Self-portraiture II

I looked back at the coffee photos again and found that I liked different ones this time around. I spent some time working on two:

f/2.8
1/45
ISO 400
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

f/2
1/125
ISO 400
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

I liked how the top one looked in b&w. It captured all of the age in my skin, which doesn't come across as well in color. It was interesting to see myself looking that old. I mean, accurately. I can't use this one because of the dark shadow from the coffee cup. I had to tone down the light a lot for this photo to look good at all, but that shadow clearly shows that the photo as edited is lying.

The one in color is maybe an obvious joke. The coffee is in focus but I am not. Which pretty much describes every morning of my life. I like this one. I like the soft focus and the transition out-of-focus. The Atka mug says something about the subject, if the viewer wants to look into it. I like that I'm looking away from the blank space rather than into it. Also the white corner (mug) and the black corner opposite.

Still needed one more self-portrait:

f/5
1/50
ISO 100
Zoom at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)
Camera in auto mode, triggered with remote

Wanted to get one more picture out of that pig. Ripped the plastic eyes off and burned the eyeholes bigger. I wanted to spend some more time on this. Try a few different compositions, inside and outside, shoot in manual, etc. But the second I put my head inside the pig, my eyes started to burn. This was only meant to be a test shot. I had to spot lighten my eye a little. Goodbye, pig.

Peregrine at Creamer's Field

Took Scout for a walk on Saturday evening, and we met a man with a falcon on our way back to the car:

f/2
1/45
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

It was 6:00pm on a very clear evening, and this was right at the edge of what I could do handheld without jumping up to ISO 3200, which is notably worse in terms of noise. I was lucking to get any decent shots of the bird at 1/45sec because it was moving quite a bit as it tore up that pigeon.

Also, it's that time of year. Everything is blue. The actual scene was nowhere near this blue. I tried to improve things in photoshop:

Did I go too far? I'm not sure. But I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make the colors truer while keeping a late evening look. I like the apartment building in the background. I think the shape and the yellow help to fill out the background, and they show that this is an urban scene--that this guy is flying his bird in the middle of town. I think that's important.

Here's the other decent one I got:

f/2.8
1/45
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

Really the only good thing about this photo is the eye contact between the man and the bird. I had to stop down to get enough DOF to have them both in focus, and I knew it would be underexposed. The whole right side of the frame is empty as well, and the background behind the bird is way too busy. Here's the best I could do with it:

Really had to up the exposure to get the detail I wanted on the bird and the gore. Made it square to emphasize the relationship between the man and the bird. There's a diagonal line across the center between their eyes. In spite of the problems, I like this one. Will work on it some more to try to get the evening sky a little better.

Anyway, a good lesson in the importance of carrying your camera and talking to strangers.

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.