People Stuff:
Now that I’m into the 2nd half of the project I would like to start to explore a little of the business of portraiture from the subjects side. I emailed all of my participants so far and asked if anyone would like to contribute a paragraph. The first person to reply was Kristen, who is a keen photographer herself. Her thoughts on the subject are really interesting and I thought I would reproduce them directly here.
“To be photographed really depends on your mood; it is of course better to feel relaxed than tense with worry or wish to be somewhere else. I think it’s of key importance to feel comfortable in your surroundings and ultimately by the person taking the picture. When I was young, I used to love posing for the camera and experimenting with make up and fashion and to this day I still love it. A certain expression and state of mind can be captured on film forever so I think it’s important to make the most of the time, light and life that you have. I think this common love that each person has for photographs is a legacy to the desire to capture something that means more than words to each person’s heart.
Therefore the act of being photographed can be a very big deal as you are likely through a sequence of snaps to reveal different aspects of your personality, for example, behind a smile may lie a glimmer of sadness that cannot be hidden from the truth of the camera lens, therefore I find it more fun to probe the more real-life exposure that lies behind the camera, I see the camera as an audience, almost someone to entertain, therefore depending on where you are, it can be your stage, you can use props, backgrounds and even fashion to mould and sculpt your identity the way you would like it to be seen through your own eyes, therefore, it is more automatic to appear more friendly as you may reflect a certain partnership with the camera to find the most peaceful and playful aspects to what is often spontaneous in nature.
To be photographed by Matthew was most helpful to my skills as a photographer and I found him very knowledgeable, professional and fun. He often felt the vibe of the best way to capture a moment that would be a catalyst for a better picture and let the scene unfold naturally allowing time for reflection on what suited the individual and what worked best with regard to the light. The camera was snapping away and I'd say it was a very cool photo-shoot, I will definitely be in contact for more projects :)”
I almost omitted Kristen’s third paragraph since she is being characteristically generous, but I thought it best just to include it as she wrote it. Thanks Kristen. I hope to have more people’s reflections on the process and results because I think it might be folly to become too engaged to ones own perspective as a photographer. How a subject feels is important to me.
Techie Stuff:
I wanted to reflect on what might be my favourite part of the process, and that is printing. I think there is a danger that we might start to print less and less these days and only ever look at photographs on computer screens. I know that lots of my friends have literally thousands of holiday photographs that they never turn into prints. I don’t want to arrogantly suggest that this is a bad thing, but personally, I believe that the best of your photographs deserve to be printed nicely, to be enjoyed on paper and seen in an album or a frame or even a pinboard. There is a quality to good paper prints that emphasises reflected light rather than the transmitted light of a screen, and only really good pictures look as good on paper as they do on the backlit brilliance of a computer screen. (Just like transparencies used to look better than most prints). For me the best of my pictures give me great pleasure in print whether it is the 100portraits album I am compiling or the framed prints on our walls at home or even the business cards with photos on them. I would urge you to get into the printing habit to really explore and enjoy the different qualities that make a great print.
However, a good print needs thinking about. There are 2 ways to go:
- Submit your image files as JPEG’s to a print shop
- Print yourself at home
A recent survey in “Amateur Photographer” magazine found that more people in the UK print their own pictures at home than any other European country! The same magazine has alarmed me by running a long series of comparisons of print quality and consistency from a variety of high street print shops. These shops ranged from excellent to poor, and I would recommend you try a few before you settle on a particular one as a reliable favourite. Theoretically the best of them should have regularly maintained and calibrated printers so don’t be afraid to search for a good one, they can be excellent indeed, and convenient.
The convenience and quality that I can achieve at home has swayed me in that direction. There are a few things to notice though if you are going to enjoy great prints.
Calibration: Early on I realised that I was editing pictures in Photoshop (elements) or Photoshop light room, and feeling pleased with the results onscreen, but being disappointed with the results. The most important thing you can do is to calibrate your screen using a colorimeter that will check the accuracy of the colour output of your screen and then create a “monitor profile” that automatically corrects your screen. I bought a cheap device with it’s own simple to use software by “Pantone” called the “Huey Pro” for around £100 UK. It took 5 minutes to run, measuring the room’s ambient light and checking colours that it flashed onto the screen. The result was amazing, my Sony Vaio laptop had had a colour cast that I hadn’t noticed, that seemed to result in blue clothing being fine after adjustments on screen, but ugly and over-saturated in prints. This simple adjustment prevents me from over or under processing screen colours because I wrongly perceive them.
Print Settings: Once you have a calibrated and reliable screen, it is good to sacrifice the cost of a set of small prints to try different settings to find which ones give prints that match your screen. It took me about 10 trial and error prints to get settings that were accurate, but now a few hundred prints later I get reliable and vibrant colours and delightful prints. The chief things to look at are:
- Turn off fast print settings
- Set Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever software you use “manage printing”; it does so much better than the printer software if it supports your printer.
- Turn off bi-directional printing
- Ensure the colour space set on your camera matches the printer driver settings. (Commonly Adobe RGB)
- If you need to adjust a colour bias that makes the prints differ from your calibrated screen, then use the manual adjustment sliders and compare the results in natural daylight with your screen.
- Then save all settings under a “profile name”, set it as your default and enjoy lovely reliable prints.
Paper and Ink: At the moment, the big printer manufacturers are fleecing us, any reps reading this, please take note, you are greedy swines, and your paper and ink prices are the reason why people buy cheap ink and crappy paper, but, the best way to get perfect prints is to buy the manufacturers proper ink, and paper. It’s costly, but if you are only printing out your best work as gifts or for special display, it’s manageable.
There are some lovely fine-art (so called) papers of very high quality that can also work beautifully with your printer manufacturer’s ink, but you need to use the settings that they recommend to get good results.
I’d love to have a moan now about how wasteful of energy electronic photo frames are, but here comes the nice man with my medication, so I’ll sign off by saying, good photographs ultimately have to make good prints; try a few and enjoy them.
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