James P. Jones || Photographer

Last Friday, Amie and I played hooky and went to the Yusef Karsh exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to a second Karsh exhibit at Boston Public Library. If you view his images online, you will discover that if you have any interest in people pre-1980's you have probably seen his work. Karsh was one of the great portrait photographers. I don't recall seeing anyone better, just different.

I was taught years ago by a highschool band teacher the trumpet players handshake - to each other they would say "Hi, I'm [insert name here], I'm better than you." Photographers and guitar players have a certain degree of similar disdain when viewing each others work. The "I can do that" syndrome. Nevertheless, when I look at Karsh's work, I neither think I can match it, nor would I know how. Sure, I can take apart the lighting. But, if you visit the BPL exhibit they have an anecdote for each image. How he got the expression he did. For such a polite man and dignified man, he must have had a sense of humor. He got the best out of his sitters.

Technically he was superior in his shooting, the care is obvious. But when you see these gigantic prints in person, you have to admire every stage of the processing of the images. They are fantastic. For sure, some speak to me more than others, and I prefer his earlier work. But, when I was younger I preferred the earlier Beatles work too. No doubt my taste may evolve with time.

So, at the end of the day being self-taught I haven't played with 4x5 and above (in camera size). Like many I have shot primarily in the 35mm range thought medium format (6cmx6cm) is what really got me excited about photography to begin with. So, this weekend I went back to my roots.

I am only a couple of years deep in this photo journey, and it is largely thanks to the generous support of my uncle Bill (an avid photographer and acquirer of amazing things photographic) that I have been able to learn quickly, keep interested, and fill all my freetime with photography. Using his borrowed Hasselblad this weekend I shot 3 portraits of friends. They were all shot on the same location, Prospect Park, in Providence. I shot using only available light on these cloudy days. Using non-paid models, I felt the pressure of time to move quickly and with little additional light. Just a reflector that saw very little use.

Of course, I shot film in the largest format I had available with the longest lens (120 Makro-Planar). One roll apiece of 120 format B&W. After processing color chrome, B&W seems absurdly lenient and simple. I loved it. The only part that wasn't fun was getting stuck loading the 120 onto the reel. It has been a while since I loaded 120 and it kept slipping off the catch at the beginning of the reel.

As a personal note, I must photograph women more. I know what a strong man looks like; I know how I would wish to be perceived or at least can imagine different scenarios quickly. But, shooting women is a foreign affair. I am already outside the box and so I want to learn the psyche of female beauty. It is a learning process. Apparently I may be shooting a friend of mine, Megumi, this weekend. Perhaps I will learn some more. I want it to be as natural a process as photographing myself.

You will notice that these are not happy portraits, they are portraits of strength. These are three people as I know them to be on the inside (Mark would argue perhaps that he isn't a trendy euro-hippy with sunglasses on the inside - but he does peer over the lenses a lot in life and try to look deeper into you.) Ok, it may be a stretch.

*my thanks to Chris (pilot), Mark (interactive developer), and Jessica (furniture maker) who posed outside on the first chilly weekend of the year.

I have spent the last hour or so printing out a dozen test prints for a client meeting that I am to have this afternoon. For this reason, I am going to be brief and to the point. I am having a color problem with Photoshop CS4.

I had heard from my uncle Bill who had upgraded a week before me that when he switched to CS4 his prints didn't look right. I didn't really think about it until I went to print out a draft comp for a client just now. I have removed the logo from the images.

Working from a monitor calibrated this morning I went to print out the draft comp for out client. The results were brown. I followed my usual process, the only exception being that I have just started to use CS4. I am printing an Adobe RGB image with almost everything in gamut (including the red swish). I printed 2 luster prints (approximating the ultimate format these will be used in). Brown. I think it could be the Epson profile for luster, so I switch to heavyweight matte. Print. Same thing. Switch to relative colorimetric as opposed to my usual perceptual. Brown. Turn off black point compensation. Same thing. Now, I haven't tried absolute colorimetric. But, I don't like using absolute colorimetric as it will squish the colors.

I did notice that in proofing, if I turned on "preserve numbers" then my screen showed the ugly brown as opposed to red. But, then switching over to perceptual or relative colorimetric all was well.

Finally I gave up and let the printer determine colors. I was beginning to think the printer couldn't do a hot red. But, bam. Hot red - much closer overall to the screen image. So, maybe it isn't the printer. I look for new Epson profiles to no avail.

Finally, I boot up the old CS2 Photoshop. Same settings, same profile, near perfect results. I don't know what it means except that CS4 is misbehaving for me or I am just not getting something in the new workflow.

I'm not posting the source image yet, but when I can I will. Trust me that image on the right is the closest by far.

I get up each morning to run errands around 6:40am. It is not a joy to do, mostly because I stay up far too late to have my circadian rhythms in sync with this hour. But, on the bright side (haha), I do get up before dawn this time of year.

Galen Rowell (mountain light studio) set a precedent and a style that is widely copied, and I too learned from reading his books and following his technical tips. He wasn't a super technical photographer but he used neutral density filters and fill flash to do what audio engineers call "compressing." In the audio world basically it comes from the belief that the loudest song on the radio will sound the best. So, you use electronic equipment to bring up audio levels when they are quiet on a track and lower the loudest parts do they don't fuzz out (all on the fly at the radio station). This makes for maximum impact. But it can become a drone because you remove some of the dynamic range.

The same is achieved in photography by reducing the light range in a photo. I use a neutral density filter to lower the light levels of everything above the horizon line and at the same time I am shooting on a Fujifilm S5 Pro which has the built in ability to capture extreme dynamic range (beyond basically all other cameras currently available including the newest best ones). You squish the dynamic range into something the camera can capture and suddenly, just like radio, everything "pops."

But, just like radio it can get boring. The problem is that 90% of the market likes the loudest brashest sound out there. Only the remaining 10% may care that their jazz and classical tunes should have a natural dynamic range from pianissimo to fortissimo. On the up side these people tend to be interested in art. On the downside they aren't a very big market. But, perhaps big enough.

This weekend was the first time I was really in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge to be able to take advantage of an exceptional photographic opportunity. It may even have been a once in a lifetime opportunity; who knows. I was in Maine for peak foliage staying near a marsh that happened to be the focal point of local birding because some rare birds had been noticed a couple of days previous. I don't have any photos of them as I didn't think to bring a long lens with me. That may have been my only real oversight, but frankly I didn't want to have to carry a long lens on vacation and I don't really regret it.

A wonderful time. The difference between a great photo and a snapshot is about 5 seconds of contemplation before pressing the shutter. Add a tripod, stopping the lens down to best aperture (each lens is different), and some basic concepts of lighting and you have the makings for a great photo. The rest is composition and I have a long way to go on that one. I do have one insight though; Cartier-Bresson would look at his negatives upside down. I used to think that meant no sky. But, I think he perhaps didn't distinguish between sky and structure. Rather it would just be positive and negative space and therefore these too could be balance. Food for thought.

As you may have noticed, photographyri hasn't been updated for a couple of weeks. We just moved it to a newer server with more speed and capacity, so now I'm back to updating.

Last week, Saturday, I went out to the Roger Williams Park Zoo. It is an exceptional zoo and I really like it. The first Saturday of each week is free for Providence residents, but we decided to pay the extra $2 to enter the special exhibit - Flutterby. It is a great little greenhouse filled with butterflies of all kinds. It was a wonderful little paradise, that incidentally protected us from the torrential rainstorm that washed over everything while we were inside.

I was shooting digital, not film, with auto-focus lenses for convenience. I didn't have a macro lense with me (well, Amie had one on her that is also Nikon mount, but I didn't use it). Instead I primarily shot with the Nikon 85mm f1.8 AFD. It is a great lens with a very shallow depth of field, but a beautiful look at wide aperture. I've provided a comparison of just a slight shift of focus at wide aperture (in these photos, the f-stop was at 2.2). Amazing.

I think flutterby is a wonderful opportunity for any photographer to get some great close-up images. The butterflies are beautiful, but equally impressive is the array of flowers and vegetation. Whoever constructed the landscape did a great job and the whole scene is very attractive. Very conducive to capturing images.

As I have grown older I have come to have a slightly different perspective of zoos. I love zoos; visiting them were some of the happiest memories of my childhood (my friends know I still don't forgive Dukakis for closing Stone Zoo, but that is a separate issue). But, as I looked at the elephants, with "Alice" on the left of this image rocking her head back and forth, I was left wondering if this is how it should be. The elephant exhibit appears to be under construction so it seems that the elephants are confined to this small room for the time being (small being relative to their size). The swaying motion of Alice just conveyed a sense of distress or restlessness, amplified by the artificial lighting. I had heard once that swaying was a sign of mental concern in elephants in captivity, a sign of their general distress. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. In stark contrast to the oddly still air, there must have been 10 people in the room in near silence, the zoo keeper was upbeat and fed them carrots with obvious affection for the animals. I know zookeepers love animals, the dilemma must be greater for them than for me. But, they are no doubt acutely aware of their educational mission and therefore offset any discomfort at caging these magnificent beasts. A mixed bag. I look forward to when they are out of this little room once more.

I was hoping that the Polar Bears would be back, but regretfully a park employee told me that we can expect them in 2011. I don't plan much that far out there, so 2011 sounds like a while away. With any luck I'll see polar bears before 2011, even if it means I have to go to Alaska. There was one interesting affect of the heavy rain; the snow leopard was very active. I guess cats don't like rain no matter what the size, so he (or she) was pacing the enclosure before laying out on a stone shelf. I wasn't sure if it was displeasure or relief from the heat. It all looks the same. The downside is that the light was so poor that it was hard to get a shot, but I didn't mind. It was simply amazing to see this beautiful creature staring me down - safely on the other side of a fence.