A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN

October 25, 2014

The Myth of “Straight Out of the Camera”

Filed under: General photography — Tony Drumm @ 1:04 pm

Back when I was first dipping my toe into the photography water, I had a friend who was something of a mentor to me. He recommended the camera I bought (Canon AE-1) as it was relatively affordable to a college student and had an inexpensive power winder that I needed. He shot a couple Olympus 35mm cameras at the time and had a great eye.

He would tell me it was both less expensive and more interesting to shoot transparencies – slide film like Ektachrome and Kodachrome – than shooting negative film. Developing was somewhat more expensive, but you didn’t have to pay for prints (and Ektachrome was pretty easy to develop at home). But more important, when you viewed a slide, you would see more plainly the skill of the photographer. In the process of printing, one could adjust for a less-than-perfect exposure, do dodging and burning, etc., cropping, and even alter the color balance. When you sent your film to be processed and printed, you would also lose some information about how you did. Is this print dark because I underexposed or because they printed it that way? (This assumes you aren’t color printing yourself.)

Shooting transparency film in the early 1980s.

I took this to heart, and for many years I shot almost exclusively slides. I learned that slides really are less forgiving than, say, Kodacolor negative film. The latitude – the range from lightest to darkest – was compressed and contrast was pretty high. I eventually set up a color darkroom and printed onto Cibachrome, a color reversal paper designed for printing slides. I learned then the darkroom techniques that could let me alter an image more to my liking. Still, the original slides were pretty much a product of what I did with my camera.

Let’s now look at digital. A term widely bantered about on photography discussion sites is SOOC, an abbreviation for Straight Out Of the Camera.” The implication is, this is the unaltered image, just as I took it, with no – zero – manipulation. Sometimes this is used as a before image to compare to the after image produced using editing software. Sometimes it’s shown as the “see what I can do without using Photoshop or manipulating the photo” sort of bravado. It’s basically trying to be analogous to a slide.

But, let’s look at this more closely. When you press the shutter, your camera collects a set of data from the sensor. Each sensor site – pixel – stores a numerical value representing the amount of light it has received. That light has passed through a red, green, or blue filter. These are laid out in a pattern, and now something – a computer – must interpret this data and make sense of it. It is not yet a photo until all the data is assembled into a photo. And the choice of how the various red, green, and blue pixels are combined to make a particular color is yet to be decided.

Suppose you are shooting in JPEG mode – you direct the camera to store JPEG images on the memory card. If we look at one of those photos, is that photo SOOC? Well, strictly speaking it is literally SOOC. But, does it represent an unaltered, unmanipulated photograph? No. There is no such thing. In order for the camera’s computer to write that JPEG file, it has to interpret the sensor data and manipulate it according to the settings you provide. My camera has several modes like Camera Neutral or Landscape. The color rendition will be dramatically affected by this choice. It has noise reduction and sharpness settings which again have a noticeable effect. If they didn’t have a noticeable effect, they wouldn’t bother creating those settings. I can choose sRGB or AdobeRGB color space which will affect how the red, green, and blue data are combined.

To say this photo represents the scene as I saw it, with no manipulation, is disingenuous and wrong. Were those beautiful rich greens actually there or enhanced due to saturation settings and using Landscape mode?

If instead of shooting JPEG, I shoot RAW, then little has changed. Now, instead of the camera’s computer assembling the sensor data into a viewable image, we just move that operation to a computer running Lightroom or Camera Raw or one of the other RAW editing programs. There’s no avoiding it. Even if you set the program to its defaults, you have made a choice that affects the image. And if you use different RAW processors using different algorithms, you’ll see different results.

In fact, with a RAW file, you can’t even produce a photo that is literally SOOC (aside from the tiny imbedded JPEG the camera adds to the RAW file). The RAW data is just ones and zeros, there is no photograph until that data is processed.

What, then, does SOOC mean? Not a lot, I’m afraid. If you want to show before-after comparisons, that’s fine, and one can see what you did between the two. And, for the most part, the adjustments and manipulation done in-camera or during RAW file import tend to be globally applied, so we can know that.

But, if you want to brag about your photography chops and disparage those who want to use all the brushes in the paint set, don’t bother. Or, shoot transparency film. Oh, and we’ll view those on a light board with a loupe – any scanning or printing will, you know, manipulate the image.

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October 7, 2014

Senior Photos

Filed under: Portraits — Tony Drumm @ 2:40 pm

Michaela is a dancer, so I knew many of her photos would feature dance in some way. I’ve found dancers to be terrific models – they take direction and can do almost anything you can envision with their bodies.

We met up downtown to do some photos in an urban setting. There is something cool about a ballet pose on the streets or sidewalks.

The setting also provided some nice backdrops for a more traditional image. But she gave me looks which bring some emotion and help draw you in. All I have to do is light it and snap the shutter!

We also did a few photos in a park/garden setting. I was having her do some jumps for me, saw her hair flying, and said, “let’s take some shots with her just swinging her hair around.” She liked the idea, and I really like how this worked out.

Michaela’s mom had a photo of a ballerina she wanted to more-or-less replicate. We shot this downtown in the daylight using what I guess you’d call a concrete planter as the seat. The sun was below the surrounding buildings, so I was able to easily light her to get the effect we wanted. It’s definitely a photo that wants to be black and white.

Jayke is also a performer – singer, actor, and now, dancer. He wanted something different, something a bit edgy and definitely urban. I was actually surprised to find an alley with some graffiti in Rochester. Nothing like I saw in Ybor City in the Tampa area, but still usable with some good doorways and nice brick walls.

This sort of setting is really fun for shooting portraits. It’s easy to see possibilities. With a willing subject, the ideas just roll.

Jayke brought plenty of ideas to the session, too. That was especially true for the various dance positions he wanted. I wanted to shoot him doing some jumps, so he obliged me and did a variety of leaps for me.

I knew from the outset I’d want many of these to be black and white. I was happy that Jayke is fond of B&W and knew I could approach this shoot almost like a personal project.

We did have an occasional pedestrian or car to deal with. They might have wondered about what we were doing. Taking photographs, I guess, was pretty obvious, though!

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October 2, 2014

The Italy Trip

Filed under: Beautiful Earth,General photography — Tony Drumm @ 11:35 am

Lynne and I traveled to Italy for our first visit to this amazing and old country. We began our trip separately, as Lynne attended a retreat in the hills north of Rome, while I headed to Milan to attend the Italian Grand Prix Formula 1 race. It was my first Formula 1 race and one of those on my bucket list.

When arriving in Europe, it’s usually morning and your objective is to stay awake until around normal bedtime. After I landed in Milan, I made my way to the central train station and, from there, my hotel. The hotel was about a block and a half away – convenient for arriving and departing, but also for traveling the short distance to Monza, the site of the race. I was able to check in early, then I headed back to the station and took the subway downtown to the Duomo area.

The Milan Duomo is an old Gothic church. It’s an amazing site, and their museum across the piazza was great. The top photo was taken from atop the church – lots of opportunities there for great black and white photos.

Small vehicles rule Europe. Milan apparently has some sort of electric car deal going on. It reminded me of the bikes-for-rent things here.

The central train station, Stazione Centrale, was build during the 1930s by Mossolini – it’s grand and spectacular, a symbol of the nationalism that serves as the hallmark of fascism. It was hard to capture in a photo, and I never did grab a shot of the exterior.

I arrived in Milan on Thursday before the race. The cars start running for practice sessions on Friday. Qualifying is Saturday, and the race is Sunday afternoon. There were a couple trains to Monza per hour – although I didn’t figure out the second one until Sunday – and they offered a special deal single ticket per day good for the train ride plus a bus from the Monza train station to the track, Autodromo Nazionale Monza. The track sits inside a huge park. It’s historic – built in the 1920s and served as the home of nearly all the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix. It’s where Mario Andretti watch races as a teenager. (Mario is amazing – he’s won the F1 World Championship, won the Indy 500, won Daytona.)

From the bus drop off, you have a good mile walk to the track. Once inside the track boundaries, I had another mile or so to get to the stands with my seat. On Friday, I wandered around the track. It really is a park with park-like paths, some wide, some narrow, some paved. The back part of the track is surrounded by woods. There once was an oval track with severely banked turns. Those concrete banked sections still exist. The current track runs under them in a couple places, and the roads/paths also drop below them here and there or run alongside these old sections. They haven’t been used in decades, but they were featured in the James Garner film, Grand Prix.

The home team in Italy is Ferrari. They also have quite a history and have raced in every Formula 1 world championship. So, you see lots of red Ferrari gear and flags all weekend. The Italian Ferrari fans are known as the tifosi, and they are everywhere. For this race, I joined them. They’ve had a few tough years and unfortunately had some troubles in the race with Alonso having to retire his car. I did manage to grab a decent shot of him in his Ferrari. Panning as these cars fly by at close to 200mph is definitely a trick – one I’ve not quite mastered!

Each day, Friday to Sunday, there were more people at the track. I figured it would be lighter for practice on Friday, but it’s surprising how many people come out only on race day. Besides the F1 race, there are support races with the GP2 and GP3 open-wheel cars – many up-coming young drivers may well drive F1 some day – and a Porsche class. So, there are things going on on-track throughout each day.

At the end of the Grand Prix, the fans jumped the fence and scrambled to get a glimpse of the podium ceremony. It stands out over the track near the start/finish line. By the time I got close, most of the ceremony and interviews were done. I was somewhat behind the podium and someone’s huge Ferrari flag on a 30 foot pole kept blowing and obscuring the view. But before winner Lewis Hamilton left the podium, he turned and held up his trophy and grinned to those of us in back. It was great, the flag dropped for a moment, and I had a shot. Thank you, Lewis!

On Monday after the race, I headed to Venice where Lynne and I were to meet up. Since I was only a couple hundred yards from the train station, my trip was fine. Arriving in Venice, I just had to make my way to our hotel from the Venice train station. This involved riding one of the vaporettos, a water bus. Venice is a collection of islands. There are no cars, no scooters. The only bicycles I saw were being ridden in a piazza by children. So, you take the water bus or you walk. Often, you do both! After stepping off the water bus, I had a bit of a walk which wasn’t particularly far but involved crossing three bridges. With suitcases, this isn’t terribly fun.

Lynne’s travels were not as smooth as mine. That’s an understatement, but she did make it to Venice on Monday. I had checked in and wandered about waiting to hear from her. As I walked through the narrow streets and across countless canals, I kept thinking, “I wonder if I’d ever be able to find this place again?” Maps are hugely important in Venice. It’s so easy to lose your way, although by the time we left, I at least had a pretty decent idea how to get around the area surrounding our hotel.

While there, we actually found out some friends we haven’t seen since we left upstate NY in 1992 were also in Venice, and we arranged to have dinner together. It was an incredible happening, and it was fun to catch up with them. Sometimes, it really is a small world.

I really loved the uniqueness of Venice. But we soon left for Florence. Lynne had already had a bit of a tour of downtown Florence on her trip from the country to Venice. She in fact took a train from Florence to Venice as the final part of that trip.

Florence is a beautiful city with tons of great art including Michelangelo’s David. This is an imposing sculpture, 17 feet high, and it’s incredible. After viewing many sculptures from ancient Rome to others from his time, there is something just different about his work. David’s face, in particular, had a life and expression others do not.

Florence has its own Duomo with the largest dome of its time, quite an engineering feat. We bought Firenze Cards which get you into many of the sites in the city and also let you skip the long lines. We jumped to the front of the line entering the Duomo, but didn’t realize until we walked inside and saw stairs that we had found the entrance to walk to the top of the church. That was over 460 stairs. I’m sure the many miles I walked at the racetrack, around Milan, and in Venice helped me make it up there. Lynne managed to make the climb as well. The view of the city was great. We later traveled across the river and up the hill to the south of the city center for another remarkable view.

From on high, you can see that the city lies in a valley surrounded by hills. It’s rather spectacular.

From Florence, we headed to our final destination, Rome.

In my head, I feel Milan and Florence had a similar feeling to them. Venice was different, of course. But Rome felt mostly just big. Walking the streets of Rome was akin to walking through Manhattan. Except in Rome, vehicular traffic runs on different rules. Maybe, you could say, one rule: Stay mostly on your side of the street. Lanes are something made up on the fly. There didn’t seem to be many if any lane markings. And, like much of Europe, motorcycles and scooters just go wherever there is room.

Crossing streets can be a trick. They do seem to stop for pedestrians in marked crosswalks, but you have to be clear you really are attempting to cross. And some streets are so big with so much traffic, I’m not sure I’m brave enough to attempt crossing even in a crosswalk. We managed our way across one roundabout more by finding the place with the least traffic and an island of parked buses.

There is much ancient to see. I think the Coliseum was particularly noteworthy. The nearby forum was pretty amazing, too, and it appears that archeological digs are still active. To think back to the times these places were built and the amazing civilization that existed, amazing building that took place – it’s all rather hard to envision.

Nestled within Rome is the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. We took a guided tour of the Vatican museum which ends in the Sistine Chapel. I really didn’t realize how much artwork resides there nor the breadth of it from ancient Rome and Egypt to modern. Once again, I was blown away by Michelangelo’s work in the Chapel. You can then walk into St. Peters where his most famous Pieta resides. It’s so unfortunate the security that’s been needed to protect this sculpture after someone broke Mary’s hand off with a hammer. I saw it much closer and pre-damage at the New York Worlds Fare as a child with my parents. I still remember that experience.

St. Peters is quite the cathedral – huge, beautifully decorated. And, at least by American standards, old. The plaza in front of the church was filled with platforms and seats. We were there on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, Pope Francis would make his usual appearance.

My grandparents immigrated from Italy, and my mom and her relatives all considered themselves Italian. Not Italian-American, although that would be the term today. Just Italian. She never made the trip to Italy. I think she was never fond of the idea of a boat trip across the ocean or, later, a plane trip. I thought of her a lot during my time in the “old country.” Maybe more so in Vatican City. I think she’d have loved to see that (and to see the pope).

I certainly want to travel to Italy again. Next time, I’d like to go south to Foggia and to Roseto, birthplace of my grandparents. Hopefully, that will happen some day. Meanwhile, I have terrific memories and some decent photos!

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August 30, 2014

The Odd Couple at Summerset Theatre

Filed under: Theatre — Tony Drumm @ 10:01 am

I shot The Odd Couple at Summerset Theatre in late July. It was the finale production for this summer season.

Neil Simon comedies are always interesting, and I tend to think of them as a day-in-the-life style. We have a single set – Oscar’s apartment – in which all the happenings happen.

The general story is familiar to anyone of my generation since it formed the basis for a TV show of the same name. The TV show brought with it some of the characters from the play.

Many scenes feature the whole gang of friends as they try to deal with Felix and his angst. This made for some cool photographic compositions with everyone leaning in and reacting together.

Sometimes it’s difficult to find an angle that shows all the faces, but that’s often a problem shooting live. Still, it’s not usually something to get hung up about.

Other times, everyone just comes together and make the photo for you.

Lighting was not particularly challenging here, as most such plays are more dialog driven and don’t really need – or want – a fancy lighting design. As the photographer, I can pretty well set my exposure and go. There are some hot and cold spots on the set to be aware of, though.

Being dialog driven, you have to look for the interesting photos. You find a lot of time folks are sitting and talking. But the moments are there. Some happen quickly and you might or might not catch them. Others, like the guys surrounding Felix, holding a wet towel to his head, all looking, offering their support and concern, just build in front of you. You see it, frame it up, and you have a favorite shot from the evening.

I mentioned the leaning in. That can make such a difference in a still photo. Our brains interpret this for the interaction it represents. We sort of feel it. Lean them back and the energy totally washes away from the image. It’s really remarkable.

I can’t believe summer is nearly gone. Another season of Summerset shows is done, the Fridays on the patio at RCT are done, and Labor Day is two days away. But, that means RCT’s season is about to begin (the first show is RENT, and it opens soon), and Riverland will be working on their fall semester shows soon. I have all that to look forward to!

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August 21, 2014

Lindsay and Brad

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tony Drumm @ 10:09 am

I had the great pleasure and honor to photograph the wedding of two of my favorite people last month. We know Brad and Lindsay from theatre – where they met. They are gifted actors and incredible friends.

An outdoor wedding was planned, and while July tends to be warm and dry here, you just never know. We had rain early in the day, then it sprinkled on and off. They decided to let me shoot the portraits in the park before the ceremony. When the rain stopped, we headed outside, but I asked one of the bridesmaids to grab an umbrella just in case.

We needed it briefly, and the timing worked pretty well. Lindsay wanted Brad to see her and her gown for the first time that day, so I took Lindsay out first to photograph a few portraits of her and her attendants then had Brad come out for their meeting. Brad walked up just as the little sprinkles ended and she dropped the umbrella. Brad had this look on his face pretty much the entire day.

That was it for the rain. The cloud cover gave me some terrific lighting which I supplemented here and there.

Things would ramp up soon with lots of family and wedding party photos, but at this point, it was good to see things were coming together nicely. They could enjoy a relatively quiet moment.

The ceremony approached, friends gathered, and it was show time. The clouds gave way to sunshine, so I was glad we had chosen a fairly shady location for the ceremony. Some additional fullness to the tree canopy would have been nice, but we work with what we have!

The shade also helped the attendees avoid the July sun as the couple exchanged personal vows and make it all official.

Brad and Lindsay have a connection to New Orleans, so there was a running NOLA theme including a fun parade of the attendees from the park setting to Rochester Civic Theatre for the reception. Leading the way was a three-piece band playing a bit of jazz and, at one point, the Chicken Dance. It was very fun!

It was certainly the first wedding I’ve attended to have a parade.

What has also become unusual for weddings is a live band. They had the band LP and the 45s provide the music for the evening. They grace the patio stage at RCT several times during the summer, and many of the folks at the wedding – certainly the theatre crowd – know and appreciate their renditions of ’50s and ’60s rock-and-roll. (They always draw big crowds to the RCT patio!)

After a Johnny Mango catered dinner – New Orleans style, of course – the band kicked things off with the couples’ first dance.

Prior to the wedding, I watched Lynne assemble edible magnolia blossoms (the Louisiana state flower) and lace and then build the wedding cake for the event. It turned out great and was probably the best tasting wedding cake I’ve experienced!

The festivities then kicked into high gear. Even Leslie – the keyboardist – was able to dance a little.

The sun set and the party continued.

Weddings, no matter how well planned, have a way of bringing surprises and challenges. I’m sure there were moments that weren’t as expected or desired (there always are), but from my point of view, it was a wonderful day, two amazing people were married, many, many guests shared the day with them, and everyone had a great time.

Their photographer had a great time, too. I had many opportunities for taking fun photos, they were very open to suggestions, and I got to see two good friends tie the knot. It doesn’t get much better.

I wish them all the best in their future together.

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July 24, 2014

Anniversary Gig

Filed under: Portraits — Tony Drumm @ 9:51 am

I had the pleasure of photographing a wonderful couple a few weeks ago on the occasion of their fifth anniversary. They had this fun idea of dressing up in their wedding clothes, creating a bouquet and boutonnieres, and having a couple of their close friends tag along, then having me photograph them at home and at various places around town.

Like a wedding, we had some time constraints – one of their party had to leave town. So, we shot at literally high noon. Not the ideal time of day for photography, but I told them we’d make it work. While trying to make them look their best, I also tried to keep some hints of where we were. The shot above is in front of their home, so I intentionally left the somewhat distracting window in the shot with the brown siding to add “our house” to the story.

We made a few photos at Rochester Civic Theatre, three of the four of them have performed on its stage. There’s a fun shot of them on stage, but after we got that shot, I suggested having them sit in the house seats. One of them played off that and said, let’s all have different expressions reacting to what’s on stage. It worked great! I love collaborating with performers.