Month: August 2009

Dreaming of Light

Posted by Chris Klug – August 29, 2009

Geometry

Geometry

Went into the backyard late this afternoon and did some capturing of light. No real commentary today, just wanted to post some of the images that I found.

Contrasts

Contrasts

Very peaceful afternoon, right as summer begins to fade into early fall.

Visual tension

Visual tension

Have a good weekend, everyone. This week I’m making a trip to a conference in the Pacific Northwest, where I hope to rent a camera I’ve never shot with before and tour Seattle with one of the regular readers of this blog. I’ll post again before I go.

Portrait

Posted by Chris Klug – August 28, 2009

Not much touch up, just enough

Not much touch up, just enough

Yesterday I did a short portrait session for a colleague. She had been asked to speak at a conference in Korea, and they wanted a picture of her for the program. The last portrait she had done was years ago, and she knew I was a photographer. She asked me earlier in the week if I’d ever done portraits, and I replied as how I used to make extra money while in college shooting actor’s head shots. Not quite the same thing, but enough similarity that I felt confident that I could pull it off.

I’d always liked high-key portraits and wanted to try that setup. There is a video studio that we had available to us, so I borrowed it for an hour and did a quick lighting setup there. I wished I had flash units, all I had were the studio lights. I discovered quickly that I didn’t have as much light as I wished. In high-key, you want an incident reading at the white wall to be one whole stop brighter than a reading at the subject. Ideally, 1/125th at f/11 at the wall, and 1/125th at f/8 at the subject. Both readings at ISO 100. With flash equipment, that would be easy to achieve. But these lights just weren’t that bright. They were incandescent-temperature fluorescent fixtures, and a bit unwieldy to boot (clamps and sand bags, etc).

They were made for film shooting I guess (30 fps at f/5.6 is three stops dimmer than 1/125th at f/11). This image was exposed at 1/60th at f/6.7 at ISO 400, which works out to 3 1/3 stops dimmer than the ideal 1/125th at f/8 at ISO 100. And in post-processing I had to increase the Exposure by a half a stop to really balance the image.

I used my wife’s 50mm f/2.5 Canon Macro (a very sharp lens) which with the 1.6 crop factor, is like an 80mm. I also tried a 75-300 Canon zoom (at 75mm) but I felt like I had to move too far away from the subject (so as to frame properly) to keep a proper connection with her.

I shot about 100 frames in 15 minutes or so. Picked one that looked scholarly enough, got the client’s okay, then softened the focus a bit, cleanup up some imperfections, punched up the eyes a smidge, and sent it off. In that short time I really developed sympathy for photographers who do portraits or fashion shoots for a living. Getting the image is just the start of the process.

I also did a B&W version in Nik Silver Efex, which I included below.

I don’t think I was quite as relaxed as I would like. I was too fussy, too unsure of the light and the equipment. The client has talked about a more casual portrait she wants done. I’d like to do that after I get all my equipment back. I’d like to use available light for that one, maybe just some reflectors.

All in all, I was pretty happy with the overall work. Wish I had my strobe units, though.

Nik Silver Efex to the rescue

Nik Silver Efex to the rescue

Both these images appear courtesy of the client. Thanks, Brenda.

What is this?

Posted by Chris Klug – August 27, 2009

What the heck is this?

What the heck is this?

Hey, wait a minute. What is this camera doing in my house? Who are you buddy?

What are you doing here?

What are you doing here?

We don’t like your kind in this house . . . but yet you are here.

Painting in Lightroom

Posted by Chris Klug – August 27, 2009

She's had a little work done

She's had a little work done

At this moment I work on my laptop. The laptop has Lightroom on it, but not Photoshop. I await the glorious reunion of my stuffs from my Mesa apartment and my house in Pittsburgh. In the meantime, I do not have access to all my photo editing tools. So, for that reason and others, I’ve begun playing with the ‘dodging and burning’ available to me in Lightroom. This image above has been heavily dodged and burned. I’m trying to make that work invisible to the observer. I’m getting better at it, but I don’t think I’m there yet.

I pulled out this older image to play with because it was shot on Ektar 100, and as I mentioned in my last post, I was eager to get to use my newly purchased Mamiya 645e and shoot some Ektar 120. Well, 645e arrived yesterday from Adorama and it was broken. Not damaged in shipment, mind you, but broken as in ‘clearly not functional to any idiot who would have picked it up and shot off a couple test shots with it before they shipped it’ broken. Every time you turned the film advance lever to go to the next frame, the shutter fired when it reached the end of the stroke. Normally, the film advance locks at that point, but I could twirl the film advance all day long and the shutter would fire again and again and again in a never-ending stream of unusable film. Yeah, I’m a little miffed. It was rated by Adorama as in “E-” shape. That means one grade below “Excellent.” Cosmetically, it looked beautiful, no nicks dings or scratches. Looked perfect right out of the box. No so much with the properly operating, though. It’s going back.

Earlier today I shot a portrait for a colleague who is going to speak at a conference in Korea. She needed a portrait for the program. I’m going to ask her if I can post the selected image and talk about the shoot a little. It was the first time I shot a formal portrait (with lights and stuff) in thirty years. It was really interesting, and I learned a lot.

A little color at ya

Posted by Chris Klug – August 22, 2009

Captured with my beloved Mamiya 645e

Captured with my beloved Mamiya 645e

As some of you know, I kinda inspired Paul Lester to purchase a used Mamiya 645e a while back. I’m glad I did, ’cause the images he’s captured since are amazing, but I have my own Mamiya 645e story to tell.

Last year, after my wife Peg had kind of lit the photographic fire in me again by getting her own Canon 40D, I found a used Mamiya 645e on ebay. It came with three lenses (a wide angle, normal, and medium telephoto). The price was right, and I had always wanted a medium format camera back in the day. One of the few weddings I had worked was shot with a rented Mamiya camera, and I found it very easy to use.

I loved shooting with the Mamiya. Simple to operate (you want the mirror up? No problem, it’s a switch on the side of the camera, just flip it up . . . take that, Canon-who-hides-their-mirror-up-command-in-some-hard-to-find-sub-menu. You want double exposure? No problem. Easy to use, the camera would disappear in my hands and all I thought about was the shot. View finder was exceptional. The only issue was that it was Mamiya’s cheapest 645 camera, and so it was kinda clunky to hold in your hand. But my copy came with a sort of external grip, and that made it easy. That external grip is a kind of Rube-Goldberg contraption, but it works great.

In March of this year, I was shooting a sunset near my apartment in Mesa when my 35-year-old Gitzo tripod gave up the ghost and a leg collapsed beneath my Mamiya. Crash, boom, right on the cement, the camera toppled over. I kinda watched it fall to one side in slow motion. Sickening slow motion.

At first, it just looked as if the external winder handle had popped off due to impact, and some of the metal tabs inside which held the handle in place had bent. Okey doke, take the camera to the local store and have it fixed. I asked for an estimate, and it came back a week later: to fixed this little used camera was $300. They had to send it to Mamiya in NJ, the shutter was broken in addition to the handle repair. Yikes.

Well, a used Mamiya body was running $225 at KEH at the time, so that seemed like a waste of cash. Better I should keep the old body for parts and buy a new used body.

Then the problems at my company got worse, and that $225 wasn’t such a wise expenditure.

This week was my birthday, and things are a little better now economically, so my wife convinced me to buy a used Mamiya 645e body and also replace the old tripod with a new one so the whole scenario doesn’t repeat itself. The new body is on the way along with a Manfrotto tripod, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to capture some medium format images once again. I’ve been jones-ing to try the new Ektar 120 emulsion from Kodak, after enjoying the 35mm version.

The image above was captured with that now-gone Mamiya body, scanned at North Coast, and cross-processed in Nik Color Efex. Just to throw a little color at ya. Below is the original scanned image after some tweaks in Lightroom. Man, the detail in that medium format image.

Just some tweaks in Lightroom

Just some tweaks in Lightroom

North Park Lake

Posted by Chris Klug – August 21, 2009

I'm a sucker for the Black & White

I'm a sucker for the Black & White

Near our house in Pittsburgh is a lake.

The sunset today was beautiful and I honestly set out to make a color image. I had been thinking about how few color images I’ve made of late, and thought I should post one. The light was golden, the setting sun rakes across the lake just at the right time, I park the car, I see this guy in his kayak and I’m thinking ‘great, a beautiful golden image; wonderful.’ Now, if I had my film camera with me, I’d have exposed this image certainly with color film; I’d have never exposed it with b&w.

I get home, I load it into Lightroom, and I start playing. The color version stayed until I got it into Color efex, where the first preset is b&w conversion, and the b&w version just leapt off the screen.

I loaded it into Silver efex, played with it a little, and here ya go.

Just a sucker for the black&white. Even on a rare day in the ‘Burgh where color seemed to be the perfect choice.

Light and Texture

Posted by Chris Klug – August 14, 2009

Light and texture on a rainy day

Light and texture on a rainy day

Sometimes I think I’m really an abstract expressionist. What I mean is that I react to a photographic opportunity very instinctively, and often don’t know why I press the shutter. I’ve commented earlier this week that I envy the photographer who can plan a shoot, pre-visualize, then execute. I don’t know if I have the patience for that. I’m gonna give it a try once I get all my equipment back together. Last post’s ‘still life’ of the Diet Pepsi can and the banana has given me some inspiration, but I really want to set up my flash and umbrella. I’d wanted to try portraits that way with my Mamiya until it fell over.

The end of the summer is approaching here in Pittsburgh and I saw this pattern in a puddle walking back to my car. Enhanced it a little with Color Efex. Liked what I saw, so I thought I’d post.

Capture ‘em where they lay

Posted by Chris Klug – August 11, 2009

Just as I saw it

Just as I saw it

This image came out of a couple of blog discussions I’ve read in the last couple days. On one, Tom mentioned how wonderful a 50mm 1.8 lens was. Well, I slapped one on my Canon 10D and took that camera out with me today.

On another blog, I said that I tend to shoot things as I see them, and I don’t think much in terms of ‘setting up.’ Well, the image above is exactly that. I was getting in the car this morning, and put two elements of my lunch down on the roof of my Saab. Lit only by the garage light, I grabbed the shot and went on my way.

A nice surprise: Dodd Camera

Posted by Chris Klug – August 9, 2009

As some of you know, my life lately has been full of surprises, but not all of them have been nice. Yesterday, I had a very nice surprise I’d like to share with you. As this is a photography blog, it’s photography related.

Pittsburgh has many things, but one of them is NOT a robust photography store. The city has a lively arts scene, it has an Art Institute with a good photography program, it has Pittsburgh Filmmakers (that also has a good photography program) but its single photography store isn’t the best. When I lived here and went to graduate school, I remember three stores, all pretty good, but obviously not now. My guess is that the general decline in the economic scene here in Pittsburgh has collapsed the desire for photographic equipment. I don’t know for sure, however.

Until yesterday, Peg and I thought that if we wanted to ‘browse’ in a photo store, we needed to drive to NYC, where there’s B&H and Adorama, among others. There’s a Calumet in Philly, a little ways closer than NYC.

We like browsing in photography stores. When we lived in SF, we would frequent Keeble and Suchat, a GREAT local photography store (heck, it’s located in Palo Alto, so they don’t exactly have to scrounge for potential buyers of high-end gear, if you get my drift). We happily pay the ‘extra’ for good customer service. We bought lots of equipment in K&S.

Thursday night, I discovered Dodd Camera in Cleveland on the internet. The web site looked okay, so we drove there yesterday. Cleveland is about 2:15 away, so it’s easily a day trip. Well, lo and behold, not only was Dodd’s ‘ok,’ it was also GREAT. Lots of equipment, very clean, crowded on a Saturday afternoon, very knowledgeable salespeople (I would listen to each one discussing with customers and they knew whereof they spoke), and a decent stock of film and darkroom equipment (decent for 2009, that is, which is all you can ask).

I had a particularly nice conversation with Eric Wethington, who also impressed me very much. We bought some stuff, and had a nice chat about the store. Highly Recommended if you find yourself in Cleveland.

Peg and I will be back.

P.S. They had Leica gear in the sales case. I saw an M7 and an M8. Very nice.

Seeing things anew

Posted by Chris Klug – August 9, 2009

Sometimes the simplest thing can catch my eye.

Sometimes the simplest thing can catch my eye.

I’m in the midst of adjusting to my new world. Pittsburgh is very different than Phoenix. I think even people who haven’t been to either location could conjure that difference in their mind’s eye. For me it’s been a kind of a visual jolt that I don’t think I’ve totally adjusted to quite yet. It isn’t as simple as, say, color, or architecture, either. Pittsburgh, especially in the summer has color. It’s just mostly GREEN. The tans and browns and such of the desert southwest are almost entirely non-existent.

The architecture is way more interesting, certainly. I really have to think about how to work with that, as architecture in Phoenix never really interested me.

But the biggest different is the quality of light. It is so much softer here. Partly because of the ever-present cloud cover (for those that don’t know, Pittsburgh has less days of sunshine than Seattle). So the light is almost always soft and almost always leaning towards the blue end of the spectrum.

There is a ton I want to capture. Images may come slowly, but they will come.

It’s August 9th, and you can already see signs of the area prepping for fall. Fall will truly start to arrive by Labor Day. I’m gonna start stocking up on Ektar and hopefully capture images on film this fall as well as digital.