My wife's making some good photographs - and we have proof

In the past, my wife has:

a. listened to me as I banged on about the technology and aesthetics of photography; and

b. taken the line that she just took snaps - leaving the photography to me.

However, in the past few months, she's started using a Fuji X10, and is getting some very good results. She's applying what she knows started to pay attention to her own photography and apply what she knows. She's .

F'rinstance, she got this shot at Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire - which I conspicuously failed to capture:

Birds and the moon over Whitby Abbey.

And I like this one (of me) from our recent trip to Britain.

Shane at Hampton Court

Nice shots, huh?

Not just snaps, but well-composed photographs!

But it's not just my opinion. A few days back, she experienced that comment that each of us who make photographs, rather than take snaps eventually receive. A colleague commenting on her photography said

 ... you must have a really good camera!

Yep!  Linda's a photographer now!

Season's greetings, everyone.

Shane

Rubbish on my drive

I think I started digging around in my Lightroom catalogue because I'd decided to make myself a "best of" photo book. (I did, by the way - and I thoroughly recommend it to any keen photographer. It was such a buzz to see the book.)

Anyway ... I started with star ratings, and then rediscovered that I'd never had a really consistent way of rating my work. In fact, most of my images have no rating whatsoever, meaning I would be thrown back on that least reliable device in my arsenal: my memory.

Argh!

So started trawling through my images - and found in incredible amount of rubbish. Three, four or more copies of the same image in various formats and sizes; most of which is the legacy of my pre-Lightroom days

BLR (before Lightroom), I'd load my raw file onto my computer and open it in Photoshop. Then I'd tweak it a bit and because I wanted my "negative" file for the future, I'd save it as a TIF. TIFs have the advantage that they aren't lossey - but they're big.

I did an experiment, to demonstrate file sizes - based on a file from my 16.3 Meg Fuji X100s:

A 34 Meg raw file becomes a 64 Meg TIF to protect the data after processing - or I could have saved it as a .PSD file to allow for more processing, which would be the same size. Alternately, I can save space with a JPEG or one quality or another - but only by throwing away much of my data. Oddly enough, the smallest non-lossy format was Adobe's DNG format. Maybe there's a lesson in that.

But the point is that I did this for several years: creating TIF and JPEG versions of files - often with a smaller "web" version of the JPEG - and cluttering up my drives, and thoroughly confusing myself in the process.

Then Lightroom appeared - and I saw it was good.

Now, my workflow is to load the image files onto my computer using LR - which places it in my catalogue. I then always (and for once, "always" means always) keyword the images, and can process them.

Processing in this case means making adjustments which are stored by LR with my raw file at a cost of around 10k per file. The raw file remains pristine, and I can make virtual versions of any image, which allows me to have multiple versions of my images - at a cost of about 10k per version.

And because all these files are key worded - as well as having all their metadata - I can find a particular image in moments.

Yes, I'm a fan of LR and no, I don't get a spotter's fee from Adobe. In fact, due to their introducing their ridiculous subscription model for most of their products, Adobe's off my Christmas card list this year - but Lightroom is a great product.

As for my back catalogue, I find that 84% of the 29,500 images in LR have no rating - and most of the rest are rated in an idiosyncratic manner (to say the least!). So, if I rate 100 a day, say six days a week ... that will only take 11 months to complete.

What I really need is a 100% reliable script which will rate my images for me.

Christmas is coming up, so if Father Christmas and the Birthday Fairy work together, maybe I can have my wish.

Or ... I can suck it up and just do it ...

Season's greetings!

Shane

Oil on my sensor - my D800 sensor

Let me tell you a tale ...

I went out for a quick shoot earlier in the week. (You will not see any of these images as they were sharp, perfectly exposed, incredibly boring images. (But I digress.)

When I loaded them into Lightroom, I saw this stuff in the sky:

Weird, huh?

It had to be dust, so I tried blowing it away with my trusty rocket blower and did a test exposure (an f/20 shot of a blue sky). Nope, still there!

So I went to my Plan B: using a specialised electrostatically-charged brush which in the past, removed all but the most stuck-on muck. The streaks were made worse!

So I had to resort to Plan C: wet cleaning using some preprepared sensor swabs that I just happened to have ordered a few days previously. They just seemed to move the mess around.

I was stumped. It wasn't behaving like any dust, or any fibres I'd seen before (which in retrospect should have been a clue!) - so I fired up Google.

After quite a bit of trawling, I found a (very) few posts about oil on D800 sensors! Argh!! We've all heard about the problems with oil on the D600, but on an 800? This is a pro camera!!

The problem was that oil, wherever it had come from, made sense. The "smears" could have been a fluid. It also explained why the blower did nothing, a swipe with a swab didn't do much, and the brush made it worse. However, it didn't explain why a high-end, made in Japan Nikon had oil on its sensor.

So, I began by visiting  my local pharmacy and asking them for a high purity solvent. They sold me a tiny bottle of 99% pure isopropyl alcohol, which I was tempted to use on the sensor, but which I only used the wash my electrostatic brush.

After the brush dried, I used another swab on the sensor. The sensor looked better, but not great. So I used the brush - which actually improved the situation! The isopropyl alcohol had done the trick and the brush wasn't moving oil around.

With a few bits still on the sensor, I used the blower - and the sensor is now almost perfect. Good enough at least that hopefully, the camera's cleaning mode will shake off the last bits. If not, I can handle it in post.

I'm not thrilled - but at least I can use my camera.

It will be interesting to see what Nikon says about this.

Shane
in Canberra

On using the Nikon D800

It's been a while, hasn't it? This was supposed to be a fortnightly (or thereabouts) blog, but I've never achieved anything like that.

I have no excuses - so to the kind or bored souls who read my ramblings: my apologies.

Nearly a year ago, I bought a Nikon D800. It's a superb camera, but it does have its drawbacks. Firstly, in a world hankering for small and light, it's neither.

This doesn't mean that it can't be used for street photography, though!

At the British Museum

But I digress.

Also, due to its staggering 36 M sensor, it's a camera which doesn't tolerate errors. Unless my focus is pin sharp, images from it are almost useless.

This creates problems. Due to it being full frame, the depth of field compared with my old and much-beloved crop frame D300 is very shallow. This means I need small apertures / high f-numbers for anything that isn't stationary - which can be a problem as, unless I'm using a tripod, I need a high enough shutter speed to avoid camera shake.

Of course, sometimes a tripod isn't an option. This is the result of a 30 second exposure:

Shine Dome, Canberra

I've got to say that I'm in awe of modern digital cameras. Look at the contrast ratio in that shot and the colour balance. Somehow, the D800 has handled at least five different light sources and still produced a great image.

The red streak is the tail lights of a passing car. It also left a "ghost" of its roof near under the street light on the right!

Anyway - the bottom line is that every photographer needs a tripod - and a good tripod at that. I'd suggest that you go for a ball head. Just make sure it can handle the weight of any camera-lens combination you're likely to use in the future.

The other result of going full frame is the loss of focal length. Using a crop frame sensor means that the focal length of every lens is effectively changed. On a Nikon APS-C camera such as the D300, my 70-200 is effectively a 105 - 300, which is handy when trying to photograph birds. (It's not so good when going wide. My 14 - 24 was a 21 - 36 on the D300.)

Anyway ... I decided to get myself a teleconverter to try to get some "reach". I bought the Nikon x1.7 unit, which as you would expect, increases the focal length of a lens by a factor of 1.7, at a cost of losing 1.5 f-stops.

So far, I'm happy with the results. This little chap was up in a small tree and using my 70 - 200 would

Baby magpie lark

have meant either a tiny image, or the need for me to crop very hard indeed. Using my lens effectively as a 340mm telephoto,  got what is for me, an effective image.

The loss of speed due to the teleconverter isn't an issue, as I have to stop the lens down to achieve a good depth of field.

I actually worked "semi-manually" with this. I had the camera on auto ISO and manual. I selected the appropriate aperture, went for a high, 1/500 sec shutter speed and dialled in centre-weighted metering. The Nikon did the rest.

I'm no bird photographer - so I'm happy with the result.


Keep making those photographs!

Shane Baker
Canberra

Hopes in the retro camera trend

There's been endless fuss this week (and in fact, for several weeks) about Nikon's new full frame SLR, the Df and its retro look.

The good news about the Df (in my opinion) includes:

• sensor and processor apparently from the top of the line Nikon D4.
• major controls accessible through good old-fashioned knobs, which are not only easy to use, but which show at a glance where they're set. Great!
• it's smaller and lighter than many new SLRs, despite having a proper, metal body.
• it can conveniently use old Nikkor lenses.

The bad news isn't great. In Australia at least, the Df will sell for more than the 36 meg, pro body D800. And this is for a camera with fewer autofocus points than the D800, one card slot, no built-in flash and no video capability.

Ouch!

Of course, as with all things, the proof of the camera will be in the actual images produced in real situations. For this, we must wait. 

Joe McNally has posted some nice shots already - but Joe could produce great images with a box Brownie. He's no indication of how a photographer of modest (even very modest) attainment such as myself will go armed with a Df.

Time will tell - as it will also tell regarding whether this "retro" look with mechanical dials is a marketing gimmick, or a trend. Fujifilm seems to have started this with their X series cameras and they've justifiably received high praise for these cameras. Pick one an X100s for example, and you'll note metal analogue dials controlling aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation - in a metal body. They even take an old-fashioned cable release!

I hope it's a trend. I love my D800, as I did my D300 that preceded it. Great cameras - reliable, ergonomic tools which produce great images. It's just that I'd like to be able to see what's what by glancing at a dial - as we could in the stone age.

Maybe Nikon and Fuji have realised that the film cameras they made for all those years had something going for them in the digital age: analogue controls.

Let's hope so.

Shane Baker

Gear for travelling

My wife and I recently returned from a  five week trip to Britain and France. Naturally, I saw this as a photo op as well as a holiday, and took cameras with me. Eight or nine kgs of cameras.

In 2011, we did a similar trip, where I took my Nikon D300 (a crop frame SLR) with my 24-70 f/2.8 and my then-new 14-24 f/2.8. I was surprised to discover that 90% of my images were made with the 14-24 on that trip - but bearing in mind that with the crop frame APS-C sensor, the lens is a 21-36mm equivalent lens, in retrospect that's not so surprising.

Bruge

On this trip, I took my monster D800 with those two lenses, plus a few odds and sods, including a light meter, a 50mm f/1.8 and ND and polarising filters.

I also took my new Fujifilm X100s - and seriously considered taking this alone. A friend of mine who is a mirrorless convert pushed me in that direction, and photographer Valérie Jardin had recently demonstrated it was possible to take the Fuji alone on a four week holiday. In the end, I compromised by also taking the Fuji - which is tiny by SLR standards. I also undertook to "do" Paris with the Fuji only.

So - how did it go?

Well, with the greatest respect, unless you are like Ms Jardin, a street photographer, I can't see the X100s as a replacement for an SLR. It's a brilliant camera, but the fixed focal length lens places some limitations.

Take the shot of Notre Dame to the right. A pleasant enough shot, and the camera handled to demanding light well, but the fixed 35mm equivalent lens means that I didn't get the whole edifice.

"Zoom with your feet", I hear you cry, and in many cases, that's valid. However - in places like Paris, which are awash with @#$%^*! tourists (why can't they leave people like you and mean alone?) getting back will mean including endless people - many wearing distracting colours.

The Nikon, with its wider lens would have been better in that case.

On the other hand, the Fuji came into its own capturing this candid shot in the Louvre.

Could I have got it with the D800? Probably - but I think this young woman might have noticed the big, black, intimidating camera and possibly been distracted by having it pointed at her. (The man in the image below was - and he wasn't even the subject of the shot.)

Clearly, it's horses for courses. The beauty of the Fuji is that weighs almost nothing and takes little space. It's easy to carry in your bag, or even a (capacious) jacket pocket - and it looks like your grandad's old film rangefinder, so no-one cares.

What about the D800?

Well, I'm glad I took it, but it's not a snapshot camera. With its 36 megapixel sensor, it's a demanding, unforgiving camera, and you blaze away with it at your peril.

The man on the right has noticed my D800!

On the other hand, it can produce luscious colours and detail. The images below, shot in early light in Yorkshire have a detail and depth of colour for which the D800 and its SLR kin were made.

What about lenses? Well, with the full frame D800, the 24mm setting on the 24-70 was wide enough for almost all occasions, and I only used the 14-24 once. It probably could have stayed at home.

And the other gear could have stayed as well. I didn't have time to use the filters - although the polarising filter would have been useful once or twice. I also used the light meter only once - again due to time pressures.

At times, I could have used a tripod. The weather wasn't great for much of the trip, and the need to use small apertures on the full frame D800 for necessary depth of field created problems. It's an occupational hazard. This wasn't an issue on the X100s, of course.

So, was the D800 worth it? Did I need my Kata bag (described by one friend as a "lifeboat")?

I think I did.

I could have taken the X100s only and come away with great results - if I were willing to accept the limitations of that package. The camera is more than capable of producing brilliant images in a wide range of conditions. If, like Valérie, my main interest were street photography, I would have been mad to lump along 2.5kgs of SLR - or my lifeboat.

If, on the other hand, like me, you wished to make a range of images from a wide range of subjects, the SLR remains the best option - unless you go the mirrorless, interchangeable lens route.

Maybe, I'll go that way in the future - but not yet.

Shane Baker

I was at the British museum yesterday ...

and I noted some strange behaviour from the people there.

There were the usual types with their smart phones and point and shoots, using flash on everything. This was not only distracting for the rest of us, but they were also using flash while shooting through glass.

No doubt, they will get home and curse their cameras for producing fuzzy, wildly over-exposed images - not realising that they would get better results (and longer battery life) with the flash OFF. The green setting is NOT our friend.

Unfortunately like the poor, or politicians, the flash brigade is always out in force, but there was another group: people photographing everything - and I mean that quite literally.

I watched one man with a moderately good point and shoot. He saw nothing there except the back of his camera. He would stand in front of an exhibit for as long as it took to pull focus, shoot, then do the same to the next object. He wasn't experiencing the Museum - he was making a visual collection to look at later.

Now I'd be the last person to object to photography. I'm the one carting my D800 and two heavy lenses in my Kata backpack, and I like to photograph things. But photography isn't a substitute for experience - it's a means to help preserve our memories.

While I was there, I made three photographs. Others were making hundreds.

I'll bet I had the better experience.

Good (and appropriate) shooting.

Shane

It's worth looking back on your images

Last Saturday, I went out for a dawn shoot with my friend Rod Burgess.

We weren't quite sure where we were going, but were looking for a spot with the rolling hills typical of parts of the ACT - bathed with dawn's golden light.

We stopped at a spot, and got out our gear.

Canberra sunrise - looking towards the Murrumbidgee River.

I recently heard a photographer describe landscape as being like sports shooting - and it's certainly true that at dawn and dusk, the light changes so fast that one can't relax for a moment. The light's changing, meaning that exposure changes and so do opportunities.  You've gotta keep ducking and weaving!!

I'd chosen not to use any filters was was relying on the D800's raw files and Lightroom to get the details I wanted.

I was also deliberately "exposing to the right". (I remain to be convinced on the advantages of that strategy - but that's another issue.)

During the shoot, looking at the 3" display on my Nikon, the shots had looked pretty ordinary.

Anyway, I got home and loaded the images into Lightroom - and was pleasantly surprised.
There were a few that made me feel it had been worth getting out of bed at 05:45 on a Saturday morning when there was frost on the ground! The shot here is a case in point. Nice range of colours, textures. Yeah, I was happy with that.

I put this and several other shots up on Smugmug, and relaxed.

Later that day, after tic tacking with Rod, I went back into Lightroom - and was surprised to find this:

Canberra sky at sunrise.

That's typical of the great clouds we often get in Canberra - usually when far from a camera, I might add. I was glad I was able to capture it - and more pleased that I'd gone back to look again.

Mind you, this process of revision works both ways. I had this on my Smugmug site for quite a while:

No, I don't know what I was thinking, either!

And this was posted for two or three days. Yes, it's a photograph of a platypus - but it doesn't make it worthy of inflicting on visitors to my web site.

I take slight comfort from the fact that some very well known, and very good photographers post duds too. I guess the advantage of the web is that when such a blunder is realised, we can make it go away.

So ... the lesson is to look again at your shots, hours or days later. You'll probably have more pleasant surprises than nasty shocks.

Keep shooting.

Shane

In praise of the nifty 50

Yesterday morning, I went out with a group of friends from the Southside Camera Club here in Canberra for a "Murrumbidgee River Ramble".

I came away with some acceptable images - and more importantly, neither my camera nor me fell in the drink! (If you miss the significance of this statement, please read my past couple of blogs.)

Eucalypts at sunrise, Canberra.

Anyway, after some landscapes, we repaired to the home of the Club members who had arranged the photo walk, where they provided us with a scrumptious breakfast. (Yes, life can be tough in a camera club!)

Not only did they go above and beyond in the catering department, but they allowed those of us who were interested to use their home studio gear for a little impromptu portraiture and still life work. I wandered in to see Len, the generous and patient husband of one of our members, being photographed.

Well, I couldn't let this pass - but as my semi-aquatic 24-70 is in transit from Nikon, I plonked my "nifty 50" (Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens) on my D800 and had a try.

I'm delighted with my results.

Len

The images are sharp, have true colour and good contrast - and were made with a Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D, a lens that sells in Australia for  $A127. Even its up-market brother, the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G sells for $A250 - which is a fraction of the price of my admittedly wonderful 24-70 f/2.8.

Len

The message is clear. As much as I like three or four of my landscapes from yesterday, I love a couple of the portraits of the long-siffering Len. I hope he does too.

Clearly, I have to get off my backside and do more portraiture. And I've got to use my cheap, light and unobtrusive little nifty 50 more often, as well.

If you haven't got a 50, think about getting one. They're a steal!

Shane

To buy a point and shoot - or not?

Olympus is pulling out of low end point and shoot cameras - and I can see why. We don't need them.

One of my wok colleagues asked what camera she should buy in the $100 - $200 range. My reaction? Don't.

Why?

She has a good quality mobile phone - which means she has a good basic camera already. Apart from a zoom lens, I can't see what a $150 compact would offer that her "camera" doesn't already offer.

What I suggested she do is spend her lazy $100 - 200 on software. She's not running a Mac at home so she doesn't have iPhoto - meaning she needs something like PhotoShop Elements or Lightroom to:

• do "post" on here images - crop, contrast and maybe some colour correction, and
• more importantly ... catalogue her images.

People are generating images all over the place, and then what? They sit on the device until it fails or they're deleted. If they're downloaded to the computer, they sit there without keywords or meaningful names until the disc fails.

Either way, they're not accessible. And if you can't find the image, it's just a waste of disc space.

My advice to anyone without suitable software is to get either Elements or when it's released: Lightroom 5 or start using your copy of iPhoto. Then, catalogue your existing images - which is, I will admit, a horrible job.

However! Once that's done, your work flow could be something like mine: First, download the images from the camera, using just a basic preset - to add a little contrast - or whatever your camera needs.

Then - keyword your images. Right away! Then and there. Before you do anything else. Pronto.

Seriously, it will take maybe 5 minutes to do a heap of images and once done, they're done forever - and they can be found!

After that, you can do your "post":

1. Crop and straighten
2. Remove stuff that shouldn't be there - rubbish, idiots, that kind of thing.
3. Do any more tweaking of brightness, colour balance, contrast - that kind of thing.

It amazes me how few people look after their images. Almost everyone over 12 has a camera these days and they use them to capture images. Then, for most people, it stops there. At least in the film days, the film would be printed at the local lab. Now? Who knows?

Photographs augment and even preserve our images. They are precious and deserve to be looked after.

Here endeth the lesson.

Have a good one.

Shane

A week after I dropped my D800

And a week after I dropped my D800 - with disasterous results, the reason is starting to show.

When I fell, I obviously made first contact with my left elbow - which was the arm holding the camera!

It could have been worse - but I keep thinking about and missing my knackered Nikon.

My wife tells me that I'm a bit dangerous with a camera, because I tend to become focussed (no pun intended) on the shot and oblivious to my surroundings. She's probably right.

Mind you, I'm not exactly alone in that respect. Look at the horrific casualty rates among war photographers. 

And my friend Claude was telling me about stopping in the middle of a street on his recent trip to Vancouver when he saw a shot. He's standing there surrounded by traffic and shooting with his new Fuji X-E1, when he suddenly realises what he's doing.

Still, we've all done stuff like that. It's part of the magic of photography, I guess - and we usually survive!

To to follow-up on my sad tale of the aquatic D800 ...

Nikon Australia gave me an answer within 72 hours - which I think is good service. The good news is that they can fix the 24-70, albeit at a price. I'll have that back in about a week.

The bad news is that my beloved D800 was already showing signs of corrosion. It wasn't economic to fix.

Sob ...

Back to the trusty D300 for the time being.

So the lesson learned from this - at a price - is that when you carry camera gear in a situation where it could get damaged, put it in your bag.

And by the way, the people I work with have pointed out (rather forcefully I might add) that things could have been worse. I was alone, out of sight and had a heavy fall onto rocks in a river. I could have been injured - or even drowned. I certainly have the bruises to prove that point, although they're nothing that won't heal.

All true, of course - but my D800 is no more!

Sob ...

A tale of disaster

So I went out to "do some photography" yesterday morning.

The reason? I hadn't made a photograph in weeks and I was feeling withdrawal. And it was foggy and I thought there might be something in it. I got some shots at the National Arboretum here in Canberra - and a couple weren't bad, either.

Trees in fog, National Arboretum Canberra.
© Shane Baker

Anyway, I was heading home, and I thought it might be worth making a diversion to the Murrumbidgee River to see if there was anything to shoot. The sun was up and something might be there, right?

There was. A nice flat surface on a pool in the river with reflections. I just had to get down there.

So, I picked up the Nikon and the tripod and my camera bag and headed down towards some rocks. Slippery rocks.

Next thing I know, it's like someone has kicked my legs out from under me. I hit the rocks like a safe, get back on my feet - and can't see the Nikon. Some frantic looking around and I see it - my D800 with 24 - 70 lens attached literally submerged in the river!

The lens was full of water, so I let it drain and headed home. Once home, I separated the body and lens and placed them into a home-made dehumidifier - where they remain until I can send them to Nikon Service in Sydney tomorrow!

I feel sick just thinking about this beautiful gear submerged in a river. God knows what the service bill will be.

The take away from this? If you've got a bag or a case or whatever, use it if there's the slightest chance of something going wrong - like walking on rocks in a river.

The tale of the repairs waits for another day.

Sigh ...

Shane

Kids and photography.

We've had three of the grandkids visiting from Perth this week. Me being me, I offered each of them the use of a camera. The 13 year old has the D300, the 7 year old the D90 and the 5 year old the Fuji X10.

I have to say that despite the patronising comments coming from more than a few adults, they've produced some very good images.

I love digital for kids - or anyone learning photography. The marginal cost of any image is almost nothing, and they get immediate feedback when they try something new. Perfect!

And, of cause, I can give them a set of images on a USB stick that they can print or show to family and friends.

So the message is: don't underestimate kids. Give them a useable camera and they'll deliver.

A portraiture master class with Greg Weight.

Last Sunday, I did a portraiture master class with Greg Weight.

I enjoyed the session, and especially Greg's practical, unaffected view of photography and portraiture.  (The fact that he is a Nikon shooter didn't hurt either (Joke!!).

When she picked me up, my wife Linda asked me what I'd learned.

Good question.

I'd certainly learned stuff - but more importantly, I'd gained a few things. Firstly, I realised I knew stuff. I recognised the photographers Greg talked about and often, the images to which he referred. I also understood a fair amount of the technical stuff too.

That means thatI gained confidence in my ability.

But I also came to the conclusion that I don't have to be an expert on portraiture to shoot portraits.

What I did learn / decide / conclude is that I've got to get off my arse and join in. To be an effective portrait photographer ... I've got to shoot portraits.

Yep - I'm nothing if not quick! <blush>

I've lined up friends who have agreed to be photographed, I have the photo kit and I've ordered a backdrop - which I'll use some of the time.

Time to stop talking and start doing - or as Frederick Van Johnson says: Time to take off that lens cap and shoot!

I've always admired portrait photography.

I'm in awe of the likes of Arnold Newman, Josef Karsh, Irving Penn, and Aussies like David Moore, Max Dupain and Helmut Newton. For all that, I've tended to treat portraiture as something of a spectator sport - which is a major failure on my part.

That said, from my armchair (or basement, for my North American readers) I'm going to "have a go" at some recent examples of portraiture.

I should begin by saying that I'm not aware of any all-encompassing definition of photographic portraiture. Wikipedia defines it as:

Portrait photography or portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that displays the expression, personality, and mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is usually the person's face, although the entire body and the background or context may be included.

That gives a lot of options and covers a lot of ground. There have been and continue to be glorious formal portraits such as these:

 Norman Lindsay by Max Dupain

And Karsh, like Shakespeare or Beethoven is arguably part of our culture ...

Then there's the less formal school. I love environmental portraits.Check out Irving Penn's Igor Stravinsky:

So, given this latitude ... I was disappointed when I visited the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to see the 2013 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

I'm not so egocentric that I expect to like everything shown. I expect a full range of reactions from gobsmacked to angry - but not to be disappointed.  There's some damn fine work in this year's exhibition, but there's a lot of rubbish too (in my humble opinion!).

What do I mean by rubbish?  Images that could only be described as "snaps". Yes, I know there's a fine line between photojournalistic or even environmental portraiture - but quite a few were well over the line.

Also, I would expect any portrait to be sharp. Many were not. One in particular was simply out of focus. No doubt the cognoscenti would patiently explain to me that this "artistic", but I consider it shows a lack of craft. Similarly, eyes should be in focus, but noses can be a tad blurry. Several images were the other way around.

There also appeared to be a hefty dollop of political correctness in the selections. I can't believe the selections (from over 1,200 entries, I believe) really had that many "land rights for gay whales" images.

Many of the PC selections also had another characteristic that I find unforgivable: they only made any sense with a written explanation. Photography and portraiture are visual art forms. The image should speak for itself. If an image only has meaning with a hefty panel of explanatory text next to it, then the artist has failed.

To be fair to the Portrait Gallery, they're not alone in all this. I followed a link from a tweet earlier today which prompted me to write this little rant - because the piece on portraiture seemed to be advocating the very kind of "portraiture" I dislike so much!

I'll get off my soap box now.

Have a good Easter.

The value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving

I want to write about the value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving. 

(Those of you who know me and have heard this already may like to browse Wikipedia now or make a cup of tea.)

The poor souls who attend my Digital Photography classes at Erindale are told with some apparent authority by yours truly that a photograph has value if it was one or more of the following characteristics:

• it's fine art. Not many of us produce a lot of this, unfortunately;
• it's of value to you. The grandparent's shot of a grandchild (or vise versa) is a classic example; or
• it's a record of something of value that has been lost.

It's this third point that was reinforced for me recently.

It's Canberra's 100th birthday on 12 March 2013 and for those of you not familiar with the history of our wide brown land, it had a troubled beginning. While it was proclaimed in 1913, due to two world wars, the Great Depression and indifference from much of Australia, it wasn't really developed until the 1960s.

I recently saw some photographs made from the 1910s through to the 1970s showing Canberra "before". These images were accompanied by very good attempts to make the same image from the same vantage point - using landmarks to try to orientated the photographer. The whole show was quite fascinating.

Now these images were workman-like shots, but they were made for a purpose - and that purpose wasn't great art. They were intended as a record only. And it's well that they were made because they are a record of places and indeed, people who are gone forever. Nothing will bring that place back. Even if the unthinkable (and highly improbable) were to take place and mankind were to be wiped out by some catastrophe, the place where Canberra now sits will never look as it did in 1913 - or in 1960.

So my point is that even the most mundane snaps have value as they will inevitably record - and in a sense, preserve - someone or something that is no-longer with us.

And this brings me to another of my hobby horses: an image is only useful if it's preserved and can be found.

These images were preserved because they had been made by a government agency and carefully stored and catalogued. If they had been treated as are so many images made today, I'm sure they would be lost - and so would their value.

When attending big public events, I wonder at the number of people using their phones as cameras. Don't get me wrong - most of the smart phones these days have very capable photographic capability - but what happens then? Are these images stored, or are they uploaded (and down sampled) on Facebook, perhaps? Maybe they're sent by email or SMS - but are they kept? We are told that more photography is taking place now than ever before, but where will the images of the people and places that are gone forever be found in 10, 20 or 100 years?

So my thought for the day is: whatever means you use to capture those "snaps" of family, friends and places: save and protect them for the future!

Thanks for reading this through to the end.  I'll have a little lie down now ...

Shane

And where are my images from the Multicultural Festival, I hear you ask?

Well ..... I didn't get any.  (Yes, I'm embarrassed.)

Despite my great love of street photography, I don't find t easy and have to get into a certain mind set. This weekend past - I didn't.

Maybe next year?

<sigh>

Shane "promises" Baker

Giving street photography another try

It's the Canberra Multicultural Festival this weekend, and I'm going to give street photography another try.

Although I admire street photography at its best - the likes of Elliott Erwitt come to mind - I haven't done much of it.

A few years back, I went to teh Festival armed with an SLR and a zoom and came away with one of my best ever images:

I love this shot. This man with his interesting face is deep in conversion with two friends who are conveniently framing his image. In my perhaps not very humble opinion, it's a genuiely good shot.

But I haven't done anything as good since.

So this year, I'm giving it a try with an innocuous little camera - one that looks like I'm using my grandad's old film rangefinder: my Fuji X10.

As you can see, it doesn't look like much. It's not likely that people will feel confronted by it. The alternative is for me to use my D800. Even with the "nifty 50", it looks a bit intimidating - though nowhere near as scary as an SLR mounting a 70-200 zoom!

Nevertheless, I may try the D800 - just as an experiment.

So with gear decided, the other issue is tactics. Apart from street portraiture, where the photographer literally asks permission to photograph people, there are basically two tactics. One can stalk one's subject with a relatively short lens, shoot from a distance with a long lens - or stake out a space and wait for them to come to you.

I'm going to try the latter - with the X10 and maybe with the D800.

I'll let you know how I go!

Shane Baker

I want to talk about how we assess photographs.

And I apologise in advance, because I’m probably about to offend someone. 

But first, I must tell you about dog show judging - because I find parallels with the photography world. 

In the Australian dog show scene, and I suspect in the rest of the world, there’s a thing called “face judging”. Who is holding the lead in the ring is at least as important as the dog at the end for some judges. I’ve seen some horrible examples put up by dog judges, and in every case, at the end of the lead, you’ll find a “face”; someone with status in the dog world.

More on that in a minute.

The other feature of dog judging is the phenomenon called “fault judging”. Basically, when you look at a dog in the ring you can judge it two ways. One way is to look at all the dogs (with a full understanding of the standard for that breed) and pick the best example in the ring. The winner may have faults (although no major faults) but overall, it will be the one that is closest to the ideal Pug or Great Dane or Labrador or whatever.

Fault judging is when the judge looks at a line of dogs, finds their faults - and then picks the dog with the fewest faults. It may look horrible, but hey - it’s the dog with the fewest faults! (No-one can fault that! (Boom, boom!)

So to come back to my heresy: there’s a lot of fault judging and face judging in the photography world.

The internet has given all of us an unprecedented opportunity to show our work. (More power to the World Wide Web!) But it has inevitably led to a lot of images being shown that should never have seen the light of day. At the extreme are those people who simply upload the entire contents of their camera’s card to the web site of their choice, and wait for the plaudits to flow.

Others of us try to be a bit more discriminating. I place images on my web site (shaneb.smugmug.com - check it out!) either because I think they’re good shots or simply because people may find them interesting. (Hopefully, they’re both, BTW.) I also post snaps for family and friends, but these are generally in folders that aren’t inflicted on the unsuspecting public.

Unfortunately, some well-known photographers who should know better (and can do better) sometimes place pretty average images on the internet - and they’re generally greeted with rapturous applause by their followers.

That’s face judging folks. 

To be fair, I’ve had plenty of “what was I thinking?” moments, after which I’ve quietly deleted an image from my web site. Clearly, so do photographers who are better and more highly regarded than me. That’s part of being human. What I can’t understand is when a famous photographer posts a snap - and the internet explodes with praise.

We all have to do better - both as artist and audience.

And now to fault judging. In photography, I’ve seen it in the flesh and I’ve seen it on line: someone puts up an image,and armchair experts immediately work it over for faults. It may not be sharp, composition could be better, too much/not enough contrast, blown-out highlights.

You know the drill.

Check this out:

Robert Capa - D-Day landing.

Horrible? Not level, not sharp, print includes sprocket holes. The fault judges would put that on the reject pile in a heartbeat.

Or what about this? Badly composed, huh? What's the subject; surely not the doves??

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Henri Matisse

Both photographs work - despite their faults. Maybe even because of them?

So my thought for the day? We need to 

1. Be rationally critical of our own work.
2. Recognise that even the best of us don't always get it right. No need to criticise, but let's not applaud by reflex, either.
3. Assess an image, either it's one of ours, one by friends or one by the famous simply by asking whether it works. 

My apologies to those I have offended. I didn't mean to.

Shane Baker

Wisdom of the podcast.

I listen to podcasts; several in fact.

I know I'm not alone in this, but I'm surprised at how many of my photog friends don't subscribe. They're free, easy to listen to in your car, or on public transport (which I try to use on a day to day basis), and while there are duds, there are many good episodes.

One I listened to recently was Martin Bailey interviewing Don Komarechka. Don's a nature photographer from Ontario, who in addition to beautiful landscape work, shoots the most amazing snowflake photographs - see http://www.donkom.ca .

At the end of the podcast, Martin asked Don for three tips. He offered up the following gems:

1. Quoting a Life magazine photographer who was asked how he got such great shots: "Use f/8 and be there."  

In other words, whether you just get out of bed or travel, but put yourself in a position to make great photographs.

2. For his second tip, Don noted that many people return from trips with mediocre images saying "you had to be there". One of the reasons their shots aren't that great is because they don't try different angles - "work the shot" as they say. 

So the second tip was: "The world isn't 5 and a half feet tall."

3. The third tip was: Tell a story with your images, if you can.

He conceded this wasn't always possible - but we should look for it.

How true!

Happy Australia Day, 2013.

Shane Baker

Canberra

A warm welcome to my first post

Welcome to the first post of this new blog.  I plan to post at least weekly, sharing my thoughts and learnings about photography.

I should tell you a bit about myself. I'm a Canberra public servant of necessity, and I photograph by choice. It has to be said that I spend more time thinking about photography than doing it - and I guess this blog is a symptom of that!

For the gear-minded, I shoot with Nikon gear (though I have a lovely little Fuji X10), use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop (if necessary) and print using an Epson 3880.

For those wanting to inflict further pain on themselves, I have a Smugmug account at shaneb.smugmg.com .  I post images there from time to time and you're welcome to check those out and leave your comments.

I also tweet (very occasionally) as @ShaneBakerACT.

I hope you find the blog of interest - and I genuinely welcome your comments and thoughts.

Shane Baker
Canberra