On Photography – Ming Thein

Landscape photography, part one: a few principles

December 11, 2013 by Ming Thein

I’ll be straight up honest here: I’m not known as a landscape photographer. Far from it, in fact. But that hasn’t stopped me from experimenting, and as we all know, experimentation is the key to artistic development and evolution: applying what you learn in one discipline to your others can result in something unique, and vice versa. I think the relationship between landscape, cityscape and architectural photography is pretty obvious. Might I approach a watch or food plating as a landscape in future? Why not! Or treat a landscape as an abstract? Certainly.

Exclusive: an interview with Nick Brandt

December 9, 2013 by Ming Thein

After my review of his first book, I received a very complimentary email from Nick thanking me for my review and expressing something between relief and gratitude that the lengths he went to to get to prints right were being appreciated. A short correspondence developed, and he has very graciously agreed to an exclusive interview for the site, which follows my review of the final book in the series – Across The Ravaged Land – and constitutes today’s post. I admit that writing the questions for that interview made me somewhat nervous, because Nick is one of my few true photographic heroes; a rockstar with integrity, talent, and beyond that, passion. Let us begin.

Book review: Across The Ravaged Land, by Nick Brandt

December 7, 2013 by Ming Thein

I think many of you will recall me being quite blown away by the power of the images and the quality of the printing/ presentation in my review of Nick Brandt’s earlier twin book On This Earth, A Shadow Falls (here). I’m fairly sure many of you were too, judging from my email traffic, the comments, and the number of orders via Amazon. I’ve turned into an enormous fan of Nick’s work: he is the photographer’s photographer, a man who clearly thinks about what he’s doing, photographs with integrity, for a reason, with an idea, with the most appropriate tool for the job, and presents the images in the best possible way. Across The Ravaged Land, the final volume in the trilogy, raises the bar even further. I spent an hour with the book and felt like I’d been smacked upside the head with the Pentax 67II he favours. Allow me to explain why.

Note: in this article, I’ve attempted to reproduce the tonal feel and colour of the images as accurately as possible, but reality is that it’s simply impossible to do so via a screen and a JPEG. Just buy the book, and from the print quality alone you’ll see why every photographer should spend some time making prints. I can’t even begin to imagine the impact of the large format images.

Photoessay: The boats of Amsterdam

December 5, 2013 by Ming Thein

I must first apologize for the enormous processing backlog that has kept me from posting any images from the Amsterdam and Prague workshops several months ago to the site; the astute of you will have seen them go up on Flickr a little while ago, though.

Photoessay: recent iPhone work

November 29, 2013 by Ming Thein

Today’s post is a small collection of recent work – I suppose a better description is grab shots encountered in the course of life when I didn’t have another camera available to me. I make no excuses for the medium; the work stands on its own. It’s to serve as a reminder that the camera really doesn’t matter. Enjoy! MT

Defining ‘art’, redux

November 25, 2013 by Ming Thein

Is a creative interpretation in another medium of the work of another artist art in itself?

Not so long ago, we had a healthy debate on the line between photography and art (if you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend spending some time on both the main article and the comments – especially the comments). In yesterday’s photoessay, I attempted something different. Distilled out of this are a few thoughts and interpretations on the definition of art…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: art, article, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein, what is art

Photoessay: artistic experiments in the home

November 24, 2013 by Ming Thein

Brokeback Chair

And now for something a little different. Shooting purely for message isn’t new to me; shooting purely for message through metaphor with found objects is, to some extent. Today’s photoessay is an experiment; make of it what you will – but I’m very curious to see what you all think…please leave a comment after the jump. And yes, the captions matter. MT

[Read more…]

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: art, experimental, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein

Originality is dead: or is it?

November 22, 2013 by Ming Thein

Today’s post is going to be something of a counterpoint to yesterday. Every time we frame up an image, we ostensibly try to capture something different, unique – in essence, to take a photograph that has never been taken before. But more importantly, the resultant outcome must actually look like it has never been taken before, by appearing quite distinctly different from anything else. That’s the part which is not so easy.

Each of the images in this set represents the outcome of a new experiment for me: subject, idea, execution, processing, equipment or something else. They are almost certainly unique, but I cannot say that they have not been attempted before, by somebody else. Take, for example, the fact that they were all shot on film: film is not new, even to me. But developing my own film and looking at the tonality achievable undoubtedly influences the way I process my digital files. Just as composing in squares does affects the way I see the world, too; and so on.

Photoessay: Universal Studios Singapore

November 16, 2013 by Ming Thein

A continuation of the previous article on tourist location photographability.

Perhaps as a reflection of personal interest, I was certainly more drawn to the urban scenery element of the place rather than the rides or the fantasy areas; none of the people really fit the scene – i.e. looked ‘in place’, so I left them out (think 1940s New York or 1960s Hollywood being full of Asians in tank tops and shorts). The results are a slightly surreal and empty environment; I think it reflects my recent and increasing fascination with form and light over action. We all go through subject and stylistic shifts in our photographic journey as we explore new things; having shot a lot of street, cinematic and reportage work in recent years, perhaps it’s time for a change.

Artificial environments and ‘tourist’ photography

November 14, 2013 by Ming Thein

A couple of months ago, I spent some time in a theme park – not because I particularly wanted to go on any of the rides or because I felt like I needed a little escapism, but because I was teaching a workshop as part of the Maybank Photo Awards 2013, and Universal Studios Singapore was a sponsor. Being there made me realize a number of things.