Sherlock Holmes is gay. That's okay.

Sherlock Holmes is gay, or, in Guy Ritchie's new film (A Game of Shadows), at least bisexual.

I'm fine with that. In fact, despite groans from the purists, I'm fine with most of Ritchie's reinterpretation.

I've read most of the Holmes canon (albeit not recently) and let the purists howl, but let's get this straight; the Holmes stories aren't always, or even often, really mysteries. The purists have it wrong.

Holmes stories are certainly not mysteries in the Agatha Christie sense of "here are all the suspects introduced at the beginning and here are the clues all laid out for you to find."

Holmes is a superhuman superhero, finding clues that only he can see, making connections only he can make. Readers have no chance to see these clues, to make these connections. And that's not the point anyway. Holmes' stories are often adventure stories, science fiction stories, stories about battling the abuse of power (particularly patriarchal power) and even evil itself.

<May contain spoilers>

Downey's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, Wing Chun Kung Fu expert, is a stroke of genius. He externalizes internal processes, which is what cinema is all about. He radically reinvents Holmes as a man for our age. And remember, Holmes puts up his dukes, and wins, several times in the books.

Bottom line. I thought the latest film was pretty damn cool. And yet there's something about it that doesn't completely satisfy.

A love relationship between Holmes and Watson is neither a new or unusual idea.

But Ritchie opens the closet. Holmes loves Watson ... not necessarily physically ... but loves nonetheless. Bummer though; it's mostly played as camp. Cue nervous laughter. It would have been sweeter to play it a bit more realistically ... dare I say straight. The camp introduces a strain of self-mockery, distancing audiences from fully investing in the characters.

Holmes 2 is louder than Holmes 1. The action quotient has increased. But even for a pop culture action flick, the pacing is too frenetic by half. (I'd call the shootout in the woods this film's bridge too far.) There isn't time or space for emotional resonance.

What the film gets wrong isn't the kung fu, the gay, the explosions ... well maybe some of the explosions. What it gets wrong is that it forgets that the loudest loud has impact only in contrast to the quietest quiet; light exists only in contrast to dark.

The movie deserves better.

But the final meeting with Holmes and Professor Moriarty nearly compensates. Intellectually matched, Moriarty's lack of humanity is matched and overcome not by Holmes' superhuman genius or prowess. In the end, Moriarty is overcome by Holmes' humanity. I don't think any actor but Downey could have pulled that off. That satisfied. More of that sooner would have been good.

This is a good movie. It could have been a much better movie, and in one, near-final scene, it is nearly a great movie.

Note: The subtext about war on behalf of a military industrial is canny for its connection to Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle, who lost many family members in World War I.

This review by Scott Mendelson is an interesting one. I'll post any others I come across that seem especially good.


(Lots of little tweaks done here Dec. 22)

Did anyone really ask for this?

I can't imagine anyone asking for this, but I went to the movies and saw that they're re-releasing Star Wars Episode I (Jar Jar's back, yippee), in 3D no less, in February 2012.

Phantom Menace is rubbish ... except for this part (lower right), which is brilliant, in the same way that the first 10 minutes of the Road Warrior are brilliant. It's about pacing, restraint. Sure the sequences are all about action, but the action is doled out in doses with clarity and significance. In the case of the Road Warrior, those few (wordless) minutes define the character of Max and his world.

In the case of The Phantom Menace, it's as if some other director stopped into the studio just for that day and created something cool instead of something lame. The force-field door sequence that separates the two Jedi is an original take on the classic samurai sword battle (which is what all the Star Wars light sabre battles are at their core).

Why don't they just re-release those five minutes. Or maybe combine the good 20 minutes from all three Star Wars prequel films into one good highlights film. At $2 a ticket, that might be an okay idea.

Somewhat related: Hopefully, Christopher Nolan took the well-earned criticism of the action sequences in the last Batman film to heart when making the new one. The Dark Knight was an okay movie, but the action sequences were a murky indecipherable mess. Just really bad actually.

Working with light

I've been doing more work with artificial light lately. This photo of Nathalie, my wife, was made in my improvised studio with three strobes. I simply like photographing my wife.

In this case, I was looking for high-key, fairly hard-light look. In post-production, I soften the look just slightly and open up the shadows on the right side of the frame.

The light setup: A strobe to the viewer's left was set above in a softbox umbrella at about half power (you can see the catchlight in her eyes). A strobe to the viewers right was lower and set to about one eighth power. A white background is illuminated with a flash at full power.

The camera setup: Canon 7D at ISO 400 and 1/125th. Canon 50m f/1.4 at  f/8. Most lens are great at f/8. The 50 1.4 is no exception. The lens is just as sharp at much wider apertures. The quickness and quietness of focusing is really useful for making photos like this.

Retouching: Basically, there was no retouching except this: The red channel was copied and pasted into a new layer. That layer was gaussian blurred at 10 pixels. Everything but the skin was erased in that layer and the layer was set to 20 percent opacity in luminosity blending mode. Sounds complicated, but actually very simple. Adds a subtle glow. There is no sharpening and no cloning, though I did extend the right side to make it a perfect square.

Cool tools: My Canon lens lineup

I've had the pleasure or working with, next to, or observing some really good photographers over the past 20 years. I'll name some names. First, Marlin Wagner, now retired, and really a dean of photographers in the Bloomsburg, Pa. region. Gordon Wenzel, a Danville, Pa. based photographer who is our go-to guy for the tricky jobs where there's no second chances (he's especially good at portraits). Then there are the local newspaper photographers, Keith Haupt, Bill Hughes, M.J. McDonald, and Jimmy May, they are all good enough to work in much bigger towns at much bigger papers. And then there's my friend Mike Zarrett (Towne Camera), who in addition to being able to disassemble and reassemble a lens or tune up a Leica, is a very fine shooter himself.

I do a lot of shooting for the Bloomsburg University. Most of what I know, I learned from watching these folks. You can see my work for the university at bloomufocus.blogspot.com.

Now, equipment is just a small part of photography, but honestly, the equipment is cool. It's fun to research and write about.

Here's what I use and my observations of how the items work out:

Camera: Canon 7D.

I chose this for:

1) the viewfinder, which is large and bright for a crop sensor camera. 2) 18 mega-pixels gives me a double-page spread without resizing. The camera feels great in the hand, shoots blazingly fast. Far more customization than I will ever use. I usually manually select the focus point and it's easy to do that quickly. Cons? Nothing major. The 18 mega-pixels seems to be about the limit of what I'd want on an APC sensor. I go to ISO 800 without worrying at all, ISO 1600 if I have to ... but I'm conscious of some slight detail loss. I shoot almost everything jpeg unless the circumstances are particularly unusual or challenging.

Fav feature: Gridlines in the viewfinder. More of a Nikon thing that Canon copied, but I love them and keep them on all the time. I like the control layout and viewfinder so much, I don't think I could ever go back to the XXX or XX series again.

What to improve: Honestly, not much. Noise and dynamic range can always be better. But that's all I can think of.

Canon 50 1.8/1.4 
Both lenses are very sharp. A lot has been written about the 1.8, which costs about $125, is built like junk, noisy focusing, but very sharp. If you rarely use the 50, shoot mostly landscapes stopped way down, or are on a tight budget, the 1.8 is fine.

But if you're pretty a serious photographer, use the 50 mm focal length a lot, or shoot a lot of portraits, get the 1.4. The lens is still built lightly, but nicer enough. Cost runs about $350. Focus is fast and silent, helpful for a portrait sessions (80 mm equivalent on crop frame). Things are dreamy wide open at 1.4 to 1.8, but perfectly sharp after. For portrait work, there's simply no more there there that you want to capture ... certainly not anything you'd want to show unless you're deep into dermatology. I use this lens fairly often for both portraits and at dimly lit events, like backstage at commencement.

Tokina 11-16 f2.8
Within it's limited zoom range, this is basically is a lens without any real compromises. It's completely sharp, distortion is well controlled. I haven't had a problem yet in the field with CA. Unlike a Canon EFS lens, you can mount it to a full frame camera, and, trying it on a cheap film body, it looks like it will work fine at 16mm, which is still very wide. At about $700, a really good buy for what it does.

Tokina 16-50 f2.8
This is generally a very good lens, though not in the same league for absolute quality as the 11-16. At about $550, it's a good value. Now discontinued I've seen it for sale at about $1,000. That's too much in my opinion. Get the Canon lens instead at that price.

The lens is very very sharp. I haven't had a real problem with flare. There is a decent amount of distortion at 16mm, and the CA at the wide end can be pronounced ... it's not always noticeable, but in high contrast situations, its enough that it needs to be corrected before going to print. A pin came loose inside that prevented the lens from zooming. Had to send it out for repair at Tokina in California for $130.

Canon 85 f1.8 and 100 f2.
These sister lenses are both basically perfect in any way that anyone would notice in print. Perfectly sharp, fast and silent focus, nice contrast. There's nothing not to like. And in the $450 range, they are a bargain as well. You probably don't need both though. The 100 is really nice for events on stage.

Canon 70-300 USM IS/Canon 70-200 f4L (non-IS)
The price is similar enough that unless you are really stuck on the IS, go the extra dollars for the the f4L. I have the 70-300 and optically, I can't point to anything wrong about it, but I just don't like it. Our sports information director uses it all the time. The 70-200 f4. Wow. There's just something special about the lens. Nicer to use, nicer color, nicer contrast, sharpness just seems better. Yeah, you have to hold it steady in low light. I think it's worth it.

Tamron 24-135 f3.5-5.6
I purchased this lens used at $250 to use while the Tokina 16-50 was being repaired. With a 5x plus zoom range, it's simply much much better than I expected. Color, contrast and sharpness are all very nice. Autofocus is not Canon (or even Tokina) fast and quiet, but it's good enough. Sure the aperture is slow. But the optics are good. This will be a regular outdoor event lens (homecoming parade).

Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5
This lens defines the middle of the road. It's light. Cheap. Not super fast, but not super slow either. There is nothing terrible about it. Sharpness is passable, just though. (It really suffers there in comparison to better lenses.) Color and contrast are flat, but they can be boosted in software. Good for a budget choice. But I will use the Tamron 24-135 over this.

Canon 24-85 f3.5-4.5
Got this super cheap on a lark. Very small, very light, attractive zoom range. Not too slow. Better than the 28-105 for color and sharpness, but not nearly as good as the Tokina 16-50 or Sigma 24-70. Lot of distortion on the wide end. It doesn't get used often.

Sigma 24-70 f2.8
I used this lens (non-OIS) for several years on an XT.  My colleague uses it now. It's a very nice lens for (as I recall) about $500. Not as sharp as the Tokina 16-50, but doesn't have the CA either. Seems to struggle for sharpness a little at 24mm though.

Canon 28 f2.8
The university had this when we were shooting with film and the 10D. I can't recall anything exceptional about it one way or the other image quality wise. Noisy, like the 50 1.8, and unpleasant to use though.

Canon 18-55 (kit lens)
God, I hate this lens. The university has it for the pool camera. It's just so dim and it feels like junk. I dislike it so much that I can't comment on the optics. We've had our students use it and the results have been okay, but not remarkable. There may not be anything really wrong with the lens. I just hate it.

Sigma 20 f1.8
The university purchased this lens back when we where shooting film. It was unique for the time and did yeoman's work for us. But sharpness wasn't great on 400 speed slide film. It's not going to hold up on digital. I never use it anymore.

Tamron 20-40 f2.7-3.5
This is another lens I purchased used for about $270 while the Tokina 16-50 was in the shop. It was a complete turkey and I returned it. Sharpness was terrible. Color was terrible. Contrast was terrible. With only a 2x zoom range, I thought this lens would deliver. And I expected the Tamron 24-135 to be iffy. The opposite was true. Go figure.

Camera: Olympus XZ-1
This is the camera I use for everyday life.

First to dispense with cons: Not small enough for a pants pocket. No viewfinder. Really though, those things can't be helped.

Everything else is just about perfect. The control layout is different than Canon layout so it takes so getting used to. Ten megapixels is just right. The lens is great. The jpeg output is pleasing to the eye. Noise is fairly well controlled. It's responsive enough for focus and speed. And again, the lens (f1.8-2.5) is just great.

Biases
I'm pretty tactile, so I probably rate things that are particularly cheaply made (kit lens) lower than they would rate on optics alone. Once something reaches an appropriate level of quality, say 50 1.4, I'm not that fussy. The Tokina lenses both feel particularly solid, as does the 70-200 f4L. Though light, the Tamron 24-135 feels nice to use too.

I don't use filters, but I do keep hoods on the two Tokinas and the Tamron.

Inspiration: The most important drawing

Or perhaps the second most important drawing.

About eight years ago I was sitting at a bar. My (now) wife Nathalie and I had known each other for about a year, give or take.

I drew this on a napkin from memory. (A napkin is actually a pretty tricky thing to draw on with a fountain pen.) Before I was finished I realized that at that moment, I really wanted to be no where else but home with her.

The first most important drawing:
I saw Nathalie at a meeting. I didn't know her name, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. So I made a drawing on an ordinary index card. After the meeting we bumped into each other. I introduced myself and gave her the card. She's got it stashed away in a box of cards. (Ah. She corrects me. I stopped by her office and gave her the drawing soon after, but tried to play it down saying "I aways sketch people in meetings.")

In the end, a drawing is nice to have. But I think the most important thing about a drawing is that it forces you to really look, you create something from what you see, and you remember.

I generally hate quotes from famous people tacked onto writing, but this one seems appropriate:
I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen... (Frederick Franck)

Suffice to say, I'm a lucky guy.

Turn off the auto pilot

I shoot photos for a university. Professors teaching in classrooms with blackboards, or whiteboards, behind them.  Those large areas of black or white can wreak havoc on a camera's automatic exposure. The camera sees a lot of black and overexposes. The camera sees a lot of white and underexposes. Sure, you can use exposure compensation. Sure, camera manufacturers' automatic exposure is getting better all the time.

But here's a suggestions: Just ditch the automatic and switch to manual mode.

Arrive a few minutes early. Fire some test frames in whatever mode you typically work in. Adjust to get the subject exposure you want. Then lock that exposure down in manual mode. This works in many situations outside of classrooms ... particularly indoor shoots. Gymnasiums and stages come to mind.

Outdoor lighting can change more quickly ... I find the automatic exposure modes, aperture priority (typically my choice), shutter priority etc., paired with quick exposure compensation (add about a stop and a half of postive exposure compensation for backlighting), more helpful here.

The photo shown above is of the Dance Ensemble at the university. Auto exposure would have vastly overexposed the image. Exposure compensation would have yielded wildly inconsistent shots. It was shot with a Canon 7D in manual mode with the 50 mm 1.4 at 2.8. ISO was 3200 and the shutter speed 1/160.

The significance of small differences

A case of bad news, good news.

Bad news: We've had a few challenges this semester. A number of projects didn't come off as smoothly as I'd like. Of course, I'm never completely happy.

Good news: Nothing catastrophic. And there were a lot of lessons learned that will make me a better designer.

It brings to mind a book I read several years ago, Why Buildings Fall Down, by structural engineers Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori. While the subject of the book is architecture, engineering and disaster ... the lessons really can be applied to almost anything. The authors touch on the fatal collapse of a hotel catwalk in Kansas City (illustrated very clearly at the blog After Corbu) ... a reminder that seemingly small differences can be essential. Written pre-911, the concept of redundancy is brought home in the example of an aircraft that hits a skyscraper without toppling it. The book is accessible without being condescending, and the lessons can an easily extend from engineering structures to editing and design work flows.

Inspiration: Color and character

If you have children, chances are you've seen cartoons, lots of cartoons, and less face it, to an adult, many of them are really unbearably stupid. In fact, there's one on the tube as I write this.
Funny thing: one of the first things my wife and I watched together was a cartoon and it was great. We watched on DVD and couldn't wait to see what happened next. The cartoon was Tenchi and it featured a great heroine, space pirate Ryoko.
Tenchi is classic adolescent fantasy ... firing on all the Jungian cylinders. (I'm old enough to recognize one, but young enough to appreciate it). A boy steals some keys from his grandfather and sneaks into a cave where he awakens a female space pirate/demon ... Ryoko (right). A classic bad girl gone good ... a sort of pre-Xena who can shoot energy beams from her hands, teleport, regenerate lost limbs, and drink like a sailor. In short, a perfect Anima.
And she's also got really cool outfits ... this one in particular struck me even at the time as having a sophisticated thing going on with color.
Color complement pairs are red-green, blue-orange, and purple-yellow.

Normally with red-green it's hard not to think of Christmas. You've got to shift something. Here, it looks like they've paired red-green, with a weakened and matched set, orange and the light green in the hair. I'd love to find an excuse to use a scheme like this sometime.

Update: 

Thinking about this overnight. I tend to use color complements in the traditional painterly sense, but scientifically, perhaps the pairings should be red-cyan, green-orange.

About the show: What made the cartoon so good ... the character design and voice acting were all top notch ... the script was funny. You can watch it with the kids (we did) and there's still plenty for adults to appreciate. Lots of sly fun and innuendo, but without the cool irony of a show that doesn't really want to commit to it's own story ... there's an endearing earnestness to it.

File under the best camera is the one you have with you.
This isn't a perfect image. I'm not even sure it's a good image, but in this case, I'm biased. One of nice things about living in a small town is that it's big enough to have a "there" there, but small enough to feel like it's your town. You can park and walk to a variety of places ... pick up a sub at an old-fashioned lunch counter ... walk to an art reception. And along the way a little girl is mesmerized by the dresses (and shoes) in the shop window.  Grabbed it quick with an Olympus XZ-1, which is a very nice tool to be elaborated on in the future. I'll cross post this at bloomsburgarts.blogspot.com because I think it says something good about the nature of the community.

Image: How to lose the fluorescent light blues

Quick tip:

I almost never shoot photos in raw, unless it's a critical shot that can never be repeated, or if there are particular challenges in the lighting and I need every scrap of dynamic range and resolution I can get.

Here's a way to lose the yellow cast you sometimes get in skin tones when shooting digitally in mixed light.

In Photoshop, select Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation. Select "Yellows" from the drop down menu. You can use the eyedropper to fine-tune the selection. Shift the first slider "Hue" to the left to about -5. That will move the yellow cast a little toward a healthy red/pink glow. Adjust saturation and lightness to suit the image. Now, unless you specifically select the skin area to adjust, you may shift the color of yellow objects in the frame. Often, I don't care.

This is the ink painting that hangs in my office, and to a certain extent, still informs what I like to do in my work. The painting, done with a medium size watercolor brush and traditional chinese ink is large, about two feet by three feet. There were probably just half a dozen pencil lines sketched before I put brush to paper. I did several takes, working very fast, looking for a sense of spontaneity and grace, and chose the best. Ink, with a brush or a fountain pen, attracts me as a medium because there's no hiding. The line is there, or not. It demands commitment. But it also demands a level of constant practice, which is hard to maintain. Or else you find yourself working in a familiar way. So recent works have been done in pencil, using the lighter shades of grey to find my way, break out of drawing habits and look for alternate lines of expression.
A larger version of the painting can be seen on my DeviantArt account.

Project: Have I seen this face?

I work at a university (it won't be tough to figure out which). Here's the drill: You get an email about a speaker with a long speech title, and some art, which just isn't as high-rez as you'd like. You set aside an hour and work something up.

So imagine my surprise when this lands in my inbox. The title has just six words. The speaker is fairly well known. And his photograph is good. He looks, in fact, a bit like Jean Reno, which is only so bad.
So, I make the photo very large. Boost the blues a little. Cut the type into the picture and the picture into the type. The client wants a little more verbiage than I'd prefer, but nothing too outrageous.
Overall, satisfying.

Some technical details:
1) What background color to use? I chose a pale blue to match the eyes. Another logical choice could have been a sandy tan ... playing up the blue/orange complement pair and perhaps suggesting the Middle East. But I stuck with the blue background, which I think has the effect of magnifying the warmth of the skin tone.
2) How to get the photo inserted into the text. In InDesign, select the text block, create outsides. Then (re)import the photo into the text block and size and position it to match. InDesign wouldn't let me do more than one line at a time, so I had to import the photo a couple of times.