A Rolleiflex portrait of a kid on a bike.

Rolleiflex 6008i,  150mm lens. Black and white film.

I remember the day when I came to grips with the idea that a child could be too well documented.  It was the afternoon on which I took this image.  I was working in my little studio, which is just ten steps from the front of our house, when Ben came home from school on his bike.  I grabbed my tripod mounted Rollei and headed out front.  He saw me coming out the door so he waited for me near the top of the drive.  He saw the camera and figured this might take a while so he dropped his backpack on the ground and gave me his gravely-determined-to-be-patient face.

I metered the exposure and snapped a few frames.  Then I heard, "Are we done yet?"

And even though my child is very patient and undemanding of me I could hear the photo-fatigue in his voice.  Now I only document truly big milestones in his life.  Things like:

Waking up, eating oatmeal, walking the dog, playing chess, shooting video, riding away from the house, riding back to the house, swimming, running, walking, chewing, laughing, yawning, playing video games, eating snacks, etc. I think we're working toward a really healthy balance......

The gaze.

What you might be looking for in every meaningful portrait is the appearance of a connection with your subject.  Are they comfortable enough with you to stare into your camera? Can they be strong and calm?

Amy.  Hasselblad Camera. 150mm lens.  Kodak T-Max 400 CN film. Big light.

Brenda's Portrait. First Round.

Two variations on one image of Brenda.


As part of my ten days of vacation I took portraits of friends and acquaintances here in Austin.  What else would a photographer do on vacation? Brenda is an extremely good and extremely successful public relations specialist.  I see her frequently at Zach Scott Theatre where she consults and has been a board member.  I was nervous about asking her to come to the studio and sit because I believed that she would be too busy.  Or that she had so many photographer friends that she couldn't find time for one more portrait sitting.  But in the end I asked and she graciously accepted.

We worked with a digital camera (the Sony a77) and with a Hasselblad medium format film camera, and the session lasted about an hour.  This image is from a first pass edit.  It's from the Sony camera. But I just picked up the contact sheets last friday and I've already found ten frames I have to scan.  The larger format camera just looks different.

But I've very happy with the color and feel of these digital images as well.  At ISO 100 the a77 files are everything you could want in a digital camera file for portrait work.  They are color neutral, not too saturated, they have low-to-noise and they have bountiful dynamic range.  If you shoot mainly in the studio you couldn't ask for a better tool.

I used a variation of the lighting I'd set up for Carrie's photos, which I've shown this week.  The main difference is that I put a 48 by 48 inch Chimera Panel with a 3/4 stop, white diffusion cloth between the front of the Octabank and Brenda.  It's about half way in between, maybe 18 inches from Brenda.  It softened the light which also softened the skin tone and made the transitions between light and shadow gentler and more gradual.

I haven't had time to scan the black and white film images yet but they should follow this post in short order.

While you wouldn't be able to tell from a file that's displayed at 1800 pixels at its widest on the web, the lens I used here is very, very sharp.  It's a $200 Sony 55-200 mm and it's quickly becoming my favorite portrait lens because it's optically so well behaved and I like to think that it's driving its big brother, the $2000 70-200mm 2.8 lens, that's just languishing in the equipment drawer, into a rage over the indignity of having to play second fiddle to a budget product.  But I have to give credit where it's due.

The secret of getting a good portrait has nothing to do whatsoever with equipment.  Using an 85mm 1.4 or a full frame camera won't trump the superior value of just spending time with your subject.  If you let yourself get hurried or work to an artificially short schedule you'll only end up with technically perfect images of people who aren't invested in the process or outcome.  You have to build a collaboration.  You do that by asking questions and listening.  You explain what you are working toward in a portrait and recruit the sitter as a close ally.  You work together to make something you'll both love.  The time is obvious in the outcome.

I watched a video where a photographer was instructing a student in the mechanics of shooting a beautiful model.  The student spent a lot of time setting up his lighting.  Way too much time working on focusing and composition.  And no time at all talking to the model.  He snapped one frame and turned around to show it, on the back of the camera, to his teacher.  He ignored the model completely.  She returned the favor and no one ended up with anything good.  Then the teacher stepped in and explained to the model what he wanted.  He shot tons for frames.  During the process he provided a steady stream of verbal feedback. He kept her in the process.  When he stopped and showed his work it was as though he and the student were working with two totally different women who just happened to be sharing the same outfit.

And as good as the photographer was the images he showed were of a surface beauty, a nod to a well done sample of the styles of the day.  But what was lacking was the bond between the subject and the artist that bridges the gulf between them and allows them both, for a slender slip of time, to share a kind of intimacy with the camera that translates into a brief insight.  An insight into what makes the subject special.  And unique.  It's time well spent.

Just another portrait.

Big light. Big camera. Black and White film.  Looking for alternate ideas of gut wrenching beauty.

Why do I bother to write when others think so well? Style? Read this !!!

http://www.fotocommunity.com/info/Helsinki_Bus_Station_Theory

It was written by a great photographer who is now, also, a great teacher.  It's about developing as a photographer.  Big thanks to VSL reader, Stan, who brought this to my attention.

On another note,  I love Robin's post today because the photos are great and the idea's he espouses match mine.  It's a good read: http://robinwong.blogspot.com/2012/04/dont-you-ever-get-bored.html


http://www.kirktuck.com/site/home.html

Comparing film and digital for the millionth time.

studio portrait of Carrie C.


I wrote earlier about photographing Carrie in the studio.  In that post I started with a portrait that had been done digitally, with a Sony a77 camera, and then post processed into the black and white image I wanted.  This image is from a roll of medium format, Fuji Acros, black and white film (ISO 100) that we shot at the very end of the session.  I used a 120mm Makro lens and shot a f5.6.  As I was photographing with flash the shutter speed is largely irrelevant.

While the focus on the background falls off much more quickly than the digital versions I think there are few major technical differences between the two images that would make either one a "pass" or a "failure" but it seems that a very strange thing happened, psychologically, on the way to pressing the mechanical shutter button.

Carrie and I had been working on making a portrait for the better part of an hour and a half.  All my work up to this point was done with a typical digital SLR camera.  When we switched to the bigger format camera, and I started loading film, Carrie immediately honed into the changed paradigm.  In fact, I think we both sensed that the larger camera signalled  a change in the balance of studio magic.  The bigger camera slowed me way down.  I couldn't depend on face detection auto focus to do my heavy lifting for me as far as keeping the image sharp went.  I had to do that work myself.  I was much more focused on looking at her face through the lens because of it.

And that meant that Carrie had to sense the longer lag for focusing and slow her global movements down to compensate. She couldn't shift position as quickly and without regard for its effect.  I think we also sensed that there was, for me at least, more skin in the game.  More opportunities to screw up. More real cost to the process.  And she seemed, instinctively, to step up her game, as a subject, in order to help me be more successful.  The larger, slower camera seemed more real and less like fiction; the industrial design and the more measured pace imparted an idiomatic majesty to the process that had been missing.  A fine dining perspective rather than a drop in to the neighborhood Chili's. 


I don't know if you can tell, when you look at this photograph and compare it to the earlier one of Carrie, but there is a more relaxed facial attitude, on her part,  coupled with a more forward and invested posture.  We're more of a temporary team.

It could be just the placebo effect of using something out of the ordinary in an ordinary time.  But most doctors will tell you that the placebo effect is a powerful force.  I won't disregard it in the future.

I ended up shooting three rolls of film with Carrie. I like everything I see on the contact sheets. Furthermore, it was a fun process for me because the performance art of shooting in short, slow bursts of 12 frames came back to me as fast as a freestyle stroke after one day out of the water.  It felt so right.

As I mentioned in my "welcome back" post I will be concentrating more on portrait work as we go forward.  Don't despair if you are only here for the "gear" though,  I have a gear post coming up tomorrow to break the monotony.

When working on a new style of portraits it's really nice to have good models to work with.

this is an image of Carrie C.  


Over the course of my recent vacation from blogging I asked people I'd met over the last few years to come into the studio and have their portrait done.  I'd seen Carrie present at a Ted Conference, live, and was blown away by her calmness and her ability to connect with an audience. When she accepted my invitation to come by for a portrait I was really happy.  I asked her to dress in something dark and with long sleeves.  That seems to help focus the camera's attention to a subject's face.  At the least it keeps a bright, white blouse from blowing out the highlights.

I'd been experimenting with LED lighting panels and Hasselblad film camera but I gave that whole methodology a break too and reverted to using two monolight flashes and a digital camera.  I figured I needed to master the camera anyway.  The flashes are the same type of light I've used for two decades so I figured it was a quick way to remove variables.

I do my own stunts.

I don't know if you've been there before but if you are doing a solo set up and shoot for a corporate client there's a point where you are in a big conference room setting up lights all by yourself and wondering if you're getting the lights right.  And there's no one to use for a stand in.  And you really want to see how the light looks, and whether you're going to get that little reflection in the top right hand corner of your subject's glasses....  But you knew it was silly to bring an assistant along just to have someone to aim your camera at for a few seconds.

I was setting up at a high tech company today.  We were shooting a key executive in two locations.  This was the first location.  I set up a light on the back wall nearly 30 feet behind the spot where the subject would stand.  It was an Elinchrom monolight set at its lowest power and firing through a small, small softbox.  I had a light to the left of my camera and up high enough so that the bottom edge of the Varistar 41 inch modifier would be just at chin height for my subject.  And everyone was off checking e-mail and waiting for the appointed time and I really wanted to see what I was getting.

I know you'll probably say to yourself,  "What a doofus.  He's been doing this for 25 years and he still wants to preview his set up?  Why, in the name of all that's holy and photographic, am I reading this blog???"   This is a good question but it's beyond the scope of our article of the moment.

But I really did want to make sure there were no glitches that might bite me later.  Like that reflection in the glasses...

I set the zoom lens on my camera to 12 feet (thank goodness I still own a zoom lens with a real distance scale) and I set the camera to manual focus.  Then I set the drive menu to "10 second self-timer" and I scurried over to the shiny quarter I'd left on the floor when I paced out the twelve feet.  The shutter fired and the flashes fired and I scurried back over to the camera to set what I'd gotten.

At that point I added a very weak backlight.  And I adjusted my exposure just a bit.  And I did a few cleaning cycles on the camera to knock the gunk off the sensor that was starting to come into focus at f8.  When my client came in I was nearly ready.  I forgot to switch the camera back to single frame advance so my first button push was a bit anti-climactic.  We got that straightened out quickly.

Knowing I had everything set up correctly before the "star" stepped in to the room helped me to be calm and to concentrate on building a rapport with him.  It was easy.  We talked about his kids.

The one thing I did absolutely right today was to bring along an "Apple Box."  You'll rarely hear the fancy photography blogs mention "Apple Boxes," but they sure come in handy whether you're shooting film or digital.  They are wooden boxes, originally used by the film industry, and they are great for people of absolutely normal height of....say, about five feet, eight inches tall, to stand on when photographing abnormally tall people (anyone over five feet, ten inches tall....).

Since my subject was about 6'2" or better I can't think of a better $25 piece of gear.  So, I do my own stunts with the help of the self-timer and, I like to stand on wooden boxes when I make portraits.  It all seems like a very strange business to me.

This is an Apple Crate or Apple Box.  I felt smart because I packed one today.

If the image doesn't work you weren't close enough.

So many people think that Robert Capa was talking about physical distance.  And maybe he was.  But I think he was talking about emotional distance.  If you can't feel emotionally connected to a subject I just don't see how you can expect to make a great image.  If you are a sports shooter it's a connection to the excitement of the competition and the grace of whatever sport it is that you've chosen to photograph.  Landscape photographers are drawn to certain areas and terrains.  Even if they have to fly thousands of miles to get there.  And portrait photographers who do their work for the love of the art should feel a strong connection with the person in front of them.  Closing the emotional distance to better understand what to show.  Empathy?  

To blaze away with your camera without coming to some realization of what you are trying to describe about your subject is a recipe for bland photos.  If you are engaged and your subject is engaged then you'll be better able to translate that energy to your audience.  The studio should be a quiet, private place with enough emotional space to allow a certain kind of magic to appear.  I can't do this work with an entourage.  It would be too impersonal.

Tech stuff:  Leica R8 camera. Ilford Pan F 50 ISO film. 90mm Summicron lens.  Scanned on an Epson V500 scanner and post processed in SnapSeed.  

A day without coffee is sad. And unproductive.

My favorite model, Lou, was in the studio one day during a time when I was working on a video about coffee.  It was early times for photo/video adopters.  We were using a Canon L2 Hi-8 camera and a couple of Sony EC-M lavalier microphones.  Lou wasn't really interested in participating in the video project but we did have fun playing around with our coffee cup props.  I used a lower lighting angle on a big, Balcar Zebra Umbrella, with a diffusion cover to light her.

I asked Lou to show me the ennui that comes from "no more coffee."  And she gave me this very, very emotionally flat look. I thought it was fun so I snapped the shutter.  We were using a Hasselblad Camera and a long lens along with some black and white film.

I posted this to discuss how some artists work.  I think that the best work, for me, comes in the moments of play that fall in between the paid work.  When we work seriously, for money, we work within boundaries that are established both by the client and by our need to erect a safety net so that we cannot fail.  But girding against failure also pins our playful wings and moves us not to risk too much.

When we are carefree and submerged in the process of fun and imagination, and when there are no consequences to failure, we are free to push for what our hearts see.  Even if it seems silly and inconsequential at the time.

I've been thinking lately about the process of thinking and I've come to believe that when everything is processed through the thing we call "intellect" it short circuits the process of being in the moment and being unambiguously creative.  In the martial arts people practice their moves over and over again so that when they compete or fight their attacks and defenses happen in a space beyond thought.  They do it by instinct. The act of playing around with photographs in a carefree way helps to build that same sort of unconscious and unplanned creativity that lets us create work that moves us in a different way than the quantitative process of planning provides.

I know people who plan meticulously and execute their photography exactly according to plan.  My feeling is that the planning is valuable, but only if you are willing to throw it all away when instinct, and your heart, over-rule your brain and suggest a different approach, all at faster than the speed of thought.

When I photograph I am not looking for perfection.  I am looking for a way to channel a feeling about my subject. I am looking for ways to guide inspiration that comes from an immeasurable place into my camera. I become a conduit.

Sometimes coffee helps.

Making a fun portrait is like a dance where I lead sometimes and I am led at other times and neither of us really know what awaits at the next stanza.






http://www.kirktuck.com/site/home.html

Wanna buy the Brooklyn Bridge? How about a theater seat?

In my "welcome back" article yesterday I mentioned that I recently had an assignment to photograph one of Austin's greatest actors in order to "sell" theater seats as a way of funding a much needed, new theater building.  The marketing people knew that showing a seat by itself would be boring but a seat with Martin would sell.  I showed up to the shoot with several things that might interest you as a photographer.  First of all I've all but given up using white, seamless background paper on location. It's a pain in the butt to transport and, with the new selection tools in PhotoShop CS5 and CS6 as long as you get enough light on your background to get it near white making a drop out is a piece of cake. White cake. I bought a white, muslin background years ago for an annual report project.  It came from Calumet.  When it gets dirty I toss it in the washing machine with some detergent and a bit of bleach and it comes out clean and white, white, white.  I probably spent $60 on the cloth background in 2002 and I've used it hundreds of times since then.  When Ben was young he used it often to build tents in the living room....

I brought four Elinchrom D-Lite 4IT monolights but I only used three of them.  I used one on either side of Martin because the marketing folks at Zachary Scott Theatre like bright, high key light for stuff like this.  The light on the left is coming through a small, Elinchrom Varistar which is a like a shoot through umbrella but the back is enclosed so there's no backward light scatter.  A white interior re-directs light to the front for more efficiency.  It's soft but directional.  And the Varistars set up as quickly as a regular umbrella.  That seemed easy enough so I used another, larger (41 inch diameter) Varistar on the other side.  Usually I use two lights on a white background, bounced out of black-backed umbrellas.  Today I had enough room to try something different so I put one D-Lite 4IT with a standard reflector behind the background and shot it through the fabric.  I tried to balance the exposure so that the area directly behind Martin would go white without too much spill coming forward onto Martin.  I think it worked out just fine.

I brought along one of the Sony A77 cameras with a 16-50mm f2.8 zoom lens and shot all of the images here with that lens and camera combination.  I like the Sony A77 camera even more than I thought I would for studio work.  You get to pre-chimp every shot and then see a post shot  review immediately.  I had the camera set up so that I'd see a review for two seconds after every shot.  But a touch of the shutter button would cancel the review and return you to the live image.  At one point in the shoot one of the front monolights stopped firing.  I saw it on the very first review.  I was  able to quickly fix the issue (dead or dying battery in a radio trigger....).  Shooting in the "old school" OVF method I would probably have shot a long volley of shots before stopping to review and we would have lost many good shots to a technical problem. 

The shots here are presented as 1800 pixel (long axis) images but I can assure you that at 4000 by 6000 pixels the images are exhilaratingly sharp.  In fact, now that I've untangled the "jpeg rubric" of the Sony hive mind I love what I'm getting from the camera and rarely, if ever, need to sharpen images in post. What you see in the EVF or on the rear screen is such a close approximation of what I eventually see on the studio computer screen that I've stopped worrying about technical details that fall outside of the binary "fail/succeed" paradigm.

But the real magic of a shoot with Martin is Martin.  He's a pro and that really makes getting wonderful images easy as pie.  My big complaint from the marketing department?  Too much great stuff to choose from.  I wish all my photography problems were like that...

Information to Sony Alpha shooters... I'm kinda shocked at how good some of Sony's cheaper (more cost effective?) lenses are.  I was going to buy the Zeiss 85mm 1.4 for the Alpha cameras but I tested the 85mm 2.8 SAL lens and found it to be terrific. Even wide open. The Zeiss is around $1500 while the Sony SAL lens is just $249.  When I first dallied with the system I also bought a cheap, 55-200mm SAL lens for around $250 just to have something longer and light weight. I eventually bought their big Kahuna, the 70-200 f2.8, with its glorious white finish (and dense, wrist straining, beefy construction) but after I saw how sharp the cheap zoom is I've left the other lens in the drawer for every assignment except the low light theater work.  Amazing how good the consumer stuff is... All the Canon and Nikon shooters can ignore this.

http://www.kirktuck.com/site/home.html

There's a setting on my new camera that I like to play with...

It's called: Rich Tone Monochrome.

It only works in the Jpeg file setting. It's basically noise reduction and HDR combined for black and white.  It can produce dramatic files with high sharpness and very little high ISO noise.  And since the frame rate of the camera, in normal daylight, is so fast, and the processor in the camera is so powerful, the mode can be used hand-held and the camera will "micro-align" multiple frames and stack them into one finished file.

I normally dislike the religion of HDR.  But I'm finding more and more uses for some of the in-camera options, as long as they are used intelligently. This is not intended to be a promotion for Sony or any particular model but an admission, based on long meditation during my break, that some stylized processing can be useful and fun.  Especially when it is controllable and customizable.

I was sitting at Medici Caffe, drinking a cappuccino, watching the beautiful people downtown, and reading the owner's manual for my Sony flash when I decided to explore the rich tone monochrome setting on my camera. I was reading the owner's manual for the flash in vain.  There is no control on the flash for setting exposure compensation.  That has to be done in the function menu, on the camera.

But I was amazed at the results of my test.  The coffee cup has an extremely wide range of tones and none of the highlights are even close to burning out.  Even with a .75 stop push to get the exposure I was looking for.  What a wonderful tool this might be for portrait work in the studio on a sturdy tripod, with a patient subject.  I say "patient" because the downside of most of the in-camera modes is that the file is processed right after you take the picture and can take up to ten seconds to render.....

While I still find "over the top" HDR offensive,  I am giving up my one person crusade to persuade people to have good taste.  If you want to try an effect then who am I to say you are wrong?  If you want to wear mutton chop sideburns then I think you should  go for it.  If you think pink is a good color for your car then more power to you. Go Pink. In fact, with the adoption of the Sonys I'm joining the parade and using the little settings with so little discretion it amazes me.  Digital is different.  The technique is everything.  I'm trying to bend the device to my will.  Then it will be photography.

I call this one, "Street lamp bending in the hurricane winds."  And any pixelazation you see is intended.  Rock on a77.

At some point it's really all about having fun with photography.

Renae (on the right) was my assistant back around the turn of the century.  She was amazing and brilliant.  And when we finished long shooting days on location she'd invite a friend or two over to the studio sometimes and we'd all share a bottle of good wine and set up lighting gear and make portraits.  Kinda weird when you consider that most days we'd just spent eight or nine hours setting up and taking down equipment somewhere in or around Austin in order to make portraits for work.

But shooting portraits of people like Amy and Renae was the perfect way to wind down a day and leave the studio on an art note.

We had just finished shooting an annual report for a dot com company whose stock had gone from a dollar a share to fifty four dollars a share, overnight.  (A few months later it made the round trip back to a dollar when the market popped...).  We invited Amy over, uncorked a St. Emillion Grande Cru Classé and started playing with cameras and lights.

I used a 35m Leica R8 film camera with a 90mm Summicron lens for this shot.  At the time I was happy using Ilford's Pan F, 50 ISO film.  The light of the day was a four foot by six foot softbox used in close and just to the left of camera. Powered by a Profoto box.  A small softbox slapped a little light on the gray, canvas background and we fired away.  We probably shot ten or twelve 36 exp. rolls of film that night and shipped it off to the lab the next day without a thought.

When the film and contact sheets came back I took a cursory look through and ordered a few favorite prints from some individual portraits we'd done.  Today I was looking through this work box of film and contact sheets and this time around it was the shots of Renae and Amy together that caught my attention.  I grabbed a strip of negatives that looked promising and put them on the scanner.  This is what we ended up with.

It's instructive to me that somewhere in the last five years we started doing just what we needed to do to survive.  And the art got lost.  But the magic is that with a little elbow grease, some heart and some imagination, we can get the art back.  It's a process of reaching out to people and fighting the entropy that whispers in your ear, "you've already done this.  Why do you need to do it again?"

But the reality is that even though I've made portraits before, each new person in front of the camera is different and interesting in their own way.  I'd forgotten for a while just how satisfying the process of making a portrait is.  Doesn't matter if you're playing for happiness or playing for the money.  The important thing is to play well.  And play often.

I saw that bumper sticker again yesterday.  It said, "Bark less. Wag more."  I like it.

We're back. Both of us. Now. Howdy.

Thanks for your patience.  I needed some time away from the VSL blog and from all the noise on the web in order to really assess where I am and where I want to be....as an artist.  When I look back over the last ten years I regret that I focused only on the nuts and bolts of getting the jobs done.  At times I was too conscientious about a client's time. I presumed they only had time to get done what we had in the contract.  But I come into contact with so many interesting people that by doing "just what the job required" I missed the opportunity to supplement each project with my own "take" and my own point of view.  I became really good at following the "instruction manual" of image making without giving enough thought to stepping outside the boundaries of our proscribed relationships and asking, "Can I take a really cool photo just for us?"

A re-introduction to the Visual Science Lab. The manual.

"A man with a live grenade in his hand always gets more attention."

What is it? This is a blog that's written by me to talk about stuff I'm interested in.  By extension, I think you might be interested in some of the same stuff.  This is not an "inspirational" site where I toss on my rose colored (but still polarized) sunglasses and write column after column of positive affirmations meant to make us all feel good about wanting to be photographers.  You can find several hundred million of those sites scattered across the web.  This is not a blog where I implore you to learn how to light like everyone else.  This is not a blog for people who think that their cellphones are a perfectly good replacement for cameras.  If we all agree with each other and pat each other on the back all we've basically done is the adult version of giving every kid who participates a big trophy and a sense that nothing is left to be done.  

I think this blog should be about the hard work of doing good work with your camera.  There are a few things I might take too much for granted about you as part of the audience.  To wit:  I think you've read your camera's owner's manual and you know how to operate the machine.  I think you're a good reader and you have a wide knowledge of subjects that deal both directly with photography but also with culture, art and literature.  I think you care more about the "why" of photographing something than the "nuts-and-bolts-how-to" photograph something.  I think you've been through enough schooling to make cogent arguments that center on the topic rather than presenting ad hominem attacks in your comments.  Further, I presume you are experienced in taking and making images and that you are not here because you think I have magic photo beans that I might be induced to share. I might be taking too much for granted but I'm optimistic...

How to use this blog.  Read the newest blog, think about it, figure out what's true for you and then go about your business.  If I do my job right you'll think about what you're shooting, perhaps concentrate on what you love a bit more and really be mindful about your photography practice.  If you do your job right you'll come to see me as a peer and just another voice on the web.  Someone with different opinions and maybe a different approach than other ports on the web.  Even if you violently disagree with everything I write it may be constructive for you to at least be exposed to a different way of thinking as a vehicle to strengthening your own position.  Share what you like and pass over the stuff you don't like.  I like my photographs.  You don't have to.  I'm not posting them for your critique. 

I don't want to read or write any comments on politics here.  There are hundreds of thousands of sites where you can go and scream at each other about which rich white men should lead us into the future.  Just remember the old Japanese saying, One step forward and all is darkness. Or you could ponder Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  Especially if you are very sure of all facts.....  Let's just not do it here.  Because, from my point of view, half of you are wrong.  :-)

No one really wants to talk about religion here either.  Unless it's about the worship of film or the damnation of cellphone-o-graphy.  But maybe those religions are too volatile as well.  I guess we better skip them. (for the record, I'm not against taking images with phones but I do resent the showmen and fervent proselytizers who are pushing the new agenda as a new way to monetize the process.)

There are three things we'll mostly discuss here. By that I mean there are three things I'm interested in discussing here, for the most part. The first is art.  What we're trying to say, and whose shoulders we're standing on as we try to say it. We'll talk about influence and art history because those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it....  The second is about the equipment we use to make our images and how our tools mold us and the other way around.  If you think you are the master of your tools and there's no reciprocity we'll have some interesting discussions.  Finally, we'll talk about the process.  How to go about realizing a vision.  And we won't just discuss it in "step one, step two, step three's" but in allegory and metaphor and allusion and idiomatic reference.  

Right now I'm grappling with the idea of re-inventing my take on the portrait.  But sooner than you know it I'll be on to something else.

Want to enjoy good photographic art?  Want to make good photographic art?  Then we all have to reach for it and spend the time in the water (a metaphor for practicing our craft over time) that it takes.  It won't happen a nanosecond quicker just because you won an argument on a web forum.  Get your goggles, your Speedo and your latex swim cap.  We start again tomorrow. Hope the water's not too cold...

One final word.  The use of a camera, and the personal experimentation with camera or a lens, will always take precedence over charts, graphs and numbers.  Always.  Measure as much as you want but leave your slide rule and charts in the car when you come to lunch.

Staying wet and staying happy.

Fewer blogs means more time for swimming.  And more time to shoot. Above: Hblad, film, Big lens. Big light. Beautiful woman. Balanced equation.




Here's one from 2010 that summarizes my "new" blogging direction: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/11/getting-back-to-basics.html

More on Tues.


In light of the mirrorless revolution and the Sony SLT technology I think this post I wrote a few years back is interesting.  http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-would-i-design-perfect-camera-for.html