Ming Thein | Photographer

Photoessay: Chicago stories

February 14, 2016 by Ming Thein

You will pay…or the Don will make you pay

I’m going to try something a bit polarising today: a set of images with an imagined narrative, and knowing how many of you dislike titles, I’m almost certain that my read of the narrative is going to be completely different to yours. This may be down to cultural context, personal context/ biases, or my subconscious including ambient elements that were in the scene but not captured. Feel free to offer an alternative interpretation. MT

This series was shot with a Leica Q, D810/ Zeiss 28 Otus, A7RII/ Zeiss 85 Batis and processed with Photoshop Workflow II. You can also look over my shoulder at the underlying postprocessing in the Weekly Photoshop Workflow series.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: chicago, life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, people, photoessay, photography, stories, thein

A question of value, accessibility and medium format…

February 12, 2016 by Ming Thein

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Let’s say you’re in the market for a new camera – which face it, most of us find ourselves in frequently, often for reasons of our own doing. It has to be something reasonably exciting, and having played this game and gone through this cycle many times, for argument’s sake, it’s probably going to be at the higher end of the spectrum. We have a lot of choices. What I’ve shown above represents the full spectrum of choices, from the best of conventional high performance DSLR, to the top end of mirrorless, to entry level medium format, to something a bit more unconventional. Figure on spending say ~$12k by the time you’re done – body, a lens or two, and the usual plethora of system-specific accessories.

Photoessay: Mokhtar Samba and the African Jazz Project

February 10, 2016 by Ming Thein

I have a dirty little secret. I like to shoot jazz concerts at small venues. Wednesdays, Thursdays and by special appointment. It’s something I did perhaps ten years ago, shortly after starting photography seriously; I’ve done it on and off a few times since when time and opportunity permits. The music came first; I’m very much tone deaf but can still appreciate it. The camera came along after being invited to shoot by some of the venue owners, and stayed since. Today’s set is from Mokhtar Samba and the African Jazz Project at No Black Tie in Kuala Lumpur from a couple of months back. You may recognise some of the images from the photographing concerts article. Enjoy! MT

This series was shot with a Nikon D5500, Zeiss 1.4/55 Otus and Leica Q, and post processed with the Monochrome Masterclass workflow. You can also look over my shoulder at the underlying postprocessing in the Weekly Photoshop Workflow series.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: concert, jazz, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, mokhtar samba, no black tie, thein

Photographing concerts

February 8, 2016 by Ming Thein

This is a slightly unusual topic for me: concert photography is something I’ve done quite a bit of, but never generally publicise because it falls out of my preferred commercial work. I started with being interested in the music first, in the mid 2000s; I shot a number of small venues locally, and these actually formed some of my earliest work – licensed to musicians and the like. Sadly, musicians are much like photographers: 99.99% of us are broke, but there are a small number of rockstars who make it into the big leagues. There are a few more who do okay and get by; we’re thankful we can sing for our supper and not drive a desk. That said, I have never (and will never) be on the other side of the microphone.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, concert, documentary, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, style, thein

Photoessay: The Idea of Man, Chicago, part II

February 4, 2016 by Ming Thein

Continued from part I

I was in Chicago at the end of last year for my exhibition of the same name at the Rangefinder Gallery; what we showed was actually only 27 of the 70+ images from that series, curated from a further 10,000+ images over the course of many years of shooting. However, I’ve always thought of Idea of Man as an ongoing project; our interpretation of the philosophy of life is as dependent on ourselves as it is on whatever we happen to be observing. And there’s always a place to go or culture to experience that is foreign to us, and may well raise new questions over what is ‘normal’, ‘expected’, and ‘individual’. Thus, the show must go on.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: chicago, idea of man, life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, people, photoessay, photography, thein

Photoessay: The Idea of Man, Chicago, part I

February 2, 2016 by Ming Thein

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: chicago, idea of man, life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, people, photoessay, photography, thein

Alternate presentations: cinematic Thaipusam 2016 photoessay

January 31, 2016 by Ming Thein

As a follow on to the article a few days ago about my experiences shooting medium format for low light reportage work, I’m presenting the promised cinematic set from Thaipusam 2016. I deliberately left a few articles’ gap between them rather than presenting them back to back; this allows a bit of settling time and objectivity between the two sets of images. It also brings up the question of stylistic choices: how do you decide?

Bespoke Queenstown Landscape Workshop, 21-24 April 2016

January 29, 2016 by Ming Thein

Time for something different. This April, I’m offering more than a workshop: an intensive experience to raise your photography to the next level. The focus will be on landscape, in and around Queenstown, New Zealand. We (I) will be driving a lot, bringing you to locations I discovered on my last trip to both explore and develop your own work. But here’s the kicker: the workshop will limited to just three participants, and is inclusive of 4*+ accommodation and ground transport costs. It’s something I’ve been asked for in the past, but didn’t make much sense unless going to a location where driving/ground transport is necessary and we have much range to cover.

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Filed Under: Teaching Tagged With: bespoke, exclusive, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, new zealand, queenstown, thein, Workshop

Premiere and review: The Olympus PEN F

January 27, 2016 by Ming Thein

After being limited to 16MP for nearly four years, we now have a marginal increase in resolution – to 20MP, matching the Panasonic GX8 announced last year (and quite possibly sharing the same sensor, too). The PEN F is another retro-tastic design clearly inspired by the original film half-frame PEN F, right down to the knob on the front vertical face of the camera. It is also yet another subdivision of a niche by Olympus of its EVF cameras – we have the photo-centric E-M1, the video-centric E-M5II, the budget-centric E-M10II, and now the PEN F. One thing that struck me throughout the test period was that the camera really feels as though it’s geared towards the JPEG shooter (or, more likely, the social media crowd). It’s the first all-new ‘serious’ camera from Olympus in a couple of years – so how does it perform?

Thank you to Olympus Malaysia for the loan. Note that all images were processed in Olympus Raw Viewer 3, and then run through my usual photoshop workflow; as such it’s difficult for me to make objective and comparative statements about image quality as this is not my normal workflow and one cannot compare it to other cameras easily. What I can do for now is assess how this particular workflow performs, and that’s what I’ll be doing later. Additional images will be posted to this flickr gallery.

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews Tagged With: gearhead, m4/3, micro four thirds, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, olympus, pen f, review, thein

Reportage and medium format: Thaipusam 2016 with a Hasselblad H5D-50C

January 25, 2016 by Ming Thein

Thaipusam is a Big Deal for those involved religiously* – but also quite an amazing experience as an observer. One of, if not the largest of these festivals takes place in a cave temple about 15km outside of Kuala Lumpur every year at the Batu Caves. I’ve photographed the event previously in 2008, 2011 and 2012. This year’s festival happened just a couple of days ago on the 23rd-24th of January, and I went back for the fourth time. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a very special experience even as a non-participant and not really understanding the significance of the ceremony to the believers. There really is some energy there from the sheer number of participants and general positive and hopeful thoughts that are going around at the time.

*Wikipedia does a much better job of explaining it than I can.