Penny's Pastries. Getting the feeling right.

We were doing an article for Inc. Magazine when I met Penny. She'd opened a baking business and had been pushed into bankruptcy because a big customer pushed her to grow too quickly and then moved on to a different product from a different supplier.  She learned a lot from the experience and set out to start over. That was the story.  It was a cold and gray day outside and we were still working with film.  Medium format transparency film.  Probably 100 speed Fujichrome by the look of this frame.

I knew I wanted  to light Penny with a big soft light and I knew I needed to light the ovens in the background to give the image a sense of dimensionality and place.  But the biggest thing that was needed was to make some sort of connection with Penny that would make the image genuine.  We talked about baking and food.  We talked about the challenges of business.  Once the lighting was set I didn't monkey with it for the rest of the shoot.  I figured that if there wasn't some sort of rapport all the lighting in world wouldn't make a difference.

We all hit it off.  Penny got a nice profile in the magazine.  We got a bag of great cookies.

It's nice when everyone is on the same page.  Makes me happy to think about it even now.  I guess that's why photography is so cool.

The Goat Man of South Austin

I wrote an earlier blog about the goat man of south Austin but I think the post got lost when I shifted everything to blogger.  So I thought I'd do a quick one.  Back in 2005 the artistic director of Zachary Scott Theater, David Steakley, wrote a play called, Keeping Austin Weird.  The play showcased many of the characters around Austin that make it such a blue spot in such a red state.  Steakley interviewed several hundred people, both famous and not,  over the course of his investigation into the eccentric side of the city.  There was the family that used latex paint to create a giant Twister game in their front yard.  The entire front yard.  There was Gov. Ann Richards and also the lady with the pink pig car.

I shoot the season brochure for the theater each years and we decided, since this would be our "anchor" play, to include the wild personalities as the art in the brochure.  I was given a list of people that the marketing department thought would be most visible.  I was also given a board member who would act as a producer, getting in touch and scheduling our shoots.  We needed to go on location because in most cases the practical location was in some way part of the thing that made these people less ordinary.

I traveled around with a car filled up with lighting gear that ran the gamut from big electronic strobes, powered by inverters and car batteries, to tiny strobes and little florescent lamp tubes.  Some times we used a few lights.  Some times we used them all.

But when I got to the Goat Man's house in South Austin the light was perfect.  No light necessary.  Not even reflector.  Gotta watch yourself.  There is some truth to the idea that "when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail".  Sometimes you have to step back and really assess why you're dragging the gear out of the trunk.  And then you have to have the good sense (or heightened laziness) to leave it all in the car and use the light nature gives you.

The Goat was crazy aggressive but his best friend couldn't have been nicer.  Offered me a cold beer after we finished but there were other interesting people who needed documented so I pushed off.  A hot day and a job well done.

One more thing.  For some reason I decided to shoot this with my old Kodak DCS 760.  I'd bought a Nikon D2x but still preferred the colors and the tonalities of the Kodak.  I still have it in the studio and use it when I want a different look for people.  It's wicked sharp though.  You have to make sure you need sharpness if you go to pick up this camera.  With the AA filter removed it's almost illegally sharp.

If you have the chance to photograph a man and his pet goat you should do it.  It's an interested way to spend an hour on a hot, dusty friday afternoon.  Be sure to follow up with a man who has his own doll garden (fun fact:  All the dolls' eyes light up at night.  When new neighbors move in next door he turns the hundreds of doll heads in the garden to face the new arrival's house!).

Never a dull moment as a photographer.

A few more from my NYC packaging job.+Go Chaps.

I woke up this morning feeling greedy for photography.  I was up before dawn.  It was a cold, steely gray outside.  I made a quick cup of coffee, grabbed my EP-2 and headed out to shoot anything.  It all looked so fresh and sharp and alive.  When I came home around 8am I started downloading cards into my computer and I sat there wondering, as the little ball went round, what was it that compels us to spend time photographing.  Or doing art.  Or writing.  I think it's our desire to be connected and to share.

As I was cleaning up the files I sorted out my desktop and came back to this folder and decided to share a few more images from this shoot in NYC. 

So after I wrote the paragraph above I changed my whole Sunday.  Usually I walk through downtown in the afternoon and shoot for fun but today I did a studio shoot at Zach Scott Theater with an amazing actor named, Jaston Williams, one of the two famous guys from Greater Tuna!  What an incredible actor.  I can hardly wait to post process the images and show them.  Just amazing.

Then the day became downright strange.  Totally off the subject of photography.  I never watch football.  Ever.  But my kid goes to the same jr. high school that Drew Brees attended.  Drew Brees was the quarterback at Westlake High School which is where Ben will go next year for high school.  Since we felt like hometown folk we bought a few bags of chips and some different dips (bean dip, French onion, piquante sauce, etc),  I bought some beer and a bunch of root beer for Ben and we spent the evening like typical Americans.  We watched the Super Bowl.  I couldn't believe how excited we were when the Saints won.  All I can say is, "Go Chaps!"

Valentine's Day Fashion Special.

One of my favorite holidays.  An excuse to eat chocolate like a glutton and send silly cards to loved ones and wannabe loved ones.  But most of all, a day to think about gingerbread cookies from Sweetish Hill Bakery.  Like the fine examples in the photograph above.

At studio Kirk, we sometimes do things just for fun.  And one year it seemed like a lot of fun to photograph cookies.  Notice the fine "penmanship" of the message on the right cookie.  The line of frosting stays consistent and none of the letters crowd or collide with the other letters.  The design around the edges of the cookies takes them to a much higher level than store bought cookies.

I used my favorite cookie shooting lens on a 35mm film camera.  That would be the 90 Summicron on a Leica R8.  Shot on color negative film and scanned on one of the many scanners we went through in our quest for the great scan.  The image would be much better if we shot it now because we'd be able to shoot it with some sort of ultra-high resolution camera which would allow us to zoom in on the cookies and even count the separate crumbs!  But alas, it was shot early in the century before the widespread adaptation of cutting edge technology.  Much to my chagrin.  Another frame into the trash heap of history.

Thinking about thought in a media rich environment.

Revolving doors on West Sixth street, Austin, Texas.  

Camera:  Olympus EP2

There are a lot of thoughts that I think I've generated in the vacuum of my own mind which I'm pretty sure are just the manifestation of years and years of immersion in a media rich culture.  I think my subconscious spends a lot of time stealing and borrowing fun snippets of concepts and visions that I catch and snatch across time and experience.  And that makes me sad because I wonder if our culture mediates against the chance of having an original thought.  Just as people say they were "standing on the shoulders of giants"  when they accomplish something profound; I wonder if we as a creative class are just the culmination and revolving door synthesis of all the "Leave it to Beaver" and "24" and "Gilligan's Island" shows we've watched, mixed with a dose of Dr. Suess, a little Susan Sontag and stirred around by some "Blade Runner" and "The Sound of Music".  I know the accompanying sound track is a raucous mix of Beethoven, The Beatles, Mozart, The Rolling Stones and Joni Mitchell and disco.

With six billion people in the world are there still original thoughts?  Or are we destined to sample and mix?

I came up with an idea for a new book recently.  I thought it was pretty cool and pretty sexy.  When I pitched it to a publisher they said, in effect:  "You seem to be on to a very important trend.  But we've already signed a writer for that project."  When I go out to photograph I struggle with a saturated awareness of the history of photography and the work that's happening everywhere around me.  Am I referencing previous work by artists?  Am I using a "melody line" in reference or is it a visual cliche that we're all destined to rework until the next swirl hits?

Photographers tend to be of two minds.  In the first category are compulsive researchers like me who look and look and look.  And the research is promiscuous;  I can probably tell you what camera and lens were used as well as who took the picture and where it first appeared.   So I am paralyzed by over consuming information.  I curse the web for that.  But the other extreme is the photographers who curmudgeonly refuse to know what's going on in their field  and who resist the computer at all costs.  They consider their vision unsullied until someone points out to them that the opus they've struggled with for decades has already been done, many times, and usually much better. Because few are truly resistant to the persistence "the messages". Paralysis or re-invention of the wheel?  There has to be a better choice.

At this point I'm sure the cliche minded have already jumped to the story about the patent clerk who, well over a hundred years ago, suggested closing the patent office because he was certain that all the good and original ideas had already been considered.  But that's not quite where I'm headed here.

I think we make so much work to please our audiences.  We shoot what we shoot because we want to be perceived as creative and cool.  Our map for coolness is the compilation of greatest hits that serially litter our attention.  We reference and tweak and bend them like Stephen Fairey with his poster of Obama, which started life as someone else's photograph.  And the problem is that we sometimes, unintentionally, step over the line into pure plagiarism.

Most of us started careers as artists or commercial photographers because we had a sense of our own visual sensibility but over time we've subjugated that clear vision for one we think will serve us better among our peers and our clients.  Little by little, we've hidden away the things that makes the art uniquely our own and that renders it  as just a souvenir of our culture.

To understand what I really mean it's enlightening to study the best known work of the writer, Vladimir Nabokov;  the novel, Lolita.  There's very little in this book that is really prurient or shocking by most standards and yet, when the book was first published in 1955   it was banned in the United States for a time.  It was regarded as so unpublishable that Nabokov was only able to sell it to a European publisher with a shaky, porny reputation.  It may be the best novel of the 20th century.  And not because of the subject matter but because of the writing.  And the unique point of view.  And the wonderful storytelling.

Now the book is celebrated by scholars.  Kubrick did the movie and it is astoundingly good. (It should be, Nabokov wrote the screenplay).  The book gets better and better, and over 54 years later still has relevance and power.  It was a set of "giant shoulders" to stand on for the next generation of authors who could now write in a more revealing and intimate manner.  But the "take away" is that Nabokov had the courage to create art that was in sync with his own nature while being profoundly out of sync with the prevailing culture. 

Of the books written in 1955 the vast majority have been consigned to the dusty card catalog of history. Lolita grows in power and influence.  If we are to create work that is meaningful to ourselves (and we can have no idea of the work's intrinsic value to anyone else) then we have to be as fearless as Nabokov and shoot from the heart.  Show uncomfortable work that has real meaning to us, and use a visual language that isn't a mirrored reflection of our social construct's greatest hits.

A clear vision may be influenced by the immersive media culture that swirls around us but the courage to shoot differently is the power that could make work that matters.  Even if it only matters to an audience of one.  That's the true nature of art.

commercial message:  If you are in Austin, Texas on the 13th of February I will be teaching a unique portrait workshop at Zachary Scott Theater, sponsored by Precision Camera. We'll discuss lighting and aesthetics, have a guest appearance and demo by the amazing photographer,  Will Van Overbeek (see:  www.willvano.com), a make-up demo by famed MUA, Patricia de la Garza and hands on sessions in the afternoon.  Yes, there will be donuts...

Info and registration:  http://www.precision-camera.com/product/CLASS6

Without a doubt, the perfect Valentine's Day present.

Thanks, Kirk