Black and White Photography Blog

This site is a spinoff from my print store (which has been on the web since 1999).

What Can Be Taught?

The easiest thing to accomplish in two hours is to help you with the basics. You have a new digital camera and need help figuring out how to use it. When should you use flash? How does the meter work? What mode should you use for what type of shooting. What exactly is that histogram on the back trying to tell me? What is a proper exposure? There are so many ways to focus the camera, which way is best in which situation?

The next step up from that is the actual use of the camera. You would like to take certain types of pictures, and you just aren’t sure how to go about it.

Next up the ladder of difficulty, how to photograph people on the street.

I can also do overviews of how I use Lightroom, or Photoshop to work with digital images. And of course there is always printing, which is a lesson in itself.

And the most difficult of all: how to find your own voice; your own style. Are there exercises that can help you discover yourself so that you are doing more than just taking vacation snaps; or pictures of your pet dog? The answer is yes, but every student I’ve met so far has had different needs in these areas, so usually the lesson begins in my apartment with a chat so that I can get to know you and figure out your skill level and what you want to get out of the lesson. This is why I do individual workshops rather than leading groups of 8 or 10 photographers around. The group workshop is a more lucrative; but I’m more comfortable working one-on-one with each student since I believe each person arrives at the lesson with different weaknesses, strengths and goals.

This process of trying to help the person who has the technical part covered, but is trying to figure out where to go next – these are the really challenging lessons, and I believe that I’ve been able to help some students in this area. Though not all.

MY BACKGROUND AND EXPERTISE

I shot with black and white film and did my work in the traditional darkroom for many years. I began to experiment with digital photography and inkjet printers a long time ago, but I didn’t begin to offer digital prints until I was convinced they were the equal of my darkroom work. My current digital workflow incorporates Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop (less and less), two Epson Printers (4800 and 7800) and two digital cameras: Canon 40D and a Canon 450D which has been modified for infrared work. A lot of the photography on the site was done with this infrared camera. I live and work in a small studio apartment on the upper east side, which is fine for individual lessons.

YOUR BACKGROUND

Your background, experience and interests guide the lesson. So I can’t say there is such a thing as a typical lesson. Generally though they begin in my apartment with that chat I mentioned where we can come to some agreement about what is needed. After that, we may end up in Central Park – just shooting and then back to my apartment to review your work. Or we may spend the entire time in front of the computer.

AFTER THE LESSON

I will try to leave you with exercises that you can use once you’re on your own. If you are an advanced photographer, you should walk away with some new ideas about what is involved in making an expressive photograph. If you are a beginner, you will walk away with exercises and a better understanding of basic principles of photography, or maybe just what all the buttons on your camera do. Maybe you walk away with a better understanding of what RAW mode is and why it’s important.

HOW TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT

In your introductory e-mail (if we are going to meet for the first time) it would be useful for you to tell me something about what you hope to get out of the lesson. At the very least, you should tell me what camera you are going to bring to the lesson. At the most, you can try and explain why you feel frustrated with your images.

E-mail me at davebeckerman@gmail.com

Depending on your requirements, your lesson could begin at my home or at an agreed on spot that would make for better shooting.

Dave Beckerman Photography

243 East 83^rd Street, 3B

New York, NY 10028

FAQ

What if I Prepay and Can’t Make It?

If you want, we can always reschedule. If you have decided that for whatever reason you no longer want to take the lesson than I will return your payment.

What If It Rains or Snows?

Up to you. I’ve done my best shooting in the rain and snow. If you’d rather reschedule for a sunny day – that’s fine.

What Camera Should I Bring?

This might be the most important decision you have to make. I would prefer that you bring the camera that you usually use. But hopefully one that has manual mode if you are beginner.

If you are interested in learning more about my own shooting, please note that I rarely use a zoom lens, and that I prefer fast prime lenses. I have mentioned the cameras I shoot with, but here are the lenses I use. My normal lens is the Sigma 30mm f1.4. This is very versatile and I would guess that 75% of my digital images were shot with that lens. I also have a Canon 50mm f1.4. This is a bit long for street shooting, but when I want a change, I’ll use it. Canon 20mm f2.8 lens. Rarely used, but sometimes I like it for landscapes. And the only zoom lens I have: the Canon 70-300mm with IS. I consider myself a generalist in terms of shooting style, and there are times when I want to compress a landscape, or actually need to a long lens because I can’t get close enough to the subject – but I never use it for street photography. I have a number of rules about street shooting, and using a zoom is for me a no-no.

Can You Actually Teach How to Make Better Pictures?

That depends. If you are just learning the basics, then of course I can help you. If you have been shooting for 30 years and still haven’t been able to figure out how to improve your images – then I’m not sure how much help I can be. But you never know. Everyone is different.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dave

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.

Introduction

If you are a street photographer, you’ll find things to disagree with in this article. I often disagree with my own conclusions. I do concentrate on the current DSLR camera and skip over the Leica M since I figure if you’re a street photographer using the M camera you already have your own techniques down. But if street photography is new for you, and you are wondering about what sort of digital camera has the most useful features, and how to get over your initial fear of taking pictures of strangers in a strange land – then you may find useful techniques, both psychological and technical in this post. But fair warning – a seasoned street photographer will be likely to fall asleep while perusing this post. Someone who is just starting to do street photography may be overwhelmed by the amount information.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

In this post I try to summarize the tips about street photography in one place.

When you’re getting started the challenge is overcoming the fear of taking pictures of strangers. Since telephoto lenses aren’t normally used in street photography, how can you stand a few feet from your subject, put the camera to your eye, focus, and click the shutter without getting nervous? A good street photographer is not only fearful in the beginning (this is a good sign of being sensitive) but they also don’t want to do anything which will change the how the subject is behaving.

With practice, you can overcome your reluctance to photograph strangers as well as learn techniques which will help you get better candid shots. One word of caution – it can be addictive. If you’ve been doing street photography for a while, it may effect which seat you choose in a restaurant, or which side of the street you decide to walk on. When you walk out of your house, you may notice that one side of the street is in shade, the other side is sunny. Which side of the street you choose to walk on may be influenced by years of street shooting.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND MORAL ISSUES

Let’s get some basic concepts out of the way. The first thing to accept is that you are invading the privacy of your intended subject. You may have the best intentions in the world, but once you decide to point your camera at someone without their permission, you will be invading their personal space. This is what it means to take a candid street shot. Continue reading ‘Street Photography Techniques (Summary)’ »

That is the question.

Part I

Washington, DC, Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007.

The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…. How many other things are we missing?

Part II

From The Autobiography of Ansel Adams (paperback edition) page 240

In 1942 Edward [Weston] had an exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He could not drive a car, so Virginia and I went to Carmel and drove him to Santa Barbara for the opening. [...] On the drive home, we passed a large field, on whose distant edge was an interesting assemblage of weather-beaten planks and posts. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and continued driving. In a few minutes an image of what I had seen disturbed me; I had a growing sense of the importance of a potential photograph.

I said to Edward, “I saw something back there that bugs me. Do you mind if I turn back?”

“Not at all,” he replied, “I think I saw the same thing.”

We retraced more than a mile, parked the car, and carried our cameras across the wide field. The object turned out to be a pigsty with one embarrassed pig. We both made pictures; mine, Boards, Farm near Santa Barbara, is shown here for the first time. I never saw Edward’s results.

This was one of the not too frequent occasions where a transient image makes an impresson on the mind, though the photographer is not aware of it at the time. It seems to digest; the subconscious mind develops the impression into a quasi-visualization, then the conscience moves in and, with insistent pressure, makes the photographer feel quite troubled unless he returns to the source. On every occasion that this has happened to me, the subject was worthy of renewed attention. When I have not returned I am gently haunted with a sense of loss.

Part III

Shooting in the street, this feeling of loss is even more common. But it’s up to the photographer to obey the whispers of his mind. How many times I had passed this dog in the window, thinking that there was a photograph there, but not stopping, until one day the dog put his head through the blinds. Even at that point I continued on my way for a few steps because I was late to meet a friend. But the shot called me back. I walked back a half block angry at myself for missing this amusing scene happy to find that the dog was still in the same position. Click. Closer. Click. Dog begins barking and I continue on my way.

During most of my sessions with beginning students, the most common issue (that I picked up on) is that the students are simply not noticing the potential images that are all around them. Many times I have stopped to take a picture of something, a reflection in puddle, the way leaves have collected on a sewer grating. And just as often passersby stop and watch me, wondering why in the world I would be be bent down in the rain to photograph a puddle.

These same passersby, when I do stop to chat with them about what I’m doing, and show them the image on the back of the camera, immediately get it. It’s one of the things that I try very hard to form into an exercise with students to force them to see what’s around and not to just walk by. How many times have we been walking, talking about some technical camera issue, when I stop to take a picture and then continue on. Again, the beginning student is puzzled. The seasoned photographer just tries to stay out of my way, wait for the moment to pass, and then the conversation continues. It is the single most important skill, this sense of being aware of your relationship to the environment.

Related to this is the idea of watching a scene and imagining what could happen. This is really another step up from simply seeing. Here you are seeing what might be there and that is even more difficult to practice. I can only say that if you are doing something that looks somewhat strange to passersby, you may be on to something; don’t be afraid to look silly.

If you are publishing pictures to Flickr and also a Lightroom user, than I have to say this is a great treat. I never used Flickr much because it was always an extra step to upload, to write the title and the caption etc. when I was already doing this for my blog and my photo store. But Lightroom 3 has a very neat way to publish stuff to Flickr without a lot of extra work. It pulls the title from the title field, and the caption from the caption field and can create sets on Flickr to correspond to your sets in Lightroom. And — if you have a Pro-Account with Flickr, it will let you make modifications in Lightroom and republish just the images that have changed.

If you don’t have a Pro Flickr account then you’d have to delete the images from Flickr and publish them when you make changes. But anyone who’s making a career of this and sees Flickr as another place for exposure isn’t going to balk at the $25 a year fee for the Pro Account.

I still haven’t fully explored this, but I uploaded 28 images, some with titles some without just to see how it works.

And if you don’t feel like adding them to a set, you can just drop them into the Photostream. You also have all the same controls that you’d have for any export in terms of:

Watermarking, size, sharpening etc. Like I say – pretty neat. Oh – and Lightroom keywords that you assign to the image will show up as TAGS when published to Flickr.

You are almost invisible.  You are wearing your best tourist clothes.  Your camera is in your hand or around your neck.  You have spotted a subject standing in a doorway a half-block away.  You imagine how far from the subject you’ll be when you take the shot; if you take the shot.  You pre-focus, either by aiming the camera at a similar distance, or with hyperfocal distance, or whatever method you want for the situation.

There are people walking behind you and people walking towards you.  As you approach your subject you evaluate whether you can quickly snap this shot or not.  Your shutter speed is set to 1/150th of a second (which is the best you can manage in this light) or 1/1000th if you are lucky.  And just as you hit your mark the camera goes to your eye and you stop, in mid-step and snap the image and without removing the camera from your eye, continue with your walking.

You have got your shot, and you were stock still when you took it.  Only problem, as you stopped momentarily for no reason that was apparent to the guy behind you, he bumps into you – not expecting you to stop.  This is the stutter-step.  All street photographers use it; and having someone bump into them from behind is common.  You mumble, sorry, and continue on your way.

Again, the idea is that you want to pause for just that brief moment while you squeeze the shutter and continue on as if nothing happened.

In today’s atmosphere where every photographer is a suspicious character, especially if they want to photograph children – the easiest way to get yourself into trouble is photographing kids in a park playing.  Your motives maybe pure, but parks have signs posted about no adults allowed unless they are guardians or related to a kid; and so even though you are following in a street photography tradition that goes back to Helen Levitt and other famous photographers who did street candids of children playing, you are likely to be misunderstood.

So a collorary of the tip: Bring a Friend Along, is bring a kid along.  In this case, I would often visit a nearby park with my eight year old niece and have her stand in front of the scene I wished to photograph.  If you are a woman photographer – this is even easier since you are less likely to be regarded with suspicion.  My niece had a short attention span, normal in a kid, and I could get her to pose or pretend to pose for me only once or twice before it was time to push her on the swings.  But that was how this shot was taken.  The park was filled with mothers and upper-east side guardians, and even with my pretense of photographing my niece, they all had an eye on me so I had to work fast.  I wouldn’t waste my opportunity and had shots pre-designed before moving my niece into the path and taking my shots.  Here are a few from these outings.

In 1993 (give or take a few years) I was walking through Central Park when I first saw Poet’s Walk (above).  I was brought up in the Bronx, and although I had lived in Manhattan for a decade, I had never seen this part of the park.  I didn’t know what it was called, so I called it Promenade and for years that was the name of the print.

At any rate, it was early winter.  At that time, Poet’s Walk (sometimes called Literary Walk) was paved.  On the day I first saw it I simply told myself that I would need to come back and photograph it when the weather was better.  I rarely photograph in harsh sunlight, at least for scenics, if I can help it.  It was just a place that I filed away as worth revisiting.

At that time I was younger and stronger and was shooting with a large metal 4 x 5 view camera.  It was a big deal to get out into the field with this thing.  You’d need to carry a bunch of film loaders (that you’d pre-load) and a changing bag, and a heavy-duty tripod, and I was using a spot light meter and three lenses.  This was a smaller version of the type of rig that Ansel Adams used in his prime until he moved to medium format.  He was asked what camera he was using and would say, the heaviest he could carry.

So one day, I look out the window of my apartment on East 83rd street – early in the morning – and there’s that feeling of gloom and the approach of a snow storm.  This is the type of weather I like to shoot in.  Someday people may go through my photographs and discover that most of them were shot either at night or during storms.  Maybe it was because I was born during the winter.  I don’t know, but during the summer I slow down and as my other photographer friends know, rarely feel like shooting.  But this was brisk and cold and I had my backpack filled with holders and the camera and I was out to the park as the sun was coming up.

That’s another factor.  I’m a morning person.  If I am on a night-shooting kick, then I’ll sleep during the day so I have the energy to shoot at night.

And I get out to Poet’s Walk, and walk around a bit looking for the best view, the best trees.  I’m the only one there.  Light hail is falling and bouncing on the pavement.  And as I setup I realize that the holders which contain the film are getting wet.  I’m not sure if it’s just the outside of the holders or if it’s getting through to the film.

I work quickly.  The good thing about using a view camera is that you carry a black cloth around with you that you put over your head so that you can see the ground glass on the back of the camera.  The view camera also has something called tilts and swings which allow you to get what I’d call a “looming” effect with objects in the foreground.  In this case the nearby bare trees.

I don’t like to go out of my way to force a composition to be quirky.  I see this as a traditional picture – bottom third is going to be the walkway, top two thirds the trees and sky.  The image is going to be centered.  This is usually considered boring and not dynamic – but so be it.  I don’t see any other way to shoot it.

The hail is bouncing off the black cloth on my head.  I have thin gloves on, but my hands still seem to be sticking to the tripod.  I didn’t think it would be as cold as it was and I’m underdressed.  I want to go home.

As I say – the walk is empty.  I don’t like to waste shots with the view camera.  You have to develop each negative sheet separately and it’s a pain.  The shot is missing something, but I don’t know what.  So I stand there waiting and shivering.  After about five minutes, a couple with umbrellas walk towards from behind and cross into the scene.  I watch them walking towards the horizon and realize that if I let them go far enough away, they’ll be perfect to give stature to the trees.  In other words, without these small figures in the shot, you don’t have a sense of the looming mighty trees.  And so I don’t have much time because they hit the spot, I take one shot.  Pull the holder out and turn it around for one more shot, and that’s it.

I pack up everything and head home.

When I get home I go into my bathroom darkroom and remove the two sheets of exposed film.  One of them has gotten wet and is sticking a bit to the holder.  I develop them that day, one at a time.  The beauty of this is that I can hold up the first negative to the light and determine whether it’s exposed properly.  It’s a bit flat.  Not very contrasty.  So I develop the second sheet and give it more time in the developer.  When it’s been fixed I hold it to the light and it looks just right.

By the afternoon I’ve made a 16 x 20 inch print.  Let it dry.  Flatten it.  And look at it.  Well, I like it, but it also has that “postcard” look.  That’s something that was in my head at the time.  I didn’t want to make simply beautiful prints – I wanted to be more than that.  So I put the negative and the print away.

About a month later, a photographer friend stopped by, and I was showing him some of my recent shots – and he wasn’t much impressed by anything until I pulled out the Promenade print.  “Ah,” he said.  “That is fantastic.”

We argued about it a while, with me still insisting that it was too postcardy.  But he won out and I began to show it to other friends and photographers I knew who all thought it was a good print of a well-known area of the park.  As I say – I didn’t really know that this was the most photographed spot in the park or I might not have even bothered with it.

Long story short – when I did go into the business of selling photographs – this one shot has outsold every other shot I’ve done since (as I write this it’s almost 20 years later).  So it shows what I know about my own work.

Here’s a similar exercise.  For the last image, I began with the shot that was two stops under and made corrections in Lightroom through the curve.  Now this idea of correction is tricky as there is really no “correct” way to alter a photo.  There may be times when you want black to show up as gray, or snow to be gray.  The point is simply to be able to have the data you need to make these artistic corrections.

Here, in the last image I decided to leave just a touch of glow of the hinge and the edge of the box.  I could easily have made the box pure black with no detail, or brought up parts of the box to show a touch of the boxes grain, though some of that would depend on the lighting.  In this case the light is just a bulb off to the side and up which is going to produce a flat image without much detail in the box.

If you need to, you can review this post about reading histograms.

I think I went through the idea of how the camera’s light meter see’s everything as 18% gray and unless corrected will render white or black scenes as a middle gray.  Here’s an easy way to test what I’ve said and to learn how to make necessary corrections.

The 40D which I’m currently using has three metering patters: spot, center-weighted, and the entire frame.  For this exercise I set the metering pattern to center-weighted, pointed a bulb at a large very white box of printing paper, put a hinge in the center to focus on and then shot it in the following order:

1) No corrections.  The camera does it’s best to make the white box gray.

2) Over-exposed by one-stop.  Better, but not quite white.

3) Over-exposed by two stops.  That’s white.  There is fall-off in the upper right corner but that’s from how the scene is lit (badly).

and 4) I make corrections in Lightroom, including brightening the upper right corner with the gradient tool.

Next up, I’ll do the same thing with a black portfolio case… stay tuned.

Another way to get a good white or black tone is to take a reading from an 18% gray card under the same lighting conditions as you’ll be shooting and just leave the exposure settings there.  And yes – they still make gray cards for this purpose.

Simple exercise.  Ask a friend to drop things (in this case a leaf) and practice trying to catch it.  You’ll want to use a high shutter speed, at least 1/1000th of a second, and to make the game harder, a narrow depth of field, maybe even wide open (f1.4).  You’ll have to pre-focus and lock focus on the spot that where you expect the object to be (use your friends hand) and then have them count 1-2-3 drop and click when ready.

Once you’ve mastered this, think about the angle you’re shooting at and play with that a bit.

And then try and do the exercise without your friend giving the 1-2-3 warning.  The exercise gets you into the practice of pre-focusing, as well as being quick on the trigger.  It isn’t very different from the wild west trick you see in the movies where a coin a thrown up and the gunfighter shoots a hole through it.  In fact, if you have something larger than a coin that can be tossed, you can practice the wild west trick as well though you are going to have to focus on the object while it falls.