M8/9 users: The meter is center weighted and very heavily biased towards protecting highlights. So, for backlit subjects there are a few ways of compensating. a) Lock exposure with the camera aimed at something of roughly equal luminance but not backlit; this works on the shutter half-press position (with a little dot displayed at the top between the leftmost digits in the finder) if you’ve got the release mode set to standard. b) For M9 users, use the rear dial to activate exposure compensation. I personally don’t like this, because I have no idea if I have it set or not, and if so, how much. c) If you’re shooting with fixed and not auto-ISO, then note the shutter reading in the finder, and move the shutter dial to something appropriate. I use a slightly more complicated method, with auto-ISO: if the shutter speed displayed is over the minimum you set, then you know the camera is in base ISO. I just manually set it to something lower; the camera can’t lower the ISO any more, so it overexposes as desired. If the situation is dark and you’re above base ISO, this doesn’t work. In very dark situations, I usually just leave the camera at ISO 1250 and go manual with the exposure.

See more of my work with the Leica M9-P here on Flickr: click here And for earlier work with the M8, click here

Part five: Photojournalism and street

Photojournalism (hereafter PJ) and street photography go hand in hand: they’re about capturing a moment of life. PJ goes a bit further by adding a story to that moment; street can just be an aesthetically pleasing moment in and of itself. Both though require the photographer to be observant and ready. This is what works for me.

Protest Kabila, Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

10: Watch your shutter speeds. You’re going to need more than 1/focal length – maybe 1/2x to be safe, or even 1/3x if you’re running and gunning. You’re moving, your subject is moving, and nothing is steady. Remember also that the higher the resolution your camera, the less forgiving it is of focus errors and camera shake.

Rain, London. Ricoh GRDIII

9: Small, nondescript cameras are best. They don’t draw attention to you – especially in the current day and age of everybody carrying a camera, nobody is going to take you seriously if you have a small black compact. You’d be surprised how much I get away with using the iPhone or Ricoh GR-Digital III. People simply don’t perceive it as threatening in the same way a pro DSLR and 70-200 might be. Compacts also give you more depth of field for a given aperture.

Morning paper, London. Ricoh GRDIII

8: Shoot wide and close. The perspective produces a stronger image; wide lenses are also more forgiving to focus errors and camera shake. And as a bonus, you get context in the frame as par for the course.

Learning English. London. Leica M8, 21/1.4

7: Anticipate and observe. To quote the Cartier-Bresson: pick the decisive moment. To do so, you need to be aware of everything around you; really look. Pay attention to the details. People are fairly predictable; it should be easy to spot if something out of the ordinary is about to happen. Anticipation of the action gives you a vital few seconds more to prepare and be in position, or have the camera out.

Bicycle, Kathmandu. Nikon D700, 24/1.4

6: Blend in. Act like you belong, dress nondescript, and nobody will pay you a second glance. It will make your job a lot easier. If you draw attention to yourself – be it by being uncertain or provocative – then people of course notice.

Oblivious. I was standing 3 feet in front of them. Canon IXUS 220HS

5: Always have the camera to hand. How are you going to get a quick shot off if the camera is in your bag? You should be able to get a shot in less than 5 seconds – sometimes your window is even shorter than that.

Trekking office, Kathmandu. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

4: In a real emergency, help. Yes, our duty as a PJ is to record, document, communicate and raise awareness about the events around you; you help by telling a story. But you don’t have to shoot all the time. Get your shot and then help out the people. Remember that at the end of the day, we’re all human.

Street party. They would need help the following morning. I didn’t stay that long. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

3: Practice, practice, practice. Use your camera until you’re fast and proficient; you should be able to visualize the frame and field of view without having to raise the camera to your eye. You should be able to set things by muscle memory and have a group of settings (if your camera supports this) that configures the camera to be ready to go.

Reflections. Leica X1

2: If spotted, acknowledge your subject. A friendly smile, a sincere nod – all of these things make people feel comfortable with your presence and make your life easy. You don’t have to stop and talk or explain what you’re doing if nobody is asking. Smile and move on. Done.

Smoking break. Olympus E-PM1, 45/1.8

1: Be confident. It is better to say sorry rather than ask permission and miss the shot. With that, go out and be productive.

Martial law, Kathmandu. Nikon D700, 24/1.4

See more of my photojournalism work here on flickr: click here

Part six: Lighting

This post deals with the light you create. You can’t always find what you need, so it’s important to know the dos and don’ts of off camera lighting. My tips apply to speedlight users; I’ve never been a huge fan of monoblocks, nor have I used them very much since Nikon launched their CLS system. Sure, sometimes you wish for more power, but then again you remember that you can go for hundreds, if not nearly thousands, of shots on a set or two of AAs – instead of carrying a 50kg lead acid lump around. Read on.

10: Always shoot in manual mode with flash. Otherwise, there’s no way you can balance your flash and ambient exposure; if you want all flash, then you can dial in the highest sync speed possible – this will help you avoid camera shake. If you let the camera decide, it will usually only get it right for the center portion of the frame when the flash exposure is much greater than the ambient exposure. This is to say, most camera systems are useless at daylight fill, especially under very bright conditions.

Inspector. Note how inside/ outside luminance is balanced. Nikon D3, 24-70, one SB900 in a soft box.

9: Imperfect diffusers and softboxes add character to portraits, but not product shots. Uneven lighting for most product shots just makes the object look odd. For people, it can be strangely flattering. Consider making some shoddy homemade internal baffles for your portrait soft boxes.

Shoddy baffling adds character! D200, 17-55/2.8, 2xSB600s in homemade soft boxes.

8: If you’re controlling lighting, you shouldn’t have blown highlights or blocked up shadows – unless you want them. Self-explanatory. Your lighting isn’t balanced properly. Try again.

Intentional outline. Nikon D3, 105VR, one SB900 off camera.

7: Those clip on diffusers are pointless. A small light source can never replicate a big light source unless you expand (and diffuse) it – be it bouncing off the ceiling, or a softbox. A little clip on diffuser is just going to make a small, diffuse source – which at any distance, looks like a small intense source except weaker. You’ll get the same reflections and general lighting feel. All you’ll have done is a) look stupid b) wasted your money and c) lost at least two stops of light. I’ve never even used the diffuser domes supplied with any of my flashes; they’re still in the plastic bags they came in.

Unrelated shot. Speake-Marin perpetual calendar. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G, one SB900 and diffuser.

6: Duct tape is your friend. Use it to tape flashes in odd positions to whatever supports might be handy; sometimes you just can’t erect a flash stand in the place you want it. But you could tape the flash to the ceiling. I’ve done it before.

The Hollywood shot. Flashes duct taped to curtain poles. Seriously. D3, 24-70/2.8 and three SB900s

5: More flashes are better. I’ve got four; two primary units, one spare, and one more unit to use as a commander on cameras without a built in (Leica M9-P, I’m looking at you). Legend has it that Joe McNally travels with an entire suitcase of SB800s. I dread to think how many batteries he goes through every year.

Alfabeti. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G 2xSB900s

4: If you’re short of lights, consider a reflector. Positioning one light directly opposite the reflector gives you another pseudo-light – depending on the reflector, it could be as little as 1 stop light loss – think of a mirror, for instance. A more diffuse reflector can provide gentle fill.

Leaf shutter benefits. Leica X1, SB900, 1/2000s.

3: Higher sync speeds are better. Pro DSLRs top out at 1/250s for full power, or less power and faster – but these are not true ‘flash speeds’, because the flash has to fire for longer but at reduced power – note how the flash no longer freezes motion at 1/8000s as much as it did at 1/250s. Leaf shutter compacts like the Ricoh GRDIII and Leica X1 both sync to 1/2000s; they’re great for capturing motion or providing balanced daylight fill, where your ambient shutter speed might be very high. You won’t lose the highlights, and you also won’t lose the shadows – thanks to your high sync speed.

Dessert. Balanced with ambient daylight in restaurant. Nikon D700, Zeiss 2/28 Distagon, 2xSB900

2: Remember the eyes. For living subjects, a little catch light reflected in the eye can make all the difference between a flat, boring shot and a portrait that looks alive. Use a reflector, or if you’re using Nikon CLS, the trigger flash on your camera works fine too.

Note the eyes. Leica X1, SB900.

1: Spare batteries are important. Never get caught short. I avoid NiMH as they tend to exhibit the memory effect, especially if not used frequently – as would be typical for your second or third spare set. The Sanyo Eneloop batteries are fantastic – they really do hold charge like alkalines, but have the reuseability and current draw properties of NiMH. I’ve got eight sets of these for my flashes, and only charge them when depleted.

Macro lighting is quite a different game entirely. There isn’t a lot of working distance, and you need a lot of diffusion to create the same apparent perceived light source size.

Part seven: Postproduction and editing

Photoshop is a fix all for everything, right? It’s also come to represent a dirty word; when something has been ‘Photoshopped’ it’s no longer authentic or original, and the skill of the photographer has been severely diminished. Wrong, think again. Photoshop is the equivalent of the darkroom from the film days: sure, you can add things to the scene, but they look odd and unnatural. The main thing you did in the darkroom was finalize the exposure: adjust the density and brightness, and fiddle with the contrast. Maybe some dodge and burn. How? Chemical mixes, timing and cutout masks. We do the same now – except the chemicals are your raw converter and curves layer, the fixer is your save button, and dodge and burn is a brush tool.

So what is editing exactly? The process of removing unwanted material – in this case photographs – to leave a more coherent story or narrative; being selective about what you show is just as important as having something to show in the first place. There’s no point in having technically brilliant but boring images – but you can make a story out of perfectly timed moments, even if they’re a little noisy or blurred.

The flying Vianney Halter for Goldpfeil. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

10: Keep all of your raw files. You never know when somebody might ask for a color version of a B&W image; don’t lose that sale because you were trying to be cheap on storage. Storage IS cheap.

Sinister chitty chitty bang bang. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

9: Sharpening should be the last step. If you sharpen too early on, you’re to end up with extra noise and less tonal information, especially for images with a lot of fine detail. Why? Because of the way sharpening works. It increases apparent acuity between adjacent areas of different luminance by increasing the difference in luminosity between them. Making something brighter or darker – with images containing a lot of fine detail, this means a change to a large area of the image – will inevitably destroy some tonal information, especially at the extreme ends of the tonal range.

If the G-P F1-047 was titanium and on a blue strap…it’s really aluminum and on a tan strap. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

8: Let your images mature before deleting. Look at your images immediately after a shoot and pick out your favorites. Then do this exercise again two weeks later. You’ll probably find that there’s been a big change. Why? Immediately after the shoot, you remember how difficult it was to get one shot; that effort put in affects your artistic judgment. Two weeks later, you’ll probably not remember as clearly, and you’re more likely to go with your first instincts. Go with the latter selection.

A tale of two frames. I initially preferred the first frame; but a month later, I think there’s more of a story and more contrasts in the second one. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

7: Calibrate your monitor. Whether you use one of the Spyders or the built in utility in OS X, it’s important to adjust your monitor to produce as accurate color as possible – this is important for both print and screen; you want to make sure that other people see the same thing you put in so much effort to create. For print, you can attach the color profile to the file; a good printer will be able to match the print to what you see on screen. It’s also important to know the gamut of your monitor; I’ll never do any serious editing on my 11” MacBook Air because the screen has terrible color. On the other hand, the 27” iMac/ Cinema Displays are fantastic, as are the 15” and 17” MacBook Pros.

Intentional color. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

6: Do most of your adjustments in the raw converter. This is important, because the data is in its highest bitrate form – which means making large changes to the file at this stage has the least impact on image quality. If you do highlight recovery on a 16 bit raw file, you’ll probably have a decent stop or two (assuming a good sensor) before you get posterization or false color. Now try doing the same to a jpeg and you’ll see what I mean. By the same token, keep your files in the highest bitrate form until you’re absolutely sure you’re not going to change anything again – and that might be a Photoshop file in 16 bit with all layers, or it might be a quality 12 jpeg. I generally don’t edit again, so I save my finished files as a maximum quality jpeg. Remember that print doesn’t have as much dynamic range as a computer screen, so if it looks fine on a calibrated monitor, it’ll probably look fine in print.

Sunset shadow. Nikon D90, 18-200VR.

5: Buy a good tablet. I like the Wacom Intuos 4. It will help you immensely to lay precise masks and control your dodge and burn; the tip is pressure and tilt sensitive to control brush size and density. It’s much faster than doing things with the mouse, too – once you get used to how the entire tablet area maps to your screen. Get one that suits your screen size. The medium 6×9” is perfect for my 15” MacBook Pro.

The Beach. Leica M8, 50/1.4 ASPH

4: Don’t overdo anything. Turning it up to 11 works for some shots, but not most. Too much sharpening leaves haloes. Too much contrast loses tonal detail. Too much saturation makes it feel unnatural and cartoonish. Etc. And don’t even get me started on overuse of HDR; overlapping tonal values are jarring to the eyes.

Turning it up to 11. Nikon D90, 105VR

3: Always have backups of your backups. I’ve had a situation where a new OS caused some serious issues with my primary computer; the upshot was that none of the files were readable. My primary backup drive – a Maxtor; I’ll never buy one of those again, just too many have failed – started making the click of death when I connected it, and I was able to get most of my data off in time before the drive crashed and died. Good thing there was one more backup copy. My current management strategy is to keep all finished jpegs on my editing computer; there are two duplicate backups with all the raw files (in the same file structure) on external drives, one of which lives in my bag and goes with me everywhere; I also time machine the primary drive whenever I do a backup to the externals. Generally I’ll do a backup once I finish editing a batch, which might be 50 or 100 images or thereabouts. Storage is cheap. Lost files are priceless.

Blue water. Nikon D3, 24-70/2.8 G

2: Integrity matters, especially for photojournalists. Whilst I’ll have no compulsion removing dust from a watch product shot or litter from fine art street photography, I absolutely will NOT touch the content of the image for photojournalism. This is because once you do, and if you get caught, your credibility is instantly nonexistent.

Panerai Mare Nostrum, on a GuB Marine Chronometer. Clean well, because even at this relatively low magnification, it’s very visible. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

1: You can’t polish a turd. Don’t think that you can rescue a compositionally weak image ‘in Photoshop’. You can’t. You can’t change the lighting. If you didn’t get it mostly right in-camera, you’re not going to be able to fix it in Photoshop. You can fix exposure, color, contrast and the way the image appears; you can’t change the content. If an image is good, however, you can make it extraordinary.

Color palette and tonality hugely affects the feel of an image. But the content must be there to tone in the first place. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

Part Eight: General tips for all photographers

Here are some suggestions that apply to everybody, regardless of what or how you shoot.

Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

10: Shoot raw and expose a little bit hot. There’s always a bit of potential to recover highlights in your raw files; some cameras more than others. Know how much yours can tolerate before blowing highlights completely. It’s not just a way to expand dynamic range; exposing hot and bringing down the exposure later actually reduces shadow noise, too. For those of you using a third party RAW converter that doesn’t read proprietary image settings, crank your sharpening in camera up to maximum – it won’t affect the raw file (only the jpeg preview), but you will be able to more easily see if things are in focus or not when using the image review screen.

But we all have favorites. Billingham Hadley Pro. Leica M8, 50/1.4 ASPH

9: There is no perfect bag. Just accept it, and move on. Buy a new one if it takes your fancy but don’t expect it to solve all of your problems. Most of the time I only use a bag if I have other non-photographic items to transport. If it’s camera-only then it just goes over my shoulder.

At the station. Note clean edges and overall feel of the image. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

8: Watch the edges of your frame. Your subject is identified by a) light; b) position in the composition; c) context. The edges add or remove context – and with it, distractions. Use them carefully.

Spotlight. I’d have missed this if I was fiddling with my settings. Olympus E-PM1, Panasonic 20/1.7

7: Learn your equipment. You should be able to operate your cameras like it’s second nature. Muscle memory is your friend, and can make the difference between responding instinctively and getting the shot, or missing it altogether. Practice is the only way to do this.

The ephemeral sushi. Nothing is in focus, the saturation is all over the place, there are hot spots, the color isn’t accurate…but somehow, it works. Olympus E-PM1, Panasonic 20/1.7

6: Look at lots of images. Famous works. Not so famous works. Flickr. It’s a good source of both inspiration and way of helping you to hone your sense of composition.

But surely it will make me a better photographer!

5: Don’t buy new gear unless you’re sure you’re not the limitation. Make sure you know exactly what it is that your current gear isn’t doing for you and how the new gear will solve it.

Homage a Rene Magritte. Prague. Olympus E-PM1, 45/1.8

4: Look at other mediums of art for inspiration. It could be painting, design, architecture; for instance I love the way Magritte renders clouds, and I look for that kind of light when shooting skies.

Gorilla in the shadows, Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

3: Look for interesting light, not just interesting subjects. But of course it’s best to have both. The best photos present an unusual subject in an extraordinary way.

Precision. I waited for both the sun and the bird. Nikon D700, 24/1.4

2: Be very, very selective with your keepers. Keep only the best. I throw away 99% of what I shoot. Not because it’s bad, but because if you shoot good pictures, then keeping only excellent will make you excellent after a while; if you shoot excellent on average and keep only outstanding, then you’ll be outstanding. And so on. Continually push and challenge yourself – set assignments, practice, tasks. Go outside of your comfort zone, and the persistence will yield results.

Serendipity. Interesting things happen when you stick a compact inside a marine chronometer then do wide-angle macrophotography with it; this was my first time trying it. Ricoh GR-Digital III

1: Shoot lots. Practice, practice, practice. Experiment. If it doesn’t work, at least you’ve learned not to do it. If it does, great – another technique to add to the arsenal. I always get asked ‘how do I pick it up? How did you pick it up?’ and my answer is the same: I experimented and shot a lot. But I also made sure I made a note of what I did, so I learned something from the experience. When I started, I was probably doing a thousand frames a day – 99.9% were crap, of course – but slowly that ratio swung. Always carry a camera – even if it’s just your phone – and don’t be afraid to use it.

Part nine: Birding and wildlife

The focus of this post is on birding and wildlife: it’s something that every aspiring serious amateur photographer will probably try at least once, usually right after they purchase an enormous telephoto lens. Bragging rights are only good if you have the images to go along with the lens.

Cattle egret. Nikon D3, 400/2.8 VRII

10: Dress right, bring mosquito/ insect repellant, and carry a bottle of water and a hat. The environment where some animals live can be harsh and remote. You’re not going to be concentrating on the photography if you’re not comfortable.

Scarlet ibises. Nikon D3, 70-300VR

9: Pay attention to the time of day. There’s no wrong or right time to shoot, but there is good light and bad light. Bad light is flat and uninteresting, and doesn’t flatter your subject. Good light is always tangential and thus creates contrasts; better still, it can isolate your subject from the background. And if there’s plenty of it, that’s a bonus because you can use a higher shutter speed.

Eagle. Nikon D3, 300/2.8 VR + 1.4x

8: A sharp but noisy image is better than a noise-free but blur one. Unless your intention is to be artistic or atmospheric, it’s better to have grain than none but also no idea what the subject actually is. This goes for all subjects, and types of photography: if your subject and composition are strong enough, nobody is going to care that the shot is grainy – look at Robert Capa’s Normandy Beach landing photos.

Albino peacock. Nikon D3, 300/2.8 VR + 1.4x TC

7: Use single point continuous AF. Avoid the temptation to let the camera decide the AF point; it will almost never focus on the eyes, and certainly won’t be able to recognize animal faces (except perhaps some chimpanzees.) Continuous AF is necessary because your depth of field is razor thin; a little movement to and fro either by you or your subject can move focus dramatically.

A thoughtful scratch. Nikon D200, 300/2.8 VR + 1.4x TC

6: Shoot in bursts. Two reasons for this: action usually unfolds in a sequence, and the first image may not be the most interesting; secondly, if you’re using a borderline shutter speed, then the burst helps to negate the effects of your finger pushing the shutter (and also camera). The first and last shots will usually be blur, but the middle group will be sharp because you didn’t have to move your finger in between.

Stealth duck. Nikon D200, 300/2.8 VR + 1.4x TC

5: Focus on the eyes. With all living things, the eyes are the key to the soul. I can’t explain why, but everybody knows that a portrait with the subject looking at the camera is a lot more powerful than one where you just see the back of the person’s head. The same goes for wildlife. Better yet if you can get a catchlight in the pupil, be it the sun or a very small fill flash.

Caught in the act of lunch. Nikon D200, AI 500/4 P

4: Have support. I don’t mean a sherpa team or an agony aunt. The longer the lens, the more support you’re going to need. A 0.1 degree camera movement with a wide lens covering 100 degrees horizontally is going to produce 0.1% blur, which you can probably get away with on a small print; but an 0.1 degree camera movement with a 5 degree field of view – corresponding to a 500mm lens – is equivalent to a whopping 2% blur. That shot will be so bad it might as well be completely out of focus. A gimbal head and solid tripod legs are great, but not very mobile. What I prefer to do is use a stout carbon-fiber monopod and rest my arm on the top of the lens to tension the system; if I’ve got something convenient to lean on, then I’ll use a bean bag to support the lens. This gets worse as your lenses get longer – I normally used an old manual focus 500/4 with 1.4x converter on DX, meaning 1,050mm equivalent. Handheld, this is an impossible combination to aim and hold, let alone get a steady shot with. With the monopod technique, 1/50s was routinely possible.

Angry cassowary. Olympus E-410, Nikon AI 500/4 P + 1.4x TC

3: Know our subject. Do your research, learn behavioral patterns, feeding patterns and anything else such as favorite watering spots or trees; the more you know about your subject, the easier it will be to find it and go unnoticed. Also, identify rare or unusual behavior – further adding something unique to your image.

The bird with the sun hat. Canon 1D Mark III, 500/4 L IS

2: Patience, patience, patience. The rarer your subject, the longer it’s going to take for you to a) find it and b) get into a position where you can shoot it, or where it stays still for long enough for you to get a good image. Give up and call it a day only when you absolutely can’t stand waiting any longer; some of the most stunning wildlife images – think of the BBC Planet Earth series – were only captured after years of waiting.

Dancing flamingoes. Nikon D2H, 55-200/4-5.6 DX

1: Be ready and stay alert. Usually most interesting action happens in a split second; if you’re not ready with your settings fixed and your finger on the shutter, you’re going to miss it. This one seems to conflict with #2, but it really doesn’t; it’s what makes wildlife photography so difficult. Endless waiting, but the need to be vigilant. In the end though, the results pay off.

More of my nature and wildlife work can be seen here on flickr

Part 10: Macrophotography

Lange Datograph. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

10: Watch your reflections! Every time I shoot something polished and reflective, I keep thinking of this viral internet meme called reflectoporn. Don’t google it. You have been warned.

Jaeger Le-Coultre Gyrotourbillon 2 tourbillon. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G with 72mm extension.

9: Use bellows or extension tubes to get more magnification. I’ve got both; remember you need to compensate exposure for light loss as your magnification increases. The Nikons do this automatically, but most other cameras don’t. Macro lenses and extension tubes/ bellows work great; make sure they’re high quality items because cheap ones will have non-planar mounts, and result in odd distortion. Note that some lenses won’t work with bellows or tubes because they either bring the focal point inside the rear element of the lens, or the lens design isn’t compatible because the focusing elements are internal.

There’s no way you’re getting the entire dragonfly in focus without focus stacking. And they don’t stay still for that long. Nikon D3, 105/2.8 VR + 1.4x TC

8: Diffraction vs. DoF: a tradeoff. Pick one. As you stop down more, your DoF increases; but go too far and you also start to lose resolution because of diffraction. Exactly when this kicks in depends on your focal length and the pixel pitch of your camera; on the D700 with a 60mm lens, it starts around f22 and becomes very noticeable by f32. There are a couple of solutions: use a shorter focal length – the 35 ASPH FLE gives me more DoF by f16; or use a tilt shift lens.

Ants are skittish. Don’t get too close. I’ve had bugs jump on my lens before. Nikon D200, 105/2.8 VR

7: Working distance is your friend. There’s more room for lighting, and less chance of disturbing the subject (especially for those of you who shoot small bugs or insects). For product shoots, since you’re further away, reflections are smaller – and thus require less retouching.

Speake-Marin Immortal Dragon. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZM 2.8/28 Biogon

6: Macro lenses are used for macro work for a reason. That’s because they’re optimized for near subject distances; the plane of focus is flat and they have correction for common aberrations (spherical, lateral CA, LoCA) especially close up. With a normal lens, as you get closer, the aberrations and distortions get more and more obvious – which is why you don’t want to use a normal lens and extension tubes. There are two exceptions: when you have no choice, and when using certain particular lenses. A good example is the Leica 35/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE; who’d have thought a documentary/ reportage lens with a 70cm near focus limit performs spectacularly on a D700 with extension tubes?

Jaeger Le-Coultre Gyrotourbillon I. Nikon D700, Leica 35/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE

5: Continuous light sources are good. Not for primary lighting, but for helping focus and composition. Better yet if you mirror your lighting position with the secondary lights. I use a pair of 120 LED video light panels.

Critical focus plane. Roger Dubuis MuchMore. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G + 36mm extension tube.

4: Use DOF preview to check your composition. DOF preview? Composition? How are there related? Simple: as you stop down, your composition changes again. And there’s a big difference between f2.8 and f22 at macro distances.

Sinn 556. This looked very different in the finder because almost nothing was in the plane of focus. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

3: Clean your subject well! The better the lighting, the more uniform the subject texture, and the higher the magnification, the more dust you’re going to see. It’s much easier to clean the real object than try to do it in photoshop.

Lange Datograph. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G. Focus stack of 20 images with bellows and extension tubes. Magnification set, then camera moved on a rail. If I didn’t, the images wouldn’t align properly because they’d all be at different magnifications. The blue screws at left are about 0.5mm across.

2: Set magnification, not focus. What’s the difference? Each lens gives a certain magnification ratio for a particular focus distance; if you focus first (or only focus) then you’ll find the composition changing – especially at the borders – as the image snaps into focus. I decide how much of the subject I want to cover, and then move the camera to focus. This is especially important at high magnifications – I work all the way up to 6:1.

Speake-Marin SM2. A short exposure time stops the balance dead – and this thing rotates through 270 degrees eight times per second. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G + 72mm of extension tubes.

1: Keep your exposure times short. You’re going to be wondering how. I use a flash and the highest sync speed the camera supports; because you’re stopped down and at base ISO, 99.9% or more of the light comes from the flash. And flash times – even at maximum power – are less than 1/1000s usually. Lower power ratings are even faster – this is more than enough to stop camera shake even at very high magnifications. The upshot? I don’t use tripods; they’ve been relegated to holding my flashes! I value the freedom of composition given by handholding the rig. The one exception to this rule is when I need to do focus stacking.

Be creative. Girard Perregaux F1-047. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

More of my watch work can be seen here on flickr

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Understanding lens-related descriptive terms

August 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

I realize that in almost all of my past lens reviews, I use terms whose meanings may not be immediately obvious to everybody – allow me firstly to apologize for that, and remedy the situation by explaining some of the more comment terms I use. Note: This is not a technical lexicon (that’s in the works) but rather an attempt to help readers get an understanding of what I mean by ‘luminous transparency’, for instance. I know a lot of you are going to ask for images; I’ll add them in the future once I can find suitable examples. In the meantime, read the text and see if you can spot what I’m seeing in review images, or alternatively, make a small donation via Paypal to contribute towards a straightjacket if you think I’ve gone completely insane. MT

Aberration
Any sort of limitation in the optics that causes distortions in the final image, i.e. straight lines not rendered straight, curved planes of focus, incomplete spectra resulting in inaccurate colors etc – it’s a catchall term for imperfections.

Astigmatism
An effect where the left and right sides of the lens do not render symmetrically, e.g. left edge softer than right edge. Usually the product of misaligned elements. Note that most lenses are capable of theoretically much better results than in reality; the limitation is due to manufacturing tolerances and the impossibility of aligning everything perfectly. Such optical limitations are far more obvious on high resolution sensors, which means that you should really test the specific lens sample you’re going to buy before you actually pay for it…
Note that astigmatism can also be a design flaw where sagittal and tangential rays come into focus at different planes; it looks quite similar to coma. (Thank you Oskar O for pointing this out.)

Bokeh
A general reference to the out of focus areas in an image. Smooth bokeh has no uneven luminance values across the out of focus areas, or hard/ sharp edges, and renders even complex out-of-focus subjects in a uniformly blurred manner. Nervous bokeh is mostly smooth, but can be provoked into double images with the wrong kind of out of focus subject. Bad bokeh is full of oddities like double images, hard edges, artificial highlights, texture in blur areas etc – in other words, it distracts the eye from the primary subject and outweighs it visually. Swirly bokeh is where the background areas are rendered in a spiral pattern as though rotated; this is a trait of many fast lenses – especially the Leica 50/1 Noctilux.

Chromatic aberration
Light is made up of different wavelengths; uncorrected, these focus at different distances away from the lens, resulting in a lateral spread of color across the focal plane. Well corrected lenses use pairs of chromatic doublet elements that bend all of the wavelengths of light by the same amount at every doublet; this ensures that all wavelengths of light focuses in the same plane. Chromatic aberration, or CA, manifests as red-blue fringing on high contrast areas – this is the image separating out into its constituent spectra. Red and blue are usually the most obvious because they have the greatest difference in wavelengths – between 450 and 750nm or thereabouts.

Cinematic
This is one of the tougher properties to describe, and very personal. For me, a lens is cinematic if it has a few properties – smooth background bokeh, and transparency in foreground bokeh; slightly biased but accurate color transmission – usually warm; minimal to zero chromatic aberration; gentle flare; a well-defined plane of focus. These properties usually require at least a short telephoto to achieve, but there are some shorter lenses that do admirably well – the Zeiss ZF 21/2.8, ZF 28/2, Nikon AFS 24/1.4, Leica 35/1.4 ASPH FLE, 50/1.4 ASPH and 50/0.95 ASPH come to mind.

Cold
A lens whose color transmission is biased in favor of the shorter wavelengths, i.e. blues; it attenuates reds.

Coma
The spreading of point light sources; usually at the edge of the frame. Points will not be rendered as points, but instead somewhat egg shaped – a corona of white with a bright ‘yolk’ at the center.

Contrast
The way a lens renders luminance differences in a scene – high contrast means that these are exaggerated; low contrast means that they are minimized. Low contrast lenses are good for high-contrast scenes, because they help to limit the dynamic range of the transmitted image – and thus leave it within the sensor’s capabilities.

Dark
A lens with high saturation and very low flare or internal reflection; ‘darkness’ in a lens mean that colors are rendered in a rich, saturated manner; low flare and internal reflection reduces the overall key of the image and eliminates bright but low-contrast areas.

Distortion
A flaw in the image where straight lines in the subject are not rendered as such. Perspective distortion is when verticals or horizontals that are not perfectly parallel to the imaging plane converge or diverge; lens-induced distortion (barrel or pincushion) is when straight lines are rendered as curving.

Field curvature
An ideal lens projects a flat subject plane onto a flat image plane; most lenses suffer from a mild degree of curvature in both, which is to say that the projected surfaces of subject and image are the opposite sides of a sphere – curving away from the sensor plane and towards the optical center of the lens at the edges. In real terms, this means that the plane of focus in the subject isn’t always the same distance away from the camera.

Flare
A bright spot in an image caused by internal reflections off surfaces within a lens; usually caused by stray non-image forming light coming in at an oblique angle and reflecting off elements; this kind of flare is well-defined and usually lens-shaped. Flare can also take the form of a general lowering of contrast that appears as a white haziness across the image; this is caused by light scattered off the internal surfaces within a lens assembly – including but not limited to edges of individual elements, helicoids, etc.

Flat field
A lens that does not have perceptible field curvature. Most macro lenses and super telephotos are flat field.

Gentle
A rather abstract concept that is used to describe tonal gradations and contrast; shallow output gradation for a given input gradation would be shallow; the opposite would be strong.

Latitudinal chromatic aberration
Colored fringes (multiple images) on a solid edge caused by different wavelengths of light not focusing in the same place.

Longitudinal chromatic aberration
Colored fringing in the foreground and background areas outside the plane of focus, caused by prismatic separation of different wavelengths of light by the lens elements.

Luminosity
Another useful but slightly vague term; my idea of a luminous lens is one which has some minor degree of flare and moderate to low contrast, resulting in a bright or high-key image. Blacks are not always rendered as true black, and images shot with the lens at the correct exposure turn out somewhat brighter than expected. Not necessarily representative of low microcontrast.

Macrocontrast
The projected difference in tonality in the image, relative to the perceived difference between bright and dark areas of substantial actual luminosity differences in a subject. In short: how black are the blacks, and how white are the whites?

Microcontrast
Not quite the opposite of macro contrast – microcontrast is the lens’ ability to maintain small luminance differences in a subject and transfer them to the imaging plane. Note that lenses which have low CA are typically high microcontrast, as there is little ‘averaging out’ of fine detail structures when all of the light from the subject lands up at the same spot.

Neutral
A neutral lens is one without tonal or hue biases in any direction (warm or cold, light or dark). It reproduces exactly what it sees.

Purple fringing
Any portion of the image, usually high contrast, that has a purple glow around it; this is often confused with a lens effect but is actually a sensor effect; it’s due to minor internal reflections off the coatings of the microlens array covering the individual photosites. The color is uniform around the high contrast area, and does not shift left-right as chromatic aberrations would.

Resolution/ resolving power
The ability of a lens to reproduce fine detail structures. Related very intimately to microcontrast – a lens that can resolve high amounts of detail must necessarily be able to resolve small luminosity differences in adjacent areas.

Sharpness
A perceptual effect rather than an actual, measurable property; not to be confused with resolution. Something can be sharp with little resolution – i.e. able to project large differences in macro contrast with little chromatic aberration, creating a sharp edge; but have poor microcontrast resulting in low resolution, but high perceived sharpness. Rather, sharpness is a subjective measure for how much difference we perceive between adjacent areas of different tonal values.

Spherochromatism
The presence of chromatic aberration in bokeh – out of focus highlights separating into distinct red-green portions.

Tonality
The lens’ ability to reproduce luminance and color differences in a scene, and the nature of how it renders these differences in the image.

Transition zone
The plane represented by the distance from the camera where things just start to lose critical focus; a bit in front of and a bit behind the actual focal plane.

Transmission
The lens’ ability to capture light and transfer it to the image plane, limited only by the physical aperture/ iris of the lens. Applies to both the overall amount of light – T stop vs f stop – and the spectral transmission of the lens,i.e. which light spectra the actual types of glass allow through. See also this article on T stops and F stops

Transparency
The ability of a lens not to impart any of its own distinguishing characteristics on the image; it renders the scene as-seen, without any distracting properties or aberrations. My idea of a transparent lens is one with high microcontrast, moderate macrocontrast, natural spectral transmission with good saturation, and a T stop that’s close to its F stop. Bokeh is simply blurred and does not exhibit nervousness or swirliness; foregrounds and backgrounds are equally smooth. Such a beast is a rare piece of optics indeed.

Warm
A lens whose color transmission is biased in favor of the longer wavelengths, i.e. reds; it attenuates blues.

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Thoughts on copyright, intellectual property, images and Section 114A

August 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

Here’s a question of moral fiber for you: if you were moderately hungry, for a let’s say a piece of fruit; you happened to walk past an apple on a table. Would you take it, if:
a) A sign said ‘please help yourself’
b) There was no sign, and no obvious owner
c) There was a tag on the apple saying ‘this belongs to’
d) The table with the apple on it was in a grocery store.

Most people would take it in situation a); some might take it in situation b); and almost nobody in c) and d) because it would be outright theft. Simple, right?

Let’s look at this situation again. Suppose you needed an image of an object. You find one on the internet that suits your purposes. Would you download and use it, without asking, if:
a) The image was under a creative commons license
b) The image was a sample for royalty-free or licensed stock
c) The image was on somebody else’s gallery site, say Flickr
d) The image was on somebody else’s site with a watermark and ‘all rights reserved’ in the fine print.

Not such a straightforward answer now, is it? For one, people tend to behave with much less regard and decency in the anonymity of the internet than in the real world. Images are intellectual property. This has monetary value, especially if you are a photographer; taking them without permission if you are not allowed to do so is plainly theft. The answer to the above dilemma is that only in situation a) would you be able to use the image without obtaining the image owner’s permission. b), c) and d) are all theft. However, most of the time asking nicely and offering credit is usually enough for the image owner to agree. After all, everybody knows that anything and everything put on the internet is fair game for viewing and public consumption.

Returning to the fruit analogy, the problem comes when there’s nobody doing any policing; how many of you would still follow the law to the letter if you were almost certain you’d never get caught? The reality is that it’s impossible for a photographer to police their own IP on the internet; there’s simply no way to prove that an image hasn’t been used other than by seeing every single image on the web and coming to the conclusion that none of those images are yours.

It gets even more complicated: although use of an image for any sort of use other than the license granted – and creative commons is the only license that lets you use an image without attribution (usually) for non-commercial purposes – is theoretically theft, there’s no point in following legal recourse if there’s no value to be gained. In such situations, the only people who win are the lawyers. Thus we are left with a perceptive difference – even amongst photographers – that ripping an image that’s not yours for editorial or blogging purposes isn’t as ‘bad’ as commercial use.

True, but theft is theft – would it matter if somebody stole the apple to eat themselves or to sell on to somebody else? No.

It doesn’t help that the majority of photographers are completely unaware of their own rights, and don’t bother issuing licenses or clear terms of engagement and usage conditions to clients or recipients of images; the problem here is that there’s now no way of proving whether the user of the image is a rightful licensee or not – such claims will be extremely weak in a court of law, because of the precedent that the photographer himself/ herself does not value their own images or intellectual property.

There’s an obvious cascade here: If the photographer isn’t aware of their rights, and doesn’t stand up for them, how can they communicate that to clients or persons infringing? The answer is, they can’t. And you can be sure that nobody else is going to, because it simply isn’t in their best interests to do so. This results in a wide base of consumers of media who simply expect it to be free, and pout and lose their temper when they’re told it isn’t.

I’ve recently had several cases of unauthorized image use – some on blogs, some editorial, and some commercial – not one single person bothered to have the simple courtesy to ask if they could use the images in question. I would have given permission for editorial use with attribution; for commercial use with licensing (if you’re using it to make money, it’s only fair that I should receive a license fee for helping you to do so). The most ignoble part of it was that in all cases, images were stripped from the server or screen capped, most of the time with the watermarks cropped out, and in some cases, manipulated to form horrible collages or crops – with the watermarks in. There’s another obvious problem with this: not only does it clearly demonstrate that all of the offenders knew what they were doing, but they also didn’t care. Do you think they would feel happy if somebody did the same to their content? Would they sit back and do nothing? I don’t think so, somehow. I put a lot of time and effort into creating content for this site – images, text, graphics etc – and it angers me when I see somebody else profiting off it without even the courtesy to ask permission. Only one apologized when confronted. The rest didn’t even respond, and will be the recipients of legal documents in short order.

It gets worse: what if one of the images used without permission is used in a defamatory or negative way? Or even displayed badly, but with the photographer’s watermark in place? The reputation of the photographer is on the line here – both professionally (what if influential people/ potential clients see the poor crops or presentations and make conclusions unfairly, leading to loss of business?) and legally – if used for defamatory purposes, the photographer can be liable – the onus of proof is on them to demonstrate that that was not the intention, and use was without permission. As with all demonstrations of negative proof, it’s extremely difficult to do and highly time consuming. You as a photographer have a responsibility to your own work and image to ensure that they are not used in a negative manner.

This problem isn’t just limited to images – music, articles, writing, artwork – anything creative that can be easily replicated and distributed – is also fair game. The more effort required to produce something, the more likely the creator is to defend their rights – you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be almost no court cases involving camera phone images, but no end of those for piracy of big-budget movies. Simple rule: the more effort you have to put into creating something, the more value it should have – else economics simply don’t make sense.

Speaking of economics, there’s a concerning trend here, too: free markets are dictated by willing buyer/ willing seller; prices fluctuate proportional to demand. If there are no or few willing payers for photography in today’s marketplace, what does that mean for the industry as a whole? Aside from the big budget productions that still require commissions, you can be sure that will translate not only into falling photographer rates, but also increasing image theft or copyright infringement. It’s happening already, and looking rather grim.

So as a photographer, what can you do to prevent this? What can you do to safeguard your rights and preserve the value of your images? Several very simple things:
1. Do not use anybody else’s images without permission, except if the images are available under a creative commons license, and even then, only for non-commercial use. If you have used images in the past or are still using them, either remove them or seek permission from the owner of the image. Don’t forget to give credits.
2. Issue licenses to all users of your own images, that clearly state the parameters of use (consideration, applicable images/ file names, date and region of validity, permitted media) and some form of signed agreement.
3. If you see images being used which clearly do not belong to the photographer, please make the photographer aware if you can – often this is the only way we will find out (and thank you to those readers who’ve drawn such situations to my attention in the past)
4. Support photographers who are exercising their rights. If there is enough social pressure not to do something, it will reduce in prevalence and hopefully eventually cease.

I want to finish this article by talking about a new act that’s coming into force affecting all Malaysians: Section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950, amendment passed April 2012. It’s the complete opposite of intellectual property rights: the implication is that we are now legally liable for every single distributed piece of information via whatever networked means we are deemed to control or have administration rights over, whether we posted it or not. If somebody hacks your site and posts a defamatory, libelious comment or something similar, you are responsible. If somebody leaks confidential information, you are responsible. If somebody uses your site, your devices, or even your internet connection, you are responsible – regardless of whether you did it or not, or whether you were a willing participant or not. Yes, that means if your laptop was stolen at gunpoint, then used to rob a bank, you are legally liable to be prosecuted for the bank robbery. The onus of negative proof is now on you, the site owner – and every good scientist will tell you, that’s impossible to do. Notably, the act does not cover copyright infringement – so that means you have no additional legal recourse if somebody decided to steal one of your images.

If this seems a bit stupid, it is. At the moment it is unclear how the act will be enforced, but you can be sure that if it’s anything like ISA, it probably won’t be fairly applied. The troubling thing is just how much power this gives to criminals and would-be hackers – if you’re webmaster of a popular site, it’s probably time to change your passwords and increase the security around your servers. Sad to say this, but between poor recognition of legitimate intellectual property rights and enforcement of liability against something you didn’t do, Malaysia has taken one enormous step backwards for creativity and e-commerce. I’m not shutting down this site yet, but I’m also not ruling it out if enforcement of the law becomes unreasonable. For more information or to support the opposition to 114A, visit www.Stop114A.wordpress.com

Apologies for the very serious, heavy article, but I feel that I must use my little soapbox as well as I can to raise awareness and defend the fort for all fellow photographers. Let’s keep this business viable for all of us. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, copyright, essay, intellectual property, ip, law, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, ownership, photography, thein

What it means to be a professional

August 12, 2012 by Ming Thein

Ostensibly, professional photographers are people who make their living – or the majority of it – from photography or related activities. A profession is a vocation: you take pride in your work, and don’t dabble. Clients rely on you to deliver what was agreed in the contract or letter of engagement, and there is always a letter of engagement with clear terms. Bottom line: money changes hands for services rendered.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about skill. This isn’t to say that there is no skill required to be a good professional photographer, but rather than it really doesn’t seem to be the determining factor in whether one gets the job or not – I’ve been learning this the hard way over the last few months. An event photographer who just randomly aims his camera at groups of people and blasts them with flash can be a professional if all he does is that, and pays his rent with the proceeds. Similarly, perhaps one of the members of Magnum might be an investment magnate on the side; clearly he doesn’t need the photojournalism income, and this doesn’t make him a professional.

Do you see something wrong with those sweeping statements? I certainly do. Yet this is the perception of the industry, and the public at large – and most importantly, that of the majority of clients, too. I’ve always thought of honesty as the best policy – there’s no point in pretending you’re a pro if you’re not. I’ve always told my clients (at least until March this year) that I’m not a full time photographer, but I do deliver professional results.

What does this mean? One thing above all else: consistency. Anybody who takes enough photographs can pull together a portfolio of 10 decent ones; or even 10 excellent ones; however, that may be all they’ve gotten out of say 100 or 200 tries*. On the other hand, if you see similar quality across the board, in every shoot, and the portfolio just happens to be full of slightly better images than the rest – you’ve found a true professional. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, or who the client is, or what conditions they’re working under, they deliver the goods every time. This is particularly important for photojournalists, who must be conditioned to react instantly or miss the shot. And the gear doesn’t matter: a pro will use the right tool for the job, but you could give him a box brownie and the image wouldn’t be that fundamentally different: composition, lighting etc should not change. (Image quality is a different matter altogether, of course).

In every every other industry, being a professional implies that there is a minimum standard that you can expect – a professional dentist or doctor would have a degree, and some years of housemanship, for instance; a professional electrician would be able to wire something without electrocuting themselves (or you); a professional accountant would be able to file your taxes without landing you in trouble with the authorities**. I say ‘implies’, because like with all things, there are varying standards of service. But for the most part, the vast majority of people charging money for that service do know what they’re doing.

*One try would be one event, one wedding, one set of watch images, etc. – with several dozen, if not several hundred images per try.
**Taxation is perhaps the only branch of accountancy where creativity is not only encouraged, but rewarded.

The creative sector is a bit more of a minefield, because everything is subjective. Value is relative – if what you want is a reproduction, then shallow depth of field and soft focus isn’t going to cut it for you – similarly, portraits don’t generally flatter if they’re shot so as to optimize for resolution. Although there are general rules as to what constitutes a good image, and what constitutes a bad one, one can push the envelopes so far that there no longer becomes any clear lines – ultimately, it’s up to whoever is paying the bills. And this is the second thing that differentiates a true professional from an amateur: they deliver what the client wants. This implies a few things: they have the technical ability to execute; they may or may not require the creative ability to translate the client’s vision into a frame, and endow with with their own touch; or they may be required to create an execute the entire concept and shoot. I’ve had the whole spectrum; we must be prepared to wear many hats. Even if the client’s idea may not be the best possible solution you can see for that particular problem (e.g. the lighting is boring, or the framing or angle is too conventional) – we still execute as best we can, and try to tweak it to put our mark of individuality on it – after all, the work will eventually become an advertisement for ourselves, so we must put some pride into it. And it’s also for this reason that inevitably professionals will also try a few creative variations that aren’t on the shot list, in the hope that the client goes for them over or in addition to the original images.

The next distinction is choice: for most working professionals, there is no choice: we take all the jobs we can, partially because volume correlates directly to our income, and partially because you never know what contacts or leads an assignment now may open up in the future. In an increasingly tough photographic market, the reality is that most pros cannot afford to turn down jobs; for every well-paying assignment with a good amount of creative freedom, there are plenty of run-of-the-mill ‘shot factory’ type jobs; though we try, standard pack-shot images from these shoots will never be portfolio-grade material; these clients will probably never make our CV or be publicized; but as much as we don’t like these jobs, we still accept them because they pay the bills, and keep us afloat until the next dream assignment comes along. We know how to price jobs to take into account contingencies, equipment, bad weather, things we need to hire for the job. We understand licensing, intellectual property, and how to protect our image rights***. People who do not make their living from photography do not need to do this, and have the luxury to shoot only the subjects that interest them – consequently, this gives risen to a lot of highly skilled amateurs, and a lot of jaded, creatively-stagnated professionals. However, put the amateur outside his comfort zone, and the results will be decidedly mixed. The pro will soldier on and deliver the expected level of quality, but there’s a good chance that he won’t produce anything exceptional, either.

***Using images without permission is theft, people. A jeweler makes rings for a living – you wouldn’t take one without paying for it. A photographer makes photographs for a living – yet plenty of people either expect images for free, or just help themselves…this is not cool.

And that brings me to the final easily quantifiable distinction: being prepared. Even if something outside the normal course of work happens, the pro is prepared and ready to continue; an example could be as simple as having a spare body, extra lighting equipment if the client changes their mind and wants an outdoor shoot, or even being ready to work under pressure with an audience.

So where is the happy medium? If you can make some of your living from photographic assignments, and some of it elsewhere, perhaps. I don’t know because I’m still trying to figure out what the balance is; the months where I’ve got plenty of commercial work tends to end with a very drained, tired, uninspired feeling; but the months where I’ve got time to be creative also tend to be financial black holes.

Above all, though, I believe that ‘being professional’ should mean something beyond just making your living off it – it should be an embodiment of the term when taken out of context, as in “he acted professionally in that situation”. In summary, here’s my opinion of what makes a true professional photographer (and you’re welcome to differ):
– Doesn’t have any other occupations to distract his/her commitment.
– Consistently delivers the same quality shown in his/her portfolio, i.e. the portfolio is representative of the person, not an exceptional set of outliers.
– Accepts assignments out of financial necessity, but gives them 100% effort and commitment regardless of whether they are interesting or not.
– Continually seeks to improve their personal development and skill level
– Is always prepared for any conceivable eventuality, and has the experience to deal with it and still fulfill the contract.
– Should always act with the client’s best interests in mind, in a fair, ethical an honorable manner. What does this mean? Price equally, don’t discriminate. If you make a mistake, fix it. You’ll be surprised how many photographers don’t do this****.

Now to work on increasing the income bit. MT

****The infamous wedding photography fiasco that’s been making the rounds across the Singaporean forums over the last month or so, for instance.

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Observations and commentary on the state of the photographic industry

August 8, 2012 by Ming Thein

The photography industry as we know it is changing. In this article, I want to examine some of the dynamics of the ‘old’ industry, and the ‘new’ industry – and how we as photographers can survive commercially. In some ways, this is the state of how I perceive the actual roles of the various job titles in the past, and how they’ve now evolved to fit the new ecosystem.

In the pre-digital era, and up to the transition point – oh, I suppose 2004 or so, when DSLRs became accessible to the mainstream:

Camera companies – Made cameras and lenses only. Made money from both of these; product generations were long (10+ years!).

Camera shops – Made money from selling photographic equipment to individual consumers.

Film companies – Made film for those cameras, and sometimes cameras and lenses too. Made money from this.

Amateur photographers – Bought mid-level cameras and film, used services of labs, publishers, photo schools etc.

Professional photographers – Bought cameras and film, especially the aspirational products; used services of labs, publishers, galleries, taught at photo schools. Made money by charging for images and prints.

Stock agencies – Held large collections of high-grade images for licensing; made money through royalties. License fees in the same order of magnitude of cost as hiring a professional for the job (usually).

Printing companies/ labs/ developers – Processed film, made prints, made money from this.

Publishers – Produced books, magazines, etc; made money through advertising and sales.

Galleries – Exhibited and sold prints.

Photo schools – Made money through selling courses to amateurs.

Today, the landscape looks very different (old guard remains in bold):

Camera companies – Made cameras and lenses only. Some now make sensors and electronics, too; have begun a battle of attrition killing each other on price in the hopes of increasing market share. We’re in the odd position of having CSCs that cost less than some compacts, and CSCs that cost more than some DSLRs. Money is made on the lenses and accessories, rarely on the camera bodies, and almost never on the compacts. The smaller players who can’t compete on price or incredibly short-lived generations have and will die or merge (e.g. Ricoh Pentax, Sigma).

Camera shops – A lot of the larger brick and mortar chains have gone; sunk by huge overheads that can no longer be sustained by narrow margins or price wars with online companies. In developed markets, people go to fondle, but not to buy – the prices are poor, and the service is abysmal – usually, nobody has any clue what they’re selling. In developing countries – like Malaysia, for example – only the large volume dealers survive; again, it’s a price thing; we are an even more price-sensitive environment than the US. RM50 ($15) can often make the difference between selling an M9, or not. Even the rich here – perhaps especially the rich – are very, very price sensitive. To make things worse, the local distributors give bonus payouts if a certain volume threshold is met; in order to meet the volume, you have to lower prices…you can see where this destructive spiral goes. It’s possible that these places may form small chains, but unlikely because it doesn’t make sense to have multiple physical locations if you can serve a lot of customers via the internet. Basically: the days of your corner pro shop are long gone. Interestingly, the lack of availability for niche models means that even more attention is paid to what’s written on the internet by pros and so-called ‘experts’.

Film companies – Kodak has gone under, and sold off the digital business – need I say any more? Although it seems that film is making something of a revival in amateur circles, I don’t see the businesses supporting it – there are only two proper pro labs left in Kuala Lumpur that can handle slide film well; even finding a minicab that can handle normal color negs is becoming challenging. The reality of professional work these days means that it is not a viable option because of falling rates and increasingly demanding throughput and deadlines.

Amateur photographers – Now represent more sales of ‘pro grade’ equipment than professionals; photography has become in vogue again. Consumers of content, makers of content, some excellent, some utter rubbish; supporters of the voracious demand for teaching and new product. Often swayed by marketing gimmicks – first it was more pixels, now it’s higher ISO numbers and ‘art filters’ or ‘scene modes’. This market is by far what keeps the camera companies in business.

Professional photographers – There are many breeds of pros these days – assuming the definition of pro is ‘makes all or most of their living from photography or related activities’. There are those who work for studios, or as press photographers – i.e. drawing a salary. There are those who shoot weddings and events; in this part of the world, they are mostly amateurs who charge for their work, but do not deliver consistency of quality or reliability. Unfortunately these people are the group the public interact with the most, and frankly, give the true pros a bad name – even those in the same industry. There is a small group who shoot for stock, or international agencies. Finally, there are the commercial photographers and studio owners, whose jobs are increasingly being supplanted by the huge quantity of stock out there, or worse, being taken by the amateurs who vastly undercharge, do a poor job, and generally threaten the sustainability and image of the industry. The reality is that the jobs that pay well – commercial work, advertising – are both shrinking and being heavily guarded by the established photographers; and the portion of the work that’s evergreen is becoming commercially unviable – there are event photographers in Malaysia who charge about RM50 an hour (that’s US$15) including processing (assuming they do any at all) for a huge number of images. In this price sensitive environment, that’s death. Needless to say, at those rates, it takes you 20 hours of work to pay off a D3200 kit; you’re not going to be having backup bodies in case things fail, nor are you going to be able to produce anything indoors except with direct flash.

The upshot of all of this is that the smart pros are doing many other related things – notice the increasing number of workshops and seminars offered; product endorsements; sponsored or ad-driven blogs; etc. You can’t just produce photos for money anymore. About a third of my income is from teaching; I’m staying away from advertising because it affects my credibility; but I will use other unique tools like the Email School of Photography, paid competitions and Amazon referral links.

Stock agencies – The old guard of stock agencies is still charging an arm and a leg, for (admittedly) higher quality images; however, they’re also giving the photographers a rather lousy deal. Getty takes between 60 and 80% of the royalties for each of my images it sells; ouch! The alternative is no money, or micro stock – where you get 20-30 cents, and hope like hell you sell a lot of images. The question is, would you rather have nothing, a bit of a lot, or next to nothing?

Printing companies/ labs/ developers – Almost dead, at least in this part of the world; the labs that survive are focused on digital printing; there are good ones, and bad ones, and few who really understood the transition well enough to be considered master printmakers. I’m lucky to have one here in Kuala Lumpur who takes care of my printing and is also a HP Master Printer. (Wesley Wong @ Giclee Art). Online print-on-demand bookmakers like Blurb are doing very well – there have been more and more of these emerging, though quality is somewhat hit and miss – even with Blurb, who appear to subcontract the actual print work to many different vendors. Getting replacements usually isn’t too difficult, though. And you can now print small runs instead of hundreds, as was the norm for offset printing.

Publishers – While amateur photography magazines have proliferated with the increase in interest in the hobby, they’ve also suffered stiff competition from websites, who can put out more content in a more timely manner – and offer things like full size files to play with – that the magazines simply can’t compete with. The magazines are trying to maintain their edge based on content quality, but I feel even that’s eroding. (I used to be Editor of a photography magazine here; finding people to produce quality content was so difficult that in the end I was writing and shooting nearly 90% of the magazine myself.)

Galleries – I can’t speak for overseas, but there just isn’t a market for photographic prints in Asia. While there seem to be a lot of galleries in Europe (at least there were on my last trip there) – I don’t know how they make money; it isn’t from print or ticket sales. I suspect that most are sponsored by camera makers or wealthy patrons.

Photo schools – Nothing much has changed here, but there are now more of them – though a lot of the ‘photo schools’ in Asia are just one-man shows who hire some seminaked models, set up some lights, and charge for entry. Needless to say, you’ll learn nothing. On the other hand, there are a number of very good pro shooters who’ve now turned to teaching to supplant their dwindling professional income; I’m one of them. You have the opportunity to learn from people who perhaps five or ten years ago, would have jealously guarded their secrets and techniques. Choose wisely, is all I can advise – looking at the quality of the person’s portfolio is an excellent way of doing this.

Photography blogs and news sites (like this one) – The majority of sites exist to satisfy the desire for content – reviews, validations of personal equipment choices, or information on whether one should buy camera X or camera Y. Preferably yesterday. Traffic spikes are huge when exclusives are in play (from experience, here) – and advertisers and referral fees are how these sites are supported. Some of us try to be a bit more esoteric in our choice of topics and deal with other photography-related things beyond equipment, but that’s not always the case. And it’s clear that while a lot of these sites still respect IP – I’m fine with people syndicating my articles/ posts with proper credit, and it does happen – but there are an equal number who frankly just don’t give a shit about IP, image rights or NDA agreements.

Rumor sites – They exist only because human nature wants the latest and greatest. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion to break NDA and reveal what I know; I can’t think why anybody would violate their position of trust for…well, precisely nothing. No money, (obviously) no credit, and nothing else whatsoever. I can’t help but wonder if some of the camera companies are leaking things directly to stir up interest in advance of product launches, though. They support themselves with referral links, of course.

Image sharing/ hosting sites – While most are free in some form – basic services of Flickr, Picasa, etc – the premium services for serious photographers are charged. Though how Flickr makes any money off me is baffling; I more than get my annual subscription worth through hosting and server bandwidth alone. I suppose there must be others who don’t have 14,000 uploads, though. Notably some have folded, though – Kodak’s PictureGallery, for instance.

Computer companies, software companies (e.g. Apple, Adobe) – I’m sure part of Apple’s meteoric success in the last few years is due to digital photography and the support/ processing requirements – actually, I’m surprised that there isn’t an Apple camera yet. Without the support ecosystem – photoshop, a decent machine to run it on – digital is pretty worthless, because I still haven’t seen a single out of camera jpeg that I’d be happy to present to a client. I don’t know how many iPads were sold for use solely as portfolio devices, but I’m sure it’s a lot; if I hadn’t won one in a contest, I’d probably buy it solely for that purpose. Beats carrying around a print portfolio, and it’s cheaper, too.

Mobile phone companies – The fact that we’re seeing innovation in this space – the Nokia 808 PureView comes to mind – says that photography is being taken seriously even by non-camera makers. Coupled with internet connectivity and social media, picture sharing has skyrocketed – however, it’s unclear who on the hosting end is making money out of this. I’m sure Facebook will eventually find a way to charge us for sharing our images using its platform – never mind that it’s one of the worst image sharing platforms ever, between compression, sRGB color spaces and horrible interfaces – but we still use it anyway, because it’s the easiest way to ensure that all your friends see something.

Microstock agencies – Microstock only works with volume – high numbers of purchases for newly-minted content and websites; and high numbers of eager photographers to make some money out of their images, even if it’s only cents. Without that huge amount of content to trade in, the micro stock model just doesn’t work. I don’t know how sustainable this is in the long term, either.

Accessory companies – The burgeoning increase in amateurs also means a bigger market for what would formerly have been very niche accessories – there are businesses making nothing but stick-on grips, or replacement rubbers, for instance. I welcome diversity, cottage industries and craftsmen in general – I hope these are sustainable, and honestly, given current camera sales volumes, see no reason why they wouldn’t be.

Self-proclaimed ‘experts’ – People with no clients, a crap (or worse, nonexistent) portfolio of work, no credentials but very, very loud voices have come out of the woodwork in recent years; the problem is that the louder the voice, the more they get heard – especially on the internet. Controversy is seen as a good thing, even if there’s no substance behind it – because it gets traffic, and traffic is directly proportional to advertising revenue. The problem is not that they exist, but that they’re assigned far too much weight by both consumers and camera companies alike. I would be very, very weary of any opinions by ‘experts’ who obviously are incapable of taking a halfway decent photograph. This of course assumes one can tell the difference at all; perhaps a better litmus test is to look at the proportion of disparaging or negative comments received: in over 700,000 views, I’ve had no more than 5 negative emails/ comments. I know you can’t please everybody, but I try hard to have the bases covered.

Online retailers – Almost all of today’s successful brick-and-mortar retailers also have an online presence; not necessarily the opposite. And the unsuccessful brick-and-mortar retailers simply don’t exist in cyberspace. Correlation? I think so; the online portion of a physical retailer’s business gives them enough volume to be competitive on price regardless of the sales channel; this is self-reinforcing in that you’re more likely to buy from say, the B&H Superstore in NYC if you’re there, since you know the prices are the same as on their website. But if your local camera shop is more expensive or can’t afford to keep the inventory range in stock because of lack of volume, the chances of you making a purchase there decrease dramatically. And there may be a store on the other side of the country (or even in another country) that does mail order – but if you don’t know about it, how are you going to make a purchase at all?

Online bulk retailers (e.g. Amazon) – Photographic equipment is a natural progression for existing retailers of electronics and other consumer goods – the one thing you have to be careful of is that descriptions are accurate, and goods are in stock. What we consider to be important differences – kit lens types, for instance – probably get overlooked by the clerk doing the data entry into the system. And not always having a number to call to confirm (or having the number, but a person who obviously can’t remember the details of the hundreds of thousands of products they sell) can sometimes make things risky. The flip side, of course, is that the enormous volumes and lack of sales tax can make these a very attractive option price-wise. They’re also often the first to receive new product in any significant quantity, simply because initial order volumes are so huge that manufacturers allocate priority stocks to them.

So what does this all mean? When the dust settles, we’re going to see a lot of consolidation in some areas – manufacturers, retailers – and a lot of proliferation in others – blogs, self-proclaimed ‘experts’, workshops, etc. I think we’re not quite done with the change yet; the shift to digital has killed or nearly killed a lot of industries, but at the same time opened up entirely new sectors to the enterprising individual or company. If you’d asked me even five years ago whether I thought there was any other way to make a photography-related living than from selling images or perhaps sales referrals through blogging, I would have said no. But here we are today – who knows where my income in another five years will originate. All I do know is that as photographers, we’ve got a whole load of new tools at our disposal to master, but once we do, we can always improve the quality of our images and broaden the shooting envelope. I may not be making most of my living from my commercial clients in future, but I do know that I’m going to continue using everything available to up the standard of my work, and help those who are interested to do the same. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, commentary, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photographic industry, thein

Aspect ratios and compositional theory

July 31, 2012 by Ming Thein

Round plate in a square frame. The composition is ostensibly balanced, but a little randomization is created by the uneven lighting. Leica D-Lux 5

Aspect ratio: image width/ image height, with the long dimension first.

There are six common aspect ratios for cameras today (and as many as you like if you use the crop tool, but that’s another subject for another day):

1:1 – Square format, traditionally the realm of 6x6cm Hasselblads, and now popularized by various mobile apps.

5:4 – Large format and sheet film cameras, mainly 8×10″.

4:3 – Broadcast television and video used this aspect ratio, originally in 640×480 pixel resolution; small sensor cameras and compacts (which inherited early video CCD architecture) have been using this aspect ratio ever since. Four Thirds and Micro Four thirds are the larger consumer formats to use it; in medium format there’s also 645 which has the same aspect ratio for both film and digital.

3:2 – Double a movie frame; famously invented when Oscar Barnack rotated the film through 90 degrees and doubled the width of the frame to create the 24x36mm ‘full frame’ 35mm camera format. Almost all larger sensored DSLRs use this today.

16:9 – HDTV format; not a native aspect ratio for digital still cameras, but useful to provide a more cinematic feel to an image.

2.35/2.40:1 – Motion picture widescreen for feature films; very rarely used for still photography, and there are certainly no dedicated digital still cameras that offer exclusively this format. Not only is it extremely wide, if you’re cropping down from a 4:3 sensor you’re throwing away more than half of your image.

16:9 and cinematic. Note how the whole subject isn’t necessary for you to identify it. Nikon D700, AFS 85/1.4 G

Most modern cameras offer different image sizes in-camera, though all they really do is crop the top and bottom or sides. There are a few digital cameras that have sensors bigger than the lens’ image circle, which allow the diagonal angle of view for a given focal length to be maintained when changing crop; the main one of these is the Panasonic LX series of cameras. Put one of these on a tripod, slide the aspect ratio switch on the lens barrel and you’ll notice that the horizontal field of view gets wider than the 4:3 option, even though this is the native aspect ratio of the sensor. (It also means that you don’t suffer as much of a resolution decrease as you’d expect when changing aspect ratios). There is no point in shooting in another aspect ratio if all the camera does is throw away the extra pixels; you’re better off capturing as much information as you can at the time of shooting and then deciding later what crop would work best (assuming, of course, that you didn’t compose correctly at the time.)

Filling the frame – native 4:3 of the Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, uncropped. 45/1.8

Now that’s out of the way, the aim of this article is to focus on understanding the compositional impact of different aspect ratios, and more importantly, how to pick the right aspect ratio for a given subject.

There are two ways to go about this – either you shoot only one aspect ratio (for instance 3:2 because you have a digital SLR) and arrange the contents of your frame around it, or you keep an open mind and match the aspect ratio to respect the subject and the dynamic of your composition. For instance, you might use a 1:1 square for a round object if you want a balanced frame, or you might use 16:9 and just focus on one curve if you want to highlight a particular detail in a cinematic manner – you never see movie shots showing the whole of Earth, for instance; it’s always a hemisphere with the sun rising in just the right place. This is not a coincidence!

(Nearly) symmetric, but visually balanced. The two are not the same thing. Leica M9-P

Most people will stick to the aspect ratio that is native to the camera, and either do nothing else, or crop to fit later. This is compositionally very, very sloppy – not only do you not get the best frame for the shape of your subject, there’s a very good chance that you probably won’t be able to fill the frame properly, either; 3:2 is a bit of a compromise aspect ratio that lacks the organic intimacy of 5:4 or 4:3 for portraits, or the drama of 16:9 for more expansive scenes.

Symmetry. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G

If you crop to fit the subject exactly, then chances are you’ll probably also land up with a very boring frame – this time, because the composition is too balanced. It seems counterintuitive, but the reality is that such compositions tend to use the space around the subject as a frame, and nothing else; there is no context, secondary subjects or points of interest added.

Balanced, but not at all symmetric.

Don’t despair too much if this situation seems a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The good news is that the one obvious remaining strategy usually works the best if done correctly: learn to fill your frame. For the most part, this is how I operate unless I know the final output (usually client work) is going to be of an certain aspect ratio, or if the scene itself just cries out for a certain shape.

What does filling the frame entail? Well, for one, you should be able to identify your subject – that’s composition 101. The remaining space should be filled with elements that either echo your subject, strengthen the story, or give the subject context. But in no way should they distract the eye from the primary subject. And each smaller element should be placed in the remaining space in a balanced manner.

The leading space of anticipation. Depth of field control and lighting make it clear what’s part of the foreground/ subject, and what’s part of the background and is context.

Here’s a visual example, using dots to represent compositional elements. The big red circle is the subject. The lighter color/ lower saturation dots are the secondary, tertiary and other filler.

First we place the main subject; where exactly in the frame is up to you, but in general, you leave leading space in front of the subject’s orientation if you want to create expectation (i.e. if a person is in profile, then put most of the space in front of their nose); trailing space if you want to create urgency or drama; or alternatively, let the supporting background elements dictate where to put the primary subject. For this example, let’s just pick an arbitrary starting location – all dots look pretty much the same. I’m going to pick 3:2 as our example aspect ratio.

Now the secondaries – put them in the white space, with balanced space around them to create both an isolating/ highlighting frame, and a buffer zone between them and the main subject so they don’t get confused or overlapped:

And the same for the tertiaries.

The other filler rests wherever it rests, but just make sure that distracting elements – say a huge point highlight like the sun, in this case, the blue dot – don’t go in distracting places.

There – a balanced composition. There isn’t any odd empty space that doesn’t have an equivalent mirror along a given horizontal or vertical (or for that matter, any other orientation) axis. Let’s try this again for 1:1 and the same size original subject:

And finally, 16:9:

Notice how for the 16:9 example I didn’t show the whole subject; you don’t always need to. Just so long as you can identify what the subject is, you’ll be fine. In fact, it’s quite easy to imagine this particular frame as say a sunrise over the edge of earth (using our previous example) with a fleet of spaceships in the foreground…
(Oops, I’m getting carried away. Perhaps I should take up modern art, or perhaps designing colorblindness tests.)

More seriously there’s a secondary subject intersecting the main subject – does it matter? Only if the intersection causes some perceived division of either, e.g. a horizontal line running through somebody’s head would tend to suggest decapitation to a view, and consequently looks rather odd for a portrait. However, there are also examples where such intersections or juxtapositions can create interesting images in their own right.

Notice how each composition is balanced, but you still instantly know what the main subject is.

Want to make this exercise more realistic? Okay, let’s go back to 3:2 and do one for wide angle, with emphasized perspectives and huge relative size differences in dots:

And another one for telephoto, with the foreground and background dots blurred to replicate shallow depth of field:

Once again, notice how your eye is still drawn to the main subject in each composition. Of course, real life isn’t quite this easy; subjects aren’t dots, the white spaces aren’t always uniformly white, and most of all, you almost never have any control over where to put anything else except your main subject; most of the time it’s about waiting for the secondaries to move, or you moving (for immobile subjects) to get the vantage point that works. The only time you have full control is when you’re shooting still life in a studio.

Note how the empty space serves to highlight the (highlighted) subject. Nikon D700, AFS 85/1.4 G

One interesting thing I’d like to bring up at this point is our very restricted use of verticals – almost always, verticals are in more square aspect ratios; 3:2 is about the slimmest vertical aspect ratio you see. You almost never see 16:9 or anything wider; my theory is that it’s both to do with how our eyes natively see, and how content is presented. Since human eyes are horizontally tandem, we tend to see in a wider horizontal field than vertical; a tall image forces our eyes to scan up and down its length, which means that such images are difficult to compose because they must be broken into zones with complimentary transitions for the composition to work. (The same is not true for horizontals, because we can take in the image at a glance and instantly recognize the surrounding areas as context.)

The secondary subject reinforcing the primary, empty space creates anticipation. Nikon D700, AFS 28-300VR

Making things worse, almost all displays are geared towards this ergonomic trend – as makes sense – when was the last time you saw a vertical monitor? Furthermore, we get subconscious reinforcement through other means that horizontal is the way to go: most cameras only have one grip, and even those that have two make shooting landscapes much easier than portraits; even after we shoot, when we view the images on a monitor, the verticals take up about a third of the space, but the horizontals nearly the entire area – obviously, the larger ones look better, so we tend not to be as influenced by the vertical images…

We needed to have at least one vertical in here. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 85/1.4 Planar

However, with practice, you’ll learn to see this way – and with more practice, you’ll learn to see this in the instant you identify what you want to have as your main subject; along with lighting, focus, exposure etc. Fortunately, visual pattern recognition is something that human brains are very good at, even for things that have zero fixed quantitative parameters. For example, we know something is a dog even if it’s in a different orientation, different size, a line drawing or a photograph, or a stylized graphic silhouette. Try programming a computer to do this, and you’ll soon realize both how impossible a task quantifying the distinguishing parameters of a dog is, and what an amazing piece of hardware our brains are. (If you disagree, what marks the difference between a wolf and a dog? Or a dog and a cat? Or a dog and a cow? They’re all four-legged with tails and pointy ears.)

Once again, it comes down to practice. The more you shoot and the more images your brain sees, the faster it becomes at picking out compositions in a live scene that work against ones that don’t. I know that isn’t a concrete answer, but shouldn’t you be out shooting now? 🙂 MT

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