Photography and Sumi-e

The critique session. This is a common thing to do in photography circles. Photographers bring samples of their work and a panel of “experts” or maybe just other photographers look them over and give suggestions for improvement. The critique can be in person or there are dozens of online photo forums where members post their work for review by other members.

I think that this is mostly a photography thing. Maybe since I’m not a sculptor or a painter I’m just not in the loop, but I’ve never heard of such a thing for other art forms. What is it about photographers?

Anyway, until the other night I had never participated in a critique. I figure I’ve been taking photos for longer then I care to admit and have read a wee too many photography books for my own good so if I haven’t figured out the rule of thirds or how to use an exposure meter by now it is a lost cause. Plus, if I have got the basics down and I’m to the point that I’m flaunting “the rules” with strange, twisted, evil compositions and exposures to fit my personal vision of the world, then there is no point in asking someone else to judge what I’m doing with an eye toward some sort of improvement - I do what I do and some people will like it and some won’t.

Well, I decided to go to an “open critique for photographers” at the BookSmart Studio. It sounded pretty informal and was a chance for photographers to get together, show off their latest experiments, and swap ideas for a while. I don’t know a lot of other photographers so I thought what the heck.

There was a lot of  “I would crop it here” and “what if you darkened this area up a bit”, but for me seeing what the other photographers were doing and learning why they were doing it was the really good part. It was like going to a gallery and having the artist available for questions.

Oddly enough this leads me to my subject for today – Japanese ink painting or Sumi-e (pronounced like: sue me, eh). I’d like to apologise beforehand for my butchering of this subject. I’m no art scholar and no expert in Asian culture so please bear with me as I do my best to cover a subject that seems so simple on the surface and yet runs as deep as the human soul.

You can read about the history of Sumi-e in the wiki link above. It is an old old art form originating in China in the first century and eventually migrating to Japan around the fourteenth century.  Technically the term Sumi-e refers only to Japanese ink painting, but very often the term is used to cover many similar styles from other regions of Asia. The basics come down to the use of solid sticks of black ink ground on a stone and mixed with water in various concentrations to create subtle shades of grey applied to rice paper or silk using traditional brushes. I have included an image of a work by Shubun from the fifteenth century. Search Google images for more examples.

I’ll bet many of us have seen Sumi-e, but haven’t thought much about them. They have a distinctive look that at first glance seems very simple and sparse. Subjects are reduced to bare essentials. Often there is writing in the open areas. Westerners think they are quaint, but not very interesting.

One of the things I have always read about Sumi-e is that space is as important or perhaps more important than the objects. An intriguing idea, but what does it mean? Most descriptions of Sumi-e stop there – no explanation of how or why empty space is important. Often I think this is because the writer does not have the foggiest why; they are just repeating what others have written. This has always bothered me and recently I decided to dig a little deeper.

To a westerner, empty space is often referred to as “negative” space.

“…as defining a general composition the negative space is the area that is not the primary subject. The primary subject or object is defined by the negative space surrounding it.” – Roland Lee Art Gallery

So space is merely anything that is not the primary subject. It is just a throw away – not exactly the important point we’re looking for here.

A more significant use of “negative” space can be seen in works of M.C. Escher as birds morph into fish or whatever depending on where one focuses attention. Many of his drawings blur the distinction between positive and negative space. The white areas can be negative thus defining the edges of the black areas or vice-versa. Still at any given moment we are just using one to outline the other.

One key point that is often overlooked is that ink painting is more that just a style of art. It is an excercise in meditation deeply tied to Zen Buddhism and is used as a method to teach Zen principles.

“…ink paintings are done using precise techniques … that originated among the monks of Zen Buddhist China as an alternative form of meditation, supplemental to the traditional practice of sitting, as well as an exercise in observation and poetry.” - The Japan Center

“…illusory boundaries between self and others are dissolved. The core of existence is revealed to be nonexistence, the “essence” of all things non-essence or nothingness. The recognition and acceptance of the truth of this nothingness is essential to the ability to attain enlightenment. If recognition of the empty nature of all things is a principle tenet of Zen, this view must have some effect on the ways in which practitioners of Zen perceive the world around them. Certain aesthetic qualities would be found appealing to someone who is striving to embrace emptiness. Clutter and embellishments would be less attractive to a person who sees the void as ideal. Instead, a Zen mode of thought would lead to the appreciation of empty spaces and simplicity. It follows that another aspect of the Zen aesthetic may find beauty in unfilled space. “ – Rachael Dubin

Now we are getting somewhere. Space in Sumi-e is not just what’s left over after the main subject is drawn. It does not merely outline. It is something in itself. Empty space can be beautiful. It is a place to clear the mind of clutter and explore the essentials of existence.

Whether one is into Zen or not, an appreciation of emptiness can bring a much needed perspective on life. Look up into a clear night sky -  there is an awful lot of emptiness in the universe; maybe we should to get used to it. The deep desert and the far ocean are places that many find uncomfortable. I think there can even be a kind of emptiness in a deep forest.

We avoid space and emptiness whenever we can. We clutter our houses with “stuff”. We clutter our lives with activities. We fill lulls in conversation with mindless chatter…

And we always fill our photographs with the main subject. The Kodak rule is to always move in close and fill the frame. People don’t want to see space. It makes a photograph difficult to understand. We like our images plain and simple with a solid obvious subject front and center and a clear title just to be sure we don’t miss the point.

Certainly there are times when some judicious cropping is in order, but I think it is often a knee jerk response. Being a technologically derived art form, photography often leads to formulaic approaches both in the creation and in the viewing. We crop because it is a rule of good photography. All open areas are automatically cut away without a thought. After all, this is just negative space and serves no purpose other than to define the positive objects, right?

The image at the top of the post is one that I took last winter. I had printed it for a show and didn’t use it so I grabbed it and hung it up at the critique. The first response of the other photographers was to crop the space off the top – not a second’s hesitation. It may be hard to tell from a web based image rather than the hard print, but I felt that the cropping changed the image immensely. I have included a cropped version for comparison.

The acid test was to ask my wife which she preferred. She normally never agrees with me on anything artistic, but this time she did. She felt that removing the darkness at the top took away a sense of height that pulled the building upwards. The cropped version makes the building look short and squat.

I would take it further. The building in the photo is a call box/control booth at the local canal lock at night during the winter. The place was quiet, dark, cold, and deserted. The canal is drained and shut down during the winter. The only sound was a small unseen stream of water lightly hissing through a gap in the lock doors. Ice covered what little open water lay in the bottom of the canal. No one was there to man the controls. No one was going to call from their boat to have the locks opened. The huge gears sat silent - frozen in more ways than one.

I feel that the black sky above the building not only adds an element of height, but also is an essential element of the place. Quietness, rest, poise, balance, isolation, anticipation, flight can all be found in that blank space. The original image is really about the space and the feel of the place. It is the experience that I felt being there.

The cropped version is about the building. The building is nothing. It is just a building. It might still be a nice photo, but it doesn’t convey anything beyond the colors and the geometric shapes.

Maybe showing a single photo was not a fair test. Maybe if I had put up several that I took that night a theme would have emerged. The final image is another that I took of that building (so to speak). Maybe I should have added even more space to make the point more obvious.

MDW

Glossy Digital Prints

I typically print my photos on Moab Entrada Rag Natural 300 paper which has a slightly textured matte surface. The 300gsm is nice and heavy in your hand, the texture feels rich and “fabric-ey”, and it lays flat before and after printing – no curling or waving. However, the Entrada is not really designed for rough handling. The soft open surface can pick up oil from fingers and is relatively easy to scratch and dent. It is best to put the prints under glass soon after printing.

This week I needed something a little different. The Wayne County Council for the Arts is having a show of photos taken within our county. All entries need to be submitted mounted and unframed. I decided to submit some photos, but I didn’t know how the prints would be handled or stored or presented once I turned them in, so I thought I had better use a glossy paper that would better resist smudges and scratching. The glossy would also look better since matte prints not under glass can sometimes look a little flat.  Plus I was planning to go black and white which I like best on a gloss type surface in order to have the look and feel of traditional wet process prints.

Usually I would order something like this through the Internet, but I didn’t feel like waiting for shipping so I needed to find a local supplier. I stopped by my local art supply shop to pick up some photo mounting adhesive and some board (permanent mounting is also something I don’t usually do). This gave me another idea. What if I printed on matte paper and then applied a gloss finish over the top?

I had heard of people doing this, but I never saw the point since I always frame my prints. So I picked up a can of glossy Krylon “Preserve It!” digital photo protectant and headed home to try it out. Of course the can warned me about flammable harmful vapors, but I figured how bad could it be?

The stuff worked great at putting a glossy surface over my prints. It was an interesting effect – a matte textured surface with a glossy sheen. Unfortunately the smell was over powering. I sprayed two roughly 8×10 prints out in my garage – not the cleanest environment, but well ventilated. After letting the prints dry for 15 minutes or so, I brought them inside. Holy Cow! In no time I could not stand to be in my office. I opened the window and closed the door in a vain attempt to keep the fumes out of the rest of the house. After a couple of hours I could not take it anymore. The prints had to go back out to the garage. It took all afternoon to air out my office to the point it was habitable again and I could still smell it the next day because just laying the prints on my desk caused the odor to impregnate the wood! After several days in the garage the prints still reeked so I threw them away.

Back to the drawing board – looks like real honest to goodness glossy paper is the way to go. I decided to head over to Booksmart Studio to see what paper they had on hand. Booksmart specializes in high end art book type printing, but they also sell stuff for photo printing and even carry a line of inkjet printable metal for those adventurous types.

They several brands of paper; Canson, Innova, Lumijet, etc., and a large selection of Hahnemühle. I always wanted to try Hahnemühle, but it is expensive and I got used to the Moab so I just never bothered. One nice thing at Booksmart is that they have sample prints on dozens of different papers so you can spread them all out on the counter and compare them. I messed around trying to decide on the right combination of print quality, texture, and gloss for about twenty minutes. I finally decided on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm.

This is a cotton based paper with no optical brighteners and a gloss coating with a little bit of a dimpling texture that gives it a sparkle when held at the right angle to the light. Although there are no brighteners, the white is still a little brighter than the Entrada Natural. I like how deep and dark the blacks become and the warm grey lighter tones in black and white photos. I have not printed much color on it yet, but so far it seems to need the saturation boosted a little in order to match the colors of the Entrada. There is a slight curve toward the coated side, but nothing serious. It feels good, it looks good, and it seems to take handling very well.

So I fiddled around a bit until I got it to look the way I wanted it and then I printed my photos. I sprayed the back of the prints with 3M Photo Mount Adhesive. I did the spraying in the garage again, but the odor was nothing like the preservative. Once the prints dried a couple of minutes, I took them inside and mounted them on foam board using a hard rubber roller to press them down. Presto! – mounted unframed prints.

I could enter 3 photos and had planned to use one of a canal lock at night, one of a barn with vines growing over it, and one of some bolts in a local railroad tower. After I got them all printed and mounted, I noticed that the entries had to be all taken within the last 5 months. The barn and the canal lock were taken back in January so they were out. I ended up just using three bolt photos; two of which I have included in this post.

Oh well.

MDW

New Camera and Stuff

I’m not a big “gear head” when it comes to camera equipment. Oh, I know what’s what and I keep up on new developments, but when I meet another photographer I mostly like to talk about shooting styles and subject matter and philosophy rather than the latest sensor technology. On the other hand I did just get a slew of new equipment so I figure I better burn at least one post on it.

Those brave souls that have been following my last few posts know that I lost all my camera equipment while on a trip to Costa Rica. Thank goodness for home owners insurance which covered the loss – monetarily at least. I still really miss a lot of my old equipment that I collected over the years; much of which is no longer manufactured.

So let’s see, I needed a new camera and some new lenses and a new backpack and new filters and new memory cards – just about everything. I even lost a pin hole lens that I made myself out of an old camera body lens cap and some tin foil. Since I lost the camera AND the lenses I had the opportunity to move away from Nikon to another brand. I narrowed it down to Canon, Nikon, and Sony. In the end I went with Nikon again. Nothing against the other brands – it was a close call and really I think I could have gone with any of them based on the specs.

Staying with Nikon was again more of a stylistic choice for me than a technical choice. I’ve used Canon before, but Sony was a bit of a flyer. I wish I would have had the opportunity to try them all out for a while and then decide, but no chance of that so I had to go with Internet reviews and gut feelings. From all that I read and from viewing images taken with each brand in various models, I just felt that Nikon was the best fit for my method of shooting and the look of the images most closely matched the look I’m going for these days. I can’t really explain it – sorry.

So I have upgraded from a Nikon D200 to a D300. I know the D300S is out, but the major difference looked to me to be just the addition of video which I think is a stupid feature to have on a still camera and I’m happier without it gunking up the works. The D300 looks and handles a lot like the D200. It is only different enough to be really annoying.

The biggest hassle is that the buttons on the back have moved. The top button next to the video screen used to be for reviewing photos and the second down was the menu. The 300 has more features and a bigger screen so the review button has moved up and to the left away from the screen and now the top button is the menu. I have taken a couple hundred photos with the new camera and I am constantly bringing up the menu when I want to review my images. Maybe in a couple hundred more I’ll be retrained.

The D300 gives me two more megapixels which is always nice. The image noise seems to be less too which is also nice. The body is solid and weather proof just like the 200 (a must have when working in the outdoors). The bigger review screen is good, bigger is always better, but it seems a little too bright. I have it adjusted down as far as it will go and I still think it is too bright. It would be fantastic if someone would invent a screen that would adjust itself based on ambient lighting – brighter in the sunshine and dimmer in the shade.

I have yet to really get the hang of the thing so that my images finish in the same zone that I’m used to. The histogram is a little different, the exposure latitude seems a little wider, the preview screen tends to blow out my highlights, etc. I know I should not be using the preview screen to make decisions about contrast and exposure, but it is so hard not to be swayed by it when it is right in front of my face. Eventually I’ll get used to what the histogram and what the screen should look like when the image is the way I like it – it’s just going to take some time. The two photos on this post are from the new system.

Besides a new camera I had to get new lenses. My old ones were ones that I saved from my film camera days. They were completely manual. No CPUs and no auto focus motors. They were simple tubes with glass in them – lightweight and compact. The new lenses are specifically made for digital cameras and with the inclusion of focus motors (that I never use) and digital electronics, they are huge and heavy. My main lens now is a Tamron AF 28-75 F/2.8 zoom. This thing weighs 18oz! When I took it out on a hike the first time I could not shoot portrait from my tripod because the weight of the lens would pull the camera down no matter how much I tightened the mounting screw.

Back at home I took a piece of copper plate that I had left over from another project and cut a hunk off. I hammered it into a Z shape and drilled a hole in the middle. One leg of the Z hooks over the edge of the tripod head,  it passes under the camera, and then the other leg hooks over the back edge of the camera. Now I can turn the camera sideways without it pivoting around the mounting screw.

Another change in the lens department is the lack of an aperture ring. My old lenses had a physical ring that turned to set the F-stop. The new lenses rely on the camera. The D300 has a wheel on the front under the shutter release. Turning the wheel sets the aperture on the lens. This was a bit annoying at first, but I’m getting used to it. I was very worried that the electronics were going to force me into either aperture priority or shutter priority – happily I can still work everything manually.

Another change that is making it difficult to get the hang of the new system is that Nikon changed the raw (NEF) file format between the 200 and the 300. So my Paint Shop Pro XI photo editing software will no longer read them. I decided to upgrade to version X2 (shouldn’t that be XII?) which will open the new NEF files. I should not have bothered with the upgrade – the software itself has almost no upgraded abilities in the areas I use and although it opens the D300 raw files, they are unusable once loaded. Here’s why.

Nikon has come out with something called the Picture Control System. I find this a really crappy and wholly unnecessary bit if fluff added just to keep the programmers busy and to sell new software. The D200 had a menu where you could set modes like standard or vivid which would shade the images a little toward more contrast or more saturation or whatever. That was it. You set the setting and forgot about it. The resulting raw file was just a file.

Now we have a thing called a picture control where one can set the same basic stuff (standard, neutral, vivid, monochrome) only the settings are somehow separate from the actual image file so that according to the manual one can “share image processing settings among compatible devices and software”. Great. On top of all the color profile crap flying around let’s add another layer of redundant and proprietary complexity so that we can really screw things up!

It would appear that Paint Shop is not a “compatible” piece of software and misses out on the picture control settings. All the raw files opened with it are blown out beyond recovery. The histograms are shoved way way way to the right. I tried creating my own picture controls with all the settings at some sort of neutral position hoping that I could tone done the raw files, but it never helped.

In the end I had to install Nikon’s ViewNX software that came with the camera. I now import the raw files from the camera and then open then in ViewNX. I select all the images and export them to TIFF files. The TIFFs are now in a form that Paint Shop can open and ViewNX has applied the picture control so they look correct. Just what I needed was another step in my workflow. Besides, I could have opened TIFFs in Paint Shop XI and saved fifty bucks on the upgrade. Sheesh.

Finally we come to the new backpack. It is a Lowepro Flipside 400 AW. The flipside deal just means that the main zipper to open the bag is on the side against the wearer’s back rather than on the “face” of the bag. Supposedly this allows one to slip their arms out of the shoulder straps and spin the bag around on the waist strap to the front and get gear out without putting the bag on the ground. Many reviewers swear by this feature. It gives me the willies just thinking about such a maneuver. I ain’t doing it.

My old Lowepro bag used to open from the top. It stood up when on the ground and the top access was quick and easy. I often set up my shots while standing in mud or water or snow or maybe all three and an upright bag only let the bottom get all mucky. The new bag needs to lay down so the entire pack gets wet and muddy. The good thing about the zipper being on the side toward your back is that the wetness doesn’t get on you when you put the pack back on. Unfortunately the face of the pack is a mess. Good thing it is weather proof.

This pack has a tripod holder which my old one didn’t. I like this feature. I used to have to bungee the tripod onto my motorcycle and sometimes it scratched the rear fender or gouged up my seat. Now I can hook the tripod to the pack on my back and avoid all that. When I’m in the woods, I still carry the tripod in my hand – it would be too much trouble to strap it on and off all the time.

That’s about it for first impressions. I’m very fortunate to be able to replace all my lost gear and most of the gripes I have will go away once I get used to how the new stuff works. Time will tell.

MDW