I have been quite busy this past week, so not much time to do anything photo/blog/computer related. However, I woke up this morning and looked out at the grey sky and made a pot of coffee. I am on my second pot at the moment and I was catching up on a bit of processing and sorting and was suddenly struck by the photo above – I’d processed it late at night the other day, but, at the time, must have been on auto-pilot because, when it appeared on my screen, I instantly thought of the famous quote: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”.

For some reason, I had always thought that Dorothy Parker said that (and it is certainly a Parker-esque quote) – maybe because reading Parker quotes always cracks me up, or maybe because it had been incorrectly attributed to her somewhere else and I had neglected to check the source. (As an aside, some of my favourite Parker quotes include: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.” “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

Anyway, a quick search suggests that most people attribute the quote to Gloria Steinem, but a bit more searching and it seems Steinem did not say it:

‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’
This slogan is often attributed to Gloria Steinem. Other claims for origination point to Flo (Florynce) Kennedy, or to an anonymous author who painted the slogan on a wall at University of Wisconsin in 1969.

Gloria Steinem had this to say in a letter she wrote to Time magazine in autumn 2000:

“In your note on my new and happy marital partnership with David Bale, you credit me with the witticism ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’ In fact, Irina Dunn, a distinguished Australian educator, journalist and politician, coined the phrase back in 1970 when she was a student at the University of Sydney. She paraphrased the philosopher who said, ‘Man needs God like fish needs a bicycle.’ Dunn deserves credit for creating such a popular and durable spoof of the old idea that women need men more than vice versa.”

Irina Dunn later confirmed Steinem’s version of events, in January 2002:

“Yes, indeed, I am the one Gloria referred to. I was paraphrasing from a phrase I read in a philosophical text I was reading for my Honours year in English Literature and Language in 1970. It was ‘A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle’. My inspiration arose from being involved in the renascent women’s movement at the time, and from being a bit if a smart-arse. I scribbled the phrase on the backs of two toilet doors, would you believe, one at Sydney University where I was a student, and the other at Soren’s Wine Bar at Woolloomooloo, a seedy suburb in south Sydney. The doors, I have to add, were already favoured graffiti sites.”

And there is always U2 using it in Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World from the album Achtung Baby:

Nothin’ much to say I guess
Just the same as all the rest
Been trying to throw your arms around the world
And a woman needs a man
Like a fish needs a bicycle
When you’re tryin’ to throw your arms around the world

Tokyo International Forum interior

Despite the meltdown of the global economy and a general slowing of business everywhere, 2009 has been a busy one for tokyololas so far (which may or may not explain why I have left a photo of a weird looking poodle at the top of this blog FOREVER).

Anyway, the other day, I was having a very brief email exchange about processing black & white digital photos and I was explaining why I really like to use HDR/tonemapping for black and white photos, particularly black and white photos of sky/clouds.

Two caveats up front: I don’t really care whether or not the process is called “HDR” or “Tonemapping”, so I will refer to it as HDR going forward; AND I don’t really care whether or not people like or don’t like “HDR”. I will agree that there is A LOT of very badly done “HDR” floating around the internet, but, beyond that, whether or not one likes the more extreme, cartoonish-looking HDR is a matter of personal preference or if you are not a fan of the Stuck in Customs style, again, that is a matter of personal preference.

I have certainly dabbled in a range of “HDR” styles just to get a feel for the process and see what can/cannot be done; and I have certainly produced a few HDR shots that I now abhor, but I am glad I did do them as a kind of experimentation because I now have a very strong sense of what I like and don’t like. As I said above, it is all a matter of personal taste and even when I find myself not particularly liking someone else’s vision, I do understand the time and effort that went into producing the end result.

These days, I tend to only do HDR for sky shots or architecture, and I MUCH prefer a more “True Tone HDR” style. In other words, I want the HDR element of the processing to be very subtle or even indiscernible. I have also found that a lot of digital black and white photos I see online are quite flat and lack the range of blacks that can be found in a nice black and white film photo.

This observation and dissatisfaction led me to start experimenting with HDR for black and white shooting and processing. I say “shooting” here because I almost always know before I take the shot that I am going for a black and white end product and, of course, if you are going to do decent HDR, you need to decide up front so you can do the multi-exposures (yes, of course, I know it is possible to do HDR from 1 shot, but I never do, so it is always a decision I make at the point of shooting).

This is not really a tutorial, so if you have no idea what any of this means, and, more important, you want to know, you might want to do some additional reading: stuck in customs HDR tutorial, Naturescapes.net HDR Landscapes Tutorial, Wikipedia HDR page, and Photomatix (the software I use to process/tonemap the images).

Personally, I like to keep things simple, so my approach to HDR is simple: no tripod – just a fast lens (I own two tripods, including a very handsome carbon fibre model, but I rarely carry it out and about with me and most often use it on my balcony or out back at night), 3 exposures using the AEB feature of my camera (-2/0/+2), upload to Lightroom, process in Photomatix, final adjustments in Lightroom (usually minor or none), export the final image. The whole thing from selecting AEB to exporting the final image can be done in less than 10 minutes. I know doing more than 3 exposures can yield even better results, but that would then require a tripod 100% of the time and would involve more fiddling with exposures on the spot (fine on a nice summer day, but not something I’d want to spend time doing when it is below zero outside). Two things I have not included above: shoot in RAW (I assume that anyone who owns a half-decent DSLR is shooting RAW – if you’re not, you should be and you’ll need to in order to do HDR), shoot on ISO 100 if possible or 200 if you must (any higher and you’ll most likely end up with noise in your final image).

Now, the results. The first shot below shows the base image (the “correct” exposure of the scene) converted to black and white – pretty flat, no?

Here is the HDR/tonemapped version (click on the image and you’ll get a larger view):

Much better range of light and, what’s incredible, is that you can actually see a patch of what seems to be precipitation under the cloud (which is not at all visible in the base image). Now, if you want to have more fun, you can do other things with the image. For example, here is the actual final image that I ended up posting to Flickr – it was desaturated in Lightroom and there was some adjustment in terms of blue/green tones (again, clicking on the image will give you a better view):

Back to black and white – here are a few other examples of how I use the above process to get a final image I am happy with:

Palais Garnier -Opéra de Paris

Notre Dame de Paris (Notre Dame Cathedral) interior

intense sky over Harumi