The Online Photographer

Photo courtesy UNRWA

The plight of the refugees: I can't seem to find a photographer's name to put with this picture, which has gone viral in a big way all over the world. The official caption seems to be "Yarmouk residents gather to await food distribution from UNRWA," and the best attribution is apparently "UNWRA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] Archives." According to one article, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia presented it on the Senate floor, and I saw a feature about it on the evening news, although I can't recall now whether I was watching NBC or CBS (I think it was the latter). The BBC says it was taken on January 31st. A number of TOP readers have sent me tips about it. The scene, of Palestinian refugees in Damascus, Syria, massing for food handouts, looks like CGI from an apocalytic Hollywood movie. It's possible it was taken with a cellphone by a relief worker.

UPDATE: The Hacker Factor Blog thinks this photo has been doctored. (Thanks to "Anon" for this.)

UPDATE to the update: Hugh Crawford disputes this claim in his Featured Comment below. And has convinced Yr. Hmbl. Ed.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said these were Syrian refugees, but they are semi-permanent Palestinian refugees inside Syria. (Thanks to JL for the correction.)

Marc Israel Sellem

Zany accident: This very unfortunate coincidence was captured by Marc Israel Sellem of the Jerusalem Post. It appears to show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making a Hitler mustache with the shadow of his finger on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's face. The newspaper disavowed it explicitly and the photographer removed it from his personal Facebook page, where it first appeared, at the request of his employer (although it still appears on his website). It was of course inadvertent, and had no intentional meaning—just an accident of the light. No doubt an embarrassment to both people pictured. And yet still very strange indeed.

Photo courtesy @TheEllenShow/Twitter

Most stars per pixel: The most famous photograph in the world at the moment is this mass selfie taken at the Oscars in an attempt by host Ellen Degeneres to beat the all-time retweet record set by Barack Obama with his re-election message. And it succeeded, being retweeted 779,295 times in half an hour and allegedly crashing Twitter. It shows a number of very famous actors, one TV show host, and one very lucky Kenyan fellow who was in the right place at the right time (perhaps his famous sister ought to have been where he is, and he should be the one photo-bombing from the back, instead of the other way around). That the stunt might have been product placement for show sponsor Samsung takes just a tiny bit of the fun out of it. And personally, I like Al Roker's Oscars selfie too (scroll down at the link).

Mike

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MJFerron: "That first photo of the refugees in Syria not only tells a story of life there but reminds me how lucky I am to have born in a rare moment in time and in place where even a commoner like me lives a luxurious life in comparison. One often forgets this."

Hugh Crawford: "These amateur forensics people in an echo chamber are impossible to accurately describe without veering off into ad hominem no-no-land.

"There is even a video on YouTube that shows the photograph being taken at between 12 and 15 seconds where the person taking the video is a a little above, behind, and to the left of the man taking the still image and the person in the U.N. uniform and helmet making an announcement with a megaphone. You can see the photographer raise his arm and what is probably a cellphone to take the picture.

"Apparently a person named Neal Krawetz made the following analysis that the echo chamber folk are excited about:

The shape of the crowd in the photo is different than the shape of the crowd in the video. So in a few seconds, the entire crowd shape changed.

"As though someone with a megaphone said, 'the food's over there!'? It looks about the same to me though.

Virtually everyone is facing forward in the photo. The video clip (from 12 seconds to 15 seconds) shows that there are people looking in every direction. Yet the photographer claims to have captured that one special moment when nearly everyone was looking forward at the camera. (I showed this photo to a few photographers who all agreed that a crowd that large looking at the camera like that was either staged or digitally altered. And given the video, the photo was clearly digitally altered.)

"As though the person with the megaphone were standing next to the photographer? In big group photos I have seen photographers use a megaphone to get everyone to look at the camera for the photo. I suppose something like 'pay attention if you want  aid' would do. Even an announcement about a lost cat would get most peoples' attention if it was really loud and the person making it was wearing a smurf blue helmet and body armor.

The video shows a haze over the crowd that gets thick in the distance. The photo shows the haze over the buildings but not over the sea of people.

Almost like the video was exposed for the U.N. guy in the shady foreground, shot in lower res then compressed to YouTube data rates and seems to have a lot of U.N. blue veiling flare on top of shooting directly into the sun with a zoom lens and overloading the sensor.

People get smaller in the distance—it's called 'perspective'. In the video, you can see that the people near the camera are big, people in the distance are small, and there is a smooth height transition from big to small that follows the depth. In the photo, we have big people near the camera and small people right behind them; there is no transition related to the perspective.

"Yet if you are shooting the same scene from a lower vantage point closer to the people in the foreground those people will obscure the people immediately behind them; this too is called perspective.

"There is some more whining about the finer-detailed portions of the photo having different compression artifacts than other parts (do these guys know anything about how adaptive discrete cosine transform compression works?), confusion about reflected light (hey it looks like a big blue light reflector was next to the photographer, but that's impossible so it must be an alteration).

"I am getting so tired of these people who are intent on trying to discredit anyone they don't agree with on the flimsiest, and often made-up, grounds."

CK Lai: "Re: the selfie. Samsung can say anything it (they?) likes. Unfortunately, they have a history of being...shall we say...economical with the truth? 'Samsung and its media buying firm Starcom MediaVest negotiated to have its Galaxy smartphone integrated into the show.' Article: 'Behind the Preplanned Oscar Selfie.' YMMV."

Y'all know how much I like old B&W pictures. Here's Johnny Carson on the day he first hosted the tonight show in 1962, courtesy of the Library of Congress via The New York Times.

So did you see the first "Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," and if so, what did you think?

Mike

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Jon Orchard: "I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds it hard to believe that Jimmy is older now than Johnny was then. Perhaps it's because, being in my mid 30s, I remember Johnny as old and surely 39 can't be 'old'...can it?"

I can't remember if I've posted this before, or just meant to. Sorry if I'm repeating myself.

Here's probably  the coolest house in Waukesha. A real picture by a real photographer (looks like a 4x5 original), although I'm afraid I have no idea who the photographer is. The house is a converted 1934 Art Deco water tower, high on one of the highest hills in my hilly town.

Unfortunately it's also by far the most expensive house in a rather downscale neighborhood (actually, one of the most expensive houses in the whole city), and it's right across the street from the hospital. But it certainly is interesting...I'd love to go see the inside, but I can't see my way clear to knowingly waste a real estate agent's time. You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike

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Kevin Bourque: "Mmm....I can just smell the Ektachrome 64T. Architecturally correct verticals, too!"

Paul Mc Cann: "Having moved a few times and sold houses I can assure that here in Ireland at least 90% of the viewers are tyre kickers and/or neighbours in for a nosy peek. In Northern Ireland it is, or was, acceptable to just knock on the door and ask for a look-see, without any appointment. In Southern Ireland that would be a no-no. The agent accompanies all viewers there and prefers to have the occupants not present. Stressful either way."

Mike replies: I'll say. I toured the house of a neighbor that was "for sale by owner" and thereafter vowed never to do that again. For me it's an agent, an open house, or nothing.

For one thing, it appeared that the husband and the wife had quited different feelings about the idea of selling the house and moving. Very awkward, and I was so uncomfortable I remember little of what that house looked like!

I guess this post is just a link with n/t. I'd sure like to have taken that one, though.

(And a brief aside: "capturing images" is just another way of saying "taking pictures"—and really, neither one is inherently better than the other—but all the same, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. Grates like a howler*.)

Mike
(Thanks to Jeff)

*"A mistake, esp. an embarrassing one in speech or writing, that evokes laughter." —Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

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farshore: "I have shot in this area quite a bit, and surfers jumping off the cliff is not at all usual. What is unusual is how close he is to the cliff, and that he chose to jump with a wave coming in instead of going out."

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Tapes)

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Alan Hill: "Those seats must be specially designed so that you can only be comfortable if you are weightless."

Jeff: "I wonder if there's an astronaut forum somewhere with folks complaining about the location of the XYZ button."

Mike replies: Or if Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to point out all the errors in the picture. [g]

John Krumm: "Looks like this is where Olympus finds inspiration for menu design."

Mike replies: Bah-dum-pah!

My friend Jack took this view of Green Bay's Lambeau Field yesterday from the roof deck of the brand new South End Zone, which adds 7,000 new seats to the old stadium. Last year, he would have needed a hot air balloon to get this view.

Here's a larger version, and here's the story. Note the crops showing the ball in the air, as a demonstration of the Leica S2's resolution. And that's with a 24mm (19mm equivalent angle of view*) lens!

The Packers beat the Washington Generals 128-3, and Aaron Rodgers' QB rating was 286. He threw for 680 yards**, tying a Packers record.

Mike

*The S2 has a 45x30mm sensor, so the crop factor is ~.8x.

**These numbers might not be 100% accurate. As I've mentioned before, I have a poor memory for numbers.

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Jason Sewell: "Great shot. But there appears to be slight up/down motion blur. Or is this a lens issue?"

Mike replies: As always with the Web, you have to keep in mind that you're not seeing the actual picture--you're seeing a small JPEG of it through several generations of web software. I'm sure what you're seeing is some kind of digital artifact, given how sharp the extreme crop is:

And even that is several generations away from the original!

Ctein comments: Normally pixel-peeping is an inappropriate way to look at a photograph, but you can't say Mike didn't invite it in this case! Hell, made it well-nigh irresistible. [Grin]

Anyways…there's definitely an asymmetry in the sharpness. It could be partly a depth of field issue as semilog suggests, as the picture is sharpest at the bottom (closest) and gradually loses definition towards the top (further away). You wouldn't think depth of field would be an issue at this distance with an ultra-wide-angle lens, but when you're pixel peeping at this level (at 100% size, it's almost a 3.5x5' photograph on my screen) DoF can be astonishingly shallow.

I'm thinking that's not it entirely. There's a peculiar doubling of the fine detail in the big screen at the top of the stadium. Quite evident in the lettering. It looks just a little bit like camera shake. Does the Leica S2 have a vertical-traveling focal plane shutter? If so, it's entirely possible to have a photograph where a bit of camera shake affects the top of the photograph but not the bottom (or vice versa).

But…I'm thinking that's not it entirely, either. Because if you look at the trees  near to the screen, behind it, they are pretty blurry, but look a little further to the left or the right and they become quite sharp. (And towards the extreme edges get a little smeary, but that's normal in ultrawide angle lens, especially with this degree of pixel peeping.  Remember—3.5x5' print! That's feet, not inches.)

So, my vote?  What semilog says: toss in turbulence/thermals in the atmosphere. It can produce effects just like this, that vary from spot to spot in the picture. Normally you only see them with telephoto lenses, which magnify the effect. But normally you're not pixel-peeping on such a high-resolution image.

I'm pretty certain what you're seeing is not a lens quality issue. Decentering in a lens can produce an asymmetric image in pretty complex patterns, but the superb quality at the bottom of the photograph—tack-sharp along the lower edge and no noticeable smearing until you get to the extreme corners and there it's quite symmetric—argue against that. Decentered lenses can look good on one side of a photograph and bad on the other, but not this good.

My two cents' worth.

Andy Kowalczyk: "Yes, the color balance is atrocious. The entire stadium is overwrought with Green and Yellow. A superb football picture demands a color palette rich in Navy Blue and Orange! —Andy Kowalczyk, Chicago."

This almost doesn't work this small. What I like are the details—the half-full glass between their knees, the fact that her toenails are painted, his tattoo, the older person's hand on his bicep, the way her fingers fan out delicately on top of his like swan feathers.

Mike

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Henry Rogers: "Presumably it's a story with actors rather than a slice of life. The glass, or plastic beaker, seems to be dry rather than empty. The girl has painted toenails but un-painted finger nails. Is that a real tattoo on the inside of the man's left arm or a transfer? Male tattoos are often where they show best, on the outside of an arm, but that wouldn't work in this scene. Both females have hands in more-than-casual gestures. It's an intriguing scene but does it mean anything? If not, does that matter. Oh, and it's pretty good technically too but that may not be the point. Tell us more please Mike!"

Mike replies: I can't tell you what it means, but it was entirely adventitious—no setup or direction at all. It really was a "random snap." I did take a variant or two before they moved, though. It was taken in the front of a speedboat on a lake. (To answer some other commenters, no, I wasn't driving the boat. I think we were moving along the shore at trolling speed at the time.)

Geoff: "I think you've probably answered this before but what do you use to put those nice filed neg. carrier borders around your digital images? (at least that's what I assume is going on here) Great shot by the way!"

Mike replies: Several people have asked about the processing so here goes: Usually I do balancing (set the vignetting, burning and dodging, and image geometry [Lens Corrections > Manual Transform]) in Photoshop first. Then open in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 and set the tones using the Global Adjustments, being very careful of the Structure slider which is one of those "crack cocaine" controls in post. (I.e., get addicted and you can't get enough...until your picture, like an addict's life, lies in utter ruins). Then I open a Color Filter, usually Yellow but infrequently orange or red, almost always backing it off from its default. Hint: look for mid-tones with the color filters, especially with skin tones. In Finishing Adjustments I use Sepia 19 for Toning, backing it off to the neighborhood of 20/20 for "Silver" and "Paper" toning. Generally I use a little more toning for images of people and a little less for landscapes or anything with skies. Finally, I use Image Border #3 and back it off to –95 in the Size slider.

This last is the only real "fakery" in this method, but I'll tell you why I do it: it's to make my digital B&W pictures consistent with the rest of my life's work. I see my work as a continuity. Film to digital was a huge disruption for me as it was for many people, but if a film and digital B&W picture are framed and hung near each other, I don't want either one to scream "this is film!" and "this is digital!"—I want people to look at the pictures. I probably wouldn't use a border if I were starting out now, but I'm not starting out now—I have hundreds of pictures already in my print cases that have borders. So the new ones need to be, not identical, but aesthetically consonant with the old ones.

I now almost never start with sharpening or noise reduction. I've found that current cameras are sharp enough with no adjustment or just a little "Clarity" and don't need more, and what noise I see is seldom intrusive. (This is quite a big change from, say, 2005, when we were preoccupied with sharpening and noise.) Note that B&W has an advantage here because we don't see chroma noise nearly as much. But I seldom use sharpening or noise reduction on color pictures now either, at least for Web use.

I seldom use Curves but when they're needed it would be very difficult to explain in words what to do. I just know what images with various curve shapes look like in B&W images, from long work with enlarger printing and film and paper sensitometry, so when I see any of those "looks" in the digital image I know what to apply to counteract it or back it off. This would require a short seminar-type class to convey properly (and it would take me a lot of time to work how to teach it). But I seldom use Curves, so you can ignore this bit.

And a few more words about image processing:

In general, processing is not really a technical matter. Yes, you need the technical skills so you can implement your adjustments, but what it's really all about is judgement: taste and intention. That is, what looks right to you, and what you want the picture to look like. In "amount," processing might well be less important than how you see and what you take pictures of; but in "quality," it's every bit as much about your personality and preferences, your own idiosyncratic sense of "there, that's right, that's the way I like it and think it should be." That's 85% of post-processing for me. It will naturally be more or less for others, because some peoples' work is more about processing and some peoples' work is less about it. 

And specific to me, here are two hints about the way I process. With almost every control, there is "too little" and "too much." It's easier to judge the proper amount of almost everything by starting with too little and creeping up on "too much" gradually or incrementally. If you start with massive amounts of Structure or Clarity, it's more difficult to back off to find the right point. Start off with too little and move up on it until it seems like enough.

What I do with almost every parameter is to move up on it until it becomes noticeable, then back off just a tad. I never want people to look at a picture and say "what a beautiful print!" or "what excellent post-processing!" first. They can say that later if they want to. But their first reaction should be to the visual contents of the picture—in this case, parts of the bodies of three people touching and the details that provide clues as to their identities and situation. That's the important aspect of the picture, not how much toning I gave it or whether it's super-sharp or not.

Finally, Taran asked how size could matter. That's art school 101 (i.e., very basic, and very important) but—talk about size—it's too big a subject to cover in this already-too-long reply.

A few snaps from yesterday. We had a lovely day at the lake, and the weather was perfect.

Ever since I mentioned the TOPcam at the end of Wednesday's post, I've been inundated with requests from people wanting to know more, because, of course, the popularity of B&W (and the pent-up demand for B&W-only cameras) is fierce. The unique TOPcam hybrid, which was created AT GREAT EXPENSE TO ME, is called the "Sony NEX-XXX" (that last bit is pronounced "tri ex"). Unfortunately—don't mass outside my door with cudgels and firebrands, please—I cannot reveal the identity of the shop that did the stunning masterpiece of a conversion. Their identity is top secret. They have an eight- or ten-year waiting list, and they don't want anyone to know they let me skip the line.

My bro' had a permit to burn brush, but needed a windless day.

That's fire, in the top pic. Of course, as I mentioned, the TOPcam is not capable of recording colors. For you lovers of colors, the fire was orange*.

Coming home from the lake I drove through endless clouds of bugs. What with our wet Spring and (so far) Summer, the bugs are flourishing. The front of the car is covered with bug grime. For some reason I felt bad when a lightning bug would get mushed against the windshield...you see a little streak of bright phosphorescence for a few seconds that then slowly, sadly fades. Sorry, little lightning buggies. I guess it's better than dying slowly in a jar.

I think I mentioned that I'm not big on fireworks, but I managed to see a show anyway. Coming home, I followed the colored blooms in the sky and got off the freeway an exit or two early. Come to find, the service road north of the airport was lined on both sides with vans, pickups, and SUVs, all festooned with persons. (I swear, everybody in this town has their own favorite strategic location from which to watch the fireworks, which originate at the Fairgrounds.) I stopped for a while and watched with the crowd.

You may consider this an ironic fireworks shot, not a straight fireworks shot. As I mentioned I mentioned, I'm not that big on fireworks, personally. But, for you lovers of colors, the sky was really dark gray, and the firework in the picture really was just white, nothing more. The TOPcam got the colors just right! The TOPcam is awesome.

Hope you had a nice one yesterday too, if you're a Murkin.

Mike
(Thanks to m3photo)

*Okay, I'll admit it, the top picture of those two really does look better in color. Shhh.

UPDATE: A "Satire Alert" belongs with this post. My NEX-6/24mm kit is bog standard. It will only take B&W faux-35mm pics because that's the kind of pics I like best, that's all. My intent is never to mislead. Carry on.

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Robert Roaldi: "Someday, someone will find your B&W fireworks photo and colorize it."

Here's my latest pic, taken last night. I got six or eight good shots last night, but the older I get the more willing I am to let the "just good" ones fall away and concentrate on the ones that have "it" for me—whatever strange grace it is that makes a picture work for me. This is one, but then, they're my friends.

Lillian and Rebecca, daughter and mother

Lately I've been wanting my digital pictures to look like my film pictures so that they all go together. I've got twenty years' worth of prints that looks just like this, black and white with a black line around it. It's a natural look for Tri-X printed with an enlarger, not at all a natural look for digital. But then, digital has no inherent materiality in the modernist sense—it's plastic, it can look like anything. So why can't it look like the rest of my work? It's all one body of work.

It's just that my technique used to have integrity and now it doesn't, is all. I can live with that, I guess. But maybe I'll feel differently a month from now.

Mike

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Nick: "I've been trying to make just such a border. Dare I ask what you did to get that slight irregularity to its inside?"

Mike replies: First apply the Type 3 border in Silver Efex Pro 2 > Finishing Adjustments > Image Borders, then (back in Photoshop) crop in from the outer edge.

Ben Rosengart: "I suppose one shouldn't be overly attached to that kind of formal integrity, any more than to anything else. Doing B&W on a color camera means you're already in a state of sin, right?"

Mike replies: 'Zackly.

John London: "That picture has great tones Mike!"

Mike replies: Thanks. You've given me a great compliment: Louis Armstrong's highest compliment to a fellow musician was "He has good tone." I think it was Frank DiPerna (either Frank, or Joe Cameron) who told me that he thought it was a high compliment to photographers, too.

As you know, whenever photographers gather, pictures are made. I got to have lunch yesterday with my friends Nick and Jack at Screaming Tuna on the Milwaukee River in the Third Ward, which was fun.

Nick gets schooled in the use of the Leica S-Kahuna, the World's Best Camera according to Yrs. Trly. Photo by me, with the world's 132nd-best camera*.

Nick's portrait of Jack—with a camera he'd never handled before, on manual everything, including focus. Jack was impressed.

Some big doofus with a weenie camera. On the Hank Aaron State Trail in Festival Park, with my trusty GX1/20mm/LVF2 combo.

Jack's shot of the view from the Screaming Tuna: the tug Leona B pushing a coal barge under the Water Street drawbridge. Note "Historic Third Ward" gate in the background.

With only the 120mm lens with him, Jack made a wide-angle panoramic of the coal barge, which worked well even though the barge was moving (slowly).

a 100% crop from the panorama above, which could be printed at 240 res at 12x3 feet in size (Jack's business involves selling large prints).

My restauranteur friends Siam and Quyen no longer own the Screaming Tuna, but they're opening a new restaurant in Shorewood next summer. I'm looking forward to that. But I don't think it will become the site of future meetups; by coincidence, Nick and his wife are planning to move to Arizona soon, and Jack and his wife spend part of each winter at their condo in the same Arizona city. I figure that means that in the future, we'll have to meet for lunch somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

Mike
(Thanks to Nick Hartmann and Jack MacDonough)

*Estimated.

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Chris: "Nice shot of the Leona B. The pano looks especially nice. I had hoped to catch the St. Mary's Challenger last time I was in Milwaukee. She's the oldest laker still in service. To put things in perspective, she started her career on the Great Lakes in 1906. That's six years before the Titanic. I really need to get a shot of her this year if I can...."

David L.: "Geez, we missed the opportunity for a duel between the S-Kahuna and the Dragoon! Wow, shootout of the decade and it didn't happen :-( "

In a little less than two weeks, the two boys in this 1971 snapshot, John in the middle and Jim on the right, will coach against each other in the Superbowl.

That two brothers could end up as head coaches in the NFL is maybe not quite as improbable as two brothers both being Superbowl-winning NFL quarterbacks—and neither is quite as amazing as the Williams sisters—but that they'd end up coaching their teams to Championships in the same year ranks as a strange coincidence.

And it goes to show, you never really know what the future is going to see in a photograph...even a mundane family snapshot like this one.

Mike
(Photo courtesy of the Harbaugh family, via si.com)

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A book of interest today:

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Ben Rosengart: "Reminds me of Peter Turnley's story of having his picture go up against his brother's in a blind competition, and one won and the other was runner-up."

dan meyers: "Here in Baltimore it's already being called both a) the Harbowl and b) the Bro Bowl."

Datshy Noyszewski

My brother and sister-in-law's living room is a de facto torture test for available-light shooting. The light at night is pleasant in person, but it's low in level and quite variable around the room—camera after camera that I've tested over the years has skidded up against its limitations in that room. There are reflections from a wall of windows and pools of light and dark, direct mixed with indirect lighting.

I made the usual bunch of happy holiday family snaps like this one. Datshy is my brother's sister-in-law and a longtime friend.

I think this is going to be the end of "a picture a day" for me, though. I'll throw up a snap from time to time, but pictures need to season more, for my taste. Releasing them into the world when they're too green (heh) makes it too easy to misstep.

Also, I haven't really worked out how to make these little JPEGs look good on TOP. They look a lot different here than they do on my monitor. (Is there a parallel to color management called "B&W management"? Hmm. [UPDATE: Solved now. Thanks. More on the topic anon.])

Mike

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Hugh Crawford: "There have been several mentions in the Comments of color managed browsers and calibrated monitors, etc.

"It is entirely possible to set up a workflow such that Photoshop, your browser, random other viewing software, and your printer all make the image look the same and 'correct' but the same file will look like either light mud, dark mud, or 'black-light Elvis on velvet' on most peoples' browsers. Photographers seem more likely than most users to fall into this trap by fine tuning their systems so that everything is wildly out of whack but overall the different factors compensate for each other.

"The problem is to produce sRGB profile files that look good on both the average non-color managed system and the most color managed systems.

"The solution to the above problem is left as an exercise for the reader. (Or see my other comment, in the Comments section below.)

"It's a lot easier than it used to be now that Apple has switched from gamma 1.6 to gamma 2.2. This article alone may help your problems.

"These days the only radically bad looking displays belong to longtime Mac users who have not switched to gamma 2.2 and see everything lighter than the rest of the world. If I have a client who insists that something on the web looks really washed out on their old Mac computer that they use for pre-press I send them to the local Apple store. Everybody else either cares enough to set their computer up correctly, is lucky enough that the default settings are right, or just doesn't care.

"That said, keeping setup that is tweaked to match your important client's whacked out system can save a lot in your psychopharm perscription co-pay.

"By the way, for testing your web graphics, you can't beat using the various online browser testing services like these:

http://browsershots.org/

https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html

Streetlights in Fog, 4:00 a.m.

ISO 6400, comp. –3, and I almost hate to say it, handheld. Taken this morning.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David Bostedo: "Looks like you could use more exposure range...the bulb filaments are blown out and not visible."

Mike replies: True, but I can recover the shape of the glass globe:

Did the mighty dragoon just swat you down with its awesomeness? [g]

Nicholas Condon: "Okay, that recovered image of the globe made me laugh. It's also amusing that you used a camera capable of ridiculous resolution and dynamic range to take a picture of a foggy day where the highlights are completely blown and the shadows are almost completely stopped. On the other hand, it's a really nice picture."

Ernest Theisen: "I sometimes get up at 4:00 in the morning but I don't take my camera to the bathroom with me."

Mike replies: I wasn't going to the bathroom outside, I promise.

Jeff: "Photo for your book Waukesha de Nuit, I suppose."

[In case you didn't get Jeff's reference: perhaps the most famous early book of night photography is Brassaï's Paris de Nuit, or Paris by Night. —Mike]

A site called Cosas Cool found these amongst the vast L.o.C. archives. Antecedents of the great dress-up-the-dog photographers of today, no doubt...someone should write a thesis.

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Kwas)

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

(I'm just sayin'.) A random snap encountered surfing—Georgia Holt, 86, and her daughter Cher, 66 (and the photographer, unidentified). The picture was tweeted by Cher after she and her Mom visited with the Obamas.

Mike

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Inside the abandoned Pabst Brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee

As promised previously, a few snaps from this afternoon.

Pabst beer was brewed in Milwaukee for 152 years, and at its peak in 1978 was one of the largest labels in America. But by the 1990s the company had gone into steep decline and become a "virtual brewery" (contracting out the making of its beer). The company still exists today, but in 1996 the huge historic brewery complex in Milwaukee was closed. Abandoned since then, it's slated for urban renewal beginning very soon, although the final plans haven't been revealed to the public yet.

Paint peel porn was plentiful

Once renowned far and wide for its tours, the ruins are still toured by visitors...frequently including photographers. Our friend Jack MacDonough (you've crossed his path before in these pages) invited me to come with him today to photograph in the old bottling plant.

I noticed right away that we have different modus operandi. Jack sets right up and starts shooting—whereas I'd reconnoiter the whole joint first, then decide where I wanted to shoot. The scene at the top of the post is what meets the eye right inside the door where we entered the old building.

Jack was working—he'll sell pictures he made today. I, on the other hand, was just messin' around:

Jack, S2 in one hand, Gitzo tripod in the other, through a gap in the wall next to a door covered in (what else?) peeling paint.

Messing around or not, I should have brought my tripod along. Tactical error. The picture below probably comes off the worst of the four here on the blog page, because you're seeing it too small, but on my screen it's the one that interests me the most. (I suppose you have to like pictures of photographers working, which of course I do.)

Unfortunately I had to push the little GF1 to ISO 1600, which is beyond its limits. The file is pretty crungey close in. Maybe I'll send it to Ctein so he can work his industrial light and magic on the offending pixels; this one would be a challenge to print.

(By the way, see all that whitish cruft on the ground in front of the archway? Bird feathers.)

It was fun to get out from behind the computer and do some shooting today. I don't get around much anymore.

Mike

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Made me laugh—Hugh Look found this fabulous jacket on eBay. Perfect for the digital black-and-white photographer who has everything.

Mike

(P.S. Hugh says the jacket really is as pictured, it's not a spoof; he didn't Photoshop the picture.)

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I thought fans of a certain TV show might get a smile out of what I found in the course of my local motorized meanderings a few days ago. It's an iPhone snap (didn't have a camera with me).

Now to get a photo of the sign on the highway that says "Bong Recreation Area." (Seriously.)

Mike

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