Camera's in the shop

Currently, A1 Camera Repair in downtown Louisville has my camera in order to do a full-on cleaning of the lens, mirror, and sensor. $45 and 3-5 day turnaround. I'm sure that's fairly typical for someone to do it right (after my previous attempts at cleaning it myself, I discovered that was not what I was doing), but it seems a little steep after Peace Camera in Raleigh offered to do it for free.

Still, "free" and "have to drive 10 hours to get there" put together actually is not free in the strictest of senses.

I meant to actually show you an image of the dust and particles all over the corner of a photograph, in order to illustrate just how bad things were getting. However, since I was fighting with the lens and taking some rather particular shots in order to avoid getting any residuals, I managed not to capture any that clearly showed the problem. I confess, I was not thinking about the blog when I was taking the shots, or I would have taken a photo of some blank white wall or something. As it was, I succeeded in avoiding having dust obviously speckling the photographs I took, and failed in acquiring any examples for you.

"This was a triumph."

At any rate, some of my current experiments with the automated features of PhotoshopCS4 involve panoramas. Rather than take a really large photograph, I am able to take multiple shots of a scene and then stitch them together in post. I am learning what to do and what not to do, in order to get the results I like. Things to remember: turn off auto focus, don't use a wide-angle lens, definitely do not zoom in and out. These things together will cause the stitching to mis-match and make it very obvious that there were multiple images.

Hopefully the formatting of this post will make sense. I apologize to two groups of people for this: the ones that have me on their RSS feed readers and can't see the image, and the people on dial-up. Because I think it's a rather large image (or was when I uploaded it. I'm still not entirely sure what Blogger/Google/Picassa do to images when I upload them) and will take a while for you to load it.

Click the image to see the photograph bigger and clearer. The dusky lines crossing it at different points are the result of an artistic shutter speed in light that was getting too dark for it. It makes for an appealing vignette in individual images. When stitched together, you get this.

Addendum:
Speaking of RSS Feeds, keep up with me on Twitter for a slightly more up-to-date update on what I'm doing around town. I will sometimes announce trips to various places, and if you'd like a moment in the spotlight you may wind up as the subject of an impromptu photoshoot. I'll also be announcing next month's sale for my website. Just go to Twitter and look up tlamkinjr .

Long time no see!

No, the government hasn't bought us out in the middle of this economic crisis. Being a free service and a purely academic blog, we don't have anything that our new administration would want. No bailout money for this Palette of Pixels!

The other half of the staff has been wrapped up in new employment responsibilities, keeping her from making her debut post, so my attempt to entice her into saying something to you by going silent for months has failed miserably.

The weather has turned wonderful, and if the thunderstorms would stop bypassing my ridge, I would love to share some of the beautiful images of clouds that are possible. First, though, I'll need to explore how to properly clean a dSLR camera when pine, oak, and maple pollen finally work their way onto one of the lenses. It may be on the mirror, too, which would be even more annoying.

Unlike a regular mirror, I can't just take Windex to it. I'll need to investigate just how dangerous that Canned Air stuff might be to the delicate lenses. The propellent may be fine for cleaning the insides of electronic equipment, but that chemical may leave a residue on my lenses which would be worse than a spot of dust. I can photoshop that single blot out - but a big smear across the screen would be catastrophic. There are lens cleaning kits, too, but I'm dubious. The advertising for them always comes across as though it were written by the same people currently trying to sell you bucketloads of the new acai berries to make you lose weight like magic. Plus, the kits look really cheap like someone just repackaged a makeup kit. I will have to see, and I will let you know.

Since this is the first post in a while, I'll open the floor to any readers that may browse through the area. Do you guys have any questions, or have you discovered anything new from your respective palettes?

Make them Smile

Last week we skipped the pictures to talk about a different part of the palette. Prior to that, I promised we would go over smiles.

Smiles are very important in an image. They're not always necessary, but always important. Maybe I should say that people's expressions are always important. The presence, or absence, of a smile can tell a lot about a situation. Sometimes a smile would seem horribly out of place - or even horrific. Other times, the absence of a smile makes the image look bland, or dull, just as you would feel if you were in that situation with the subjects and no smiles were to be found.

Photographers, in order to get the right smile from their subject, often have to resort to tactics used by other professions that thrive on smiles. A photographer can suddenly morph into a clown, or a comedian, or a suave politician trying to talk someone into reluctantly smiling despite themselves. Sometimes, though, this transformation is not an option. In candid images, for example, you don't want the people's attention on you. Also, in crowds, it may simply not be possible to get everyone in the frame to smile.

Nevertheless, if you're showing a portrait of people at an event, you'd like to capture a moment where they are having fun.


Here is an example of some people watching a parade. You have a few different expressions, here. The man in the foreground seems to be smiling almost reluctantly. He's having fun, almost like something has unexpectedly amused him despite the frown lines and wrinkles that may belie a somewhat dour attitude. The woman beside him has the tight-lipped smile of someone uncomfortable with the expression. Maybe she's self-conscious about her teeth, or maybe she just really hates the photographer. Behind them are more grins of people watching the parade, and even the fellow walking by seems to be chuckling to himself. The picture is full of life, and of different stories, but the sum of the parts is that people are having fun. This is a place you would want to be, and it is an even that can make anyone grin.

This is the portrait you would like to hand the event organizer, or someone possibly interested in hosting a similar event. The image could be what convinces them that a parade is just the thing they need to bring some life to their town. It is good advertising,and it tells a good story.

Like most advertising, this image is a lie. I used the same techniques we've been talking about: blur, smudge clone-stamp, and even some copy-pasting. I took more time, about 20 minutes, and worked in closer detail. It is my hope that you cannot immediately tell what artwork I did to the image. Comparing a before-and-after, though, would show what things required my attention.



Here is the original photograph of these people as they watch the parade.


A photographer, a comedian, and even a politician can convince people to smile.

Me? I can make them smile.

Restoring a Portrait

It can be a lot of fun making sure your digital photographs look pristine and clear of intruding tourists. Photographs that tell a reliable story can capture a moment for a long time. Did you know that modern ink used in home printers is actually designed for archive use? Tests have shown that desktop printed documents are capable of surviving over 200 years. That’s a long time for you to be keeping pictures of Scruffy the dog, still wet from his first bath.

Some images, however, are priceless. They’re not printed on modern acid-free paper, using this state-of-the-art ink that makes us glad we’re not running our cars on anything made by Lexmark. These photographs are often of our own ancestors, the portrait surviving only because it has been behind glass for years, or was tucked into the attic for a couple generations, or sheer luck. Sometimes luck isn’t enough and time takes its toll despite our best efforts.


This is another image I found on the internet. There is an amazing amount of old photographs that have been scanned and uploaded onto the world wide web, and many of them are in similar condition to this. Age spots, mildew, water damage, creasing, wrinkles, and simply the changes in environment making the ink peel and flake off – many things can cause these minor bits of damage that grow to ruin the entire image. Soon, the portrait becomes unrecognizable and it goes from priceless to worthless. This effect is tragic, but correctable.

It used to be, before digital technology, that a skilled artisan needed to step in and take the original photograph to a laboratory. There, under a microscope or multiple magnifying glasses, the artist would carefully paint, cut, paste, and eventually repair the marred surface of the image. It was a painstaking process, not least of all because the artist was working with the original piece. If anything should happen, the photograph is gone, and is irreplaceable.

Nowadays, with scanners and other digital-capture devices (even your camera!), you can have something to work with and leave the precious original alone. To mimic the hard work performed by the artist mentioned previously, you simply need to use the methods I mentioned in the beach scene. You cannot erase the damaged sections, but you can take pixels from another section and paint over the flaw. Taking your time and envisioning what result you want will allow you to gradually restore the portrait to its prior glory. With the right training and a lot more time devoted to the project, it is even possible to improve on the original and clear up errors inherent in old photography – even adding color to a black-and-white portrait!

Here is the result of a few minutes’ work on this piece I found.


If you did not know it was originally damaged, it should be difficult to tell that anything has been done to the image. It is still very soft-focused, the colors are all the same, and lines that are supposed to be continuous do follow from one point to another without apparent disruption.

Just for comparison sake, here are the two images side-by-side.


Now if only we could make her smile…

We can. We’ll do that next week.

Post Production

Being a Palette of Pixels, the art form goes far beyond the initial capture. I like to think of that original snapshot, portrait, photograph, as being a raw, frozen instant. It is the real world, caught and framed in such a way as to give your viewers a narrow and focused image or thought. On some level, it is telling a story.

That's why I love the art form.

"A picture is worth a thousand words," they say. But sometimes there's a lot of extraneous words involved that don't contribute to your story. Just like with a written tale, you could leave it as the raw original, but it is often better to look back over what you've captured and start trimming down the excess. Get rid of any distracting elements that don't add to what you're trying to say. You have to know what is important, and what is telling some side story that isn't vital. Also, perfect your language. Make it fit exactly what you're trying to do. Word choice, sentence structure, even punctuation is of utmost importance. After you're done, no one will see how much work you put into making your story succinct, fluid, and streamlined. That's the idea, though. Your brush strokes can be invisible, so long as the story is what you want to tell.

I suppose it counts as a metaphor when I move back and forth between the imagery of a novel and a photograph. Nevertheless, the end result is the same. A good photograph does not have to be a finished product.



Ah, summer break on the beach. Friends hanging out with the other tourists, a bright blue sky and a big golden sun directly overhead. Thoughts of school are far away, and you hop out of the water for a second so your friend can snap a photo before you go in for lunch at the hotel. A perfect shot to remember the moment!

The photograph is 'complete'. Everything's in frame. You've got Scooter, there, and Jessica, names I made up JUST NOW, and they look happy and content. They're looking out of a portrait at their future selves. Their future selves are looking at the portrait going "Aw, we were so young." Or something. And then they send it off to mom, and mom goes "Aw, they're so cute!" And they send it off to their friends in Canada, and they go "Aw, it looks so warm!" And they set the photograph in a cute little frame on their coffee table, and the neighbors come over and see it. And their neighbors go "Aw, who are those people back there?"

Imagine the sound of a record player scratching and the cozy music abruptly ending.

"What? What people? Oh. Um. Other tourists, I guess."

"And how come the ocean looks tilted?"

"Well, we were on the sand, so I guess the camera wasn't straight."

"And why's your hair in your face?"

"Well I just got out of the water."

"Scooter was sucking it in a bit, wasn't he? Look at the -"

"IT IS JUST A PICTURE, STOP IT."

Why should it be just a picture? Trim down your story so only the elements you intend to share are carried across. Don't distract with excess details. Those tourists have their own story. The awesome waves and the way the water felt, you can tell that story without this portrait. Scooter really needed to relax, but he was nervous and you guys had just met. He wanted to look good!

Brush up the sand, smooth out the hair, tilt the image, lose some of those shadows, and offer Scooter the tummy tuck he was trying to do himself...




Now your story is coming through a bit clearer.