PixelatedImage Blog

Many of you are beginning to suspect that when the venerable Scott Kelby tells me to do something, I just automatically do it. Like some mindless drone. Well nothing could be further from the truth. When Scott suggests something I obey more like a loyal ninja - it’s a matter of honour. Also? Ninjas have cool stuff. And Scott, to make my segue complete, often turns me on to cool stuff. So like the trained photographic ninja that I am, and at the risk of wearing this metaphor down to it’s marrowless bones, here’s something else that’s cool.

The Hoodman Professional Loupe

I mentionned this recently, but now that I’ve had a chance to use it, I wanted to bring your attention to it, if only to throw in my own 5 Pixel rating and confirm your suspicions - this is an amazing little addition to my kit. I love it.

The concept is simple - block the light from the screen and magnify the screen enough to make it a little easier to view while eliminating pixelation. Basically this makes the screen useful again. Review screens are far from perfect but this takes it up a notch or two and if you shoot in bright situations, i’d go so far as to risk my ninja’s honour and say it’s a must have.

Rating: 5 Pixels

As someone who’s just been messing with hundreds and hundreds of gigabites of image files, this is amazing. It’s called DROBO, from Data ROBOt. And it’s so amazing I swear there must be some kind of voodoo sorcery thing behind it. Check out the site HERE, and the video - you must watch the VIDEO

I’ve been having issues with Lightroom lately. It is, no doubt, operating exactly the way it is meant to, but problematically I don’t know how that is. So I messed around with some files and life has been miserable and now I have split my libraries and am re-importing all 40,000 some images. Jeepers.

So in an effort to divide my images over two drives and have back-ups of each, here is my solution from the beginning.

Hard drive one has two initial folders - one marked IMAGES, the other marked LIBRARY. The images go into IMAGES (duh) and then I open Lightroon, create a new catalogue and specify the LIBRARY folder. It then creates all it’s needed folders and files therein. Now import the images and specify the IMAGES folder as your source. Presto.

Now open the preferences in Lightroom and have it backup your library according to your personal preferences - I like it done every time Lightroom starts. It will then ask you WHERE to back up the catalogue, and that’s where drive number two comes in. In drive number two I have two folders as well. One marked BACKUP IMAGES, one marked BACKUP CATALOGUE (although I still use the word "library"). Specify BACKUP CATALOGUE as the destination for these backups. Now you just have to copy all your image files (I know, this is a heavy time commitment) to the BACKUP IMAGES folder on the second drive.

From now on when you import images you specify Drive 1, the IMAGES folder, and whatever subfolder structure you like, for the new images, and in the Backup to: dialogue specify the same subfolder in the BACKUP IMAGES folder on Drive 2. Now you have your images backed up, and your catalogues backed up.

One more thing I have done to make this all a little easier to navigate, I took down my logoed custom identity plate and simply put in - PIXELATED IMAGE Library -2004-2006 - or PIXELATED IMAGE Library 2007, so I can immediately tell which catalogue I am using and which drives I am working out of.

I’m betting there are more elegant solutions to all this and I’m eager to hear about them if you have them. But for now, this is my solution - it’s easy for me to remember and the files are where I need them all. Sure, I need four 500gb drives, but if one crashes, I’m golden.

Kathmandu, 2007.

This image is a result of pure dumb luck, as I am beginning to suspect the bulk of my images are. I was wandering the back alleys of Bhoda, just on the outskirts of Kathmandu, it was early morning, 6:30am, and the promised rainy season had just shown up. Truth be told I was in a funk - the kind that takes hold of me when I am in a place for an insanely short time and know that trying to feel-out the spirit of the place, let alone capture it in any meaningful way, is an insanely presumptuous task. It’s probably this very mindset that makes me manically search for the thing and which makes the thing itself so elusive. Trying too hard pushes the muse away.

Suddenly I looked up and saw this woman. Her fingers aren’t all there - there’re bits missing. You don’t have to look hard to see that life has been tough for her. She spent five minutes consumed by her devotion - lighting the butter lamps, swinging the incense, praying. She knew I was there, we acknowledged each other with a nod and a near-smile. I shot about 25 frames, my feet getting wet, no real sense of time. Mostly I just prayed she’d keep at her prayers long enough that my intrusion would result in an image that meant something, said something about her and her devotion.

You can’t plan these moments. They gobsmack you from your blindside. Slowly I am learning that creativity has its genesis in something, Someone, bigger than me - that it’s the process of seizing a small handful of convergent serendipitous elements the moment your muse taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey! Wake-up! Look at that.” And in the in-between times when there is nothing to look at and you feel like your muse is off screwing around when she should be hard at work, those are the times when it’s natural to fret and stew about the images you’re currently NOT creating. But natural or not, that inclination has a tendency to stand in front of you, looming, and preventing you from seeing the moments that ARE there. Or that WILL be there, any moment, if we have eyes to see them.

It’s taken me a while, and I re-learn this lesson with each assignment, but the more I embrace the times when nothing is happening, and the more I stop searching for what isn’t there - the more I start seeing what IS there. And that’s the only thing you can photograph.

Think of composition as how you arrange elements within the frame to tell the most compelling story possible, or to bring what is within the frame as close as possible to your original vision.

They say the camera doesn’t lie. I don’t know who they are but they don’t for a minute know what they’re talking about. The camera says exactly what you tell it to say, it’s unreliable and easily bought. The decisions you make will determine exactly what spin the camera will put on the reality you saw, and will bring in it’s wake a great image or one that falls short of its potential.

In broad strokes a great image contains strong foreground (FRG) and background (BKG). That background may be strong based on it’s total lack of focus; having rendered a busy scene into a gentle blur of colour and texture you free the viewer to focus on the foreground. Or the FRG and BKG may be equally sharp - but you’re placed them in such a way that one is prominent. However you do it, managing the relationship between the FRG and the BKG is key. Here are a couple means to that end.

• Depth of Field. Choosing a large aperture (f/1.2, f/1.8, f/2.0 etc) will give you very shallow depth of field.  Your focus point will be in focus, little else will. That which is not in focus will be rendered blurry and will guide your viewer to concentrate on what you want him to. It is the job of the storyteller in any medium to guide the audience. Distractions must either be placed intentionally or eliminated intentionally. Of course the inverse is also true - using a small aperture (f/8.0, f/16, f/22) will increase the depth of your field of focus. This can be used as powerfully as a narrow DOF but you must use it intentionally, and it’s harder to tell a strong story this way because you’ve got more elements to control.

• Point of View. Where you stand relative to your subject is vital. Think of the three elements at work here: Camera, Foreground Subject, Background Subject. If the FRG and BKG do not move - if they remain static and only the camera moves, then the relationship between the FRG and BKG changes. Move one way and the elements are perceived to move apart. Move the other and they converge. This is helpful when you want to create an implied relationship - if you want the objects to seem close, then move accordingly. If you want some distance, move the other way.

• Lens Choice. Amateurs make the mistake of thinking that big lenses are for making stuff big and wide lenses are for getting more stuff into the image. While this is not untrue it’s a simplistic way to look at things. A 200mm lens has several properties, only one of which is the ability to make a duck really, really big. What lenses do is manipulate our perception of space and the implied relationship between objects caught in that space. That 200mm lens in the the hands of a professional may never be used to make a duck really big. More often than not it will be chosen because it forces FRG and BKG together - it compresses them, making them appear closer to each other. The 17mm will do quite the opposite. So if your intention was an intimate portrait with a soft background, a longer lens would be perfect. If you wanted a sense of isolation, the shorter lens would be a good choice. Begin thinking in terms of compression or expansion when you think about your lens. Remember too that this applies to faces. Shoot a face at 17mm and it will have an expansive, comic effect. Shoot a face at 85-135mm and it will compress beautifully. Shoot a chubby person with a 200mm lens and the effect will be less than flattering.

My second thought has less to do with the relationship between foreground and background, but everything to do with composition.

Time itself is rarely mentionned in discussions about composition. But time is one of our raw materials and the difference between a good shot, a great shot, and the one that got away, is time. Our selection of shutter speed determines how wide or thin that slice of time captured will be, and it will have aesthetic consequences on the image. What I want to touch on is the captured moment itself.

If you are shooting stills or architecture this is less relevant than if you are shooting people or wildlife. The look, gesture, or emotion of your subject is captured in very thin slices with a camera. Which exact moment you chose to capture determines how powerfully your story is told. Henri Cartier Bresson talked about this in terms of the "decisive moment". It’s the moment that in one fraction of a second best expresses the sum of the moments that together make the scene unfolding before you. These moments don’t often repeat themselves, so learn to anticipate. Study your subjects - what makes people laugh, what are the signs that they are going to laugh, or smile, or cry. Anticipation keeps you a step ahead.

Lexar has just published my most recent article, The Challenges and Rewards of Photographing a People and Their Culture. I published this stemming from my experiences in Kashmir on the recent Lumen Dei trip.

Read the article HERE.

Also be sure to check out Scott Kelby’s recently added video tutorial (wmv file) on conversion of B/W images on the same site HERE

A couple months ago I posted news about a new product called ZINK. ZINK stands for Zero INK and is the future of mobile printing. We have mobile everything and cell phones now have cameras, but still no way to easily print those images. Enter ZINK. In a few months the first ZINK printers will roll off the line giving every photographer who’s ever been asked “hey, can I have a copy of that?” a fighting chance.
The Pixelated Image caught the vision pretty quickly, and now ZINK has joined the Pixelated Image as a sponsor. Each sponsor I have is a leader in the imaging field, and I am fiercely proud of the relationships I have with them. Contrary to the artsy thought that “it’s not the gear”, it IS partly the gear. It allows you to form your vision without a sketch pad and pencil, and each piece of great gear gets you one step closer to being able to realize your vision.

Take a moment check ZINK out online - I can’t wait for these to finally go into production and into our hands.

A few weeks ago I commented that I thought I had found the perfect camera strap. In theory the gear from UPstrap sounded great, but I wanted to wait until it came before I commented any further. Well my straps came and I love them. I have shot 4 assignments with them now and am convinced these are the best straps I have ever used, if not the best ever made.

Straps are a necessary evil. I prefer no tethers on my gear and in the studio and controlled environments I remove my straps and work without them. But in the field where I shoot 99% of my work a strap allows me to carry my gear and not drop it . All straps do that. How well they stay on your body, how comfortable they are, how well made they are, and how easily they attach to the camera - those are what separate the wheat from the chaff.

UPstraps are really simple. High quality webbing with a rubber-like compound pad in the middle. That pad is covered with tiny soft nipples. And it smells like a snorkel - bringing back memories of the Caribbean each time I smell it. But I digress. The pad is where the magic is. Put it on your shoulder and it stays there. Period. If you go to UPstrap’s website you’ll see a seemingly endless list of recommendations from people like Steve McCurry, this didn’t stop me from being skeptical.

The first strap is the simplest - The SLR classic. It mounts to the camera straight through the strap mounts and doubles back through the small buckle on the strap. It’s in-conspicuous, easy to mount once you figure out the way the strap doubles back on itself, and this strap is not going to separate itself from the camera accidentally.

The second - The SLR - QR- is a QR version of the first - similar in all regards but with the addition of Fastex-like nylon quick release buckles a few inches from the mounting point. This allows you to remove the strap and put it on something else, like a tripod, or in my case to attach the bandolier strap. What I would not use it for is quick removal so that I can use the camera sans-strap. The buckles still get in the way. This isn’t a criticism, I have a different way of mounting and removing my straps, but the QR does allow me to attach the bandolier - something I have been waiting for a long time.
The QR Bandolier is simply a large piece of webbing with QR buckles on the ends and no rubber pad. Initially this jarred me a little as the whole product line seems to revolve around the genius of the rubber pad, but on a bandolier - a strap that goes cross-ways across your chest - you want to be able to move freely and these shoulder pads work so well they’d inhibit that. I love this set-up. I have long been a fan of shooting with two bodies and now I can do that really easily and switch back to the conventional shoulder strap when I need to.
The last strap, the LT Strap is similar to the SLR Classic but with big beefy metal clips on it - for use with a camera bag, a laptop bag, or, I dunno, something really big. A 4×5 view camera? When I say “beefy” clips, I mean there is nothing you can possibly do to break these. Of course that’s my estimation of the product and not the manufacturer’s guarantee.

All the straps are made in the USA, if that’s important to you. They use top quality materials. Most importantly, they really work. Nervous at first I began to get bolder with them the more I used them. Sure, there are circumstances under which that camera will finally succumb to gravity - they’re amazing but not actually magic - but where all the straps I have ever used would have slid off, the UPstraps stay. I also love that they are inconspicuous and unbranded - nothing flashy that screams “STEAL ME” about the camera it’s supposed to be protecting.

I know this is alot of words for a review on something so basic. But like anything basic if it doesn’t work it becomes a frustration and frustration impedes creativity. More pragmatically, if my cameras fall off and break, I can’t work. If I throw my back and neck out by all the wierd shrugging I used to do to keep the camera on my shoulder, I can’t work then either.

UPstrap, it has been noted, has succeeded in building a better mousetrap. These are the last straps I will buy. Check out the UPstrap Website for a complete product line and ordering details. The website is pretty simple and unspectacular looking, but it’s clear and useful. Customer service was excellent with UPstrap, even after a bit of a struggle ordering online through their payment engine.

An excellent product made by a solid company.

Rating: 5 Pixels

Addendum. I just got this from Al Stegmeyer, the inventor of UPstrap, and wanted to give him the last word on this:

What really separates the UPstrap quick release from ALL others is the use of the mil-spec release. This release has a tensile strength rating of 300# at least twice that of any other camera strap that I am aware of. Keep in mind that tensile strength and jerk strength are very different. Hence, while one might think that a quick release that is rated at 150# will not come apart at 75# of jerk weight. Add to this equation the impact of temperature and the “dynamic range” of strength published from the lab and what is available in the freezing cold field are different. Fact is, the QR we use is the strongest I know of. It may be a bit clunky but it is something you need not worry about.

The reason our shopping cart is a bit cranky is that I have security settings set very high. So while I may loose some business and have a few frustrated users I choose the conservative route to protect your information. In fact, I never get to know your credit card number unless you insist that we put through a phone order. When you lock into the https secure server you are connected direct to the cc processor. The company that hosts our website does not get to collect your cc data.

Spent yesterday with Bert Monroy and the folks at NAPP here in Vancouver - a one day Photoshop Creativity tour. Bert is an amazing guy, as is Dave Cross who did a similar tour last year. But I’m unconvinced on attending another of these one-day events. If you’re a beginner, you should absolutely go. If you’ve never been, you should without hesitation go. If you’ve never met any of these fine NAPP folks, you too - go! But if you’ve done it a couple times and you’ve spent some quality time in Photoshop already then you may find, like I did, that there is so much breadth of content and not enough depth. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. This allows you to see possibilities and then go home and discover more for yourself. But for someone with a busy schedule and not lacking in the foundations or even much of the intermediate photoshop geekery, then what you long for is not more ideas but deeper ones - and a one day seminar is just too short for that.

Now, having said that - let me say this; those folks at NAPP do a darn fine job. The people are top-quality, so are the materials. If you don’t belong to NAPP already, you should.

I came home yesterday with:

1. A headache - so much content covered so quickly I have conceptual whiplash.

2. New respect for the artistry of Bert Monroy who creates huge photo-realistic images or paintings using Photoshop. They’re actually better than photo-realistic - they have more detail and no distortion. Remarkable. Here is a man with talent to spare and way too much sparetime. He spent 11 months doing a painting of a train station in Chicago. I would just look for Filter > Render > Train Station  filter and be done with it in minutes or I would give up.

3. New insight into the Blend If dialogue in layer styles. Amazing. I’ve been meaning to dig under the hood of this one and never got the kick I needed until now.

4. New insights into channels. Different channels contain different information. Reducing noise in the blue channel alone is better than doing it in all three. Sharpening is better in the green channel. Contrast changes are better in the red. Huge oversimplification, but if you’ve ever thought, "man, I don’t need no stinking channels"  - then you’re wrong…man.

5. A Hoodman Professional LCD Screen Loupe ordered from the fine folks at B&H Photo. Because Scott Kelby made me. Actually I had never seen this, but it’s a fantastic idea and compared to a new piece of L glass or a Gitzo tripod, they’re cheap. Additionally, if your photo vest and assorted gear doesn’t already make you feel like the king of the geek’s homecoming prom, then you can wear it around your neck for that "I wanna be Francis Ford Coppolla" look. Very dashing. Seriously, ever had a problem seeing the LCD screen in bright lighting situations? Like Africa? No more. These rock.

**
On Inspiration. On rethinking it I wanted to make a comment about my last post. I wrote that I was uninspired and unmotivated. And while that’s true, it sounds a little like whining. I’m not. Creativity, as most writers will tell you, has little to do with the feeling of inspiration or motivation. It’s a little like love that way. It’s just hard work at times. You have to put in the time. Most writers sit and write until the thoughts and words begin to gel. So too with people who work with the visual language. If you wait until you "feel inspired" you will produce sporadic work of questionable genius. And you’re clients aren’t bound to be happy. Feelings have nothing to do with it.

So uninspired right now. By that I mean totally unmotivated to take my camera (did you know the way we use the word "camera" comes from the latin - camera obscura - meaning dark room? The original "camera" was a large room that functioned as what we’d think of now as a big pin-hole camera) in hand and go shooting. But to be inspired is, at least linguistically, to be affected by an in-breathing. And I’m not much breathing-in these days. I get in these swings where the technical demands and concerns become the whole thing and creativity is edged out in favour of technology and technique.

So, were I to pry my kilted butt out of my aeron chair and my eyes away from my monitors, here are the top 10 inspiring, creatively inhaling, activities I would immediately engage in and thus re-direct my creative talents toward good and not evil. I’m not inspired enough to do them, but better people - smarter people like you - will see the wisdom in these ideas and you’ll embrace them as you would orphaned children needing love and care.

1. Pick up a book of the works of one of the classic photographers. Preferably someone whose style is different than mine, even someone whose work I don’t care for, and take it in.

2. Having done that - create an imaginary shot list asking yourself the question, if I had to create an homage to this piece or this photographer, but in my own style - how would I do that.

3. Go do that.

4. Look at your favourite 10 images from the last year or last month, whatever, and make a list of the similarities. Do they all share a same basic framing, basic narrative, colour palette? Where they all shot with the same lens, same lighting, same basic settings? What you’re doing here is finding a palettable way of asking: what’s the rut I have fallen into. On it’s own, this is a great exercise.

5. Get out of your rut. If you’re shooting horizontally, shoot vertically for a day. And ONLY vertically. Creativity functions best within confines - so impose some rules. If you always shoot with that 85/1.8 then slap on your 24mm and don’t take it off. For a week. Always shoot colour? Stop. Always shoot in soft light? Go out at high noon and shoot something garish.

6. We gravitate to shooting things we love. Go shoot something you passionately dislike. Passion is important, but we tend to favour that which is beautiful or easy. Comedians often make a career of talking about those things that they are passionately infuriated by. So go shoot the ugly.

7. Lose the technology. Grab your point and shoot or your Holga. Heck, grab a sketch pad and go make some really bad art. Try framing some shots with a pencil without ever bringing a camera to your eye. Call it your "man, if only I had my camera" experiment. But go back to the basics.

8. In narrative the heart of story is conflict. Stories do not move forward without conflict. Ever. In photography I beleive, or I think I do, that conflict is expressed through contrast. So go create some images that are high contrast conceptually. A hell’s-angel biker sitting on a tricycle or Big Wheel. A priest at a casino or strip club. A bridal couple in the slums. A man in a speedo at a black-tie wedding reception. Or something simpler - a Starbucks cup littering an idyllic beach, a couple arguing in a romantic spot. Think contrast. Mechanical vs. organic. Curvy vs. Straight. Dark vs. Light. Are you beginning to see the how contrast and conflict are connected?

9. Break a rule. Screw the rule of thirds or the golden rectangle. Use slow shutter speed. Stop focussing. Blow out the highlights. Point the camera in the wrong direction. Do something, anything, to silence that inner rule-monger who is so afraid you’ll create an image that you can’t even salvage in Photoshop with the Un-Suck filter.

10. Make up a creative exercise all on your own. Go do it.