What's New
Currently underway: Epson Stylus Pro 4880 printer user experience report
Being mulled over: Photographs from Angkor, Cambodia
June 10th, 2008
When you can’t make head or tail of the direction of the prevailing winds the best idea is to lie low and wait until things take recognizable shape. The upside is that, meanwhile, you can re-channel at least some of your energy and try to do something meaningful that is not dependent on the direction of the winds. I have been re-directing quite a bit of my zeal lately and am posting a series of photographs called The disappearance of old Shanghai. Any and all feedback will be appreciated.
May 21st, 2008
Some photographers tend to think that creativity ends when you finish a shoot and put your camera away. Working on the photographs taken in Cambodia in the beginning of the month I became immensely aware that it should not cease to be happening until you have produced the final presentation of a body of work. I actually have been amazed at the amount of creativity and thought that can go into the process of working on what normally would be considered as predefined work. Post-shooting work can be as defining as what you produce with the camera in your hands. Moreover, it can determine the destiny of certain images - adequate presentation can salvage individual photographs from going straight into the trash bin; two different presentations will favour some images over others from the same group of pictures. And of course, it is always fascinating how many ideas and indirect messages can go into such simple things as, say, image sequence or overall colour combinations.
I shot 11 rolls of film in Cambodia and ended up scanning and closely working on 25 images. They, however, could not be naturally organised into a coherent sequence and I spent a considerable amount of time working on an acceptable presentation of the photographs. The first presentation I came up with was passable; the second was much better yet its format did not allow including some of the images that I liked. The third presentation was a reasonable balance between the first two and represents most of my favourite photographs from the trip.
I should note that the relatively strong images that are worthy photographs in their own right went into each of the presentations; it is the fate of the “lesser” pictures that was intertwined with each particular presentation. Such images would have gone directly into the trash bin if not for the presentation; at the same time, the presentation could come into existence only with their inclusion. Is not it interesting how existence of two things is supported by their inter-dependability and how the inter-dependability makes each of them much stronger than they could ever be if presented separately? That is what creativity is about - coming up with something that makes one plus one equal a tiny bit more than plain vanilla two.
Working on possible presentations of the photographs also reminded me once again that in the game of art and creativity aesthetic perception and judgment are the kings while tools and technique are mere servants. Whereas the former would probably find it strenuous to survive without the latter, the latter would simply be an empty shell without the former.
May 6th, 2008
Photographic and travel Gods (as well as my boss) have been exceedingly good to me this year - as you might recall, I went to Morocco in January, Inner Mongolia and Hong Kong in February and India in April. “Life is too short to slow down,” they whispered in my year and I, taking this advice from above literally, spent three days in early May photographing in Angkor, Cambodia.
I cannot find the right words to describe the richness of the cultural relics of Angkor - take my word for it, it will simply blow your mind. The topping on the cake is that in Angkor, unlike most remote destinations in China, you can travel in comfort if you want to. Every day I would head out at 5 a.m. and photograph until about 9 a.m. After that I would go back to the hotel to have brunch (with champagne - no less!), swim and read a book or listen to my music while savouring mango daiquiris. In the afternoon I would go out again and photograph until after sunset. That would be followed by a bit more of a relaxing time in the evening. Believe it or not, I had one of the best whisky sours in my entire life while in Cambodia J.
This time I took my complete Hasselblad system with me. This included a 503cw camera body, a Flexbody, three lenses (the classic combination of the 50, 80 and 150 mm), 1.4X teleconverter and two film backs, as well as was accompanied by the Lumix LX2, accessories and several dozen of rolls of film. My Nikon D70s, unfortunately, had to stay home as it has been feeling too nostalgic about India...
Quite interestingly, I used the Flexbody most of the time as I find myself increasingly wearisome about converging lines in photographs. As good as the camera is, though, it is severely limited by the small image circle of the Hasselblad lenses (CFi 4/50 lens in particular). This has me thinking hard about a proper 4X5 camera setup - let’s see where this leads J.
 |
Cambodian boy figuring out how to use a Flexbody J
Home page photograph has been updated with one of the photographs from the trip.
April 29th, 2008
Part five of my on-going (or, rather, on-crawling) Epson 4880 printer report, 8-bit vs. 16-bit printing, has now been posted.
April 22nd, 2008
I tried doing concert/music photography a couple of times in the past and, whereas it is relatively easy to produce fairly descent images, I found it particularly hard to create photographs that would perfectly reflect and be consistent with the music to the extent whereby one can guess what the music is like by only looking at the picture(s).
I have always been a big fan of Janis Joplin (whose version of Summertime is my favourite among the ones that I have). However, her CDs disappeared from my life at some unknown point, most likely together with someone so precious that their evaporation went unnoticed. Missing the music quite badly, I ordered a couple of new CDs from Amazon. And there, on the back of one of the CD inserts, was the perfect photograph of Janis that, at least in my mind, pins down her music in one single powerful statement.
 |
April 20th, 2008
The trip that I mentioned in the previous post was to India. As expected, things were way too hectic to do anything meaningful photography-wise (eight flights to/from and in India in six days – those who travel often will know what this means and implies). Nonetheless, I tried my best to perceive what was unfolding before my eyes as if I were on a dedicated photographic expedition as I believe this to be crucial to improving one’s photographic vision.
I came back with a bouquet of contradictory feelings and impressions that I find impossible to reconcile into a simple black-or-white notion. On the one hand, I was absolutely stunned by the cultural richness and excited by the photographic potential that the country offers. On the other hand, the shock induced by the pervasive sadness of the human condition as well as the state of the environment and infrastructure (Mumbai in particular) left me speechless.
Several photographs from the trip have temporarily been posted here. This collection is only what its name, “India – a first look from behind a window pane”, suggests and has no pretense at being art or reportage – most of the photographs were actually taken from the car as we were traveling from one business meeting to the next. And yes, the word “first” was used on purpose J.
Update: If you are interested in seeing some brilliant photography from India, visit here.
April 12th, 2008
Tomorrow I am off to a place that is far away, entirely unfamiliar and full of promises. This being a business trip I do not expect to be able to do a lot of photography but, as always, I will be looking out for photographic opportunities. Meanwhile and if you get tired of the Web sites that specialise in the technical aspects of photography, check out The Week in Pictures – most certainly will be worth your while.
April 10th, 2008
“Technologies today are ill-equipped to store the world's digital information on digital media for the long haul, according to Gartner. To have reliable storage that can last 20 to 100 years, researchers will have to overcome challenges related to data format, hardware, software, metadata and information retrieval.”
Keep this in mind when you long for or savour that latest DSLR. Looks like film gets a second breath.
April 9th, 2008
It is funny how in this age of immediate communications all sorts of implications of human nature (where technology does not and will never have a say) result in one of your Christmas presents arriving in April. Better later than never, though, as the present is in the form of a slightly stained and worn-out – read greatly appreciated – book of absolutely superb black-and-white photography that depicts China from late eighties on. It is hand-signed “(...) Here is to many more years of friendship and to an ever-keener vision of our world”. Talk about essence, thoughtfulness and taste. Thank you so much, Chris.
 |
April 8th, 2008
So I have been looking at and living with the photographs from Bashang for quite some time now and recently realised that I liked the ones with at least some human presence in them much more than those without. I have now deleted five photographs from the portfolio and all of them were pure landscapes.
Lately I also grew tired of the photographs that hang on my walls and have been thinking about replacing some of them. I even printed and prepared a few new pictures for framing but something felt wrong. It was when I printed several photographs from Zhouzhuang that it dawned on me that pure landscape, which has so far been my favourite type of photography, appears somewhat lifeless and does not seem to cut it for me as it used to. One might argue that my landscape photography is far from great but the thing is that I feel the same about others’ work, too. In fact, any type of photography that does not have people in it (e.g., landscape or architecture) does not seem to be my cup of tea anymore. Looking back now I can see inklings of the brewing change but it probably was the trip to Bashang that helped it to take shape.
This is not to say that I am done with landscape photography. Nonetheless, this is quite a bit of a change that is likely to have a few implications. First and foremost, my future travel destinations, at least partially, will be different from the kind of places that I have been normally traveling to. Second, my photographic approaches as well as what equipment I use and acquire in the future might change, too. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and where it leads. The most interesting question that I have been trying to answer, though, is what has caused this transformation, as well as whether it is going to trickle down to and surface in non-photographic aspects of my life. Very interesting indeed.
March 29th, 2008
I have never thought of photography as a potential source of additional income. However, I do occasionally receive email enquiring whether I sell prints. As this happens fairly consistently, I now offer prints for sale to those who would like to have one of my photographs not only in the form of the tiny on-screen embodiment. I should note that my primary intent is to make the photographs available to as many people as possible and my pricing policy is in tune with this purpose - any print can be bought for only USD29 (plus shipping). Further details can be found here.
March 21st, 2008
"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
This has been one of my favourite quotations from years back. So what happens when you are acutely aware of the possibility, or even inevitability, that something fundamentally precious will leave you before you are willing or ready to let it go? Then the number of times that every and any thing related to it happens seems minuscule, you start reminiscing every occurrence while it is still happening, and unavoidable emptiness imperceptibly yet firmly overshadows your existence. And it all seems way, way, way too limited.
March 18th, 2008
My computer was long overdue for an upgrade and so I recently bit the bullet and upgraded to the Mac Pro. The picture below shows what I used for the past couple of years; roll your mouse over the image to see what I am typing this on now. As you can imagine, moving from a two-generations-old Mac Mini to the latest-and-greatest eight-core Mac Pro is a huge leap in productivity. To give you an idea, I can now easily have a dozen applications open and painlessly work on several documents at the same time. What is so unusual about it? Well, dig this – two of the documents are 500MB+ files opened in Photoshop J.
|
As advanced as Mac OS X is, the process of migrating from the old Mac to the new one involved vastly more than one click. For some reason Migration Assistant reported a problem with the OS of the old Mac and I had to move everything manually. Transferring documents, music, photos, etc. was mostly straightforward; moving email account settings, bookmarks, contacts, and so on was not difficult, too, but had to be done in a very meticulous way. Nonetheless, all of it was much easier than moving from PC to Mac.
I had some of the original scans and RAW files on a couple of external drives and one of them failed while I was fiddling with them. Cold sweat ran down my spine when I realised that I had some important photos on it and had not backed it up for several months. I ran to a data recovery specialist and, fortunately, managed to recover all the files. The only caveat is that data recovery is a very, very expensive service – you will be surprised! In short, buying an additional huge-capacity hard drive and backing up all important information is much cheaper. Lesson learned – after the hardware fiasco I now have Time Machine backing up the primary hard drive hourly. Some things are not appreciated until they are almost lost.
March 14th, 2008
Your Camera Doesn't Matter vs. Your Camera Does Matter is a fascinating controversy. And the funny thing is that they are both right.
March 10th, 2008
I almost entirely forgot that I spent one evening and one morning (about four hours altogether) photographing The Great Wall at Jinshanling （金山岭长城） on the way back from Bashang Grassland. I have to admit that photographing The Wall is a rather strange undertaking. On the one hand, it undoubtedly is an interesting and easily accessible subject (if you are based in China, that is) that requires a minimal outlay in terms of both money and time to photograph. On the other hand, it has been photographed so many times by so many people that positively answering the question of whether the world needs yet another picture of The Wall takes a lot of inspiration and courage. Also, coming up with unordinary images of The Wall takes a lot more than it might seem at first and, not surprisingly, some of the best images were taken by Chinese photographers who stayed or even literally lived on the Wall for extended periods of time. In the end of the day, I suppose, it boils down to one’s general attitude towards the “been there, done that” issue. There might be a billion of photos of The Wall out there and Pink Floyd have probably performed it a few hundred times but… Hold on, I think I am drifting… or am I? Anyway, considering the fact that I have not produced any decent pictures of The Wall (which is a real shame, given the number of years that I have spent in China), I gladly accepted the opportunity to photograph it.
With this as a background and for what it is worth, I hope that the photograph below passes as a decent picture.
 |
The Great Wall @ Jinshanling （金山岭长城）
(A side note: there has recently been a bit of an anti-saturation movement on the Internet so, just for the record, the photo was taken with Velvia 50 slide film and, after scanning, only Levels were adjusted - in a very straightforward and judicious manner. Granted, Velvia 50 is a saturated film; however, nobody seems to have had problems with that ever since it was introduced about twenty years ago – quite the opposite!)
March 2nd, 2008
At long last, ten favourite photographs from Bashang Grassland have been posted. The collection, however, is not the final statement - as has been becoming my regular practice, I am pacing myself and will probably further fine-tune some of the individual images and overall presentation of the portfolio.
I have been looking at the pictures and thinking, what is the most crucial element that no excellent photograph can afford lacking? Cameras, lenses, technique, etc. are important; they constitute the foundation of any acceptably good photograph and are what photographers tend to concentrate on while exploring the initial twenty percent of their artistic path. However, it is aesthetic sensitivity and judgment at every step of the photographic process, from the moment you contemplate a possible image and look at what unfolds before your eyes to when you click the “Print” button in Photoshop, that are essential to creating an outstanding photograph; they are required to depart from the land of mediocrity into the realm of true expression and are gradually developed during the remaining eighty percent of one’s artistic career.
February 24th, 2008
A further comment from Tom on Hasselblad lens shutters:
My research indicates that we must avoid 1/8 and 1/15 second exposures especially – they are the ones which are most susceptible to going long. However, I experienced problems at every shutter speed (but I wasn’t shooting faster than 1/30). It just shows that there is no perfect camera system – they all have flaws and trade-offs. I’ll take the incredible Zeiss glass for the price of cold weather issues.
February 23rd, 2008
My friend from Canada Tom Willekes has written describing his experience photographing in cold weather, which I find fascinating – see a part of his email and my comments below. Home page photograph has been updated with another picture from the trip to Bashang Grassland; the photo mentioned in the first paragraph of Tom’s email is now at the end of this post.
Hi Oleg,
I went to your page today and was greeted by the photo in the subject line – very nice! We call them “sun dogs” in this part of the world. I’ve seen some before but not as complete as the one you caught on film. Nice job.
Then I read your description of your winter photography excursion. I once misjudged the timing of sunrise and had to wait 15 minutes in -30 degree C weather. Then I spent 45 minutes taking pictures, oblivious to the condition of my feet. When I got in the truck and started to warm I experienced pain like I’ve never had. My feet had frozen quite completely, almost to the point of frost bite. I learned my lesson that day. Ever since I’ve been careful not to push it. No photograph is worth jeopardizing a body part. J
One question: Did you have any problem with the shutters in your Hasselblad getting slow? I’ve noticed this and have heard it’s because they use whale oil as a lubricant. My large format lens shutters don’t seem to suffer the same problem. Maybe my lenses need a CLA?
Anyway, just thought I’d drop a line and encourage you to get better gloves, a face mask, thick socks, long underwear, a thermos with hot chocolate, heavy boots, a fur hat (I find this the most vital), and keep taking pictures in the cold. The light is never crisper than when it dips below minus 20!
Here’s one where it was below -20 and it made for some great mist on the water. However, my (Hasselblad) shutter slowed down significantly and I wasted many pictures.
Tom Willekes
http://members.shaw.ca/twillekes
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photonwrangler/
In the previous post I mentioned some of the equipment problems that one has to deal with when photographing in cold temperatures. The list, however, was incomplete - one issue I did not bring up is that Hasselblad shutters do get slow indeed. I had quite a few severely overexposed (and unusable) photos; they were in groups of three to five shots and the groups were unevenly scattered among the fifteen rolls of film that I shot there. It is difficult to predict when the shutters slow down; I suppose it happens when the temperature falls below a certain point. Another photographer who was also using a Hasselblad system could not release the shutter in the cold at all; it worked without any problems once warmed up, though.
Photographing in cold temperatures is very challenging indeed but as Tom rightly mentions the beautiful light most certainly makes it worthwhile.
 |
Sun Dogs @ Bashang Grassland
Natural phenomenon – no “creative” filters or Photoshop
February 17th, 2008
I do not know what hit me but instead of going some place warm I decided to spend several days photographing in Bashang Grassland during the Chinese New Year holiday earlier this month. Located in Southern Inner Mongolia and Northern Hebei, Bashang Grassland is one of the major photographic destinations in China. I photographed there before in autumn (have a look here) but photographing there in winter is an entirely different undertaking – not so much so because of the different appearances but simply because it is freaking cold; I do not want to make extravagant claims but it at least was -20C all right. I suppose the drive behind going there was the periodical necessity to test the limits, shake off the slowly yet persistently encroaching lethargy of the day-to-day reality and shake up the idle comfort of well-established grooves.
It was my first time photographing for extended periods of time (two to four hours at a time) in such adverse conditions and I have to say that it was more challenging than I expected. -20C might not sound that bad; the thing, however, is that you have to carry on once in the field no matter what – you can not drop by a café for a hot cup of coffee if you feel cold and you can not catch a taxi to go back home if you feel tired. Most importantly, though, you know exactly why you are there and you have to do it.
Wind is your worst enemy and your best friend. It pushes the cold further into the realm of intolerability and stings. At the same time, it is the very same wind that brings about subtle colours, distant vagueness and beautiful atmospheric phenomenon (current home page photograph was taken without any “creative” filters; I do not actually own any).
 |
Wind
Snow is a blessing and a curse, too. It is one of the main reasons why you are there in the first place; Bashang, however, is a very spacious place and snow restricts movement and makes finding interesting perspectives and satisfactory compositions even more strenuous.
 |
Snow (and us stuck in it)
The low temperature puts all your equipment to test. Batteries die in no time if you keep your camera or meter out in the open, camera operation noticeably slows down and tripod heads of questionable quality become unusable.
The harsh conditions push you to the edge of what you can do physically, too. There was one time where I knew perfectly well that I had to use a graduated ND filter. I, however, could not manage it because my fingers went numb before I could set it all up (you can not do it wearing thick gloves and thin gloves simply do not last long enough). And the disturbing part about your fingers going numb (apart from the fact that it hurts, of course) is that it is not possible to know where the line between them being temporarily numb and freezing them off is. I happened to freeze off a couple of fingertips, one photographer froze off his ears and another companion froze off the tip of his nose (which he, apparently, put against the LCD of his DSLR for longer than he should have). In the end none of it was disastrous but, again, you do not know where the line is, how far behind it you have gone and where the point of no return lies.
It is quite unexpected, then, that despite the intense and never ending challenge you unintentionally tend to look for and photograph subtlety, thoughtfulness and longing. But wait... have not I seen that somewhere... delicacy, contemplation and craving amidst a relentless and driving force? Why is it that I hear Charles Mingus’ “The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady” playing?
February 2nd, 2008
At the risk of annoying millions (gazillions?) of people out there, a musical turn on the theory of relativity: the first movement of Brahms’ first piano concerto (where it is over four minutes before you actually get to hear the piano; as an alternative, Miles Davis’ Pharaoh’s Dance qualifies, too) is much shorter than, for instance, Céline Dion’s love theme from "Titanic". Looking at it from the flip side, any of the Chopin’s Preludes is much, much longer than the aforementioned masterpiece of the Canadian star J.
February 1st, 2008
To paraphrase a part of the dialog between Prince Feisal and Mr. Bentley in “Lawrence of Arabia”,
“I understand you’ve been given no cannons.”
“That is so.”
“You are handicapped?”
“It restricts us to small things.”
In late January I happened to have the pleasure of enjoying a couple of days of sterile tourism in Marrakech, Morocco. I had neither Can(n)ons nor Nikons at my disposal; instead, my rusty-but-trusty Lumix LX-2 with a half-empty battery and a half-full 2GB SD card was the only photographic tool that I could use. Photography-wise, lousy preparation on my part? You could say so; however, on this particular trip, even that sufficed to fully utilise the time available for what could pass as creative photography. In retrospect, this was yet another occurrence when it was obvious to me that working within known and well-mastered limitations is often easier and more productive than being lost in or simultaneously juggling an uncomfortable number of dubious choices. Several photographs from the trip can temporarily be found here.
January 23rd, 2008
I currently have five versions of “My funny valentine” (too few, I suppose, given the fact that it has been performed by more than six hundred musicians) and my favourite, by far, is the one by Keith Jarrett, which is on his album “Up for it”. This makes me wonder who would “play”, say, Ansel Adams’ “Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake” best. Would it necessarily be Ansel Adams himself? With the power and flexibility of the digital darkroom, would the work be taken onto an even higher level? Would there be fascinating controversies similar to the one between Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein? The possibilities are very, very intriguing but, alas, as Brooks Jensen mentions in one of his podcasts, “performing” another photographer’s negative (or RAW file for that matter) has so far remained an unexamined taboo in photography.
N.B. If the link above is blocked in the country of your residence, you can open it via http://zend2.com or any other proxy server (guess why I think it might be blocked J). "Look at me and my bad self!" (© Kuzco) J
January 19th, 2008
There are things in life that do not immediately speak to you yet you feel compelled to conquer and, ultimately, become fond of them. The conquering process, however, sometimes takes such a long time that they unobtrusively become an irreplaceable part of your life and, in the end, the purpose of truly savouring them becomes irrelevant.
 |
Winter sunset @ West Lake, Hangzhou, China （中国杭州西湖）
January 14th, 2008
Where is the point of losing innocence? When your intuition starts solely serving the purpose of juxtaposing, protecting and advancing interests as opposed to being finely tuned to detect, make sense of and relate to delicate fluctuations in another person’s emotions, seeing artistry in fleeting moments and savouring subtle notions. Similar to how going down the hill is easier than climbing a mountain or the fact that centrifugal forces prevail over binding forces, the process can only unfold in one direction and it is only a question of time when the line is crossed. But the truly horrible part is that once innocence is lost you know exactly how, are able and almost willing to decline its return even if it happens to find a crack to come back. Decency makes an appearance when the rejection happens in a courteous manner, but what is decency compared to innocence?
 |
Winter afternoon @ West Lake, Hangzhou, China （中国杭州西湖）
January 6th, 2008
Part four of my report on the Epson 4880 printer, swapping photo and matte black inks, has now been posted. (Report to be continued - stay tuned!)
January 2nd, 2008
I mentioned in the end of last year that Epson pro-level printers generally appear to be better-sorted products. Epson, however, is a multinational company and their policies vary greatly depending on the country. Also, there are bound to be discrepancies in products and services offered in different nations. I happen to be living in China and buying the 4880 in The Middle Kingdom was not without a few surprises.
-
My Epson 4880 came with a software CD that has “Epson Stylus PRO 4550/4880C” written on it. I insert the CD into my Mac, run the installation programme and guess what? It contains software for the 4550 only! In other words, my 4880 came without any sort of software. The Epson technician who came to install the printer (and was useful for moving it around only) was as puzzled as yours truly and, after making a couple of phone calls, suggested that I download the software from the Epson Web site. This eventually worked but, still, I would not call this elegant – for a company like Epson this, in fact, is a fundamental blunder.
-
The printer that I bought is actually called “Epson Stylus Pro 4880C”. Up to this point, however, I have not been able to figure out what this “C” might imply. At first I naively thought that this might indicate that the printer I bought is the ColorBurst Edition but considering the fact that it came without any software whatsoever I scrapped that idea. I then phoned Epson hotline and they confirmed that the “C” designation means that this printer is made and sold in China. They, however, could not clarify whether there are any technical differences between the 4880C and the 4880 sold elsewhere.
-
As mentioned earlier the 4880 takes both 110ml and 220ml cartridges. 110ml cartridges would be ideal for the amount of printing that I do. Unfortunately, Epson’s policy in China is that they do not sell 110ml cartridges in this country. Another fundamental inconvenience is that the 220ml cartridges are longer than the 110ml ones and once you install one of them (as I had to do as I use matte black ink) the ink compartment cover cannot be closed. I do not find this particularly elegant, too, but there currently is no choice.
-
The flip (positive) side of the above point, however, is that in China Epson sell 220ml cartridges at the price that in other countries is paid for 110ml cartridges – current price of 220ml cartridges in Shanghai is RMB450 (approximately USD61). I suppose I should not really be complaining J.
What's new 2008 |
||||