Tea Leaves

My year in photography ended like it usually does, at my parents’ house where I took pictures of the Christmas festivities and all of the excessive preparation of food. This year I sent the gallery to my parents, and then got a curious email from my dad essentially asking me why my camera takes better pictures. I did not have an answer. As is usual for me though, I do a lot of insight from the negative. So, for the new decade I present up to ten things that will not make your pictures any better.
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If camera bodies and bags are the number 1 and 2 dork shopping obsessions related to photography, sharpness is probably a close third. It is probably the most popular purely technical aspect of actual pictures that makes it to the camera dork shopping list. People buy bigger cameras, more expensive lenses, sturdier enlargers (well, maybe not), and spill a lot of sweat and tears over sharpness and “picture quality.” Even my resolutely un-camera-dorky partner peterb got into the act when he described the Nikon D300 autofocus system as being one that could lead to “tack sharp” images. Unfortunately, it’s a hard concept to pin down. Most people will tell you when they think a picture is sharp, or not. But sharpness is more of a mixture of multiple technical characteristics than a single measurable quantity.
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Some reviews of Panasonic’s answer to the Olympus EP-1 are starting to trickle out into the intertubes. I just noticed that the Luminous Landscape people are talking about their experience with the camera. The review is about what you would expect. The camera is quicker to focus and generally more usable but it does not have the sensor-based anti-shake. You can’t have everything.

But here is a line from the review that confuses me: “Doing serious photography with a camera at arms length just isn’t my thing.”

You hear this complaint over and over again from the people in the world who just can’t live without an eye-level viewfinder. I understand the shortcomings of the LCD screen, but this complaint still baffles me. The implication is that the only way to use the LCD on the back of the camera to compose pictures is to lock yer arms straight out in front of your face like a mentally crippled robot and then point the camera in the right direction. So here is my question: do serious photographers not have elbows? Can any of you out in the Intertube-land enlighten me? Do you have elbows?

I left this out of my 09/09/09 post, even though it was the other cool thing that happened that day. I thought maybe you all had suffered enough of with my constant rambling about cameras. But, after a lot of deliberation, I decided to pull the trigger on a D700. After only two days, I haven’t used it enough for to provide you with a in-depth and comprehensive review, Top Gear style. But I can say this: Wow.
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Back when I used to print in the darkroom I had a little green notebook that I used to keep track of what I had done. If I made a worthy print of a given negative, I’d write down the roll the negative came from, the frame number on the roll, the paper I used, the contrast settings I used on the enlarger, and any particulars of how I dodged and burned the various areas of the picture to get the look “just right.” The theory was that if I needed to print the picture again I’d have a point at which to start working.

With digital processing techniques, I generally don’t need a log book like this. I can just open the file again in Lightroom or Photoshop and the software will have kept all my settings for me. But, once in a while this is not enough.
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The natural cycle of things has been working its way through my life. Back in the day I was an enthusiastic shooter of black and white film and printer of black and white prints. I even had someone rebuild a bathroom in our house to use as a small darkroom where I cranked out what I think were credible prints of reasonably interesting pictures. Of course, I can’t show them to you unless you come over to my house, so you will never know. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Well, that was then, this is now.
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If you hang around the Interweb forums related to photography long enough, you come to notice that the two most common questions are always first “what should I buy?” and second something like “what bag should I put it in?” or “I am going on a trip, what should I bring?” When you think about it, all of these questions stem from the same basic source of insecurity on the part of the photographer. What these questions really say is “I don’t know what I want to do with the camera, please help.”

I’m here to help.
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A couple of months ago Kodak announced that they would stop manufacturing Kodachrome slide film. given that this is a product that has been continually available for longer than most current photographers have been alive, you would think that this was a pretty big deal. But no. The end result of the digital vs. film battle was so predetermined that even that bastion of irrational nostalgia: the Leica Users Group mailing list barely made a peep about it. The truth is that Kodachrome died in the 1980s when Fuji introduced Velvia.
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Having returned from my recent trip to Paris, I ran my pictures through my semi-home grown web gallery generation scripts. No, you don’t want this code, trust me. Just use flickr. Anyway, I uploaded the pictures and put the links up for all to see. People were happy. I have generally been happy with my scheme for lo these many years except for the fact that the pictures are always a bit soft after the downscaling, and I don’t have a convenient way to sharpen them. Every couple of years I look for a solution and fail, so last night was the time to try again.
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I was standing behind the Gare St. Lazare last week looking around at the morning light in Paris. We were taking the train to Vernon to go to Giverny, where Monet had his house and famous gardens. There was a lot of construction around the train station, but I didn’t see anyone jumping over puddles. Even if I had, I probably would not have grabbed a picture of it.
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