Ambient Light Meter
An ambient light meter may help your photography more than a new camera.
Findings
In a desktop browser with site navigation, a black-and-white picture of a city shows buildings and old cars, accompanied by descriptive text. The picture brings a little something from the past back to life. In it, I see fragments, details, and things long replaced. I’m grateful someone stood there and recorded it for posterity, and more than a two-dimensional time capsule, it’s a template for making new pictures.
Low and Slow
When scratching at something, the perfect vantage point is impossible. Big places show that it’s tough to have a full perspective up close, same for standing too far back. Yet with a normal lens, we enter the perfect vantage point for seeing something wherever we are, even if the focus is slow.
The Ethics of Seeing
This practice is built on the belief that photography is a way to stay tethered to the real world. Using a detached, topographic approach, the work records the landscape exactly as it is — without the distortion of sentiment or the distraction of escapism. Whether the subject is beautiful or uncomfortable, the goal remains the same: to provide an honest, standard-lens account of the places we inhabit. This is not art as a hiding place; it is art as a form of witnessing.
From Memory
One way to truly see what’s all around is to go somewhere else.
From Start to Finish
It’s about the picture, and maybe we’ll learn a few things along the way.
The Look
The trick is to a make picture that’s neither too saturated nor flat — neither too contrasty nor flat — just plain honest. It’s tougher to accomplish than one might think.
You have to be
I’m as interested in how a picture is made as in what it shows because you have to be. I’m talking about tools, texture, and tone. I’m thinking about lighting, color, and composition, and how well-assembled pictures can show nothing at all — and that’s okay.
One Camera, One Lens
The X-Pro series is Fujifilm’s gift to photography. I recommend the X-Pro2 and XF 35mm f/2 lens because it’s digital perfection.
Virtual Movements
With enough resolution, we can crop in, move a frame around, and simulate a view camera’s movements in post — including rise, fall, and shift.
Basic Editing
Pull the contrast slider down to -100 and then set a tonal curve to one’s liking.
Film, Post 2020
Put film photography to rest. Digital is better.
Makeshift Rangefinder
By most metrics, we’re lousy photographers, and that’s fine. 50mm might be the best focal length, and 35mm the best lens if we crop in a little.
5600ºK
If sunlight’s temperature sits between 5000ºK and 6500ºK, then 5600ºK is a good custom choice.
Taken Seriously
If a picture is good enough for a view camera, it’s potentially good enough for a series, seriously. I love getting lost under a focusing cloth.
Aspect Ratios
Focal lengths and aspect ratios correlate. A 50mm needs a narrower 4:5 to emphasize relationships between foregrounds and back grounds, and on the other side, a 28mm does better with a wider 3:2 because it emphasizes side-to-side relationships.
Layered
A 50mm lens is more front-to-back than side-to-side and compresses things together, perfect for layering foregrounds over backgrounds — more deadpan than a 35.
Complaining (a how to guide)
Live a great life. From wherever to whatever, I love taking pictures with my camera. It’s an obsession — a small footprint: prints, posts, and film resting inside a trusty binder.
Film Emulation
It’s fine to digitally emulate analog. A box of monochrome 8x10 sells for $250 — a $150 rise from a decade ago, and some 35mm rolls fetch $15. Analog was once the primary photographic method.
Wooden Tripod
I serviced the wooden tripod today. I repaired a loose hinge, polished the head plate, and applied mineral oil.