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The Windy Pixel – If you have not added this site to your bookmarks, DO IT NOW and visit it each and every day for an injection of creativity and to make you smile! ;0) – Cheers Justin, I had great fun thinking up the questions and even more fun reading your answers!!!

1. Can you please tell me a bit about yourself ?

I am a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I’ve lived in Chicago or its suburbs since I was born.  I am a career scientist/nerd with a keen interest in photography.  Science and photography are my principle interests and hobbies, much of what I do outside of these two areas is at least tangentially related (i.e. reading and writing about the two).  I used to brew my own beer, although I have found less and less time for this and more time for home roasting coffee.

2. How and when did you catch the photography bug?

This is a tough one to answer.  I have vivid memories of playing incessantly with my father’s film cameras as a kid.  I definitely lost a piece of his film advance from his F3 in the woods of Michigan when I was very young.  Moreover, I seem to always have a camera on my shoulder in vacation photographs.  I bought myself an N70 my first year into college and then replaced that the next year with a D100.  Throughout college and for the first few years of graduate school I would shoot sporadically, picking up and putting down the camera for vacations etc.  I suppose I really got serious about photography around a year ago.  We decided to start The Windy Pixel and I began to make a habit out of reading everything I could about photography, equipment, processing etc and out of taking photographs whenever possible.  So I would say I have always been bitten, but perhaps I got infected virulently at the beginning of 2009.  That being said, I always feel like I “just picked it up.”  I think part of getting better as a photographer is to maintain a level of unfamiliarity with the camera and the process, trying every new angle or idea you stumble upon to reach understanding.

3. What’s in your camera bag?

I carry my D700 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, extra battery and remote cable release in my backpack every day, and my tripod in the trunk of my car.  When I head out for more serious shooting, I carry a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.8, AI-S 28mm f/3.5, Zenitar 17mm f/2.8 and Peleng 8mm f/3.5, a bunch of filters and extra memory cards, batteries, etc.

4. What the most useful item of photography equipment you own (apart from your camera!)?

Tripod.  Without a doubt.  Obviously this is an essential piece of equipment for HDR and low-light shooting, but it is also a crutch I lean on pretty heavily to ensure that I take my time composing and thinking about what I am doing.  I find the tripod makes me change my eye-level perspective and find the right angle.

5. Do you have a favourite photo that you have taken and why?

I think part of that feeling of having “just picked it up” also means that my favorite photograph changes all the time.  Novelty in a photograph is key for me.  Therefore, at the moment, I’d have to say the photograph I posted on 1/19/2010 “A long sunset in the emerald city.” is my favourite.

To me, photography is a way of actively engaging the world.  Sure you are an observer, even a documentation behind the camera, but you are also part of the scene and the emotion of a given time and place.  My favorite photographs are always those that tell me the story of where I was with whom and when.  In the case of the photograph I linked, I was with my folks at this totally unique place in the city with nothing to do but hang out and enjoy the crisp air and a beautiful sunset.  Another favorite of mine would be “The Great Snake” – my wife and I spent the evening at the top of the Hancock Tower taking photographs and generally having a great time, the sunset was as good as the company.

6. Are there any photographers that particularly inspire you?

Inspiration comes in many forms – were I to pick photographers from whom I learn the most, it would be Mike Boehmer (whose work you are familiar with from tWp) and my wife, whose work has popped up on tWp from time to time.  She has an innate sense of the craft that is always useful to observe and has a habit of wowing me by finding the right angle or shot that I walked right past.  Between the two of them I am always picking up new ideas or riffing on shots they take (stealing if you ask them :)).  Annie’s work, of course, is always inspiring, though I’ve been out and about shooting with her less.  I admit the secret to her photographic eye is harder to learn by example (she just sees things I miss).

The truth is I am not much into the personalities surrounding photographers, this is especially true of extremely popular internet personalities – the people who make the image are inherently uninteresting to me, I find that the image is what inspires.  Oftentimes there is a large disconnect between the popularity of a photographer and the quality of their images.  Those considerations aside, if we are to mention professionals or other prolific amateurs whose work I follow regularly and draw inspiration from to pick up the cam and get out there the list would be long indeed.  For the sake of brevity I will mention in no particular order

• David Nightingale
• Josh Sommers
• Trey Ratcliff
• Scott Bourne
• Dave Hill
• Christophe Huet
• Ansel Adams, etc, etc ,etc.

7. How would you describe your photographic style in 3 words?

Urban landscape HDR.

8. What 3 pieces of advice would you offer a newcomer to photography?

i.) Read just about everything you can about photography.

ii.) Go out and shoot as much as possible, and learn for yourself that most of what you read in 1.) is bullshit, no one has all the answers.

iii.) Always ask what you can be doing better – deconstruct your work and others work – open yourself to constructive criticism and address it directly – it is important here to have a stiff upper lip.  The work of improving what we do is never done, but can’t be started until we admit it is inherently flawed.

9. If you had to showcase your work with 3 photo’s only, what would they be?

This is a great question – and a really tough one to answer.  I believe what I do is take photographs that amateurs want to take.  Clearly this is true because I am an amateur and I want to take them, but it is also the case that most of these photographs have little if any value outside of their aesthetic appeal.  That is not to say they might not have any artistic value, the line between photographer, artist, and documentation being exceptionally hard to draw and the act of drawing such lines an unnecessary business, but rather that they are made a as a labor of love and loved most by people who like to look at photographs and say wow.

“The Narrows” as an example of post-production and photo-realism.

“Helpless” to represent work designed to push the boundaries of digital photography by using composite imaging.

“A Long Sunset in the Emerald City” because it represents a new view, new processing technique and a look towards the future of tWp.

10. Where else can people find your work (Flickr, Portfolio site etc)?

I update my Flickr page every day and submit frequently to HDR-Spotting.

11. Is there anywhere in the world that you would love to visit for photographs?

There are few places I *wouldn’t* want to visit for photographs.  Photography is typically my principle motivation for selecting travel destinations.  If you’re paying, Angkor Wat, Giza and Machu Picchu would be at the top of my list.  Realistically, I hope to make it up the Oregon Coast and into Alaska in the next few years.  I very much want to see and photograph the Pacific Northwest again.  If you’re a betting man – wager on seeing some things from Olympia National Park on tWp by next winter.

12. What are your views on the ‘love/hate’ argument regarding HDR?

I’ve written a bit about this on tWp in the past – perhaps the most honest and cogent piece I put together is here.  Basically, I think HDR is an unfortunate label.  Unfortunate because, just like any branch of photography, it groups together disparate photographers and photographic styles into a single category whose bulk is constituted by rather unfortunate over use by amateurs trying to hit the “unsuck” button as hard as they can with some fancy post-processing (I realize that a lot of my work fits into this category).  In reality, HDR is just part of photography, to love or to hate it demonstrates a dogmatic bias not based on image quality but on a specific set of technologies used to generate a given image.  I think because it is new it gets a lot of attention and few, if any, of us know how to use it to its full potential, it becomes an object of consternation for photographers who eschew it.

On a personal level, I used to spend a long, fruitless hours trying to achieve similar results using masking and old photoshop tricks.  The HDR technologies that exist today make possible for the amateur photographs that were once the realm of masters of the darkroom.  I have been on a slow, but I hope steady, trajectory towards a dramatic but pleasing HDR style.  It’s my hope that this trajectory continues and the most notable features of my photographs becomes the composition, light and subject rather than the processing.

13. How much time per week do you spend looking for/taking photographs?

I, like any other amateur, am highly variable in this regard.  Some weeks my camera sees naught but the inside of my bag.  While on vacation I hardly put it away and find myself limited by the battery and memory card more than by my time.  On a typical week I like to spend four hours or so on a weekend morning out and about and maybe another hour or so during the week hunting down great photographs.

14. What inspired you to create TWP?

I had just come back from a trip to the Tetons and had such a blast reconnecting with photography that I decided I needed to do a lot more of it – and that a daily photoblog would provide the necessary catalyst.  The only problem I perceived is that my professional and financial situation kept me landlocked inside Chicago.  As Mike, Annie and I started shooting together a bit more, it became clear that one could run a daily photoblog from inside Chicago for ages and still find new material.  We decided, therefore, to start something of an urban landscape photography blog and haven’t missed a day since!

15. Can you please describe the site and also what you hope visitors will like about it’s content?

tWp is a daily photoblog with an emphasis on Chicago.  Most tWp posts comprise an image of the city and a few words about how that image was collected and or processed.  Recently, I’ve strived to build a bit more of a community around tWp – taking care to mention all the wonderful people who comment, email me, link back, or contribute to the photo/story of the day.  This is really rewarding because I’ve started to find out a lot more about who reads and who cares about what we do; often I receive emails from readers who have basic questions about photography or HDR processing or the city.  Although I make no claims as to my qualification to answer these, I do my best.  The site also includes an in-depth HDR tutorial and a gallery of Chicago images as an homage to the Gothamwithin.

I hope visitors will find daily eye-candy and inspiration as well as an open forum to connect to photography, the authors and the city.

16. Is the background/description text that accompanies the images posted on TWP from your own knowledge or do you speak to locals/carry out research?

The little tidbits you find associated with the photographs on tWp are usually the trivia or mental detritus that surrounds a specific event or place and comes from the authors.  Often, I am ignorant of something and I try to provide links back to the original source.  The truth is that I know very little about this city and I often receive emails that detail some of the history behind something we posted.

17. What setup/settings did you use to capture the photo in the ‘Helpless’ article?

The post you mention is one of my favorites.  Actually, its topic includes one of my favorite parks, photographs and songs.  The day that photograph was taken saw us visit Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada.  The Prince of Wales Hotel, situated in the most picturesque mountain valley I’ve ever seen, provided some of the inspiration.  I wanted an image of one of these old, beautiful lodges at twilight, contrasted with the rugged and wild scenery – something of a contrast between artificial and natural.  The trip coincided with some of the clearest, darkest skies of the year, and I had also wanted to make some photographs of the stars and the Milky Way.  I wanted an image that had enough detail and low enough noise so it contained abundant details of both the stars and the Earth.

The technique behind the image is really simple, and if I were back there now, I would try to carry it out to better effect with a faster lens.  I was aiming to do some wide-field astrophotography, but I wanted to create huge images devoid of noise.  When taking images of the stars on a stationary tripod, exposure times of over 30 seconds produce noticeable star trails at a focal length of 28mm.  The trick is to use many overlapping high-ISO 15-30 second exposures at 28mm to capture wide-field starlight without star trails and with exceptional sensitivity and low noise.  I had done one image using a 50mm set to f/1.8 at Teddy Roosevelt National Park called “Light Years“, and thought I could do something more dramatic at Glacier.

I used a 28mm f/3.5 lens (set at f/3.5) and exposed five bracketed shots at 2, 4, 8, 15 and 30 seconds at an ISO of 3200. I found this combination gave me a lot of detail in the sky without noticeable trailing in the stars at the highest exposure and covered the range of details I needed in the ground.  I then took a four row panorama, each row containing four overlapping images, for a basic total of 16 images.  I started at teh darkest part of the sky, figuring that there would just be a little bit of twilight left over the mountain range by the time I had finished.  The images containing the lodge were tonemapped and then blended using a panorama stitching program with the images containing the stars and the Milky Way.  The final image is HUGE – some 100 megapixels.

This all seems like a lot of work, but it ensures the most details in the sky with no noise when viewed at “normal” sizes – i.e. on the web or on a large print – say 16 inches by 24 inches.  I could have used a much wider angle lens, but then I would have noticeable noise levels even on the web.

18. Do you draw inspiration for TWP from any other websites/photographers?

I draw photographic inspiration from all sorts of websites – and whereas I might not draw specific inspiration for blog posts or for the theme of tWp from any given site, the content you see on tWp is influenced by countless Flickr streams, design blogs, photography blogs, etc.

19. What does the future hold for TWP?

Lots.  There are a few projects we set out to complete when we first started the blog, and those have yet to be realized.  I’ll list a few things here that I think are feasible within the next year.

Redesign – There is wasted space on the side bars of tWp that need to be filled with links and tutorials and other things.  I hope to get a redesign in progress ASAP.  I love the simple aesthetic and the focus on the daily photograph – but I think we can do more.

California – I’m head out for a job at Stanford and my photography will be filled with California before long.  The blog will therefore be something of a diaspora – founded in Chicago, continued on the west coast.

Nodal Tripod Head - I designed and Mike fabricated a 360 degree nodal tripod head from scrap metal.  There are other designs on the Internet for this kind of thing – and if you have $700 laying around you can order one, but we went ahead and designed one from the ground up – and made it strong enough to support at least 40 lbs of camera and lens.  Mike has taken and posted some photographs with this equipment, though he may not have mentioned in it in the text.  The prototype was a success and I am hoping to get Mike to complete another version before I leave for California – the goal being the publication of its design (free for all to use of course), construction and use.

Collections – I love our “Welcome to Gotham” set and I want to do more.  I’ve recently done a lot more vertoramas – images constructed of multiple, vertically overlapping frames – designed to give a sense of depth and detail.  Look for a collection of these images in the future on tWp.

Gigapixel – I want to make a gigapixel HDR photograph with the D700 and make a limited addition printing available for sale.  The trick is finding the right subject so that this is a truly special image.  This WILL happen, but it remains a question of when.

20. Where can fans follow TWP?

1. Website – http://www.thewindypixel.com
2. The Windy Pixel has a facebook page where you can connect and leave comments.
3. On Twitter – @thewindypixel (you can follow me at @justinwkern)

As I mentioned earlier, I’m working to build a bit more of a community around tWp – connecting with people who have a genuine interest and making the internet a better place for HDR photography.

I’ve got to say thanks to Barry and FPR for a chance to get up on a soapbox and say a few things.  It is always humbling and exciting to know that people are interested in what I just plain love to do.

Preview image from ‘Zoo Lights – Last Chance‘ – photo by Justin Kern.

Related posts:

1. Website Profile – TheWindyPixel
2. FPR Interviews Photographer Rachelle Goff
3. FPR Interviews Inspirational Photographer Ron Dubin
4. FPR Interviews Awesome Photographer – Jeff Byrnes
5. Website Profile – PlanetEarthDailyPhoto