Typical Pose Reflection

I drove down this morning to hang out with Thomas Hawk (and Missus Hawk) and about 30 other photographers to walk around Portland taking pictures. This was my first photowalk and I had an absolute blast. I'll have to put one together for Seattle soon! That's me on the left and Thomas on the right.

You can find my unedited Flickr set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8482343@N04/sets/72157604020356618/. I'd love to get links to the pics others took to compare notes on subject matter, so if you attended please leave a comment here or get in touch with me at charlieo@microsoft.com.

Thomas Hawk did a really nice thing for his friend Robert Scoble by taking a of 'first day' pictures of Roberts newborn son. Thomas, we should think about how we form some sort of volunteer community that does this free of charge for families just because we love to take pictures. I personally know I would have loved to have someone come take snapshots when our kids were born while we celebrated the birth with friends and family.

[Idea forming...]

Aw, heck, I've been meaning to play around with Facebook more. So, I just created a group called Photography Volunteers at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5630108367 with the following description:

Photography Volunteers is a group of photography enthusiasts who like to volunteer their time to take special occasion photos. It's focus is on taking pictures for the sheer love of photography, and helping others celebrate rather than a business model. If you want to make money at this sort of thing this probably isn't your group. If you are a hobbyist photographer who would like to hone your skills while doing something nice for someone by helping them create memories of their special day, well, this might be the place for you.

A first thought: I'm willing to bet there are many families who really can't afford to create these types of memories but would be very appreciative of a volunteer who would do so.

Anywho, if it sounds like a fit for you, join up. Let's see what happens.

I love taking pictures and am a stickler for quality, sharpness and detail in the pictures my family enjoys on our walls, scrapbooks, computers and devices. It's not uncommon to find me retouching an image for days until I get it just the way I like it. My recent acquisition of a Zune had me pretty excited about the ability to showcase pictures to family and friends. I loaded up a few hundred images and started viewing slideshows and selecting images for the background. The quality was fine, but in comparison with the sample images which ship on the device mine looked out of focus and not quite as crisp. I knew some of my originals were every bit as sharp and detailed. So I decided to run a few tests to see if I could figure out how to tweak my images for maximum enjoyment.

I wanted to share my images with the general public, so no copyrighted material or people for which I would need signed releases. The quandary here is that humans (generally speaking) tend to notice quality issues with faces more easily than any other type of image, especially if we know the individual personally (as will be the case with many of the images on my Zune). Therefore they can be the best subjects for evaluating quality. So I tried to pick a couple of images which would give me enough detail to mimic what I observed with crisp closeups of people. I evaluated about 15 images total and selected these as representative of the overall results:

Test Image 1 is of a hat sold in the company store about a year ago. It has lots of fine threads which don't travel in straight lines, and the intricacies of the weave lends itself nicely to mimic the wisps of hair, the eyelashes, eye details, facial hair and other details you commonly see in faces. Things for which a single pixel missing or out of place can mean a world of difference in perceived quality. This particular image is particularly sharp around the stars and R.

Test Image 2 is a picture I took while hiking the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China several years ago. This picture has and incredible amount of fine detail both in the inorganic (building) and organic (stone work, trees, snow in the distance). This picture provides interesting challenges for resizing because of the detail (and the type of detail, as we will see).

Cropping and Resizing

There were three individual tests with each image and in my tests the end result was a typical (and some might say predictable) good, better, best paradigm...

• Good: Import pictures at their original resolution and aspect ratio and allow the Zune software to crop and resize during the sync process. This is the out of box experience which I describe above as OK but not quite as good as the sample images provided.
• Better: Crop originals to a 4:3 aspect ratio (keeping original resolution) before importing into the Zune software and syncing with the Zune device. There was a noticeable uptick in perceived quality taking this approach.
• Best: Crop and resize to the optimal resolution and aspect ratio outlined below in a third party tool like Digital Image Pro, Photoshop or Paint.NET. I used Photoshop for all of the tests except the first where I compared all three programs to see if there were large differences in their resizing algorithms (which there really wasn't except if you went looking for the differences). For each export of the JPEG the highest quality option was used (12 in the case of Photoshop) to try and keep artifacting to a minimum).

Resolution

The best resolution for most pictures (especially those involving faces) is going to be 640 x 480. While not a face, the image for Test Image 1 shows distinct differences at the pixel level between 320 x 240 and 640 x 480 on the Zune device, closely resembling my observed results with actual faces. You can test this out for yourself by copying these images to your Zune and playing a slide show -- look for pixels to appear which provide more definition in the weave of the embroidery. For faces the difference between the two resolutions can be a glimmer in the eye (or not) and the other nuances we observe in the human character. Also, 640 x 480 is going to look better if you are using the TV out functionality on the Zune.

However, there are always exceptions to the rule. If a picture has many hard edges or patterns involving straight lines 320 x 240 may be perceived as better due to moire' patterns. In Test Image 2 the bricks in the building at 640 x 480 introduce an unpleasant moire' pattern on the device not observed when the 320 x 240 resolution was displayed.

It does NOT seem to make a difference what DPI you use for display on the device. I tested at 45, 72 and 96 DPI and could not discern a difference on the device between the three at comparable resolutions. As a result I'm only posting the 96 DPI images for you to download and test for yourself, because...

Even though this was a test of pictures on the device you have to go through the Zune software to get the images to the device. So why not take a look at the results there. So I did and observed the following:

It DOES make a difference what DPI you use for the Zune software for when it generates thumbnails. 96 DPI renders better in the Zune software than others and in some cases beat the thumbnail generated by the Zune software from the original high resolution image.

Resolution also seems to matter in the Zune software, and it seems somewhat at odds with what is optimal for the Zune device in most cases. 320 x 240 @ 96 DP Iooked best in the software but 640 x 480 (no matter the DPI) generally speaking looked best on the device. I guess it's hard to have your cake and eat it too. For comparison look at the suite of images in Test1. Again, this will be highly dependent on images -- it's hard to tell the difference between the various choices in Test2. Judge for yourself...

Aspect Ratio

You will want to maximize use of the pixels on the Zune. Slide shows look best when all of the pictures are landscape (640 width x 480 height). Otherwise the portrait images (480 width x 640 height) are displayed significantly smaller in a horizontal letterbox format. Here is some ASCII art which hopefully illustrates the differences...

[ || ]O vs. [|  |]O

It's nice not having to swivel the Zune 90 degrees while cycling through a slide show -- but you are using only 1/3rd the amount of pixels you could be for portrait images. The only time you would not want to do this is for images you plan to set as the background -- the Zune device will automatically crop the landscape picture on the sides to display as the background, perhaps obscuring important information (like those faces).

Recommendation

If you want your pictures to look their absolute best on the Zune device always use third party software to crop and resize to the following specs before importing into the Zune software and syncing to the Zune device:

• Slideshow Pictures: 640 x 480 (Landscape)
• Background Pictures: 480 x 640 (Portrait)

...and by all means use the highest quality JPEG export setting your software provides.

I hope you are enjoying your Zune as much as I am.

I returned home from Tokyo this morning to find my latest issue of American Photo waiting on me. On pages 15 and 18 is the work and interview of Jill Greenberg featured as the most controversial photo exhibition of the year. I agree with Thomas on this one (see Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse and More Thoughts on the Jill Greenberg Controversy). I remained silent on this topic UNTIL I read the article in American Photo -- the quotes attributed to Mrs. Greenberg were saddening to me, at the very least.

Here are the quotes by Mrs. Greenberg in the article I found to be disturbing, and why...

"Maybe getting kids to cry isn't the nicest thing to do, but I'm not causing anyone permanent psychological damage."

My wife is a child psychologist with a specialization in child development, and I have learned from her some of the most formative years of a childs life are between the ages of 1-6. Does Mrs. Greenberg have the expertise to know whether or not she is crossing a boundary with these children? Nothing in her official website bio indicates she does.

"Kid models aren't very expensive -- not as expensive as monkeys, for example."

It seems to me it boils down to maximizing profit for Mrs. Greenberg, regardless of the consequences or moral obligations she has to her subjects. I don't believe it's right to provoke animals in this manner, much less children, for the sake of making a buck. This dehumanizing of the children -- making them merely a commodity -- is sickening.

"Some would just cry for no reason -- my daughter did that; she didn't like standing on the apple box I used for a platform because it was a little wobbly."

Mrs. Greenberg, your child was not crying for no reason. She was crying because you put her in a position where she felt unsafe. This hit a particular nerve for me. We have professional pictures (by Karen Goforth) of our two children at six months old sitting on a turtle stool built by my grandfather. The stool is not wobbly -- it sits about three inches high, has a very wide base and therefore a low center of gravity.

Both children had learned to sit up unaided for 1-2 weeks before the pics were taken, so were naturally still a bit wobbly themselves at the time the pictures were taken. Because of this, I was mere inches away during the session, just out of camera range or within the periphery of the frame edges. The minute my children became the least bit distressed or started to sway a little bit I scooped them up and ended the session. Granted, my goals were very different from Mrs. Greenberg -- we wanted happy, smiling pictures.

I can't imagine intentionally making my child uncomfortable or unsafe to provoke them to tears. I'm baffled as to why Mrs. Greenberg as a mother would do so to her own children, much less those of friends or complete strangers.

"At the end of the day I was not in a good mood. I don't like making little kids cry."

Earlier in the article Mrs. Greenberg states she photographed 'around 35' children in groups of '12 or so for one day'. If she dislikes provoking children in this manner, why did she do it for approximately 3 days (35 children divided by 12 per day)...? The actions in this case seem to speak much louder than the words.

"The emotion you see is just so compelling, yet they're beautiful at the same time. That was one of the things that interested me about the project -- the strength and beauty of the images as images."

These images are not beautiful, nor do they depict any sort of beauty. To attribute any sort of beauty to these images is shameful in the least, and speaks volumes about the distorted perspective of the viewer.

"I also thought they made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country. Sometimes I just feel like crying about the way things are going."

The pictures by Mrs. Greenberg might be indicative of psychological projection. I'm not a psychologist, but I remember enough from my undergraduate studies in psychology to recognize the behavior. There are many, many ways to constructively deal with a negative personal outlook of our culture, political or socioeconomic environment without involving children, or causing a negative impact to their lives. Talking with a friend or spouse is a good start, and much more healthier than imposing our unhappiness upon the precious little ones in our lives.

As a result of their feature of Mrs. Greenberg I'm canceling my subscription to American Photo. I hope in the future they will decline to feature children in their magazine in this manner. There are many, many other controversial photo exhibitions they could choose to highlight which do not resort to exploiting minors.