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Shooting style by geographic region
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 4:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I can honestly say that 95% of 'oriental style' pictures just don't appeal to me at all.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
I can honestly say that 95% of 'oriental style' pictures just don't appeal to me at all.


Now we know.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 4:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Well, I gave it a shot today. Learned a few things. I'm afraid this is as Oriental as I get... more like Woodrim south eastern.

1 Cyclop

2 Cyclop

3 Cyclop

4 Cyclop

5 Cyclop

6 Cyclop

7 Cyclop



Meyer Optik Görlitz Primagon 35mm f/4.5


1 Minolta MC Rokkor PG 50mm f/1.4

2 Minolta MC Rokkor PG 50mm f/1.4

3 Minolta MC Rokkor PG 50mm f/1.4

4 Minolta MC Rokkor PG 50mm f/1.4



Vivitar 135mm f/2.3 Series 1


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 11:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
woodrim wrote:
Well, I gave it a shot today. Learned a few things. I'm afraid this is as Oriental as I get... more like Woodrim south eastern.

Can you share what are the few things you have learned? I also learn something new when I intentionally follow the oriental style.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Not all you did pick it up fast Michael, great series!


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
calvin83 wrote:
woodrim wrote:
Well, I gave it a shot today. Learned a few things. I'm afraid this is as Oriental as I get... more like Woodrim south eastern.

Can you share what are the few things you have learned? I also learn something new when I intentionally follow the oriental style.


From the experience, I got a much better appreciation for the extent of each factor that goes into the making of the desired effect. And you're correct, Attila, not all accomplished the degree of effect I would have liked. Lens certainly has a great deal to do with it, but the more important factors are the distances before and after. The most important, of course, is finding the opportunity, by which I mean finding the bright highlights to be a proper background. The proper background does not guarantee a subject for the photo, which leads to some frustration. At one point I found a wonderful background with no subject opportunity, so I held my thumb out just to illustrate this point, but couldn't extend my arm far enough for the focus.

Getting the distances right is a matter of experimentation and is different with each focal length, so I can't prescribe anything other than to suggest experimentation. I also found that wide open does not assure the effect - sometimes it comes from stopping down a little, mostly because of distance issues, and then you are at the mercy of the shape of your iris. I suspect the 50mm to be the better focal length when working in close distances before and after subject. Wide angles are only good at MFD or close to it, and with the background far enough not to come into depth of field. I liked the 85mm of the Cyclop, but I tend to like medium telephotos anyway.

I used the Series 1 lens because of its f/2.3 shallow depth, but still found its bokeh too creamy for this effect. I think the Rokkors abilities in this regard might surprise people. I have gotten even better results from it in previous shoots. In a way I might have been cheating by relying on the Cyclop for so much of it, but at the same time it demonstrates how important the lens is to the effect. Essentially, you get the best results from the lenses that have the greatest faults from a technical perspective.

I had taken my Meyer Primotar 80/3.5, despite its haze issues, because I have gotten nice bokeh rings from it in the past. I think it would have done well, but I found myself without the correct adapter. I had other lenses with potential, but time and opportunity would not allow use of all of them. One was the Jupiter-9.

I very much enjoyed the outing, having a particular goal in mind, but didn't hesitate from my usual style of shooting when opportunities arose. The Cyclop surprised me at times with results one might never guess came from such a lens; images that look quite normal for medium telephotos. I will post some of those in the long running Cyclop thread.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
@woodrim

Yes. The most important factor are the subject to background distance. The size of the dot bokeh depends on the aperture and focus distance. The bokeh dots will be brighter is we use a large aperture(smaller F number). On the other side, the bokeh dots will become larger when we focus closer(the dots will become dimmer due to conversation of energy).

Fast standard and short telephotos with short MFD will be more ideal but not a must. Lens with a circular aperture is preferred if we need to stop down the lens to get enough DOF(I use my Piesker Picon for it circular aperture). If a lens has good sharpness at wide open, it will give more degree of freedom as we do not need to stop it down for better sharpness. A less corrected lens like primoplan or trioplan will also give you more freedom because they behave very differently in wide open and stopped down.

For the art part. Do you discover how to use the pleasant bokeh circles and exciting busy backgrounds in the composition of photos to make a better photo? They are important elements in my photos. If I take those photos in western style, the photo may not be nice at all. Can you figure how I use them in my photos above?


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 4:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
If I am correct, I believe you are referring to positioning the subject so that it does not conflict with the bokeh rings. That is, to place the subject in more neutral background, while still maintaining good composition. Of course cropping after the fact can help with this when not entirely possible at time of shooting (composition). If I am correct, can you see the same in any of my photos?


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
woodrim wrote:
If I am correct, I believe you are referring to positioning the subject so that it does not conflict with the bokeh rings. That is, to place the subject in more neutral background, while still maintaining good composition. Of course cropping after the fact can help with this when not entirely possible at time of shooting (composition). If I am correct, can you see the same in any of my photos?

Yes. By putting the subject in a neutral background with a busy background nearby, we can make the subject more stand out from the background. Examples are the #2 Cyclop, Primagon 35mm, #2 Rokkor and the last one. There are more ways to use the bokeh rings and I will explain more below with my photos.

#1
Minimal composition with only the subject and the background. It may be less interesting if the background are in western style.

#2
Similar to above but the subject have similar brightness of the background. They are competing so this is may not be a good example.

#3
The subject is surround by the bokeh rings appear in foreground and background.

#4
The bokeh rings are the subject of this photo. The bird is used to direct the reader to look at the background.

#5
The bokeh rings are competing with the red flowers. I want to create more tensions by composite them in different directions.

#6
A typical portraits photo. This photo should looks nice both in western style or oriental style.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 6:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Calvin: I appreciate very much how you are giving thought to the placement of subject and background. As you know, that is an important part of photography in general, but perhaps even more so when balancing the attention to both subject and background. While the use of bokeh rings and other forms of busyness is an artistic challenge, I think it must be balanced well with the purpose of the photograph. For instance, portraits. In your example of the fellow reading a book, the background adds interest to the photograph because the person is not the entire purpose of the picture. It all comes together well as an entire image, although I'd prefer if the bottle was not in the foreground. Things like that are as important as the things you want to appear. Many a time I have spotted something in my photos I had not noticed at the time of exposure. That too requires a discipline.

With a portrait where the person is the intended subject, most times a smooth and creamy bokeh works best. In the example of the young lady posted by Attila and taken by Francis Ho, the background bokeh rings attract attention away from the young lady. As photographers, we still look at it favorably because we understand and like those effects, but when the lady is the focus, perhaps there should not be anything competing for attention. So the message here is that one must consider both the subject and the purpose in order to be a well balanced photographer.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I am very happy that photos in which bokeh is very important get a serious debate here, specially after shooting a lens wide open at times has been discredited as beginner's folly.
My view is that 'photo' means 'light' and 'photography' doing graphics by means of light. Of course if it was a landscape photo or of architecture then sharpness in all frame and lack of distortion are important, but obviously Photo-graphy is a much wider field and a 'picture' might just as well be fully abstract.

Doing graphics all the content in the frame and their interplay are of equal importance and so are the 'empty' spaces. This can be well seen in the linked photos of Don Hong-Oai photos. They easily could be mistaken for ink paintings, I am no specialist, but they seem to follow classic, 'oriental' rules or views.
Photos shown here as samples of "Oriental Style" are different and have huge oof contents, play with bokeh while Don Hong-Oai's photos are all sharp. My take is that they don't contradict because all follow similar ideas of 'doing graphics'.
The term "Oriental Style" still most likely always will be simplifying and certainly there also are many western photographers who emphasize graphics of bokeh. For me the 3rd and 4th sample given by Calvin are good samples of "Oriental Style", maybe even more so than #1 and #2. Many Asian photographers love to play with flare as in #3, same people often prefer shooting film, colors of #4 are quite 'film like', and both play with, or use positioning of elements and emptiness.

calvin83 wrote:
Any oriental style in the following photos? Or only Calvin's style? Wink

#1

#2

#3

#4


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Here's my turn, what style are these? Razz





PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nature style? I don't so much see a technique here as just shooting butterflies with a slow lens wide open. My guess. Am I wrong?


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
kuuan: The term "Oriental style" I think was just coined by Attila to attribute a specific style of shooting with busy bokeh, not to describe the broader style of all Asians. Where I'm from, the political correctness police would say Oriental is not a politically correct way of identifying Asians, but I suspect it is a perfectly good way of identifying a region of the world. I hope I'm right about that - and I'll also add that I'm an unlikely source of political correctness since I despise it.

The two images you pointed out, numbers three and four from Calvin's post, just happen to be the ones I don't get at all. Maybe I'm missing something. Number three is an okay composition, but not ideal, of nothing special - and it has bad CA where one might expect to see it. Any wide angle lens can capture great depth of field. Number four is even more puzzling to me. It looks like a picture I might expect from someone who has no photographic experience - who was just asked to take a picture of the pretty sky. What am I missing?


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
woodrim wrote:
Nature style? I don't so much see a technique here as just shooting butterflies with a slow lens wide open. My guess. Am I wrong?


Nothing wrong, i'm trying to figure out what makes them one style or the other..


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 9:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
vanylapep wrote:
woodrim wrote:
Nature style? I don't so much see a technique here as just shooting butterflies with a slow lens wide open. My guess. Am I wrong?


Nothing wrong, i'm trying to figure out what makes them one style or the other..


Ah, okay. What i believe we've learned so far is that it isn't just about blur or busy blur, it is a combination of how the photographer chooses the scene and uses the lens' characteristics to create an image with artistic out-of-focus areas, but in compliment with the subject. I deliberately did not use bokeh to describe the out-of focus because to my knowledge boken means more than that; it also means the quality of the blur. I've struggled with this for a while - that saying great bokeh might be a redundant use of the language. I have not yet resolved this in my mind.

To get back on subject, when Attila attributed this artistic bokeh to Oriental shooting style, he also suggested us westerners pay much less attention to the art of the bokeh, preferring smooth and creamy bokeh instead.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
What is most polite, politically correct expression to use for people who has Chinese, Indonesian , Asian roots ? I would like to show my maximum respect of course, Western , Oriental I thought proper term to mark differences.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 9:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Attila: Again, I'm an unusual source of politically correctness. I thougfht I remembered Oriental going out of favor to describe people from Asia or the Orient, to be more specific. We'll need to hear from out Asian members for confirmation. I doubt anyone took any offense from you, and it may just be the correctness people over here that make this stuff up. People of African heritage have gone from Africans to Negros to colored, to blacks, and now to African Americans, even if they aren't Americans. Honestly, I don't know what was wrong with Negro.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 11:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I tried this afternoon some photographies with your oriental, asian style in mind.
I don't know if I succeeded. Wink
I chose the Meyer Trioplan 100mm f2.8.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
woodrim wrote:
Attila: Again, I'm an unusual source of politically correctness. I thougfht I remembered Oriental going out of favor to describe people from Asia or the Orient, to be more specific. We'll need to hear from out Asian members for confirmation. I doubt anyone took any offense from you, and it may just be the correctness people over here that make this stuff up. People of African heritage have gone from Africans to Negros to colored, to blacks, and now to African Americans, even if they aren't Americans. Honestly, I don't know what was wrong with Negro.


Okay, thank you! I agree, you have strange country from this point of view.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 11:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
5,6,13 not fit at all, others are very promising Smile do you have vivid setting in your camera ? or saturate a bit more your shoots , they will be even more with extra saturation.


PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I'm asian and not offended.


PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
woodrim wrote:
vanylapep wrote:
woodrim wrote:
Nature style? I don't so much see a technique here as just shooting butterflies with a slow lens wide open. My guess. Am I wrong?


Nothing wrong, i'm trying to figure out what makes them one style or the other..


Ah, okay. What i believe we've learned so far is that it isn't just about blur or busy blur, it is a combination of how the photographer chooses the scene and uses the lens' characteristics to create an image with artistic out-of-focus areas, but in compliment with the subject. I deliberately did not use bokeh to describe the out-of focus because to my knowledge boken means more than that; it also means the quality of the blur. I've struggled with this for a while - that saying great bokeh might be a redundant use of the language. I have not yet resolved this in my mind.

To get back on subject, when Attila attributed this artistic bokeh to Oriental shooting style, he also suggested us westerners pay much less attention to the art of the bokeh, preferring smooth and creamy bokeh instead.


I see. I will try to compose the background into my shots.

Btw, i'm asian and my father when he teached me a bit about photography, he mainly spoke about tips for getting good background and didn't talk much about the main subject of the photo.


PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
vanylapep wrote:
Btw, i'm asian and my father when he teached me a bit about photography, he mainly spoke about tips for getting good background and didn't talk much about the main subject of the photo.


Yes,quiet common issue, I think very typical and same mistake as western people not compose enough background.

A bit remind to me my MUM's photo , she said: stay son before Basilica I will capture you with building Smile result? I did look like an ant on picture , I have one only one good picture from my child hood Smile

What western people do with Domiplan 50mm f2.8 ? (throw it out promptly... )

I found this photo from one of my Asian friends

https://www.facebook.com/nursham.mamat



PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
@kuuan
Photo-graphy can be abstract or realism depend on what purpose of photographer.

Don Hong-Oai photos are classic oriental style which you found in the old Chinese paintings. Those photos show poetic quality of the scene. The empty space are intentionally leave blank to give the space for reader to think.

I am very happy that you can understand my purpose on #3 and #4. Flare is an important element in #3. It give another dimension to the photos by separate the trees on the left with the washed color. In #4, you can image there is a dragon on the right and the lit cloud in the bottom left are the fire breathes of the dragon. It looks like the dragon is going to burn the city with its fire breathes. I will consider #4 is have more quality of the classic oriental style because it have the elements of 'leave blank' and it is more thought provoking.

@others
Most of us will pay attention to the subject but we may overlook the background sometimes . The relation of the subject and the background is very important in oriental style. The photos will become even more interesting if we can find the interactions(e.g. #4 of my Picon 135mm).
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