Print Offer: Jim Bouton by Ancil Nance

<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/303865/boutonsharpenedsmall.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/320/314206/boutonsharpenedsmall.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" /></a>Here's an example of how a picture can be grainy, selectively unsharp, and unconventionally composed, and yet still be...well, <span style="font-style: italic;">perfect</span>. This great shot of former Major League pitcher and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBall-Four-Jim-Bouton%2Fdp%2F0020306652%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1167321765%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325" style="font-style: italic;">Ball Four</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; font-style: italic;" width="1" /> author Jim Bouton by photographer Ancil Nance was first featured on T.O.P. <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/10/on-rain-delays.html">in a posting last October</a>. Ancil has kindly cooperated with me to help make a T.O.P. fine print available.<br /><br />It was August 5th, 1977, at Multnomah Stadium (now PGE Park) in Portland, Oregon. Bouton, who'd retired from the Major Leagues in 1970, the same year his famous book was published, was making a comeback pitching for Bing Russell's Minor League Portland Mavericks (you've probably heard of Bing's son Kurt, also once a Maverick but now famous as an actor). Nance was on assignment for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Oregon Times</span>, charged with getting a shot of Bouton's famous "hat trick" that he used to distract batters. (Nance <a href="http://www.ancilnance.com/bouton/">got that shot too</a>.) "I was someplace behind the backstop trying to shoot over and through the catcher and ump," he says.<br /><br />Formally, the odd shape the pitcher's body makes simultaneously emphasizes athletic effort and graceful balance. The back wall, brought close by the telephoto, seems almost like a dark cloud (I removed a distraction from the left edge), and the blank space at the top suggests the position his upper body occupied just moments before. His hat nearly touching the center of the edge of the frame provides the composition with dynamism and directionality. The white accents are what give the print its tonal vividness. Although the picture has plenty of selective motion blur, you can easily recognize that it's Jim Bouton.<br /><br />Our print is made from a large new scan provided by the photographer. The image is 5 x 7.5 inches, printed with carbon pigment inks on a larger sheet of Moab Entrada Natural. Apropos our discussions in the "On Printmaking" post, in this case the photographer was sent a proof for approval and shares the proceeds. A small number of signed prints are available for a higher price. Unsigned prints will be shipped this coming week; signed prints will require a delay of up to several weeks. Apart from the photographer's signature, the signed and unsigned prints are identical.<br /><br />Worldwide shipping is included in the price—Priority Mail within the U.S., Airmail elsewhere in the world.<br /><br />This is a lovely little print, and I'll say again what I said last October: have you ever seen a better picture of a pitcher? Here's my own answer: there may be some others as good, but none better. It's going up on my wall.<br /><br />Many thanks to Ancil Nance for agreeing to make this offer possible.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/270931/boutonsharpenedsmallwborder.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/200/793954/boutonsharpenedsmallwborder.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">UNSIGNED</span>, $75<br /><form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"><br /><input src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but22.gif" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!" type="image" border="0"><br /><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /><input name="add" value="1" type="hidden"><input name="cmd" value="_cart" type="hidden"><input name="business" value="mcjohnston@mac.com" type="hidden"><input name="item_name" value="Jim Bouton by Ancil Nance UNSIGNED" type="hidden"><input name="amount" value="75.00" type="hidden"><input name="no_shipping" value="2" type="hidden"><input name="no_note" value="1" type="hidden"><input name="currency_code" value="USD" type="hidden"><input name="lc" value="US" type="hidden"><input name="bn" value="PP-ShopCartBF" type="hidden"></form><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">SIGNED</span>, $120<br /><form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"><br /><input src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but22.gif" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!" type="image" border="0"><br /><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /><input name="add" value="1" type="hidden"><input name="cmd" value="_cart" type="hidden"><input name="business" value="mcjohnston@mac.com" type="hidden"><input name="item_name" value="Jim Bouton by Ancil Nance SIGNED" type="hidden"><input name="amount" value="120.00" type="hidden"><input name="no_shipping" value="2" type="hidden"><input name="no_note" value="1" type="hidden"><input name="currency_code" value="USD" type="hidden"><input name="lc" value="US" type="hidden"><input name="bn" value="PP-ShopCartBF" type="hidden"></form><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON</span><br /><br />P.S. If you happen to be a baseball fan and know of any baseball sites or forums, I'd be grateful if you'd mention this offer and/or provide a link. I'm sure there are baseball fans out there who don't normally collect photographs who might want to know about this. Thanks!

Print Offer: Jim Bouton by Ancil Nance

Here's an example of how a picture can be grainy, selectively unsharp, and unconventionally composed, and yet still be...well, perfect ....

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The Year in Photography

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">T.O.P. Picture Book of the Year 2006</span></span><br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3865212778/theonlinephot-20" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/320/531052/Picture%205.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><br />Winner</span><br />"The" book of 2006 may not be the easiest or the prettiest book of the year. Published by Steidl, photographer Robert Polidori's massive, detailed documentary investigation of the effects of wind, floods, and bureaucratic foul-up on America's most distinctively beautiful city is meticulous, strangely attractive, and fascinating page after page.<br /><br />Robert Polidori was not the only photographer to make outstanding pictures in Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina. (And I have not seen this mentioned elsewhere, but the first photographer I know of to make this kind of extended artistic documentation of the effects of hurricanes was Maryland photographer Jim Sherwood, in the 1980s; I wrote about Sherwood's work for the old <span style="font-style: italic;">Camera & Darkroom</span> magazine. His work constituted an investigation, not just the news documentation typical of earlier eras, and his precedence in this subject-matter area deserves acknowledgement.)<br /><br />One of the great problems of Katrina is the formidable disjunct between our images on television and the devastation people report seeing in person. Robert Polidori has created a partial antidote to the disjunct, in pictures of "terrible beauty" that people will still be looking at with sober fascination a century from now.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRobert-Polidori-After-Flood%2Fdp%2F3865212778%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1167348675%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325">Buy <span style="font-style: italic;">After the Flood</span></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; font-style: italic;" width="1" /><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Runners-Up</span><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3865212743/theonlinephot-20" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/200/345147/historyimages.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSze-Tsung-Leong-History-Images%2Fdp%2F3865212743%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1167068071%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"><span style="font-style: italic;">History Images</span> by Sze Tsung Leong</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> Photographers have always found significant motivation in recording things that are becoming rare because of change. Our world is changing rapidly now, thanks to burgeoning human population, international shipping and communication, and the globalized economy. Leong has recorded the razing of traditional buildings and neighborhoods in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Nanjing, Pingyao and Xiamen to make way for massive new construction, and his sober views of these nearly fantastical scenes is thought-provoking, distressing, fraught with awe.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3865212336/theonlinephot-20" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/200/142513/niagara.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNiagara-Alec-Soth%2Fdp%2F3865212336%2Fsr%3D11-1%2Fqid%3D1167337597&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"><span style="font-style: italic;">Niagara</span> by Alec Soth</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> Photography always has room for the poetic, and Alec Soth's wry, beautiful little personal investigation into some of the oddities of turning a natural wonder into a honeymoon destination; along the way he creates a visual meditation on romance that is touching, implies the sordid, and acknowledges both wonder and our decidedly Earthbound nature. The effect is surprisingly wistful. It may, in fact, be a richer experience than an actual visit....<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0714846376/theonlinephot-20" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/200/629639/lookingeast.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSteve-McCurry-Looking-East-Portraits%2Fdp%2F0714846376%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1167339095%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"><span style="font-style: italic;">Looking East</span> by Steve McCurry</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> These are not new portraits, mostly. They've been seen and celebrated in numerous outlets and venues over recent years, from the cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">National Geographic</span> to art galleries. But this book may be the best way to own and enjoy a selection of them for yourself. The large size works beautifully and the reproductions seem almost as rich and deep as oil paintings. This is one of those books that's more than the sum of its parts, a nice object to own and a great way to enjoy this outstanding work.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON</span>

The Year in Photography

T.O.P. Picture Book of the Year 2006 Winner "The" book of 2006 may not be the easiest or the prettiest book of the year. Published...

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Anti-Shake Pt. II, or, Shake Reduction as Virtual Tripod for Nature Work

By <span style="font-weight: bold;">Carl Weese</span><br /><br />Most references to anti-shake technology talk about using long lenses at shutter speeds normally useful only with normal lenses, or about working in very low light conditions for reportorial-style shooting with short or normal lenses wide open at shutter speeds that were not possible to hand-hold in the past. The rule of thumb with 35mm cameras is that you can, with practice, expect a good success rate at about the reciprocal of the focal length, i.e., 1/60th second with a normal 50mm lens, 1/30th with a 35mm or a 28mm, 1/250th with a 180mm. For a DSLR with a 1.5 factor relative to 35mm you'd up those rule of thumb speeds by the same 1.5 so a 40mm/60mm-equivalent should need 1/60th sec.<br /><br />I've been thinking about another potential use. The light in a forest during a soft rain can be magical, though in winter it can be pretty uncomfortable to work with. I've done a lot of large format pictures in this light, but it's arduous work with many traps to ruin pictures, ranging from tripod legs sinking into soft ground to large pieces of film buckling during long exposures because they've absorbed too much humidity. Working in wet conditions with a small camera on a tripod isn't a whole lot more expedient.<br /><br />When I first got a good DSLR several years ago, which had weather-resistance as a key feature, I went out to shoot rain in the forest, both on tripod and in a freewheeling, walkabout manner. The weatherproofing worked fine, though it was hard to keep water drops off the lens, especially handling the camera on a tripod. With the small sensor and short lenses of digital capture, a few drops that would have no meaningful effect on an 8x10 camera's results show huge soft blobs in the DSLR picture because of the enormous depth of field. But I also found that, despite that relatively deep focus, I didn't like my results with the lenses wide open, which they had to be to work in the dim light handheld. A really shallow plane of focus and wildly out of focus backgrounds—the "selective focus" technique—just isn't what the woods look like to me. Not that I need Group ƒ.64 universal focus, but considerable depth and a fair amount of definition even in the out-of-focus background seems necessary. So when the day after Christmas offered soft and beautiful light with on and off gentle, but chilly, rain, I headed to my favorite nearby forest reservation for an experiment.<br /><br />First, a digression about hand-holding slow shutter speeds, or speeds that are slow in relation to a long lens. Any marksman knows that no matter how steady and accurate your aim may be, if you flinch the release of an arrow or jerk a firearm's trigger instead of squeezing it skillfully, you simply will <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> hit what you aimed at. In fact, a steady aim isn't especially important at all. What counts is being able to have the aim perfect at the exact instant of an equally perfect release. Watching photographers over the years, including plenty of pros, I'm convinced that far more hand-held pictures are ruined by lousy shutter release technique than by shaky hands. Any marksman can also tell you how to get better at this. It's the same way musicians get to Carnegie Hall—practice, Dude, practice! End digression.<br /><br />What I wanted to find out was whether the SR function of the Pentax K10D would let me stop down to apertures that gave the depth of field I wanted and deliver good results at the resulting shutter speeds, which could not reasonably be expected to work without anti-shake technology (I was thinking of, say, 50/50 success instead of one out of ten). This way I could walk around with the camera cradled in my hands, lens pointed down out of the drips and drops, and lift it only to make exposures of interesting subjects. In the woods, I set the K10D to one of its two Aperture Priority functions, set the ISO to Auto with range limited to 100–400, with the aperture for the 21mm/32mm-equivalent lens at ƒ/8, and of course, the Shake Reduction function switched on. The first thing I looked at...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/48533/persistent.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/400/81645/persistent.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Persistent Leaves, Hidden Valley</span><br /></div><br />...came in at 1/8th sec. exposure, and while the background of this close framing is certainly not in focus, I think it works fine whereas with the lens wide open barely a single leaf would be sharp and the background would have turned to mush instead of reading as forest floor. The texture of the leaves is wonderfully detailed in all five exposures I made (this is simply the prettiest), but that won't be terribly apparent in small web repro. So SR passed its first test as a virtual tripod for this sort of shooting. Here is a shot done from considerably greater distance at 1/6th sec....<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/475481/twotrees.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/400/412699/twotrees.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Two Trees and the Shepaug, Hidden Valley</span><br /></div><br />...the bark of the two trees crackles with detail in the original file and the laurel leaves in front are in quite good focus. While the focus is not universal from front to back, I like it much better than I would a sharp zone of a foot or less, which is what it would be with the lens wide open, which is what it would have to be for a rational unassisted shutter speed of 1/30 sec. I did a lot of captures over an hour or so. I shot each idea two or three times. When ƒ/8 pulled the shutter below 1/4 sec. I opened to ƒ/5.6. There are some captures that look soft at 100% view but few that wouldn't look fine (at least for resolution) sized for a small print. The amazing thing is that a large percentage of them look OK even at 100% and so could easily be interpolated up well beyond the native (13-inch wide) resolution of the K10D. If you'd like to see more of these captures, just to think about the sorts of pictures this technique lends itself to—you can't judge resolution from the web-prepared files—pop over to <a href="http://www.workingpictures.blogspot.com">my web log</a> to see a few others in the posting for 12/28/06.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: CARL WEESE</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Part I is <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/12/weese-on-anti-shake_22.html">here</a>.</span>

Anti-Shake Pt. II, or, Shake Reduction as Virtual Tripod for Nature Work

By Carl Weese Most references to anti-shake technology talk about using long lenses at shutter speeds normally useful only with normal lense...

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The Year in Photography

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >T.O.P. Technical Book of the Year 2006</span><br /></div><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321449916/theonlinephot-20" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/400/649255/imagesharpening.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWorld-Image-Sharpening-Adobe-Photoshop%2Fdp%2F0321449916%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1167254080%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325" style="font-style: italic;">Real World Image Sharpening With Adobe Photoshop CS2</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" width="1" /> by Bruce Fraser (Peachpit Press, 304 pages, 2006. $26.39 from Amazon.)<br /><br />The last published book by the late Bruce Fraser, first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Although arguably not as important a book as his pivotal <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FReal-World-Camera-Adobe-Photoshop%2Fdp%2F0321334094%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fqid%3D1167254959%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325" style="font-style: italic;">Real World Camera Raw With Adobe Photoshop CS2</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theonlinephot-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&o=1" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important; font-style: italic;" width="1" />, or his earlier book on color management, <span style="font-style: italic;">Image Sharpening</span> is a generous and exhaustive treatment of this sometimes elusive subject by the guy who developed the award-winning and widely used PhotoKit Sharpener. Meaning, the guy who wrote the book was the guy who wrote the book, if ya follow.<br /><br />I knew this title should win T.O.P.'s Tech Book award when I read a dismissive online review pointing out that you can just go get PhotoKit Sharpener and be done with it, that nobody needs to know this much about sharpening. Well, maybe not—but y'know, enthusiasts are people who want to know a subject from the ground up and from the inside out, and to whom the nuts and bolts of good technique are not necessarily a burden but a challenge, even a pleasure. They want to understand a technique well enough to apply it with freedom and subtlety. (Even if, afterwards, they go get PhotoKit Sharpener.) Our kind of folk—making <span style="font-style: italic;">Image Sharpening</span> our kind of technical book.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Featured Comment</span> by <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Lehet:</span> I've considered myself to be well above average in understanding USM since version 2 of Photoshop, but this book blew my mind. I wish it had been available 10 years ago, or that I read it a year ago.<br /><br />[<span style="font-weight: bold;">Note:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">John Lehet is a skilled photographer and master edition printer whose work has been featured several times on this blog and whose website can be seen <a href="http://www.lehet.com/">here</a>.</span> —Ed.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Featured Comment</span> by <span style="font-weight: bold;">David Mantripp:</span> I think that on balance this is the most illuminating technical book on a digital topic that I have ever read. Bruce Fraser accomplished a level of readability and clarity of prose here which I don't think he reached before—<span style="font-style: italic;">Real Worl Color Management</span> is a little heavy handed, and the ACR book doesn't really add up to the sum of its parts. Technical books probably do not need, in the absolute, to have a sense of narrative or other literary qualities, but <span style="font-style: italic;">Real World Sharpening</span> has these and they really, really help.<br /><br />Just for the record, this isn't just an emotional response to Bruce Fraser's sad passing—I first <a href="http://www.snowhenge.net/pblog/archives/000286.html">wrote about this book</a> on 30th August 2006, before I had any idea that he was unwell.

The Year in Photography

T.O.P. Technical Book of the Year 2006 Real World Image Sharpening With Adobe Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser (Peachpit Press, 304 pages, 200...

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Essence of Atmosphere

by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Adam McAnaney<br /><br /></span>This is just to alert you to an excellent <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> offering: "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20061227_BENGIVENOLENS_FEATURE/blocker.html">Essence of Atmosphere" by Nicole Bengiveno</a>.<br /><br />I don't read other newspapers (or news sites) regularly, so I can't say whether the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> is better or worse at this than other papers, but I do know this much: the quality (or at least the prominence) of the photography at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> has increased tremendously since they went color. I remember being adamantly opposed to the change, fearing it was a populist move that would make the paper look like <span style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span> (no offense to <span style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span>; it does an excellent job of bringing important headline stories to readers in areas of the U.S. without a local paper, and around the world). I quickly ate crow as the move exceeded anything I could have hoped for. But as much as going color provided a dramatic change, the Internet has done far more for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> photographers. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> has done an excellent job of integrating multimedia into its website. Without the cost of printing additional color pages, the website provides us with access to more and better pictures. In addition, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> has freed photographers from the constraints of articles, allowing them to occassionally present their own projects or visual stories.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, these "time and motion exposures" constitute compelling evidence that sometimes a little shake is a good thing....<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: ADAM McANANEY</span>

Essence of Atmosphere

by Adam McAnaney This is just to alert you to an excellent New York Times offering: " Essence of Atmosphere" by Nicole Bengiveno ...

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On Printmaking

I'm happy to say I've got a really nice little print for the "Print Offer" coming up on Friday. It's a picture I've come to love, and the print is a little beauty, a little gem. Unlike the offering on the 15th, it's not something anyone will already have. If you're a baseball fan at all, especially, keep alert.<br /><br />There was a tiny little controversy—not even as much as a tempest in a teapot—over my decision to offer <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/12/print-offer-dorothea-langes-migrant_15.html">a fine print of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother</a>" two weeks ago. A few people worried it might not be legal (it is) or ethical (it is) and a few others opined that it wasn't quite the right thing to do anyway (I disgree, but hey, fine, they're entitled).<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/379783/redclouddoublelarge.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/400/941648/redclouddoublelarge.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">John C. H. Grabill, <span style="font-style: italic;">Red Cloud and American Horse</span> </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(Click on the image to see a larger version)</span><br /></div><br />The thing is, <span style="font-style: italic;">pace</span> Ansel Adams, a print really <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a performance. Take a look at this pair of pictures. The photograph is by John C. H. Grabill, and it's entitled "Red Cloud and American Horse, the Two Most Noted Chiefs Now Living." That was in 1891. Ansel said the negative is the score; in this case, the score is a TIFF filed downloaded from the Library of Congress website, which is on the right. On the left is a small JPEG of an in-progress file I've been working on to make a print out of. It's not finished yet. It may not <span style="font-style: italic;">get</span> finished, either: the TIFF file is a so-so scan of an old, damaged print. The print, like most photographs, was not particularly well-made in the first place, and it shows all sorts of defects: water damage, metalizing, discoloring, fading, and a maddening number of flaws—some in the original negative, some in the original print, some in the scan, some not showing up except in my contrast-enhanced rendering of the scan. I worked on and off for two days on spotting the #$%! thing. There's still some left to do.<br /><br />Now, I suppose, one could ask just what the heck it is I'm doing, and what it is I'm making. It's not an original anything, certainly. A restoration? A pointless little prettied-up pictorial simulacrum of the original? Maybe you like the charms of the original in all its damaged glory—fine, but remember, you can't <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> the original. It's in the Library of Congress collection. All you can have is a digitized TIFF, or a reproduction print made from something like the version on the left, whether you let me do all the dirty work or you do it yourself. So would you make an inkjet print of the file on the right and hang it on your wall? I don't think I would. (I might hang the original, if I could.)<br /><br />What <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> think I'm doing, anyhow, is this: <span style="font-style: italic;">printmaking</span>. I like printmaking. I like it because I like to look at prints. If I spend five hours of my life re-working a nasty old TIFF from the LoC, it's because I like the picture and want to look at it more often, that's all.<br /><br />The argument could also be made that what's being done is <span style="font-style: italic;">rescuing</span>. Sure, nothing you can download from the LoC website is literally in need of rescuing—except perhaps from obscurity, from being overlooked, forgotten. (Had you ever seen Grabill's portrait of Red Cloud and American Horse before? I hadn't. I've known about and admired Red Cloud for a long time, though.) There are tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—maybe <span style="font-style: italic;">millions</span> of fine old photographs languishing in archives, museums, libraries, historical societies, and estates all over the world. I could work for the rest of my life on making prints of pictures just from the LoC collection, and never make a dent. Why not resuscitate a few nice ones for a frame on the wall of a few of the more discerning households here and there?<br /><br />So, you're saying, fine and dandy—but what the heck has all this blather got to do with "Migrant Mother"? It's a very famous photograph and doesn't need rescuing from anything. The answer there is...well, not to be immodest, but I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span> at this. Not the best, mind you—I'm not that immodest—just very good. At printmaking, I mean. And this is where <span style="font-style: italic;">interpretation</span> comes in. I like interpreting pictures as prints—performing them, Adams would have said. Running them through my own aesthetic filter, putting my stamp on them, eking out their expressiveness, finding the balance I think is just right.<br /><br />Let's take Migrant Mother, for example. I'm going to exaggerate these two details, to make my point, but I think you'll see what I'm talking about.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5406/570/1600/migrantlowcontrast.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/320/340586/migrantlowcontrast.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Take this detail first. It's Florence Owens Thompson's face, rendered in fairly low contrast. Now look what happens when I increase the local contrast:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/119539/migranthighcontrast.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/320/349234/migranthighcontrast.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The change is slight, and either one works fine technically. But the higher contrast version <span style="font-style: italic;">changes her expression</span>. Are you seeing that? Yes, it's the same exact information—but it <span style="font-style: italic;">feels</span> subtly different. Look at them together. In the top picture, she looks more resigned, forebearing. In the bottom one, she looks more worried, more anxious, maybe even a touch angry.<br /><br />It's easy to analyze why: the higher local contrast emphasizes both the lines in her forhead and her upper lip. By darkening the upper lip, her frown is emphasized; her mouth in the top picture could almost be of a mouth in a resting attitude, whereas the bottom one seems more like an active expression, actively displeased. And bringing out the lines on her forehead makes her worry more exaggerated. It's a subtle thing, but it's definitely something any viewer would sense in looking at a fine reproduction.<br /><br />This isn't a technical issue at all, really. It's pure interpretative. In making a print I'm not thinking how I want the contrast to look, I'm thinking "what makes her expression the most eloquent?" I don't want to overcook the local contrast on her face, because then, sadness and worry overwhelms stoicism and forebearance, and you don't want it to. All those elements should balance: it's what give her face in the picture such tremendous richness. It's not just a matter of the contrast, it's a matter of the <span style="font-style: italic;">effects</span> of the contrast.<br /><br />In my version of Red Cloud and American Horse, for instance, I'm just not feeling the cold and the wind of the prairie quite as much as I do from the original. It seems a little too flat, a little too pretty. Is it too brown? I'm going to have to figure that out.<br /><br />Well, anyway—maybe now you'll understand when I tell you that I've been agonizing all day over whether to make the final version of Friday's print five inches wide or five-and-a-half inches wide. Slightly smaller, and it has more of a gem-like quality (I even like it smaller still; it works). Slightly larger, and you see just <span style="font-style: italic;">slightly</span> more film grain, which I like. But a little more sharpening shows the grain too. Gotta find that perfect balance where everything's just so and the whole thing sings....<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Featured Comment</span> by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Robin Dreyer:</span> I don't see any ethical problems here—I'm just glad to see someone recognizing photographic printing as printmaking. I love to print—I have friends who are printmakers in the classical sense (i.e. etching, litho, etc.), and I've always seen a connection between what they do and what I do. I also supervise the printing of publications, and when I work with printers, I'm aware that they, too, are printmakers. What ties these things together is the shifts and the interpretations that happen when an image is translated from one material to another. It's printmaking.

On Printmaking

I'm happy to say I've got a really nice little print for the "Print Offer" coming up on Friday. It's a picture I'v...

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Eaten Enough Yet?

<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/1600/20487/Picture%206.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5406/570/320/414366/Picture%206.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Toby Melville, Heathrow Airport, London (Reuters)</span><br /></div><br />Hope the Christians among you had a nice celebration over the past couple of days, and that you haven't made yourself look like—or feel like—the poor soul in Toby Melville's picture above (as my friend Gabi wrote from Chicago, "I think I have eaten my body weight in cookies in the last week or so." She's a competing triathlete, though, so she earns her cookies.)<br /><br />Here at T.O.P. we've got some nice pointless fun planned for the next week or so. Amongt other things, I'm about to embark on a series of 2006 Awards. Now, why would a blog give awards, and who cares? I just happen to think it's fun, is all, although I detect a didactic imperative in calling attention to some deserving books and people, which I always like to do. Anyway, we're starting with the "Camera of the Year," below, and will culminate in the "Photographer of the Year" on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Hope you find something of interest in the array, and, if not, there will be other things mixed in, too. And I think I've got a really neato print offer lined up for this Friday. Keep comin' back.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON</span>

Eaten Enough Yet?

Toby Melville, Heathrow Airport, London (Reuters) Hope the Christians among you had a nice celebration over the past couple of days, and tha...

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