Indulge me. I re-read this and wanted to reprint it for the people who are new here. More original programming to come.

Why you shouldn't shoot like everyone else.

Let's face it,  I don't think any of us woke up one morning and said, “The thing I love best is taking pictures of strident brides putting on yet another cookie cutter,  antique ivory white dress with the annoying little buttons down the back.....”.  We didn't.  We don't.  We do many of the annoying little jobs we do because they pay the bills.  The wedding profits pay for the mortgage and the car payments.  The bridal portraits help pay for new gear.  And the PR photos of “guys in ties”, done with the same old soft box and grid light on the background,  pays for dinners and electric bills.  But you are way off base if you think we buy for a moment that you shoot these things because you are driven by your “inner muse” to do your “Art”.  (That's capital “A” art.....).

We're not all wired the same way so if you really get a thrill running a business and making a profit and that's all you want out of your photography then I get it and we'll give you a pass on the art thing.  But the rest of you aren't getting off so easily.  Most of us got into this field because we loved taking photographs of people, or landscapes, or life on the streets.  I certainly didn't pick up a camera because I saw a cool product photograph in a catalog.

I picked up a camera because I loved taking photographs of my friends.  I wasn't drawn to images that were lit in a particular way, I really loved the stuff that was black and white, available light and relatively unposed.  When I had done this kind of work for years as a pleasurable hobby I found my self at loose ends after my partners and I sold our advertising  agency.  I had some money in my pocket and a bunch of people kept hiring me to photograph them or their loved ones in the style I'd done.

But.....as soon as the art moved from hobby to business there started a subtle erosion of the essential point of view that made my work different from everybody else's.  I learned that there was an established style to shooting business head shots and so I learned that style and began to offer it.  I had to buy lights and drag them into the mix.  I learned the “right way” to do an executive portrait and I started to incorporate what I learned into the mix.  

And if you think about it, the convergence of digital imaging and the photo sharing sites on the web has quickened a process of homogenization that now seems relentless.  How many of you think that a reportage style of wedding photography is wonderfully unique?  Really?  Even though every wedding book I've seen in the past three months has exactly the same stuff in it?  The close up of the fingers trying to button five hundred annoying buttons on the back of an antique ivory wedding dress?  The edgey images with the razor thin slice of sharp focus that just screams out, “Hey, look at me.  I got a Canon 5D and a fast 85mm lens...”  You know the drill.  We all know the drill because we presume that these are the images and styles that brides want and we want to deliver them so we can make the car payments and buy dinner.  And in the corporate world we know that the standard head shot is generally a boring piece of crap that doesn't move the game forward any more than music on your website.

I think we homogenize for a variety of valid anthropological reasons.  We have a subconscious  desire to please our tribe.  We fear striving for originality and excellence because we have a suspicion that these things aren't valued by our clients and showing different work might cause them to reject our services.  Which we then interpret to be a rejection of our selves.  We might fear the hostility that will inevitably come from those who are practicing the status quo.

But here's the nasty reality statement that I'm sure you've known was coming from the minute you started reading this:  The people who populate the top 1% of the art world don't really give a minute of thought to what might “play well in Peoria”.  They pursue their vision.  Their own vision.  And they do it in a way that basically welds them into the longer view of art history or photo history because it introduces aesthetic game changers that the rest of us will buy into decades down the road and work to homogenize into our collective offerings while some where a new generation comes knocking with the real goods.  But we won't understand the value of those goods until it's just too damn late.  Think Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.  Both of whom were incredible pioneers as opposed to the Chase Jarvis and Michael Grecco types who understand a trendy, contemporary use of the tools, and the power of good, pervasive marketing.

It's like Avedon invented Haute Cuisine while Jarvis added an extra strip of bacon to the cheeseburger.....while Grecco introduced pink mayonnaise and convinced Ludacris to put it on his bacon cheeseburger.....really, it is apt.

Consider this for a moment...two companies sell 90% of the cameras used by professionals today.  Both have the identical format!  Your choice is really sensor A or sensor B.  Processing algorithm A or   Processing algorithm B.  Can you imagine the photographers we truly admire from the film age being constrained to choose between just two different films?  Where is the differentiation?  Where is the rugged individualism?  How did this all happen?

Some postulate that every move toward convenience decreases overall quality.  That every wave of mass acceptance creates an inertia to consider whatever the masses have embraced to be the “standard”.  By that measure, clothes from Walmart are the new standard, and if you are truthful you'll acknowledge that you'd never get your wardrobe from Walmart...

So, what do you do? If you are a business person, first analyze your business carefully, and if you find that selling your current product, no matter how commodified it is, is going well and your market share is growing, then continue on your path.  But if you feel like you got into this field to do something unique and different but you have the queasy feeling that you let the weight of life and money drag you into some compromised stasis then start pushing back and re-connect with why you wanted to be here in the first place.

When I taught at The University of Texas at Austin I had a student who came to me and complained that she couldn't possibly fulfill her promise as a great fashion photographer unless she had a Hasselblad and a stable of good, Zeiss lenses.  But she whined that she could never afford them, so she was doomed to failure.  A week earlier I had overheard her telling a classmate that her parents had just bought her brand new, turbo-charged  Volvo station wagon. ( in the early 1980's this would have been viewed as radically indulgent within the student class---now, who knows?).  

I suggested that she sell the car and buy the dream.  She thought I was insane.  The money trumped the art.  The comfort quotient kicked the crap out of art.  I caught up with her two decades of “life lessons” later.  She has become a gifted artist.  She pursues her vision with a Holga camera.  She lives on the edge.  She doesn't own a car.  But here's the news flash, she's happier than she ever was because she's very clear about what she wants.  And what she wants is to pursue the vision she had in the very first gestalt moment of loving photography.

So, how do you change?  How about throwing away all the trappings and offering what you really feel compelled to offer as art, and the hell with the rest of the market.  After all, would you rather be the next Avedon or a watered down/ tarted up version of Olan Mills.  You have the “Art” with a capital “A” in you or you would have never chosen this business.  Owning a McDonald's franchise is a much more secure way to earn lots more money.  So trade down on lifestyle, if necessary, and trade up on artistic integrity.  I can almost guarantee that you'll spend less on therapy and Xanax.  And people may grow up wanting to be just like you----instead of wanting to have your lifestyle.

I know you might think this sounds preachy and high handed but it's really a synopsis of the journey of self discovery I've been on lately.  I've opened the files in my office and dragged in a big ass trash can.  Anything that doesn't feel good, special and all about my work goes into the can.  All the event negatives from the 1990's.  All the executive portraits older than three years.  And I've started showing only the styles I want to shoot.  Not everything I could do in a pinch.  It makes me feel lighter.  Like I'm freeing up mindshare.  But that's something for another month.

In the meantime my prescription for change is to go back to using your very first camera for a month.  If you learned on a Canon AE-1 or a Minolta Maxxum 7000 or a Holga, go back and get one and load it up.  Shoot the way you once loved for a month.  Live with your style for a month and see if it doesn't feel better. 

I could give you more advice about shooting with little strobes but it would all be bullshit until you figure out why you shoot, and what you want to have coming out of your camera.  Customers?  If the work is satisfying to you then you'll find the market you want.  It may not be the market that supports your BMW payments but remember, you trade you life for money and you'll never get either back, so you might as well start doing it on your terms right now!

Thanks, Kirk

Author:  Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography

      Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography

(really, two totally separate books with annoyingly similar titles.....)

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

Taking a mental vacation to the islands.

Belinda under the Jamaican Skies.

Obsessing about your job is a quick way to make life suck.  Letting go of job-session is a quick route back to happiness.  Over the last couple of years our industry has been pummeled like an ugly pinata at a teenage birthday party.  We've heard that stock photography will eat our lunches.  We've seen that clients under duress have the loyalty of a Goldman Sachs executive.  And we've been beat over the head with the concept that legions of amateur photographers will steal our clients (the same feckless clients) and undercut us by working for free.  Well.  What a special and happy way to look at your chosen profession. (sarcasm intended).

I'm not buying any of it anymore.  We're in full mercenary mode at Casa de Kirk Tuck Photography.  No mercy, no prisoners.  But we're doing it by re-inventing reality to suit our disposition.  The rules going forward are simple:  Provide a great product and provide it at a fair price.  If someone wants it cheaper, say, "No."   If no one wants the product then take the day off and work on one of those long term, big payoff, personal projects.  Part of the new reality is that we've got existence and subsistence covered and we're only working for the gravy anyway.  My own European social welfare construct on an individual and self directed basis.

So today a job got postponed.  No worries.  I had lunch with a wonderful art director instead.  We even had beer at lunch!  I swam at the pool this morning.  I'm writing a blog now.  And I'm going on vacation in my mind, remembering all the fun places I get sent....just because  I am a photographer.  

The image above was done on a vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica.  Again, on vacation with a Hasselblad and a 100mm 3.5 planar.  One pocketful of Tri-X.  We'd done a project here a few months earlier and part of our payment was an equal amount of vacation time at the same resort.  We sampled many islands over the course of two or three years,  nearly always with the same bargain.  One week of work in exchange for a fee and a one week of vacation.  And vacation can be a beautiful thing.

So I'm banishing all those negative presumptions and my new reality includes the fact that the phone keeps ringing, the e-mail pinging and the checks arriving like clockwork in the mailbox.  Job postponed?  Off to lunch.  Job cancelled?  Off on vacation.

GEAR NOTE:  I like to keep my friends up to date about what I'm shooting with.  As you may remember I got some feedback from a big agency client a few months back about the need for much higher resolution in my files.  I'd been shooting exclusively with Olympus cameras because I find their lenses to be wonderful and the color palette very attractive.  And to a certain extent I'm enough of a curmudgeon to not want to shoot what everyone else does.......

But I am running a business, I'm not paid by Olympus and I do listen to my clients with the intensity and focus of the Echelon System.  So, knowing that Olympus isn't making any higher resolution cameras right now I added a Canon 5D mark 2 and some lenses.  Decided I could work with the system and started filling in the blanks spots.

I just picked up two pieces last week that I actually like shooting with a lot.  The Canon 7D and the Canon 15-85mm EFS zoom lens.  I'm practicing with them now and I'll be wringing them out at the next few swim meets and then I'll be ready to let you know what I think about them.....

Love the idea of full disclosure.  Just wanted to let you know what's jangling around in my brain and my camera bag today.

Sometime the only rules that apply are propriety.

So, I've made all kinds of pronouncements about how one should do street photography but here's one situation that falls outside my strictures.  I saw the face and wanted to do a quick portrait but she was in the wrong light.  I walked up and asked, in very broken Italian, if I could take her portrait and if she would mind moving about twenty feet to the other side of the street so I could take advantage of the overhanging structure to shield her from the direct sun but close enough to a bright wall so I would have some direction light on her face.  It was near dusk and she was also illuminated by the light fixture in the overhanging structure.  The whole process took about three minutes.  She was amenable but guarded and that was exactly the look I wanted.

Rules are helpful in defining the boundaries that you must inevitably step over to do art.

Overheard this morning at a coffee shop....

Two advertising agency creatives were sitting at a downtown coffee shop having some sort of espresso drinks and I overheard them talking about business.  Now, it's no secret that the advertising business is going through as big or bigger a meltdown than even the photography business so I leaned over a bit and concentrated.  I wanted to hear how they deal with the slow down and the slow pay and the slow etc.  Quick into the conversation it became obvious that their agencies had lost some pitches and things were.....tense in the respective offices.  Finally one of the guys says,  "We should both ditch our jobs and start our own ad agency."  The other guy takes a long drink of coffee, gives the other guy the "are you insane" look and then says,  "There a ton of agencies.  We don't need to open another one.  Someone needs to open some new clients!"

The above vignette has very little and a lot to do with the blog below...

Kids playing on the Square in Sienna.

Wow!  If you're really freaked out about the economy and the state of the world and you feel a bit paralyzed and helpless I suggest that you stop drinking coffee for a while.  You may find that half the panic is self inflicted..... You are also less likely to spill hot beverages into your lap while driving, or, onto your laptop while contemplating the fall of civilization.

I just got it today.  The realization that we have no machine that will allow us to freeze our cultural evolution at a point where it works optimally for me.  I now understand that we're never going back to the "old days" even though the old days never really existed except as a fluid interpretation in our own minds.  Were we richer then or did we care less?

I read something in a book over the weekend.  It said (and you've heard it before) "the past is like the wake of a boat.  It trails out of view, never to return.  As to the future?  One step ahead and all is blackness.  We have only now."  In a way this flurry of images from Italy is a purge of the past.  I'm showing them and then archiving the prints.  Because if you are busy tending the work of the past you don't have the bandwidth to create here and now.  I'll show some of my favorites over then next few weeks and then get back to work on my own stuff.  In a new way.  With new understanding and new insights.

One of the insights is the need to be flexible.  To bend and try new stuff. To embrace fun and stop digging in my heels, trying to make people understand the value of what we did in the past.  Someone once said, "No one will ever win who bets against the web."  I would add that you rarely win by depending upon the way you used to do things...

It's hot and summer and everyone is moving slowly.  I'm heading out to walk and soak up the feeling of slowness and see if there's a visual component to it.  Wish me luck.

Ah. Verona. Romeo and Juliet. Tourism. Italy.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I love shooting on the streets in Italy.  As part of one of our trips to Italy in the early 1990’s Belinda and I decided to visit some of the smaller cities like Lucca,  Bologna, Parma and Verona.  It was the same trip that found me dragging along my big, chrome Hasselblad 500 CM and my 100mm Planar lens as my street shooting camera.  While all of the cities had their own charming attributes it was Verona that stole my heart because of their wonderfully cynical tourist board.  They took the story of Romeo and Juliet and ran with it.  Right down to designating a small house and courtyard as the house of Juliet.  Tourist would go there to see where the star crossed lovers lived.  And the tourist board indulged them by also installing a telephone like contraption that, for a few coins, would tell you the brief story of the feuding houses in one of four different languages.  I noticed that the photo which graced the machine was from the Zefferelli version of the Romeo and Juliet movie.  So appropriate!

Of course we made the pilgrimage to the house.  How could we come all this way and not see it?  We saw a few adventurous tourists from other countries but we also saw plenty of Italians.  I saw this man listening intently to the taped message and couldn’t resist photographing him.  I printed the images and put them in a show a few years later.  Most people took a cursory look and decided that the man was some sort of shady character doing some sort of shady and illegal deal over the phone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He was just a local tourist, eager to hear all the news.

I have many images in my files of people on phones.  How was I to know back then that all the phone booths would eventually disappear only to be replaced by the ubiquitous cellphone?  The phone booth now seems like a romantic and chancy part of a past life. The cellphone like an empty appliance.  C’est la vie.

Street Shooting In Italy is the best.

Men standing around in Rome.

I love to shoot in the streets but in my own town very few people ever get out of their cars and walk anywhere so it's pretty tough to practice here.  In my role as the persistent contrarian I disagree with everyone else's take on what constitutes a great "street shooting" camera.  And I'll probably conflict with some statement I've blogged previously but then I do that from time to time.  The prevailing idea of the street camera is one that is small, light, unobtrusive and which can be set to a hyperfocal distance and fired without taking time to focus.  The ultimate expresssion is often thought to be a small, light, stealthy small camera which has a lens that can be manually hyperfocused and brought up to the eye for a quick snap without having to mess with settings.  The ultimate expression of this kind of "street shooting" camera has often be posited to the Leica M series cameras.  To read what I thought about the M cameras ten years ago you might be interested in reading this old post on Photo.net.......

And lately I've written some lines of praise for the advantages of the Olympus Pen series cameras (the EPL being my favorite because it is slightly faster and sharper...) coupled with the older Pen F lenses which are manual focus and easy to set.  And I do like the results from those cameras.

On a later trip to Italy I took along a Mamiya Six camera and it was a good compromise with its quick rangefinder, sharp lenses and fast operating parameters.  But looking back I am just as happy, perhaps more happy with images like the one above and the one below which I took on a vacation with my wife, a few years earlier.

Men on the square in Sienna.  Standing around.  Talking.

For this trip around Italy in the mid 1990's I decided to go maximally minimal and take on camera and one lens.  I decided on the Hasselblad 500 CM with a waist level finder and the 100mm 3.5 lens.  I brought two 120 backs along.  While it might seem to be a counterintuitive choice it was based on my operational comfort.  At the time I was shooting with this kind of camera every day of the week and my hands were totally used to the operation.  It just felt right.  

But if you've used a medium format, waist level finder with a 100 mm lens you know that it's slow to focus, slow to operate and slow to compose.  The idea is to make all of these things into a virtue.  I work slowly and deliberately and try to make sure that I don't disrupt the dynamic that drew me to the scene in the first place.  You could march right up to a group like this and take charge but even if they were compliant you will have changed every thing.  All the energy and all the aesthetics.  You could take the passive way out and use a long lens from across the square to secretly capture them but you would eliminate all the contextual details that you get with the normal focal length used close in.  The middle way is to make yourself anonymous and quiet.

My technique is to find the scene and move myself into roughly the right position based on my understanding of the lens's angle of view.  Then I look at the subjects and smile.  Then I compose on the finder and then I focus.  Then I wait until I am no longer a curiosity or an amusement and I wait until I see the texture and gesture that first attracted me and then I push the shutter.  I try not to intrude but I don't retreat.  If they protest I walk on and look for other opportunities.  If they ignore me (yes.  please.) then I continue shooting till I have the frame I want and I move on.  But mostly I wait and wait to see something that resonates.

With the H-blad and rolls of film with only 12 exposures patience and timing is everything.  There's no way you can "motor" your way to a good shot.  And what I've come to know with fast digital cameras is that there is still no way to "motor" your way to success.  Scene with people move.  They are  subject chaos theory.  They come together and break apart.  The best you can wish for is to see the pattern as they come together and prepare for the moment when the image peaks for you.  Then you push the button.  And the photo works or it doesn't.  You print it or you leave it in the sleeve.

If you feel so disposed I would love to hear your street shooting techniques in the comments.  What camera and lens, how you use it and maybe even a link to some of your work.  We might all learn more.

Thanks, Kirk

What's in a portrait for me?

I am, on the whole, a fairly mediocre portrait photographer but I masquerade as a much better one.  And I get away with it because I cheat.  As often as possible.  What do I mean?  Well, I'm sure there are a number of photographers who can make just about anyone who stumbles by their camera look better than they do in real life.  They can make fat people look thinner.  Stupid people look smarter.  Ugly people less ugly.  I can't do these things.  In fact, I dislike photographing most people (which is a real sore spot for my CFO ) and I am drawn most often to make portraits of people who fit into fairly narrow types.  I love to photograph women but judging by the covers of every "how to" photography book published in the last five years or so, there's nothing unusual about that.

But the ones I choose have alluring and intriguing eyes, good cheek bones and dark hair.  The eyes give the viewer something quintessentially human to look at.  The cheek bones check the subconscious, internal mental box that says, "ideal beauty" and the dark hair is easier to photograph against different background and adds a nice, automatic contrast for the flesh tones of the face.

If I am no better a portrait photographer than the next guy, then why do I persist in doing it?  I guess it's because I am fascinated with each person's story.  As if the amalgam of stories gives me a big bell curve with which to understand my fellow humans.  Portraiture is an invitation to ask personal questions, to spend time with interesting people and to acquire new stories and new points of view.  In the end, for the most part, the print, or the image on the web, is just a souvenir of the shared experience.

The reason "the studio" persists lies in its nature as a private place where the shared experience of portraiture can be practiced in a comfortable and controllable space.

I love to take photographs of people.  I'm not choosy about styles or environments.  I like the studio because I can control the lights but I like the spontaneous nature of the street.  All I really need is the right person to shoot.  Then I can make both of us look pretty good.

If it's Saturday it must be Swimming Day! And other errata....

Now that is some bokeh!

If it's Summer in Austin you can usually find us at the pool.  I'm there in the mornings for our daily masters workout.  Guess who was on the deck coaching our team early this past Thurs. morning?  If you said the world's 100 butterfly record holder, Ian Crocker, you would be correct.  That's got to be a bit intimidating at 7 am......  Ben hits the pool for his daily workout with the Rollingwood Waves at 11:30 am on the weekdays.  On Friday nights or Saturday mornings we're usually at the pool for the mighty Rollingwood Waves kid's swim meets.

This may come as a surprise to you but I am also the official kid's swim team documentary photographer.  We all have to have a volunteer positions and that's mine.  I shoot whatever I want, all season long and then I do a big slide show at the end of the season.  People seem to like it.  Maybe they're just being nice.

I like to catch the kids mid dive.  When I shot the old Kodak DCS 760 (noble beast of a camera....) I had one opportunity for each kid.  With the faster cameras come more chances.  Today I was playing around with a Canon 7D and the 70-200 f4 L lens (the plain jane version, not the IS one....) and I was able to get three or even four variations of each dive.  The camera can shoot Jpegs, nonstop, at around 8 FPS.

I've got a few things to learn about Canon's brand new focusing system but it seems pretty straightforward.  Mostly you just hold your finger down on the button when you see stuff you like.

And then the camera pretty much does everything else for you.  I wish there was a switch on the camera to move shouting parents out of the way when they walk in front of my camera.  That will be on a later body.  Or perhaps it's a Nikon feature.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Canon 7D I'll tell you what I like about it in one short sentence:  The got the sound and feel of the shutter just right.  More?  The finder is beautiful.  But what I really like is the 70-200mm lens.  I'm guessing I should have immediately bought the new and improved 70-200mm f2.8 version 2 with IS but I was tired of spending multiple thousands of dollars on lenses when ALL of the reviewers told me that the $600 f4 is sharper.  I'm sure someone can dispute that but I'm giving up trying to keep up with the pecking order and the minutiae of lens lust.  Here's my one sentence review of the f4 version:  It was light enough to carry around all day in the heat and when I looked at my handheld, wide open shots they seemed really nice for a lens that's only $600.

We always start the swim meets with a cheer and then the national anthem.  

I'd like to talk for a second about how I do my photography at the swim meets.  I generally use one body and one lens at a time.  I keep a second lens in a very small bag that hangs over my shoulder.  I don't bring any flashes, stands, tripods, meters, filters, cable releases, cellphones, monopods, or Hoodman loupes with me.  I know most of the parents because I've been on the board at the pool for ten years.  They know I'm supposed to be there taking photographs, which is very nice.  I know a lot of the kids because my son has been swimming in the program for ten years.  I take candid shots when I can and when I can't I smile and ask people to squeeze together a little closer.  Sometimes the kids have shots in mind that they want to do.  I always do the shots their way and include them in the web gallery we put up.  I tend not to photograph the parents, other than the coaches, because they are hot, sticky and wearing very casual stuff.  Believe me, they don't want to be included.

I've been spoiled by shooting the two Olympus f2 SHG lenses, the 35-100 and the 14-35 so now I can only enjoy lenses that are good enough to be shot wide open or nearly wide open.  The Canon lens I mentioned above qualifies.  (Side issue:  If you are lucky enough to have a good "bricks and mortar" camera store nearby you should buy your stuff there and foster a good working relationship with a professional sales person.  Here's why:  when I wanted to dip my toe into some Canon stuff the 70-200 was a must have.  But I already have a three and a half pound monster so I was having difficulty trying to decide what to end up with.  I've also heard that QC in all optics can be variable, item by item.  My solution would be to head to the camera store on a Saturday afternoon and borrow all four models of lenses and then spend the evening shooting them.  When I narrow it down I then reserve the right to test the variations of the model I decided upon before buying it.  Once I held the faster lenses for twenty or thirty minutes my mind was made up.  Much tougher and more expensive to do this kind of "real world" evaluation with mail order.  Unfair to play locally and buy long distance.  If you have some weird rational for spending hours at the local store playing and then buy long distance to save a few dollars I don't want to hear about it.

Ready to get the show on the road.

All the images get color corrected just like we'd do for any other client.  We then load between 500 and 800 images from the swim meet up in a gallery on Smugmug.  The images are sized to 1800 pixels wide and saved at 85% jpegs from Lightroom 2.7.  We don't retouch kids.  The galleries are available to the families to look thru.  Sometimes the kids will be over at the house the day after the meet and they bring up the latest gallery, grab some snacks, then put them up on a 27 inch monitor and run the slide show.  Good for some laughs for the teenaged people.  We used to enable the print order function in Smugmug and price the prints at a fairly reasonable amount but most parents just want a digital file. We've set up the Smugmug fulfillment system to sell them files for personal display for a nominal amount.  As a board member it would have been a big conflict of interest for me to make money at pool but I didn't want to train our audience to expect free stuff so we donate the proceeds to the school district foundation.  Parents feel good about it, I feel good about it and the school really likes it.  They all have my permission to make prints for personal use.

There are a bunch of reasons I like to do this kind of stuff.  First, it keeps my technique fresh.  Second, I love some of the images because the kids are so expressive.  Third, it gives me an excuse to buy faster or just different cameras.  Fourth,  it helps me get acclimated to the Summer heat in a way that's directly connected to what I really do for a living.  Finally,  it's a clever dodge that keeps me from having to volunteer for a really tough job.  Like corralling six year olds.

I wish I could do stuff like this all the time. It's fun.  It's outdoors.  I obviously love the sport of swimming.  But I did "real" work this week as well.  Yesterday I spent some quality time photographing semiconductor products using the cheapo bellows I talked about earlier in the week.  Also did some portraits of doctors.  Met a new photojournalist in town who I think will turn into a very hot shooter.  I did what any jealous, weary professional would do in the face of strong, young competition:  I took him out for nice lunch, got to know him and gave him a hearty welcome to Austin.  There's not just one pie and it's not a zero sum game.  Meeting other artists should be a fringe benefit of the business.

Sure is fun being a photographer.  Now where did I put that bottle of Gatorade???

Marketing note:  If you've even thought vaguely, in passing, mildly, or lackadaisically about checking out my fourth book, the one on lighting equipment, would you be willing to go to Amazon.com and look at the reviews we've been getting?  It's my favorite book and I think it deserves a wider audience.  Won't take but a minute or two.....  Just in case, here's the link:

Becky's New Car. Dress Rehearsal.

There's a fun play opening at Zachary Scott Theater.  It's called "Becky's New Car".  I shot the final dress rehearsal last night and had a lot of fun doing it.  I packed two camera bags because I wasn't sure how I wanted to shoot the show.  I'm not always decisive while packing.  Bravo to those of you who do things the same way every time.  It must be a real time saver.....

My first idea was to use the Pen cameras.  I recently got a second EVF so I could have finders on both the EPL and the EP2.  That's the way I like to shoot these cameras.   I packed a bag with the Panasonic 20mm 1.7, the little zoom (just for safety) and several Pen F film lenses, including the 38mm 1.8, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2.  I brought along extra batteries and two 8 gig memory cards.

In the second small Domke bag I brought along the Canon 5d mk2 with the 24-105mm zoom lens.  At the last minute the marketing director called and asked me to bring some lights for a set up shot or two after the rehearsal.  I added three of the Vivitar 383 flashes (two dedicated to Olympus and one dedicated to Canon )  three small Manfrotto stands and two small (32") umbrellas.

Just as I was leaving the house, the moment I turned around to wave goodbye to my dog, a snaky shot of lightening flashed up the sky and the longest and most ominous kettle drum of thunder I've ever heard shook me and the ground.  I tossed the camera bags into the car, along with the small stand bag, and headed off to grab a quick dinner before the show.  I grabbed a quick sandwich in a nearly empty restaurant and sat looking out the window watching a hard driving, gray rain swirl in waves and pelt the windows.  As I stared out the window I wasn't thinking particularly deep thoughts....I was trying to decide which cameras to shoot with.

I knew the file quality would be "better" if I used the bigger camera.  But in some sort of "Rebel Without a Cause",  contrarian mindset I wanted to use the small cameras to show off.  To pull great files from the small sensors and to write column touting what could be done with these little tools in the "right" hands.  Yes.  Total Hubris.  The kind of stuff that's been the downfall of heros, villains and overly indulged photographers since time immemorial......or at least since the 1960's.  It's rare that I slow down and examine, in the time, what my real motivations are for choosing a camera or, for that matter, saying something out loud.  For instance, I haven't thought through why I'm even telling you the thought process behind all this.....perhaps it's therapeutic...

So now I'm in the small theater.  This stage is a theater in the round and all the light is top lighting.  Our biggest problem in shooting here is that the high angle of the lighting causes "raccoon" eyes for a lot of our talent.  I've got both the Pen cameras out.  With the 60mm on the EP2 I can see that I'll be shooting at ISO 800 to get 1/125th at f2.8.  I want to shoot at 2.8 to cover the focusing slop of my old eyes and the manual focus lens.  I do some test shots and they look okay.  But in the dark of the theater I'm having trouble really seeing "in focus".  I could do this if I shot a lot.  If I really cover myself.

But then I chuck the small cameras back in the bag and relent.  I pull out the Canon and shoot the show with the 24-105 locked at f4.  With the center focusing point I know I'm getting focus much more accurately than what I could do by hand.  The photos work.  But I'm deflated. I guess I like shooting with cameras like the Pen with manual lenses because they require some sort of skill.  Some use of my years of training and experience.  I guess the whole problem for me is that the cameras have become so easy.  My rational mind reminds me that the real crux of our professional is "how" we see, not anything technical.  So my irrational mind really just mourns for the loss of the need for technical prowess over equipment budget.  In the old days a Nikon FM could turn out just as good an image as a Nikon F5, in the right hands......

Now each generation of new camera can trump the previous one by dint of automation and the march of technology.  We can echo the platitude that "it's the guy behind the finder" that makes or breaks the image.  And I get that.  I really do.  But I miss the challenge.  Maybe there is a big market out there for psychologist helping experienced photographers get over the idea that hard won technical skills don't really matter that much anymore.  It's a tough one and an idea that goes back to the basis of our self-image as masters of so many arcane facts.

At some point you just have to relax and enjoy the show......

I shot about 700 shots and spent half an hour narrowing down the take to a more manageable 400 for the marketing director, Jim.  He's seen me use so many cameras over the years in the dark and contrasty space of the two theaters.  The first digital stuff we shot in the theater was with an Olympus e10 and quickly followed by a Kodak 660.  We could only shoot at ISO 100 with the Kodak.  Anything higher was a mess of blue channel noise.  with the e10 we got away with ISO 200.  Then came all the others.
I never imagined five years ago that a slow zoom and a high ISO would be a good combination for theater.  In the bad ISO days as in the film days, we were always chasing faster lenses and radical noise reduction schemes.  It's nice to get some depth of field...

And it's good to keep reminding myself that the only thing that truly matters is the final image.  How we get there is really of very little concern to most clients, to the actors and to the patrons of the theater.  The real issue is:  Did we capture the emotion of the play in a way that might make people interested in buying a ticket....?

Have we captured the spirit of the performance?

Funny thing.  I looked at the new gallery in the main offices of the theater.  They recently hung a permanent show of my work from over the last 17 years.  All the prints look good.  From the early Leicas to the sturdy squares from the Hasselblads to the early digital stuff shot with painful timing on tripods to the latest digital stuff.  The plays come through.  The technique recedes or is invisible.  And that's the way it's really supposed to be.

A mundane post about a boring piece of gear that is a good value...

Fotodiox macro bellows for Canon.

When the economy hit the fan last year I was in the middle of a system purge.  I was convinced that everything would change radically.  I would only go after high end jobs that would leverage my talents as a people photographer.  I would get rid of the gear that wasn't cogent to my mission and this would make me more streamlined and help me with positioning.  Right.  So I sold off my Nikon gear and part of that excavation included my old PB-4 bellows rig for shooting close up.  For nearly a year I felt well vindicated by the whole purge.

But somewhere along the line......say about two weeks ago....the phone started to ring again and the mysteries of telecommunications played midwife at the re-union of me and my former largest client.  Could I, they asked, still do wafer and die shots?  Would I be able to do some this month?  Well, yes, all the brain cells that deal with that set of tasks were still firing well.  The problem was I had two systems to work with and had a bellows for neither.  Why a bellows?  To do this work correctly you need to be able to get to 3 to 5 times lifesize.  Can't do it with a macro lens alone.

I started to explore options and I came across a solution that made me skeptical.  On Amazon.com Fotodiox (company) was offering simple bellow units for just about every camera on the current market for the princely sum of $49.  Yep.  $49.  How could you go wrong.

Short answer?  You can't.  I ordered on and waited to see what would happen.  It came in a non-descript box and had the right Canon adapters on both ends.  I fitted a valiant and trusted 50mm Micro Nikkor, with traditional aperture ring, onto a Fotodiox Nikon to Canon camera mount adapter ring and got going.  Bottom line.  Pretty solid.  It lock down tight.  Made with a good bit of plastic.  Not much else to tell.  After the shoot I looked at files at 100% and couldn't find any deviation from parallel in any plane.  That's the crucial deal.

Is it anything like the ultra-smooth and ultra sturdy Nikon?  No.  But for the five or ten times a year I need the extra extension it is very worthwhile and workman-like.  A damn cheap way to get your feet wet on some REAL macro stuff.  You could also buy a reversing ring and use a conventional 50mm lens with pretty good results.  Well done for the money.

Here are a few more views:

Front.  Business End.

Rear.  Camera goes here.

Sleak?  Naw.  Just hard plastic, a bellows and a couple of attaching mounts.  Works well on a 5D mk2.