What is eternity?

...and how can it be captured?

There's a proverb out that informs us that only two things are certain: death and taxes.

I may have a problem with the latter and hold a blithe indifference towards the former, but I believe that more than simple human interaction with the system of life is both certain and perpetual.

As a photographer, I need to look for more than simply composition in a shot - it needs to speak to me. Moreover, I have to be able to infer the thoughts and perceptions of those who will eventually see the finished product. I've said this before - there's no point in taking a picture and giving it a status that says, "This has meaning" when no one can understand it. Although not all meanings are apparent, there must be at least some faint aspect of a message or meeting to cause people to search a little more, look a little deeper.

Love is a powerful emotion - those who haven't experienced it can't relate and those who have can't describe it. Although my primary purpose in visiting China back in June was as a student, I also intended to find great photographic opportunities as much as possible.

It is a tradition for those who live near - or even not so near - to the Yellow Mountains (Huang Shan) to put a padlock on the chains between the fence posts up there.

The tradition started some time ago, and symbolizes the perpetuity of love in a committed relationship. China, with a divorce rate nowhere near ours here in America, views the social life of married couples much differently. Once one has found love, it "binds" him to the other for eternity.



This photo is in honor of my girlfriend's and my six-month anniversary.

The meaning behind a photo is important. I loved the way this was set up and loved what it stood for. It's not even folklore or a legend (which account for the reasons behind most of China's little rituals and customs), just an idea - the idea that love endures forever.

As it should.

Shanghai revisited

The river tour I took in Shanghai was probably the best overall photographic experience of the trip.

The 45 minutes we spent on the river observing the city at night was great. In that space of time, the sun set dramatically over the city. It looked like this:



My computer decided it ought to look like this:



But really, it looks like this:



Currently, I'm in the mountains with internet filtered to block deviantART. I'll be uploading again on Monday.

I got my picture DVDs from China in the mail on Monday, so I'll be going through them for a while and posting the best ones all over.

That's all for now.

Casual Modelling and Human HDR

Before I say anything artsy at all, I feel as though I should apologize for not making the weekly posts I'd promised. I'd also like to apologize for the absence of every single other contributor, but I won't. They'll be back soon, I hope.

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Glamour modelling isn't as hard as it's made out to be. For a lot of my teenage years, I was told I ought to be a model. And no, it wasn't just my mother, it was anyone: people in clothing stores, people in coffee shops (the most awkward conversation starter EVER)...I never followed up on that suggestion; as someone so perpetually self-conscious and not always confident in my appearance, I found it hard to accept that I could model clothing. I know I wear clothes well - modesty aside, I tend to be a well-dressed person (generally). As an artist, I know about color co-ordination and complementation, what clashes and what doesn't; not walking in a straight line tends to contribute to my fashion choices and consciousness anyway. It stands to reason I'd be willing, if not eager, to intern at a portrait studio of some sort.

I've always hated the typical female model figure. The pencil-thin body, artificial tan, professionally done hair, fake boobs, all that crap - hated it. That sort of image has become a false idol for young girls everywhere - they see some perceived reason to aspire to that kind of skin-deep view of themselves and their peers, and aspire to emulate every aspect of the typical mainstream female fashion model.

I'm of the opinion that anyone can look good if they put their mind to it. With the value our society places on appearance, it's important to at least try. And come on, you know we all do a bit of camera-whoring when we get bored.




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"Human HDR" is in the title because I was always fascinated with the possibilities of HDR imaging, but never was able to make a human look good with higher-dynamic highlight processing. I decided to link the possibilities of human HDR imaging with the possibilities of casual modelling.

There's definitely some kind of message in the fact that two self-conscious people wind up with each other. There's a moral there. maybe it's the kind of problem that needs worked out together.

The raw camera file is below. I used full manual on my D60, 18-55 DX VR G ED basic lens.

There are several problems with this shot that become apparent. One of them was the wall of the house to the left, now cropped out. The other is the radio antenna going through her right arm. The sky's also pretty flat but that's alright when our subject is wearing such a busy outfit. I'm not a fan of flat, boring skies, but I can learn to deal. The last problem is those tan lines...kidding...


Photomatix Pro 3 allows the user to, instead of generating a full HDR with detail enhancing and tonal range compression, simply combine exposures of two or more images with S/H processing ranging from basic to intensive. I did a simple gamma pull on the raw file (after I removed the antenna with a brush tool - flat sky comes in handy for once!) and then combined them.

Technically, this is not "Human HDR" but it's close. Skin highlights are always interesting to deal with because the computer registers the skin as mainly reds and oranges - the same colors most often highlighted in direct-natural-light images. Notice the roof behind her - it got really vivid, which was a necessary sacrifice because those same settings brought out her natural skin glow so well.

Such circumstances make people look so pale. Can't have that. (In the raw file, she appears much paler than she is. The processed image is almost true-to-life!)

The final image is not only a great study in spontaneous modelling, but also great practice at achieving more realistic, higher-dynamic images.

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Feel free to contact me through any link on the right side of this page. My images are my property and are licensed under Creative Commons licenses. I welcome your feedback/criticism/comments!

J.B

5-Star hotel, 3-Star room

I will let you make your own judgment on this one, but let's just say that my personal experiences left a bit to be desired.

The Grand Hotel, in Taipei, Taiwan, is an authentic Chinese palace-styled five-star hotel originally built to accommodate visiting dignitaries. It's a nice place, although the campus itself is a bit sketchy and getting there involves a fair bit of walking up hills and watching out for poisonous snakes and stray dogs.

On the whole, I was unsatisfied with the experience I had there...I was fully expecting a five-star hotel, with all the amenities, although in all fairness I'd never actually stayed at one before.

All the other hotels we stayed at were three- and four-star hotels that provided us with a great deal of amenities and services we weren't expecting: complimentary slippers and bathrobes, inexpensive laundry services, soap, lotion, and bodywash dispensers in the showers, nice views of the city/countyside, and low-priced food and drink in the lobby shop.

The Grand Hotel had none of the above for us. There were no bathrobes, and the single pair of feminine, sandal-like leather "slippers" in the room cost NT$250 (about US$8) to use. The bathroom had no dispensers; rather, they provided us with two little bottles, one of shampoo and the other of bodywash, akin to the type you'd find in a Holiday Inn Express here in the States. There was no lotion. The paint in the bathroom was poorly applied and could not disguise the aging and cracked woodwork. Oh, and the unappealing wallpaper in the bathroom was - get this! - moldy.



The laundry service there, should I have decided to throw in all my dirty clothes at the time, would have run me a ridiculous NT$500 in total (about US$15) compared to the ¥50 I could have spent on laundry in our 3-star in Beijing (approx. US$8).

There was a mini-fridge in the room, of course (it wasn't cold), that contained cans of Coca-Cola and three types of beer, as well as mini bottles of whiskey and Johnny Walker, and a bottle of water. The Coke was the cheapest thing there, costing a mere NT$150 (US$4.50). The next cheapest was the bottle of water, with a price of NT$200 (US$6).

Paradoxically, there was a vending machine on the campus of the hotel, down near what I presumed was the maintenance shed, where one could get an identical can of Coke for NT$20 (US 60¢).

Did I mention how small the room was? There was only a single light in the ceiling (the others were above the bed and the table). Notice the two lamps in the picture of our room below? The one on the right had a broken switch so it didn't work. We ended up using the tiny spotlight in the ceiling instead. The far wall, as in most hotels, was all windows, but they didn't open as far as I could tell. And how about this view?


So much for a pleasant view of Shanghai at night, or overlooking the campus of Peking University, or a panorama of Hangzhou - this five-star hotel gives you a concrete wall and a jungle!

I was lucky to snap that picture, too, as the windows had a nasty habit of accumulating condensation to the point where we couldn't see out of them.


I didn't take a picture of the room until my roommate and I were packing in prep to check out. I am standing in front of the door, the bathroom is to my left and a desk with a light is to the right.

The beds were smaller than what we'd had at other hotels, but they were by far the most comfortable, which definitely made up for the moldy bathroom, at least a little bit.

Unfortunately, the lights were positioned in such a way that we couldn't reach them from the bed, as we could in all the other hotels. They had to be turned off before one gets in bed, which resulted in my tripping not once, but twice...

The walls had been spackled over and over in attempts to hide what upon closer inspection appeared to be dents or even holes. Tacky. Just like the conspicuous lack of décor.

Luckily, the breakfast at The Grand Hotel reminded me that we were indeed in a five-star hotel.


It wasn't all that easy to remember that little fact, though. I presume this is a side of The Grand Hotel that people rarely see or hear about. I didn't have a very satisfying experience there, let's say.

Just thought I'd share that. Again, make your own judgment.