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6 May 2013 » CameraHobby 2.0

Regular readers of this site may recall that in the past I uploaded and shared several photography–related newsletters produced by my friend Edwin Leong (#1, #2 and #3); Edwin used to run the CameraHobby site and was the owner of NikonLinks for a number of years. Well, I am writing this post to spread the great news that, instead of continuing with periodic newsletters, Edwin has now started a new blog: The Photo Tech Geek.

Yesteryears

Having run this Web site for nearly ten years, I perfectly understand Edwin's sentiments in going from the CameraHobby site to a prolonged break in publishing to the newsletter format and now to The Photo Tech Geek blog. On the one hand, such sites are often run by enthusiast photographers who have daytime jobs, families and numerous other commitments. It takes a lot of energy to continually and consistently create new content and, given various obligations, sometimes there simply is not enough zest. On the other hand, our feelings about our own work change and fluctuate, sometimes on a daily basis, and almost always over a longer period of time as we mature. The question of whether what we are doing is worthwhile can be a frequent guest. There are always ups and downs, and I can easily see how it may be tempting to call it all quits during one of the greater downs. At the same time, however, the inseparable trait of any creative person is that there are bound to be times when he experiences the irresistible urge to express what he feels, either through words, visual images, or any other medium. In this sense, I knew that Edwin's work would surface again somewhere, sometime.

Welcome back, Edwin.

2 May 2013 » Recent favourite quotation

"I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was."

Stanley Kubrick (via Photographs on the Brain)

30 April 2013 » Bye bye, Flickr

I have now used my Flickr account for a few months, which is long enough to have a good taste of it is, and what it is not. In short, I have decided to close the account and use this Web site only to share images in the future. I thought I would share with you some thoughts and observations, which partially explain my decision. Before I do, though, I would like to re–post several images that I originally shared on Flickr.

Important decisions, 12 April 2013

Mood

Tuesday

Beijing, January 2013

New Year flowers

Jing'an Temple in snow

From all the images that I took during the period of using Flickr (landscape work aside), only six have been posted here; these photographs are quite representative of what kind of photography I want to do when I am not shooting landscapes. Come to think of it, this number is consistent with the pace at which I tend to create worthwhile photographs in general; moreover, I am fairly certain that this number would have been the same if I shot film all this time. This leads me to the conclusion that, just as the number of keepers does not really depend on what medium or camera we use, using any particular platform—or multiple platforms—for sharing your images is not going to improve the quality of your work.
This has always been true in photography, but I think it cannot be repeated enough: we need to edit, edit, edit. The ability to immediately upload any and all images mostly serves to propagate trash. Which is why the workflow of shooting film was—and still is—advantageous in this respect: it has many stages that effectively place garbage where it belongs, not in public places. Flickr sort of helped me with editing as I put pictures out in the open and looked at them over a longer period to decide if I wanted to keep them; however, I am not convinced that editing should be done at the expense of innocent viewers' attention.
Using one platform for sharing images may easily lead to using multiple platforms—after all, more is better, right? However, using multiple platforms quickly transforms sharing into marketing, which in turn quickly becomes a totally different game that devours a lot of time and energy. Life is too short not to stay focused, and we need to pay close attention to how we use our resources. Personally, I prefer to spend my time on photography, not marketing.
Four out of six photographs above were taken with the iPhone, and I have also noted that the number of images I snap with the camera in my phone has been growing exponentially over the past couple of years. No matter how you slice it, cameraphonegraphy is a fact of life that is here to stay regardless of how retrograde our initial reaction to it may have been. And I actually welcome it—as far as I am concerned, it is only an additional photographic tool offered to all of us for free (well, sort of). It is up to us to decide if or how we use it; at the same time, it is our responsibility to use it sensibly and avoid propagating photographic pollution.
Despite their controversial nature, I realise that I do like Instagram—style filters in some instances. If used with taste and care, they can help to mask the bluntness of the naked reality thus taking our images away from technically correct depiction and closer to how reality registers in our minds. Thinking about what I would miss most after closing my Flickr account, filters came to my mind first; in fact, filters were the only thing that I thought of. But of course, this is not a big deal as similar effects can be added using other means.
If you already have a personal Web site you need to consider how you use the content that you create, to promote your own site or let other commercial online enterprises thrive using your content for free.

This year I seem to be concentrating on exploring connectivity of photography, so you may naturally ask what is next for me now that the Flickr page has been turned. There still are a few social networking tools that peak my curiosity (witness the link to my Twitter feed above), but, having seen what I have seen, I do not expect any major miracles here. I increasingly realise that, in the grand scheme of things, the fundamentals of creativity and personal expression always remain the same; you may choose and fine–tune how you travel from point A to point B, but the purpose of your journey and destination will not change.

At any rate, I will be sharing my further thoughts in due course.

2 April 2013 » Recent favourite quotation

"If and when I have to shoot digitally, I always shoot to card and never show anyone. I usually give myself a day or two before I look at the session. It's the same thing you would do with film, you shoot your film, it goes to the lab the next morning and you get it back that afternoon. That space in time between [taking the photograph] and looking at it after is a really important thing. It's kind of like counting to ten when someone makes you really mad. If I said something awful to you and you just counted to ten, your reaction would be different than just [snaps fingers]."

Norman Jean Roy

30 March 2013 » Random thoughts on connectivity, continued

During the past couple of months I continued photographing and experimenting with tools that offer drastically different types and degrees of connectivity. Namely, I have been using an iPhone 5, the most widely and deeply connected camera, the Sony RX100, a compact camera that is connected to the extent that now–traditional digital workflow fosters connectivity, and a Hasselblad V series system, an old–fashioned mechanical film camera that is perfectly disconnected. It has been quite fascinating to look at connectivity beyond the first timer euphoria and try to understand how it relates to and influences the inherent essence of each of these tools.

Nanxun, Spring rain #2

Hasselblad Flexbody camera, CFE 2.8/80 lens (shifted) and Fujifilm Provia 100F film

As I was using the three cameras alongside each other at one point I realised that to make sense of connectivity we need to consider it in a broader and more encompassing sense. In particular, aside from the technical question of how quickly we can spread an image around the globe, which is technical connectivity, we also need to consider aesthetic connectivity and how it pertains to technical connectivity.

What do I mean by aesthetic connectivity? Simply put, it is whether and to what degree an image reflects one's vision and connects to his inner self. In my mind, aesthetic connectivity must be a precondition to technical connectivity: what is the point in sharing with others an image that has failed to connect to you? Furthermore, the relationship between the two is inverse: in my experience, the easier the technical connectivity, the less there is aesthetic connectivity, and vice versa. For some reason, technical connectivity tends to fail fostering aesthetic connectivity, or may even harm it.

As an example, last month a friend and I went roaming through and photographing ancient villages in Southern Anhui Province, China (the image above is not from the journey, though). Looking at the photographs from the trip, images taken with the Hasselblad, although far from being masterpieces, clearly are more aesthetically connected and stand out in a number of ways: they are much better thought out, more carefully composed and, if not exactly boasting decisive moments, taken at the right moments in time. Photographs taken with the RX100 are notably more offhand, but at least they are correctly exposed at the optimal f–stop and ISO setting. And images taken with the iPhone are, well, careless snapshots at the mercy of what iPhone software thinks is best; while some of them "came out" quite alright, it was more due to luck than preconceived intentions. And technical connectivity, of course, was the opposite: iPhone photos could be shared immediately (but were not: they were not aesthetically connected enough to bother with technical connectivity); images from the RX100 took a couple of days after the trip to be ready for sharing, and slides from the Hasselblad took significantly longer to prepare. Notably, it is only the images shot with the Hasselblad that truly deserve subsequent technical connectivity (I hope to share them later).

Apart from the apparent inability to inspire aesthetic connectivity, another problem I see with mobile connectivity in general and the iPhone in particular is that there are too many social networking platforms that are not too dissimilar yet different enough to be mutually replaceable. Each platform connects to different groups of people in slightly different ways, which I suppose is a good thing if you are trying to reach out to as many people as you possibly can. This, however, raises the question of what content one should feed to different channels. Do you feed the same content to all channels? This approach does not seem ideal to me, because at least some of your contacts overlap over different platforms. Do you then feed different content to different channels depending on the audience? Sounds like a good idea, but can you consistently produce enough worthwhile content for all the channels you choose to use? Or do you simply feed all channels with any and all content you can come up with?

To be honest, I do not know what the best strategy is. Moreover, I find this overabundance of platforms quite confusing and the subtle yet persistent pressure to feed them quite tiresome. What I do know, though, is that I am very reluctant to feed all platforms with any content at any cost, because it often means feeding them with indiscriminate garbage. What's more, I am becoming increasingly tired of photographing my food, drinks, feet, keyboard, and other similar subjects that iPhone's camera apparently has an inbuilt magnet for. I feel I start to miss aesthetic connectivity, and I simply cannot afford allowing technical connectivity to thrive at the expense of aesthetic connectivity.

But of course, this is nothing new and simply takes us back to the old wisdom: content is king and quality trumps quantity. As it has always been, quality content is what ultimately matters, and it can only be created via achieving aesthetic connectivity. Technical connectivity can be of great help and our digital cameras have to be connected, but we need to place our priorities adequately and not confuse means with ends. And as a means, technical connectivity has to be used with care and in moderation.

22 January 2013 » Thoughts on camera connectivity

I have been using my newly bought iPhone 5 as a camera together with the latest Flickr application for over a month now, and I have to say that being able to share images in a simple and straightforward manner is totally addictive. And not only that—it is also inspiring. Carrying my Sony RX100 alongside the iPhone suddenly makes the latest–and–greatest compact camera feel like a dinosaur—something very solid yet completely out of time.

It is after using iPhone 5 as a connected camera that I realise how backward the now–traditional digital workflow has become. While a typical digital camera does not allow to directly share images, the number of ways you can do that with a smartphone is mind–boggling. I know I am a bit late to the party and so far have only tried the Flickr app and sending images via iMessage or Viber; nonetheless, it is obvious to me that this is the future—and the future is already here. Having to connect the camera to your computer, download images and do at least some sort of processing before you can share anything truly impedes our creativity and enthusiasm about photography. Indeed, it is a wonder that camera makers still do not seem to realise the importance of connectivity. Soon enough connecting your camera to a computer will be as awkward as dropping film at a local lab and waiting for hours before you could see the results once was.

A nice meal. Connected*.

Historically in photography, we have always been ready to give up a bit of quality for convenience. We switched to smaller and smaller formats as soon as they became good enough, and digital capture mostly killed film even before its quality was on a par with the analog medium. Convenience always wins, and I envision that the next major leap in this regard will come in the shape of connectivity.

In this day and age digital capture without connectivity is as inconvenient as 35mm film once was vis–à–vis digital capture. While the now–traditional digital workflow reduced the shoot–to–show time from days to hours, connectivity combined with mobile software now reduces it from hours to minutes. All of a sudden, the traditional digital workflow has become a time–consuming impediment. And whereas there still are reasons to shoot film despite various inconveniences associated with it, soon there will be no reason to use digital capture without connectivity. The reason mobile phones are overtaking low–end compact cameras is not only that they are good enough in terms of image quality, always with you and allow carrying one device less; it is also because they are connected.

Of course, there are numerous instances when connectivity is of a decisively secondary consideration. It does not matter to me when I do serious landscape work in the mountains, and you would not care about it if what you have in mind is meticulous image post processing. However, for "civilians"—and even the most serious photographers are "civilians" on some level and at certain times—it may be a major consideration that trumps megapixels, camera controls and the power of proper image editing software. And if your argument is using a slow, contemplative shooting approach where connectivity might actually be detrimental, you may as well go all the way and shoot film ;-).

One thing that we will obviously need is simple yet powerful applications on our image capturing devices. The latest version of Flickr app already offers fairly comprehensive image editing and sharing features, and I think this is where camera manufacturers will find themselves in a tight spot: given their track record, they simply will not be able to come up with adequate mobile applications of their own. This will create the pressure to abandon their existing UI and adopt existing mobile OS and popular applications such as those of Flickr, Instagram et al. It will be interesting to see if they will be able to take the plunge and remain creative and competitive.

In short, if you think the dust has settled and the digital revolution is over, think again. I believe it is far from finished and we are going to see some really interesting changes in the near future. Connectivity is already knocking on our doors, loud and clear, and there will be other game–changing innovations. As we have been saying for over a decade now, what an exciting time to be a photographer!

*I wrote most of this post using Pages on my iPhone while having a meal in Shanghai Brewery. I was sending pictures of the food to my better half via Viber as it was being served. At the same time, the images were automatically uploaded to my Dropbox account from my iPhone and further onto my computer at home once I switched it on. Of course, I could have instantly shared them on Flickr, too. All nearly perfectly connected. And there is no reason our digital cameras should not work the same way.

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