As Photographers Why Is Old Better?

I was going to shoot in this persons barn and they said oh well i'll clean it up a bit for you...I said no no dont do that..The dust and cobwebs are what make it more interesting. And why is that? Old seems to be better. Old cars, old barns, old bridges....Some young girl looking through my prints says "oh i just love old cars" Why is that? Why is old better and its far more appealing to shoot.

I'm hoping some have images to contribute to this thread and thoughts.

This image i'm posting i took on my road trip in Eastern Washington....Looking in i wondered about the boat how long it had been there and if it was just put there for a week when a week turned into months an then years.

ErikJonas said:

I was going to shoot in this person's barn and they said oh well i'll clean it up a bit for you...I said no no dont do that..The dust and cobwebs are what make it more interesting. And why is that? Old seems to be better. Old cars, old barns, old bridges....Some young girl looking through my prints says "oh i just love old cars" Why is that? Why is old better and its far more appealing to shoot.

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The presence of patina, dust and debris bring to the fore the passage of time and then we wonder about the stories one could tell of that bygone time. That's where the charm comes from. Otherwise it's just a more cold, scientific collection of old stiff.

ErikJonas said:

... wondered about the boat how long it had been there and if it was just put there for a week when a week turned into months an then years.

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You have opened up a window to someone's life many years ago. That's the magic of such shots. I'm glad you stopped them tidying up. I really enjoy such peeks into history and the opportunity the picture give me to create my own story and a different one each time I return. That'd the beauty of ignorance!

Once again, there seem to be no dark blacks! However, there really are blacks this time and what's going on is that the highlights are blown and the image just looks light. This is a high dynamic range scene and must be shot RAW or bracketed, so as to be able to recover the highlights. Do you have this in RAW too?

Asher

Asher....Hows this look?...I tried re-editing it and i cropped it a little bit as well which brought the boat up some more...







Just trying to learn something here =) Thanks for the coaching too by the way.

ErikJonas said:

Asher....Hows this look?...I tried re-editing it and i cropped it a little bit as well which brought the boat up some more...

Just trying to learn something here =) Thanks for the coaching too by the way.

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Thanks Erik for the effort to control the distribution of tonalities.

Are you working with RAW images. What has been your workflow. Do you desaturate the colored file or just change to gray scale? Anyway this version better uses the resources of your image file. Now, this picture is far easier to contemplate. So, what happened to the originals. You should put them back so we can follow the progress of your edits!

Asher

Asher.... I dont shoot raw...Huge files that i do not have the storage space for among other things....My editing skills are pretty raw though that has to count for something right? Seriously i am still learning but all i need are the basics anyway...

When i shoot i always shoot a bit under exsposed as i was told if you blow something out you lose detail your done theres no saving it, if you shoot a bit under you can add light it PS...I adjust shadows and bright and thats it....Levels i check those but but do not go by them, i go by what i visually like because at the end of the day i'm the one who has to look at it and try to sell it. Its going to be something i'm happy with....Yes a lot of my B/W are gray...But if i like the image and the image gets a lot of positive feed back at a show then thats whats important to me and sales too.....





Yes yes i know it does not conform to "the rules" but i like it...No one else might. We'll see...And not refering to here as only about 4 people here are going to possibly if at all comment but i mean over all we'll see when i show my prints the response i get to it....This building above saddly is months from being torn down....

ErikJonas said:

Asher.... I dont shoot raw...Huge files that i do not have the storage space for among other things....My editing skills are pretty raw though that has to count for something right? Seriously i am still learning but all i need are the basics anyway...

When i shoot i always shoot a bit under exsposed as i was told if you blow something out you lose detail your done theres no saving it, if you shoot a bit under you can add light it PS...I adjust shadows and bright and thats it....Levels i check those but but do not go by them, i go by what i visually like because at the end of the day i'm the one who has to look at it and try to sell it. Its going to be something i'm happy with....Yes a lot of my B/W are gray...But if i like the image and the image gets a lot of positive feed back at a show then thats whats important to me and sales too.....

Yes yes i know it does not conform to "the rules" but i like it...No one else might. We'll see...And not refering to here as only about 4 people here are going to possibly if at all comment but i mean over all we'll see when i show my prints the response i get to it....This building above saddly is months from being torn down....

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Erik,

The reason why Asher is asking you for the details of your workflow is because the tonality of most of your B&W images is not as it should be. If this is intentional, then no problem. But if this is happening against your will, then you should find out how to deal with it properly, with our help if you want to.

If you need to keep all highlight details when shooting jpg only, you can either under expose (like you are doing), or you can shoot brackets for still subjects (like the ones shown above). But a reasonable underexposure would be just a tad (somewhere around 1 stops max), not like 2-3 stops. Your pictures with tonality problems seem to have been underexposed at least 2 stops. After that, all your mid and shadow tonality is pushed into deep shadows. If you want to recover the shadows by increasing their luminosity, you will start to compress the tonal range. If you are using a filter (highlights/shadows or the like), these can do a terrible job if you don't know how exactly to use them. The examples I have seen make me think that you are not aware of the damage you are causing.

Most importantly, I hope you are not commiting the cardinal sin: i.e. editing your camera original jpg files. Because if you do, everytime you do something and save the image, you end up losing it bit by bit. If you work with jpgs, you should safely back-up the camera originals and work only on copies.

Second most important is to have a calibrated display. I think that you work on a laptop and the screens on them are terrible for doing any editing unless you calibrate them first. Since you have never ever mentioned anything about calibration, I am assuming that your display clips the blacks horribly to boost apparent contrast. If it does do that and you edit on such a display, you will end up with images which appear to be contrasty on your own screen but on ours it looks really bad. Did you look at you images at somebody else's computer to compare?

HTH,

Cheers

Hi Erik,

This is a major branching point in your career in photography, more important than any lens or camera upgrade. You really have to trust me on this. Not taking pictures in RAW is like not eating breakfast and lunch and then trying to run a marathon. It's not possible! There simply will not be enough reserve in your system. This is what's happening to your B&W. Here, unlike the previous image, the blacks are simply absent and the brightest whites are once again blown. The only way to deal with this without changing the natural lighting, is to wait until later in the day when the light is less bright and then your exposure might cover the shadows to the brights. Still in order to actually record all this information, you need to shoot RAW. There's simply no way around it when you are using natural light or high key images. When you use RW, the bright areas can be recovered and the detail in the shadows can be rescued up to 1.5 to 2 stops at each end in some cameras.

Hard drives are just $90 for 1 Terrabyte. If you go through your images and delete images that are no good then you will get rid of at least 50% of the space and have room for RAW files. I'm always astonished by how much recovery is possible using RAW files. Even better, RAW translation software is getting so much better each year.

When you consider the price of gasoline to travel to the place you have to take pictures, then that's more than the storage of RAW files. Just keep the best.

Even if you don't know how to work in RAW, you can learn it. We had a 90 year old lady with a Canon G4/5 camera and she shot in RAw and processed the images in Lightzone! Her name was Mary bull. You are much younger, my friend. And as stubborn as you can be, this is one change you just need to make.

You don't need more than one person to comment on your pictures if they know what they are looking at. Those who might think your pictures are great right now will likely be blown away by the improvements you can easily make.

Do you have a tripod? Even if you don't, likely your Pentax has a built in bracketing funtion. Set the self timer to 10 seconds and have the camera resting on a table or ladder or whatever is handy and let it take 3 exposure bracketed pictures for you which you can fuse together in so many different software choices to span the high dynamic range from the brightest light to the darkest shade.

Do I like your picture? Yes, very much, I do enjoy images of forgotten rooms. They allow my imagination to conjure up parties and lovers and fights and pretenses that went on year after year.

However, if I don't say this is not good enough for you potential work product, you have to listen and not be insulted. Your Pentax, as it is with the lenses you have, can take you all the way to the best jobs in photography. The block is how hard you will apply yourself to discard bad pictures and put in the extra labor to deliver on a great idea. Look at the trouble you went to getting this wonderful project going! If you have the right files, you can deliver the best prints. Otherwise, your pictures will be just below what's needed.

Asher

Asher....I have had 3 very good photographers who saw my images first on their computer tell me that my images seemed to be washed out a bit but they have also seen the actual prints and they say the prints look great.......No i do not have a laptop....I edit on a older high quality CRT monitor as they have better color.

Again....I can adjust that image to where it has what you deem the acceptable tonal range but its not what I want....And if your seeing it on a LCD monitor i can garuntee your not seeing the image the same as i am

Cem....Thankyou for looking out for me....I down load the memory card to a folder...I have another folder called "Temp" when i see a image i want to edit i copy that image to the temp folder and then load it into Elements from that folder...The original is never touched. Copied but never touched.

Gotta take my mom to the doctor this morning.....Have a good day guys......Erik...

Since this thread has become about black an whites and not things "old"....And i dont have access to a few hundred images of mine....Heres a picture of Jordan thats more i think what your looking for....This was shot on a tripod...I didnt have a tripod for a long time....Just after my moms stroke i got a tripod....I went back to my job after some time off to get the year end bonus and a raise which was retro and then left to care for mt mom...The bonus money got me my tripod a SLK....I liked it better then the Manfrotto (spelling) Anyway...This is from a set of about 30 images.




Jordan at 17 here does not qualify to be old. But its a black an white more along the line of what you want to see...

Oh and on the bracketing...I have no interest in HDR-ing my images now or ever....Heres another B/W image.....




This is Jordan at 15 When I first started shooting her. She'd done a few other shoots prior that i had set up for her....

Images #1,2 and 9 are in need of checking as they are not appearing. Please correct that.

ErikJonas said:

Oh and on the bracketing...I have no interest in HDR-ing my images now or ever....Heres another B/W image.....

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Nor am I! I just offered bracketing as away of you being able to take a decent picture in the conditions you found yourself in without blowing out the brights. Look at Jim Collum's work, disciplined and showing the finest craftsmanship in building an image from the widest range of smooth full rich undamaged tones.

You sometimes end up in B&W with what are essentially skeletonized from your perfectly well-conceived ideas and captures by either missing out data by over-exposing or else working with 8 BIT files and jpgs. I'm suggesting that you drive out to the place with the interesting forgotten items and when you get there, set up your tripod and have bracket your exposure, so that you can nail the highlights and display the shadows. That's where all the spiders and moths are hiding respectively. Or else, go at dusk! Just don't end up with files with no resilience.

Let's put some numbers to this. Imagine opening your your box of crayons and find not 64 colors but only 4! You suddenly lose a lot of options for subtle differences! Now think about a RAw file with 4096 levels as opposed to 256. Obviously you lose big time in describing things that use the missing tones in each of the colors! One can make a pretty good representation once you have completed all your work and then want to print the image or show it on the web in sRGB. But we shouldn't even consider making jpgs the files we depend on for art or artistic commercial work.

If you photograph a rescue, explosion, bank robbery or landing of aliens, you'll get paid, jpg or RAW! Surprise some some preacher, star or politician doing something nasty, you get the money once again as a jpg. It's hot, so why not! For everything else, RAW is the nearest thing to mother's milk, wheat and rainbows! It has everything you need to make art. Read about RAW here and Michael Reichman's article with input from Michael Tapes and Thomas Knoll, "Understanding RAW Files" here.

5 minutes looking at this first video will show you how RAW can deal with highlights and shadows, in this case, a sky and dark bushes, but this could be your bright room and the dark corners and detail of the bench. One hour on the web reading all the free tutorials on RAW processing, will get you on track. That's it! All cameras come with their own software for their own processing RAW files so there's really no excuse for anyone to work with "thin" files anymore, is there?

Asher