tumbleweed, tumbling
Originally uploaded by JKönig

Ok so it’s been almost two months since my last post! The irony is that because I have been very busy I have a lot to write about, but because I’ve been really busy I have not hand any time to sit down a create a post.

However, I do think this blog is important, as important as any other part of the job I do as a photographer. With that in mind I’m going to be trying to hit two posts a week. And posting more pictures, after all this is a photography blog (I’m not going to repeat the cliché concerning a specific volume of text).

In the meantime here’s a list of cool stuff I’ve seen on the internet:

• 78 Photography Rules for Complete Idiots A long and in places pretty tenuous (”It’s better to photograph clouds, when there are clouds”) list of the pretty blindingly obvious, worth a read though to see how many ‘rules’ you have have broken and actually produced great photos (I make it 24)
• Evolution of Photoshop: 1988 – 2009 A trip down memory lane, if you’re anything like me!
• Let your darkside outGood marketing, even better T-shirt!
• Manhattanhenge History repeats itself. Some very interesting images.

MG

Images (c) Dilip Krishnan & Rob Fergus

I was reading through the proceedings of this year’s SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) conference - as I’m sure we have all done at some point in our lives - when I came across a very interesting paper.

The conference generally concerns computer graphics and image analysis however the following title has a very practical application in photography: Dark Flash Photography. No we’re not talking about Joey Lawrence’s promotional images for the film Twilight, but instead a way to take flash photographs without people objecting, or even noticing!

The gist is that you can ‘hide’ the pulse of light outside the visible spectrum thus making it appear as much as 200 times dimmer than a regular flash. This requires an IR enabled camera and suitably modified flashgun. The use of flash for photography can range from an mild annoyance to a dangerous distraction in certain circumstances, which leads to the use of shutter speeds far slower than would be ideal. The dark flash solves this problem but creates a new one.

left to right, IR image, natural light image, combined image, long exposure natural light (for reference)

Capturing light in the IR part of the spectrum doesn’t allow natural looking colours to be recorded. Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus solved this problem by taking two exposures, one with the dark flash and one high ISO natural light photo immediately after it. The clever part is that the dark flash image can be used to guide to de-noise the high ISO image far more effectively that any other noise reduction technique. Simply put if you see an edge or spike in the natural light image and there isn’t a corresponding edge in the IR image then the point is probably the result of noise. The actual process is a little more involved, I’d recommend anyone technically minded to have a look at the original paper.

The result is a clean image with natural looking colours. The post processing required is complex, and there times when the approach wont work well if the subject moves between the two exposures (shooting fast paced sports for example). However if you have an IR enabled camera and like black and white images I can see this being a very valuable technique when in many circumstances, and indeed the only real solution to the problem of dazzling people with flash.

MG

I am now on twitter so go and add me if you want to know more about what I am up to. I promise I will only post about photography projects, updates and interesting things I come across, not about what I’m eating for breakfast!

Anyone who’s seen my flickr stream and/or blog post knows I’m a big fan of the Orbis ring flash adaptor. They recently held a competition and although I didn’t win I was pleased be in the top 10 - considering the high standard of photos selected! My image (which accompanies this post) along with the other finalists & winner have been added to the Orbis samples gallery here.

MG

I came across “Dave Cross’ Fix it challenge” via Scott Kelby’s blog. Basically each week Dave posts an image in need of some serious retouching, participants fire up photoshop and do their worst, posting the resulting images in the pool from which winner is chosen. I had been on the look out for something to practice my photoshop skills on, and being a highly competitive person I couldn’t resist having a go.

This week’s image is a period photograph of a woman standing in front of a painted background. My immediate thoughts were, on top of fixing the obvious damage, I would attempt to restore the colour that would have been present - had colour film been invented at the time! This is something I’ve not attempted before on a photograph so it’s an ideal learning opportunity. In the end it turned out to be somewhat more challenging than I had expected! What follows is a step by step breakdown of what I did and why I did it…

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short gap filler
Originally uploaded by smussyolay

Posts have been a little scarce recently as I have been very busy. This does mean however that I have a lot to talk about, so stay tuned! In the meantime here are a few interesting things I’ve come across recently.

♦ Firstly, one of the reasons I love the internet: honest product reviews by people with no mandate to keep manufacturers or editors happy, such as Scott Kelby’s review of the Jobo photoGPS, a piece you’d be unlikely to find in a photography magazine! (ps if you haven’t read it already check out The Online Photographer’s review of the Nikon 24-120mm ƒ/3.5–5.6G, which is in a similar vein)

♦ Canon have announced the latest in the line of affordable DSLRs, a market segment it created back in 2003 with the release of the Digital Rebel. Check out a hands on preview of the new 500D here. The one good thing about this announcement for amateur photographers (who want to shoot pictures, not video) is that it will likely push down the cost of the 450D.

What’s wrong with the new 500D? Well they’ve equipped it with a 15 megapixel sensor, when there are widespread concerns that 15mp was too much for the 50D. To put this in perspective, 8mp is still fine for the professional sports shooters using the 1DmkII. The 35mm film that was used by some of the worlds top photographers for over half a century barely equates to 8mp. According to the stats of people visiting this site in the past year, the vast majority of users screen resolutions only correspond to a 1mp image (and that’s if it fills the entire screen). Don’t get me wrong, high resolution is not in and of itself bad, but I really can’t see including a 15mp sensor in an entry level camera as anything other than a marketing gimmick.

♦ At some point I’ll write an essay on film vs. digital, and my whole take on the debate. But to summarise, my position has always been that no matter how sophisticated the technology becomes it will always be the artistic vision and skill behind the equipment that dictates the ultimate result (until such time when computers become truly intelligent, at which point us photographers will be totally out of a job).

The sentiment was echoed by Michael Johnston in a recent post on The Online Photographer, but this time accompanied by a video which demonstrates the point far better than I could hope to do.

Disclaimer yes it’s a viral ad for Samsung and as a result you have to take what you see with a pinch of salt. But the point is it doesn’t matter if the entire thing isn’t 100% real, having seen “One Man and His Dog”, I know it could be done!

I had to post this as soon as I saw it - vandals/subversives/pop-culture philosophers/bored design students have pasted photoshop toolbars and menus over heavily airbrushed advertisements displayed in the city’s subways, in a bold and candid statement about the spurious nature of the images beneath.

Or so it seems. The cynic in me at leasts entertains the idea that this was in fact carried out by the Ad agencies themselves as part of some guerrilla marketing campaign. Weclome to the age where nothing is real and even some of the hoaxes are a hoax.

It’s fairly clever either way, I’m sure it brightened the odd commuter’s day! And before anyone accuses me of referring to a cream cake in my headline, take a look at this.

MG

Originally uploaded by
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I have just received notification of the following response to an e-petition filed last year by Adam Jones, which stated “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places”:

Thank you for your e-petition asking for clarification of the law on photography in public places.

There are no legal restrictions on photography in public places. However, the law applies to photographers as it does to anybody else in a public place. So there may be situations in which the taking of photographs may cause or lead to public order situations, inflame an already tense situation, or raise security considerations. Additionally, the police may require a person to move on in order to prevent a breach of the peace, to avoid a public order situation, or for the person’s own safety or welfare, or for the safety and welfare of others.

Each situation will be different and it would be an operational matter for the police officer concerned as to what action if any should be taken in respect of those taking photographs. Anybody with a concern about a specific incident should raise the matter with the Chief Constable of the relevant force.

This simply reiterates what photographers already know; that what we have been doing for over one hundred years is not against the law. Clearly causing an obstruction constitutes a legitimate offence, however if we try and be too discrete then we face being arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act, as happened recently. And this is not an isolated case, see here, here, here, here, here.

Whilst it’s good to see that the petition actually solicited a response, in this case it pretty amounts to a denial that a problem exists, despite the fact that Austin Mitchell MP tabled an early day motion on the subject in March of last year.

A petition was never going to really solve anything. If you want to make a difference, the website theyworkforyou.com allows you to find out who your MP is so you can write them directly about the issue. If they were one of the 245 MPs to sign Mitchell’s EDM they might just listen. In the meantime we must still fear unwarranted searches when engaging in a perfectly legal activity.

MG