PixelatedImage Blog

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1. A quote. From this years PDN Photo Annual, a story about photographers forming emotional connections to their subjects and the stories they tell - "For these three photographers, compassion is every bit as important as composition - if not more so." I love that.

2. The scoop on Lightroom 1.1. From Scott Kelby, news that the Lightroom 1.1 Update is coming soon. Details on Scott’s blog HERE - You need to check out his post on this - it includes a partial, but tantalizing, glimpse of the coming features. And the update is free. My favourite price.

(Update - Looks like Scott has updated his blog entry and it no longer lists the coming improvements to Lr1.1 - I knew I should have copy/pasted. So, you’ll just have to trust him, folks. I saw the list, and it’s very promising. Keep your eyes open.)

3. Fans of documentary/reportage/humanitarian/black and white photography should spend some time with TOM STODDART - there was an interview with Stoddart in the recent issue of Professional Photographer (April 2007) and it’s a must-read. If you respect shooters like Nachtwey, you’ll love the work and thinking, and compassion, of Stoddart. His iWitness images of Sudan are particularily compelling.

4. The aforementionned issue of Professional Photographer (a UK magazine, published by Archant Specialist) has some excellent articles on travel photography. As a matter of practice I get two magazines by subscription - PDN and Photoshop User. But once in a while I end up with a copy of PP - when it’s good, it’s really good. Find it. Love it. This issue also has a good review of the Leica D-Lux 3, of which I am a fan.

5. Photo Workshop in Cairo, April 2008?
Lastly, I am toying around with the idea of leading another photo-tour, this time in Cairo and Northern Egypt. I’d be accompanied by Kevin Clark, an accomplished photograper and good friend who’s lived and worked in Cairo. Timing? Possibly sometime in April 2008. 10 days, a little bit rough and tumble, definitely not a bus tour - but you’d come home with spectacular images that the tourist crowd just never gets. Space would be limited to 6 participants and while I am only in the "what-if" stage right now I’m also beginning to take expressions of interest. If you want on the email list, leave a comment with info and your level of interest.

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Ok, off to India and Nepal. See you on the other side.

This is a little premature, but the coming days are a little nutty and I’m unsure I’ll have a chance to post again. If I do, consider it a bonus.

On Wednesday I head to India for the Lumen Dei tour with co-founder and co-leader and exceptional photographer and friend Matt Brandon - we’ll be in Delhi for a few days, Agra briefly, and then Kashmir for the rest of our time. After we see our students off at the end I will be joining my wife in Delhi and flying to Kathmandu for a week.

I return June 17 and look forward to reconnecting with you all then. If I have a chance to update this I will, but consider it unlikely.

In the meantime keep your eyes on Lexar.com - they should be publishing the latest in my Lessons Learned On Assignment series in the coming days. Look for the one about Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda.

See you soon.

In a desperate bid to give you some content before I fly to India and Nepal and leave you orphans for a month, I have been posting a little more than usual. For some of you this means four weeks of reading the back-log. Which is good - that’s how long I will be gone.

As I reflected on the transition to digital I remembered that one of my biggest adjustments was switching my understanding of what is and is not a proper exposure. I grew up on Ansel Adams’ Zone System and I think that gave me a really solid base for understanding how meters work and how to use that to maximum advantage. I’m no techy, in fact I’m pretty pragmatic, but the Zone System worked, even if I still struggle to understand the intricacies that fill books. But exposing for digital is not exposing for film. Different monsters altogether.

So here’s a few pointers.

1. The bulk of the digital information is contained in what is displayed as the right side of the histogram. Try to expose your images so the histogram is as close to the right side without blowing out the highlights. Unless you have specularity - like the sun, a lightbulb, anything that SHOULD be blown out. Keeping your exposure biased in this direction gives you the most digital data and generally allows you to tweak your image with the least amount of damage to the pixels. For your viewing pleasure, exhibit A:

2. Having said you shouldn’t blow out the highlights do not default to underexposing. Don’t go off the right side of the histogram, but get close to it. If you get paranoid of blowing the highlights and deliberately underexpose you will plug the shadows and attempts to bring them back will bring alot of noise into your image.

3. Shoot RAW. Always. Unless you have a really good reason not to. RAW allows you unparalleled ability to adjust for exposure errors and gives you greater latitude than film shooters ever imagined. JPG does not. If you blow a highlight in JPG, it’s not something you can recover and still maintain the highest image quality. By all means shoot RAW+JPG if you want, but shoot RAW. Really.

4. There are times when the lighting goes from deep blacks to bright lights in a range that is greater than what you can expose for while still keeping the shadows from plunging and the highlights from being blown. In techy terms this means you have a higher dynamic range of light than your sensor is able to capture. And sadly there are only a few things you can do. You can use fill flash or reflected light to bring up the shadows a few stops. You can allow the black to simply be really black - you’re an artist dammit! - and then use Lightroom or Photoshop to bring them back some. Or you can put that camera on a tripod, bracket your exposures enough stops apart to cover the dynamic range, and then use the Merge to HDR function in Photoshop to create an image that works for you.

So it really comes down to the histogram. Use the LCD/Preview screen to check composition, and the histogram to check exposure. Expose for the highlights and keep the histogram to the right as close as you can without going off the side and blowing the whites. See, i told you it was an oversimplification. There are long, looong articles out there on just this subject, and this clearly can’t cover it all. But it can get you started and get you exposing images that keep all the data you need to create the highest quality images.

I have it on good authority that Scott Kelby reads this blog daily. (So I’m under great pressure to produce!) - if I’ve erred in any of this or there is anything further to add, I suspect he’s the one to do it, so keep your eyes on the comments for additions, corrections, and the odd Scott Kelby sighting.

I have a friend who is just on the cusp of making the switch to digital. She’s an accomplished film shooter and feels it’s time to make "The Switch". So she’s easing in and got a leased Nikon and is having some frustrations (not with the Nikon specifically, but with the switch in general). So this one is for her and for those of you who might be going through the same thing. Here’s a really brief, and incomplete list of advicey kinds of bits that came to mind as I was packing for my LUMEN DEI trip this morning.

1. Digital is not just like film only different. When you swtich to digital you aren’t just switching one type of film stock for another, you’re switching paradigms, gear, workflow, business models, and billing practices. You’ll shoot differently, expose differently, and if you never did any of your own darkroom or lab work, that’s gonna change now too. Sometimes learning new things is so difficult because we fail to let go of our old paradigms - digital is a whole new world, so let go of everything you thought you knew and go in with eyes open and be prepared for a learning curve. Don’t panic, it’s all going to be ok.

2. The learning curve is inevitable, but you can make it easier on yourself and I’d recommend three books by my colleague Scott Kelby. Scott says he’s a fan of mine but as I’m a fan of his it’s more like a mutual admiration society, but it’s kind of exclusive so don’t go asking for membership or pool passes. Here’s my recommendation - go to scottkelbybooks.com and order these three books:

1. The Digital Photography Book, Scott Kelby
2. The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers, Scott Kelby
3. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, Scott Kelby

I know there are alot of books out there on these three subjects, but while Kelby is an excellent photographer and knows his stuff inside and out, it’s his ability to write and educate clearly, simply, and without condescension that sets him apart. That and an uncanny ability to presage the questions I have and answer them in the next paragraph. It’s pretty creepy, actually.

3. Now make sure you have Photoshop CS2 or CS3 now that it’s out, and Lightroom. Lightroom is so far beyond what I began with and starting out with it is, in my mind, totally crucial. I can’t speak highly enough of the program. Sit down and work through Scott’s three books - you’ll find the whole thing becomes much less intimidating with Scott teaching you. Trust me on this one.

4. If you’re heavily invested in optics from Nikon or another line you might want to stick with that brand when buying a digital camera, but my recommendation otherwise is Canon. The full-frame sensors are truly the holy grail, in my mind, of digital shooting. And only Canon gives you them. The 5D is an incredible camera. Some have asked me about the 1 series and while I’ll admit they’re amazing, my recommendation is to buy the 5D and spend the difference on an L series lens or two.(Unless you’re heading to Bhagdad and need the bomb-proofing and weather/dust seals) The bodies will all one day be obsolete but the lenses will last much, much longer. And they’ll have a visible effect on your work. I’m not bashing Nikon - the fact is both Nikon and Canon make a couple excellent cameras and a couple that are more like cheap toys for weekend warriors. I prefer Canon.

5. Go out and shoot, have fun, play with your camera. Shoot thousands of frames and delete them if you don’t like them. Learn to read your histogram, learn your white balance, shoot in RAW.

6. Don’t hesitate to ask questions or look for help. If you’re in Vancouver I’m available for coaching and I’m not as expensive as you think. Seriously.

I really believe that digital imaging is a gigantic step forward in the technology needed to take your vision and put it within the frame - the rewards, for me and countless others, are simply so much greater shooting in digital. But the transition can be intimidating. I hope some of this has helped. As always, questions are welcome. And if I don’t know the answer, I’m pretty sure it’s in something Kelby has already written.

I saw an ad for this in the recent issue of PDN. It’s something I’ve talked to a number of photographers about and I am really excited I’m not the only one who thunk the same thoughts I’ve thunk. Those thoughts being something like “wouldn’t it be awesome if someone made a pocket-sized USB printer so when someone wants a copy of an image I can actually give them one?”

And within 6 months of my thinking these thoughts, enter ZINK.It prints 2×3 images and uses no ink. It probably uses sorcery. It’s not releasing until later this year, but it looks really promising and the price is right. If PDN is to believed, and it’s usually reliable, the price will start around USD 99.00.

More details HERE

1. Thanks to Jordan at the DigitalExplorer for showing this to me - I’ve been on the Inside Lightroom site alot but haven’t spent much time experimenting with the presets - of which there are a great many, most of them a little too experimental for my needs/wants. But this one - 300 - rocks. I just gave a random Taj Mahal image the 300 Preset and exported it out as you see it here. Grungy and contrasty and kind of po-mo or something. I like it. Inside Lightroom blog site HERE, 300 Preset download HERE. Thanks, Jordan

2. Interface shortcuts in Lightroom - Shift+TAB hides and reveals all the palettes and stuff. F5, F6, F7, and F8 hide/reveal the top module picker, bottom film strip, left side bar, and right side bar - in that order.

3. In Develop Module the ” \ ” key is a toggle key that toggles between your developed changes and the undevelopped original. Very handy.

I shot this image on my first assignment for World Vision Canada. It hangs large on my office wall and reminds me of a time in my life that will remain a peak in my memory forever. It was shot in Malawi after three days of travelling just to get where I was going. It was my second trip to Africa, and my biggest fear was screwing up the assignment. Those fears faded once I shot this image. I realized that it was all coming together and if I could manage to pull off this shot I could just repeat it until I’d shot the brief and filled my hard drive.

The most amusing thing about this assignment, and all assignments of this nature, is the juxtaposition we are trying to present. The need is to capture an image that reflects, with total integrity, beauty, and hope, a reality that in some ways doesn’t truly look like this. African children do not have the luxury of treating their animals like pets, they do not cuddle with them, they do not name them cute names like “Sparkle”. They raise them, they breed them, they feed them, they kill them, they eat them. End of story. But for these families a goat represents great hope and it is a gift of astonishing proportions - and totally disproportionate to the money it takes us to give the gift. And so these images need to reflect that relationship. This one is my favourites.

What is most amusing is the list of shots I had to fulfill. Happy Child holding Rooster. Happy Child Riding Ox. Happy Child milking Dairy Cow. For the record, no african rooster likes to be held and they don’t take it lying down. No african ox would allow a child, happy or otherwise, to ride it. And african dairy cows are scary. So I revised my list. Happy Medical Worker Stiching Child’s Rooster Wounds. Happy Oxen Stampeding Village. Happy Dairy Cow Running for the Hills, Followed By Happy Child in Hot Pursuit. These assignments never turn out quite like you think. (For the record, no child was ever harmed in my shoots. The oxen did, however, stampede and nearly kill us all, but that’s a story for another time. Perhaps when the memory is less painful to me and my therapist says it’s ok to go there…)

In this case we were riding towards a farmstead, with a truck-load of school-kids in the back. As we passed a small group of huts I saw the kid (goat) that you see in this image. Young, beautiful, clean, and as I was soon to discover - very unhappy about his impromptu photo shoot. I’ve been told that a previous shoot like this ended with the goat eating the little girl’s (only) dress and having her burst into tears. So I was keen to avoid that. What I got instead was a truck load of children chasing the goat round and round a hut while the mother goat chased them and the local dogs followed suit. It was like some glorious scene from an African version of Keystone Cops and the adults sitting under the eaves of their huts had front-row seating to the premiere. I love - LOVE - the laughter these shoots kindle in people. And if it takes me playing the clown to so do, so be it.

We ended up catching the goat and getting off about 50 frames. The little girl was gorgeous, but shy. The goat pouted the whole time. The kids ran amuck and through the frame, the dogs chased each other - too riled up to stop. It was, in short, total chaos. And I loved every moment of it. The image itself gives no hint of what went on just without the edges of the frame. To me it’s a reminder of the nature of peace - that the chaos is only ever at bay for a short time - it’s always there just out of line with your peripheral vision, but it’s there. The peace and tranquility that this image evokes in me is only ever just a calm within the storm, not the absence of it. And that makes it all the more welcome when it comes.

In October you will begin seeing the 2008 World Vision Canada Christmas Gift Catalogue. Some of the images I’ve taken this year actually turned out to be well-exposed and mostly-focussed. They will appear in that catalogue. Please get one, but don’t treasure it and hide it away. Thumb through it, dog-ear the pages, and buy as many goats, chickens, alpacas, deep wells, mosquito nets, as you can possibly buy. Your great aunt Sally doesn’t need another scented candle and your brother doesn’t need another tie. But these kids are dying for some of this stuff. Literally. Dying. Look at this little girl and tell me she’s not worth it. I’ve walked hand in hand with her. And hundreds of others, all just as beautiful. I can tell you from looking into their eyes and seeing them laugh and play and hope and dream - they’re worth it a hundred times over.

Please join me in kicking at the darkness that is extreme poverty. To find out more, please visit World Vision Canada, World Vision US, or World Vision International

EXIF data: Canon 5D, 24-70/2.8 @ 39mm, iso400, 1/2500, f2.8. Image processed in Lightroom.

I have a friend who’s getting in on the Evrium Two For One deal in June and he’s looking for someone to go halvesies (I can’t believe I just wrote that word with a straight face). So, if you’re interested in the Evrium Fluid Galleries software and you want a deal, please leave a comment and we’ll set you up with my friend.

If there is more than one who gets in on the deal I’ll match people up and you can all go in together in pairs. I just ask that in return for the favour you list me (david duchemin) as your referrer so I can get a kick back and pay off the bad men at the camera store who keep taking my money. Any takers?

For those unfamiliar with it, Fluid Galleries is the software I use to run my own portfolios. I’ve reviewed it here. And here.

More info here: EVRIUM.COM

Below this post is one post of mind-boggling length but broken up into three very-nearly-humane lengths.

A weakness of any technologically driven art is that we get very focussed on the technology. And we forget the bigger questions. Or we’re scared to dive into them. I’ve adapted an excellent article on understanding dynamic composition and while it truely is a little long and will possibly take a couple reads to really "get it", I think this is really, really worth reading. The thinking is not primarily my own, for that I credit Raymond Aubin’s excellent article La Compostition Dynamique. I’ve translated it, and re-worked it a little, but the heart of it remains his. I hope I’ve done justice to his thinking.

I encourage you to plow through this and work to understand it - it’s thick at times, but valuable. If you decide not to read it we probably can’t be friends anymore.

Questions and interaction encouraged.