My recent adventures in San Antonio.

I had fun today.  I had fun yesterday.  I blame photography.  I was heading to San Antonio to take photos today at the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort.  My favorite production company was producing a show for 2000 people.  I went down to SA last night so I could get an early start.

Packing for a shoot is always interesting.  Tomorrow I'm shooting a portrait of a political candidate for a high end production company and PR agency.  I'm packing a bunch of Elinchrom lights, spiffy triggers, breathtaking modifiers and, even a beauty dish.  I'll take a couple of Canon 5Dmk2's and the Zeiss 85mm 1.4 and 100 f2 Macro Planar.  Yummy glass.  And that's the way I like to walk in for a high profile job.

But today I was whipping thru a show, having fun and taking documentation photos of stuff.  Wall treatments, plasma displays and even an interaction display that sensed movement via IR sensors and made things happen on a twenty foot wide screen (see above).  I knew three things:  1.  I'd be moving fast and soaking up all kinds of details and shots.  2.  I wanted to use live view to line up walls and generally previsualize the final images.  3.  18 megabytes was more than enough to make my client happy-happy.

I grabbed two 60D's.  (Cameras are like rattlesnakes, they like to travel in pairs.  Matched pairs.)  I grabbed a motley assemblage of lenses.  No Zeiss glass.  Why not?  Because I'd have the luxury of putting the cameras on my tripod, stopping down to f8 and shooting at slow ISO's like 200 and 500 and occasionally 1250.  At f8 every lens is good.  And all the popular ones are easily and automatically corrected in Lightroom.

Big plus, if I dropped one from the top of a 16 foot ladder while grappling with my acrophobia, and it smashed to pieces on the floor I'd be much less devastated than if it had been a pricy German uber lens.

I shot a lot.  I had fun seeing them on the screen.  I got back to Austin in time for supper.  And then, for excitement, I took Ben out to practice driving.

Listen carefully:  Ben got his learner's permit.  This means he's operating a motor car.  With my lackadaisical supervision.  If you are in the our area watch out for a silver Honda Element with a small madman at the wheel......and a larger madman in the passenger seat.  We're learning together....