An ebook Review

I have decided to add some photo book reviews to the mix of this blog. I have a growing collection of ebooks. Ebooks are an interesting idea, a kind of democratizing of the publishing industry. One problem with getting a photo book published in the traditional manner is the expense of producing a large enough printing (5K or more) to get the per copy cost down to a price point that will sell in a mass market. As a consequence many photo books rely on images made in tried and true iconic locations. An ebook allows the author to take chances on subject matter that a traditional publisher might not want to risk.

With "Intimate Portraits of the Colorado Plateau" Guy Tal takes advantage of the economy of digital publishing to present a personal collection of wonderful landscape images. While some might bemoan the lack of a well printed book lying on the lap (I like those too) the digital format has the distinct advantage of being viewed in the same back lit manner that most photographers do their editing these days, thus (I believe) the images in an ebook are a truer representation of the photographer's intent than the printed page would or could be. Also the printed book becomes a thing in itself, separate from the subjects it represents, while the ephemeral image on the screen retains more of the "moment in time" quality of standing in the landscape itself. Lacking physicality, it becomes more nearly an experience of that moment.

Guy writes about how he came to the Colorado Plateau, influences on his photography and "the place" but it is through the photographs that the reader stands in his shoes and senses the deep affinity he feels for his adopted home. Rather than the grand view, Guy has given us landscape on a scale to "be" in, a scale we can relate to rather than be overwhelmed by and he has done so with a keen sense of color, form and space. This is a generous book of 146 pages loaded with Guy's unique vision. I am particularly fond of  the images of details, my favorite of which (from page 8) appears below.

I like the fact that Intimate Portraits is laid out as single pages, No photographs are spread across a gutter  as is often done in print and even a few ebooks I have bought. I highly recommend Intimate Portraits of the Colorado Plateau for your collection of digital monographs and if you haven't started collecting ebooks this would be a great start.

Guy has published other ebooks as well. You can find them at GuyTalBooks.com. If the link doesn't work for you copy and paste "http://guytalbooks.com/catalog_category.php?cid=0" (minus the quotation marks) to your browser.

Disclaimer: Guy Tal did not request nor did he give me anything in exchange for this review. It was initiated solely by me and reflects my own opinions. I did request and Guy granted permission to reproduce the images used.

How Many Pixels?

A friend is selling his Nikon gear and buying Canon. I won’t get into the Nikon vs Canon debate or his reasons for doing so. I have never owned or used a Nikon (I’ve owned Yashica, Miranda, Pentax, Canon, Olympus, Mamiya, Fuji, Graflex & Wista cameras) so I’m not qualified to express an opinion re: Nikon. In any case my personal choices are based on what the camera can do rather than the name on the housing. In looking at Canon choices he asked whether I thought he needed an 18 MP camera or if 15 MP would do. My reply (edited & amended) follows:

From a purely technical standpoint the number of MPs depends on how you plan to use the photos. If you are planning to sell prints it depends on how big you plan to print and how finely detailed you want the prints. I’ve printed 18’ X 24” posters shot with my XTi which is 10MP. The jump to 15 MP is only 50% and 18 MP is only 20% more than 15 MP (80% more than a 10 MP camera).

The average human eye can't resolve smaller than 100 dpi without the aid of a magnifying glass. Most photos are printed between 150 dpi/ppi and 300 dpi/ppi. At 240 ppi a 10MP image will print 10.8" x 16.2". If it is a highly detailed image and you want to print at 300 ppi it will only print 8.64" x 12.96". If it is low detail and you are comfortable with printing at 150 ppi you can make a 17.28" x 25.92" print. Portraits can be printed at 150 ppi since seeing every pore in the skin is rarely flattering except perhaps to newborns.

My ill-fated G-10 was 14 MP and a 240 ppi print from that would give me a 13.8" x 18.4" print (note the different aspect ratio) but the trade off with the smaller sensor was that cramming in all those photosites onto a tiny compact sensor resulted in noise problems at any ISO above 400. Canon gave up and went back to 10 MP for the G-11 & G-12 because of that. For comparison purposes though, the 14 MPs from the G-10 approximates a 15 MP camera.

My 7D is 18 MP and it will print 14.4" x 21.6" at 240 ppi. That's only 3.6" longer on the short side and 5.4" on the long side larger than 10 MP at the same 240 ppi. That's because the 80% larger is area, not linear. In linear terms 18 MP is only about 30% larger than 10 MP at the same print resolution. For most purposes a 10-12 MP camera is the threshold (roughly equal to 35mm film) but you can do fine work with even less.

FWIW Kirk Tuck, portrait/commercial photographer of considerable repute in Austin, TX, author of several photography books and a popular blog still shoots portraits occasionally with an old 6 MP camera. I have printed the above photo at 30" x 40". It was shot with my 10D, a 6 MP camera. You can’t see every vein in the leaves or count the flakes of snow but that wasn’t my objective in making the image. In the end, photography is more about content and vision than pixels.

Cascade Mt. Waterfall

Revisiting the photos I took of the waterfall on Cascade Mountain I did some work on this one of the upper falls. It is a single frame image. Full size it would print at approximately 14½" by 21½". This is probably my favorite photo from that day.

Update on the G-10: I sent it to Canon and they could fix it but offered an upgrade to a G-11 for an extra hundred. I went for that deal and it arrived today. I've charged the batteries and will post some photos soon.

Reverse Grisaille

Time for another tutorial. I've been meaning to write up this one for a while now and was prompted to finally do it when I used this technique on the photo above.

Grisaille (pronounced griz-eye) is a painting technique that means to paint in B&W in order to establish the form of a subject. Hue (what most people refer to as color) can confuse the eye in terms of tone (dark & light) because intense warm hues can perceived as being lighter than they are and cooler hues tend to recede, appearing darker than they are. By painting with only tone the artist can define the form of a subject without reference to "color" and gain a better understanding of the form. 


Often this is done only in "studies", references for later paintings that are in color (a combination of tone and hue) but some artists have used the grisaille as a tonal base for overpainting with translucent hues. The grisaille establishes the tone and is seen through the translucent glaze of hue resulting in the color.

I wondered whether something similar could be done in Photoshop and found a technique that I call "Reverse grisaille". It is reverse grisaille because although I could not find an effective way to have a B&W layer show through a color layer, it is quite easy and effective to do the opposite.

I started with an image that I had adjusted in Lightroom (Background) and added a B&W Adjustment layer which I adjusted for the best tonal relationships to define the forms.  I then changed the blend mode of the B&W layer to Luminosity for the result at the right. For the final image at the top of the page I also added a vignette using the elliptical lasso tool set to a 150 pixel feather and reversed (Shift/Ctrl/i). I filled the selection with black and reduced the opacity to 12%. You can see the layers in the illustration below.

So, as the emperor said in the movie Mozart, "There it is". Give it a try and see how you like it. Could I have achieved the same using some other method in Photoshop, for example curves or contrast? I'm sure I could have. Photoshop offers at least a half dozen ways to do most things but as an old film B&W photographer this technique appeals to me. I don't use it a lot but for some images it works really well.

Please do not repost, copy, or redistribute without permission.

Remembering

The photo is part of a project I'm working on that involves memorials in the form of angels or other female figures. I started quite by accident after noticing a sculpture of an angel in the cemetery in Gabriels, NY, a tiny hamlet near Saranac Lake.  I've stopped to photograph it several times when passing by because it is such an appealing bit of sculpture and it inspired me to look for other memorials in that vein.

So far I've found only a handful of these sculptures. Most figurative memorials seem to be public monuments of male figures, frequently soldiers or founding fathers, placed in parks, town squares or near government buildings but these are in cemeteries where they are rarely seen and often unnoticed even by those who do venture there. At two cemeteries that I have visited I have encountered maintenance workers and asked if there were such sculptures and in both cases they didn't know despite working among the monuments regularly.

The above is one of three that I found when I visited the graves of my grandparents. My grandfather died before I was born and I hadn't been there since my grandmother's funeral nearly 50 years ago. The figures all seem to be from the 1800's to very early 1900's when people visited cemeteries more regularly. In fact in the early 1800's people would go for picnics in cemeteries on summer weekends. Modern memorials tend to be rectangular blocks with names inscribed and occasionally a shallow relief. My hope is to find a dozen or more of these sculptures and produce a small portfolio of prints.

Namesake

I returned to the waterfall on Cascade Mountain on Monday. My friend Ron went along. We set out early and got there under overcast skies. That was what I was hoping for. I had been here on the prior Wednesday and under a clear sky the lighting was much too harsh and contrasty to record the full height of this waterfall which comes off the side of Cascade Mountain between Upper  and Lower Cascade Lakes. It is the cascade that gives the mountain and lakes their name.

In the 1800s there was a hotel between the two lakes. You can see part of its foundation in the day use area that now occupies the space between Upper & Lower Cascade Lakes. In the photo above you can see remnants of a dam (lower left) that was apparently the water source for the hotel. There are still some pieces of old pipe lying about.

The photo is a three frame stitch from my Canon 7D. Printed full size at 240 ppi this image is a fraction under 20"x24".

A Bad/Good Day

I went hiking yesterday. A trip to 'my' lean-to in the Adirondacks, one that I look after as a adopter or maintainer. It was a very nice day but as I was crossing Indian Pass Brook a rock that I stepped on rolled out from under my right foot and dumped me in the stream. I was soaked from head to foot. Fortunately the water was uncharacteristically warm, or maybe I should say "not cold", for this time of year in the Adirondacks. Not so fortunately I was carrying my cell phone in my pocket and my Canon G10 in a waist pack. I had been intending to see if the GPS in the phone would still work with only the satellites to guide it but I didn't get to test that. The phone seems to be effectively dead. The camera, after drying it out, turns on but it is squirrelly and will need repair or replacement depending on the repair cost.

I wrung out my clothes, dumped the water from my boots, redressed and hiked out. By the time I got back to my truck (4 miles away) I was mostly dry. I went on to the Cascade Lakes area to check out a waterfall but on the hike out to my truck I spotted these Painted Trillium near the parking lot. I went back with the camera (7D) I had in the truck to make this group portrait. The photos from the Cascade Mt. waterfall are on my Flickr page. Moral: When hiking, carry your gear in a waterproof container even if it is a nice day.

If 8-10 folks decided to buy archival prints from me at $50/print, I might just break even on the day. ;-)

Addendum: I talked to Verizon and it will take sales of 20 or more prints for me to break even on yesterday. Ouch!

Tree With Galls - Spring

Back in March I created a collage of photos depicting a tree on the Hatch Road that has been a frequent subject for my camera. After making the collage I decided that I should make a version in each season. This morning I awoke to a dense fog and the leaves are starting to unfold, perfect conditions for the spring version, so I dashed out before breakfast to shoot it.

More From the Tooley Pond Rd.

Another view of the Nodding Trillium that I posted on Flickr from last Friday's excursion. In that horizontal version I positioned the white Trillium behind to make the bug's antler stand out but for this vertical I wanted the white blooms to recede so I positioned them higher and added a vignette to darken them. I also brightened the reds and yellows a bit to make the blossom stand out.

Lazy Blogger

The title is me chastising myself. I've been goofing off on posting. Spring finally seems to have come to stay in the North Country. Friday I went to Lampson Falls and the Tooley Pond Rd. to check out the waterfalls and spring flowers. I posted a bunch of photos to Flickr. I've started using Flickr for photos and will be weening off Picasaweb because I don't like Picasaweb's policy of allowing anyone to buy prints through commercial print services without even asking the owner of the photos. Crass commercial person that I am, I'd like to be the one selling prints of my photos. I will leave some things there that I intend to be public.

The trillium were out in force along the Tooley Pond Rd. but so were the black flies. I had to wave my hat in front of the lens madly just before making an exposure to disperse the clouds of black flies and I came home well bitten. All in all it was a good day though with a mix of sun and clouds. We've now settled in to clouds and rain through Thursday if the forecast is right.

The photo is Veratrum Viride AKA Indian Poke, Indian Hellebore, False Hellebore or Green False Hellebore. The color version is on Flickr but I thought it was a good candidate for B&W.

Stone Valley Trails

I did a return trip to Stone Valley Trails this morning. The river was running very high and downstream it has flooded the trail in places. At this location there would normally be only a small side stream flowing amongst the trees, but with the river in flood stage it has overwhelmed the woods. I was struck by the wave patterns from water crashing around trees as well as the fact that the trees are able to stand up to such a force. 'Rooted' indeed.

Blood Root Time Again

My friend Ron told me that the Blood Root were blooming on the Stone Valley Trail. There was some wild weather forecast for today, rain (possibly downpours) and strong winds up to 40-50 mph. It didn't seem too bad this morning though so I set out. It was good that I went today. They are already starting to fade a bit. Another day or so, especially with some heavy weather passing through, and I don't know if there will be much there to photograph. I originally shot this view with my cell phone to post to Facebook but liked it so I re-shot it with the 7D at a point when there was partial sun.

Perfect Layers Review

OnOne has released a trial version of their Perfect Layers plugin for Lightroom. When I first heard that this product was in the works I was excited. A plugin program that allowed the use of layers within Lightroom would be an exciting bit of software. Alas, I have watched all their tutorials, downloaded the trial version and run it through its paces only to find that does not describe Perfect Layers.


Let me start with some definitions. "Non-destructive" is the first, a term that is used to describe this plugin and that is true enough. In photo editing terms non-destructive simply means that you aren't altering any of the information in the original file. When using layers you do that by making all your edits to duplicate layers and/or adjustment layers. The difference is that a duplicate layer consists of pixels (an actual copy of the background layer /original image) and the adjustment layers are merely sets of instructions that alter how the layer(s) below are seen.

When you edit and save changes to an original file, that is destructive editing. You have then changed data in the file which cannot be retrieved.  You can actually edit "non-destructively" by simply making copy of a file and editing that. As long as you never do any edits to the original file, only to copies, you are editing non-destructively because you can always go back to the original file. Layers have an advantage in that you can do masking to limit where and/or how intensely the edits done on layers above the background image will affect the image. You can also change the "Blend Mode" and global transparency of the layers.  In short they give you phenomenal control over the appearance of your image. Lightroom is non-destructive by using only sets of instructions to modify the original file, instructions that are reapplied to the file each time it is opened but never by writing the edits over the original data.

The next definition is "within". To me that means you don't leave the Lightroom interface or methodology for editing. Perfect Layers does not work within Lightroom. It does not create a set of instructions to be applied to the original file whenever it is opened. What it does is create a PSD copy of the file (I found that it creates a copy even if the original is already a PSD file)  and pop you out of Lightroom into a different interface in the same way that you would if you had the full version of Photoshop and chose to edit the file in Photoshop. Once your Perfect Layers edits are complete, it pops you back into Lightroom. You can go to Perfect Layers from Lightroom but you can go to Photoshop or any number of programs from Lightroom. You can also go back to Lightroom from any of them but when working in any of them you are not within Lightroom. There are OnOne presets that work within Lightroom. Perfect Layers isn't one of them.

Once in the Perfect Layers environment you don't even have Lightroom style controls. I.E. The brush tool changes size by using the right and left bracket keys, not the wheel on your mouse. The blending modes are limited to the lighten/darken/multiply/screen/overlay/hard light/soft light options with an added "color" option which appears to reverse the colors. The OnOne site says that the trial version does not have all the options that the full release version will have. Maybe they will add more blending modes. You can alter the opacity of layers. You can brush in masking but it doesn't have automatic masking based on luminosity, something you can do in Photoshop and that is useful in controlling local contrast.

You can import multiple images or versions of an image for such things as changing heads in group portraits, having the same person appear in multiple places or blending exposures for an HDR effect although it isn't true HDR with tone mapping. As a last observation I have noted that whenever the Perfect Layers trial software is running on my Vista machine it slows everything down significantly with delays between commands/keystrokes and execution. That applies not just to Perfect layers but to all other open programs/windows as well. That may be just my machine but it is significant enough that I felt compelled to mention it.

I started by saying what would have excited me and now I have to say that Perfect Layers isn't it. There's no hint of a price yet but their other offerings run from $50 to $260 with most at the $160 price point (I'm rounding from $xxx.95).  If this comes in at the average you could buy Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro or one of several other full fledged photo editor packages that have layers for less and have much greater capabilities. That would be my recommendation.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of the products mentioned in this review other than being a user. I received nothing for free that could not also be had by anyone in Internetland. I have no axe to grind. I do own an older version of OnOne's Photo Suite and find both Genuine Fractals (Perfect Resize in its latest incarnation) and the Photo Frame software to be excellent products. I undertook this trial and review with high anticipation but concluded in the end that it will add nothing to my workflow.

Addendum 6/9/11: I see that On-one has come out with the final version at $129.95 (there is a $99.95 pre-order price listed on their site this morning). I have not checked out the final version and don't plan to. It still only does layers while the other programs I mentioned above do layers and much more for less money. Perfect Layers may arguably be easier to use and/or have a shorter learning curve. If that's what you are looking for it may be the right investment for you.

BTW the Reverse Grisaille technique that I described in the post on June 6 could probably be done using Perfect layers. You could create a virtual copy in Lightroom, convert it to B&W, adjust the B&W as you want then combine the two using Perfect layers in the same manner I did in Photoshop. But again you could also do it in Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, etc.

"The Show"

My B&W show is up at Art Central in Potsdam. If you are in the area drop by and check it out. Above is the main wall with a bit under half the photos. The photo below is another view from the opposite direction. the photos included in the show are in my B&W gallery on Zenfolio and the one's included in the show are marked with an * in the title.