Photos | NoPo

North Portland (NoPo) lies between the Columbia and Willamette River where they join to flow toward the Pacific. Its shores are lined with harbors, including the Port of Portland freight terminals. The gentrification of downtown Portland hasn't reached NoPo, and its character is little changed, I imagine, since the 1950s.

In editing these photos I was thinking about Gerry Johansson's book Deutschland, which I fell in love with as soon as I picked it up. Jörg Colberg has a nice interview with Gerry Johansson on the Conscientious Photography Magazine site, and a lot of what Gerry has to say resonates with me: finding beauty as you personally see it; photography as a way "to react to your feelings instantly"; and letting images fall into themes naturally without forcing a specific project to happen.

Gerry's visual style (small, square, b&w photos with spare content and strong composition) made me want to try some more square images. They seemed to fall into pairs again, so I've presented them that way. Most of the photos are molded by a particular light that we get in Portland on some overcast days -- a smooth, neutral, shadowless light.

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Tech | Olympus OM-D EM-5, one year later

I've now been using the Olympus OM-D EM-5 actively for a year. It's been in 10 countries with me and recorded over 21,000 frames. Every camera and lens has strengths and tradeoffs, but for my needs the EM-5 is the best digital camera I've owned, and I think Olympus deserves recognition for its achievement.

In thinking about this, I found that I can go even further: this camera has helped me improve my photography and strengthen my personal style, compared to my full frame DSLR. How can a camera do that, when it's just a tool? Well, I think a camera that has certain strengths does influence the photographer.

• In-body stabilization with interchangeable lenses has been a revelation. In the past my wide-angle lenses never had stabilization, but now I'm encouraged to shoot hand-held wide angles anytime, in low light and at night.
• A high-quality EVF encourages experimentation, because it shows a "live" view of actual exposure (in decent light) and allows "live" composition in different aspect ratios. I'm trying exposures and compositions I wouldn't have attempted using my DSLR.
• Because the EM-5 is so small, I never have to choose between an SLR and a compact camera; I always have the full creative capabilities of an SLR with me.
• Because the EM-5 is "friendlier looking" than my DSLR, I don't get challenged as much by strangers when I'm shooting on the street (people wanting to know why I'm taking pictures). I don't have data to back this up, but in it's been my experience.
• By reducing my lens choices, the EM-5 has actually helped me think less about absolute pixel-level image quality and more about the content of the image. Sure, the Olympus 9-18mm is softer in the corners than a Canon 16-35mm L -- but I can hardly recall a situation where it mattered.

It has faults, of course. Most prominently:

• Custom settings (MySets) are essentially unusable, because you have to dive into the (mediocre) menu system to retrieve them. You can assign a MySet to a button, but you have to hold down the button while shooting -- in other words, pinch the top of the camera with your thumb on Fn1 and your finger on the shutter. It's a bafflingly stupid design choice in an otherwise thoughtfully designed camera, and no custom settings is a big limitation in a semi-professional camera.
• Though the camera is sturdy and weather-resistant overall, on my silver model the paint has worn off the right top corner, where my finger rests on the shutter. I've never seen that on any camera before.
• Customizing the camera is needlessly complicated and has some pointless gotchas, but there's a good DPReview guide for this and you don't do it often.

But oddly enough, when a camera is this good, it gains a certain character that makes you look past obvious faults and want to just keeping using it.

These days when I pick up my Canon 5D, it feels wrong to me. It's too bulky and heavy; I don't want to walk with it for 6 or 8 hours, as I often do when traveling. The viewfinder view is bigger, but there's information missing, especially live exposure information. The only reasons to use the DSLR are pure image quality, or the benefit of a specific lens (sharpness or DOF). Those are good reasons, but rarely; nearly always, the DSLR stays in the closet and the EM-5 comes with me.

So here's to the future of Micro Four Thirds!

Tech | Recovering cropped RAW files in Lightroom

A benefit of the electronic viewfinder on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is the ability to change the aspect ratio and compose your shots with the correct result shown in the viewfinder. This is easier than using the viewfinder of a DSLR and trying to guess what, say, a square composition will look like after cropping.

If you do this in RAW mode, the camera still records the full 4:3 image that the sensor saw. This is apparent in playback in the camera, where you see your crop superimposed on the full 4:3 image. But it's not apparent when you load the file into Lightroom (as of version 4.3). In Crop & Straighten mode in Lightroom, you'll just see the cropped image and won't be able to recover the full 4:3 image. The data is there in your RAW file, but you can't see it in Lightroom.

Adobe provides a Lightroom plug-in to help, called the Adobe DNG Recover Edge plug-in. As the name suggests, it requires converting your RAW files to DNG, but everything can be done within Lightroom. After installing the plug-in, to recover the full 4:3 image:

1. Select the image(s) in the Library
2. Select Library > Convert Photo to DNG...
3. Review the settings for DNG conversion (particularly whether you want to retain the original RAW file), and complete the conversion
4. Select the converted image(s)
5. Select Library > Plug-in Extras > DNG Recover Edges > Apply

Using the plug-in in step 5 creates a copy of each intermediate DNG file created in step 3 and imports it, so now in your Library you have each cropped original and a new non-cropped copy (with "_full" appended to the file name), with the aspect ratio reset to 4:3.

At what point in your process should you use the plug-in? Personally I prefer to keep the original RAW files in my Library, with the aspect ratio I shot them at, so I can see the composition I intended. I only use the steps above if I need to recover more of the image. That works because the steps above retain any adjustments and metadata changes you've already made using the RAW file (similar to a Virtual Copy, although it's a new file).

The downside of this approach is that the new file created by the plug-in has its History reset to start with a new Import at the time you used the plug-in. That's awkward if you need the History but would prefer to delete the intermediate DNG file. On the other hand, using the plug-in on all your RAW images right after importing them means their aspect ratios will be reset to 4:3, so you'd have to recompose every image with the aspect ratio you shot it at.

A compromise would be to start converting RAW to DNG at import. Then steps 1-3 above don't apply. I'm not at that point yet -- the potential long-term benefits of DNG are a whole other topic, covered here, here, and here.

"Yeah, but not of junk."

We're having some nice foggy mornings here, so this morning I took a camera for a walk around the neighborhood.

A lady out walking her dogs came up to me as I was making this photograph.

"May I ask why you're taking pictures?" she wanted to know.

"I do it for myself. I'm a photographer." I replied. Then I asked, "Do you like taking pictures too?"

"Yeah, but not of junk."

Photos | Off season

A fairground in the off season has an eerie emptiness. Lights flash and music plays, but there are few visitors to bring real life to the artificial life of the attractions. The fairground is revealed as a place of illusions -- full of fake facades, false perspectives, cartoonish shapes, and meaningless patterns.

In this set I again worked with pairing images in different ways. The pairings can be based on related subject matter, similar perspectives, or continuity of form. The variety of possible combinations reflects the fairground's bizarre mix of styles, colors, structures, and styles.

The three fairgrounds represented in this set are Coney Island in New York (2008), the Märchenpark in Heidelberg, Germany (2009), and the Prater in Vienna, Austria (2013).

View the flickr slideshow