New York Photography Blog

Warning – many rainy day shots coming up.  Today is second day, and it was cold, miserable – and excellent shooting weather.  I believe there’s one more day of deluge.  And already I have four or five good images from mother natures amusement ride.  I say that because the wind on the avenues must have been around 60 m.p.h.  I was hoping to get a shot with maybe 8 umbrellas all blowing apart at the same time.  I think I have one with 5 going at the same time.  For me – this is great fun, and what will always get me out of my laboratory.

My greatest dream of all, is to have a tornado moving slowly down fifth avenue.  Maybe it touches down around 59th street, and skips around until it gets to Grand Central Station.  I was sent home from school in – maybe the second grade – and still remember how much fun it was holding on from one Bronx lamp post to the next so as not to get blown away.  When I think back on it – it’s funny that parents weren’t called to come and get us.  They just let us out and we somehow managed (most of us) to make it back home.

I may do this in sequence – first one umbrella, then two etc.

Near subway entrance, 3rd / 86th

Sorry – don’t know why I decided to do this one in sepia. Just works for me.

I have a few more that I like… Last time I put up a post with images of the day was when the Pope was in town.  The current pope.  Rain and the pope.  What do they have in common.

is still a kiss…

Due to popular request (two?) here’s how this shot happened.

First off, I’m now back in the mood, meaning that the camera is always around my neck.  I walk down two flights of stairs and look through the glass door and it’s raining lightly.  I like to try and get a feeling of the drops of rain (which are visible in the non-web image and also the girl’s hair is completely matted down)… But okay, so I know that I’m going to want a fast shutter speed and I set the camera to 800 ASA and shutter priority at 1/500th or 1/1000th) with an f1.4 lens (the 50mm on full frame) this is probably going to be fine.

And I also transfer focus lock to the back of the camera for street shooting.

And I just walk out of the house with the camera hidden (because of the weather) under my coat, an umbrella, two bags of garbage, and a package to drop off at Fedex on the corner.  Out the door and turn to the right and I immediately see this couple (from the other side) and they’re having a very emotional moment.  The woman is upset about something and is crying.

I think about raising the camera to my eye – but a) I don’t want to really intrude on her private moment and b) I feel bad for them, whatever they’re going through and I pass by them.  As I walk towards the Fedex store, I turn around once and they are still in that emotional state.  I drop off the package, chat with the owner – I’m pretty friendly with most of the store owners in the neighborhood and to my surprise, when I turn the corner to return home, I see that the couple haven’t moved, and that the mood has completely changed.

I sense now that they are going to kiss.  I’m about 1/2 a city block away and I have the umbrella out now, and am trying to get closer without calling attention to myself.  I remember checking the top of the camera to see what the f-stop is going to be and it reads about f2.0.  I’m also beginning to scout for anything else that I might put in the shot.  Other than the older woman who is walking towards me, and I know her and know she will turn into her building…  And I’m also wondering whether a kiss on the street is even worth the effort or not, and I’m getting closer and they still haven’t kissed.

She’s laughing.  Still, maybe, but I don’t know if I want to waste my one shot on the laugh… and I actually turn my back to them and pretend to take pictures of stuff that’s around… and I’m still not really close enough…  And they’re are somewhat aware of what’s going on around them…  and so I decide this is stupid, I can’t stand on the sidewalk and wait for the kiss.  So I turn and with the camera actually to my eye, and focusing as I walk… and now I’m maybe 6 or 8 sidewalk boxes away… and yes, they do move to kiss and for a moment I’m still not sure… but then I notice that even though they are both short – she is on her tippy toes – and the woman going into the apartment… well it’s very close… and I move even closer and stop and take three shots in rapid succession… and just as I finish I get the feeling that they have noticed me, but at the same time don’t really care… and they turn to walk and we’re actually walking almost side by side now and I can hear their conversation.

She was upset about some mix-up having to do with their lunchtime date…  and they wander off, talking about where they will eat, and I make the left and go back into my building.

I don’t look at the images on the back of the camera when I get upstairs.  The camera sits for a few moments on top of a cabinet and I’m thinking about whether I did get anything worthwhile or not.  After a half-hour has gone by, I load them into Lightroom.  Yes, I did get one laugh shot which as I suspected didn’t work for me.  And one decent kiss, but it’s slightly out-of-focus and will have to be cropped on top of that… and I missed what I wanted with the older woman…  Exposure and general look are fine…

And that’s how the shot happened.  Anticipation. Luck, but not enough luck.  And just curiosity on my part and the fact that they took forever to get the lunch thing figured out.

I’m texting in the rain,
Just texting in the rain,
What a glorious feeling,
I’m texting  again…

Lester stopped by today and the conversation ran all over the place until he asked what was going to happen to all these pictures after I was gone.  It’s something I’ve thought about but never did come up with anything satisfying.  If I had children, then I could leave it to them.  But I don’t.  And I don’t have anyone in the family that I could see leaving it to.  What would they do with a bunch of files, some prints and a bunch of negatives.

What annoys me is the idea that this so-called estate might become valuable after I die.  I was pondering this dilemma that’s common to artists and I did have one idea, to sell off the rights to my estate while still alive.  I wonder if anyone has ever done that.  You could put it up on eBay and sell your lifetime of work to the highest bidder.  The winning bidder would be free to resell prints, make prints from the files or negatives or just sell the whole thing off to a gallery or a museum.

It’s a long shot, from the buyers point of view, but art collectors are always looking for these sorts of long shots.  And the point, in case that’s missed, is that the artist would get some benefit from his/her estate while still able to use it.

Poet’s Walk – Burning (2010)

There is something liberating about burning a print – especially a so-called signature print.  I can understand why Brett did it.  I can also tell you that I saw his exhibit at Aperature and his were to date the most beautiful (from a technical point of view) prints I’ve ever seen, and that includes original prints by Adams, Evans, and the other top photographers.  As a printer, he was the acme.

- I am slowly adding the members blogs to the Photoblogger Society (bottom of sidebar) so members can get an idea of what their sites will look like.  Each one gets a separate page.  I hope to finish this today.

- If you are driving a Toyota and it starts to accelerate on it’s own, can’t you slip it into neutral, brake it, and pull over?  I’m serious about the question.  Or does it lock up the transmission as well and turn you into a hurtling projectile.  Now that would be bad.

- Tomorrow is last day of sale.

- I have one more order (a lot of 5 x 7’s to get out)

- The Epson 7800 is working like a charm these days (knock wood).  The secret cure was to change the maintenance tank, even though it said there was 30% left.  That has to be some sort of estimate since it doesn’t have a chip on the thing, and does it know how much of each ink I’m using.  In other words, I’m using much more of the three blacks than the average person. **Correction. It does have a chip (Ken Smith).

- Beautiful spring day.  Plan to actually get out and do some infrared.

When I was a kid – all this stuff was strictly against the law.  Now the state takes it over and the money is used for good purposes.  You can tell because the city schools are overflowing with money and class sizes have gotten smaller.  The idea of the state taxing and promoting what was once sinful, is worse than when it was a private enterprise, as it still is in a few states.  In other words, if you tax so-called sinful activities, then you make us all into bookies.  We are all living off the addictions of others.  That just doesn’t seem right.

What was the phrase that was big in the early years, no taxation without representation?  I don’t remember voting for taxing cigarettes, or having the state sponsored lottery.  Maybe I was drunk that day.

Matt W. usually takes me for a birthday dinner at the Mansion on 86th; usually a few months after my birthday because, well, I’m just not much into eating out.  But on the way back, it’s become a tradition to use him or his camera as a prop of some kind, and to shoot him in the parking garage mirror.  Since he’s shooting film, and it’s night, he’s not going to waste much film on this game; but since I’m digital, it doesn’t matter.

What do we talk about when we get together?  Well, generally some way to build the business – that never goes anywhere.  I’m sure that he’d like me to start a photography lab so that he could have a friend do his printing at a cheap friendly price.

And since I’m doing everything possible to move away (though it isn’t possible) of doing this type of production all day and night, we follow an imaginary path that involves renting space, and hiring people that always ends in the same place – nowheresville.

After dinner, we sit like two old men, outside the restaurant and watch people go by.  Commenting on the shots we’ve missed, or what we’ve gotten.  An ambulance pulls up with lights flashing right at me, and two attendants help someone out of the restaurant and into the ambulance, while I’m taking my pictures.  Matt tells me that my images will be underexposed because of the flashing lights, and grabs for the camera to see what they look like on the back but I don’t give it to him because he’s always teasing me about using digital so why should he get to see the instant stuff.

Get your own digital gizmo if you want instant feedback.  But eventually I hand it over and he’s surprised that the shots come out properly exposed.  Now how did that happen.  When he and I talk about photography, for me it’s like talking to someone from the 20’s.  It’s as if I’ve gone back in time.  You have to remember, he doesn’t even have batteries in his camera.  Doesn’t use a light meter.  Develops film without a timer or a thermometer.  (I’m not kidding).

If I told him that he should at least have a little pocket meter with him, he’d just laugh in my face.  Why would anyone need to meter anything after all these years.

Of course I do miss a few shots because the 5D simply isn’t as fast at focusing at night as the 40D was; esp. it seems with the 50mm.  I have to live with that in exchange for being able to use the higher ISOs.

Well anyway – maybe it that guy ordered the juniors cheesecake, which is what we had and it was like eating an entire cake.  If anyone tried to eat that thing by themselves, they’d need an ambulance.

The garage mirror (convex or concave… surely I don’t need to look that up).  I’ve going to say concave since it is caved in.

Ghostly for sure…  and why shouldn’t it be.  We are, after all, just shadows… walking around for a few years before vanishing…

into an ambulance.

* * *

Other notes.  I am getting about five requests a day now for the Photoblogger Society, but nothing that has blown me away.  (I take that back, I just got two really good ones). I hate being the gatekeeper, but I think that for this project to make any sense – you need one.  For example, two applications came in from relatively new blogs, and by new I mean maybe 20 images.  I’m looking for blogs that have some weight to them.  I mean they don’t have to sum up a career, but they’ve got to have some heft to them.

Please be sure to test out the code in your blog before I go live (maybe two weeks).  Even if it doesn’t work, I may find some kludge to make it work.  And remember, once the code is in place and working, it will be live.  By that I mean, then when the blogger for a day adds a post, it will appear in your blogger for a day post.  This gives life to the post, and I think is helpful in terms of attracting people to the Blogger of the Day’s site over time; at least before it’s completely buried in your own posts.

LINK TO PHOTOBLOGGER CODE.

* * *

As far as my own struggle – the last two days (since I lowered prices and put up the sale) have been good, almost great.  What that means is that I made the rent in those two days.  During the previous three weeks or so while prices were high – just about nothing.  So it’s an important lesson, and I need to keep learning it.  What I have decided to do, is keep working as I’ve been doing – since that is bringing in an income – and start looking for an intern.  I have to give more thought to that since I get emails fairly often from students who would like to intern, but the business is so erratic, that I need to figure out how something like that would work.

But the idea would be that in return for doing the grunt work, I would teach what I could, and take the intern along when I go out to shoot.

The best thing (for me) that came out of the hdr experiments, was the tonemapping tool in Photomatix.  I have created a monochrome preset that seems to work very well for converting raw images to b&w.  The shot above is an old one – done with the Rebel something or other in 2004.  If I were making corrections in Lightroom, there would be a bunch of gradients, and other techniques for dodge / burning areas.

This comes straight out of the tonemapping program.  Yes, you could then use it as a starting point and fine-tune this and that in Lightroom or Photoshop.  But essentially, the tonemapping (and I did two prints for customers today using it) gives this excellent control over both overall contrast and tonality, as well as “micro” areas of the image.

You can setup presets to give different effects depending on the source image and what you want to do with it.

* * *

Original “flat” version “zeroed out”

Default Settings in Tonemap (Photomatix)

Let me try this again because I wasn’t clear about the whole workflow to do this shot.

1. In Lightroom, I have a preset.  It sets the curve to linear.  It zeros out all the attributes.  And it uses the calibration that I like, which is faithful.  This produces a very flat image.  Next to no contrast.  Nothing dropping off the edges of the histogram.

2. Then I created a preset for this type of input image in Tonemapping.  It brings up different areas at different contrast levels etc.  I call it Monochrome 1.  I have two other presets, one for images that are coming in too contrasty, and one for images that are just too flat.  But I am not fusing three images together, though the preset will work as well with them.  And I am not creating two virtual images.  It is one image.

The problem that I have with multiple images is that if anything is moving – tree branches, ducks, etc. the result is not pleasing to me, i.e. not the normal blur you get from using one image.  On the other hand – if the initial scene really is contrasty, and nothing much is moving, or your shutter speed is fast enough, then fine – combine them and then tonemap them.

Here are the tonemapping settings for this monochrome image.

I’m not saying that this will work for all images, or that I will always use it as is, but it is a good start for both my 5d raw images that I want to go to monochrome with, and my 40D and whatever the early Rebel was called.  The idea is to try and give the tonemapping program all the data you can.  You may be able to make all the changes you need with tonemapping, or it may be an intermediate step and you’ll import it back into Lightroom or Photoshop.  But the point is, it surprised me how well the program works for dealing with both flat, and high contrast images.  And of course – it’s another reason why you always want to shoot raw if you care about what you’re shooting.  It’s just that you never know what piece of software is in the pipeline, or how a new converter may be able to pull more detail from the highlights than your current one.

Anyway, I don’t mean to do a commercial for Photomatix.  I haven’t compared it with other programs as it works.  And you can download it and like most software try it for free.  Tonemapping is just one part of the program.  Obviously the main parts are for creating HDR images.

Someday I’ll put all my ‘Become Your Dream’ shots together.  De La Vega lives nearby.  I’m not sure that this one is his… no fish.  Of course the guy, who was making a delivery to a nearby bar sees me.  Not everyone did.  In fact he was the only one that noticed me shooting through the hole.  28mm f11.  I was just a few inches away from the board.  Generally the 28mm is too short for me, but I always have it with me and here it comes in handy.

I also did some shooting at H (3200).  I don’t know if it’s this particular camera, or if my eyes are going, but in a well-lit spot where I tested, I didn’t think noise / grain whatever you call it was bad at all on the 5d.  To my eye, better than 1600 on the 40D.  In other words – you can use it, as opposed to the higher end ASAs on other cameras I’ve had that I would never use.

The Other Side of the Dream

Okay, so here are the issues I’m trying to resolve with this idea:

1) Feedburner / Buzzboost points to a javascript file at feedburner.  I know that Wordpress.com sites can’t (or at least the last time I looked) include the javascript tag.  Is there a way around this?

2) If I do the Buzzboost as FULL HTML, and the embedded blog uses images that are too large for your blog – it will mess up your design.  One workaround is to offer a choice of two flavors of the blog to be embedded, FULL HTML (has pictures) and PLAIN HTML (which will have links and such but won’t have images).  The member can choose which one they want to use.

Now, if there is a way to resize images with CSS, and CSS can be included as part of the code, then that would prevent large images from messing up the other members’ blogs.

What about blogger.com  Can someone tell me if you can include javascript tag?

But basically that’s it.  I guess nothing is as simple as it seems once you get into it.

Also, there will have to be a limit on the number of members, otherwise our blogs will be featuring content from other members every day

What follows is an example of how the Photobloggers Society can pull posts from another photoblogger and have them appear in your photoblog. In this case, it is the worst scenario in that Matt Weber’s pictures are huge! But still, nothing that terrible happens. Code can also be supplied so that you just see links and text and the images aren’t there, but that sort of ruins the effect.

For more on the Photobloggers Society read this post: http://www.beckermanphoto.com/blog/apply-for-your-photoblog-day

I could pick other sites to do as well except that the ones I know are doing well (which is how I know them).

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