The Online Photographer

This string of Featured Comments from the second post about railroad tracks as a setting for portraits was good enough that I thought I'd make them into a separate post.

My thanks to commenters John Day, Mark Roberts, Dop, Kathy, Anonymous, and especially Allen.

John Day: "A couple of the comments to the earlier railroad post irritate me. Don't try to make light of being on railroad tracks. Being a railroad worker, some of you have absolutely no idea how much training we go through annually to be able to safely work on or around railroad tracks. And even with all this training, we still lose too many of our own out on the rails. You may think you have it all figured out, but you don't. You may get away with it. But some won't. When you're dead, you're dead for a long, long time.

"I've seen firsthand what a train can do anything from a car to a semi truck. What it does to a human being walking across the tracks is even worse. You no longer look human. Picking up severed limbs and pieces of flesh is something you don't easily forget. It gets worse but I'm not going there. Don't put other people or yourself in harm's way."

Mark Roberts: "My significant other is a pathologist who, though she is now mostly concerned with cancer pathology, used to do forensic work. She's told me about more gruesome scenarios than I ever thought existed. But she says the autopsies she hates most are people who have been hit by trains. (I did not ask for further clarification.) Next time you're in Boston give me a shout and we can meet for coffee and I'll share some of her stories with you.

"Or not.... :-)"

Mike replies: Coffee, sure. Gruesome stories, no thanks.

Dop (partial comment): "I'm reminded of this video clip of a guy who was so caught up in filming a steam train that he was completely oblivious to the regular service train coming up fast.  Nobody gets hurt—but it would be a major shock for the guy who escapes death by an inch, the person filming him, and the train driver.

Kathy: "It's not the train you see that kills you. That's a truism I heard from my dad who was a railway signalman."

Anonymous: "And think about the poor engineer. Even if you are willing to accept the risk for yourself, railroad workers literally have nightmares and emotional problems from near misses and fatalities."

Allen: "Thank you for posting this story. As a working locomotive engineer, I can wholeheartedly say that there is nothing—nothing—I dread more than seeing someone on the track ahead. By the time I can make out what I'm looking at, be it a person, an animal, junk, or even a fallen tree, it's far too late to stop before I reach it. Physics is physics and momentum is the law.

"I have no way of knowing if someone on the track is a photographer, a suicide, someone playing chicken, a drunk or if they're just oblivious but I do know that if they don't move, I have to watch them go out of sight under the windshield and wait for the thump.

"Even the effort to slow down before impact by using emergency braking has the potential to derail the train and cause even more damage than just hitting someone.  Everyone who runs trains knows that...but you still almost always have to try.

"Thankfully, in all my years I've never run over anyone...yet. Vehicles, yes, pedestrians no. Lots of close calls but so far they all made it. The young lady pinned in her car with the fractured skull was really bad, I can tell you. Hell, I even get misty about hitting a dog...I don't know what'll happen when the day finally comes when someone takes the wrong step. But we all know that if you stay in the job long enough, it's almost inevitable.

"I've worked with many engineers who remembered every little detail about people they'd hit...what they looked like, what they were wearing, what happened to them. The memories haunted them the rest of their careers and believe me, they are not photographs. The common thread is that most of them said the person on the track looked up and looked them right in the eye as they went under the nose. It's terrifying.

"So when people say they're going to continue to get their shots on the tracks regardless of the risk because they are the ones taking that risk, I would ask them to think a moment about me and my crew in the cab. Think about the flashbacks and nightmares I'll have after I see you flying like a rag doll. Think about the second or two I have to make the decision to try to save your life by slamming on the brakes...and maybe consider the consequences to people all around if the worst happens and the train piles up because of it. We carry some hazardous stuff you know and derailing it in a populated area because you were willing to take the risk is a terrible choice for an engineer to have to make...especially when it's all for a photo. A senior picture that causes a catastrophe will be a memorable shot, all right...the question is, to whom?

"In reading the comments, it seems most everyone here gets the idea, but please, if you absolutely must have tracks for a shot...be a pro, do some research to find a small carrier or scenic/tourist railroad that will give you permission and protection to work on their property. I have to believe that getting a client killed during a shoot has to be bad for future references, so do the right thing and go where you're legal. It might be a little less convenient and it might take a little more work but I'll thank you for it in advance.

"And maybe I can make it a career without the inevitable."

(posted by) Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Sean: "A kid I grew up with was killed by a train when he took a short cut across the tracks after a night out. He knew those tracks well—we all did. We prided ourselves on the risks we'd take on those tracks and in the tunnels they ran through. He was 17 when the train hit him. His twin sister was in my class at school. He was from an Irish family much like my own. I'll never forget Mathew Clancey's wake. His casket was closed. We all knew why."

David L.: "I had an odd but enlightening experience with a train 40 years ago. I had a warehouse job and we were unloading a rail car in the back of the building. Running the forklift inside it caused the car to start rolling very slowly, maybe one mile per hour. We jumped to the ground and scratched our heads wondering what to do. The train crew that left the car obviously failed to set the brake. Being clever, I picked up a wooden pallet and pushed it onto the track figuring it would surely stop the box car. Wrong! In vivid slow motion the half-empty rail car slowly crunched and crushed the pallet under the steel wheels and continued on down the track as if nothing happened. If one rail car going one MPH could do that, imagine what a train going even 25 MPH could do? For engineer and physicist readers, kinetic energy = 1/2mv^2. If m is huge, the energy is proportionally huge. After my little education about trains and moving mass I'll never take a chance near RR tracks."

Sadly, I've lost the link in my huge email stack, but somebody the other day sent me a link to an article about photographers taking portraits on railroad tracks.

Photographers taking...um, what?

You know those times when you didn't know a thing was a thing? Well, I had no idea that taking portraits on railroad tracks was a thing. But just Google "portraits on railroad tracks" and hit "image," and you'll find out what I did:

There are thousands of 'em. It's a big thing. Portraits taken on railroad tracks.

Who knew? I didn't.

The article I can no longer locate quoted a Union Pacific representative, I believe, saying, in effect: stop that.

Several reasons: first, all train tracks, whether active or not, are private property. They can't even legally be crossed on foot except at designated crossings. Police officers can not only give you a ticket and a fine for doing so, but can actually arrest you and haul you in. And the railroads have their own police, who are authorized to do the same.

The fines can be stiff, too. One outraged blogger learned her $6,000 fine was part of a media event surrounding the little-known International Level Crossing Awareness Day, but even ordinary average run-of-the-mill fines can run up to $2,000. 

Second, it can be dangerous. In 2012, 52-year-old Sacramento, California high school photography teacher Kathy Carlisle was killed on the train tracks. She was photographing one train approaching her and was struck by another coming the other way. Kathy must have assumed that the horns and ground vibration she heard were coming from the train in front of her, not another one behind her.

While people evidently feel that a train is too big to miss and thus can't be a danger, an accident involving a train and a person or a vehicle happens every three hours in the United States. I was actually on board a train once that struck someone. The train blew its horn repeatedly, braking till it shuddered, then stopped on the tracks for a long time. Along with others, I got off to find out what was going on. It turned out the train had struck a teenager walking on the tracks. He was hard of hearing, and had been listening to earphones—turned up loud, the only way he could hear the music (I learned all this from a newspaper article a couple of days later). The accident happened very close to a station. Despite people screaming at him and the train sounding its horn, he had no warning when he was struck from behind. He later died.

Also, if you have the misfortune to be killed by a train, you'll be suspected of suicide. As many as 50% of them might be; the real number is probably closer to 30%, but no one knows for sure. Irish-born U.K. photographer Bob Carlos Clarke committed suicide by train in 2006. But many deaths that aren't suicides are assumed to be by members of the public hearing the news. It's the same problem that caused the accidents in the first place: people really don't believe that train-to-pedestrian accidents can happen accidentally.

But they do. Between four and five hundred U.S. Americans are killed every year by trains, almost double the number killed in train-vehicle collisions of all kinds. (Many vehicle deaths are the result of the car hitting the train rather than the other way around, another fact that seems counter-intutive to most. The great book illustrator N.C. Wyeth, father of the late artist Andrew, was killed when he ran into a train in his car. [UPDATE: At least the way I heard the story. Several commenters believe otherwise. —MJ]

Both outstrip the number of people killed while on trains, in accidents such as derailments. Train-pedestrian accidents are the leading cause of death involving trains.

The final reason not to use train tracks as a portrait setting is that it encourages the very problem that causes the accidents, by presenting the setting as benign—an appropriate place to put a child or to use as a footpath. You wouldn't pose a kid in the middle of a highway or perched on the ledge of a high building, would you?

So: if you take portraits on train tracks: better stop that. Not a good idea.

Mike
(Thanks to Andre Moreau)

UPDATE: The reader who sent the link was Mike Plews, and here is the link. Thanks Mike!

ADDENDUM: I'm not sure I made this clear enough. I'm not really talking about photographers being on railroad tracks...if you know it's against the law and you're aware of the dangers, then the dumb illegal things you do to get a picture are up to you. I've trespassed to get pictures a time or two. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Kathy Carlisle, who was not shooting portraits as far as I know.

The post is really more about posing your clients, including minors, on railroad tracks. That's what got to me when I first saw that first link. It clearly sends the wrong message both to kids in the pictures and kids who look at the pictures. It's what seems really wrong to me. Sorry for not making that more upfront. —MJ

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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

Dmitriy Kostyuchenko: "For what it's worth, when I got ticketed for trespassing while taking photos near a rail line, the fine was only about $200.... No, the photos didn't turn out."

Oskar Ojala: "I've seen such photos, but always felt that the tracks as a setting were a bit of a cliché. The screen capture that illustrates this article doesn't make me think otherwise."

Mike replies: Right. Senior portraits, for instance...the graduate is "on the right track," headed off toward the horizon, etc., etc. You know.

Hugh Crawford: "When I was child this sort of thing happened all the time, or at least three or four times a summer. The brakes on the tomato and lettuce trucks were really bad, and The Western Pacific trains would take about a half mile to stop, and it was a real mess sometimes.

"I think that kid in the white sweatshirt is me. We had a slide tray of train wrecks from a grade crossing a mile down the road. In high school I knew a half dozen kids that got killed in train wrecks."

John Camp (partial comment): "When I was a newspaper columnist, I did a column about a Twin Cities lawyer who every summer would (illegally) hop a freight at the switchyards there and ride all over the country, jumping on and off trains, wherever he felt like it, and dodging the railroad cops. The column really upset the railroad people, and I went off to do a second column about how illegal and stupid train-hopping is.

"One thing they showed me is that often, in switchyards, you literally cannot hear a boxcar coming. That's because trains are (or were, anyway, and probably still are) made up with the least amount of power. They do that by having one powered engine push a line of boxcars, all going to a variety of destinations, up a rise in the track.  As each car gets to the top of the rise, it is cut loose and begins rolling on its own down the other side. A guy in a switch booth will throw switches to get that boxcar to the correct train to take the boxcar to its destination. Those cars are often moving quite some distance through the switchyard, and almost silently. If you're trespassing in the night (which is most often the case, because you're sneaking around a forbidden area, and in the daytime, the railroad cops will spot you and arrest you) you can be hit and killed by one of these silently moving box cars, which, since they're often dark colors, you can't either see or hear coming.

"On the other hand, life is too short not to shoot around cars and trains. You just have to take care."

Just a brief tip that might be useful. This was inspired by Alan Farthing, who wrote in response to Ken's short post yesterday:

This year we lost a good friend and had difficulty in finding an image of him for his obituary. Yes he hated having his picture taken; found quite a few where he was caught dodging cameras. We should have been insistent on at least a few occasions....

We all have friends or relatives who dislike being photographed and who often ask not to be. They do dodge the camera and complain when you try to sneak a few shots—or work out ways to subvert us, a form of hostility masquerading as "being funny." My policy in those cases is to respect peoples' wishes, and not nip away at them with the camera if they happen not to like it. People should be treated how they wish to be treated.

But, as Ken and Alan so eloquently expressed, we often want to have pictures of those dopes we love. And we need a few. What to do?

I've had very good luck just sitting down with those people and making a deal. I tell them I won't take a picture of them at every opportunity and I won't be all the time sticking a camera in their face, but that in return I have a request. I explain that photography is my thing (they already know that) and they are important people to me and that I'd really like to get a decent record shot of what they look like every now and then. I just ask them if they will please cooperate with me for five or ten minutes twice a year—not for them, but as a favor to me—and just put up with me on those occasions. Later, when I invoke that discussion, they relent.

Then, when I get my chance, I work quickly, to minimize their discomfort, often taking three minutes or even less. That helps set up the next occasion.

So far, it's worked for everyone I've tried it with. Maybe it will work for you too.

Mike
(Thanks to Alan)

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "I tried that with my wife. Still doesn't fly. She's so outrageously camera-shy that a solid 75% of the photographs I have taken of her include her raised hand obscuring her face. (Sometimes with an extended finger.) I have managed to catch a few lovely candids of her when she was distracted by other family members. Oddly enough she likes the photos as much as I do. But she still does everything she can to dodge the next one. It's remarkably similar to photographing skittish wildlife; perhaps I should pull out the 500mm ƒ/4 lens...."

Mike replies: LOL! Surveillance photography....

Mike Chisholm: "Of course, as photographers, it is quite likely we usually forget one quite important family member—ourselves. Many of us are embarrassed by self-portraiture; it seems a little vain. But in 50 years, the only shots of you are likely to belong to someone else's family. Get over it, and sit in front of a camera...preferably your own!"

Alan Farthing replies to Mike: Thanks Mike for the suggestion. Shame I could not try that with Dave!

The sunset tonight, from the car. The parked car, that is!

I got some criticism yesterday for the first picture in the "Pool Lesson" post. A number of people (I didn't post all the negative comments) thought I was being irresponsible to take a picture from the car while driving through a rainstorm. I was inclined to defend myself at first. But, truthfully, I couldn't really remember what I actually do when I take a picture from the car. I do it so semi-unconsciously that I'm not really aware of it. Does it actually distract me? Am I being reckless and just not acknowledging it to myself?

Then I thought, wait a minute—I'm supposed to be one of those guys who tests stuff. Why not test it? So I threw the NEX-6 in the car and off I went.

I photograph quite often from the car, not because that's a good way to photograph but just because I like to drive around. Naturally, whenever I take a "composed" picture, looking at or through either of the viewfinders (EVF or viewing screen), it's with the car stopped. I can't recall ever trying to look at or through a camera viewfinder while the car is moving (I didn't try that tonight, either).

Often, I'll get out and walk around a bit. Sometimes—since I'm lazy—I'll jockey the car into some vantage point or other and just take a picture from there. (Again, what I'm out doing is driving, not photographing. But I like to do both, so I do.)

Now, of course, we are all responsible for our own self-preservation. You should never do anything that puts your life or safety or the lives or safety of others in jeopardy, and I'm not suggesting you do so. Ultimately you're the arbiter of what distracts you, and you should act according to your conscience.

But for myself, I'm very comfortable driving the car (at moseying-along speeds, anyway) with just one hand on the steering wheel. For a very good reason: for most of my life I've driven cars with stick shifts. Left hand steers. Right hand shifts. Right hand often rests on the stick.

The camera sits on the passenger seat. When I'm getting ready to shoot, I pick it up. Do I look at it when I pick it up? No, turns out. I just grab for it. My hand knows where it is.

Do I look at it to turn it on? The answer's no there too. (I did this a number of times, just doing what felt natural and usual.)

So next I held up the camera as if I were taking pictures blind through the windshield, to see if it blocked my view. Not much, it turns out. It mostly blocks my view of the dashboard, and it's over so far toward the middle of the car it's really not blocking my view of anything out the window. And of course if there's something way over to the right that I really want to see, I can always just move my hand.

Normally I just hold the camera up for a few seconds, enough for a few clicks. But for this test, I drove along for miles that way, just holding the camera up like that, asking myself, "Objectively, now—is this unsafe at all?"

Again, you decide for yourself. I don't want to be a bad example. But for taking pictures without looking...well, I could operate the camera in my sleep (and sometimes do—I think I've admitted before that I sometimes dream of shooting!), and I really just don't think it's dangerous in the slightest to drive and snap out the front windshield at the same time. For me, at least. As long as you're keeping your eyes on the road and not looking either at the camera or through it.

Your mileage, as the Internet expression goes, may vary.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Paul McCann: "I'm with you on this. I get so tired of this 'Health and Safety' whingeing. Can't do this. Don't do that. The English police even prosecuted a woman for eating an apple while driving. World has gone mad."

latent_image: "There's a lot of rationalization in this post Mike, and I'm not buying it. Distraction kills, and taking photos while driving is distraction. Eating, texting, talking on a cellphone (whether hands-free or not), fiddling with an MP3 player, etc...those are the things that distract you during the split second in which you obliterate a kid in a crosswalk. My suggestion while driving is to do just one thing: drive. Who wants to be one of those idiots who hurts or kills someone because they were foolishly distracted?"

Mike replies: I admit my own behavior violates my own values. I, too, am one of those people who advocates "when you drive, just drive."

Taran: "Obligatory Andrew Bush set...."

Mike replies: And speaking of Andrew Bush and eating an apple....

Simon (partial comment): "My mileage differs significantly, and I blame it on the cars here in Australia being right hand drive. I'm trying to grab the camera with my left hand then swap hands to shoot."

Mike King aka darkroommike: "One of my biggest sources of artistic frustration as a young man was that my father never would stop the car when I wanted to shoot a picture. In his mind: destination and sleep = vacation. We got three stops per day, two stops for the facilities and one stop for lunch, I'm sure that if the drive-through had existed in our part of the world in the '60s and '70s we would not have stopped for lunch. So now I make it a point to stop frequently, walk about a bit and take photos. (I don't really blame Dad for not wanting to stop; it must have seemed an enormous waste of time to unload and reload five children every time I wanted to shoot a photo!)"

Wheelchair user Miles Ambridge's mother objected strenuously to his placement in his class photo, saying it makes him look "ostracized."
Photo courtesy The Province.

Sports broadcasters have long known that people identify with watching sports they themselves have played. It's not necessary to have competed or even to have played well, but people who've never played golf (or my recent favorite, pool) won't enjoy watching golf (or pool) as much as people who play those games.

In part we identify with "photographer stories" because...well, we know how it is. It struck me recently that I've never really done any "nature" photography (unless The Great Pigeon Safari counts)—or even any landscape photography in the hiking-in-the-wilderness sense. Sure enough, I don't identify too closely with accounts of nature or landscape photographers working. I also can't identify with trying to find body armor that fits or needing to get to Africa in a hurry on the very next flight. But I sure have posed a lot of class pictures. (When I taught photography, Yearbook Advisor/Photographer and official Development Department photographer were both part of my job description. For no extra pay, of course.)

The mother making a big deal out of this is probably just as bad as the problem itself, but then, since it's on the Internet we have to talk about it. What do you think—did this photographer screw up? You can't put the wheelchair in front of the risers, because then you just have the opposite problem—you're spotlighting the wheelchair-using kid. The photographer could have scootched the kids in the front row down a bit, but who knows what the back row of the risers looked like? Maybe the photographer was constrained, and couldn't move the back row of kids at all.

I think I would have found the best friend of the kid in the wheelchair and had that kid reaching over and linking hands with the wheelchair-bound kid. But then, I always tried to get "creative" with class pictures, which didn't always work out all that well.

I think at the very least the photographer could have put the teacher in the gap between the wheelchair and the risers. Whoever took this sure got those other kids to sit there in an orderly fashion, I'll say that for them. I always had a tendency to rile the kids up too much to get, er, ideal compliance.

Let's face it, it's a wretched assignment, the kind of thing that makes you question your life choices. Even if you do well you haven't really done well.

Although as I cast back in my memory it seems to me that I have seen at least one really good group picture of students. When my class went to Washington, D.C. in seventh grade, the organizers of the trip got a professional photographer to take a group photo of us on the steps of the Capitol with a big rotating-lens camera, from up on a ladder. He had a kid from one end of the picture run down to the other end while the exposure was being made, and she tripped and stumbled, which made her appear as a faint ghost behind the other kids. The large negative (black-and-white, naturally) made a rich-looking print, with faces you could actually identify, and I remember admiring the picture.

My print of that picture is long since lost, unfortunately. I'd love to revisit it now.

Mike

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post used the term "wheelchair-bound," which is not right—wheelchairs, as Bill Stothers points out, are liberating. —Ed.]

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Featured Comments from:

Rick D: "Oh my, that's a tough one. I presume the photo was part of a 'cattle call' of classes taken that same day on a tight schedule, and further presume the photographer has a formula for posing and shooting. Biggest concerns are getting everybody smiling in unison, all eyes are open and with kids, nobody is goofing off. Having a standard setup helps achieve those goals, but lacks artistic flexibility.

"On reflection, I'd probably have shifted everybody to the right of the risers, stood the teacher to the right of the boy, and moved my gear to the group's center. This would have made this class look different from the others, which would attract a different sort of attention that somebody, including the complaining mom, might have complained about anyway. It might also have thrown the schedule off, but probably not by much.

"Kids are resilient and I hope the little boy has friends and good experiences to take with him from his second grade year. Certainly, no harm was intended here. Mom is not, in my view, helping assure this outcome with her grandstanding."

David Zivic: "A sensitive topic, and my feel is that it is an innocent mistake. The other shoulders are between touching to 6" apart and that should have at least remained consistent. It actually appears that the second wooden seat is shorter in front of the teacher than on the offending side. Put the chair where the teacher is standing pushed up against the first wooden seat, shoulder to shoulder with the friend in the striped shirt, and put the teacher on the other side standing at the third row equal height with them again as in this photo.

"Now for a sports metaphor. This is all Monday morning quarterbacking. The most important part of this is the kid looks very happy, I'm OK with the mother's point of view, and the photographer might have taken 20 of these photos that day...an occasional 'miss' occurs with all of us every day."

Greg Roberts: "I saw a newspaper article on Sunday about that photo and I thought the headline would have been more truthful to have read, 'Underpaid button pusher takes mediocre photo.' In my and my wife's opinion, the parents are reading too much into this. This photo is not discrimination, it is just a poorly executed photo."

Doug C: "Rotating-lens camera? Please, the whole camera rotates on a turntable. It's a #10 Cirkut camera. And yes, it's a pretty neat tool for group photographs, I still use mine, it's a bit better than digital in some ways, though the advantages are getting nibbled down. Contact prints are very nice, even in color, which is what I shoot mostly."

Steve: "I'm the father of a child with special needs and can attest to the need for such parents to constantly advocate for their children in even the most accommodating school system. School photos are a prime opportunity to (unintentionally) highlight these children's differences. A professional, especially a pro consumer portrait photographer, should remember that it's not about us as the photographer, but rather the client and their needs/wishes. It isn't an overstatement that this photo is ostracizing, as that is precisely the feeling that special needs children get when their differences are put on display or commented upon. I know it to be true for even more trivial things than the class photo. I photograph my son in ways that I later see his embarrassment or sensitivity to, so I try to be aware of it. The image here does that clearly, even if it is unintentional (as it no doubt was—what decent person would intend to make this boy and his family feel that way?). I understand the reaction against the mother, but the complacency shown by the company initially is typical and difficult to overcome. It's great that the school promptly joined the effort to simply have the photo retaken. I'm not sure that continuing to criticize the mother is helpful, though."

Richard: "There are tons of things the photographer could have done...however they now have immense restrictions put on them for digital school photos. You set up your lights on a grey card system to get it to fall into a perfect parameter and then you do not move anything, lights, camera angle, or else an adjustment needs to be made. I was made to use this system on one of my more creative dance schools this year and I can tell you it wasn't long before it went out the window, but a small cog working for a big machine does not have that option.

"The company still needs to take responsibility for not training the photographer properly for these situations so they know what they are allowed to do and what they cant do."

Mike adds: That's kind of what I thought. The regimented nature of the other children and their arrangement signifies at least the possibility that the photographer is acting by rote and rule and doesn't feel the freedom to depart from the script.

Susan Hastings: "Speaking as the mother of a son who is in a wheelchair I think the mother was right to protest. On the Internet that may have been turned into an 'overreaction', which was not her original intention. I think the child will feel sad rather than angry looking at this photo when he is older. The suggestions people have already made about getting the child out of the wheelchair and onto one of the risers are spot on."

Ernest Zarate: "For me, this photograph illustrates the transformative nature of photography. The real time situation was possibly one of motion, activity, and some chaos—that is not uncommon in these settings (I speak not as a school photographer but as an elementary teacher of 23 years' experience, having endured a score-plus number of these). But when the photographer pressed the shutter and took the picture, all of that flux is gone. The only thing left is the recording of that moment and decision, defined and limited by the frame, and the (in this case godawful) setting, lighting and the vantage point. At the time of the photograph being made, I'm sure it all seemed innocuous enough, or at least good enough. Other classes of squirming, noisy, active kids and their patient (or not) teachers are waiting.

"I have found it often the case with photographs that only when one has time to see all those decisions, removed from the action of that moment, that one sees the full impact of those decisions as a whole, i.e., a photograph. And many times the sum of the photograph is very different than the time of the photograph.

"For me, such is the case with this photograph."

Ryan: "I used to work for this company, and yes the photographer screwed up. Move the back bench over to make room for the chair. Teacher stands between front and back bench."

Peter Stacey: "It is wrong because they could easily get him closer to the others and haven't even tried. Apologies to the purists but five minutes in Photoshop improves things a lot!

"Something similar in the real world surely wouldn't have been too difficult."

Mike replies: Much better, but I'd still like to see the teacher standing behind the wheelchair, not distancing herself (or "being distanced" perhaps) from Miles.

So if you've been reading this "vertical photography magazine" a long long time, you might remember a piece I wrote explaining why I'm not a photojournalist. I described coming across a perfect and very newsworthy picture and not being able to take it because it would have been intrusive to others. I'd link to it, but I can't find it. (An increasing problem. I really need to do a book of "The Best of TOP" so all that stuff is in one place.)

[UPDATE: Here it is; thanks to Roger Bradbury for finding it. This isn't even the first time I've lost that piece—I did the same thing once before. Oh well. —Mike]

Anyway, take another look at that crowd shot from Ned's memorial posted on Saturday. It was taken from an open mezzanine or balcony area above the main reception hall at MYAC. I realized at some point that I could get a good establishing shot from up there, so I went up and took the picture you saw the other day, and some others. But here's the funny part. As I was standing there snapping away, I was thinking how great it would be if I could just get everybody in the room to look up at me for twenty seconds.

And then I looked to my right...an arm's length away there was an open mike. The mezzanine had been set up so that the musicians in the family (there are a number) could play for the crowd later on, which did indeed eventually happen.

All I had to do was step to the mike, say, "Uh, excuse me...", and ask everybody to look at me.

I didn't.

Why not? Because I'm still the same guy I was all those years ago at the Wall....

Where you go, there you are.

Seeing, in sequence
And while we're on the subject of how we shoot, I thought I'd show you the rest of the shots from the sequence that ended up with the portrait of Lillian and Rebecca (Becky) that I posted the other day:

The next shot was the portrait; just the one.

All spontaneous. (That family is used to me, present for the camera but not self-conscious in front of it.)

And it's funny, but it you look again at the first picture in the sequence, you can see why I thought maybe the picture that was about to materialize was going to be a portrait of Becky and Jim. Didn't turn out that way.

You go with the flow, of course.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

TOP's links!

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Nigel: "I'm a documentary filmmaker and would happily, even enjoyably, have gone to that microphone to get the crowd to turn round. In the past I've even jumped on stage at a live event and asked the audience to help me and my crew out, and on assignment once thrust a microphone in the face of one of your ex-Presidents (my boss told me to get the interview, so I did). And of course in public I'd shoot individuals in all sorts of ways and get clearence afterwards if needed.

"But with a stills camera, on my own—which is always a strictly amateur thing for me—I wouldn't say boo to a goose. I often think that if I pretended I was on assignment when with a stills camera I would now have shots I really miss not getting, along with others that would have emerged during the process, that I didn't even try for."

It would be useful if someone, somewhere, could collate all the known "best practices" of card management and provide "footnotes," that is, substantiation for the technical claims. (Lloyd Chambers? Shawn Barnett? Rob Galbraith? Thom Hogan?)

I ain't that guy. However, it seems to me that the recommendations would be divided into several partitions:

• Technical best practices
• Workflow concerns
• Security concerns

For instance, I like Gato's suggestion of keeping exposed cards separate from the camera gear, because no one would steal a card alone but someone might steal the camera bag. That's a security issue, but not a technical one.

Of course, that might not be good advice for me personally. I recently lost my Kindle in my very own house. I remember the last time I had it in my hand and yet I cannot find the @#$! thing anywhere. It's been missing for two weeks. Highly annoying. You can imagine how likely I am to keep track of a card if I were to remove it from the camera while shooting. Sticking a filled card in a pocket—or "somewhere"—in the middle of shooting would be tantmount to blindfolding myself and tossing it into a landfill over my shoulder.

This is only one reason why I assume my own practices are virtually worthless to most people. I end up using a wide variety of cameras, and I'm disorganized and lose things easily.

Of course, maybe that makes me more suited to recommend my practices, because I'm such a doofus in this respect that if it works for me, it'll work for you. I don't know. What I'm saying here is that you have to take your own personality, psychology, and abilities into account when you do stuff. For example, I am not going to try to take a backup hard drive offsite on a regular basis. It's a very good idea, and I can see the sense in it; but I also know exactly what I'd do: I'd swap the drive at the offsite location about three times, and then I'd stop. Presently I'd forget about it, and then, five years later, I'd think, "Holy crap, my former neighbor Annabelle still has that hard drive of mine that I was using for offsite backup. And they moved to Oklahoma two years ago. Wonder if they still have it?" Meanwhile, my five-year-old backup is sitting on a shelf in Annabelle's laundry room in Tulsa and has spiders living in it. You get the point.

At any rate, I virtually never use more than one card in a day, and never take more than one card when I go out photographing. I end up almost literally never swapping cards while shooting. I might have done it, but only in the early days with one of my first two digital cameras.

I know some people don't have this luxury.

For the D800, I have three SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB cards. I just put a clean one in the camera, pointed it out the window, and shot until it filled up. It recorded 278 NEF (Raw) files of about 47.5 MB each, and 278 "Normal" JPEGs of about 9.5 MB each. All that data took 9:41 to download from the card to the computer.

That's with the 36-MP D800, of course, which records 7360x4912 files. Most people shoot smaller files (we all did, until fairly recently). Also, of course, there are bigger cards available, too. (Thank you, video.)

Now, it's quite possible that it's a holdover from shooting film for so many years, but 278 images is overkill for me. That's about eight rolls of 35mm film, and I could probably count on one hand the number of times in my life I've shot as much as eight rolls of 35mm film in one day.

Of course, "YMMV." How much we shoot is entirely a personal choice. Some people are "heavy" shooters (like Garry Winogrand); some people are "light" shooters (like Walker Evans). Back in my school days, there was one local teacher who used to advocate shooting 10 rolls a day, and another who shot very sparingly, 100 rolls a year or less. Actually, I think he shot less than 50 rolls a year, but that seems fantastical and you might not believe it if I said it, so I'll say 100.

I experimented, once upon a time. Severely limited my shooting for a spell, then forced myself to shoot a lot for a spell. I discovered I don't do as well when I shoot too much. It makes me "scattered" and too casual. I do better when I try to make every shot tell, and try to get "the" shot rather than "spray 'n' pray."

(Besides, I hate editing too much work. I'll tell you that story some other time.)

So I seldom hit the limit of the card. I generally have the opposite problem. I often shoot too few images on a card. It's sort of pointless to transfer 12 images (or 20, or 32, or whatever) to the computer and assign them their own folder. So I sometimes just leave the card in the camera for a while as it fills up. There have been a few times when I've hit the wall and filled up a card completely (not with the D800; I'm just speaking generally). But most of those times are just because I'm lazy and started out shooting with a half-full card.

If I'm going somewhere where I know I'll be doing a lot of shooting, I just make sure I have an empty card. That's enough.

If it was not enough—even once—I'd probably buy bigger cards. I don't mind paying for cards these days. Even good ones have gotten relatively inexpensive, and photography is my favorite thing. I can justify the expense.

The upshot is that the way I "think" is that there's a card in the camera and however many pictures the card will hold is how much I can shoot. Bear in mind I'm not a pro or anything close to it. If I were on some critical mission (almost never happens), I'd take a spare card as a backup. I've never experienced a card failure in recent years, though, so I admit I'm relaxed about that. I'm more worried about the camera failing, and much more worried about the battery running out of juice.

Such as it is...
Anyway, here's what I do:

• Take one card along in the camera, and never swap cards "in the field."
• Never reformat in the field.
• Never erase single images on a card (okay, except on those occasions when I mess up and start shooting on a half-full card. But that's a mistake, not a conscious practice.)
• Download the card to the computer using a card reader. The card then goes in a stack on top of my preamp next to my desk where I keep all my cards. I then take a different card and put it back in the camera.
• With the new card in the camera, I "Delete All" in the camera. I don't reformat unless there's any possibility that the card was last used in a different camera. For me, that means often with SD cards and seldom with CF cards, because I currently only use CF cards in the Big Dragoon (the Nikon).

I guess the only thing that needs explaining is why I put the just-used card at the bottom of the pile and put a different card back in the camera—although you've probably already figured that out. It's just so that I retain any particular batch of images on the original card for a while. My system backs up hourly, and sometimes it's a few days before I get around to looking through new images. Mostly, I'll have backed up the images and opened them in Photoshop before the card they came from is re-used. It's just a simple additional failsafe. I've never needed it, but I like doing it.

For example, the card I just filled up as a test is backing up right now. There's a clean card in the D800, erased and ready to go. The card with all the test images on it is at the bottom of the pile; it won't be erased for at least a few days. And possibly a few weeks, unless the weather gets friendlier.

I should mention that I have no real authority for my practice of "erasing all" rather than reformatting every time. I do it because there was one occasion, with one camera, and one card, where reformatting did not erase the old images. Or at least I thought it didn't—it's possible it was operator error. I can't give you chapter and verse. I don't remember. As I say, I use lots of cameras. But ever since then, I've preferred erasing rather than reformatting to clean a card before reuse.

I guess the only thing left to say is that one thing I don't do is to get rid of my old cards. I have all sorts of old cards floating around here, and that's probably not the greatest practice. I tend not to use them—I use my latest "set" of cards almost always. It would probably be more organized to formalize that and get rid of all the sundry older ones.

I'll think about that.

Mike

UPDATE: After filling a card with the D800 I figured I'd try the same thing with one of my new Sony 16 GB cards and the Panasonic GX1, to see how much it really holds, but lordy, I don't have that much patience. The buffer doesn't clear nearly as quickly, and the camera says it can hold almost 800 Raw+JPEG images. I'm going to take its word for that. You can shoot that many pictures in a day, but while you're beavering away at that I'll be over here in the shade of a tree, resting. Shooting 800 pictures in one go is just too much like work.

I'm left thinking I maybe should have gotten 32 GB cards for the D800 and 8 GB cards for the Micro 4/3 cameras.

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Keith B: "Just before your last step of deleting all in the camera, you might want to add this: Whenever placing a 'fresh' card in the camera, hit the playback button and see what's on the card. If you don't remember offloading those files, don't erase, reformat, or shoot with the card until you've confirmed the files have been safely saved into the system. Ask me how I know...."

Shawn Barnett: "I remember standing next to Rob Galbraith in either the Lexar or SanDisk booth at some trade show, asking them whether there was a way to detect when a card was nearing failure. The answer was no. When the card starts having errors, it's failing. There's no telling when that'll happen. Exhaustive testing of a card will just add to the wear and reveal nothing until actual wear builds up, when its too late. Since then, I've decided we're all on our own.

"The practices I follow and recommend are:

• Spend at least a little more than the cheapest card you can find.
• Don't format the card until you've copied your data to at least two locations.
• Format your card in the camera you'll use it with.
• Switch to newer cards after two years or less just to be safe.

"I try to keep a CF and an SD card in my truck for those times I forget to load the latest review camera. I also carry a few in a holder in my camera bags.

"I try not to put them in loose in a pocket, for a very good reason. I still carry and use a SanDisk Ultra II 8GB that the washing machine repairman recovered after a year in the 'gunk basket' of my washing machine. Its images were intact, despite the rust caked on the outside of its casing from the nail that was jammed against it in the basket. This disobeys my number four guideline, but it makes me feel like I'm getting away with something.

"I think Rob would be better able to answer your query, but I'll check with the card makers again to see if anything's changed on that longevity question, among other items."

[Shawn was Senior Editor at Imaging-Resource and is now a Senior Editor on the reviews team at Dpreview. —Ed.]

Andrew Hughes: "I would add one recommendation to Shawn's short list: Always buy your cards from a super-reliable source. As an example, Amazon is good, Amazon resellers less so. The likelihood of buying a counterfeit card is high and I would wager that failure rates on counterfeit cards are higher than on legitimate ones."

psu: "Note on formatting vs. delete-all.... Computer 'file systems,' including the storage systems used on flash cards are really just big multi-level lookup tables. At the top hierarchy is the whole system. At the bottom are the pieces of memory that make up the file itself. When you format the card, you just wipe the top level table, and replace it with an empty one. This makes all the files 'disappear' because the system can't find the pieces anymore. But all the pieces are still there. Similarly, when you delete a single file all you do is walk down to the entry in the file system tables that is keeping track of where that file starts and removing it, so you can't find the file anymore. The data is 'still there.'

"Now, like all computer programs file systems have bugs. So, it's possible to 'erase' a single file or a whole file system and for whatever reason maybe some of that old information leaks back in and you think you see things that you just 'deleted.' The only way to know for sure is to actually walk every block of memory in the card or disk and physically erase it by changing all the bits (but that's slow). And even that might not be enough. Those little memory cells just hold charge, or magnetic pulses or whatever, and they can hang around even if 'erased.' So some enterprising dude can come along with special hardware and read it all off. So if you really want it erased what you should really do is not write zeros, but rather write random gibberish over and over again until not even the magnetic remnants of the old data are there underneath anymore. Bottom line: there isn't much difference between format and erase. But format is faster (fewer things to remove). I generally use format."

Mike adds: Shawn tells me he also reformats. He feels there are fewers errors that way than after multiple erase-alls when using cards in many different cameras.

I like exercises. I'm a natural teacher, I think, in that I like learning things and I like finding ways to provoke students to learn things. (Although I haven't had any students for well over a decade—almost two. Sad, that.) I'd rather investigate something with an eye towards learning about it than "do" it...whatever "it" is. I'm a bit of a teacher on TOP, even. In a manner of speaking. Even though I receive as much knowledge and wisdom here as I impart.

Accordingly, I've given myself self-assignments throughout my involvement in photography. No big deal, really...I just like finding out about things. Some of these self-assignments work, some don't. Some are big and boundless, some are small and constricted. In fact, for the past few months I've been toying with the idea of writing a series of "Afternoon Exercises" posts this coming Spring...short quasi-assignments designed to help people improve their seeing, as opposed to their photography or photographic skills per se. We'll see about that. I think it could be interesting. If it's not too much work, and if enough people like what I come up with.

In the previous post I said that this morning I might be "doing something positively antediluvian: working on the computer offline!" The first response I got, from a reader named Mark, said, "I got a better idea. Go out and take some pictures. LOL."

Hmm. Funny how people assume I don't take pictures. I seem to be hearing that more and more lately.

Apropos of that, I thought you might be interested to hear what I've been up to lately, photographically speaking. I gotta warn you, though, it's really...well, dumb.

Accumulated skills, or a giant rut?
I'd become aware that, over many years, I've developed a "philosophy" of photography, in the demotic sense of that word...that is, ideas about how photography functions and what it does best, what kinds of pictures are "good" or work best, etc. What kind of pictures I like best. In addition, I've developed certain habits of working, certain aims and goals...ideas about what I'm after, ways of seeing, and of course a bag of "usual tricks." We all have our "usual tricks"—ways we go about making pictures that, over time, we've learned work for us. Things we can do over and over again knowing we're at least partially assured of a good outcome.

So it just struck me one day that maybe I should just completely obliterate all that. Not just head in the other direction, but completely abandon everything I know about making good pictures, just to see what happens.

Just as an exercise.

Why not? It's not hurting anybody. Although it might be temporarily a bit hard on my ego. Heh.

So for this exercise, I've been shooting in ways that completely ignore everything I've ever learned. Not controlling things, not applying craftsmanship, not avoiding pitfalls or problems. Anti-perfectionism. Then just looking to see if anything sort of somehow works. About the only thing I can tell you about it for sure is that I've been throwing away a hell of a lot of pictures! The latest card I downloaded, for instance, yeilded three files that I bothered to keep...out of 4GB.

As an adjunct to this, I've decided to just play with the files in Photoshop as much as I want to, utterly winging it, completely divorced from my usual ideas about reproducing reality, or real colors or real light—all my well-established habits and ideas.

I don't intend all this to be anything permanent, of course.

Worth it? Who knows?
I can't tell you yet if there's anything to be gained from this exercise. And please note that I'm not (I said NOT) suggesting anybody else try this. I don't even know yet if it's halfway worth the time it takes.

But it really is kind of interesting. It feels quite risky...and actually quite stupid, too! But then again, as I say, it doesn't hurt anybody and it doesn't commit me to anything.

I can't say I've gotten a "good" result yet, and I certainly am not going to show anyone the results so far, so don't ask—sorry, but I'd sooner go to a dinner party in my underpants than show anybody any of this $#!t. It does feel liberating, though, I'll say that. Like a weight, a responsibility, has been whisked entirely into nothingness.

I wouldn't even have mentioned it but for that comment. But it seems like a good diversion at the moment. Who knows how much energy it'll have, or how long it will last? I'll never know if I don't try.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 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.

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John Krumm: "This sounds like a good idea, kind of fun, and it seems how creativity is pushed sometimes. Of course the equivalent on a piano might not sound so great, but luckily nobody has to hear you play with your photography. Perhaps after your experiment you can teach a workshop on 'letting go of what you know.'"

Kenneth Wajda: "Interesting idea in theory, but I don't know how you can do that, Mike. I play guitar and there are things that I instinctively do, but if I were to try to throw all that out the window, I couldn't. It's too well set. It's instinctive. I can't imagine taking a photo and turning all that off, either. Unless I was going for 'bad composition,' but why would I do that? Does not compute."

Jeff: "Reminds me a bit of the 'George does the opposite' Seinfeld episode. Except, of course, that he was going not against his learnings, but against his instincts, which had consistently resulted in bad outcomes."

Mike replies: One of the great existential Seinfeld episodes.

Mark: "Wow, not only have I scored a featured comment about a week ago, my first, but now I've actually been mentioned in your post. I am truly honored. I do, however, want to apologize if you thought I was being a smart aleck or anything of the kind when I said go out and take pictures. I am a very long-time member of a popular Canon forum (POTN), and whenever the forum is down for maintenance, that's what it always says: Go out and take pictures. That's what I was quoting. Oh, were it that simple. I'm often working and unable to go out and enjoy doing same. Yesterday I did have off and went to the Bronx Zoo where I shot almost 10 gigs. Some of it was video, which I rarely do, though the two lions were roaring their heads off so it was very cool.

"Enjoy, Mike, and I like the fact you're hanging off the edge, stretching the envelope, so to speak, cause if you ain't off the edge artistically, you're taking up too much space.  ;-) "

Bill Pierce: "You have changed three things because you have recently acquired a new and different camera. But the hardest thing to change is what you shoot pictures of. Most of us take pictures of what is around us. And we have job and family responsibilities that tend to keep us in one place. Blessed is the journalist who gets to travel to exciting places or is given permission to document an interesting person. If you take off to a place you’ve always wanted to explore, that means we won’t have any TOP. I don’t know how you solve that problem (unless an in depth essay on Lulu would be a change for you and a dynamite essay for TOP)."

Mike replies: My biggest impediment, no doubt. I am not inspired by my locale....

Rob: "Mike, here is the reason why you are having trouble producing images that please you. Although you have deliberately discarded all your usual rules for creating pictures, you have retained your rules for evaluating them. It is a sort of philosophical trap. The only way out is to judge what you create with no standards of good or bad. Is that even possible?"

Mike replies: I may have mischaracterized what I'm after. I'm just trying to ignore my usual prejudices about what makes a good picture, is all; saying I'm "avoiding craftsmanship" and throwing judgement out the window wasn't quite accurate. Sorry. The pace of blogging is not ideal for thoughtful writing.

I'm shooting about one or two of these a day; can't wait to finish my work today so I can get to today's. Yesterday's was not a picture I would normally "allow" myself; but it did evolve over about 100 shots, and the full file got worked on quite a bit in PS.

So this is a pretty decent eBay product shot, isn't it? Camera's a bit dirty. Close enough for government work, as we used to say in D.C. You can read the serial number.

I have a bunch of schtuff to list (schtuff—that's a technical term) on eBay, and I wanted to shoot it with the D800. But I don't have a macro or a long lens for it.

So check out what I did...

...Just shot it with the 28mm and cropped. Instant digital zoom.

And the crop was too big—I had to reduce the image size. I could have stood twice as far away.

Hehe. Whee!

(Lighting is one umbrella at camera left.)

Mike

ADDENDUM: The camera is a Nikkormat (a.k.a. "Nikkomat," in Japan) FT3, manufactured for just a short period of time in 1977 while the then-new FM was being readied for sale. It was thus the last of the Nikkormats, Nikon's traditional (but always somewhat confusing to the public) name for its sturdy no-nonsense workhorse cameras just below the F line. (Many pros, especially beginning pros, preferred two Nikkormats to one F.) The FT3 was the only Nikkormat that accepted Auto-Indexing (AI) lenses. As with many old Nikkormats, the meter on this one no longer works. Otherwise it's still fully functional. The FT3 also has the distinction of having the shortest production run of any Nikon SLR (I believe—I'd have to ask Stephen Gandy to be sure).

It's actually fairly analogous to the D800/E—it was the top of Nikon's amateur camera line, but one tier below its flagship pro cameras, just like the D800 is.

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:

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Featured Comments from:

Pascal Jappy: "I am sooo jealous, I'm never reading your blog again. Not until tomorrow at least!"

Manuel: "Amazing shot. No moiré whatsoever ;-) "

ault: "Camera's a bit dirty??? I had thought that mine were moderately clean. It appears they are not."

Mike replies: Well, it's clean for real life. But look at the right-hand side of the top plate and you'll see what I mean. That's a light coating of grime that could easily be spruced up a bit.

As any tabletop photographer can tell you, lots of things show up in a product shot that sometimes aren't even visible to the eye unless you look carefully. Small-object photographers spend a lot of time getting things scrupulously clean in order to photograph them.

This used to be a lot more of a problem before you could spot with a click of the mouse. Of course, in eBay product shots, you have to be very careful what you spot out—you have to make sure it's something that's actually removable from the camera. There are times when I'm about to spot a white mark off a camera when I have to go back down to the basement and check that the white spot is actually a speck of dust that can be brushed off the camera itself. Cleaning up a photo of a object for sale if the object  itself can't be cleaned would be deceptive. It's usually a lot easier—still—just to make sure the thing is clean before you take its picture.

David Aspinall: "Congrats on your purchase but it just reinforces what for me is one of the problems of the digital age...Too much choice Too much money Too much in-built redundancy. The old Nikon will still be going long after the D800 is in a recycling bin."

Mike replies: Gasp.

Pavel: "That old Nikon is as beautiful as any sculpture and always potentially more useful too. If only to sit on a shelf that faithful servant should not be cast down like this, publicly and on fleabay of all fates, in the heat of your infatuation with the new. You will be sorry Mike! And I will use my 'toldyouso' emoticon on you, mercilessly, when you soon realize your terrible mistake! (As a man of your passion, intellect, good taste and good grammar undoubtedly will.) I know you would not sell a good book once you've thumbed through it! You've upended my faith in the known universe! By the way...umm ....how much ya askin'?"

Soeren Engelbrecht: "Nice, Mike. I'm constantly bewondered by seeing people—or even camera shops—trying to sell very expensive camera stuff and not being able to make a decent picture of it :-) They put their double-digit MP compact into 'macro mode' (which is often optimised for wide angle), move within two inches of the object, and then downsample to 0.8 MP or whatever they need. The result: weird perspective distortion—and often heavy barrel distortion, too. I'd definitely buy something from you, though :-) "

Mike replies: As the kids say now, "I know, right?"

The other thing that used to "bewonder" me is how often camera companies will put example photos in their brochures that either don't show off the qualities of the equipment or that have some obvious flaw. An old Contax brochure had an example picture, made with a Zeiss lens, that had obvious camera shake...and the caption talked about the sharpness of the lens.

It was later explained to me that often the U.S. importing arm of the camera company is responsible for the brochure, and just sends one of its tech reps out to snag a few sample pictures—and some of them just aren't terribly good photographers. You can see the same distinctions sometimes in digital review sites—the "sample" pictures from site to site, or even among different reviewers on the same site, can vary pretty widely in style and skill.

From McDonald's Canada, a brief but entertaining glimpse into the specialist world of food photography and food styling.

By chance, a shoot for a burger ad is one of the few food photography shoots I've personally witnessed, and the video here understates the amount of styling that goes on by a considerable degree—although I'm sure it isn't deception, just narrative compression. You wouldn't want to sit through all the time this actually takes. At the shoot I saw, the stylist sat next to a giant stack of plastic trays full of buns, and as she patiently inspected one after another after another, she flipped the rejects briskly over her shoulder. Behind her was a small mountain of rejected buns. She must have gone through a thousand buns to find the four or five "stars" needed for the shoot.

That was B.P., of course—Before Photoshop. Maybe they don't need to go through nearly as many "prospects" now. James B, who sent us this link, said "depending on your point of view, this is either an informative look at how the advertising industry intelligently offers information on a product (in this case, the ingredients), or a cynical attempt to completely disguise the sad reality of a MacDonalds cheeseburger."

Reality on the left, advertising version on the right. The top half of the bun is actually displaced backwards in the advertising photo.
Photo courtesy McDonald's Canada.

Plus, if you don't already know, you can find out from Hope Bagozzi how our Canadian friends say "out" and "about." :-)

Mike

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

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "The 'ad vs. reality' shot you show here is itself a bit of a deflection from reality. The 'real' burger on the left is not unappealing, all nicely lit and obviously handled with care, unlike the sad lumps you find at the bottom of a paper bag after you leave the drive-thru. A 'real' burger is usually slapped together carelessly, squished into a paper wrapper, and then mashed into a bag with a bunch of other stuff. By the time you unwrap it, it's twisted and limp, sweaty from condensation, and half the condiments have been squeezed out and smeared over the bun. If you want more realistic 'ad vs. reality' photos, check out this guy's website."

Featured Comment by John London: "In a previous life—or so it seems now—I was an industrial photographer working in the packaging industry, and my main task was photographing food for use on consumer packaging. For over 20 years we made food look good and edible, and most in a time before studio flash arrived in our studio. Shooting 10x8 trannies under tungsten in the early days and processed in our darkroom for speed was challenging. Make no mistake, food has to look good on the packaging, and our job was to help make the product sell. Along with stylists, marketing managers, brand managers, studios managers, product designers, advertising managers, graphic designers, etc. etc.—possibly a dozen or so people, all intent on putting their two-pennies' worth into the mix, was to choose the best, light it, photograph it, and present it in the manner desired and make it the most mouthwatering product you have ever seen.

"I remember one particular product shoot involved raspberries, which, in the U.K. at that time of year, were out of season. The remedy was to fly over from the Channel Islands pallets of the freshest fruit so we could choose the required number of delectable pieces. It took one and a half pallets before all the V.I.P.'s were satisfied with the desired samples. They then had to be set up, light, photographed, processed, evaluated and hopefully the photograph accepted before the fruit wilted in the cool room or we had to start again.

"Our fully equipped kitchen also was put to use on many occasions, especially on cake shoots. One chocolate line took three days, and over 60 cakes were cooked and rejected before we had the right one...have you ever cut a sponge or a cake and found objectionable air bubbles in the wrong place or maybe the chocolate topping of an uneven thickness or a caramel which colours on an incorrect line?

"All this is to point out that food photography is not a con, it's a craft. It takes an awful lot of hard work and integrity to make a product look its best. I am not advocating misdirection or fraud, but would you really want to see a favourite food look average, uninteresting, and non-appetising? I doubt it."

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(A Magnum video. Best if you go to full screen.)

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

Featured Comment by Dave: "Ahhh...Coney Island. I can smell the Coppertone.... I was born in raised in Coney Island, within spitting distance of the beach. In the 'seventies, although I had already moved to other parts of the city, I returned often to shoot on the beach and the boardwalk. From the look of his pictures, Bruce and I were probably out there around the same time. That place and that time defined the golden age of street photography for me. People were relaxed—they were enjoying themselves, and they weren't afraid to let their guard down. It was easy to connect with strangers—most of the time, stealth wasn't a part of the equation. There was an unspoken trust between subject and photographer that led to a deeper level of engagement between the two. I find that quality missing from most of the street photography I see today, and I consider it a loss. Thanks for posting the video, Mike!"

A few posts below this one you read my account of shooting with Jack MacD. at the abandoned Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. After seeing a few of my pictures, I thought you might enjoy seeing a few from Jack's early edit. He's the only guy I know personally who shoots with a Leica S2.

You might recall that Jack prints his work anywhere from large to very large and sells the prints to corporate clients for decor in hotels and commercial buildings. Anyway, for this reason he is always looking for potential panoramas, diptychs like the one above, and triptychs.

In Jack's impromptu portrait of me looking out the window you can start to get a bit of a sense of what the S2's large sensor and spectacular lenses will do for you. The files are vivid and lifelike, full of fine detail and texture and subtlety of color. Showing S2 files on the internet, of course, is a little like driving a Ferrari in a school zone.

By the way the subjective contrast in the portrait scene was much greater, with deep shadow on the right side of the picture. I'm assuming that the Leica lets Jack dig into the shadows pretty much at will. I took a few pictures of him in the same place, and I was thinking a white reflector would be needed to pick up a little extra detail on the shadowed side of the face. Not so with the S2, which is essentially capable of mimicking a reflector virtually.

He has only two lenses, a 35mm and a 120mm (equivalent to 28mm and 96mm in 35mm format). The portrait was taken with the long lens. By the way, despite owning  other cameras, including an M9, Jack guesses that he does 90% of all his photography with the S2—even family snapshots. I've heard him call it "my point-and-shoot," only partly joking.

These last two are of the same motifs as the first two pictures in my post—proof of the old adage that two photographers can shoot the same thing standing alongside each other and not make the same picture.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Scott Kirkpatrick: "The informal portrait of you shows signs of its MF origins that are not wasted at internet size. Besides the 'virtual fill light' from a little extra dynamic range, look at how well-rendered the middle tones are in your shirt. I think the difference is obvious, so maybe it is time for some blind testing with best case comparisons.

"I tried one of these a while back, comparing images of the same distant village with my M9 and a 75mm against a P45+ MF back (on my Hassy 500C) with a Zeiss 120. Tripod, mirror up, all that stuff. I asked Carl Weese to be the 'golden eyes' judge. He could tell pretty easily, that the rendering of details in the middle tones was more complete and lifelike from the P45+. It was obvious while pixel-peeping, but you could also tell at 800 pixels width."

Featured Comment by CMS: "That is really a great portrait!"