ming thein – Ming Thein

Photoessay: Growing up

October 5, 2019 by Ming Thein

I have come to the conclusion that four year olds are mostly like uninhibited adults. At least mine seems to be; I suppose their actions make sense in their minds with their limited understanding of the world, and when you disagree – there will be hell to pay because there is no way anything could possibly be different to how they have imagined. (Arguably, this is the same with a lot of supposedly fully grown adults I have to deal with, too.) There are moments when they are remarkably mature and self-sufficient; there are others when we are reminded that they sleep the sleep of innocents and don’t carry any of the worries of reality. They are a bundle of nerves and listen almost solely to the lizard brain. There is no self control and that leaves parents torn between the short term pain of trying to impose it, and the long term gain of raising a person who doesn’t bang tables to get their way. Just looking at these images has driven home though how much she’s matured over the past year, though she probably won’t be self-sufficient for another 15 years or more – and getting seemingly longer with every generation. To think there are entire species whose lifespans are much shorter than the past four years; and intelligent ones who are fully mature and ‘adult’ after just one or two years. We humans are probably the only species with the luxury to explore and pursue something higher up the pyramid of needs than mere sustenance and survival – we should not waste it on pointless diversions… MT

Shot over the last year, mostly with the Nikon Z7 and my custom SOOC JPEG profiles.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: growing up, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, sophie, thein

Quick review: the 2019 Fuji XF10

October 2, 2019 by Ming Thein

Some camera purchases begin with much research, planning and deliberation; not to mention angst and hand-wringing. Others begin at airport duty free with too much time on one’s hands, and subsequent serendipity in locating a second hand unit. This falls into the latter category. I make no secret to being a big fan of large sensor compacts for their versatility and image quality. I liked the original APS-C GR, the Coolpix A and to a lesser degree, the original RX100; the RX0II is in my bag. You see, I had some time to kill at Heathrow, and landed up playing with some things I wouldn’t have done so otherwise. Those touch-and-try display counters are dangerous things.

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews Tagged With: finepix, fuji, fuji xf10, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, review, thein, xf10

Computational photography: what ‘format’ is it?

September 26, 2019 by Ming Thein

Gratuitous header; moment of enlightenment.

One of the unavoidable buzzwords of the last couple of years has been ‘computational photography’. Besides sounding slightly oxymoronic and insulting to the ‘real’ photographer who presumably represents what they see and doesn’t attempt to manipulate objects into (or out of) being that aren’t physically there, the reality is that it’s unavoidable and has been unavoidable since the start of the digital era. Everything that requires photons to be converted into electrical signals and back to photons again (whether off a display or reflected off a print) – must be mathematically interpreted and altered in some form before output. It is not possible to avoid this: the Bayer interpolation, in-camera JPEG conversions, any file format saving, conversion to print color space – a ‘computation’ has to be performed to translate the data. Hell, there’s already an implicit computation in the analog to digital stage (although arguably photons are already ‘digital’ since they represent discrete quanta of energy, but that’s another discussion for another time). However, what I’d like to discuss today* is something one step further down that road, and following on from the previous posts on format illusions: in light of the broader possibilities of computational photography, what does ‘format’ even mean?

*I.e. excluding things like subject recognition for tracking, depth mapping and simulated shallow DOF transitions etc. for the time being; we’ll revisit that later.

Photoessay: Of canopies and curves

September 23, 2019 by Ming Thein

There’s a collection of rather strange but interesting architecture within the Lake Gardens in Kuala Lumpur; it was built at different times but is surprisingly coherent. None of it is used much, but at least it’s visually interesting. I presume it must be intentional that the curves somewhat mirror the canopies of the trees; it would be hard to think of any other reason to make construction this difficult (especially in a country not known for either exacting standards or quality builders). Can’t be good for the trees though, since the enclosed ones don’t seem to be doing quite as well as those out in the open. I had a sense of deja vu walking through here – the forms are oddly reminiscent of The Garden of Cosmic Speculation but without the massive earthworks, or the underlying cosmological references. Still, as a respite from the functionally boring boxes popular here, I’m not complaining. MT

This series was shot with a Nikon D3500 and AF-P 10-20/4.5-5.6 DX VR, and post processed with Photoshop Workflow III.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein

Photoessay: Colorlumpur

September 17, 2019 by Ming Thein

Today, a slight disjointed set of wimmelbild-esque urban vignettes. I’m pretty sure at a subconscious level my attraction to these scenes was the variety of textures present in each; they also happened to make a good variety of test subjects in my usual preferred kind of hard light to to see if I’d managed to match the Z7’s SOOC JPEG curve tuning to the ‘normal’ workflow I’ve used up to this point. I think a little more work might be required to fine tune things, but there’s something quite attractive about how the lower midtones are being handled; the tonal richness is there. It was also a rare opportunity to shoot the old part Kuala Lumpur in this kind of light – I find it really makes you look at the city in a different way, especially if you can manage to disconnect a little and pretend you’re somewhere completely new. Turns out it isn’t that difficult to do if you haven’t been to this part of town in six months… MT

This series was shot with mostly a Nikon Z7, AF-S 70-200/4 VR and my color SOOC profile; there are a few other singles from other cameras I had sitting around that I could never quite coherently place in a set until now. Those were processed with Photoshop Workflow III.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: kuala lumpur, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein, urban, vignette

Photoessay: A Japanese puzzle

September 11, 2019 by Ming Thein

The precision with which Japanese cities come together has always felt like akin to a puzzle with a thousand architects – though things appear chaotic at first, there is a sense of underlying deliberation and precision probably borne from just how clean each individual element tends to be, and how neatly it slots into place whilst respecting the space of its surrounding neighbours. Perhaps it is a metaphor for Japanese society in a nutshell – which makes sense, given cities are a reflection of their inhabitants (and unfortunately this isn’t always a good thing). I have always been drawn to wimmelbild-type scenes like this in any city as they feel to capture a good sense of the essence and mood of a city without resorting to using distinctive landmarks for identification – if done well, you should know where you are without having to search for street signs… MT

This series was shot with a Nikon D850, 24-120VR and processed with Photoshop Workflow III – the images predate the custom presets, though these would have worked fine, too.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: japan, japanese puzzle, kyoto, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, osaka, photoessay, photography, thein, tokyo

Back to basics: Layering

September 8, 2019 by Ming Thein

Judging from the correspondence and comments flying around recently, it’s about time we did a refresher course here on the fundamentals of composition and image-making. As usual, there’s far too much obsession over hardware and not enough thought about what it’s actually being used for. This will be the first of several posts from the archives in this theme. That said, those people are unlikely to read these posts anyway…

There are two obvious definitions to layering: the literal splitting of the frame into planes of different distances, and the metaphorical addition of implied meaning through careful choice of subjects and subject placement. Ideally, an image should employ both to reward the viewer on further contemplation and to provide a visual that isn’t overly literal or one-dimensional. Unquestionably, a degree of ambiguity is required too, especially when working with implied meaning. But how can we consistently make images that fire on all cylinders?

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: how to, layering, meaning, metaphore, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, spatial, teaching, thein

Photoessay: Structured

September 5, 2019 by Ming Thein

As the the title suggests, the images in today’s post were curated by pattern, spatial frequency and something that probably has a formal architectural name that I’m not aware of – but tend to think of as ‘orders of complexity’. We got from rectangles to triangles and tetrahedrals; uniform to recursive; compound straight shapes to arcs and arches and on to organic forms. These forms take on a rhythm and get more complex, but then distill and simplify down into something more focused and massive. In a way, it feels a lot like the thought process behind designing a watch…

This series shot with a Nikon D3500, AF-P 10-20 DX VR, AF-P 18-55 DX VR II, AF-P 70-300 DX VR. SOOC JPEG.

Back to basics: Structure

September 2, 2019 by Ming Thein

I’ve put off writing this article for a very, very long time for the simple reason that there are visual things that I have to figure out how to explain which somewhat transcend the limits of the written language to describe. Even defining the meaning of ‘structure’ in a photographic sense is tricky: we understand it to be a system of support that is not necessarily seen but underpins what we see on the surface – both physical and metaphysical. It is the means by which order is created out of chaos. Photographically, I like to think of ‘the structure of an image’ as the flow or visual rhythm of elements. Controlling the structure of an image controls the order in which the elements are read, and in turn the idea or story implied by those elements. Without conscious management of structure, it is therefore very difficult to consistently create images with anything more than a very literal impact.

On-Assignment photoessay: Welders

August 30, 2019 by Ming Thein

I am pathologically attracted to welding. It’s the photographers’ analog to a moth being drawn to a flame, or in this case either an oxyacetylene torch or plasma arc. My theory is that it has to do with a) light and b) unusual light. How often do you see somebody focusing intently on what is essentially a continuously powered, almost unidirectional flash? You can’t help but look. The radiating shadows created by that harsh light create all sorts of leading lines that force your eyes to the source: man and fire. It’s visually epic in a Metropolis sort of way; the Rocketman-esque helmets do nothing to detract from this, making the whole thing simply impossible to turn away from. It’s probably the reason my eyes have floaters, and some of my sensors have burn marks. But in monochrome it also tells a timeless story of man’s desire to build something great from the sum of much lesser components. And for nothing if that reason, we must bear witness to these things coming to life. MT

Shot over a very long period of time over a large number of construction and heavy engineering assignments, with various hardware from 6×6 film to micro 4/3 to MF digital and everything in between…