Erudite Expressions | Eugene's Photoblog

Hope

2012-05-12T10:06:09Z

Yesterday, I attended Zack Arias's Medium Format Night. Coming into the evening, I knew almost nothing about shooting medium format, so the event was a great learning experience. Here is how Zack described the event:You may say that you aren’t interested in medium format. Or you may be but it’s a number of years ahead in your future. Come on out and play around anyway and have a few drinks with all of us. You may hate medium format because you think the D800 is just as good. You’re still welcome to come. I promise you this won’t be a used car lot environment where someone is trying to sell you something everywhere you turn. It’s simply an event I myself wish I could have gone to. At Zack's studio last night, there were four different areas in which people could go to and take some photos (three sets with models posing throughout the night plus an extra set for a still life shoot). The photo seen in today's image is one of Hope Sonam, a singer/songwriter from Atlanta. She was a lot of fun to photograph, if this Instagram photo can serve as a guide. My big takeaway from the event was that shooting with these medium format cameras isn't that much different than shooting with your regular dSLR (I shoot with the Canon 5D Mark II). It's the post-processing and management of the immense files that requires (a lot of) thought. I was absolutely blown away by the amount of detail captured by the Phase One camera used to capture this photograph. We're talking about 80 megapixel shots, which when uncompressed into TIFF, become staggering 240MB files. If you convert to 16-bit TIFF, each file can easily top 500MB in size. Zack talked about pixel peeping on his blog, and pixel peep we did. There were large monitors at the studio and we looked at photos at 100% (1:1) resolution. For those of you at home, I have uploaded the full, unadjusted JPEG on Flickr. To get the JPEG output, I used Capture One software to output the proprietary RAW file into an 8-bit TIFF file, which I opened in Photoshop CS5. I then saved it as a JPEG file using Photoshop's default conversion (output quality was the maximum 12). The only difference between the original uploaded on Flickr and the image I have posted here on the blog is that I did a selective curves adjustment on Hope's eyes to bring out the whites.

Crown smiles

2012-05-08T22:40:26Z

This is a scene in front of Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millenium Park. Designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa and executed by Krueck and Sexton Architects, Crown Fountain opened in July 2004. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. Each of the towers is 50 feet (15.2 m) tall, and they use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display digital videos on their inward faces. From Wikipedia, regarding the faces used on the LED display of the fountain:Approximately 75 ethnic, social, and religious Chicago organizations were asked to provide candidates whose faces would be photographed for integration into the fountain.mThe subjects were chosen from local schools, churches and community groups, and filming began in 2001 at the downtown campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The SAIC students filmed their subjects with a $100,000 high-definition HDW-F900 video camera, the same model used in the production of the three Star Wars prequels. About 20 SAIC students took part in what became an informal master's course in public art for the project. Faculty from Columbia College Chicago was also involved in the production of the video. The high-definition equipment was used because of the scale of the project. Because the image proportions were like a movie screen with a width far exceeding its height, the camera was turned on its side during filming. Each face appears on the sculpture for a total of 5 minutes using various parts of individual 80-second videos. A 40-second section is played at one-third speed forward and backward, running for a total of 4 minutes.mThen, there is a subsequent segment, where the mouth is puckering, that is stretched to 15 seconds. This is followed by a section, in which the water appears to spout from the open mouth, that is stretched to last for 30 seconds. Finally, there is a smile after the completion of the water spouting from the mouth, that is slowed to extend for 15 seconds. Of the original 1,051 subjects filmed, 960 videos were determined to be usable for the project. Originally, the set of images was presumed to be the beginning of a work in progress, but as of 2009 no additional videos are planned. To achieve the effect in which water appears to be flowing from subjects' mouths, each video has a segment where the subject's lips are puckered, which is then timed to correspond to the spouting water, reminiscent of gargoyle fountains. Each face is cropped so that no hair and usually no ears are visible. Since there is no tripod designed for cameras turned on their sides, an adjustable barber/dentist's chair was used to minimize the need for the movement of the state-of-the-art camera during filming. Nonetheless, in some case, digital manipulation was necessary to properly simulate puckering in the exact proper location on the video. Many of the faces had to be stretched in order to get the mouths properly positioned. Additionally, each video was color-corrected for brightness, contrast and color saturation. Both the playback equipment and the final videos had to be further adjusted to account for sunlight during viewing.This is one of my favourite images I captured in Chicago, not least for the emotion it captures in the two subjects who decided (ever so boldly) to walk onto the (approximately) inch-deep water encompassing the pool in front of the two towers. ### Notes: 1) My entire Chicago gallery is here. 2) I am taking bookings for weddings in 2012. Details are here. I have reduced prices by 40% from the year prior for a limited time.

multiplicity

2012-05-07T20:28:35Z

Titled Cloud Gate and affectionately known as 'The Bean' by Chicagoans, this sculpture has a curved reflection surface that reflects both sky and skyline. Most of the surface has a convex shape but the underneath side is concave. Resembling a giant drop of liquid mercury, the mirror sculpture is 66 feet long and 33 feet high. For Chicagoans and its visitors, it has become a favorite photo op since its installation in 2005. But this is a good question: does the reflection continue into infinity? It appears from the photograph the answer is no...

tulips in the park

2012-05-06T21:58:05Z

Tulips at Millenium Park in Chicago, IL.

Chicago, looking up

2012-05-05T10:19:27Z

Editor's note: I am continuing my photo series from my recent trip to Chicago. The gallery of the images I have posted so far is here. I captured this shot of the Sears (Willis) Tower flanked by two other buildings during my architecture tour on the Chicago River. Do you see those four 'boxes' on the left side of the Sears Tower, near the top floor? In 2009, Sears Tower owners began a major renovation of the Skydeck, to include the installation of retractable glass balconies, extending approximately four feet from the 103rd floor. The all-glass boxes allow visitors to look through the floor to the street 1,353 feet (412 m) below. I didn't partake in this experience (choosing to go to the John Hancock Center instead).

art, Chicago

2012-05-04T20:29:51Z

A view of Chicago and an art installation by Katharina Fritsch at The Art Institute of Chicago. From left to right, the sculptures are Figure of a Saint (St. Michael), Skull, Hand, Egg, and Madonna Figure. From the website:Katharina Fritsch roots her work in the personal, often drawing from childhood memories of familiar circumstances or chance encounters. Her references engage broad aspects of folklore and culture through meticulous reproductions of everyday objects, which she formally manipulates with shifts in scale and color. Made strange by repetition and siting, her sculptural installations are both seductive and disturbing. In the Proustian sense of activating memory, Fritsch’s works create an unnerving familiarity that is subsequently destabilized by the realization that we are seeing a form, a character, or an object for the very first time. While Fritsch’s painstakingly handcrafted objects are easily mistaken for manufactured items, the artist employs a complicated and time-consuming fabrication process that begins with sketches and scale models. Molded by hand, worked and reworked, each object is subjected to multiple processes of casting or layering. The completed yet still idiosyncratic forms are then painted in bold, highly saturated colors with matte, nonreflective surfaces, creating a sense of otherworldliness. In Fritsch’s words, “Often my sculptures have a matte surface so that there is no reflection whatsoever from the surroundings. That increases the impression of a vision that one cannot grasp.' The saturated colours of the sculptures contrasted nicely with some drab buildings in the background.

Chicago waterfront

2012-05-03T23:20:08Z

Chicago waterfront as seen from the Navy Pier. I captured this photo during my first day in Chicago, the recap of which you can read here. ### Note: my gallery of the images I have posted from Chicago is here.

metra

2012-05-01T22:51:03Z

A view of Chicago from the elevated platform at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Chicago towers

2012-04-30T06:29:18Z

Editor's note: I am continuing my photo series from my recent trip to Chicago. The gallery of the images I have posted so far is here. I captured this photo from atop the John Hancock Center. As mentioned in a prior post, I hung around there for over two hours, arriving well before sunset and staying well after. For this particular photograph, I used my Canon macro lens to capture the detail of the sun reflecting on the Trump Hotel and Tower (center left) and Sears Tower (center right). I hope you like the result.

Wrigley Field (#2)

2012-04-29T23:25:42Z

Editor's note: I am continuing my photo series from my recent trip to Chicago. The gallery of the images I have posted so far is here. This is another wide-angle view of Wrigley Field, taken from my brief visit to the upper deck seats. I prefer this image to my previous post, though I'd be interested to hear what you think. Of all the photographs I've posted of Wrigley Field so far, this one is my favorite by far.