OT: Choppy Swim Practice Today. Maybe I had too much on my mind.

Paradise. 

Some days it's just hard for me to make up my mind. Do I want to hop in one of the lanes on the right hand side of the center of the pool and struggle to keep up with the faster swimmers or do I want to jump into a crowded lane with swimmers who are more or less in line with my speed and endurance? I was one of the first people on deck this morning and jumped into lane four; right in the middle. Lane three filled up with the people I usually swim with but my lane today, the pivotal lane between fast and not so fast, stayed lonely until after warmup.

Then I noticed a bunch of faster swimmers arriving late. Couldn't justify using up a whole lane for myself and I know I can be hard to categorize. Too fast for some lanes and not fast enough for others. I had effectively pushed all the slower swimmers into the first three lanes and had effectively pushed all the faster swimmers into the far three lanes. I decided to abdicate the middle lane and alleviate the crowding in lanes 5 & 6.

But the conundrum was "where to go?" My usual lane, #3, was filled with four swimmers. The swimmers in lane 2 were too slow for my usual pace and I didn't want to disrupt them. I looked at lane 1, which is usually the slowest lane and there seemed to be no one there. I grabbed my gear and headed over. I could pace with my buddies in lane three but, apparently, have an entire lane to myself again.

At least that's the way it looked until Tommy Hannan jumped in. He'd been swimming in lane 1 since warmup but had gotten out to answer nature's call. (Thanks for not peeing in my lane....). He offered to swim on whatever interval might work for me. There's something intimidating about circle swimming with an Olympic gold medalist. He moved through the water like a shark. A fast shark. I was happy to know that he'd tolerate and compensate for me in his lane but, after fifteen anxious minutes of swimming hard, I decided to move again.

In the end I wound up swimming in a total of four lanes today and could never find just the right mix. I stayed for a bit of the second workout just to get enough yards in. Strange to swim on those days when you just can't figure out where you fit in. And tomorrow will be totally different. I blame too much thinking about lenses and not enough thinking about swimming. That's easy to fix --- I'll just shred my checkbook.

I shot a photography assignment with the Olympus 12-100mm and the GH5 yesterday. Here are a few random observations.

A client I'd done work for ten years ago called me a few weeks back and asked if I could do a photo shoot to replace the images on their website that had been there for over a decade (now that's how to get your money's worth out of a photographer!). When we did the original website it was cool just to have a well designed site and basically the photography was little more than a documentation to prove that the staff existed and that the firm actually had physical offices. Nothing fancy to the photography.

Now so much water has flowed beneath the bridges that photography for a website is a different conversation. The firm still has a central office but it's more of a way station. Most of the executives are working from home or from small, single person, satellite offices that are close to their homes. The client's thoughts about websites have changed as well. Rather than have individual headshots against anonymous backgrounds they wanted to do something much more casual and almost conversational with their people photography. Their business is still a "people" business and they want their people to be visible but they want to be seen as approachable, likable and congenial. Also important was to show their cohesiveness as a team.

I like their out of the box thinking. They asked me (as the assignment) to join their six person executive leadership team for lunch at a new restaurant and to shoot  candid images of them at lunch as they talked and laughed and shared a meal together. The client checked with the restaurant and made sure it was okay with them to have me shooting, almost randomly, in their main dining room during a busy lunch. This being Austin, Texas, home of the very idea of laid back, it was no problem.

The restaurant is near downtown and is in a re-purposed power plant facility. It's very cool. There were a couple stories of glass windows and all the furnishings were spare and modern. We wouldn't be lighting anything but I had full license to be as intrusive and

I live in Austin. I should show some photographs of live music performances. Don't want to get typecast as someone who can only shoot corporate......

Austin likes to call itself the "Live Music Capitol." We get a lot of musicians, bands, performers through the city on a extremely regular basis and there's well over 100 venues for live music every night of the week. So, if you've been a photographer in Austin long enough you've probably done some concert shots or performance shots. I know I have done my share.... Here's a small selection from my collection....

A small set up for quick, run-and-gun video conversations.

Panasonic GH5+Olympus 12-100mm f4.0+Camvate Camera Rig Cage+ Saramonic SmartRig+ Pre-Amp + Aputure Diety microphone + Audio Technica isolating headphones. 

Manfrotto fluid head and Berlebach wooden tripod. Add batteries. Push red button. Make sure you see the flashing red indicator or nothing really happened.

Test it all before you go out the door. 

Make sure you can look through your viewfinder without poking yourself in the eye with the back of the microphone.

Test the lens with the body you're going to use it with. 

Have a plan to take the whole rig off the tripod.

Work with your pre-amp enough times that you know where the gain knob is without having to look.

Grab the correct release lever. Nothing worse that watching a camera slide off the rails.

Figure out how you're going to hold that puppy when you want to move around. 

Do you really need an external monitor if you need to be very mobile (not with the GH5 at 30 fps).

Can you access all the menu items quickly?

Is your cage rock solid?

Did you set the headphone levels correctly? (Any alternate advice on the proper way to set headphone levels? Chime in please!).

Did you bring the right tripod or do you wish you could go up another foot?

Did you get the advance check?

Did the bank cash it for you?

It's fun to look back at old campaigns. Reminds us of what we are capable.

In the early days of digital imaging I worked with an agency called, Dandy Idea, to create a series of magazine print ads and posters for the city of Round Rock, Texas. They wanted to up their tourism profile and didn't think being the headquarters for Dell, Inc. was really a major draw for families. 

Since they have great public soccer fields, an enormous number of great baseball/softball fields and lots of areas in which to give road bikers a workout the chamber decided to position the city as a destination for sports. The theme for the campaign was "Game On." and the ads used the stencil type I'm used when I created these images for my portfolio and for direct mail. 

Of course, as scheduling would have it we did the shots in the middle of an especially hot Summer. I got a lot of practice drinking Gatorade(tm) and finding convenient shade. I worked with one of my all time favorite art directors, Greg Barton, and we had a great time looking for locations and doing crazy stuff like me lying belly down in a ditch filled with stingy plants to get the bike shot, or getting my car stuck in the mud on scouting shot (rescued by some good ole boys in a pick-up truck equipped with a winch). 

The photos ran everywhere and the response exceeded expectations. Everyone was happy. You'll probably be happy to know that I can't quite remember what camera and lens I was shooting with back then so I guess it really didn't matter. Right? Just thought I'd share a blast from the days when digital cameras were barely out of the crib......

Actual Competitive Cyclist.

Little Leaguer. 

Inexpensive flash accessory. Not much money for much enhanced performance in my softbox.

Godox AD200. A fun flash. Portable and Powerful.

The object above is the business end of my Godox AD200 which is a cross between a portable flash and a mono-light. It's small and agile and comes with a powerful, rechargeable lithium ion battery that pounds out about 500 full power, 200 watt second flashes. The even cooler thing is that the AD200 comes with two different, interchangeable flash heads. One is the bare bulb flash tube in Pyrex that you see in the illustration. The other is a more conventional flash head, like the ones you see used with on camera flashes. That head has a small, LED modeling light incorporated into the package. The bare bulb head has no modeling light. 

The reason to have the bare bulb flash tube is for how well it spreads light into a softbox or even big umbrella. But there is a diffuser that gives you a bit more control over that spread. With the diffuser in front you get a 180 degree light spread which is more efficient (and slightly less "spill-y" than the bare tube). It's well designed and even has ventilation for the flash tube. That's a nice touch. 

I used it both ways; with and without the diffuser and I found the light across the front of the 32x48 inch softbox I like to use to be more even and to have a softer quality to it overall. And there's very little light lost -- maybe 2/3rds of a stop. For a bit less than $20 it's a great addition to your AD200 flash system. Nice when a cool tool is so affordable!