Jim Mathis Photography

My lifelong photography journey

2011-11-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

I received my first camera for Christmas when I was in the fourth grade. It was a 620 size Sawyer Nomad. I bought a 35mm Kodak Pony when I was in high school.

When I got to college I became more interested in photography. I was able to buy a 35mm Petri SLR and soon graduated to a Nikkormat. It was there that I set up a darkroom and became proficient with the mechanics of photography. I got very familiar with f-stops, shutter speeds, and film speeds. I bought more cameras and lenses and learned how they worked.

When I left college in 1971, I got a job at a camera store and was soon the store manager. I was able to go to trade shows and keep up on all the latest equipment and materials.

When I was 25 years old I opened a custom photo lab catering to professional photographers. I considered myself an expert on the technical issues surrounding photography. My pictures however, though technically good, were never what I hoped for in terms of artistic merit.

It was not until 1991 on a trip to Italy that I had a breakthrough of sorts. My wife and I spent a lot of time in museums and galleries and I began to see myself as an artist with a camera. I was using a Pentax 645 at the time. The pictures that I brought back from Italy were the best photographs I had ever made. I still have large photos of Italy in my house taken over twenty years ago.

It is significant to note that from the time that I started becoming serious about photography until I began making really good photographs was about 25 years. In the first half of the 1990’s, I produced some of my favorite photographs.

I sold the photo lab in 1996 and began perusing other interest. I would take pictures with my 35mm Canon and drop them off at a one-hour photo lab. When I picked them up, as often as not, I would thumb through them and toss them in a drawer or the trash can. I had forgotten that the reason I opened the photo lab back in1973 was the deplorable state of the photofinishing industry at the time, and nothing had really changed. I became so discouraged that I quit taking pictures all together.

In about 1998 I bought a Nikon slide scanner and an Epson printer and began scanning some old slides and negatives and making inkjet prints. They were wonderful and I realized that I still loved photography, but I had to have complete control of the process from the time I clicked the shutter until the prints were made if I was going to get acceptable results.

In 2001 I bought my first digital camera, an Olympus E-20. The camera was marvelous. I immediately put all my 35mm gear on eBay and haven’t shot a roll of film since.

Since then I have upgraded my digital cameras a couple of times and am now using a Pentax K20D.

In 2008 I decided to get back into photography as a full-time profession. Once again I am making photographs that I am proud of because I can control the whole process. With modern cameras, computers, and printers, this is something that I can do for many years in the future and leave a legacy of great photographs.

Blacks is black and white is white

2011-06-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

A photo or video image is made up of all shades of gray from black to white and all the colors that go along with them. The goal is for the whites to be white and the blacks to be black with everything in the middle to be in the right place along the scale.

There are two general ways to do this. One is to start with a white surface such as white paper or canvas and build up pigment or ink to get to black. With good paper and high quality printers or paint, this works great. The opposite approach is to start with a black surface such as a TV or computer monitor and light it up to produce white. This also works very well. In each case how black the screen or how white the paper are big factors in the quality of the image.

A nearly impossible task is start with a white surface and try to light it to produce a whole range of tones from black to white. This is theoretically impossible and practically very difficult. Movie theaters are able to do this for all practical purposes by darkening the room so that the white screen looks black and then lighting it with the projector. Sometimes a silver screen could be used which is easier to make look black and is more reflective for the white areas, but reflective screens have their own problems such as stray reflections and directionality.

For this reason the use of video projectors in lighted rooms cannot produce images with an acceptable degree of tonal range no matter how powerful the projector.

I foresee that video projectors such as currently used will soon go the way of broadcast TV and wired telephones. LCD flat screen video monitors are a much better choice in most situations. The breakthrough that is needed is folding LCD screens. I presume that engineers are already working on this. Stay tuned.

The pixel race is over

2011-06-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

When digital photography first came on the scene, there was a big debate about how many pixels, or picture elements, it would take to make digital photography as good as film.

When the first one million pixel cameras (one-meg) came out it is was very encouraging because we could see that it was going to happen, digital was going to work. Before long two-meg cameras were here producing very good results. Five-meg cameras had the ability to surpass 35mm and were taking aim at medium format. My first digital camera was a five-meg Olympus which I have used to make beautify 16x20 and larger prints.

I like to think of the number of mega-pixels a camera has as being comparable to the horsepower of a car. A minimum amount is needed for sure, but horsepower does not determine the quality of the car or even how fast it will go. There are many other factors that are more important. It is the same with cameras.

It turns out that after a minimum of about 3 or 4 meg, the number of mega-pixels a camera has is of little value in determining the quality of the photos.

Now that most cameras have 7 or 8 million pixels or more, this is no longer a factor in quality. In fact many cell phones have 5-meg cameras built-in that produce very low quality pictures, I know, I have one. The quality of the lens and the electronics are much more important.

Of course the skill of the photography is really the bottom line in determining the quality of the photographs.

Hold it Steady

2011-06-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

If your pictures are blurry or not as sharp as you would like, the most likely thing is camera movement. If you are firing a rifle at a target and you miss, the only thing that could have happened is you moved the gun.

Photography is the same, if you pictures are not sharp, there is a good chance that the camera moved. When I was in the photo-finishing business, the vast majority of the millions of photos I saw were degraded to some degree by camera movement.

When I show my large photographs at art shows or people come to my home or studio, they often ask how I get the pictures so sharp. Some people even ask what kind of special equipment I use to make 36 inch wide photos. When I tell them I just hold the camera steady, they think I am joking.

When I have one-on-one students, I often teach them how to hold the camera and to practice holding it steady to get better pictures.

Part of the problem is the design of the cameras. High performance cameras are designed to make them easier to hold steady with good hand-holds and viewfinders that can be pressed against your face for stability. Poorly designed cameras that must be held at arm's-length or are very light weight are very difficult to hold steady.

Just as a rifle is more accurate than a pistol, an eye contact viewfinder is much more accurate than a point & shoot camera with only an LCD screen. Some point and shoot cameras have optical viewfinders, but most don't.
Long lenses or zoom lenses zoomed in are harder to hold and low light, resulting in slower shutter speeds, increase the problem.

If you want sharper pictures, practice holding the camera steady or buy a camera that is easier to hold.

"Can I hold this camera steady?"and "Can I see the viewfinder in all situations?" are the most important questions to ask before buying a new camera.

If you are serious about making better photographs, call me to arrange for a day of one-on-one coaching. You can be a better photographer in just one day. The one day cost of $250 is still in affect.

Rule of Thirds

2011-05-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is a series of free tips to help you become a better photographer.This week we will talk about the "Rule of Thirds."

Imagine the frame divided into vertical and horizontal thirds like a tic-tac-toe game. The sweet spots are along the lines and where the lines cross.When in doubt, try to put the most important part of the scene in these areas because that is the place our eyes naturallyfall first.

If you are making a portrait, it is a good idea to put the subjects eyes fall near the upper third line. See the cover of my book at the right.See the example below of our worship leader, Daniel Brymer.

This is not a hard and fast rule, but it is certainly a good place to start for an interesting composition.

Avoiding the "Bullseye"

2011-05-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

I am starting a series of free tips to help you become a better photographer.

The first one concerns composition. Composition is nothing more than where you put the important parts of the picture in the frame. This implies that you know what is important and what isn't important to the picture, and place the subject accordingly. It also means that you are looking at the whole scene when you line up the shot.Putting the subject in the exact middle of the picture is what we call the "Bullseye syndrome." Ninety-five percent of the time this is exactly the wrong place for the main subject.

The main subject should be placed to one side a little or closer to the top or bottom, except in unusual situations.In the two photos below, the one on the right is more interesting because the person's head is off center and leaning toward the edge of the picture.The one on the left is static by comparison because the person's head and eyes are centered like a bullseye.

I intend to make this a weekly series, so stayed tuned for more tips and forward this to your camera toting friends.

Hold the camera at arm’s length so it is easy to see.

2010-06-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is the third in a series on the biggest myths in photography.

Number 8...

"Hold the camera at arm’s length so it is easy to see."

I am not sure where this came from, but for some reason or another people, decided that they could see the image better on a little screen than could looking through a viewfinder. Camera manufactures quickly saw that they could save some money by eliminating viewfinders all together on lower priced camera. Today we find ourselves back to the same place where we were 100 years ago with the need to throw a dark cloth over the back of the camera to see the image for framing.

LCD screens are very difficult to see in bright light and often impossible to see on a sunny day with sunglasses.

Since the beginning of photography, photographers have known that holding the camera steady is the secret to sharp pictures. Without the ability to brace the camera against your face, holding the camera steady becomes very difficult.

People often ask me questions about what camera to buy. The first thing I always tell them is to get a camera with a viewfinder. Ideally it would be a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) but an electronic viewfinder is a good second choice. Even a simple optical “window” viewfinder is an improvement over an LCD screen. The LCD screens on the back of the camera are wonderful for reviewing your photos or for some unusual situations, but 99% of the time you should push the camera up to your face to steady it, and to be able to see exactly what you are getting in all kinds of light situations.

The proper way to hold a camera is illustrated above.

My pictures are just for fun. I don’t care what happens to them in a year, much less fifty years.

2010-06-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

This is a second in a series of 10 posts about the biggest myths in photography.

Number 9. My pictures are just for fun. I don’t care what happens to them in a year, much less fifty years.

Part of my business is restoring old photographs. A common comment I hear is, “I wish my parents (aunt, grandparents, fill in the blank) had taken better care of these pictures. I guess they didn’t know they would be important.”

The best known photographer of the twentieth century was Ansel Adams. He was also a musician. He considered making a photograph the equivalent of writing a song – the composition. (Funny how the same word applies to both music and photography.) The print and its display is then the performance. Both were equally important. His photographs now sell for tens of thousands of dollars largely because he put care and technique into making his photographs.

We may not be Ansel Adams, but we can value photographs for what they are and take care in the making and keeping of them.

The digital age introduces its own challenges of storage and long term use. The important thing to consider is that someday people will be looking at your photos, or not, if you deleted them or lost them when your hard drive crashed, and trying to understand how you lived and what was important to you. Chances are the only record your great grandchildren will have of you is an old photograph or two. I know that because that is the only record I have of some of my great-grandparents.

Almost daily somebody will ask me what will happen to all the photos that are never even downloaded from the camera much less printed in some sort of permanent form. The answer is “nothing.” They will be gone in a few years.

Were they important? Possibly. Only the future will tell us what we should have saved and could have been discarded.

If I take enough pictures, some of them are bound to be good.

2010-06-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

This is a first in a series of 10 posts about the biggest myths in photography.

Number 10 - If I take enough pictures, some of them are bound to be good.

This is related to the old saying about given enough monkeys, time, and typewriters, they would eventually write all the works of Shakespeare. Maybe. But it would take a LOT of time and they would go through a lot of typewriters.

Photography is a learned skill. It is not hard, but like any other skill such as woodworking, playing a musical instrument, or public speaking, it is not automatic, and therefore requires a little bit of training. Professional instruction is not necessary, but would certainly go a long way.

If I decided to build a table, I could go out and buy a saw, some wood, and start randomly cutting wood and gluing pieces together. Given enough time I might end up with something that looks like table. But I would save a lot of time and trees if I did a little research on the details of table making. It is the same with photography. A little care and knowledge goes a long way.

The Eastman Kodak Company has been struggling with this conundrum since they brought out the first Kodak in 1888. How do you convince people that anybody can take pictures and still provide enough training that they may actually make some good photos? Generally they have errored on the side of telling people how easy it is, and billions of people have wasted billions of dollars on lousy pictures in the past 120 years.

I recently saw an article about this in an 1892 photography journal. The writer was lamenting that people were expecting miracles in their photos without making any effort to become better photographers. In the digital age the incremental cost has gone way down, the quantity of pictures taken has gone way up, but the quality of photos hasn’t changed. If anything they have gotten worse.

Having spent 23 years in the photofinishing business, I have seen plenty of pictures that could have been a lot better with only minor changes. Most of the people wanted better pictures but apparently not bad enough to try to learn.

Next week Myth # 9.

Give Photographs Some Respect

2010-04-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

My mother often comments about how serious I was as a child. I think I just took some things seriously that others regarded as less than serious, things like photos and music. I always took music very seriously, and I always saw the value of photographs.

I got my first camera in the fourth grade I knew right away that I was documenting my childhood and that the photographs would be important in fifty or sixty years. I knew this because I knew how important the fifty year-old photos of my parents and grandparents were.

Since then I have made somewhere around a million photographs. Tens of thousands of them are in my file cabinets either as negatives, slides, prints, or digital files on CDs. The best ones are in the form of books. Some of them are just documentation while others are very significant, but all of them are important for one reason or another.

I have always been concerned that many people haven’t given much respect to photographs. I have made quite a bit of money restoring old photographs, most of which only needed restoration because they were mistreated.

In the digital age, it seems that more and more photographs are considered to be free and therefore have no value. There are already anthropologists who fear that we will lose the records of generations because their photos were deleted or lost when the hard-drive crashed.

Personally I think that the best photographs will be preserved. But a quick glance at Facebook indicates that most people are not interested in making photographs that are aesthetically or technically pleasing.

With modern camera, making wonderful photographs has never been easier, but with ease comes sloppiness. My desire is that people would think, even for just a few seconds about how they could make their pictures better, and then learn some basics about how the camera works. Then the world would look a whole lot better, and future generations would have a better idea of what we cared about, and about how things looked back in 2010.

Testing

2010-01-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

Somewhere around 1980, I did what I called my “Ultimate Film Test.” Actually it was more than film. I took about 8 or 10 camera and lens combinations, in different formats, and bought a dozen or so rolls each of a half a dozen different types of film. I set up a little still life in my backyard consisting of some flowers, a lawn chair, bird bath and so forth. I then photographed the same scene with every possible exposure and film combination with each camera.

The next step was to make identical 8x10 prints from every exposure, carefully labeling each of the hundreds of prints as to the camera, lens, film type, and exposure. By sorting the prints in different ways, I could easily see what difference changing the exposure made, the differences in film types, and the differences in cameras and formats.

By using this extensive testing method, I no longer had to rely on other people’s untested opinions, or hearsay. Since at the time I was working with a lot with professional photographers, I could easily bring out clearly documented photographs to show results from the film or camera in question. Very few photographers have ever gone to the trouble and expense to test their equipment and film choices in any significant way.

I began repeating this test about every ten years as film and technology changed. It was then possible to clearly show what changes, usually improvements, had taken places with film emulsions, lenses, etc. by comparing older prints with the newer ones. One of the biggest variables was the processing, but since I owned a photo lab, this was a constant.

Now in the digital age, it is even more important to test our equipment and techniques. Film, of course, is no longer a factor, but digital technology is changing all the time. The only way to know for sure if a 12-meg camera that costs $1500, set to ISO 1600, will give better results than a 7-meg camera that costs $500 set at ISO 100, is to test them side by side with the same subject and then make identical prints. Instead of film changes we now have a choice of RAW, TIFF, the various versions of JPEG, and so forth. Which works best, and how much difference is there? If we haven’t tested them and can show documented results, we don’t really know. Plus it might be different next year.

These principles are true in many other areas as well; except in some fields the testing can be very difficult or the results often hard to interpret.

I am also a musician. Testing various types of strings on different guitars, using different amplifiers, cords, picks, and so forth, and actually recording each and carefully analyzing the results is certainly possible, but probably beyond what most musicians are willing to do. Instead we find something we like and stick with it, or we are constantly trying all sorts of variations and never knowing what changed the results.

Most businesses follow this latter model. We either stick with what works, or just keep trying things until, hopefully, we find something that does work.

What kind of camera should I buy?

2009-10-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

That is perhaps the most frequently asked question I hear. My usual response is to buy the one you like. By that I mean get one that feels right in your hands and looks like something you will want to carry around.

Second, buy the best camera you can afford or spend the most money you feel comfortable spending on a camera. You really do get what you pay for.

Beyond that the main consideration, in my opinion, is the viewfinder. The viewfinder is what you will spend your time looking at or through while you are making those beautiful photographs. There are three general types of viewfinders. The best is a single-lens-reflex which means that you are looking through the actual lens that the sensor is looking through. In the digital world the term is DSLR for digital single lens reflex.

DSLR cameras are generally the most expensive, but are far and away the most pleasure to use. You almost always see exactly what you are going to get, the original WYSIWYG design. Most have interchangeable lenses for greater versatility. Even if you never change lenses the bigger and brighter viewfinder of a DSLR is worth it. The downside, besides expense, is size. DSLR cameras are bigger and heavier than the other types of digital cameras. Carrying around a DSLR of any brand will mark you as someone who is serious about their photography.

The next type of camera/viewfinder is the electronic viewfinder camera or EVF. This type of camera has a LCD screen that is viewed through a magnifier. These cameras are almost as good as a DSLR and are generally smaller and less expensive. The advantage of the EVF camera is that menu items and other information can be read right off the screen in the viewfinder. Most EVF cameras also give an instant preview right after the photo is made so you can see what you got without taking your eye off the viewfinder. Most EVF camera do not offer interchangeable lenses but do have wide range zoom lenses as standard, so this may not be a serious issue. Most video cameras are of this type.

The last type of camera is the one that has no viewfinder at all, but only a LCD screen on the back. These have many limitations. The fact that they are hard to see in all but ideal lighting conditions is only one. The secret of sharp photos is to hold the camera steady. Holding the camera steady at arm’s length with no support against your face is almost impossible with this type of camera. I know from experience that an LCD screen is impossible to see in bright snow with sunglasses on, making the camera useless in these or many other conditions. Some companies, such as Hoodman, now are making accessory hoods that fasten to the LCD screen to make them useful in more varied light conditions.

Many, if not most, point and shoot cameras, and many more expensive cameras, are eliminating the eye-level viewfinder completely relying only on a LCD screen. This is a big mistake. When purchasing your new digital camera, make sure you can hold the camera up to your eye and see the image clearly through the viewfinder. A good sharp and easy to use viewfinder is the first step in selecting a camera and making great photographs.

Jim Mathis School of Photography

2009-10-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have believed for some time that as we get older we need to be passing along the things we have learned over the years.

I got my first camera in the fourth grade and have been making picture almost every day since. I believe that is 18,980 days and it is certainly millions of photographs. I have sold cameras, owned a custom photo lab, taught photo classes, and of course been a professional photographer. I have photographed people in every situation imaginable and all kinds of machines and scenery in about a dozen countries.

It is now time to start doing what I can to teach others. With that in mind I am launching “The Jim Mathis School of Photography.”

Most photo classes are introductory level or teach out-dated technology. The first phase of my school will focus on taking people from where they are in their photography skills and help then move to where they want to be. The format will be one-on-one coaching, one day it a time. I think I can help most people dramatically improve their skills on one day.

If you would like to be a better photographer, no matter what your skill level is now, plan to spend a day with me. For an introductory price of $250 per day, I will figure out where you are and help you move to the next level.

I am also beginning to work on instruction videos and will offer workshops on various photo subjects in the future.

Go to: www.JimMathisSchoolofPhotography.com

The National Parks

2009-10-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed watching the PBS Ken Burns special on the National Parks last week. Not surprising, there have been a number of photographers directly associated with the parks in various ways. William Henry Jackson’s photos were instrumental in the forming of the first National Park at Yellowstone. The Kolb Brothers had a studio at the Grand Canyon and helped promote it for many years. And of course Ansel Adams will always be associated with Yosemite.

In many ways the National Parks grew up with photography and the rise in attendance at the parks paralleled the growth in amateur photography. We have not been to all of the National Parks, but we have been to a few, and making photos at The Grand Canyon or Yellowstone are some of my fondest memories.

For many years our business was such that we took our annual vacation in the winter. For that reason we are among the privileged few who have been to Yellowstone, not once, but twice, in the winter when the park is covered with snow and the hordes of tourists have left for Florida.

We have a 30x40 print of a frozen Yellowstone Lake at sunrise which often hangs over our fireplace. My wife has a similar size 30x40 print of the Grand Canyon in winter over her desk.

Winter is coming. This can be a glorious time for photography. I probably won’t be going to one of the National Parks this winter, but I will definitely be getting out photos and albums and enjoying some hot chocolate while thinking about the great times skiing, hiking, and snowmobiling in sub-zero weather in the most beautiful of God’s creations.

The above photo is the Grand Tetons in January.

Art Westport

2009-09-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

We had a good time at Art Westport last weekend. This was our first experience at this show, but hopefully not our last. Though the sales of framed photographs was not what we had hoped, we practically sold out of panoramic notecards. More importantly, we saw many old friends and made new acquaintances.

The Westport art fair draws an eclectic mix of people which makes for wonderful people watching and good conversations. My panoramic photo of a London street scene attracted the attention of an older gentleman who said he had driven double-decker buses in London as well as cross-country buses through Europe. He told me about the old Routemasters with their crash-box transmissions and manual steering. The new buses have automatic transmissions and power steering even though they are still double-deckers.

In the words of Yogi, “You can hear a lot just be listening.”

We saw lots of dogs walking their owners, but no cats. I guess cats aren’t all that into art.
I took a break from the art fair to play with my band, Sky Blue, Saturday night. We played to a packed house at Homer’s. Overall, a great weekend.

Next weekend we will be at the Zona Rosa Art Festival near KCI and the week after that at the Overland Park Fall Festival. I expect to be better stocked with notecards this time.

Digital Resolution

2009-07-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of confusion concerning resolution in digital photography. In the days of film, we just tried to get as much resolution as possible, figuring the more the better. With digital imaging, the subject is a lot less subjective and a whole lot more specific.

Cameras are sold based on the number of individual pixels, or picture elements, they can achieve. 35mm film, under ideal conditions, could possibly show the equivalent of about 10 million pixels. In reality, a five-meg, or 5 million pixel camera, is about equal to 35mm film in resolution.

But the number of pixels is far from the whole story in digital photography. With virtually every camera outside of camera phones, producing images with more than five megapixels, other qualities become more important. The quality of the lens, the type, size, and quality of the sensor, and of course the skill of the photographer are all more important than the number of pixels.

In practical use, the final use of the image determines the resolution necessary. The number of pixels in an image is determined by the media and the size of the image. The most common resolution of an image to be printed on paper is 300 dpi (dots per inch.) If the final result is an 8x10 print the resolution of the image would be 300dpi x 8 inches by 300dpi x 10 inches, or 2400 X 3,000 pixels. 2400 times 3,000 equals 7.2 meg. If the camera produces less than 7.2 megapixels, additional resolution must be interpolated by the computer. This is relatively easy and gives good results. A camera with more than 7.2 megapixels has excess capacity for an 8x10 print. The additional resolution is not only unnecessary, but can degrade the image and only increases the file size.

If the image is going to be viewed on a computer screen, the resolution is about 72 dpi. Web designers usually think of the image size in terms of pixels. If the resolution of a computer monitor is 600x800 pixels, a 400-pixel wide image will cover half the screen. An image in the corner of a web site might be 100 pixels wide. If I post a nice size 200 x 300 pixel image on my web site it has 60,000 pixels, it is a 60K image. If I shot the photo with a 10-meg camera, I must throw away more than 99% of the information.

I often get requests for “high-resolution” photos. I later find out that they are going to be used on a business card, brochure, or even a web site. The size of the final image is the determining factor in the needed resolution.

A good analogy might be to compare camera pixels to horsepower of a car. A 500 horsepower car might be cool, but if all of your driving is in traffic under 40mph, you have a lot of excess capacity and are probably wasting gas. The arguments in favor of a 500HP car are about as ambiguous as they are for a 20-Meg camera, based more on bragging rights than actual necessity.

The confusion over resolution may result from confusing sharpness with resolution. Sharpness is a relative term and has to do with what a picture “looks” like. The factors affecting sharpness are camera movement (the biggie), focus, exposure, and the subject. Maximum sharpness is not always necessary and is often undesirable as in the case of portraits. Professional photographers learn how to use relative sharpness to best advantage.

The format of the file has no affect on resolution. JPEG, TIFF, PSD, RAW, etc are all ways of storing data and have no affect on the resolution. The only affect they have on quality is in the way they are used.

I have seen publications request specific file formats under the guise of better quality. I presume that they had received low quality images in the format of JPEG, or whatever, and concluded that the format was the problem. Poor images can be any format. I will address these formats in a later post.

"Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away"

2009-06-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

This week the Eastman Kodak Company announced the end of Kodachrome. Kodachrome film was introduced in 1936 as the first successful color film. In 1986, my wife and I attended a celebration in Rochester, NY marking the 50th anniversary of the introduction. 1936-2009, 73 years is a good run for any product.

I shot my first roll of Kodachrome in about 1960 and carried on a love/hate relationship with it for the next 35 years. Its color was garish, the exposure was ultra-critical, and the processing extremely specialized, but it was still the best color film we had for many years.

I have slide cabinets full of gorgeous Kodachrome slides made primarily in the 70’s and 80’s. But I have also thrown away thousands of slides that were over or (mainly) under-exposed. Getting the exposure right was a real pain, and you never knew how you did until, a few days later, when the little yellow boxes came back from the Kodak labs in New York, Chicago, or Dallas.

Bracketing, which is a technique of shooting various exposures of the same subject to make sure that you have one at the correct exposure, became routine among pros using Kodachrome.

This week I sold two slide projectors and 25 slide trays on Craig’s List. I kept back one projector and two trays just in case I ever needed them. But, basically it is the end of an era. Digital imaging is clearly superior as far as I am concerned. (The only down sides are questions of archiving and the fact that the quality of the image of digital projectors are not yet as good as projecting a Kodachrome slide with a professional slide projector.)

Kodachrome is now part of our heritage. In the future us old-time photographers will set around old-folks homes and talk about our struggles and victories with Kodachrome and its much maligned brother, Ektachrome. I am looking forward to it. I have the slides to back up my war stories.

The Art of the Car

2009-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Art Institute’s Art of the Cars Concours was this weekend. About 180 gorgeous cars were on display on the lawn of the art school. As a photographer and car lover, I had a great time walking around, chatting with car owners and enthusiasts and making photos.

The interesting thing about photograph as a hobby is that it is nearly always tired to another hobby. People photograph their pets, their coin collection, birds, cars, or just about everything else that interests them. I would be impossible to be a photographer and not be interested in other things because you wouldn’t have anything to photograph.

The bulk of my professional work is photographing people because I love people. But as a hobbyist, I like all kinds of thing – and cars are certainly high on that list.

To see my photos from the Art of the Car, 2009, CLICK HERE.

10,000 Hours

2009-03-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

For a long time I have been interested in the idea of talent verses work. I believe that talent is over-rated and hard work is under-rated. Some research at Florida State University has born this out. FSU researches have determined that it takes about 10,000 hours to learn a difficult skill. In other words, to become a top golfer, surgeon, musician, or photographer, it takes about 10,000 hours of diligent work and practice.

If you practice every night during the week and all day on Saturday’s, you would reach 10,000 hours in about 20 years. If you are in medical school, 10,000 hours is about 5 years. So this number seems about right. And practice is not just piddling around. It must be diligent and disciplined work with a purpose.

A few people like Tiger Woods or Mozart were able to get in their 10,000 hours before they were 21 years-old so people called them prodigies. For others of us, it has taken many years to develop the skills that we need to be considered “talented.”

The top musicians I know can pretty much point to this number of 10,000 hours, along with the quality of the time spent, as the secret. Twenty hours per week for 10 years equals 10,000 hours for example.

In photography, great pictures are not a result of having an expensive camera, no more than a good golf score comes from expensive clubs. But rather, outstanding photos come from years of hard work and practice.

I got my first camera in 1958 and got my first job in photography in 1971. I have spent practically every day since then trying to make better photographs. That’s a lot of hours.

PMA Wrap-up

2009-03-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 5 started with a breakfast featuring Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist. http://www.craigslist.org/ I was surprised that he still worked in customer service of his own company. He hired somebody else to be CEO. That shows where his heart is. He started Craigslist in 1995 just to help people. They figured out later how to pay the bills. Craig's personal blog is: http://www.cnewmark.com/

I then went to a class put on by Franziska Frey who is professor at the Rochester Institue of Technology about archiving photos and long-term storage of digital images. She said that the magic number is five years. Make new CD's every five years and replace your hard drive every five years. After that you are at a greatly increased risk of loosing information. There is a lot of information about this kind of thing that is not commonly known. I will be adding links to Library of Congress sites from http://www.mathisphoto.net/ later.

I finished up the trade show in the afternoon, had an iced mocha at a local coffeehouse (not a chain) and took a cab to the airport. It was a good week. I now have lots of ideas and information to process and file in my brain.

PMA Part II

2009-03-04T23:17:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, March 4

I started off today with a couple of workshops about bookbinding and printing. The best one was by some folks from the Hardcover Binders Association, a trade group. http://www.hardcoverbinders.org/

After that, I finally made it to the main floor of the trade show. Canon has now declared itself the world leader in digital imaging, and I didn’t hear anybody disputing that. As such, they claimed the most prominent and biggest space on the floor. They have a huge array of products from cameras to printers and in all prices from inexpensive to out of sight.

A number of the large manufactures such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Pentax were putting on demonstrations and shows featuring famous photographers and personalities. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and am looking forward to more tomorrow.

There were a few amazing products that would have been unbelievable just a few years ago. For example, Sony was showing a new camera that will produce true 220 degree panoramics in camera just by turning the camera during a 10 sec exposure. The camera seamlessly stitches together a series of images. The camera is under $500 and ships next month. Casio was showing a pocketable point and shoot camera that will shoot 30 frames per second. This can be easily converted to HD video.

Speaking of video, Canon, Sony, and JVC among others, were all showing super-small, gorgeous Hi-Def camcorders that use flash memory and are about the size of your fist. These manufactures were also showing portable DVD recorders that could be used to write directly from the video cameras.

I’ve enjoyed meeting photographers, dealers, and manufactures from all over the world.

After resting at my hotel, I had dinner at Bahama Breeze http://www.bahamabreeze.com/ and walked back to the convention center for the Beach Boys concert. The concert was wonderful. It certainly helped that the room had good acoustics. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston were the only two original members. At any rate, they sounded great and everybody left with big smiles.

I decided to take the bus back to my hotel. It is a twenty minute walk but the bus took 45 minutes. Deciding whether to sit for 45 minutes or walk for 20 is not an obvious decision.

PMA Report

2009-03-03T22:04:00.000-08:00

PMA 2009

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The first session of the day featured Stephen Burns, http://www.chromeallusion.com/ He talked about graphics software other than Photoshop. Virtually everyone in the group were Photoshop users, so he talked about what some other things could do differently. He specifically talked about Nik Software.

At 9:00 was the business meeting where five people were given special recognition for their contributions to the industry. The CEO of Nikon was elected to the PMA Hall of Fame. Geoffrey Moore then talked about disruptive innovation.

I went from there to the trade show. The whole photo industry has changed dramatically since the last time I attended PMA about 15 years ago. No one was showing photofinishing equipment, no new film or film cameras were introduced, but there are all kinds of new things never dreamed of before the past few years.

There are a large number of companies showing equipment for printing and binding photo books at all different prices and qualities.

Some companies such as Minolta, Konica, and Mamiya have disappeared altogether. Others have risen to the occasion. Sony and Panasonic didn’t even attend PMA a few years ago, now they are some of the stars.

In the evening I attended an event featuring Jodi Cobb. Jodi is a long-time National Geographic photographer and multi-award winner. She was the first woman to be named White House Photographer of the Year. To photographers, National Geographic staffers are like rock stars. She was wonderful and she and her photos got a standing ovation.

Monday, March 2

After a good nights sleep, I awoke to watch the news of the snow storm that had blanketed the East Coast. Here it was in the mid-60’s with a clear blue “Sky Blue” sky. I walked along palm tree lined Howard Hughes Ave to the convention center. I had a nice breakfast at the convention center and went to the first seminar on dance school photography. It was very interesting.

The second seminar was titled “Being Photographic: Digital Books & New Forms of Photographic Expression.” The speaker was Frank Cost, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. This was an outstanding talk. He pointed out that publishing is all about finding an audience for an idea. With today’s technology the audience no longer has to be large, it can be as small as one person.

The medium is the message, and a book is considered by just about everybody to be a high quality medium – thus the message is elevated just by being in book form.

The luncheon speaker was an author and consultant named Michael Silverstein. He talked about “Trading Up” what motivates consumers.

A message that came through from several sources was that for the past 120 years we have been in a routine. People bought a roll of film, they went home and shot 12, 24, or 36 pictures, then took the film back to the store. A short while later they picked-up their pictures, looked at them a few times and stuck them in a drawer. Now that routine has been disrupted and people don’t know what to do.

Most people keep trying to do the same old thing, such as printing 4x6 prints from their digital files, just with new technologies. Creative people look for new ways to use not only the new tools, but the old ones as well.

As an example, in the afternoon I went to a class put on by a couple of fine artists who have been using digital imaging for about 20 years. They are constantly exploring new ways of using ink-jet printers, making one of a kind and extremely limited edition art books, as well as very large prints on a variety of materials. They were Dorothy Simpson Krause http://www.dotkrause.com/ and Bonny Pierce Lhotka http://www.lhotka.com/ There studio is http://www.digitalatelier.com/

They had some amazing samples and pictures of commercial art and displays they had done. Bonny Lhotka was particularly into 3D imaging using lenticular lenses.

The next seminar was on optimizing web sites for search engine results. They covered both natural search results (SEO) and paid search results, and how they can work together. Some of these things I knew, but the class filled in some gaps in my knowledge.

The last seminar of the day was about selecting a photo book printer. One presenter was a photo book specialist with Xerox, Brian Segnit and the other was with Fuji, Thomas Curley.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Arrived at Las Vegas airport at about noon and walked to Tuscany Suites Hotel. Since I didn’t know where I was going, I was carrying one bag and pulling another, and it was pretty warm, it was a long walk. It may have been about two miles.

After lunch at the hotel, getting settled in my room and resting a little, I walked to the convention center. This was about a 25 minute walk, probably about a mile and a half since I walk about 4 miles and hour.

The first workshop was called The Seven Rings of Photo Books. It was not particularly interesting, but a bit of an introduction to photo books. What I learned is that most people haven’t heard of specialty photo books and if they have, they are sort of beyond their understanding.

I then went to the Opening Event with a wonderful keynote speaker – Jeremy Gutsche, http://www.jeremygutsche.com/

He said win like you are used to it and lose like you enjoy it. If you aren’t failing at a good percentage of stuff, you aren’t innovating.

Here is Jeremy Gutsche's address at PMA on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHbm8me7tU&eurl=http://www.jeremygutsche.com/

Innovation always starts with the customer. Find out what they want.

He cited Smith Corona as the world’s best typewriter company, but they saw no need for computers. They ultimately failed.

Culture beats strategy any day.

I walked back to the hotel stopping at Gordon Biersch Restaurant-brewery for a crab cake sandwich and a locally brewed brew. http://www.gordonbierschrestaurants.com/

Addios 4x6 prints

2009-01-27T07:59:00.001-08:00

I spent 23 years in the photofinishing business. Since our clientele was primarily professionals, we called the 3x5 or 4x6 prints “proofs.” That was really just a subtle hint that we didn’t consider a little piece of paper a suitable end to the art of photography.

We knew that 95% of all photographs would end up as 4x6 prints in a drawer. This was never a particularly satisfying thought. Figuring out what to do with all those little prints has been an ongoing challenge ever since George Eastman began cranking them out in 1893. By that time photography had been around for nearly 60 years, but Eastman’s Kodak Company opened photography up to everybody, and opened the floodgates on all these little pieces of paper.

Now in the age of digital photography we have a lot more choices. We are no longer bound to the tradition of the little paper print. We can share photos on web sites, email them to anybody who might be interested, display them as wall size works of art, or wrap them around our cars. As a lover of books, I have been challenging myself with book projects that were not feasible even a couple of years ago. Anybody with a good eye and a little cash can publish a coffee table photography book. I see specialized books of photography as a coming market for commercial photography.

Photos on your web site

2009-01-12T09:31:00.000-08:00

In this era of electronic communication, it is easy to forget that it is still about relationships. We want to feel connected to others. The amazing success of sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook attest to this fact. When we deal with another company via the internet we still strive for some sort of personal connection.

I recently chose a vender for a project that could be handled by a specialty company thousands of miles away. A Google search revealed several choices, but I ultimately choice the company which posted photos and a short biography of each of their staff. The bios included e-mail addresses and a direct phone number so I knew I could contact anybody in the company. I also knew their job title and their background experience. When someone from the company called me with a question, I called up their photo page and felt like I could make a personal connection. I did not even consider any company that did not provide a phone number or a street address on the first page of their web site.

We are in a very visually oriented culture. Pictures are essential to an effective web site. Photographs should be high quality and attention getting. Additionally, many people are sophisticated enough to recognize stock photos, so actual photos of your business and your people are important – even if you don’t look like the models in the stock images.

I quick survey of web sites shows that very few are using photos effectively. I believe the front page of your web site should feature a high quality photo of your product, facility, people, or maybe the president or key spokesperson. Somebody unfamiliar with your business should be able to glance at the opening page of your site and immediately know what you do without reading a lengthy description.

If you have a “photo” page on your web site, you will find that that is the page most viewers click on first. They want to see what your product looks like, what your office looks like, and if you are the product, they want to see what you look like. A model holding a “black box” is passé.
It has been said that “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But the right picture, in the right place, and the right size could be worth thousands, if not, tens of thousands of dollars to your business.

Beautiful photos grab eyeballs and bring people back, but too many or too large of files will cause the site to load slowly. If it takes more for than a few seconds for your site to load, people will just exit out and move on. For that reason photographs should be optimized for fast loading and tested with various interconnect speeds.

Make it a habit of walking into your business every morning like you are just walking in the door for the first time. You will see all kinds of things you never saw before that every customer immediately sees. Then click on your web page, or better yet, do a search for your company and see it with new eyes like a potential customer would. Is it visually appealing, can you figure out what your company does, can you find out somebody’s name or what they look like? You might be amazed.

Architecture Photography

2008-08-29T13:24:00.000-07:00

Back in the Golden Age of rock & roll, when gas was cheap and phones were hard-wired, I roomed with a couple of architectural students. We were all photographers too, so naturally our late night bull-sessions centered around architecture and photography. Of course I became interested in architecture as well, as we made road trips to photography historical and significant buildings. I even took some History of Architecture classes and collected books on architecture. I have since seen and photographed even more famous buildings in Europe and the U.S. of A.

My friends went on to have successful careers as architects and designers while I stayed with photography.

Now days, when I am not photographing business people and performers, I am usually out photographing buildings.

The difference between photographing people and buildings is that with people portraiture, you move the people and the lights until you get the picture you want. In building portraiture, neither the buildings nor the sun are easily moveable, so we have to go when the sun and the building are where we want them to be. This is usually the first few hours after sunrise or the last few hours before sunset, depending upon the orientation of the building and the time of year.

The other rule of architectural photography is no converging vertical lines. The edges of the building and all vertical features should be parallel to each other and to the edge of the photo.

Do you need architectural photography? Give me a call. If you want to photograph some buildings yourself, I hope these tips are useful.