Photographic resolutions for 2016

Posted on January 3, 2016 by David

Figure 1 – Sunset through the trees Christmas Eve 2015, Heard Farm, Wayland, Massachusetts. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

January 3, 2016 and it’s time to take stock in how I did on my photographic resolutions for 2015 and to make new or continued one’s for 2016.

Beginning with last year’s resolutions, we have:

Focus on seeing. Well, as I said last year: I think that this always must be there. Seeing and visualizing are really what photography is about – seeing the scene and visualizing how it is going to translate to the final picture. This is complicated, in that the visualized image is in your mind, so part of the process is formalizing how you are going to use your technical skills to achieve it – or to learn those skills. I am going to give myself a B+ on this as there is a lot of room for improvement. That after all is the real adventure.
Spend more time taking photographs and have my camera with me more often. Another B+. I have become much better at this, but not perfect. Of course, the IPhone helps a lot.
Slow down, concentrate on composing the image, on setting and checking the light. And yes, learn more about the camera controls, the one’s you don’t use, but should. This remains the key and is a lifelong lesson. Yes, indeed. I have been working a lot on this. I always set my camera for bird photography, so as not to miss anything and when I am confronted with something else, I do think. First is invariably which set of focus points I need – set those. Often, I drop the ISO from my default 1600 bird ISO to achieve a less “grainy” image. What should be given priority exposure time or f-stop? Take the first images. Do I need exposure compensation or greater depth of focus? Do I need to shift viewpoint or from “landscape” to “portrait.” I start to worry about the framing of the image – about lines at the edges, tilted or rotated lines in the image. I review the image, zooming in to check the sharpness. I have started to notice a curious fact. I see something and visualize what I want. I start to take images. But typically this comes to an abrupt stop when I realize that I have gotten exactly what I want. So in a sense the whole image concept builds up. It isn’t a random snap, snap, snap. You could argue that more of the process should be visualizing through the lens and less by taking pictures. But that is the luxury of digital “35 mm” – quotes because it isn’t really that. OK, I’m so proud of myself – how about an A- here?
Continue to learn to photograph trees. They remain the most worthy of subjects – always, always. I thought that I would celebrate them here with a picture that I took on Christmas eve at Heard Farm in Wayland, Massachusetts of the sun beginning to set. Again an A-!
Work more on portraiture. I have tried hard to do this and as my “En Persona Gallery” and “The Swap” project with Donna Griffiths indicate I have had some decent success. I think I need to learn more technically about portraiture and to use more of the tools. So B+.
Learn and utilize strobe-light techniques in portraiture. Those are some of the tools that I am talking about along with umbrellas and the like. Sorry, Wolf – only a C for this and that is probably a gift.
Continue to photograph birds and to develop better technique. I think that I have had some good success with this, and in particular have learned how to use my mid-range zoom to better effect rather than struggling with the big lens. So here I give myself an A.

So now the big question is where to go next ,and I will make the following resolutions, many being continuations of last year.

Focus on seeing.
Spend more time taking photographs and have my camera with me more often.
Slow down, concentrate on composing the image.
Continue to learn to photograph trees.
Work more on portraiture, learn more about the deliberate techniques.
Continue the fun adventure of photographing birds.
Go further with the pictorialism photography project.
Learn more about using layers in imaging crafting Photoshop.

Well, that’s all for now. It is the first weekend of the year, and I had better get out and take some photographs.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 168 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/4000 at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Backing out of the driveway – First snow winter of 2015/6

Posted on January 2, 2016 by David

Firgure 1 – Backing out of the driveway – First snow December 29, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

As many of you know in December this winter the weather has been remarkably warm in Boston. I kept hoping that we could achieve a record breaking December with no snow. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be, and on December 29 we had our first snowfall, which ended up as a slushy mess on the driveway.

I was pondering just how I might depict this less than lovely first coat. My wife had gone out on an errand, and when I saw the tracks of her tires where she had backed out of the driveway, it struck me that I had a novel catch on the theme. I was excited enough by the potential image that I overcame indolence and not only changed to a wide angle zoom, but I also struggled to remove the screen from the window.

I am pretty happy with the end result. It is an abstract, of course, that reminds me of the parallel paths of a conductor’s baton. Then too, for those of us that drive in this mess, it is symbolic of the not so happy relationship between cars and snow.

At a technical level, I was surprised that the image did not, as most snow scenes do, require exposure compensation. In the case of snow this is a step or so over exposure, but not here! The image demanded pure black and white, that is no toning

Canon T2i with EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens at 24 mm IS on, ISO 200 Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/320th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Happy New Year from Hati and Skoll Gallery

Posted on January 1, 2016 by David

Figure 1 – Phto-pictorialism study #2 – The path to the New Year. Assabet River Wildlife Refuge. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Happy New Year to all my friends and readers of Hati and Skoll. Thank you all for your continued support and interest.
Last New Year I spoke about two things: the tabula rasa (the blank slate) and paths.

The tabula rasa is a concept attributed to the political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) – the belief that the mind of a new born is like a blank slate. In reality, I think, that new years are like new minds in that they have both a component of blankness of infinite possibility and a component that is preset by the events of the past. If you focus on political news events, the past year was simply terrible and that excess baggage follows us into 2016. It is not enough to wish it all away; we have to consciously push it away. If instead you focus on scientific, technological, and intellectual accomplishment this past year was a shiner. That dichotomy is what defines our less than perfect race. Of course, the concept that the New Year is a New Beginning is itself artificial.
There is also a curious paradox when you consider the blank slate in photographic terms. Is a white slate from which we subtract or a black slate to which we add? Historiacally in photography you start with whiteness and build up an absorbant layer of silver. But in digital photograph, it goes the other way. There is nothing in the electron wells and light builds these up.

As for paths, the New Year is exciting. We don’t know which path we will take; so we just put a foot forward at a time and trust to the vagaries of serendipity and light. For that reason I have chosen Figure 1 – the second of my phot-pictorialism studies to lead Hati and Skoll isnto the New Year. The path is there beckoning. But the details are not clear yet. There is fog and noise, but we are starting to write on the tabula rasa of 2016. Approach the future with dignity and grace, with confidence and hope. What more can we ask of ourselves?

Nilufer Demir – Aylan’s Story 2015 – Favorite Photographs 2015 #10

Posted on December 31, 2015 by David

We have reached the end of this year’s favorite photographs, and I find myself keep coming back to the image from this past September of a Turkish police officer cradling the body of drowned migrant child Aylan Kurdi near the Turkish resort of Bodrum by Nilufer Demir / DHA / Reuters. Aylan’s family was trying to cross to Greece when their boat capsized and his mother and two of her children — Aylan and Ghalib — perished. The father, Abdullah, survived at least physically. At the time the news media repeatedly announced that this single photograph represented a game changer in the refugee tragedy unfolding in Europe. Needless-to-say the world has moved on in very bad ways. Still I have to believe that this image will be a lasting monument to the personal tragedies of our times. And if nothing else, it is photojournalism at its very best, challenging us to be better than we are. It is a good thought for the New Year.

Ansel Adams – Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, 1944 – Favorite Photographs 2015 #9

Posted on December 30, 2015 by David

I am starting to realize that I love both pictorialist photography and f/64 photography – and that that’s all right. Ultimately, it is about the picture and what the artist is trying to say with the image. One of the great aspects of searching out favorites at the end of each year is that I get to type the name “Ansel Adams” into a GOOGLE Image search and visit old friends. There they are all lined up and tweaking my memory with a dash (dopamine blasts) of fondness.

All that fanfare. I would like to name as Favorite Photograph for 2015 # 9 one of my absolute all time Ansel Adams photographs: Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, 1944. As with all of Adams’ work there are lots of copies on the web and the link that I have given you is from Scripps College. I chose it because it has those absolutely luscious sepia, selenium tones that finalize a great Adams print. The appeal of Winter Sunrise to me is that it represents everything that Ansel Adams stood for. It is crystal sharp and its dynamic range – the zone system personified as if it were a religion. Note the detail in both the blacks and whites, the subtle differences between the clouds and the sky. Then there is the spotlighting of the horse. The horse is, of course, the central figure in the image, but given the grandeur of the mountains it takes a moment or two for you eye to realize that fact. And recognize that the mountains and the horse define the great American West. This was Ansel Adams at the height of his career – as the master of his craft.

Weta Digital – Gollum from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Ring 2001-2003, Favorite Photographs 2015 #8

Posted on December 29, 2015 by David

In the musical “Man of La Mancha” Cervantes entices us with the words: “May I set the stage? I shall impersonate a man.Come, enter into my imagination and see him! His name…” For the great characters of fiction seeing him, seeing him as I do, was the problem because no two people see a character in the same way.

Among the great books of my generation were J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Hobbit” and “The Trilogy of the Ring” and for many years we were told that the reason that none of these books was successfully put on film was because of the fact that everyone had an individual mind image of what the different characters should look like and bringing these characters to film would shatter this image.This is, of course, nonsense. There are great writers and there are equally great photographers and cinematographers.

So I’d like to offer up as Favorite Photograph 2015 #8 Weta Digital – Gollum from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Ring 2001-2003. Whoa you say? Foul, foul, and double foul! This is merely an animated image from a movie.

Merely an animated image from a movie – NOTHING. This image is ground breaking and represents a major turning point in photographic imaging. In 1998 computer graphics researcher Henrik Jensen recognized that human and animal skin is translucent and this affects the way we see it. Taking into account this translucence, what physicists refer to as light diffusion, is a critical component of what makes things appear alive and real. Jensen teamed up with Joe Letteri, of Weta Digital and it was Letteri’s team that created Gollum.

But still, where is the revolution? The animated Gullom and his kin are a part of a major advance in animation, one that hurls us forward towards “the singularity.” It is closely related to the Digital Human League and the University of Southern California’s Creative Technology Laboratory and their freeware Emily2 available through the Wikihuiman Project. The future is truly now.

What we are seeing here is, of course, a form of virtual reality. Over the decades, I have awaited each space probe’s passage past the planets – or in the parlance of this blog the opening of robotic eyes. It has been a breath taking ride and a kind of vindication for the science geek. But it was equally thrilling to watch dinosaurs walk the Earth again and also to hear an ever so real Gollum utter words long burned into my memory and imagination:

“Curse it! curse it! curse it!” Curse the Baggins! It’s gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He’s found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.”

Harry Burton, Howard Carter in King Tutankhamen’s tomb, 1922 – Favorite Photographs 2015 #7

Posted on December 28, 2015 by David

Figure 1 - Harry Burton, Howard Carter examining the sarcophogus of King Tutanhkamun, 1921. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Figure 1 – Harry Burton, Howard Carter examining the sarcophagus of King Tutankhamen, 1922. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.

It is important, I think, to recognize that great photography is everywhere. In the early 1920’s something very important was taking place in Egypt, the world of the ancient Egyptians was being revealed to us due particularly to excavations in the Valley of the Kings. In 1922 Howard Carter and George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon discovered the nearly intact tomb of King Tutankhamun. This sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt.

It seems significant that Tutankhamen literally means “The living image of god.” Harry Burton (1879 – 1940) was the Photographer of the Pharoahs. From 1914 Burton worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s (New York City) Egyptian Expedition. However, Howard Carter specifically requested that Burton be “loaned” to the Tutankhamen Expedition to photograph the event. He spent eight years documenting the work and this opus consists of about 1400 glass plate negatives. Much of this work is currently housed at the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford.

Harry Burton was both a scientist and an artist. As a result it is difficult to choose a “best” image. But I believe that the photograph of Figure 1 truly captures the moment and nature of archaeological discovery. The fact that Carter wears only a tee shirt speaks to the oppressive conditions within the tomb, and yet Burton manages to create a beautifully and dramatically illuminated image with stunning dynamic range and excellent composition.

Beth Moon – Fornax from the Diamond Nights Series – Favorite Photographs 2015 #6

Posted on December 27, 2015 by David

I have spoken several times in the past about contemporary California photographer Beth Moon. Recently she has departed from her traditional platinum palladium medium, but not from her compelling tree images nor from a compelling dose of magical mysticism, into gloriously illuminated and colorful night skies.The result is her “Diamond Night Series.” The image that I have chosen for Favorite Photographs of 2015 #6 is her “Fornax.” Astronomy buffs will recognize that Fornax is a constellation in the Southern Sky named for a furnace. This is the word furnace used in its alchemy context, a vessel for the creation of new substances and new worlds.

These images were taken of great baobab trees at wild, remote locations that are far from human civilization with its light pollution. They are meant to indicate the interaction between living things and the celestial forces of the universe. My motivation of choosing “Fornax” is that it indicates a creative force that causes the trees to appear to dance and be repelled from one another but at the same attracted and drawn to the Milky Way. I think that these images also suggest that our light pollution has taken away and blinded us from an essential element of magic in our world. It has locked our sights in the direction of rationalism.

On her website Ms. Moon adds a technical note that explains how the images were taken on moonless nights with a wide angle lens at an ISO of 3200 – 6400. In some cases she used a flash light to introduce a soft and natural glow. That flashlight is, of course, the artist’s paintbrush.The comment about the wide angle lens reflects what is referred to as the rule of 500. Divide the number 500 by the lens’ focal length (This is the true focal length; so if you are not using a full-frame camera you’ve got to also divide by the length of the sensor in divided into 35 mm.) and that is the longest exposure that you can use without getting star trails in your image.

But the bottom line is that once again Beth Moon has heighten our awareness of the pure magical world that photography reveals and she has once again dazzled us.

Margaret Bourke White – Kentucky Flood, 1937 – Favorite Photographs 2015 # 5

Posted on December 26, 2015 by David

Among the giants of photojournalist in the mid-twentieth century was Margaret Bourke-White (1904 – 1971). She was the first foreigner permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the first American female war photojournalist, and the first female photographer for Henry Luce’s Life magazine. Much of this photography focused on poverty during the Great Depression, particularly in the American South.

Arguably no photograph exemplifies this genre better than Margaret Bourke White’s image “Kentucky Flood, 1937.” This is the fifth “Favorite Photograph for 2015. In January and February of 1937 the Ohio River flooded. It is estimated that one million people were left homeless, that 385 were killed, and property losses reached $500 million ($8 billion in today’s dollars). The photograph brilliantly shows desperate African Americans in a bread line standing in front of a billboard that pictures the “typical white American family” and proclaims “World’s Highest Standard of Living; there is no way like the American way.”

What is most remarkable about this photograph is its timelessness. It speaks of historical events and the fundamental dignity of humans facing extreme adversity. At the same time it might as well be a poster today for “Black Lives Matter.” The true paradox of the image is that “the real American Dream” is not in the white faces of the family in the car but in the “black faces on the line.” In the words of Edward Kennedy 1980.”

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”