The Personal Journal of James Vornov
For reasons I only partly understand, I bought the latest version of Tinderbox from Eastgate. It’s been over 4 years since I last worked on the Decision Tools blog. I found the relevant files and templates to update the home page at least.
The iPad is serving as catalyst here. Somehow the eBook format of the iPad suggests to me that is worth weaving together all of the threads contained in my philosophical investigations.
Photography has not been front and center over the past 6 months. It was a cold, snowy and wet fall and winter. When traveling, I’ve been seeing cities, not photographing them.
In casting around for a new project, I think that using the Leica with Velvia in urban and suburban settings would provide some interesting perceptual lessons, bringing its psychedelic color rendering to scenes where color is really more subdued.
Its an easy but expensive workflow depending on whether I pay the local lab to scan or not. But its so clearly non-digital to my eyes; its photographic in an old school sense.
The cameras have been sitting idly for months it seems. During the summer I was without my laptop so that images remained unprocessed. With unprocessed images, what’s the point of capturing more?
I literally forgot how easy and pleasurable it is to bring along the Sigma DP1 as a travel camera and collect a visual diary during a trip. The images are frequently gorgeous and its slowness matters little if the approach is casual.
Its all down to intuition for casual shooting. It’s a matter of trusting that if something looks interesting, it’s worth framing a shot, owning the frame and capturing an image. In post processing, it’s simple enough to use Aperture for review with editing using Tonal Contrast and some regional intensity highlighting with a combination of a filter plus control points.
I’m just back from a business trip to the UK and Netherlands. In London, I shot two rolls of Tri-X with the Leica. In Amsterdam, I used the Sigma DP1. The Tri-X is off being developed and scanned. I’ve downloaded the Sigma images.
I had intended at first just to bring the Leica, but the Sigma is so small and light that it begged to go too. I’ve done some of my best city travel photography with the Sigma, so a head to head with the Leica was of interest.
Either one is a nice substitute for the too big to bring Nikon D300 and zoom. My style of shooting with either the Leica or Sigma is about the same. It is much easier to capture a moment with the Leica given it’s rangefinder-based manual focus. The Sigma is too unpredictable in time to focus for capturing an image with split second accuracy.
Of course the SIgma has all of the considerable advantages of digital including lack of processing time and cost as well as instant review. On balance, as I was shooting I felt like digital won out. However, I await the Leica images.
This looks like a really nice image, but it’s actually technically pretty poor. When I looked at it on my 21 inch monitor during sorting, I passed over it because the detail in the more distant walls are blurred by camera shake. It’s at 1/20 sec which I can usually handhold, but only if I brace the camera well, control my movement and breathing and squeeze the release. Sometimes I actually close my eyes at the moment of capture because it helps me focus on not moving.
But I was dodging occasional cars as I timed the capture. You can see the next car approaching around the bend. The headlight works well, but capture was not optimal.
I realize that when you get home and review, the images have imperfections that can’t be fixed until next time. So it’s the best we have.
As I process images from Umbria I realize that I’ve found a simple, effective equipment combination in the Nikon D300 and Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. The images are sharp and have sufficient dynamic range for processing. The combination of aperture and usable ISO gives me the ability to shoot well past sunset. I have simple off-camera IR control of flash.
It’s a DX setup, but I have no need for a full frame sensor since I have wide and sharp DX lenses.
What would cause me to upgrade? The D300 is well built but heavy. I’d love a body the size and weight of the D80 but with the image quality of the D300. In fact, smaller and lighter would be better as long as it was balanced with the Tamron. The Tamron is optically perfect for me, but it’s not of the same build quality as the Nikon equivalent. But I’ll take the Tamron based on its size and weight.
I continue to work through the large number of images I captured in Italy last month. After a break, I’m rating and scanning again. It’s interesting how much I like the quick takes on images that I did while there because I had fresh ideas of what I wanted to say about what I had just seen. Now it’s more of a dialogue with the image and construction of experience.
This was processed in Aperture with some NIK plugins.
Here’s one of the few images I captured using my widest lens in Italy. It’s impressive and a lesson to me about creating large scale abstracted images.
The Nikon 12-24mm f/4 is very sharp, here stopped down to f/9 under cloud cover. Even at the edges, the image at full resolution is impressively detailed.
I decided to go to Italy pretty light this time. I put the Nikon D300 with the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 zoom in my small, unpadded LowePro Terraclime along with the Nikon 12-24mm f/4 and a flash, my SB800. These are the two lenses that I use most frequently by far. This kit is lacking on the long end, but my only lenses longer than the Tamron are the 105mm micro and an older 70-300mm Nikon zoom which never gets used.
As was typical, the Tamron stayed on the camera most of the time. I switched to the wider 12-24 a few times, but if I went out for a walk, it was just the Tamron that went along. I would have been fine on the trip with the one lens alone. It’s fast (f/2.8), sharp (far superior to the Nikon 24-70mm VR), and compact compared to the Nikon equivalent. The build quality is not the same. The lens ring that holds the shade is a bit loose and rattles now, but it doesn’t affect any optics.When I looked at this image, I thought that it was with the 12-24mm since I put it on to get the wide view of this famous church in Assisi. It’s actually the Tamron at 17mm. I’m now interested in filtering the Aperture library to see whether the 12-24mm actually contributed at all. If not, the 12-24mm stays home next time.
There were times when the 50mm reach of the Tamron wasn’t enough. I would have liked to have a VR long lens to get me to 150mm or so. Certainly something to consider for the next trip and future lens buys. The ability to push ISO up to 1600 without severe comprise in image quality with the D300 is great. In combination with an f/2.8 lens it allows light light shooting and preservation of a handholding shutter speed. I wouldn’t consider bringing a tripod an a trip like this.
The flash never was used. It’s mostly because I was walking and shooting, walking and shooting. If I had a few days just to photograph and not sightsee, I might have used it. I’ll continue to bring it along on these kinds of trips.
My wife had the Nikon P5000 compact. It was her sketch camera and I used it a few times when I didn’t have the SLR and she had the compact in her purse. So it would be inaccurate to say I didn’t bring a compact backup. It captured a few nice images as did the iPhone camera, my ultimate backup for really casual shooting (restaurant dishes, etc). Some compact backup is always necessary. Nice to have someone to carry it and share the trip.
I looked at this image from Umbria this morning and wondered why I was working on it. I’ve been photographing the suburban environment I live in with a developing visual vocabulary. In Umbria, the suburban environment is very different and the resulting images reflect it.
It’s process. Spend time in a new environment and gain new visual impressions. For me it’s the essence of travel- getting out of one’s usual routines and ways of seeing. Then on returning, the daily reality doesn’t look the same.
Umbria is truly a beautiful place with extraordinary visual sights nearly everywhere. I’m not a travel photographer or a chronicler of Italian landscape. But I’m happy to share what I saw and hope that it helps to inform my more usual work.
