From garden variety playground to arctic wasteland in the blink of an eye.

The image above is what sunsets in Austin look like on most days.  Especially in the winter when the sun's arc is lower.  Taken around 5pm just a few days ago it was a balmy and typical day here in the jewel of the southwest.  People were kayaking and paddle boarding on the lake and I was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt snapping photos after a day spent........snapping photos.

It was a nice day for sitting at one of the azure blue picnic tables at P.Terry's and munching fries and a veggie burger.  Don't worry, the fries are done in canola oil and the veggie burger buns are whole wheat.  Even the Dr. Pepper is "Dublin" Dr. Pepper, made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  People were happy and sassy.  Girl scouts were selling cookies and co-eds were riding their mopeds.  Just another day in paradise.  But then.........the "Arctic Blast" hit.

It came barreling in with 40 mile per hour wind gusts and frenetic slurps of rain.  The chatter of branches on my rooftop woke me from a deep sleep.  The dog was disquieted.  It was winter.  The brutal, weeklong endurance event that we dread here in central Texas.  I got up in the morning and checked the thermometer (actually, I don't have a thermometer, I just looked on my iPod Touch...) and it was 25 degrees and dropping.  I made it to the pool for the 8:30 am workout and we did some variation of the set above.  In my lane, with Ann, we did 16 of the 50's instead of 10.  The water in the outdoor pool was warm enough and there was a layer of steam that extended the comfort zone about a foot above the water but getting out of the pool and over to the locker room was daunting.  A true hardship.

I went back last night to look at the pool.  The temperature had begun its descent to 16 degrees (widely acknowledged to be the end of the world around here.)  I could barely hold my Pen EPL1 and LensBaby composer still enough in the blistering wind gusts to take this image at 1/60th of a second.  I knew all was lost when I got the e-mail from Brian (the pool manager) this evening.  Seems the "wind chill factor" (who made that up?) was going to be 5 degrees in the morning and he thought it would be cruel for the coaches to be on the deck in the pre-dawn bluster.  I would have gladly gone but who am I to flout the rules of the pool?  There will be workout at noon.  We expect it to be in the high 20's.

Am I right to believe that people "up north" live thru this kind of stuff for months at a time?  Why?  Who can get any swimming done?  (and don't give me that stuff about indoor pools.  once you've tasted the freedom of blue skies above you'll never go back.)

I guess that means I'll have more time for photos tomorrow morning.  Thank goodness I have a hobby.

(this is mostly tongue in check.  Texans do tend to over-react to cold weather.  It's because it is a novelty.  But we get the reciprocal torture in the Summer.  Don't you worry.)

Random note:  go to Will's blog and see his shot of Jimmy Carter.  I couldn't do that in 5 minutes, could you?  http://willvano.blogspot.com


Love the shot of our pool, to the left.  Wild how the strong wind creates waves in the water.

Sometimes Lunch is just lunch....

Belinda at Hang Town.  Our favorite, indoor, hamburger joint.  

I spent the morning scheduling future work and sending out "thank you" cards.  By one o'clock, when I looked up from my desk, I was starving for lunch.  And with the cold, north winds howling outside and the temperature dropping quickly I wanted something hot and comforting.  Hamburger and fries.  But I hate eating lunch alone.  I grabbed my car keys and my EP2 and took the twelve steps from my studio into the front door of our house, in search of Belinda; kind spouse, vicious CFO and all around graphic designer.  She was on the phone walking a client thru a website design but when I whispered, "Lunch?" She was off the phone and out the door in a shot.

I guess that's one of the benefits of working for yourself and having a spouse who is also self-employed, I'm almost never at a loss for a good lunch date. We headed to Hangtown to get a couple of really good burgers and some (almost) forbidden French fries.  And we talked about our careers.  It's good to have spent the last 25 years doing the things that most people dream of doing once they retire.  It's still scary, even after 25 years, to take the leap of faith that work will continue to come in.  That the marketing will continue to work.  That photography (and design) will continue to be viable ways to earn a living.  But once you get over the fear and embrace the freedom and the sheer adrenaline rush of working without any sort of safety net the ride becomes a lot of fun.  

And we've learned that part of the reward of doing what we do is being able to do what we do.  So we ate lunch.  And talked about how nice life can be.

"Molly Ivins" and the Olympus EP-2. A study in black and white.

Last Sunday I finished up my review of the EPL2 camera and put it back in the shipping box to send back to Olympus (disclosure:  we don't get to keep review cameras unless we send Olympus a check or a credit card number.  And with cameras that are in short supplier for review, not even then!).  Later that afternoon I went over to Zachary Scott Theater to do a "running shoot" of the dress rehearsal of the new, one woman play, "Red Hot Patriot."  It's a one woman play about journalist, Molly Ivins.  

I took a Canon 5D2 to shoot with as my "serious" camera and, just for fun, I also took my stalwart companion, the Olympus EP-2 (no "L" in that name) with the VF-2 finder and an ancient 40mm f 1.4 Olympus Pen lens.  The old fits and focuses manually on the camera and works in both the "A" and the "M" mode.  I shot 400+ color shots with the Canon and during the course of the 90 minute play I also banged off 70 images with the Pen.  The color stuff looked great (shot at 3200) and that's what I turned into the marketing department.  All week long I've seen e-blasts and postcard mailers and newspaper ads from those shots.  They all look great.  But I forgot about the black and white stuff because I had so many things going on last week.  Today I brought the camera along to lunch with Belinda and I took a cursory peek at what was already on the card.  Eureka.  The B&W rehearsal shots.

While I was waiting for another gallery of photos to upload I pushed the "Molly" images into Lightroom and began to look around the take.  Here's what I noticed:  I used the black and white setting when I shot the Large Super Fine Jpegs.  I really like the Olympus take on black and white.  It's pretty much what I'd aim for if I were shooting Tri-X in my old Leica.  The lighting on the stage didn't change much.  Once I guessed at the right exposure I pretty much just shot everything around the same settings.  In case the Exif didn't make it intact the nerd words are these:  ISO 800, f2.5, 1/320th of a second.  Of course, no flash.

I'm including these images because people kept asking about the low light performance of the test camera.  I wanted to see what the low light performance was of the previous generation.  At 800 the background starts to show some noise but it's certainly much better than my old Tri-X days.  I'm very, very happy with the texture and the tonality of the mid-range tones and happy that, under fairly contrasty light I didn't have to worry about highlight details.

On another note I actually find it easier to manually focus lenses with the VF-2 finder, using the "shimmer" technique, than it is to focus even fast manual focus lenses on the Canon camera (yes, I have the Eg focusing screen installed.)  The "shimmer" effect is basically just an interference pattern that becomes visible when you achieve correct focus with an LCD finder.  It doesn't work with optical finders in the same way.  Any images out of focus can be blamed on my poor manual coordination or my aging reflexes.  For an 40 year old lens I'm very impressed and happy with it's nearly wide open performance.  Easily as good as my Panasonic 20mm 1.7, under similar circumstances.

And the whole experience reminded me why I like these little cameras for so many things:  They are small, light, responsive and balanced.  They're also very, very cute.

Someone took me to task about my recent review of the EPL2.  Their point was that much of the review seemed more like a review of the benefits and features of micro four thirds format machines in general and less a review of the name camera, specifically.  And maybe that's intentional on my part.  I feel like a lot of people miss  one of my main points:  These cameras aren't (at this point of development) meant to be a replacement for professional, full frame cameras used to create flawless work for clients.  They can do that in the right hands, and in the right circumstances, but they are really wonderful documentation cameras.  Cameras that go thru your day with you documenting cool stuff you see and cool people you meet.  And they do for me what Leica rangefinders did in the old days.  They provide me with the potential to take a camera anywhere and use it with aplomb.  I have the big cameras and I use them where appropriate but I came from a generation of visual artists who didn't necessarily have to have one tool do everything.

This is a camera I use because it has a small foot print.  A quiet and discreet demeanor and lots of imaging capability.

One more thing. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you live in, this is a play that will make you ask some hard questions.  And it's funny.  Very funny.  But I wasn't paying attention to the play, I was there to make photographs.  So let's not let the comments devolve into a political discussion or I'll censor them quicker than North Korean television (if such a thing exists....).

Do you remember when we used to print things?

I got just got copies of an annual report that I worked on last year.  We started in the Summer when it was hot and steamy and we finished on a freezing, overcast day in December.  The design of the annual report was very, very good but the thing I liked most about it (in addition to the photography) was the printing.  Whoever spec'ed the printing didn't mess around with skinny, toilet tissue newsprint.  They went with rich, glossy premium white stock.  The high priced spread.  And they used a six color offset printer with nice machines.  No cheesy powder dye printing.  And the result is makes this report look like the best handprinted Lightjet/Cibachrome prints you ever saw.  And you know what?  When everyone else settles for what they think is "good enough" and then something like this comes along and sits next to it, the makers of the lesser work should just hang their heads and walk away.

And maybe that's where we're coming to with photography.  Maybe so many people have settled for "just-good-enough" stock photography and "just-okay-but-really-cheap" production values and "she's- not-really-the-person-we-wanted-in-the-ad-but-she-works-in-HR-and-she-was-free" not quite there models, that they've diminished peoples' memories of what really great stuff looked like.  And when something really well done comes along it sticks out from the crowd like gold coins in a pile of...... leftover pizza.  And everyone recognizes the difference in quality.  And then clients will want something that's as good as "that piece that Bob did."  You know, the one that won all the awards and grabbed everyone's attention.

Could it be that after a decade of "good enough" the pendulum could actually swing back in the other direction toward........WOW!!!!! THAT'S FANTASTIC.  ?????

Well.  One of my clients just did it and I was blown away.  I wonder if we can make that reality the next big social trend.  We could call it.........I WANT STUFF TO BE THE VERY BEST IT CAN BE.  Because we only get to do this one time around.  And wouldn't it be great if the work of our lives was something we could be proud of?

While printing presses have been modernized, at the top it's still the same process of spreading ink across a sheet of paper.  At high rates of speed.  Yeah.  Let's do this thing right.

LED lighting. I'm finally getting a handle on this stuff. And I'm using it more and more. It's a "style" thing.

I did a project a little while back for the Austin Technology Incubator and most of it entailed taking photographs of the really smart people who seem to be inventing the next wave of entrepreneurial businesses.  The building we photographed in had a wild mix of business start-ups, mentors and educators, all seemingly bent on discovering or sharing why some businesses thrive while others never seem to get cranking no matter how much time and money get thrown in.  The building also had an amazing long central atrium that was filled with diaphanous clouds of softly diffused sunlight.

I used one of the "sky bridges" that linked the two sides of the buildings together as a portrait location for some of my shots.  What I wanted was the "idea" or feeling of a large, open space but without the instrusion of too much detail.  It was the perfect venue for using the technique of shooting a moderate telephoto lens at a shallow aperture.  I chose to use a rather pedestrian (but more than adequate) Canon 85mm 1.8 lens, stopped down to f2.8.  While the area behind my subject was nice and bright the ceiling over the bridge blocked all the top light and, since he was on the outside edge looking in he wasn't lit by much fill from the other side.

I knew I would have to add light to balance the difference between the illumination where he was standing with the illumination behind him.  I also wanted the light to have some direction so I would want it to come from one side, high enough to put a little shadow under his chin.  I added a second, harder but weaker kick light from the same side just to add some teeth to the light.

I could have used a small flash into any number of modifying accessories but I've become weary of the constant use of flash.  Subjects are used to continuous light.  They don't react as much to that.  Flash always seems to draw more attention.  And subjects also seem to "play to" flash more than to other kinds of light.  I was in an experimental mood so I shot all the work on that particular day with a combination of different LED light fixtures.  Some battery powered and some A/C powered.  And what I liked, once again, was the WYSIWYG nature of the lights.  With a 1/4 minus green (a magenta colored filter) over the main light source the balance for the diffuse daylight is pretty darn close.  I dropped the green saturation by about -10 in Lightroom 3.2 and that seem to make everything just right.

Here's what the set up looks like:

160 LED fixture on the far left.  500 LED fixture in my typical "portrait" position being diffused by a one stop scrim on a Westcott FastFlag frame.  Canon 5d2 with an 85mm 1.8 on a Berlebach wooden tripod.


When I first started working with the LED lights I felt a bit "off" and that perceived lack of mastery is probably what pushed me to continue to work with them.  I hate unsolved mysteries.   And, in truth, I haven't really changed a bunch of parameters since I started as much as I've just allowed myself to sink in a become comfortable with the lights.  It's the same thing we did with studio flash but for many of us it happened so long ago that we've forgotten the learning pains of the process.

Now it's becoming my preference (where practical) to light portraits with LED's.  I'm into some mental groove that makes me happy to perennially problem solve and so, I guess the constant need to blend light sources instead of overpowering them is giving me some kind of nice feedback loop.

Let's revisit the ground rules for the blog again:  You don't have to light like me.  You don't have to use the same gear.  I'm just writing "out loud" trying to help you and me understand why I sometimes approach a task the way I do and what the attractions are.

And I'll be frank,  part of the attraction right now is that so few other people are lighting things the way I do.  And that's cool too.

Nostalgia for the good old days....of early digital.

This is not so much a walk through remembrance gardens as it is a quick salute to one old war horse of a camera.  My Kodak DCS 760's last battery bit the dust.  It holds enough charge to get off maybe ten or fifteen images before shutting down altogether.  I've made no secret through the years that this is my favorite digital camera for all the same reason I've always talked about here.  I doesn't have an extensive menu of choices.  It was built to be a RAW only camera and Jpeg capability was added later via a firmware upgrade.  There are very few user settings to work with.  There's no "dynamic range enhancement" feature because the camera already kicked butt when it came to dynamic range.

There's only two focus modes and while you can set single and continuous for frame rates you'll only get 1.5 fps as your fastest throughput.  There are no "sports modes".   There's no "vivid"  or "landscape" setting.  The body is based on Nikon's venerable F5 and the whole thing is a nearly five pound block of metal.  The screen on the back is miserable.  It pushes you to double check what you're doing with a good light meter.  And, even in their prime of life, the batteries sucked and the camera sucked down batteries.

So why do I love this camera?  Well,  it's the same reason any photographer should love any camera:  The files look so nice.   So very, very nice.  Even today I love the look I get from this camera.  It's enough to make me plug in the A/C adapter and get busy.  When I look back over the last ten years at all the digital cameras I've owned this one consistently gave me images and campaigns that looked different and better.  Almost magical.   In fact, one of the things that attracted me to the first generation of  Olympus professional cameras (as exemplified by the E1's that I still own.....) was the look of the files from the Kodak sensors.  So different from the other solutions on the market.

Yes,  I've been using PhotoShop for decades.  I can probably emulate the look with enough post processing but the point is that the art just squirted out of this camera with reckless abandon.

The shot above was part of a series for the Austin Lyric Opera.  We shot it with a Nikon 105 DC lens nearly wide open.  It was lit with a six by six foot screen to the left of frame, very close in and slightly over the top of Meredith.  The main light source was a 1,000 watt Profoto ProTungsten, continuous halogen light.  The background (nearly 60 feet away) was lit with a single 300 watt DeSisti spotlight.  I used an 80B filter on the camera to bring up the blue spectrum and avoid blue channel noise in the file.

The image was processed in Kodak's Photo Desk software and then tweaked in PhotoShop.

I had other cameras available to me at the time but I chose this one because it matched my vision of the palette I wanted for this job.  Too often we buy one camera or one system then shoehorn everything into that one set of tools.  And it's not always an optimum choice.  The painfully high res camera may not always be the ultimate choice.  One system may have lens strengths in one area by not another.  Your mood may change.  Even now,  with all the feedback I've gotten over buying some Canon gear it's good to remember that I shoot with more than that one system.

Granted, it's easier to shoot with the cleanest, highest res LCD's as guides.  It's nice to have great high ISO performance.  But I still keep two different Kodak cameras around for their unique color and file contrast.  I keep a Sony R1 around because it love that lens for outdoor stuff.  I love the Pen series from Olympus for its feel and its gorgeous jpegs (and good movie mode) and I still keep a drawer full of Rollei SLR MF film cameras when I want real black and white and not just the canned SilverFX  looks. (I'm sure I'll hear from SilverFX fans so I'll just say that they're really good.  They're not Tri-X on Seagull warmtone or Ilfobrom Gallerie).

I'm not writing this to suggest that you rush out and buy old cameras.  Or even new cameras.  I wouldn't have brought it up at all if I hadn't just put together a portfolio full of portraits and lifestyle shots and spent the better part of a month selecting and printing images.  I assumed that the old Kodak images would fall apart compared to some of the newer stuff I'd been shooting on the Canon 5D2 but it just wasn't the case.  When it comes to portraits it's a whole different ballgame than technical subjects with lots of detail and sharp edges.  At 13 by 19 it all looked technically good.  And that included images from the 6 megapixel Kodak, a ten megapixel Olympus, some Nikon D2x files, some Canon files and even an entry from the Leaf AFi7 system (39 megapixels).  They all coexisted just fine in one book.

I showed the book yesterday at a design firm called Pentagram.  The designer I showed the book to stopped and savored the four images from the Austin Lyric Opera series.  I included a variation of the one above.  To her, the look outweighed any sort of technical differences.  It might have been a different ballgame if I'd been showing landscapes or big production ad shots.  But for portraits.  I think I was right a year ago.  The Kodak's were a milestone.

Note:  I wrote this last Summer.  And I'm reposting it today because I was able to get brand new batteries for the DCS 760 and so I've been shooting with it again.  It's wonderful.  It's also written as an argument for people who want to hold my feet to the fire for not sticking with one brand, one style, one way of being a photographer.  Photography is a celebration of diversity and evolving ideas and techniques.  Not a hobby embedded in the amber of "best practices."  That's great for doctors and engineers but nonsense for artists and visual communicators....

A brief, one sided conversation about lens testing and reality....

Testing lenses by shooting targets and graphing the resolution line pairs is interesting, compelling and.....silly.  Most high speed lenses don't do "great corners".  And in either image above the ability to have great performance in the corners is beyond meaningless.

To read the DXO reviews of Canon's fast primes you would think they were all designed by morons who couldn't make sharp glass if they broke it into little shards.  But very few lenses are really computed with intention of being flat field, macro lenses.