It's been almost ten months since I uploaded any new work to Flickr, so I've added some new pictures, along with some write-ups. Here's the link to the first new one, and you can page forward from there (left arrow). The first one is relevant to a recent discussion here on TOP.
It's tough to get the tones right. They should be considered approximate. I can make the pictures look the way I want them to look on my computer—usually—but the Flickr algorithm changes things in subtle ways. I find I have to lighten the pictures before posting, and in some cases that throws the tones off somewhat. The one of the churchyard is probably pretty approximate; sunlit white clapboard is tough. In a print you have to get it just right. Edward Hopper is a good model for rendering sunlit white clapboard. Even though he was a painter (who sometimes worked from photographs), you can still study how he did it. He gets the feel right.
You might think that the same issues don't impact* prints, but they do. Prints are susceptible to looking different under different lighting, as well as different types of lighting. "Museum lighting" was traditionally strong and bright, and now is often the opposite; wall lighting in living rooms can range from bright daylight to murky "leftover" incandescent light from shaded lamps. These days, interior lighting is often from LEDs, which may have different characteristics than older B&W printmakers assumed would be normal or usual.
They even make viewing booths and proofing stations with controlled color-calibrated lighting for viewing prints, objects, and things like color samples in a controlled environment. When I was a custom printer I took care to calibrate the intensity of my darkroom viewing light so I wouldn't be misled into making prints too dark or too light. Lighting that's too bright causes you to print dark, and vice versa—I could even see it in gallery shows if a photographer who made their own prints had bad darkroom viewing lighting. You also have to accommodate for eye adjustment. The best darkroom viewing light would be one that ramps up slowly to full brightness (I never had anything like that).
Anyway, I hope these look okay on your monitor. I'll be adding a few more this afternoon perhaps.
Mike
*Yes, I accept "impact" as a verb. It's widely used, and there's not really another word that means quite the same thing with the same, er, impact.
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Featured Comments from:
Nick: "I love the photos, though I thought they looked substantially too dark when I looked at them on my monitor at work (during a break, of course). Questioning myself (since you've forgotten more about B&W tonality than I'll ever learn), I flipped over to my Flickr Photostream to see if I thought I really was making everything too high-key. Well, I'm sure I've got questionable (or bad) decisions all over the place in how I place tones, but my photos look too dark on this monitor as well! Gonna have to look again on my better-calibrated monitor at home....
Mike replies: Good idea. My pictures do skew a little too dark at times and on some monitors. I like some tone in highlights, and I'm definitely not afraid of photographing in dark scenes, sometimes in near total darkness. Plus, I generally edit at night in minimal room light.
A picture that looks tonally just about right to me on Flicker, on my calibrated monitor, and with daylight illuminating the room through windows (my office has windows on all four walls), is this one:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156825285@N07/52449968060/in/photostream/
So take a look at that one when you get home. If that looks "right" to you tonally, then we're probably on more or less the same page, as they say.
Martin: "The presentation on Flickr looks good to me. I think 'Oak Tree, Old Number Nine Church' nails the highlight and shadow retention, and the sky has lovely varied tones while still being distinct against the bright sunlit hard surfaces and the shadows in the foliage. Tasteful and thoughtful treatment all around.
"I do agree with John Krumm's observation that 'Tree Down' feels underexposed, even given your preference for richer mids and shadows.
"Can you say anything about what looks like artifacting in the upper 15% of the 'Wheat' photo? I love the detail in the rest of the photograph, but when you get to the upper extremes of the image it looks like stippling or a low bit-depth scan. Is that in the original, or is Flickr's compression making a hash of it?"
Mike replies: I see a little pixelization at the highest magnification on Flickr, but mainly just a little out-of-focus blur (bokeh):
Sorry I couldn't get exactly the same place on the image.
These showed up in my feed, since I follow you. The one I noticed changing (brightening) is Tree Down, which seemed quite dark at first. I often do the same thing on Flick, and even more often if I share an image on Facebook, where it helps to bump exposure by half a stop or more. Lots to like here. I like the dark tones of the farm and truck shot, but also the daylight field.
Posted by: John Krumm | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 01:45 PM
Flickr doesn't have any algorithm to change the tonality, AFAIK. I think there is only resizing. If you are saving your jpg in sRGB colour space, it ought to display on flickr exactly as it would in that colour space in Photoshop. I'm sure readers more knowledgeable than me have tested this and will weigh in.
Posted by: Howard Sandler | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 01:58 PM
All I will say for now is that it's great to see someone diligently and persistently working on BW tonality and presentation. I haven't seen much of that since my community darkroom days. The effort shows, too. Applause!
Posted by: robert e | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 03:19 PM
This provides an opening for my favorite rant about galleries displaying photos - prints under reflective glass. Practically all the galleries in LA display photos this way and the reflections ruin the viewing.
Nothing in my experience came close to the displays at the Annenberg Space For Photography in Century City/West LA. They had a lighting specialist who ensured the color and viewing were the best. Alas, they are no more.
Posted by: JH | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 04:38 PM
Harvested Grainfield, you had me thinking I was looking at a David Plowden for a moment.
Posted by: Keith | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 05:21 PM
All of this talk of the difference lighting makes reminds me of an old story. I had a job lacquering a set of cabinets that were to be wall hung in a new condominium. As they were to be a custom off white I mixed a large quantity so as not to run out midstream.. I then proceeded to count the coats so that each piece got exactly the same coverage. The job was delivered and the contractor hung them on the wall. Then came the phone call, “they don’t match!” So I went out to the job site and met the client, knowing exactly what the problem was as soon as I walked into the room. We inspected the job together and sure enough the middle wall had a green tone compared to the walls on either side. I then asked the client to turn around. The 4th wall was floor to ceiling glass facing out on a grassy hill. There is your green tone Ma'am , the curtains had not yet been installed. I suggested she come back after dark and if there was still a problem I would be happy to remedy it. No more phone calls, yay.
Posted by: Terry Letton | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 06:17 PM
"Prints are susceptible to looking different under different lighting, as well as different types of lighting. "Museum lighting" was traditionally strong and bright, and now is often the opposite"
Oh yes! A recent-ish show of St Ansel's prints in SF was so dimly lit that his (archival) prints, printed for the then usual lighting were deeply murky.
People were going in close and squinting. A woman standing next to me commented to her companion how the person on the side just didn't fit. I pulled out my pocket flashlight and lit the print. "Oh, that looks right now!"
Awful. A wildly different set of prints would be needed.
===========
"So take a look at that one when you get home."
That one looks fine, but some of the others are too dark for me. Then again, we know our tastes differ.
Posted by: Moose | Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 07:24 PM
No matter how you work on them your images will be viewed on our computer monitors. Difficult for quality to come through when seen on a screen that is not set up for it.
Posted by: Daniel | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 07:31 AM
Those images look very good to me—very dramatic! With my screen brightness is turned up all the way, as it should be, I would have raised the shadows a bit on a few of them, but only just a bit. Highlights and mid-tones are glorious!
Posted by: Stephen Cowdery | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 09:28 AM
Flash (on, fired). - Why?
[It's apparently a glitch in the Sigma EXIF software. Every Sigma FP picture on Flickr says "Flash (on, fired)." I mention from time to time that the camera doesn't have a flash, I don't own a flash, and flash wasn't used. But I can't mention it in every writeup; it would get tiresome.
No flash on, no flash fired. --Mike]
Posted by: Christer Almqvist | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 09:51 AM
I'm of the same mind as you; I love working with "available darkness." It's almost a signature. And, I seldom use flash, haven't used an external flash since the Press 25 era.
Posted by: MikeR | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 12:27 PM
I haven't used Fliker in years. I had access problems when they changed ownership and gave up on them. Support sucked. I ended up asking them to delete my account and they took 6 months to do it. I never bothered to set up another.
Most of my photos, both serious work and snapshots, go to my FaceBook account where they almost always appear duller than in Lightroom/Photoshop. Add to that the variances of rendition between different monitors and I have given up any notion of controlling how others see my photos on their monitors. I try to get the best tones I can on my monitor or in a print if I print it but that's all you can do. Once you post it there are too many variables.
Posted by: James Bullard | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 01:26 PM
Nice work, Mike. But this shows up an issue with digital images on-screen- they are endlessly manipulable by anyone (or automatically by any software program that touches the file). So which is the real thing?
These days I make black-and-white silver prints. And when I've got finished print, well, it is what it is. Dealing with room illumination levels is not that big a problem (and I once judged color prints inside a large MacBeth viewing box).
I'm enjoying the way you see things, keep up the good work!
Posted by: Mark Sampson | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 03:28 PM
I like the first two the best. The paint spill on the road is a photographers photo if you know what I mean. The night shot is so atmospheric and perfectly balanced.The shadow tones may have been difficult to get right on that one. It would make a great print.
In todays online world it's impossible to know what an image will look like on someone else's monitor, phone, tablet etc. Even if colour calibrated the brightness is at the whim of the operator.
a device is subject to whatever brightness it happens to be set to. To muddy the waters even more some devices now have 'hdr' displays. For me a photograph is not a photograph until it's printed.
Posted by: Bob Johnston | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 05:13 PM
Any word on the print sale?
Posted by: Seth Friedman | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 05:50 PM
One of the nice things about editing on a computer is that you can sit on the image long as you deem fit and change it as needed incrementally. Despite that luxury, I often have the nasty habit of showing an image long before its's actually 'come of age' and is fit for public consumption...
Regrettably, and for whatever reason, low light at galleries is now the ongoing trend, understandable perhaps for 'vintage' prints, inexplicable otherwise. One of the reasons I've always enjoyed the gallery experience was because the work would be bathed in light. It was a downright rejuvenating experience- now, it can be downright gloomy and depressing... what did I just see? Yes, reflections (as someone brought up) can be an annoyance at times, but now you also have box type frames that can cause a very distinct and dark shadow to be cast on the upper portion of the print! I don't understand how artist or gallery can present work that is, in effect, artificially 'cropped,' and can be easily remedied either by a change of frame or lighting. At first, I thought it was just the case of one errant gallery- sadly, that's not the case...
Posted by: Stan B. | Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 05:58 PM
Love the work, Mike. The detail of Wheat sucks me in, but the one that really grabs me is Farmyard with Pickup Truck. The subtle tones in the unlit buildings are wonderful.
Speaking of monitors, my laptop screen is a workhorse display, but the attached second monitor is a beautiful LG 22MD4KA-B UltraFine 4K Display. Dragging the flickr window from the laptop display to the LG is night-and-day (ahem).
Posted by: Joel Becker | Friday, 16 August 2024 at 12:32 PM
While the inconsistency of digital presentation is a real problem, from the photographer's point of view, many of the same problems exist when you send out prints, as is described right here in this post and comments. You don't necessarily know how the museum, gallery, individual, or whoever will display them, and you certainly don't know how later owners will display them.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Friday, 16 August 2024 at 01:56 PM
I would like to contribute to the topic of the importance of the viewing light of photos and paintings.
For a year now, I have been increasingly concerned with the question of the average brightness and contrast of new photos that are usually found on site.
A very good reproduction specialist (Graphic Arts) I work with adjusts his prints on a professional viewing desk (JUST), which is far too bright, but unfortunately he is a stubborn thick skull.
I therefore took the light meter (light measurement) to various public museums and galleries in Berlin and also to average apartments to determine the usual, diffuse light level during the day.
- Reproduction specialist / Graphic Arts, viewing desk (JUST):
half power: 8 ½ EV (most used), full power: 9 EV
- Museum of Photography Helmut Newton Foundation, fall 2023:
6 EV and mostly 7.2 EV and ditto
- Museum of Photography Helmut Newton Foundation, August 2024: 5 EV to 5 ½ EV
- Public museum, KUNSTFORUM: new, modern lighting design!: 5 EV - 6 EV
Professional photo gallery (F3): Walls 5 EV , if spotlight lighting:
in the center: 8 EV, at the spot edge: 7 EV
- Private apartments: mostly 4 EV to 6 EV
I think you are well advised to adjust new photos on average so that they look good with a viewing light in the range of 5 EV to 6 EV.
Posted by: Lothar Adler | Friday, 16 August 2024 at 02:48 PM
Your photos look much better on my calibrated monitor than my iPad. Too dark on the iPad.
Posted by: JR | Friday, 16 August 2024 at 07:28 PM
Lovely work! I particularly like "Wheat", "Churchyard, Number Nine Road", and "Farmyard with Pickup Truck". You have a fine appreciation for low-key tonality with strong highlights.
Posted by: Craig | Saturday, 17 August 2024 at 01:55 PM
Mike, I really like your darker night images. They look perfect on my calibrated iMac screen. Spilled paint is excellent. The paint seems to almost lift off the road as it moves into the background.
Also, there was a comment on how galleries are now so dim. It reminds me of when I visited the William Henry Fox Talbot gallery in Lacock England. Some of the prints were covered by black velvet sheets, which you had to lift to view the prints. Of course those very early prints were not processed at all well and so need to remain in darkness, so as not to completely disappear. Perhaps that's where the galleries are going!
Posted by: David Drake | Sunday, 18 August 2024 at 03:22 PM