One of the greatest strengths of Lightroom Classic is that its edits are none destructive and that the original images are not changed in the application. Instead the edits are stored inside Lightroom Classic in the catalog and applied at time of editing and only baked in when exported to an alternative file format, commonly JPG or TIF.

The catalog holds not only the edit recipes, but the physical location of the actual images, keywords, collection membership and other metadata. While the database is now old and far from optimal, it works well, if not particularly fast and has served users well.

Lightroom Classic supports the capability of creating, using and saving multiple catalogs, but only one at a time. The catalog model also necessitates the creation of a number of catalog supporting files, one example being the file holding previews of the edited image. All of these files are kept in the same directory / folder as the catalog file itself which ends in .lrcat and all are required for successful catalog usage.

The vast majority of Lightroom Classic users are best served by a single catalog. Back in the very early days of Lightroom Classic, some folks recommended multiple catalogs, more out of concern for database performance than any other reason. Professionals who contract to multiple clients may choose to have separate catalogs for each client. I do this myself, but it does create risk should the user not be paying attention to which catalog is being used at what time.

Lightroom Classic does not allow for more than one catalog to be open at one time, and does not allow for the same catalog to be opened on more than one computer at the same time. I hope that all Lightroom Classic users know this, but as Adobe is focused on cloud everything, it looks to many of us that Lightroom Classic has become the bastard stepchild. Recent bugs in releases demonstrate that Adobe has not maintained their quality commitment to Lightroom Classic.

The risk of multiple catalogs is that if you are not aware of which catalog is in use, you may import images, do edits, and perform other functions and then find after the fact that all your work is in the “wrong” catalog. Lightroom Classic does provide a function to import from one catalog to another and while it does work, the user does need to have a deep understanding of the Lightroom Classic infrastructure to make this successful.

Which brings me to my point. If you prefer to use Lightroom Classic, as I do and as do most professionals, instead of the cloud version, stick to one catalog only. Use collections (not folders) to segregate and manage your images. While the database structure is now ancient, a catalog with a million images is quite viable, I know from personal experience.

As noted you can have more than one catalog with Lightroom Classic. The pertinent question to ask before doing so is to identify the whys and benefits of making your life more complicated.

We have seen and continue to see a resurgence in the use of cameras that record images on film. It costs more per image, requires development to see the negative, which must then be scanned and converted to be edited. It’s a lot more time and work, so why is film growing?

I recently had a member of my photography club do a presentation on shooting with film. While I don’t think that every club member will go out tomorrow and engage in film photography, the level of interest was very high and the interaction with Simon, our presenter, was excellent.

Simon made a couple of what I think are truly salient points. The first is that images made on film look different from digital images. It’s my contention that this difference is missed a lot of the time, and in my opinion, he is absolutely correct.

Our digital sensors have incredible resolution. This gets magnified by the editing tendency to oversharpen and the overly aggressive use of noise reduction. While the images look just fine in the digital realm, when compared to film they are definitely crisper. If you prefer that, good on you, but there is a feel that you get from the slightly softer images shot on film as well as the contribution that grain makes to the image. While digital noise and grain are not the same thing in any way, digital fans still refer to noise as grain. So it goes.

While noise may increase with ISO, it follows a different curve than ISO does in film. Generally, a fast film is ISO 400 and if you push it to a higher ISO, it changes the development and rapidly increases the amount of grain. When we shot film, we pushed it because it was necessary to be able to get the image. I have the ability with my digital camera to make images, that I could not make with film and value that greatly, but those images are the exception, not the norm.

Film in addition to the nominal softening and the mood contribution of grain also has its own character. While no longer available, Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 look very different. This is also true of two ISO 400 black and white films, specifically Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X. The look of a film was a consideration for many film photographers. And like we find with digital, there were vendor camps that eschewed and denounced anything other than their faves. Tribalism is a normal thing in most humans, regardless of its value.

When I was a film photographer, for colour I shot mostly transparency film, aka slides. For black and white, it was all negative film. However I would choose at the time Kodak Vericolor III Professional (and its predecessor) for weddings and portraits specifically because of its look.

There are film emulation software options for digital photographers and even the best that I have found still look like digital with some kind of processing. As of now, I do not see digital processing achieving the look and feel of film.

Does this mean that all photographers need to rush out and embrace film, perhaps again? Of course not. However it benefits us all to see the strengths and yes the challenges of film and accept it as a means to your creative goals.

Until next time, I wish you good health and prosperity.

Hello all. I read this morning a very interesting article about how reading history, written prior to all the wokista redaction and rewriting is a superb method of understanding the past and appreciating what happened and how it influenced where we are today.

I concur, but would propose extending that proposition to those of us who practice the crafts of photography and videography.

A photograph or video is as we all understand, a capture of a moment or short period in time. I am not referring to cinema video of course as that is contrived by design, but the video that we may make on the cameras that we use to make still images.

These moments in time are freezes of what is then and what was to us in the future. We need only take time to invest in seeing the photographs of Dorothea Lange from the Farm Services Administration during the Great Depression, to be able to travel back in time and “be” if only for a few minutes then and there.

My friend Judy has really embraced drone video. She does a lot of seashore type of stuff that when she couples with music is relaxing and beautiful. It’s also a time machine for how the shoreline was when she made the video.

Anyone who lives near a shoreline or who has visited sites of shoreline erosion such as the Hopewell Rocks in Canada’s New Brunswick province can get a real sense of stepping back in time to what once was.

Indeed landscapes and particularly those including geological subject matter are wonderful time machines, but so to are photographs of people, family, friends, homes and the like.

In an interview, the Duffer brothers, creators of the, in my opinion, generally excellent show Stranger Things, emphasized how hard their set teams worked to create sets that evoked the nineteen eighties and the costume team also had to work to find or recreate clothing from the period.

We sometimes will look back on old photos of ourselves, family and friends and ask ourselves what we were thinking, but at the time, it was what it was and those photos are visual time machines to that period. Sadly, such images are often unappreciated for this capability until long after the time has past.

I find automotive design to be another kind of time machine, from the large rounded edges of the nineteen forties to the space faring look of the late nineteen fifties to later less attractive designs as strong indicators of the conscious of the period.

My point is not to forget to use your time machine on a regular basis to capture and store such things for historical reference and for future generations. An image or video made well today will maintain its strength decades from now.

Until we meet again, thanks for reading and my best to you all.

Hello folks,

I was doing some minor rearranging of my office and storage area and it spawned an article idea that I realized might be of interest to you.

You’ve heard me say / write on many occasions that a photograph is not finished until it is printed. Ideally that means framed and on the wall, but space can be an issue, and others in the household may be less amenable to the idea. They’d be wrong of course but as Vonnegut would say “say it goes”.

For many folks who like prints, the solution is a print house. Whether that is a low cost option like a print jobber who makes nice print or a dedicated photograph printer like WhiteWall (https://whitewall.ca) either can serve the needs / wants pretty well. A higher end print shop, will often offer a small selection of different papers and that is where I want to spend some time, but for the sake of clarity, leveraging paper options tends to live in the realm of making your own prints at home.

This isn’t a treatise on picking a photographic printer. If that topic is of interest, please let me know. What I want to converse on today is photographic paper, specifically the paper surface.

Let’s Talk Paper

For years, resin coated papers were poo-pooed by some because of shorter longevity and limited surface types. While surface types are still limited, the longevity of RC papers is now typically thirty years, more than enough for most. So I am going to jump that discussion, and get to surfaces. What we all discover is that surface variety increases dramatically when we look at non-resin coated papers.

There’s a caveat here. Non RC papers allow the ink to soak into the paper, not lie on top of the resin level. This means a longer drying and set up time and that means that you really should never judge a print by what it looks like as it comes off the printer. Give it a day, two days is better before passing judgement. This presumes of course that you have predetermined the colour and brightness correct before making your “final” print. I’ve written about this before, but if anyone wants a review, just shoot me an email.

Finding a wide variety of surfaces requires either a sample pack, a sample card set or a visit to a serious photography shop that understands printing and carries the higher end papers. While the printer maker papers are not bad, some quite nice, they are bought off rolls from other makers. In fact, there is only one photo paper maker left that still makes their own paper from start to finish and that is Hahnemuhle.

Let me say up front that I receive no commission or reward from this company. After years of doing fine art printing, I can say that I have never been disappointed and that I have found the widest surface variety from Hahnemuhle.

Surface Types

Mostly we are familiar with gloss, matte and some kind of semi-gloss surface such as a lustre. These surfaces have no texture to speak of, in the manner that the paper texture contributes to the look of the print.

Where the magic happens is when the texture is rich enough that it contributes visually to the look of the print. A simple example is canvas, which gives a sense of depth and richness akin to what we would see from an oil painting. Printing on canvas is easier today than ever, and there are commercial stretcher kits that make preparing the canvas for display simple if one just follows the instructions.

But let’s go beyond canvas. It’s hard to describe a texture without seeing and feeling it. As fine leather makers will talk about the “hand” of different leathers, so to do fine art printers. Years ago, my friend Paul represented Hahnemuhle in Canada through their distributor and he and spent time in coffee shops feeling the hand of different papers. We probably looked like weirdos to others, but the feel along with the look is important in selecting a paper.

We also understand that different surfaces serve different subjects better than some others. Particularly if your love is black and white printing, the surface texture really becomes powerful due to the lack of the distraction of colour.

I enjoy textured papers and have at least one box or roll of each of the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Matte papers. Note that textured papers are almost entirely matte finished meaning that they look great behind glass when hung. Glossy and lustre can have internal reflections between the print and the glass and while it won’t bother some, I really dislike it and so don’t do it. You be your own judge.

From the fine texture of Museum Etching and Albrecht Durer to the deep textures of Torchon or German Etching, I find options for surfaces that support the story of the image. Sure it’s a bit more work, more test prints and yes a higher cost for these superlative papers, but for folks like myself, it’s completely worth the investment considering that these prints will long outlive me and hold up without fading or colour change.

If you want to try this out for yourself with your own photo printer, you are encourage to get the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Textured Sample Pack. It’s a very inexpensive way to discover textured fine art papers.

In the past I have discussed different ink types. This is defined by the printer maker. For simplicity we will encounter dyes (coloured but transparent) or pigment (coloured and not transparent - like paint). Lower cost printers will use dye, true photo printers will use pigments. I and most fine art printers only use pigments, but if your printer uses dye ink, don’t let that stop your experimentation. Pigments tend to last longer but may not have as much pop to colours. Some printers include a clear coat option, others don’t. To me it doesn’t matter for reasons forthcoming and none of my printers have this clear option so I don’t miss it. If you are doing fast prints on RC papers where the ink sits on the resin, the clear coat can serve as a gentle protectant. This doesn’t mean that fibre based, linen based or plant based papers don’t need protecting, but remember that they absorb the ink so it’s a different song.

When I print on a fine art paper, I let the print dry and setup for several days. Then I spray on a coat of Hahnemuhle Print Varnish. Varnishing comes from oil painting used as a surface protectant and in today’s world also as a protection against the denigrating effect of UV light. The only hassle is that the stuff is hard on your lungs so where a mask and spray in an area with decent airflow.

Mounting and Display

Even if the print is only going to live in a portfolio case, I always will mount the print to some hard matte board or more often acid free foamcore. You can get this in preset sizes or buy the cutters and learn to cut it yourself. Matte board is better but harder to work with. If you go with foamcore, thinner is better than thicker because dents are less visible.

I have had enormous success with the non-toxic and acid free 3M Photo Mounting Spray adhesive. It has a medium set up time so you get the orientation right and then I use a firm rubber roller from the art supply store to ensure that there are no air bubbles left behind.

Once mounted the print is ready for the portfolio or the wall in a frame. But there is one more step I encourage consideration of.

A frame in the old days was its own work of art with wide edges with complex and beautiful carvings in the wood and often a really spectacular finish. While still used for paintings, these frames have fallen out of favour for photographs, but as always, make up your own mind.

I like very minimalist frames, really just to get the photo a bit off the wall. For me, simple is best, but make your own call. Where I find myself much more often is the use of a matte around the photograph, to create separation from the frame and the wall finish. Use of mattes around the photograph can also resolve issues between the paint colour on the wall and the colour or lack thereof in the print. Many frames include a sheet of glass as a protector. It’s in your best interest to get frames that use UV resistant glass to prevent fading and colour shift.

If you print to the so-called standard sizes, you can find precut mattes reasonably easy at a big box art supply store. Some of these stores will even custom cut mattes for you which is worth the cost unless you are prepared to buy your own matte cutter and learn to use it which will involve a lot of learning curve and material loss. I have my own matte cutter, but have to mentally prepare myself for its use, and spend some dedicated time with scrap pieces to get my cutting skills back to where I need them to be. A nice matte can either have a square edge or a diagonal cut, whichever serves the image best and some mattes have multiple layers to create separation layers in the matte itself. This can be very powerful so long as it does not take away from the image. The job of the matte and the frame is to keep the viewer in the photograph not to distract.

Wrapping Up

So to summarize, I advocate trying papers with different surface textures to learn which textures work best for what types of images you create. Then mount them so they don’t wrinkle or crease and hold their shape. Then consider a matte to extend the size of the image and further create viewer isolation from distracting backgrounds and finally if going on the wall, use of a frame that displays the image well but doesn’t distract.

Thanks as always for reading. Send questions or requests to me via the link on the page. Until we speak again, be well and enjoy what you do.

Like all of us, days are up and down, and while elements of the past weeks have been challenging, this week I received two separate gifts that raised my spirits enormously.

I received two photographic books from dear friends this week arriving a day apart.

Long time friend Becki sent me a copy of her newest book Candid.Color. Most of you will know Becki from her sharing of incredible street photography, most often rendered in black and white. For this book, Becki leapt from her comfort zone to revisit street photography shot in and finalized in colour. Even today, colour is not the common medium for street, yet Becki stepped into colour street with full intent. The images have been made around the world but all are what one could put in the “street” box. Perhaps even more relevant is the clear diligence that Becki put into the flow of the book moving through a variety of thematic concepts and still binding them together regardless of photographic location. Every photo has a “look”, a look I attribute to how Becki “sees”. She does an exemplary job of really seeing what is there, and capturing not just a primary subject but ensures that there is exactly the right level of context to support the story that lies within the image to inspire the viewer to engage. It’s a superb act of work.

My dear friend, Greg sent me a copy of his most recent book, which basically tells the story of what he does as a photographer. Greg photographs anything that strikes his pleasure, regardless of where he is, and always imparts his seeing onto his images. He creates distinct images of things that could otherwise be commonplace, making them stand out and separate from thousands of other images of what could be the same subject made by others. Like Becki, this is a profound application of what and how Greg sees that is captured and displayed by his artwork. Greg’s work has a look as well, sometimes highly emotional, sometimes with almost childlike wonder and is definitely outside the “norm”.

Decades ago, RUSH wrote a song called The Camera Eye. I always identified very closely with Neil Peart’s lyrics but in the case of that song, I think he got it wrong. It’s not the camera eye that matters, it’s the photographer’s eye that counts and the work of both these great artists is what makes their photography books stand out.

Neil also wrote in Vital Signs, that “everybody got to deviate from the norm. Everybody got to elevate from the norm.” If the norm, by definition, is the average, I cannot agree more. True artists, who are true to themselves, not to some group think, corporate overlord or some other kind of authority by being true deviate from the norm and their work stands out accordingly. Not everyone will like it and whether someone else likes it or hates it is in the context of true art completely irrelevant as far as I am concerned.

I have often said that a photograph is not finished until it is printed. I’d take that a step further by saying a collection of prints are incomplete until they are laid out and flowed in a photographic book. Fortunately, tools like the Blurb tool in Lightroom Classic has the foundation for books already done and it is thus easier than in the past to produce a photo book. Perhaps you should consider doing your own.

Hello all. A couple of weeks back a member of my club named Simon did a fabulous presentation on why in the digital age he chooses to shoot on film.

It’s certainly not because film is trendy, although is appears to be. In fact, Simon states straight up that film is not as sharp as digital and acknowledges that film has less than half the dynamic range of even inexpensive digital sensors. So one might ask why he, and others, would choose a medium that is more work, less automated and produces outcomes of allegedly lesser quality.

My interpretation of his rationale and heavily weighted by own, is because of CRAFT. Specifically, the craft of making images that matter to the maker and perhaps to other viewers. I recognize that my own position of not caring what other’s opinions might be is an outlier, but I don’t think it impacts the decision.

Simon takes the position and I agree, that images made on film, feel more “real”. Less exacting, perhaps less technically precise, smoother in flow and having greater “legs” over time.

He also does not align with a single film format. Yes he shoots 35mm film, but also 120mm roll film and 4x5 sheet film. He understands and his work demonstrates that true medium format in the 6x6 cm or 6x7 cm frame has a different look entirely from a digital medium format camera that may only actually deliver 6x4.5 cm frames if that. There are medium format named digital cameras whose sensor size is quite a bit smaller than that and while fine products, they cannot deliver the look of true medium format.

When it comes to 4x5 inch sheet film, digital cannot get there. No matter what you do with a sensor, unless it is also 4x5, digital will never look like or feel like 4x5 film. We also don’t find the true value prop of sheet film because digital cannot deliver tilt, swing and shift like a sheet film camera. I do have a Hasselblad digital camera and the tilt shift adapter for it and while it is excellent, it doesn’t deliver the feel of what I can take on my 4x5 on plain old sheet film.

Film is also naturally constraining. ISOs are uniformly low and even with a two stop push, you might get to ISO 1600 before the grain falls apart. We are accustomed to using high ISOs in our digital cameras, a wonderful thing, but also a means to avoid some of the craft of making an image. Film cameras don’t support super high shutter speeds, or super long shutter speeds for that matter, and there are considerations and constraints with chemical based options that never appear in digital. A film shooter might understand reciprocity failure, most digital shooters have likely never had to concern themselves with it.

Thus, while some may say that film and digital are just different roads to the same outcome, the facts say that this is not true. I’m not saying that digital should be dropped at all. For someone who started as a film photographer, there are many benefits that digital brings, but for some people, it is too fine, too clinical and takes away from the craft of image making.

Film is definitely more complex. Not just in the capture of the image onto film, but also in how the film is developed, and how those negatives or positives get turned into physical prints. Prints are the natural and optimal outcome for any image as we all know. Film is also more limiting. A roll of film in a 35mm camera will be rated for 36 frames. Maybe you get 1 or 2 extra, but every frame counts and the data shows us that film photographers make a lot fewer images per unit time, and because of the intent and planning involved, generally have a much higher success rate. In my case, and in Simon’s we can say that a single image made on 4x5 sheet film occupies about 30 minutes of our time per image. That’s a lot more thinking and planning than on digital. When I started as a wedding photographer, shooting 120 and 35, I might expose three rolls of 120 for a total of 30 shots and 1 or 2 rolls of 36. In the digital world, a thousand shots at a wedding is not unusual. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can say that for me, that massive increase in volume did not mean more better images to cull down to an album, it only meant more images to have to sort through.

Film is naturally constraining. It is certainly more demanding of the photographer. If you find yourself burnt out in your photography or feel that it’s been quite some time since you crafted an image that you really love, it might be worth your while to get yourself an old used film camera and see how it helps you see and perform your craft differently.

Hi folks. As many of you know, I am a big fan of the products from Affinity. Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher are go to applications for me, with Designer and Publisher completely replacing their Adobe competitors and Photo taking more and more of my work that would normally just go to Photoshop.

The bundle was always a great deal at about $100 CAD for all three. Earlier, the company that makes the Canva drawing tool bought Affinity and I became quite worried. Canva’s free edition is quite good, but the serious edition is a subscription model and I am not a fan of ANY subscription models as a generalization. Lots of folks love Canva, I confess I find the UI more confusing than useful.

So I had a few fears. First that Affinity products would turn into the dreaded subscription model that ticks me off. Second that the so usable user interface would be screwed up making it more “user friendly” or as I in my cynical moments refer to as moron friendly. Third, I was scared that the excellent Affinity products would get slathered in AI bullshit.

I am very pleased that I have been proven wrong in every case.

The new Affinity combines the three former separate products into a single integrated application that is available for Macintosh or Windows. You do need to create a free Canva ID to get it. And that’s it. The entire package has no costs associated with it. No cloud storage, no AI surcharges, just great tools as a truly amazing price.

If you are a Canva Pro subscribers, you do get AI stuff that can be leveraged from Affinity. I’m not and see no value in AI stuff so don’t care.

Now I am a long time Affinity customer, and have dutifully paid to stay current. With everything now free, what does that mean for my investment? Affinity has negotiated with a massive type house and registered users of prior versions will receive a massive type library at no cost in the coming months. I do get fonts with Adobe subscriptions, but I find them Adobe centric and so rarely engage. If the Affinity fonts work only in Affinity app so be it, but if available in other apps as well, that will be a huge win.

I have also been informed that there is an iPad version of the new Affinity app coming to be available early in 2026. It’s not ready yet, but prior versions were superb and I expect no less on the new version.

Does it sound too good to be true? Did to me, but I have downloaded and installed the new Affinity and there have been no surprises so far. You can get your free copy at affinity.studio if you want to give it a try. Affinity is not trying to be Lightroom Classic, it’s a deep editing tool doing both vector AND pixel level editing and all with a common file format. I’m enthused and you might be inclined to give the product a go.

Please become a member on Patreon to help support this channel. A big thanks to all the existing Patreon members! Send in comments or questions, I read and respond to all. If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please use the link on the main page as it pays me a small commission and does not cost you anything to do so. Thanks again and we will see each other again soon.

Hey folks, last time I wrote about using your tripod as a compositional tool. There were the expected response themes, either great idea, I should do that more or I don’t carry a tripod, it’s too cumbersome and gets in the way of my creativity.

Whatever you choose, you’re right for you.

Dead Centre IS Deadly

I often quote my friend Rick Sammon’s compositional guideline that dead centre is deadly. What I have apparently failed to do effectively is explain why, so let’s explore that this time.

I enter this topic on the presumption that you want to make images that are interesting, that catch the viewer’s eye and that encourage the viewer to spend more time in the photograph, turning it from a snapshot into a better shot.

Visual Tension and Movement

When as a creative we place the subject dead centre, the viewer’s eye goes right to the subject. And stays there. This is the definition of stale or stagnant. There’s no sense of visual flow that encourages the viewer to explore the rest of the image and to see what contributes to the primary subject to make the experience more interesting. While we may have appreciated the dime store postcards we saw in our youth, for the most part they encouraged the one subject dead centre model and so are neither memorable or interesting because there is nothing for the viewer to explore beyond the primary subject. The perfect symmetrical balance kills any visual tension, whereas placing the primary subject in a different position, creates visual tension and keeps the viewer engaged.

Predictability

The challenge of dead centre is that it can look too symmetrical. Where symmetry may be a specific goal for a specific image, psychology teaches us that asymmetry is far more interesting and engaging to the human mind. Thus, an image that is overly symmetrical will look unplanned, boring and staid. Judges in photo exhibitions (and I am not saying you should listen to such creatures) will have a field day eviscerating such images for poor composition and being oversimplified. Moreover, the positioning leaves the subject to place to go, and no real sense of environmental context further creating the mental sense of staid or dead.

Missing Context

Context is what makes an image shine. Context is there to support the subject and to aid in the creation of the visual story. Without context, you have an Amazon ad image. It’s just a thing. By staying away from dead centre you include the environment and perhaps other compositional tools, like negative space, contrasting elements, more information supporting the story or even over used elements such as leading lines.

Exceptions

Placing a subject dead centre doesn’t always means a dead image. Architecture, reflections and balanced portraits will often benefit from the symmetry created. Perhaps you are intending for minimalism in the piece of work so you want no context or other elements. Keeping the frame full with a centred portrait can create a sense of intimacy. And of course you may be working to deliver a particularly graphic oriented image that requires balance and geometry.

You’re the creative, do what you wish, but if you look at your images and find the majority have dead centre subjects, it’s probably a good exercise to work on use of other compositional tools to get out of that centre rut.

Please become a member on Patreon to help support this channel. A big thanks to all the existing Patreon members! Send in comments or questions, I read and respond to all. If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please use the link on the main page as it pays me a small commission and does not cost you anything to do so. Thanks again and we will see each other again soon.

In this article, I want to discuss what I believe is the most powerful aid to composition skills development.

We are all aware of, or at least have heard of, the myriad “Rules of Composition”. Any can be very helpful when used in a manner appropriate to the content, yet I see many images that demonstrate no application of compositional guides and others that exist soley as examples of compositional guides that don’t actually add anything to the image.

Compositional skills are not permanent. They degrade without use and application. Many photographers feel a lot of internal pressure when making an image, and composition does tend to be one of the elements that goes out the window first. Due perhaps to the low cost of storing an image, perhaps the adoration for burst mode or perhaps being consumed by some form of automation, we all tend to come home with far more images than we will actually use. Whether one keeps the ones we don’t use is a personal decision and I will avoid that topic as invariably I piss someone off.

The most important thing to consider when focusing on composition is to slow down. Perhaps your subject does not allow this, and that is fine, but then it is the wrong subject for building compositional skill. A tool that always buys time is a tripod.

The Right Tripod

The right tripod isn’t about a brand, or what you paid for it. It comes down to some simple criteria that we should all be aware of.

• The tripod head and the leg set may come as a kit, but you should be able to select each independently of the other

• The tripod leg set should be of sufficient length to reach your mid chest without engaging a centre column if one exists

• The tripod leg set should be made of a vibration retardant material. That means a quality carbon fibre weave

• The tripod head if you are making stills must be a ball head with smooth movements and precision locking mechanisms

• The head should use the industry standard ARCA plate mounting system. Proprietary mounts are on their best day a serious pain in the ass

• The pan and tilt functions on the head should be separate controls and ideally there will be a drag control on the tilt portion to allow for fine movements

• A built in level is handy, but you really want the level either in the camera or in one of those cheap levels that mount to the hot shoe. Levels on a tripod head can be hard to see and hard to achieve. Levels on a leg set deliver no practical value at all

• The tripod leg set should be specified to support at least 1.5x the weight of your camera and heaviest lens

• The tripod ball head should be specified to support at least 1.5x the weight of your camera and heaviest lens. These capacities are not additive

• The tripod should be easy to extend and to collapse and be light enough that you will use it and take it with you. If not, it’s the wrong tripod. A tripod in the closet has no value at all.

• An L bracket for your camera is not mandatory but is integral if you will be changing the sensor orientation from horizontal to vertical or vice versa. Flip heads are universally a poor solution

Placing Your Tripod

The tripod placement must never define the image. Your intent for the image should define the angle of view required / desired and the tripod merely exists as a stable platform for compositional change.

Also remember that the tripod while affected by gravity is not stuck in a gravity well, If you don’t like what you can see and compose, move the tripod to a different spot.

A Tripod as Compositional Tool

Now that you have your tripod and camera placed to suit your intent, stop and step away. Look at your subject / scene and note in some way all the things that make up the overall shot.

What is there that must be dominant to the viewer? Is there clutter or crap that will take attention away from the subject? If it cannot be easily removed, you will need to move. Depending on anything for removal after the fact is risky. It might work, but it also means you get the lazy stamp in your photo workbook.

Now look through the viewfinder or the LCD, whichever you prefer and view your composition. Are there composition rules that will help the image without becoming the image. Leading lines are handy but too often BECOME the subject and that is massively boring. Does your placement put the subject dead center? As my friend Rick Sammon reminds us, “dead center is deadly”. Sure there are times when it works, but the probability of dead center placement success is very low indeed. Is the angle of view of the lens delivering what you want to achieve or are you going to have to resort to lots of work in post? Getting your composition right in camera is a goal we should all aspire to achieve.

Now think about the exposure that will best deliver your intent. I’ve already talked about how the meter’s recommended exposure may be the wrong decision for your goal. Yes storage is cheap. Which leads to bracketing. Useful in a pinch, but lazy overall. Read the light and expose for your primary subject. Everything else is ancillary.

This is also a good time for what Rick calls “border patrol”. Walk your eyes along all the edges to check for things making intrusions into the shot that will detract from it. Move them, or move you, or if very small, note to remove in post.

Now make the image. This is tough because I challenge you to think like you are using an 8x10 view camera. That means you get one shot, not 103. Certainly if something fails badly, make another image, but don’t be sloppy and plan on “fixing things in post” or shooting 20 of the same thing, believing that one will be that much better than the next. Your goal should be to get it right in one, because when you are in the situation where time is limited and you have to work fast, you will only have the time to get it right the first time.

Wrapping Up

Go on. Try it. I challenge you, or in the vernacular of the six year old, I double dog dare you. This is important skills development work and anything worth doing is worth doing properly.

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My bro Sam and I talk about the craft and the motivation to make images a lot. In our recent time together, he said something that has been percolating in my memory for a bit and I thought it would be an interesting article.

Photographers talk about cameras. A lot. Some think that the camera makes the image. I’m sad for those folks, because the camera only stores the image that the mind makes. Sure there has been an ongoing evolution of image storage over the last 150 years, but really that is what the camera’s primary job is.

All the doodads, geegaws and automation are tools, whose purpose it to make the storage of the image easier for the user, and while some (me) find a lot of the automation and AI nonsense is an impasse not a boon to the storage of the image because of excessive irreversible processing, in the long run, that only matters at the individual level. Or doesn’t matter at all.

What I find most photographers forget to talk about is the lens that gets the image into the camera. I know folks who sweat the glass and folks who like to use now very old lenses with their modern cameras to obtain a specific look. It’s not the look of the old camera, it’s the look of the older glass.

For me, I like simple. Zooms are a huge boon to most everyone and I certainly own and use them, but for maximum creative control, I prefer the natural constraints of a prime or as I knew them fixed focal length lens. Zooms alter the angle of view depending on focus distance. It’s a fact, that most folks are unaware of. A 200mm FFL is always the same angle of view regardless of distance between lens and subject. Does anyone really care? Only the individual knows for sure. What I do know that is true for me is that I want to be in as much control of image creation as possible with as little automation as possible. Your mileage likely varies.

Lenses today, as a generality, are optically as good as anything that came before, and even cheap offshore lenses are now surprisingly sharp with decent contrast and solid coatings.

However, I can take a 1959 Minolta 35mm f/2 Auto Rokker X lens and compare the unaltered image with a 2000s Canon 35mm f/1.4L lens and the image will look subtly different. And the Zeiss 35mm f/1.4 lens on my Leica has a different look again. This difference comes from lens design, glass used, type of multicoating, and overall construction. I will say that the old Minolta lens and the much newer Zeiss lens have far more robust construction than the Canon lens. That so far has not had any impact on image quality, but the feel of the precision of the build has a psychological impact.

Do you need to source and use only older lenses? Of course not. Even if we focus solely on the craft of making images and ignore taking pictures completely, your intent and attention contribute the most, prior to any automation, stacking, homogenizing or other “fixes” that you have no control over. However, it’s all in the lens. For everything the camera does, the image is created in the mind and transmitted to the storage box by the lens. Thus do I conclude that the lens is more important than the camera?

All other considerations being equal, the lens is more important every time.

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A bit delayed due to a hectic week. I was in Toronto on Friday for a couple of good reasons and spent most of the day with my older better looking brother Sam. He will be traumatized to hear we are related, because we aren’t, but that’s how I see him.

He asked me why I was not making images for myself for the last while, sticking solely to photography for clients. A good question, and after consideration, I admitted I was feeling like I’d already done it and was bored. Over the course of the day walking around the Museum and the Yorkville area, Sam reminded me of what my inspiration Alfred Eisenstadt is known to have said, that images are all around you, you just have to see them.

So I made the effort.

I found for myself, that landscapes, architecture, close up and most of what I have done for years and with some success had no interest to me, but the people doing their jobs did. I was less inspired by people just sitting around, drinking overpriced beverages and trying to look pretty, but the people working were starting to click in my brain. I had no camera with me as I personally don’t consider a smartphone to be a camera, your mileage on that topic may vary. And perhaps not having a camera with its natural demand to be used and the subtle pressure to make images, allowed me to see what was right in front of me.

It was the young woman pruning bushes and cleaning up ornamental topiary. It was the young Somali gentlemen cleaning detritus from in front of a condominium building. It was the older fellow having a spirited argument with himself (no earbuds visible). It was the pretty young woman who was working so hard to be noticed and receive approving looks from others. It was the number of people in a crowded downtown with their massive dogs. It was the lineup to overspend on corporate coffee when independents were readily available, but lacking the fancy logo on their paper cups.

There were images worth making all around me. And for me, they were all people. People doing their jobs, not a one making endless selfies of itself. There were those of course, but their obvious narcissism turns me off and I don’t count those folks. Your mileage may vary.

So thanks a ton Sam. I may even charge the battery in my now old Leica M and bring it with one lens with me when next I must venture into the big city, a place I do not enjoy going to or being in.

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Hello all. I realize that this topic is only timely for readers in the Northern Hemisphere but it’s top of mind, so my apologies to readers for whom fall colours are not a thing.

Look through your photo library and have a look at how many fall colour scenes you already have. Then compare that on the number that are printed and on your walls. No need to tell me the numerical ratio.

For those who photograph fall colours, we are drawn to do so by both the colour change (because it’s different) and because of the change in the angle of the sun which produces a much nicer light and creates a more effective balance of light and shade.

You may be familiar with the quote from one of my personal heroes, Professor Albert Einstein. Einstein is reputed to have said that if you do the same thing over and over expected different results, you may need to seek help from a mental health professional.

Actually I cleaned that up a bit.

So when you decide to go make fall colour images, decide up front NOT to do the same thing as you always do, which is based on some fairly straightforward data analysis is a landscape, shot with a wide angle lens, sometimes, but not nearly often enough, using a polarizer filter.

I’ve shot more of these than I care to admit, and none are on my walls. Mostly because they look the same as every other fall colour shot. Spell b-o-r-i-n-g.

Change things up.

My proposal and challenge to you is not to make fall colour images using a wide angle lens. Instead take one or both of two different lenses.

The first being the longest focal length telephoto that you have access to. Shoot so tight and so close that you only see a small portion of the larger scene and now compose for patterns, light and shade, colour transitions of any kind and duplicating myself, keep it really tight.

The second being a macro lens that at least delivers 1:1 magnification. If you already own a set of extension tubes, take them as well. Now focus on (pun intended) on the internal framework structure of a single leaf. You are looking for the segments that hold the parts between segments, colour shifts, faults in the leaf, pores in the leaf and if you are particularly lucky some fauna on the leaf for interest and context. If the leaf you like is still on the tree (best), it’s ok to remove it. Nature will do so in short order anyways and if it is the colour that is really driving the subject, get it before it falls and the internal sugars oxidize into brown. Alternatively, use a fallen leaf. You’re the artist, you do you.

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Hello folks. I hear frequently from photographers that they saw this incredible scene and made a photography but then felt that the photograph didn’t capture what they saw and are while not completely dissatisfied have determined that something is missing.

When we spend time reviewing the image, we commonly come to the agreement that the image lacks the depth, that the photographer saw before making the image.

Exactly. But why?

Humans have depth perception because we have binocular vision. We don’t actually see in 3D, in objective reality, we have stereoscopic vision. We see two different things and our brains bring the two together to provide depth vision.

If we do a couple of simple exercises we also discover that when we look at something, only one distance is perfectly sharp while elements farther away in front or behind are soft. If we bring our attention to one of those elements what is soft changes. Humans do not see with massive depth of field, but often think that they do. To quote a very old National Lampoon skit, “wrong again honey”.

I suspect that you are starting to see the issue at hand. Too much depth of field.

What? But we always want tons of depth of field, don’t we? Of course we don’t. If we make a portrait, all of us know that the only focus point is the closest eyeball. We also tend to use wider apertures to put the background out of focus so it does not distract. Depending on the lens used and the distance between lens and subject, we might even find that the tip of the nose is out of focus and certainly the front of the ears have gone soft.

It is this conscious use of limited depth of field that is what gives the portrait depth and makes it look like it has depth. Certainly lighting, posing and other elements are contributors, but it was that decision to shoot close with a longer focal length and the lens wide open that creates depth. Why is the 85mm f/1.2 so often called the portrait lens? Because when used in tight and wide open, it creates depth in the portrait.

Now let’s go to the landscape where I hear this question raised most. The first “error” is using an inappropriate focal length. I know that camera shops will tell you that you need a wide angle lens for landscapes. You can certainly do so, but the massive depth of field at pretty much any aperture will provide a large field of view, but it also provides a large field of view with little to no depth. Since when you the human looks at a landscape with your Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball, the whole scene is never in sharp focus, when your image is, you see unconsciously that it doesn’t look right.

Now if we take the position that all photographs only have a single critical subject and that everything else is there to provide context, which will be discussed in a future article, then why do we seek so much depth of field. If the thing that attracts me is an acacia tree on a plain, silhouetted by a sunset from behind distant mountains, what must be in focus?

Clearly the acacia tree is the subject must be in focus. What about the grasslands in front of the tree? They can be soft with sharpness increasing where the tree is. What about the mountains in the far distance? They should be soft to create depth, not tack sharp.

This representation of soft becoming tack sharp at the primary subject then getting softer as the actual distance behind the subject gets greater, is what your eye and brain see when you focus on the acacia tree. And now the photograph more accurately represents what you were actually seeing but consciously chose to ignore when making the image.

In serious photography, you get to decide where the focus point is and how much depth of field to use. To get the most accurate representation of your subject as the eye actually sees it, you need less depth of field than you have been taught.

Less is actually more.

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Hello folks.

I thought it was a reasonable time to revisit the idea of composition. I promise not to drown you in rules because that’s been done so much by so many it could make you ill.

What I want to cover instead is the idea of what makes an effective composition. Sure we can just hammer a rule on something and be on our way but that doesn’t reveal the why of composition as part of your craft as an image creator.

Why Worry about Composition?

Let’s suppose that you don’t play in the fool’s game of photographic contests. Let me be clear, I think competitions are mostly destructive and only really serve the substantial egos of the judges and act as a source of your best work for no cost, no attribution and no value to you. Contests talk about gaining “exposure”. Exposure does not pay the rent. Every serious creative knows that working for “exposure” is a fool’s game with no chance of winning or even scoring.

So if not for competition, why worry about composition?

Joy. Pleasure. The fact that your image gets viewed for longer than the 2 seconds granted in today’s idiotic world that is focused on volume, not quality.

If you make an image and after a month has passed you can look at it critically and still say you love it, that’s going to be due in a very large part to your work in composing the image. Sure you may have mentally followed some of those composition “rules” that you have heard ad infinitum and have stored mentally, and that is not a bad thing, if you use them as guidelines to be applied at your choice and not by rote.

The outcome of successful composition is first that you like the created image. You will find that you may not have had to do a lot of repositioning in post. That’s a good sign. While I believe that cropping is one of the most useful tools available to us, if you have to crop every image to make it pleasing, that’s on you. I see a lot of flower, bird and critter photos where the subject is dead centre. The image is typically sharp, well exposed and well processed, but it doesn’t hold the viewer’s eye because as my friend and superb educator Rick Sammon has said (and proven) dead centre is deadly. Is that a rule? It’s a guide. A guide that happens to be true most of the time. So before making the image at all, check your viewfinder or LCD and ask yourself is this an image I will want to look at for some time. Will it engage viewers in some way other than being just another pretty picture?

Pretty is fine. But taking a picture of something that is already naturally pretty such as a flower or a kitten, isn’t lasting. But if you look at such images with an objective eye, you will find that the ones that stick with you have a solid composition that keeps your eye in the image.

And really, isn’t that what we all want? For ourselves and other viewers to look at our work and spend some time with it? For it not to be disposable? With over 2 billion pictures being taken daily, and over 99% of them forgotten while being seen, as a creative is that where you want to be?

I don’t think so.

Composition is not the image. It is a critical tool in MAKING an image. You know what to do, now focus on that.

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When we photograph, we see our subject and its environment from our visual and mental perspective. This is both normal and expected. There is nothing wrong with it at all. But what if you want to try something completely different?

It’s challenging to do, but the only thing you require is an open mind and of course your imagination. A camera is necessary, but can get in the way while you build this approach.

Let’s say you have a pet in the home. In the past I had the joy of a series of half wolves, but I am older and lack the energy needed to keep such critters happy and so now have cats. There are about a million cat videos on the web that millions find fun.

But here’s the challenge. Make photographs from the cat’s perspective.

I don’t mean just getting to the cat’s position, although that is a start. Since cats are good examples of pets that have no interest in your opinion of where they sit, you may not have to lie on the ground to make images, which for some of us, is a good thing.

What does the cat “see”? It’s not what you see, so you have to think like you think a cat thinks. What gets a cat’s attention, other than food or sleep. What does the cat look for around it. Can you create a sense of what the cat is thinking and what it’s next action might be?

Tough stuff, but massively illuminating from a seeing perspective.

What about a flower? Lots of folks make flower images. Sadly most of them are boring and tedious, because flowers are generally naturally beautiful. What else is there? I am no flora biologist but I am aware of people who believe that plants have feelings and some form of awareness of their surroundings. How this works, I don’t know, but we know that flowers turn to face the sun as an example.

Now instead of making yet another flower image, BE the flower. What is the flower’s “eye” view? What does it “see”? What parts of the its environment are interesting to it?

I warned you, you need an open mind and IMAGINATION to achieve this kind of assignment. It’s less a question of can you do it, and much more, are you willing to make the effort to do it.

Wrapping Up

Creating images from the subject’s eye perspective is way outside the box, but doing so will open your own eyes to new photographic and creative opportunities.

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Hey everyone. We’re into August as I write this and other than two days in the last three weeks where the daily temperature was 24 degrees Celsius or less, it’s been a humid oven since late June.

I respect that some people love the heat and humidity but I am not one of them. Moreover what with the haze and way the light hits the planet at this time of the year, I look at August as the worst month for outdoor photography other than at sunrise or sunset. Other than those times, the light, to be polite, sucks.

Photograph Inside

I know some people hate photographing outside in the winter, but I like it. I prefer spring or fall, but prefer winter to August as the light is better. As photography always involves light and how you manage it, coming inside to the air conditioning and having time and the ability to completely control the light is a good thing.

Thoughts On Making Images

The one thing that I find missing when observing images and talking to students is the lack of attention to the light. What’s the direction? What’s the colour? What’s the quality can usually be answered after some thought but are rarely articulated quickly. Some would call this instinctive shooting, but there is nothing evolutionary that would build an instinct for considering these aspects of light, so instinct is at best, misaligned.

Making images indoors is very easy, takes little space and should be very inexpensive. If you already own a flash, that’s great but even if you fear or hate flash, you probably have access to a desk lamp. A quick trip to the dollar store will get you four pieces of white foamcore, and if you cook or bake, you probably have a roll of white parchment paper in a drawer. If not, hit your local grocery store. Oh and you’ll need some tape. White gaffer tape is best but plain old package tape works fine.

Tape up three sheets of foamcore to make a three sided wall. Set them on the fourth piece. You now have a white shooting box. Place your desklamp somewhere such that it lights the inside of the box. The white foamcore acts as reflectors so you only need ONE light.

Now put something inside the box. Think simple. A grapefruit has nice texture. Or a banana. Or a flower in a glass from the garden. Or whatever three dimensional thing that you want to use as an exercise subject for your project. When embarking on this as a learning or practice exercise, I am less concerned with what the subject is and more on how it will change as I change the light.

I used licensed images of food because it’s usually readily available and often brings interesting textures to your subject without a lot of work on your part.

Exercise steps

Choose an appropriate lens for the size of the subject and use depth of field preview or image simulation to get just enough depth of field for the subject but keep the box corners blurred.

Make photographs of the subject using the table lamp, moving it from place to place so the direction of light striking the subject changes with each image. Go left to right, up to down, really varying the position of the light. Don’t worry about white balance, set the camera to AWB and move on. Move the light closer. Move it farther away, and for each image SEE how the light changes the representation of the subject. I recommend making notes of the light position for each image to enhance your learning.

Once you’ve done that, loosely tape a piece of white parchment paper over the front of the desk lamp. This acts to spread the light out, what we call diffusion. Contrary to a lot of error on the Internet, it does not soften the light. Only changing the distance between the light and the subject can soften it.

Repeat all the movements of light placement that you did in the first sequence, again noting the placement of the light for each image.

Once that is done, hopefully there is an overhead light in the room where you work, or there is daylight coming through a window that is not hitting the subject directly. Take some parchment paper and make a single layer lid for your box. This creates an overcast day, without a colour cast.

Now make images but as the light is fixed, now move the subject around and make images to capture different impacts of the fixed light on your subject. This simple exercise teaches the criticality of photographer movement to find the best photographic position. Many photographers find a place to stand or sit and stick there like stuck in a gravity well. Don’t be that image maker.

Development

Presuming that you made good exposures in your shooting, bring your images into whatever you use for editing purposes. Edit the images for your pleasure from a crop and adjustment perspective but DO NOTHING to the white balance.

Now pick a few and make copies of them. With a copy, use only the blue/yellow white balance slider to alter the image to be under warm and cool light. How does the colour of the light change the feel or the story of the image? Make as many copies and different blue/yellow settings as you like but note what you did as part of your learning.

Now with fresh copies of the same or different images, instead of using the blue/yellow slider, try manipulating only the tint slider, moving towards magenta and towards green to get a very rough sense of what a change in tint does to the image, again noting what you did for each image.

Wrapping Up

I expect that you will not like every potential outcome. That’s fine, keep the ones that you kept at the beginning and put them in a collection or folder that you can easily find again for reference. Any photographer working on growth has a several of these things not for printing or sharing necessarily but as a record of time in virtual school lab work. We learn by the doing, not by the seeing or the hearing.

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I want to thank the few who took the time to offer their thoughts on getting out of the doldrums or not being engaged. I sincerely appreciate the work and effort provided and believe the responses will be useful for all at some point.

I should start by being clear that I live by the philosophy of objectivism. I understand that while many align with me on this, there are others who do not. For those, I hope that we can politely disagree, because my response to a detailed series of questions from a wonderful supporter will be driven by that moral philosophy.

For those who do not know, objectivism is a moral philosophy based on the fact that reality exists outside of consciousness. Reality is, regardless of what you pretend to think is real. Objectivism holds that rationality is the only means to acquire and build knowledge eschewing mysticism, faith, and emotions as valid tools of cognition. Objectivism holds that you are accountable for your own existence and that you do not exist to benefit another over yourself and that they do not exist to benefit you over themselves. It also holds that governments must be small and have the sole function of protecting citizens against threats whether foreign or domestic and otherwise get out of the way.

I preface the article with this, because not to do so, would be potential misinformation.

Solutions

My friend Sam, who has a couple of years experience on me suggests that when stuck, to go outside and just listen to the birds. For him it opens the mind, creates peace and allows him to move past all the sludge. This sounds like a very good thing.

My friend Gary has an album of photos that he spends time with when he gets stuck. The photos are of the type that engage is mind, to create mental stories about the circumstances, the time, the place, the people and to encourage him to ask what he was thinking when he made those images. Given how few people ever look at their older work, I thought that this was a very interesting approach.

Long time club member Heather suggested that doldrums can be broken by changing up who you go out to photograph with. If your common practice is to go out with the same people and it’s not working, go on your own, or with different people. If you typically go on your own, find a few people with different ways of seeing and head out with them.

My friend Michael took a different approach. His character is to listen actively, to think and to respond, often with questions to help the person solve the problem themselves. He’s a very smart fellow. He references a number of articles and posts on the subject of getting out of a rut and after removing the demand for the deliver of a commercial product from the conversation (because it is a very different challenge) he gets to the meat of his thoughts. I will post his questions and how I react to them.

What is the specific problem you are facing?

For me, it is that I often think that I’ve already been there done that, and have too many images in history that already do nothing for me, why do it again, on the Einsteinian principle of doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is insane. I am not seeing things that warrant a shutter squeeze.

Are you trying to force yourself to do something you think you should love when you have no actual interest in doing it?

Most likely yes. Mike’s response to a yes, is ok, walk away, take a break, do something else that does get your blood going. Your desire to make images will return or it won’t. There’s no clock attached. If forcing yourself is making you unhappy, stop forcing things.

Where is the pressure and expectation that you should be creating something coming from? Do you believe you are failing by not doing so? Is there a sense of guilt for not doing it?

Societies, cultures, faiths and despots learned years ago the manipulative power of fear, pain and guilt. All have used some or all at some point and many still use them all today. Fear of being ostracized, or having committed a so called sin, the pain of not being part of some arbitrary group, or the guilt of not delivering to some fake expectation. These are all manipulations and while we may recognize them when thrust upon us, we have been ingrained since childhood to believe that we deserve pain, fear and guilt and so don’t see it when we do it to ourselves. We are often our own worst enemy, digging, picking, slashing and carving at our own self-worth. A true objectivist has a face with no pain, no fear and no guilt, and when one does sense those things particularly when self-inflicted, the trauma is real.

If it is not making you happy. Stop doing it, or berating yourself for not doing it. Perhaps you will come back around, perhaps not, but whatever happens is ok.

Yup, that’s the one for me at least. I’ve done this for a long time, and trained hundreds of people and internally believe that I am failing if I don’t keep it up. You make your own determination. I’ve put my cameras aside for the moment for personal use. I will still do client work because that is a different thing entirely.

Wrapping Up

Please become a member on Patreon to help support this channel. A big thanks to all the existing Patreon members! Send in comments or questions, I read and respond to all. If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please use the link on the main page as it pays me a small commission and does not cost you anything to do so. Thanks again and we will see each other again soon.