The Visual Science Lab / Kirk Tuck

My Favorite Blog Post of 2010, Reprised. I hope you enjoy.

2012-01-28T09:16:00.004-06:00

4.21.2010

Why you shouldn't run your life like a business....

image of an actor portraying the famous Louisiana governor, Huey Long, for Zach Scott Theater. Hasselblad 201f, 150mm 2.8 Zeiss lens.

When I was young I never thought about money. There was always enough. Never too much. Only rarely did I long for something I couldn't afford. I was happy chasing beautiful women, eating euphorically great Tex Mex food and sleeping on a futon on the floor of my small downtown studio. (Now we would call this a "live/work space"). I stayed in school at UT for nearly ten years if you count the teaching jobs. And I certainly wasn't thinking about the money as I abandoned electrical engineering for English literature and then for photography.

What I was thinking about is how to make photographs. And why to make photographs. And how to enjoy my working life. Even though it seems harder to make money in photography now I know that there is a flip side to that perception. It may be that now I've had the inertia of hundreds or thousands of people in my life who either tell me directly or thru their actions that making money is vitally important, being a "smart" businessman is vitally important, that dying rich is mission critical. And for a moment I started giving in to the inertia. I started to believe the upscale, white bread vision of the American Dream.

Thankfully, this blog, which generates no real money and sucks down hours of time delivered me a left handed gift in the guise of a reader who suggested that I run my business in a way that makes sense. He read about the death of my favorite umbrella on yesterday's blog offering and took me to task for not taking an assistant with me everywhere. No matter what the logistics of a shoot the entourage trumps my comfort and my "working methodology". He went on to say that my belief in focusing on my portrait subject with all my conscious intention, and not being distracted by other people, and not letting my portrait subject be distracted by other people was "BS". And I don't think he meant, "Bachelor of Science". This is not meant to be a spiteful rejoinder to his well intentioned (I assume) post but as a paean to Hunter S. Thompson and the spirit of having fun in your own special way. All fictional, of course.

So, according to the great, homogenized business plan of universal commercial photography a smart businessman would have an assistant at his side in every shoot. Ready to lunge for falling light stands and take one for the team, when necessary. To sweeten the pot I get the unalloyed joy of spending all my waking hours in the presence of said assistant. They are to provide me chauffeur services when I get all noddy-offy. And I'm sure I can look forward to hours of lively conversation about all sorts of things that twenty somethings are interested in during the endless dinners, lunches, breakfasts and coffee breaks we'll be taking together. Sounds worse than dating and I've succeeded in avoiding thatparticular pleasure for over thirty years now.

But, indeed, this would be a smart business thing to do? I can picture it now: Yukio, all dressed in assistant black with tattoos , and I are heading down farm to market road 123 in north Texas. Yukio is at the wheel and is a picture of intensity. The lines on the road whip by like the bullets in the Matrix. Scenery? Screw the scenery! We're on fire. I've got an iPhone in one hand and a laptop in the other. I'm manically calling my clients every five minutes to check in. When I'm not calling the clients I'm calling suppliers trying to bargain down their pricing to maximize our profit. I'm on one call when the other phone rings. It's my broker. They need an answer right away. Back to the first phone with my broker on hold and I'm speed dialing my attorney to make sure that the insider information I got from yesterday's client won't land me in hot water if I short a butt load of that client's stock before the closing bell. We resolve that and I look over at Yukio. She's in the zone. We're making good time. She's holding the Element right at 105 (mph). At this rate we'll get paid for a travel day and a shooting day all in the same day. To maximize profit. Yukio hasn't slept in days. I keep putting amphetamines in her coffee. Makes her much more efficient. And a much faster driver.

West coast should be awake now so I start dialing anyone who will listen to me. The prices went up on a bunch of stuff I bought last week, some Canon stuff, and I haven't had it shipped to me yet but I'll probably sell it at a profit to some guy in LA who needs it bad and can't find the cool stuff in stock. Is it wrong for me to screw the whole market and corner needed gear, selling it a week later at a much higher price. Naw. Gotta keep moving relentlessly forward. Like a shark. Or with Yukio, like a whole school of sharks.

We stop at a small gas station in Armpit, Texas to scrounge up Red Bulls and No Doze. I notice Yukio shaking violently and think this can't be a good thing. When she heads to the restroom I start dialing replacement assistants just in case. Yukio comes back looking refreshed and starts crying when I offer to drive for a while. She's out cold on an equipment case in the back, seconds later.

I stop a bit later with the intention of running into a Starbuck's for a quad shot latte and I wonder if I should wake Yukio. Who am I kidding? It's been so long since I've carried my own coffee to the car I wouldn't know how to do it. And I'm not very good with the lids on top either.

We stop in Texarkana where I've agreed to do an evening shoot in return for a slightly higher fee. Yukio and I sleep walk through this one. You gotta hand it to the assisting school the Yuk-ster attended. She can dive for a falling light stand like no one I've seen. I have her set up ten or so lights to impress the client and, at the end of the evening when I get bored I randomly knock them over to see just how many Yukio can handle under pressure. Haven't lost one in months.

My turn to nap in the car while we drive on toward Dallas. I wake up to find that we're somewhere west of El Paso and the engine is on fire. I leave it all to Yukio while I sun next to the interstate to build up my reserves of vitamin D. Don't know how she pulled it off but apparently we've (she's) loaded all of the gear into a minivan that she commandeered at gunpoint and we're racing off to catch up with Dallas. We toss a couple cans of Red Bull to the elderly couple whose minivan we're borrowing so they don't get too dehydrated while walking across the desert.

I'm bored with the music I brought along on my cheap MP3 player (can't buy an iPod. Not a sound biz decision) and I pout for a few minutes till I remember that I have an assistant in tow and I force her at gunpoint to start singing Beatles tunes for me while I cold call on the phone and look over some spread sheets I got from my business coach. Real estate, baby. All counterintuitive.

We make it to our location with minutes to spare and I watch with awe as Yukio loads the equipment cart high. It would be easier on her if I could make up my mind but, because of the perilous nature of my business I require her to bring all four brands of lights I worship, and three brands of cameras into each location so I can decide based on the spiritual vibes of the space. What's six hundred pounds between friends. No, scratch that. Between employer and freelance contractor, uncovered by insurance or tax withholding. Magnanimous photographer that I am I do hold the elevator door so that it doesn't crunch that bag of my favorite lenses.

It's a portrait shot and we've done thousands of these before but for the life of me I just can't make up my mind. Six lights? Ten lights? Double backgrounds? I leave vague instructions for my assistant and wander off to find the client and some coffee. My client is a bit concerned because she's sure we discussed the exact lighting set up on the phone and in e-mails. She even produces drawings of the intended shots which she claims to have sent me weeks ago. I do what any self-respecting photographer might do. I blame Yukio. I dress her down right there in front of client and camera. She doesn't mind, she knows that every once in a while everyone has to take one for the team. As long as it's not me. I gobble down a few Xanax to offset the coffee jitters. Thank God for chemistry.

I'm on the phone with another client and Yukio is skimming Craig's List looking for a new job when the CEO of the company we're working for comes in. He's ready to be photographed and he's like a beige bowling ball with a shiny, sweaty complexion. No problem, Yukio will take care of that in a heartbeat. She's the Swiss Army Knife (TM) of assistants. Ready to powder a "glistener" in a heartbeat.
Thank God I've got an assistant in the room because I haven't got a clue which direction we're shooting in. All looks and feels the same to me. She gets me lined up and ready. Focuses the camera and sets the exposure. We shoot. She stands behind me making faces and twitches staring at the client to get his attention. We have a strict rule: the client should never directly engage the camera. It's the assistant's duty to distract them into a more natural pose and expression.

Just as we're about to pull off the perfect shot the power in the building goes off. Not a problem, the crafty and enterprising Y pulls a contraption that looks like an exercise bike out of one of our cases and sets it up. On either side of the back wheel is a heavy grey casing that looks a lot like a car generator. She plugs the power packs into the contraption then gets on the bicycle seat and starts peddling like Lance Armstrong running from the French. She's sweating buckets but the packs are back up and recycling. We finish shooting the CEO and as the last frame gets saved to the CF card my assistant falls to the floor, insensate. She's inarticulate for a while. Then we dowse her with a bucket of cold water and she comes to. Just in time, there's packing to be done and a bucket's worth of cold water to sponge up off the client's floor.

Looking back, we've billed three shooting days and two travel days in the space of two 24 hour days. I wonder if I could be more efficient with a second assistant. Seems counter productive but both Madonna and Oprah have entourages and they are far wealthier than me. Seems like it's worth a shot. Can I keep up this pace? Will Pfizer and Sandofi keep making interesting chemicals? Will the coffee run out?

Then, I wake up with a start from this bad dream and realize that the assistant thing is an acquired taste. And every photographer has a different comfort zone within which to work. I don't mind coming early to set up. I don't mind having dinner alone. I'm okay handling most stuff. I don't have an iPhone. I cherish my time writing and thinking. I think I'll leave things just the way they are. In the days of digital assistants are for big productions, or complex stuff.

Now, when it comes to post processing, Yukio and I handle it so well we've already post processed the stuff we're going to shoot next year.

To bring the whole blog back around to the beginning I have an observation to make: When I actively think about doing things to make money stuff rarely works out. I do my due diligence. I send contracts. I follow up. But when I focus on money as the reward everything always goes south. When I enjoy the process or the challenge, when I love what I do, the money rolls in. The more I desire the less I get. The less I desire the more I get. So, by that logic, if I desire nothing I'll get it all. Whatever. I just like the feel of a camera in my hand and a project in front of me.

Business note: The IRS is busy redefining contract workers, employer obligations and YOUR tax obligations to contractors whom they may (almost certainly) classify as regular workers. They (assistants) do work under your direction, with your tools and all the stuff that serves as a litmus test for who is an employee. If you think that freelance assistants are vital to your business you owe it to yourself to check with an attorney who is very familiar with payroll issues so that you don't wind up getting a big, unintended consequence in the pursuit of photographic business practices from the film days.......

The Week in Review. Chaos.

2012-01-27T10:42:00.002-06:00

Wow. What a week. I started getting really sick on Sunday and by Weds. had descended into a bleak underworld of doom and gloom so depressing (as expressed in my column) that world renowned photographers (I had no idea they were even reading my blog) sent me private e-mails asking if I was okay. I was touched. And, while the meds my doctor gave me Tues. afternoon have been progressively effective it wasn't quick enough to prevent the staff at VSL from gleefully pushing me out of the way (under the pretense of encouraging me to rest) to make room for that annoyingly gleeful, Charlie Martini to come in and do his mischief, yesterday.

You know you're really ill if even your collection of original Nick Fury and the Agents of SHIELD comic books doesn't bring you back into balanced contentment.

I know some of you were worried so I though I'd give you an overall update. I'm back to 92.5% of my usual self and recovering on a geometric trajectory. I might even make it back to swim practice in the morning, tomorrow.

The world of photography is not imploding. Everything will be fine. They just stopped serving the buffets during the shoot. You know, like in the good old days. With the iced filled bowls the size of larger beauty dishes, packed high with freshly boiled and peeled jumbo shrimp and the elegant plates with the careful stacks of black caviar grains. Back when they served Champagne to the cast and crews instead of this cheap Prosecco we're getting now... But it will all be okay and we'll all adjust. Just cast that net a little wider and toss it a little harder.

I'm taking tomorrow off from blogging here but sent a scintillating article to Michael Johnston for his blog: the online photographer, that should run tomorrow. That's providing, of course, that it passes his rigorous editing and high standards.

I know today that it's not the fever so I know I'm really trembling with anticipation as the first copies of our new book: LED Lighting are being rushed to Amazon.com and other vendors across the United States. The book has a cover price of $34.95. The Amazon price is currently so low I don't even want to show it here but it's certainly less than the price of many lunches I've had. And not really incredible lunches either.

I can't really think of any big launches or products that hit this week and there's nothing much that I think we all need to run out and buy. Next week I'm planning to write a bunch of short articles about specific uses of the LED panels and I think that should be fun. I've used them for all of my assignments so far this year and I'm kinda thinking that I'll persevere through the year just for the hell of it. I just found out that I paid my lab bill twice last month so now I have enough credit to run through another 20 rolls of MF tri-x. If you see me out with the Hasselblad and a smile, that's why.

I'm turning the comments on. I'm around. Say hello. Check in. Be heard.

The book is landing.

2012-01-26T11:51:00.001-06:00

I have one copy. I like it. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the your neighborhood camera stores should be getting theirs any day now. Kind of amazing but the whole project stayed ahead of schedule. And the book looks great.

Things change in the time between writing the books and having them come off the trucks. I'll update info as necessary here on the VSL blog. Not too much has changed in the overall market. But we'll talk about it.

The effects of my illness seem to be fading. As does my hazy fog of pessimism. Now I need to have a conference with the interloper, Martini. What was he thinking? Was he thinking? It's all a mystery to me.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. Imaging makes me warm and tingly.

2012-01-26T08:48:00.005-06:00

From time to time, when Kirk is indisposed, the VSL staff sometimes has guest columnists step in and take the reins. After the massive dose of gloominess he subjected readers to today we asked comedian and lead VSL researcher, Charlie Martini, to step into the Office Depot discount swivel office chair and give it a go. Unlike Kirk, Charlie is remarkably optimistic about everything. But then he's also on a cocktail of three different SSRI's and takes Absolute liquid vitamins throughout the day.

By Guest Columnist, Dr. Charlie Martini

When last we saw Kirk he was heading off in the specially equipped racing Honda Element (with lasers, machine guns and ejection seats) vowing to find happiness in the world of photography. We have every hope that, when the prescription drugs, triple strength coffee (you know he goes through a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain every week day.) and the bottle of Jack Daniels give out he'll be back demanding that I get my scrappy, punter butt out of his chair and let him get back to work. And, of course I will, because of my profound respect for his diligent visual research and my deep personal fear of his temper.

His last foray of this nature was aptly chronicled here: Kirk's Crazy Journey. I can only hope this one is shorter in duration and less fraught with litigation after the fact.

But first, a brief introduction. I have a doctoral degree in astrophysics, I'm into racewalking, as a native Englishman I root for my local football club (that means soccer to you world-ravaging yanks) and love a good cuppa in the morning, with biscuits, if you please. I am masterful with my version of iPhone-o-graphy and am a big, big fan of the wide gamut world of HDR.

Today I'm going to talk about the things that make me positively hopeful and enthusiastic about the practice of photography. My goal? To take the nasty aftertaste of defeatism left by Kirk's last column out of your mouth and put it back where it belongs. And not a moment too soon, eh? What say we get along with the tale.

I've been involved with photography for a long time and here are the things I've seen change for the better:

1. I no longer have to pay for film. Now every frame I shoot is free. Like the wind and water and my spirit. I am free to express who I really am with no economic consequences.

2. I no longer have to pay for processing. Since I live alone, and am too ugly to effectively date, I used to resent all the time I "saved" by having a "lab" process my film. Now I get to do the processing on my own computing machine and it serves to fill up the empty hours of my "bad part" of the day; that part that spans from the time they force us out of the VSL labs at the end of the day til I come dancing back through the air locks and biometric security in the next morning.

3. With the magic of the internet I can share my images of turtles and cat whiskers and blooming flowers and artistically blurry waterfalls, and members of full contact poetry slams, with people around the globe. Often I will receive the honor of a request that a photo of mine be used in a book or magazine or on a website. Even though there's never really a "'budget" to pay me I find the magic and rush of seeing my work spread across the internet as magical as the moment in Titanic when hero and heroine find themselves together on the deck as the ship goes down. It warms my heart so to be integrated into the discussion. And there's tremendous value in that! Just an amazing feeling of well being. I'd like to have a credit but have been reminded many times that space on the web is just so expensive.

4. Cameras have gotten so good that I can take fabulous photos anywhere. At anytime. For any reason. And that makes me feel empowered. Just last night I was sitting across from a couple in a nice restaurant and they were breaking up. It looked so sad. I put down my copy of Flat World and watched keenly. It was pretty quiet but she was crying a bit and it looked so dramatic and real and great that I leaned across the table and shot a bunch of frames to put up on facebook. I know they won't mind. It's part of the new universal ethos of maximum share. And, as we learned in lower school, sharing is always good.

5. The ISO performance of our mighty plastic recording beasts have become so superb I can even take photos of things I can't see. It's an amazing approach to art and one that works from time to time. Kirk has tried to explain how the quality and direction of light are critical to a photograph's success. But we all know what a curmudgeon he is. It's just another one of his time wasting excuses. If I point my camera at the general vicinity of something that seems like it may be exciting and set the autobracket just right I always come away with something I can rescue in Photoshop. If I didn't shoot I'd never know.

6. When I'm not in the lab trying to join up string theory with photographic composition I sometimes get do free "imaging" work for my bank. I'm so proud that they let me submit photographs for their use as they are one of the biggest bank holding companies in the world. Mucho prestigo! But they're nice and I like to help them out. They appreciate the work I do and they are very nice about explaining the paperwork that helps me give them all my rights to the material. I'd try to charge them but, hey! we're all like family and it just seems like the right thing to do. When Kirk's last paycheck to me bounced they were so sweet about only charging me $80 for my bounced checks. That's what real love buys. You watch my back and I'll wash yours. I'll tell you this! Back in the good ole days this was an opportunity we never had. Especially if we had to pay for film!!!! Now I can say I've had my work used by XXXXX bank. (The contract I offered to sign said I couldn't actually use their name....)

7. Have you ever noticed that just owning a really good camera gets you invited into cool places? Since I'm pretty well known as "uncle Charlie" by everyone on staff, here and at the bank and, oh, at my favorite restaurants (love American style bangers and mash). I'm often asked to attend marvelous weddings and bar mitzvahs and office parties. (I'll never forget that really swell Christmas party in the Denny's "private" room. Those Walmart assistant managers can parteeeeee.) Funny thing is they always ask me to bring along my camera, you know, "just in case". But, would I be out on a Saturday night without it? Would I? Not bloody likely. To stay on the "A" list I've gotten into the habit of sending everyone a DVD with all the photos on it. Sharing brings me closer my fellow man and it spreads something we at VSL call, name recognition. When a real job shows up I'm sure they'll remember me!

8. Potential riches. Kirk has harped long enough on the his old song about the deflating value of photography but I've heard there's still a path to riches via a little bit of magic they call, "stock photography." It's a bit expensive to get starting in since the stock photo companies wouldn't accept images from any of the cameras I had at the time but twelve thousand dollars later I was ready to get rich. I had a new, top of the line, approved camera and a couple of really great lenses. Now, all I have to do is to shoot whatever I want, keyword it, process it and upload it to the stock photography company's website. They have a skyscraper filled with crack editors who will help winnow down my submissions to a tight group of "super-winners." With a bit of elbow grease I've been told we'll be able to make at least a dollar for every image we sell, and possibly thousands of dollars. Honest, it's happened before!!! Logically, the stock company will take their 70% (it's only fair for all the hard work they do) but that still leaves me with 30%. I don't need my calculator to tell me that if all 6 billion people in the world pull out their gold credit cards and buy just one of my pictures just one time that's a whopping one point eight billion dollars!!!!!!! And don't worry, I am upping my chances at unimaginable wealth by uploading dozens and dozens of images at a time. If Kirk would turn off his "rainy day rants" and get to work he could potentially make billions as well. You can drag an old horse to water but you can't always resuscitate him. At least that's what my mum used to say. Tuck just doesn't seem to get the new economy. It's not about the big deal anymore. It's about hundreds of thousands of very, very, very tiny deals all coming together nicely.

9. Unlimited inspiration. Did you ever have one of those days when you left the house and you just didn't have any idea what to shoot? Or why you even brought your camera with you? Doesn't happen to me anymore because I use the Inspiration Image Juggler on Flickr and the Random Greatness button on 500px to see what everyone around the world is shooting, right now. And then I go out and try to shoot exactly the same thing. Most guys on the sites even provide equipment lists to help me and instructions on how they shot. Takes a lot of the guesswork out of the process. And it gives you a much greater chance of artistic success. We certainly never had this in the good old days.

10. Never before, in the history of all photography and even art, have we had so many experts on the web tell us exactly how to do really good and unique photography. The one thing they all share is a remarkable optimism. They exude hearty confidence. They are indeed, the confidence men. They want to help us make photography fun. And part of the fun of photography is buying stuff. And so they teach us stuff we really need to know to be successful in being happy and we reciprocate by spending thousands of dollars a year on really cool gear that they talk about on their websites. It's amazing how much you can learn absolutely free. Just last week I learned that I really couldn't do effective portraits without this 45mm 1.8 lens from Olympus three of the guys were blogging about. The hard part was deciding whose link to click through. Never had this kind of "free" education before. And no strings attached. The real winner? Me. Now I've got the tools that will make my portraits sing like Madonna. (She's Brit now, you know?)

11. HDR. Oh my God!!! Have you seen this kind of photography? It makes every photograph look like a really, really cool painting. Seriously! Technicolor on steroids. Oh yeah, there's a learning curve but that's beautifully handled by that free education aspect of the new web 3.0. Essentially you find just about anything that might make a decent photograph and then you shoot three or more exposures. One for the shadows. One for the highlight. And one for the mid-tones. The more different exposures you shoot the more information you have to play with when you get back to your computer. But it's worth it because just about every photo will end up with the same ultra cool look. Almost like magic. (I have to make a wee confession here. I always wanted to be a painter but I didn't have the time or stick-to-it-tiveness to learn exactly how to do painting. Probably my ADHD... but now all my work can look like paintings and I've even used these incredible tools called "actions" to make the whole process almost automatic.) When I show the images to my friends they are always amazed. But I can walk them through the process pretty quickly and in no time they're knocking out these colorful masterpieces by the bucketload. What's not to like about that?

12. Really, really great workshops. Thousands and thousands of them. (If Kirk weren't so glum and bitchy and anti-social he could have a whole, new career in the new part of heaven I call workshops. That would take the gray air out of his negativity balloon!!!) In the old days there were one or two groups that held workshops and they were very prissy. They had the gumption to demand portfolios in order to get into a class. Hello!!!!!! I'd like to have a portfolio. Isn't that why I want to take your class??? But now there are thousands and thousands of them and they're on every topic you can imagine. And the amazing thing is that they're all taught by super busy, super hard working pros who have so many clients it's amazing they can even squeeze a random weekend in. I've taken 42 in the last five years and at least half of those were about how to use my "porty" flash. I've learned a remarkable amount. One teacher was so helpful in showing me what the manual for my camera really said. Another helped me find a method that would trigger my flash when I take it off the camera!!!! Really. I can't make this stuff up. Usually we see a slide show of the teacher's work and I must admit I've spent some time in the shadows of giants.

And all the top teachers seem to know each other and recommend each others workshops and that makes me feel more comfortable, taking advice from a trusted source. Pre-web it was just a shot in the dark. If I ever take the step to "Pro" I'll be ready. One light. Off Camera. HDR. And now maybe even LED. What more could any client want? And it's not so far fetched. There's a big ad agency in our town and I've actually toyed with the idea of putting together my best work and showing it to the person they call the "art buyer." I'm trying to narrow down my portfolio so I'm only showing my best work (I learned that in a workshop). So far I have vacation golf photos from Maui, animals shot with DOF at the local zoo (workshop), a few different photos of plates of food I ordered at restaurants (when I thought the plates looked good), and lots of street photography of people's backs. If I can interleave some waterfalls and some dramatic HDR sunsets and some shots of my neighbor's kid playing in the hose I'll have a pretty cool and well rounded selection of images. And I know most of them are good because we had critiques at a number of the workshops. It's like a stamp of approval.

In closing I have to say that the promise of the internet and of photography is that the markets have never been bigger or wider or more open. I can sell my images anywhere in the world and feel safe that the U.S. Copyright laws are there to protect my work at all times. If I can assemble my 1,000 true believers and they can feel good about my work then I can throw it all out onto the market with a healthy dosage of abundance energy and it will come, unerringly, back to me a million fold. And that's the real promise of the new economy. You just have to have a little faith. And, as I'm finding out, a lot of patience. But, it will happen.

Whether you are a pro, an aspiring pro, or an enthusiastic enthusiast there's never, ever been a better time to be a photographer. New markets are opening up everywhere. The education process is practically free and the barriers to getting in, either as an insider enthusiast or a new pro, are all gone. Let's face it: Anyone can do this and everyone needs photography. Saturated marketplace? That's what the glum experts said about gold ten years ago. Who's laughing now?

Thanks for reading. Hopefully Tuck's not working on a big doco and will be back to take the reins this Friday, coming. Cheerio. By the way, he's not really as glum as they make him out in the comments section and he does have a life outside of his blog. Oh well. My task is done and Bob's your uncle.

Some predictions about the future of photography.

2012-01-25T12:42:00.005-06:00

I think we're just about there. The point where photography, for the most part, becomes so ubiquitous, surrounds us so completely and, through its own total familiarity, loses all of its power to surprise and delight. Which means, necessarily that we're ripe for re-invention. Wholesale reinvention.

It's not that the cameras have gotten better, or easier, or more accessible that makes this inevitable, rather it's the unceasing firehose torrent of exposure to everyone's photographs, via the web, that'd sucking the life out of the medium. Really.

Yes, yes, I know that you'd never have come as far as you have without the resources of the web but at the same time you would have worked in a state of more relative isolation and you might have developed a very, very unique vision that was transformative instead of just being a check box for a style. HDR? Check. Joel Grime's Style? Check. Chase Jarvis Style (does he really have one yet?) ? Check. Street Photography? Check. Panos? Check. Hot chicks? Check. Moody black and white? Check.

We are able to become so aware, minute by minute, of what everyone else is up to and what everyone else is posting that we've become a giant stew pot of randomly seen, homogenized images. And I'm certainly not immune. If I were immune I'd still be shooting roll after roll of sweet medium format tri-x in an ample sized camera with a achingly beautiful, long lens instead of dicking around with a Panasonic this or an Olympus that.

It's not the cameras anymore it's the hypnotic access to images and the funneling of tastes into some twisted Bell Curve of merit that's sucking the life out of the art while at the same time spreading it out to a larger and larger audience. An audience of narcissists, just like me, who all want to have their time on your screen. But why? Why is a "nice capture" sentiment from a total stranger such a lure for so many?

I'll venture to say that most people are intent to show off their level of mastery. "See what I can do." "Watch me. Watch me." They are not so much sharing the content or feelings encapsulated in the image as they are showing off the technical mastery of the wrapping. Is this basic human nature? Are we, as a species, wired for maximum distribution?

So what does all this mean for the business of photography? You can see the effects everywhere. There are little silos or islands left for professionals to cling to. Knowing how to effectively use shift lenses and how to beautifully light interior spaces keeps some architectural photographers' noses above the water line. And there will always be a need for highly technical specialities that require techniques that are demanding but not "sexy." Like macro work with microchips or food photography for advertising (as opposed to the "anything goes" food photography for editorial clients). So, technical work is a safe island. Being on the cutting edge of massively detail oriented PhotoShop Compositing and retouching techniques might also be a safe haven, until one company after another automates what you've spent years learning to do...

The landscape for commercial photography looks a lot like an inverse Bell Curve. A big spike near the "cheap/free" axis and another spike in the opposite "high tech/high touch" access and a giant abyss in the middle. Which is decimating the traditional markets as the middle of the curve is where most of the job volume came from. No matter how good your game is "cheap/free" at 90% will always beat "really/really good at 100% if you are selling to a price sensitive market. And that's 99% of the market.

I was reading a link on a forum today where a member was asking for technical help. He needed to take a photograph with a huge background, cars and motorcycles and people and dogs in the foreground, all beautifully lit and perfectly done. His issue was that so much stuff, required in the frame, killed the detail he could resolve overall. But here's the deal. This wasn't his real job, he was a work "volunteer." Even though he was doing the job for free he wasn't in the planning meetings for the photo nor was his input valued. But, bless him, he was as anchored as a bulldog to a stick and ready to do a great job for the reward of doing......a great job. For free. Not as part of his job.

He got some suggestions which he really liked. One of which called for shooting each part separately and combining them together in post processing. Now, I don't know if you've done this before but he's likely looking at a couple of days to shoot everything, retouch it and composite it. On his own time. For the reward of showing off his chops.

This "altruism" is rampant all over the place and what it means is that it cost most companies nothing at all to give their employees a shot at doing something which might have previously cost them several thousand dollars. Their worst case scenario would only be to reject his work and hire someone working as a professional who has experience in doing these kinds of images. And owns the right tools to do them well. But more often than not the rank and file managers don't have the filters to see whether the work is good or just passable. They like the idea of getting their pizza for free as long as it's warm.

I have no doubt that the person who queried the forum will spend nights and weekends doing this project. I also have no doubt that his employers, having paid nothing for the project, will not be in the least bit appreciative of his efforts. And one less project will go to a kid out of photo school or a pro trying to keep his business up and running.

But this is not a problem that the clients are required to fix or even acknowledge. This is the new normal. Now, the number of exotic and highly technical jobs isn't increasing. It's pretty much a fixed number. So, if the trained specialists have those markets locked up where's the market for other photographers supposed to come from? Maybe there is no solution and the market segment will slowly dissolve as it did for typesetters and color separators. And color labs. And medium format film camera makers.

So, on to the predictions:

1. Wedding photography, baby photography and general retail photography has already become totally homogenized and every quarter the pricing, income and profit from these specialties will drop quickly. There will always be a high end market of buyers somewhere but they'll continue to seek out fine artists whose vision coincides with the aesthetic tastes of the buyers. A tiny 1% of the market, at best. Already the vast majority of child photographers are employees in national companies that inhabit the malls and provide tightly controlled and regimented photographic products for relatively low prices. They make their money on volume and the occasional upsell to "canvas" products with higher margins. Wedding photographers will come to grips with the fact that the new generations of clients have no real interest in a print book and want to have all the images turned over to them on a disk. Most clients know they can design and produce their own books at a fraction of the price and with total control. Resale? You gotta be kidding.

2. Advertising photography. This was never as big a market as most people think. And it's becoming smaller and smaller for dedicated photographers. We have a new phenomenon at play here as well. Give a designer or an art director a camera and some lessons, couple that with hours and hours of meticulous post processing and they will come out with something really good. Most of the time. Again, slicing into the inverted photo Bell Curve. Let's face facts, these people have a really good eye to begin with, they know what they want to see in an image and they can use the little screen on the back of the camera to iteratively experiment until they get what they need as raw material. The raw material goes into making an assemblage which becomes the ad.

But why do they do this if it's easier to hire a photographer? Well, for one thing more and more clients are scoffing at paying any sort of mark up for outside supplier used by their ad agencies. If the agency keeps all the work in house they can charge their clients for the photography and all the hours and hours of post processing and keep all the proceeds in their own profit stream. Let's face it, the ad agencies have been squeezed like everyone else and they're jumping at saving where they can and profiting where it's possible. They'll still rely on the current "A-list" of photographers for their high profile projects but the days of people making money shooting products on white are quickly coming to an end. Unless they do it in a way that's very, very compelling.

3. Everything else. There will always be sports photographers....until the 4K video cameras with high shutter speeds hit the market along with "best shot" selector programs to narrow down the streams. As it is the vast majority of sports shooters work for Getty or Corbis, aren't paid even the same wages their counterparts in the 1970's made (real dollars! Not inflation adjusted), and don't own the rights to their own images. Same with the "red carpet" celebrity photographers.

It's not that photographers have fallen down on their respective jobs it's just that photography is technically easier than ever before, more people have more time on their hands to practice a kind of amorphous pro/pro-lite/advanced amateur/will work for: tickets, access, food, a pat on the back style of photography. And the total saturation of photography supports this. It won't get better.

The attitude I've described above is exactly why the camera markets are in flux. The mirrorless cameras do about 90% of what the full sized, traditional DSLR's do and they are fun to play with and cheap to buy. They'll work for most of the stuff people want to do. With the right lenses they have certain advantages that make them perfect for portraits and pretty darn good for wide angle work. But the buy in is in just the right spot: Under $1,000.

I predict that the market for traditional, pro level DSLRs (the Nikon D4, the Canon 1DX) will remain strong as a status symbol for doctors, dentists, software engineers and trustfund enthusiasts. But they've long been out of the reach of aspiring professionals building their first systems. The rest of the DSLR market will plunge into the abyss as quickly as film did. In ten years there will be few, if any, mid-curve or bargain DSLR's. They will all have been replaced by smaller, cheaper but nearly as good, mirrorless cameras.

The bottom end of the market, the little Canon, Fuji, Sony, Nikon, Olympus point and shoot cameras will be entirely replaced by the very next generation of iPhones and their competitors because the "good enough" of those imaging tools and their addictive use as communications tools will be too good a value proposition.

I also predict that the sale of inkjet printers will follow the same trajectory as film. The idea of making a print at home or in the studio will appeal to a very small niche that enjoys complete control over every step of the process but the vast majority of people will rarely have prints made, will enjoy their images on screens scattered hither and yon around their homes and, when they feel the need for a print they'll send their digital files to Walmart or Costco or some other discount provider.

So, what does this mean for the future of "enthusiast" photographers? In previous generations we looked to the print as the gold standard. And, printed large, every wart or imperfection of process rang through most clearly. We worked not only on our "vision" but on our ability to translate it well to the print. We could all view the same print in the same way and in that sense we had a promise of objectivity about its "consumption." But the jagged rift in the the expectation of generations means that we know have an entire generation who will have grown up as "enthusiasts" who have never really seen a beautifully made prints. Their entire experience of photography other than their own comes from looking at low res images on the web. And that's a medium that really doesn't provide a fixed, objective viewing experience. It also covers up a myriad of flaws and defects. In this way it works against the acceptance of pricier camera options such as medium format digital cameras. Afterall, if the image will only be viewed on a screen whose maximum resolution is 2500 by 1280 pixels with 8 bits of information per channel why would anyone need or want a slower operating camera whose reason to be is wrapped around providing 7,000 or 8,000 pixels on a side? Why indeed?

Is the print even relevant to most people anymore? Is it still part of our collective consciousness? I think not.

I think the role of the historically typical professional photographer is now relegated to that of mythology. We want to believe that there's still space for them to exist because that reinforces our notions that when we make art we're competing with a known and revered quantity that elevates us in some way. It's targeting. We also harbor the inner conceit that someday we're going to "tell the boss to get screwed and launch ourselves as pros." And we can't let go of the myth without sabotaging our "back up" strategy that, if we thought rationally about, we'd never consider.... Witness that all camera manufacturers couch their cameras as tools for professionals and showcase pros in their ads. Especially Canon and Nikon. When, in fact, pros are a tiny, tiny fraction of all buyers.

That's not to say that there aren't swashbuckling photographers making their way in the world scaling mountains and selling the story and pictures of their six week adventure to a magazine for a couple thousand dollars. But the clinical reality is that they either have a spouse to help support them or they leverage their exposure in low paying magazines to breathe economic life into their endless series of workshops.

My overriding prediction? That in the next ten years photography will slide into the warm goo of modern culture and have no more relevance than the background music in the fast food restaurant in which you are having lunch. A small number of professionals will be shooting the images of crispy tacos for Taco Bell, the burgers for McDonalds and the power tools for the online catalog of your favorite manufacturer. The fashion magazines will be full of stock or "volunteer" photography, if the magazines still exist. And every workplace in the world will buy a photo booth for executive and employee photographs. Select your background and it will be seamlessly applied...

Some will say that I'm being gloomy and pessimistic but I think I have a pretty good vantage point from which to look at the market. But, I could be totally wrong. It's happened before.

I started this column talking about wholesale reinvention. What do I mean by that? I wish I knew because it's going to come from someone a lot smarter than I. Think about what works for advertising and understand that lots and lots of cultural affectations come from there. Keep your eye on younger and younger people because they'll lead by example. And, while I see them snap, post and discard lots of cellphone images I rarely come across anyone in my kid's generation who has any desire to own a "pro" camera, much less the inventory of lenses. They are the unencumbered generation.

Their only attachment seems to be for gaming. If I were a camera maker like Nikon I would try to push the development of a Wii game that has a "camera controller" and the the player can select what kind of photographer he'd like to be and then "go" to a shooting adventure and snap images from a video loop that then gleans out the captured still frames and ranks him on style and timing. Additions to the program could include post processing options via Hipstermatic. Live the experience without untethering from your console. Hmmm. I might have a marketable idea there.

What's my strategy? Sell stuff other people aren't. Black and white portraits done on MF film. Technical work for the tech clients. Executive portraits for people who aren't yet ready to make the march of shame into the photobooth. Shoots that require really good lighting and really good technique. And, of course, books that talk about the same. Or, maybe I'll chuck it all and move the family to a little fishing village on the coast of Belize.....

Don't argue with me too much. I'm sure I'll feel much better about the whole business tomorrow....

Edit: Do I harp on "too much free?" I am not alone: http://blog.allklier.com/2012/01/penny-wise-pound-foolish.html

New Addition: More information about the LED Lighting Book....

Hanging around at home. Sick. And bugging everyone around me.

2012-01-24T13:08:00.002-06:00

Joe York. Actor. Lead Role: Rocky Horror Picture Show. Zach Scott Theater.

When you have a fever (with some chills thrown in) and a throbbing headache, and the room seems to spin every time you stand up, it seems comforting to write a blog. I'm willing myself to get better as quickly as possible because I have an assignment tonight at 8pm to shoot a dress rehearsal of a new play at the Zachary Scott Theatre. That means I have to be able to focus on something other than how crappy I feel for about three hours straight.

When I was feeling dandy and in the pink it was my intention to get all experimental and shoot with stuff like the Olympus EP3 and the GH2, along with a bag ful of the manual focus lenses I was talking about in my previous Saturday blog. But when I feel like crap I default to the easy, bulletproof stuff. So I'm loading up a couple of Canon 5Dmk2's and a couple of L zooms and I figure, unless we're doing the play by candle light I'll come back with the stuff I need. Funny how your health determines the gear you reach for.

I've been reading the forums this week and everyone seems focused on what Olympus is planning to launch on the 8th of February. From all signs it looks like an OM-1 body style stuffed with, depending on whom you believe, the best next Panasonic sensor, a super high res EVF and acres of weather sealing. The Olympus fans think it will focus on something before you even decide to focus on it. It's going to be that fast. Me? I don't care about it at all today. That'll change. But even though the OM-1 was Belinda's film camera of choice for many years I never really warmed up to the body design to the extent that I pine for its return.

I'd rather think about lights today. LED lights. And there are two reasons for my interest. The first is that I've received my advance copy of the LED Lighting For Photographers in the mail. It's the book I started working on in late 2010 and finished up in mid 2011. Judging by past books (and the fact that the book is now printed in the U.S.) I expect that the bulk of the books will be delivered to the publisher and to Amazon.com in the next couple of weeks.

The book looks good although I already found my first typo. I'm not sure I made this public information in past discussions of the book but there is a four page section by noted wedding/beauty photographer, Neil van Niekirk. He writes about how and why he's adapting LED light panels to his work and he was kind enough to also send along some examples.

Neil's work in consistently good as is his website: http://neilvn.com/tangents/ He also has written several really good books for my publisher and you can find more information about his books, here: http://www.amazon.com/Off-Camera-Flash-Techniques-Digital-Photographers/dp/1608952789/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327430737&sr=1-1

The second reason I'm into my LEDs is that I added a second, big, cheap 1,000 bulb LED fixture to my inventory and I've gotten great use out of all the gear shooting product in the studio. Wonderful to work with WYSIWYG lights instead of flash when you are fine tuning stuff that stays still. You can track down that nasty little reflection on a book cover and fix it before you get all the way into PhotoShop.

I used one of the 1k bulb units, along with a 500 bulb unit, on location last week to shoot some portraits and I was very happy with the general look. With one layer of color correction and one layer of diffusion in front of the bulbs I got the same effect I'd get from a small softbox with a flash. But since there weren't any flash pops I didn't really have to worry about blinks and such. It's really a nice way to work unless you specialize in sports or fast moving children...

The photo above was taken as an ad image for the Zach Scott version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We shot on both 35mm film and medium format film using 1k tungsten lights, pushed through diffusion panels, as our light sources. The film was Kodak 64T which was a tungsten balanced film with an ISO of 64. We worked on a tripod and Joe gave us lots to work with. I stumbled across this 35mm image as I was searching in the equipment closet for aspirin (don't ask) and I wanted to see it again so I scanned it with the old Epson V500 Photo scanner. We could have done better with a dedicated film scanner but the last Nikon LS-4000 got donated to somewhere almost a decade ago.

Amazing to think how much preplanning went into shoots in the film days. You had to figure out how you were going to handle the shoot in order to decide which film to bring. And how you were going to "Polaroid" something if you used a 35mm format. Since most of the theatre lighting back then was tungsten it was easiest to mix and match with similar lights and balanced films. Plus the fact that 64T was a beautiful emulsion.

Uh oh. Belinda just came out to the office to take my temperature. She gave me the "strict doctor" look. I better sign off and pretend to be resting....

Weird-o-graphy for Restaurant Business Magazine.

2012-01-23T16:03:00.001-06:00

A while back (early 2000's) I got a phone call from one of my favorite clients, the art director at Restaurant Business Magazine. When she called I usually got to shoot things like a premier chef showing off his chops while making an incredible duck recipe. We'd shoot and talk and then, after we were pretty sure we had the shot. we'd all sit down, crack a nice bottle of wine and take a crack at the duck as well. Other assignments introduced me to the brothers who own the legendary San Antonio restaurant, Mi Tierra. I even drove the six hours to Laredo once to photograph the one great chef in the region, at the time...

This assignment was different. Austin was one of the first cities in the country to ban smoking in restaurants and the gentleman in the photo above, Vic, (owner of Vic's Restaurant) was the protest hold out in the implementation of the law. Seems smokers comprised an overwhelming majority of his clientele and, according to Vic, they spent more per person than non-smokers. His basic philosophy could pretty much be distilled down to, "I don't require people to smoke. But they can if they'd like."

I packed the usual jumble of lights and stands and softboxes, and I packed a couple of Mamiya Six medium format cameras along with the trio of Mamiya Six lenses, and headed over the the "Y" at Oakhill. That's where two Texas Highways come together just west of Austin and just outside the front gate of Freescale Semiconductor's front gate.

I walked in, met Vic and looked around. Half of the restaurant was kinda cordoned off and I learned that this was where Vic practiced his second business, repairing computers.

The bar at which Vic is sitting faces a wall of windows so I immediately discarded the idea of lighting anything and instead went available light with the 75mm lens and camera on a tripod. I shot two twelve exposure rolls and ended up with just the look of defiance the magazine was looking for.

I packed the car and headed to the lab. That's how we did things back then. The next morning I picked up the MF transparency film, edited it and chunked it into a Fed Ex envelope because, that's how we did things back then.

Of all the cameras I've owned and sold I regret most selling the Mamiya Six cameras. They were absolute magic. They could make a photographer better. No matter what people say. Some times the Indian likes to shoot with a really perfect, absolutely straight arrow. Especially a magic one.

GH2 Officially Rocks. Kirk likes it. So much so that he's typing in the third person....

2012-01-23T08:28:00.001-06:00

Bitchin Impala.

After a month of messing around with the GH2 I finally sat down and went through every word in the poorly written manual and mastered the settings on the GH2 that had confused me but which I really wanted to use for my photographs. I did a portrait assignment on location with the camera and its 14-140mm lens last week and, at ISO 160, the images were just right. (go figure).

But the big revelation to me was to set the preview to "constant" if I wanted to see real time changes in exposure, on the screen, when I changed camera parameters. I also found the "sledge hammer" settings in the film modes for sharpness, contrast and saturation. No fine tuning allowed. The jumps are big. But in Jpeg the one jump up to higher sharpness helped me zero in on what I wanted in my files. More apparent sharpness.

My lens test, on Saturday, showed me that all of these cameras and most of the lenses are pretty darn good. Even lenses from the 1960's and 1970's. You just have to eliminate operator error or operator laziness.

I ran into a large group of photographers who were doing the downtown "photo walk" thing and I was surprised to see that none of them had embraced the smaller, mirrorless cameras yet. Each participant was carrying a full sized DSLR. One person was walking around, shooting handheld with a Canon 24mm tilt/shift lens on a big Canon body. They all seemed to be having fun.

I was happy to be traveling light. Just the GH2 and the Olympus 60mm 1.5. Fast and easy.

Nice Day for Photography with a 60mm 1.5.

2012-01-22T20:19:00.002-06:00

Olympus Pen F 60mm 1.5 used at f2.8 to photograph chairs at Congress Ave. Restaurant. GH2 Jpeg.

I'm slowly getting the whole process of shooting with manual lenses on the Panasonic GH2 dialed in. First things first. You set the preview to "constant." That will show you exactly what happens, vis-a-vis color balance and exposure, when you shoot in "M." When you shoot in any other mode the GH2 ignores the constant setting and gives you what it thinks it the correct exposure. Good to know. Now I can walk around an use manual exposure and when I bring the camera to my eye, with my favorite shutter speed already set I can quickly fine tune with the aperture ring (or vice versa). The Pen F 60mm 1.5 has a lot of throw between f-stops and you can actually make adjustments in tiny increments and see them with feedback in the EVF. Perfect. And once you have the settings figured out you don't have to change anything until you shoot under different light.

Next up is the manual focusing routine. Since my adapter rings don't give me a correct infinity focus with Pen lenses I generally want to zoom in and look at the focus integrity before I shoot. I'll skip this step and squint a lot if the action is moving quickly but, in most situations like the chairs and door above, the subject isn't moving so fast that I don't have time to double check exact focus. With the camera at my eye I put the little dial that controls shutter speed and aperture. It sits on the top right of the back of the camera. You can push it straight in and it will increase the live view magnification to 8X, which is perfect for fine focusing a fast, moderate telephoto lens. One quick, slight touch on the shutter button and you're back to full frame in the EVF. Couldn't be easier and it's quicker to do than to read.

GH2 and Olympus Pen F 60mm 1.5 @ f2

My goal on today's walk was to dial in and learn the focus technique and the exposure technique forward and backward until I could do it without thinking. I worked hard on it and I think, in another few weeks, I'll have it nailed. We've talked here about time in the water so many times that I'm sure you're getting tired of hearing it but....part of good photography is being fluid with the tools in your hands. You can't let ineptitude and lack of practice rob you of opportunity.

I'll have my next practice session on Tues. night at Zach Scott Theatre when we do another dress rehearsal for a play that opens later in the week. Feels like an all m4/3rd's project to me.

While I was downtown I ran into Stephen N. An accomplished photographer. He was so skinny I hardly recognized him. He's been biking all over the place. Love the way I get a little control of DOF with the 60mm. f2.8

minimum focus distance. 60mm 1.5

For some reason I was looking for close up images this afternoon. Here a glass vase I found in a window on Guadelupe St. between 2nd and 3rd. This is as close as the 60mm will focus. I think it's adequate. And the performance is still very good, even close to wide open. And hand held.

The glass vase.

It must have been vase day for Kirk's blog because I kept running into them all over town. This one was in one of the retail shops at the bottom of the Monarch Residence Tower. I like the blue facets.

All manual. All the time. 60mm.

Love the satanic glow from the building that overlooks the Whole Foods HQ. Nice with the sky. WB set at daylight right after sunset. That makes the sky more blue saturated and accentuates the warmer lights on the buildings. You might be able to find noise if you peek "hard" but then I'll just call you a nerd and insist that your can "smooth it out" in post.

It was a wild day downtown from 4-6pm. I saw no fewer than 20 photographers out with bags over their shoulders, monopods gripped in their hands. Appears there was an organized "photo walk" happening. Looked like an engineer's convention to me. Meant in the nicest way possible. Loved seeing people out and shooting and sharing the experience. I hope that means more in the future.

The Panasonic has been officially pressed into service for a real job and it did just fine. In fact, it was easy to use and quick. The raw files were splendid. I lit the entire job with LED panels as well. It's one thing to write about them, it's an entirely different thing to put their money where your word processor is... The proof is in the pudding. Or on the web galleries.

If you don't like reading about Olympus and Panasonic stuff, don't despair. I'm sure some other shiny object will capture my attention, sooner or later....

note: I am now a member of 500px. My address is: http://500px.com/kirktuck

It would feel more like home if you would follow me there. Thanks. Lots of fun.

Pure retro on my Panasonic and Olympus Cameras. The manual, Pen FT Lens test EXTRAVAGANZA.

2012-01-21T23:40:00.001-06:00

I'll start with a little bit of background. In the 1960's Olympus starting making cameras that used a half frame of 35mm film instead of the full frame. They called these "half frame" cameras. Most of the cameras were little compacts that were very light weight and easy to use. People who made small prints bought them to save money. And, even back then, people were trying to shove cameras into their pockets...

The half frame is really the same size as a "full frame" frame of 35mm movie film. Honest. What we consider full frame is actually "double frame." But I don't want to head down that rabbit hole right now. Having enjoyed a certain amount of success in the market the designers and dreamers at Olympus thought that there would be demand for a more sophisticated camera system that would keep the half frame film size but include some really cool things like a rotary, titanium shutter that syncs at all speeds, interchangeable lenses that are really, really good, and a mirrored reflex finder. Which made the camera a genuine "SLR." This was known as the Pen F system.

The camera was used by plenty of photojournalists who embraced the camera for the same reasons people are flocking to mirrorless cameras in the present: They were smaller, more discreet, easier to carry and very capable. In fact, one of the most famous photographers in the 20th century, Eugene Smith, appeared in ads for the Pen F's and shot with them on assignments. My favorite ad for the Pens is one in which Olympus showed how the whole system can fit in a shoe box.

But the reason the system had legs and sold reasonably well was the lenses. That's something Olympus has always done well. I won't go in for the standard hyperbole and suggest that they made lenses that are just as good as the current Leica M lenses but they were damn good and the half frame lenses were specifically designed for the smaller rectangle of film that the smaller cameras shot so they were optimized for higher resolution than the typical 35mm lenses of the day. It makes sense, the frames would have to be enlarged to a much greater degree in order to make the standard, black and white 8x10 inch prints that were the lingua Franca of the day.

What finally killed the Olympus half frame cameras? In a word? Color print film. Why? Because the labs begged for automated printers and those printers were never designed to deal with the odd ball size of the negatives. If people couldn't get film printed cheaply they weren't really interested. So what worked well in the days when people did their own lab work, and when labs handled each negative individually, didn't work as well in the age of automation. Too bad because it's a great little system. I should know, I have five of the Pen FT bodies and the collection of lenses in the first photo, plus some duplicates of my favorites in the Olympus equipment drawer. The one guarded by angry black Mamba snakes...

When the new, digital Pens came out I realized that the shorter lens flange to sensor dimension would make mounting lots of different lenses on the bodies a pretty straightforward deal. When I heard that adapters were already being made I jumped into the micro four thirds cameras mostly in order to breathe new, digital life into a collection of lenses that were interesting and, in some cases, a little exotic. And I have not been disappointed. But I'd never done the real test where you mount the lenses on the highest res digital camera you own and put that on a tripod with the self timer engaged and start looking at how the glass performs....wide open. And stuff like that. So I did. And I found out some interesting stuff.

Two 1,000 bulb LED lights make for a quick and simple photo set up with lots of lumens for stopping down and using the slowest ISO on the GH2. I think that's 160. The black flag to the right is serving no purpose whatsoever. It just happened to be there when I was setting up.

I chose to the Panasonic Lumix GH2 for my tests because the sensor is acknowledged, at this juncture, to be the highest res of the m4/3 tribe. It's also easy to use in a studio setting. Set preview to constant and shoot in M and you'll see each change you make to aperture, shutter speed and ISO right on the screen. Tap on the screen to increase magnification for fine focus...

Let me introduce you to the motley crew of lenses and say a little something about each one. I feel like I'm introducing family. Why am I in so little hurry to snap up the new primes coming to market? Because I think I've already got cooler ones. Take the 60mm 1.5, for example. No other company makes anything nearly as cool for the smaller cameras. Center sharpness is okay at full aperture and, like most lens designs of the time, you'll want to add some contrast to your files. These lenses are not post processing free but when done well you can squeeze really good performance out of them. When you hit f3.5 you are sharp from corner to corner and it's a very convincing sharpness. Hell yes, I use it for theatre shots. And portraits in dark and moody coffee shops and more. It uses the same lens hood at the 50mm to 90mm zoom lens. It's becoming rare and a bit costly but if you find a clean one you might want to put in on your camera and give it a spin. If you shoot portraits I can pretty much guarantee that it's a struggle your credit card will win.

Reader Note: you can click on any of the photos and they will come up much bigger in a separate window. I uploaded files that are 1200 pixels on the long edge so you might want to depend on the text for my observations about their performance.

above and just below: the 60mm 1.5

In every system there's one lens that shows up everywhere. Like the ubiquitous 50mm 1.8's for 35mm cameras. Or the 18-55mm kit zooms for APS-C cameras. In the Pen F hierarchy that lens would be the 38mm 1.8. It's small, light, fast and well corrected. This was my everyday shooter in the film days. While most of the Pen F lenses are able to be used wide open they tend to mimic standard gauss designs in that the center is sharp at or near wide open and stopping the lens down brings greater and greater corner sharpness. By f4 the lens is really good and by f8 it's as perfect as you could want it to be.

Above: think of the 38mm as the budget "system lens"

I think of the 70mm f2 as the equivalent of the standard 35mm 135mm lens. In particular, I think of mine as the 135 f2 L series of the Pens. It's not nearly as sharp as that much more modern lens, when used wide open but it sharpens up nicely one stop down and, by f4 is monster good. If flares a little in contrajour light so I try to always use it with a hood or shade the front element with my hand... It's a great "candid" shooter.

the 70mm. half the weight of the chunky 60mm.

There are really two lenses that haven't jumped through the time travel portal with the same success as the longer focal lengths. Those are the 20mm 3.5 and the 25mm 2.8. The 20mm is widest Pen F lens that ever got made and it's really nothing to write home about until you stop it down to f5.6. And alarmingly, at least with my copy, it tends to start flying apart with diffraction softening right at f11. By the time you get to f16 you'll think you forgot to focus. Which actually brings up something we need to talk about. There's a lot of focus shifting, as you stop down, in some of these lenses (especially the zoom). If you focus wide open and then stop down you may or may not have some safety with depth of field but you'll be way better off to stop down first and then focus. Which is how the older lenses work on the mirrorless camera anyhow. If you need a 20mm you might want to pass on one of these and head straight of the Panasonic. The 20mm 1.7 Panasonic may be one of the most beloved optics of the entire family m43 system...

I've gotten detailed shots from the 20mm Pen F lens but I've had to boast contrast a lot to make them work. And adding a bit of saturation won't hurt either...

Above: the 20mm 3.5. Not quite the sharpest of the flock.

Now. Someone get me a drool bib. This is one of my favorite lenses of all. The fabulous 40mm 1.4. I think of it as the high speed standard of the entire small camera universe. There was faster and very rare 42mm 1.2 but it wasn't as well corrected as the 1.4 and weighed nearly twice as much. I shot some flat stuff in the studio today which is represented below. At 1.4 it's decent. Not a lot of micro detail in the files. But one stop down brings it to parity with just about anything out there. At f2.8 it's sharper than the Canon 50mm 1.4 at 2.8 and even a little sharper, to my eye, than the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 at 2.8. When you hit f4 it's like you put a macro lens on the front of your camera. Sharp and contrasty over the whole frame. Kinda like that Olympus 45mm 1.8 they've been shopping around.....only this puppy is a two thirds of a stop faster. And it looks even better because it's black.

It's my photojournalist wannabe lens. I love it for portraits and candids and street shooting and just about anything that requires a slightly longer prime optic. The Panasonic camera seemed to swell with pride when I put this on the lens mount.

The crowning achievement of PenF lens design.

Not because it's exotic but because it's nearly

PERFECT.

Reader tip about lens adapters: I have three different adapter rings that allow me to mount Pen F lenses on the m4/3 digital cameras. All three of them will allow the lens to focus past infinity. That means that the focusing scale on the lens barrel becomes meaningless. And that reduced the lens's usability as a zone focusing "street shooter". If I had the time I'd probably figure out the positions for hyperfocal distances and mark them on the lens barrel with a red dot but.....I'm too lazy. Or I spend too much time writing. At any rate you are now warned not to trust the infinity setting on any legacy lens mounted via an adapter. Test before you set to infinity and go out for walk. Even with the wide angles. Especially with the wide angles...

And, Olympus knew how to do hoods. Nice hoods with

thumbscrews. You tighten, they stay in place.

Which brings me to a lens that is an enigma to me. The 25mm. For the longest time I thought this lens and the 20mm lens were not very good and not very sharp. Today I changed my mind. This is the first time I've put them on a tripod and then used live view to focus. My focusing skills with the smaller format are a pale ghost of my medium format focusing skills and I think it's because the finders on the Pen F cameras are old tech, very dark and the DOF of the short focal length makes everything look like it's in focus in the viewfinder (when viewed tiny) while it's not sharp if blown up.

Today I put this lens on the GH2 and focused at 8x magnification and shot test shots. And I like them. There's good detail everywhere. It's not going to replace a fast focusing and bright lens like the Leica/Lumix 25mm 1.4 but it's very well done and, when stopped down to 5.6 it does a very nice job with subjects that give you enough time to check focus. Sad about the lack of true infinity on the adapter rings because it's a focal length that would lend itself to zone focusing and shooting from the hip.

the 25mm 2.8. Beautifully made.

And now revealed to actually be sharp.

Which brings me to the longest half frame lens in my collection, the 150mm f4. If you play the equivalent game this optic gives you the same angle of view on m4/3 as a 300mm on a full frame film or digital camera. This is another lens that never really satisfied me until I put it on the EP2. With the benefit of adjustable (by focal length) image stabilization I was able to hold it still enough for distance shots to discover that it is really well corrected and sharp. One reader of a previous post about this lens pointed out what might be veiling glare but I think it's really just the lower contrast of a design from the late 1960's when a lower contrast lens with good sharpness was actually a benefit to people who shot black and white film in contrasty situations. You could always add contrast in the darkroom with graded papers or multi-grade papers but you couldn't bring back blown highlights or blocked shadows.

It was an epiphany to actually put the lens on a tripod and do the two second self time as a release mechanism. The magnification works against hand holding. Especially on the GH2 which doesn't have IS in the body. If used correctly I find the lens to be quite good wide open and at its best when used at 5.6. With a judicious boost of contrast and a moderate dose of saturation in your favorite post processing program you'll have snappy photos with some nice compression. And it works well as a long lens for video. As long as you're on the sticks.... A big benefit, vis-a-vis full frame, is that it's 1/3 the size and weight of the bigger format's equivalent.

Go long. And pack light.

I like the 300 f4. Especially now that I know

the sharpness issues were really just

my lazy technique.

Back in the late 1960's zoom lenses were really just a novelty and most of them (with the exception of the Nikkor 80-200 f4.5) were unsharp and unsatisfying. But this lens from Olympus is pretty good. Not nearly as good as the single focal length lenses above but head and shoulders above most of the dreck that was available way back then. I wasn't old enough to shoot back then but I used the older zooms when I was on a budget in the earlier times of my amateur career as a photographer.

The focal length is not long, is corresponds to about 100mm to 180mm's but it seems just right for a guy who likes to do classical portraiture. While it's not stunningly sharp at 3.5 it's pretty nice by the time you get to f5.6. And.....it's a constant aperture zoom. Nothing changes as you change focal lengths. It's not a true parafocal zoom. It does shift focus as you zoom which means you'll want to refocus every time you shift focal lengths. If you press it into service for video you'll find that it shifts the image a lot as you focus. The way to use this lens is to line up your shot and lock in your parameters, then shoot your scene and move on. I wouldn't try to follow focus with this one.

An early telephoto zoom that acquits itself nicely at

f5.6. And it's less than a quarter the volume of

a Canon 70-200mm L lens. This one I could

carry all day long....

While I'm not going to review it because I never really use it I also have a 2x converter for the system.

I haven't been able to suspend my belief that

older teleconverters suck so I've only tried this

once, on the 150 and handheld. If it's not sharp or

if it is sharp, how would I know? I'll try it sooner or later

and let you know.

40mm wide open.

40mm at f4

60mm wide open.

60mm at f3.5

70mm wide open

70mm at f4

20.

24.

38.

40.

60.

70.

50 on the zoom.

60 on the zoom

70 on the zoom

90 on the zoom wide open

90 on the zoom at 5.6

150mm.

90 on the zoom

150.

Physical Construction: The Olympus Pen F lenses are made in the way we've come to expect products from the height of the industrial age to have been made. Knurled metal barrel that are designed to offer just the right friction for your fingers, with areas of small indents alternating with big scallops to provide the sense that you'll always have a great grip. The lenses are small but dense and feel as though they are made to last a photographer's lifetime. And the proof is in the pudding. Several of the lenses I have trace their origin back to around 1968. And they were well used. But the focusing rings are still smooth and sure in operation, the spring back for the auto aperture is still free of drag and the mounting rings look brand new. Even the stop down button and the locking buttons are made of well crafted and robust metal. If there is plastic anywhere on any of the lenses I've not been able to find it.

If Panasonic and/or Olympus introduces focus peaking in their next generation of cameras I'll be in heaven and will probably put off buying the current, popular primes for a long time.

Recommendations. Of the lenses I've listed, most, beside the 38mm's, are going to be too expensive to be practical purchases. Both Panasonic and Olympus have better performing (and easier to focus) wide angle and wide/normal lenses than the 20mm and 25mm. The sweet spot for me would be the 40mm 1.4, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2. All are wonderful lenses that are competitive with just about anything you'll find today ( provided that the glass is in good shape and not fogged in the least).

If I had to choose just one it would be the 60mm 1.5. It's physically beautiful on the camera and the view through the EVF, or even on the rear screen, of the GH2 is wonderful. With one touch of a button I'm able to fine focus at 8x and, one stop down the lens doesn't miss a beat. A far cry from the slow kit lenses that most of us suffer with.

Since I own the 40 and the 60 Pen F lenses I've put off buying the 45mm 1.8. But I keep seeing images that impress me. If I do buy one it will be because I have become to lazy to manually focus my 60. But for now, I'll persevere.

So why do I write this when probably no more than a few handfuls of people have any interest in MF lenses for mirrorless cameras? Because the Pen F lenses deserve some recognition. They set a standard in their days that's taken forty years to be re-invented. And that's very cool.

Thanks for reading.

Below, the full sized, 4000+ pixel test of the 60mm at f3.5. Jpeg (8 quality) sharpened. click it and see.

On Politically and Legal Safe Ground. My review of the Nikon F...

2012-01-19T17:47:00.001-06:00

We were ready to be impressed by this one from Nikon. It had gotten such good previous press. And there are things we like about it but let's get the less positive stuff out of the way first. This camera is not digital. It only takes physical film but it does operate in a semi-open system architecture. You can use any brand of spooled, perforated 35mm film, available from a wide (but ever diminishing) circle of suppliers.

We were horrified to find that instead of a bad, dim, dark rear LCD screen that requires the viewer to keep his or her eye centered behind it to see it properly, Nikon have left the screen off altogether. We'll presume that this was an attempt to keep manufacturing costs down but...we at VSL feel like that's just one step too far. Of course, LCD's may not have been available at the time of design but surely they could have put a little cathode ray tube back there, just to, you know, preview stuff.

Which brings us to our next criticism. No Menus. None? Nope. Astounding. I fiddled with the damn thing for nearly an hour, trying to find a way to auto bracket or to fine tune exposure. I couldn't even find a color space setting. Now that's primitive. In frustration I sent the camera to our fully equipped and space age lab for further analysis. Within days they had researched, poked and prodded and found the source of the design defect. In a word: battery. The camera maker had forgotten to include a battery in the package. Or a place to put a battery. It was all so mysterious.

We did some more research and consulted with a very, very old photographer (over 40!!!!) and he let us know that this Nikon F body was actually designed that way. He showed us how to read a meter that lives outside the camera (but be careful, you'll have to choose a film first) and how to set the few controls available. And we were off and running. Kinda.

We stepped outdoors, put a slight pressure on the shutter button and ..... nada. No focusing. Defective lens? Not according to our consultant. The lenses were meant to be focused by hand, like the Zeiss lenses currently on the market. We tried turning the lens barrel, as instructed, and were rewarded with improved focus. But even though we looked everywhere we were unable to find the diopter. With our eyes and that old screen we'd be lucky to get 50% of the stuff we shoot in focus, and that's outside in good light!

The buffer in the camera is pitiful. No matter how much time we waited between shots the camera would always stop at 36 frames and not budge. At one point we even left it "on" overnight to see if the buffer would clear but, no. And it's apparently WORM (write once, read many) technology because once you've hit the buffer you actually have to introduce new memory. And that's not cheap.

The top shutter speed is a dismal 1/1000th of a second and the shortest timed exposure is 1 second.

Here's our executive summary:

While we were anxious to buy into the hype surrounding this camera we knew at the outset that we'd been sold a "pig in a poke." When attempting to first load "film" memory in the camera the entire bottom fell off. Right onto the ground. The camera lacks even the barest degree of customization ability and it shoots only as quickly as you can push a lever 120 degrees with your thumb.

On the other hand, the non-battery lasted forever and the lens was fast, sharp and well corrected. Our recommendation? If you're into fast shooting, extreme sports, quick work, total control or.... just about any metric you can imagine then this camera is definitely not for you. So, how are they positioning it in the market? Would you believe they are trying to position it for professionals? Our prediction? They'll need a lot of marketing (and just the right kind) if they are going to make any head way with this one.

See our gallery of 4x6 inch prints on the refrigerator....

Here are the specs:

Big.

Heavy.

Slow.

Construction: Metal on metal and more metal. With metal. Everywhere.

Positives: We were unable to destroy it in any fashion. We even used it to chock the wheels of a large school bus on a perilous incline. We liked the noise it makes when we push the button.

Stayed tuned. Next month we'll be reviewing the Canonet QL17. Camera, Icon or Ruse?

A day of mourning for Kodak and SOPA/PIPA NOW REVISED.

2012-01-19T10:02:00.004-06:00

Was life easier back in the days when you just had to be good at your job?

Is protection from rank piracy really that difficult to conceive?

Notice: Edited at 3:14 on 1/19/2012 to include a counterpoint. Please read.

"Like most things in life the internet is a trade-off. A compromise. We give up some privacy in return for "connectedness." We give up some traditional protections of ownership to be able to conversely grab stuff that we want "with no consequences." At least that's the way it seems. I'm profoundly disturbed by what's happening in regard to laws that protect intellectual property and content versus the "need" to freely steal whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want it, but I might be sitting on a different side of the table than most people. You see, I write books and I create photographs that have value and which can be sold to people for actual 20th century style money. But my paradigm works only if most people play by the rules. And it seems, more and more, that they don't." (end of original content).

I wrote a long column about how the SOPA and PIPA laws would be better than nothing for content creators. I was wrong. I've been taken to school by dozens of bright and impassioned people who understand the technical aspects of the web in far greater detail than me. I have also had phone calls from two IP lawyers who are personal friends who calmly talked me through the pros and cons of what I was thinking and what I had written. Not to mention my photographer peers who just waded right in with no gloves on...

I was wrong. I decided to take down what I had written this morning and leave up the thoughtful examples that one of our readers sent to me, by way of e-mail. I have come to agree that "the ends don't always justify the means."

I want to thank everyone for their patience and politeness in this, very rare, instance in which I was obviously thinking incorrectly. I am glad, with my new knowledge and guidance, that the legislation got killed. Chastened by my own lack of depth. And fearful that my attorney friends will send me big invoices (which I will not pay since I did not solicit their advice...). I am truly gratified to have such compassionate and thoughtful friends as readers of the blog.

Now I'll just get back to writing about photography. Seriously, Thanks.

Counterpoint by a long time reader of VSL. For balance.

How about an alternate point of view from one of our well informed readers? Okay. I've redacted his name and contact info at his request.

"I am big fan of your blog about photography and read each post. Even

calling me a hobbyist photographer would be generous, yet your writing

about the issues surrounding professional photography always engage

and inform me. That is why I was so dismayed to see you defend

SOPA/PIPA in your recent blog posting. You see, while I might be a

hobbyist photographer, I am expert on the internet and specifically

software on the internet. I have been working in that sphere for 16

years and can assure you my opposition (and most peoples opposition)

to SOPA/PIPA is not due to our desire to make all content "free".

Rather, I am a strong proponent of copyright and IP protection, but I

am strong opponent of poorly written laws that are both technically

and legally idiotic.

From a technical perspective, the very idea of "foreign" vs "domestic"

website is ludicrous and impossible to define. For instance,

blogspot.com (which I'm sure you recognize) is hosted via google using

data centers around the globe. A person in Belgium accessing your

website maybe accessing that data via a data center in Brussels,

Chicago, or both and would never know the difference. You are the

person uploading content to this website yet you have no ability to

know if your website is "foreign" or "domestic' and neither does a

judge, google who hosts your site, or anyone visiting it.

Let me give you an example of the kind of use case that us in the

technology business are so worried about:

1. You, disgusted with Google over their stance on SOPA/PIPA, decide

to leave the freely available blogspot hosting service, and recreate

your website as is (without the blogger header) by using your own ISP,

which you pay for.

2. You want to be able to provide the same level of service as your

previous blog (ads for your books, speedy loading, rss feeds), so you

pay your ISP for a content network, and search engine optimization,

and you take your new site live. (thus making it a foreign site)

3. Further, now that you have all this infrastructure, you decide to

start selling your books yourself through your site, and get a

contract with a payment processor and create a little web store.

4. Everything is going swimmingly, you have easily paid for your

infrastructure and more!

5. On your website you post a link to another website that contains

public domain photographs.

6. That website then posts a copyrighted photograph. (You are now

facilitating infringement)

7. A competitor of yours files a SOPA "private right of action"

against your site and gets a ruling in their favor (without your

presence or defense).

8. Your competitor can now cause your amazon ads and payment processor

to stop doing business with you, destroying your new found revenue

stream, and you have no recourse to fix this problem. Further, even

if you prove that you didn't infringe copyright, your competitor is

immune from civil action for invoking this law.

Notice in that use case, never did you actually violate any copyright.

If you think this is far fetched, it is because you have not worked

in the internet technology world. I can assure you that actions very

similar to this are already happening under the similarly bad, yet

less poorly written DMCA. The same coalition came out (with less

effective protesting) against that bill because of how easy it would

be to abuse and how poorly it understood the technical problems it

faced. Nearly every complaint brought against the DMCA before it

passed have come true.

That is why we are fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard now. It isn't because

we want content creators (you do realize that software people are

content creators as well?) to be digital sharecroppers making money

for google without compensation. It is because these laws end up being

the weapons that litigious companies use to blackmail small technology

companies and small content creators. They hinder content creation

and technical innovation, all to support large content companies that

do little advance the actual content creators or the American people

as a whole.

Thank you,"

My day of mourning for the passing of Kodak.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. I suppose it was inevitable given their track record of dis-innovation over the last decade. But I come here today not to bury Kodak but to praise them. They were the iPhone of their day, bringing quick and pain-free imaging to the masses while making glorious products for the Olympian gods of the photography of their time.

When the company emerges from bankruptcy they'll be not much more than a high end supplier of big inkjet machines that make printed brochures and prints from photos. I guess they don't get that the next big revolution is to finally, truly go "paperless." Paperless was one of the early promises of digital. It's just taken a bit longer to get there than we thought. And Kodak is charging right into.....the paper market. Inkjets spewing on paper at a time when even my generation is flowing to the screen and the cloud.

Ah well. At least we'll have fond memories of Instamatic Cameras on 1960's family vacations. Our first tentative steps as baby photographers with Tri-X and D-76. Our first flirtations with color via Kodachrome. Our self assured steps into business with large and medium format Ektachromes. And even our "step off the cliffs" into digital with the DCS series of cameras.

I'll never forget the darkness and quiet as I rolled countless rolls of 35mm film onto unforgiving metal reels for development. I'll always savor the memory of a gorgeous face looking back at me from the black and white magic of an Ektalure print in the development tray. A tray filled with Dektol.

Likewise, I won't forget their enormous financial and ethical support of the efforts of the ASMP and the PPof A to train, educate and guide generations of professional photographers into profitable businesses. I won't forget the free film they gave me for a trip to Rome or the samples of new products they routinely handed out for our use.

I won't forget the things I learned in the books they published. From my Kodak Photo Data Guide with incredibly valuable (to film and large format photographers) charts and graphs for using filters, computing reciprocity, calculating depth of field and so much more. I remember when the Kodak Photo Data Guide was a bible among practitioners young and old. The same with the Darkroom Data Guide with it's matrix of times and temperatures and developer dilutions.

They were the software and firmware and back end of all our businesses. And they rarely let us down or allowed a bad product to hit the market. Not a lot of "rev 1.99's"

Kodak made Rochester, N.Y. not only a nice place to live (by all accounts) but also a cultural hub and a locus for all things photographic. They gave back. To photographers and Photography. And I think we all need to be thankful for the incredible foundation they built upon which we stand today.

Who will step up and take their place in the digital age?

Dis-attachment-ism. My new religion. Works for just about everything.

2012-01-17T10:33:00.001-06:00

Everywhere I turn there are work boxes full of old negatives and transparencies. Most for clients who've been bought out, gone bankrupt or changed ownership. Like dental records of dead people.

At some point it's good to disentangle the emotional cabling wrapped around our ankles before it pulls us under for good.

If you're anything like me you get attached to the processes that you master. I once took pride in knowing all 17,000 keystroke commands for WordStar, the first really mainstream word processing software for early IBM personal computers. I was sad when faster, better, more streamlined word processors hit the market because I had come to romanticize all the time I'd spent being conversant with the foibles of the older program. I mistakenly thought that the early skill set had value outside the actual writing. (The main lesson for me today.)

In the film days we saved everything. We saved the slides and the contact sheets and the negatives and transparencies in all sizes. Over time that's an efficient way to fill up filing cabinets. In those days businesses seemed to have a corporate memory and were interested in their achievements and milestones. They liked the idea of having a visual historic record of their growth and success. They understood adaptive reuse. But now businesses change hands like playing cards and they spin off and recreate themselves with amazing alacrity. Executives don't add value through decades of service, now they leverage a quarter and move on. The value of the photographic records of their oblique and tangential orbits have become as devalued as Kodak stock.

When images had a physical manifestation we valued them as "objects" in addition to their stored visual information. Negatives could be a thing of beauty in a of themselves. But now we've become pragmatic. Now mental and physical space comes at a premium. And the lure of the old creates its own pools of amber and tar that serve, if we're not careful, to anchor us into a position that's a losing proposition: the reminders of how we did stuff in the old days. You know, ten years ago.

I'm grappling with a sea change. I'm convinced that everything we knew about showing portfolios has changed profoundly. That all the information spewing from photographic marketing consultants is as dated as MySpace. Until recently I was right there with them. I believed that we needed a printed book. I believed that we needed to show our 20 most powerful images. And I believed that screen based portfolios were a sidekick, an adjunct or a watered down appetizer for the real deal: Hand made prints in fanciful and tragically expensive bindings.

Several things are changing my mind. When I visit with designers and art directors they always default to the screen. When I hand someone an electronic tablet with a portfolio on it they succumb to their addiction and wipe thru every image in the portfolio...and then they ask for more. They tell me they like to see work electronically more than they like to see work on paper. It's a sea change. It's seismic. But consider this, the new generation of art buyers and art directors, marketing directors and managers has, effectively, grown up with the screen, learned on the screen and earned on the screen. Print is something....extra that gets done.

Why the disconnection between what consultants and old guys tell us and what's happening on the ground for 95% of the photographers I know? Easy, the consultants go for the biggest pay off. They work with the folks who are aiming with all their might at the biggest ad agencies with the biggest accounts. And it takes time for the art buyers and art directors to work their way up the kerning ladder to get into the position to accept visits from reps and recommended talent. By the time they get there they've been trained by each other and their predecessors to think of the "print book" as the "gold standard." And that may be the reality for the "one percent" of advertising people. But the vast majority, especially those under 40 (ten times more so for the people under thirty) the screen is the thing. Show on a screen and you speak in their language. There's an immediate connection to the relevant work they do. E-mail blasts, banner ads, websites, video and the whole social fabric of modern life.

So, I practiced with a Kindle Fire and today I'm heading to the Apple store to buy the iPad I put off buying for some reason that seems irrelevant now. This whole line of thought came to me as I was searching the archives to see what else I might want to stuff into the portfolio I'd be building electronically this week. And it dawned on me that some much of the studio had become a monument to the way we did things in the past, and the jobs of the past.

I've pulled out thirty pounds of old film and paper from filing cabinets and job boxes. It's headed out to the trash. I think if I can winnow out thirty pounds a day for a few days I'll have unfettered the part of my brain that hand been tasked with keeping a mental inventory of everything physically photographic and where it lived and I'll be able to re-task those parts of my brain to re-enter now.

I've also been peeling off older cameras and lenses. Not the hallowed stuff that I just can't seem to detach from but the clutter that builds up over time when you convince yourself that you need a back up for your back up camera. Those sorts of things.

With every pound of film shed and every box of last year's photo miracle machines that heads out the door I feel lighter and less encumbered. Less set on making old tools work for new jobs. Less set in my ways and more open to change on many levels.

I have two friends who are around my age and both of them, several years ago embarked on the search for the holy grail of print portfolios. Their searches brought them to master "giclee" (fancy inkjet) printers who printed on thick, archival papers. They printed large and they printed really well. And then they bound the images in custom-made leather books. Almost Medieval in their grandeur, detail and mass. The pages sewn into the spines in the greatest tradition of book making. And they wound up with multi-thousand dollar art pieces that are, in fact, prints stuck in amber. Unchanging and unchangeable.

Sorry. Not for me. I'm going after the fat part of the market that changes all the time.

I'm using different cameras. I'm breaking the video rules I never really liked. In short, I'm trying to translate the way I've looked at stuff into a modern idiom that works. And the declining costs are like getting a "do over."

Unloading stuff is like getting permission to start over. And starting over is just what the economy always seems to be doing. I like the idea of showing up at a meeting with less than a square foot of electronics and being able to show off multiple and quickly configurable portfolios. I guess not all aspects of change are so horrendous. While I sometimes pine for film I'm equally aware that the back end is.....a pain in the ass, for commercial production.

Funny that getting rid of a few negatives and chrome would trigger so many other changes.

Note: Dear Technically oriented readers: Yes. I would have to be living under a rock not to have heard the rumors that Apple will be launching a new iPad three the minute I buy an iPad two. That's the way technology seems to go. If the iPad two+portfolio produces one typical job I'll gladly line up for the next one.

Notes on the using the Kindle Fire: I've actually been showing work, albeit informally, on the Kindle Fire and the screen is very good. The two issues that may or may not constrain using one as a portfolio platform is the dearth of good portfolio presentation programs. But for $200 it may be just what you need to show an ever changing book on a budget. Or if you just hate all things Apple.

Notes on throwing stuff away: I'm spending time editing through the piles. I'm saving the best frame from 100 on most old jobs but some are so old and so boring that they just have to go....

Final note for the morning: The comments are on but that doesn't mean you must use them. If you do, please be nice. I'll try to do the same when I come over and comment on your blogs...

Mini Old School Class on White Background.

2012-01-16T16:51:00.000-06:00

Ad shot from the 1990's. A Quick and clean revisiting of White Background Lighting Techniques from the film days. (ie: before you could just cut stuff out in PhotoShop).

If there's one subject that comes up again and again on lighting forums it is: "What is the correct way to light and prep for a white drop out background?" Time and time again the bold rush in to suggest everything from blasting the background with one huge flash to shooting against black and just cutting it out with Gimp Tools XP10. But there is actually a method that used to be taught in all the photo schools or learned at the feet of the guys who did it before you. And it made sense back then.

I thought I'd put this up for three reasons: I like the image of the skater. I was playing with the pen tool I've had for ten years and remembered how much I like to scrawl things across photos. And finally, a younger photographer, who will have to do many, many of these kinds of shots asked me to.

In the shot above I'm starting by rolling out a nine foot wide seamless backdrop of Super White paper. I roll it so that the front end (right behind the skater) is at least 12 feet from the plane of the hanging paper in the far background. This allows me put an even light on all of the background but leaves me enough room to scrim the background light off the skater with black panels.

I'm using five lights on the background. There are two flash heads on either side of the set and all four of them have white umbrellas with black backings on them. They are aimed at the opposite sides of the seamless so the light feathers across the surface. I've also added a center light, high up to both clean up the middle of the background and also provide additional light (via careful feathering) to the paper that's spread across the floor behind our model. I always attempt to light the backgrounds so that every surface that shows to the camera is within a 1/3 stop of everything else. Having too much light in a spot is just as bad as not having enough when you don't have the luxury of hands-on post processing.

In front of the background paper I've placed four sturdy milk carton holders to elevate my model's platform. I've placed a stout piece of plywood under the shiny, white Pleixglas for support. Having the platform raised means that, at the angle I want to shoot my dancer and the focal length I'll use, I'm actually seeing the far end of the white paper at her foot level instead of the part of the paper nearest the camera. This is pure white and gives me a great reflection back on the shiny plexiglas surface which works to obliterate detail and go as white as possible. It also gives me a nice reflection of the skater's blades and shoes right in front of her.

The one boom arm you see coming into the frame on the left hand side is tightly secured to a solid tether and it there so the skater can reach out and steady herself if she starts to lose her balance.

I'm using a large (54 by 72 inch) Chimera softbox from about 45 degrees to the left, in front of the skater and just far enough away so that it won't show in camera. The only other source of illumination is a white fill reflector from the opposite side.

I meter (with an incident meter) the background and get a reading. In this case it was probably f11 and 1/3 stops. I then meter while adjusting the distance of the softbox to the model until I get a reading that's one third of a stop darker on the model. In this way I am assured that the background will go pure white but I'm equally assured that the least amount of light will spill forward from the background lighting to contaminate (and lower the contrast of) the model at the front of the set. In this situation all we left for the color separator was to clean up the area around the model's feet.

Even in the zenith of our digital days I can think of several reasons (all lighting and lens oriented) to maintain the same lighting practice. Less spill means less veiling flare. And, as I've written, less unwanted contamination on the subject. The even-ness of the background means that, even though you will be using the selection tool in Photoshop you'll have less issues to deal with and will spend less time with "refine edge." Finally, if you get used to doing it correctly you'll see that it also works just as well for video. And it's easier than "green screening" everything and fixing it all up in post...

I won't get into the argument about "incident meter versus reflected" or exactly how to hold your light meter. I think that's too personal to talk about on a public blog. And I do think you'll figure out your own technique. After all, you can see the results right away now. But can you see 1/3 stop above white, on your camera's histogram? Meters are still relevant.

We took the day off today. Back tomorrow to discuss portfolios for the new age of screen dominance. Maybe.

Have you ever had one of those days when you went out to shoot and nothing looked good?

2012-01-16T00:00:00.003-06:00

Thank your lucky stars you weren't hanging around with me today because my photographic mojo was on vacation. Missing in inaction. Everything I pointed my camera at just kind of oozed into blah. And all the PhotoShop in the world won't save it.

Saturday was a nice day in Austin and I went out with the Panasonic GH2 and the kit 14-140 lens to walk around, snap a few photos of a seventy degree day in the middle of January, and to buy some kale. I'm pretty happy with the performance of the GH2 and the long zoom. It's not the world's sharpest lens at it's longest focal length but I give it the benefit of the doubt since I've alway handheld it and depended on the magic powers of the image stabilization.

The wide angle on the 14-140 is good but it does have some geometric distortion. If you use it for interior scenes with straight walls you will become familiar with "lens correction".

But I guess I've gotten bored with my usual route in downtown. When I woke up this morning I had a craving to shoot somewhere different. And, with the weather outside looking pretty darn nice I hopped in my car with two camera systems (the Nikon V1 and the GH2) and headed to San Antonio to shoot in their downtown. Alas, the photo-gods were against me every step of the way...

Saturday afternoon in Austin. Love the long reach of the 14-140. Nice compression effects, too.

I left the Austin city limits, heading south, around 10:45am and within twenty minutes the sky starting turning an abysmal, gray, gravy sort of color and then all the saturation drained out of everything and the light levels began to droop. By the time I hit the street in front of the Emily Morgan hotel, about three blocks from the Alamo, I started seeing sketchy patches of light rain. Nothing sexy or foreboding about the clouds. No picturesque drama, just a gray flannel funk that seemed to suck the visual life out of everything.

I started out with the GH2 and the 14-140 and stuck everything else in a little, sling bag. There were the usual families in front of the Alamo. But even though I made the pilgrimage I just couldn't pull the trigger on another cynical shot of a another little group of social outliers posing in front of the shrine to Texas' freedom while the designated photographer in their girthy group gingerly held the smartphone up and fiddled and fiddled.

I did stumble across these guys but I cheated and actually asked them if I could snap a few pics.

Nikon V1 with the 30-110mm.

Some days you go out and the universe throws gold in front of your Nikon or Canon or Olympus. But other days it's like the universe pokes you in the eye and puts a mental soft focus filter on even your best lens. You have at least two choices. You can keep moving and keep looking or you can pack it in and head to the closest bar/coffee shop/place to take a nap. After driving for an hour I just didn't have the good graces to shove the gear back in the bag, lick my blocked artist wounds and crawl back behind the wheel.

I kept walking and headed down Commerce toward the Mercado.

I did come across this big T-rex which reminded me that I've been hearing T-Rex "Bang a Gong" (or various cover versions) all week long on the radio. Will the current ruling generation spend the rest of their lives mining the meager treasures of my generation? (Kidding, of course. I never tire of hearing instrumental versions of Beatles' tunes in every elevator...).

Chair at Marti's next to the Alameda Museum.

Usually, in the middle of a three day weekend, the Mercado is crawling with tourists and locals and conjunto bands and vendors. It's almost always a patchwork of the interesting and eccentric. Today the crowds were sparse and the gray sky acted like a giant tourist repellant. The usual crowds were in Mi Tierra Restaurant but it was one of those days when I found no pleasure shooting fish in a barrel and only paid homage to the historic restuarant by shooting some images of the altar inside the front door and some sybaritic, sweet delicacies in the dessert cases that run forty feet wide across the lobby.

A detail of the altar in the foyer of Mi Tierra Restaurant. If you've read the blog for a while you might remember me talking about Mi Tierra for its giant wall mural depicting San Antonio history. Or the oil painting of Bill Clinton in jogging clothes. Or the altar to Mexican-American music legend, Selena.

The GH2 seems to handle higher ISO's just fine. There's a fine, black pattern of noise when you examine a file closely but none of the multi-colored speckled splotches that we used to see in previous generations of noisy cameras. The files seem to cling to their normal saturation as the ISO's climb.

GH2 Raw files are fun and easy to color correct.

The Mercado left me cold and frustrated. No matter how I looked at it I couldn't attach the leads to the art battery and jump-start any sort of creative vision. I turned around and headed back east, this time going down Houston St. I'm always happy to see the box office at the Majestic theater and I spent some time trying to get it to sing to my camera but the performance was perfunctory. No magic transferred. No talent welled up like blood in a fresh wound. Nothing.

I usually love the way this structure looks. The colors are so rich and tangy. But today the grey sky reached in under the overhang, snuck around the marquee and just pulled and pulled at the chromatic joy that usually flows off the columns and ornamentation like delicious visual nectar. The light was already failing by four and its dreary decline kept driving my little camera to higher and higher ISOs. With each click up the scale a little bit of the character of the scene dissolved into the monotone froth. The people in the street were mostly small families playing "tourists in their own town" and they seemed off limits to me today. Misplaced compassion or just a lack of mercenary inertia.

In desperation I even tried 16:9 but it's like the wires between my brain and my eyes were disconnected.

When the battery in my GH2 finally died (after 462 shots) I decided to make a big course correction. I buzzed by the Alamo one more time, on my way back to my car, and then headed up Broadway for a total change of pace. I went to the San Antonio Museum, paid my eight bucks and headed in. The featured show was about 5,000 years of Chinese jade. I left all the other stuff in the car and grabbed the Nikon V1 with my favorite optic for that system, the 30-110mm and started walking through the galleries. I would have done it on roller skates if I could have...

I'm not sure why but I still find the files I'm getting from the V1 to be very visually compelling. The camera, lens and IS system handled the low, tungsten light beautifully, with very little intervention from me. I don't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure this is ISO 800, wide open at 1/15th of a second and it seems tack sharp and relatively noiseless to me.

The museum was as sparsely peopled as the streets but that was fine with me. I was there to re-charge my batteries; soaking in the feeling of continuity and creativity across time and culture. And it seemed to work. At least being in the middle of the art took the edge off my frustration at my own frailty.

I loved this detail of the Hindu god, Vishnu, who had four heads that faced in all directions, until Shiva chopped one off.

I came to the conclusion that even if art is permanent (and the jury is waaaay out on digital photography) the nature of the artist, over time, is to sink into anonymity and dissolve into the collective of his or her cultural and context. Maybe that was the message the cosmos was trying to text me today..

But, like a child, I was quickly sidetracked by the pretty colors bouncing off the ceiling of this walkway between two buildings and the repeated diagonal pattern of the struts and I forgot to worry about my own implicit mortality for the time being.

I love the visual pattern of standing in a gallery, looking into a gallery that looks into a gallery.

Nikon V1 with 30-110.

Detail of a large and disturbing mural by a photo/artist/genius named Daniel Lee.

I almost missed this show (the Daniel Lee: Manimal show) since it was wedged in between a gallery of decorative arts and a gallery dedicated to Pre-Columbian earth goddess figurines, and I've seen enough Pre-Columbian earth goddess figurines to satisfy even Claude Levi-Strauss. I have struggled to wade through, From Honey to Ashes, more than a few times.... But the show that struck me had nothing to do with CLS.

It was a show of highly manipulated photographic images by Chinese born artist, Daniel Lee. Here's a link: http://www.daniellee.com/ This particular show was part of his "Manimal" series and, seen in the flesh, it was stunning, disturbing and convincingly done. That sparked me right up and I spent a good half hour really absorbing the two dozen large pieces of his on display. The above is a portion of a very large C-print (think four feet by at least 12 feet.) It's a riveting and cynical allusion to a number of classical paintings and reminded me of a twisted interpretation of european religious paintings from the 14-16th centuries.

Having finally connected with something provoking I felt justified in heading home. The gray dived from 18% to 90% as only a winter afternoon light can and, even though it wasn't cold, the oppression of the short and parsimonious scraps of spiceless daylight was palpable. I welcomed the stingy sunset and sat back on my battered fabric car seat and listened to an old Moody Blues album as the three laned ribbon of IH35 stretched out in front of me, the hum of the tires interrupted from time to time by the little round disks placed on the edges of the lane to keep drivers awake.

What did I learn today? That sometimes you have off days and, while you probably won't know it until you suffer through them, you'd probably be best served dropping the cameras back in the bag and raking leaves or baking bread instead. I learned that walking is almost always pleasurable, even when you are in a creative funk. On the way back home I learned that Whataburger now offers whole wheat buns for their hamburgers and that jalapeños are delicious when combined with pickle slices.

I learned that more coffee does not make one see things in a more creative or visually interesting way.

I think I've come to grips with why I love the Nikon V1 so much. When I use it I preset it to "A" and leave the aperture set at the widest setting. I put the camera into the auto ISO 100-800 setting. AWB. And the only thing I manipulate is the +/- exposure compensation. It's really become my ultimate "point and shoot" camera and I don't have to think when I use it.

The GH2 is capable of so much fine tuning that the potential creates an impetus to meddle and control. And I always feel like there's just one more thing I should set. While both cameras are capable of very good images the GH2 is less transparent during the process of taking a photograph while the Nikon V1 is becoming more and more transparent. It's no wonder photographers who've taken the leap love the V1. It gives them permission to take a vacation from total control. And sometimes we need that.

I came into Austin just in time to have home made minestrone with the family and to savor a glass of red wine. Then I walked into my office to look at today's photographs. I was disappointed but not defeated. I think it's instructive to feel the world and my mind push back. Next time out I won't take making fun images for granted.

Dear Nikon, Please come out with an 18mm f2.0 lens for the Series One cameras tomorrow. I swear I'll buy at least one. KT

Finally, since I mentioned Claude Levi Strauss I have to toss out one of my favorite quotes attributed to him: "I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty." I've never found the actual usage but I love the phrase. I think of it whenever I read something particularly passionate and totally uninformed on one of the photographic forums...

"One fallow day doesn't make a famine." (mine.)

a few fun things on the web.

2012-01-15T10:15:00.000-06:00

Hi. It's Sunday. And I just read this from my friend, Andy:

http://blog.atmtxphoto.com/2012/01/15/my-new-two-camera-olympus-pen-setup/

It's a interesting read about another person's search for the right photographic tools.

Then I wanted to invite you to see how my images, made for Manuel's Restaurant were used in the video on the front page of their website, here:

http://www.manuels.com/ You might want to turn the sound down if you hate sound that plays automatically when you open a website.

I'm working on a blog about using LED lights to illuminate a corporate command center but I'm waiting on permission to show the images. I'll put that in the box called, "coming soon."

Hope everyone has a great week.

A post that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Photography. Hang onto your hats, tech boys.

2012-01-13T18:00:00.004-06:00

I'm in pretty good shape. I swim with four or five former Olympians and a local Tour de France veteran. Well, when I say I swim with them what I really mean is that we all show up at the same pool and take instruction from the same coach but I inhabit a lane a few lanes down from the "big dogs." The pool is divided between slower (but still very competitive) swimmers in the first few lanes (on the left as you face the pool from the shallow end) and very, very fast swimmers on the right hand side of the pool. I swim somewhere in the middle. On crowded days, a bit to the left.

I try to go every weekday to the seven a.m. workout since I need to be up to transport my kid to cross country practice. On the weekends we have practice from 8:30 to 10:00 am, both days. Our workouts vary between 3,000 and 5,000 yards.

One of our swimmers is a guy named, Rip Esselstyn. In addition to having been an All American swimmer at the University of Texas, and a professional triathalon-er, and the current USMS 45-50 year old world record holder for the 200 backstroke, he's also the author of a best selling book called "The Engine Two Diet." His book is a bestseller and it studies the benefits (on world class athletes and ordinary people) of eating a vegan diet. All vegan, all the time. His dad is a doctor, specializing in cardiology, at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Esselstyn is the author of the book, "Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease."

They have both done extensive research into heart disease and their books imply that eating a vegan diet can help make you heart attack proof. The interesting thing about all this is that Rip has been able to convince many of the world class athletes he knows to undertake a vegan diet and the results have been pretty amazing. Everyone's cholesterol drops dramatically, and, in the pool they seem to get faster and faster.

I've read Rip's book and his dad's book and I understood most of the underlying premises but I had been letting entropy and habit take their course. Sometime in December two of my friends (who are only a few years older than me) got panic diagnoses from their doctors. Both had over 90% blockage of major arteries. Both required major surgical intervention. Both were voracious omnivores.

We generally eat pretty healthy at home but I'd been letting things slide at lunch. BBQ spare ribs here, a double cheeseburger there, some really greasy Chinese food (but I swear it was loaded with veggies....) and of course, the errant cookie with afternoon coffee. I was pretty good at breakfast and amazingly healthy at dinner (under the unblinking eye of Belinda...) but lunch was totally out of control. Fries anyone? And, at 56 years of experience who among us shouldn't be watching our diets?

So, after I watched Rip place one of the world's best known athletes on the full bore vegan diet, I decided to dive into the deep end and kick my "lunch training" up a notch. A big notch. Which has resulted already in tightening the old belt a notch or two.

Since the middle of December I've developed a new routine that saves me cash and hopefully will allow me to live forever and torment readers of this blog well into my triple digit years. I've made it pretty clear to all my photographer friends, the ones who lunch with me, that I'll be having lunch at the vegan bar at the downtown Whole Foods Market. The one at Sixth St. and Lamar Blvd. The Mothership.

How does this save me money? Well, my favorite thing to order is the beans and rice on a bed of fresh, raw spinach leaves. Big food but small cost. Currently $3.99. Filling, made with no oils or dairy or meat products, and served up fresh. Today the beans were cannelli, made with garlic and chunks of artichoke hearts. They were incredible. The vegan bar also makes infused water. My favorite is blueberry and sage. It comes with any entrée, free. As in no charge.

Then, in defiance of my own morning nature, I finally learned how to make passably good coffee on my own and I'm eating a special blend of cereal called, Rip's Big Bowl. It's really good. And vegan.

So, what does all this get me? Well, for the cynically pragmatic, I'm saving about six dollars a day versus my previous lunch adventures and that adds up pretty quick. I eat lunch out most days. I'm swimming faster than I did last year, although I'm sure we can chalk up some of the improvement to the placebo effect. I'm dragging along a few friends, a subset of whom are a bit overweight and might benefit from sharing my new dietary discipline; and they haven't really complained. Finally, I'm eating quite a bit farther down the food chain which should make Michael Pollan happy.

It's an experiment, like everything else in life. But so far this is a happy experiment. Am I going totally vegan? What? Do I look insane? Life has to have space in it for the occasional strip of bacon, the random breakfast taco, and an nice, juicy rib eye steak from time to time. But lunch is generally the meal where most of us do the most damage and I know I'm not keen to get my chest cracked open and have some veins moved around. So it seems like a good place to start.

Why am I discussing this on what has always been a photo oriented soapbox? Because it's my only New Year's resolution and the more people who know about it the more friends I'll have holding my feet to the fire and helping me over the bumps in the road (I barely made it out the door past the hot dessert bar today....). And if I jar someone else into at least considering their cardio health then that's cool too.

Coffee's not bad with a little rice milk in it........naw, screw that. I'll still toss in some half and half.

Whatever you've resolved for your New Year I hope you'll decide to throw in some exercise and a good balance of veggies over animal products. I need to keep as many of you readers around as I can....you know I love a good audience.

Thinking about gear made me think about gear.

2012-01-12T16:34:00.005-06:00

Amy. Brought to you by Phase One.

I got some interesting mail when after I wrote my last two columns. Those screeds were essentially essays to myself, telling me to stop wasting time and money and get out and work on the work instead of working on the toys. One person wrote to tell me that I was a dilettante who just played with cheap cameras and didn't "get" the allure and the technical virtuosity of cameras like the Nikon D3x or any of the other full frame cameras. I certainly can't argue about being a dilettante; I'm not nearly as committed to the real craft of photography as I should be. If I were I'd be rushing into the darkroom to use the last of the real technology before the art of photography dissolves completely into a totally subjective romp through the imaginary Disney Land of digital where anything from a snap made on a phone to still frame from a video camera counts as big art... (that should get us some mail...).

But I did take umbrage from the assertion that I didn't know "shit" about bigger, better cameras than the micro four thirds, "baby" cameras I'm "always going on and on about." I did have another life before I started this blog and in that particular life (three years ago) I spent some quality time playing around (all dilettante-style) with three different, at the time, state of the art, medium format digital cameras. Leaf, Phase One and Mamiya all sent me their cameras and asked me, "pretty please!!!" to use them for a few months and then, maybe, write a review for one of the photo magazines I haphazardly wrote for back then. The Leaf AFi7 was a bit unwieldy, but workable. They sent it along with a 180mm f2.8 Schneider lens that made me almost cry when it came time to box up and send it back. In the days when 12 megapixels was about the max for my then Nikon System the 40 megapixels on the Leaf sensor was a technical revelation.

But the camera I liked playing with the most, and the one I held onto the longest, was the Phase One with the 40+ back and two really fun lenses. The lens I liked best (naturally) was the 75-150mm zoom. What a treat for a portrait photographer.

I spent many happy days blowing up the files really big. But when it came right down to it I just couldn't justify the price tags. Had they come during a different point in our economic timeline I confess that I would have tried to rationalize the Phase One. It just flat out worked. Well, if I'm going to be totally honest, the two different batteries (which died in opposite cycles from each other) drove me a bit crazy but I guess that's a "first world" complaint.

I made big prints. I looked at every pixel. I shot the cameras with flash, daylight, tungsten, florescent and even some early LED fixtures. And I could see a difference. Not a $45,000 difference but a difference. But I'm getting off track. My real point was that I have played with bigger cameras and that, in fact, helps energize my enthusiasm for the smaller cameras. Being able to do 90% (with the pixie cameras) of what I was able to do with ultimate cameras is a profound thing. An amazing thing. And I appreciate the engineering we can buy these days for so much less money.

Amy with coffee. All is right with the Universe.

But this was my "take away" from the year of shooting big: If I do my technique really well, and I'm not making a print very big, then most people, myself included, really won't see the difference between a $1,000 camera and a $30,000 camera with a $8,000 lens. Under perfect circumstances? Printed really large? Best Technique. Yes, the big camera files will technically look better every time. But in real life? Naw. Having a camera with a stout battery, menus you know forward and backward and enough pixels to make a nice 12 by 18 inch print is really a very sweet spot on the whole continuum.

Big bucks. Little screen.

Would I snap up one of the Phase One systems if it cost less than an old 2003 Honda Element? I'd probably do that trade. But it's like every other camera system. No matter how good it is today someone will come out with a system to trump it in a year. Learning to use any camera well never gets obsoleted. People have warned me several different ways: "Never drive a car that's faster than the one you have." "Never work on a computer that's faster than one you can afford."

And it's like every other camera system in the world in that, if you have nothing particularly interesting to say, the images don't look particularly interesting. And while high quality is nice, it's not art.

Even those who loudly proclaim to care nothing about gear (sneer implied) stopped to ask me about the bad boy hanging off the front of the Mamiya camera. Tech Chick Magnet (TCM).

Finally, I was reading through a forum post in which an insane person wrote about the need for there to be a mirror-less full frame camera from the micro four thirds companies. Huh? That's like Tesla cranking out a diesel Hummer. But the argument was soon joined and, at one point a "professional" photographer stepped in to say that having the full frame was "crucial" in order to maintain "credibility" with clients and stock agencies. I think that instead of eviscerating his logic I'll just let that whole concept hang in the air...

Hope you're having a great week. Let us know if you decided to run out and pick up a medium format digital camera system. The whiskers on a cat will never be sharper.

erratic bonus: Great video by someone I don't know: http://vimeo.com/34813864

How to shoot far more interesting photographs...

2012-01-12T11:21:00.002-06:00

(consumer camera. consumer lens. continuous light.)

The only way to shoot more interesting photographs is to become a more interesting person.

And, how do you do that?

Listen more, talk less.

Travel more.

Eat stuff you never tried before.

Go some place scary.

Make friends with people who are smarter than you.

Make friends with people who are actors, artist and musicians.

Change your habits.

Read more novels.

Read more poems. (Try Billy Collins...or Wallace Stevens.)

Go to museums. Look at the art.

Go to art galleries.

Go to a mosque. Go to a church or go to a synagog. Go to a house of worship that's not your current brand.

Learn new stuff from your kids.

Pick a place that's one tank of gas away and go there.

Go on a life threatening adventure.

Spend a month on a cargo ship. Or a fishing boat.

Take naps in the middle of the day and stay up all night.

Try your hand at abstract painting.

Date your wife. Or husband.

Change political parties for a while.

Put down your cameras until you really learn how to tell interesting stories.

Become a more interesting person and you'll take more interesting photographs. Really.

Irrational purchases versus marketing strength.

2012-01-11T09:52:00.004-06:00

(postcard mailer)

Versus...

(new camera of the moment)

Or this....

A piazza in Rome.

Street shooting in Rome.

I love cameras as much as the next guy. Maybe even more. But, at some point the mania of researching, buying, testing, trading and selling off cameras, and then wading through the next generation of offerings seems...over the top. This isn't really me talking, it's my book on Commercial Photography. I re-read it last night after having coffee with a pragmatic gentleman yesterday who mentioned the book.

I get that it took a number of years and a number of tries for camera makers to get digital cameras back to the same level of working transparency that they'd achieved decades ago in film cameras. Up until the time of the Canon 5D2 and the Nikon D3 we could easily rationalize that we "needed" to upgrade our camera to take advantage of the curve that was still grasping for true "holistic" usability in our professional tools. But boy did we sacrifice some hard earned money, time and mental rigor.

Around 2009 all of the pieces were firmly in place. Any of the top cameras on the market that year are totally satisfactory for the function of creating great images and mastering the needs of the mainstream commercial marketplace. My Olympus EP2 was a perfect camera for the leisurely hobby of shooting fun stuff while on a walk or road trip. And it still is.

My Canon 5Dmk2 is a perfected working tool for what I need to do to keep my clients happy. In fact, the 1DS mk2 from 2004 was just about there as well. When you think about it, just about every camera with delusions of professional competency made since 2008 or 2009 is probably better, overall, than us operators. And in point of hard fact most professional assignments are usually done either on a stout tripod (at a reasonably low ISO) or in complicity with electronic flash or other supplemental lighting (also at a reasonably low ISO) and can be handled with a wide range of cameras and lenses. Including (when stopped down) most recent zoom lenses.

What's fueling the race to make every camera full frame? What's the cattle prod that keeps the herd begging for higher and higher pixel counts? And what's the new fascination with the new "rangefinder" styled cameras.....that are anything but? Desire and marketing?

It's fun to buy new cameras but even I have limits. I was drooling over the Fuji X pro camera shown on Michael Johnston's blog and all over the web when my inner business guy (deeply repressed during most camera buying escapades) emerged, beating me about the head and shoulders with a rolled up copy of my own business book.

He had a couple of questions. But first he looked around the studio and started counting cameras and lenses and lights and gadgets. He was still counting an hour later when I came back from lunch.... and then he turned on me like a spreadsheet badger and demanded to know what the hell I was thinking.

"I see enough cameras to re-brick a wall." He shouted. "But I don't see any new promotional mailers. I don't see a revised contact list. I don't see any work being done on adding to the e-mail lists. Where the hell is the new portfolio of people we've been talking about, ad nauseum? And why am I stepping over three or four different camera systems here? Are you fucking nuts? Or did you just win the lottery?"

(My inner business guy can really get in my face...)

But he had a point. And I could see it pretty clearly. And so can my bank account.

"Hey, Photo-Punk." My inner business guy taunted. "Let me give you a quick lesson on asset allocation." I slunk down in my chair and got ready for the lecture I knew I deserved...

He began: "I see you have the Canon 1DX on order already. Pretty sweet. But dude (he calls me that when he's really pissed...) we're talking seven large ($7,000) for that one camera body. And how often, when making one of your executive photos or your product shots of electronic toys do you actually need like, 10 frames per second? Or more throughput? (said with a vicious sneer...) What you really need are more new clients and more return visits from old clients and, guess what? They like the gear you're shooting with right now just fine."

I reached for my cup of coffee and he slapped my hand with a ruler, hard. Then he looked at the Starbucks label and just shook his head. "We'll deal with that money leak in another conversation..."

Back to business: "For the same $7,000 you could finance a coherent, effective direct mail campaign to every art buyer and worthwhile art director in Texas. One thousand postcards, printed, would run you around $200. One thousand stamps for said will run you another $430. A little more elbow grease and a little less time haunting the Photo Equipment Porno sites and you'd have your mailing list in good shape. Throw some cash at a good graphic designer and for less than $1,000 you can reach a pretty well defined list of potential, check writing clients. And you could do that seven times in one year for the price of that one camera body!!!!!" He was screaming and foaming at the mouth by this point...

"If you get a handful of new clients from just that advertising it would return a zillion times more cash to your pocket than a camera that you'll be convinced is obsolete by the time the next big photo trade show rolls around." (Then he muttered something unflattering under his breath. Very much a hard nosed business guy....not a marketing guy. A marketing guy can insult you and smile at the same time.)

I decided to stand up for my inner artist. I said that I needed the tools that would make my inner artist happy. That was the argument I trotted out. Bad move.

"Your inner-f-ing artist???? You gotta be kidding me. That guy was happy shooting on the streets with an old Hasselblad, a used lens and a pocket full of slow film. I haven't seen anything from these profit vampire digital cameras that looks any better. And do you know why? Because you keep spending all your money on toys. Back when a camera would last you longer than indigestion you could put money aside for travel and adventure. Remember travel and adventure? A hell of a lot more fun to do, and write about, than the buttons on the lastest f-ing point and shoot cameras. Wouldn't you agree?"

I looked back down at my shoes and tried to remember the last time I got on an airplane and left town to shoot art for myself.....

"Let's take that same $7,000 and see what you could do if you were smart enough to use if for a trip. Shall we?"

"Hey look! Here on Expedia. You could get a round trip ticket and ten nights at a decent hotel in Tokyo for less than $2,800 bucks. But wait, don't you have a friend with an extra room in Paris? And a couple million frequent flier miles? So all you'd have to pay for is.....film? No, not even that? Just food? And you're standing around your office, getting older and slower and looking at dinky ass digital cameras? Just grab one out of the drawer, throw a couple of lenses in a bag and get your sad butt in gear. What the hell are you waiting for? Or take the $7,000 and go to Rome for a month. Maybe you could even write a book about it. Where's your old penchant for blue sky? Have you turned into a photo pussy?"

He was right. Where was my inner business guy as we got all wrapped up in the digital marketplace? Now that we've got cameras that are more or less as transparent as the film cameras they replaced what was my excuse to buy more? Was it the habit we got into as we feverishly tried to master early digital? Or was it just resistance and the thinly disguised belief that we "techie" photographers have that the newest camera is like a magic talisman that will give us power over our competitors? According to my inner business guy the only real magic is the work you do on your marketing to clients.

Everything else is just addiction to the "new car smell."

1DX order cancelled. Passport renewed. Cards in process. How's that for a kick in the ass for the New Year?

My positive and upbeat assessment of the potential for every creative business.

2012-01-10T13:21:00.001-06:00

So here we are in the second week of the new year and I'm finally ready to write something upbeat and happy. 2012 will be the year we have resurgent fun with photography. I can feel it in my bones. It's the Photographer Spring. But here's the deal: Success, markets and everything tied to them will be different than ever before and they will be exactly the same.

Hunh? Yep. All the "hype" surrounding social marketing, SEO and magic beans 3.0 will deflate like a tired little balloon and the marketing will once again mean, "I met him. I know him. I like him. I trust him. I like his work." I'm not saying that all the little digital add-ons don't have their place. All of them work in some way to drive people to our websites but real, face to face, social interaction is the spark in the spark plugs. It's the juice that makes the creative process work. Every photographer who wants to work in 2012 needs to do two things: Get your portfolio in shape. And, Get out the door and meet people.

I have some suggestions for people made "homebound" by the recession. Get out of the house. Get out of the studio. Head to your favorite coffee shop. Take a small, easy to handle portfolio and show it to anyone who is interested. Invite your favorite creatives out for a happy hour. Pick up a round. Call one new person a week. You'll meet 52 potential clients in a year. Call five people a week and you'll meet 250 new contacts this year. If you're not busy working then the calling is the work and the meeting is the pay off.

Next up. Prove it. If your work is more creative than everyone in your market you're halfway there. The proof is in the sale. If you can't sell the work it may be the most creative thing around but far less valuable to clients than good, solid work that fills a niche or a need. This is a business and we constantly have to find out what our potential clients need. It's not enough to shoot stuff just cause you like it. You also have to sell it.

If you live in a second tier market filled with industrial manufacturers the web will misguide you. What resonates on the web are beautiful images of young women like the one above. And you may sell one or two usages to the local dermatologists but if your market is all about manufacturing and not about fashion and leisure you might want to think about going after the ripe, still hanging fruit: Industrial images. Make that the most creative stuff around and you'll likely have a fuller calendar. And a contact file of people who constantly need new, high quality work.

The web seduces us with the idea that everything happens on the web. But my recent clients repudiate a lot of that. Even in the tech space lots of time and money goes into the creation of large point of purchase posters, tradeshow banners, capabilities and sales brochures, annual reports and yes, print ads. The trend in web-o-graphy might be iPhones and smaller mirrorless cameras but what that new sensibility means is that traditional, large sensor cameras become elevated into a different space. The bottom of the market may be in full retreat but the high to top of the market seems to be recovering and looking to make up for lost time.

Three or four of my most recent jobs are along the lines of what I would call "emergency re-do's." Either the original photography was attempted in-house or it was jobbed out to a freelancer based on low price. In each case the client needed images that could be printed very large and maintain very high quality. Large operations centers needed lighting and perspective control. Products needed exacting lighting and edge to edge sharpness at high resolution. And, finally, all three projects' images had to be be capable of working in large print sizes. None of these parameters had been met.

In a very real sense, the skills and mastery of tools that propelled our businesses, pre-web mania, are the same ones that clients seem to be re-visiting now, in an age where so many tools and techniques have been downsized.

An interesting and related success story. I have a friend who shoots architecture. He is the busiest working photographer I know, locally. In the last two years his competitors pushed the market. Their prices dropped and they stopped doing interesting lighting. Budget was the critical metric. They jumped into the whole "HDR-chitecture" style of washing interiors with flat light from umbrella-ed flash and then working the images over in HDR to minimize both shadows and highlight burnout. It's a quick way to bounce through an architecture job but it quickly tends to make work that all looks alike. And it's almost impossible to create a personal style or make an artful and individual interpretation of a designer's work.

Nearly everyone in the market (including my friend) used either Canon 5Dmk2's or Canon 1Ds mk3's with the 17mm and 24mm shift lenses as their "go to" optics. My friend decided to go in a different direction and bought a Hasselblad H4D camera, a shift assemble and a raft of Hasselblad and Schneider lenses. Coupled with cases of Dedolights (small, highly controllable spot lights) the camera and his style make an incredibly powerful statement, not only about his work, but also about his success in the market. The camera brings his vision to market in a way that no one (clients or competitors) can easily match. Architects can readily see a quality difference in the work and are drawn to it in spite of his higher fees. In essence, he's recreated his market. And in doing so he'll recreate the statewide market because he extended the relative curve up instead of down. He's booked solidly all over the country, two months out.

This will be the year that we go back and prove to clients just how good we can be. And just how good we are. And that means heading out the door and proving it. Not just talking about it on the web.

My friend can walk into a prospective client's office and unroll a 30x40 inch print with detail and tone that goes on forever and forever. He can't do that on his website. There you can get a whiff, a hint of what's on the menu. But when the entrée is right in front of you then you can taste the difference.

I'm excited about marketing this year. I've stuffed my Kindle Fire with photo galleries of my best work. It's a great platform to share over breakfasts and lunches. I'm biting the bullet for an iPad because it's probably the right tool for quick multi-person meetings and agency presentations. And I'm upgrading the work in my 12 by 18 inch print portfolio because it's a great closer in meetings when I'm in the running for a fun project. But each of these marketing tools requires direct client contact.

The "low hanging fruit" in the photography business may be gone but the people who bring their own stepladders will always have an advantage over the people who are content to stand on the ground and wait for the winds of change to knock something out of the trees for them.

An embarrassment of riches. So much, so soon.

2012-01-09T21:00:00.000-06:00

Kirk's predictions from last week:

"Canon will see the writing on the wall and come at the mirrorless market in two directions. First they'll pump up their G family and add cameras in the $600+ market that are akin to the Fuji X10. Bigger and quieter sensors, more in cameras processing and an ability to go toe to toe, in good light, with everyone's entry level APS-C cameras and m4:3rds cameras."

What I like about the new camera: The big, fat sensor.

The two things that will kill the appeal of the G1x for me: f5.8 at the long end of the zoom. The same crappy style .80X optical viewfinder. With an EVF it would have had a chance....

And from Fuji....

"8. The current year will become known as the amazing year of prime lenses! The m4:3rds market got off to a rough start when the only option for lenses was a handful of tame, mid-focal length zooms with apertures that started at 3.5 and quickly rushed to 5.6. Couple a smaller sensor, increased depth of field and increased high ISO noise with a crippled optic and it's hard to make the whole package an easy sell. Then one lens turned around the whole space. Panasonic launched the brilliant 20mm 1.7 pancake lens for the format and sales started soaring. The best implementation of this lens is on the Pen EP-3. The camera provides really good image stabilization while the lens gives back high sharpness at an aperture almost guaranteed to ameliorate the need to go to nose bleed ISO's to capture everyday images. And, did I mention the high sharpness wide open?

It didn't take the manufacturers long to learn the lesson and now, Alpha-Blogger, Michael Johnston, has named the recently launched 45mm f1.8 Olympus Pen

lens as his "lens of the year." It's fast. It's sharp. It's cute and cuddly. And it works on more than one camera system. If Olympus have fatally shot themselves in their own foot the lens will work just as well on the Panasonic m4:3 camera offerings. (See points 5 and 6 above. These cameras may be all you need). Hurray for open systems. This time....

The 45mm was followed by an amazing 12mm (24mm equivalent) and, in the Panasonic camp, a Leica branded 25mm f1.4 that's gotten the kinds of lens reviews usually offered only for the most elite and expensive of optics. In fact, the one review I recently read was extremely boring. It basically said: "Sharp and perfect across the frame, wide open and stopped down. No weaknesses that we could see."

How popular is the use of prime lenses on the mirrorless cameras (including Sony's, Olympus and Panasonic)???? Leica is currently in an extreme backorder situation with nearly all of their "M" optics, and since M9 camera sales haven't followed the same curve it only stands to reason that those lenses are ending up on something. That something seems to be inexpensive mirrorless cameras. Great sensors coupled with exhilarating optics in small packages. Isn't that what the great documentary photographers always wanted?"

My take on the Fuji? : The new Leica. The Leica for this generation. All primes all the time. This camera is then next step from film cameras like the Contax G2. If they fixed the little gotcha's from the X100 operation controls this camera is destined to be the "go to" camera for pro's who don't do sports. (PWDDS). Can you say "fast maximum apertures."? That with a great sensor might just be the holy grail of the street shooting, take anywhere, walk about (not "photowalk") camera. It would also make a great travel camera.

*****

So, after seeing all the new stuff, and after having a GH2 for a week, which one am I going to run out and buy? None of the above. I'm liking this 4:3rds stuff and my next purchase will probably be one of these.

Small, nice EVF, nice form factor, great price, great sensor, really good higher ISO performance. And did I mention "great price."? If I buy anything at all it's bound to be more lenses. But for which system...?

Just a quick update as I looked around the web today.

By the way, since we're all way too focused on the smaller cameras lately, has anyone checked out what uber-flash master, David Hobby, is up to lately? Camera-wise? Yep. He plunked down for a medium format digital machine. Mamiya with a Phase One back and a light smattering of lenses. I look forward to hearing more: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2012/01/bailing-on-nikon-d4.html Check out how good he is at rationalizing stuff...

Cause for celebration. We've crested Three Million Pageviews here on the Visual Science Lab !!!!

2012-01-09T17:05:00.001-06:00

I started the Visual Science Lab blog on January 26, 2009. It was my way of clawing out from the isolation that seemed to be settling over photographers everywhere as a result of the giant recession. In just under three short years we've gone from a tiny handful of readers to over thousands of visitors every day. I'm officially celebrating (I'll have a cookie with my coffee today) that my blog has delivered over three million pageviews in that amount of time. I know that pageviews and visits are two different animals but I also know that my blog is on a lot of different feeds as well. Anyway, thank you for reading and thank you for clicking on the "followers" thing on the side. I'm hoping that more of you will take the plunge and become public members. I'd love to see the little counter click over to 1,000 before the end of the month.

Since you've watched the blog grow up I thought I'd post some images of Ben growing up as well. He's the guy that always gets dragged into the studio, when I should leave him to his homework, and gets used as a model for whatever lighting or lens test I happen to be interested in at the time.

I've also sprinkled in one of Amy (with camera) and a few of myself just for fun. Thank you! Happy New Year.

Amy hiding behind my favorite Kodak.

For a technology client in Scottsdale.

Take Bodhi Bike Downtown. Take Pictures. Drink Coffee. Eat Pizza. Come Home.

2012-01-08T19:59:00.001-06:00

Nikon V1 with 30-110mm lens. Loved the lipstick on the Nissan Leaf Demo person. She was happy to pose for a close up.

Nikon V1 with 30-110mm. Face Detection AF. A face to go with the lips.

Same Camera information. Context.

Same Camera Info. The weather was mild today. 2nd Street was busier than I've ever seen it during a Sunday afternoon.

Every side walk table was filled and the crowd was buzzing.

What's not to like about Eggs Benedict and mimosas?

The Barrista at Caffe Medici was very patient and very busy.

It was the Congress Ave. location. The cappuccino was perfect.

The in-lense IS was doing a great job at 1/15th of a second.

Caffe Medici patron catches me snapping a candid. Auto everything.

I think the Nikon V1 does really nice skin tones. Right out of the camera. And I think the 30-110mm lens is sweet.

Cups at the ready. Nice focus on the second cup. Right where I wanted it.

Yes. The Nikon V1 with the 30-110mm will do nice close up photos. This is one of those grills on the front of a ticket booth. I photograph it when I walk by. I'm waiting for it to change into something else.

I like urban art and I like hot dogs. This is on the side of "Frank's." It's a downtown restaurant that specializes in hot dogs. And it's really good.

V1 does signage.

It was a short trip downtown. I liked seeing a lot of other people riding their bikes around in the middle of the winter.

I didn't have much in the way of photographic intentions when I hoped on my ultra-hip Bodhi Bike (electric and human powered, two wheeled transportation) and blazed through the steep hills west of the city and down through the park. I was coming up to the railroad tracks that run perpendicular to Lamar Blvd. between Cesar Chavez and Second Street when I ran into my photographer friend, Andy. He was out walking with his small cameras and we decided to walk through downtown together.

I parked the bike in the parking garage at Whole Foods and we headed out. Five minutes later we ran into another mutual photographer friend, Frank, and altogether we wandered into downtown. Frank was using his Olympus EP3 and alternating between his 12mm lens and the 45mm 1.8. Andy was using two EPL1 cameras outfitted with a 20mm Panasonic 1.7 and the 45mm 1.8 Pen lens. I was the odd man out with my Nikon V1 and the 30-110mm lens.

We ended up at my favorite coffee bar, Caffe Medici, and renewed our caffeine dosages. We ventured over to the traveling, Nissan Leaf, demonstration near Frank's Hot Dog restaurant and then wound our way back to Sixth and Lamar. It was a cool, grey day with a really nice energy to it. We split up and I made my way back to Whole Foods for a slice of pizza and a glass of water. Then the bike ride back through the hills.

Didn't get much done today but it was so much fun to get out, see friends and relax. I'll try to do something constructive tomorrow. But fun counts just fine in my book.

An aside: I wrote column for TOP yesterday. It got comments. One comment was from a person writing from India who, essentially, took me to task for not making a definiitive choice between the Nikon V1, the Olympus Pen EP3 and the Panasonic GH2. He could not see why a professional photographer would ever need to own more than two cameras, total. He suggested that even one camera would be a month's worth of wages. I forget sometimes how privileged we are and how culturally contextual writing can be.

I'll fix it in post.

2012-01-08T17:17:00.000-06:00