essay – Ming Thein | Photographer

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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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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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: 16:9, 1:1, 3:2, 4:3, article, aspect ratios, crop, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, thein

A few tales of customer service and “professional” support in the world of photography

July 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’m not going to name names because anonymous allusions can’t be legally construed as libel, but I think it’s important that an open letter goes out to the brands/ distributors/ dealers – in a previous corporate life, we were always taught to treat a customer complainant as a gift: it’s an opportunity for you to interact with the customer, build a relationship and find out what aspects of your business’ operations require improvement. It’s also a way for you to distinguish yourself from the competition – recently, there was a scandal locally with KFC staff attacking customers who got angry after being informed that a particular offer had expired…that attack was videoed and on youtube fairly soon afterwards. Needless to say, that was not a good day for the company’s PR department.

Sadly though, in Asia, the majority of companies tend to treat customers largely with indifference – the attitude seems to be ‘you buy from me good, you don’t buy from me I don’t care’ – not the best way to do business. Especially with complex, expensive product which makes the relationship part of the business increasingly important.

For professionals, it’s even more important to have good backup – if you don’t, and something goes wrong on a job, or before a job, then you’re up the proverbial river of brown without an outboard. I make system selection based just as much on the level of support I’m going to get from the company as the capabilities of the gear. It’s one of the reasons I stuck to Nikon even in the days when Canon had clearly superior sensors.

So, I’m going to tell you a few stories – good and bad.

1. Quality control, part one

Several years ago, I bought a lens that I thought was possibly the best lens I’d ever used. It wasn’t cheap, but then again it really delivered the goods: I could see precisely why you were paying that much. A friend wanted one urgently for an assignment; I sold it to him knowing that the dealer had a second one in stock. Big mistake: the second one was a disaster; it was soft until f8, didn’t focus smoothly, and worst of all, after just two days, one of the aperture blades detached and jammed the entire iris assembly at at f2 (let’s just say I wasn’t paying for an f2 lens).

No problem, these things happen – the dealer didn’t have any more, so he referred me to the distributor, who should be able to do a swap without issue – after all, the lens was effectively brand new. A call to my contact at the distributor – with them knowing full well I was editor of a photo magazine at the time – told me that I’d have to send the lens back to the manufacturer for repair, with them flat out refusing an exchange and actually accusing me of damaging it myself. They were totally unhelpful in resolving the problem at all. Excuse me? I want the lens because I need to make pictures with it, not a broken object so it can give me a headache.

Long story short: in the end, I never resolved the problem. I landed up complaining to the manufacturer about their distributor’s treatment of customers (more than the lens problem); I had to threaten to write a nasty column in the magazine detailing my experiences before I got any hint of an apology. In the end it came personally from the distributor’s international CEO, and I got so fed up that I took a refund from the dealer instead. I have still not found another good copy of that lens, incidentally – it seems that the first one was exceptional, and my friend is a lucky b******. I eventually sold my entire system and dissuaded other interested parties from investing in it.

2. Quality control, part two

Earlier in the year, I took delivery of a new camera from the first batch. It had asymmetric focusing issues. (I’m sure mention of that is enough for you to know exactly who I’m talking about now). The manufacturer’s local professional support arm was both responsive, and concerned: I told to bring it in straight away so they could do some testing, and so I could pick up a replacement. (The latter was especially impressive knowing that the cameras were in extremely short supply worldwide.) Two days later, I did – and the replacement unit, as well as the loan units, and demo units, all displayed the same problem. No problem – I was then given a loaner camera, which was the previous flagship – for as long as I needed. A month later, I was told a new batch arrived – but opted to upgraded to a slightly improved model, instead. This was a bit better, but still not perfect. I was eventually called and informed that a fix had been found, and I should bring the camera in. I was lent a new flagship for all too short a day before collecting my camera the following day, repaired and functioning as expected.

3. Quality control, part three

Very recently, I received a lens whose price was high, and performance not even close to a much cheaper competitor. Worse still, it wasn’t even as good as the previous copy I’d had (and no, it’s not the same lens from story #1) – it was only sharp in the exact center, very soft off-axis, and worse still, asymmetrically so. The concerned distributor apologized and swapped it out, with their division head personally delivering the replacement – now that’s service. Unfortunately, the second one also seemed rather off – it was consistently sharp across the frame, but there was heavy ghosting and double imaging. I landed up going to the warehouse and testing every single copy of the lens they had in stock – it seemed that batch had either one or the other problem (ghosting/ softness/ asymmetry). At this point, the distributor was both mortified and hugely embarrassed, promising to send the entire batch back to the factory and demand an explanation – it’s good to know that he wouldn’t sell them to other customers who might perhaps not be as picky about their optics as me. I was given a much more expensive lens of similar focal length in exchange, no questions asked. And allowed to pick the actual unit, too – let’s just say I’m convinced the one I’ve now got is exceptionally good. Outcome: one very happy customer.

4. Software hiccups

On a previous assignment, one of the cameras I was using developed a software fault of some kind that caused it to lock up – that’s not good, but not so bad because every locked up camera I’ve had has always been rectified by pulling the battery. Most of the time, images aren’t lost, either. No harm, no foul. However, this particular incident resulted in the entire card being getting so corrupted that it would crash any Mac that tried to mount it – needless to say, image recovery software wasn’t an option. Worse still, all the images from one particular job were on that card – I was in the middle of the job. (In the end, I landed up submitting a mix of recovered images through forensic recovery, some reshot images and backup images from the B-roll. The client wasn’t happy because we didn’t have the first and best take; it was a large commission for an important client, whom I landed up losing because of this.) In these situations, a backup camera wouldn’t have helped because you can’t backtrack your steps and shoot everything again. Parallel writing might have helped, but the chances are that mirroring would probably have resulted in both cards being corrupted.

I understand that you can be extremely unlucky and have these things happen. But what I couldn’t deal with afterwards was the extreme arrogance of the manufacturer: whilst their employees were most helpful and apologetic, their MD flat out accused me of user error, and kept trying to change the subject. I offered to work with a software team to determine what the problem was so a firmware fix could solve it, but the offer was rebutted with the effective message of ‘we don’t need you.’

How on earth it is possible to create a card that has physically damaged sectors (but a perfect physical appearance) with a camera is beyond me. If I could fake something like that, I’d be a programmer, not a photographer.

In the end, I managed to get a replacement camera to reshoot the job which did have parallel writing and dual card slots, but that didn’t work properly either – it didn’t seem to be able to parallel write, and if you change the ISO immediately after taking a shot while the camera is writing to the card, then subsequent files wouldn’t save at all. You’d think this would be a fairly common operation, but I guess not.

Needless to say I do not use or recommend this camera brand for professional use, or any use where actually having images is important, period.

5. My bad

Pro DSLRs are mostly weather sealed. Mine was; I shot in monsoon rains without a hiccup. The problem came when I arrived back in my air conditioned apartment, and pulled the battery out to put in a fresh one – uh oh. A popping sound ensued, and some smoke came out. The charge indicator went from full to flat in a second. Turns out that the temperature differential created condensation inside the battery compartment, and that shorted out the camera. Still, after putting a third battery in (letting the camera dry out first, of course) everything seemed to work fine, except it wouldn’t save a file. I thought it might be the card interface.

I took it in to the manufacturer’s service department, where they accepted my credentials and issued me with a loan body. Three days later, they issued me with a quote – it seems they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with it, but the only way they could guarantee its continued future operation would be to replace pretty much everything but the outer shell, mount, prism and mirror assembly. This would of course cost more than a new camera! I elected not to have the work done, and wait for the camera’s successor instead (a matter of months). I was allowed to keep the loan body until that time – not at all expected or obligated, but a very thoughtful touch indeed.

6. I believe they call that dictation, not collaboration

I was asked to do a live watch photography demonstration recently; I would have to use a certain brand of watch, camera etc – which is fine – so long as I have the lighting equipment and diffusers I need. They expected me to produce live images like what you see in my portfolio – except I was told that I had to do it so a) the audience could see, and b) no Photoshop was allowed. I don’t know what they were smoking, but there’s no way you can produce a perfect commercial grade image without retouching; worse still, how would the audience see if all the action happens inside a light tent? I suggested streaming video from a GoPro positioned inside the tent (to minimize reflections) but they insisted it wasn’t possible because it was a competitor’s product. I was told to do it without the light tent, and far away enough from the watch that the audience could also see the watch.

Anybody who’s attempted microphotography of any kind will realize this is impossible: you now have zero lighting control, plenty of unwanted reflections, and worse still, what macro lens gives you 2:1 magnification and 50cm of free working distance in front of the lens?

I told the client it wasn’t technically possible; they threatened to use somebody else. I wished them luck. These are the kinds of clients that I try to avoid, because if you can’t pull it off, you’ll just land up making everybody look bad, including yourself.

7. A complete 180 turn

Many years ago, I reviewed a camera as part of my editorial duties at the magazine. It was a final production prototype, so the company was understandably a bit nervous about us publishing images – in fact, they wanted us to do a review with product images only, and no samples. That would obviously defeat the point of a camera review! I suggested that we would let them approve any images we chose to publish beforehand; they very reluctantly agreed.

Fast forward two weeks – on returning the camera and submitting images for them to okay, not only were they thrilled with what I did with the camera, but they also wanted to use the images for their promotional materials. Happy to do so – let’s talk licensing. Oh, sorry, they said, we’re not paying for images because it’s our camera. Um…does that mean a chef doesn’t get paid because it isn’t his kitchen? They replied that the PR value of being associated with our brand would be compensation enough. Okay, so would I get image credits? No. Could I at least get tear sheets to put in the portfolio? No. Could I list them as a client? No. Then how the hell would I get anything out of this at all?

In the end, I chose the worst images I could find from that set to publish in the magazine; I was told by several dealers that it was never a popular model (despite actually being a pretty good camera). I nearly switched systems to this after using it – but changed my mind completely after dealing with the company’s local management.

8. Take it first, pay me later, if you don’t like it, bring it back.

I have a trusted dealer here that knows I go through equipment faster than an alcoholic through a bottle of gin; I’m given trial periods, loans, agreed buyback amounts, no questions asked replacements for faulty gear, out of warranty service costs absorbed by them, preferential delivery for new stuff, freebies, and above all, excellent prices. This is unheard of in Southeast Asia, where the retailer is king, not the consumer. Needless to say, I’ve spent a small fortune here, and refer everybody who asks me where they should buy equipment. I’d buy from here on the basis of price alone, but my relationship with the owner and most of his staff means that it’s like visiting friends rather than doing business.

Moral of the story: be careful how you treat your customers, because you don’t know if the guy is going to be your next biggest customer, may not buy much but give you huge referrals, or even worse, run a moderately popular blog 🙂 MT

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Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, customer service, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, pro service, thein

Clients from hell (or, some light partial humor)

July 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

I think a lot of working pros will be able to relate to this list, see the satire in it, and then commiserate with me that I was only partially joking…

Without further ado, in no particular order:

– Those who ask for endless retouching revisions, all of which creep increasingly outside scope – masking out figures to place from a location shot to garnish a text page in a brochure

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, then pay late (big companies are notorious for this; it’s as though there’s an internal KPI for creditor days – the higher the better)

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, and don’t pay at all

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, agree, then question every item on the bill again at payment date whilst of course contesting half of them

– Those who after agreeing price and scope, sneak something in under the pretense of ‘oh, can you also help me out with something small?’ (which is of course neither small nor easy)

– Those who pay for a fixed number of shots but ask for all of the raw files or expect at least 50% more final delivery shots, knowing you’ll produce far more than agreed to ensure the scope is completely met

– Those who ask for uncompressed maximum resolution 16bit CMYK TIFF files, then complain they can’t open them because their computers have ‘insufficient system resources’

– Those who don’t actually pay your work more than a cursory glance before finding one shot they didn’t like in the 200 you delivered, then demanding a discount even though they loved everything else

– Those who specifically look for one image they don’t like, so they can complain to you non-stop about it afterwards so they can get a discount

– Those who think their problems with other unrelated contractors are your fault, and either use that as an excuse as to why they can’t pay, or why they expect more from you

– Those who ask for your style, then hand you a book/ magazine/ menu and say ‘copy this’

– Those who approve every single shot on the camera review screen, then complain that you didn’t give them what they asked for afterwards

– Those who don’t supply any of the agreed props or items

– Those who supply you with objects or food to be photographed that are obviously unpresentable – they may be scratched, dented, cracked, partially eaten, or generally used

– Those who complain that your make the food look overcooked, when in fact that was the way it came out of the kitchen – identifiable by the fact that only the roast looks too dark, but every other object on the plate looks fine

– Those who don’t supply any of the agreed equipment/ props/ garnishes/ sauces/ spare parts

– Those who aren’t on time, and worse still, don’t tell you that they’re running late

– Those who want fully processed and retouched images the day after the shoot

– Those who expect you to reschedule all of your other shoots to accommodate them

– Those who leave all decisions to their creative agency, whose vision is substantially different to their own…you can imagine what happens after that

I’ve just realized that this list isn’t that funny after all, I’ve had some clients who qualify for almost every single item…MT

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Filed Under: On Assignment, On Photography Tagged With: article, clients from hell, essay, humor, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, satire, thein

Thoughts on Instagram and similar apps

July 14, 2012 by Ming Thein

No instagram, just careful exposure. iPhone 4

It seems that there are several distinctive ‘looks’ that amateur photographers recognize and try to replicate:

– High contrast black and white, sometimes with extra grain, usually all in focus
– Solarized/ retina-searing color, usually all in focus
– Partial bleach-bypass cross-processed color, usually with uneven depth of field or obvious lens flaws (Holga-with-expired-film)
– Very shallow depth of field of any sort
– The ‘miniature effect’ – pseudo tilt-shift

Originally, these styles were either conscious artistic decisions, or the consequences of not enough money and using expired film. They were chosen precisely because they looked unique – either because it was a difficult thing to execute well (using tilt-shift lenses, for instance) or because nobody else did it (cross-processing). The only exception to this is the high contrast black and white style, which was more a consequence of the limitations of the film chemistry at the time, and the requirements a picture of any recognizable description under difficult lighting conditions over fine grain.

However, now that we have a choice of how we process our images – and there’s sufficient latitude even in files from point and shoot cameras – a proliferation of either in-camera modes, filters or apps has taken hold of the photography industry, each claiming to be all you need produce one or all of the above styles.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it takes the skill out of actually having to do any of these things (learn to process B&W properly, either chemically or in Photoshop, for instance); on the other, it does make crappy camera phone shots a lot more pleasant to look at. Until you’ve seen perhaps five, after which they’re all the same anyway – you might as well just have say five or ten random images that come out of the filter, regardless of what you actually shot – after all, you want your grab shot to look like a HC-B, right?

Yes and no. While filters and apps are great for improving the ease of getting the look you want and promoting the general democratization of photography, it’s also sad to see that the vast majority of people can’t tell the difference between a sloppily applied filter, an Instagram shot, and something that was actually done intentionally with full control. It’s even sadder to see that there are a lot of internet ‘photographers’ and bloggers who claim to be the best thing since sliced bread, but would be completely lost without Silver Efex or similar. Strip the artifice away, and what are you left with? A shot with extremely weak composition.

This isn’t so say that mobile phones are useless as capture devices; far from it. My previous article on using the iPhone as a camera is very much in support of it. If you learn the limitations of your device, you don’t need to resort to overcooked processing to mask its inherent limitations – blown highlights or blocked up shadows, for example. There are definitely undoubted advantages – instant connectivity, the ability to share and abundant abundant processing power all come to mind. Apps that come close to replicating the functionality and control of Photoshop – PhotoForge is a good example – make a very good argument for what an intelligent camera can do.

I’ve long maintained that all of these post-capture applications – be they photoshop or filters – cannot materially add to or take away from the composition of the image, because that’s the one thing that’s baked in at the time of capture. No matter how badly you botch the processing, if it’s a strong shot, it will always remain a strong shot whether in B&W, or color, or run through the Holgarize filter on your iPhone. However, the reverse of course applies: garbage in, garbage out. Composition aside, everything else is merely distraction. The problem is when the distraction portion is so great that the viewer can’t tell the difference, or worse, is drawn in at first by the distraction then disappointed by the lack of substance – I admit it happens to me a lot when browsing through images on flickr.

Put it this way: putting effort into learning how to compose properly will pay off in a much bigger way than putting effort into figuring out which button does what on the app. Or if you want to do both, then at least your image will have some substance to it.

If I sound a bit cynical and bitter about the whole thing, it’s not because I see people doing things with ease that I do the manual way – far from it; if there is an easier, faster workflow I’m usually the first to adopt it. What bothers me is that there are plenty of these ‘photographers’ who are not only ignorant about what they’re doing – ‘oh, I’ll use the Velvia filter’ – without actually knowing what Velvia is, or how it’s actually meant to look. Worse still, they get preachy about it and suddenly become an authority on slide film because they have an app or a button that says so. Never mind the fact that some of us shot commercial product jobs with multiple lights on slide, back in the day when you had to calculate guide numbers manually…man, I sound old.

Remember: it’s a tool, not a religion, and before you spout opinions, make sure you can back them up – it’s quite possible the other person you’re talking to has forgotten more than most people ever learn about the particular topic you’re talking about, but is just too polite to say anything about it. With that, I stand ready to be corrected. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: apps, essay, instagram, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, thein

Common photographic mistakes by beginners, amateurs and pros – and how to avoid them

July 2, 2012 by Ming Thein

Beginners: Ever wonder why your photos don’t look ‘professional?’ Amateurs: ever wonder why you lack consistency? Pros: Ever wonder why you lose your edge or drive? Wonder no longer. This article deals with some of the most common oversights by photographers of all kinds, and how to avoid them.

Beginners

The missing subject. If it’s not obvious at a glance what is the subject of your image – i.e. what the photo is actually about – then you should probably ask yourself why you took the picture in the first place. If the answer was ‘because of the X’, and the X is not obvious, then you need to try again. The subject in a photo should stand out – by contrast, by color, by light, by motion, or by focus. In exceptional cases it’s possible to make it stand out by not having it, but this is very, very rare and requires perfect use of contextual information to allow the viewer to make inferences about what should complete the scene.

Poor perspective use. Pick your perspective before your angle of view. Wide angles are used to emphasize foreground subjects, telephotos to de-emphasize them with respect to the background. Don’t use a wide angle to ‘get more stuff in’ the frame, that will just result in boring images. Similarly, telephotos are not for ‘getting closer’.

Being stuck in the wrong gear. This includes the entire suite of woes of technical errors – exposure, focus, camera shake, white balance etc. Usually due to the driver relying too much on the camera to do the work for you: it will never get it right because there is no way the camera can know what the photographer intends to do with each image. You will have to take control somewhere along the line in the imaging chain in order to create the image you envision in your mind at the time of capture, and it’s better to do it closer to the capture process to minimize the subsequent amount of image quality degradation.

Amateurs

Worrying too much about gear. This usually takes the form of hauling around everything you own for every shoot and believing a new piece of equipment will solve some deficiency in your images that can almost always be traced back to photographic skill, or more specifically, the lack thereof. If you carry too much stuff you’ll always be second-guessing your choice of lens or camera. And if you keep buying new gear, you’ll never master what you’ve got – and be at a disadvantage because you can’t control your equipment. Before buying new gear, make sure you know exactly what it is with your current kit that is the limitation, and that it will resolve the problem – otherwise you’ll have both wasted money and compromised your photography. However, if you’re just a camera collector, disregard this item. In fact, disregard this entire post.

Intrusions and truncations into frame edges. With 100% finders being commonplace, there’s no excuse for parts of the subject being cut off at the edges, or obviously contrasting distractions intruding into the frame – like tree branches or phantom limbs, for instance.

Color issues. Odd white balance, or objects in the frame that are obviously the wrong color can create some interest in an otherwise boring scene – or things like that can just be jarring if they’re too far off the mark. This is especially important for skin tones or food. If you’re not sure what the correct white balance is, either adjust it accordingly with the eyedropper tool when converting the raw file, or manually white balance with a gray card. Don’t leave the camera to do it on automatic – if a channel gets clipped, the information isn’t recoverable. This is especially obvious with jpegs due to the limited tonal range available in the first place.

Black and white contrast issues. Amateur black and white generally tends to be too flat or too contrasty. The latter results in a loss of highlight and shadow quarter tones, resulting in an over-graphic representation of the subject and not enough tonal range to differentiate the subject from the background; the former is just dull and uninteresting to look at. It’s like knowing the chef had twenty different ingredients to make a meal, but he used only the gray, monotonous-tasting one.

Poor use of natural frames or leading lines. These little ‘helpers’ are to be found all over the place – the converging perspectives of a long hallway are a great example of this. They can help to draw your eye to the subject, but they can also lead your eye away from it if you put the subject anywhere else by the confluence of these lines.

Center-only composition. Few images work well with the subject dead-center or nearly there; the more dynamic images always have a bit of space before or after – I like to think of it as the anticipation or the aftermath. All cameras these days have more than one focusing point. I hear they even let you pick which one!

Lack of balance. I did say just now that center-subject compositions are boring; that’s because they mostly are. But at the same time, you can’t have frames where all of the action happens in say the bottom-left corner and the rest of the image is empty. Visual balance is a tough thing to describe, but fortunately it’s one of those properties of an image which is instinctively easy to recognize.

Incorrect use of depth of field. Too little, and the picture becomes about the bokeh – most of the images shot with the old Leica 50/1.0 Noctilux are like this – I can never understand why people gush over a picture of a boring fence or pile of bricks just because it exhibits swirly bokeh; to me it says nothing more than ‘I rely on my gear to create a style for me because I have no imagination!’ It is, of course, a tool – used well, it can enhance an image. Used poorly, well, you’re just another camera collector who takes pictures of fences. Notice I haven’t said anything about too much depth of field – you can always compose to use this to your advantage, because any secondary element of context helps to tell the story. However, the converse is also true – there’s no context in an abstract wall of blur. Conclusion: I’m beginning to think there’s a just right amount of bokeh for every scene – or at least a range; just enough blur to help you focus on the primary subject, not too much to remove all the context.

Poor timing and not being prepared. I see plenty of shots that I call ‘near misses’. This is when the idea is there, the technical execution is well done, but the timing is off – always caused by a moving element that’s out of position. There are two elements to getting this right – practice, and practice. You need to have some ability to anticipate what’s going to happen next; you also need to have an instinctive feel for how much lag your camera has between depressing the button and the picture being taken. And the only way to make this intuitive is by shooting and getting accustomed to it.

Professionals

Getting stuck in the creative rut. Not pushing yourself and relying on the same patterns of framing time and again may ensure you get the money shot, but eventually everybody else will be getting the same money shot, too. (Certain local celebrity wedding photographers where I live are notorious for this.) You need to be continually trying new things, improving and refining and always pushing. It’s an increasingly competitive industry, and a very visual one – if your images don’t stand out, then you’re never going to be a client’s first choice – they probably won’t even notice you from the rest of the pack.

Leaving the thinking to the client asks for and no more. This is related to the previous point – in fact, it’s the precursor to it. Clients come in a continuum: those who leave all of the creative freedom to the photographer, recognizing that the reason why they were attracted to your portfolio in the first place is because of your own personal style (these are the best clients of all) – to those that tell you exactly what they want, down to the last millimeter of positioning. The former type of client is rare; this makes it very easy to fall into being a contractor/ executor rather than being a creative.

Subcontracting out too much of the retouching and styling. Another related point comes in the form of an army of assistants and stylists. Given how much of the creative process is encapsulated in the post processing portion, it seems rather risky to leave the work to somebody else – even if they understand your original vision, chances are that it will take longer because there will be many revisions required, and in the end it may still not quite be what you initially envisioned. If you let this happen for too long, technology may move on to the point where you don’t even know how to achieve the desired end result anymore. And if your assistant or retoucher leaves, then what happens?

Not trying different subjects. I’ve had endless debates with various people in the industry on this topic – is it better to be a specialist and only shoot one thing, or a generalist and shoot everything? The reality is that it’s a bit of both. You have to be known for one thing – that becomes your go-to commercial support – but you need to be able to shoot many different types of subjects. There are two reasons for this – firstly, it lets you make more income from being able to offer clients additional services; the less obvious one is that shooting different things helps you to develop different techniques that can be applied across your particular subject of expertise.

Finally, there’s working too much. This sounds contradictory, but not taking enough time out to focus on personal shooting/ creative development can actually make you lose your creativity and consequently negatively affect your business. Fortunately when this happens, you’ve got less work and more time to experiment, so hopefully you do actually go out and do some personal shooting. I’ve definitely noticed that the more commercial work I do, the less I feel inclined to do personal work – I think this is dangerous because that’s probably the only time where you don’t have limitations imposed on you by your deliverables, and can let your creativity do its thing.

And on that note, I’m off for a walk. With a camera. MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, common mistakes, essay, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

Commercial work vs personal work vs experimentation vs development

June 30, 2012 by Ming Thein

This shot was the result of creative white balance use, and getting up early because I wanted to try it. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

One thing I’ve noticed since turning to photography full time is that the amount of personal work I do has greatly reduced. It’s not because I don’t have time to do it – on the contrary, I should have plenty more opportunities to sneak out and shoot for half an hour or an hour here and there – I think it’s because I’m starting to fall into the trap of complacency. Or perhaps I’m reaching a photographic saturation point of sorts.

This shot was the result of experimenting with large amounts of blu-tack to keep the watch in place for the shot. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro

I definitely still enjoy shooting, and I still feel the same rush when I nail the frame – what I’m missing is the feeling of wanting to go out and do it in the first place. I think a large part of it is because once you start running your own business, there are always more things you can be doing on the development front – either sending out feelers to potential new clients, following up on existing ones, or doing post processing from jobs past. And that doesn’t count this blog, either.

Up to this point, I’d never used dinner plates as props for watch photography before. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro

It’s odd, but equipment choice paralysis also seems to be a contributing factor. I’ve now got three systems – Nikon FX, Leica M and Micro 4/3 – each for a specific purpose, but also each with enough lenses to make a general purpose kit that I can comfortably go out and shoot anything with, be it an assignment or a holiday at the beach. And that doesn’t count the various compact cameras, either. Sometimes I honestly stand in front of the equipment cabinet before going out and feel plagued by indecision – even if I pick a system, which lens(es) should it go with? What do I anticipate shooting? What kind of look or style am I going for?

Divisive symmetry. One of those experiments. Nikon D3

Constantly planning shots and thinking about the end result does make you a more conscious and prepared photographer, but it also means that to some extent you’re either paralyzed by indecision, or micromanaging everything in your control to the point that it doesn’t become fun anymore. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is the feeling that you definitely have the wrong piece of equipment on you, but the right one is sitting in the cabinet at home. (At that point, the best thing you can do is figure out what you can do with what you’ve got and just shoot, but that’s an entire post on its own for another day).

The ephemeral missing sushi. One of my favorite near misses – even though nothing is in focus, you can make out enough of the shot to know that there should be something between the fingers and on it’s way to the diner’s mouth. To my eyes, the blurriness of it all actually helps to reinforce the implied surrealism. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, Panasonic 20/1.7 G

So what’s the upshot of all of this? Well, not doing as much personal work means that that the times you do shoot are mostly bridled by the requirements of your clients, and frequently do not result in you pushing the creative envelope – especially if you have conservative clients. The importance of photography for yourself is that it gives you time to experiment and develop your style and technique; without it, it’s too easy to stagnate into a creative rut and consequently land up being unproductive, or worse, uncompetitive. Not having an end client to please takes the pressure off you, and leaves you free to try things that you might not have time to do while on assignment, especially if time is tight and shot list is long – which it almost always is.

It was extremely dark, and empty – there were no people to fill the frame and provide context, motion and life – I didn’t even know if the shot would work technically, let alone aesthetically. I’m very pleased with the result, though. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH

Inevitably, the early results of any experiment result in failure, or at best, partial success. Whilst this may not be acceptable in a client scenario, it’s a crucial part of the learning and development process – if you succeeded at something straight away, chances are you will develop that style far less that somebody who has to work at it. The reasons is down to understanding: assuming we don’t give up, humans understand things by doing them; the more times you have to try something, the more parameters you have to change, the more complete a picture you will be able to build up of how things work. This in turn results in better control over the end result, which of course culminates in better output.

Same with this shot – one of those surreal, but fun experiments that came to mind after passing by the gorilla for sale in a store window. Leica M9-P, Zeiss 28/2.8 Biogon

Without this experimentation, one stagnates creatively; it’s actually very obvious in the work of various ‘famous’ wedding photographers in this country. Many of them revert to the same portfolio of five or ten compositions and apply them to every shoot – which has several consequences; firstly, they are increasingly pigeonholed into a particular style or look, and that’s what clients expect; secondly, they can’t take the risk of doings something else because of client rejection; finally, they can’t break out of that way of seeing because they’ve been doing it for so long, and the creative process has atrophied. It’s a dangerous cycle.

Reflections – another experiment. By this point in the shoot (shooting a launch gallery for the Leica V-Lux 3) – I’d had a whole card full of standard shots, but nothing different and interesting – there wasn’t any clean water in sight for a neat reflection, so had to try and make do.

What I always find interesting – and inspiring – is the work of serious amateurs; Flickr is one of the best places to see this. Whilst there are a good number of pros on the site (myself included), it’s also home to a lot of people who fall into the former category. Serious amateurs are in an enviable position – one I didn’t appreciate myself until recently – most of the time, they have the skills to be able to make the shot they want, the lack of pressure to execute it, and the lack of cynicism that stops them from trying things that might fail in the first place. The result is that browsing uploads from my contacts shows me a wide cross section of work; some of it really quite excellent and inspiring; some of it utter rubbish; however, the most interesting to me are the experiments that are near misses, or clearly out of style for the individual: you can almost see how the compositional mind of the photographer works, trying to adapt their old way of seeing to a new style. It’s almost like seeing how something is made.

If I hadn’t brought the D-Lux 5 along, and packed the light panels on a whim, then this series wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have known that it’s very possible to make commercial-grade food images with a compact.

I often get ideas through looking at other people’s images, period – especially of places I’ve been before, or things I’ve shot before. This gives you the ability to see things through the eyes of another person – and find what you might have missed from your own perspective, which in turn makes you want to go out and shoot again to try and perfect your vision once more, and capture the essence of that particular subject…

Making do with the relatively slow f2.8 aperture of the 28/2.8 ASPH and the limited low light capabilities of the M9-P resulted in long shutter speeds, and the slight softening which lead to this rather surreal image – and the hidden gorilla in the shadows.

Creativity is an iterative process; one that must be built on, nurtured, and continuously pursued. Without it, it’s impossible to develop as a photographer. At the same time, it can’t be forced – something that a lot of people (our government included) don’t seem to understand; you can’t just throw time and money at it and hope that new ideas sprout. It doesn’t work that way – the inspiration, or the ‘ah ha!’ spark has to be there in the first place. The tough part is creating an environment for yourself in which you feel inspired and inclined to experiment. Stress, expectations and tight schedules aren’t conducive for creativity. But over-relaxation and laziness isn’t, either. It’s a tough balance, this one. And that’s one of the reasons why from now on, I’m going to make sure there are a couple of days a month – usually tacked on to the end of location-based assignments – which permit me to go off, explore and experiment. I highly recommend it. MT

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: article, balance, creativity, essay, experimentation, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, personal, photography, professional, thein

Infinite frames in a crop: compositional building blocks (or, the future of photography?)

June 28, 2012 by Ming Thein

Ion Orchard sunset. Leica S2, 70/2.5 Summarit-S

Here’s an interesting thought: sensor resolution is way past the point of far more than most people need – look at that recent Nokia 808 PureView and it’s 41MP sensor as an example. For most compact camera users, that’s just asking for trouble – file sizes, viewing, shooting technique…the list goes on.

What if we took a say 50MP compact 2/3″ sensor (not unfeasible) and just output no more than 5 MP from the sensor? You can zoom to your heart’s content before capture – either by taking a 1:1 crop or downsizing various portions of the frame; have a low light mode which uses pixel binning to reduce noise and/or improve dynamic range; and finally, make the whole thing speedy and lag-free by using a bright, fixed-focus wide angle lens. Or I suppose if you must have macro modes, make it AF. Finally, add some form of image stabilization to the mix, because that kind of pixel density is going to make most tripods look as though they have palsy. We’ve dropped the size, weight and cost of the zoom assembly; this makes for more compact, robust cameras. It also means that more engineering effort and perhaps even more money (though I wouldn’t put it past consumer electronics companies to want to hang on to every single extra penny and avoid R&D spending where possible) can be put into the lens, which should in theory improve optics.

The results probably wouldn’t be pretty at the pixel level, but the target audience is unlikely to care. And 5 good MP is more than enough for a clean 6×4″, or social media post, or email. Hell, it’d probably be enough for a decent A3 print if you use one of the pixel binning modes in good light. Think of it as digital zoom, but instead of getting degradation off the base pixel-level image quality, you get an improvement as you use more and more pixels.

However, I digress. As interesting as that idea is for the future of compacts – I wasn’t initially intending to suggest a new type of camera. What I wanted to explore are the building blocks of composition. Assuming everything is in focus, a scene – especially one shot from a wide angle perspective – can easily be decomposed into multiple elements, some of which contain the subject, some of which contain context, and some of which may turn context into a subject in its own right. All images are made up of these building blocks, and each can be treated as an image in itself. (Don’t try to compose this way in the real world, or you’re either going to go crazy or turn into a product photographer.) Examples may be – a face, a texture, a landmark.

Sometimes you don’t need more than a couple to create an arresting image – a portrait, for instance – sometimes you need as many as you can get to convey the chaos of the scene (crisis photojournalism comes to mind). What I notice in good photographers’ images is that all critical frames contain the elements required to tell the story, and usually in aesthetically pleasing relative placement, too. This is a learned skill; one can identify the critical elements required to tell a story, and then go out and look for a frame that contains them. I suppose the more control you have over the placement of the individual elements, and the more individual elements you can even identify in the first place, the stronger your image will be. Elements may break down into sub-elements – a wide shot may contain a portrait which can contain a face closeup; all of these things are building blocks.

This brings us full circle to the original starting point – how many images are there in an image? Let’s take the first image as an example:

This decomposes into what I think are five clear elements; the building and its relationship with the organic are the subjects.

What I find interesting is that each of these elements – or crops – could be an image on its own. And you can of course further subdivide these images down into their own building blocks. How many does one need to make up a strong overall image? One? Two? More? It’s hard to say; I think the answer is actually infinite. If you had infinite resolution, you could keep subdividing and cropping infinitely.

I know this is a fairly nebulous post, but stay with me here and you’ll start to see the genesis of an idea.

Let’s do the same, but in reverse. The frame below arguably works on its own as an image:

But then, if we include more context, so does this:

Or this:

And this.

We can keep pulling out…

…until we reach the initial (final?) frame.

Welding. Nikon D800, AFS 28-300 VR

Each of these compositions on its own would have worked as a frame. Similarly, continuously pulling out adds more and more context, until you pass a threshold beyond which the context dominates the subject. I framed the final shot that way because that was the farthest I thought I could pull out to maximize context, but at the same time isolate the subjects in the frame. Anything more and the subjects would have been too small to identify cleanly. You’ve also got to consider the final viewing size: smaller would mean physically smaller subjects, which would encourage tighter framing. Similarly, images that appear flat and cluttered at smaller sizes frequently work well when enlarged due to the greater amount of detail we can physically appreciate.

I started this article postulating on whether increases in resolution would lead to a new generation of pixel-binning super-sensored compacts; the more I think about it, the more I think it might even apply to photography as a whole. We have long past the point of resolution sufficiency for most purposes; shrinking pixel pitches mean that lens maximum apertures and diffraction-impacted apertures are converging. Eventually you’re going to have to buy excellently designed and well-corrected fast lenses and shoot them wide open to absolutely maximize resolution from the sensor.

Perhaps this will give birth to a new style or form of photography – we capture everything first, and then decide what’s important to the frame afterwards. A little bit like Lytro, but for composition rather than focus. Of course, we can do the same today with the super high resolution DSLRs, but there are limits to how much we can crop, and the lack of suitable lenses to serve as a reproduction optic. Such a camera – let’s call it post-capture framing – would be responsive due to lack of focusing needs; hyper focal would probably suffice; offer decent low light performance due to the large maximum apertures required; and be reasonably compact – rangefinder sized, perhaps – due to an optical system designed and matched to the sensor. It’d probably be closer in proportions to a cube, actually – once the lens is taken into account.

The skill of the photographer at the moment of capture would then be reduced to timing and exposure; the latter would probably be mostly automated, leaving only timing; however, this doesn’t make things any easier. The bulk of the work would now be done in post-processing – not just the digital ‘development’ portion, but also the editing, framing and cropping. I’ve always thought of editing as one of the critical skills for a pro – one’s reputation is based as much on the photos you show against the ones you don’t; being able to see the frame ‘in the wild’ and capture the moment in time is not an easy thing to do. Post-capture framing would give you all the time in the world to do that, which would make things easier somewhat – but also offer more opportunities and flexibility for other compositions.

This would of course raise some interesting IP issues: if another ‘editor’ cropped the original photo to a much smaller, unrecognizable frame, whose photo is it? The person who pressed the button, and just aimed the camera in the right general direction, or the one who actually saw the composition in the master frame?

It’s a brave new world, and an exciting time to be a photographer. Personally, though, I’m one of those very anal people who seeks to maximize all of the image quality they can get out of the camera; which means I don’t crop unless it’s to a non-native aspect ratio. Understanding the use of ‘building blocks’ to create a final composition, plus knowing when you’ve got enough context (or too much context, overpowering the subject) is a very important skill to refine, regardless of the technology involved. MT

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

Everybody’s a critic

June 26, 2012 by Ming Thein

In the internet age, anybody who has an opinion is free to express it. They’re even free to promote it in whatever way they choose, to whoever they choose. And inevitably it’s the loudest people that get heard – though not necessarily are they the ones with the most valid or interesting things to say.

/rant on: Something has been bothering me, for the past few weeks. And I’ve just put my finger on it. Every time I post a camera or lens review, something odd happens. Traffic spikes, but so do the very polarized emails and comments: everything from outright praise that I find undeserved (though extremely flattering) to derision and people attempting to poke holes in every single portion of my methodology or opinions. I want to make several things clear, both for reviews going forwards and retroactively for things I’ve already written:

1. Everything is relative. If you don’t like my images, fine – nobody is forcing you to look at them. Same for my opinions. But one of the great things about the internet is that there’s so much free content out there that you’re at liberty to choose what you see and read. (What you believe is up to you). And even better, is that there’s always an opportunity to learn something because everybody has a different point of view. I strive to approach every comment and question with an open mind, because it’s entirely possible (in fact, likely) that somebody has thought of something I’ve overlooked. But at the same time, questions are fine, but if you’re going to be a critic, then at least have a clear logical support case for your argument.

2. I will never claim that X image is better than Y image on anything but a subjective, personal level. Remember, cinematographers like flare, but still photographers don’t. Same with certain soft lenses. Photography is subjective, and that subjectivity means that nobody is right or wrong for the most part.

3. For the other parts that are quantifiable – noise, resolution, color accuracy (but not ‘pleasingness’) etc – then scientific tests are always the best way to get a relative idea of whether A is better than B. But the observer must always remember that there are a lot of variables involved – some of which cannot be decoupled from the equation (like lens choice) and some of which are also not relevant to the question (lens choice does not affect noise performance!).

4. I run tests and reviews as practical exercises. The reviews and tests I write are basically a documentation of my own evaluation process to determine if a particular camera makes sense for me or not as a tool, and if so, what incremental advantage does it offer over what I’ve already got. It’s possible to always say ‘but you should have use the 50/1.4 Aspherical Super-Nonagon-Reproductar ED instead of the 50/2.8 XYZ Noname’ – yes, but that isn’t a real world choice for me. I don’t think about the equipment I don’t have, because I’m not going to make photos with it. And I’m certainly not going to go out and buy it solely for the sake of a test. It seems a lot of people get hung up over this and fail to realize that a) a huge amount of work is required to document these tests and b) I’m not paid for it. Worse still, it takes away from the time I have available to do work that does pay. If I compare two things it’s because it’s a real world choice I’ll have to face when looking into the equipment cabinet.

5. My conclusions are not drawn solely from the images you see. The images are there as examples and illustrations. There is no validity to base a conclusion off shrunken web-size jpegs that have both been compressed and color-converted down to 8bit SRGB. I don’t share full size raw files because a) they’re proprietary and b) it would be ridiculously impractical due to bandwidth and hosting considerations. I won’t write something unless I’ve seen it enough times to warrant mention – a single odd image could be down to any number of factors, including sample variation. If something however performs consistently better or worse than expected based on other pieces of equipment of similar specifications, then it’s worth noting. And I suspect that’s what makes a lot of people uncomfortable, because they may have put their money in the wrong camp.

6. Equipment is nothing but a tool. If one tool gives you more flexibility or capability than another, then use it; if it doesn’t, don’t. Grow up and stop wasting your time defending your equipment choices online as though they’re religious beliefs or life and death. If you like it, use it. If that makes you produce better images with camera A even though camera B has more resolution, then camera A is better for you. This is why we have literally hundreds of choices on the market – the camera companies are smart enough to realize that, and let the diehard fans fight to the death over it on the internet. Any publicity is good publicity, right? As a photographer, I only care about the usefulness of a tool. I will buy what works and be vocal about what doesn’t, because if we’re not, then nothing will improve or be fixed. Remember: by far the most important ingredient in a successful photograph is the photographer.

7. The litmus test is the image you get out of it. If the viewer spends most of their time looking for noise rather than at the subject, then I’ve failed as a photographer. Delivering a good image – something that pleases myself and my clients – is the end goal, not to produce an incredibly boring photography that’s technically perfect. That is not what I’m hired for.

8. Finally, my site is about photography, not equipment. If you are looking for community validation of your expensive purchases and expect to see results that show the most expensive is always the best by a clear margin, then criticize my testing methodology with no proof or credibility if I find otherwise, please go and find a suitable forum for that – there are plenty of them out there. But if you want to learn about how understanding the various elements of composition will make you a better photographer, or how human psychology influences our perception of color, then keep reading. /rant off. MT

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Filed Under: Off topic Tagged With: critic, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, testing methodology, thein

On the value of having a muse

June 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

Starburst. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, Panasonic 20/1.7

This has been another one of those tricky articles to write – mainly because a lot of self-reflection went into it, and as we all know, it’s very difficult to do that and remain objective. The essays is illustrated with images that are representative of experiments that worked – things I was inspired to try with various muses, and in turn learned something from.

What is a muse? In its purest form, a muse is perhaps best defined as something that triggers inspiration in an artistic or creative sense. It doesn’t have to be an inanimate object; most artists’ muses tend to be people; in fact, most artists tend to land up romantically involved with their muses. Creativity is impossible to separate from inspiration, and inspiration is a very close bedfellow of attachment – attachment to an idea. (I know this sounds like Inception, but bear with me here.*)

*On an unrelated note, that movie contains one of the most spectacular dining rooms I’ve ever seen – from a design and architectural point of view. And I suspect it would be pretty cool as both a photographic subject and backdrop, too.

Floating head. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 14-42 kit lens

This attachment can take many forms. From a specifically artistic point of view, the main one is to try and capture the essence of the subject in the artist’s work; in fact, an extremely challenging muse is probably the best thing an artist can have, because no matter how hard they try, they will never feel as though they’ve done the subject justice – and this is what drives the growth of creativity. It’s not so much attachment to the subject per se, as an obsession with the desire to capture the subject in a medium or object other than the subject itself – which is in itself doomed to failure, because the more one understands about a subject, the more one realizes that it’s impossible to reproduce it in another medium – especially if the subject is something live and changing, like a person.

Prague sunset. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

So in effect, muses are necessary stimulants to creativity. There are a few things that make a good muse: complexity and multidimensionality is one; ease of access is another (you never know when an idea might strike, and you just have to try something out); finally, some sort of flux or dynamism is another – which is why most muses tend to be things that offer infinitely variable possibilities – for instance, Ansel Adams and Yosemite – or a person.

Journey ending. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Having a muse is also an admission of the artist to imperfection – at least in their own minds. If the artist was happy with their work, they’d finish one piece of art – take one photograph – feel like they’ve nailed the shot, and then never look at the subject again. By trying to photograph something repeatedly, it says both that there’s perhaps more to capture than is possible in a single frame, as well as all of the past frames being insufficient or incomplete in some way.

Vienna at Christmas. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH

A person may have many muses. You might, for instance, be inspired by a particular place or location; an object, and a person. Most of mine fall into the latter two categories, though the objects tend to be somewhat short-lived. I’ll start with the easy one – objects. I tend to accumulate objects of design. I have a huge weakness for things which have unique (but functional) design elements; things made of unusual or highly tactile materials and textures; and things that just look good. Past random acquisitions include a miniature fountain pen with no clip; a vase with a hole so impractically small that you would be hard pressed to fit even a single flower stem in it, but an incredibly unique texture; and fifteen stuffed polar bears.** And of course there are the watches, too.

**You may have already seen these make cameo appearances in various camera tests. Their white fur is an excellent test subject for highlight tonality, microcontrast, and of course fine detail reproduction.

Bob. Nikon D700, Voigtlander 20/3.5

Most of these objects will be the subjects of several photo sessions, or until I’m happy with at least one or two of the images I’ve captured. After that, they don’t change, so they don’t really serve much of a challenge photographically; however they litter my apartment as monuments to my design curiosity. But by far the biggest guilty pleasure of mine are cameras and lenses; yes, they are technical tools used to capture an image. But different cameras also force you to shoot differently and think about composition in different ways; a great example is a compact, or a monochrome-only camera. The former removes the crutch of bokeh, and forces you to rely on subject differentiation solely via framing and light; the latter forces you to see luminance, texture and shadow, rather than contrasts in color. Both are refreshing, and mastery helps you improve overall as a photographer.

Red vase and erstwhile contents. Nikon D5100, 60/2.8 G Micro

Then there’s the difference between rangefinders and SLRs – viewing and focusing method aside, I find the biggest difference is that a rangefinder forces you to focus more on your subject – you can’t see what’s in focus and what isn’t; you can’t frame precisely. Shot properly, both of those things subconsciously make you concentrate more on ensuring that the subject itself is the most immediately obvious thing in the frame, and the primary composition is so strong that whatever might be in the edges or out of focus areas of the frame become secondary, and do not detract from the subject. A new camera makes you want to go out and shoot with it, too – and that motivation is often enough to make you get images you wouldn’t otherwise have managed if you’d either stayed at home or not bothered to experiment with.

A Parisian cliche. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH. I don’t think I would even have attempted this with a big black DSLR.

Japan is also a source of endless inspiration for me – perhaps because the place is just so different from anywhere else in the world, especially the old world of Europe where I used to live, and the developing world of South-East Asia where I now live. I step off the plane and feel excited – those very differences that pervade every aspect of daily life force you to approach subjects with fresh eyes and curiosity; you take experimental risks and try things you normally wouldn’t at home or on a commercial shoot, where risk might equal loss of a client. I think every photographer needs these creative trips on a semi-regular basis as a way of forcing your eyes not to take things for granted, especially when back home. Seeing something done differently overseas tends to make you wonder what’s normal – it is of course all relative – but perhaps enough for you to find a worthwhile frame in the course of your daily life you might have otherwise ignored.

Waiting for the train, Sapporo. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

My biggest muse, by far, is my long-suffering wife. She is crash test dummy for new equipment and technique, a partner in crime for experimentation, and a handy anonymous body when an empty scene happens to need one to complete the frame. (She isn’t that patient, though, which also forces me to hone my instinctive composition and technical skills – the less one has to think about something, the faster one works.) And as a person, I find her endlessly fascinating*** – which means that there are always facets of her personality that I’m trying to capture; regardless of whether I do or not, I’ll always feel there’s something left over the next hill – and that motivates me to keep shooting.

***I suppose if this wasn’t the case, then I probably married the wrong person. Perhaps there’s a photographic metaphor in this – maybe in choice of camera or choice of subject – but that remains another topic for another day.

Medusa sleeps. Leica X1

Conversely, there are places I visit frequently with a camera – either as part of testing, or because I always have a camera of some sort on me – I will take some photos, but nothing in the location compels me to return. These I do not consider to be muses because they don’t inspire me; I just happen to be there and see something.

Bukit Bintang reflections. Apple iPhone 4

I highly recommend you find your own muse; it doesn’t have to be a person, or even a fellow photographer (my wife doesn’t really have any interest in taking pictures, and she is almost always surprised by the way the images turn out – despite having participated instrumentally in their creation). Rather, your muse is a reflection of you as a photographer – what is it that fascinates you? What inspires you? What makes you want to create? Finding and understanding that is a hugely important step to unlocking your creativity. MT

This post was brought to you by Ming Thein’s Email School of Photography – learn exactly what you want to learn, when you want to learn it. Muses not included, but I’m always happy to talk psychology to figure out what drives you. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook!