photography Archives – Florian Ziegler

29/04/2023

My Black and White Workflow

Today I was asked about my black and white workflow. I thought I might answer it here as well:

I only shoot raw, both with my Leica and my Fuji cameras, so technically, there is always color information there. (Hence I was able to convert this image back to color.)

But usually, I never see my images in color, ever.

That is because I have set all of my cameras to black and white, using the “Monochrom” mode on the Leicas and the ACROS (Yellow) film simulation on the Fujis. That way I only see b/w images when looking through the EVF or at the display, both when shooting and also when I review the photos I have taken.

Photo Mechanic, which I use for editing, shows me monochrome photos too, as it uses the preview images generated by the cameras.

And finally, when I import my photos into Lightroom, I have it set up so that it applies a custom preset using a B&W profile (mostly Adobe Monochrome) to the images right away.

That’s it. 🙂

All that being said, I obviously shoot in color sometimes. I even have a whole project I shoot in color.

I also think it is important to note, that some photos do not work in b/w – and some don’t work in color. That is why I usually decide whether to shoot either b/w or color before going out/taking the first picture, because – at least for me – seeing works differently in both cases. I probably should elaborate on that in another post…

22/04/2023 at 16:51

Editing btconf

In the process of editing my #btconf images from earlier this week:

I did take 1,641 images in total. 805 were left after the first pass, 406 after the second. Now down to 219 photos. I usually aim for something in the range of 150 or so images. Getting rid of the last 50, is always the hardest part.

Final thing after that will be sequencing. I mostly go with chronological here, but sometimes, moving a couple of images around makes for a more interesting flow.

Stay tuned!

20/04/2023

Personal Picture Postcards

So I created this new feature into my photo blog where I can send a photograph and a personal note to someone in the form of a (digital) postcard.

This is probably not an original idea, but it was important to me, not to use an external service and that I have full control over how to present the photo and the note.

As I have written before, I am not a fan of sharing photography via social media, because it lacks personality and intentionality.

And while I love my photo blog for sharing my images, I was looking for a way to send a personal message to someone – that’s just for them, eg. to say thank you or send them an image, that is only meant for them.

It was also important to allow people to keep their postcards. That is why you can download them (it’s a simple HTML file) and look at them offline. (It should even work in Quick Look on a Mac!)

Here is an example postcard, if you want to check it out.

I will probably make it more accessible and also optimize the file size at bit (all assets are base64 encoded and embedded in the HTML file). Stuff might still break. (Please let me know!)

Oh and, I almost forgot to mention: You need a somewhat adequate screen (size) to see it, because mobile phones are way too small to look at photography. 😏

I’d love to hear what you think!

PS: I had this idea for a while and Sophie‘s talk at beyond tellerrand got me all fired up to tinker with my personal website again, so I made the first prototype back in the hotel that night. 🤘

08/04/2023

File Handling: Leica M vs. Fuji

Something I never read about anywhere is how incredibly well the (digital) Leica M handles SD cards and files.

Example from earlier today:

After importing images and then putting the SD card back into my Fujifilm X-E4, it complained with a “card failure” error.

To its defense: The card was pretty much full and I used Photo Mechanic to select images and add some meta data directly on the card, which they (Camera Bits) explicitly, repeatedly tell you to never do. (What can I say… 🤷‍♂️)

The Fuji was basically crashing. Couldn’t even format the card.

So, I popped it into the Leica, formatted it without issues. Back into the Fuji, which now showed no card error.

Another thing that I run into constantly is that the Fuji cannot display the images after I added meta data to them with Photo Mechanic (again, directly onto the card, yes, I know…), whereas the Leica does not have any issues whatsoever.

Maybe it’s because of the file format – Fuji’s proprietary RAW vs. Leica using DNG?

Anyway, I just found that interesting.

02/04/2023

WordCamp Switzerland 2023

It’s been quite a while since I published one of my WordCamp photo recap posts! I had to look it up: It was for WCEU 2018. Crazy, how time flies!

I had a great time meeting old friends and making new ones.

Well, without further ado, here’s my (short) photographic recap of WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

Enjoy.

1. A Wapuu banner welcomes attendees to WordCamp Switzerland 2023, which took place in Murten/Morat on April 1st 2023.

2. Empty chairs in the “Aquarium” room waiting to be filled.

3. WordCamp Organizer Michael Hörnlimann stands atop the stairs in Centre Loewenberg, waiting for attendees to arrive.

4. Léa McAleese is the first speaker of the day, with her session about “Nurturing your customers”.

5. The microphone, housed inside a foam box, is passed arround between attendees to ask questions.

6. Looking into the “Aula” room during an ongoing session.

7. The hotel buildings are part of Centre Loewenberg, the location for WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

8. Volunteer Florian Blaser waits for the next talk to start in the “Aula” room.

9. Nestor Angulo de Ugarte during his session “Round 1! FIGHT! – Or how to survive against a malicious hacker”.

10. Nico Martin answers questions from the audience after his talk about “How to automate your maintenance with Playwright”.

11. An attendee scans a QR code during Nico Martin’s talk at WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

12. Claudio Rimann, part of the photography team at WordCamp Switzerland 2023, peaks through the door into the “Aula” room.

13. Christian Zumbrunnen announces the next speaker, Remkus De Vries with his session: “WooCommerce, but faster”.

14. Attendees gather for the group photo at WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

15. Stefan “Velthy” Velthuys reacts while picking the winners of Required’s “guess the number of lines of code” competition.

16. Karin Christen hands out the prices to the competition winners.

17. cyon’s Philipp Zeder reacts after winning the competition.

18. Remkus De Vries is getting a back rub from WordCamp Switzerland 2023 organizer Mark Howells-Mead.

19. Noel Tock is getting mic’ed up by Maxime Culea.

20. Milan Ivanovic announces the final session of the day at WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

21. Panel discussion with the topic “WordPress in 2025” is about to start. Moderated by Noel Tock, with participants Matt Cromwell, Karin Christen, Simea Merki and Roslyn Lavery (not pictured).

22. Michael Hörnlimann presents some stats about WordCamp Switzerland 2023 during the closing remarks.

23. Michelle Bulloch says “Au revoir” and good-bye to the attendees at WordCamp Switzerland 2023.

Interested in going down memory lane? Have a look at all posts tagged WordCamp, with all of the recaps going back to the very first WordCamp Europe.

All images in this post taken by Florian Ziegler and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

And finally, for those who are interested: All photos taken with the Leica M10-P with either the 35mm or 50mm lens. Editing and gentle post processing in Lightroom.

09/01/2023

2022 Retrospective

In 2022 I archived¹ 21,469 photos, 4,846 of which, I marked as favorites. (2021’s numbers for comparison: 22,097 archived, 4,809 favorites. That is pretty consistent, I’d say.)

35 % of images are tagged “home”, which means I took them at and around my home. (46 % in 2021). 45 % of all of my 2022 images have at least one of my daughters in them, which further indicates that documenting my family is by far the most important part of my photographic practice.

Last year I got a new camera, the Fujifilm X-E4, which I used for roughly 34 % of my images. The Leica M is still number one at 49 %, the Q accounts for 13 % of photographs taken in 2022. (The remaining 4 % are various cameras I only used for testing, etc.)

I took the most images in May, 2,948 to be exact.

(See 2021)

Books I created in 2022

Elvan Matilda Lumi 5: Fifth year in the life of my daughter Lumi, 232 pages, March 2022
beyond moments Berlin 2022: Event documentation of beyond tellerrand in Berlin, 68 pages, September 2022
Türkei 2022: Documents our visit to our family in Turkey, 188 pages, November 2022
Zila Erna Suvi 3: Third year in the life of my daughter Suvi, 238 pages, December 2022

(See books I created in 2021 and 2020)

I shoot way more. These are just the ones I am keeping.↩︎

08/01/2023

I Am Not a Fan of Consuming Photography Online

I am not a fan of consuming photography online. Which probably sounds weird, coming from someone who just finished 100 days of posting daily to his photoblog. I should probably clarify this a bit:

I do not like looking at photographs in a feed like application like Instagram or Mastodon (as I learned just recently, when I tried to follow some photo related hashtags).

My main issue is with presentation and image size: Photos are way too small to appreciate them really and they are all in the same format and context.

Also I am missing intentionality. I am not looking at photographer X’s work, I am just looking at everything at once – and whatever some algorithm deems right for me at the moment. (Not on Mastodon, but following hashtags feels pretty much the same.)

Don’t get me wrong, I do not have an issue looking at photos on a screen – although nothing – nothing! – beats the printed image – but I would rather go to people’s websites, where they present their images in a way that they think fits their work best and that they put a little bit of effort into.

So I guess, what I am trying to say is this: Create a dedicated place for your photography online. Get a website going, start a photoblog and share your images in a format that they deserve.

If you already have a photoblog, please share it with me. I’d love to follow along.

06/01/2023 at 16:59

Tag: photography