Motion in Still Photography

This is an image made at the now well known Kamalaya Hotel in Koh Samui, Southern Thailand. I shot this image for myself, while staying there enjoying new year holiday.  The image was a cropped version of the beautiful lotus pond at the hotel lobby. 

Lotus is an interesting object, especially for Chinese, or may be for most of the oriental cultures. For Chinese, lotus often used to refer a gentleman, that it is more important what one became, rather than where he came from; just as the beautiful and clean lotus grown up from the mud. For buddhist, it also represents the varies level of mind and spiritual development.

I like this image a lot for a lot of reasons, of course lotus as subject itself, but much more.  First is the camera used to capture the image was a fine crated Swiss made Alpa 12 camera,  it is a camera designed all the way back to the very basic, handing all photography creativity back to photographer himself, rely on nothing but the movement of photographer's hand. The lens in use was the rare Carl Zeiss 38mm Biogon specially made for Alpa, of very limited number and long discontinued. The combination of the camera and lens perhaps represents the very best of still image making tool of highest precision.  The image was captured with a Phase One P45 back of 39mp resolution, and what did it capture?

The beautiful light on the pond, the water,  the shadow, the beautiful lotus in light and also in shadow, but also a jumping goldfish?  The fish, although small, while it jump in the area where the water pouring down to the surface of the pond, signify a lively image that such a small creature to challenge the relatively dynamic nature force, thru the media the fish itself live in.  I don't know if goldfish even jumps!

In still photography, the moment freeze between shutter open and close, but really nothing is still.  All the images presented tell us something, and it depends on how we read the picture.

V

Photography is an interesting work, the one behind the camera can sometimes turn an otherwise common scene into an interesting one, simply to choose the time to photograph, recompose the posture, expression, available location and perhaps mixes of lights. 

I shot this picture in the small swimming pool of my apartment, I chose to shoot in the night so I can use the artificial light to project the pool to look more depth and visually appeared to be much larger, while I still need the trees in the corner to be lightly lit to avoid lost sense of dimension.  I use a bron-color Pulso G powered by a Verso A2 pack to light up the model to give a contrast look with her face showing off more attitude to match the lighting, and time the exposure a little longer to have the underwater lighting to properly exposed to get the right balance.  I asked the model to pose in contrary to the form of the pool and get this image. Is it luck?  Not really! But is it difficult?  Certainly not!  It is a little plan ahead of time and to be clear with the photographer himself of what is the image he wants to produce, and how to get there. Picture shot using a Canon 1Ds MK3 mounted with EF 35/1.4L.

Painting & Photography

Painting perhaps started as early as man started to learn how to use our hands. In comparison, photography is just happening. But how different?

Photography, by its definition, is painting by the light, saying so, really there is no tool needed, ancient wisdom has discovered the pinhole and use it, long before photographer use it to record image. Through the superior optical quality of our eyes, human is capable of seeing general things in a reasonably clear images, but certainly they are people who see beyond that, beyond the realm of realism, or, are they they seeing the reality in a way we didn't see?

Claude Monet, the founder of French impressionist painting or Vincet van Gogh, considered the post-impressionist, presented from their painting the image so real beyond what our common eye sees. Because what they presented was a pure value of the color, the light, the shadow, rather than focus on detail and lost the essential part of the world they see?

I took this picture from a compact Canon ixus i, a small 4-million pixels digit cam in northern Thailand nearby the Golden Triangle, it was a foggy morning, with condensation built on the window glass of my hotel room, and the early light while look thru the window took my attention and I shot this image, totally un-retouched. And the real world is very much the same, we are looking at exactly the same thing but often there are something between our mind and the subject, or sometimes as the photographer use the filter, either a piece of colored glass or gel, mesh, a piece of tissue, or just a different mindset?

Black & White in Color

Man has always fascinated by the beautiful sceneries the nature has presented to us, awe by its swift color changing, feel the live and death, it is a wonderful world. And yet, and as it has always been, photographers over generations have strive to define what naturally presented to us in bold black and white, not all, but mostly did, me included.

What is so intrigue that we are drawn back to the essential of pure tonal value while everyday our eyes see things in colorful way? Are those colors just illusional? Or it is a gift from higher being or a reward from advanced development of the human being? But does color means anything to us? Or does it mean something to us because we have the choices?

I shot this picture back in November 2006 in the beautiful Rajaprapha Dam in southern Thailand, in closing hours of the day, while on a boat cruise to return to the land, the nature has bathe the sky with a setting sun and unbelievable vibrant color, I had to call the boatman to stop, ask the beautiful Russian model Elina to climb the tree submerge from the water, shot with a Canon 1Ds MK2 and 70-200/2.8L IS using the shoe mounted EX580 flash gun, and this is among the most favorite ones. Why do I like it? The model is the subject of the picture, good skin tone from the whole day shooting in good sunlight, should it be better to allow the picture to show the vivid color of beautiful sunset and the model herself? But then will it be more interesting if I try to portrait the picture in pure black and white? Or can I leave some original color there? And here it is, I want the picture to portrait the nature, rather than just focus on the model, so the expression of the body, the tree branches and the background sky gave me the opportunity to get this picture as it is presented here. I want the shadow of the body be a part of the nature itself, tried to disassociate the model is a human, rather, tried to just portrait her as part of nature. And so the final result of picture.

Color or black and white is a choice, it matters how the photographer want to express by way of the photography, presented as a picture. Will a pure black and white or full color presentation of this very same image will have less visual impact? Or vice versa? Or may be it will be a different story, or may be really it is the same story told from different point of view?

Portrait

What makes a good portrait? This is a question often asked, many answered, more didn't. Is it about the person in the image? The light? The composition? Chemistry between the photographer and the model? A bit of everything? Or not?

I made this image for a young model, Kate, using a new Sinar Hy6 6X6 camera fitted with a 33-million-pixels Sinar eMotion 75 digital back. The lens which helped capture this beautiful image is the well known Carl Zeiss 120/4 Makro Planar.

What makes a good portrait? Human is an emotional creature, the emotion inside the model's brain reflect on her face, story told in her eyes, subtle yet sensible change happening in milliseconds, photographer pressed the shutter at the moment it captures something, and often missed more. I made pictures for many people, often many pictures for each of them, it is very seldom many people like the same picture, in particular, often the model likes the picture different from the one picked by the photographer, but is it strange? No, not at all, at least I am used to it.

The neural system in our brain works so fast and we often did not know it actual works. We often look at a picture and in that instant, we might smell the person in picture, feel her skin texture, share her happiness, or her sorrow, or uncertainty. Or we like the jewel the model wears, imagine how will the same jewel on ourselves, and what is the fabric of her dress? How soft? Is she really look at the lens? Or she was trying to look thru it to find the eye behind the viewfinder? Or something? Too many things happened in the instant of image capture, and as many things happened at the instant that one looked at the picture.

So does it matter what makes a good portrait? May be we should not try to define such answer, or because the answer is already in each one's mind?

SEAL Table

This is a table I designed in late 2007 and went into production by the end of 2007 and continue to 2008. The name of this table comes from sea and land, which suggests the intend use of this table.

I started the design to try to offer a solution of a all terrain table, especially for use on beachside, garden, swimming pool side and certainly indoors. So the choice of material quite naturally set to use a marine grade stainless steel, SUS316L so it can withstand weathering, and the design itself is to transform the tri-table-leg into table top, to allow the true all-terrain use. Fabricating the table is no easy task, to reach a larger footprint, the table leg is slightly stretched out to allow the connecting angle in a direction that require extra precision cut for the hollow, cone shape table leg, and weld them together to form the table top, which is using 2.5mm thick 316L steel. The SEAL Table is not light, but the entire design to make it an all terrain use was also to enable it to float on water, with the weight it balanced to a level that the table is more useful, on clear water, about 100 mm above the surface of water. The displacement of water keeps the table afloat, and in order to reach a perfect balance, the fabrication of the hollow leg require the degree of control beyond most common fabricators' ability, but it is quite fascination to see how it work on water. And of course, it is also quite pleasing to see it stand along as a design object.

This image is one of the advertising I made for this table, with the lovely model, Magaritta, laying on the floor with her leg across the table legs, holding a wine glass while licking the chocolate dripping from the able top, a lovely yet sexy presentation, at least it is to me. The direction of the image is of course to present the table, but more or less to use the model and set up of the image to soften and warm up the cold stainless steel.

The image was taken using the Phase One P45+ digital back of 29 million pixels resolution attached to my beloved Contax 645 camera mounted with Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 45-90mm lens.

Fashion Accessory

When so many people following, what is fashion? And who represents it?  Or, what represents it?

This picture, a recent work for a fashion house, illustrate that it is a difficult question to answer. Here, the oversize bag in a bold fashion style, the shiny black vinyl material powerfully center stage the image. The lovely Canadian blonde model, fair skin and nicely proportioned, hidden behind the bag as if she is the accessory of the bag, or indeed she is?

Under strong fashion trend today, and as one of those photographers who help shaping its influence, often I wondered today's fashion consumers became the mannequin which the fashion house to dress their clothes on, perhaps with some added accessories, rather than the consumer making his or her own statement.

An industrial started by designing and selling the accessories, now the the end products took the stage and make consumers as the accessories of accessory?
Taken with a Canon 1Ds MK3 digital DSLR and the ultra-sharp EF 85/1.2L, setting at f/11 and shutter speed at 1/125s, ISO 50. The original CR2 raw file was developed using Adobe Lightroom 2.0 and some post production work in Photoshop.