Sometime the only rules that apply are propriety.

So, I've made all kinds of pronouncements about how one should do street photography but here's one situation that falls outside my strictures.  I saw the face and wanted to do a quick portrait but she was in the wrong light.  I walked up and asked, in very broken Italian, if I could take her portrait and if she would mind moving about twenty feet to the other side of the street so I could take advantage of the overhanging structure to shield her from the direct sun but close enough to a bright wall so I would have some direction light on her face.  It was near dusk and she was also illuminated by the light fixture in the overhanging structure.  The whole process took about three minutes.  She was amenable but guarded and that was exactly the look I wanted.

Rules are helpful in defining the boundaries that you must inevitably step over to do art.

Overheard this morning at a coffee shop....

Two advertising agency creatives were sitting at a downtown coffee shop having some sort of espresso drinks and I overheard them talking about business.  Now, it's no secret that the advertising business is going through as big or bigger a meltdown than even the photography business so I leaned over a bit and concentrated.  I wanted to hear how they deal with the slow down and the slow pay and the slow etc.  Quick into the conversation it became obvious that their agencies had lost some pitches and things were.....tense in the respective offices.  Finally one of the guys says,  "We should both ditch our jobs and start our own ad agency."  The other guy takes a long drink of coffee, gives the other guy the "are you insane" look and then says,  "There a ton of agencies.  We don't need to open another one.  Someone needs to open some new clients!"

The above vignette has very little and a lot to do with the blog below...

Kids playing on the Square in Sienna.

Wow!  If you're really freaked out about the economy and the state of the world and you feel a bit paralyzed and helpless I suggest that you stop drinking coffee for a while.  You may find that half the panic is self inflicted..... You are also less likely to spill hot beverages into your lap while driving, or, onto your laptop while contemplating the fall of civilization.

I just got it today.  The realization that we have no machine that will allow us to freeze our cultural evolution at a point where it works optimally for me.  I now understand that we're never going back to the "old days" even though the old days never really existed except as a fluid interpretation in our own minds.  Were we richer then or did we care less?

I read something in a book over the weekend.  It said (and you've heard it before) "the past is like the wake of a boat.  It trails out of view, never to return.  As to the future?  One step ahead and all is blackness.  We have only now."  In a way this flurry of images from Italy is a purge of the past.  I'm showing them and then archiving the prints.  Because if you are busy tending the work of the past you don't have the bandwidth to create here and now.  I'll show some of my favorites over then next few weeks and then get back to work on my own stuff.  In a new way.  With new understanding and new insights.

One of the insights is the need to be flexible.  To bend and try new stuff. To embrace fun and stop digging in my heels, trying to make people understand the value of what we did in the past.  Someone once said, "No one will ever win who bets against the web."  I would add that you rarely win by depending upon the way you used to do things...

It's hot and summer and everyone is moving slowly.  I'm heading out to walk and soak up the feeling of slowness and see if there's a visual component to it.  Wish me luck.

Ah. Verona. Romeo and Juliet. Tourism. Italy.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I love shooting on the streets in Italy.  As part of one of our trips to Italy in the early 1990’s Belinda and I decided to visit some of the smaller cities like Lucca,  Bologna, Parma and Verona.  It was the same trip that found me dragging along my big, chrome Hasselblad 500 CM and my 100mm Planar lens as my street shooting camera.  While all of the cities had their own charming attributes it was Verona that stole my heart because of their wonderfully cynical tourist board.  They took the story of Romeo and Juliet and ran with it.  Right down to designating a small house and courtyard as the house of Juliet.  Tourist would go there to see where the star crossed lovers lived.  And the tourist board indulged them by also installing a telephone like contraption that, for a few coins, would tell you the brief story of the feuding houses in one of four different languages.  I noticed that the photo which graced the machine was from the Zefferelli version of the Romeo and Juliet movie.  So appropriate!

Of course we made the pilgrimage to the house.  How could we come all this way and not see it?  We saw a few adventurous tourists from other countries but we also saw plenty of Italians.  I saw this man listening intently to the taped message and couldn’t resist photographing him.  I printed the images and put them in a show a few years later.  Most people took a cursory look and decided that the man was some sort of shady character doing some sort of shady and illegal deal over the phone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He was just a local tourist, eager to hear all the news.

I have many images in my files of people on phones.  How was I to know back then that all the phone booths would eventually disappear only to be replaced by the ubiquitous cellphone?  The phone booth now seems like a romantic and chancy part of a past life. The cellphone like an empty appliance.  C’est la vie.

Street Shooting In Italy is the best.

Men standing around in Rome.

I love to shoot in the streets but in my own town very few people ever get out of their cars and walk anywhere so it's pretty tough to practice here.  In my role as the persistent contrarian I disagree with everyone else's take on what constitutes a great "street shooting" camera.  And I'll probably conflict with some statement I've blogged previously but then I do that from time to time.  The prevailing idea of the street camera is one that is small, light, unobtrusive and which can be set to a hyperfocal distance and fired without taking time to focus.  The ultimate expresssion is often thought to be a small, light, stealthy small camera which has a lens that can be manually hyperfocused and brought up to the eye for a quick snap without having to mess with settings.  The ultimate expression of this kind of "street shooting" camera has often be posited to the Leica M series cameras.  To read what I thought about the M cameras ten years ago you might be interested in reading this old post on Photo.net.......

And lately I've written some lines of praise for the advantages of the Olympus Pen series cameras (the EPL being my favorite because it is slightly faster and sharper...) coupled with the older Pen F lenses which are manual focus and easy to set.  And I do like the results from those cameras.

On a later trip to Italy I took along a Mamiya Six camera and it was a good compromise with its quick rangefinder, sharp lenses and fast operating parameters.  But looking back I am just as happy, perhaps more happy with images like the one above and the one below which I took on a vacation with my wife, a few years earlier.

Men on the square in Sienna.  Standing around.  Talking.

For this trip around Italy in the mid 1990's I decided to go maximally minimal and take on camera and one lens.  I decided on the Hasselblad 500 CM with a waist level finder and the 100mm 3.5 lens.  I brought two 120 backs along.  While it might seem to be a counterintuitive choice it was based on my operational comfort.  At the time I was shooting with this kind of camera every day of the week and my hands were totally used to the operation.  It just felt right.  

But if you've used a medium format, waist level finder with a 100 mm lens you know that it's slow to focus, slow to operate and slow to compose.  The idea is to make all of these things into a virtue.  I work slowly and deliberately and try to make sure that I don't disrupt the dynamic that drew me to the scene in the first place.  You could march right up to a group like this and take charge but even if they were compliant you will have changed every thing.  All the energy and all the aesthetics.  You could take the passive way out and use a long lens from across the square to secretly capture them but you would eliminate all the contextual details that you get with the normal focal length used close in.  The middle way is to make yourself anonymous and quiet.

My technique is to find the scene and move myself into roughly the right position based on my understanding of the lens's angle of view.  Then I look at the subjects and smile.  Then I compose on the finder and then I focus.  Then I wait until I am no longer a curiosity or an amusement and I wait until I see the texture and gesture that first attracted me and then I push the shutter.  I try not to intrude but I don't retreat.  If they protest I walk on and look for other opportunities.  If they ignore me (yes.  please.) then I continue shooting till I have the frame I want and I move on.  But mostly I wait and wait to see something that resonates.

With the H-blad and rolls of film with only 12 exposures patience and timing is everything.  There's no way you can "motor" your way to a good shot.  And what I've come to know with fast digital cameras is that there is still no way to "motor" your way to success.  Scene with people move.  They are  subject chaos theory.  They come together and break apart.  The best you can wish for is to see the pattern as they come together and prepare for the moment when the image peaks for you.  Then you push the button.  And the photo works or it doesn't.  You print it or you leave it in the sleeve.

If you feel so disposed I would love to hear your street shooting techniques in the comments.  What camera and lens, how you use it and maybe even a link to some of your work.  We might all learn more.

Thanks, Kirk

What's in a portrait for me?

I am, on the whole, a fairly mediocre portrait photographer but I masquerade as a much better one.  And I get away with it because I cheat.  As often as possible.  What do I mean?  Well, I'm sure there are a number of photographers who can make just about anyone who stumbles by their camera look better than they do in real life.  They can make fat people look thinner.  Stupid people look smarter.  Ugly people less ugly.  I can't do these things.  In fact, I dislike photographing most people (which is a real sore spot for my CFO ) and I am drawn most often to make portraits of people who fit into fairly narrow types.  I love to photograph women but judging by the covers of every "how to" photography book published in the last five years or so, there's nothing unusual about that.

But the ones I choose have alluring and intriguing eyes, good cheek bones and dark hair.  The eyes give the viewer something quintessentially human to look at.  The cheek bones check the subconscious, internal mental box that says, "ideal beauty" and the dark hair is easier to photograph against different background and adds a nice, automatic contrast for the flesh tones of the face.

If I am no better a portrait photographer than the next guy, then why do I persist in doing it?  I guess it's because I am fascinated with each person's story.  As if the amalgam of stories gives me a big bell curve with which to understand my fellow humans.  Portraiture is an invitation to ask personal questions, to spend time with interesting people and to acquire new stories and new points of view.  In the end, for the most part, the print, or the image on the web, is just a souvenir of the shared experience.

The reason "the studio" persists lies in its nature as a private place where the shared experience of portraiture can be practiced in a comfortable and controllable space.

I love to take photographs of people.  I'm not choosy about styles or environments.  I like the studio because I can control the lights but I like the spontaneous nature of the street.  All I really need is the right person to shoot.  Then I can make both of us look pretty good.

If it's Saturday it must be Swimming Day! And other errata....

Now that is some bokeh!

If it's Summer in Austin you can usually find us at the pool.  I'm there in the mornings for our daily masters workout.  Guess who was on the deck coaching our team early this past Thurs. morning?  If you said the world's 100 butterfly record holder, Ian Crocker, you would be correct.  That's got to be a bit intimidating at 7 am......  Ben hits the pool for his daily workout with the Rollingwood Waves at 11:30 am on the weekdays.  On Friday nights or Saturday mornings we're usually at the pool for the mighty Rollingwood Waves kid's swim meets.

This may come as a surprise to you but I am also the official kid's swim team documentary photographer.  We all have to have a volunteer positions and that's mine.  I shoot whatever I want, all season long and then I do a big slide show at the end of the season.  People seem to like it.  Maybe they're just being nice.

I like to catch the kids mid dive.  When I shot the old Kodak DCS 760 (noble beast of a camera....) I had one opportunity for each kid.  With the faster cameras come more chances.  Today I was playing around with a Canon 7D and the 70-200 f4 L lens (the plain jane version, not the IS one....) and I was able to get three or even four variations of each dive.  The camera can shoot Jpegs, nonstop, at around 8 FPS.

I've got a few things to learn about Canon's brand new focusing system but it seems pretty straightforward.  Mostly you just hold your finger down on the button when you see stuff you like.

And then the camera pretty much does everything else for you.  I wish there was a switch on the camera to move shouting parents out of the way when they walk in front of my camera.  That will be on a later body.  Or perhaps it's a Nikon feature.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Canon 7D I'll tell you what I like about it in one short sentence:  The got the sound and feel of the shutter just right.  More?  The finder is beautiful.  But what I really like is the 70-200mm lens.  I'm guessing I should have immediately bought the new and improved 70-200mm f2.8 version 2 with IS but I was tired of spending multiple thousands of dollars on lenses when ALL of the reviewers told me that the $600 f4 is sharper.  I'm sure someone can dispute that but I'm giving up trying to keep up with the pecking order and the minutiae of lens lust.  Here's my one sentence review of the f4 version:  It was light enough to carry around all day in the heat and when I looked at my handheld, wide open shots they seemed really nice for a lens that's only $600.

We always start the swim meets with a cheer and then the national anthem.  

I'd like to talk for a second about how I do my photography at the swim meets.  I generally use one body and one lens at a time.  I keep a second lens in a very small bag that hangs over my shoulder.  I don't bring any flashes, stands, tripods, meters, filters, cable releases, cellphones, monopods, or Hoodman loupes with me.  I know most of the parents because I've been on the board at the pool for ten years.  They know I'm supposed to be there taking photographs, which is very nice.  I know a lot of the kids because my son has been swimming in the program for ten years.  I take candid shots when I can and when I can't I smile and ask people to squeeze together a little closer.  Sometimes the kids have shots in mind that they want to do.  I always do the shots their way and include them in the web gallery we put up.  I tend not to photograph the parents, other than the coaches, because they are hot, sticky and wearing very casual stuff.  Believe me, they don't want to be included.

I've been spoiled by shooting the two Olympus f2 SHG lenses, the 35-100 and the 14-35 so now I can only enjoy lenses that are good enough to be shot wide open or nearly wide open.  The Canon lens I mentioned above qualifies.  (Side issue:  If you are lucky enough to have a good "bricks and mortar" camera store nearby you should buy your stuff there and foster a good working relationship with a professional sales person.  Here's why:  when I wanted to dip my toe into some Canon stuff the 70-200 was a must have.  But I already have a three and a half pound monster so I was having difficulty trying to decide what to end up with.  I've also heard that QC in all optics can be variable, item by item.  My solution would be to head to the camera store on a Saturday afternoon and borrow all four models of lenses and then spend the evening shooting them.  When I narrow it down I then reserve the right to test the variations of the model I decided upon before buying it.  Once I held the faster lenses for twenty or thirty minutes my mind was made up.  Much tougher and more expensive to do this kind of "real world" evaluation with mail order.  Unfair to play locally and buy long distance.  If you have some weird rational for spending hours at the local store playing and then buy long distance to save a few dollars I don't want to hear about it.

Ready to get the show on the road.

All the images get color corrected just like we'd do for any other client.  We then load between 500 and 800 images from the swim meet up in a gallery on Smugmug.  The images are sized to 1800 pixels wide and saved at 85% jpegs from Lightroom 2.7.  We don't retouch kids.  The galleries are available to the families to look thru.  Sometimes the kids will be over at the house the day after the meet and they bring up the latest gallery, grab some snacks, then put them up on a 27 inch monitor and run the slide show.  Good for some laughs for the teenaged people.  We used to enable the print order function in Smugmug and price the prints at a fairly reasonable amount but most parents just want a digital file. We've set up the Smugmug fulfillment system to sell them files for personal display for a nominal amount.  As a board member it would have been a big conflict of interest for me to make money at pool but I didn't want to train our audience to expect free stuff so we donate the proceeds to the school district foundation.  Parents feel good about it, I feel good about it and the school really likes it.  They all have my permission to make prints for personal use.

There are a bunch of reasons I like to do this kind of stuff.  First, it keeps my technique fresh.  Second, I love some of the images because the kids are so expressive.  Third, it gives me an excuse to buy faster or just different cameras.  Fourth,  it helps me get acclimated to the Summer heat in a way that's directly connected to what I really do for a living.  Finally,  it's a clever dodge that keeps me from having to volunteer for a really tough job.  Like corralling six year olds.

I wish I could do stuff like this all the time. It's fun.  It's outdoors.  I obviously love the sport of swimming.  But I did "real" work this week as well.  Yesterday I spent some quality time photographing semiconductor products using the cheapo bellows I talked about earlier in the week.  Also did some portraits of doctors.  Met a new photojournalist in town who I think will turn into a very hot shooter.  I did what any jealous, weary professional would do in the face of strong, young competition:  I took him out for nice lunch, got to know him and gave him a hearty welcome to Austin.  There's not just one pie and it's not a zero sum game.  Meeting other artists should be a fringe benefit of the business.

Sure is fun being a photographer.  Now where did I put that bottle of Gatorade???

Marketing note:  If you've even thought vaguely, in passing, mildly, or lackadaisically about checking out my fourth book, the one on lighting equipment, would you be willing to go to Amazon.com and look at the reviews we've been getting?  It's my favorite book and I think it deserves a wider audience.  Won't take but a minute or two.....  Just in case, here's the link:

Becky's New Car. Dress Rehearsal.

There's a fun play opening at Zachary Scott Theater.  It's called "Becky's New Car".  I shot the final dress rehearsal last night and had a lot of fun doing it.  I packed two camera bags because I wasn't sure how I wanted to shoot the show.  I'm not always decisive while packing.  Bravo to those of you who do things the same way every time.  It must be a real time saver.....

My first idea was to use the Pen cameras.  I recently got a second EVF so I could have finders on both the EPL and the EP2.  That's the way I like to shoot these cameras.   I packed a bag with the Panasonic 20mm 1.7, the little zoom (just for safety) and several Pen F film lenses, including the 38mm 1.8, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2.  I brought along extra batteries and two 8 gig memory cards.

In the second small Domke bag I brought along the Canon 5d mk2 with the 24-105mm zoom lens.  At the last minute the marketing director called and asked me to bring some lights for a set up shot or two after the rehearsal.  I added three of the Vivitar 383 flashes (two dedicated to Olympus and one dedicated to Canon )  three small Manfrotto stands and two small (32") umbrellas.

Just as I was leaving the house, the moment I turned around to wave goodbye to my dog, a snaky shot of lightening flashed up the sky and the longest and most ominous kettle drum of thunder I've ever heard shook me and the ground.  I tossed the camera bags into the car, along with the small stand bag, and headed off to grab a quick dinner before the show.  I grabbed a quick sandwich in a nearly empty restaurant and sat looking out the window watching a hard driving, gray rain swirl in waves and pelt the windows.  As I stared out the window I wasn't thinking particularly deep thoughts....I was trying to decide which cameras to shoot with.

I knew the file quality would be "better" if I used the bigger camera.  But in some sort of "Rebel Without a Cause",  contrarian mindset I wanted to use the small cameras to show off.  To pull great files from the small sensors and to write column touting what could be done with these little tools in the "right" hands.  Yes.  Total Hubris.  The kind of stuff that's been the downfall of heros, villains and overly indulged photographers since time immemorial......or at least since the 1960's.  It's rare that I slow down and examine, in the time, what my real motivations are for choosing a camera or, for that matter, saying something out loud.  For instance, I haven't thought through why I'm even telling you the thought process behind all this.....perhaps it's therapeutic...

So now I'm in the small theater.  This stage is a theater in the round and all the light is top lighting.  Our biggest problem in shooting here is that the high angle of the lighting causes "raccoon" eyes for a lot of our talent.  I've got both the Pen cameras out.  With the 60mm on the EP2 I can see that I'll be shooting at ISO 800 to get 1/125th at f2.8.  I want to shoot at 2.8 to cover the focusing slop of my old eyes and the manual focus lens.  I do some test shots and they look okay.  But in the dark of the theater I'm having trouble really seeing "in focus".  I could do this if I shot a lot.  If I really cover myself.

But then I chuck the small cameras back in the bag and relent.  I pull out the Canon and shoot the show with the 24-105 locked at f4.  With the center focusing point I know I'm getting focus much more accurately than what I could do by hand.  The photos work.  But I'm deflated. I guess I like shooting with cameras like the Pen with manual lenses because they require some sort of skill.  Some use of my years of training and experience.  I guess the whole problem for me is that the cameras have become so easy.  My rational mind reminds me that the real crux of our professional is "how" we see, not anything technical.  So my irrational mind really just mourns for the loss of the need for technical prowess over equipment budget.  In the old days a Nikon FM could turn out just as good an image as a Nikon F5, in the right hands......

Now each generation of new camera can trump the previous one by dint of automation and the march of technology.  We can echo the platitude that "it's the guy behind the finder" that makes or breaks the image.  And I get that.  I really do.  But I miss the challenge.  Maybe there is a big market out there for psychologist helping experienced photographers get over the idea that hard won technical skills don't really matter that much anymore.  It's a tough one and an idea that goes back to the basis of our self-image as masters of so many arcane facts.

At some point you just have to relax and enjoy the show......

I shot about 700 shots and spent half an hour narrowing down the take to a more manageable 400 for the marketing director, Jim.  He's seen me use so many cameras over the years in the dark and contrasty space of the two theaters.  The first digital stuff we shot in the theater was with an Olympus e10 and quickly followed by a Kodak 660.  We could only shoot at ISO 100 with the Kodak.  Anything higher was a mess of blue channel noise.  with the e10 we got away with ISO 200.  Then came all the others.
I never imagined five years ago that a slow zoom and a high ISO would be a good combination for theater.  In the bad ISO days as in the film days, we were always chasing faster lenses and radical noise reduction schemes.  It's nice to get some depth of field...

And it's good to keep reminding myself that the only thing that truly matters is the final image.  How we get there is really of very little concern to most clients, to the actors and to the patrons of the theater.  The real issue is:  Did we capture the emotion of the play in a way that might make people interested in buying a ticket....?

Have we captured the spirit of the performance?

Funny thing.  I looked at the new gallery in the main offices of the theater.  They recently hung a permanent show of my work from over the last 17 years.  All the prints look good.  From the early Leicas to the sturdy squares from the Hasselblads to the early digital stuff shot with painful timing on tripods to the latest digital stuff.  The plays come through.  The technique recedes or is invisible.  And that's the way it's really supposed to be.

A mundane post about a boring piece of gear that is a good value...

Fotodiox macro bellows for Canon.

When the economy hit the fan last year I was in the middle of a system purge.  I was convinced that everything would change radically.  I would only go after high end jobs that would leverage my talents as a people photographer.  I would get rid of the gear that wasn't cogent to my mission and this would make me more streamlined and help me with positioning.  Right.  So I sold off my Nikon gear and part of that excavation included my old PB-4 bellows rig for shooting close up.  For nearly a year I felt well vindicated by the whole purge.

But somewhere along the line......say about two weeks ago....the phone started to ring again and the mysteries of telecommunications played midwife at the re-union of me and my former largest client.  Could I, they asked, still do wafer and die shots?  Would I be able to do some this month?  Well, yes, all the brain cells that deal with that set of tasks were still firing well.  The problem was I had two systems to work with and had a bellows for neither.  Why a bellows?  To do this work correctly you need to be able to get to 3 to 5 times lifesize.  Can't do it with a macro lens alone.

I started to explore options and I came across a solution that made me skeptical.  On Amazon.com Fotodiox (company) was offering simple bellow units for just about every camera on the current market for the princely sum of $49.  Yep.  $49.  How could you go wrong.

Short answer?  You can't.  I ordered on and waited to see what would happen.  It came in a non-descript box and had the right Canon adapters on both ends.  I fitted a valiant and trusted 50mm Micro Nikkor, with traditional aperture ring, onto a Fotodiox Nikon to Canon camera mount adapter ring and got going.  Bottom line.  Pretty solid.  It lock down tight.  Made with a good bit of plastic.  Not much else to tell.  After the shoot I looked at files at 100% and couldn't find any deviation from parallel in any plane.  That's the crucial deal.

Is it anything like the ultra-smooth and ultra sturdy Nikon?  No.  But for the five or ten times a year I need the extra extension it is very worthwhile and workman-like.  A damn cheap way to get your feet wet on some REAL macro stuff.  You could also buy a reversing ring and use a conventional 50mm lens with pretty good results.  Well done for the money.

Here are a few more views:

Front.  Business End.

Rear.  Camera goes here.

Sleak?  Naw.  Just hard plastic, a bellows and a couple of attaching mounts.  Works well on a 5D mk2.

     

A disturbing photograph for a disturbing play.

Set up shot for a dark and disturbing play called, "Keely and Du".


Not every play can be light-hearted and whimsical.  Well,  I guess they could but it would be like eating donuts at every meal;  the fun, donut-ty-ness of the experience would wear thin and the woozy hypoglycemia would get old quick.  This was a publicity photograph for the play, "Keely and Du" which was about an older couple who posed as helpful counselors but were, instead, fanatics who kidnapped a pregnant girl and chained her to a bed in their basement to prevent her from getting an abortion.

Let me say from the outset that I won't let this blog get bogged down in politics or reactionism from either side of the ethical/moral issues.  I'm just here to talk about the actual photograph.

We were looking for something a bit disturbing and something a bit graphic to draw people into our ad.  We were reaching out to an audience with an appetite for challenging theater and this was certainly a challenging piece.

After years of trying to get people to smile or look pleasant I came to realize that getting just the right "disturbing" look takes a good actor and a good amount of collaboration and consensus.  We set up a large, Balcar umbrella (60 inches) with a baffle diffuser  as our main light and put it over to the left of camera.  In a rare break from my tradition I actually used an active fill on the other side rather than a reflective panel.  I wanted to keep the fill small and contained and used a small umbrella on a very low powered battery powered strobe and was careful to make sure that the actor on my right blocked the fill light from the younger actor's face so I could get the deep shadow area.

I shot with a Hasselblad 200 series camera with a 150mm f2.8 Zeiss Planar onto Agfapan 100 film, rated at ISO 50 and pulled about 10% in the development.  Even though the image was intended for the theater I still printed mostly on fiber paper.  This was printed on Ilford Multi-grade double weight paper and selenium toned in a very small dilution for a terribly long time.  I usually delivered an 11x14 inch master print if we knew that the image would be used in a four color reproduction.

I continue to search out these kinds of projects because it's so much more challenging than "shooting fish in a barrel."  I find that pushing outside the bounds of "popular" is a method to make your brain and your point of view flexible.  And I'm always reminded that mighty oaks are inflexible and can be uprooted by strong wind.  More flexible trees are harder to uproot because they bend with the wind.