Chrome is NOT color managed and FF only when you turn it on, so you're really just looking at the raw RGB being thrown to the screen. Since the images are saved (and tagged) in sRGB, whatever the difference between your iMac screen and sRGB is - will throw off how you see the images, but I'm sure you already knew that. But then, iMac screens, even hardware calibrated, are pretty mediocre at best.
James Markus wrote:
Peter, Photo editors always have some other criteria on image selection, and I rarely agreed with my editors choices. It seemed they would
get stuck on the mask overlay with banners, features inside, and other necessary information they would put over the photo. I use to keep the
masks for all the different products my department created on hand so I could crop accordingly. It left the editors less opportunity to screw
up a good photo.
Jim
James - I have no doubt that it was decision by committee. The shot I put first was my first choice as well as Dan Forte's first choice. When I shoot - or used to shoot this kind of stuff - I am always thinking about how a cover might be laid out and would mark up a Polaroid with a Sharpie after folding it to the shape of the magazine to simulate how the image might integrate with all the graphics that they require - and also how something might get used on the inside of the magazine - remembering all the while that the more images - and the larger they are - all affect how much you'd be getting paid in the end. And, shooting advertising for so many years, you become acutely aware of what's needed for layout, copy, bleed, etc. and if you don't learn that early, you don't work much - or at all.
dmacmillan wrote:
Great work! I hate time constraints like that, plus knowing you're working with a celebrity. Did you get his autograph? I look back at the opportunities for autographs that I missed.
Doug - I hear you about time constraints. As you know all too well, that's part of what all that Art Center training was about, and I was only a little over a year out of school when this happened. I had enough experience with slightly less well known musicians - y'know - Doc Watson, Willie Dixon, Bonnie Raitt and David Lindley - the crazy guitarist who play with Jackson Browne for so many years. I never got any autographs from any of the people I shot, but I got the photographs. I was never into having my photo taken with the artists. Too me that felt too much like trying to put myself into their world and I preferred to not do that. I did have a long conversation with Bonnie Raitt after we finished our shoot and when I told her I was going to be shooting David Lindley, and knowing that they were friends, she insisted on signing the backdrop with a message to him. That's as close as I'm come to an autograph.
Thanks. I hope that came across. It really was an experience and there have been quite a few clients over the years who have hired me simply because of these shots. They literally go and tell people they hired the guy who shot these shots of George - even though we might be shooting products or architecture or something else not related to music. Weird how that happens.
LarryBeemer wrote:
Peter,
Fabulous story! And photos! Not too many people can say one of the Fab 4 was directly instrumental in blowing the doors open to their career.
...and another +1 on olde skool focusing screens...
Thanks Larry. Talking about this really brings it all back. Seems like it was yesterday and I remember meeting Dan Forte - the writer at A&I Color Lab that evening before they closed to look at the first snip tests with me. We did that back then. And every once in a while you'd run into Annie L. there picking up her own film. You know, I never got rid of the RZ stuff, so I'll have to dust it all off and start shooting with it again but I'll probably have to work out a way to correlate using a dlsr as an electronic Polaroid, as you really have to be within about 1/4 stop of the right exposure shooting color transparency film. We're hopelessly spoiled today.
Peter Figen wrote:
Chrome is NOT color managed and FF only when you turn it on, so you're really just looking at the raw RGB being thrown to the screen. Since the images are saved (and tagged) in sRGB, whatever the difference between your iMac screen and sRGB is - will throw off how you see the images, but I'm sure you already knew that. But then, iMac screens, even hardware calibrated, are pretty mediocre at best.
I guess my inferior eye and hardware could never pick up on something as nuanced as color like you can.
Peter Figen wrote:
as you really have to be within about 1/4 stop of the right exposure shooting color transparency film. We're hopelessly spoiled today.
DanielScott wrote:
I guess my inferior eye and hardware could never pick up on something as nuanced as color like you can.
No Daniel. I just explained to you where exactly you went wrong and why. These are issues we solved over twenty years ago when the whole idea of color management was new and exciting. You need to understand the entire digital pixel path and what happens to it to understand where you might go wrong. Once you get your head around it it's so simple but until you do, it's so easy to assume that what you're seeing is correct until one day you realize maybe it's not. But you have to come to that in your own time when you're ready for it. And, yes, there are differences in the way people see color. That's a known fact. Have you ever been tested or perhaps had the same assignments I had in school that helped to determine that? Men are known to generally have less acute color perception than women and if you have that, it's good to know. And then there are personal preferences for overall feel that one might prefer. And yes, there is a huge difference (if you can see it) between an iMac screen and an Eizo. Apple would have you believe that they make the world's best screens, but that's just marketing b.s., and while their $6K+ Pro Display might be great, it still leaves a lot to be desired and the iMac screens, well, I have two and I know. I started out with my first high end display in '95 with the Radius PressView, then added the $5K Barco Reference Calibrator, three Sony Artisans and finally the Eizo CG series. In a way the Barco was the most sophisticated but all three until the Eizo were limited to approximately sRGB color gamut and after having worked with the Eizo for several years now, that extra gamut is entirely welcome. You really should do yourself a favor and use one for a while. Until you do, you'll never know the difference. Sorta like the difference between driving an old Beetle and an old Porsche. Even though they come from the same humble beginnings and even share a few parts, they're worlds apart. Or the difference between say an affordable 200mm lens and a 200mm 1.8. Or the difference between a cheap plywood Takamine and a vintage 000-18 Martin. You only know with experience.
And only on a really good day. I used to buy maybe two hundred rolls of film at a time - sometimes the Kodak rep would drop off a hundred rolls (yes that happened fairly often) to try out but the first thing you'd do is to shoot a color test to see just what filter that batch of film needed to be neutral, then you'd decide what it took to be neutral plus what it took to get the look you wanted. And then some E-6 labs were better and more consistent than others and some of them would actually let you know when their chemistry was at the same color point as when you ran your tests. And sometimes the color would change from the beginning of the run to the end. Hell, I remember having large black and white LIghtjet prints that changed color from one side to the other because they replenished the chemical line as the prints went through the RA-4 line. That I could easily see that very slight - maybe 2 points of cyan shift and the lab owner couldn't made for an interesting discussion.
What I didn't know until later was how easy it was to do color correction at the drum scan level. And how easy it really was to match film from different processing runs, but we were fed a lot of nonsense in those days and we believed it because who the hell had their own drum scanners back then. They could tell us anything and did. There's still a lot of mystery left in photography but a lot less than there was a quarter century ago.
Peter Figen wrote:
No Daniel. I just explained to you where exactly you went wrong and why. These are issues we solved over twenty years ago when the whole idea of color management was new and exciting. You need to understand the entire digital pixel path and what happens to it to understand where you might go wrong. Once you get your head around it it's so simple but until you do, it's so easy to assume that what you're seeing is correct until one day you realize maybe it's not. But you have to come to that in your own time when you're ready for it. And, yes, there are differences in the way people see color. That's a known fact. Have you ever been tested or perhaps had the same assignments I had in school that helped to determine that? Men are known to generally have less acute color perception than women and if you have that, it's good to know. And then there are personal preferences for overall feel that one might prefer. And yes, there is a huge difference (if you can see it) between an iMac screen and an Eizo. Apple would have you believe that they make the world's best screens, but that's just marketing b.s., and while their $6K+ Pro Display might be great, it still leaves a lot to be desired and the iMac screens, well, I have two and I know. I started out with my first high end display in '95 with the Radius PressView, then added the $5K Barco Reference Calibrator, three Sony Artisans and finally the Eizo CG series. In a way the Barco was the most sophisticated but all three until the Eizo were limited to approximately sRGB color gamut and after having worked with the Eizo for several years now, that extra gamut is entirely welcome. You really should do yourself a favor and use one for a while. Until you do, you'll never know the difference. Sorta like the difference between driving an old Beetle and an old Porsche. Even though they come from the same humble beginnings and even share a few parts, they're worlds apart. Or the difference between say an affordable 200mm lens and a 200mm 1.8. Or the difference between a cheap plywood Takamine and a vintage 000-18 Martin. You only know with experience. ...Show more →
Peter, I complimented your work and offered some constructive criticism. You cussed me out, have been condescending and assumed I simply have no understanding to criticize your work, and even suggested that I might be color blind because I am doing so. My bad, next time I wont comment.
Peter, enjoyed the story and what an experience😳 I am not skilled to comment on anything technical but to me these are lovely images. Top notch work as usual 👍🏻 UGMV
Peter Figen wrote:
I had enough experience with slightly less well known musicians - y'know - Doc Watson, Willie Dixon, Bonnie Raitt and David Lindley - the crazy guitarist who play with Jackson Browne for so many years
I would have loved to meet any of those mentioned, but Bonnie Raitt would have been on the top of the list. She seems like a real character in addition to being one of my favorite musicians. I remember once when she was welcoming John Lee Hooker to the stage to play together. She asked him: "Been getting any lately?".
Discussions of color and the mention of Art Center reminded me of a class where our instructor told us National Geographic would buy entire emulsion runs of Ektachrome. They'd then run tests and provide gel filter recommendations when sending the film to their photographers.
I bought film by the case. I always checked to make sure all the rolls I'd take to a job, such as a wedding, was from the same emulsion run. I also worked closely with my lab. We ran a series of tests on each case to determine the optimum ASA setting between the film, my equipment and their processing. When a job would come back, they'd send me the computer printouts and I'd check densities of each frame. The lab representative told me the lab loved to see work from me because it was so consistent. He said they had far fewer reprints with my orders.
