Ming Thein | Photographer

POTD: Photography is a team sport…and a commentary on competitions

April 18, 2012 by Ming Thein

Canon Photomarathon, Kuala Lumpur. Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1, ZD 45/1.8

This isn’t a recent event, but a group of photographers running around the streets of KL in a pack yesterday reminded me of this shot. The aim of the event is simple: it is a competition with several categories of prize, but everything must be shot on the day, in the same location, and you’ve got to wear the same damn shirt as everybody else. Editing is permitted, but everybody submits prints for judging, made on one of those dye sub printers.

Several thoughts:
1. There’s a HUGE market for photography equipment in Malaysia. This relatively small segment of the population was at least a thousand-strong, with easily $3,000 or more of gear for each person on average. There was more than one person going around with 1-series bodies and 300/2.8s.

2. It’s commendable that somebody bothers to organize something on this scale at all.

3. How on earth the organizers expect to see good results when you restrict the participants is ludicrous – it just makes you look bad because the level of photography is is low.

4. You’re not going to get any good reportage style images or candids when you’re milling around in a pack of hundreds or thousands of very conspicuous people. And more often than not, if you try something that looks out of the ordinary, a whole bunch of people will follow you immediately afterwards and it ceases to be unusual. And in the end the entire event just turns into an equipment masturbation session, with plenty of mine-is-bigger-than-yours. Or maybe that’s what the organizers want, so they can sell more cameras.

5. Postprocessing is as much part of the modern photography process as darkroom work was for film. So treat it as such, not an aberration or ‘cheat’. If you’re going to do something unnatural like HDR, it’ll be obvious to the judges (we hope).

6. Dye sub printers produce horrible color. Perhaps processing doesn’t matter because you won’t be able to appreciate the subtle tones anyway.

7. My final point is a criticism leveled at the organizers of almost all competitions, not just this one: yes, I can understand why you’d need limited rights to republish the image afterwards, but why on earth do all competitions result in the photographer having to surrender any and all rights to all images entered? Don’t the organizers realize that the really good photographers and pros will never agree to do this? I certainly would not enter my best images if I know I’ll have to surrender the rights to them. And if I’m not going to enter my best images, then why bother entering at all? If you’ve got a whole pool of people who think like this – and I know a lot of pros and talented amateurs do – then you’re just lowering the standard in general.

What I’d like to see – or perhaps even organize – is a competition based solely on merit; with no rights transferral or ownership, so we’d see people putting their best foot forward. Anonymous entry, so we don’t bias based on names or fame. Something to think about for the future, perhaps. MT

Filed Under: On Photography, POTD Tagged With: competition, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photo, potd, thein

Photoessay: Hanoi, part one

April 17, 2012 by Ming Thein

Hanoi is one of the more interesting places I’ve been recently – these images were shot during downtime on a business trip about a year ago. It’s a fascinating mix of French colonial and Southeast Asian chaos; juxtapositions abound, and rich textures are plenty – making for great shooting. Part one, in color. I’m told Ho Chi Minh City is a lot more developed an interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to visit yet. MT

This set shot with a Nikon D700, 85/1.4G and 28-300/3.5-5.6 VR.

Quantum mechanics at work again: the scene changed because the subjects noticed the photographer.

Feels like France.

A vomit-inducing ride. Notice passenger on the right hand bike.

If only I knew what cards she was holding.

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: hanoi, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photoessay, photography, photojournalism, pj, street, thein, vietnam

POTD: Hommage a Hiroshi Sugimoto

April 17, 2012 by Ming Thein

Seascape. Part of a full set coming up later. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 14-42 kit lens.

The sea is one of those odd subjects – like the sky – that’s seemingly full of infinite variation, but at the same time is instantly identifiable for what it is. I could take a thousand images of the sea, and none of them would be the same – but you’d know instantly that it was the sea. Even if the processing was the same, which I’d never do because it’d be boring.

What you don’t immediately notice here is that to achieve this perspective, the shot was taken at 14mm and just inches above the water, about 30m away from the beach and out to sea. (Interestingly, the EXIF data records the subject as being 4.3 billion meters away – I’d say that’s infinity, and in fact, further away than the moon.) Not exactly the least hazardous environment for photographic equipment! I suppose the only reason I even attempted this series was the relatively low cost of the equipment at risk; no way would I do it with an M9, for instance. I didn’t take anything heavier in the way of photographic equipment because it was meant to be a break. But at the same time, I don’t think I’d be able to truly relax unless I knew I had the ability to make the shot if the opportunity arose.

Sometimes we need time in a different physical location to reset our seeing process, if nothing else. MT

Filed Under: POTD Tagged With: landscape, micro 4/3, micro four thirds, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, olympus, photo, potd, seascape, thein

Kuala Lumpur reader meetup!

April 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’m thinking either Friday 4 May, in the evening – say 7.30pm – or Saturday 5 May, in the morning – say 1030am. Location: at the fountain outside Pavilion.

If you’d like to join, please vote for a time in the comments below. Thanks!

Singapore is still on, but I’m awaiting a final schedule from Leica before I post any dates/ times. MT

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, reader meetup, thein

Contact sheets, and how to use them

April 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

This article is a lead on from my earlier review of the Magnum Contact Sheets book.

Contact sheets are a tool that date from the days of film: basically, the developed negatives are laid out directly on top of photographic printing paper, exposed for the appropriate duration, and fixed. They aren’t ‘proper’ prints per se, but a provide the photographer and editor a quick way of looking at all of the images in a sequence at once.

A printed (or from negatives) contact sheet would probably look something like this.

The photographer would then mark out his first and second cut images, followed by the verification from the editor; the chosen images would then be printed properly from the original negatives, with any tweaks required (such as dodging and burning, increasing exposure, changing print density etc.) With the analog photography process, that marked the end of the line for the photographer unless they also did their own printing – which was rare.

Interestingly, contact sheets were considered something of a luxury item for photographers because of the cost of producing them – especially when there were a lot of rolls of film to go through – most photographers just used a loupe and light table, or if desperate, held the negatives up to a window.

Contact sheets still remain a useful tool, not just because they allow you to see all images at once and judge their relative merits, but also because they force you to look at the distilled essence of an image: if a shot makes a compelling thumbnail, it’s generally also quite powerful at larger sizes. However, the reverse isn’t true: some shots need to be printed large to work well, landscapes, for instance. With images like this, contact sheets aren’t necessarily the best tool (unless you’re shooting medium format, or have larger thumbnails to work with).

Not shooting film? Don’t worry. We can still do the same thing today in the digital world. Photoshop itself has an automated tool (File>Automate>Contact Sheet) to create contact sheets of images; these are useful to print or send to clients. Alternatively, programs such as Bridge and Lightroom effectively let you create digital contact sheets which you can interact with on the fly:

Today’s contact sheet: screenshot of Adobe Bridge, thumbnail view.

What these programs let you do is a) see everything at once; b) see only the ones you wanted; c) use a magnifying loupe to check sharpness on a particular image or several images to compare; d) here’s the important bit: rate images. With Bridge and LR, Command-[number] lets you tag a star rating from 1-5; later on, you can filter by images rated at a certain level or above. And it works for raw files too, so long as the camera is supported by Adobe Camera Raw.

My current process is to keep all images from a shoot (except the obvious duds or unsuccessful experiments, which I bin in camera) and then conduct a first pass edit using the contact sheet view as soon as they’re in the computer – I’ll rate my images 3, 4 and 5*; 3* are kept because they’re useful for stock or remembering a particular event; 4* are good images and deliverable to clients; 5* are portfolio grade, best-of. The rest aren’t worth keeping and get binned. I’ll work on the 5* images first, and go down the quality ladder from there. That way, my best images are immediately ready to go, and if I don’t get a chance to make a final file (analogous to printing) of the 3*s, I can always come back later.

As photographers, we often fall into the trap of either being overcritical (bin all) or sentimental (bin none) – neither approach is good. For personal work, using contact sheets helps you to edit and see what worked and what didn’t (and by combination, what ideas might work in future if combined). On assignment, it lets you see the relative merits of each image and ensure that you’re only turning in the very best. Contact sheets are a powerful tool to help you achieve this – and the cost of printing is no longer really an excuse. MT

Look out for a future article on Editing: how to select images.

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: contact sheets, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

POTD: Reflections and reflections on reflection

April 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

Reflections. Leica V-Lux 3.

I still haven’t found a camera that can quite capture the luminous nature of reflections in glass – they all either seem to make it look too ‘solid’, or too transparent; I suspect it has something to do with the sensor filtration or the transmission properties of the lenses used.

Here’s a second interesting thought: why don’t camera makers match the spectral response of the sensor to that of the human eye, rather than limit it to an arbitrary range of wavelengths? Our eyes don’t work that way, and that’s probably why it’s so darned difficult to capture exactly what we see. MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: architecture, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, potd, thein, v-lux 3

Photoessay: Abstracts in metal

April 15, 2012 by Ming Thein

In an earlier photoessay, I covered some of what goes on at a shipyard; today’s coda represents the outtakes that didn’t make it into the final deliverable for the client, but I shot as part of my body of personal work. There’s just so much abstract geometry and texture going on with the interplay of parts, metals, surfaces and finishes at the yard it’s impossible to ignore; I’m pretty sure some of these would make rather interesting large prints. MT

This set was shot with a Panasonic TZ3.

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: compact, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, panasonic, photo, photoessay, photography, ship, shipbuilder, shipyard, singapore, thein, tz3

Book review: Magnum Contact Sheets

April 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

Like most photographers, I do like a good fine art book of images – especially if the content is first rate. Books can be a source of inspiration and ideas, as well as a good reality check to see what’s out there in the world of photography. This will be the first in a longer term series of book reviews, in which I’ll highlight anything I find particularly interesting, and how it’s relevant to photography or developing your skills further. The minimum benchmark is of course that I must find the book worthwhile enough to purchase, but I’ll reserve the right to call out work so singularly execrable that I would be doing a disservice to the buying public if I didn’t warn them away from it.

First off: it’s a Magnum anthology, which means there aren’t going to be any bad images in here. Even the ones that are perhaps compositionally less strong are pretty darn impressive, more so when you read the context and understand the back story.

The book is also full of interesting little tidbits: I didn’t know that most of Robert Capa’s negatives from the Normandy invasion were actually spoiled by the developer – they were overcooked in the drying cupboard and melted – the few that were salvageable were the ones where the emulsion had slipped from the celluloid, but not completely come off; this is why all of the series seem to have some motion blur in them. I thought it was either due to the intensity of the moment, or the technical limitations imposed by cameras and films of the day. Interestingly, I think one could argue that the images are just as powerful despite being technically imperfect; the additional dynamic added adds a real sense of urgency, panic and chaos – which is precisely what war is.

However, the real kicker here is that the images presented aren’t just the single ‘selected’ iconic ones, but also the ones before and after – i.e. a contact sheet of that entire roll of film. For me, this was mind blowing: I have long been under the impression that the photography greats just take one, or at most two, shots and then nail the image; they don’t. They work the scene with at least one, sometimes more, rolls of film before they get what they need. It’s an incremental process. You can actually visualize the compositional development process in the mind of the photographer from shot to shot, especially if the subject is relatively static and predictable so they have the opportunity to try different things and execute incremental refinements.

What I’d take away from this – other than the powerful images and great (but not excellent) printing is that although the great photographers no doubt have huge innate talent – you can see that already from the first shot in the series, usually – but they also have the determination and patience to keep shooting until they know they’ve nailed it. That, combined with the selection process afterwards, is what makes all the difference between being perceived as a mediocre to average photographer, or an incredible one. It’s not that famous photographers don’t take crappy shots; we usually don’t get to see them.

There’s no referral program for people who live in Malaysia, so go ahead and buy it from your favorite retailer. Product images from Amazon. MT

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: book review, magnum contact sheets, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photojournalism, thein

POTD: One more from the window seat

April 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

Not just good for landscapes! Ricoh GR-Digital (original flavor), 2006. What you’re looking at is the shadow of the airplane projected onto a cloud; the white dot with the color halo around it is the sun. The color halo itself is caused by the same process that creates rainbows – prismatic spectral dispersion of the white light from the sun by the water droplets in the cloud. MT

Filed Under: POTD Tagged With: aerial, cloud, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, plane, potd, projection, ricoh gr digital, thein

On assignment and studio review: Watch photography with the Leica M9-P

April 13, 2012 by Ming Thein

We photographers are a strange lot: sometimes we make our lives difficult when there’s absolutely no need to. I recently shot a watch photography assignment using a Leica M9-P, of all things. (This setup has been the subject of another post, here)

You probably know that my usual rig for this is a Nikon with a whole bunch of extension tubes. Why did I do it, you might ask? See the end of the post for the answer.

Let’s start back-to-front, with a few highlights from the results:

Deep Sea Chronograph.

I would conservatively say that this was the most difficult shoot I’ve ever done, and the only one that required the services of an assistant – normally, I find they just get in the way and it’s much faster for me to do what needs to be done rather than have to explain it. Firstly, this rig is one which does not focus to infinity, is entirely manual, and is both heavy and unwieldy. Put one finger wrong and you’re liable to make a hole in the bellows, which being the better part of half a century old, is extremely fragile. (The mechanical parts are still in amazingly good condition though, and operate very smoothly.) You need to set magnification first – also restrictive, between about 2.5:1 to 1:2 only (with the Visoflex and 90/4 only) – then move the entire rig to frame – and because it’s unwieldy, you can’t do this handheld. I made a kind of gimbal head out of a Manfrotto 468RC0 Hydrostat head tilted at 90 degrees, to which was vertically mounted a Manfrotto geared focusing rail, with the rail on the Bellows II attached at right angles to that – which allowed me tilt and yaw motion, and precise front/back and up/down movements. Slow going – there were ten adjustment points on support system alone, to say nothing of photographic controls – but accurate.

Duometre a Quantieme Lunaire 40.5

Secondly, the Visoflex prism obviously blocks the M9-P’s hotshoe, ruling out the use of flashes – at least by any conventional means. With a custom-fabricated cable (read: a hotshoe cover with holes made in it to thread through speaker wire, which was then soldered to the contact points of a donor slave – in this case, a Nikon SB700), it was possible. The slave flash would fire at minimum power and trigger the other flashes in SU4 optical slave mode. Optical slave mode is a polite way of saying 100% manual – so it’s either light meter (which I don’t have) or experience (which I do have, from shooting the same thing with slide film). My assistant would run from flash to flash poking buttons and turning wheels in response to cryptic instructions like “top, up one; back, thirty-two and fifty millimeters, up ten degrees; kill the right one.”

[Translation: Top flash, increase power by one stop. Back flash, change power to 1/32 and zoom head to 50mm, tilt the head up ten degrees. Turn off the right flash.]

Amvox World Chronograph

It was a near thing. The entire job relied on a single critical part: that sync cable. At one point, there was an internal short somewhere which either kept the flash firing frequently enough to trigger epilepsy, or not firing at all. And to compound things, I suspect the trigger voltage of the hotshoe and flash didn’t agree, which would occasionally cause the M9-P to not fire its shutter at all. And then the Visoflex jammed…let’s just say the Victorinox earned its keep on that day.

Duometre a Quantieme Lunaire 40.5

It took me just over nine hours to make a final cut of 80 photographs – which is excruciatingly slow, considering I’ll normally do three times that number in two thirds of the time. Most of the delay was due to moving and setting the camera, or fine-tuning the flashes.

Duometre a Spherotourbillon

However, I think this conclusively proves that the Leica M system is a lot more versatile than most people think. Now, if only Leica would produce modern versions of these accessories – and perhaps something to trigger a flash. I don’t think most people have any idea how difficult it is to find a Bellows II-screwmount to Leica M adaptor until you look…

Master Ultra Thin Reserve de Marche

One quick comment on image quality: the 90/4 Macro-Elmar is a superbly sharp lens with great micro contrast, if you use it in the optimal range. At maximum aperture (f4), there is very visible chromatic aberration – both longitudinal and lateral. Stopped down between f5.6 and f11, it’s superb. At f16, diffraction suddenly kicks in – there’s a huge difference between f13 and f16, it’s as though somebody has run a Gaussian filter over the entire image. (I think at this magnification it’s probably closer to f32, though). I wouldn’t even go near f22. I had to pay careful attention to lighting with the M9, for the simple reason that its dynamic range is probably 2-2.5 stops less than the D800 at base ISO. All in all though, I think you’ll agree that the combination is capable of some spectacular results – even more impressive considering that it was never designed for this.

Because we photographers have a particularly odd fascination with checking out other people’s equipment, I’m going to leave you with some gear shots. I will also say that if anybody is in the market for a tripod head, the Manfrotto Hydrostat series is truly excellent – it’s the only head I’ve ever used that doesn’t exhibit any ‘droop’ when locking down the head, no matter the weight or magnification of the camera and lens combination attached. It’s rock solid.

Yours truly at work. (You’ll notice I’m not using the tripod here; I put it aside for the further-away shots of whole watches.)

My exhibition of fine art horology sponsored by Jaeger Le-Coultre and Leica will be on display at Starhill Gallery, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur from 3 May onwards – please drop by if you’re in town! If you let me know in advance, I’ll try to give you a personal tour. MT

____________

Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!