GIANNI GALASSI PhotoGraphia

MAXXI RELOADED

Olympus OM-D E-M5 - Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm (50mm eq.) w/polarizer
1/125" f7.1 ISO 200
In-camera monochrome (red filter) - Slightly tweaked out-of-camera jpg

Let ME say it before YOU say it: I have already shot Zaha Hadid's MAXXI* Museum in Rome so many times. Yet I can't help going back there with a camera. There are subjects one never gets bored exploring. It's instructive and challenging in the meantime. Moreover I'm in a quasi-monochrome mood lately, so there is plenty of new (to me) aspects of that building to find, capture and render.

Nonetheless I have tons of backlog of unselected and unedited photographs sitting in my hard drives. Many of those (some dates back to May 2011) don't belong to this new stream of mine, therefore this summer I'll be posting a mix of not-so-new and new-new works. My blog will look a little less consistent and your humble will be a happier man.

*For those who wonder, MAXXI is the acronym for Museum of the Arts of the 21 (XXI in Roman numerals) century. It should be compulsorily included in all tourist itineraries of Rome, even the shortest ones. Especially if you are a photographer. And I know you are.

DODHO MAGAZINE

This is not the first time a portfolio of my images is featured by a photography magazine, either on paper or online. Nonetheless I'm particularly happy to point this one to PhotoGraphia readers' attention since it's a relatively newborn one, it's 99% focused on photographs (text is reduced to a few introductory lines), it's beautifully designed and it's totally free (and advertising-free too!). And, most importantly, the selected authors -despite their different subjects and techniques- have a lot in common. Click on the link below to get the pdf file or visit dodho's website. Enjoy.

Download Dodho Magazine Issue 3

HOMAGE TO GORDON LEWIS

This is a straight out-of-camera color jpg. Uncropped, untweaked, unretouched. Pretty unusual, for me. Because it's unedited, certainly, but most of all because it's rectangular and depicts not just one but even two human beings.
I was taking some shots of the geometric shadows cast on that building the other day, when I was struck by that "decisive moment" feeling. Which never happens to me, as I usually control the whole shooting process, thanks to the static nature of my favorite subjects. Buildings don't move and shadows shift very slowly. Briefly, when it comes to my imaging process, everything is my decision, no matter the moment.
While composing the other day, though, I couldn't help thinking of the American photograper GORDON LEWIS, whose work I especially admire for its graphic strenght, color mastering, sharp technique and unrhetorical humanity. It was a matter of a fraction of a second: I framed (on the LCD monitor of my new Canon G1X), said to myself "This one is for Gordon" and released the shutter. Twice, but I prefer the first shot for its better composition.
After reviewing the day's work on my computer I went to pay a visit to Gordon's blog, Shutterfinger, in order to see his last posted photographs. Ironically I found out that, under that "decisive moment" bias, I unwittingly put into practice the titles of the last Shutterfinger's posts: "Learn to pay attention", "Getting It togheter", "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity", "What is <The Right Way>?
Gordon Lewis has a lot teach to all of us. His musings on photography are deep and cultivated, yet inspired by a healthily pragmatic approach. And his photographs push the so-called "street photography" towards new boundaries. Enjoy.

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND

The other day the 100,000th visitor hit this blog's pages. Although being aware that most (but not too many) photography dedicated sites get bigger traffic volumes than this, I'm happy with a result that came in two years only, since PhotoGraphia opened in November 2009.
I owe my blog's success to regulars in the first place, who encourage me to consistently post new works with their appreciation and comments. Among them someone became a friend, and our relationship is getting deeper through the messages we exchange by email. But a big help also came from other bloggers who so kindly linked my site into their posts. I could track most of them and personally express my gratitude. Yet some are unknown to me, as many forums' participants who quoted PhotoGraphia in their discussions. So thank you all.
As for my plans, I will keep on posting a new photograph every other day (approximately) and try to fight my laziness and write a little more than I recently did. Which is not an easy task as English, as you surely realized, is not my mother tongue. But I'll do my best, promise.
My hope for the future is that PhotoGraphia can get so many visitors that I won't even realize that the 200,000th has been hit. So wish me good luck, as I wish all the best to you all.

PHOTO TRAVEL REVIEW MAG

A site dedicated to photography, travel and adventure, Photo Travel Review Magazine has invited me to show my work in their newly-born Featured Photographers column. Even though I wouldn't exactly define my photographs as adventurous (except under a perspective point of view, perhaps), I warmly welcomed Bill Lockhart's (one of the three photographers managing the site) proposal, and selected a small Lisbon portfolio.
By the way, Bill's personal website is not to be missed. Enjoy.

To see my Lisbon portfolio in PTR Mag click >>> here.

THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY THOUSAND

This is PhotoGraphia's 300th post, and the 90.000th visit has been hit today. Let me say thank you to all visitors, and express a special acknowledgement to all regular readers who, according to Google statistic, are responsible for a huge percentage of the traffic gathered by this blog. Among them, some have become friends and this is what makes me especially happy.

THE CAMERAS OF MY LIFE 8

Finding excuses is one of the skills of a good (or bad, or average) photographer. Whenever, at the pit of our stomach, we feel the lust for new gear, we can't help making up a more than reasonable list of what's wrong or inadequate in our current equipment and how the purchase of something new could improve our imaging process. I know this twice: as a photographer, of course, and as a biker. This syndrome is not to be mistaken for collecting compulsion. I'm no collector at all. Even when I had several vintage motorcycles (now I only own a modern Harley Davidson), I used to ride them every day. And I do the same with cameras, lenses and accessories: I use every piece of equipment I own on a regular basis. And whenever something sits in my gear closet more than a reasonable lapse of time, I sell it or trade it in. I don't accumulate. I find owning more than I need uncomfortable: it makes me slightly anxious.

In 1974 I was 20, I was a novice pro-photographer and got a Rolleiflex 2.8 TLR along with a Nikkormat FTn with a bunch of Nikkor lenses in my bag. The only way to become an adult photographer would be buying a view camera. Despite their current affordability, such cameras were very expensive at the time. Lenses were expensive too. As was sheet film, and its (color) processing, which was only made by few pro labs. But the idea of composing and focusing my (reversed) image looking at a big squared ground glass under a black cloth, and then closing the shutter, sliding a film holder in my camera back, pull out the film protection slider, releasing the shutter by squeezing a pump remote, counting exposure time with a stop-watch, pushing in the film protection slider, pulling out the chassis and recocking the shutter for the next shot: all this slow and sort of zen-ish process was so tempting!  Briefly, I had to find a good excuse. And I quickly found it, the day a new customer asked me to shoot his brand new machinery tool lineup catalog.

The first commercial large-format photograph I shot with my Arca Swiss in 1974

It would have been impossible to get a decent focus all along the subject at such a narrow distance: a tiltable focal plane was essential. Moreover it was a well paid job (nowadays the same machinery dealer would approach his catalog in a d-i-y perspective, and I'd be jobless: photographers-to-be beware!), which would have helped sinking the purchase of my outfit: an austere and frugal Arca Swiss 4x5" model C.

As we learn from Luminous Landscape, "Arca Swiss, notwithstanding its name and antecedents, is now headquartered in France. Their first products in the technical and view camera market were introduced in the 1950's. Today they are well known for their ball heads as well as M line and F line view cameras, in sizes from 6X9cm roll film to 8X10" sheet film, as well as mounts for digital backs. Arca Swiss lacks a web site, one of the few companies of any size in the photographic industry without one. Remarkable."
Precision Camera Works informs us that "the original line was made until 1984. It consists of the Model A (with axis tilts); Model B (with base tilts); and the Model C (with both axis and base tilts). These cameras use spring backs; the 4x5 is compatible with the Polaroid 545 and 405 holders, plus most “slide-in” roll-film backs." The lens I choose was a Schneider Symmar 150mm f/5.6, mounted on a classic Copal blade shutter.
Thanks to that camera, my business got on steroids. Besides catalogs, industrial and corporate imaging, I had the opportunity to sell my interior decoration and crocheting photographs to most female weekly magazines, which were so generous I covered the cost of my Arca Swiss in a few months. At first, I found out that what I still had to learn before I could properly use a tilt/shift camera exceeded what I already knew. But with time, reciprocity failure, extended bellows exposure compensation and Scheimpflug principle became familiar to me. What I couldn't imagine at the time is that the legacy of my large-format camera experience would have been so helpful today in my workflow, especially as far as vertical lines correction and live-view framing are concerned, along with that taste for slowness that I never lost since then.
Every time I grab a camera and go outside to shoot, I feel happy for the compactness and lightness of my current equipment, and for not being a large-format photographer anymore. But I'm also aware that, without that "heavy" experience, what I know and can do today would be dramatically different.

"Heartily wishes", a corporate greeting card I shot with my 4x5" Arca Swiss in 1975

BOOKMAKERS

PhotoGraphia contributor Jeffrey Goggin emailed me today an interesting remark he has made on photography books publishing. The debate about imaging and media has been revamped by the recent release of advanced tablet devices which, according to many commenters, bear the potential of making paper obsolete (at least in the long term). And having experienced the making of seven books myself, I thought that I should share our brief email conversation with PhotoGraphia readers.

Jeffrey: This past Friday night and all-day Saturday, I attended a how-to seminar at a new gallery in Gilbert (near Phoenix, Arizona, where I live) about publishing a book of photographs.  Although I already had some idea as to what was involved -specifically, the part about how photography books generally don't make any money unless they sell 8-10,000 copies; hence the photographer is expected to personally contribute/raise funds from others (sponsors, patrons, family) to cover the loss that would otherwise be incurred by the publisher-, I was surprised to learn how small the typical press run is for most books of photography, including even those by very well known photographers: 1,200-1500 copies! For an unknown photographer, 1,000 copies is not unusual and very few press runs are for more than 2,500 copies. And even for a 1,000-copy press run, the cost the featured photographer will be expected to cover -in advance of publication, naturally- is typically in the range of $15-20,000 … yikes!

GG: And your figures refer to the US market! Imagine what happens in a small country like mine (Italy) where most photography and contemporary art books are 100% at the expense of galleries, museums or artists themselves most of the times.

Jeffrey: The reason why photographers agree to subsidize publishing a book of their photographs (aside from vanity) is because of the marketing and promotional benefits having such a book can provide, depending upon where they are in their careers.  In my case, though, given the non-existent state of my "career" as a photographer, publishing a book of my photographs makes no sense whatsoever (which is something I'd already deduced before I attended the seminar, so I wasn't disappointed upon learning this), but when the time does come -if ever!- the information I learned this weekend will prove more than worth the $195 fee I paid to attend the seminar.

GG: If publishing one's photo book is crucial, books-on-demand online services like Blurb do a good job for a total cost which is more manageable. Meaning that even if the cost-per-copy is higher (the double, more or less), a limited quantity of copies, even a single copy at a time (which is more than enough most of the times) can be ordered.

Jeffrey: Yes, Blurb does a good job with what they offer, but your book has to fit the formats they offer (size, paper choice, etc.), which works just okay in some cases, quite well in others, and not at all for others still.

GG: True. But new options are being offered to customers, and chances to find your ideal format increase every day. Moreover digital print quality (Blurb uses HP Indigo printers, for instance) is largely over the average traditional print-shop output.

Jeffrey: I agree. Except that with Blurb, you're self-publishing, which means you have to arrange for promotion and distribution yourself. If you already have a customer base, it can work very well, but if you haven't yet sold more than a handful of prints, then you face an uphill battle to attract attention for the book and you're the only soldier who's fighting!

It would be interesting to know which is your favorite weapon: how many of you print their photographs by themselves, how many use lab services, how many post them in the Web, how many have them published in books (self or traditionally published) to fight (and hopefully win) their battle.

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A LEICA

Christmas is five days away, and perhaps somebody secretly asked Santa for a luxury camera that he can't afford and will never appear under the tree.
In two of my older posts, THE 2.0 DIGITAL CAMERA and PANASONIC GF1 AND CAMERA DESIGN, I had the chance to point out the advantages of the Micro Four Thirds system over bulkier and more expensive kits. The Panasonic GF1 epitomizes the essence of the M43 philosophy: a small and light boxy body, well built, devoid of frills, with a superb LCD screen and the option of a handy tiltable electronic viewfinder. As for the available lenses, counting the so-far-announced 2011 line, eight Panasonic units are available. Plus the Olympus line and some primes from other manufacturers. Plus, of course, via adapter rings, virtually any lens built in the last 80 years. Personally, I'm a little skeptical about this kind of mating, though I'm aware it's a tempting option for photographers feeling an experimental mood. As a matter of fact I must confess that I recently bought a M43 pinhole "lens" myself, even if I'm not sure I will ever get satisfactory results out of it. But the end of an exhibition always finds me in an experimental mood, so why oppose to it?
A sentence of mine, "IMHO Micro 4/3 can really be considered as the Third-Millennium Leica (whereas M8 and M9 can not)" has been quoted by most sites all around the web, igniting an endless debate between pros and cons. One year later I find myself stumbling in a controversial post hosted by Steve Huff in his interesting blog, written by former photo-journalist David Babsky: "Leica M9.5" - The Small But Excellent Panasonic GF1.
I will not summarize Babsky's article here. It's worth reading it, together with the wealth of heated comments it sparked off. Just let me dwell upon a couple of points about whats makes a Leica a "Leica", and see if the GF1 complies:

• compact enough to be pocketed in a jacket - CHECK
• light weight and unobtrusive - CHECK
• smaller photosensitive device's size than most professional current cameras - CHECK
• small high-quality interchangeable lenses - CHECK
• vibration-free mirrorless design - CHECK
• optional viewfinder - CHECK
• heavy limitations in the use of telephoto lens - UNCHECK
• outrageous price - UNCHECK
• poor LCD monitor - UNCHECK
• live-view unavailability - UNCHECK
• fetish value - N.A.

Let Santa have a read on this, and who knows? Perhaps a modern time Leica will appear under most photographers' tree.

"THE" QUESTION

I already mentioned Gordon Lewis' Shutterfinger blog. The photographic quality and the cleverness of the published articles are really outstanding. In his last post, Gordon goes further and deeper by simply asking a question: Why Do You Photograph? I think it's worth a visit. And an answer, if you will. Enjoy.

THE BEAST

BestiaMag is an Argentinian online magazine whose content is related to art and design. Run by three design graduates, Andres Simone, Ivan Flugelman and Emil Iosipescu, Bestia (the Beast) already featured more than 60 artists from around the world collecting more than 500 pages of material.

In its last issue, Numero 10, a short portfolio of your humble is featured alongside other artists' from Argentina and the United States. Enjoy.

PRECISIONISM

I like to insist about all the learning the interaction with people in the Internet involves. One year ago this site was featured by Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer blog. In a comment to that post, a reader called Jeff suggested I should see the work of Ralston Crawford. I'm grateful to Jeff, as I had never heard about Crawford before (another thing one can learn day after day is the vastness of his own ignorance).

Ralston Crawford - Third Avenue Elevated, No. 1

Born in Canada in 1906 but grown up in Buffalo NY, Crawford was an American painter and lithographer. His graphic representation of the urban and industrial landscape led him to join Precisionism, an artistic movement that sprang in the United States in the early 1920s and was deeply influenced by Cubism and Futurism. Among Precisionists were painters like Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe as well as photographers like Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand.

No need to say that I like Crawford's art, since I recognize in it the same subjects and the same light-and-shadow game that can be found in my work. Briefly, I feel we share something. I only regret having known Ralston Crawford so late: if I did earlier, I probably would have become aware of what I was doing long before. Unsurprisingly, he was also a photographer, but I'm sure he will be mostly remembered for his unmistakable paintings. By the way, they can be seen here, here and here. Enjoy.

ONE YEAR

On November 8, 2009, I opened this blog and posted my first entry: a quote from John Szarkowski's seminal book The Photographer's Eye. Exactly one year later the 50,000th pageview of PhotoGraphia has been reached. This result exceeds my most optimistic predictions. As I already stated, running a blog taught me a lot. Among many interesting things, I learned about a fiendish invention like Google Analytics, a service through which a blogger can acquire (almost) any information about his readers and regulars. Google Analytics tell me that PhotoGraphia has totalled some 20,000 unique visitors from 130 countries all over the world. Most of the visits (almost 13,000) come from the United States, whereas only 4,000 come from my country. This confirms that making PhotoGraphia an English-speaking site has been a clever choice (although being a hard challenge for my English writing ability).
Each visit lasted an average 59 seconds, which experts consider a good performance, as the clicking compulsion usually pushes people to abandon a web page more quickly than that. Moreover most of my posts are textless: a simple photograph and a dozen of tags. And I even suppressed titles lately, with a few exceptions. One minute spent watching a photograph is more than the time a visitor usually spends in front of a work of art in any museum or private gallery.
Looking at the traffic graphs, heavy peaks can be detected whenever Photographia has been linked by another blog or site or discussion forum. Every now and then I indulged in gear reviews (which is not exactly PhotoGraphia's call) and gear-focused sites has reported them to their audience. Unfailingly those entries caused sudden increases in visitors' number. But in the long term the biggest thrust comes from bloggers being, along with their readers, on the same wavelenght as me.
Speaking of which, statistics say that a gorgeous 30% of visitors have come back to PhotoGraphia more than 9 times in a year (3% of them more than 200 times, as a matter of fact). And this is the most gratifying of all those data. Many people out there share my ideas about photography and want to cultivate their passion through a lighter and simpler approach, focusing more on the imaging process than on gear and enjoying photographs more than cameras. I'll do my best not to disappoint them in the next twelve months.

ADDENDUM
Sorry, perhaps I should have added a new post category: self celebration. But it won't recur that much, promise.

INTO THE NIGHT (BOUNDARIES 11)

Running a blog can be a demanding task sometimes (not today, since it's holiday in my country), as regular readers expect new entries to be posted at regular intervals and they can't be let down, no matter my tiredness or my spare time. But yet it's a rewarding task. Every other day I have to browse my hard disk and choose a new photograph to show, and this helps me to learn something new about my work and to assess what deserves to be put online without the "context" that can be supplied by a book or an exhibition. And every now and then I like to indulge in writing my musings about photography or photo paraphernalia: a valuable opportunity to set my ideas in order and learn how I can share them with readers. Moreover, I'm spurred to follow other people's blogs, which is always an instructive experience: again, it's about learning. And, above all, I make new acquaintances.

Fairly often, it all starts with a comment to a post of mine, or with me commenting theirs. Or simply by clicking their name under a comment to somebody else's post, just to find out that behind an interesting point of view on a certain issue there is a whole artistic world to be discovered. Then an email can follow, and a kind reply. So we start exchanging opinions or technical informations. Or even signed prints -by the way, I'm always interested in swapping photographs, so don't hesitate-. Some friend blogger asks me for articles to be hosted in their sites, and I happily write them. Others interview me. Links are traded and the promise of a live meeting in Rome or elsewhere is made -what would our life be like without the Internet?-.

Jeffrey Goggin - Monopoly Houses

Some time ago I met (only digitally yet) the American JEFFREY GOGGIN. We first approached on technical issues, as we both have adopted Micro Four Thirds as an alternative to DSLRs. But I soon realized that, through his compelling work, this Scottsdale AZ based photographer is pushing the boundaries of light mastering far beyond the usual limits. The hour "between dog and wolf" -as it is called in French-, and the darker ones, have no secrets for him. This is why you are all invited to a journey into the night with JEFFREY's photographs. You'll be wanting more. Enjoy.

SHEDDING LIGHT

PhotoGraphia friend site ENTICING the LIGHT has just posted SHEDDING LIGHT on GIANNI GALASSI, an interview with your humble on photography and related paraphernalia. Enjoy.

NO WORDS

 
Well, I need words to express myself anyway...

In a previous post this blog went through the captioning issue. I was in the process of laying out the catalogue of my new exhibition then, and I dealt with the need to get clean textless pages. On the other hand an appendix with 105 captions (210, considering the English and Italian versions) would have been totally useless. But I don't want to repeat myself. Those interested can scroll down to the Capture Captioning post and read my musings.

Briefly, I decided to release a catalogue that was completely devoid of text (put apart the two intro essays), and I deeply enjoyed the freedom feeling this decision gave me. Then came the mounting of the show. As a viewer, I must say that the pinball game my eyes are forced to by the different readability of a painting or a photograph hanging to a museum wall and its 14-points-font caption is always an annoying experience. Not to mention when the almost unreadable caption is glued far away from the artwork it is related to, together with a bunch of other unreadable captions, and nobody understands which is which. The question was simple: should my exhibition have captions (as all my previous ones) or not?

The answer is in the short statement I hung near the entrance of the show:

Don't look for captions beside images: you won't find any. The classic trio “what-where-when” usually coming with a photograph would be meaningless here. I have been hesitating for a long time before I freed my works from the addendum that always accompanied them. Despite my non-descriptive approach, captions were there to certify that those pictures complied to photography codes. While reassuring the viewer, they reassured me too: don't worry, you are still a photographer, you haven't totally lost sight of the realm of objectiveness yet.

But what if we reverse the point at issue? My photographs' aim is not to depict the world, but rather to witness the random and ephemeral geometries generated by the light-and-shadow play. It's worth to recall that light only exists when it hits a sensitive device, as the human eye or the camera, which roughly mimics human eye's operation.  Light is a mere electro-magnetic radiation in itself, and the world, without an observing eye, is dark.

So if reality can be portrayed only on a subjective basis, a picture speaks about itself and its author in the first place. Then the viewers may as well, in their own subjectiveness, ascertain the “what-where-when” of the photographs they are looking at. What I mostly have at heart is getting them to understand the “why”.

FORTYTHOUSAND

Today this blog totalled 40.000 pageviews in nine months. I'm deeply grateful to everybody having taken part to the success of PhotoGraphia. Moreover Google Analytics tells me that most of my viewers/readers are faithful friends of my site since their first visit, which encourages me to stay on this track. Thanks a lot to all of you.

I'm currently in the process of setting up my exhibition in Venice. It's an exciting job, where what I planned to do is continuously challenged by what I actually can do and what realistically can be done; well, I'm so happy with the results. My previous show's experience helped me a lot, as well as my wife Daniela's invaluable collaboration (without her ideas this exhibition wouldn't even exist), the curator Laura Ginapri, who is also in charge of the local organization, Giancarlo Rosini and Walter Ferretti from Rosini Art, who skillfully crafted the mounting, and all the kind people from the Giorgio Cini Foundation which is hosting the event.

Days like these deserve to be remembered. I'm enjoying this experience and learning a lot.

PANASONIC GF1 AND CAMERA DESIGN

A couple of weeks ago I posted a comment in 4/3 rumors that I like to share with you (after a little editing).

After the release of the first model only, the GFx line has a huge potential to exploit yet. Under both design and ergonomics points of view. Although not to be necessarily imitated by Panasonic, Sony's NEX5 is a brilliant example of an innovatively clever and non-dogmatic engineering. As for image quality, the GFx line will follow its evolution as any other camera, with the introduction of backlit sensors, smarter algorythms and better processors. No matter the resolution, which is not an issue anymore. Firmware can evolve too, as it generally did in the past few years, towards a better jpg in-camera processing, thanks to selective noise-reduction and subsequently selective sharpening techniques. Such technology has already been implemented in recent Panasonic models. And good built-in viewfinders aren't too far away.

Menu and user interface are definitely a serious issue in modern camera design. High end DSLR are, basically, classic film SRL from the Fifties with a sensor hammered in, thus shouldn't be taken as good examples of  contemporary camera design. On the other hand low-end compacts must rely mostly on soft commands, as mechanical buttons and dials cost too much to manufacturers. IMHO Canon G10 is the first sensible attempt to supply photographers with an effective stills-capture physical interface. Forget about its menus, they are as crappy as the competitors’, but the exposure compensation and  ISO dials are a real luxury. Nothing else can help photographer better than that in his expose-to-the-right task. No doubt there is still a lot to do in order to build the perfect EVIL camera as far as this aspect is concerned. For instance, the standard mode dial could be replaced by a more useful speed (or aperture, or both) selector(s). And the card formatting command shouldn't be buried under three menu levels. And why do I have to choose between adaptive and non-adaptive LCD screen luminosity? Of course I need it to adapt itself to lighting conditions! And so on... Leica M digital cameras should be imitated with regard to menu simplification (only to that, I fear). I certainly dream of third-party firmware allowing us to make our life easier and get our cameras to operate more like cameras. Hackers all over the world, unite!

As for lenses, M43 market is still slow. But I'm sure it will be revitalized as soon as third-party manufacturers will start releasing their own M43 glasses. Which hopefully will be firmware in-camera corrected against vignetting, distortion and chromatic aberration, so that they can cost less and, moreover, be lighter and smaller. There is a wide demand, spreading from ultra-fast primes to wide-range zooms (which is my case).

BETTER PHOTOGRAPHY

Being published by a photography magazine is a rewarding experience I already had in my career. Although no earnings are generally involved. It means that somebody thinks his readers could learn something from my works and advice. Having a piece of knowledge to share is more rewarding than money. And more useful, too.
Yet this time I'm more pleased than usual, as it's an Indian magazine. I know, the Internet is nowhere and everywhere, there is no more "far away", "it's the globalization, baby", and so on... Still I can't help being excited at the idea that, despite I have never been in Asia, an Indian journalist sitting in his Mumbai office noticed my photographs in some website, googled me until he found my email address and made me his proposal. And that in its May issue, dedicated to Learn to Create Magic with Light and Shadows, Better Photography (India, not to be mistaken for the Australian magazine with the same name), hosts now a four-page article dedicated to your humble. Those interested can follow the link below. It's a 570k PDF.

Read SHADES OF GEOMETRY

16-RULE

Most photographers complain about the lack of reactivity of their fully automated modern cameras. Especially those who practice street photography (which is not the case of the above picture).
Well, there is an effective way to cope with this issue. The goal is to make our camera skip the standard exposure and focusing routine, so that we can simply and quickly press the button and get the shot taken. No two-step pressing, no focus buzzing, no delay. As in the "good old times."
First of all, the lens must be set to manual focus. A short prime, like a 28 or 35 mm (or their equivalent) is the best choice. Otherwise a zoom lens set to the same focal lenght will do the job. Focus must be manually set to the hyperfocal distance, which is the distance allowing a depht-of-field, say, from 3-5 meters (10-15 feet) to infinity, provided that aperture is set to an average value like 8, with APS or the so-called full frame sensors. The smaller the sensor, the bigger the aperture: 4 or 5,6. In digital capture, smaller apertures are always to be avoided because of diffraction. As for the hyperfocal distance of your lens, it can be easily found: the web is full of dedicated, easy-to-consult charts.
So, with camera mode switched to manual, we set the aperture at 8. Now the question is: how can we be ready to shoot without a light metering procedure? In a recent comment to a post in Gordon Lewis' Shutterfinger blog, I recalled the time (only a few years ago, yet it feels like ages) when I mostly shot b/w with a meterless Leica M4-P, applying the so called 16-rule: under a bright daylight, with the aperture set to 16, shutter speed must be the reciprocal of the selected ISO value, i.e. 1/100" f/16 at ISO 100. Or 1/200" f/11. Or 1/400 f/8, which will be our option. If we like to get our photograph a little underexposed (1/3 IL is a clever choice, in street and candid photography) the exposure will be set to 1/500 f/8.
As simple as that. With cloudy weather, the 16-rule becomes the 11-rule, and so on.
By the way, Gordon Lewis' website is also worth a visit. Enjoy.