Motivation

I recently had the good fortune of selling a large number of prints to a local hospital system via a gallery they use to choose and install the artwork.  Because of the gallery’s standards regarding artwork in health care facilities, there were certain types of scenes that they were particularly interested in and others that they did not want to display.  They therefore wanted print options for display beyond what I have on my website.  Based on their interests I had to go back through my archives and generate completed files from my unedited RAW files…….and I have to admit that for the most part I really liked the images choices I generated for them.

But the point of this post is not that sale.  The point is that I had years and years of unedited images.  And by that I don’t mean unprocessed, I mean unedited. As in picking the keepers from the throw aways, the wheat from the chaff, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I realized that I have thousands of images (many of them duplicates with slightly different apertures, focus points etc) with no separation of the ones that might be worth showing or printing other than the ones that I thought were my absolute best images. It turns out that what I thought was my best was not always what they thought was my best.  And though they picked some that I thought were among my best works,  they also picked a good number that I would not have considered five star images.  But I still thought they were good.  And there they were, hidden among the hundreds and hundreds of other images.  And since I just went through them with an eye for the particular types of images they wanted,  I know there are other good ones in there that didn’t fit what they told me they were looking for.  How much easier would it have been had I, years ago, done at least some sort of star ranking and not just print the few I thought were ‘portfolio material’, leaving the rest behind.

I am not talking about keeping lousy images or showing work that is garbage in the hopes that someone likes it.  I am talking about knowing which are your good to very good photographs.  Ones that you can still be glad to be associated with even if they are not your portfolio star performers.  I now recognize the importance of this for two reasons.  One, not everyone necessarily agrees with the artist’s taste and ideas and the ‘consumer’ might absolutely love the photograph that you think is just good.  Peoples’ tastes are different.  Secondly, there may be (as there was in this case) extraneous rules or limitations about what can be used by a potential client who may be looking for a very specific type of image that is not a ‘star performer’.  The best chocolate cake in the world will not satisfy someone who is shopping for apple pie.

So, with this knowledge, I am changing my habits and changing them now.  About two or three weeks ago I went on a fantastic trip with two of my photography buddies to Smoky Mountain National Park.  The trip had initially been planned for wildflower season but, because of the unusually warm February and March, the April wildflowers bloomed a month early and we totally missed them.  Nonetheless, there were still abundant photo ops and we had a great time and came away with many good images.  However, as anyone reading this probably knows, to get many good ones you often take hundreds that don’t quite make the cut and never see the light of day.  I will not let these 1500 or so images fade into obscurity.  It takes a good deal of time, but I am editing all of these and all  future  images as I go.  Though I may do preliminary processing on all the top picks I clearly will only print my favorites, which may only number ten or so.  But I will have at least separated out the really good ones into a Lightroom collection that I can show while having easy access to a number of images that are culled and ready to use.

I think this is a good practice that I had not been doing regularly.  If you aren’t doing this perhaps you should consider it as well.

I am pleased to announce that my entire Carrie Furnace Project has now been posted to my website.  The project consists of 47 black and white photographs, most of which have associated audio content.  It can be viewed as a slideshow without the audio or as individual images with optional playing of the audio using the audio player on each page for the images that have this content.

To see the project click here:  The Carrie Furnace Project

I embarked on a small 15 minute project that I thought might be worthwhile  while I was reading Martin Evening’s new book on Lightroom 4.  In it he notes that the printer profiles that one utilizes in Lightroom and Photoshop for specific printers and papers typically automatically map the very dark tones to levels where the printer can produce detail (ie a level of say 1-5 would be mapped by the profile to a new level where the printer can generate a bit of detail by visually producing differences in the black tones).  However, it is much more critical that one map the highlights to levels where the printer can produce detail, as profiles typically do not accomplish this very well.

For example, 255 is pure white and any pixel at level 255 will print to paper white. This means that pixels at 254, 253, 252 etc SHOULD have some ink and that the levels SHOULD be able to be discerned from each other…..after all if you can’t tell a 254 from a 253 then there will not be any ability to discern details or contrast in that region in the print.  But the SHOULD is not reality and all printers are different.  It seems it would be useful to know what level one’s printer can start showing detail so that the brightest highlights with detail can be mapped to that level.

So I did a brief experiment.  I made a new file in Photoshop and with the marquee tool made multiple squares and then  using the Edit>Fill command filled the squares with neutral colors at 255, 255, 255 and 254, 254, 254 and 253, 253, 253 etc all the way down to the upper 240s.  My goal was to see where my printer started to produce printed patches that were able to be seen (thus, not printing paper white) and if one were able to denote differences between the patches (thus, denoting the ability to differentiate detail).

My results:

255, 255, 255 – appeared paper white with no discernible tone, as it should

254, 254, 254 – also appeared paper white with no discernible tone

253, 253, 253 – the very slightest amount of tone was visible under light and if you looked carefully you could make out the square

252, 252, 252 – this was the first patch you could see with a quick but directed look

251, 251, 251 – and lower were pretty straightforward to see and the differences between each were evident, ie 251, 251, 251 could fairly easily discerned from 250, 250, 250 and so on

Is this helpful information??  Maybe not groundbreaking , but I think it is helpful,  Now I know that the brightest level in an image where I still want some ink and not paper white should be 251, 251, 251 or 252, 252, 252.  Many books have advocated 248, 248, 248….but I think it helps to know how your particular printer acts and what it can do with the lighter tomes.  Of course, I believe the results might only apply to the particular paper and profile that you are testing, but nonetheless I think this is useful information to have.

I am using an Epson 7900 and would be interested in what types of results people get with other printers and if this is felt to be a worthwhile endeavor.

One more image ‘brought to life’ from my hard drive from the 2004 Michigan Upper Peninsula workshop I spoke about in my last post.  In this one I was intrigued by the lines and shapes in the foreground made by the flow of the water during the long exposure.

Red Rock Falls

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Copyright Howard Grill

It was pretty close to this time in 2004 that I attended my first photography workshop.  The location was Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the workshop lasted for a week. I remember it quite fondly, as it was the first time I was really able to immerse myself in photography for a prolonged period of time.

Every so often I like revisiting old images that I never had a chance to work on before. Not working on them doesn’t mean I didn’t like them, just that it is hard to keep up with editing and refining what one produces.  This one, though taken in 2004, has just being ‘given life’.

“Bog Sunrise”

Copyright Howard Grill

“This is the same problem I have with digital photography. The potential is always remarkable. But the medium never settles. Each year there is a better camera to buy and new software to download. The user never has time to become comfortable with the tool. Consequently too much of the work is merely about the technology. The HDR and QTVR fads are good examples. Instead of focusing on the subject, users obsess over RAW conversion, Photoshop plug-ins, and on and on. For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.”

Alec Soth

Too much focus on the technology and not enough on the picture and the emotions it generates.  So many software upgrades that we are upgrading before we have come close to mastering the prior version.  Pixel people instead of composing.  I know I have been there!  My guess is that we all have.

I always have my eyes open for interesting and high quality photography magazines.  They are hard to come by.  However, a few months back I got an iPad and ran across a magazine edited by Michael Freeman that is formatted specifically for the iPad.  Actually, perhaps I should say for tablets, because I really am not sure if it is available for Android based tablets or not.

At any rate, what makes it very interesting is that it is one of the new breed of multimedia publications made specifically for electronic devices.  The magazine has interviews, portfolios, informational articles etc.  But each article typically has some type of multimedia component, be it an interview, teaching points, audio etc.  That itself would not merit mention as it needs to be quality, not just fluff.  This one is definitely quality.  I am not sure that the multimedia options in the ‘magazine’ are being utilized to their full potential and it will be very interesting to see how this whole genre of multimedia publications evolves over time.  And I am sure they will evolve.

This one is definitely worth checking out.  It can be purchased via subscription or single issue.  After reading the first one I went ahead and subscribed.  Check it out in the Apple App store and Newsstand.

For background information about this project see my post entitled The Carrie Furnace Project.

To hear the 1-2 minute audio content click on the link below the picture, which will open the audio content in a separate page.

This post’s audio content describes how the iron making process was essentially unchanged from the Civil War up until the 1980s.

The Carrie Furnace Project

Copyright Howard Grill

CLICK HERE FOR 1-2 MINUTES OF AUDIO CONTENT

For background information about this project see my post entitled The Carrie Furnace Project.

To hear the 1-2 minute audio content click on the link below the picture, which will open the audio content in a separate page.

This post’s audio content describes how clean the rooms in the plant were kept.

The Carrie Furnace Project

Copyright Howard Grill

CLICK HERE FOR 1-2 MINUTES OF AUDIO CONTENT

For background information about this project see my post entitled The Carrie Furnace Project.

To hear the 1-2 minute audio content click on the link below the picture, which will open the audio content in a separate page.

This post’s audio content describes how the large popes seen were used to bring air into the stoves to be heated prior to passing it on to the furnace.

The Carrie Furnace Project

Copyright Howard Grill

CLICK HERE FOR 1-2 MINUTES OF AUDIO CONTENT