Category Archives: night

Dynamic range

Mosque of Mohamed Ali in Cairo, Egypt

Back in the days of film, I shot only transparency — and in the latter days, primarily Fuji Velvia which was very contrasty and had rich, almost unnaturally saturated color. Transparency film was unforgiving and had very little dynamic range, meaning that it could only record a small portion of the range of lights and darks that you could see with your eyes. While digital still is far from being able to record an image with as wide a contrast range as the eye, it’s closing the gap. As I’m processing my photos from Egypt, I’m seeing that my new Nikon D700 has closed the gap even more.

I would have been hard pressed to get the shot above back in my film days. The sun was blazing and the contrast between the brightly lit stone in the courtyard of the Mosque of Mohamed Ali in Cairo’s Saladin Citadel and the shadows in the upper reaches of the surrounding arcade was huge. Still, with some minor tweaking in Adobe Lightroom 2, there is detail in every nook and cranny (reducing the image for the web has crunched the contrast a bit again but, trust me, the full size image has a ton of detail).

The camera doesn’t make a great photo, the photographer does. But a good camera can enable a photographer to capture scenes that would otherwise have been nearly impossible. I consider it a partnership. Technology is a tool like any other and I’m happy to make use of it.

update: I lost momentum on my Alamy goals while in Egypt. You can see by the chart below — the steady line is my goal of 10 images keyworded per day, the green line is my actual progress. I was ahead of schedule before Egypt but the flat section shows my lack of progress while I was out of the country. Time to make up for lost time now.
progress chart

Good night, Shanghai

Shanghai Pearl Tower

I had dinner atop the Oriental Pearl Tower on my last night in China and hoped to finally get that dusk shot I’d been waiting for. Not only was it threatening rain, but I had learned the night before when trying to shoot the skyline that most of the buildings were not lit until about an hour and a half after sunset. So, no twilight skies with lit skyscrapers on this trip. After dinner, it was pouring rain. Buckets. But, as I made my dash out of the building with my gear bundled tightly under my raincoat, I looked up and saw the tower lit for the first time. I found a small overhang from a ticket window that provided enough shelter that I could get this shot. One of the last 5 of my trip — and the rest of those were primarily shots I took of my amazing hotel room to show friends.

Not the shot that I had envisioned, but I like it. If the lights couldn’t be on while there was some sky color, I’m actually glad to have had the cloud cover so that the spotlights had something to illuminate. I’ll just have to come back when that newest tallest-building-in-China is complete and get my skyline shot from across the river then.

I’ve been lazy the last two days and haven’t updated my Alamy files at all so I keyworded 36 images this morning to cover today’s goal as well as that of the past two. Now I’m all caught up — for the time being. Only 874 more images to prep to meet my May 1 goal of 2000 images.

Shanghai – the last day

shanghai morning

Hopes for the sparkling twilight or early morning skyline shot of Shanghai dimmed on the morning of my last day in China when I awoke to more overcast skies. Still, a cab ride down to the riverfront couldn’t hurt. If there’s no sunrise, surely there will still be something to shoot.

The color that was lacking in the sky was provided by the silk garments worn by the wonderful people of Shanghai who seem to come out every morning to exercise along the promenade. I previously posted a shot of a gentleman flying a kite that is one of my favorites from this trip. It was also shot this morning under the grey blanket of clouds and just goes to show: it’s not always what you are looking for, but what you find.

My Alamy goals are progressing well. Since my last post I’ve keyworded 95 images (my goal for those 5 days was only 50) and I uploaded another 223 which passed quality control earlier this evening. It’s a bit of a gamble to upload so many images at one time because, if any one is rejected by QC, the entire batch gets chucked out. Happily, everything sailed through.

I can’t get overly confident in my goals, however. Starting this weekend, I’ll be on the road for two weeks and probably won’t get any keywording done at all. I’ll need to either make up the slack before I leave or have lots of catching up to do when I get back. At least for now I can say that I’m ahead of schedule.

Pearl of Shanghai (part 1) and goal setting

Pearl Tower, Shanghai, China

I mentioned in an earlier post that my main goal on this trip to the Shanghai region of China was to get a good, iconic skyline shot of the Oriental Pearl Tower and the recently developed Pudong area. I showed a photo of two nearby skyscrapers — currently the tallest in China — with a fairly blue sky behind. This shot was taken from the observation platform of one of those skyscrapers, the Jin Mao, a few minutes later. The haze was much thicker from above and I’ve actually boosted the contrast quite a bit here to somewhat compensate for it.

A tip for those of you who have also found yourself shooting through glass in situations like this: get your lens as close to the glass as possible and drape your jacket over your head and camera to block any reflections coming from behind and beside you. You might look stupid but it gets the job done. Any color cast from tinted glass can be corrected in Photoshop.

This was not the iconic shot I wanted but in some ways the haze helps to separate the Pearl from the older city in the background so I don’t think it’s is a total loss. I still wanted the shot that was in my head, though. I’ll post my progress on that front as my last two days in Shanghai sped on in the coming posts.

Meanwhile, in the present, I’ve been making goals for the coming year. I’m not really a New Year’s Resolution kind of guy but I do like to have goals. They keep time from getting away from me.

Over the last year, I neglected my image files on Alamy. Between travel, moving, and feeding other stock agencies, I just didn’t increase the number of images placed with Alamy the way I should. So… 2009 is my catch-up year.

As of yesterday, I had 1024 images online with Alamy directly. I say “directly” because other agencies I put images with also put them on Alamy so, technically, I have more on Alamy but these 1024 images are those that I am directly responsible for. For those of you who don’t know, Alamy requires more of the photographer in return for a larger percentage of sales. You do your own editing, you do your own keywording, etc.

I’ve decided to set a goal of basically doubling my Alamy files by May 1, 2009. My goal is 2000 images posted and keyworded. That comes to about 10 images per day which doesn’t sound like much to keyword, but I’ll also have to prep and upload about 900 of those. This morning I keyworded a dozen images so — so far — I’m ahead of schedule. Which I need to be, because I’ll be away the first two weeks in February so I need to get a head start.

If I meet my first phase goal by May 1, the second phase will be to double the number again by the end of the year. By January 1, 2010, I want to have 4000 images with Alamy. Quadrupling my files in one year seems daunting but I have a backlog of images that need to be on the market. My hope is that, by quadrupling my images this year, I can quadruple my 2008 income from Alamy in 2010. When you put it in dollar terms, there’s quite an incentive.

I’ll post progress reports of my new goal on this blog. I’m still deciding how to do that exactly but it may just be a series of short “progress posts” or a line at the end of each regular post. Either way, I hope by making my progress public, it will provide a further kick in the pants.

Wish me luck.