Monthly Archives: November 2008

Bokeh, why, oh, why?

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Anyone that frequents photography forums, or Flickr, will have heard of bokeh. People talk of photos with creamy bokeh. They ask what lens to buy based on the bokeh it produces. Dear lord, Flickr even has HBW, Happy Bokeh Wednesday! My question is this, is it really that important? I would have thought having the main component of the image in focus was more important than the shape or creamyness of the out of focus area.

So what is bokeh? Well, different things to different people it seems.

Wikipedia says

Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke , a noun form of bokeru, “become blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.

Right, clear as mud. If you happen to be a Poindexter, there is an even more in depth article here. Be aware, its heavy going, but if you love chatting about circles of confusion and aperture shapes, your blood pressure will rise with every passing paragraph.

So it seems bokeh is all about the look of the out of focus part of an image. Right.

So when did bokeh become popular? Again, Wikipedia say “The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 2000.” That may be the case, but it seems to be tossed around with gay abandon in plenty of photography forums, and it seems to be happening more and more. It has even gotten to a point where I saw a question asked today on Flickr wanting a point and shoot recommendationbased on the bokeh the tiny tiny lens will produce.

Yellow Dots

Creamy???

I did a 30 second survey just now on Flickr. Two simple searches. Here are the results.

We found 32,076 results matching “sydney opera house“.

We found 405,609 results matching bokeh.

Who would have thought Bokeh would be more common than an Australia icon? Not me, thats for sure.

So, can someone explain the appeal in this bokeh trend? Is the backgraound more important than the foreground in a photo? Help me understand! Please.  🙂

Life photos, now on Google.

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If you have ever found yourself flicking through an old Life magazine at a doctors surgery, this might be of interest to you.

“We’re excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the Life photo archive,” Software Engineer Paco Galanes wrote in the Official Google Blog. “This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Amazingly, some 97 percent of Life’s library has never been seen by the public before.

“Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published,” Galanes observed. “The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time.”

Initially, only 20 percent of the library has been uploaded to the Google site, but more photos will be added incrementally over the coming months. If you’re looking for some real eye candy, go with all due haste to the Life Photo Archive Hosted by Google.

Read more at http://blog.megapixel.net/blog/

Some amazing images are already up. A link direct to the Google page is here.

A 1958 camera rocked my socks.

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Monday this week, a package arrived. Nothing out of the ordinary there, ever since the obsession with old film cameras has had me checking the Vintage Camera section of eBay every day, it seems I find some old gem that I must have and part with some hard earned for an ancient beauty. I have talked before about this sudden obsession with film and how it has changed the way I look at photography. But for months now, I have been trying to grab a TLR camera. And last week, I made a successful bid on a Yashica 635 TLR camera. See below.

New Old Toy

Wow. What can I say? The viewfinder alone is enough to send the pulse rate up. This version of the Yashica TLR also has a 35mm kit that lets you use standard 35mm film in it. Why you would bother is beyond me, but it does make it pretty unique in the world of TLR’s.

I have just finished my 1st roll of 12 exposures (which by the way gave me an excuse finally to use the old Yashica light meter I bought ages ago). I expect I will develop that film over the weekend, but I don’t have a film scanner capable of scanning 120 film. Oh well, looks like its time to do some more ghetto scanning. If the camera works ok, I am even contemplating grabbing some colour 120 film and seeing how that looks. Exciting times for this mug photographer.

Remembrance Day.

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Originally called Armistice Day, this day commemorated the end of the hostilities for the Great War (World War I), the signing of the armistice, which occurred on 11 November 1918 – the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Armistice Day was observed by the Allies as a way of remembering those who died, especially soldiers with ‘no known grave’.

On the first anniversary of the armistice, in 1919, one minute’s silence was instituted as part of the main commemorative ceremony. In London, in 1920, the commemoration was given added significance with the return of the remains of an unknown soldier from the battlefields of the Western Front.

The Flanders poppy became accepted throughout the allied nations as the flower of remembrance to be worn on Armistice Day. The red poppies were among the first plants that sprouted from the devastation of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. ‘Soldiers’ folklore had it that the poppies were vivid red from having been nurtured in ground drenched with the blood of their comrades’.

Soldiers lost.

After the end of World War II in 1945, the Australian and British governments changed the name to Remembrance Day as an appropriate title for a day which would commemorate all war dead. In October 1997, then Governor-General of Australia, Sir William Deane, issued a proclamation declaring:

11 November as Remembrance Day and urging Australians to observe one minute’s silence at 11.00 am on Remembrance Day each year to remember the sacrifice of those who died or otherwise suffered in Australia’s cause in wars and war-like conflicts.

Taken from http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/remembrance/

So on this day of remembrance, I thought I would look into the lives of some famous war photographers. I suppose the name that comes to mind when i think of war photography is Robert Capa. Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary in 1913, he was obviously to young to photograph the Great War, but is famous for his photos from the Spanish Civil war and WWII. He helped found Magnum Photos and is often quoted when people talk about street photography with this all to often heard quote.

“If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

It was in that terrific series, “The genius of photography“, that I first heard of Tony Vaccaro. He fought in the US Army and took his camera along. He talks about develpoing film in a helmet on a moonlit night during quiet times in the fighting. Certainly makes you think. I have troubles in my garage, and there is no chance of a bunch of Germans shooting at me through the window.

It really must take a ton of courage and a clear mind to take photos in times of war. So as well as remembering the soldiers today, I say we remember the photographers and journalists who reported on wars, and still do today.

Lest we forget.

Barack Obama, Canon and fanboys.

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After spending a lot of my day at work watching the US election online and then witnessing some of the online discussions about the result, it got me wondering, “What makes people so passionate about their political views, religious beliefs and product loyalty?” Really, some of the tripe that I read about Obama winning the election was beyond belief. Ignorance is alive and well it seems. What drives people to hate the so called opposition in all aspects of life? I can, to a point, understand it in politics and religion, after all, they can have a profound effect on our lives. And I know that when I was younger, I was probably guilty of an intense dislike of people who didn’t agree with me, but these days I would like to think I am a little more tolerant of people with different beliefs to my own. Sure, I still find it hard how people can believe their lives are in some way controlled by a higher being, but I don’t hate them for it. As long as they don’t push their ideals on to me, I am fine with them having their beliefs.

Having pondered the political and religious idea for a few hours this afternoon, tonight it struck me. I was sitting, looking at where our kitchen used to be, will be again in a week or two, but isn’t at the moment, and it came like a bolt of lightning. People have the same fervent beliefs regarding products. You see it so often on internet forums, PC vs Mac, Intel vs AMD, Microsoft vs Apple and the list is longer than a politicians lunch. But what purpose does it serve? Do people really get such a kick out of bagging a product that they don’t use, and sometimes, have never used? Again, it wasn’t long ago that I was bagging Macintosh computers myself, and yet here I sit, plugging away happily on my 16 month old MacBook Pro. These days I wonder why I didn’t make the move years ago. I know it was because I used to play a lot of racing simulations that wouldn’t run on the Mac, but it doesn’t stop me thinking about it.

Fil-Lm

So we come to photography, after all, it is what this BLOG is supposed to be about. I saw a forum post today that went along the lines of…Anyone that uses a Nikon is a piss poor excuse for a photographer! What? I mean really, does the camera make that much difference? I would say no. This person had a link to their gallery in the forum signature, so I went off for a look at this Canon super photographer. To say I was under whelmed, well, is an understatement. Piss poor would best describe his photographic achievements. Now I am quite happy using a Canon camera, but if I won the lottery 3 months back, I would have traded the lot for a Nikon D3.

So help me understand this blind faith. Do you know of instances of it where you have read something on the net and shaken your head? Why do people need to degrade a person because of their product choice? Is it purely insecurity on their behalf? Its got me beat.

Is it too easy to take a good photo these days?

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The aforementioned question popped into my head the other day whilst I was pouring over the Shorpy website, a fantastic site of old photos that have been digitised and retouched. You really need to have a look yourself to see how good these photos are. There really are some stunning photos on there. This shot for example, taken in 1947, over 60 years ago, is a beautiful photo. I don’t know if I could reproduce that image today. But I bet there are plenty of people who could.

And that brings me to the point of this BLOG entry. Is it too easy to take a good photo? Obviously, it isn’t, otherwise Flickr and sites like it would be loaded to the brim with magnificent images, and clearly, they are not. But I wonder what what the photographers of the mid 20th century think of the current day photo makers. Would they be sitting back in the recliners recalling the old days of large format cameras and lugging them 20 miles along a gravel road in bare feet just to get a shot. Not having the fancy exposure meters in todays cameras. The ability to chimp a shot, on the spot and retake it. The luxury of Photoshop compared to the dark room.

Where the photographers of days gone by better photographers than today? I hear names like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Paul Strand and W. Eugene Smith and wonder how they would go with a nice new Nikon D3 and a few fancy lenses. Would Ansel Adams still take B&W landscapes? Or would they be colour rich ultra wide spectaculars?

I also wonder if they realise that their photos will be regarded as classics. Did Breson realise at the time that his photo of the man jumping a puddle would be a classic. Considering the man jumping the puddle was obviously still going to end up in the water, wouldn’t it have been better if the shot was slightly later, thus showing the man standing on water? Would that have changed peoples perception of the shot. After having heard some of the critics talk about the photo, I doubt it would have made any difference. Breson called it the decisive moment. I think it was a missed chance. Would he have taken a better photo with a Canon 1D MkIII firing away at 10 frames per second?

One thing that we can try is using older gear to take photos. I have already touched on that in the previous BLOG article, “Film, why is it so addictive?”. Using old equipment is one way to compare you photos from the older gear vs the newer gear.

There is no right answer to any of this, much like a lot of the previous BLOG entries. It is just a chance to discuss another aspect of a very interesting pass time, hobby or occupation. Feel free to discuss this. Suggest other photos or photographers. Have you tried to take photos with older gear? What was your experience?