On Photography – Ming Thein

Film diaries: Nine months on

July 15, 2013 by Ming Thein

It’s now been a healthy chunk of time since I started shooting film again; enough to have a baby. What kind of child has this experiment turned out to be? Building on an earlier article of random thoughts and also from a digital perspective, I’ve had some more time to reflect on things now that a) my workflow has matured, and b) I think I’ve figured out where it fits in the grand scheme of things creatively for me. All I’m going to say is that the point I’m at now is very much not what I expected when I bought the F2 Titan in October last year.

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Filed Under: Articles, Film Diaries, On Photography Tagged With: article, eight months on, essay, film, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

Photoessay: Small format Fukuokan monochromes

July 13, 2013 by Ming Thein

Most of these are square because I was under the influence of Hasselblad at the time; with your primary camera set up to shoot black and white squares, it’s difficult to break your shooting rhythm to see much of anything else. However, this set was shot entirely with a Leica(sonic) D Lux 6. I think what’s interesting here is when I used the DL6 over the ‘Blad: mainly in situations where a) I wouldn’t be fast enough with MF; b) when it was too dark and I didn’t have the 400 back already on the camera; c) when I needed longer or wider perspectives I didn’t have as most of the time I was only carrying 50 or 80mm lenses. There’s still very much room in the bag (pocket?) for a smaller format and a smaller camera, even if you have to give up image quality: a shot is better than no shot at all. Admittedly, at these sizes and this presentation format, it’s not easy to tell what camera was used. Regardless, it’s always about the images: enjoy! MT

The importance of printing, from a photographer’s standpoint

July 11, 2013 by Ming Thein

From the print session at the end of last year’s Making Light workshop – these were a bit of a revelation to the participants, most of whom had never made large prints before. And we were doing straight out of camera printing with no real postprocessing or optimization…

If all of you, dear readers, were sitting in a room, and I asked “How many of you print?” I think not every hand would be raised. “Regularly?” Even fewer. “Large?” Fewer still. And you’ve all proven yourselves to be a pretty exceptional bunch of people, if the comment threads are anything to go by. If anything, the average photographer – taking both amateurs and pros into consideration – these days prints very little, if at all. Yet a concern that seems to dominate a lot of photographers’ thoughts is over resolution; my question is why?

Choice, compromise and creativity

July 9, 2013 by Ming Thein

What do these two things have in common, other than they’re from (very, very loosely, give or take a decade) the same era?

Photoessay: A few trees

July 5, 2013 by Ming Thein

I thought I’d do something different with today’s photoessay: it’s a collection of images spanning a wide period in my career, but of a single subject. For a landscape photographer, trees, clouds, terrain, water, weather etc. are all staple building blocks of a complete image; for an obsessive photographer, each individual element can yield manifold variations. (Clouds are my other real obsession, but I think I’m going to need more than one photoessay to do those justice.) It’s an interesting idea I’d like to explore further both in future photoessays and opinion pieces. Enjoy! MT

Images shot with a variety of equipment at various times; the different vintages of watermark are the giveaway here.

Kuala Lumpur

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

Spheres of influence – or, the butterfly effect

July 3, 2013 by Ming Thein

Moonrise, redux. How many times have we seen a scene like this in a movie? For me, enough that it was in my subconscious when I shot the watch.

Following on from yesterday’s reposted article on influences, I wanted to delve a bit deeper into the topic. Influences go both ways – as in we are as much receptive as we are conductive – and this can be both conscious and subconscious. I don’t claim to be anything more than a casual interested observer when it comes to the field of human psychology, but I do notice after a while, big groups of people tend to act and think the same if they spend enough time together; I suppose it’s some form of subconscious normalization that happens in order to maintain the peace. And those who don’t fit will feel sufficiently uncomfortable to leave or be ejected – or if they’re strong influencers themselves, land up as leaders.

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

Repost: What influences your photography?

July 1, 2013 by Ming Thein

Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4G

What follows is a repost of an original article from early 2012: it’s a necessary prelude to what comes tomorrow, so for those who’ve read it – bear with me; for those who haven’t, enjoy.

A random thought struck me while driving today (it seems to happen often, but then again with Malaysian traffic, I do spend a lot of time in the car): what are my conscious and unconscious photographic influences, and how do they affect my images look?

I think this is a topic worth exploring because it’s useful to analyze how you think as a photographer, because it will both consciously help you to identify potential shots sooner, as well as tap into other sources of influence you might not have previously considered. As sacrificial guinea pig, I’ll go first.

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

The proverbial desert island camera

June 27, 2013 by Ming Thein

One question you tend to see publicly discussed ad nauseam on forums is the one that goes something along the lines of “If you could only bring one camera/lens to a desert island, what would that be, and why?” I’m sure it’s something even we more serious photographers give some consideration to from time to time; if only because one day we might find ourselves facing such an eventuality. In the greater interests of this site’s readership, I put myself in precisely that situation a couple of weeks ago.

A question of sensor size

June 25, 2013 by Ming Thein

The contenders.

Conventional wisdom states that the bigger the sensor, the better. The bigger the pixels, the better. All things equal, that’s true; however, 10-micron pixels would mean very low resolution compacts, and medium format digital doesn’t sell in sufficient volumes to justify the same sort of R&D spend that consumer or even midrange pro gear would get. I admit I’d always been curious to see just how much the technological improvements from generation to generation offset pixel pitch etc.; some time ago, I did a comparison of the Leica S2 against the then-new Nikon D800E. Today, we go one step further to see exactly what kind of gap exists between the various grades of equipment. Spoiler: it’s not as wide as you might imagine in some areas.

Photographic aspirations, part three: a manifesto

June 23, 2013 by Ming Thein

Take your beliefs to the streets.

I actually wrote something like this quite some time ago – it’s still on my flickr ‘about’ page, I believe. It’s actually interesting from a strange self-analysis point of view to see how my views of photography have morphed in the last few years, partially as a consequence of experience, and partially due to the shift towards commercial work. So, perhaps I’ll revisit this post again in another few years and see how things have changed again…