Book Review + Epiphany

I admit, I read way too much. As a kid I used to read everything I could find. I knew the backs of every kleenex box and furniture polish by heart. Nothing escaped my semantically inclined gray matter.

Naturally, as I was getting into photography I emptied the library and even (gasp) bought a few books from amazon (my BFF). After reading, flipping, delving, studying and eventually chucking many a book, here are my hard earned book reviews and rating:

Actually before we go there, a quick overview. There are generally four types of photography books:

1. How to use your equipment books
2. How to compose your pictures books
3. What to actually take photos of books
4. History of photography, Biographies etc.

The first two are very often clumped together and are found in abundance at the beginner level. By far my favorite is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson (and as evidenced by the over 700 reviews on Amazon, many agree). Short, to the point, very explanatory and beautiful examples, he basically explains what he calls the "photography triangle" (or something to that effect). It's composed of Aperture (amount of light coming in), ISO (sensitivity of the "film" or sensor), and Shutter Speed (how long you let light hit the sensor). And in the heart is the camera's built in light meter which tells you (with some prompting sometimes) which combinations work. He then goes on to explain why you would want different Aperture sizes or Shutter speeds based on what you want out of the picture. Good stuff, highly recommended. Two thumbs up, five stars.

In the second category there are a bunch of books I don't remember because they all explained more or less the different aspects of a photograph. Namely (this is from memory)

• Line
• Shape
• Form
• Tone
• Color
• Light

And they probably all wrote about the rule of thirds and the golden proportion (aka the golden rectangle, ask Dan Brown about it). Yipee. None of the books I read pop out as anything special.

In the third category there are a whole bunch that are okay (how to photograph kids, adults, wedding, portraits, etc.) though there are two that really stood out:

1. Photography and the Art of Seeing by Freeman Patterson
2. Photography Composition by Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon

Photography and the Art of Seeing is more of a workshop type book, which you really have to get into to get anything out of it (which I have not done too much of yet). As of now it gets four stars until it gets a bit more use and then I'll re-evaluate.

Photography Composition is more of an epiphanous (is that a word?) for me. It doesn't go in depth into much but it brings an outlook in to photography that I have not seen anywhere else and I find it quite intriguing (and, in fact, epiphanous).

The authors come with the premise (which makes sense so far in most cases, though I am working at applying it to all) that every photograph is telling a story or expressing (or attempting to elicit) an emotion (or mood). It's the job of a photographer to first of all figure out what story he is trying to tell, and then how to tell it best by choosing the right combination of lens, aperture , shutter speed, composition, placement, timing, and what to include or exclude in the frame.

So, now it's not "wow, that's cool, let me take a picture" it's "wow, that's cool, let me figure out why it's cool, what emotion or mood or idea does it tell, and how could I best express that feeling I got when I first saw it (or maybe I could elicit a different feeling by shooting it in a different way)".

This is getting a bit long, I'll continue it in a bit with some examples and some more thoughts (as if anyone cares. nunu.).

Yearbook Cover

This is a yearbook cover I did for the Hebrew Academy. The idea and the tree (well mot of the tree) was drawn by the high school students and the texture, background grass and text was done by the berk-meister (me). The background is actually a few layers of some out of focus lights from some lights hanging in a tree at the good old cow farm (what were light doing on a tree? Dunno, some Chanukah thing I guess.).

Photo Shoot @ Heritage Park in Cerritos

Recently I had the privilege of taking pics for a wonderful family here that is leaving town (on to greener pastures in Cleveland).

Heritage Park is this awesome park in Cerritos with an island, some gnarly old looking facades and a fun playground or two (I can't believe that I a just discovering this place after almost living here for four years).

I scouted out the place in advance and made sure the sun wouldn't be peeking out for a while (miscalculated a bit).

Turns out the island park doesn't open until 10:00 and I had set this up to start at 9:00. So I called and pushed off the shooting until 9:30.

Turns out the sun came up earlier than expected (around 10:15) and most of the pics after that were shot (pun intended).

Moral of the story: Lighting is better than location.

Also I have to remember to change my setting when shooting kids running around (i.e. tell my camera to try to track the kids running around).

Other than that the pics came out great and the kids were loads of fun (my kids on the other hand came cranky as DMV workers).

(should have shot this one with a longer lens)

I love brick walls.

My most awesomest lens so far (and why)

One of the large advantages of Nikon is that they never upgraded their mount (where the lens attaches to the camera) so basically any lens made since the mid 70's works with the camera (Canon changed their system in the late 80's). Coupled with the fact that well made lens last a very long time (a Leica lens from the 20's will probably work better than most new lens) this makes it quite fun to look for and buy used Nikon lens. After spending way too much time researching lens (though not trying them out) I ended up with a few good old lenses (so far).

So far I bought: 18mm f2.8 prime lens (very wide angle) - very used 35mm f/2 prime lens (moderately wide) - lightly used 50mm f/1.4 lens (normal, pretty much the way we see things) - new 105mm f/2 DC (short telephoto, totally rocks for portraits and currently holds the title of "my most awesomest lens so far) - used 70-210 f/4 (telephoto zoom, good for kids running around) - used

Now I am sure I'm going to sell some of them and buy different ones, but the advantage of buying used (if you do your research) is that you could use the lens for a year or two and sell it for at least how much you paid for it.

Back to our broadcast:

Why the 105mm DC rocks: 1. It's a great length for faces. You could get pretty close without the nose looking like a watermelon (which for kids may look cute but adults will shoot you and never let you take their picture again) 2. It's fast. The aperture opens up to 52.5 mm. Thats half of 105mm. Hence the f/2 (focal length divided by largest aperture opening = f/x). What that does is allows mucho light into the camera allowing for two things A. great background blur (very thin depth of field, i.e. not much in focus) B. Fast shutter speeds for action or low light when you would normally need a flash. 3. It's sharp as a victorinox chef's knife. 4. It does something magical to skin tones (not sure how to explain that. Magic.) 5. Built like a tank. 6. Has this "Defocus Control" thingie which theoretically allows you to change the appearance of the out of focus areas (known as "bokeh" for some strange reason). It also allows you to use it as a "soft focus" lens which gives a dreamy look to the pictures.

What's not that hot: 1. Slower than newer lens to focus 2. Has some focusing issues sometimes (trying to figure out when) 3. Ridiculous button that you have to press to focus manually (and you have to pull a switch on the camera. Ridiculous.)

Now for some much awaited examples:

that's wide open at f/2. If you check out that full size image you could see how sharp it is. All I did was slightly boost the saturation. And check out the skin, mmmmmmm, and that beautiful background bokeh...

and

@f/2.8. This is my sister Devorah Leah Ashkenazi. Colors were edited but didn't touch the skin or background.

and

Mendel and Bubby @ f/3.2 (should have been at 4 or 5.6, I keep on doing that)

and

@ f3.2. Don't look at it full size, I kind of missed the eyes a bit (nerd. Me, not the kid.).

and

Mendel @ f/2.5

and

Chanaleh @ f/2.5

and

some dude @ f2.2

and last but not least.

This was actually taken with the 35mm at f/2.2 (bokeh isn't nearly as nice, but the picture is cool) and edited quite a bit in photoshop.

The point is, that even without the "defocus control" (which I haven't really played around with) this lens is the bees knees (which may or may not be kosher. Ask your local Rabbi, who may or may not know the answer.)

First Paid Event!

Pulled off my first paid gig a month or two ago. I was nervous as anything. Thank G-d the Blesofskis are one of the most chilled people I know and they made it a lot easier. Overall I did a decent job. They were very happy, however I am always looking for things I messed up with.

Im going to try to post an evaluation of myself after each gig, we'll see how that goes.

What I am happy with: 1. I got there early and scouted the scene for lighting, settings etc.

2. I found some cool backlighting in middle and utilized it a bit.

3. Looked for patterns, and overall snapped some great shots.

Things that I messed up/could learn from

1. Make sure the area is clear of rubbish. (Check out that plastic string on the grass.)

2. Use a smaller aperture when dealing with more than one person, or when dealing with a close up and the subject is facing slightly to the side (straight on, or more to side both work with large apertures, straight on because both eyes could be in focus, more to the side because it's okay if the other eye is not in focus, but when it's a bit to the side then it just looks like you missed).

(if you check out the larger sizes, you could see that the dude on the right is slightly out of focus)

3. Don't shoot up at someone on a bright day, the sky will totally overexpose and spill into anything your shooting at. Not pretty unless you're going for that look. (I don't have any pics of this, they weren't worth saving.)

4. Shoot at smaller apertures when dealing with subjects moving at or away from you to allow a larger margin for error with focusing.

(again, in the large version you could see the running kid is slightly out of focus)

And that's all folks.

@ The Cow Farm

Had loads of fun taking pics at the cow farm. Tramped around with my tripod and had some fun self portraits.

And

And

(that's would be me as reflected in my wonderfully portable 27" iMac)

And a nice low light pic (taken at f/2.8, iso 1400 (my Rebel would quake at such numbers, the D700? Bring it on!) didn't have my 50mm f/1.4 yet).

And some random cow-farmy pics:

And finally, a cow.

Mmmmm tongue (do you think cows like how their tongue tastes, maybe if you feed them enough pickle juice or something).

Now, lest you be under a wrong impression, I do not spend all my time time at the farm taking odd pics. Rather I have a very rigid schedule, composed of time-wasting, graphic design, truck checking, cow inspecting, book reading, iBook reading (yes I have an iPad, more on that some other time), learning, sealing, sleeping, cooking, eating, coffee-making, amongst other things.

Happy cow thoughts.