vision – Ming Thein | Photographer

Photoessay: Mobile sketchbook

March 30, 2020 by Ming Thein

On the back of the previous post, I realize I haven’t posted anything from my smartphone in a while – oddly, it isn’t because I haven’t been using it; it’s because its role keeps changing for me, from a curiosity and article of discipline (enforcing seeing and shot discipline completely independently of hardware) to an object of convenience, to a document copier, and now on to a visual sketchbook of sorts. I know I tried this already with the Pen F; that turned out be treated as a more serious photography tool which has since converged around the Z7 or D3500, leaving a hole for something for me to experiment with – and specifically, one with the extended DOF of a smaller sensor. There’s sadly no 100mm+ perspective option, but careful positioning and composition means the 56mm module renders more compressed than you might think. A good photographer should be able to work within and around limitations and not make excuses and all that… MT

Shot with an iPhone XS Max, no processing.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: iphone, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, mobile, photoessay, photography, sketchbook, thein, vision

Back to basics: Rules of vision – part II

August 15, 2019 by Ming Thein

Upside down, or?

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…

Continued from part I – hopefully the first part has had time to settle and digest; let us press on…

We draw temporal inferences from direction of shadows
The length and direction of shadows also suggests time of day: this is one of the indelible subconscious rules dating back to the very beginning. It is a consequence of observing sunrises and sunsets and being able to judge approaching darkness accordingly, by both overall luminance of a scene and the shadows cast by the sun. Sadly, for a lot of us, this is somewhat academic as there are far too many offices with hours that extend beyond daylight and further have no natural light whatsoever…

Back to basics: Rules of vision (or, things we can’t help seeing) – part I

August 9, 2019 by Ming Thein

Did you notice the sign above the man’s head? What about the house number? Or what appears to be a Cuban flag in the doorway? Or was the moving man the first ‘anchor’?

Regular readers will know that I hate arbitrary maxims labelled as ‘photographic’ rules simply because there is no such thing as a ‘universal scene’ or universal set of parameters for every image. Every composition is different, and every creative intention is different, which means the whole premise of there being a fixed set of laws that make a ‘good’ image or ‘image that works’ can only be nonsense. However, I do think there are some fundamental principles of human vision – and consequently psychological response to elements in an image – that we cannot ignore since they directly influence the response of our audience to the ideas we are trying to present. That is what I wish to address today: what are the autonomous/ subconscious/ reflex/ automatic – pick your preferred term – visual responses that we should be aware of and seek to utilise when we compose an image? Think of this post as the predecessor to The Four Things: it’s the underlying reason why some of the Things have to be the way they are.

Rules of vision – part II

October 27, 2016 by Ming Thein

Upside down, or?

Continued from part I – hopefully the first part has had time to settle and digest; let us press on…

Rules of vision (or, things we can’t help seeing) – part I

October 25, 2016 by Ming Thein

Did you notice the sign above the man’s head? What about the house number? Or what appears to be a Cuban flag in the doorway? Or was the moving man the first ‘anchor’?

On vision and postprocessing

May 15, 2016 by Ming Thein

H51-B0000691 composite
Before and after – starting point of RAW file in color (right), final presentation mono (left). Is that ‘photoshopped’? To most audiences, it probably is; but it’s no different to using black and white film, processing with a certain chemistry and doing a little dodging and burning of the print. Nothing has been added or removed that was not physically present in the original scene.

Though the mainstream population has now been firmly in the digital era of photography for more than a decade, I’m sure we can all remember a recent time when we were asked ‘so how much photoshop did you do?’ when presenting an image. The misconception that a good image must have some degree of implicit trickery is problematic; to the public, ‘Photoshop’ has become synonymous with ‘digital illustration’, ‘compositing’, or worse, ‘deliberate misrepresentation’. As much as we do our best to explain that Photoshop is really no different to the darkroom and chemical processes of the film days, we are at best regarded with some skepticism. But it does beg the question: why not use all the tools at one’s disposal, and what’s wrong with it if we do?

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, creativity, essay, idea, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photoshop, postprocessing, thein, vision

The eyes of a baby

March 5, 2016 by Ming Thein

_Q116_L1020754 copy
Insert gratuitous infant photo here.

As many of you know, I have a 11-month old daughter. This is not going to be a scientific attempt at trying to replicate infant vision; far from it. Think of it more as a series of observations from the perspective of a photographer observing and observer. All in all: as anybody who’s had children will know, sometimes they have just as much to teach us (or remind us of) as we do them.

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