Outside Lighting In

Nikon D800E Test on Architecture... shows no-moire but BIG CA

Today was my second day out with the D800E on a safari looking for more moiré = wide-angle lenses + buildings with lines. After my first attempt at bagging a moiré came back with only a minor specimen that I mounted on the wall of my Flickr photostream. Today I executed at least seven U-turns in hot pursuit, but as you can see from the 23 captures, no moirés were found in today's safari. (All fullsize Jpegs on Flickr)

There isn't a moiré in the bunch on the 23 full-size photos.

The new issue for me and anyone stepping up from around 12MP is that you now MUST use all your lens calibrations and CA removal tools to make the 36MP image clean at 100%. Note: Nikon Capture NX2.3.1 software is extra; an upcharge on this $3300 camera allegedly prone to moiré. This was best described on a forum post when it was said that when you buy a car you don't expect the gas but you do expect a spare tire. (This also proved the hypothesis that most online forum posts will eventually devolve into arcane references and obscure data about why MTF curves suck or why software design is/isn't free or who has the best hash-browns...)

However, in a glow of optimism I asked the interwebs to rescue me from being drafted into the cult of Nikon Capture NX2. I am an architectural photographer, not a software designer, and I don't have time to try every RAW converter on earth to see if they can contribute to my workflow, or learn a new software if I'm happy with Lightroom 4. Neither do you, I suspect.

At issue are the NEF files out of the Nikon D800E. They are proprietary to Nikon, and if you use Nikon Capture NX2.3.1 to tweek those NEF photos the tweeks are only visible in Nikon Capture NX2.3.1 unless you save the image out as a tiff or a Jpeg. That blows. I want to use/tweek the raw files in Lightroom 4 and I want to continually tweek the raw files in Lightroom 4 and add and subtract where I left off. Not do the corrections outside LR4 in CNX2 and import back to LR4. If that sounds confusing it is, that's my bitch. 

Old workflow: Expose image as NEF (RAW) on D300 > Upload to LR3 & convert to DNG in one step > Correct and enhance DNG in LR3 > Lather, rinse, repeat the edits, go backwards, print,etc...

New Workflow: Expose image as NEF (RAW) on D800E > Upload as NEF into LR4 > use custom export preset to export and open as NEF in Capture NX2.3.1 > edit/correct/enhance NEF in clunky CNX2 > Save as new NEF in CNX2 > Import back into LR4 > manage in LR4 (realize CNX2 edits are not visible in LR4) When a print is needed re-export to CNX2 as NEF > double-check edits > save as TIFF in CNX2 > Import CNX2 Tiff into LR4 through Import dialog > Print from LR4...

My deal is I'll give freely of my time and images and take photos that people are curious about with the camera I was lucky enough to get as a Nikon Professional Services member on preorder.  I love the camera as my last post shows. I do not have green-display issues, or white spots on long exposures, or out of focus edges. I love the camera and have seen tremendous image quality in the last three days.

Hopefully the world would crowd-source answers for all of us to use to work around CNX2. The good news is that the D800 NEF files already open in LR4. I learned enough of the CNX2 (60 day trial) software yesterday evening and used all the relevant NIK buttons to try to understand why my photos looked good in CNX2 and like dirt in LR4. CNX2 did a really nice job of making the NEF files look their best. But I still don't want to use it, maybe you do. The way I understand it, non-destructive edits to the NEF file in CNX2 are stored inside the NEF file in a secret hiding place that is only readable by CNX2. If you want to add a gradation and a blur in Lightroom 4 to your perfectly corrected CNX2 NEF file, you can, but in LR4 it will still look like an uncorrected NEF with a LR4 gradation and blur. Did I mention that blows?

I'm now looking for ways to fix the Chromatic Abberations (CA) and convert the NEF entirely in LR4, and any ideas for fixing the moiré if I come across it. The DX cameras at 12MP were really forgiving as far as CA and lens calibrations were concerned, the new D800E will expose any errors or sloppiness in my work, so I'll need to be very meticulous. The medium-format photographers have already danced this waltz since they always had big files and no AA filters. With 36 Megapixels the D800E now makes it imperative we use the best glass and correct for CA and lens distortion in-software before sending any images out to clients. I know this means a new step in the workflow, but I really want the outcome to all be within Lightroom 4.

Thanks for any tips or ideas. I have 58 days left on my trail of Nikon Capture NX2.3.1 so I want to figure out a DAMN workflow before then. (Sorry I meant DAM)

Comment at Flickr where all 23 samples are full size jpegs: 

http://www.flickr.com

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Stephen Schafer  |  Schaf Photo Architectural Photography   |   www.habsphoto.com

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PO Box 24218  |  Ventura, California  93002

E:   schaf((at))west.net

Landline:   805-652-1000

Selected as one of the

Best of ASMP in their 2011 international competition

http://asmp.org/bestof2011

Nikon D800E - 11 Things to Know + a Moiré Hunting Safari

Excuse the technical slant of this post, this is for those that speak the language. My usual blog fare is less tool-based.

A new Nikon D800E digital camera showed up at Samy's yesterday with my name on it, NPS pre-ordered, and so I dropped everything to go pick it up, since it felt like Christmas a month earlier than expected. Driving while salivating...

I know it's just a tool, it's just a tool, it's just a tool...

As an architectural photographer I had squeezed more than the expected life from my Nikon D300… it was well past it's planned move from primary to backup-camera status, it was getting long in the tooth (long in the pixel?). I hadn't jumped ship for the Canons, I hadn't up-bought to a 16, 18 or 24 MP Nikon. I HAD contemplated FX, medium format, or the removal of the Anti-aliasing filter in my camera to get the sharpness I wanted in my architectural photos (most architects like sharp edges as well). But I just sat tight, whined, and used my 5x7 large format camera when sharpness was paramount; the waiting/whining paid off.

Note: these 11 things come from a very specific viewpoint: mine. Everything I photograph is from a tripod. I use autofocus once to focus the subject, then turn it off (AF speed is unimportant). I use very wide angle lenses 90% of the time. Camera weight or size is not an issue. Sharpness is paramount, skin tones are irrelevant. The vast majority of my photos are taken at 160 ISO (sensor speed is irrelevant). 30 second exposures are not uncommon. Buildings don't move (California earthquakes excepted). Tethered capture to a Mac Air is common. RAW always. Video never. I want to do as little retouching as possible. I don't wear glasses. I never shoot HDR. I will manually layer many files in Photoshop if needed (see other posts). That influences what I think. That's just my opinion, I may be wrong.

 

D800E no moiré, impossible to see on screen without going to Flickr and downloading Full Size

11 things I couldn't find out about the Nikon D800E until it showed up yesterday...

Skip to the bottom for a link to my Flickr account with full-size (7360 Pixel wide) samples from my moiré safari.

#1. The tripod hole has been moved to the top. (Just kidding.)

1. First impression in the hand. The FX format makes the D800E body a little more stout in the hand (obviously) but it still retains the same feel as my D300, D200, F100 and feels intuitive right out of the box which is the primary reason I didn't escape to Canon and their spectacular 17mmTS - I hate the Canon "feel" (I hate the wheel). I thought the bigger FX viewfinder would be a BIG difference but the D300 was well magnified so while it's better, it's not notably better. Same with the bigger display, it's better, not notably (the D300 was the first amazing display). The D800E has a little viewfinder-eyepiece shutter to block out stray light when you're not looking through the viewfinder, finally, very F3 ish.

2. The shutter/mirror return are snappier-ish and quicker-ish and feel better-dampened even though the FX mirror box is bigger and more mass is moving. Solid, dude.

3. I get 100 FX frame (36MP) captures at lossless compressed NEF/14-bit (no Jpeg) on an 8Gig CF card. I need to buy 16's now. And I need to limit my brackets from +/-3 to 2 frames (one on, and one under for highlights). Or I'll need to buy another raid… and a faster computer… lather, rinse, repeat. ACR has no problem converting the NEF files to DNG's in Lightroom 4. Although I suspect I will need to keep the Nikon NEF files to use the anti-moiré filtering in the Nikon software. So my typical DAM, DNG conversion may be FUBAR.

4. The D800 has a quiet (Q) mode that lets you execute the first half of the shutter noise but forego the shutter return noise until you take your finger from the shutter, (it sounds like a mirror-up action). This could work for that one critical frame in the church during a wedding ceremony. You could capture and then put your camera under your jacket and release the mirror. Then do it again. (that sounds like why I got out of the wedding business) I will note that most of the noise is in the first half of this action so it doesn't do much, but there must be a more meaningful reason why Nikon added this feature.

5. The F*%#in' grid screen lines still do not meet in the middle, where grid lines must meet to be useful for architectural photography. So I will be sending my new camera to KatzEye Optics to get a new custom grid screen made with lines that meet in the middle. I had to do this with my D200 and D300 and the saddest part is that I will be boxing my new baby up and sending it to Massachusetts later this week for a new screen for two weeks. (Wah.) 

6. The CF/SD card door now pulls out and opens, no more little D300 lever.

7. Surprisingly, downloading didn't take that much longer than my typical D300 image flow. I hesitate to include a "number" for how much time it takes to download images to a computer (lots-o-variables). However, thirty - 14bit, full size FX images downloaded and converted to DNG in Lightroom-4 take about 3 and a half minutes (30 lossless-compressed NEFs to DNGs.) (Firewire-800 Lexar cardreader, 8GB San Disk 60MB/s CF card, medium LR previews) Your results may vary. Didn't try USB 3 (no port on my Mac yet). Each DNG was about 36-39Mb same size as the compressed lossless NEFs. (compared to about 15Mb for my D300 DNG files; same amount of photos, 36/15ths as much space, do the math)

9. Nikon has still not added a © (copyright "c in a circle") symbol to the Image Comment menu (they do have an @ symbol for emails and a % percentage sign for no apparent reason at all). The D800E allows two lines of Image Comment text so I was able to spell out the word "Copyright schafphoto.com" with letters to spare. Plus the custom Metadata menu: "Copyright Information,"  where more text is allowed, two lines for "Artist" and three for "Copyright" so I was able to put in "Stephen Schafer, www.schafphoto.com, all rights reserved, schaf-@-west.net" (w/o the hyphens… I don't need any more spam). If you look at the metadata on my Flickr images, you'll see that the D800E data is added to the additional copyright metadata that gets glued to my files upon upload through Lightroom4; this makes my contact and copyright info show many times on different lines of my metadata code, for what it's worth, it's in there, a lot. 

10. There are two Virtual Horizon features, one on the display, and one inside the viewfinder which is a bit tricky and counter-intuitive at first (at least horizontally). There are tiny little dashed lines at the edges of the ground-glass frame that indicate front back and side to side leveling, I'll get used to it. Suffice it to say that if you use these in-the-viewfinder horizon lines, you'll slow yourself down as if you were using a tripod. I think this is good, since 36MP files are not conducive to "machine gun" photography. The on-display virtual horizon will come in handy when leveling the camera, and when using the camera attached to a HDMI feed of the screen to level the camera when it's out of reach like on a high tripod, boom or clamp. The on-display Virtual Horizon graphic will superimpose itself on the Live-view when you figure out all the right buttons to push in the right order, that required the manual.

11. No more Autofocus C & S on the auto/manual switch just AF and M. I never cared since on a tripod I just want it to auto-focus or not.

(Who's counting) 12. I like that the INFO button is now separate and will override whatever screen or photo is showing in one-touch, handy for setting exposure blindly when on a tall tripod by just looking at the rear info on the big screen.

(While we're at it) 13. For anyone stepping-up from DX to FX format, it's nice to get the wide end of my old Nikon lenses back again. The D800E will let you shoot DX lenses across the full FX sensor, just watch for the vignetted edges. If you know you're going to crop square, you can get a really wide image, but lens cutoff exacerbated by filters and even petal-shaped hoods will start to creep into the sides as blurry black ghosts if you're not keenly aware of your edges (this is where the D800E 100% viewfinder comes in handy). 

* I don't do video so no comment. Even with this feature-rich camera I have little desire to shoot moving pictures. (Think of all the money I'll save on audio equipment)

My worry with the D800E WAS that the moiré patterns caused by the lack of an AA filter would show up in all kind of architectural subjects. I still expect that mini-blinds will be the D800E 's downfall, but could not find any mini-blinds to sacrafice this morning.

 

Detail with moiré - see full size at Flickr

 I have uploaded 4 of the worst photos I have taken in recent memory... but I knew you'd be curious...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schafphoto/sets/72157629490955922/

I went out to hunt moiré patterns this first morning with the D800E showing little regard for subject or composition – just looking for patterns, roof tiles, fences, vents, receding lines of siding, etc. (I also learned the C.A. on my 28mm 2.8 Nikon AF-D lens sucks). Out of thirty images: I only found one mild moiré. My test shows me that I'm going to be just fine. The high resolution of the D800E makes only really, really small patterns into potential issues. (I haven't commented on the sharpness here because that's gonna take a lot more time to understand). The only D800E moiré pattern I could find was in the garage doors next to the back of the school bus. They are subtle at full size, but I have not used the Nikon software to remove them either. The Nikon software will probably easily remove that once I install it and learn how to use it. In the meantime, out of 30 views where I was trying really hard to make the D800E stumble, so far it has not and indeed has exceeded my expectations.

Newsflash 5 hours later, the buzz is already wearing off. I just figured out that that disc that comes with the camera is a coaster. It's boxed with ViewNX2, not CaptureNX2, leaving me no option but to drop $140 clams on Capture NX2 just to fix the moiré that's baked into this camera. Now that I tracked down moiré on my safari I know there's more out there, but I won't be able get rid of it. Bonehead move by Nikon, how much does CaptureNX cost them on a $3500 camera? Can't be much since they're giving it away for free in Jolly Old England... that's why they're jolly.

The new Nikon D800 advertisement in PDN has the slogan "Sorry, but you're going to want to reshoot everything you've ever shot."    They may be right.

(Please comment on my Flickr page or e-mail me, my blog is not comment-friendly)

PS: My Nikon GP1-GPS unit works perfectly with the D800E so the images on Flickr are Geotagged.

See and experiment with the full size NEF file here: http://www.mediafire.com/?nt22c5nnk24b5sr

I'm always looking for freelance writing work.. See more of my work at www.schafphoto.com

 

Bixby Bridge HAER and acronyms like A.P.I.W.A.T.W.

Poison Oak be damned, it's nice when a 5x7 large format (LF) photography trip for a HAER photo documentation works out. It almost makes the two weeks with a rash worth it. I'll forget about the rash, but in the spirit of the HABS/HAER/HALS* programs these photos will endure in cold storage at Fort Meade in the LoC P&P* storage facility. Two weeks of itchin' & scratchin' for 500+ years of public benefit... So worth it.

If you decide to get out of your car on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and photograph in this area watch out for those little Poison Oak plants with red leaves, "leaves of three, let it be." There are a million pages on the WWW about Poison Oak and they are all over the Big Sur hills. If I ever write a magazine article about photography in coastal CA (California) there will be a section about Posion Oak, so be careful.

1000-360    Bixby Bridge HAER-CA-2297  Two-part panoramic photo of bridge deck and south pier. ^click photo to zoom

This brings to mind the adage: "A picture is worth a thousand words," (aPiWaTW, OK that one's ridiculous) It's actually two pictures, so maybe it's 2000 words, plus a couple hundred to describe the itching and the perfect weather conditions, and it's a panorama (not quite 360° degrees, but who's counting). So in this vain I think the acronymic photo title should be: 1000/360 now I just need to get a magazine to run it. And for those of you who stumbled upon this BLOG (Web log) and photo on the WWW and have never heard of all these silly letters:

* The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), are historical documentation collections administered by the National Park Service (NPS) Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) and available in the Library of Congress (LoC) Prints & Photographs (P&P) Reading Room. The collections of thousands of heritage buildings, bridges, tunnels, and parks can be keyword searched on the Library of Congress website:  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/ 

The Bixby Bridge images from this itchy outing will be sent to HDP in late 2012 and should be searchable in 2014. I can now join DATIC, the official club of people who: Drop Acronyms to Increase Credibility.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (or Dusk)

Dateline Ventura County, Jan 16, 2012. A crisp winter evening in Santa Paula, up on a ladder waiting for the sun to get out of the picture...

My latest glowing architectural photography project is the Santa Paula Housing Authority's new senior affordable housing project named "The Orchards at Santa Paula." This image was created for McCarthy Companies, the project manager on this development, and will grace the invitation for the grand opening and probably the websites of everyone involved. 

It's a really cute place but it faces north, and while this may be great for photos in Australia this time of year, photography of north facing architecture in Ventura California is a real challenge. You can imagine the look on my client's face when I told them, "The best time to photograph your project is in six months at summer solstice... will that work for your grand opening invitation?"

Architectural photography in Southern California allows for a lot of sun-lighting variation but inevitably the south facing architecture is completed in summer and the north facing ones are ready in winter...

Must be Murphy's Law of solar frustration.

The solution is the always the same... "Wait 'til the sun goes down!"

As you can see from the afternoon photo...the backlit sunlight in the afternoon doesn't do The Orchards any favors, it's still a cute little project but it's not as warm and cozy as the dusk view. High-contrast sunlight on the back units, cool, low-contrast reflected light from the open sky on the shaded units in the foreground. Add dark windows and a blank cyan sky and it's pretty hard to get excited about any building in such unflattering light; and remember waiting for solstice is not an option since the grand opening is a week away. So with a ladder, a tall tripod, and cooperation from the staff to turn off sprinklers, remove the tree-stakes, and turn on all the lights, a very handsome photo was created with very little Photoshopping. Of course we had to stand around on-site waiting for the perfect moment, a window of twilight, the five minutes where the exterior sky and the interior lights match, before the sky goes black and the moment is gone.

Always happy to use available darkness whenever the sun is six months away.

 

The "F"-word & The HABS at the Edge of America

One of the most interesting HABS photography projects in a while took me to the bottom edge of America this month to photograph the San Ysidro Customs House in San Diego at the Tijuana border, shown here in this view from the public pedestrian entry tunnel into the USA.

 

Built as the original border station in 1932 for cars and pedestrians the Spanish Revival Building with a decorative cupola now sits beside the new high-tech border crossing where over twenty lanes of cars, vans and buses sit in longs lines on the 5 Freeway coming across the US/Mexico border.

 

click photos for a larger view >>>>>

 

The building has been a bit marginalized as the border crossing has expanded and enveloped the setting but the happy news is it will be adaptively reused instead of being demolished or moved to another location. The project worked out as a nice HABS documentation with help from the staff at the site even though we had planned to photograph overall context views from a building that had been demolished a week before we arrived at the site... surprise.

 

Cole Smothers, my assistant on this project, caught the photo below of me jammed into the corner of America, along side the high fences that surround the Customs House. This project was a challenge because most of the building was surrounded by fences, barricades and walls, making composition of the exterior facades a cram-me-into-a-corner-with-a-camera affair. Surprises make life interesting and support my faith in the "F"-word... Flexibility! 

 

Schaf in the Corner of America. Photo by Cole Smothers

Talented Masons, Opium Pipes, and a Big Hole in San Francisco

I like San Francisco in December, I hope it becomes a habit. A year ago I spent a drizzly December day doing a HABS-like documentation of a handsome brick building on Natoma Street in Downtown San Francisco. 

This was a small building documentation brought on by the construction of the new $4 Billion Dollar Transbay Transit Center that is replacing the old Timothy Pfleuger designed Transbay Terminal. Since the expansion plan for the project extended over multiple blocks it required demolition of some old and new buildings including 77 Natoma shown above, and I was commissioned to record the features, interior and context of the building before it was demolished.

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR A LARGER VIEW

A year later the project has just made headlines worldwide as artifacts of the Gold Rush era began to surface at (or rather under) the construction site. The buildings on Natoma shown above including the newer, metal-clad, rounded one on the right and the old bus ramp on the left are all a big hole in the ground now, San Francisco's version of Boston's BIG DIG. Archeologists from William Self Associates are busy combing through the site and preserving the history of an 1880s residential neighborhood now long gone (probably replaced by commercial buildings similar to the one I documented at 77 Natoma).

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/development/2011/12/dig-sfs-transport-terminal-unearths-artifacts

This is how it all looks today in December 2011 from the roof of a building just down the block while I was in the city doing another couple HABS projects. The brick buildings are gone, the bus ramps are gone, the Pfleuger Terminal is gone and construction proceeds day and night - but opium pipes, chamber pots and porcelain doll heads from the 1880s keep telling stories. 

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR A LARGER VIEW

Exercise in Lighting...(or lighting as exercise)

This week my photo assistant Dave Sanchez and I put in three long days in the Sierras above Bishop, California photographing a Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation of some hydro-electric powerplants. In a way it was peaceful. Not because of the beautiful surroundings, the yellow Aspens, the clean air and the snow-capped peaks, because that did indeed make lunchtime attractive. No, the peaceful part was in our head. Because the generators and turbines were spinning the entire time, we had both the constant hum of the machinery and earplugs to avoid the din, forcing all communication to take the form of lip reading (short words) pointing and impromptu sign language (double peace-sign means f22); it gave us a lot of time to think.

The exercise regimen forced on Dave was required by a dark corner in the control room which stubbornly wanted to stay dark. There was little room to move, and less room to set up lights, though I tried before switching them on, only then seeing the brushed aluminum behind the new switches created a very effective reflector - right back into the camera. Changing gears, we went with the new LED spotlights I had brought, allowing the light to be focused into the old switchboard while avoiding the modern mirrored one opposite the camera. I wanted to avoid casting confusing shadows that might make it hard to understand the various gauges, buttons and levers on the panel so we used the "lightpainting" technique, allowing the movement of the lights to erase the edges of the shadows. While the dark corner would be easy to fix in Photoshop on a digital photo, the 5x7 film negatives need to be properly exposed because there is very little manipulation done in the darkroom, and usually only selective darkening of parts of a frame rather than lightening up shadowy areas. The unretouched result is shown above.

The video may be a little loud... it was inside the Powerhouse after all...

 

Here we are making the final photos, after we finished the large format views and the 5x7 camera was put away, we were doing the duplicate digital views from the same tripod position. The 5x7 film views required ten second exposures and the digital only three seconds each, but this is why assistants never gain weight on my projects. 

HABS Photographer Stephen Schafer Selected for Best of ASMP 2011

 

I'm excited to be one of twenty photographers chosen from more than 150 projects submitted by my peers for the seventh annual Best of ASMP 2011 (and the first HABS photographer).

The American Society of Media Photographers, founded in 1944, is the premier trade association for the world's most respected professional photographers. Promoting photographers' rights and providing education in better business practices.

The selected 2011 photographers run the gamut, from documentary to digital shot using a remote-controlled helicopter... and beyond. The twenty photographers have some pretty interesting stories about how and why they chose to execute their photographic vision, I'm just glad I could round out the mostly digital group with my state-of-the-art-1933 approach to HABS photography on the Ahwahnee. The interview has some fun photos of SF County Jail #3 along with photos of the Kaufmann House and Ennis House that will be donated to the Library of Congress HABS, HAER, HALS photography collection in the future.

The 20 Interviews at this link:  ASMP Best of 2011 Link

 

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Old Libbey Bowl Photos...

I had the pleasure of documenting Ojai's original Libbey Bowl in the Historic American Buildings Survey style a few weeks before its demolition in Summer 2010.

The HABS-like archival prints were donated to the Ojai Museum and will serve as a reminder of the design and architecture of the first bowl in Libbey Park. These final images capture a Nordhoff High School concert in the bowl, and details of the sun-dappled outdoor venue which was built between 1954 and 1957.

The original bowl was conceived, initiated, planned and built by famed local architect Austen Pierpont, and noted architect Roy C. Wilson of Santa Paula was also associated with the project.

   (click on photos to enlarge)

Today in the LA Times, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reviewed David Bury's new Libbey Park Bowl.

Link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/06/architecture-review-david-burys-new-libbey-bowl.html

Libbey Bowl has been the backdrop for the appearances of world-reknowned musicians, performers and composers for over fifty years and this tradition will continue under its new arch. The Ojai Music Festival and other community events will now have a much more comfy venue to enjoy, and the termites and dry-rot are now all gone, but I hafta admit, a bit of the funkiness is gone too. 

 

Swiss Family Indian?

The next time we have out of town guests we're takin' them straight to Palmdale!

    The most amazing place to show off Hollywood, the American Dream, the desert landscape, and Native American Culture is the Antelope Valley Indian Museum State Historic Park. It may look like a Swiss chalet but the Swiss would never imagined this – it's classic folk-art-Americana. I expected to see Charles Phoenix there with a Disneyland tour.

  CLICK ON IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW>>>

    Howard Arden Edwards, a Holywood set designer, self-taught artist, and avid collector of Native American artifacts, originally conceived of the 1928 building – a cross between a Hollywood set, a Swiss chalet, a rustic craftsman house and the Batcave. More info here: http://avim.parks.ca.gov/ 

    

    Schaf Photo was commissioned by architect John Lesak of Page & Turnbull to photograph the site and show the thoughtful stabilization of the building. After a four-year rehabilitation, the AVIM is open with a discrete new geothermal climate control and an intricate cable-stay system, designed to hold the flimsy, set-like building together and keep it from blowing away in the relentless Antelope Valley winds. This was a digital color documentation and not a HABS/HAER project but this National Register of Historic Places site is worthy of documentation in the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey collection. Perhaps in the future.

    

    

I hope our photos tell the story, but you have to

climb up the uneven stone stairs between the historic rooms

and see it yourself to believe it.

 

THIS JUST IN>>> Antelope Valley Indian Museum receives a prestigious 2011 Preservation Design Award by the California Preservation Foundation! 

Ennis House & Ahwahnee HABS (An Honor)

 

With the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite and Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis-Brown House in Los Angeles, 2010 proved to be a great year for HABS projects.

This was the year that we composed full documentations of these two buildings built in 1924 (Ennis) and 1925-1927 (Ahwahnee). It has been an honor. Both buildings were obviously worthy of documentation in the 5x7 format, but color digital images with GPS locations were also captured at the same time.

 

Click on photos for a larger view>>>

 

 

The negatives and prints will be released into the public domain upon acceptance at the Library of Congress; they will then be available for public upload and research at the LOC website.

 

Most importantly the negatives should still be in fine condition in the year 2510, just short of the 600 year anniversary of both buildings. (With California's earthquakes, fires and termites, I hope these amazing buildings still exist then too.)

 

2011 Here we come!

 

 

Sunrise Ahwahnee Hotel Yosemite

I thought I'd share the moment when the sun crests Halfdome and lights the east side ofthe Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, The site of my latest HABS project.

Click the arrow and see the sun come up...

 

A photo is worth 2 words...

In this case the two words were U-Turn, because when I saw the two words on this sign, I was compelled.

2 Words (One arrow). 

( 900 East Baseline Road, Claremont, CA )

Photography quote of the day...

  "Everyone has a photographic memory... Some just don't have the film."

 – Stephen Wright

 

HABS-Like Photographic Documentation (out-takes)

The Los Angeles skyline from the roof of the Garment Capitol building  (click to enlarge)

In every photographic documentation project there are the requirements – the Scope of Work – and then there are the photographs that aren't contractually obligated, but rather the subjects just demand to be photographed. Much of what I photograph for a living is CEQA HABS-Like mitigation photography when buildings will be rehabilitated, altered or demolished. Though many of my subjects have existed for long enough to be deemed historic, their architectural, landscape and engineering qualities will surely change after my documentation is complete.

HABS/HAER/HALS (For a definition see my website: habsphoto.com)

HABS, HAER and HALS photographers have a duty to record historic resources as a permanent record of the growth and development of the nation’s built environment so that architects, engineers, scholars, preservationists, and the public can examine and study their technological and cultural significance. Generally I get a Scope of Work that outlines the general parameters of a project and how many photographs may be needed to adequately document a building. Sometimes twenty photos will do, sometimes 300. 

Then there are the photos that aren't on the roster. The unique sign, the yellow Lab, the perfect weather, the robot in the back of the church. They speak to me, and I must obey (must be the robot ESP). So I thought I would share a few views that were "off the list" on some of the HABS and HAER and HALS jobs I've been doing lately.

They just spoke to me...

Yellow Lab in the Amador Fire Station (click to enlarge)

A Nordhoff High School Concert at the old Libbey Bowl in Ojai  (click to enlarge)

A sign in the Catalina Pottery Works Garage, Catalina Island

The "Holy Robot" stained-glass window at the rear of the Pius X Catholic Church in Chula Vista

(click to enlarge)

Interior of Roundhouse, Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, Simi Valley (click to enlarge)

Billboard, Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood  (click to enlarge)

405 Freeway, What's missing?  (click to enlarge)

My Family Homestead, Bad Laasphe, Germany

One side of the family had great taste in slate siding and a view of the whole Bad Laasphe Valley. Alas the house was sold long ago... but as soon as I have an extra million Euros, I'm buying it back as a summer getaway...

Happiness... or would that be HABS - iness?

Happiness is a HABS job, an overcast day, and a bucket truck...

 

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A LIE

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A LIE, that was my bumper sticker in the 90s... I was so stoked and ironic...

Is there such a thing as an anti-HERO photograph? Can a photo be trustworthy and impartial? This is the dilemma of the ethical photojournalist, how to illustrate a story with photographs, being fair and equitable yet still creating compelling images that sell newspapers (and win awards). 

The National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics (NPPA LINK- nine standards) has as its number one standard:

 "Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects."

I was fortunate to learn early that newspaper photojournalism deadlines did not appeal to me. I was promoted to the position of Photo Editor of the local college newspaper, and soon found my staff photographers even worse with deadlines than I. There wasn't really ever a discussion of what ethical standards might be or what constituted an ethically a gray area. If there would have been a controversy over one of our photos we may have had that lecture, but it never happened while I was at the VC Press. 

I then went on to Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, and the concept of photo ethics remained nonchalant. Had a crisis occurred with a student or instructor photograph at the time, I'm sure there would have been a "Memo from Ernie" read in all the classes, and we may have debated it over beer(s) at Peabody's but it never happened while I was at Brooks. 

I decided to go into commercial photography and opened a studio in downtown Ventura. I started knocking on doors with my portfolio looking for work. No one ever asked for my diploma, no one cared if I was Democrat or Republican, they just felt my price was fair, and took my word for it that every image in my portfolio was actually mine. They had to trust that the images I showed them exemplified the quality of work I would deliver.

Ah, Marketing. I caught on real soon that the objectivity of photojournalism is not a requirement for advertising, just look at the healthy-looking cowboys in the cigarette ads. 

At Brooks we used Crisco when we needed scoops of vanilla ice cream.

My first big client made refrigerator-sized industrial equipment. They took my advice and allowed me to use blue, yellow and red gels on the lights (hey it was the 80s), I taped blueprints up on the walls of the research department we were photographing. We then moved every new computer in the building (with 5.25 inch floppy drives attached) into the frame so it would look "High-Tech." Photojournalistically unethical? Yes, yet just another day in advertising. 

In the 90s I photographed so many scientist/doctor-like models, I eventually bought a white lab coat and a stethoscope to keep in the studio so that I wouldn't need to rent wardrobe. The photos depicted a white male wearing a lab coat over a shirt and tie with a stethoscope around his neck. If you assumed that the man was a doctor, then that was merely a lucky coincidence for the client du jour. 

I now spend almost all my time photographing architecture and bridges and the like, and also the people that design them and live in them in their context. In this age when Adobe Photoshop is used on virtually every image seen in public, photographic ethics and the "Photoshop Propriety" of each photographer has more bearing than ever on how a project will look. Much of my work is documentary structure surveys (HABS/HAER/HALS) and in those cases I strive to be as informational and objective as possible. I'm more comfortable with the "Honester" approach to my subjects and since I'm not entering any competitions, I don't have the added temptation of winning awards. Often the final project has never seen a computer, the film is printed in the darkroom and delivered without the aid of modern technology.

   

However my architectural portfolios and editorial assignments call for HERO shots and the most attractive views. The only thing keeping me from spending even more time in Photoshop is a belief that my retouching has reached a point where I think more manipulation stops telling the story and enters the realm of "CGI" (Computer Generated Imaging)(where reality has no bearing on what can be done). Like the Bionic Man, "We can make him stronger, faster..." we can make a building look better than it really is: That paint color is a little dull, let's brighten the hue, the windows would have been bigger if they hadn't run over budget, let's make them bigger, the trees will be mature someday, let's clone in some old trees from the park, etc., etc., etc...

I'm not sure we can proscribe how much a commercial photograph can be changed before it becomes "false advertising." Everyone – viewer, photographer, client, architect, art director, advertiser – will have a different standard. Some photographers will feel more Photoshopping is normal, and others will feel that any manipulation is too much. So today the body of work that a photographer exhibits in their portfolio and website shows not only their talent and point of view, but also the tremendous influence of their "Photoshop Propriety". 

I have given away the lab coat, the clip-on ties, the stethoscope, the makeup kit, etc. (It was a long list.) I kept the lights – I use them to illuminate dark places. While teaching a California Preservation Foundation Workshop on Photography last week, someone asked if taking a generator and lights into a dark building was indeed honest documentation when the room has been dark for decades and has no windows or electricity. Hmm – we had an answer – but is there a right answer? I'll leave that question open...

-Schaf

Note: when I wrote this, I heard a nice story on the radio about Food Stylists and photography, makes advertising photographers look tame... listen here (NPR LINK)

Our HERO

Where did the term "HERO," to describe the most impressive photograph in an architectural portfolio, come from anyway?

This is the HERO view of the Working Artists Ventura (WAV) sustainable artists complex in Ventura that was dedicated this month; and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of my three heroic assistants and the artists and staff of the WAV who allowed us to light up their studios and neaten up their balconies, etc. 

<<<CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE

For the uninitiated, this photograph took about six hours on site to light, an hour to capture and about eight hours in the computer to create the final HERO. That eight hours is what I would call enhancement & subtraction. No pixels were harmed in the Hero-ification of this image, but some were lightened and some darkened, some were covered up by others, and over time, a "Still-Frame-Movie" was created from about twelve still frames all taken from atop a 10' ladder on a digital SLR. The car streaks came from one view, the clouds from another, the best view of Paul's artwork in the window was chosen along with the Avenue windows with the best car reflections to make the empty commercial space look brighter. The best views of people leaning on the railings were added, and the blown-out Ventura Ave. street sign was replaced from a darker exposure. The prominent Do Not Enter sign and the ratty fence were covered up with ivy and cleaned up link-by-link.

Now, I know you're thinking, "That's Cheating." Yes, guilty as charged, but in my defense, every picture tells a lie. Trust me, I could make this a bigger lie, or I could offer up the plain exposure before the sun went down, or I could show it in the rain, but is a view in the afternoon or in the rain really any truer than a morning view or one with a bus parked in front? I do a lot of documentary photography, and this is not that, but no one asked me for a documentary image of the WAV, they wanted a HERO.

Credits for the WAV HERO "Still-Frame-Movie"

1st assistant/lighter: Hannah Fitzgerald

Key Grip: Lisa Dodge

Best Boy: Ricardo Miranda

Casting: Paul Lindhard

Catering: Spencer McKenzie's

The Dude: Chris Velasco

Sets: Paul Benevidez

Landscape Lights/communications: Sara Wiley

Documentist: Jessica Lindley

Starring Building Exposure: 7:41:48 PM

Offramp and Ivy: 7:55:14 PM

Sky: 7:41:27 PM

Offramp tail light streaks: 8:02:54 PM

Street Lights: 7:23:51 PM

Cars on Avenue: 7:42:55 PM

People on WAV deck: 7:34:04 PM

Guy on the ladder: Stephen Schafer

That cast and crew came together to compress five hours of lighting and 39 minutes of photography into one still frame. THANKS!

-Schaf

Fifteen minutes, sometimes less.

 

The secret to successful architectural photography:

Knowing which 23 & 3/4 hours NOT to take the photograph. 

     -Schaf