Book Decisions

So, after adding a whole bunch of photos from yesterday’s session at the Jones Playhouse, I now have something like 117 pages in my SoFoBoMo book. That’s a wee bit long.

So I face a choice:

• edit things down way more tightly, making a smaller book
• Edit things down a bit more tightly, and make more than one book

I am leaning toward the latter.

And I can remember when people were discussing whether 35 images was too high as a minimum for a project done in a month.

Completed Book List

Just to let folks know, when you upload your SoFoBoMo book PDF to sofobomo.org, and go to check the “completed book page”, your book will likely not appear at the bottom of the page. The books are listed in the order participants registered, so your book will fall somewhere in the middle.

SoFoBoMo status

I’m busily charging batteries and formatting CF cards to get ready for this afternoon’s session photographing the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse at the University of Washington. This will be the last session that goes into the SoFoBoMo book, but the project stretches into the indefinite future – I’m having a lot of fun.

Using InDesign Free Trial

I’m using Adobe InDesign CS3 for my SoFoBoMo book effort. It does the job, although I find it complicated and the UI is somehow contrived so that whenever I work for an extended period of time, I end up with my hands painful and stiff from repetitive motions.

But it has excellent PDF generation capabilties – I have 100+ images in my book (I’m editting it down, yes) right now, and I can crank out a PDF that’s under 15MB with no trouble at all.

And, if you’re still pondering how you’re going to generate the PDF layout for your book, and you’re not averse to learning to use InDesign, Gordon McGregor points out that there’s a free 30 trial version. That’s how he did his book.

“Shoot”

I know I’m weird. And it’s probably just me.

But go and look at this page of search results for this blog: http://photomusings.wordpress.com/?s=shoot

What you’ll notice, if you care to look, is that I tend to not use the word ’shoot’ to mean ‘photograph’. Most (not all, but most) of the occurences of the word ’shoot’ and its variants here on this blog appear in quoted text.

There’s a reason for that. I look at the definition of the word ’shoot’, and I think to myself “One of these definitions is NOT like the others. One of them doesn’t belong.”

Here’s the definition, lifted from the handy dictionary on my Mac:

shoot | sh oōt| |ʃut| |ʃuːt|verb ( past shot | sh ät| |ʃɑt| |ʃɒt|)1 [ trans. ] kill or wound (a person or animal) with a bullet or arrow : he was shot in the leg during an armed robbery | [ trans. ] troops shot dead 29 people.• [ intrans. ] fire a bullet from a gun or discharge an arrow from a bow : he shot at me twice | the troops were ordered to shoot to kill | [ trans. ] they shot a volley of arrows into the village.• cause (a gun) to fire.• [ trans. ] damage or remove (something) with a bullet or missile : Guy, shoot their hats off.• [ intrans. ] hunt game with a gun : we go to Scotland to shoot every autumn.• [ intrans. ] ( shoot over) shoot game over (an estate or other area of countryside).• shoot game in or on (an estate, cover, etc.).2 [ intrans. ] move suddenly and rapidly in a particular direction : the car shot forward | Ward’s hand shot out, grabbing his arm.• [ trans. ] cause to move suddenly and rapidly in a particular direction : he would have fallen if Marc hadn’t shot out a hand to stop him | Beauchamp shot United into the lead.• [ trans. ] direct (a glance, question, or remark) at someone : [with two objs. ] Luke shot her a quick glance |[with direct speech ] “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she shot back.• [ intrans. ] used to invite a comment or question : “May I just ask you one more question?” “Shoot.”• (of a pain) move with a sharp stabbing sensation : Claudia felt a shaft of pain shoot through her chest | figurativea pang of regret shot through her.• [ trans. ] (of a boat) sweep swiftly down or under (rapids, a waterfall, or a bridge).• [ trans. ] informal (of a motor vehicle) pass (a traffic light at red).• extend sharply in a particular direction : a road that seemed to just shoot upward at a terrifying angle.• [ trans. ] move (a door bolt) to fasten or unfasten a door.3 [ intrans. ] (in soccer, hockey, basketball, etc.) kick, hit, or throw the ball or puck in an attempt to score a goal : Williams twice shot wide | [ trans. ] after school, we’d go straight out in the alley to shoot baskets.• [ trans. ] informal make (a specified score) for a round of golf : in the second round he shot a 65.• [ trans. ] informal play a game of (pool or dice).4 [ trans. ] film or photograph (a scene, film, etc.) : she has just been commissioned to shoot a video | [ intrans. ]point the camera and just shoot—nothing could be easier.5 [ intrans. ] (of a plant or seed) send out buds or shoots; germinate.• (of a bud or shoot) appear; sprout.6 [ trans. ] informal inject oneself or another person with (a narcotic drug) : he shot dope into his arm.7 [ trans. ] plane (the edge of a board) accurately.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but if #4 there wasn’t in the list, and you didn’t already know this particular meaning of ’shoot’, I think you’d be a bit surprised if #4 was added.

I know other photographers who don’t like to use the word ’shoot’ when they mean ‘photograph’, so I know I’m not completely alone. And I know that occasionally, I fall into the same usage as everyone else.

It’s just that when I hold the concept of making a photograph in my head, and then I hold the meanings I associate most with the word ’shoot’ in my head at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be much overlap. And when I say “doesn’t seem to be much overlap” I mean “the two concepts immediately retreat to opposite corners of my mind”. As a result, I don’t have a handy short single word to apply instead of the verb ‘photograph’. I guess I’m stuck with two extra syllables and having people look at me funny.

In the scheme of things, this is probably insignificant. I’m wary, though, of the way the multiple meanings of the words we use can mean that ideas and attitudes that aren’t relevant can get dragged into our thinking. As a result, I guess I’ll continue my stubborn yet futile resistance to this particular usage of the verb ’shoot’.

Call me a rebel. I’m ok with that.

Toning

Rod asks

Paul, I agree with your comments here. But what prompted me to post a note here was to ask you about the images you’ve been showing here lately of the theaters. They all have this really attractive tone/color to them: Is that a soft sepia tone?

All the B&W images that I tone are toned using the curves tool in Photoshop.

A fairly lengthy article on this technique can be found at http://www.butzi.net/articles/toning.htm.

The article includes a link to a .zip file containing the curves files used for all the examples there. The theatre images were all toned using the “slightly warm mid-tones, neutral highlights” curve.

My Personal SoFoBoMo status

Unlike last year, where I documented pretty much exposure I made for SoFoBoMo, this year I’ve been working away industriously on my own without saying much about it.

Here’s where I am…

I have the book layout mostly done, in InDesign. Much of my books layout is simply lifted from my effort last year. Unlike last year, where I put a lot of thought into the layout, this year I’m mostly interested in generating a book in time for the end of SoFoBoMo, without losing the momentum I have built up for the project overall. I like this empty theatre project, and I see it going on for a long time – much longer than the one month effort for SoFoBoMo.

So I have the book layout done (mostly), and I have a bunch of photos laid in the book, in four sections – one section each for the four theatres I’ve photographed so far. I’ve got roughly 100 photos in the book now. That’s way more than I want for the final book, so I’m busily working on editing that number down.

To top it off, I have another session at yet another theatre scheduled for Monday afternoon. That will give me one more section, and a slew of photographs to add.

Finally, I have a lot of text to write. This is not good news, because the writing part is going very slowly. So far I have written quite a lot, and then throw all but a very small fraction.

I started this whole project on May 18th. I still have plenty of time, but I’m planning on being finished with the book (but not the project) on 14th.

24mm TS-E

A little while back, Ed Richards asked me via email:

How about musing on using a TS lens? Or, more to the point, the shift?
Seeing tilt is really going to require that monitor – I do not find I
use tilt much even on 4×5, so I see these as more shift lenses, unless
you are doing table top work. Canon has just raised the bar on TS with
their new 17 TS. Could be the ultimate lens for shooting interiors.
Anything wider than 65mm on 4×5 and you get no shift, and there is not a
lot with the 65mm.

I’ve been going to the photo sessions for the theatre project with a bag full of lenses, including my 24mm f/3.5 TS-E, the 24-105 f/4L, and the 100mm f/2.8 macro. The first time, not quite sure what to expect, I took along the 70-200mm f/2.8; however, I never used it, so I freed up space in the (small) bag by not taking it along since then. At the first session, I thought I wanted a lens that opened up wider than f/3.5, so the next time I brought along a 28-70 f/2.8 instead of the 24-105. Again, I never used it.

In fact, of the keepers from the photos I’ve made so far, ALL of them were made using one specific lens – the 24mm f/3.5 TS-E.

When I first got it, I had panoramas in mind. It is ok for that, but not in the way I expected. I thought I’d use the shift feature to make overlapping exposures for panoramics. So far, I’ve not made a single successful photograph that way. I have made some successful 2:1 aspect ratio photos using the lense and cropping. And for landscape work, I find that orienting the lens so that the sift becomes rise/fall is, well, massively useful. Remember that I’ve got years and years of doing landscape photography with a view camera, and by far the movement I used the most was front fall/rear rise. So I put the 24mm TS-E on the camera, put the camera on the tripod, and my fingers and brain immediately feel comfortable dialing in front rise/fall with the camera back vertical. It’s like breathing for me; it happens without conscious thought.

And that experience has carried over into the theatre photographs. I made a few exposures at the very start – wide lens without the camera leveled front to back. When I looked at the converging lines on the display, I knew that although this is a perfectly reasonable way to tackle the subject, it is nonetheless not MY way. My way, it turned out, was to put that friendly 24mm TS-E on the camera, level the camera using the bubble level in the QR clamp, and then let my fingers do the rise/fall magic.

So I’m really happy with the 24mm f/3.5 TS-E, especially for the theatre work, where it currently accounts for about 99% of the exposures made and 100% of the keepers.

Is it a solution free of collateral problems? No. In particular, I have half a dozen images where one end of the frame is out of focus although the other end is crisp; I’m attributing these to inadvertently budging the swing/tilt and getting the plane of focus wrong at the same time that I have left shift in there, so that I’m outside the real usable image circle of the lens. Because I don’t yet have an exposure routine nailed down tight, I sometimes leave the lens not zeroed after making an exposure. That’s a workflow problem, really, and not a lens problem.

Ed’s comment about needing a bigger monitor to really use tilt to move the plane of focus is on point. There’s no way to see the focus plan in the crappy little 35mm full frame viewfinder. A big monitor would help, but what really helps is the live view and zoom mode on the 5d mk II, which lets you sort of use the rear display as a window onto a display that’s ten times as large (linearly) as the read display is. Think of it as an electronic focus loupe, if you’re coming from the view camera world. I have used it this way to verify focus, in very low light, in the theatre, and I can tell you that this feature is the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, and eel’s elbows all rolled into one.

So, bottom line: I like the 24mm TS-E a lot. I like it an awful lot. I like it so much that I lust after the NEW 24mm TS-E that Canon have announced, as well as the new 17mmm TS-E. And I continue to lust after the 45mm TS-E and the 90mm TS-E.

Decoration

Just a bit ago, Lisa Call twittered “Why do you buy art?” I twittered back “I buy visual art because it makes my home nice to live in. I buy theatre and books because they make my mind nice to live in.”

I’m constantly amazed at how people will spend thousands of dollars on stuff to decorate their homes and yards, and then refuse to make the slightest effort to improve the interior design of their mind, instead filling it with horrid, ugly rubbish.

You can go on vacation and get away from your home and yard, but when you go, you’re still trapped in the same mind. There are not many things you can’t escape by going somewhere else, but your mind is definitely one of them. Doesn’t it make some sense to invest a little effort to make it a nice place?

People sometimes buy really nice beds, figuring that they spend about 1/3 of their life in bed. You spend 100% of your waking hours in your mind. If improving your bed makes sense, then it makes twice as much sense to improve your mind. If you worry about the pillow on your bed, you ought to invest twice as much concern for the contents of the head you rest on that pillow.

One really nice way to make your mind a nicer place to live, of course, is to make art yourself.

As an interior decoration practice, artmaking is hard to beat.

Cameras, part two

Amy comments:

Good artists get the best out of their tools. When given better tools, they produce even better work.

I’ve heard a lot of pundits say It’s the photographer, not the camera, but I know that’s just baloney. I know that when I’m working with defective or limited tools, I can’t produce my best. Maybe that’s why I’m so fussy about my gear (photography, computer, illustration, et al).

Now, the funny thing is that I both agree with Amy, and I don’t.

As Amy is, I am squarely in the “buy the best tools you can, learn to use them effectively” camp.

The funny part is this: sometimes (not always, but sometimes) less is more. Sometimes the more limited tool is the better tool. It’s not always the case the the very best tool is the most broadly applicable one. Sometimes the best tool is, paradoxically, the one that restricts you in some way.

My most recent example is that I spent quite a while photographing with what is arguably the most restrictive lens for the digital SLR’s I own – the old, somewhat creaky 100mm macro. It’s slow to focus, somewhat unbalanced, and heavy. But by using it, I learned to push my photography toward the strengths of that lens – focusing up very close, and beautiful out of focus rendering. By forcing myself to cope with an imposed limitation, I got better as a photographer, and happier as a person.

I’m not saying it always works that way. And if you have enough self discipline, you can set your very versatile zoom lens to 100mm and f/2.8 and go to town, just as I did with my macro lens.

But sometimes, just sometimes, it works well to head out with gear you know will limit you in some way, just to see what will happen.