Color and Why not

Over the course of this summer I shot thousands of photos over a two month period in Ghana. On my arrival home I realized I had enough portraits to make a series. So I set out sifting through and picking the very best of the photos. There were a few decisions I had to make when going into post processing. My first decision was to have them in color or black and white.

Of course I could have both but I wanted a certain consistency to extend through the series. Unlike many of my peers my roots in photography began in a darkroom. I shot on 35mm black and white film for the first two years before I switched over to digital. Because of this I tend to lean towards black and white over color in many of my photo editing decisions. The lack of color in many cases makes some of the photos more tangible to me. The image is less distracting and focus is more on the subject. Especially in portraits. My usual plan is to look at the un-edited photo with and without color. If I feel that the color doesn't add anything to the photo then it becomes black and white.

In the film world of today I feel as if we are seeing less and less black and white films and even less television without color. With newer cameras expanding dynamic range and colorspace at an alarming rate, black and white seems to many people an unviable option. In certain cases its seen as cliche or "retro". I disagree with these statements but I agree that b&w in video is much more of a difficult decision than in photography. In the end it comes down to the decision of the director and what you think will best help tell your story. Choose wisely.


Released in 2013 Ida was an Oscar nominated film in the Best Achievement in Cinematography category

These are some of the photos in my upcoming series.

Learning Time-lapse Photography

Over the years I have always seen and been interested in beautiful landscapes and architecture in film and documentaries.  Often times in documentaries these shots incorporate a time lapse to add to the beauty of the shot, visually show the passage of time,  or to just add to the film's aesthetic.  Recently I decided that I wanted to learn how to do time-lapse photography/motion sequences.

Although it is possible to create a "time-lapse" using a camera's video mode and speeding it up in post it is not the most professional way.  I have found that in order to observe motion blur and to perform in low light areas taking still photographs creates a better end product.

What You Need:
-A Camera
-A tripod
-An external timer

Once you find a location you want to shoot you must set up your tripod exactly the way you want it and make sure it does not move.  Next adjust you're camera settings.  (since you are in photo mode you can adjust shutter speed below 1/30 to allow for motion blur).  Next set your external timer to the interval or rate you want your pictures to be take.  The interval you set should be directly related to the style you are interested in shooting as well as the speed at which what you are shooting is moving.  Some general guidelines for hows long of an interval to set are as follows:

1second intervals for moving traffic, fast-moving clouds, and driving.
1-3secs intervals for sunrises and sunsets, slow moving clouds, crowds of people
15-30secs intervals for shadows, the sun moving across the sky (with no clouds), and stars in the night sky
90-120seccs intervals  for fast growing plants
5mins-15mins  intervals for building construction

How long these intervals last should be related to how long you want the finished product to be.  In order to find out how long you need to shoot for to achieve your finished product there is a simple calculation.

How long you want your final product to be (in seconds)

X(multiplied by)

The rate you want to play the clips back (fps)

= the number of shots you need to take

then take this answer ^ and multiply...

 The number of shots you need to take

X(multiplied by)

The time interval between each shot you set

= how long you need to shoot for

An example:
If you want a 15 second clip played back at 30fps with an interval of 2seconds between each shot. How long will it take you?

15 x 30 = 450
450 x 2 = 900seconds (the time it will take to shoot this scene)
900/60= 15mins

So it will take 900seconds or 15mins of shooting to get the end result you want.

After learning the basics for time-lapse photography I look forward to employing what I have learned in order to make more powerful and dynamic shots for future projects.

Before and After

I'm making a rather large presentation tomorrow for one of my other classes. While doing research, I came across some before and after photos I thought were amazing. They're beautiful in the art sense of photography, but I guess I'm struggling with what type of art it is. If the photographer made it look like that (or at least similar to it) right out of the camera, then it's photography. But, if SO much post-production work was done to it, then that's not photography, right? That's photoshop art. Anyway, I still thought they were beautiful images.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crashmattb/sets/72157612362286896/

Museo Del Prado

I was researching Google Earth when I ran across an article about the Prado Museum in Spain using Extremely high resolution cameras to photograph 14 of the most famous works in its collection and include them in their Google Earth building. The image posted is a screenshot of a detail from Hieronymus Bosch's triptych entitled "The Garden of Earthly Delights". I thought how appropriate it is to have this particular artist's work displayed in this way, since his was a virtual world of his own creation which was far ahead of his time. The incredible zoom capabilities offered by this technology make it possible to see every tiny detail, which is especially useful in a painting replete with them.