yeah totally, was just wondering if there was a specific lens anyone wanted to steer me in the direction of
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Wednesday, 18 September 2013 23:02 (ten years ago) link
oh xps
Sorry. Only ever used my gf's Nikon with its old slow lenses.
― chinavision!, Wednesday, 18 September 2013 23:06 (ten years ago) link
nikon lenses are weird to price because they hold their value pretty well? since they never changed the mount. i dunno i could be talking out of my ass
― 乒乓, Thursday, 19 September 2013 00:16 (ten years ago) link
i just walked past this:
http://butterfliesandbuffalo.com/theproject/camera/
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 19 September 2013 22:58 (ten years ago) link
would any of you guys have any idea why the buildings here are increasingly out of focus moving left to right? what would cause that? they're all the same distance away pretty much...
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2879/10028949374_0b6429e0ba_b.jpg
― rent, Tuesday, 1 October 2013 04:14 (ten years ago) link
i really don't know the answer to this (& they don't look too-jarringly-different, to me), but is it the amount of ambient light, which is kinda abundant on the left & minimal on the right? i want to talk poetically about air purity like hearing joel meyerowitz talk about taking photographs of light in cape cod but i don't really have the stats to back this
― schlump, Tuesday, 1 October 2013 15:06 (ten years ago) link
tilt shift?
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Tuesday, 1 October 2013 15:08 (ten years ago) link
could be that they're actually not all the same distance away. with aperture at f/2 your DOF is gonna be fairly narrow, esp if the focus is not at infinity
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 1 October 2013 15:13 (ten years ago) link
there was a TOP post that mentioned stuff about air purity & c. here http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2013/09/leica-on-high.html
huh i guess yeah could just be that--aperture, etc. maybe ill test it out again. i noticed it and then the first person i showed it to noticed it and now i can't not notice, oh well
― rent, Wednesday, 2 October 2013 13:06 (ten years ago) link
was for a few reasons (work stuff, friend stuff, a first date that didnt go very well, etc.) feeling really crappy on sunday. got myself out of bed and wandered around town. still feeling all bummed and sorry for myself when this happened. background is that domestic helpers, mostly from the philippines, work extremely hard, are separated from family for years at a time, are treated very unfairly under the law here in hk, and generally get only a few hours a week (on sunday) off. yet, they remain for the most part the warmest, most cheerful people. anyways, they all get together on sunday. walked through a big group. i just held up my camera and flash and shot off 3 pics quickly. this is the third one. just..this was the spontaneous response and captures the exact moment i felt better...best ppl ever:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7432/10119561994_095c6f51da_b.jpg
― rent, Wednesday, 9 October 2013 13:23 (ten years ago) link
aw <3
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 9 October 2013 13:26 (ten years ago) link
that is fucking awesome
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Wednesday, 9 October 2013 13:33 (ten years ago) link
that's so great
― schlump, Wednesday, 9 October 2013 14:53 (ten years ago) link
i watched a bunch of jonas mekas films at a retro, here, having always felt like i kinda got JM & admiring him a bunch & liking the lithuania film without loving it, & i am really just knocked out, now, like by how much of a template he is for diaristic art, & then also just by his occasional - as in not constant, & not immediate - skill as a filmmaker. there are parts of walden that resemble the best of saul leiter's photography, i think, & parts of as i was moving ahead that are as good at recording & working with images as any of the like top shelf still photographers i can think of. brutally underserved by youtube's colour rendering here (& i'm trying to link directly to 1 hr 7 min & 49 seconds through, which it mightn't), but his recording & frenetic reediting of a snowball fight is such a powerful, reverberative glimpse into something that happened forever ago & still just pops from the screen,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD1CfCV1rPw?t=1h7m49s
― schlump, Wednesday, 16 October 2013 20:46 (ten years ago) link
road surfaces and slide film, the dream combo
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Wednesday, 20 November 2013 06:08 (ten years ago) link
does anybody who has ever had a prolonged internal moral debate about the ethics of cropping feel like sharing their thoughts, here? i have never wanted to crop. or zoom. jesus christ. but I have a fridge full of photographs that I took with a lens I was too distracted & dilettantish to realise was pretty beat up, the photos which were taken through bearing the slight scars of. one edge, when i've shot toward light & focused a long way away, has a slight clustering of a few lines, eating into the sky & ruining its uniformity. it only occurred to me while i couldn't sleep last night, after being kinda bummed about this occasional distraction that: oh yeah, i could just crop. & robert frank cropped! & before that i'd been trying to find comfort in how beat up some peoples' photos are anyway. or thinking about jonas mekas' film work, which is usually pretty jagged-edged, sixteen mm camera frames not usually absent of some kind of interference.
cropping. what do you think about it. i play with the frame a lot i think. but also sometimes maybe it's more important to concentrate on serving the thing you took a photograph of?
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 20:51 (ten years ago) link
99.5% of the time i don't crop
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:01 (ten years ago) link
I crop a lot. I just checked the last 100 images I published out of Lightroom in some form, and 60 of them were cropped from the original 3:2 ratio. Some were product shots I had to crop square, other times I was going for some cinema-still effect, other times it's just sloppiness by me not getting close enough to my subject. I'm not remotely precious about it because I'm not good enough at composition.
When I've shot weddings I'm mindful of the fact that ppl may want 3:2 prints (6"x4" being yr standard high street lab print), so I lock the ratio and only crop in 3:2.
― Michael Jones, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:44 (ten years ago) link
Cropping is fine don't let anybody tell you otherwise
Plenty of famous photogs cropped
Just don't let anybody see the uncrops
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:45 (ten years ago) link
I think that HCB's 'puddle jumper' was in fact a crop but being HCB the original exists nowhere
As for film - no, I don't crop. For some weird reason I can't bring myself to crop a scanned frame. It is what it is.
― Michael Jones, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:45 (ten years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/xP2Qwaz.jpg
The original puddle jumper
THe part on the left was part of the fence he was shooting through
http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/derriere-la-gare-saint-lazare/
Apparently one of only two of his photos that were ever cropped
Like we could prove otherwise though
He probably burns all his contact sheets
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:48 (ten years ago) link
And of course the version we all know now crops out the bottom 1/3 of the picture as well
http://i.imgur.com/gHIb5hd.jpg
Gordon Parks shoots the Invisible Man, Crops
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:50 (ten years ago) link
the most reproduced portrait of all time was cropped
http://i.imgur.com/sHiyNhL.jpg
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:51 (ten years ago) link
Cropping was arguably better in the film days
You'd just move the enlarger head closer
Bigger grain yeah sure but you could sometimes get more detail too
Cropping digital is okay if you have a large source file and you're gonna show at 1024x768 or some other web resolution
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:52 (ten years ago) link
when i see something that visibly doesn't conform to a common ratio i am raising an eyebrow
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:53 (ten years ago) link
bigger grain would actually probably be an argument for cropping for me
the same way deep overexposure + then scanning can get you something you can't get otherwise
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 21:58 (ten years ago) link
Fucking hell, the original negative
http://i.imgur.com/8Ib5avK.jpg
I'm glad to see HCB underexposed too
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:01 (ten years ago) link
You can think of anti-cropping people as being photography's rockists
But given all the other ways we manipulate images
Color balance curves printing big small whatever
Intentionally overexposing underexposing shooting expired film cross processing shooting movie film
Cropping is just one more tool in the kit
Nobody has to know
It can be your secret
Take it with you to the grave
Destroy your hard drive when you die
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:03 (ten years ago) link
On my tombstone it will say
He was a cropper
I am not ashamed
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:05 (ten years ago) link
Now with all that having been said
I have never cropped a single image in my life
yeah it just goes against my instinct. I've done it a few times and then later replaced the cropped with the uncropped.
― chinavision!, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:08 (ten years ago) link
honestly it just makes life easier too
― chinavision!, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:09 (ten years ago) link
ha ha 乒乓 you are pretty much the disappointed paternal voice in my head ruefully shaking his head at my first inclinations toward cropping. like you appreciate the arguments but also something will have changed if i do it. i just can't even look at the disfigured skies that my lack of care has wrought anymore. it's like the guy in the godfather's unbeautified daughter.
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:09 (ten years ago) link
i feel like i am applying for one of those licenses that means you can smoke marijuana in public because you have ptsd & so should be exempted from having to comply with certain social mores. the idea of cropping to me is so awkward, like it is a lie. didn't alice notley say the wrong word in a story is a lie in the middle of the page. i can't even make myself crop the selvages.
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:11 (ten years ago) link
you are allowed to crop, but it must be done on the negative, with scissors.accept this ruling.
― chinavision!, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:12 (ten years ago) link
that's perfect
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:14 (ten years ago) link
mentally consulting robert frank's career to create parameters for everyday life
alternately, now that you know about your lens deficiency, next time you use it you must tape a piece of cardboard to the offending side.
― chinavision!, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:17 (ten years ago) link
i feel like when i look at my photos i'm already disappointed by how much i missed getting in to the frame in the first place
i want to put the whole world in to every shot more or less
― ᶓ͠סּᴥ͠סּᶔ ᶓͼ᷆ₓͼ᷇ᶔ (gr8080), Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:18 (ten years ago) link
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, November 21, 2013 5:14 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark
This is how I live tbh
If it helps you to be a uncropper while following robert frank
Remember that frank did not think the negative was sacrosanct
As evidenced by his later work in nova scotia
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:22 (ten years ago) link
What you need to do I think is to take a roll that you have developed
And eat it
Or burn it
Then and maybe then can you start to crop
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:23 (ten years ago) link
Tbh I remember reading that robert frank had arranged with Steidl
To publish a new edition of the americans
With all new crops
Probably the most disappointed I have ever felt with Frank
Not because of the cropping but because I did not think the new crops could bring anything to the images that we did not already know
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:24 (ten years ago) link
I don't think I necessarily pre-visualise in 3:2. Sometimes I know I only want a sliver of what I can capture from where I am.
― Michael Jones, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:24 (ten years ago) link
i think more & more that the less you are taking a photograph of - "of" - the better. i just was at the library looking at eggleston & koenig's (lovely) double exposure, i have maybe a new favourite eggleston (no i don't), this 2004 shot of half a phonebox and just some yellow canvasing in madrid. like obviously with W E the deal about ~life continuing beyond the frame~ is popular wisdom but also he just so delicately unites everything that's happening, pinpoints the essence & needs little more.
i have replaced my lens fwiw. i have a 35mm now. i miss the kind of innate hyper closeness of my 50mm, like it has come to just represent the act of literally focusing on a thing to me. but i am figuring it out.
i think frank has fucked with the crops used in editions of the americans at least twice?? usually erring toward revealing the full frame iirc. there's a section in the THE AMERICANS: THE ~~RE-MIX~~ deluxe book about it
― love mike love (ko komo) (schlump), Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:28 (ten years ago) link
i think more & more that the less you are taking a photograph of - "of" - the better
don't tell that to friedlander
― chinavision!, Thursday, 21 November 2013 22:29 (ten years ago) link