East 75th

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I always am: there's a really strong impulse in the photo community to conform. It's never said out loud, but look around a bit and you'll get the picture.

You'd think it would be the opposite: "I see a lot of zigging, perhaps I'll zag." But it's not. Zigging leads to more zigging.

I could be wrong, but I feel like photographers a few decades back took more pride in being out of step with the trends. I also feel you saw more "weird" images, and more breaks from the expected.

Wide Angle Wednesday

In my last post, I mentioned how you might use a telephoto focal length to shoot a portrait of a person. It's usually a great idea.

Don't think I don't love wide-angle lenses, however. Again, of course, you have to work purposefully to use them well. Here's my main tip: don't leave your wide angle lens trying to do the thinking for you. If you just point it without using your eyes and brain, its main characteristic is that it will just lump everything together into a jumble. Sometimes, by chance, a fantastic jumble. More often, a confused jumble. It will include objects near and far, and without much relationship between these objects.

To use it at its most photographic, think flat or think deep.

The shot above -- just a snap from my iPhone from Tuesday, nothing special -- is about thinking flat. It's two large elements in relationship to each other. There's no jumbled confusion because the image has been conceived as a flat space. The relationship is "this shape against that shape." What's left out of the shot is more important than what's in.

An even more exciting way to use a wide-angle lens is take advantage of its depiction of space and get something in the foreground in relation to the rest of the image. That's really an idea that should be in your mind as soon as you move to wide focal lengths. Let something close fight with the large background. Put a person close to you and the space they exist in behind. Put an object close by and some sort of opposition behind. Let a visual story develop: this against that. Let the wide field of view show more than we're used to seeing (a repeated pattern, an overwhelming amount of something, a vast space) and give us a close element to make that pattern / space / aggregation seem even vaster.

Don't think of your widest lens as a way to "get everyone in the picture." Think of it as a way to depict depth.

One last note: play with what happens when you tilt the lens down. If you study some of the Garry Winogrand street photographs you'll find that he often used the strategy of getting right up to a person, using a wide focal length, and tilting the lens down a little. That puts the viewer right into the photographic subject's space -- a feeling quite different than that provided by the "normal" lens of Henri Cartier-Bresson's street photos.

Tuesday Tele Tip

Most DSLR cameras are sold with a "kit" lens included. That's usually a zoom lens, almost always with a focal length of 18-55mm or 18-70mm. That can be a useful lens, but often our first impulse in how to put it to work results in disaster. Here's what I mean:

I ask one student to photograph another. Almost every single time, the student will stand up, point the camera at the other student and -- without thinking -- zoom out. That leaves them a few feet away from their subject using a focal length of 18mm. The resulting portrait isn't great.

Here's the thing: an 18mm focal length provides an "expanded" space. To see this, stand in a corner of a room and look with your eyes. Now look through your camera with the 18mm focal length and look at the space: you'll get the impression of a much deeper space. Zoom to a longer focal length and you'll feel as if the space is more compressed.

That "expanded" space is not flattering to the human face, generally: there can be an impression of a larger nose and larger chin, for example. The "compression" a longer focal length provides tends to create a more flattering image. Take a look at the next magazine rack you walk past: most of the faces you'll see there tend to be photographically compressed.

Try a further experiment: using the 18mm focal length, frame a person from just above their head to just about the second button on their shirt. Take the shot. Now, move yourself backward, change your focal length to 55mm (or 70mm) and get that same "two-button closeup" framing. Take the shot.

Compare the two and you'll see: focal length can have a transformative effect on a face. The same person may look quite different in these two shots. Usually, the longer focal length is perceived as making a significantly more flattering portrait.

Also, notice that most likely you'll now be throwing the background out of focus when using this longer focal length, depending on the distance between you, the subject and the background.

So consider forcing yourself to automatically zoom to telephoto when you decide to take a picture of a person. That 55mm or 70mm length can work just fine -- but you have to decide that's what will work best and, as always, force yourself to take control of the photograph you are making.

Recent Good News

Two nice news briefs:

First, Mrs. New York Portraits passed her orals, meaning she's one step closer to her Ph.D. in Art History, specializing in the history of Photography. No more exams, no more classes, and a chance to now focus on her dissertation. And the stacks of books have (mostly) been moved out of way.

Second, I found out today that my short doc To Get to the Other Side will be screening at the ASU Art Museum Fourteenth Annual Short Film and Video Festival in April.

So a good start to March, overall.

Manual Mode Monday

This week I'm posting just a few hints for photographers. There's a tendency to focus on the complicated elements of the field and to forget the basics, so here are some reminders / tips for using a digital camera. These are all topics covered in my "Seriously Fun Photography" course at Hunter Continuing Education.

Using Manual Mode with a DSLR

One topic many photographers find confusing is how to work in manual mode on a digital SLR camera. Let's demystify it:

1. Turn the big knob on top of the camera to M.

2. Point the camera at your subject and press the shutter halfway down. You'll see in your viewfinder if the camera thinks you are underexposing or overexposing -- there's a little indicator that will let you know. (Your camera may have a little triangle, or a light or another indicator that tells you if it thinks you are over or under on your exposure.)

3. Your camera will either have two wheels -- one in front for your index finger and one on the back for your thumb -- or just a single wheel.

3a. If you have two wheels, turn one of them and notice if it is changing your shutter speed or aperture. Then turn the other. Now you know the two elements you are controlling in manual mode (you've already set your ISO setting).

3b. If you have one wheel on your camera, turn it and see if you are adjusting shutter speed or aperture. On most cameras, you then press and hold the "+/-" button (Canon) or the Exposure Compensation button "AE-L" (Nikon) and that will allow the wheel to adjust the other element. In other words, if you turn the wheel and it changes shutter speed, press the "+/-" button (Canon) or the Exposure Compensation button "AE-L" (Nikon) and now the wheel will adjust your aperture setting.

4. Adjust aperture or shutter speed until your camera's indicator is in the middle (or at zero).

5. Take the shot.

6. Then look on your viewscreen, and see if you've got it right.

Friday: Self Portrait with Bicycle Wheel

Above: last Friday at MoMa.

Thursday Theory

Picasso thought: "You'll feel a mix of lust and shame standing in front of this painting. You'll be attracted and repelled. It will disorient you, both spatially and morally."

Nah. People just take pictures of it as if it were a bowl of fruit.

Wednesday Whirls

What has happened in museums? No one is looking at the art. They're all taking terrible pictures of the art.

I do not understand. You can buy the museum's catalog, with good pictures in it. Maybe ... while you are there, standing between me and the painting, you could ... look at the painting?

Tuesday Title Test

Ah. Black on black. It's an abstract painting by Ad Reinhardt, but what's the title? C'mon, you ... know ... this ... one. Look closely, you'll figure it out.

Post answers in the comments.

Malevich Monday

Ah. White on White. C'mon, you know this one. Post the correct title and year in the comments.

Sam Francis Sunday

Above: Friday Night at MoMA.

CL A.S.S. Y

Despite the bad weather we've had the last few days, I managed to make it over to Park Avenue and teach -- and now the first "Seriously Fun Photography" for 2010 class is ... ahem ... behind me.

That's good, as I continue to use a dumb acronym to force students to remember the three elements we need to master to understand and control exposure.

A. S. S.

That's right: we need to work with three related elements: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Sensitivity.

Aperture:
The f/stops to memorize are f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22. If you forget these, make two columns, and at the top of the left one write 1.4 and at the top of the right one write 2.0. Now double each number as you go down the column (rounding off when needed). Changing one stop lets in twice as much light (or half as much, depending on which direction you go. f/2 lets in a lot of light, f/22 lets in very little light. So if you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too dark, you would switch to f/5.6. If you took a picture using f/8 and it seemed a little too bright, you'd switch to f/11.

Shutter Speed:
The common shutter speeds are:

1/1000th of a second
1/500th
1/250th
1/125th
1/60th
1/30th
1/15th
1/8th
1/4th
1/2
1 second.

-- As a rule of thumb, if you are moving and you're subject is moving, you'll want to be shooting at 1/1000th of a second to get a sharp picture.

-- If you are still but the subject is moving along, it would be good to be at 1/250th or faster.

-- If you and the subject are both relatively still, you can probably handhold the camera as slow as 1/60th, but slower than that and you'll get a soft picture because of camera shake caused by pressing the shutter.

-- At speeds that are slower, you'll need a tripod to steady the camera, and probably want to trigger it using the self-timer or a release.

-- Many decent cameras have higher shutter speeds, and these are very useful for action or sports.

Notice that the relationship of these shutter speed settings is also doubling (or halving) the amount of light that hits your sensor.

Sensitivity:
This is the ISO "speed" of a digital sensor or of film. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 are available on many cameras (but not all), and you should take some test shots with yours to find out if the higher ISO settings are usable or not. Figure out the fastest ISO speed you find produces acceptable shots on your camera -- you'll need to switch to it sooner or later. Notice that each ISO speed is twice as sensitive (or half as sensitive) as the next.

At this point, we experimented with finding a good exposure for the lighting in our classroom. It turned out to be: f/2.8 and 1/125th of a second at ISO 1600.

Then we decided to start applying our general knowledge about the relationship between apertures and depth of field. While we start to get the idea when we say "f/2 -- shallow depth of field and f/22 - deep depth of field" actually trying this out in with some real world shots is always a good experiment.

So we set up an experiment: we set our aperture at f/1.4 and and focused on the eyes of a person sitting close to us. Upon reviewing the photo, we found that the that the person sitting further behind was out of focus. So, to see how depth of field changes, we ran through the whole series of aperture settings available finding the person in the background more in focus as we changed our aperture -- f/2 to f/2.8 to f/4 to f/5.6 to f/8 to f/11 to f/16 to f/22.

Since we were in manual mode, we had to change the shutter speed to keep our exposure the same while we ran through these apertures.

But then we realized changing manual settings can be slow -- so we explored using "Shutter Priority" and "Aperture Priority" as a quicker way to choose the factor that is most important to us, and let the computer choose the other setting.

We learned that a faster way to try this experiment was to switch to Aperture Priority mode -- then, we would pick the aperture and the camera would select the shutter speed -- so when we changed aperture, the camera would change the shutter speed and we were able to keep the same exposure.

We finished our class with an experiment in learning to see the environment around us -- finding assigned alphabet letters in our seemingly boring classroom -- and then with a game of photographic "telephone" -- about learning to communicate complex ideas through visual images.

Our homework: shoot a manual exposure, getting the best exposure you can and then checking this by looking at the image's histogram.

Then: try a series of shutter speeds with a moving object -- such as a spinning umbrella, a bouncing basket ball, or a hula hoop.

Next week we'll begin to look at composition, framing, and related issues.

Above: an iPhone snapshot from Tuesday. In Manhattan, it's important to be able to coordinate animal prints in any weather.

EgoFest Followup

Well, EgoFest was fun to follow from afar, and it seems like it must have been a blast to be there. Great to see a festival that is so focused on doing things right for the filmmakers and the audience.

I made a post linking all of the films screening at EgoFest -- or at least, all I could find -- to their IMDB.com pages. I did this for two reasons:

1. If you were there, you can give the filmmakers a rating. They really really want you to.

2. If you were not there, a good number of the films are viewable online, linked from the IMDB page -- so you can watch either the full film or a trailer and get a sense of what screened. And then give a rating.

So, go to it.

World Freaking Premiere

My short documentary To Get to the Other Side is screening at EgoFest Film Festival today.

If you are there, enjoy the film (and the full day of programming -- over 40 shorts are screening). If you get a chance, sign in to imdb.com and give my short film an honest rating.

If you are not there, but want to follow the day's events, you can follow 18 of the filmmakers on this Twitter list of EgoFest Filmmakers. (Or you can follow the hashtag #EgoFest or festival organizer Phil Holbrook.)

They say the question-and-answer sessions and the awards ceremony will be streaming, so be ready to watch live.

You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest updates.

Photo Class Postponed to Feb 25th

My Seriously Fun Photography class has had its start day postponed one week. That means you can still enroll if you like. (More details soon, or you can look at previous posts on this blog.)

Above: an iPhone snapshot from today at Bronx Community College.

Photography in the News, Please Do Not Shake It Edition

Are there any horribly inappropriate uses of instant photo technology in the news today?

I'm glad you asked. Of course there are.

Mortuary Techs Caught Head-Handed

"Mortuary technicians have been caught playing with the dead—and they even documented their deeds on Polaroid. According to the NY Post, the photos that have been released—allegedly by someone who was trying to blackmail the employees—were taken around 2004."

Photography in the News, Shake It Edition

Is there any news from the world of photography involving a world-class collection of photographs being sold off piece-by-piece rather than going to a museum? Unfortunately, there is, so now's your chance to purchase one of the 1,200 items up for auction...

Sotheby's to Sell Off Polaroid Collection

"The bankrupt Polaroid company will be selling off the highlights of its photography collection. Sotheby's has scheduled the auction for June 21st and 22nd, following a six-day-long display filling the entirety of Sotheby's headquarters."

In NYC? Take my Photo Course at Hunter CE

Photography sure can be fun. If only there were some sort of class about that, taught locally starting next Thursday.

SERIOUSLY FUN PHOTOGRAPHY / SERFUN
Build on the basics and master the skills and ideas advanced photographers use in a fun, low-pressure class. Open to anyone able to shoot a photo and import it into a computer (and welcoming advanced students as well), in this class we'll use the digital camera as a fast way to learn the essentials of photography. We'll learn-by-doing, exploring professional techniques while creating a portfolio project (on any topic of your choice) to show your advanced skills. If you've always been interested in photography, but have put off becoming great at it, this is your chance.

Course/Section: SERFUN/1 6 Session(s) 12 Hour(s) Tuition: $250.00
Day(s) Meet: Thursday Date: 02/18/10-03/25/10 Time: 06:00PM-08:00PM
Location: CS, 71 E 94 ST./
Instructor(s): FISHER, TED

You can register online at Continuing Education at Hunter College

Above: an iPhone snapshot taken today.

Yesterday ... and Today

What a difference 24 hours can make. Above: iPhone snapshots: yesterday at Bronx Community College and today in the Upper East Side.

Blind Faith Screening, Egofest Schedule Posted

Over on my other blog I've linked to two February screenings: Blind Faith: A Film About Seeing at Picture This Film Festival and the World Freaking Premiere of To Get to the Other Side at EgoFest Short Video Film Festival.

EgoFest has now posted a schedule of the films with my short documentary in Block 3. I really really wish I could go to both of these events.