However, in these cases you’re usually dealing with fully formed, relatively mature images that have already made it through several quality gates. You’re trying to decide which of several very different scenes works best in a specific sequential context. But sometimes I want to play this game at a lower level: to identify which particular representation of a scene works most effectively. To pick a champion who may or may not survive the great gladiatorial struggle to find a proper place within a larger body of work.

William Eggleston famously claimed he only made one photograph per scene because he found the process of selecting a ‘winner’ too difficult. Several years ago, when I was still coming to grips with the way I worked, I showed several contact sheets to an established, considerably well-renowned photographer.

“You’re only making one or two exposures in settings where I think you need to take more to truly get a feeling for the compositional possibilities. I don’t buy Eggleston’s spiel and even if it’s true, I hate to tell you this but you’re not him. You’re no genius, you might miss something and what could seem the ideal composition at the time may not remain as ideal upon further reflection. And then you’ll be left without enough material and you’ll never really know if you could have done any better.

Besides, you’re shooting medium format, you don’t have to carry the cross that a 8×10 photographer bears. You cannot and should not get away with ‘just’ dragging yourself to a location, methodically setting up your camera, making a single exposure and then relying on that large format goodness to compensate for a sub-optimal or conservative composition. Don’t settle for less especially when you have more flexibility… give yourself some bloody options”.

So, if resolved to make multiple photographs of a scene, how could I get better at making and then picking the “best” one? While clearly a loaded and some would say fundamentally unanswerable question, one tactic I’ve found to work in certain scenarios is to walk away from the location and return straight away (possibly from a different path). Because you’re effectively starting all over again, you can reassess the entire composition and free yourself from any creative corners you may have painted yourself into.

When it comes to analysing actual images, I learned a few things from my peers. One was to free yourself temporarily from the intricate details of a photo (that so many individuals obsess over) and concentrate solely on form. By squinting and allowing the image to become indistinct, you can make distinctions based purely on primary shapes, the broader brush strokes.

Going further, comparing photographs which are viewed upside down AND reflected in a mirror can disassociate yourself entirely from their contextual baggage, separating completely their connection with reality.

Many people can just rely on contact sheets and a decent loupe. I still resort to making screen-sized scans of my negatives and use software like Aperture or Lightroom to quickly flip back and forth between variations and narrow the choices.

Regardless of how the approach, it can still be a very difficult process. I remember reading that Josef Koudelka took “proof prints of near misses, cut out all the elements in the image, and rearranged them – as a guide to the picture he should have taken”.

Here’s a recent email conversation I had with the insig.ht crew about a problem I had with two of my photographs:

Hin: Hi everyone, I’ve just had a big debate with my girlfriend about this pair of photographs taken in Chennai. Fundamentally, do you prefer the image with “more wall” or “less wall”?

Initially I went with “less wall”; the balance seemed off with “more wall”, it felt like there was too much dead space in the left of the scene. Then she convinced me that the ‘visual path’ of “more wall” is more effective: the larger amount of wall is better at leading your eye across the frame. I definitely see her point, but one part of me still prefers the compositional purity or starkness of “less wall”. And now it’s late and I’m exhausted and confused… so what are your thoughts and opinions?

Ben: I prefer the image where the wall dominates the frame: the closer crop. Go with your gut instinct!

Hannah: If it’s about the wall then, for me, it’s about the holes in the wall. Two holes in a wall is better than one, so more wall.

Michael: Two holes are better than one, yes.

James H: I keep going back and forth, but I think I prefer “less wall” overall. I like the two holes in “more wall”, but the bit of bush peeking over the leftmost segment weakens the picture for me. Also, in “less wall” there’s a more forceful contrast between the wall and the shrub in the foreground on the right and a more binary relationship between the wall and its natural surroundings. Because of the starkness of the “less wall” composition, the break in the wall seems more clearly articulated. I guess the “less wall” wall seems more dominant in the frame, which then underscores its fallenness. There’s more of a “once great” feeling, a greater sense of dramatic reversal.

James W: I’m going to agree with James H on the less wall is more argument. For me it came down to that second hole and bush peeking over the wall being a distraction from the grandness of the wall. The picture becomes more about the hole and less about the wall, and it’s the edge of the wall that is so bloody cool.

Hannah: Interesting to see which aspects of the image make it more or less effective as a photo for each of us. Compositionally we can trick anything into significance, but if the object itself actually has a significance or at least can suggest something about its significance (within a greater narrative), that to me, is what will make a photo. Does playing a game within the frame to make a vase of flowers more looming make the the fact that they’re flowers more significant?

It’s the subject that we see and should think about, the balance of the elements, the game of tension between elements, the way the eye moves in the service of the subject, in my opinion. If the subject is a ruin than what makes a ruin more ruined, or more something else? What is the subject to you, Hin?

James H: Hannah, you might just be intending a narrower sense of the word there, but can’t the subject be something we don’t directly observe? To me the subject of that picture is not the wall in its ruined state but rather its fall from a greater state. Not the pictured object itself but the change it has undergone, not the rubble but the collapse. What makes the “less wall” version work for me is that the composition succeeds better at suggesting the wall’s former grandeur, and it is the way this suggestion mingles with the pictured decay that conjures an impression of a change, a fall.

But I agree with you that the composition should serve the subject, and since it’s Hin that has to choose one composition over another, it’s his notion of the subject that counts. Loosely related, about landscape paintings of the Song dynasty in China:

“There was an abstract quality to the paintings that gives them a special appeal in the present day. The artists were not concerned with depicting nature accurately but rather with creating a highly personal vision of natural beauty. A premium was placed on subtlety and suggestion. For example, the winner of an imperial contest painted a lone monk drawing water from an icy stream to depict the subject announced by the emperor: a monastery hidden deep in the mountains during the winter.”

Hin: Thanks for the feedback, really thought provoking and it helped to crystallise how I and other people look at these photos.

Looking through my scans, it’s clear that my focus was less the entire wall than the edge of the wall: the gash that separates red brick from green. My first image is of the wall quite a way back, then I slowly get closer till all I have is just the edge and the shrubbery. You can see through the process that I’m trying to get the balance of concrete and green just right; for me it’s not one or the other, but both. The holes are important, but after further thought, one is sufficient, two is superfluous. So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m going with “less wall”.

Sometimes when I’m literally or figuratively beating my head against a wall, I wonder if Eggleston was right. What are your approaches to making on on-the-spot compositional choices and later assessing your photographs?

If you haven’t detected this before, take a look now. If you’re lucky enough to have a wide-gamut display (modern wide-gamut monitors can display all the colours in the Adobe RGB colour space while standard screens  barely cope with the SRGB space), this problem will be even more evident.

Congratulations! You’ve stumbled across one of the thorny, unspoken issues of the web: colour management in browsers. Some browsers do it, other browser don’t. This specific  issue exists because there are two types of ICC profiles, V2 and V4 (all you need to know is that V4 profiles are more accurate; refer to this International Colour Consortium document for the technical specifics).

The trouble is:

• Firefox 3.0 and Safari understand ICC V2 and V4 profiles.
• Firefox 3.5 introduced a new colour management system which no longer understands ICC V4 profiles (great job guys).
• Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome don’t understand colour profiles at all!

The browser uses colour profiles in two locations:

• Your system colour profile in MacOS or Windows (created by your display calibration software).
• The profile embedded within each image (embedded by the retoucher in Photoshop).

The browser must able to understand both these profiles in order for the image to be rendered correctly.

To complicate things, note that:

• Most modern display calibration software will generate ICC V4 system profiles by default.
• The standard SRGB and Adobe RGB profiles that ship with Photoshop are V2.

The following table summarises the colour management characteristics of each browser:

Browser colour management support

In my case, what was happening was that while my images contained a V2 profile, my display calibration software generated a V4 system profile which Firefox 3.5 was unable to recognise.

So assuming you have a calibrated display (and if you don’t, you might as well give up photography), you really have only three options when it comes to viewing images correctly on the web:

1. Just use Safari
2. Downgrade your browser to Firefox 3.0 (not really recommended)
3. If this functionality is supported, force your display calibration software to generate an ICC V2 system profile, use Firefox 3.5 and hope that no one embeds ICC V4 profiles in their images

This appalling state of affairs will hopefully improve over time as browsers are updated or re-written. Till then, this International Color Consortium page can be used to determine if your browser correctly supports ICC V4 profiles.

Of course, none of this matters if the photographer (or more correctly, the retoucher) has problems perceiving colours in the first place. Try out this hue perception test. How did you do? Don’t worry dear reader, there’s still time to get out of this pesky photography gig!

I’ve been hearing and reading about online book printing on demand for a while. Quite often though, opinions diverge regarding the quality of the books and it is difficult to know the real value of these opinions.

So I decided to design and order books from several online printing companies, see for myself and share my experience and results here on insig.ht. I tried to do so from a photographer’s standpoint.

I picked the three following websites as they seemed to be popular choices among photographers: lulu.com, blurb.com & adorama.com

My goal was to print a nice looking hardcover photo book in color. Ideally the quality would be good enough so that I could feel comfortable selling the book.

I also wanted, as much as possible, to:

- have control over the layout of the book
- have control over the printed colors
- minimize the resizing of the pictures by the printer

I chose 23 of my images and used the same files for all the books. All images were JPEG quality 12 in sRGB profile, resized in Photoshop at 300dpi. Those are specs recommended by all 3 sites. When a profile was available, I soft-proofed the images in Photoshop using a calibrated monitor.

I won’t go into details regarding the pricing as it varies greatly depending on the size of the book and the printing options chosen. But, expect to spend $30/$40 or more for a single book. Note that unlike Adorama, Blurb and Lulu offer the ability to sell your books through their site, and you can choose your price.

Now, let’s get to the comparison. I wrote down the technical stuff and you can see short videos of the book reviews…

ADORAMA

Website: Adoramapix

You will need to create a free Adorama account to login & access the online software. No need to install anything; you design the book online.

Hardcover Sizes: 4″x6″ – 5.5″x8″ – 8″x8″ – 10″x8″ – 12″x8″
(No Softcover available)

Pages: 26 or 50

Cover: ImageWrap Only

Themes: Lots of silly themes (templates for the book) are offered. Choose “no theme” and get a neutral look to start with.

Software & Layout: Navigating the software is pretty straightforward, controls are easy to understand and pictures are laid out on the book with Drag & Drop.
Unfortunately, the pictures won’t insert in the layout keeping their original sizes. You need to resize them manually to match their native pixel dimensions.
Also, in order to center your images the same way on every page, I recommend clicking on the Grid button and selecting the Snap to grid option in Tools –>Preferences .
The software gets the job and offers good freedom with the layout. However, it can be pretty painstaking to resize each picture back to its original size.

Profile: you can download a color profile at the bottom of this page

Book printed: one 8″x8″

+’s: Real photo paper / Profile provided / Accurate colors / Sharp & vibrant prints / Interesting “flat” binding

-’s: Number of pages: only 26 or 50 / Very thick pages give a unusual feel to the book / no PDF upload / Not possible to sell your book through the site

BLURB

Website: Blurb
You’ll first need to download and install the Blurb Bookmark software on your computer and create a free account in order to print your book.

Hardcover Sizes: 7″x7″ – 10″x8″ – 8″x10″ – 13″x11″ – 12″x12″
(Softcover available for smaller sizes)

Pages: from 20 to 440 – Standard & Premium Paper (optional)

Cover: ImageWrap or Dustjacket

Themes: Like Adorama, there are a number of bad looking themes offered. I think the “blank” theme is a good start.

Software & Layout: Easy software to naviguate with Drag and Drop capability.
There are many different pre-formatted page layouts you can choose from. In them, you’ll find fixed sized containers where you can drop your pictures. But if your picture is too big for the container, it will be cropped.
For full control you can now (it’s a new Bookmark feature) create custom-sized containers and personal layouts. To do so, click on Edit Layout in Bookmark. You can then save and re-use your custom layout on any page.
Overall, it’s good and pretty flexible software. But, if you need to use many different personal layouts, it can be a lot of work to build them.
Update: Blurb now also accepts PDF uploads.

Profile: The standard Blurb offering does not provide any profiles.
However, their B3 program offers the download of a profile and a Custom Workflow printing option, meaning that your book should be printed on designated calibrated printers.
This program is still in Beta, so an invitation is needed to get access it; Blurb sent me an invite in a timely manner. You can find more about the program here.

Books printed: one 7″x7″ with the Custom Workflow and one 10″x8″ without it. Both books on Standard Paper.

+’s: Good software / Good & varied book formats offered / Profile available (if B3 member) / Accurate colors even with standard Workflow / PDF upload

-’s: No significant quality increase with Custom Workflow / Flat & unsharp prints / Thin paper / Poor binding / Extra options (Custom Workflow, Blurb logo removal, Premium Paper) increase the price of the book significantly

LULU

Lulu offers 2 types of books: a standard Book and a more expensive Photo Book.

- The standard Book is printed from a PDF file uploaded on the site and printed on standard paper. It seems to be aimed towards written and/or illustration books. Most of the offered book formats are in portrait orientation.
- The Photo Book is designed online with the Lulu Studio software and printed on better paper. Less book format options.

1. Photo Book

Website: Lulu Photo Book
You access the software online. No need to install anything. You will need to create a free Lulu account to print your book.

Themes: Same as competitors; I recommend the theme named “blank”.

Cover: ImageWrap Only

Hardcover Sizes: 8.5″x11″ – 9″x7″ – 8.5″x8.5″
(Softcover also available)

Pages: from 20 to 120

Software & Layout: Software is pretty basic but easy to use. You can choose from different containers to insert your pictures into, but there is no indication of their sizes. So there is a good chance that your pictures will end up being resized by the software when you insert it. The resizing done on my pictures seemed OK though.
So, friendly software but with limited control.

Profile: No color profile is available.

Book Printed: one 9″x7″ Photo Book

+’s: Software very easy to use

-’s: Limited controls in Software / Flat & unsharp prints / Color Cast / Poor binding / No PDF upload

2. Standard Book

Website: Lulu standard Book

Cover/Sizes/Pages: Many options are available, too many to list, but you can find the info here.

Layout: You can design your book and layout using any desktop publishing program before converting it to PDF format. I used inDesign. Unfortunately, there is no inDesign template on the Lulu site, which would be nice!

Profile: No profile is available.

Book Printed: one 6″x9″ standard Book

+’s: PDF upload, hence full control over the layout / Good color accuracy / Many formats and binding options

-’s: Flat & unsharp prints / Thin non-glossy paper / Poor binding

CONCLUSION

Looking at the books I received, I think that none of these printing services really makes the cut in order to be considered a serious option for photographers’ books. Adorama printing is good, but the product seems limited in use. Blurb and Lulu printing quality is simply not good enough. However, I do think they can be used in certain cases; they could be great for mock ups, promo pieces, or even fancy magazines.

I have started researching other options: smaller printers, printing lesser quantities and more focused on quality but haven’t found the task very easy so far. Where are you hiding, dear printers? I would love if you could share (in the comments) your experiences with the sites mentioned here as well as with any other book printing company.

Links:
- An up to date listing of interesting printing companies: Printer Resources for Independent Art Publishers
- The founder of Edition One Studio interviewed here
- Magazine printing on demand: MagCloud

Thanks to Karen Rudd for the video editing.

Why? Exactly. And why not?

The video is in HD, if you need a closer look at the tutorial. There are lots of example videos out there. Have a look, and let us know in the comments if you’ve given mobile-phone time-lapsing a whirl.