Kyoto

Sometimes an image works in black and white only. A very mundane scene, saved only from the virtual bin by curious experimentation, this image works for me on a very “tones and textures” level in mono.

EM5 45mm

Working Religiion

Religion in Japan is very inclusive, very everyday. It is a working religion, a part of every day life and it is often a complicated mix of tradition and belief.

It can also be beautiful in a very real way.

Architectural Contradictions

Kyoto, more than an other city I have been to in Japan, has a bewildering variety of architectural styles. Many can be seen in the space of only a few city blocks.

The main shopping strip has everything from carved detail the Italians would be proud of, rust and run-down to all of the last 6 decades covered.

But it’s when you get into the backstreets that the really cool (weird!) stuff appears.

All this sits surprisingly comfortably with several hundred years of traditional building.

Over Processing or Over Thinking?

The image below is over processed.

That is according to me, as their is no reliable or logical measure for this. Each to their own.

The reason I feel it is over processed, is because I know how much effort I put into it’s processing. Which lines I crossed.

Taken with the “Hard” sharp EM5 mk1 sensor and the sublimely sharp 75mm at f5.6 (as near technical perfection as I have at hand), the temptation was to follow the image’s potential and push the envelope.

Showing off?

I guess there is always an element of that when processing work for others, otherwise we would not bother at all.

Technically perfect at A2.

There is nothing overtly fake about the image. Nothing added or removed, nothing modified in the true “Photo Manipulation” sense. The sharpening, mostly applied by brush tool in Lightroom is supplemented by added clarity and contrast, highlight recovery and selective colour saturation.

Nothing was pushed to the maximum settings available, not even close. Even the dreaded M43 noise is basically invisible at large print sizes and there are no sharpening artefacts. I just felt I went back to the sharpening “well” once too often.

These have always been the processing tricks photographers have used to enhance the perception of perfection in their images, but at what point is there more make-up than face?.

Personally, guiltily, I like the effect, but equally I felt compelled to come clean and share my unsettled feelings of “tricking” you, the viewer.

Blue and Yellow

Kyoto Japan.

Bull Ant Drifting

A technique we tried at Hollybank called “drifting” Macro.

Pen F 12-100 f4

Morning at Hollybank Reserve

About 10 minutes out of Launceston is an old tennis racket factory, tree reserve, called Hollybank. The factory is long gone, but the regimented trees have been “parkified”, making it a beautiful and soothing place to be.

I have been going there for most of my life, sometimes regularly, such as over the last few years for photography, but always at least once a year or so for picnics etc.

Plenty of regular landscape compositions (if the light is kind). The lack of autumn colour surprised me, as Hollybank often goes off before town, being a little cooler, but not this year.

We chose it today as for our latest photo-group get together for landscape shooters, looking at tele lenses, wide lenses for low near-far techniques and for macro. It can be a tough place to get the perfect shot. The light can be harsh, fickle even, but with a little experimentation, there is lots of potential.

All images 12-100 pro and Pen F.

Haiku #67 Imperial Palace

The Things We Have In Common

Mis identified as a Western Australian tree image, this one was a detail shot from a temple in Japan.

EM5 25mm

More Semi Macro or "Drifting".

All of the above were taken in 5 minutes and within 3-4 feet of each other. The great thing about (semi) macro photography is how much there is easily at hand. Technique is easy. Set the camera to manual focus (usually the closest focussing distance), a wide aperture and “drift” in to focus, shooting as you find something with the right balance of sharpness and blur.

The camera was the Em1, with the 12-40 wide open. This lens has sweeter Bokeh than the 12-100, but is less powerful, giving me 1:3 at half the working distance. With this lens the Bokeh tends to become a part of the image rather than just lost detail.

All of the images are jpeg’s with minimal processing simply because the RAW files I took at the same time, did not offer me anything more than the jpegs except more processing needs. The depth of colour comes from under exposing most of the files by -1 to -1.5 stops, bringing out the rich colour in the highlights at the cost of the shadow areas (expanded dynamic range is often cited as the “cure” for this, but creatively, I like the negative space).

Grrrr. Apple's Sloppy Bokeh Ad

A little grumpy rant here.

If you are a multi billion dollar company, pushing a new (and exciting) bit of photo hardware, then I feel it is incumbent on you to get your basic, basic, basic facts straight.

“Bokeh” is pronounced “Bow” as in bone - “Keh” as in kettle, not “Bokker” as your current Iphone add implies and, while we are on it, it is a term used for the quality of all of the semi or fully out of focus areas of an image not as a term to describe the quantity of blur is applied.

Apparently the phone companies have more people in camera R & D than the camera companies, so you think that someone in this vast network could have taken a tiny peak at the origins of a word before accepting the common “slang” version of it. It is actually a quite recent Anglicising (An American translation to boot, like the ad) of a Japanese language term (Boke Aji), so double bad Apple for not finding either form.

I feel sorry for the women in the ad, they are just doing what they are told, but are now the faces of this stuff-up.

Oh and they use it like a verb also. Bad, bad, bad.

So Apple or Orange or who ever you are, how about you try a little harder.

P.S. I wonder if they stuffed up the Japanese ad?!

Japan Looming

Not long now.

The draw of Japan for my wife and I after so many trips, is the fine balance of excitement of exploring the exotic and a deep feeling of comfort. never somewhere we could tire of, or even feel we fully understand, Japan offers us a sense of familiarity mixed with habitual perfectionism, cleanliness, consideration and generosity.