Arm-length self portrait

Self portrait taken at arm length, holding a Nikon P60 "point-and-shoot" in the right hand.

Focal length was 6.4mm that in this camera is roughly equivalent to using a 35mm wide angle lens in a traditional 35mm film SLR camera. The effect of this focal length, at such short distance (some 75cm away froom face), is that facial features, specially the nose, come out somewhat exagerated and prominent.

It is usual to use a short telephoto lens for shooting portraits, because the reduced perspective angle tends to equalize facial features, making them a bit flatter and delivering a more pleasant effect most of the time. However, in this case, the wider perspective angle that results from the short focal length, and the ambience lighting, give the subject greater character.

All light is natural, afternoon sun, coming from four windows, softened by white veils. One window in front of the subject provides the main source of light. Other windows provide accent ligth, one in the same plane, left of the subject, another left and some 3m behind (hidden by the subject's body), and finally one 4m behind the subject provides some backlight. The shot was made with the diafragm set to f3.6 and shutter speed of 1/125. The small diafragm aperture provides a short depth of field that blurs the background enough to make it undisturbing.

The composition was very tentative since I could not see the viewfinder, and mostly had to guess. The aim was to shoot at about 45º degrees, and place the camera a little higher than the eyes, turning the head slighty upwards, while looking directly into the lens. This shot was the best among six trials. Nevertheless the photo was cropped a little, to remove a distracting small piece of the rear window from the right side of the subject.

Other post-processing procedures done to the photo are the following:

1. RGB level curves were corrected just enough to soften the contrast in the high key areas of the image.
2. Sensor noise was cleaned from darker areas.
3. Skin tone and detail were softened.
4. Background brightness was slighty reduced.
5. The blue tone in the shirt was desaturated a little.
6. Some edge sharpening was applied.

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(traducción al castellanno)

Autoretrato hecho sosteniendo una camara digital "point-and-shoot" Nikon P60 con el brazo derecho, y con longitud focal 6,4mm, que equivale gruesamente a unos 35mm en una camara SLR de 35mm.

El efecto de la longitud focal es que los rasgos faciales, especialmenete la nariz aparecen algo acentuados y prominentes. El uso de una distancia focal mayor reduce el angulo de perspectiva, lo que aplana un poco los rasgos faciales, lo que resulta más grato en algunos casos. Sin embargo, en este caso al mayor angulo de la perspectiva parece otorgar un mayor caracter al sujeto.

La iluminación es natural, con luz que proviene de cuatro ventanas atenuadas con velos blancos, una al frente, dos a la izquierda, y una a espaldas del sujeto. Una de las ventanas a la izquierda del sujeto se encuentra en el mismo plano, estando la segunda 3m más atrás oculta por el sujeto. La foto se tomó con un diafragma f3.6 y velocidad de 1/125seg. El diafragma bien abierto resulta en una profundidad de campo corta que hace suficiente difuso el fondo para que no resulte perturbador.

La composición fue bastante tentativa, ya que no podia ver el visor de la camara. SIn embargo el diseño fue disparar la camara aproximadamante a 45º, y ligeramente mas arriba de los ojos, girando levemente la cabeza hacia arriba y mirando directo al lente. Esta foto fue la mejor composición entre seis intentos. a foto debió ser cortada un poco para remover un trozo de la ventana posterior que aparecía a la derecha del sujeto.

El resultado entregado directamente por la camara en formato jpeg fue prácticamente igual a la imagen final que se exhibe aquí, con algún postproceso:

1. Se corrigió ligeramente las curvas de nivel para suavizar el contraste de las zonas mas iluminadas.
   
2. Se eliminó ruido en las zonas mas oscuras.
   
3. Se suavizó el detalle de la piel.
4. Se redujo el brillo del fondo.
5. Se desaturo ligeramente el tono azul de la camisa.
6. Se aplicó aumentó algo la nitidez de los bordes.
   

To post-process or not?

*My son who was the model in the photos used in this article requested that the images be removed... I will prepare an equivalent set of photos to illustrate the article"

Some of the great photographers of the 20th century, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon among others were big advocates of not doing any post processing to ther pictures. Cartier-Bresson would not even print his own pictures, just sending away the film rolls. You can see in his prints, as well as in those of Avedon, the border of the negative.

Cartier-Bresson used to say that he knew when everything was in place to make a great shot in his viewfinder. "The decisive moment", as he titled one of his books. His concep was that of drawing. He saw the subject and made a quick instant drawing using the camera, in a way like sketching. Perharps this approach was essential to his photojournalistic style, that made a mark in the photography worls of his time.

Other photographers crop and post process their photos to obtain high quality prints.

Is one way better or more valid than the other?

I believe the answer is no. Both are valid and sound approaches to photography. Art becomes part of the loop at different points of the timeline. I also want to stress the phrase "20th century masters", meaning early 20th century. The film and paper period, when the work of these masters was shot with 35mm Leicas and 50mm lenses, as in the case of Cartier-Bresson, or in the large, extremely fine grained and detailed, 8x11 format of studio view cameras.

However the turn of the century brought to us digital media, and digital cameras make a very different scene. The outcome of the camera is always the same, we cannot tune the camera to different situation using different types of film. That is somethig we do in the post processing stages of our digital images. The shooting sessions are more focused in getting raw material that can be turned into good images later in the computer, rather than getting that one, single, perfect image of early 20th century photographers, who had fewer chances to shoot, and also the expense of doing so.

Some say that the ease of using digital cameras and the low cost of shooting, have made us less careful when shooting, and therefore less likely to get great images. Altough digital media makes it easy to be more generous with the number of images we store in our cameras, I do not agree that it makes us reckless about our photos, just shooting anything. I can see in many of today's younger photographers a very carefully conceived body of work, that is only enhanced by the enormous possibilities of digital image processing.

Let me show an example of how post processing an image has merit in itself, regardless of the source image.

At the right there is an arm-legth self portrait of my son. Although the raw photo does not have a great quality as it is, there some interesting features iin it. First, the angle at which it is taken is unusual, and the subject, fortunately, did not tilt his head upwards, just looking into the camera, thus putting an interesting accent in his eyes.



Light is very flat and there are a couple of distracting spots. So I first tried to tweak the light to make it more attractive, but I soon realized that the photo was in dire need of cropping. SInce the eyes are a very strong focal point I cropped to make them the main feature in the photo.







Then I decided that the edges were not strong enough, so I drew soft lines along some of the edges to get the image at the left.



In this photo the facial features are well accented but the image still lacks strength so the next move was to make a black and white version. In this image I applied yellow-orange filtering, increased the overall contrast and made the lines I had previously drawn along the edges, a bit stronger for a much more dramatic effect.

The final image has qualities not present in the original. I have shown how starting with a reasonable but not exciting photo, image processing work can add qualities that make that photo an interesting image.

Moonlight and shadows

Moonlight and shadows
Originally uploaded by mujica

Photo of the moon taken through a veil of clouds that makes a soft focus effect, so the typical details of the moon surface that are visible when it is shot in clear skies ar hidden in a soft white light. Also the rather long exposure to get the sky and cloud's colors burns the moon circumference making it look all white.

Some minor cropping was done and saturation was increased in the clouds.

Carmenere, afternoon

Carmenere, afternoon
Originally uploaded by mujica

I shotthis photo late afternoon. the composition of the image is as it was shot - a la Cartier-Bresson. Some color tweaking was done however, to warm up the colors, and highlight the red reflections. I used the floor as background, because the light was there, and things seemed to fit perfectly. The texture of the wooden floor came out a bit flat and unpleasant. So I cut out the glass and its refelection, to overlay a subtle texture only on the wooden floor in order to make it more interesting.

Skyline in the mist

This photo was shot in Niagara Falls from the US side. The skyline is on the canadian side. The photo was processed with The Gimp using the channel mixer, plus some edge sharpening.