Vince Lupo's Mapping the West

I'm starting to go back over all the photos I posted while I was out West -- so nice to work on a 27" monitor instead of a 13" laptop!

One thing is that I think a good majority of those posted photos is that they were dark, so I'm going to be re-posting a number of those shots. Other thing - and this might generate a debate/discussion/arm wrestle, so I'm going tread lightly here (knowing the direction some of these kinds of discussions on RFF can possibly go): I've always worked in Adobe 1998 and have saved both my TIFFS and JPEGS as such. In speaking with a good and longtime friend of mine who owns an archival scanning and printing business and I would consider to be one of the best in the business, he recommended that I save my TIFFS in Adobe 1998 and my JPEGS for web in sRGB, reason being that some browsers no longer support Adobe 1998. My laptop uses Safari but on my desktop I use Chrome, so there's a possibility that my using Adobe 1998 all this time for my posted JPEGS might be a reason for the difference between my laptop and desktop, among other things. So I'm taking his advice and seeing if this change makes a positive difference. Of course the other possibility is that my desktop pretty much stays in a constant environment, whereas while I was out West I was staying someplace new every night, and I even worked in our truck one day as my wife drove. So that's another factor that could have played a role. Or my laptop screen and my desktop screen are not 'matched', calibration-wise. But in general Mac screens are pretty good, and in the past I haven't found them to be wildly out of sync. Or the final possibility (maybe the most likely one!) is that I'm just a dimwit and while I'm on the road I can't tell whether an image is dark or not while working on a small laptop. In any case, I'm going to go through these shots again -- ah well.

Here are two -- much better versions, I think!(?)


Untitled 2023-9 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr


Ryan3 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr
 
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Another revised shot — one thing I am noticing is the sRGB JPEGS seem to be ‘flatter’ that the Adobe 1998 ones. Shadows don’t seem as punchy in these web JPEGS. Hmm I may try an experiment.

Untitled 2023-11 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr
 
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Looking more closely at some of the photos I uploaded while I was out West, and I have to say some of them look pretty bad. So it seems that I'll have to start from scratch on a number of them.

Sincerest apologies for posting some sub-standard work while I was on the road. I always keep telling myself to wait until I'm back home before I work on any of the photos, but most (all?) of the time my eagerness gets the better of me.
 
I feel the same with my pictures, Vince. I regret not being able to remove the older photos.

Apparently there is no standard for photos on the internet. The photos change all the time and apparently just by themselves.

I love your work, above all because of their typical tonality and incredible sharpness.

Erik.
 
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Vince Lupo said:
Looking more closely at some of the photos I uploaded while I was out West, and I have to say some of them look pretty bad. So it seems that I'll have to start from scratch on a number of them.

Sincerest apologies for posting some sub-standard work while I was on the road. I always keep telling myself to wait until I'm back home before I work on any of the photos, but most (all?) of the time my eagerness gets the better of me.
Click to expand...

Vince, your worst photos are better than most people's best - period!

Secondly, I get the eagerness to share images with others. Photography and the desire to share
can be so exciting!

Personally I believe that a photograph is not a photograph until it has been shared. I love to share my images with others and I love to see what others have to share too! And, that is why a degree of self selecting and editing is so important. Not every picture is a keeper and in the excitement of the moment it can be hard to see that. I’ve been trying to improve my process of selecting what I share with the community. Time is my friend. Stepping back for a day or two and then reexamining a photo can be a great help in deciding what is a keeper and what is a clunker. Asking myself what is so compelling about a photograph to warrant sharing it with others? After waiting a few days and having a second look I often realize that a picture is mediocre at best. However, the real keepers will still be ready for primetime and it’ll have been worth the wait.

I’m just sharing my thoughts on my own process and how I’m trying to improve it.

All the best,
Mike
 
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Yokosuka_Mike said:
Vince, your worst photos are better than most people's best - period!

Secondly, I get the eagerness to share images with others. Photography and the desire to share
can be so exciting!

Personally I believe that a photograph is not a photograph until it has been shared. I love to share my images with others and I love to see what others have to share too! And, that is why a degree of self selecting and editing is so important. Not every picture is a keeper and in the excitement of the moment it can be hard to see that. I’ve been trying to improve my process of selecting what I share with the community. Time is my friend. Stepping back for a day or two and then reexamining a photo can be a great help in deciding what is a keeper and what is a clunker. Asking myself what is so compelling about a photograph to warrant sharing it with others? After waiting a few days and having a second look I often realize that a picture is mediocre at best. However, the real keepers will still be ready for primetime and it’ll have been worth the wait.

I’m just sharing my thoughts on my own process and how I’m trying to improve it.

All the best,
Mike
Click to expand...
Many thanks for your thoughts Mike - I do appreciate it!

While I think I got a lot of good moments and some worthwhile additions to the project, it’s my rendering/interpretation of some of those images that is really lacking. I’ll have to go through each and every shot I posted while I was out there and start all over again with them (I think the ones that I have revisited so far look a lot better than the initial results). After that, I’ll have to figure out which ones will ‘fit’ into the project with all the other Mapping the West photos and see how they look as 11”x16” prints.

Honestly I think something is up with the calibration of that laptop screen, in addition to not having been in a consistent, stable environment in which to work on the photos throughout. I don’t have any deadline so there’s no rush for me to get these done, but for some reason I always feel like I do. Guess it’s the ‘work’ side of me that drives that.

On a side note, the first photo from this entire thread at the top of page 1 (The Hand of God) is in the process of being printed as a 40”x60” canvas print and will be installed at Rio Grande Winery in Las Cruces. Very exciting!
 
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Vince Lupo said:
I'm starting to go back over all the photos I posted while I was out West -- so nice to work on a 27" monitor instead of a 13" laptop!

One thing is that I think a good majority of those posted photos is that they were dark, so I'm going to be re-posting a number of those shots.
Click to expand...

I think this darkness issue is being experienced by other members here too. When I'm posting B&W images I'll overcompensate; make the picture a little brighter than normal so that it looks more natural after posting.

All the best,
Mike
 
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