Blower Fans

Not CERN scale cool, but great vintage steam(punk) cool.

The image will run as a two page spread. Many thanks to George, who helps maintain the system, for stepping in on short notice.

School Entrance

Just after this image was made I started to descend the hill, and because the fog was so thick, you could look directly at the sun. At that moment there were some power lines crossing in front of the sun and what I first thought were two birds sitting. The “birds” however were moving along with the sun and not staying on the power lines. When the sun is so low you can actually see the sun (of course more accurately the earth) move rather quickly.

The nut I am I turned to my client and said, “Do you see those two black spots on the sun?”. The reply was, “no”. And shaking my head I say, “Well I swear I can see two spots on the sun”. Or that was approximately the dialogue. Not two days later I stumbled across this National Geographic article about massive sun spots on the sun, large enough to see with the naked eye.

Sometimes you’ve got to trust what you see!    -it is after all our greatest way to perceive our universe.

In the field (another view from a field) and light where there was not any.

Sometimes the vision for the ideal view of a project is just not the current reality. This Garden Pavilion serves as the entryway and main gate for the Common Ground High School teaching vegetable garden. We photographed the finished structure in the fall as seemed appropriate for fruitful gardens. But the school had opted to hold off on electrifying the building (while still planning surrounding services).

While I’d say today’s trend, and definitely among my clients, is to photograph projects under natural light conditions, as well as use the designed light environment instead of sticking in a big photographer’s nose. In this case David had designed lighting that he envisioned illuminating the translucent roof, a great way to create atmosphere for evening outdoor events the school might hold. So in addition to making day images we had the task of illuminating the roof from within to create a glowing roof at dusk a reality. The logistics turned out to be easier than if the building had been more enclosed. We used a series of wide open faces light down the rafters on each roof side and a couple smaller spots on the floor interior. And of course the generators to power everything while we waited for dusk to descend.

Generators

Interior Lighting

Interior Lighting

Scouting View

And the finished image. With a second preset camera in the garden we were also able to make a matching broadside image from within the garden.
Thankfully in the fall, in a field, at dusk we weren’t eaten alive waiting for the right moment!

Harvest Pavilion at Dusk

I had the interesting opportunity to photograph some archival documents, posters, paintings, etc at the residence of artist Richard Artschwager for an upcoming Whitney retrospective. Nothing too different in the photography, though I tested out a nice new portable tilt photo table (new meaning: my construction). Barring hauling a studio column this makes poster size flat works manageable on location with just a tripod. Also, though ceilings were not a problem here, the tilt table allows a shorter ceiling height. Anyway, it was a privilege to photograph the work and meet such an art luminary (lunch was great!). I can’t post any inside tour pics, but the converted church residence was a trip.

Artschwager

Artschwager

Poster

Blip Stencils

I couldn’t help but make the first here after I saw it (made it on the way out, after covering the bases). I knew it wouldn’t make it with space constraints. The reason being that without the help of a heavy caption one understandably would assume the left wall of names is also from the Civil War (which it is not, World War II, I think). Anyway, point is outside of editorial clarity or expediency I like the architecturally formal strength here. In this I think I have a sense of space and a visually longer lasting image – the building lines are there to follow, loop back on, and interlock.

Civil War Memorial

The second image as well was not published, as this whole wall was. I want to share this here because it is a good editorial image for me as it feels different than many I have made. It is closer of course, perhaps, but (and maybe it is just the subject matter) it feels more intense.

Civil War Memorial

Alright, here it is, summer project 2011. Soooo much fun, well a little work.
I had the privilege of photographing 716 Walker Evans Polaroids over the course of two weeks. Kind of a hired gun situation (pardon the metaphor, remember I don’t shoot things!), but I wasn’t going to pass this up. Thanks to John ffrench, Josh Chuang, and the helpful PPD staff for having me, and helping me get through this many objects in only two weeks!

Cozy summer cave:

Studio Layout

 
Closer
Some closer views of the photography stand below here. Lights were cross polarized and Polaroids were held down under glass.

Photography Stand

Glass Hold Down

The Trick, ‘er Method
The trick (or more professionally sounding, the studied method) for this type of high volume / high quality project is a consistent, smooth workflow. Objects are batched out in chunks that make sense for both equipment and human attention. I’m pretty good at estimating how long something will take me in the early project planning phase (i.e. estimate of cost for client), but there is always a slightly panicky “rubber meets the road” period in the first day or two. I plan quite a bit and do test shooting on prop objects if needed. The goal of this project was high quality human inspected color correction (not what is often referred to as “rapid imaging”) for each object. The objects have been fading and changing over time and photographing them now as faithfully as possible at least creates a record for this time that will last.

Line 'em Up

 


The Nitty Gritty
Okay, so this chunk is a little techy and inside baseball, but read on if you like. The couple nice Polaroids are at the bottom, or visit the Project page once I have that up.

-Break It Down
So, how do you get through photographing, metadata entry, and color correction of ~80 objects per day without skipping a day (and remember that is two sides each)? It sounds easier perhaps than the reality. I found that two batches of 40 objects each per day was doable, and once going I was averaging about 2 and a half sets per day (so 100 objects/day). The 40 objects were pulled and separated into sets of 10. Remember that while grandma’s snaps are probably precious these are museum objects worth, I prefer not to know, let’s say lots. So handling a stack of 10 at the camera at one time is safe and I can maintain my concentration at camera capture well for that chunk. Forgetting to capture a back side after you’ve gone to the next object sounds easy to recover from, but it throws a wrench in sorting and the downstream workflow. I won’t elaborate further, it does. Messy is not what we want! 40 objects takes about as many minutes to fully capture, that’s capture, nothing else.

-Metadata
Now there is metadata. Get it in now after capture. Metadata entry is not very batch friendly as every two images have new numbers. There is no time savings to do it later and the lack of searchable, sortable metadata when trying to track down a possible error down the road will cost you a ton of time. Believe me as careful as you think you might be, after 700+ objects you will have made more than one mistake. Metadata of all sorts attached to files will be super helpful when crosschecking against an institution provided object list.

The main metadata entered was a MET number from said museum, that was also written in pencil on each object, and the Yale object ID number. The MET number was only added to a less used IPTC field and the Yale obj ID was inserted into the file name and the image title field. These were also prefixed in the IPTC fields with “MET” or “obj” so that if viewed by someone else there would be a chance they know to what the number refers. As mentioned the Yale object number was added to the file name, but I only inserted it in before my capture sequential counter. The reason again for this is possible sorting down the line. Of course you can sort files by capture time/date in the EXIF data, but my capture counter is still good to have. Having the more important Yale object ID number in two places for each image is also good for crosschecking errors. My belief is that within reason it is best to drag along as much embedded information until pruning and final naming for delivery. The tools for metadata batching and file renaming are so good that this makes sense.

I did the full 40 object (remember that’s 80 images) metadata chunk in one sitting. Not so bad, though time for a quick walk around after that (rub the eyes back to life). Straighten/rotate files with handy straighten tool before RAW processing (PS is about 3 more mouse clicks per image if you don’t, this seriously matters! And after waiting for 80 images to process to learn that you’d wish you had done it in RAW first you will learn that too.)

-Color Correction
Color Correction was by inspection as the above image shows. I lined up five Polaroids at a time (out of each 10 object capture pile) under a neutral light source to color correct directly against a processed out tiff file. I’ll get to dealing with computers, but one thing I had to relent on was to peel off dealing with backs and fronts. It took too much time to check them in sequence at this point. I created a basic set of color correction actions in PS to get the global object close (here some things are in your favor, like the white Polaroid boarder on the front and back should only need about the same custom adjustments). What matters most is custom inspection color correction for the front print area. After applying a basic set of adjustments consistent across all objects, custom adjustments were made if needed to ensure color accuracy. I found that as well as a predominance of cyan (I assume, prevalent from fading) there was a lot of red. Maybe the red had a good staying power, but it was there and often the straight captures had this a little off. The collection has many portraits and the amount of red in faces/complexions had to be manually controlled.

The studio computer would reliably not choke with 20 front images open at once, so again a balance was made between different batch chunks at different stages. One might reasonably ask, why open 20 front images when I was only lining up 5 objects at a time to inspect. Well the reason is that PS and I will be quicker doing the grunt work of opening and applying my basic set of actions on 20 than smaller batches. As well once I get through the 20 I trigger a save and close action that gives me time to work with the objects while the computer does it’s work. Saving in PS takes time. If you can reliably have 20 images open and do all adjustments (without a crash) before saving, this saves time. I might sound insane to the reader, but efficiency of action matters. The Polaroid backs required less custom color attention and mostly just received only the basic action recorded color correction the front images initially received on open. As well either because I was slightly less cautious or file size made the difference, I found I could open 40 back images at a time and work reliably.

-Computers and Humans
We both have our strengths and weaknesses. As a common human I have a basic ability for attention, specifically sustained attention. This as I mentioned earlier is one reason that I only captured sets of 10 objects at a time. I found that the quick break after ten, aside from object safety, gave me enough of a relief to get through 4 sets of 10 with no errors. As specialized and “high end” as I’d like to make this sound the capture process is repetitive.
-Clean the glass, lift glass, un-sleeve object, anti-static brush, manual puff, place object, lower glass, keyboard shortcut for capture, lift glass, flip object, anti-static brush, manual puff, place object, lower glass, keyboard shortcut for capture, lift glass, re-sleeve object – Repeat. I space out at repetitive tasks.

Humans are better at perceiving subtlety in objects. We are pretty fancy at this compared to computers so as much of my energy as possible was conserved for the color correction of each individual Polaroid image area.

Computers are good at concentrating, but when you feed them too much they barf (well maybe more accurately they have a stroke). I was kindly provided this photography space because it made the most sense for the objects (no travel, safe) and the least disruptive to surrounding operations. That is awesome and there was some savings because much of my equipment was not used. On the other hand the shear volume this MacPro computer was not used to. Day one of capturing choked the single internal drive. Day two I added a large internal striped volume for some speed, an external backup volume, and a zippy SSD internally for a proper PS scratch volume. Then I was able to do things like open 20 or 40 (350-385mb) files, work with them, and save without a time losing crash.

Computers are also good at doing repetitive tasks so give them as many to do as possible so you don’t. I use PS actions and scripted launches all the time for even small things, but when you start dealing with larger numbers of files and larger file sizes any individual action that can be applied to more than one file must be batched.

Results
A couple stand outs (in my humble opinion, each for different reasons):

NO!	Walker Evans	Sink
Desert Shadow	Friedlander	Angel
Eco Cans	Lights	Birds

I see myself as an image maker and this is important in that I don’t see images “taken” or “captured”, instead MADE. Sometimes this is less artistically subjective in the photography of art (aka museum photography) where the making might be more about technical making (assembly) or in this case a more subjective, but not excessively produced image that uses a little foresight and an ounce of assembly.

This exterior image of Woolsey Hall in New Haven, CT was made to accompany interior images I made of the Civil War Memorial that lists both fallen Union and Confederate soldiers of Yale (look for an upcoming mention on those).

Woolsey Hall: Final Image

Scouting Images
First, if there is time I want a scouting image. Camera phones are awesome for this and I’ve used a pano app to approximate the wider view I’ll make later.

Scouting Phone Pano

 
Base Plate
Next is actual photography. In this case all images are made from the same view (what I most often do) as samples out of time or varied by some other parameter like exposure (a parameter could be depth of focus to give you another idea). The first image is my base plate, a clean scene with an accurate overall exposure.

Image Base Plate

 
Selective Elements
1. People
This Woolsey Hall image is effectively an “editorial” image where the goal is to make a natural looking view of the building (not a more stylized or lush “beautiful building” image). While I want all of the building facade, I also want some context to place the building. Unfortunately the available context is essentially the intersection in front. That is not so much a problem as this building is an intersection of sorts itself, as a gateway to Yale’s campus. So that leads me to filling the contextual intersection space with traffic, and not car traffic, so I want pedestrian traffic. The majority of additional plates are then sampling out a good crop of human traffic.

11-026_003-people	11-026_004-people	11-026_005-people
11-026_006-people	11-026_008-people	11-026_010-people

2. Tree Branch
The branch hanging down as seen in the base plate is providing an affect I want, keeping the view contained lower in the image than floating up to the dome. It looks too heavy though and projects too far down into the frame. I want it more at the edge. Here are the plates that get the leaf parts I want (I’m just on a 4 step ladder pushing up the same branch seen in the base plate). A bonus has been that I like the wispy clouds that have appeared and given me something other than a blank blue sky.

11-026_009-tree

11-026_010-tree

11-026_011-tree

 
Finishing an Image
All the above images are laid together. The finished image of the building is made up of all these additional elements on top of the base plate. Of course I could have closed the intersection, hired models, and had assistants hold the branches – and maybe had it all in one exposure. That is a valid approach and vary well could have produced an identical image. On the other hand the cost to create the image would be much, much more. As well there is something I think composed, not contrived about the image. Here again is the Final image.

Woolsey Hall: Final Image

Here is a quick behind the scene panorama with one instrument up on a table to photograph the sound board.

keyboard setup pano

Same instrument as finished image.

Instrument Soundboard

Fun group and day, can’t wait to come back again!
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I photographed this back in the fall with the help of Turner Brooks and his associate Aaron, but publication was delayed an issue. There has been several previous articles on this collection and the preparation of the exhibit, but I was invited to make finished images of the space.

A feature is running along with an article in the Yale Alumni Magazine. As well Architectural Lighting magazine picked up the story for their museum lighting issue.

You can see the full set of images I made as a featured project: Cushing Center.

Project: Cushing Center

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Jules Olitski’s Third Indomitable is all of 18+ feet long. The kind folks at FAE Boston unwrapped and provided a space large enough to photograph. Aside from masking off the shiny ducting above nothing was too difficult aside from backing up far enough and getting an even light spread. In the uncropped image below you can see the painting leaning against the warehouse wall on foam blocks.

Jules Olitski, Third Indomitable

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