Many thanks to Mark McCall for allowing me to use this image (and explanation below the image) clearly showing the the slimming effect of short lighting and the broadening effect of broad lighting on a model’s face.

Broad Lighting vs. Short Lighting
Broad lighting refers to lighting up the face from the “broad” side, (widest part of the face from nose to ear from the camera angle).
Short lighting refers to lighting up the face from the “short” side, (side of the face turned away from the camera)

Short lighting makes the face appear thinner in the image, and is the best choice for most subjects. Broad lighting works best for thin faces.

Thanks as always for the comments by Yves Janse and Mikael. We LOVE comments and suggestions so please send more.

This is an audio transcription — Spelling, punctuation and grammer may not be perfect
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name is Marko.‚ We are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.‚ Today is January 18, 2007.‚ For today’s show, we are lucky enough to be doing an interview with Ann Dahlgren.‚ Ann Dahlgren along with her husband, Douglas Foulke, put together this fantastic book called A Fairy’s Child.‚ I was lucky enough to come across this book a few years back in New York.‚ I love theatrical photography and I love mythological portraits and photographs, so this is going to be a really, really fun interview especially for me and I hope for you, too.‚ Rather than just talk about it, let us get into it now.
So, I would very much like to welcome, Ann Dahlgren today.‚ Ann Dahlgren is a fine art photographer and author of the book A Fairy’s Child that she did with her husband, Douglas Foulke, who is also a fine art photographer.‚ He is hanging around closely and maybe will be able to hear from him during this interview, but we definitely love to get a feel for this book called A Fairy’s Child, which is just a wonderful, wonderful piece of what I might call theatrical photography.‚ Hi there, Ann.‚ Can you tell us a little bit about your book?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Hi, Marko.‚ Well, as you said, the book is called A Fairy’s Child.‚ It is an exploration of fairies and some pretty fantastic environment.‚ Basically, the book started as just an idea for Doug and I to do a fun photograph of a fairy.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Then how did it evolve into a full-on book?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ The idea actually started on a commercial shoot that we were on in Florida and this art director we were working with started telling us about this island off the coast of Maine where people build little fairy houses.‚ We thought, “Well, that’s pretty cool.”‚ We have never heard of anything like that before and so, we just started brainstorming about the possibility of actually making a photograph of a fairy that looked real, but yet was mysterious and ethereal and all the things that we love about photograph. ‚Basically, it started out with us producing one photograph and from there it just kind of led to another, which led to another, which led to another. At some point I guess after we had maybe 20 or 30 finished prints, we thought, “Well, maybe we can make this into a book.”‚ So, that is how it started.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ How long did it take to photograph all the photographs?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ We basically did it on our free time, in between what we do commercially.‚ So, we worked on it I think over a period of four to maybe five years.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Four to five years.‚ Okay.‚ Where did you find the children?‚ Were they local children, were they relatives, were they actors?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ They were everything.‚ Basically, 90% of our commercial work is on location, so every time that we were some place and we came across some really interesting location, we would then plan to either go back or else stay after our commercial shoot to actually do the photograph for the book.‚ So, sometimes we would do a casting locally to find some models, other times they were friends of friends or family members.‚ It kind of was whatever, wherever we could find somebody that fit our idea of our little fairy.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For those listeners that have not found this book yet, I am going to be putting some links to Ann and Doug’s site, so hopefully you might be able to find it through there and see extra pictures, but I just wanted to tell people that I was actually blown away when I found this book, wandering through SoHo about two years ago.‚ I personally love theatrical photography.‚ I love mythological images.‚ I love fairies and it was just an absolute treat to find this book in a little bookstore.‚ So, if there are still books available, I highly recommend searching for them and getting your hands on them.‚ I will put one or two on our site just so you could see what we are talking about and then you can check out Ann and Doug’s site after that.‚ I would like to ask you, Ann.‚ What is your personal connection to fairies?‚ Is it a subject matter that has interested you all along?‚ Is it a relatively new thing?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ No.‚ I am not the type of person who has professed to have seen fairies in real life or anything like that although we have found that there are people like that out there.‚ We have gotten quite interesting e-mails from people that have discovered our book and we have found that there is a whole world out there, fairy lovers.‚ No.‚ It just sounded like a challenging and fun subject matter to try to create these photographs.‚ So, I would not say that I have any particular connection with fairies.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ Okay.‚ Well, it is too bad.‚ I am sure a few people would have loved to hear the opposite, but‚¦
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I know.‚ I know.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ It is all good.‚ I have no personal connection to them myself.‚ I just love the way they look from my childhood.‚ So, I am just curious, do you both photograph at the same time?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, sometimes.‚ Usually what we will do is when we are producing a shoot, I would work a lot on the costume, the make-up, getting the kids outfitted, then their ears and their wings and all that entailed.‚ We would talk about different cameras and films that we are going to be using and usually Doug would start shooting and then I would shoot some.‚ A lot of times, we would have several different cameras with different films loaded, so he could pick up one and I could pick up another and we could direct the child in whatever way we felt was the right way to go.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, it is totally a collaborative effort then.‚ You guys just work on all these projects absolutely together.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yes.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.‚ Excellent.‚ So, I would like to always ask, what was your first camera?‚ How did you get into photography?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, for myself, it started back in camp.‚ So, I was probably 10 and we had a little darkroom at the camp that I went to and that was where I took my first photograph and processed and printed my first print.‚ I know for Doug, it started with him at prep school.‚ His story is, he was told that he should take photography because he could smoke in the darkroom.‚ That is where it started with him.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Is he still smoking in the dark room?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I do not think so.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, good, good, good.‚ Very nice.‚ Very nice.‚ For the tech kids out there, they are going to wonder how these photographs were created.‚ The first thing that will probably come to mind for a lot of people is going to be Photoshop, but I am not convinced that is the case.‚ Can you give us a little insight into how these photographs were created?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚ ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Sure.‚ All of them were created using traditional black and white film.‚ Most of the times, we would shoot with T-Max 100 or 400 and Kodak infrared film.‚ We were lucky enough to have put a darkroom into our house, so we would come home after the shoot and process and make prints of what we had just shot and then work from there.‚ So, pretty much 98% of what you will see in the photograph was actually there.‚ We had a special effects make-up artist make some prosthetic ears for us.‚ We had a costume designer who make us a set of wings and then from there, we basically started making our own costumes, our own wings and things like that, but over time of traveling with these things and taking the ears on and off, all these kids, they started to disintegrate and we eventually had to have more ears made.‚ Towards the very end of the book, when we were kind of on a deadline with our publisher to bring in, I do not know, a certain amount of images, the wings really were trashed at that point.‚ So, we started experimenting with photographing insect wings primarily cicada and butterfly wings and then putting those on to the last images that we had shot in postproduction.‚ So, really, that is the only Photoshop that we really used.‚ It really was not until the end of the book process that we started utilizing Photoshop.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Very, very interesting.‚ So, really these kids are against real backgrounds.‚ The backgrounds that you are going to see in all the photographs, those were the backgrounds on location?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yes, definitely.‚ Like I said before, when we would go on location and we would find these interesting spots, that is when we decide, “Okay.‚ This is our next location” and we would go back and produce the shoot.‚ We shot a lot in Western Florida where the Banyan trees are.‚ Actually, our very first shoot was in the Sarasota, Florida region and just the way that the Banyan trees grow, it is pretty fantastic.‚ So, we started with that.‚ We have shot in locations in California, Colorado, New York, kind of wherever we found a spot that spoke to us.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For certain of the images, it looks as though the children are flying almost or one in particular that I have the luxury of looking at right now, one of the children looked almost suspended or flying.‚ How would that have been accomplished?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, she went flying.‚ We did a few shoots in the studio and one particular shoot that we knew we wanted to do was to actually have a fairy flying.‚ So, we hired a rigger or a grip person from the movie industry to come into the studio and set up this whole harness system where we could actually fly her.‚ I think the shot that you are probably looking at has two fairies in it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yes, it is.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Basically, we designed the set in the studio and then we had the two girls take turns in the harness, flying.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Fantastic.‚ If you are going to attempt this today, would you go more Photoshop or would you still try and do it the traditional way?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I think now since we do use Photoshop everyday in what we do, we probably would utilize Photoshop a lot more.‚ It just was not something that we were using on a daily basis at all back when we started this project. ‚I think we started it in 1997.‚ So, everything we did was on film in there.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ Again, we keep hearing this all the time, Photoshop has become a pretty important tool for photographers these days and we are using more tools.‚ It is just a tool that we can use instead of hiring a rigger, let us say, to have someone fly.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ It definitely cost us a lot more money to actually produce the photographs the way that we did, but that was the way that we went about it.‚ We did not really think about doing it any other way at that time.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ As an artist, for you, is it more satisfying to have done it the old fashion way?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Sure.‚ It was just so exciting to be able to have a vision and put it all together, go to a location, make it happen, bring the fog machine and the whole deal and come back and have on film what we really imagined was there versus sitting in front of a computer and making it happen.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ Right.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ I think there was a sense of accomplishment definitely after all the work that we went through.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ A well-deserved feeling of accomplishment.‚ On another technical level, I am curious actually.‚ I noticed some of the pictures are quite soft, which really adds to the mood effect.‚ Were you using soft focus filters as well or was that done in the printing?‚ How was some of the softness achieved on the photographs?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, it was done both with filters, with particular lenses and also diffusing again in the darkroom.‚ I know in some of the photographs, we used an old lens that Doug had which is an old Imagon portrait lens.‚ It just had this wonderful quality of having a very minimal amount of focus to it.‚ So, that was over different lens put on the camera, but yeah, we would shoot with softer filters and diffuse again in the darkroom.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For good effect, for absolutely good effect.‚ Are you going to be doing any other theatrical style themes or concepts in the next little while or do you have projects similar in nature for the near future?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ We do not have anything in the works at the moment.‚ We have thought about it.‚ We have a lot of images that we played with in the process of this book that were edited out in the process of our publisher wanting a certain look to the book.‚ For instance, we photograph a lot of old people to make it a little bit more of a scary, edgy field to it and we did a whole section of underwater photographs where we actually have the fairies in the pool and we were down there with them, with scuba tanks and photographing them under the water.‚ So, there is potential for another aspect to this whole fairy project that we would love to continue with, we just have not had the time recently.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, when you do have it done, please think of me.‚ I definitely want a copy.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For those people who are going to be intrigued by this book, is it still available?‚ How can they get their hands on it?‚ Can they get their hands on it?
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, at this point, we just were informed that the first printing, which was 10,000 copies, is sold out.‚ In fact, we only actually have two copies I think as our own.‚ So, we are waiting to hear back if Abrams is going to do another printing.‚ If they do not, then we will have the option to try to take that some place else to have another printing done.‚ So, hopefully, we will keep it out there.‚ At this point, your guess is as good as mine of where to find them.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ At least for now though I guess thank goodness for websites, people who want to see some of these images, I know there is a lot of them available at anndahlgren.com.‚ I am going to put that in the show notes.‚ Ann Dahlgren is spelled A-n-n D-a-h-l-g-r-e-n, anndahlgren.com if people want to go directly, but I will put the link in the show notes as well and I believe Ann has allowed me to put a couple of the images on my blog to intrigue you to go to her site because it is also a fantastic site with a lot of images left from the book.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ The direct link to the fairy website is afairyschild.com or you can go directly to the book website also, which has a short little flash movie with some images from the book.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I am going to put that link in the show notes as well.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ Great.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, I would like very much to thank Ann Dahlgren and Douglas Foulke.‚ Unfortunately, Douglas was not able to be on the line now for technical reasons, but we were lucky enough to speak with Ann today and I absolutely thank her.‚ So, thanks so much for agreeing to do this, Ann.‚ I know it was a pretty spontaneous request, but I have been in love with your book for a long, long, long time and your style.‚ It has really been my pleasure to speak to you today.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Great.‚ Thank you, Marko.‚ It has been a pleasure.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, thanks so much.
Ann Dahlgren:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ Bye-bye.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Bye now.‚ So, that was our interview with Ann Dahlgren.‚ We really hope you like that interview.‚ I know I learned a lot and I appreciated it.‚ We are going to have more interviews for you in the next few weeks as well.‚ If you would like to comment, please do so either through the blog, photography.ca/blog or through the bulletin board.‚ You can just click on the link and find your way there and you can leave comments and suggestions and anything else you like in either of those two places.‚ So, thanks very much for listening everyone and we will be back probably next week.‚ We will bring you either another interview or some knowledge, either way you will get knowledge on both.‚ So, take care everyone and happy shooting.‚ Bye for now.
[Camera clicks]

This is an audio transcription — Spelling, punctuation and grammer may not be perfect
Marko Kulik:                         Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.  My name is Marko.  We are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Today is January 18, 2007.  For today’s show, we are lucky enough to be doing an interview with Ann Dahlgren.  Ann Dahlgren along with her husband, Douglas Foulke, put together this fantastic book called A Fairy’s Child.  I was lucky enough to come across this book a few years back in New York.  I love theatrical photography and I love mythological portraits and photographs, so this is going to be a really, really fun interview especially for me and I hope for you, too.  Rather than just talk about it, let us get into it now.
So, I would very much like to welcome, Ann Dahlgren today.  Ann Dahlgren is a fine art photographer and author of the book A Fairy’s Child that she did with her husband, Douglas Foulke, who is also a fine art photographer.  He is hanging around closely and maybe will be able to hear from him during this interview, but we definitely love to get a feel for this book called A Fairy’s Child, which is just a wonderful, wonderful piece of what I might call theatrical photography.  Hi there, Ann.  Can you tell us a little bit about your book?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Hi, Marko.  Well, as you said, the book is called A Fairy’s Child.  It is an exploration of fairies and some pretty fantastic environment.  Basically, the book started as just an idea for Doug and I to do a fun photograph of a fairy.
Marko Kulik:                         Then how did it evolve into a full-on book?
Ann Dahlgren:                      The idea actually started on a commercial shoot that we were on in Florida and this art director we were working with started telling us about this island off the coast of Maine where people build little fairy houses.  We thought, “Well, that’s pretty cool.“  We have never heard of anything like that before and so, we just started brainstorming about the possibility of actually making a photograph of a fairy that looked real, but yet was mysterious and ethereal and all the things that we love about photograph.  Basically, it started out with us producing one photograph and from there it just kind of led to another, which led to another, which led to another. At some point I guess after we had maybe 20 or 30 finished prints, we thought, “Well, maybe we can make this into a book.“  So, that is how it started.
Marko Kulik:                         How long did it take to photograph all the photographs?
Ann Dahlgren:                      We basically did it on our free time, in between what we do commercially.  So, we worked on it I think over a period of four to maybe five years.
Marko Kulik:                         Four to five years.  Okay.  Where did you find the children?  Were they local children, were they relatives, were they actors?
Ann Dahlgren:                      They were everything.  Basically, 90% of our commercial work is on location, so every time that we were some place and we came across some really interesting location, we would then plan to either go back or else stay after our commercial shoot to actually do the photograph for the book.  So, sometimes we would do a casting locally to find some models, other times they were friends of friends or family members.  It kind of was whatever, wherever we could find somebody that fit our idea of our little fairy.
Marko Kulik:                         For those listeners that have not found this book yet, I am going to be putting some links to Ann and Doug’s site, so hopefully you might be able to find it through there and see extra pictures, but I just wanted to tell people that I was actually blown away when I found this book, wandering through SoHo about two years ago.  I personally love theatrical photography.  I love mythological images.  I love fairies and it was just an absolute treat to find this book in a little bookstore.  So, if there are still books available, I highly recommend searching for them and getting your hands on them.  I will put one or two on our site just so you could see what we are talking about and then you can check out Ann and Doug’s site after that.  I would like to ask you, Ann.  What is your personal connection to fairies?  Is it a subject matter that has interested you all along?  Is it a relatively new thing?
Ann Dahlgren:                      No.  I am not the type of person who has professed to have seen fairies in real life or anything like that although we have found that there are people like that out there.  We have gotten quite interesting e-mails from people that have discovered our book and we have found that there is a whole world out there, fairy lovers.  No.  It just sounded like a challenging and fun subject matter to try to create these photographs.  So, I would not say that I have any particular connection with fairies.
Marko Kulik:                         Okay.  Okay.  Well, it is too bad.  I am sure a few people would have loved to hear the opposite, but…
Ann Dahlgren:                      I know.  I know.
Marko Kulik:                         It is all good.  I have no personal connection to them myself.  I just love the way they look from my childhood.  So, I am just curious, do you both photograph at the same time?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Well, sometimes.  Usually what we will do is when we are producing a shoot, I would work a lot on the costume, the make-up, getting the kids outfitted, then their ears and their wings and all that entailed.  We would talk about different cameras and films that we are going to be using and usually Doug would start shooting and then I would shoot some.  A lot of times, we would have several different cameras with different films loaded, so he could pick up one and I could pick up another and we could direct the child in whatever way we felt was the right way to go.
Marko Kulik:                         So, it is totally a collaborative effort then.  You guys just work on all these projects absolutely together.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Yes.
Marko Kulik:                         Excellent.  Excellent.  So, I would like to always ask, what was your first camera?  How did you get into photography?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Well, for myself, it started back in camp.  So, I was probably 10 and we had a little darkroom at the camp that I went to and that was where I took my first photograph and processed and printed my first print.  I know for Doug, it started with him at prep school.  His story is, he was told that he should take photography because he could smoke in the darkroom.  That is where it started with him.
Marko Kulik:                         Is he still smoking in the dark room?
Ann Dahlgren:                      I do not think so.
Marko Kulik:                         Well, good, good, good.  Very nice.  Very nice.  For the tech kids out there, they are going to wonder how these photographs were created.  The first thing that will probably come to mind for a lot of people is going to be Photoshop, but I am not convinced that is the case.  Can you give us a little insight into how these photographs were created?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Sure.  All of them were created using traditional black and white film.  Most of the times, we would shoot with T-Max 100 or 400 and Kodak infrared film.  We were lucky enough to have put a darkroom into our house, so we would come home after the shoot and process and make prints of what we had just shot and then work from there.  So, pretty much 98% of what you will see in the photograph was actually there.  We had a special effects make-up artist make some prosthetic ears for us.  We had a costume designer who make us a set of wings and then from there, we basically started making our own costumes, our own wings and things like that, but over time of traveling with these things and taking the ears on and off, all these kids, they started to disintegrate and we eventually had to have more ears made.  Towards the very end of the book, when we were kind of on a deadline with our publisher to bring in, I do not know, a certain amount of images, the wings really were trashed at that point.  So, we started experimenting with photographing insect wings primarily cicada and butterfly wings and then putting those on to the last images that we had shot in postproduction.  So, really, that is the only Photoshop that we really used.  It really was not until the end of the book process that we started utilizing Photoshop.
Marko Kulik:                         Very, very interesting.  So, really these kids are against real backgrounds.  The backgrounds that you are going to see in all the photographs, those were the backgrounds on location?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Yes, definitely.  Like I said before, when we would go on location and we would find these interesting spots, that is when we decide, “Okay.  This is our next location” and we would go back and produce the shoot.  We shot a lot in Western Florida where the Banyan trees are.  Actually, our very first shoot was in the Sarasota, Florida region and just the way that the Banyan trees grow, it is pretty fantastic.  So, we started with that.  We have shot in locations in California, Colorado, New York, kind of wherever we found a spot that spoke to us.
Marko Kulik:                         For certain of the images, it looks as though the children are flying almost or one in particular that I have the luxury of looking at right now, one of the children looked almost suspended or flying.  How would that have been accomplished?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Well, she went flying.  We did a few shoots in the studio and one particular shoot that we knew we wanted to do was to actually have a fairy flying.  So, we hired a rigger or a grip person from the movie industry to come into the studio and set up this whole harness system where we could actually fly her.  I think the shot that you are probably looking at has two fairies in it.
Marko Kulik:                         Yes, it is.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Basically, we designed the set in the studio and then we had the two girls take turns in the harness, flying.
Marko Kulik:                         Fantastic.  If you are going to attempt this today, would you go more Photoshop or would you still try and do it the traditional way?
Ann Dahlgren:                      I think now since we do use Photoshop everyday in what we do, we probably would utilize Photoshop a lot more.  It just was not something that we were using on a daily basis at all back when we started this project.  I think we started it in 1997.  So, everything we did was on film in there.
Marko Kulik:                         Okay.  Again, we keep hearing this all the time, Photoshop has become a pretty important tool for photographers these days and we are using more tools.  It is just a tool that we can use instead of hiring a rigger, let us say, to have someone fly.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Right.  It definitely cost us a lot more money to actually produce the photographs the way that we did, but that was the way that we went about it.  We did not really think about doing it any other way at that time.
Marko Kulik:                         As an artist, for you, is it more satisfying to have done it the old fashion way?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Sure.  It was just so exciting to be able to have a vision and put it all together, go to a location, make it happen, bring the fog machine and the whole deal and come back and have on film what we really imagined was there versus sitting in front of a computer and making it happen.
Marko Kulik:                         Right.  Right.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Yeah.  I think there was a sense of accomplishment definitely after all the work that we went through.
Marko Kulik:                         A well-deserved feeling of accomplishment.  On another technical level, I am curious actually.  I noticed some of the pictures are quite soft, which really adds to the mood effect.  Were you using soft focus filters as well or was that done in the printing?  How was some of the softness achieved on the photographs?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Well, it was done both with filters, with particular lenses and also diffusing again in the darkroom.  I know in some of the photographs, we used an old lens that Doug had which is an old Imagon portrait lens.  It just had this wonderful quality of having a very minimal amount of focus to it.  So, that was over different lens put on the camera, but yeah, we would shoot with softer filters and diffuse again in the darkroom.
Marko Kulik:                         For good effect, for absolutely good effect.  Are you going to be doing any other theatrical style themes or concepts in the next little while or do you have projects similar in nature for the near future?
Ann Dahlgren:                      We do not have anything in the works at the moment.  We have thought about it.  We have a lot of images that we played with in the process of this book that were edited out in the process of our publisher wanting a certain look to the book.  For instance, we photograph a lot of old people to make it a little bit more of a scary, edgy field to it and we did a whole section of underwater photographs where we actually have the fairies in the pool and we were down there with them, with scuba tanks and photographing them under the water.  So, there is potential for another aspect to this whole fairy project that we would love to continue with, we just have not had the time recently.
Marko Kulik:                         Well, when you do have it done, please think of me.  I definitely want a copy.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Okay.
Marko Kulik:                         For those people who are going to be intrigued by this book, is it still available?  How can they get their hands on it?  Can they get their hands on it?
Ann Dahlgren:                      Well, at this point, we just were informed that the first printing, which was 10,000 copies, is sold out.  In fact, we only actually have two copies I think as our own.  So, we are waiting to hear back if Abrams is going to do another printing.  If they do not, then we will have the option to try to take that some place else to have another printing done.  So, hopefully, we will keep it out there.  At this point, your guess is as good as mine of where to find them.
Marko Kulik:                         Okay.  At least for now though I guess thank goodness for websites, people who want to see some of these images, I know there is a lot of them available at anndahlgren.com.  I am going to put that in the show notes.  Ann Dahlgren is spelled A-n-n D-a-h-l-g-r-e-n, anndahlgren.com if people want to go directly, but I will put the link in the show notes as well and I believe Ann has allowed me to put a couple of the images on my blog to intrigue you to go to her site because it is also a fantastic site with a lot of images left from the book.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Right.  The direct link to the fairy website is afairyschild.com or you can go directly to the book website also, which has a short little flash movie with some images from the book.
Marko Kulik:                         I am going to put that link in the show notes as well.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Okay.  Great.
Marko Kulik:                         So, I would like very much to thank Ann Dahlgren and Douglas Foulke.  Unfortunately, Douglas was not able to be on the line now for technical reasons, but we were lucky enough to speak with Ann today and I absolutely thank her.  So, thanks so much for agreeing to do this, Ann.  I know it was a pretty spontaneous request, but I have been in love with your book for a long, long, long time and your style.  It has really been my pleasure to speak to you today.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Great.  Thank you, Marko.  It has been a pleasure.
Marko Kulik:                         So, thanks so much.
Ann Dahlgren:                      Okay.  Bye-bye.
Marko Kulik:                         Bye now.  So, that was our interview with Ann Dahlgren.  We really hope you like that interview.  I know I learned a lot and I appreciated it.  We are going to have more interviews for you in the next few weeks as well.  If you would like to comment, please do so either through the blog, photography.ca/blog or through the bulletin board.  You can just click on the link and find your way there and you can leave comments and suggestions and anything else you like in either of those two places.  So, thanks very much for listening everyone and we will be back probably next week.  We will bring you either another interview or some knowledge, either way you will get knowledge on both.  So, take care everyone and happy shooting.  Bye for now.
[Camera clicks]

‚This is an audio transcription — Spelling, punctuation and grammer may not be perfect

Hi there everyone and welcome to the 8th Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name is Marko.‚ We are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and today is January 10, 2007.‚ Well, first off, I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year.‚ We were slightly delayed in getting this out because it was the holiday season, but we are back on top of our game and I expect, I intend, my goal is one podcast a week for 2007.‚ So, if I fail, if I miss a week, please feel free to send me your comments, photography.ca@gmail.com.‚ You can leave any comments there.‚ In fact, you can also comment on our bulletin board about anything you like, this podcast, photography in general, at Photography.ca and you will find the link to the blog there as well and to the forum as well.
For today’s show, it is pretty much an experiment, an experiment that I did actually.‚ For the longest time, I have been wanting to experiment with painting with light.‚ For those people that do not know what it is, painting with light is illuminating a person or an object with light.‚ In order to expose a photograph, in case we do not know or we need a reminder, we need light.‚ We could leave a shutter open for two days straight in a dark room and there will be no exposure at all on that film, which means you can leave it open for two days, close the film, put it back to frame 1, for example, and then just shoot again normally and there will be no difference at all because no light hit that film.‚ We need light to expose a photograph.‚ Usually, that light will come from the sun, it will come from a flash, it will come from ambient room light, and that is how we light our subjects.‚ With painting with light, we photograph in a dark or very dark environment and then we manipulate the light to light the subject or model or whatever we are photographing.
The typical way to do this is with a flashlight or some type of light source where you will leave the camera on a tripod because you do not want it to move at all and you will just outline the object or paint in the object or illuminate the object in some way.‚ I should tell you that this is not the easiest thing to do.‚ I should also tell you that if you are lucky enough to have a digital camera, it is way easier with digital camera because you could just do your experiment and if it works, yahoo, keep it; if it does not, just dump it and start again.‚ Without a doubt, one of the hardest parts of this experiment would be the exposure.‚ How do you determine the exposure?‚ Well, if you are using a digital camera, it is just so easy.‚ You do not even really need a light meter or expose.‚ You just outline the object with a flashlight or a penlight or something and if it is well exposed, you see it; if it needs more exposure you give it more and if it needs less you give it less.‚ If you are using a traditional‚ camera, it is pretty hard or it is much harder actually, but how I suggest doing it is using an ambient light meter, handheld.‚ What you would do is you would probably use a second person, that would be easiest.‚ You get that person to shine the light source.‚ In my case, I used flashlights, we will talk about that shortly, but anyhow you would get that person to shine the light source and then you meter the light source and you have to go through the entire exposure with that reading.‚ If, for example, it said f/5.6 at 1 second, that would be f/5.6 at 1 second for that single spot of light.‚ If you were outlining an object, you would have to go around the perimeter of that object, if that is what you wanted to do let us say, for 1 second at a time holding the flashlight pretty steady and moving it at a 1-second increment.‚ Pretty difficult to do, again, that is why digital makes it so much easier.‚ The effects are amazing and one of my favorite words in the English language is serendipity, which means the thrill of finding something unsought.‚ This often happens with painting with light.‚ We will try to get one effect and after it is over and we see the results, something really weird and wacky and wonderful happens.‚ It is part of the art and you improve on it.‚ If you get a result that is pretty good, you try and do it again and get it better and better and better and hone your result until the picture is fantastic.
Here is how I did my experiment.‚ I bought a bunch of smallish flashlights and I just wanted to illuminate different objects during the exposure while my camera was on a tripod. ‚Okay, I bet some people are wondering, “All right, all right, get to it.‚ How did you do it, Marko?‚ How did you do it?”‚ Well, I do not know if I did it the right way or the wrong way, but I sure as heck had a lot of fun doing it and here is what I did. ‚I purchased a lot of small flashlights.‚ My goal was really to outline the perimeter of the object and to just get it to glow.‚ This was pretty darn difficult actually because it was hard to control the spray or the fineness of the light, let us say, so I bought a Maglite and other different types of flashlights, all small, and I tried to control, let us say, the nozzle by making it really, really thin.‚ I tried using a funnel.‚ I tried using a cap.‚ Everything I used, the light still was not fine enough for me, so I really was not 100% satisfied with the result.‚ I still had a good time.‚ I still had time.‚ I think a couple of the results are cool, but I did not have the ultimate precision tool.‚ I have heard that there is something out there called a Hosemaster, which also happens to be my pornonym, a hosemaster, but it like costs several thousand dollars for this machine and apparently using fiber optics, it really gives this very controlled, fine stream of light in which you can outline objects.‚ I did not have it so I went to the department store, spent 20 or 25 bucks on some flashlights and had a blast, actually.‚ I used these flashlights to outline certain objects.‚ At first, I started with something that was alive.‚ I actually started with my cat and I tried to make the spray of light as fine as possible outline the cat and the result was actually pretty cool.‚ It was cool because you need a long exposure.‚ When you close all the lights or get it really dark and you place your camera on a tripod, you really need a long exposure.‚ A cat is a living thing and a cat, unless it is sleeping, it is going to move.‚ What happened was, I tried to outline my cat and my cat would move throughout many of the exposures.‚ Although that was not what I wanted, serendipity, word of the day, I really had a cool effect with one shot in particular whereby the cat was still for, let us say, 4 seconds of an 8-second exposure and then moved his head to another direction and was pretty still then too.‚ You actually have a ghosting effect with two heads, which is really, really interesting.‚ So, that was my first test.‚ I used — I think it was the Maglite actually.‚ I bought two size Maglites, the mini Maglite and the medium-sized Maglite and I outlined them both.‚ I did about five shots with the cat.‚ I will probably put one up, so you can give me your comments.‚ Let me know if you like it.
My next test was with a model, actually.‚ I used a live model and, again, I tried to outline.‚ My outlining attempts again, it was difficult to control the spray of light because I really wanted to get fine detail and it was difficult.‚ If you are not interested in the fine detail, you could just go over various aspects of the body, legs, face, hands, breasts, whatever, and you can get good effects.‚ For me, my best effect happened when I actually used a laser light.‚ I bought one of these $3 lasers.‚ I have cats, too.‚ My cats love to chase the thing.‚ During the exposure, I outlined the model with a laser light and that effect was really cool in my opinion.‚ Again, it was not perfect.‚ The control of the light was not perfect, so hard to do perfectly, but the result is quite good and I am actually pleased with the result.‚ Again, serendipity being what it is, we also tried using a crystal.‚ We had the model hold the crystal and then we shone the light using the laser light through the crystal and then that diffracted light hit the model in all kinds of weird and cool ways.‚ I did a few exposures with that as well, which you will also see on the blog.‚ Really, it was a combination of both outlining the model, trying to get the best result I could with the light, holding it steady as I could, moving my hand as steady as I could, and then shining the light through the crystal, which also illuminated the model and gave a really very interesting result.‚ If anyone wants to try to do exactly what I did, please, enjoy, experiment.‚ Take my idea.‚ Go with it.‚ Run with it.‚ Make it better.‚ Do something fun.‚ Do something artful.‚ Do something different.‚ Do something interesting.‚ That is what this podcast is all about, fine art photography, making art from photography, and really having a lot of fun with it.
Next, I wanted to try to outline different objects outside.‚ This was just the wrong time of year for it, I must say.‚ I mean it is freezing in Montreal.‚ My camera died.‚ I was using a digital camera.‚ It died in mid-shoot.‚ My hands were freezing.‚ I highly suggest doing this in the summertime.‚ If any of you are lucky enough to be in California or the Middle East or somewhere warm, enjoy yourself.‚ Go outside and do it.‚ I have seen painting with light photographs where you could paint a whole tree or a mountain.‚ The results are really, really interesting as well.‚ You can use even a flash.‚ You can use a portable flash and just really pop that flash at different levels of intensity, again, for great effect.‚ Take a light meter.‚ Do an exposure, let us say, of the tree and then just try popping it.‚ Try getting as close to the original exposure as possible and then playing with it and modifying it from there.‚ One thing that is very cool, which we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast is that you need light to expose the photograph.‚ So, while I was lighting certain objects outside, I wore completely black.‚ I got in my burglar uniform, put on some black jeans, black sweater, black hat, black gloves, and that way I was actually able to manipulate the light during the exposure and walk through the shutter without my body affecting the exposure. ‚Because my body was so black, it was so dark, not enough to register on the camera sensor.‚ I was able to walk like in front of the lens with no problems whatsoever.‚ For one of my tests outside, I tried to light a birdcage and I used the flashlight, one of the smaller ones.‚ I tried my best to only light the birdcage and the result is pretty interesting.‚ It is okay.‚ Like I said, my hands were freezing.‚ I moved quickly, but I did spend like over an hour outside, maybe even an hour and a half just trying different experiments, trying and looking, trying and looking, and it was quite interesting.
Like I said, I would have loved to have had more control over the light, over the fineness of the point of light only because that is what I was after.‚ If you have an image in your head, you always try and achieve that image, but it is not really necessary.‚ If you want to just light something thicker and not get the fine detail, you could also do some really interesting results.‚ I know that some people have also put like filters, soft focus filters on front of their camera during the exposure and that softens the whole thing up as well.‚ I did not do it this time, but it is something that I would definitely consider doing in the future because I do intend to try this again, probably in the summertime when it is warmer.‚ For another object that I tried to light, I tried to light a boot.‚ I took a boot and I put in the window, in a window rather, and again I tried to outline the boot and the result is pretty interesting.‚ I think it is interesting.‚ You can leave a comment and tell me what you thought as well.‚ Again, I took a light meter, shone it, took a base exposure, and just try to go over the entire boot at a regular rate whatever the exposure told me.‚ I tried to deal with about a half a second or a second and then go around the entire object for that half a second, leaving it half a second at every point while tracing the object in effect.
If you are going to light an inanimate object, in a way, that is kind of easy because there is one less variable of movement that you have to contend with.‚ When I lit the cat and the model, the exposures were like from 8 seconds to 30 seconds.‚ Those models — your cat cannot be perfectly still for 30 seconds, a human cannot either, usually a 60th of a second is the max you can normally shoot someone without like a ghosting effect or a movement effect.‚ They were pretty still, but there is still movement involved, so that is a variable that may add or detract in the photo, but it is a variable you need to be aware of.‚ When you are dealing with an inanimate object like a boot, a birdcage, a tree, a small hill or mountain, there is no ghosting effect, so you could really take your time.‚ You could put your camera on bulb with a shutter.‚ You could leave it open for minutes at a time.‚ The maximum I did was 30 seconds, but you could leave it open for minutes for sure, minutes.
That pretty much sums up my experience with this test with painting with light.‚ I would absolutely love to hear some posts or comments or send me some pictures, post it on the blog or post it in the bulletin board or send it to me by email, photography.ca@gmail.com.‚ I would love to get some feedback on your own experiments or maybe if you took something away from this podcast or you have something to add or you think, “You know what?‚ Marko, you could’ve done something differently or better,” I would love to hear it.‚ So, please shoot me a comment and it will be my pleasure as always to comment back.
That about wraps it up for our first podcast of the year and our 8th podcast in total.‚ Again, please communicate via the blog, via the bulletin board.‚ We intend to do this once a week.‚ Next week, I am not sure what the topic is going to be yet, but I have an idea that it might have to do with framing, ooohhh framing, and the possibilities and the different types of composition and/or artfulness that you could create with various framing techniques.
That about does it for me.‚ Thanks so much for listening.‚ Keep on shooting everyone and we will be back next week.‚ Bye for now.
[Camera clicks]

This is an audio transcription — Spelling, punctuation and grammer may not be perfect

Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography.ca Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name is Marko.‚ We are coming to you from Montreal.‚ Today is December 24, 2006.‚ So, it is the day before Christmas and we are all having some fun, getting ready for the holidays and I have decided to put together a podcast with a fine art photographer, Dita Kubin from Montreal.‚ So, we actually were able to do a telephone interview together and you are going to listen to it very shortly.‚ The interview lasts about 20 minutes, so I am going to get into it right away and with that, I guess I just want to wish all the listeners the happiest holiday season possible and a Happy New Year as well.‚ Thanks so much for listening to our shows.‚ We intend to do so many more during 2007 and we are going to do many more interviews.‚ We would love to get your comments, so whatever you have to say, send it to us on the blog by e-mail, on the bulletin board and it will be my pleasure to discuss anything you like with you.‚ So, Happy New Year everyone and on that note, let us get into the interview now.
So, I would like to welcome a really special guest today.‚ Our guest is Dita Kubin and she is a fine art photographer in Montreal.‚ I would like to welcome her to the show and we are going to ask her a couple of questions and hopefully, she will give us some insight into her art and her activity.‚ Welcome, Dita.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you.‚ Thank you very much.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.‚ Good.‚ Nice.‚ Welcome.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you.‚ Thank you very much.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ First off, you have a very unusual website name for people that wants to go and visit your photography and it is Phudge.ca.‚ Phudge is spelled P-h-u-d-g-e, Phudge.ca.‚ How in the world did you end up choosing Phudge.ca?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, what is funny I guess is people’s reaction to it because I think that it is pretty obvious and people often also mispronounce it and they say, “Fyudge.”‚ That is pretty funny to me.‚ Actually, it is pretty simple.‚ Phudge, obviously, photography with the ph.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Phudge, well, the idea that it is all just visual dessert, visual pleasures and not to take it so very seriously because I think that within sort of this arts, arts milieu, there is this tendency to take everything so seriously and everything has this heaviness about it that I just absolutely did not want to go there with the art that I was making.‚ I just wanted it to be kind of a light thing, a very light thing.‚ It is not brain surgery.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, it is just very, very playful.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah, it is.‚ It is.‚ I find the whole art process to be therapeutic and playful for the individual and not to get stuck behind the heavy concepts of art.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.‚ Okay.‚ That is great.‚ Well, thanks for that introduction.‚ So, I would like to get right into it with you.‚ A lot of your photographs, they caught my eye, which is definitely one of the reasons that I contacted you.‚ I definitely find your photographs somewhat unusual.‚ Is there some way you can describe your creative process a bit?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, unusual, an interesting adjective to describe my‚¦
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ They are unusual, just let me clarify.‚ They are unusual in that they make you look twice.‚ They are just not like the regular head and shoulders portraits within an environment.‚ There is other stuff definitely going on.‚ I guess for that reason, they caught my eye.‚ So, back to the question.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Can you describe the process a bit?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I guess you are talking mostly about the last series that I had been working on.‚ That series, I was working on for two years.‚ It actually began originally because I needed a couple of images to donate to an art show and I had nothing new.‚ I just decided to photograph someone and I was just experimenting in ways that I had not done before.‚ When I started to put the image together, all of these really interesting technical elements started coming out and I had such a fun time working on it that I decided to actually to try to push this sort of technique that I did not even know what I was doing at that time just to push it further and see what I could get out of it.‚ For me, it began very much as a technical exploration.‚ I did not really have any preconceived ideas of what I wanted to do.‚ Then when an image kind of made itself, I stood back and I quite enjoyed what the result was, then decided that I would try a couple more portraits in that vein to see if there was something in it.‚ When I had then the next two, I just somehow really opened my eyes and enjoyed so much the process of it that I decided I would do a whole series of that.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Let us talk about one photo in particular and we are also going to put that as the main photo for this entry in the Photography.ca blog.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Let us talk a little bit about the Soma portrait that you did.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ How was that portrait constructed?‚ Can you describe the process a bit for that one in particular?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That one in particular was one of the harder ones that I had made although considering that this was a two-year project, the earlier ones were not as elaborate, as complicated because I was not in the place where I understood what I was doing very much.‚ So, this was the first very difficult one I had set for myself thinking, “There’s no way I’m gonna be able to do this, but let’s just go and try.”‚ Obviously, for the main reason that you cannot control smoke and what it is doing.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, I had invited this woman, Soma, to pose for me.‚ She is a friend of a friend.‚ We just brought sort of props with us to the studio.‚ I rarely shoot in a studio, but I thought that with the smoke and it was still quite cold out, that this was the best place.‚ It was all shot with ambient lights, so no flash in that at all.‚ We just played around with very many different sort of I would say compositions because we were within one setting, so there was not too much we could do with that and just sort of played.‚ There was no real, again, preconceived idea of what the final image would be although I had thought that I really wanted to do an image where she was lying on the ground and the smoke was coming up towards me, that was one thing that I thought would work.‚ It did not at all.‚ I really found myself to be quite smoked very quickly.‚ It was coming into my face.‚ It was hilarious at the same time because I just could not see anymore.‚ There was so much smoke in my face.‚ Yes, we laughed and then we just continued doing different things and it ended up that after the shoot was over, I did not really know what would result from it.‚ After I processed my negs, I had my proofs I started to see what could be possible, that only this idea came out.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ At that point, which is actually how I do all of the portraits, is that I reviewed all of my shots and started to see how I could make it work towards a final.‚ I worked with sort of low res maquettes at first because there were so many images involved that I sort of weed out what does not work and work my way to a final.‚ With the small maquette, I was doing in this direction of the final one.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For those, I am sorry to interrupt.‚ For those people that do not know what a maquette is, can you give us a quick definition?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Sure.‚ It would just be basically a model to work by.‚ So, what I do is I work different variations, different small scale models.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Then I weed out the ones that are not working visually or technically and then I start working towards the ones that do.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, they are just like quick working copies, if you will.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, this one started to form in front of me.‚ You are asking me how exactly was this one made because so much of the work is postproduction.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ It looks like it might be using more than one photograph.‚ Is that correct?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ I believe that this one and it is funny, I do not have an exact count for any of them, but this one would be anywhere between 8 and 11 images‚¦
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Wow!
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That were used to make this one.‚ The idea being that it would be seamless in how it is blended together.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ But not necessarily seamless that it looks like one single image.‚ The images that I made after this one are more narrative and obviously, they are not always realistic.‚ So, you know that it is not made with one image.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ Are all the images that you used of the same shoot or some can be taken from completely different times and places?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I started that it would be just one shoot and then got into the mindset to be a puritan, that I had to use it from one, but again, I was reminded by another artist friend of mine to just not limit what you are making in any way.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, I threw that idea out and I started using images from other shoots with other people in fact.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I do not do that very often, but sometimes it works and sometimes I will have something from a year ago that I shot that has been waiting to be used and I just do not know in what way and that was partly the case with this one.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ Are these blended using something like Photoshop?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yes.‚ It is all Photoshop.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ How long would it have taken you to create to this particular image?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, it is funny because I do not sit down and work at it until I finish.‚ I really need to let them breathe for a while.‚ For this one, what I would have done was I worked on a small maquette at first, so maybe that would have been a two-day kind of thing.‚ Scanning, cleaning them, working maquettes and then I have to let them sit because I am not sure in what direction to go into.‚ This one I know I left actually for about two months.‚ I just really did not know what to do with it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ When I started to weed out the ones that did not work and decided this is the one direction I would go in, then it would be about I guess four solid working days of making the image, but also broken down, not four days in a row because again I will get up to a certain point and not know what to do with it anymore.‚ So, I have worked on the face area and then the background and I do not know what to do with it, so I am just going to let it sit maybe do a little printout and hang it on my wall, walk by it for a few days and then sit down at it again and work it again.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Quite the creative journey.‚ If people were thinking that it was just like a snap, they are absolutely wrong.‚ Maybe you set it up in a three– or four-hour session, took a snap and then they are completely wrong.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ There was like several days of work in this.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, what is funny is that in the beginning when I would be showing the images, people would have their reactions and comment on it and thinks that it is one picture.‚ My reaction was always, “People, I’m working so hard on this one picture.“
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That is not obvious at all.‚ However, now, I guess I see that that is a compliment if seen as a one shot.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I think it is a compliment.‚ It is a testament to the good blending and postproduction skills that you have definitely.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Something like that.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Definitely.‚ The image at least from my perspective is so strong and so unusual technically because the eyes are sharp and the hands are sharp as well, which for someone more in the know will just obviate the fact that it is more than one image, but for someone less in the know or someone just passing it by quickly to see and feel that it is one image taken on the spot, I guess it really is a great compliment to the work that you did to it.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I think in particular with this image as well, it has a lot of spiritual suggestion.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Definitely.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Not that even that was my intention in the beginning although incense I think for everyone has some sort of a spiritual association.‚ This woman in particular, she is from the States, but her family comes from Bangladesh area.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ The incense bowls were a gift to me from a friend of mine who went to India about five years ago on a big long trip and he had gotten me these incense little burners from Agra from a crematory.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Wow!
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Brought back four of them for me and I had always thought that they would be so wonderful to use in a shoot, but I never what or how and I had just kept them thinking that one day I am going to photograph someone with incense, with them, so it just kind of came together when I met Soma and after I found my smoky lady.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ It definitely, definitely worked out.‚
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ So, moving on.‚ I know a lot of our listeners, they are also fine art photographers and they kind of like to produce art and some of the questions for people that are just starting is “Can I live off my art?‚ Is this something that is going to sustain me?”‚ You are definitely a fine art photographer yourself, so I guess we would like to ask you‚¦
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ Do I ask myself the same question?
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Do you ask yourself the same question?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Everyday.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Everyday.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ How difficult is it to let us say sell fine art photography and make a living from selling your artwork?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, I suppose it is different in North America than it would be in other places in the world.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Such as places in Europe perhaps?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Europe definitely embraces their artists more, not that I have any first hand knowledge, but I do have other artist friends who have said that to me, but also I do come from Eastern Europe and I would have thought it would have been easier here to go that route, but I do not even think it is so much geographical.‚ I just find that people in general are not very supported to do art in a very sort of a life career kind of way.‚ I know very few, for instance, friends whose families have supported them in that route.‚ There is always this projected fear of not being able to survive in it.‚ So, already in wanting to go into art, we have that projected fear on us which we project on ourselves and on to others as well.‚ That definitely does not help people making the decision to go into artwork.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That is something that I probably still do struggle with on some level in my life, but there did come a point where I just could not do all the other stuff that I did not want to be doing in life and I knew that this is what I wanted to be doing now.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, I find that having made that decision, the rest — it is really just making that one decision.‚ The momentum after that one decision starts to go forward and things start to come to you once you have made that decision, but being in a indecisive place does not‚¦
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ It does not now.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Offer opportunities for you to go there and do that.‚ So, back to your question.‚ It is difficult to survive in this.‚ See, I think that it is not, but it has been made to be that way.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I find that it is a little bit easier now than it was two or three years ago for myself.‚ That is also in the early stages of you doing art.‚ Your art is not worth as much as it would be in the future.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For sure.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That is a part of it.‚ People are buying it just because they like it for themselves or as gifts for other people.‚ There is no further commercial value unit in that.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ Right.‚ Are you finding you are able to sell more pieces as months go on, as people see your work?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Absolutely.‚ Absolutely.‚ Maybe that is the thing that has surprised me.‚ I know that that is how it would work, but again, having the fears‚¦
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ That we cannot survive.‚ How are you going to live?‚ When it does happen, I am always surprise that somebody would want to pay for it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Then I am not surprise.‚ Yeah, of course, that is why I have been working‚¦
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So hard on that and on other things.‚ So, it makes sense to me.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, it is definitely nice to hear and I suspect that a lot of our listeners will be happy to hear that as well.‚ I think you are absolutely right.‚ It is a matter of passion really in saying, “This is what I want to do.‚ This is what I’m going to do.‚ Let me go full force at it.”‚ I guess someone can try it and fail.‚ Everyone does fail occasionally, but if you do not give it your all and you do not give it a shot, then you will never know.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Sure.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Especially when you have kind of developed a certain style for yourself and you really appreciate that style and you explore it, I guess if you put your heart and soul into it, it is going to work.‚ Just do not quit.‚ If you quit, it is definitely going to fail.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I think the other thing is the motivation behind doing our work.‚ I have met people who are motivated to do it for fame and money.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Right.‚ Right.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Or even let us just say fame or recognition or to leave some kind of a legacy behind.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I find that whenever that has been my motive, it never works out.‚ In fact, when the motive is simply to express that thing that you have to express inside, that is when things happen.‚ Yeah, in the art making process and also in what you get out of it in return.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, back to our original question.‚ Do you do any other photographic work as well or is it always working on your artwork?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ No.‚ I am doing a little bit of commercial photography.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I would say very little.‚ I never look for it, so only when I get called to do something and then it has to sort of fit in with what I am doing in general then I would do it like let us say private portraits for people.‚ I pretty much do not do any kind of advertising work at all.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah, so it is pretty much private, private portraiture.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Another important question that we like to ask.‚ I always get this by e-mail.‚ What equipment do you use?‚ So, for all the gearheads out there who are dying to ask you this question, what gear do you use, Dita?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Sure.‚ Whatever I can keep my hands on.‚
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Are you shooting mostly traditional photography?‚ Are you shooting more digital photography at the outset before processing it?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ No.‚ Everything is shot on film.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ In fact, I find myself to be very fortunate that I am still from the old school photo world.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, everything is wet lab.‚ I process my own black and white at home, send the color out, but basically I do shoot on almost anything I can.‚ The series that the image of Soma came from was shot on 35 with F90x Nikon camera.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I would like to say I have that camera and it is amazing.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ It is pretty good.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ We did not discuss this in advance, but I love that camera.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ I really do as well and I came upon it because it was actually one of the cameras they used on a film set as a prop.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ They have purchased 10 of them and then they were selling them off, so I really came in to a very good deal and that is why I bought it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ It is also a camera that for instance I let one of my other photography friends use, so she is working with it all the time.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I am very much into lending and helping each other out in that sense.‚ So, this series was also shot on Agfa, Agfa film.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For me, I had wanted to do something like this for about six years.‚ I have applied for grants, always got rejected and I took it personally at first and then I just thought, “Well, that’s ridiculous.‚ I’m not gonna let something like that get in the way of me working on a project.”‚ So, I decided that I would fund it myself.‚ So, what is the cheapest way that I could do it?‚ What is the cheapest film I could buy?‚ What is the cheapest way I could process it, scan it and work on it?
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ When they were finally printed, were they printed via inkjet, from a lab, what is the final result?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.‚ They are inkjet prints using the most archival inks that are out there and also printed on archival paper.‚ That would be the limited series edition that I have.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I have really decided to go that route and limit the production of it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ For those that are thinking of possibly doing something similar with their own projects, would you be able to suggest what paper you are using?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ You know what?‚ I would not because everyone likes something else and I have gone through it like for instance I bought the most expensive paper you can possibly buy on earth.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ After starting to print, I really did not like it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Which other people swear by that paper, so it is not for me, but it works for other people and I am now still in the process of finding something that I really want to stay with.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, the papers that you use vary from image to image?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, they vary not too much.‚ They vary a little bit because I am still in the process of trying to find the best route for me, but that is also talking about black and white images.‚ I really like a paper that has a very pure white in it.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Yeah.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I find that a lot of digital papers out there are a little bit creamy.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Which lowers the contrast of your image and for me, I need to have my whites to be white.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, that would be the perfectionist in me that does not like the most expensive paper on earth.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.‚ I guess we have taken a lot of your time.‚ I do not want to continue too much longer.‚ So, I guess I just like to ask you at the end, are you having any upcoming exhibitions or besides Phudge.ca, where else could people see some more of your work?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Well, at the present moment, I had just finished an exhibition in November and I packed it up and I am now looking for other places to exhibit in.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ This would be the series, the Recollection.‚ So, I am at the place now where I am sending out my dossier to other artists and galleries and what-nots and starting my new series.‚ So, at the moment, I do not have it up anywhere.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I am looking and as soon as I find a place, I will have it up on my website.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.‚ Excellent.‚ If you send me a link once you do have it done maybe I will be able to put that in the show notes as well.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ A little bit of a sneak peek maybe.‚ Are we able to?‚ What will the next set of work be dedicated to?
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Actually, I think that it is going to be — there are two things that I am very interested to work on and one will be a continuation of this project.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Okay.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ But in color.‚ I am sure it is what that has to tell me.‚ The other one is I am looking to go travel, to get out of town for a little bit and to continue a little bit of a sort of a series of squares that I have been working on that actually are very abstract and has new people in them and are just sort of almost abstract colors, horizons, that kind of thing.‚ So, I am curious.‚ That one I have not really worked out very much.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Excellent.‚ Excellent.‚ Well, we will look forward to it definitely.‚ So, I guess I would like to take this moment to thank you, Dita, for agreeing to do this podcast with us.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you very much, Marko.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ It was totally a pleasure and I know a lot of our visitors are going to get a lot out of it.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you very much.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, thanks again and we do hope that you will send us an update as well.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ I will.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thanks, Dita.
Dita Kubin:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ Thank you.
Marko Kulik:‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ So, that was our interview with Montreal fine art photographer, Dita Kubin.‚ I certainly hope you enjoyed that interview.‚ I hope you learned a few interesting things.‚ I know I did.‚ We intend to do more interviews in the new year.‚ I would like to take this opportunity once again to wish everyone Happy holidays and Happy New Year.‚ I hope everyone is healthy and well and gets whatever they want.‚ Please, as always, leave some comments in the blog or on the bulletin board or you can shoot me e-mails at photography.ca@gmail.com.‚ It is my pleasure to hear from you.‚ So, take care everyone.‚ Be well and we will be putting more stuff out in 2007.‚ Bye for now.
[Camera clicks]
‚

Please note that this is an audio transcription. Grammer and punctuation will not be perfect.Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name Marko and we are coming to you from Monreal, Quebec, Canada, and today is December 8, 2006.
For today’s show, we are going to talk about exposure.‚ Although a lot of people know about exposure, a lot of people do not.‚ Someone on the bulletin board mentioned that they like to know a little bit more about getting good exposure, so I thought I talk about that today.‚ Even if you know about it, I guess you can hear about it again and we all learn from each other’s techniques.‚ It is a good thing to do.
Exposure refers to the quantity of light hitting the film or digital sensor, in terms of a digital camera, to correctly take the shot.‚ This quantity of light, it needs to be precise.‚ If too much light hits the film or sensor, the shot will be overexposed or too light.‚ If not enough light hits the digital sensor or film, then the shot will be too dark and it will be under exposed.‚ It really needs some precision.‚ The good news is, is that in today’s modern cameras either traditional cameras or digital cameras, the sensor in that camera is very sophisticated.‚ Generally, that sensor will give you good results most of the time.‚ Under normal circumstances when there is good mixture of tones in the scene, your shot will be correctly exposed because basically what the camera sensor is trying to do, it is trying to give an average reading of all the tones in the scene.‚ If you have a lot of dark tones and a lot of light tones and some mixed tones, well, then your camera will generally give you very good exposure and that is all you need to do.‚ The problems happen when there is too much of one tone or too much of another tone.‚ Specifically, if there is too many light tones or too many dark tones, what the camera is going to try and do and say, “Hey look at those light tones coming to the camera.‚ In order for me to make this average, I need to close down a bit.”‚ What is going to happen is your shot is going to look grayer or not as light as it should.‚ These are situations where you need to be careful.‚ There are other techniques that you can use that will help solve these situations.
The classic example, of course, is someone standing in front of beach or in front of a window and then another person tries to take a photograph of that.‚ When that camera is looking at the scene, it is saying, “Oh my goodness, look at all the light coming into the camera.‚ Again, I need to shut down.”‚ What happens is the person in front of the beach or the window ends up looking too dark because the camera underexposed the subject because so much light was coming into the camera.‚ These are the situations where you have to be careful.‚ When you see extreme amounts of light coming into the camera or on the opposite end, if you are taking a picture of, let us say, someone wearing dark clothes against the dark wall, the camera is going to say, “Oh my god, this scene is so dark.‚ I need to average it out.‚ I need to open up a lot.‚ I need to give the shot more exposure.”‚ What happens is the black person in the black suit against the black wall ends up turning out mushy and not black because the camera did not correctly expose for those tones.‚ Like I said, again, to recap, in normal scenes where there is a variety of tones, there is really no problem and you will generally get good exposure.‚ The trick is being able to notice when the scene is not normal.‚ That only comes with experience.‚ Of course, if you have a digital camera, you could just look at the results and adjust expose accordingly and hopefully learn from it or if you are with a conventional camera, take notes if you are learning and then when you get back the results you can also see what went right and what went wrong.
Now, the camera sensor in your camera, that is a reflective sensor.‚ That is reflective meter.‚ It is called reflective meter because it measures the light that is hitting your subject and coming back to the camera, the light that is being reflected back to the camera.‚ These are generally excellent in quality as we mentioned before especially in modern cameras.‚ Again, you just have to be aware of the situation where the lighting is not normal because that camera meter will be fooled.‚ What these reflective meters do when they are in camera is they average out the whole scene within the camera.‚ It looks at the whole scene and the camera measures the whole scene.
There is another type of reflective meter called the spot meter.‚ It is exactly the same in principle except that it only measures a smaller area of the photograph.‚ Usually, you will see like a circle in the middle of the camera when you are looking through it. ‚In the center of that circle, there will be smaller circle or a smaller square.‚ If you have spot metering available on the camera, it will measure exactly what is in that teeny spot.‚ It is really handy when you are more advanced and you want your exposure to be based on a particular area of the shot, but for most people the type of metering that is non-spot that evaluates the whole scene or the whole frame of what you are shooting gives really good results.
A great tool that can help with exposure, especially if you are just learning or you want to perfect your metering technique or you want to assure yourself of good results, is a gray card.‚ What the gray card does is the gray card is the exact measurement that the camera is trying to achieve.‚ The camera is trying to make all the tones middle gray.‚ Although this may sound weird for color photography, again, it is trying to achieve a middle color so that the exposure will always be average and thereby correct.‚ You can buy this gray card at any photo store and it is a great, great handy tool when you are learning.‚ If you do come across a situation where you are just not quite sure of exposure, especially if you are with a non-digital camera and you cannot see result right away, what you could do is, let us say you are taking a picture an object or a person, well, you have that person hold the gray card or you use some type of device to hold the gray card in place and you approach the subject and you take the meter reading off the gray card.‚ You approach the gray card and you have the gray card fill the frame of the camera.‚ You note the exposure on the camera and you plug that exposure in when you back up.‚ That will give you a very accurate result.‚ You should also be aware that the actual exposure is dependent on three variables, which is the film speed, the aperture, and the shutter speed.‚ These three variables, they change.‚ They are not constant.‚ Although you may use certain a film or your camera may tell you that it is using a certain film sensitivity, it is not always bang on.‚ As you approach in experience or as you approach better photographic technique, you may want to make smaller adjustments in order to achieve better results.‚ In using the gray card, you could really find out the difference between the camera’s exposure and what the actual neutral exposure really is.‚ I recommend using the gray card when you get like a new camera or a new lens or you want to really perfect your exposure.‚ Just take a shot, put the gray card in the scene, approach the gray card, take the meter reading from the gray card and your camera, then keep that meter reading back up and take the shot as you normally would.‚ A good thing to do as always would be to take the shot according to what the camera reading was giving you from your position as opposed to what it gave you when you approach the gray card in the scene.‚ Again, it is a great, great learning tool and experience.‚ The metering we just talked about, this reflective meter, it comes with the camera and it is great tool to use.‚ You can also have an external spot meter if your camera does not have one.‚ They are pretty expensive, but they are great tools to have as well.‚ What it does is to kind of looks a little bit like a gun, let us say, and from your position you aim it at the subject and you can get an exposure reading that is very, very precise from a small area on an external reflective spot meter.‚ Very useful device for those that are more advanced who really want to perfect their exposure.
Another type of meter that is very useful to have and most pros have one, or even advanced amateurs they have one, is called an incident meter.‚ What the incident meter does is it measures the amount of light falling on the subject.‚ It does not have to do with the reflection back to your camera.‚ It is the actual amount of light that is falling on your subject.‚ You approach the subject physically.‚ It does not matter if it is a person or an object, but it is definitely something that you can approach.‚ You would not use it for a mountain or a landscape.‚ I guess you are good — if you want to get a lot of exercise, approach the mountain and then go back to your position and shoot, but it is really for portraiture or still objects.‚ The ambient meter or the incident meter will measure the light falling on the subject.‚ The results you get from this meter are very accurate because it actually measures the amount of light falling on the subject.‚ You can get into tricky situations with the incident light meter as well if different mixed lights is falling on your subject, but in general just play with it a little bit.‚ Again, check out the results either on screen on a digital camera or when you get your film back and you will see that it is just an absolutely fantastic, fantastic device.
Usually, when we use the incident meter, especially in traditional photography, we are going to measure for the shadows.‚ We are going to expose for the shadows.‚ If there is a mixed light within the scene, we are going to try and position the incident meter and we are going to point it at the light source or toward the light source, but in the darker area of the scene if that makes any sense at all.‚ If there is like a bright ray of light shining on the subject at his chest level, you may want to measure the scene below the chest level so that it does not totally blow out the scene.‚ You want to expose for the shadows in general and develop for the highlights if we are talking traditional photography.‚ If we are talking digital photography, just incident record the scene.‚ Take the metered measurement, plug it into your camera, shoot, and see what you get.‚ See what you are doing right or wrong.‚ That is really the beautiful aspect of the digital camera; you can see the results right away.‚ Again, for anyone that is seriously into photography, I highly recommend getting an incident light meter.‚ It is so practical and such a great learning tool and such a great useful tool, especially if you are being paid to shoot.‚ Now, again, these incident meters are a couple of hundred dollars.‚ They are between $200 and $300 to buy them new, but you can often find them used on eBay or you can look in your local paper or go to a local photo store and you will find these meters used as well.
The only other thing I really wanted to mention about exposure is the difference basically between traditional cameras and digital cameras.‚ Although the technique of measuring the scene will be the same, again, you are going to want to make some small adjustments with regard to the meter readings that you are getting especially if you see that your results are consistently off.‚ Film manufacturers and the camera’s speeds, you need to adjust them.‚ They are going to be really good for most applications, but you are going to find that occasionally the meter reading is off and you are going to wonder why.‚ It is because they are not all bang on, you need to adjust them slightly by increasing the exposure either through exposure compensation in the camera or exposure compensation in the meter.‚ You really need to adjust the individual meters if you want to get the best result.‚ You also need to know that when you are doing your tests that although your eye can see the difference in latitude between the darkest parts of the scene and the lightest parts of the scene, the camera cannot.‚ If there is a really huge difference, the camera will not be able to record it properly regardless of how you are metering it.‚ Now, that is a whole other topic and we can go on and on and on about the fine points of exposure, but you need to be aware that if the scene is too bright, your camera will not be able to record it regardless of the meter reading that you put in.‚ These types of situations really only occur with experience.‚ After you have shot many, many photographs, you will be able to realize, “Oh my goodness, this scene is just way too bright.‚ I either can’t shoot this scene and record both sides of the spectrum, the dark tones and the light tones correctly, or I have to reduce the contrast of the scene somehow.”‚ Sometimes that always will not be possible.‚ You need to give it up unless you have such a budget whereby you are able to really control the scene with all kinds of equipment, then if the scene is too strange in terms of its brightness variety, you just have to wait for another time or realize it is just not going to work or live with the results you get.
That basically covers our show for today.‚ As always, we appreciate comments in the blog and we also appreciate comments in the forum.‚ We are changing around the blog a little bit.‚ I hope you like the changes.‚ You can subscribe, as always, for free in iTunes.‚ Just do a search for photography podcast or Photography.ca Podcast and you will find our podcast.‚ We are going to have some direct links put up in the blog so that if you just click those links you will be subscribed in iTunes, which is a great podcatching software to have, so I recommend you download it if you do not already have it downloaded, but a lot of you probably do have it downloaded.‚ That is it for the today.‚ Thanks so much.‚ We are going to do another podcast really quickly.‚ Once every two weeks I am finding is bit long, so I intend to actually shorten that period in the very near future, maybe once every 10 days or even once a week.‚ Hope you keep on listening.‚ If you have any questions, shoot them my way.‚ It is my pleasure to answer them, either via email, via the blog, posting in the forum.‚ Always my pleasure, love talking to newbies, love talking to professionals through email or directly.‚ Again, thanks everyone for listening.‚ Have a great day and keep on shooting.‚ Bye for now.
[Camera clicks]

Please note that this is an audio transcription. Grammer and punctuation will not be perfect.

Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography.ca podcast #5.‚ My name is Marko and we are coming to you from fantastic Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on this 22nd of November 2006.
So, for today’s show, we are going to go through a little bit of the journey that I just went through.‚ I was just in the market for a camera and it took me months and months and months and months to decide which camera I was going to get.‚ There were a lot of considerations for the camera and money being one of them, quality being another one, am I just ready to go completely digital at this point, all these factors just weighing on my mind day after day, month after month, but after squirreling away some peanuts for many months I decided to take the plunge and buy a camera.‚ So the question was, which one to buy?‚ That is really what we are going to talk about today, which camera did Marko buy?‚ Actually, the two choices were the D80 by Nikon and the Canon 30D.
Before we start, I should tell you that this is just my subjective opinion on it all.‚ There is no technical test.‚ I did not really measure anything.‚ All I did was compare the two cameras and used my eye to make the best decision possible.‚ It was a pretty difficult decision for me because I am a Nikon person.‚ I have always been a Nikon person and I have three lenses that are Nikon so part of the thing was, you cannot use your Nikon lenses in any effective way whatsoever with the Canon system and vice versa.‚ Naturally, my first instinct was to go with the D80.‚ It was in my price range.‚ I was looking at about 1100 to 1200 Canadian dollars and although that is a lot for a camera, for sure that is a lot, for something approaching professional grade or prosumer, those are just what the prices are and after squirreling away for months I was prepared to plunk down the cash.‚ I got to tell you, I bought that camera a few weeks ago and I really like that camera.‚ It really did it for me.‚ It was really easy to use.‚ It was very intuitive, especially since I am totally used to the Nikon system.‚ I love, love the auto focus on it.‚ I love the body.‚ I love the way the control works and I love the way that it worked until ISO 400.‚ I must confess that I am extremely, extremely critical and at the end of the day it was all about what was going to give me the best bang for my buck at the time I am going to buy it.‚ Obviously, in two months from now or three months from now things will change, but I know a lot of you are probably going through a similar dilemma, which one to buy, which one to buy.‚ If you want to learn from the benefit of my experience or take whatever I have to say with a grain of salt, yahoo.
Back to the Nikon D80, I really, really like this camera and I liked it until ISO 400.‚ I did some tests and I did these tests with a good friend of mine, Dominic Fuizzotto, who is an excellent photographer as well and he is kind of a gadget guy, even more so than I, and we compared everything at his place using his fantastic system, despite my own decent system, his is better, what can I say?‚ Anyway, we did it at his place and the D80 was absolutely fantastic until about 400.‚ Now, when I say absolutely fantastic until about 400, I am talking about enlargements.‚ What I am talking about is, taking a shot, printing the actual result at 8 x 10 or larger.‚ That was really the criteria for me.‚ If you are going to print at 4 x 5 or you are going to use it for your computer, there is no difference between the cameras, really.‚ You are going to get great results.‚ Both the Canon and the Nikon, the D80 and the 30D, are amazing, amazing, amazing at 4 x 5 or less.‚ You will never see grain, noise and grain, all these reviews that people are talking about.‚ You really will not notice it until you blow it up.‚ I really loved the camera until ISO 400 because even at 8 x 10 when I made my results and I printed my results, they were fab.‚ They were superb and they were great.‚ However, when I went to 800, I started to notice more noise than my eyes are comfortable seeing and I am a bit of a noise freak and I am a bit of a portrait freak, so I do portraits.‚ As I have mentioned before on the blog, I always focus on the eyes, I get the eyes tack, tack sharp and I love to see detail in the eyebrows, on the eye itself, in the eyelashes, and I must say that when I was making my enlargements at 800, ISO 800 or greater, I started to lose detail in the eyelashes, eyebrows and the eye and I started to see a lot of noise.‚ For those that do not know, noise are those little pixilation effects that you see and to anyone but a trained photographer, they will probably never notice, but once you get more into anything, when you get more into anything and you get more fuzzy.‚ So, at ISO 800 and plus at 8 x 10 enlargements, I found that the D80 was not acceptable to my crazy picky eye.
Other advantage that the Nikon has over the Canon is it is quieter.‚ I really like the fact that it was quiet, whisper quiet when you click the shutter.‚ Another little thing that I also liked about it, I liked the fact that it kind of had built in multiple exposure.‚ I do a lot of playing and somewhat creative photography and it is always just to play with a gadget from time to time.‚ I do not do it that often.‚ I shoot almost always on manual or aperture priority, but I was kind of into playing with the multiple exposure button just to see what kind of cool effects you can get.‚ The Canon does not have that feature.‚ Of course, you can do anything you want in Photoshop so it is not the hugest deal, but it is nice to do stuff in camera.‚ Okay, now on to the Canon D30.‚ The Canon D30 is — as you have probably guessed that the camera I ended up buying and although the motor is not as quiet as the Nikon and although the auto focus is not as amazing as the Nikon, I ultimately went with that camera because of the noise factor.‚ Once you hit ISO 800 or once you hit ISO 1600 and you compare the results side by side — and I am going to put up some photos on the blog so you could compare them yourself.‚ These are my photos.‚ Feel free to rip them apart.‚ Feel free to tell me that my tests were inaccurate, but at the end of the day when I compare the two side by side to my eye, I found there was considerably less noise in the Canon than the Nikon.‚ Again, this is at 8 x 10 enlargements only.‚ If you are at 4 x 5 or smaller, did not see the difference, both very pleasing, both very fine, but at 8 x 10 enlargements and greater, the Canon 30D wins out over the D80 in terms of noise.‚ At the end of the day, again, for me it is all about the sharpest, best picture I can make and the best portrait that I can produce and for the extra 100 dollars or 150 dollars — Canon is offering a superb rebate right now, but it still came out to be 100 or 150 dollars more for the Canon — I went with the Canon because I am a portrait freak and when I look at eyes I like them to have all the detail as possible.
That was my basic experience, actually.‚ One of the factors that made the experience a bit harder is, again, the Nikon glass.‚ If you are not going to make big enlargements, really, at 4 x 5, everything is equal.‚ There is really no need to go buy opposite the make that you already have.‚ Sure, I have Nikon lenses and now it is going to cost me a few extra bucks in Canon lenses, but it is because I am crazy picky and it is because of the enlargements.‚ Most people are not going to make enlargements.‚ Most even prosumers are going to keep their images small.‚ They are going to keep them for computer, for email, for their websites, in which case it just does not matter which camera you get because the results are going to be superb.‚ So, I would go with what the other reviewers are saying at dpreview.com.‚ They have an absolute, absolute, really thorough comparison on both cameras themselves and then between those cameras and other cameras.‚ That review is superbly technical and it was one of the sources I went to before I made my decision, but again it is only really about the enlargements as far as my experience tells me.‚ If you have glass from Canon or Nikon, stick with that system.‚ Do not cross over unless you are a little bit freakishly obsessed.
That sums up my review.‚ I hope it is helpful to people.‚ Again, take a look at the photos.‚ Compare them side by side, but the best test is going to be your own eye.‚ Buy it from a store that you can return it.‚ Test it first or buy some cards and go to the store and do some tests by yourself.‚ Take one shot with the Canon.‚ Take one shot with the Nikon.‚ Compare for yourself.‚ Everyone’s eye is different.‚ Everyone has different subject matter.‚ You really need to just compare for yourself to get the best test possible.
As always, we love to hear comments about this podcast or stuff you would like to hear in future podcasts.‚ I got a very nice comment on the bulletin board from a new member.‚ I think I may have my first groupie.‚ She loves the podcast.‚ She just wants me talk about more basic elements, which I am absolutely prepared to do in my very next podcast.‚ It is just I am so in the thick of this comparison right now, I wanted to make this comparison about the camera that I ultimately ended up choosing.‚ The next one will be for my new “groupie,” we will get back to some basics and do a show about more basic photography.
That is it for today, everyone.‚ Thanks very much for listening to the show.‚ As always, please leave comments on the blog or inside the bulletin board on Photography.ca and I will be more than happy to answer those comments.‚ Please post some pictures at the bulletin board or you can even post pictures as comments on the blog and I will be happy to review them as well.‚ Have a nice day, everyone.‚ Keep shooting and we will see you all again or hear you all again or speak to you all again in around two weeks.‚ Thanks everyone.‚ Bye now.
[Camera clicks]

Please note that this is an audio transcription. Grammer and punctuation will not be perfect.

Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name is Marko and we are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on this November 2, 2006.
It is a beautiful sunny day in Montreal, albeit cold, and sunny days are a great time to talk about fill flash.‚ This whole podcast is actually inspired by a new member that posted some pretty interesting pictures on the Photography.ca bulletin board.‚ I quite like those pictures, but I thought that those pictures could be even better if they would have just used a little bit of fill flash.‚ In a nutshell, what fill flash is, is it fills the shadows of scenes and it is particularly useful in portraiture.‚ So even on a sunny day, which may seem counter-intuitive, a great thing to do is use a bit of fill flash. ‚What happens is the sun, especially when it is high above, will hit the subject’s head and cast like a shadow in their eyes and on their nose and it is not attractive at all.‚ So, you have this person with dark circles under their eyes and it is really not so flattering and sometimes it is really distracting.‚ What is a really good thing to use is fill flash.
Now, most modern SLRs and digital SLRs have the ability to use fill flash.‚ Sometimes you can use fill flash on the little flash that comes with the camera or if you have an actual camera that you mount on your flash via the hot shoe, you can definitely use fill flash there.‚ It is such a simple procedure.‚ All you have to do is turn on the flash and fire the camera and there you go, you have fill flash.‚ You should know what settings you are on.‚ You could be on a manual setting, you could be on a more automatic setting, but even in the sun, take a picture of a person and use the flash.‚ What is going to happen is that flash is going to fire at the person and it is going to fill their face with a bit of light and generally it will make the picture more attractive.‚ Actually, for this podcast, we are going to put up a couple of shots on the blog with and without fill flash and you can kind of see the differences.‚ Now the interesting thing about fill flash is that you can vary the amount of the fill flash.‚ What most people will do is they will put it on an automatic — they will put their camera rather on an automatic setting, turn on the flash and just shoot and although generally that is better than not using any fill flash at all, especially on a bright sunny day, it is not the best thing possible.‚ It has been my experience that the best shots or generally very good shots that use fill flash have the fill flash used at a strength that is less strong than the ambient light.‚ That is to say, the light that is lighting the subject, the natural light, let us say, well, the fill flash should be less strong than that light.‚ What happens is if the fill flash is at the same strength as the light that is naturally lighting the subject or the ambient light, it does not quite look as flattering as it could.‚ If the fill flash is stronger than the subject, well, then it is not even called fill flash anymore.‚ That is really the main light for the subject and that makes the subject.‚ Unless you are looking for a specific effect, it makes it look less pleasing than normal.
That said, for that special effect, I mean you will see this all the time in fashion or fashion magazines where the model is just blasted with light.‚ She is flawless generally and they will retouch her for hours afterwards and she will look good, but it is not generally the most natural look for general photography I would say.‚ A good thing to do is read the camera manual and figure out how to adjust the flash.‚ It is usually under something called flash compensation or fill flash, but it is generally really easy to do and what you want to do, again, is let us say you are using the little flash on the camera, you just want to lower that by one or two or three stops even and what that will do is it will just add a touch of light to your subject and light them in a very pleasing way.‚ If you were to use, let us say, minus one stop of light from the flash, what the flash is doing is it is calculating the amount of light in the scene that is naturally there and then it is giving you one stop less, minus two gives you two stops less, minus three gives you three stops less.‚ These flashes can work in different fashions, it could work by stops or other increments but what looks very natural or more pleasing, let us say, is when there is less light coming from the flash than the actual light that is lighting the subject.
Personally, when I use fill flash, I almost always choose, let us say, minus one and a half or minus two stops of light, so I am just giving the subject a little bit of light, but I am not accentuating the light from the flash so it tends to look more natural.‚ If you have a hot shoe mounted flash or a more professional flash that you mount on the camera, it will usually be really, really easy to figure out how to give less fill flash or negative flash, let us say.‚ There are some arrows or there is some button that allows you to do plus a third of a stop, plus two thirds of a stop, plus one stop, or minus a third, minus two thirds, minus one, minus two, minus three, etc., and you could just play with those and see the effect that you are going to get.‚ In fact, I highly recommend, especially if you are not so familiar with fill flash, is to just go ahead and experiment, as always.‚ Take a shot with the regular flash setting, just turn it on and shoot, see what you get.‚ Minus it by one stop of light, shoot it, see what you get.‚ Minus it by two stops of light shoot it, see what you get.‚ Compare all three and see which one is most pleasing for you.‚ It would be my guess that those shots that are minus one to minus two, they might well be the most pleasing shots, they certainly are to me, but everyone is different.‚ Of course, if you are going for the exact opposite effect, you could choose whatever you want, but then I would suggest to you it is not called fill flash at all.‚ If you go plus one or plus two stops of light from the flash, you are doing the opposite, you are getting a cool effect if that is what you want, but then it is not called fill flash.‚ That is your main light and the main light is lighting the subject and the ambient light is actually acting as a secondary light.‚ It is no longer the main light.‚ You can also, of course, use fill flash from secondary sources of light by either having a secondary flash somewhere or a secondary light somewhere, but if you are already at that level, then you pretty much already know what you are doing.‚ I guess this particular podcast is geared for just using your camera to add some extra light to the faces of someone.‚ We are talking in particular about portraits because it is really hard to fill flash or to use fill flash on a landscape scene.‚ Flash typically has a very short range or reasonably short range and if you are taking picture of a mountain or anything like that, well, your flash will just never hit the mountain, it will never make a difference.‚ That is why it is particularly useful for portraiture or even close up photography, but photography that is relatively close to the camera as opposed to landscape or scenic photography.
That covers it for today’s show.‚ It was a really short show.‚ I will be putting up some photographs on the blog that go along with the show notes and you could really see the difference by using minus one and minus two as opposed to the normal shot and as opposed to no flash at all.‚ I am going to put those up so people can see the differences and hopefully learn from them.‚ As always, if you are able to comment or choose to comment it is so appreciated and if you are interested in having your photographs critiqued, well, just join the bulletin board on Photography.ca, upload a couple of pictures and it is absolutely my pleasure to critique them.‚ In fact, I would like more members to critique them as well, but each and every shot that gets uploaded that people want critiqued, it gets critiqued by me.‚ I have a little bit of experience so I hope the tips that I have given other people thus far have been useful and appreciated.‚ Well, that is it for us again.‚ This was our fourth podcast on Photography.ca.‚ We hope you enjoyed it.‚ As always, you can leave comments on the blog or through the bulletin board and we will be back in two weeks’ time to do another podcast.‚ Thanks so much for listening everyone and happy shooting!
[Camera clicks]

Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography Podcast on Photography.ca.‚ My name is Marko.‚ We are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and today is October 12, 2006.‚ For today’s show, this is going to be really an opinion piece.‚ I am going to give you my opinion on one of the most common emails I get and that email is, “Which is better, traditional photography or digital photography?”‚ I am going to give you my opinion.‚ I am going to give it to you straight up.‚ I am going to give it to you not like the neutral Canadian that so many people think we are.‚ I am going to give you my honest opinion on it and I am going to get into it now.
The question that comes to me directly is, “Is digital photography better than traditional photography?” and my answer flat out is no.‚ Digital photography is not better than traditional photography, period.‚ So, then the question comes, “Should you switch to digital photography?”‚ My answer on that one is yes probably you should unless you are a fine art photographer.‚ If you are a fine art photographer and you love the process, you love working in the dark, you love printing your own pictures especially, you love the dark room, you love the red light, you love the smell of fixer, well then, do not switch, then stay traditional, then get into you dark room and work your magic.‚ In that case, it is really about the process.‚ It is really about the craft.‚ It is really about printing by hand and you know what, in that case, there is nothing like the magic of shining that light through the enlarger on to the paper, you take that paper, you run it through the liquids and the image starts to magically appear.‚ It is magic.‚ It is magic.‚ You know what it is going to look like.‚ You know when you are getting a good print.‚ You run it through the rest of the liquids.‚ You take it outside and see the result.‚ It is pure magic.‚ It is pure craft.‚ You know what, in that respect, digital photography can never touch traditional photography.‚ There is more of a journey from the silver located on the film to the end result.‚ It is not so quick.‚ It is not so easy.‚ It is harder.‚ It is more like your baby, your child, your masterpiece and in that respect, again, traditional wins.‚ You cannot compare.‚ Traditional wins.
I would also like to suggest that just from a business perspective, if someone is trying to sell their prints and it is taking them hours and hours and hours to make 10 selective prints, I would suggest to you that if that is all that they are doing, that those prints are going to be worth more.‚ This is just my opinion again, but it took them longer to make those prints.‚ Maybe those prints are numbered, but they did not have to press a button, they worked like crazy to get each print.‚ I guess the argument can be made that, yes, you are also working in front of your computer.‚ It takes time.‚ I agree that, yes, it takes time, but once you have your masterpiece print, once you have color corrected it and Photoshop it to the nth degree, you can make as many copies as you want and those copies can be beautiful.‚ Do not get me wrong, I have made beautiful prints.‚ I love to see beautiful prints.‚ At the end of the day, a beautiful print is a beautiful print, but there is just something more magical when you did it actually by hand in the dark room.‚ That is just my opinion.‚ Feel free to tell me I am wrong.
Okay, but what if then you are a professional photographer or a serious amateur photographer?‚ You might be into fine art, but not necessarily.‚ You are more into capturing the feel, you are more into taking souvenir photos, you are more into doing a job with the photos, making money from the photos, well then, my best suggestion is go digital.‚ Digital is just so much easier in that respect.‚ With digital, you could take as much time as you want.‚ You could take as many shots as you want plus one of the most, most desirable aspects of digital photography is the fact that you can see the results right away, which makes it a superb learning tool.‚ Let us say you are taking a picture of a White man in a white suit on a white wall, well, your camera is designed to render that picture, to render that scene as a medium tone.‚ It averages out the scene.‚ So, your camera more likely than not, is going to give you a grayish result.‚ It is not going to give you that white result.‚ When you see that image after you have taken it, right away you see that it is grayish and that just makes it a great learning tool. ‚You take a shot, you do not like what you see and then you wonder why it did not turn out properly.‚ There is nothing like the instant feedback of digital in that regard.‚ If you are a pro already and you know what you are doing, well then, you just capture the scene.‚ You have got it on your card or whatever media you recorded it on.‚ You can manipulate it, you can send it wherever it needs to go and it is done, it is a done deal.‚ If you are lucky enough to have someone working for you, you just give them the card and let them deal with it.‚ It is just so much easier in that respect.‚ Is it faster?‚ Is it always faster?‚ Well, is it faster?‚ The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no.‚ Okay, I am hedging.‚ I am hedging.‚ I am not giving you the clear answer.‚ Let us say you are a wedding photographer and you are still shooting traditionally, you are shooting on film, well, after the end of the day, you take your shots, you give them to the lab and it is done.‚ There is nothing you need to do.‚ You get that proofs.‚ If you are a digital wedding photographer, well then, that is definitely not the end of it because you have all these different scenes shot under different lights and then you have to balance them all.‚ Hopefully, you are not going to be printing yourself.‚ You are still going to give them to the lab, but you have to balance them somewhat before you give them to the lab.‚ It is not done.‚ There is still work to be done.‚ So, in that respect, in terms of speed, it really depends on what you are using, what job you are doing and where you are going with it, then sometimes, yes, it is faster and sometimes not.‚ Surely if you are a fine art photographer and you are shooting in black and white or color and you are printing them yourself, then there is no way it is going to be faster, but in that case again, it is more about the journey than about efficiency.
I guess another reason why you would want to switch is, unfortunately, the sad truth is film is on its way out.‚ Traditional photography, unfortunately, is on its way out.‚ It is still going to be around for a couple of years, but more and more film manufacturers are stopping to make their classic films.‚ There are plenty of good examples.‚ I do not want to start getting all weepy, but there are loads of films that are not being produced anymore and that number is just going to diminish and diminish as digital takes hold of the minds of people.‚ It is sad to say that even though for some applications, traditional photography is better.‚ When you are talking about low light situations, the newer cameras, the newer Nikons, the newer Canons, they do not necessarily handle low light all that well.‚ You get all kinds of noise in your picture when you do not want it.‚ It is harder to deal with.‚ Low light in traditional photography is better, but on a whole, if the film stock is on its way out and everybody is changing, you kind of have to go with the times unless you are that fine art photographer again.‚ Beta was better than VHS.‚ There is a strong argument that Ogg Vorbis is better then MP3, but MP3 is everywhere now and VHS, okay, we cannot deal with VHS, but you could not be one of the few people that like Beta, that stuck with Beta‚¦‚ Oh, my God.‚ Am I showing my age now?‚ The point being is traditional is on its way out, so you really should not be spending money on traditional cameras unless you are just like learning.‚ You can buy an inexpensive camera, you are learning photography, but for the big bucks, when you are really ready to spend money on gear, I guess I would recommend going digital.
All right, so the next question goes, “Okay, Marko, you are recommending that most people go digital.‚ Which digital camera should I get?”‚ Ah, this one is clear.‚ This one is definitely clear.‚ You want to get a digital SLR.‚ You do not want to get a point and shoot.‚ You want to get an SLR, something where you can adjust the focus, you can adjust the aperture, you can change lenses, you can adjust the shutter.‚ These cameras are just far more versatile.‚ You can do whatever you need with them.‚ My recommendation is do not go all out at first.‚ Buy a cheaper one.‚ Get a used one, go to a camera shop, go on eBay.‚ Get a used one first until you know what you are doing.‚ Do not spend the big bucks yet.‚ Good digital cameras on a prosumer level, they can cost you $1500, $2000, or more when you start adding good lenses and flashes.‚ Do not spend that money at the beginning.‚ Get something much cheaper.‚ Get something used at the beginning, learn with it and then your next camera, that is when you can spend the bucks if you are still into it.‚ So many people buy cameras with all the bells and whistles and they are not into it, they still do not know if they like it, they still do not know if they need it.‚ So, why spend the cash at that point?‚ Just buy what you need.‚ Buy something not too expensive and grow after that.‚ You can still sell that camera as well or use it as a backup.
So, I guess that covers it.‚ I guess I just wanted to basically respond to the e-mails that I keep getting, “Which is better, traditional or digital?”‚ Put it to bed once and for all.‚ I guess this is just in terms of my opinion.‚ It is not the official answer.‚ It is not gospel.‚ I do not even know if I am right, but it is my opinion and I am entitled to it, darn it.‚ That is it for today’s show.‚ As usual, please we love it if you will leave some comments.‚ That would be so much appreciated.‚ This time, we have our own dedicated blogs, so you could leave the comments on the blog.‚ The link is at Photography.ca and it is my pleasure as always to get comments on anything on this show or other shows or if you have any ideas for future shows as well.‚ So, thanks for listening everyone.‚ We will see you again in approximately two weeks.‚ My name is Marko.‚ We hope you enjoyed the show and happy shooting.‚ Bye everyone.

Please note that this is an audio transcription. Grammer and punctuation will not be perfect.

Hi there everyone and welcome to the Photography.ca podcast #2.‚ My name is Marko and I am you host.‚ Today is August 24, 2006, and we are coming to you from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
First off, thanks so much to those few people that left some comments on our bulletin board about the first podcast that we did.‚ I would encourage more people to leave comments as that is really the best way to make the show as good as possible.‚ For those people that may have stumbled upon this podcast by accident, really, there is not that much that you need to know.‚ You just go to the bulletin board on Photography.ca.‚ It is completely free to join.‚ You navigate your way to the podcast forum and you can post some feedback, any suggestions, what would you like to learn, what would you like to know, what would you like me to research for you.‚ It is absolutely free to join the bulletin board and while you are there, you could post one of your own pictures and get some critiques from me and perhaps from other people as well.‚ You can always give critiques for those photos that are already there.‚ The forum could use a little bit more actions so it would be really appreciated if people could leave more comments and post more pictures.‚ In that way, it will become an even better forum.‚ The forum as a whole is really dedicated to more alternative techniques in photography, not pictures that are so straight up.‚ There is a lot of fun we can have posting different pictures.‚ So, again, please post them.‚ Please leave comments about the podcast.
Today, I would actually like to talk about depth of field and changing it up when we are shooting in different types of situations.‚ Because Photography.ca is all about experimenting, well, it is nice to experiment.‚ In normal situations where you would choose a small depth of field or a large depth of field, well, I encourage you to change it up a bit and see the results that you get.‚ For those who do not really know that much about depth of field, there is a pretty good basic article on Photography.ca.‚ Just click the articles link and you can find it, but to recap in a nutshell, depth of field simply refers to the degree of sharpness between the foreground and background of your scene and subsequently your photograph.‚ You can control depth of field by two main ways by either making the aperture larger or smaller or by choosing different lenses.‚ If we talk about aperture, well, the smaller numbers on the barrel refers to a larger hole or aperture and the larger hole or aperture makes the foreground subject sharp but the background blurry.‚ If we choose the larger numbers around the barrel, well, that makes the entire scene from foreground to background fairly sharp.‚ The numbers in between will give you something in between.‚ In terms of choosing lenses, well, wide angle lenses tend to give you sharper depth of field than longer lenses.‚ So, wide angle lenses, 24 mm, etc., 20 mm, even 35 mm, that is going to give you a much sharper image from foreground to background than, let us say, a zoom lens of 200 mm.
Traditionally, when we shoot landscapes, we want to make the foreground to background the sharpest possible, so what people do is they will put it on a really small aperture like f/16, f/22, f/32, or even f/45 depending on what camera they are using.‚ They will often stick it on a tripod and they will get a sharp, sharp foreground to background shot.‚ Now, that can be extremely interesting and it is beautiful and it is the classic way to shoot landscapes.‚ What I would suggest doing is doing the exact opposite.‚ Choose a really large aperture, something where just the foreground is going to be sharp and the background is going to be blurry and experiment with what you are going to get.‚ Maybe focus on a rock or a tree or some small element in the scene and focus on that element and let the background go soft or blurry.‚ Shoot it at f/2.8 or f/4, see what happens.‚ Take a shot at f/5.6 instead of f/32 and see the difference.
On the other side of the coin, if you are shooting a portrait, let us say, well, a lot of people are going to choose a larger depth of field, which means a smaller number on the barrel and that will isolate the subject from the background.‚ It gives a really beautiful effect, but why not mix it up a bit?‚ Stick it on the tripod, try to get your person to stand as still as possible and shoot at f/32 or f/22.‚ Make sure you get some fast film when you are doing this, but see what happens.‚ Take a picture of their whole face in perfect sharpness, mix it up, change the angles.‚ That is really what it is all about.‚ That is the best way to experiment.
Play with your lens choices as well.‚ If you have more than one lens, try doing different things.‚ Use a wide angle lens and try and use the largest aperture possible.‚ See what happens.‚ See what you get.‚ Put a zoom lens on and try and use the smallest aperture possible.‚ See what you get.‚ Experiment, try both ends.‚ Record, record, record.‚ See the results.‚ Compare one from the other.‚ Find your own style.‚ Depth of field, it is one of the key things about photography.‚ It is one of the main choices to determine how you want your picture to look.‚ It is really up to you and experimenting is really the best way to make your photography even more interesting.‚ Of course, that is what we want.‚ We want interesting photography.‚ We do not always want the same old shots, the same old person in the middle of the photo.‚ We want to change it up.‚ We want to make it exciting.‚ Along those same lines, choose different angles, choose different heights.‚ If you are shooting a person, get on the ground and angle your camera up at that person, make them look large like a tree or get up on a table and shoot down at the person and give them a weird angle on their face.‚ Experiment and see what you get.‚ We are all about experimentation around here and we could not encourage it more.‚ If you want to really change it up, use a combination of the techniques we just talked about.‚ Shoot a portrait or shoot a landscape better.‚ Yeah, shoot a landscape with a really wide open aperture and get on a crazy angle.‚ Take a picture of the tree from the ground using zoom lens instead of a wide angle lens.‚ Do something unconventional.
On the other side of it, instead of taking a picture of a person with a wider open aperture for a more shallow depth of field, stop down a bit, go to f/8, f/11, use some faster film, stick a flash on there, choose a different angle, mix it up.‚ Choose a lens that you normally would not use, mix it up.
I guess that is really the theme of today’s show, mixing it up by using different depths of field that you normally would not use, but in order to learn it is really important to record and remember what you did.‚ Take some notes while you are doing it.‚ If you are lucky enough to have a digital camera, the notes will be there as well.‚ They will be on the EXIF data.‚ Just learn, just record and learn.
That basically covers it.‚ It is a really short episode today.‚ Next time, we will make one a little longer.‚ Again, I encourage everyone to leave some comments about this podcast, what did you like, what did you not like.‚ Please go to the forum and post your comments.‚ You can always send me an email at‚photography.ca@gmail.com and I will be sure to reply just as soon as I can.‚ I absolutely appreciate emails and I absolutely appreciate feedback.‚ So, thanks again for listening everyone and we should be back in about two weeks with a brand new tip and a little bit more of advice.‚ Until then, everyone.‚ Take care and happy shooting.
[Camera clicks]