We produced this video for the California Ski Company to show how they are creating a safe business during the coronavirus pandemic.
Got an idea for a video? Contact us
We created this video for the Hugh Groman Group, a catering company based in Berkeley, California. Through the magic of timelapse photography, we show the great effort that goes into creating success for a big party. Got an idea for a video? Contact us!
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Bombay Train Ennui (2009)
Black and white photography often creates a mood or seems more artistic by somehow emphasizing shapes and patterns. How does it do that and, furthermore how can we do that?
Before digital photography came along, a lot of people who took up photography, for fun or profit, worked in black and white. It was cheaper and easier to do yourself and that made it accessible. Not only was color processing more expensive and more difficult to manage, but the range of what looks acceptable in color is very narrow. Variations in exposure or contrast in a black and white image might change the mood or emphasis on form. Variations in color simply look wrong or bad.
Black and white photography has a longer and broader history, too. When I think of people who were down and out in the Great Depression or fighting in the great wars, I often think of the iconic black and white images of those eras. And for good reason. Cameras became small and portable and fast in the early 1900s and organizations like the FSA and WPA funded many out-of-work photographers, laying a foundation of enduring work that inspired many a street photographer or photojournalist thereafter.
For my photography, I often like to shoot in black and white - and by that I mean while looking at a black and white image on the camera. This is a distinctly new digital capability that the classic film photographers back in the day did not have. Although most digital cameras can pre-visualize in black and white, people do not typically take advantage of this. In fact, most are totally unaware of black and white as a shooting mode and treat it simply as one of many filters that can be applied in the post-processing of an image. However, using black and white mode as a shooting tool can help you make a fundamental shift from seeing the subject matter to seeing light and shadow, shape and form. I want to suggest that this is a more artistic approach because it is abstract in nature and goes beyond simply creating a copy of what we see visually, evoking an emotional component that isn’t necessarily tied to the subject matter.
We are so easily distracted by color and by the subject of the photograph and we rarely look at the shape and the form of things and where the light fades and falls off into shadow and darkness. Black and white photographs do this in a magical way by removing the distraction of color and allowing a wider range of exposure and contrast, of light and dark. Visual patterns become more visible, emphasizing shape and form. Even the most mundane and boring photographs can gain emotional quality just by making them black and white or even just reducing the color saturation.
Shooting in color and converting to black and white after the fact relies on a hopeful accident that a color picture might look better in black and white. Photographers will also tell you that shooting in color is better because you have a greater range of options when post-processing. But some cameras allow you to shoot in black and white and revert to color later, so why not visualize in black and white from the start? This is easily done with the street camera of our day - the iPhone. Shooting in black and white means changing the filter on the iPhone camera so it is displaying a black and white image while you shoot. (Tap the filter button, 3 overlapping circles, in the upper right corner of the iPhone camera.) In fact, there are 3 different black and white filters: Mono, Silvertone or Noir, and you can change the filter anytime before or after you shoot. This offers a distinct advantage over black and white photographers of the past allowing you to pre-visualize the black and white images before you take them. Some might think of this as cheating, but it’s no different than autofocus or auto exposure in that the tool is helping you use it creatively. It gets the camera out of the way and helps you to see different (aah, now there’s a great tagline for Apple’s next wave of iPhone marketing!) Think of it more as a creative tool that aids in seeing on a different level.
This is a significant step in the direction of visualizing, thinking and working with light and shadow. It can help you be a more artistic photographer and it’s so easy to do. Try it. Put your iPhone in black and white mode and See Different!
Mark
I've been doing black and white photography since I was about 10 years old, developing and processing film in my dad's darkroom (see the picture on my About page). I got my first digital camera, an Apple QuickTake 100 in 1994, but it wasn't until I got a Nikon D70 ten years later, in 2004 that I totally switched to digital photography. Check out my Black & White Gallery.
One of my favorite street photographers is Vivian Maier. The documentary Finding Vivian Maier is a superb film about this very complex person and highly recommended. Another favorite black and white photographer is Sebastião Salgado. His photographs are amazing and best seen when he exhibits his huge prints. Check out his TED Talk on The silent drama of photography.
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Check out some photos, too.
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We pay a visit to the famous Town Musicians of Bremen.
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While Peter recovers, we hang out with various friends and family from around the world. Here we have a visit from the almost famous musician b. mossman, who joins us almost daily from Denmark while Kalyan computes in the background.
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Daily visits to the physical therapist is pretty lightweight compared to the usual routine for recovery from surgery in Germany, going to reha, for a full-time, 3 week stay at a rehab facility that includes exercise, meals and lots of relaxation. Sounds more like a resort.
Peter's PT includes a daily visit to Coffee Corner, where Kalyan shows us the latest iPhone features.
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We visit the hip surgeon today, who did the hip joint replacement on Peter about 10 days ago. Dr. Rasmussen loves to explain everything about artificial hip joints (especially in English) and he likes how everything is healing up. Peter is just happy that the surgery part is over. Next we visit the physical therapist. More photos at markaltenberg.com/hip
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Andy shows Steve the difference between a traditional Maß Bier (1 liter) and the wimpy halbes Maß (1/2 liter).
Guido take note - this optometrist in Garmisch knows how to put his old Campy bike parts to good use.
Hang around the bike shop too long and you just might need to buy something.
The weather was dreary in Munich, but it was sunny inside our little Airbnb apartment... and under the matching umbrella.
Cafe at the International Terminal at SFO. Nice place to hang out before a flight (just before the fog obliterated the blazing sun outside the cafe windows).
Airplane or Airstream? Yes! And a Smokey Joe hot dog stand! Only at the Munich Airport, of course. (And the Pratt & Whitney Baujahr is 1957... same as me!)
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In fact, it was well below freezing here… -6°C when we arrived last Sunday, but thankfully warming through the week up to a pleasant 0° and bringing snow finally, towards the end of our 5 day stay. And what spectacular mountains Whistler and it's next door neighbor Blackcomb are... with a mile of vertical drop, the longest runs are about 7 miles! Great village, too, with lots of excellent restaurants and shops and space to walk.
Canada is also wired... lots of free WiFi everywhere. I'm sitting now at Vancouver International Airport on a free WiFi connection with over 56 Mbit of bandwidth!
Picture: Panorama from the top of Whistler, above a sea of clouds.
]]>Every now and then my habit of hanging around for a little while after an event, just to see what happens, pays off. This time I was treated to an impromptu solo concert by cello maestro Rushad Eggleston. Included here are a couple of deftly rendered instrumentals mixed in with some of Rushad's wonderfully wacky songs, including the future classic 'I Peed on a Bird'. Unfortunately there's a lot of background noise, but I hope the fun and spontaneity of the performance shines through. Recorded on May 6, 2013 at Burton High School in San Francisco.
]]>Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books with over 7000 exhibitors, 100 countries 280,000 attendees over 5 days. It's overwhelming, to say the least, especially to a newcomer. And it's an event with major history, dating back 500 years, to the time of Gutenberg, although it apparently lost significance in the late 17th century with the Enlightenment and re-gained its stature as the most important book fair in Europe after WWII.
The variety of booths never ceased to amaze, with oddities like the Manga Guides to Science and 'Vorsicht: Buch!' (Danger, Book!) with a video camera that captured kids in montage with a shark video, that was then printed to a flip book, while you wait. Pretty cool!
I was there with Apptology, showing off ReadyEdition, our new product for publishing periodicals to iPhone and iPad and talking to many vendors about digital publishing strategies. The migration of print into the digital world is complex and overwhelming. It may seem like a simple matter of offering books digitally on tablets, but digital publishing brings a huge range of options that can create new and exciting products or make a total disastrous mess of technology. We witnessed a little of both in the making.
It's October in Frankfurt, so we got our fill of bratwurst, schnitzel and beer while the weekend brought in hundreds of teenagers in role playing costumes, inspired by their favorite books. It was like a giant Halloween party!
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Just doing like the Frankfurters do.
]]>On our way home from Vancouver, we stopped near Seattle to visit cousins Jane and Hansel at Sunshine Cottage, where they provide the sunshine when the weather doesn't… meaning usually. (Hey, it's Seattle where 'the sky looks like bad banana baby food'*.)
* Stolen from my favorite Tom Robbins book, Skinny Legs and All.
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Lynn Canyon suspension bridge, just north of Vancouver and about 50 meters up.]]>
Actually known as Burrard Inlet, this view is from the Third Beach Seawall in Stanley Park. (Yup, the same guy who they named that hockey championship after.)]]>So today we finally get around to taking a little tip from my cycling pal (and Italian eyeglass purveyor) Gianguido and visit Musette Caffe, which is supposed to be some kind of bike themed coffee joint in Vancouver. We drive around downtown Vancouver looking for the place only to get lost in a series of one way streets and back alleys and suddenly, we're there. And we are not let down. This is a serious bike cafe… I mean it's more like a bike shop or some kind of church of bike aficionados with a cafe inserted in the middle. It overwhelms with bicycle everything as soon as you step in. Fancy racing bikes along with some vintage ones are parked in the entry way. The Vuelta de España is playing on at least 3 screens of various sizes. Musettes (of course!) hang everywhere along with vintage pro jerseys and various display cases packed with all kinds of imaginable bike games, tokens, doodads, paraphernalia and weird stuff like a Lance Armstrong lunch box (signed by Lance) and a set of tiny toy pro bike racers that come in packs of 50 so that you can set up your own mini peloton on the table. Little bike details permeate the place, like the handlebar mounted iPad cash register with celeste (Bianchi green) handlebar tape and the celeste colored cappuccino cups and saucers and a fabulous La Marzocco cappuccino machine, custom painted in, you guessed it, celeste. There's even a 3 tone celeste phone! Inner tubes populate the shelves behind the counter, alongside the coffee. I almost had a panic attack because I didn't have my bike with me and I wasn't wearing any bike clothing. Never fear… there's a hip little bike clothing boutique in the back corner of the cafe, complete with a 6 foot tall sepia toned poster of Fausto Coppi towering over everything. One of my favorite touches, as a photographer and cyclist, was the picture wall at the back of the cafe, which featured a few of Stephan Vanfleteren's stunning and haunting photos of famous Flemish cyclists (including a really sly looking Eddy Merckx). I finally calmed down enough to order a cappuccino, which was expertly made and perfectly topped with a leaf pattern (not sure why it wasn't a chainring pattern, but I guess there are still a few little bike nerdy details to work out.) Meanwhile, I ignored my wife and daughter some more while I chatted with some locals, just back from a ride, wearing their Musette Caffe kits. Turns out it was a father and son (Ian and Christopher) and we related well, both of us fathers having been dragged around the hills by our young racer sons. Apparently there's a lot of great riding around Vancouver… next time we don't leave home without the bikes! Berkeley needs one of these cafes. Seriously.
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Spotted at Whole Foods in Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver...
First thought: 'Holy crap… there's actually a product with this name!'
Second thought: 'Holy crap… it's a gluten free, kosher, organic, high in fiber breakfast cereal!'
Third thought: 'Holy crap… this is amazing!' (and that's how the product got it's name… see holycrap.ca)
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You know you're in Portland when you wander into a regular old grocery store and at least half the shoppers are wearing messenger bags, bike shoes or both... the bathroom has bicycle artwork on the wall... and the bar down the street has more steel bike frames above the bar than most bike shops. Oh yeah, and the bike lanes are everywhere and take up at least 1/3rd of the street. The only thing missing is our bikes! (And, of course, our bike friends!)
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