puck images

Agression evolves

Dumitru — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 14:21:26 +0000

We’re becoming imune to subtlety. Any form of effort is likely to discourage an individual to pursue anything that is not strictly related to his daily routine. Well, of course there are exceptions to this.
Last autumn I saw the World Press Photo exhibit in Montreal.

Copyright Jodi Bieber, 2011, World Press Photo of the Year

Looking at the photo of the year I couldn’t help remembering Paul Strand’s Blind woman.

To me both images are accusatory both of them say “look at me”.

We live in such a different age now.

RAW, JPEG and Pizza

Dumitru — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:45:42 +0000

Some time ago I was at Nikon Service centre in Montreal, waiting to fix my old FE2 film camera.
In the waiting hall there were various prints, promoting Nikon cameras.
Another guy was waiting his turn, holding his Nikon D300.
Having nothing else to do, we were both looking at the images on the wall, when all of a sudden the guy asked me:
“Hey, do you think this image is a RAW or a JPEG?”
To be clear, we were looking at a print. The guy was serious.
‘I can’t really tell”, I said.
“Oh, I can”, he replied. “This is a raw image”.
I asked him what he was doing for a living, turns out he was a wedding photographer.

There’s this myth that somehow RAW is so much “better” than JPEG. And seemingly the myth is now out of the software lab and into the wild, affecting even the pictures that hang on walls.
And apparently many photographers shoot RAW thinking that it’s required in order to obtain better pictures.

What does any of this have to do with pizza?

Well, I live in Montreal, where there’s a very strong Italian community. Lots of Italian restaurants, some of them fantastic. However, for some of my Italian friends, none of the pizza places in Montreal are good enough, and they prefer making their own pizza. I’m not even discussing pasta, that’s sacred.

So, while for me a Margherita pizza looks like this:

(image copyright Romulo Yanes)

for them it will look something like this:

If you’re not happy with what your camera produces as JPEG files, and you think you can do a better job, then by all means, shoot RAW. But one has to understand that a RAW image is pretty much like the RAW ingredients of a pizza. You can’t just start eating the RAW ingredients for a pizza, they will not taste great. RAW images are flat, they lack contrast, the colour tone is boring and they generally require a lot of effort to produce the required result. Pretty much like cooking.

So please don’t just buy in the RAW hype and give your JPEGs a chance, you’ll find that they’re more than enough for most of the day to day images of your family and outings.
Not to mention cats pictures, JPEGs are great for cats

Light from Within – the Portraits of Morfi Jiménez Mercado

Dumitru — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:18:19 +0000

While writing my post about HDR portraits I remember seeing a while ago the work of a fantastic photographer from Peru, Morfi Jiménez Mercado.

I remember getting lost in the story the characters were telling, and the thing that I was appreciating the most was the humanity that transcended his images.
Technically, he shoots in black and white, then applies colour in the digital darkroom. His use of light is exceptional and it won him the Hasselblad Masters award in 2008.
But the real quality of his images comes from the obvious connection he has with his subjects.

A Post About Baudelaire, His Mother, And HDR Portraits

Dumitru — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:36:34 +0000

I am a firm believer that photography does not have to present reality (whatever that is), but rather to convey a feeling, an emotion, to allow the viewer to be taken away by a story or by a character.

In december 1865, Charles Baudelaire was writing to his mother:

Je voudrais avoir ton portrait. C’est une idée qui s’est emparée de moi. Il y a un excellent photographe au Havre. Mais je crains bien que cela ne soit pas possible maintenant. Il faudrait que je fusse présent. Tu ne t’y connais pas, et tous les photographes, même excellents, ont des manies ridicules; ils prennent pour une bonne image une image où toutes les verrues, toutes les rides, tous les défauts, toutes les trivialités du visage sont rendus très visibles, très exagérés; plus l’image est dure, plus ils sont contents.

C. Baudelaire was worried about the fact that photographers will exaggerate on purpose the wrinkles on someone’s face in 1865? Boy, was he right.
Now with HDR photography we can take this to a whole new level. And not only we can, but we most surely do.
Here’s a screenshot from google images of several randomly selected hdr portraits:

Most images I see today, especially on social media, are HDR portraits. People with incredibly blue or green eyes, crazy skin tones and huge contrast applied all over.

I think it all relates to the media, and the constantly decreasing attention-span people have on the internet. Last time I looked into this subject, the “focus period” most people had while browsing on the net was between 1.5 and 2 seconds.
So clearly an HDR portrait brings the necessary “shock value” to make someone stop and say “wow, what a brilliant portrait!”

However, amazing as they are (and I’m not talking about poorly made HDR portraits, but of the ones made my masters of the medium, such as Andrzej Dragan), in most cases they lack… humanity.
The value of the character itself, its story, its background, is replaced by the value of its body, its face. People become beautifully defined corpses.
Yet, it makes it easier on the viewer to have a quick reaction, without the introspection and analysis required when looking at a portrait by, say,Mary Ellen Mark, which will have equal, if not more “shock value”:

With less and less time allowed for analysis, with haste being mistaken for efficiency, I’m wondering where all this is going…

A Superb Recording – Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu

Dumitru — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:12:46 +0000

To me, all art forms are similar, they are about the emotional response they trigger in an audience. It’s about the trip they make you take. It’s about letting go, losing the self and allowing a different dimension to take over.

Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor in the brilliant interpretation of Perahia and Lupu, from 1985.

It’s Only Art…

Dumitru — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:05:23 +0000

I love this image by Gary Campbell.

And this is one of many, hundreds of expressive photographs taken with a 15$ camera… a Holga.

Granted, the price can go up, but you’re still talking something under 50$.

What’s so nice about the Holga cameras is that the very thing that makes them cheap (plastic body, light leaks, distortion, vignetting, etc) also gives the images the unique look and sometimes there are unexpected and surprising results. It adds an element of fun to image making process. After all, it’s just art.

Yann Gross – Lavina

Dumitru — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:45:27 +0000

I loved these images for the sheer power of the avalanche cutting through the landscape.
There’s something special and raw, untamed in these images.
Photographer’s website is here.

Paolo Ventura

Dumitru — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:18:09 +0000

I’ve seen his work in Aperture and I look forward to seeing one of his exhibitions live.
In “The Automaton”, P. Ventura tells the story of an old man living in the ghetto of Venice during WW2.
He does a beautiful job creating models, environments and then telling a cohesive and pretty complex story photographing them.
Looking at his images, I can’t help myself bringing back the topic of “reality” when it comes to photography. After all, who’s to say that this story is not true?

His website is here.

Occupied by Wall Street

Dumitru — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:35:02 +0000

In the previous post I laid out the principle I was taught a while ago: when the photograph is about something else than colour, shoot black and white.
I kept thinking about iconic images in black and white and one of the strongest I know of is this image made by Paul Strand showing people going to work on Wall Street.
This is BW photography at its best, focusing on lines, shapes, and most importantly, message.

This image is Orwell’s 1984 and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis combined. Strand’s Wall Street, with people like ants in opposition to the impersonal mega structure became an icon of the 20th century.

Wild Colt

Dumitru — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:50:12 +0000

In his 50 years retrospective book, Bill Allard talks about how this image changed his perception on colour photography.
The image of a wild horse on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, where all we actually see is the beautiful golden colour, and the horse’s silhouette.
I think that this photograph shows beautifully how powerful colour can be in a photography, when used appropriately.
Some years ago, a photography teacher laid out the basic principles: if the photograph is about the colours, then shoot in colour. If the photography is about something else, shoot black and white.

Sable island is one of the few places where horses still roam free.
It’s on my list of “go-to” places, I just need to find a good boat…