AKA Abraham Bacoln

All I have left

I feel I’m finally approaching an understanding of the need to create. Some artists claim that they have to paint or draw or create every day, not out of a desire to maintain a skill or practice, but simply to release or satiate creative urges. Correction: I’m not approaching an understanding per se but beginning to accept that I feel this way myself. Often when I’m sitting around I’ll find myself itching to go take pictures. Other times while in the middle of something unrelated I end up having to put it down and pick up the camera. Most of the time when I feel this way the very act of photographing something is enough to satisfy me, to allow me to continue about my day. Most of the time I don’t even post the results – it’s the act of creation that is significant, not the results. On occasion, though, I can look at what I’ve made and feel good about it, good enough to share it with everyone. I’m coming to realize – and this all sound so simple from the other end but trust me, it’s truly just now becoming apparent to me – that what I’m showing people, what I see in my photos, is not what they see.

I was there for the creation of this photo. I had my thumbnail-sized piece of cracked and worn tile, I tried ten different setups with the notebook – open, closed, half-open, turned this way and that, I was there when I realized it’d be best propped open, I was there to make the decision that beach glass would work better, I chose the piece, I was the one who had to keep moving the notebook around to get it just far enough from the door, and so on and so on. I don’t tell you this to make you think it was a lot of work, because it wasn’t. I just want to give an example of what I see in this photo – because when I look at it I see all that experience.

My viewers can’t. Most of them have never been to my apartment, have no idea what my carpet looks like, they don’t know which part of what room I was in. When I look at this picture it’s almost like some cheap shot out of a movie – the film zooms out and I see my living room, the door, the lamp, the pitcher I use to water my plants, the coffee table, and so forth.

I can not dissociate myself with the creation of this photograph. I was there and I can not un-see everything I saw. The viewers can’t associate themselves with the production. They can only see exactly what I present.

That’s what I’m finally truly comprehending. When one of my photos gets far more attention than I understand, or more than I think it deserves, I’ve typically been left wondering. When I’m working on these in post-production I generally have to step away, come back later and try and view things with a fresh eye. Still, I’m only looking for colors, composition, and so forth. I don’t think it possible for me to look at it in terms of the spirit of the whole thing. I can shift levels and curves and hues in Photoshop but I can’t change how I felt while using the camera to capture a moment.

When I present an image, even one like this that I think of as nothing special, just the end result of a creative urge, I don’t understand or can’t know what the viewer will make of it. I know what colors they will see, what shapes and lines, and I sometimes hope that they will feel part of the emotions. But overall their reaction is unknown to me and can not be known by me in advance. This is both fascinating and a little bit frightening, and I still don’t know what to think about it.

I think the bottom line is that I’ve never understood painting or photography with an artist’s statement beside it such as “This piece represents the fragility of the human understanding and the importance of the familial structure with regards to the heartblood of the consumerist psyche” or somesuch. So here I find myself taking pictures that on occasion, when I get lucky, are making people feel things. How could I even make up a statement about what my picture ‘means’? This is wild and unknown and unnerving and I don’t know the right way to weld the viewer’s perceptions with mine, and I am lost in the though that I can’t even begin because I can never even know how what I’ve made will make someone feel.

Way too many photography words

WARNING: This post may be terribly boring for anyone not interested in photography. Proceed at your own risk.

EDIT: As JTJ pointed out in the comments all my discussion here is not really film vs. digital but instead ‘cd production machine at the 1-hour photo place vs. digital’. It’s still valid for me because that’s exactly how I would and will get film developed (because I am cheap) but it’s … yeah, anyway, read his comment for the rest.

So where to start? I guess I’ll start by saying I recently decided to shoot some film. As I mentioned, Sarah’s pictures got me thinking about film, and I just happened to be able to steal Trey’s camera off of Henry.

I was excited about film for three reasons:
1.) This whole concept of reportedly better tonal range
2.) Lack of chromatic abberration (purple fringing)
3.) Full-frame shots as opposed to cropped sensor

Let me take those one by one. First up, tonal range. I’ve heard people mention that they’ve gone back to film because of greater tonal range. Now I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ and can’t be bothered to read up on it because my eyes start to glaze over on technical specs and everything seems to be infused with a whole ton of personal opinion anyway. I figured I’d just look for myself. The base idea here is that the film has more detail in the darker and lighter areas than the digital.

Secondly, chromatic abberration comes in many forms but the one with which I am most concerned is the dreaded purple fringe. I’ll let you read the Wikipedia article on fringing since it has pictures and a better description than I can come up with (better than one up with which I can come?). Everything I’ve heard is that film is far less susceptible to this but I wanted to see for myself. Now my digital camera is pretty nice, it’s not bad for producing purple fringing, but I do know situations in which I will encounter it and so I try to avoid them.

Finally, full-frame shooting versus cropped sensor. I will again point you to the relevant Wikipedia article but the oversimplified short version is that the sensor inside my camera is physically smaller than a 35mm piece of film, which means my field of view is reduced and I’m not seeing the true edges of my lenses.

Before I go into the results let me say this: I am an idiot when it comes to Photoshop and color spaces. I don’t really understand what’s going on with them.

I got my film developed and put straight onto CD. When I looked at the pictures they were a bit washed out, and I was disappointed. Then when I took them into Photoshop and did nothing but re-save them the results were a lot better than what I’d been seeing originally. So. I feel that I must have saved them under a different color space, but I don’t know enough to know what I did. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

For reference, I used Fuji 200 film on a Canon EOS Rebel X body. When taking the comparison shots with my Canon Digital Rebel XT I set the ISO to 200 to match.

I’m going to give you this image of the amphitheater at Dogwood Park first:

The top is film, the bottom is digital, both shot with the same Sigma 20mm lens. First up, tonal range: film wins. The best example is the sky: where the digital shows nothing but white the film gives some cloud detail. Though, as said before, I didn’t see this originally when I looked at the images – they were washed out. Photoshop rescued this, and I’ll have to research how.

Past that there was no noticeable fringing on the film, but also none really on digital. The crop factor should be obvious as the digital shows far less than the film.

Second example:

Same layout, top film, bottom digital. The film is far more contrast-y. Oddly enough the orange bottle is more vibrant on film, but the red bag looks better on digital. I have to say that overall the film appeals to me more.

This is the point, though, where I have to say that now that I’ve seen exactly what my digital camera can do as compared to an equivalent film camera I am not ready to abandon it by any means, or start shooting film on a regular basis. The advantage that film has in initial appearance is seriously outweighed by the convenience of digital in every other aspect.

Third comparison:

In this I actually prefer the digital. The film is too contrast-y and has a look that I try to avoid when doing digital post-processing. Initially the film was far too washed out on the skin tones but one quick save in Photoshop and everything has changed. I’m really going to have to go learn more about color spaces.

At this point I had to abandon my digital camera body because I kept fretting too much about taking pictures with film and “wasting” film. I was shooting more with my digital body instead. So, I forced myself to give up the familiar and go out and finish some rolls.

Here’s a shot directly into the sun on a purple fringe test. It passed with flying colors:

A few last things: I bought both Fuji 200 film and Kodak 200 film. Overall there was very little difference in the films. I took some comparison shots of this car and the Kodak came out the winner by the slightest of margins. In the mid tones and shadows the Fuji has a bit more blue whereas the Kodak puts out a bit more red. Still, the Fuji was cheaper and the color difference is definitely not worth the price difference.

All of the pictures I shot on film that were worth uploading are here: film set.

Also, I noticed with the film that my highs were blown out more often than on digital. Should I go out shooting film again I need to be more careful with regards to what I meter off of.

Summary: I really like the way the film looks, but this is only after I take it into Photoshop and re-save. So, therefore, it’s not really any faster to me than taking my digital images into Photoshop and tweaking them ever-so-slightly (or really hard if the situation and my mood warrants). Therefore I’m giving (for me, personally) the winning title to digital based on convenience.

Are you still here? Wake up! Go outside and take some pictures.

He certainly appears to be in charge.

I figured I would share my new favorite Flickr photoset with you – the set Charles by empirik.

Charles fascinates me because he’s such a helper. The first time I saw him he was cleaning empirik’s Nikon. He is also apparently fond of adventure.

There’s something excellent in the way that empirik treats Charles as the subject that fascinates me. There’s a difference between taking a picture of a toy and taking a picture of a person, and somehow empirik is crossing that line in a way I have yet to understand. Regardless, I really enjoy it.

Free cheeseburgers, maybe?

I want to be a better photographer.

So! Because of this I tend to offer my services to my friends. “If you ever need anything photographed just give me a call.” Well, obviously, most people don’t just ‘need something photographed’ but you know, it’s out there. Anyway, my friend Chris was the first one to take me up on that offer. Wait, no, that’s not true – there’s someone else that needs something done (HI MARY) but that’s gonna require actual thought and setup and caution and professionalism. Chris just wanted to go take some pictures.

And we did, we went and took a bloody ton, and of course I learned a million things while I was doing it. One thing in particular I learned is that my hands are not as steady as I give them credit for. Better to have high ISO noise than blurry shots. I will remember this. Regardless, Chris was pleased with the results enough to say, “i’m going through them now and it’s like christmas, even though i was there and i know what’s coming.”

Yes. Productive day all around. I learned things. I made a friend happy. I have more goods in my little fake portfolio. I have a contact that can say, “Yes, I took Kevin up on his offer and the results were magnificent, darling, you simply *must* let him shoot you” (NOTE: Chris does not actually talk like this), and then most importantly I learned things. Free experience! What could be better?

Photos for giveaway

EDIT: Only one left

This mainly pertains to you Cookeville folk ’cause I don’t really intend to mail these, but if someone’s begging enough I’m sure I’ll be accommodating.

I have the following pictures printed out by the photo place, meaning these aren’t just some inkjet papers I did in my apartment or something, they’re the real thing. I got them printed a while back when I was determining if I wanted to make a portfolio book, and if so was the quality at the local photo place good enough (answer: yes) and so on and so on.

See, the thing is I don’t really need ’em, and they’re just sitting here taking up very valuable desk space. The only problem with them is that they’re not cropped to 8×10 or anything. Basically they’re printed on 8×10 paper but most of them don’t fit that ratio, so there’s a lot of white space. If you’re good with matting then knock yourself out. Or you can just hang it up in your cubicle, I don’t mind.

So here’s your chance to own, free of charge, some of the first pictures I ever printed. If you want it, comment here on which one you want, and I’ll give them away (IF ANYONE EVEN WANTS THEM *sob*) in order of request.

I got five, and they are:

Library in St. Johns, Portland, OR:

CLAIMED Modified VW bug in Portland, OR:

CLAIMED Tennessee Central 509 here in Cookeville:

CLAIMED Broad Street at night, here in Cookeville:

CLAIMED And finally, the one all the girls can fight over:

So give me a yell if you want any of these. I’m going to pretend like you’ll actually take me up on this, so I’ll say “one per, please.”

Maybe forever

Of course I love all my photos – I’m not a monster (NO WIRE HANGERS … EVER!) – but some of them I just love a little bit more than the rest. And when one of those captivating and special ones has the prestigious spot of being the main page opener of my portfolio site then it’s hard for me to replace it.

The current index page on klophoto.com is a prime example. I’m not asking you to love this picture like I do. It just means a lot to me. It’s the herald of summer. It’s twilight as the days grow longer and we’re not all smothered in darkness at 5:00PM. The weather is getting warmer and we can be outside into the evening without freezing. The light is right, my friends are there, Matt’s bikes look absolutely killer and clean, and the warm glow of the house interior just calls to me – time to go get the dinner that I showed up for.

A picture like that makes it really hard for me to update my site – I don’t ever want it to not be the first thing people see. I hope that they see it and feel the camaraderie and coming summer and all the things I feel.

I know that in time I’ll have a new favorite and an excuse to update my site, but for now, I’m pretending like I never will. I’m going to hold on to this moment just a little longer.

Anyone need a kidney – you know, for backup or something?

I sold my bass guitar. I am officially $AMOUNT closer to being able to buy that Sigma 20mm f/1.8 lens. Now to figure out what else I can sell off that I haven’t used in years. Problem is that most of my boring unused stuff kind of bit it with the hurricane. Still! Surely I can think of something …

… because, see, if I don’t actually spend any money that’s currently in my checking or savings accounts it’s like I never spent the money at ALL, right? So as long as I can magically generate the funds from sales of pre-existing possessions then I’m all good.

Madoz. Finally.

How is it possible that I’ve gone 30 years without ever hearing of Chema Madoz? He’s a Spanish photographer (and more) and right now my mind is completely blown by everything on that page I just linked to. I’m no high-falutin’ art expert so I won’t go into detail, but just imagine me using words like juxtaposition of form and intense super-(sur)real imagery and so forth. Seriously. I … I’m kind of ashamed, actually. I should have been salivating over this guy’s work from the get-go. I recognize one or two of the images, but never knew there was a whole body of work of his and that they were all this good.