forum – Ming Thein | Photographer

Forum thinking, part II

January 19, 2017 by Ming Thein

Clarity at dusk

Firstly, I’d like to say a huge thank you to everybody who contributed in the comments to the previous discussion – your ideas and support have been most helpful in clarifying my own thoughts. Fundamentally, the challenge is really one of time: how can I balance off increasing family demands against the site (which in many ways is really another child) and perhaps at the same time, make changes that both buy me time and give you something more? It isn’t a question of monetisation because all of those options require more administrative time and don’t buy time elsewhere. Having had some further time to think, here’s what I think we’ll do going forward:

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Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, forum, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, site, thein

Forum thinking

January 17, 2017 by Ming Thein

One of the best things about this website is the people I’ve met through it. At this point, my motivations for continuing to create content and engage with the community are pretty evenly split between the pleasure I get from interacting with a huge range of people with common interests, and the satisfaction I get from writing. A look at the comments below the line on any one of the more popular recent posts* – that were not entirely gear or review related shows that there’s some very insightful and intelligent discussion starting off the back of the original article, almost always covering viewpoints or interpretations that I hadn’t initially considered – and whilst I do try to be as comprehensive as possible when writing, it’s of course impossible to be exhaustive. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t learn something from these discussions, and I think one of there reasons we enjoy the quality and size of community we do here is because such discussions are both self-curating and self-encouraging. I have been told repeatedly that as far as photography goes, this community is pretty unique on the internet for both erudition, engagement and civility. The next question is of course: how do we grow this?

*For example, soul; soul, redux Photokina 2016; would they be famous now ; bucket list ; trouble with choice ; state of play ; social media – for a small selection

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Filed Under: Off topic Tagged With: community, discussion, essay, forum, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein

ShootSIN forum this weekend, 29-30 April!

April 27, 2016 by Ming Thein

shootSIN_skyline-1000

If you happen to be in Singapore this weekend (well Friday 29 and Saturday 30 specifically), ShootSIN is an event by Hasselblad and Broncolor with a number of sessions hosted by top pro photographers from the region and internationally including Karl Taylor, Sails Chong, Kevin Then and Jewel Ling. It will also be the official launch for the H6D, and I’m told there will be demo cameras. There will also be live shoot sessions with Hasselblad cameras and Broncolor lighting. My session will be on Saturday afternoon – please come along and say hi if you’re in town, and I’ll of course be happy to field any questions you might have on medium format, Hasselblad or photography in general. 🙂 MT

Location: *SCAPE, Singapore.
Date: 29-30 April 2016

Click here for more information.

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Masterclass Singapore (July 2016) and Prague (September 2016) are open for booking. Please click the links for details and to book.

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More info on Hasselblad cameras and lenses can be found here.

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography. You can also support the site by purchasing from B&H and Amazon – thanks!

We are also on Facebook and there is a curated reader Flickr pool.

Filed Under: hasselblad Tagged With: 2016, event, forum, hasselblad, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, shootsin, thein

Photoessay: Gold and Silver Forum, Schwäbisch Gmünd

December 15, 2015 by Ming Thein

_7R2_DSC1277 copy

During my previous trip to Zeiss HQ in Oberkochen, the group was taken to the nearby town of Schwäbish Gmünd for a demo session with the new lenses; I passed on the models and wandered around the town with Lloyd Chambers instead. Needless to say, this rather unique building caught my eye I and landed up producing a series of studies of it. It is the Gold and Silver Forum located on the banks of the Josefsbach stream in the centre of town; I was made to understand that the reason behind it was the area being historically a centre for fine metalsmithing several hundred years ago. Today, it serves as a public space to take in the sunshine and a meal. Personally, I think the most interesting part is the way the faceted facade reflects light and simultaneously creates the illusion of having many layers and great complexity thanks to the play of projected shadows on the underlying building’s core. This was accentuated by the hard light of that particular day. The facade itself is quite a challenging subject simply because it’s difficult to fully abstract without focusing overly on a single set of apertures, and pulling out loses the shadow gradation on the structure beneath. Enjoy! MT

This series was shot with a Sony A7RII, Zeiss Batis 1.8/85, Contax Zeiss 2.8/35 PC Distagon and a Leica Q. Postprocessing was with the ‘commercial’ technique in Making Outstanding Images Ep.5: processing for style.