I've long described the tyranny of Aspect Ratio

And now, two well known Youtubers have made interesting videos on the topic.

Tony Northrup gets dangerous with his scissors

And Craig shows some magnificent crops

By the way, my Olympus cameras tend to offer 4:3 (no crop), 3:2, 16:9, 1:1

My Sony A7 only offers 3:2 (no crop) and 16:9 even though it is mirrorless and the LCD / EVF could easily cope with showing different crops

Thoughts and Musings 1: Jesse Marlow’s approach

Thanks to +michaels Camera, Video & Digital  who ran their Melbourne Photo Show event, we got to see and hear Jesse Marlow speak on his work. He is/was a photographer on the staff of Melbourne newspaper and has focussed on Street Photography for his own body of work.. His talk was entertaining and he shared some aspects of his approach.

1. He does touch up his photos but isn’t into heavy “working” of his images in computer editing

Coming from a newspaper legacy, he does not remove objects from the scene and stuff like that . If you look at his images, they are “just right”, tonally and exposure wise and do not appear to be heavily tweaked. One very young audience member asked why his images  appeared nice and bright, how/did he use Adobe Lightroom to carry this out.

Ears in the audience must have pricked up. I think there are several approaches:

• Eschew any post processing and believe in the Holy Grail truth that “it is be straight out of the camera, untouched” or
• Accept what was there or coax the subject and light to a good position primarily. Do a slight touch up of exposure, tones, to taste. or
• Apply a signature filter / preset / recipe that colour grades and tones the result image so that it is inescapably, obviously you, or
• Apply every technique known to mankind, even multiple blended exposures, sharpening and noise reduction recipes, HDR, focus stacking, time lapse, compositing to effect what the creator visualises of the image.

It is often the case that a practitioner of one approach is becomes so obsessed in one approach that the other approaches are somehow inferior, often times, disparagingly so.

My opinion? Each approach is more appropriate to a particular genre – Street Photography shots, from the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Magnum cohort, are not heavily tweaked after the shot. The emphasis is on the moment and the capture – the situation, the composition, the juxtaposition of elements. If you enhance the look too much, you lose that sense of impromptu and immediacy and you leave the genre. How much is too much? Ah, that’s the big question.

2. Jesse doesn’t “go out” to take photos.

He carries his camera with him as part of this urban, city activities and his shots are made from observation, spotting and then patiently waiting for that moment where the subject and drama come together to make the scene.  Again, from his newspaper work and background, I would suppose “going out” is his day to day income activities on behalf of the employer. So for his own body of work, it’s a different activity.

My opinion? It’s been popular to go out alone or with a group of friends on photo walks and encounters – because many of us don’t get out much, so it’s fun to walk with a camera and encounter sights. But don’t let daily happens go by, without a photo device near at hand. It doesn’t have to be a serious camera, it could be a phone camera. (More on that, another day)

Points to reflect on.

Why is it that you take photos? Or what’s your take on Photography

In camera forums, you encounter all kinds of people who take photos. Some don’t think of themselves as “photographers” or artists. They perceive themselves as holiday snappers. At the other extreme, some people have serious egos – they have years of income photography or they have read every technical article on the internet or they have a designed their digital sensors. Maybe they’ve done all three.

I happened to be playing with the Android app by Sony and it came up with one interview question.

So, is any one camera owner or type of camera owner any less than another?

After a long while…

I was having quite a bit of passion for photography and writing about it a while back. Then work and life caught up with me, I’m having less time to devote to this side of my soul. There was a time between 1991 and nearly 2000 when I paused my photography – when the film sat in my camera for a long while before processing, when digital photography had not come down to consumer price levels, when the Internet had not become ubiquitous. Oh and phones needed a wire to convey communications.

It’s different now, I’ve learnt that I feel empty without some photo narrative running along, however infrequent, regardless of whether it is mobile phone-camera or a regular camera. The Google+ social network and Facebook forums feed my need for photo companionship and inspiration. Happens several times a day – way more interaction than those old days.

So, what’s coming in subsequent blog articles? Some musings. Some discoveries and some eureka moments. Some gear talk. And oh, yes, some photos.

Keep an eye out.

Ananda

Around Pudu market with Robin (Part 3)

Continuing our walk around Pudu market, the scenes are interesting and vibrant - people may stop for a while and pose but they're actually going on with their lives and daily chores. It's hard to get these kinds of scenes in the cleaned up western capitals and textureless shopping malls.

Below, we see a fellow intent on peeling onions - no tears, no running water baths, just everyday practical work. There's more plastic bags behind him and the styrofoam like cover in front of him is reflecting soft light onto his face like an expensive reflector or studio softbox. To be non intrusive, you don't want to get in the way of people's lives and you look for any light advantage that is environmental, ambient.

When you walk through the wet markets, the traders hop onto their 75 cc scooters to carry goods and themselves often. No Occupational Health and Safety, often no helmets, just being real. Others around their path watch out for each other and you and yell out warnings if you are unaware that you are in their way..

Crossing the road impromptu can be quite a challenge in Kuala Lumpur, compared to what I hear of Vietnam, it's relatively sedate and not a nail biting experience. 

Newspaper circulation are on a decline in the West, many people consume news off their digital devices. So far, it seems, Malaysians still have a use for newspapers and will use that to fill their time. I see more newspaper readers  in KL than in Melbourne even though Malaysians do love their digital devices.

Note: I've been using On1 Photo Raw 2017 quite a bit in these photos.

Walking around Pudu with Robin (Part 2 - Abstracts)

There comes a time during most walks with a camera, that you're attracted to some collage of colour, texture and shape.

The thing with abstracts is whether you can make them sufficiently abstract to override the viewer's feet-on-the-ground, grasp with real objects. And to not make the photo so hard to interpret that the viewer has to turn their head horizontal whilst the ponder "like this also you want to take photo?"

Two on a sea of red (don't mind the spots)

Yes, I know you can see what this is. I'm entranced by the two colours, juxtaposed

You know when you pile on layer after layer of makeup without removing it, it can only go one way.

Ok, title this "After +ahmad jaa"

Walking around Pudu market with Robin (Part 1)

I come to visit my mum and sis in Kuala Lumpur, yearly, it's a pilgrimage to my loved ones and my roots in Malaysia. One highlight over recent years is that +Robin Wong is kind enough to host me around his favourite Photo Therapy spots, often bringing some gear for me to experience.  This time, it was the 25mm f/1.2 M.Zuiko.

A few words about the lens I used most

25mm is a "normal"  field of view in Micro Four Thirds sensor format. There are other lenses in this genre - I have had and continue to have good times with my 20mm f/1.7 Panasonic Lumix pancake (the mark 1 version) that +Luke Ding sold me, second hand when I first started Micro Four Thirds. The two lenses are worlds apart in practical physicality - the 20mm is a pancake design, therefore quite short and light, less expensive, slowish in autofocus because it moves all lens elements to focus. The 25mm f/1.2 is the latest design, heavily corrected for optical performance, sharp, very fast AF, an obviously shallow depth of field at f/1.2, with the focus  clutch system for quick switch to manual focus. It is expensive, chunky and obvious, with length and  weight such that it would tip the OM-D E-M1 body forwards in balance (front heavy).

In this session, I also used my 7.5mm Samyang fisheye for some shots - it is much less bulky and expensive than the 7-14 M.Zuiko zoom but is manual focus and manual aperture.

About the images

I didn't want to carry out a lens review. I just wanted to enjoy my experience with the lens and with Robin. So these images aren't meant to be objectively delineated or critiqued but a momento of my experience and my time.

Robin, in his Shutter Therapy blog is world famous for several things, getting the max out of Olympus images, his excellent series of street portraits. You just have to be with Robin, shooting with him - he has this confidence in his purpose and his skill, his ready rapport with his subjects - one of several, very memorable masters of the craft. So when I was shooting with my Olympus E-M1 Mark 1 and this fab lens, I was feeling the heat - I had not been interacting with people and working the street for months, I had set the lens to a very shallow depth of field, requiring attention to technique, my eyesight for inspection of shots is not at a high, yada, yada, yada.

This shot above, I was very happy with. (Robin had coaxed me to try this position by the way, I had tried a less magnetic position). The subject had paused his coconut dehusking or cracking for me, and his expression, the thoughts in his eyes and his lips just convey his personality to and for me. 

The shot is SOOC JPEG from the camera, with light tonal adjustments and cropping in Snapseed for Android.

Here's the second portrait that I find magical for me. This guy had been working pretty hard, handling the chickens in this stall at the wet market. It was hot in the sun, the working environment is make shift. The workers wear gum boots because as you wash and cut  up produce, it spills on the ground and you wash the floor with running water.

Again, there is a message in his eyes and his expression is his signature. He's grasping a cheap phone, that plastic bag (yes, I know about the anti-plastic bag movement but this also shows why they have become ubiquitous) may be holding his cooked lunch. That white plastic resin chair isn't a #lonelychair by the looks of it, and the blue plastic drum is quite common to hold produce or water for rinse.

A portrait lens would have allowed me to frame his face but would have cropped out details of his environment. Moving closer to him would have exaggerated his limbs and features - I quite like this composition, distance and focal length.

People go rabid about bokeh and love to show bokeh balls. Yes, then talk turns to the size of your sensor and so on. In retail photography (weddings etc) there is a yen for backgrounds and simulated romance / staged nostalgic moments etc.... After a while, it's just a "feature" that you ask for  / buy with the photographer. I'm a bit over that for the scenes I shoot. I just want natural looking focus fall off, that's not over contrived nor ambiguous (like in a kit lens with limited f/nos).

This lens, with the two portraits done this distance, does not make background abstraction by blur, obvious. There is definite differentiation in focus though, between the different areas - a fair number of my shots were out of focus on the desired subject - I don't practise #extremeChimping, I was using Single Point Auto Focus on S-AF. The Focus and Recompose technique might be hampered by the shallow depth of field.

There's also the notorious Olympus implementation of the body framing/live viewing the shot at f/4 instead of the largest aperture of the lens - I routinely have difficulty with that on my 20mm f/1.7 Panasonic where liveview looks sharp but the actual shot has a different depth of field. I was too busy enjoying my walk this time, to notice. 

This photo above has been processed from raw with On1 Raw Photo 2017 - I noticed that her face was subtly in better light than the rest of the scene but I didn't want local adjustments. This cinematic look freshens and lifts the scene.

Robin reminded me that if the f/1.2 was difficult to achieve in broad daylight with 1/8000th sec mechanical shutter, electronic shutter has a higher ceiling.

Like The Movies (Creating A Cinematic Visual)

I've just come back from watching La La Land - a lot of things to like about the film. The allusions to old films and music interspersed thoughout the movie, the Fred Astaire tap dance segments, updated to a modern feel, the cinematic look. Yes, the cinematic look often enthralls me.

I guess I'm an incurable romantic, whatever my feet-on-the-ground life has been. Another film that dazzles me with colour, tone and visuals is The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Craven's use of colour is so magical.

And my favourite for a long time, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

I guess in stills photography, I continue to have a fascination with colour.

A recent DIYPhotography article set me off thinking that I should have a long duration theme for some shots (maybe a year?) on creating some cinematic or close to cinematic stills myself. I will use the hashtag #justLikeTheMovies - I'd also like to see how other creatives make it happen, so come play with me,  please show me cinematic stuff and tag it with that tag. I will create a Google Plus page as a rallying point for G+ users where I spend a lot of my time.

I'm an Olympus camera user. For certain recent models of these cameras, you can simulate colour tints in the field - you can produce raw and jpeg and take the raw to produce more sophisticated processing or just use the jpeg SOOC as is.

There is also the older Art Filters approach