essay – Ming Thein | Photographer

Travel minimalism: one lens to go

June 16, 2012 by Ming Thein

Canterbury in autumn. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Every time I travel for personal purposes, I’m always torn between experiencing the place, and photographing the place. Photography is such a part of me that sometimes I feel that I experience and understand things more through trying to capture the essence of them. Or perhaps it’s because doing so forces you into conscientious observer mode, and this in turn makes one’s mind more receptive to things, and more willing to question what you see and find juxtapositions or contrasts.

Canterbury Cathedral crypt. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

That aside one of the things which inevitably keeps me up the night before departure is trying to figure out what to bring equipment-wise. If it’s on assignment, then I bring everything I might possibly need, plus spares – to hell with overweight baggage, if you don’t have it, it could mean a lost job – on the other hand, if I’m traveling for myself, I’d rather carry as little gear as possible. Well, little enough that I don’t notice it after walking around for hours on end, but with sufficient coverage that I don’t get frustrated and feel like I missed a rare photographic opportunity because I didn’t bring along a wide angle. Or something along those lines.

A Parisian in her natural habitat. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

My last personal vacation saw me bringing an Olympus Pen Mini, the 14-42 kit lens and a Panasonic 20/1.7 pancake. We went to the beach. Frankly this made the choice easy as I didn’t really want to expose any of the more expensive gear to moisture, salt and sand; the M9-P definitely would not have been suitable, and the D800 might have produced great landscapes, but it would also have worked fine as a boat anchor.

Three conversations, Paris. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

I’ve been trying to fine-tune this over the years. I’ve been on trips where I did carry coverage from 14-450mm and a spare body; whilst I got some great images, I also had a sore back, and landed up leaving everything but one body and the 24-70 zoom in the hotel room for the last week. More crucially, I felt the images produced from that trip lacked focus; I brought everything, so subconsciously I was actually trying to capture everything. The upshot is a set of images that isn’t as strong as it could have been, and worse still, experiencing that slightly chaotic panicky feeling that you just might have missed a shot opportunity somewhere.

Tate Modern yard, London. Ricoh GR Digital III

My preferred travel kit is a moderate wide, and a moderate telephoto – both fast – and one body. I might carry a spare compact or something similar as a backup, just in case. I’ve gone with the D700, 24/1.4 and 85/1.4 – this is an absolutely fantastic and hugely flexible combination – plus a spare compact, either the Fuji X100, Leica D-Lux 5, or my favorite, the Ricoh GR-Digital III. Most recently, I spent two weeks in Europe with an M9-P, 28 and 50mm lenses, plus the Pen Mini and 45/1.8 (giving me 90mm in a pocket). This was also an excellent combination, and in some ways better than the Nikon based setup due to weight and instant availability of the telephoto. However, it lagged hugely in low light performance. I think the next trip I take will probably be Micro 4/3 based; an OM-D and Pen Mini with 12, 20 and 45mm lenses will cover the vast majority of situations handily. And not weigh very much, either.

Piccadilly Circus, London. Ricoh GR Digital III

So what’s all of this talk about a single lens?** Or single camera? There are advantages to this approach: firstly, you’re unencumbered and free to enjoy the atmosphere, people and culture without feeling like a packhorse; a small camera around your neck is probably much easier to manage than an entire backpack full of lenses. Also, you don’t have to worry as much about security – frankly, carrying several Leica f1.4 Summiluxes and a Noctilux around even safe Singapore made me pretty nervous.

**Let me clarify: I don’t mean going with a 28-300, though I suppose this might be a viable option for some situations. That lens has more compromises than strengths, and if you don’t know how to manage your perspectives properly, then you’ll land up with weak images too, because you’ll always be trying to ‘zoom in’.

The Shard, under construction. Ricoh GR Digital III

The main advantage, however, is that it frees up your mind from having to think about what perspective to take for a scene. Do you find the essence in the details, or do you go for something wider and more encompassing, with context? Trouble is, there is often no right answer – and from experience, I know that inevitably you’ll land up trying to make both work and being satisfied with neither. On the other hand, if you’ve got just one focal length, then you can pre visualize what your frame will look like; with sufficient experience, your eye naturally looks for compositions that fit within the perspective and angle of view of the lens you’ve got. Thus: instead of wondering what perspective to use, you’re free to spent that mental capacity on fine-tuning the elements inside the frame of the only perspective you have. It can be liberating – providing you’re thinking about the photograph, and not about the equipment you left at home. There’s also the side benefit of not having to change lenses, and thus always being ready.

The doorway, Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

I actually did this on several occasions. At the end of 2009, I made short trips to Oxford, Canterbury and Paris; for these I brought two lenses (21 and 50mm for the M8) but only used the 21. I did it again in 2010; the first trip saw me bringing a D700 and several lenses, plus the Ricoh GR-Digital III; I only used the Ricoh and its fixed 28mm because it was both much more convenient, as well as matching the way my eye was tuned at the time after my first Leica-M experience. I got wiser on the second trip and left everything behind except the GR-Digital III. Hanoi later that year saw me using only the D700 and 85/1.4 G.

A Vietnamese stereotype. Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

If you are going to try this exercise, I’d recommend going for a wide normal rather than an ultra wide or a tele; for the simple reason that these are the most flexible focal lengths to use. 35-50mm can appear wide or moderately telephoto depending on how you choose to use the foreground elements in your scene. And at some point, chances are you’ll probably want to take a photo of yourself or your traveling companion (or both of you, or your family…you get the point) – and it’s generally much easier with something wide or normal than say a 300mm.

Prague castle and stars. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Some people may find a telephoto easier to use in these kinds of situations because they can snipe from a distance; I’d personally advise against it because it’s very difficult to make images with context; and that’s one of the cornerstones of travel photography. The bokeh may be great, but if the background gives you no clue as to where the subject is, then the image could well have been shot anywhere – and that somewhat defeats the point of travel photography.

A Viennese moment. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Personally, if I had to pick, I’d go with either a 28mm, or a 35mm – depending on whether my images would likely be more people-biased (longer), or more location-biased (wider). And it’d have to be fast, too; I’d be using the lens at night, and anything slower than 2.8 wouldn’t cut it. Frankly, in some situations, even f2.8 may be a little borderline. Finally, it’d have to go on something small, light and unobtrusive; responsiveness is important because your ability to anticipate things will be a little bit diminished thanks to the foreign environment. Right now, my choice is probably between the Olympus OM-D and Panasonic 20/1.7, the Ricoh GR-Digital III/ IV, or the Leica M9-P and a 35/1.4 ASPH FLE.

Give it a try. On your next trip, just use a 35 or 50 prime for at least a day or two; if it makes you feel better, bring along your zooms too, but don’t use them until you absolutely feel that you’re missing shots. MT

Wat Arun and Boat, Bangkok. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

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Filed Under: Articles, Leica, On Photography Tagged With: 21 summilux, article, essay, leica, m8, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, minimalism, one lens, opinion, paris, philosophy, thein, travel

Color or black and white?

May 22, 2012 by Ming Thein

In advance of tomorrow’s review of the Leica M-Monochrom, it seems that this is a an appropriate question to tackle (if a completely academic one if your camera doesn’t shoot color in the first place.) It’s actually one of the tougher problems I face on a regular basis. Does a shot work better in color or black and white? What if it’s both? There are generally a few things that I look for which help, either to define the obvious or if I’m on the fence. This article is a short distillation of that process.

1. Is it commercial? If so, then 99% of the time, the required output will be color. Especially if it’s food or product; architecture can be either.

Commercial architecture. Nikon D700, AFS 24/1.4 G

2. Are there strong dominant colors in the image? If so, then color. Generally, if the image is about strong color, monochrome almost always never works because for a color to be perceived as strong, you need to have fairly constant luminance values across the scene. And luminance variation is what you need for a good B&W. If the strong dominant color as a good range of luminance values, then either can work.

Offerings of strong color. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

3. Is the image naturally washed out or low saturation because of the subject or lighting? Generally, black and white works better here; however, you’d be surprised at how different an image with subtle color and very low saturation looks vs one that is completely colorless.

Subtle color works well, sometimes. Prague castle. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

But sometimes there is just no color to be had – the scene in reality was almost monochrome already due to the flat lighting and fog. Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

4. Is the subject isolated or highlighted by the lighting of the scene? Either can work, but my personal preference is for black and white because you’ve got enough luminance isolation already without having to overdo it.

Isolation by lighting. Note how the backlight rings the subject. Paris. Leica M8, Voigtlander 50/1.1

5. Is the subject isolated by color? Stupid question, easy answer. Go with color. If not, you risk running into the problem of small differences in luminance values again. Sometimes, color IS the subject.

Isolation by color. Goa, India. Leica M8, Voigtlander 15/4.5

6. What emotion or feeling are you trying to achieve with the image? Classical timelessness always requires B&W, otherwise, go with color and shift the white balance a little.

Film Noir. This could have been 8 days or 80 years ago. It was neither, actually. London, Leica M8, 35/2 ASPH

7. Is the image part of a series, group or set? Whatever the answer is, be consistent. You could produce two different sets, but make sure the style (including color or lack thereof) is consistent between images in the set. If you’re only delivering or using one set, then don’t change styles halfway through. See what best fits the images and overall goal of the series.

The man behind the scenes, literally. If the backdrop was monochrome, would the blue screen effect metaphor have been as obvious? I think not. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 1.4/85 Planar

Of course, the easiest way to avoid all of these problems and questions it to pre visualize your shot and start with the end already in mind, so you know what you’re going to do with it. And that will be the subject of a future article 🙂 MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: black and white, bw, color, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, philosophy, photography, thein

Chasing perfect color, and common myths about white balance

May 21, 2012 by Ming Thein

The previous article on the inexact science of color and emotion dealt with why color was important, and how we can use it as a tool to alter the mood and emotional response of the viewer of our photographs. This article explains how we get there.

Sandwiches. Did you know greens are heavily affected by the yellow channel? Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Although highly saturated color is visually striking, and B&W images are timelessly classic and elegant, there are a lot of times when neither is appropriate or an accurate representation of the scene. I’ve recently realized that I like accurate color above everything else – saturation control then becomes a matter of seasoning to taste. Color accuracy is actually quite critical when it comes to things like food – if the color of cheese or lettuce is off, it just looks moldy or unfresh. This is definitely NOT good for commercial work! My recent work is what I’d call in a ‘natural’ style – the color, saturation and hues are as close to my perception and remembrance of the scene as possible. I’ll do some shifting of white balance to make things warmer or cooler as required, but not a huge amount because it can do some very strange things to tonal accuracy.

Scarlet Ibis. The red in is plumage is due to pigments in the shellfish that forms the majority of its diet. Leica V-Lux 3

Skin tones are perhaps the most difficult to replicate accurately; this is because skin is both reflective of ambient light (easy for the camera to capture) and emissive – we’re warm, and there’s some passive IR radiated by warm objects. Although modern cameras have very effective UV/IR blocking filter packs, they also produce (in my opinion) slightly dead-looking skin tones. I actually liked the skin tones from the Leica M8 for this reason, which was notorious for having perhaps the weakest UVIR filtration of any camera on the market – to the point that to get accurate blacks you’d have to use a UVIR filter on your lens.

Black fabrics in the sun are notorious IR-emitters. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Other objects that are notoriously difficult to reproduce accurately are flowers, some animals, and some fabrics. Again – this is because of the way they interact with the near-UV and near-IR spectra, which affects the way our eyes perceive color (though we can’t see UV or IR directly unlike some animals). To date, there is no camera that accurately reflects the spectral response of the human eye – and I suspect it might be very difficult to make one, because the filter pack would have to be calibrated to transmit or cut out a certain amount of each wavelength. It’s much easier to make a filter that cuts out everything above and/or below a certain wavelength. Throw in the added complication of mixed light sources, and you’ve got a minor nightmare.

Colors. All of them. Which one do you balance for without shifting the others? Answer: focus on your subject – in this case, skin tones and blacks. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 45/1.8

So what can we do to achieve perfect color?

First clarification: we are not trying to achieve perfect spectral reproduction; we’re trying to achieve perfect perceptual reproduction. It’s not quite the same thing. Basically, you want to get to the starting point of being as close to what you remember seeing as possible, then work from there. That way, you know that all of your tweaking isn’t going to create some strange shifts in certain parts of the tonal spectrum.

Chilis. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

White balance is inextricably linked to color. And there are some important things one has to bear in mind:

1. You have to get it right first time if you’re shooting JPEG. There just isn’t the tonal headroom in 8 bits to be able to make anything other than minor channel adjustments and not encounter posterization or weird hue shifts.

2. Manual white balance and a piece of paper are your best friends.

3. If you’re shooting RAW, white balance is less critical, but if you blow a channel, you’re not getting it back. Usually reds and yellows are the first to go. With earlier cameras, you might have to underexpose by as much as two stops to maintain tonal detail in the reds. I think it’s something to do with IR-sensitivity, the effectiveness of the filter pack over the top of the sensor, and how the red pixels respond very strongly to IR pollution.

Cigars are one of the most difficult colors to get right. I don’t know what it is about the tobacco leaf, but that rich, deep brown hue requires a lot of work to perfect. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

4. White balance does affect exposure. This isn’t immediately intuitive; the reason is because if you get it very, very wrong, you’ll find that after correction, the dominant colors in the shot will shift, and the sensor may not have gained up enough at the extreme ends (red or blue) resulting in underexposure – most likely. You can to some extent recover this in post, but the bigger problem is that you’re going to land up with a very noisy image – the blue channel is generally holds the most noise for most cameras as it is the least sensitive due to the laws of optics, photon energy and filtration…but I won’t go into that here; complex quantum mechanical formulae are beyond the ability of my blogging software to input and display. 🙂

Prayer wheels, Nepal. Nikon D700, 24/1.4 G

Bottom line: shoot raw, and get in the right ballpark. Small adjustment are fine, and you can never get it 100% right all the time with a manual balance because ambient light is always changing. AWB works reasonably well on most cameras these days, but you have to watch out for the very warm light sources. I was told by several people in the camera industry that it was a conscious choice to leave the yellow/red components in the tungsten AWB because people expect the light to be warm (back to perception) – and having pure whites just looked odd to most consumers. I can attest to that as a lot of my students have asked me why the color is so blue when shooting indoors! Although I can’t say whether it’s a visual expectation on the part off the photographer, or whether inaccurate white balance is something they’ve come to expect because it was inadvertently dictated by the industry.

I’ve been playing with a handy little tool recently called a WhiBal. Basically, it’s a very, very accurate neutral gray card. I’ve found there are two ways to use it – one, take a shot under AWB with the card in the frame, and use that as your reference frame; eyedropper tool WB from the card in ACR, then sync white balance between the remainder of your files. Note that these two methods only work when your lighting is consistent from frame to frame, i.e. under studio conditions. The other option is shoot the card under the lighting conditions you’re going to use to set the preset in camera; I find this works better because all of your frames are automatically synced from the shoot. And if you’re using the same setup – as I do for watches – I can basically do it once and just leave one of my manual presets to match my flash and diffuser combo.

If any of you have shot purple flowers, you’ll know they’re notorious for shifting towards blue: that’s because of the UV reflectance. Flowers have UV and IR reflective pigments to signal to other animals – in this case pollinating insects and birds – that can see UV and IR.
Nepal. Nikon D700, 24/1.4 G

Next, make the tweaks – in your RAW converter, (I use ACR 6) perfect your white balance. Use the eyedropper tool on various gray areas in the scene until, it looks close to what you remember. (This is another reason why I like to process as close to immediately as possible: you might forget what the originals scene looked like, or any processing ideas you might have had at the time). Don’t worry if the eyedropper tool doesn’t get it right; you can shift the color temperature and hue sliders a little until you do.

This blue is one of the most difficult colors to get right. What makes it so appealing as a car color – the fact that it changes a lot under different lighting conditions – also makes it a royal pain to photograph and represent accurately. The honest truth is that I have no idea what RGB value this actually is, because it’s both reflective and in many spectra. Nikon D700, 28-300VR.

Open your file, make whatever contrast adjustments you need to – curves/ levels – then only use the Hue/Saturation tool to adjust the individual channels. Using curves inevitably shifts the saturation and hue slightly – there’s no way out of that – so you’ll need to bring back the individual channels. For instance, if it’s predominantly red and you used a curve that darkened the image, you’ll have to compensate for that by reducing saturation and increasing lightness slightly in the Hue/Saturation tool. There is no exact science to this – it’s all about experience, perception, and having the most accurate monitor you can find.

Remember what I was saying before about shellfish and birds? Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Each camera has a different filter pack and spectral response. Even though manufacturers try to keep the color output consistent from model to model, there will be differences. The D3100, for instance, has a crappy color gamut that I was never happy with – much like the NEX-5 – however, the D700, D5100 and D7000 are all pretty similar. The D800 is close, but even more accurate and with a wider supported tonal range out of the box. The M8 with UVIR filter, M9 without and S2 are almost identical. Since I use a whole bunch of cameras – at the last check, Leica, Nikon, Olympus and Ricoh – I’ve created individual color profiles for each camera in ACR and saved them as camera defaults. The look I like is somewhere between the tonal richness of Leica and the warmth of Olympus – perhaps Olympus + Zeiss glass describes it best. Oh, and different lenses have different spectral transmission characteristics too, just to make life more interesting. Your personal preferences will almost certainly be different because each individual perceives color differently. But I suggest that if you have the time, this is a worthwhile exercise.

The challenging pale but saturated lightness of macaroons. Nikon D700, Carl Zeiss ZF.2 2/2.8 Distagon

One important final note: all of this is in vain if your final output use is extremely limited gamut or highly compressed (*cough*FACEBOOK*cough*) – all of the additional tonal information you tried to save is going to be lost and compressed to hell. Some browsers (Safari) and photo sharing sites (Flickr) are better than others because they are color profile aware and don’t compress images, but the issue then becomes monitor accuracy. So unless you know the final output method and have some control over it, it’s very tricky to ensure that everybody is seeing the same thing. And printing is a whole separate blog on its own…MT

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, color, essay, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, perception, thein, white balance

The inexact science of color and emotion

May 19, 2012 by Ming Thein

What makes this photo identifiable as dawn instead of sunset? Hint: it’s the color. We expect sunsets to be warm, but mornings to be cool and clear.

A series of experiments was done many years ago that showed humans have been conditioned to expect certain things in the way of color: blue ketchup just doesn’t fly, for instance. The theory is that it’s a primeval subconscious response to warn us of danger. Think of it this way: rancid meat looks a certain way, and has a certain color. Even if we can’t smell it – looking at a photograph of vomit or something decomposing makes us go ewwww. Such examples are to be found in nature all the time – think of those brightly colored poisonous beetles, for instance. In fact, the link between color and range (and thus emotion) is so strong that many species mimic the coloring of more dangerous species to warn away predators, but at the same time rely solely on that as protection because they pack no venom or toxicity. (Toxicity is energy-consuming to produce, and in food-scarce environments, you want to waste as little of your nutritional intake as possible producing something that’s only going to help you if you’re eaten – and thus probably going to die anyway.)

A tale of two cities. Shot minutes apart, though. How does the first image make you feel? The second?

How does this relate to photography? Quite simply, when you look at a photograph, how does it make you feel? Ignore the subject for a moment. The remaining emotional response is mostly down to your reaction to the processing: specifically, color. Why do black and white images have that ‘timeless’ or ‘ageless’ quality? Why do they make you feel slightly detached, as you’re an observer but not really part of the scene? It’s all due to color, or in this case, the lack of it. It’s difficult to relate to something if your information or perception on it is limited to tonal information only.

Why does this shot imply richness and juiciness? How would you feel about pale gray steak with red tomatoes, even if it tasted the same?

In fact, if you look through historical photographs and video – you’ll see that each recent era or block of ~10 years in modern history actually has quite distinct color and tonal styles. And looking at this often makes one feel something – nostalgia, hatred, wondering what one was doing with their youth. Early color photos from the 1930s and 40s have that vintage look, for instance.

To me, this screams classical photojournalism – because of the contrast, the tonality, and the lack of color. Early photographers didn’t purposely go for that look – they learned to work with it because of the limitations of darkroom chemistry.

A lot of modern photography software capitalizes on this. Instagram and all of those software filter packages are a good example – hell, even Lomography to some extent – they let you instantly create a feeling through a combination of color fiddling and contrast manipulation. There’s a reason why a photo from a Lomo or Instagram looks like a vintage hippy polaroid: it’s because the white balance was shifted warmer by several notches, the saturation decreased slightly, the contrast decreased a lot, and the relative luminance and hue of the red and yellow channels shifted. And there’s probably some grain and gaussian blur in the mix, too. Try it yourself in Photoshop, if you don’t believe me.

Cool mountain. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

The point is, polaroids looked that way because of the chemical process of the day: not because they wanted them to look that way. I’m pretty sure the engineers there were chasing perfect color, too. The upshot of all of this is that a modern photograph processed that way invokes memories of the polaroid era, because that’s how most social images looked then.

Mmm, natural green freshness.

Most humans respond in similar ways to color, namely:
Red – danger, warning, attention;
Blue – cool, calming, relaxing;
Yellow – warm, friendly, open;
Green – natural, fresh;
Black – mysterious, sinister, classic, premium, heavy;
White – pure, open, light, honest, clean
Gray – apathy

Multiple light sources can be confusing as hell, but almost always signal ‘party!’

Simply put, there’s a reason why most Ferraris are red, and most hospitals are white.

How does this help you as a photographer?

Actually, it’s fairly simple. Color enters your image everywhere, but makes an impact in at least two major ways. The first is if you’ve got one dominant color in the scene that registers on the subconscious of the viewer even before they figure out what the subject is; it can be the color of the backdrop, for instance. A more subtle way is the ambient light temperature – for instance, a warmer white balance setting will result in a shift towards the red and yellow channels; this in turn imparts the ambient light with a particular quality and tone.

Warmth. The ambient WB was shifted further away from the primary light source (the flame) to preserve the warm color.

The second major way is through contrast: if you’ve got a subject of one color against a backdrop of another completely opposite color (red and green or blue and yellow, for instance) then it’ll stand out because it’s the only thing in the scene that is visually discordant. It’s a good thing, in this case, because it draws your eye to the subject and lets the background serve as a stage – which is the way it should be.

Why does my subject stand out? It’s a different color to the background, of course.

But what if your scene has no dominant color, or is very washed out or low in saturation? Do what the cinematographers have been doing for years, and either impart a global tint as described above – you can easily do this if you shoot raw by shifting the white balance; lower color temperatures that what is accurate are cooler and bluer, and vice versa for higher color temperatures. The other alternative is to use a filter over your lens, or color the light – the latter obviously assumes you’ve got some control over your lighting, though. By far the easiest way to shift color and not land up with odd hues due to the nature of color addition and subtraction is to adjust your white balance.

KLCC dawn, color slightly shifted. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

One final comment: you need to start with an accurate white balance before you shift the color temperature. This is so you don’t land up with strange colors due to shifts along the green to magenta axis (white balance and color temperature affects only blue to orange/red). Also, remember not to overdo the saturation: shifting the white balance can cause other channels to blow, even if the original appeared to be correctly exposed. And over saturated images just look crude, frankly.

And on that note, I’m going to break until the next topic: chasing perfect color, and white balance myths. MT

Funky diner colors. Sometimes, your ambient light is close to exactly what you want – and all you have to worry about is color accuracy. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, color, emotion, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, philosophy, photography, thein

Balancing content and technical perfection

May 15, 2012 by Ming Thein

Base jumping off the KL Tower. There are no do-overs for either the shot or the participants. Nikon D200, AI-P 500/4

Suppose you had one opportunity to get the shot: what do you do? The obvious answer is go for broke; who cares if it’s slightly overexposed, out of focus or the framing is a little off. Maradona is probably only going to use the ‘hand of god’ once; the millennium is only going to roll around once in your lifetime. Bigfoot will probably only appear once, and only in out of focus or foggy areas*.

That’s one end of the spectrum: it’s all about the content rather than the execution.

Benzinger Skeleton. Full control of everything, full repeatability. The second, third, fourth and fifth shots would look exactly the same.

The opposite end would be fine art still life: any one of the aforementioned photographic sloppinesses would probably get you thrown out of the gallery, unless perhaps you were very, very good at explaining why out of focus images represent the current zeitgeist of society, how rushing around and achieving complete form and ‘just getting it done’ rather than doing it well – quantity over quality – are also paradigms of modern corporate living.

What’s this? A situation in the middle: you can anticipate what’s going to happen and be prepared, but you don’t get a do-over. You should be able to get a perfect result with practice.

Enough sarcasm. Basically, if you’re going to create a still life, you’d better damn well be in control of the elements, or it just makes you look sloppy and incompetent as a photographer. There’s no way you can excuse compositional errors, slanted horizons, overexposure or things intruding into the edges of the frame. Studio commercial photography also falls into this category; it’s 100% controlled, and if you can’t get your image right when there isn’t anything left to chance – and the shot is repeatable – then you should probably hang up your camera.

It wouldn’t have worked without the man. Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

And that’s where the dilemma comes in: for photography that isn’t clearly at one end of the spectrum or the other, where do you draw the line of acceptability? If there is no expectation to create perfection, is there any necessity? In fact, if the expectation is of something slightly imperfect – to capture the chaos of reality – then perhaps perfection would actually weaken the impact of the overall image.

I like the lyricism and movement in this image; in fact, nothing is perfect. It was underexposed because the meter gets fooled by backlit situations so I went manual and got the exposure slightly wrong; then the limitations of my equipment meant motion blur in the subject was a certainty, so I decided to work with it; finally, none of the verticals are straight – it bothers the perfectionist in me, but I bet you it wasn’t the first thing you noticed about the image. Malastranska, Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

That last point isn’t immediately obvious. In fact, it’s quite counterintuitive; I was only made aware of it because I personally tend to drift towards the technical perfection end of the spectrum, and various clients have commented that my images look a little too perfect in some ways, especially for photojournalistic work. For studio photography, on the other hand, my clients love the attention to detail.

If This Looks Too Perfect, That’s Because It Was Staged. Artfully constructed scene for a promotional video. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 1.4/85 Planar

A year or two ago, I would have thought that the ideal combination would be to nail content, composition and the technical aspects of the exposure to produce a perfect image; however, this is not only nearly impossible to do, but somehow also results in slightly lifeless images. The soul is missing – or perhaps it’s not so much soul per se as humanity represented by the slight imperfections which impart the character of the photographer onto his or her image.

More lyricism. Malastranska, Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

Perhaps I’m just confusing myself with the philosophy now, because this is my current photographic worldview:
1. We strive for perfect images.
2. Technical perfection isn’t perfection per se, because that slight bit of imperfection humanizes an image and gives it personality.
3. This means that we must have skill and ability to achieve technical and compositional perfection, even under spontaneous circumstances.
4. However, we need to have even more control than that, because we need to have the ability to add imperfection at will.
5. Go out and create, with this brief of perfect imperfection in mind.

Just your average slice of life. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, Panasonic 20/1.7 G

I hear questions from the back of the room. Does this apply to every situation? More importantly, how much imperfection should we apply?

The answer to the first is obviously not; if you can do this in a situation where you have little or no control over the subject – think war zone photojournalism, for instance – that probably makes you one step removed from God, and a clear notch above the great PJs like Capa, HC-B et. al. Remember from the Magnum Contact Sheets book, even they had to work the scene a bit to get the final composition they wanted.

The foot. The one aberration in this abstract urbanscape is actually to me what makes the image. Nikon D800, AFS 24/1.4 G

The answer to the second is nowhere near as clear cut. And frankly, I have no idea how much is too little, how much is enough, and how much is too much. The only way to determine the answer to this conclusively is to experiment, and get your work out there and opined-upon. Modern Japanese photographers tend to be at the very haphazard end of the spectrum – some of their work seems almost random, albeit very carefully constructed random – and the other end I suppose are the environmental portraitists who bring lights and modifiers and everything else with them even into the middle of conflict areas.

Flambe. Repeatable, but not controllable. You can set up the shot and do it again, but you can’t control what the flames are going to do. And this is the interesting thing that gives a little variation and makes each shot different. Seascapes are another good example. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

Personally, I’m going for something in the middle; but before I even get there, I need to shoot more – to have full intuitive control over my camera so that whatever adjustments I make come to me as second nature. And at this point something has to be said about good cameras, bad cameras, and too many cameras; good cameras are intuitive to use and require little training or practice to master. They do what you want them to, nothing more and nothing less. Bad cameras are ones that you never feel fully in control of, no matter how much practice you have. And too many cameras is just that: if you have too many cameras, you’re bound to eventually forget which button does what. And that could cost you at the most critical moment. This is why I’ll continue to use my D700 for reportage assignments until I’m fully comfortable with the D800; I know exactly habit will do under every situation, born of seventy thousand frames of experimentation – not counting the fifty thousand I shot with the D3, which is pretty much the same camera. MT

*Did anybody get the Futurama reference?

Would the burger be as appetizing without that juicy pickled onion marmalade peeking out? Probably not. Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro

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Defining style, and finding your own

May 13, 2012 by Ming Thein

Introduction: This has been one of, if perhaps not the most difficult essay to write so far: it concerns a topic that’s fundamentally important for all serious photographers, yet is extremely difficult to define in a strict technical sense due to its very nature. It’s the only essay I’ve had to stop and start writing several times because I penned myself into a corner. What you read is the culmination of many sessions and days of work. I hope you find it useful.

What is style? Dictionary.com gives a lot of options – 16 to be exact – but I think perhaps the most appropriate definition of style from a photography perspective is best described as:

A particular, distinctive characteristic mode or form of execution, construction, appearance of a visual work which can be associate with a particular person or group of people.

Let’s think about this for a moment. It probably isn’t an exhaustive definition, however, it captures the essence: style is distinctive. It’s individual, or belonging to a group of individuals, associated with them because they created it or they promote and propagate its use. What are the distinctive visual elements or combinations of visual elements that define a style, specific to photography?

1. Color (or lack of it)
2. Tonality
3. Perspective
4. Lighting
5. Focal point/ depth of field
6. Fidelity
7. Quirks, the personality of the photographer, or perhaps the X factor

Let’s examine each one individually.

Color
This one is fairly simple: is there color or not? Is it black and white? Is the color saturated, bright and punchy (think happy commercial product shot) or is it monochrome and gritty (think classical photojournalism and war photography)? Consistent use of color is one of the fundamental things that defines a style – but it isn’t exhaustive on its own. Similarly, consistent use of filters or digital gradients to apply a consistent hue shift to a set of images can also define a style; for example, I personally associate that warm, golden light with California; I have no idea why, perhaps it’s the pollution of LA or a fetish of the Hollywood directors.

Tonality
This splits out into a few options: neutral, high key, low key, low contrast and high contrast. The former three options can be combined with the latter two options; you can have something that’s neutrally biased but high contrast, or neutrally biased but low contrast. In digital terms, think of the former as where the majority of the histogram is bunched: neutral would be evenly spread, high key would be towards the highlight end, and low key towards the shadows. Contrast then becomes the bunching: if you’ve got strong gradients in the histogram at any particular point, that’s high contrast. Low contrast images don’t show this. A good example of distinctive tonality would be the works of Sebastiao Salgado: you always know it’s a Salgado because of the tonality of the image, before you even see the subject. It’s a distinctive signature that’s there in his corporate work covering the Channel Tunnel and his humanitarian work in Africa.

Perspective
This one is a highly technical characteristic, and linked to the focal length of the lens used – only. If a set is shot predominantly with a wide angle lens – modern photojournalism tends to do this a lot, with the subject placed center or near-center foreground and the environment in the background around it to give context – then that’s gives a distinct exaggerated perspective. Similarly, sport and wildlife almost always employ compressed (telephoto) perspectives due to inability to get close to the subject.

Ligthing
Lighting is linked to tonality and contrast: direct lighting produces harsh shadows and flat images for subjects in the frame that are perpendicular to the camera; diffuse lighting produces nice textures and gentle gradients. If you’re not shooting with studio lights, you might not always be able to control this; but you do have control over when and where you shoot, which of course affects the quality of the lighting. Some photographers are nocturnal, for instance. Others choose to always use direct flash in daylight – Bruce Gilden, for example.

Focal point/ depth of field
How much of the image is in focus? Granted, sometimes this is linked to the perspective because of optical limitations, but there are ways around that – fast ultrawides for DSLRs give a telephoto-like separation of subject from background, but with exaggerated perspective; similarly, small sensor super zoom cameras will let you achieve compression but also short hyperfocal distances.

Fidelity
This is a tricky one to define: how close is the image to reality? Is it a feasible scene, which you could happen upon with your naked eyes, or is it something that’s been so heavily photoshopped that you can’t tell between what was shot with a camera or created with a Wacom tablet? I’d put HDR imaging somewhere on this spectrum, too. It isn’t reality, but HDR can be used properly to actually create more natural looking results (to be the subject of a future article).

Quirks
We end with the broadest possibility of all: anything open to the creativity of the photographer. Some photographers leave a little in-joke in frame; others have a particularly distinctive way of retouching; others may only shoot one particular subject. I deliberately haven’t put subject in as a component of style, because it’s possible to shoot the same subject in many different styles – and this wouldn’t be consistent.

Now that we have some idea of how to define style, how do you define your own? Firstly, it must be consistent: you need to be shooting and finishing images in this style consistently, without having to think about it. There may be more than one style you do routinely; I have three which I’m aware of. Using my work as an example, I do three things:

Classical Photojournalist.

1. Classical photojournalist. High contrast black and white, with almost everything in focus, finessed tonal transitions in the subject – I expose and process for the the subject and let everything else fall wherever on the tonal scale it may – and mostly wide angle, mostly 28mm but with some ventures as wide as 24mm or as long as 50mm, but no longer. I’d describe it as as mix of Salgado and HC-B.

Cinematic.

2. Cinematic. This is perhaps the style that defines me the most: shallow depth of field, mostly long perspectives (85mm) with some wide, dramatic shots; strongly dynamic lighting, with heavy manipulation of color and tonality to affect atmosphere. (Color will be the subject of several future article). Heavy focus on the subject and just enough background to give context, but no more.

Commercial.

3. Commercial. Although there are elements of the previous two styles in here, I prefer to think of this as the clean, perfectly-lit product shot: it’s what I do with the majority of my watch photography.

At this point, I should take a step back: how do you even find your style, before you define it? Simple: look at what’s out there, and experiment. For the first few years – hell, it might be a lot of years – you will probably be following other people’s work. You might not even be able to consistently reproduce a style that isn’t your own. Don’t worry – that’s not the point. Your own style should evolve naturally after sufficient experimentation. I know that I didn’t really have a distinct style until 2009 – though I dabbled in many up to that point – which was the classical photojournalist. Cinematic developed at the end of 2010. Commercial has been continuously in refinement as I improve my lighting skills. Other than proving I’m nothing if not a schizophrenic photographer, it shows that even if you can define your style, you may not necessarily have found the one that works best for you: I can shoot in any one of these three, and often have trouble deciding which one would look best.

Natural.

And you know what? I’d be very disappointed if I stopped developing here. I think there’s a midpoint between all of these three styles – something I’ll tentatively call ‘natural’ – which seems to be the direction in which my work is going now, be it available light or studio. The characteristic of this style seems to be perfect color, with a little cinematic hue shift where required; a mix between dynamic and natural lighting, with an emphasis on the subject; and an overall natural perspective to the images – as though you could have seen them with your own eyes, without much artificial intervention (think monochrome, or long exposure, etc.). I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes in the future. MT

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What influences your photography?

March 9, 2012 by Ming Thein

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

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

Hanoi. Nikon D700, 85/1.4G

1. Cinema.
I love dramatic lighting, shots with huge expanses and a small bit of human context, tight crops, 16:9 and wider aspect ratios, creamy smooth foreground (contextual?) and background bokeh, spectacular lens flare, and facial emotion. And let’s not forget the influence of color tone, too. It’s all about setting a mood or feeling for the image, rather than conveying a specific story. But it’s easy to get too carried away; a close shot of a facial expression might work in cinema because you’ve got the establishing shots before and after to give context; there’s a flow of events that requires that one detail element to be complete. If you don’t have enough background context, a standalone still is rather weak and hard to place. Where I find the cinematic style does work very well is when you’ve got a series or sequence of images.

Surprise at goodbye, London. Leica M8, 35/2 ASPH

Loiterers, London. Leica M8, Zeiss ZM 21/2.8

2. Classical photojournalism.
There’s power in emotion here; criticality of timing; and frequently, only monochromatic, moody images because technology of the time couldn’t do better. You exposed for the subject and let the rest of the tonal range fall wherever it might. I’m avoiding the look because I prefer the cinematic feeling, but not the critical principles.

You’ve probably seen this shot before – it’s one of my all time favorites, and my interpretation of a Salgado.
The scavenger, Canacona Beach, Goa, India. Leica M8, 50/1.4 ASPH

3. Sebastiao Salgado.
Salgado’s work is characterized by emotion, location, and wonderful tonal processing; in some ways he showed the world what HDR was by dodging and burning away in the darkroom long before digital. And not to mention, he didn’t overdo it or make it unnatural. If only he’d used color once or twice.

Perhaps what Ansel might have shot today, if he were still alive. City Hall, London. Leica M8, Zeiss ZM 21/2.8

4. Ansel Adams.
If you’re looking for technical perfection in an image, Ansel comes pretty darn close. Large formats. Tripods. Super fine grained films, and optimal developers; platinum and selenium toning. It’s the equivalent of shooting raw with a medium format digital camera at optimal apertures and individually adjusting each image in the RAW converter before printing it off a RIP-optimized 16 bit TIFF from a printer with, oh, I don’t know, say 16 different ink tanks. But it looks spectacular.

In Rothko we Rust (complete with signature). Jaya Shipyard, Singapore. Panasonic TZ3

5. Rothko.
The modernist abstract painter isn’t somebody I’ve consciously followed; I’ve seen his paintings here and there, but it’s the simple geometry of color and strength of line that makes his compositions compelling. Lately I’ve been shooting quite a lot of architectural abstracts where this dominates; it’s not a style that works all the time though, because it’s heavily subject-driven.

I have a huge white soft spot for clouds. Leica V-Lux 3

6. Rene Magritte.
It’s the low-angled evening light and the clouds. They get me every time. There’s nothing more to say, really.

Inspection tour, Jaya Shipyard, Singapore. Ricoh GR-Digital I

7. Alex Majoli.
Early on, Majoli was noted for using only a brace of compact cameras to document and nothing else – his style is dark and moody; perhaps a reflection of his personality, or more likely a way of overcoming the limitations of the equipment by exposing only for the highlights (first ensuring the subject is in the highlight zone, of course) then disregarding the rest. He taught me two things: firstly, there are workarounds to every equipment limitation that might actually yield very interesting results; secondly, if the composition is strong enough, you don’t need to rely on extreme perspective or bokeh as a crutch.

Mount Yotei wears a hat, Hokkaido, Japan. Nikon D700, Zeiss 2/100 Makro-Planar

8. Hiroshige.
He makes me see things in layers – and not in the photoshop kind of way.

9. Dr. House.
A character from a TV series? Yes. My wife often tells me I’m very much like him: morose, intense, slightly damaged, and very, very focused on getting it right – usually at the expense of other things. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. When I’m shooting, I go into the zone and everything else becomes peripheral; you notice a lot of small details that normally pass you by. I think pushing yourself, pushing your creativity, trying new things, and seeking tangential inspiration are precisely what keeps things moving. The problem, unfortunately, is convincing your clients.

I believe it’s called a chocolate dial. Jaeger Le-Coultre Master Ultra Thin 1833. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro.

10. My subject.
As obvious as this seems, I think it’s either second nature or ignored. If you’re conscious of your subject, you’re probably going to try and present it in a natural looking way. Or maybe an unnatural contextual juxtaposition, if discordant photography is your style. I think either is fine – and I do both. The former when I’m trying to encapsulate a story in a moment; I try to look for all of the elements to put into the same frame. The latter when I’m trying to be ironic, or when the story itself is in the juxtaposition.

I can’t figure out why, but shots like this seem to be acceptable with an iPhone – maybe it’s a property of the medium. Also, I smell a little Magritte on the wind here.

11. My equipment.
I’m not afraid to admit that different gear makes me shoot differently: there are some things you can do with certain cameras that you can’t with others. I’ll never attempt all-in-focus compressed perspectives with an SLR, because I know you just can’t do it without running out of DOF (or shutter speed as a consequence of stopping down for more DOF). But you can very easily do it with a compact superzoom, because 300mm equivalent is really something like 50mm and at f5.6 and nearly infinity, it’s all going to be in focus anyway. Or, the opposite – shallow DOF cinematic wide-angle work with a compact. Different tools for different things – and I’ll pick my tool depending on both what I anticipate shooting, and the style I want to try out on the day. I’ve shot an entire job for a shipyard client on the compact Panasonic TZ3; they thought I was using the D2H and 70-200/2.8 slung over my shoulder. In reality, I managed to produce work that I never could have done with the SLR – and they were very happy with the result.

Have you figured out what influences the way you shoot? MT

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