4.25.2024
Dancer. In old Austin. Before the city's population explosion...
Yesterday's project, photographing two attorneys, went off without a hitch. Files have already been selected and we'll do final post processing tomorrow.
We're still moderating all comments because there is a person who is obsessed with leaving dozens of malevolent comments on the blog every night. It's not so bad. The comments are easy to bulk moderate. And Google is being helpful. I guess it's just a sign of the times. Mental health issues everywhere.
This weekend features (weather permitting!) the annual Eeyore's Birthday Party event at Pease Park in Austin, Texas. Costumes, painted faces, contests of strength and creativity and so much more. Starts around 11 a.m. and continues till dusk. Be sure to experience the drum circles...
After a flurry of electronic flash purchases I've got nothing new to report. The Leica SF58 did fine. Nothing glitched. Nothing broke.
We've had marvelous weather here right up until today. Now the temperatures are rising, the humidity is villainous and the pollen bearing trees, grasses and shrubs are in full allergy mode. A nice time to spend an afternoon in front of the computer...
Have a great weekend!
4.23.2024
Packing up for tomorrow's assignment. Subtractive lighting will be key.
4.22.2024
An evolving methodology for using the Leica Q2. Different than what I expected.
4.20.2024
The pluses and minuses of using a Leica SL2 and a Leica 24-90mm zoom lens for event work.
We're trying something new. I'm testing out how well eliminating comments altogether works. The consensus was: keep comments/moderate out the assh@les. Okay.
I've just gotten worn down moderating caustic and unhelpful comments. Since I won't have to read complaints or "suggestions" .....
More swimming coming up: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/is-swimming-the-ultimate-workout
It's behind a paywall. TLDR: best exercise for physical and mental health. By a long shot.
Never mind. There will be comments. The work around is, a la MJ, all of the comments will be moderated before seeing the light of day... Thanks for your time.
4.19.2024
successful project. Back home in Austin.
The event in San Antonio was successful. The hotel did a great job with the banquets and the meetings. The audio/staging/video company, Palladium, did their usual perfect job. The clients were happy and kind. The cameras I selected performed well. The electronic flashes didn't explode in my hands. No issues erupted. Everyone went home happy.
Not a very interesting story...
4.18.2024
Home. Now working on post production of event images.
4.12.2024
On Topic: Colorizing my past work. A short break from an endless posting of skyscrapers and mannequins.
I find it very interesting to see what PhotoShop's Neural Filter "Colorize" picks for color and tonality. For example it seems to have a very limited repertoire for lip color, a very pleasing but narrow palette for skin/tone skin color and a tendency in an open air scene such as this to push blue tones into the background. The steps, as most people who have toured Rome know, are neutral to warm in color and have no blue component. But on the other hand I like the deep blue jacket on the out of focus woman just to our left of the main subject's head. And I especially like that the programming paid attention to the woman just over our main subject's shoulder; again, to our left, making sure the coloration was pleasing on her face.
Iterations are (or should be) an important part of the artistic/photographic practice. How will you know the "best" treatment for an image until you knuckle down and experiment?
I came back to this image of Lou this morning after having posted one version yesterday. I didn't like the automatic colorization of the background in the last image so I selected my subject, Lou, made a duplicate layer with a layer mask, selected the background layer and reduced the color saturation of the background. By eliminating most of the color in the background I think the background is less distracting, and without the color contrasts it also looks smoother. The smoothness of the background accentuates the foreground/subject detail without requiring an increase in subject contrast or sharpening.
Once I got the image in the ballpark, for me, I also pulled out some of the saturation from the foreground subject/Lou.
There is sometimes a misconception here that I operate the blog as an art gallery. A place where I show final images to an audience that is here to ruminate together solely about images. It's not. It's really a place where I discuss the nuts and bolts of making photographs and, by showing the progression of post production on an image, I also talk about how perceptions of style change and morph either when my tools change or my tastes change. My idea for the blog, from the very beginning, is that the thoughts and the descriptions about how I work and what I'm trying to accomplish; the words, are more important than the photographs. The photographs exist here because I like them but also because they are examples that reflect what's covered in the written ideas.
A reader of another blog took a stab at VSL today/this morning by implying, in comments appended to another off topic post about tennis, that the bulk of what I show here is photographs of mannequins in store windows. I wondered if this was statistically true so I went back and checked at my VSL Google Photo Archive that's filled to the brim with images I've posted over the course of the blog's life; since, actually, 2008.
Turns out that I've posted nearly 20,000 photographs over the course of writing the blog. Of those fewer than 100 have mannequins showcased in them. You can do the math. 20,000 images means you have a lot to choose from besides fun photos of mannequins. Some are work photos, some are from hundreds of live theater shoots, many are portraits done for both myself and my clients, while some are personal images. Travel photos. And yes, some are of mannequins.
Traditional photographic blogs are few and far between these days. I'm still trying to deliver meaningful content about the real working life (and hobbyist pursuits) of a commercial photographer working in Austin, Texas. Not London or New York City but certainly not the sticks either. We still discuss which cameras and why. I post images to show concepts and sometimes, as in the image above, just because I like the way the photograph looks to me. I'd hate for the VSL blog to decline into a review site for bidets and a showcase for bowling.
Yes, you have seen this image in one form or another 9 times over the course of the blog's life. In each showing there were either small or large changes to the image, or both. My work has nothing to do with hewing to straight documentation. The work here is rarely, rarely journalism. Rather it's constructed unreality made to please me or you or clients. Or all three.
Today's iteration is a case in point. I made a few subtle changes in addition to the colorization and subsequent toning down of the background. I also removed a small skin tag from Lou's right/lower eyelid. It may change the feel of the image for some and maybe not for others but it caught my attention this morning and I used Photoshop to remove it. Were I a strict journalist and if this image was to be presented as "fact" I would not have done so. But it's not. So I did.
My firm belief, once again reinforced by quotes from the Avedon bio book I discussed earlier in the week, is that progress in the quality of both seeing and of also hitting technical targets comes from constant practice. Constant photographing and by extension the frequent revisiting and modifying of the results of one's work. Everything is a work in progress. Everything.
If you ask a swim coach how to get better the short answer is: time in the water. But the long answer should be: time in the water + the constant practice of correct form (technique). It's one thing to get wet every day but quite another to concentrate on continuing to improve a mindfulness toward, and practice of, your best form. Why bother to practice bad form?
I'll slow down on posting next week because I will be engaged then as a working, professional photographer. We start in earnest on Tuesday. Over the course of the three days of photography I'll have the opportunity to have a constant feedback loop of images going right in front of my eyes. I'll photograph, assess, improve, photograph, assess and so on. And I'll write about it after I get back...
One would think that having done hundreds of similar projects over the years that there's nothing more to learn. But that's a dangerous way to think about a discipline that's always been a moving target. The exercise of photographing hundreds or thousands of photographs in a week is just one more layer of experience in the bank. And it gets mixed with previous understandings about work.
The post production I'll do on the new images from the event will incorporate new capabilities delivered in the past year. Things like A.I. Denoise, new presets, improved firmware in cameras and lenses, new selection tools in post. Everything informs everything else ---- if you let it.
If you walk into a project cold you have to cover all your potential bases. Be ready for an unknown mix. But if you come back to a project having done the same event structure for the same client before you get to fine tune more. You look to refine the project this time around instead of inventing it from the ground up.
Seems like fun to me. Like revisiting this older image of Lou. It's a time to overlay new capabilities and to see how it affects your work. Both commercial work and personal work.