Sunday, March 30, 2014

April WP66 Print Offer

Houston, MO

Time for another WP66 print offer.  It was nice to get some prints from the drive-in project out into the world in February, so this time I want to do something similar with a completely different set of pictures.

Wilson, KS

On the six-week western leg of the 2012 Giant Road trip for my drive-in theater project, I thought it was important not to simply push through from one theater to the next. I wanted to really look at—which for me means photograph—the places I was driving through, many of them areas I'd never been before.


Chickasha, OK

Looking for all sorts of subject matter other than the theaters, everywhere I went, was also meant to help me keep seeing each new theater with fresh eyes, to find whatever might be special about the structures and settings. I think this helped.

O'Brien, TX

Later in 2012 when I spent a week at The Firehouse Cultural Center in Ruskin, FL, as visiting artist, we did an exhibit with a group of about thirty prints—a tight edit from this set of "Off Topic" pictures. The whole group can be viewed at this web gallery on my site, at this LINK. All the pictures in the web gallery are part of the April print offer.

Wilbur Springs, CA

The set includes the sort of subjects I typically show here on Working Pictures, but this time drawn from a trip that took me across the center of the country, through the Southwest, up the whole length of the West Coast from San Diego to Port Townsend, through Utah and back across the Colorado Rockies.

The offer is the same as last time: a 9-inch wide print on letter size Epson 'Signature' luster paper, but this time they are drawn from this set of color pictures. Each print is $66. You can order by sending an email, to carl[at]carlweese.com,* identifying the picture with the file number you'll find under each selected image when viewing the web gallery, linked above. Indicate whether you will use PayPal or send a check, and include your postal address for shipping. I hope the pictures of these places will prove interesting, and of course you might simply like to see what I think a good digital color print should look like.

Tutuilla, OR

The top item in the blog's sidebar at right will hold a link to this post through the month of April.


*replace [at] with the @ symbol—posting an email in clear brings on the spam bots

Hydrants, Identified as Such

Kingston, New York

Kingston, New York

Friday, March 28, 2014

33 Street Station

New York, New York

Four seconds apart. Electronic billboards and signs are taking over at all sizes, with multiple changing messages. Perhaps perfectly suited to shrinking attention spans.

New York, New York

Thursday, March 27, 2014

OPEN CENTER

New York, New York

Pink

New York, New York

New York, New York

The "building portrait" series continues over at WPII, link in the sidebar at right.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Blue Man

New York, New York

You get a much better view if you click on the picture and bring up the 1,000 pixel upload file.

FIGHT (twice)

New York, New York

New York, New York

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Lived in.

New York, New York

Click on any picture here on the blog's front page and you'll be taken to a significantly larger and more legible version. Not surprisingly, in light of what we've seen in the last post, the larger presentation is also more faithful to the tone/color of the original uploaded file. 

I did a bit of a double-take on just how much larger—and better—the second-level presentation was and realized it's different than it used to be. I probably haven't clicked on a front page shot to see the larger version in quite a while. Why would I? So I pulled the second-level file down to my desktop and tossed into Photoshop. Hello! It IS the original uploaded file, filename is intact, full 1,000 pixel long dimension intact. Just to be clear, this is still an enormous downsize from the original capture. However, it is the actual file that comes out of a Photoshop batch action that I've written to take my adjusted RAW capture files out to a 1,000-pixel wide sRGB JPEG. About as close as I can make a web presentation to what a real print would look like.

Success! Idiot "Help" Turned Off

New York, New York

Many thanks to commenters who told me that Google+ was automatically helping my pictures "look more like professionals make."

Having spent the past two weekends teaching platinum printing workshops, I'm reminded of something I always stress when teaching.

Of all the countless bad photographic prints in the world, and all the countless billions of bad uploaded web presentations of photographs, almost all of them are the result of the photographer trying too hard, not from being lazy. And now we have robots to try too hard for us.

Here are two recent pictures that I couldn't get to publish correctly, before knowing where the off-switches were, because the robots of Google+ didn't think they looked professional enough.

Manchester, Connecticut

"text stop"—I-684, south of Brewster, New York

"Rest areas," or as we used to say in New Jersey, "pit stops," are now in New York state labeled "text stops," in order to encourage people not to text while driving.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Blogger Upload Errors, Ideas?


This is a file posted here recently. 


This is what Blogger makes of another file shot and prepared in exactly the same way. Everything the same in production of the JPEG. Same PS batch action to create the blog post file. Crazy brown, and dark.


So, to see if it's something at my end, I did a full restart of my imaging computer. Launched PS, and manually took the file through the steps to prepare it for posting to the blog, not using my batch action. The result is the same (please don't tell me it looks pretty good, nothing wrong with a warm print—the point is that it's wildly off from what I uploaded).

About a week ago I was unable to make a post that used a color photo because it uploaded in a ruined state. Like this. In that case too, files from the same shoot processed through the same batch action—no changes at my end—worked fine, with just one file failing to process correctly through whatever Blogger does to make the post.

Anyone else encounter this? Ideas what's happening under the Blogger hood?

Recommendations for another place to publish my blog?

I don't have time for this.


Workshop Snaps

From this weekend's Digital Platinum workshop at The Center for Alternative Photography.



Looking In

New York, New York

Saturday, March 22, 2014

I CAN HELP

New York, New York

SILENCE IS CONSENT

New York, New York

In the city at eight in the evening, where there isn't any artificial light, it's really dark, ISO 3200 style dark with an f/1.7 lens wide open. Yet it isn't all that dark perceptually, no worry about stumbling over unseen objects as there is at night in the countryside.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Pipes

Manchester, Connecticut

I've always gravitated to morning light, but I had really good luck last Saturday in the evening light around Manchester after the first day of my workshop at PhotoSynthesis. This Saturday I'll be in New York teaching our first Digital Platinum group workshop at The Center for Alternative Photography. If I'm not totally blown out after the day's teaching, maybe I'll have some good evening light in the Big Apple.

There's a note written in felt pen on the brick above the pipe on the left, that says, "Put cap on tight." The right hand pipe has a label with printing on it, but I can't make it out at 100% view—the letters are smaller than the pixels. When I'm shooting like this, I'm so oriented on seeing pictures that I don't think in terms of individual details, or remember that those details could be interesting in providing a non-visual context for the picture. In other words, it didn't occur to me to go read the label.

AC

Shelton, Connecticut

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Snowmen

Manchester, Connecticut

More from last evening. This winter has dragged on so long, the window display in mid-March doesn't seem that out of place.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

PRAYER TOWER

Manchester, Connecticut

On Main Street this evening after the workshop session. The light's still wintry even though the temperature was up in the forties.

United Way

Waterbury, Connecticut