A girl I knew in high school (Japan) is in town working on a TV production. The wonders of Facebook brought us back together and it turns out she and another woman from the show wanted to do some modeling. They have an idea for a more complex shoot coming up. But, I've been hankering to just keep shooting every weekend and they were down with doing some impromptu shooting. An empty bluish (more like teal I suppose) room provided our backdrop as we just put on some music and started shooting.

Started with artificial lights and ended with natural light. Natural light just envelopes the body and falls off beautifully. Although I shoot digital regularly, I've been almost exclusively shooting film for these personal shoots. However, the darkness of this room simply precluded shooting film (even at f1.4). The Fuji S5 I was using has a film-like grain structure at high-iso's.

I think I have ANTM to thank for Lise and Megumi's enthusiam to shoot. If you can't figure out the acronym then you are a better person than I for not gluing yourself to the TV (someone actually said to me last week - "hey do you watch A.N.T.M.?" - I didn't know what they were talking about at first).

The subjects of this shoot are warm weather people (from the west coast and farther into the warm Pacific). So, the bone chilling cold this weekend wasn't helping our options for shooting in natural light. But, we did eventually get outside (if briefly). I actually had my first Hasselblad mechanical failure this time; the film never caught the winding number so I wound half-way through the roll before I was sure I wasting the film. It worked on the next roll no problem; not sure what went wrong.

As I was rolling the 120 I was reminded of Andrew Hetherington telling me how his new assistants don't know how to load film. I would mock their lack of knowledge, but sad to say, it really isn't requisite knowledge anymore. It would be like a recording engineer mocking me for not knowing how to splice audio-tape. I know the theory, but I've never had to do it in practice (and thank goodness for that). I am a product of the digital-audio age. But, I still like film. Soon, soon... I will be outdoors again shooting 120 color negative film and getting that beautiful, textured, nuanced look of film.

Had great fun. Still learning about shooting female subjects. The ever present battle is trying to overcome my sense of beauty and encapsulate the subject's true beauty. A happy problem for now.

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.

UPDATE - let me know if this works for you; it worked for me. Many thanks to Gerald

Had exactly the same experience as you with Photoshop CS4. Called Adobe and tech support had many thoughts. However, one seemed to work.
Strangely enough, in the Systems Preferences PRINT AND FAX module, I reset the printer I was using as my default printer. Then, I went back to Photoshop and printed out exactly as before and the color management was correct this time.
Tech support at Adobe said someone else solved the same problem using this technique.
I will continue to test. In any case, there is definitely a bug here.
Gerald Van Kollenburg