I came across this girl while walking around in Toruń Poland. She’s a waitress at a place where you can taste wine (and drink coffee and eat cake and and etc etc). I walked past her noticing her sitting there smoking her sigarette in a way only women can smoke a sigaret. A bit intimidated by the scene I walked past and through the gate of the old city wall. Out by the road I sat on a boulder lying around being boulder. I motivated my self to walk back there and use by best Polish to convince here that having your portrait taken by someone you don’t know with a 40 year old camera is a good idea. Sufficed to say, I needed little convincing and I walked back before she could finish her sigarette. I used my best Polish and, what do you know, she agreed. I ducked down low next to a parked car and I shot the single frame which became this image.

Poznań is also the home of Lech beer, especially good on a warm summer evening on the main marktet square (Rynek).
Though Poznań isn’t specifically aiming at tourist it clearly has an international character. When walking
around the market square there are friendly smiling waiters or beautiful waitresses standing in or around the
entrances of cafes and restaurants, smoothly switching to English as soon as they detect you’re not a local.
Although it’s clear why they’re standing there the emphasis is always on curtesy and friendliness. Which reflects
in the service you receive. The one restaurant that stood out in the quality of their traditional Polish Kitchen
and excellent service was Ratuszova which can be found on Rynek.

Oddly enough Poznań seems to have the widest collection of different types of trams rolling around the city.
From very modern to old, amongst them even a model that used to be in service in the streets of The Hague
The Netherlands. I recognized it as I was traveling in those very trams my self when I was a kid.
However the connections are many and the ticket system is simple enough. You buy a half hour or a full hour ticket
at one of the small kiosks which often be found next to the tram stops in the city center. Stamp the card when you
get in and the time starts.

If there’s one thing the modern Pole loves it has to be big luxurious shopping malls, though there’re citys in
Poland with many more shopping malls, Poznań must have one of the most beautiful. Stary Browar (The Old Brewery)
former Hugger’s brewery is now a big shopping mall amongst others. Though largely rebuild from scratch
around old parts of the factory it was done so with genuine turn of 20th century brick. Interesting as the
trivia maybe the fact is that the spaces inside are from time to time breathtaking. Big roof windows supported by
beautifully shaped iron struts can be found all over, bathing the inside in natural light. This is shopping in style.

So what about the Poznaniens them selves? For me a lot can be said about how people react to me when I point my
camera at them. I love doing street photography and don’t hide it. Everyone that’s interested can see
the modest film camera (rangefinder) I carry with me. If the situation allows for it I’ll give a friendly smile
and shake my camera, if not I’ll just point and take the risk. I never use a big zoomlens so I’m always really close.
So how did people in Poznań react to Mr. Nosy Parker caring a camera? In one word, wonderful! No matter if I asked or
not the reaction was always friendly, never even a no. Sometimes a small chat came out of it other times friendly eye
contact. I could walk around for hours and enjoy what I love doing most.

In conclusion. I came to Poznań with somewhat moderate expectations. In honesty it really only was on my list
because the old steam line to Wolsztyn leaves from Poznań. As an adult little kid I love steam trains and I
couldn’t wait to travel with one that’s actually still in active service! Sadly I was in for a disappointment
as the line is out of service until the end of the year (2011) due to maintenance on the rail infrastructure.
On the upside, its been replaced by the suprisse of Poznań, certainly a wonderful Polish city worth a visit.

It’s been two years since my last visit to Lasówka, a tiny mountain village in Poland on the border with Czech
Republic. Two years ago I also wrote about my visit here. A lot has changed since then, my Polish improved a lot
and the owners of Pod Zieleńcem installed a new kitchen. Okay so maybe not a lot changed, but being able to
communicate can give a place a completely different feeling.

After a very slow start, we decided to head to Poznań today. The temperature in the mountains struggled to reach
9 degrees coupled with rain, far from the usual August weather you would normally expect and not very
appealing for another full day. A rainy day is perfect for a day of travelling.
Though the distance between Lasówka and Poznań is only about 300km I assumed it would take us the better part of the day as there is no
highway at al between these two places. The first 150km took us back to Wrocław from where we left the day before
then 170km from Wrocław to Poznań. Around Wrocław they almost finished work on the city ring speeding up
traveling and getting a lot of truck and car traffic out of the city center. Giving the city a even nicer
atmosfeer then it already has.

60km after Wrocław we decided to stop in a village where we could eat something. By that time we were already
on the road for 4 hours so I could use a break and was looking forward to a warm Polish traditional dish.
We walked around the old and colorful marketplace in the heart of Rawicz. Although some of the buildings
were in desperate need of maintenance Rawicz manages to keep a friendly character.
After walking around for half an hour and seeing a collection of different photography stores with big wedding
prints decorating the facade of the buildings; mariage is big business also in a town like this. We quickly discovered
that the town had just about every shop you could think of, the one thing that seemed to be lacking was a
restaurant or even a simple pub or cafe with a menu. After randomly walking trough even more streets we decided
to ask around, this is when the obvious was confirmed; Rawicz great place for a walk but lunch or dinner is best
prepared at home. Rawicz doesn’t have a single restaurant, obviously people here have different priorities and
asking for a restaurant made us look just a little bit silly.

We decide to get back on the road and have a quick bite at a road side dinner. After very many tractors and a
fender bender causing a huge traffic jam we finally arrived in Poznań around 18:30. 320km in 7 hours, but the
car was parked and we found a nice hostel at the central marketplace. For the next 2 days we will be enjoying
Poznań in food, drinks and activities.

Vandyke brown print

A Van Dyke Brown or vdb print is a contact print technique  not unlike the better know Cyanotype. Unlike the  Cyanotype the Van Dyke Brown print produces a brown (actually more Sepia like) print. I always had an interest in old photography techniques but never really dove into to them in detail. When reading and researching about wet plate photography I stumbled upon a video of making a Van Dyke Brown print and decided to take a side step from my wet plate adventure and dive into Van Dyke Brown printing. I really loved the look and the relative simplicity of the processes and figured this would be a nice introduction to alternative photography in general. I’m not regretting it!

It’s really to bad that so little is know about these processes as they can compliment digital works very well. If you think that these techniques are only for the darkroom veterans think again! You can print out perfect digital negatives and start printing with these techniques in no time. Interesting enough these alternative processes have become a lot easier with todays cheap inkjet photo printers. My aim is to get you a nice head start with this post so you don’t have to do all the searching around that I had to do. A small disclaimer here, I’m by no means an expert! I’ve learned this process by reading other peoples articles and a really good book on printing digital negatives, I will link and refer to all of it so you can check it out your self. Let’s get started!

Although I did make prints with 4×5 negatives I will focus this post more towards the digital workflow. I shoot mostly film these days but when making a Van Dyke Brown I have the habit of scanning the negative (16bit) and convert it in photoshop to a perfect Van Dyke Brown negative, more on this later.

Let’s start with what you need and why

• Van Dyke Brown emulsion is only sensitive to UV light. Some people will also refer to Van Dyke Brown to Sun Print. So what you need is an UV light source. The sun of course will work fine I made my first prints this way. Even on a cloudy day you’ll have enough UV light to expose, although your exposure times will increase. Because the sun will output a different amount of UV light depending on the weather and time of day I decided to buy a 15 euro UV face browning unit of e-bay. Even new you can get these units for around 50 euros. They work really well and produces a constant amount of UV light. That’s really the only thing that’s important if you want reproducible results, it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes as long as you make the same mistake every time (not counting forgetting to switch the light on of course).
• You also need something to press your negative against the paper when exposing. The best thing would be a split back contact printing frame. Instead of me using a lot of words to describe what that would look like or what it is just watch this video on youtube, it also provides a nice overview of the complete processes, be sure to return though as there is some more information I can give you to make your VDB life easier, here it is. Impressive isn’t it? As you can see this guy made a beautiful home made split back contact printing frame. He really needs it to as he’s using sunlight to expose. The good news is that you probably already have a contact printing frame and never knew it! A plain picture frame! This is what I use, I just went out and bought one of those really handy a4 sized frames they sell now, be sure to get one with a wooden back and not cardboard. When you get home just grab the thinnest saw you have and saw it in two at about 1/3 of the back, grab some ducktape and duck it back to gather. There you go, a split back contact printing frame. Presure between the print and the negative is important so later on you can always buy some screws and metal plates that you can move around to make a better fit, I’ll do a write up on that as well and show you what I did. But don’t worry to much about it now, just get started. If you can’t wait to start building here’s a really good how-to
• Okay, Moving on! Now for the really easy part. Getting the chemicals needed, if you’re living in the US you’re in luck, you guys got all the cool shops that sell everything for alternative processes. I bought my first set from Bostick & Sullivan. I recommend getting this set as it contains enough chemicals for lots of prints and it includes the fixer, everything you need and you don’t have to mix chemicals your self. It also includes a nice manual which will give you a couple of good tips. In my experience the amount of sensitizer they advise to use is a bit on the high side, however this also depends on the paper you use. In europe we have Moersch for all your photo chemical needs, they also sell the VDB sensitizer, this set only contains the sensitizer so no fixer.
• A brush to paint the sensitizer on the paper. I like to use a nice soft goat hair brush, you can get these at art shops, no problem. You can also use a foam brush, these are something like 1 euro and you can also pick them up at an art shop
• Now that you’re at that art shop anyway also pickup some watercolor paper. This is what you will use to paint the sensitizer on. I sugest starting with a bit thicker paper, Arches hot pressed and Arches cold pressed will work nicely. There is a lot to be said about paper I started out with the cheapest watercolor paper I could find. In my case that was still 100% cotton and it worked fine. Want to know more, check here they keep a list of what papers work well. And here and explanatory video on paper
• Okay, almost there! Last thing on your list should be transparency film for you inkjet printer. This last bit is important it has to be for inkjet printers, it’s really easy to accidentally buy it for a laster printer which will not work and make a big sticky inky mess of everything. The film you see everyone recommending is the transparency film from Pictorico, which you can buy here. However I had some trouble finding that here in the EU so I just went to the office supply store and bought some random stuff, guess what, works just fine. Now when I say, “works just fine” I really mean for my needs, a master printer that goes for perfection will probably have some really good arguments against it, however I’m not looking for perfection I’m looking for acceptable random imperfections. This is what make prints come alive to me.

So after you collected all this you’re basically ready to start with the processes. I realize there is a lot of basic info here and you really haven’t got any instructions yet on how to actually start coating the paper and printing the negative. If you visited the links I provided you at least seen a movie that shows the process from beginning to end so you know where we’re going.

In version 2 of this article I’m going to explain how to print the negative. We will be using a nice Photoshop plugin that is going to create a correction curve for us to make the perfect Van Dyke Brown print, you will be amazed how beautiful and full of detail these prints can be. The closing 3de article we will go into more advanced techniques like toning and when to double coat or single coat and how to deal with delicate papers.

But for now keep an eye out for part 2 of this series coming soon.

Coy

Finally after having it on my todo list for close to 8 years I did a nude shoot with a profesional model. I absolutely love artistic nudes but I found it to be somewhat intimidating to get into my self without having any experience what so ever. Ideally i thought it would be best to learn from an experienced photographer in the field by means of assisting on s couple of shoots. However that opportunity  never arose so at one point I decided to just go for it. I hired an experienced model (which was also a first) and planned a shoot.

Although I was very nervous on the day of the shoot I couldn’t wait to get started. The day before the shoot I decided to go online and collect works in the style and atmosfeer I like. This preparation payed of, on such first shoot you’re going to be nervous and being able to just show a set of 12 images to a model which visually explain the direction you want to go into is a lot easier then having to explain it verbally. I wasn’t planning on copying work (although i think there’s nothing wrong with that for learning purposes) it was merely to set the mood.

As the model got undressed I did a final check on the lighting equipment and made sure everything was in working order and roughly setup for the type of light I wanted. After that I switched the heating up a bit so my model wouldn’t be cold and feel uncomfortable. When she came we started up with a couple of simple standing shots. The first lesson I learned was that shooting a nude model really isn’t that much different from shooting a dressed person. When I’m shooting I’m fully focussed on the result, thinking about light, composition and of course keeping up rapport. Between my preparations and her professionalism we got of to a flying start. I found I could focus much more on the photo as I didn’t have to coach a nervous person intimidated by my camera.

As the marks on the skin left there by undergarment faded so did the remainder of my nervous. Ideas developed further and the images were getting better and better. Every now and then I offered my model to hand her the drink I pored  or if she was warm enough. No matter if I hire a model or working with a client I always try to make sure they are comfortable and treat them with respect, what you give you’ll get back. And it almost goes without saying but I never ever touch a model or client, not even to brush away a stray hair. If I can’t communicate something I lead by example, which obviously has let to hilarious moments. The shoot of that day was no different.

That days shoot turned out to be one of the most fun shoots I ever had. The model I was working with was interested and really joined in. So what did i learn from this experience? Lets sum it up:

• Will I pay for a model again for my own creative outbursts? Definitely! First thing I did is ask when she would be available again.
• Will I plan an artistic nude shoot again? For sure. When shooting cloth people I always prefer that there clothing is as neutral as possible, if not you just run the risk of the clothing stealing the attention from the person/expresion/character. Shooting nudes is wonderful, not only the shape but every edition you make in the form of a prop becomes stronger. But maybe even more important, it inspires and feels right.

Hope you enjoy the image as much as I enjoyed making it.

portrait photography

You have no clue about framing or composition, you just shoot it the way you think it looks best in the frame you see when looking through your camera’s view finder (or at the display of your digital compact). Often you’re surprised by your own work, people compliment it even!

If you have real passion for it you probably want to discover what makes a pleasing image just so you can make more of them. You browse around for tips on composition, pretty soon you find photography forums and galleries where fellow “photographers” burn each other for putting subjects in the middle and many more rule of third based preaching. Photos also get shot-down for having blown-out highlights and no shadow detail. You realize that many of your own pictures you like so much would get burned in almost all of these online forums, all those “expert photographers” would rip them apart.

However your passion for photography is strong, you decide to learn everything about the rule of thirds, complementary colors and all the other rules that should tell you what looks good and what doesn’t. You even switch on the grid in your view finder so you can really nail those thirds.

Months go by, maybe even years, you shoot and post the photos you like to those online forums. You always select them strictly, “Details in the shadows, CHECK! No blown out highlight, CHECK! All that is interesting on the thirds, CHECK! No horizon in the middle, CHECK!”. You’re making real progress, and no one ever writes a bad comment under your photographs! Surely all you need to do is continue like this and it won’t be long before you get recognition for your work and people will start writing positive feedback.

You upgrade your gear and you buy a full frame digital camera with the best (and most expensive) midrange zoom, more vivid colors and sharper images. You buy a Scott Kelby book and pay for a subscription on one of those video websites where real photographer tell you how its done.

On Flickr you sometimes get a nice comment, “nice work, thanks for sharing”, “cool <insert big group banner>”, “Nice colors”. On the critique forms you also sometimes get something that looks like a compliment. You start to doubt if this is really for you, maybe you’re just not good enough, maybe you do not have that special something that makes a great photographer, maybe you should start photographing naked ladies because those guys seem to get all the kudos.

You lie awake thinking about it, turning and turning, much to your cats annoyance. The next morning you poor your self a really big mug of coffee, extra sugar and the works. You place your self behind your laptop and browse around on Flickr with a single thought, “what makes my work different from those other guys”. An hour passes after which you come to a startling conclusion…. Your work isn’t any different from all those guys! Everyone seems to have followed the same class and they’re all top students, details in the shadows, no blown highlights, everything neatly arranged based on the rule of thirds. All the same all…. incredibly….. hopelessly….. B O R I N G G G !!

You nok over your second mug of hot coffee, it spills over the  table and horribly burns your leg. While limping back from the kitchen holding the fabric of your pants like a 19th century ballerina holds her skirt, you review your recent epiphany. You realize that you read published books on the matter. Not long ago you’ve seen an art program on tv explaining by example the golden mean, “The open window, to the milk kan, to the head of the man sitting at the table” all following the golden mean. But now it all seems as far fetched as those Dan Brown books!

After tending your wound you start to look for some more information to gain a bit more perspective. You find out that there’s only a handful of artworks where the golden mean can be applied, and of those only a couple of modern pieces were created with the rule as such in mind. Although invented by the Greeks most artists didn’t even know about it until people again started talking about it around 150 years ago. So this wasn’t the rule the great classic painters were using!

Okay until here my autobiography our story of our fictive photo enthusiast. So what’s going on here? The truth is that when our photo enthusiast was starting out with photography by photographing what, “looked good in the frame he could see through his camera”, was a much better approach. He probably experienced some emotion when looking at the scene and unconsciously that made him decide on the framing. Although there’re exceptions most of the time that’s what photographers do, we find an existing composition and we have to frame it in a way so that it conveys a feeling or message that you want the viewer to experience or read.

There’s no right or wrong place within a frame! If you’re shooting a portrait for a magazine which runs a story of the modern woodworker, it would be perfectly fine to place the woodworker in the middle of his store and frame him in the middle of your picture. He’s the subject, the most important in the frame. You simply do not have a reason to put him anywhere else. If you would frame him left the picture becomes about the woodworkers workshop, for example.

Nothing meaningful can be said about composition if you do not know the intention or story behind the image.

There’re a host of clichés to be found on the web some are even humores, “An image should read from left to right because that’s how we read“, so we have to be able to read first before we can see? What about the people that read from right to left? Are we talking incompatible artwork?

A crude but not inaccurate description of art, “Art is creating an image or object that pleases (the onlooker)”. By that definition our photo enthusiast was well on his way of creating art when he started out.

Imagery can’t be defined by rules, of course there’re guide lines you can keep in the back of your head and which are important to know, but they should always compliment the story not the other way around.

Anyone can go on a forum an criticize your work. You’re the one that decides if a comment is useful, don’t be persuaded into a different style of photographing just because you get a lot of comments saying you’re breaking rules or you’re wrong. Just stick with it. Experiment make images you hate, fail at projects, consider selling all your gear, be desperate and then pick-up your camera again. There will come a day where you realize by looking at a photograph you made that you have found your style. A solid foundation to work on and expand.

Now go out there and switch of that silly grid in your view finder and forget about megapixels, sharp lenses, rules of third and forum bullies, if you have a reason to shoot the frame you chose you’re half way shooting a picture you’re happy with.

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Guide Number

Let’s start with the most complicated. The Guide Number of your flash unit or build in camera flash denotes it’s power at a given ISO. Lets take a build-in camera flash as an example. Comen D-SLR camera flashes on average have a Guide Number of 12 @iso100. Grab you manual or start Googling to find your Guide Number. <10 minutes pass> “Hey!! I have a D-SLR with a Guide Number of 39!!! I’m soooooooo cool”, ah yes undoubtedly you’re a stud however you have to continue reading the next sentence. Guide Numbers come in two flavors, the lower number is for people that like to use meters to calculate distance and the high number is for people that like to use their feet. Just like the distance scale on your lens…. Which brings me to.

Distance

Because light likes to fall-off or loose power as it travels we need to take the distance between camera and subject into account. A guide could be the distance scale on your lens when you focussed on the subject, but that’s not always the best way to go. My preferred method is guessing! You’d be surprised  what you know you can do when you realize you can do it….. So with your distance guestimated and your guide number looked up, let go to.

The Division

We’re ready to calculate our flash exposure! What we need is the f-stop. Shutter speed is only for continues lighting like the sun etc. Flash is to short te leave any lasting impression so we calculate the amount of light hitting the film or sensor surface. We do that by a simple devision, lets take the Guide Number 12 as an example and speculate that we’re 5 meters from our subject:

GN12 / 5 Meters = F2.4

For feet:

GN36 / 16 Feet = F2.2

Not to difficult I would say, setting your camera on F2.8 should be fine.

A Bit More

“What if i like to use a portable flash like my sb-800 and bounce it of the ceiling?” No problem just add that distance. So if the ceiling is 1.5 meters from you flash-head and the subject a similar amount from the ceiling you end op with a distance of 3 meters.

“If shutter speed doesn’t matter why is my camera manual talking about flash sync speed?” Okay there’s that issue. The flash sync speed of your camera is the maximum shutter speed with which your camera can keep the shutter in sync with the flash. Just don’t set you shutter any faster then that (often around 200/s) or you will start to see exposure differences between the top of your photo and the bottom. The dark part is the shutter going down in the middle of your flash pop. You can play a little with your shutter for creative effect, the longer you leave the shutter open the more available light wil come in, this way you can combine your flash exposure with available light. Just play you’ll see what I mean.

“My Guide Number is calculated at ISO 100 but I want to shoot at ISO 800, now what?” That’s going to add another calculation on your Guide Number. From ISO 100 to ISO 800 is in total 3 stops more light sensitivity. This means that your flash unit becomes 3 times more effective. So the only thing you need to do is multiply you Guide Number by the amount of stops your increase your ISO. In this case GN12 x 3 stops = GN36. Be careful with this though as there’s also a minimem to the light a flash unit can put out.

“I really want to use my flash manually but I can’t calculate fast enough, now what?” If you use a digital camera the answer is simple, set your camera to manual and play with the power devision scale (1/1, 1/2, 1/4 power) on the flash. Shoot and review. Pretty soon you’ll develop a sense for it and you’ll get it right on the first or second try. If you’re like me and love to shoot film the previous is not an option. When shooting black and white film you can really do a rough calculation just pick easy round number. I know the world parties about the ability to shoot raw and fiddle with the exposure in a raw editor, but I made 5 stop exposure errors on Kodak Tri-x 400 film and got away with it.

“Do you know of an iPhone or Android app that can calculate for me?” No I don’t. You can search for it but most of camera flash units come with one build in, you probably just never knew it was there. I sometimes use my Nikon SB-800 with my Rolleicord or one of my Range Finders. I switch the flash unit to manual and set the film ISO in the advanced menu. When regulate the power level there’s a small distance scale in the top right corner which show distance in, you guessed it, meters and feet. How is that for easy! Just guess the distance and set it, done.

Closing words

It’s actually a pretty long explanation for a very simple calculation. And if you look at the text without reading it you might think it a wast of time as your modern camera can TTL it all for you. But even if you do use your camera on full auto it’s still valuable to know why it behaves like it does, and how to make it do a bit more what you want even in auto mode. I hear often people complaining about their entry level D-SLR, saying it takes bad quality photographs and that they want to replace it, even asking me which one they should buy instead. The fact is the quality of D-SLRs these days it wonderful even if you get a really cheap one. But if you let the camera decide everything you get what it meters for, an average picture.

This also goes for TTL flash exposure. You’re walking around on a average sunny day and see a pretty flower you want to take a picture of. Being already one step-up the cool lader you shoot in A mode to get that nice depth of field. You realize you have some light coming in from the background, “fill flash!”, you think and you’d be right. You pop-up the flash and let the TTL do its magic. You see some blinking in the view finder but you don’t know what it means so you quickly fully press the shutter. The result is a white background with a washed out flower in the foreground. A feeling of disappointment and failure fils your being. You try to take the shot again, maybe the camera made a mistake, same result. In complete desperation you decide to gamble on taking the shot without the fill flash, quickly deciding that flashes are ugly anyway. The result is horrible, still parts of the background are blown-out and the flower now looks under exposed and lost all its vibrance. Being beaten by your camera you decide to take the photo home and “correct” it in your wonderful raw editor. You pump up the “fill light” and play with the magic “recovery” slider to save some of the highlights, then you increase the blacks to get some contrast. Because you picked-up that book from Scott Kelby you decide to start up Photoshop and play with adjustment layers. Finally giving up  you’re left with a feeling of disappointment, you blame your self for buying the wrong camera. You decide to go read your mail, maybe someone faved a photograph you uploaded on Flickr yesterday….

What went wrong here?! The first step was the correct one, fill flash would have done the trick. But the cameras default setting to sync at 1/60th of a second when doing flash exposures was not right for this particular case! By blinking the exposure calculation in the view finder the cameras light meter even tried to warn you that it would horribly over expose the available light at 1/60th. But this wasn’t a high-noon scene and at 1/250th of a second the background would have been perfect. Sadly you had no idea, flash was still scary magic. You could have changed the default sync speed in the advanced menu, probably not the best idea. Or you could have switched your camera to manual and decide about the shutter speed your self. You would have done that because you know what makes a flash exposure and a ambient exposure and how those two relate to each other.

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