Month: June 2021

“How did you get into your present comfort zone?” he asked.

Do you know, I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose I just slipped into it.

I’ve been working with a new mentor the past week or so, felt like taking on a bit of a challenge, and it hasn’t all been tough. Some has been fun, as well as highly revealing and instructive.
He’s given me plenty to think about.  Mostly around not just taking new pictures but how I go about making them sing and dance.

Now it’s true, I’ve been post processing photographs since the days of “Barneyscan”. (you gotta look that up) precursor to Photoshop.

Used to manage our library on something called “Shoebox”, an Eastman Kodak company early attempt at databasing photos. It used a cd jukebox to store photos, and had a clever algorithm to find the tagged ones. Great for demos,  type in Bird, or Macaw and up would pop a wonderful rich colour photo of a Macaw. Stunning.
You could also poll it for say, Maureen’s Wedding, or Grey Mustang at Summer Nats, or whatever you’d stored and logged, and up would pop a few seconds later….. a photo of a Macaw…   It wasn’t even beta software, more your pre-alpha 🙂
Time moved on, and so did we.  I used to use Nikon’s Capture NX2 for a long time.  Reason, it was using the clever NIk Technology “U-Point” system and made post processing a breeze, one you got used to its quirkiness. But in the end, I’ve always said, give Photoshop, Layers, Layer Masks and a Paintbrush and that would do me for pp.

So he asked, “How did you get into your present comfort zone?”  And we concluded, quite easily, it just felt comfortable.
Which is why  the next challenge was to find an image I didn’t have much investment in, and play around with it, in something like Lightroom or Capture One.
And I found there was a lot of the Develop module, that I understood, but didn’t appreciate in terms of setting the mood or emotion or feel, or even my vision of the image.

Particularly in Black and White.   I rely on Nik ‘Silver Efex Pro” for my mono conversions. Because there are lots of film effects and the old mono filters that I grew up with.  (Another question I’ve added to my memory list from last week: What is the filter factor for a Wratten Green #58?) SFX has them all listed each on it’s own slider, and makes changing sky or tree, or sand to the right tonal level for the feel I’m after, a snap.

This time through I was able to use the local Hue-Saturation-Luminosity filters to achieve the same thing.
Hey, I knew that. But, my comfort zone didn’t 🙂

My Flickr folk were the first to see the difference.  I posted a mono pic of a Collared Sparrowhawk on a fence.  As a colour shot it was pretty much unattractive. brown bird against sky, ugly fence.
“Try some tone changes,” was the suggestion.

Suddenly it was working, lighter sky, rich tones on the bird feathers and those glowing legs and eyes.  Simples. (Hah! I knew that)

Still got a way to go, as I’m tackling a series of challenges around the ‘Visual Roadmap’, not a term I leaned at Art School. More I suspect will follow.

Tonight, as Lee Lin Chin says in the ad, we could play for Ray Martin’s Gold Logi, but instead I’ve settled on a shot from the other day with Mr An Onymous.
It’s a few seconds work in Lightroom’s Black and White mode.  A trip through the HSL sliders and a few points of grain.

I wanted to keep the feather detail, but at the same time bring the emphasis on the seeming enjoyment that bird was having with its treat.

Ahh, back to the comfort of a real darkroom 🙂

Stereotype has among its first usages several hundred years back as: image perpetuated without change.
More recently its use is in the realms of psychology deal with, so I’m told, the thoughts of an individual being applied (rightly or wrongly) to a group of people.
Rough boyscout definition only.

Our blog friend Eleanor raised such an issue for the other day as her new camera is cranking out huge CR3 files and its meant she has taken to using JPEG format.  I made the comment that I often shoot JPEG format. And with good reasons.   Bought the usual responses, of ‘can’t be a true committed photographer if you’re not using raw (usually put as RAW-but its not an acronym). My photos are doomed to the dustbin of the furthermost photo hell, and me along with it’.
Truth be told I like working in JPEG as it frees me from sitting staring at the screen cranking first this, then that slider. Strange old stereotype that judges the quality of work by the file type.   I know pretension exists, still.

However changing thoughts, I had to go, on my doctors instructions to one of those, you know, what do ya call ’em,  ohhh.   Oh yeah, cognitive memory tests. Where you get asked if you can remember important stuff. Such as, What year is it? Who is Prime Minister of Australia? Count backwards from 100 minus 7 at a time… hmm, 93…..Oh, I give up.

All sorts of things I’m not all that interested in. I’m more interested not so much which day of the week it is, but will it be sunny, no wind, a low tide, what season, and will all that be good for photographs.

Among one of the questions was something about ‘Do I like to cook’.  So I gave an answer. But.  It didn’t match the stereotype required answer, and I came to the conclusion the inquisitor wasn’t interested in my answer, only that I’d fit the pattern of old male, unable to boil water.  I took time to explain I learned to cook from my Mum early in life, spent a summer holiday working with a hotel chef, and had been househusband for #kneetoo for some 18 years since her back injury.   I think I grasped the basic principle behind boiling water, and could, given a few moments notice, master the skill of opening a tin of baked beans.
However all to no avail, as it wasn’t in the stereotype answers required.

Why, I thought on the way home, don’t they ask me some questions I’m actually interested in.

How much sodium sulpite is there in a litre of Kodak D76 developer.
What is the processing time of Tri-X in D76 diluted 1:1 at 20C.
What is the calculations for DOF.
What are the three factors affecting Depth of Field.
Can you recall what is the significance of the Circle of Confusion.
etc
For the digital age:
Describe the Bayer Pattern
For bonus points what is the first name of Dr Bayer
For double bonus points, Have you met Bryce personally
Explain Discrete Cosine Transfer (DCT) as the basis for JPEG compression.

Ohh sneaky how I managed to get that in.

Not content I had to also see a podiatrist, just to check that my feet where still down there somewhere.
It was all going swimmingly until the question about ‘would I walk very far during the day?’
Stereotype kicks in. Old bloke, couch potato, might be able to walk to the mail box
My answer, most mornings I walk for an hour or before breakfast and on a day in the field I might make 10-12Km,  was not the right answer.
So we had to spend the next few minutes going over the details, you know just in case I was doing my Walter Mitty impersonation. When I mentioned that, I received a blank stare!!!!
How easy it is to consign people it seems.

A good, dear friend, told me once that she attended such a ‘memory’ day, and was asked, “Shirley, What day is it?”
Her answer, with a straight poker face. (She was quite the intellectual, an educator and author), ” Oh, that’s easy, it’s the day you told me to come for my appointment!”. Dumb silence.  And a little check-mark in the ‘failed’ box.

Gotta finish on a high.
Do you follow  “First Dog on the Moon” cartoons on the online The Guardian, news. ?
If not then do take a look at this one.  Why Vaccines should be like Hot Chips  The birdo answer is in the last panel.

Tonight’s Image is bought to you by JEPG.
This is Jack the Eastern Yellow Robin, we worked two seasons with the pair.
Shot with a D2x camera on the Mode1 JPEG setting
The reason I like that mode is the beautiful clean greys that it produces. I still use a variation of it in the D500.

We’ve been locked down to a 10 and then 25 Kilometre radius for the past few weeks.  Add to that the weather that seems to have translated itself from somewhere south of Antarctica, and #kneetoo still in recovery mode, there has not been a lot of enthusiasm to venture out to check the mailbox, let along go to the field for birds.

Thanks to a recommendation from Mike over at TOPS, I decided to buy a Kindle copy of a book by Jasmin Darznik titled The Bohemians

Warning: It is a novel. An historical novel; but a novel none the less.
It takes its setting in the late 1910s and early 1920s.  Its major setting is San Fransisco.

The heroine, is none other than Dorothea Lange. A photographer I have discussed on this blog before as her stunning photos and photo-journalism had an impact on my visual growth as a very young photographer. As a wet-behind-the-ears youngster, my local librarian had noted my interest in photography—perhaps astutely as  I’d borrowed the same basic photography books umpteen times and knew them from cover to cover, and admitted me to the ‘Adult’ section. Which, had for reasons I’ve never pondered, a really fine selection of photo-folio books. Several Dorothea Lange works were there and again I could pore of them learning a little of the artistic ability of this amazing lady.

This is not really a book review, nor am I crusading to have you rush out and buy or download the book.
The character, “Dorrie”, tells her story in the first person, and it’s a relatively good yarn, rollicking along, as Ms. Lange meets all the historical characters that played a part in forming the real Dorothea’s life.
It is also an interesting journey into the early 1920s and of course the struggles of the time. Quite a number of photographers make appearances, along with artists and writers.

Fair kept me busy during the rather cold weather of late. Hot cup of Cacao, my new fav warm drink, in my new “Hug Mug” and there was an afternoon or two speeding by.

I’m not sure about the author’s intention, but not doubt some of the social inequities of our current time have found their way into the story, which makes for some interesting comparisons.

There are a number of historical glitches, not big ones, Ansel Adams did suffer from the Influenza outbreak of 1919, and mostly they could be overlooked or simply left out of the story.

“Dorrie” hocks her beloved Graflex camera early in the story, but pops up a little later on making portraits with a 35mm Leica camera.
Really?

The Leica wasn’t announced until 1924 and production and first sales were 1925, I’m not sure of The Bohemians time setting but its highly unlikely “Dorrie” would have had access to one.  Still in the concept of the storyline it’s pretty inconsequential what she shot with. Dorothea Lange was making fine portraits and story-telling street shots no matter what camera she used.

Medical Update #5,  #kneetoo, is on the move, managed today to walk a few hundred metres up to the community centre in our village and enjoy a chat and coffee with several friends.  Full-steam ahead.

Stay safe

Been chatting, but you know, socially distanced, with a number of people over the current lock-down covid situation in our area. All of them had suffered through the long lock-downs of 2020.

Most said the current restrictions (with or without having had a vaccine), initially weren’t that hard to get settled into. But, and it seemed to be pretty universal, within a few days we all seemed to come to the same feeling, helplessness, that we’d not experienced the first time through. Not a depression, mind, but rather a niggley feeling of how quickly we had succumbed to the inevitable. It’s not an anti-lockdown thought/ Most of us appeared to at least except the need to contain the outbreaks.
But it all adds up, another quarantine failure, lack of speed on the vaccine programme, groups of vulnerable people that have been ignored, nursing home outbreaks, name calling—she said, he said—political infighting, and raging rampant fear news.

That we can talk about it and more importantly laugh about it seemed to be a good tonic

Medical Update #4
#kneetoo, is still dealing with a numbing pain of the replacement, and the long process. The good news is she is quite on the move and walking quite freely. Her physio was here the other day, and after a walk up and down the hallway, the physio said, “It’s a fine sunny day, would you like to take a few steps outside?” And so she did.
The physio opened the door and #kneetoo stepped outside.

Every bird for kilometres around felt a shiver up its spine 🙂

While all this was going on, I was sitting on a small bank of sand overlooking the beach and a number of Greater Crested Terns were taking turns (pun intended) fishing along the water’s edge.

This one had returned empty-billed, much to the chagrin of it’s hungry juvenile