Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops

Mono Lake Moonrise

I still haven't published my post on the Alain Briot workshop that I attended in October. I'm drafting it, but haven't got it done yet. I have posted some images from the workshop here and I've included one at the top of this post. It's a shot of Mono Lake around sunset when the full moon was rising.

I did enjoy my Briot workshop immensely and I believe it has improved several aspects of my photography. I'm more selective of what I shoot, I'm more patient when I'm shooting and I'm much, much pickier about the digital development and printing process.

I've been looking around for more workshops in case I can spring for the time off next year and can convince my wife to do without me for a week-end. I accidentally stumbled on a good source of workshops by following a link off The Online Photographer Blog to the Ansel Adams Gallery. Mike Johnson was blogging about a new set of prints that are for sale. These are digital prints of famous Adams photos and are available in a wide variety of sizes and come matted and, optionally, framed.

When I poked about the gallery site some more, I saw that they offered workshops in Yosemite National Park. Here's a link to the workshops for 2009. There are some very good photographers and teachers on offer including Charlie Cramer and Michael Frye. The workshops look to be three or four days long and cost around $1,000.

RIP Kenny MacLean

Kenny MacLean, ex-bassist of Platinum Blonde and musician deluxe, died unexpectedly yesterday. He was only 52. He'd just launched his latest album and had celebrated the event with a party at the Mod Club. It looks like he was intending to spend the night at his downtown apartment/studio and collapsed when brushing his teeth. Full obituary is here.

I jammed with Kenny about a year ago. A good friend of mine who runs a small computer company decided to reward his customers by renting Kenny and his band for a night and inviting any musicians in the crowd to jam with the band. Having been a musician for a long time, I know how I'd feel if anyone from the audience could come up and hack away at my drums - not very happy! But, Kenny and his group of musicians took it all in good stride and a wonderful evening was had by all.

I was lucky enough to play three tunes with the band on the drums (including a loud rendition of Wild Thing by the Troggs). He let me come up to the front of the band and do my Ray Charles party piece, Hit the Road Jack, with Kenny playing the role of the Rayettes. It was a night to remember.

Fortunately, I had my little point and shoot with me and managed to get a snap or two in. Here is my favourite photo of Kenny, capturing his good humour as well as his Platinum Blonde hair:


Kenny will be joining the big jam in the sky.

Network Back-up with MozyHome

If you're like me, you worry a lot about backing up your photos, but don't really do enough about it. Every year over the Christmas holidays, I make DVD's of the year's photo files, both the RAW images and the final images that I used for printing. This is a time-consuming process and a bit hit-or-miss given a) the rather dodgy lifespan of DVD media and b) the rate of obsolescence of various physical media (do you still own a diskette drive?).

I also do daily back-ups of my files onto an external drive, but that drive is right next to my computer and would perish in a house fire.

My dream would be to have a utility that backed up my files daily to a big disk drive in the cloud. That dream is pretty close to reality, with a bit of a gotcha that I'm working on overcoming.

There is a web site called Mozy.com where for $4.95 a month per computer you can purchase UNLIMITED online back-up for your files. I've signed up, I've downloaded their little back-up utility and it all works as promised. The utility lets you pick the files and directories that you want to back-up and lets you choose the selected frequency. It is smart to only back up the delta each time it runs. In addition, the back-up files are presented as a network drive and you can restore individual files, folders or the complete file system.

HOWEVER, the challenge is to back up your initial file system to mozy.com so you can have peace of mind and get into a nice space where you are just doing incremental back-ups. My issue (and I think this is true for most ISP's) is that my home cable connection is assymetrical. My download speeds are around 7 Mbps (thousand bits per second), but my upload speed seems throttled at around 500 bits per second. Not only that, but my account is capped at a total of 60 GB (million bytes) of data transfer per month before extra charges come into play.

If you work out the math, running the back up program for two weeks straight (24 hours per day) would copy about 60 GB of data to mozy.com. If you're like me, you have many GB of photos stored on your hard drive. In my case, if I prune dupes and things, I can probably get away with about 500 GB of archival data, with about 20 GB of incremental storage a month.

This means I can do 40 GB of archival back-up per month plus 20 GB of incremental storage. In other words, it will take me about a year to catch up with my archival storage while working away on the new stuff.

Given the importance of backing stuff up, I'm going to do this while I look around for a better way of connecting my computer to the network to see if I can overcome the uploading bottleneck.

Law of Diminishing Returns and the Canon 50d

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an art auction fundraiser for Art City Toronto, a store-front art drop-in centre for under-privileged kids in Toronto. I donated a couple of works to the silent auction and I'm delighted to report that an 18x12 framed print of my Phonehenge image sold for nearly $400. Here's the image:


It was fascinating to watch people in the silent auction as they looked at the artwork. For this particular image, a lot of people did a double-take when they noticed the old English phone booths (the photo was taken on a farm in southern Ontario in Canada). Many people walked up close to the photo to look at the details and, I'm happy to say, at 18x12, the details hold up just fine. The photo is quite sharp at that size.

Nowadays, I take most of my photos with a full-frame 12.8 megapixel camera, a Canon 5d, but the Phonehenge image was taken with an 8 megapixel APS-C camera, the Canon 20d. With the recent advent of the 50d and the 5d mk II, I've been starting to think about upgrading the 20d. In fact, I've placed the 20d on permanent loan to my son while I cogitate about an upgrade.

You can imagine my interest level when DPreview published an in-depth review of the Canon 50d. After reading the review and looking at the resolution stats and the RAW noise levels of the new camera, I must admit that I now have misgivings. With the current state of the art in sensor silicon, it looks like the sweet spot for APS-C sensors is around 10-12 megapixels. Any larger and noise levels start to increase. Not only that, but system (i.e. camera and lens) resolution becomes a matter of diminishing returns. Look at the following tables extracted from DPReview:

Camera	Measurement	Absolute resolution	Extinction resolution
Canon EOS 50D	Horizontal LPH	2250	2700
	Vertical LPH	2200	2700
Nikon D300	Horizontal LPH	2200	2600
	Vertical LPH	2100	2600
Pentax K20D	Horizontal LPH	2250	* 2300
	Vertical LPH	2250	* 2500
Sony DSLR-A700	Horizontal LPH	* 2200	2900
	Vertical LPH	2100	2800
Canon EOS 40D	Horizontal LPH	2100	2300
	Vertical LPH	1800	2300

Camera	Measurement	Absolute resolution	Extinction resolution
Canon EOS 30D	Horizontal LPH	1850	2100
	Vertical LPH	1650	2100
Nikon D200	Horizontal LPH	2100	2250
	Vertical LPH	1700	2200
Canon EOS 5D	Horizontal LPH	2300	2500
	Vertical LPH	2000	2500
Canon EOS 20D	Horizontal LPH	1850	2100
	Vertical LPH	1650	2100

Looking at the absolute resolution, moving from 8 MP (20d) to 10 MP (40d) to 15 MP (50d) results in a gain in horizontal resolution from 1850 to 2100 to 2250. If this was correlated to the number of megapixels, you would expect 1850 to 2336 to 3608. Clearly, there is something (e.g. lens resolution) hitting the wall that is preventing these new sensors from delivering on their promise. Not only that, but noise seems to go up beyond 10-12 megapixels, so the extra resolution may be getting obliterated by extra noise.

All other things (i.e. automatic sensor cleaning, larger LCD, LiveView) aside, is it worth paying $1,500 to get an uplift of 22% in resolution at the expense of more noise? Consider this in the context mentioned above, where an 18x12 image produced at a resolution of 1850 lines holds up to a room full of people examining the image up close.

I'm thinking that I might wait for the 40d to come down in price and buy a good used model instead.

Mounting Prints Part II

At a recent workshop with Alain Briot, our group was sitting around a hotel room listening to Alain review prints from some of the participants. The next person to have his images reviewed was a photographer named Loren. He'd been on a few Briot workshops before, so he knew the drill very well. As a result, he had a collection of very nice images from a previous workshop and he knew that the presentation of your portfolio was very important. While the rest of us had presented naked images, basically as they had come off the printer, Loren had mounted his prints on matte board and had brought them along in a portfolio case. As a result, his images were presented beautifully and he came across as being a notch or two up the ladder compared to the rest of us.

Alain made a point of stressing that the presentation of your work is very important. If you don't love your work enough to mount it and sign it, why should anyone love it enough to buy it or exhibit it?

In my previous post, I described Natalie Briot's mounting method, a method that I've now adopted for all my portfolio candidate images. But, I neglected to talk about cutting mattes, a subject that comes up sooner or later in the career of every photographer. There are four stages of matte cutting:

• Stage 1: you pay other people to cut mattes for you. This is problematic on two fronts. First, it is expensive. Second, it encourages you to produce standard size images that are easy to matte instead of cropping images where they want to be cropped.
• Stage 2: you start to cut your own mattes using a steel ruler and an Xacto knife. For low volumes, this is certainly an option. But, it takes lots of patience, steady hands and tolerance for the occasional little error. Try not to throw the knife or the ruler when you manage to screw up a matte on the fourth edge!
• Stage 3: after putting up with stage 2 for a little while, you realize that you are accumulating a backlog of images that need to be matted. It's time to get some help. Fortunately, there is gear that can help. I recommend Logan Matte cutting tools from the Lee Valley Catalog. For just over $100, you can start to produce nice neat edges in a reliable way. The cat no longer need worry about dodging flying tools.
• Stage 4: if you are good and lucky, you'll start to sell your work in volumes that demand a better tool set. Enter the computerized matte cutter! Be warned, the price isn't quoted, but you can have one of these babies for as low as $79 a month. This is the method used by pros like Alain Briot.

I've graduated to stage 3 and can produce a decent matte in about 10-15 minutes. The process is relatively fool proof and is perfect for my relatively modest print output. I aim to produce 1-2 portfolio quality prints a week.

If you want a little more detail on this, Alain Briot has written a tutorial on the subject.

Mounting Prints

I'm still working on my review of the Alain Briot workshop, but thought I'd pass on a tidbit of knowledge that I gleaned from Natalie Briot, Alain's better half. Natalie is the brains of the Briot operation and runs all the logistics of the workshops as well as assisting Alain in the field. She also does all the matting and mounting of Alain's prints and does a fabulous job. Here's how she does it:

1. Pick a standard outside dimension for your matte board. It is wise to choose a dimension (e.g. 16x20) that fits standard frames.
2. Cut two identical matte boards. One will be used for print attachment and the other will fold over to matte the print. In other words, your print will be sandwiched between the two boards. The back one will provide support and the front one will present your work for viewing.
   
3. Your images should be cropped to suit your art. Alain was adament that you not crop to fit a standard matte. Sometimes photos just want to be an odd size and you should crop accordingly.
4. Print your photos to fit inside a rectangle so that there is plenty of white space around the image. For example, on a 16x20 inch outside dimension board, I'll crop my photo so it fits inside a 12x16 inch rectangle, allowing a minimum 2 inch boarder.
   
5. Mount the print to the back board using archival quality plastic photo corners.
6. Measure the size of the print and subtract a quarter to half an inch to ensure that the matte fully covers the image. Cut your matte to frame your photo.
7. Attach the matte front board to the back board with an archival quality linen tape hinge. The tape needs to be moistened and attached to the boards.

Hey presto, you're done and your image is now framed in a durable double layer of matte board, suitable for framing or suitable for showing others your portfolio.

Just don't forget to sign your work. You should sign the actual print itself somewhere where the signature won't show through. Depending on the paper used, you might be able to use a pencil or might have to use ink. You should also sign the matte board below the image in pencil.

LensCulture and Contemporary Photography

I don't know about you, but I admit to being a little bit lost when it comes to contemporary photography. I've read widely on the subject and I try to see as much of it as possible, but I'm pretty much incapable of telling the good stuff from the bad and frankly don't get some of it.

To use a musical analogy, landscape photography is a little like classical music. The landscape was manufactured a long time ago, just as most of the classical repertoire was written a long time ago. Musicians and photographers are adding their own interpretation to well-known works. I was thinking of this as I photographed Mono Lake last week along with a bunch of other photographers. The parking lot was full before sunrise and people kept getting in the way of each others' shots. However, it is still fun to see the way other artists interpret Mono Lake and I'm sure, given changing lighting and cloud conditions, there is still something unique to say on the subject.

I'm currently singing in two musical groups: The Toronto Classical Singers and The Ensemble Tryptych. The former is a large oratorio choir that specializes in traditional masses and features a large orchestra during performances and the latter is a chamber choir that has a more varied repertoire. By chance, both groups are performing Handel's Messiah this year, so it has been very interesting comparing the approaches of the two conductors. Jurgen Petrenko of the TCS has to cope with a large chorus of over 100 voices, so he stresses simplicity and musical singing. Lenard Whiting on the other hand is working with TET's smaller, nimbler size and can go for a much more detached musical treatment that won't get muddied by the size of the ensemble.

Two groups, two conductors, two unique interpretions of one master work. Similarly, we have had generations of landscape photographers interpret the same scenery in different ways. The constancy of the subject matter allows the viewer to focus on the interpretation and to get a sense of the message being conveyed by the way the artist has arranged the subject and the light.

Not so with contemporary photography. Just as modern music throws out the structures of classical music and all notions of timing, scales and melodies, contemporary photography seems to dispense with the structures of classical landscape photography and substitue a free-for-all.

I've been looking at an online contemporary photography magazine called LensCulture recently and there are lots of examples of interesting work. Some of the work I get. For example, there's a gallery by Hanne van der Woude entitled Natural Red Hair that I find quite compelling. The portraits of redheads are quite lovely and, being married to a redhead, I find them very attractive. The settings are very interesting landscapes as well and the lighting is wonderful.

I also really like a gallery by Jim Vecchi called Markings: Art Underfoot in San Francisco's Sunset District. This is a beautifully composed gallery of images of brightly painted sidewalk pavement arranged in unusual shapes. The images turn sidewalk art into a superior art form.

On the other hand, I just don't understand the attraction of Ebbe Stub Wittrup's Out from Under. Here's a gallery of mediocre landscapes where the images have been de-saturated, given a colour cast and in some cases blurred. To what purpose? Here's what the accompanying blurb says: "In his most recent work, the landscapes are hardly recognizable monochromatic surfaces. But still, Ebbe Stub Wittrup obviously knows exactly how to bring this mental abstraction to life. " The only mental abstraction that matters to me is the one in the head of the viewer and my eye only saw pale, ghostly imitations of landscape as if the photographer had used really old film in a camera that over-exposed each image. There was no "bringing to life" for me.

Similarly, the portfolio of Alexei Vassiliev entitled Here and gone: 21st century anonymous portraits leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. Here's an entire gallery of blurry portraits of people. I guess this is supposed to convey a feeling of anonymity and de-personalization, but all I see is a photographer who can't seem to find the right focal point or shutter speed.

Of course, there are lots of landscape photographers that I don't like either, so finding contemporary art that doesn't speak to me should come as no surprise. It's only that I feel on firmer ground in the world of classical landscape photography. Contemporary photography kicks all the props out from underneath and I feel uncomfortable passing judgment in case I'm missing something deep and meaningful. Perhaps I'm lacking the context required to interpret these works and enjoy them.

Nevertheless, I recommend LensCulture and hope that you visit it often and join me in developing my appreciation for contemporary photography and developing my taste buds.