Picture Notes

This is what I like most about digital photography, being able to use parking lot lights for lighting. I realize that this really isn’t much of a photograph - it’s just a bicycle locked up on a railing in front of a fast food place. It’s about 5:15 pm during the winter and I’m walking home from the metro with my digital camera. I like the confusion though and the negative space and the shapes that are created with the metal and in the middle of all this visual noise there is an orange diamond with instructions.  It’s kind of an over the top snapshot. Anyway, here it is. Another day in the suburbs. What a funny word, suburbs. It’s an old word - [Middle English suburbe, from Old French, from Latin suburbium : sub-, sub- + urbs, urb-, city.] suburbium is more fun to say.

I’ll get back to more faces next.

What about Shadows?

Shadows and digital cameras. I sometimes try and bring a dramatic element to my photographs and use shadows to move the eye across the page. It’s a simple thing, shadows can create depth and add a third dimension.

But who really likes shadows? Who gets to use shadows in their advertising photography, besides concept products like perfume, credit card and drug companies. Shadows are negative spaces - mysterious, hidden, and unknown.

If you are looking for digital noise, look in the shadows. When using digital cameras or backs, shadows are an indication of the quality of the sensor technology. Neither CCD (charge coupled devices) or CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors record shadows like film. It’s as if digital sensors don’t like places without information so when they are detected - low light (a shadow) they want to put something in the space, which usually ends up as digital noise - blotches of random color. Film records shadow as D-Min or D-Max (Density Minimum or Maximum) depending on if the film is negative or positive - the film doesn’t add noise.