mingthein.com – Ming Thein

Photographing babies

February 20, 2016 by Ming Thein

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Today’s article is both somewhat off topic and an indication of how things have changed for me in the last seven months. It certainly isn’t something I’d have done or even considered previously, but when your shooting hours are severely curtailed by parental responsibility, a photographer has little choice. I’m sure we’ll be updating this post with a ‘photographing toddlers’ amendment in a year or two, but for now, I’d like to share some of the useful things I’ve learned – I’m sure there are probably a considerable number of people in the audience who might find them useful. Feel free to wait for the next article or dig in the archives for today’s entertainment if it isn’t applicable to you. And I do promise not to turn into one of those people who does nothing but post photographs of their kids…

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, babies, children, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, people, photography, thein

Photoessay: the towers, Chicago

February 18, 2016 by Ming Thein

After the previous verticality projects, I wanted to try to find a different but still coherent approach to photographing large buildings from the human perspective at street level – this is harder than it sounds, given you have little room to back up in most cases. At the same time, overt geometric distortion from the use of a wide lens is not always acceptable. With the exception of two images, the rest were shot from fairly close to the base of the buildings with minimal or no perspective correction and the intention of preserving just enough of the uniquely identifiable aspects of the architecture. Locals or architecture fans should be able to identify the edifices, or I should go back to the drawing board. Enjoy! MT

This series was shot with a Leica Q 116, D810/ Zeiss Otus 28, A7RII and Zeiss Batis 85 and post processed with PS Workflow II. You can also look over my shoulder at the underlying postprocessing in the Weekly Photoshop Workflow series.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: architecture, building, chicago, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein, towers, urban

Social media and photography: how to get it wrong

February 16, 2016 by Ming Thein

It never fails to surprise me at the – let’s be blunt – stupidity of some companies in the age of social media. Let’s say you operate a number of malls in the centre of a large city, in prominent locations with moderately interesting facades. Your objective as a mall operator is obviously to increase traffic through your property so that you can increase rental to your tenants and your own underlying return on capital. You want to encourage people to visit and spend money in every way possible. More than a few studies have shown that people who are happy are more likely to spend money than people who are not. Similarly, people are more likely to spend money in a popular environment than one that is not – part of that is herd mentality, part of that is fear of missing out. You spend money on advertising, promotion and the like. You sponsor photo competitions and go out of your way to be seen as a ‘patron of the arts’. Yet why do you program your guards to a) prevent people from taking photographs anywhere near your property when the subject isn’t even your property but the opposite direction; b) be rude about it, and c) act over real estate and public thoroughfares over which they have no jurisdiction?

Photoessay: Chicago stories

February 14, 2016 by Ming Thein

You will pay…or the Don will make you pay

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

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

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

A question of value, accessibility and medium format…

February 12, 2016 by Ming Thein

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

Photoessay: Mokhtar Samba and the African Jazz Project

February 10, 2016 by Ming Thein

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

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

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

Photographing concerts

February 8, 2016 by Ming Thein

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

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

Photoessay: The Idea of Man, Chicago, part II

February 4, 2016 by Ming Thein

Continued from part I

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

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

Photoessay: The Idea of Man, Chicago, part I

February 2, 2016 by Ming Thein

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

Alternate presentations: cinematic Thaipusam 2016 photoessay

January 31, 2016 by Ming Thein

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