The Studio Portrait

Let me get this out of the way. I did not enjoy working in the studio. I don't ever want to work in the studio again. The studio exists for control, especially control of light, and the chaos of the environment is a large part of why I like photography. So the studio portrait assignment was pretty rough for me. I found myself wanting to take pictures of the set-up more than my model:

f/16
1/180
ISO 80
Kit zoom set to 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

The assignment was a good exercise for appreciating what goes into studio photography. Getting the light right is hard. I did not come anywhere close to getting the hang of it. It was also hard to get Jason to relax. He doesn't like to sit still. In the end all I could do was let him pace around while I tried to get decent shots. Got a small handful that I sort-of like:

f/19
1/180
ISO 80
Kit zoom set to 47.5mm (~71mm equivalent)

This might seem like an odd choice, but I like the way he's moving out of the frame, and he's kind of doubled by the shadow on the other side. And I like that you can see how beat-up the paper is.

Truly, I don't like being in such an unnatural environment. I understand the value and purpose, but I don't think I will ever do it voluntarily.

Self-portraiture

Spent a long time today drinking coffee with the camera pointed at me, set to shoot at ten-second intervals. Took some with the 50mm lens and some with the 31mm. Found myself wishing that I had a darker coffee cup and also a smaller coffee cup. The giant Atka mug kept dominating the photos:

f/1.8
1/60
ISO 400
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

I'm sitting at a counter in front of a south-facing window. It's a clear day, so the light was too strong except when it passed behind the trees. I might like this photo with a smaller, darker mug. I did get a few that I liked:

f/2.0
1/90
ISO 400
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

On the one hand, this is a much less silly photo than the previous one. On the other, I think it lacks the element of self-awareness that characterizes good self-portraits. This could have been taken by anyone. It's just mimicking a portrait taken by somebody else. Whereas the top one, with the staring eye, seems more like a self-portrait even though I don't like it as much. I'll just have to keep at it.

Two self-portraits I like:

Lee Friedlander. This one cracks me up. He's intentionally "failed" to hide the camera (its shadow is on the hood), which subverts the entire scene (there's no question that he's not really driving). That's the kind of self-awareness or intentionality I'm talking about. I also like this one because the self-portraits of photographers with their cameras to their eye get tiresome fast. Here's an exception, by Ilse Bing:

Two mirrors, obviously. I like it because the curtain fills in the composition perfectly, and there's something arresting in the way the two iterations of the camera are aimed exactly 90º apart, and the front-on face in one mirror and the perfect profile in the other.

I'll keep at it. Don't think I'll turn in either of the above.

Blackout

They shut the power off in the Elvey building tonight. Tried to get some stuff for my environmental portrait assignment, just following around the folks who were trying to keep their stuff alive. It was very dark. The backup power failed. The emergency lights died. Had to do most of my shooting with the lens wide open and the ISO at 3200 or 6400. Hard to focus in the dark, and even when I got it right there was a lot of noise in the photos:

f/1.8
1/45
ISO 64000
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

It was a large room, and the fish tank was the only source of light. ISO 64000 is really too high. I think 1600 is the limit on my camera for decent looking photos. It's a shame because I know I'll never get a better shot of Dolores than this one--it's just so her. But the high ISO noise makes it unusable.

I never got Dale against a decent background, but Dale has no expressions that aren't funny. Every single picture I take of him is funny:

f/1.8
1/60
ISO 800
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

The power was back on at this point, so there was more light. Hence the lower ISO. I don't think I got a keeper of Dale. I ruined several shots by missing the focus, which is easy to miss at f/1.8. Need to practice, especially if I'm going to by an f/1.2 lens.

Also tried to get some shots of Mitch, but his position made it hard to get his eyes in. Also, lots of motion blur and missed focus. Might have had a keeper in there otherwise. Like the Dolores shots, the only light source in these was Mitch's monitor. Very hard to get Mitch without the monitor just coming out bright white:

f/2.0
1/125
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

Could have brought this down to 800 ISO, which looks a lot better. I'll play with this in photoshop, but I don't know if I can make anything of it.

The takeaways here were that I need to work on focusing in low light, and there is no such thing as a lens that is too fast. So I need one of these:

f/1.2!!!


Update: Beginning to like this shot of Dale. The closed eyes and ambiguous, possibly lewd gesture make it a lot more interesting than the others.

f/2.4
1/90
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47 equivalent)

Scott Fortino & the GI showers

Found a book in the library called Institutional. Photographs by Scott Fortino. He is or was a cop in Chicago. The book is filled with interior shots from empty jails, schools, hospitals, etc. Color. Square format. The colors and compositions have an effect like abstract paintings even though the images are entirely concrete:

It's hard to explain why I find these so moving. Details like the camera in the top one and the in-boxes in the bottom one. The screen partly pulled down. Fortino must have done a lot of arranging to make them look so perfect. The spaces look oppressive, but at the same time, like they're waiting to be reoccupied.

I took my own stab at something like this for assignment four, in the men's showers in the basement of the GI. Mine, even if they were good, would lack the impact of Fortino's because my subject is all wrong. But it was a good exercise in trying to make nice compositions out of masses of unattractive squares and rectangles:

f/16
15 sec
ISO100
18-55 zoom at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

f/16
20 sec
ISO 80
18-55 zoom at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

Kaji thought it was strange that I shot these at such a low ISO. There was no special reason. Lower ISO's are supposed to produce the least noisy images, and I had a tripod and a remote, so I figured, why not?

Frank's Church

Went back to Frank's Church on Ester Dome to try to shoot the graffiti. It was painted with broad passes so it looks out-of-focus even to the eye. I think some would call the designs disturbing, but to me they look playfully weird:

f/2.4
1/45
ISO 200
31mm lens (~47 equivalent)

f/3.5
1/20
ISO 200
31mm lens (~47 equivalent)

Nothing great, but I'm glad I have pictures of the place. It's hard to get across the feel of that room. Maybe a fisheye or a super-wide-angle would do it. It's a strange place. On the way back down, because we were supposed to shoot 30 different subjects, I shot some plants (desperate photo student's last resort):

f/1.8
1/250
ISO 80
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

f/1.8
1/350
ISO 80
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

f/1.8
1/350
ISO 100
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

In all of these, I'm lying on the ground with the lens wide open. It was the only way I could think to get unusual perspective on cranberries. Also, there were so many bushes that the scene was so twiggy that throwing everything out of focus was the only way to even have a clear subject. It was late afternoon on a clear day, so the sun was low and shining directly through the cranberries. Got some shots like the top one where they seemed to be glowing, but none that I liked. On the bottom, I'm holding two bunches of cranberries in the foreground to make those two smudges. Didn't get anything good like that, either, but I bet that will come in handy someday. The middle one is the best one. The red is more subtle, and I love the shading of the blurred background. Twigs along the bottom are too busy.

Street Photography

In my heart, this is all I really want to do. Candid photographs of strangers going about their lives. It's almost always more compelling to me than landscapes or portraits or anything else. Here's Robert Frank:

Daido Moriyama:

Lee Friedlander:


















These three are so different, but all came from this method of capturing natural human moments as intentional compositions. Something that comes out, when you look at a bunch of street photographs by a single artist, is how different they all are. Of course there's a consistent style, but so much is dictated by subjects that are outside the photographer's control. It's visually a very fluid and interesting form, and people just interest me more than anything else.

But how does one do this in Fairbanks. It's not New York. If you go downtown, hardly anyone is walking on the street. You can hear the shutter of a dslr half a block away. Also, people in this town are very private and not unlikely to be violent.

The box stores are where the real activity is, but you have no legal right to shoot inside a business. I still tried it a bit, and nobody complained, but I didn't get anything good. At this point I've shot strangers just enough to realize how demanding it is, looking for opportunities and capturing them in the brief time you have. I think I could try for years without ever getting good. But apart from the difficulty, trying to do it brought home how complicated the ethics are. Take this shot:

f/1.8
1/20
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)


It didn't come out, obviously, but I want to talk about the postures of the man and women. I think anyone looking at it would see a defensive posture in the man and some low-level aggression or threat from the woman. At the very least they appear to be at odds. But nothing could be further from the case. They were talking and laughing, and she happened to be turning when I snapped. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Everyone knows how easy it is to lie or mislead with photographs, and sometimes that's okay. But street photography has a documentary element, and I'm not comfortable with the idea of street photos that appear to show something very different from what I witnessed when I took them.

But there's a more pressing ethical problem. Who is it okay to take pictures of? In a city like Kingston or Honolulu or other places I've lived, everybody walks. In Fairbanks, people tend to walk because they're poor or have other problems. Take this kid:

f/2.0
1/30
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)


It would have been easy to walk up closer and get maybe a decent shot. I mean, it's not everyday you see somebody go fetal on Airport Way. Instead I called him over and drove him to his house. So I might not be cut out for this. Would Lee Friedlander have driven the kid to his house? No! Lee Friedlander would have gotten the shot.

Petco, dump pig, splatter egg...

Busy at work. No chance to shoot. Had to shoot everything the day before, and I couldn't think of anything special to shoot. So. Stopped at Petco. No luck with mice; did better with fish:

f/2.8

1/20

ISO 1600

40mm lens (~60mm equivalent)

First of all, the Pentax does fine handheld at 1/20 or 1/30, thanks I guess to the image stabilization. Kind of an incoherent image, but I like that some of the fish are motion blurred and some of the fish are just out of focus. Really chaotic, as it was in the tank. Can't believe they put this many fish together.

You can see my reflection. I don't know how to do a straight-on shot like this and avoid that. I wound up choosing the worst, most overexposed image because it had the least reflection. Then I lowered the exposure in photoshop.

Stopped at the dump on the way home. Looking for something (anything) to use for blur shots. And there it was:

f/11
1/20
ISO 400
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)
Camera mounted on tripod

I tried to get a pan on Sheep Creek Road. Found a good spot and practiced on cars while I waited for a bicycle, which would be allowable under class rules. Waited 90 minutes. No bicycle. Had to be the longest bicycle-free span in the history of Sheep Creek. Got some really nice pans of cars and trucks though. Threw in the towel. Went home and did this:

f/9.5
1/2
ISO 80
zoom lens at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

The pig is sliding left-to-right on the seat of a rowing machine. Camera is mounted on a tripod very close to the pig. Lighting via fluorescent grow lights. The white space at left is a monitor showing a picture of the selfsame pig, but you can't really tell. This was as clear as I could get the pig at half a second. Most of the exposures were much worse than this one. I like this. It's like some nightmare vision.

Still needed a stop-motion. It was after midnight when I thought I should do something with an egg:

f/1.8
1/3000
ISO 800
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)
Shooting in continuous mode
Two fluorescent grow lights, one positioned on either side of the lens

That's a 7/8" forstner bit drilling into a raw egg. There's one thing I would have done differently. The yolk is so clear where it is in focus, I think 1/3000 was overkill. I wish I'd slowed the shutter down and stopped down the aperture for greater depth of field. The flying yolk isn't moving too fast. It's just out of focus. The blurred foreground and background really detract from this. But how many eggs do you want me to clean off my walls?

Nederland, Colorado

Trying to get my assignment done while visiting my girlfriend. Not recommended. Here's Erica:

f/2.8
1/160
ISO 400
40mm lens (~60mm equivalent)

f/11
1/100
ISO 6400
40mm lens (~60mm equivalent)

Kind of a cloudy morning. Not enough light in the cabin to be doing this exercise handheld with a moving subject. The second photo is better than I'd expect from such a high ISO, but it isn't good. Oh well. I like her expression far better in the second one, but the first photo is a lot less noisy.

f/2.8 gets most of Erica in focus. Need to practice focusing with lenses wide open. I'm guessing in the winter that's how I'll shoot pretty much everything.

Further exercises were done with pine cones and an ugly hotel carpet. I won't mar the internet with those.

Tonewood, bicycle chain, etc.

Leaving for Colorado. Hard to find time to shoot. Looked through the cabin for anything that might work. Lameness followed. Photographed some (poorly) bookmatched guitar and ukulele backs. Some houseplants. A bicycle chain. Here's the myrtle:

f/2.0
1/640
ISO 80
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

f/18
1/100
ISO 800
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

I did these on the porch. Cloudy but bright (hence the 1/640 on the first one). I successfully executed shallow and then deep depth of field, but I can't think of any other reason for these photographs to exist.

Did the same thing with the bike chain, but inside under a grow light. One photo has just one link in focus, the other has everything in focus. Tripod required. Dumb, pointless photos.