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A Very Good Cause

April 20, 2012 By A. Cemal Ekin Leave a Comment

Mehmet-Nevin BIlginer Dormitory TEVITOL is a special school near Istanbul. It accepts, after multiple screenings and tests, gifted children most of whom do not have the means to continue their education let alone receive an excellent one at TEVITOL. It was started by the late Sezai Turkes in his wife’s memory and now operated by the Turkish Educational Foundation (TEV). Its success is undeniable and the students who go through that system receive excellent education and continue on to their college and even higher degrees. Many of the graduates are now in the US, studying at prestigious institutions such as MIT, Duke, Yale, and so on, with full scholarship.

The campus is a very pleasant one right on the Marmara Sea near Gebze, not too far from Istanbul proper. On Wednesday, we went to a special event on the TEVITOL campus. It was the dedication of Mehmet & Nevin Bilginer Dormitory for the female students. Nevin Bilginer is the sister of my brother-in-law Ergun, and Ergun and Binnaz have been instrumental in the fulfillment of the mission of construction of this building which will provide rooms for 40 students.

The day started as heavy overcast with rain predicted. A strong wind kept the rain at bay, but later caused some damage across the country. Clouds, sometimes heavy, provided some comfort from the sun. We spent some time in the lobby of the main administrative building where they served tea and coffee and we got a chance to meet the principle of the school as well as several teachers. One young teacher, Patrick, was from Boston! Small world indeed. After the morning tea, we moved up the short hill to the front of the new dormitory where speeches were delivered, plaques were given, the ribbon was cut. Inside, on the second floor common sitting and study area three students performed very nice music, one played an acoustic guitar and sang a song and the other two performed as a flute duet.

After that was lunch in the school cafeteria overlooking the water. they served soup, mixed grill, salad, and dessert. Very enjoyable morning all around. I am glad I was here in time to participate and take some photographs which I will share with you below. The day continued with a dinner with a different group of family at the dinner table that evening, that will be the subject of the next post.

A few short video clips from the day are below:

Opening speech by Adnan Ignedelikci

Speech delivered by Nevin Bilginer

The guitar and voice performance by a TEVITOL student

Flute duet by two TEVITOL students

Filed Under: All Posts, Family, Photography Tagged With: Turkey

WPGA Finally Publishes the Book

April 15, 2012 By A. Cemal Ekin 6 Comments

A while back I wrote and presented the difficulties I had had with Worldwide Photography Gala Awards (WPGA) and the promised publication of the book, Portraits and People Around the World, II. I am pleased to write now that the book actually got published and I purchased my three copies. I feel that I had a small part in fulfilling that promise although, at times WPGA staff might have thought I was a royal pain in the back.

There is a teachable moment here for all, especially for WPGA. My suggestions are:

Request publishable photo submissions at the expense of upload times instead of small images, especially those that pass the first round
Prepare the book layout ahead of time, needing only to drop in the photos, the next one should be better I hope
On the Web site, make sure there are update no less than every 2-3 weeks. These need not be too detailed but inform the waiting participants what to expect. Inform, inform, inform! It is easier to ignore the information than to wonder what on earth might be happening
If necessary, hire an outside designer to complete the book if human resources is an issue
Never ignore messages from me!! ;-)

Take a look at the book on the WPGA site, Mina’s photograph is on page 42.

Filed Under: All Posts, Photography

Lightroom 4 Final Thoughts

April 13, 2012 By A. Cemal Ekin 1 Comment

I have written and documented the unexpected, and for me undesirable, changes in Lightroom 4. This post will wrap up this subject and I will move on. Earlier, I was taken by some of the improvements in Lightroom in the new release and recommended the upgrade without doing much testing. Let this be a lesson to me!

The Good

Lightroom 4 has a new process engine under the hood known as 2012 Process. It is remarkably good in handling over exposed photographs. The older version could, with the help of recovery and exposure, restore some highlight detail but at the expense of some color shift. This was most noticeable in photographs where the sky and the clouds were over exposed. The sky color would invariably shift towards cyan, needing further and often complex corrections. The 2012 process, by using highlights, whites, and exposure, brings back the detail while retaining color quite close to the original sky color. That deserves a round of applause.

The “Basic” panel tools have been reorganized, and the confusion between the exposure and the brightness sliders is eliminated. Adjustments starting in the middle and affecting the image in the same way are also good improvements. So is the correction of chromatic aberration, it is one click and any color fringing is gone from most images.

If you want to use Lightroom as a front end to Blurb you will likely enjoy the book creation. And the geotagging is a convenient feature without needing extra plugins. All these are welcome changes.

The Bad

Although the basic panel adjustments are more sensible, I find it difficult to get the results I could from Lightroom 3, process 2010. The new tools’ behaviors are not finessed, I guess that’s the best way I could express it. One of the adjustments I found quite useful, the clarity adjustment has become totally unpredictable and lost any use I might have for it. That is too bad, which I have documented in different posts and also on Adobe forums (forum 1, forum 2). Take a look at the image on the left, click on it to see it larger and feel free to save that large image. Then follow the steps below to see the behavior:

Import the image to Lightroom 4
Create a virtual copy
When the virtual copy is selected, enter the develop module
Scroll all the way down to Camera Calibration
Change the Process to 2010

Now you have two identical images one using 2012 process and the other 2010. Now, in 2012 process image, move the slider to the right and observe what happens to tonality of the squares, the light ones become muddy and the dark ones try to catch up with the light ones. Pay attention to the histogram as it loses the spiked appearance which is normal for this image and becomes all bundled in the middle. Then, switch to the virtual copy using process 2010 and move the clarity slider to the right. Notice that the overall tonality of the squares remain essentially the same except when two squares meet creating an edge that gets the clarity treatment. Look at the histogram which retains its overall appearance and creates small heaps of tones due to the change in the edge tonalities.

Printing is another unwelcome change, my reasonably well controlled experiments using two computers and four different applications clearly show that Lightroom 4 print is significantly and unexpectedly lighter. Combined with the lack of improvements in the print module makes that not useful to me either.

The Solution (The Ugly)

I have come to the conclusion that I cannot use Lightroom 4 with this much idiosyncrasy especially in two areas that are important to me. So, I chose one image, any image, and reset all the settings. Then went to the Camera Calibration and changed the process to 2010. Then I created a preset, called Use 2010 Process, and deselected all the options except “Process Version”. To automatically apply this preset to all the new imports, I right-clicked on the preset and chose “Apply on Import” which put a plus sign next to the name. From this point on, all the imports are automatically applied this preset and all use the 2010 process. If I see an image that is over exposed, for that image I may switch to 2012 process and correct the problem. The chromatic aberration correction and other parts seem to work the same in 2010 or 2012 processes, I’m glad.

I likened this Lightroom upgrade to Windows Me or Vista which most users remember not very kindly. There are many users who seem to be quite pleased with the changes in Lightroom 4, in fact some wish the clarity adjustment were even stronger. It is quite possible that there are segments of Lightroom users with different expectations and needs and this product is satisfying the needs of some of these segments (now I am wearing my professor of marketing hat!) Time will tell if Adobe will see the unsatisfied, and generally quiet segment(s) and make changes in Lightroom 4.x or 5 to address these issues. In the mean time, I will be using Lightroom 4 as a glorified Lightroom 3, that’s the “ugly” part. I guess if I did my homework ahead of time I could have saved myself the cost of the upgrade. But again, considering not many dissatisfied users are as vocal as I am, maybe my upgrade mistake will serve a purpose after all.

Filed Under: All Posts, Lightroom

Our Neighborhood

April 7, 2012 By A. Cemal Ekin Leave a Comment

We live in a nice neighborhood, modest but nice. It is close to many amenities yet away from the main drag, heavy traffic, and the hustle and the bustle of busy centers. The streets are wide enough to make it feel very open, all single-dwelling houses with generally well kept appearance, and mostly flat terrain. When the weather is good I take short strolls in different directions and sometimes even take photographs. These strolls do not extend too far, generally one or two block away from home. In this collection of photographs, covering two such strolls, you will see how open the feeling is and notice that in this suburban setting there is quite a bit of wild areas.

In the first group of photographs you will walk from our house towards south on Spring Green Rd, look back at the house and continue to the corner. On Narragansett Parkway, turn left and walk to the corner of Fair street, see the tall tree across the street. A little further up, you will see one of the trees that grew into a slanted shape because of the pruning to clear the wires, power and phone. That is at the corner of Fair and Clearwater Streets. Around the corner is the large tree trunk. Continuing on, you will come to the corner of Osceola Avenue and turn left. There are some very interesting trees on that road. At the corner of Osceola and Elenor is another area left to wilderness, enjoy the forsythia blossoms against the brushes. A little further up is Spring Green again, turn left and a short hop by the Miller and Cleri houses you will come back home.

I took a different path for the second walk, across the street from our house is Aberdeen Avenue where I started. There was a nice spring blossom display on the right and the trash barrels on the left, Thursday is the trash day in our neighborhood. A little further is a dead-end street with a small shed and more spring flowers. Continuing on, the road ends on Danforth Street. Turning right you will see a bunch of trees as if huddling on the sidewalk to watch the people go by. Danforth in this direction ends on North Country Club Drive, across the street is the play ground. The tree I named “Three Graces” graces the ground. The spring time is here since kids playing baseball were running around. Next to the playground is another woodsy area, a little further than that an interesting tree, actually a penta-tree is on the left. A little further, at the corner of Spring Green is a new house that was built after we moved in. Turning the corner, you will see another area left wild with a small brook running through. You can see the ivy that is ready to burst into action and grow even more. Looking south, you will see the starting point and short hop will take you back to where we started.

I hope you enjoyed walking around our neighborhood.

Filed Under: All Posts, Photography

Lovely Vilia

April 4, 2012 By A. Cemal Ekin 2 Comments

I had a very pleasant photo shoot with Vilia Putrius, one of the company dancers of the Festival Ballet Providence. She was a joy to work with, not only because of her very pleasant personality but also because she knows how to move, how to pose, how to hold a pose, and look so graceful.

The main purpose was to provide photographs that the Festival Ballet Providence could use in promoting their upcoming Swan Lake performance. Vilia dressed in whites as Odette first and we tried to convey a gentle, kind, graceful personality. After we had enough variety in white, then she changed to Odile in black with a change of make up. We tried to capture a more edgy, coquettish, somewhat sinister, evil personality for Odile. Vilia, a gentle person found it difficult to move into that persona but the professional that she is, our desired persona finally emerged. My coaxing and coaching during the shoot and handling the post processing were all aimed at creating these opposite personalities. The result is the collection you see below.

Thank you Vilia for being such a great model. I regret that I will not be here to see the actual performance. I am sure it will be a smashing success.