One Final Rope - 19 July 2009 [ prev | next ]
The last in the Rope series. I need to work on the processing of these, to get them a bit "brighter" and more uniform between images. I don't think that they would work as very large images, but as a set, perhaps in a single frame, or perhaps two frames of three, they could be interesting. I have to think of how to use them the best.
I am seeing some frustrating artifacts in the shadow areas of these images. Even turning the JPG quality to 98% I still see them, yet I don't see them in Lightroom, where I manage the converted TIFF files. I have to figure out where they come from. If Lightroom is at fault, I might have to resize the images in Photoshop CS4, which would be really annoying.
Next in the series.
. . .tie a boat. This series is one which I would not post individually. I find the colours interesting and the shapes made between pier, boat and rope, but each shot doesn't hold enough interest on its own. As a set, I am not sure. I like them, but they may be a tad too esoteric for general consumption.
This is the photo which made me realize that my cheap Chinese Hasselblad-Contax adapter could not reach infinity. The shot is in focus until just in front of the stones, and then soft, which is very frustrating, since I wanted the stones to be sharp. I eventually bought a Novoflex adapter, which is much better.
The sky dominates in this image, but it isn't the subject, as is obvious. Unfortunately, I managed to get this photo slightly blurry, probably by not having a tripod and by sitting in an awkward position. It works well small, but I wouldn't be able to print a good A2.
New, short, series. This lighthouse is right at the tip of the seawall surrounding the harbour.
I wonder what this arrangement of pipes does. I like this shot best of this series.
More moorings.
Another messy harbour photo. The moorings catch my eye, and I have another, more minimalist, series of shots of different boat moorings.
I love the details in traditional work places, like the net in this harbour. The messiness is unavoidable, because this is not for tourists, nor for aesthetes, but for workers.
I am in catch-up mode again, having just returned from vacation in Denmark, and sent my father, who was visiting us, home.
The next 5 photos, this one included, are probably not photos I would put in one of my galleries, since they are not as minimalist as I normally like. On the other hand, they show some of the messiness of an active harbour, aesthetics be damned, and as a set, I find that they work well.
would still be photographed. To me this is not a terribly special photo, but the Sinar back has given it something that I would not have gotten with my other cameras, I think. The Leica M8 also has great colour, and some of the films I use in the Leica M6 and Contax 645 AF also might have given nice results, but there is something I cannot put my finger on going on here.
I struggled with the decision of whether or not to put this photo up, since I have much better photos, but in the end my galleries (work in progress) are for the best photos, but the blog is for photos I want to show, whether or not they belong to my best. This one shows something that the medium format digital back has given me.
A followup to yesterday, and another scene which it is hard to appreciate properly in small. One day the web will be composed of more than text, thumbnails and tiny movies.
There isn't much to say about photos like this; it is all in the atmosphere they project. It is hard to make these small versions convey the same feeling as large prints though.
I made many interesting images in the same forest where the previous photo was made. The forest is on Rügen, on the Ostsee in Germany, near Sassnitz, and is clearly very old. The average tree was much larger than even some of the largest of trees in some of the young forests in Berlin, and the floor of the forest had many interesting corners and twists.
This tree was right next to the path, even leaning over it, and with its strange growth, commanded immediate attention. As I was pondering my shot, my girlfriend saw the tree and turned around, asking if I wasn't going to photograph it. It was hard to get a good angle, given the bright sky and the high location of the tree, but playing a bit with the vignetting tools fixed it a bit.
I was almost running to catch up with my speeding girlfriend, who was rushing through the forest to beat our daughter's built-in bad mood/hunger/tired countdown timer, but on the way, I saw this: in the middle of darkness was light. I had little time to figure out the best vantage point, and simply walked right and left a little until it looked right, metered and shot.
I love the feeling of light in darkness in this shot. Lucidity in obscurity.
Not every tree in this forest was large. This one was probably too ambitious in approaching the edge, and so was trimmed by the management. The foliage in this area almost completely covered the sky, so it was difficult to set the white balance, but if you examine the brown bits closely, this is actually fairly accurate.
When thinking about forests, trees come to mind, but trees en masse, not trees as individuals. This particular tree is definitely an individual, lurking ominously beside the path, ready to drag off any unaware travellers. One of my first serious shots with the Sinar eMotion 54 LV, the extra care necessary to get the shot properly done is also visible in the final image. The colours are great, the sharpness great, and the tonal gradation has a medium format feel that I cannot easily match with my smaller cameras. I am able to move the exposure around without affecting the image quality visibly in ways that I could never do with my (ex-)Canon 5D, and not even with the Leica M8.
I am not sure what it is about medium format which makes it so special, but people comment on the images in ways that they don't about my other photography. The colours and sharpness of the Leica M8 images are also widely admired, but the medium format achieves a 3-dimensionality and a presence, which smaller formats does not.
