Ragtime hits the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/us/the-most-interesting-things-to-do-around-texas-this-week.html


Here's some more images:

Super Light. Super Cheap.

The Fotodiox 72 inch umbrella with supplied diffusion cover.

Sometimes the blog lies fallow for a day or so and then it comes roaring back. Sometimes it's because I've stumbled into a sticky patch of good work and I've got my head down and working as fast as my little fingers will fly over the keyboard. Sometimes it's just sloth. For the last few days I've been getting back to my true photographic love, shooting portraits in my little studio. Just straightforward and happy portraits.

I'm a big believer in using large, soft, directional light sources to create portraits in my own style. I'm not a fan of hard lighting in most situations and I feel like hard light is always a bit cruel when used on anyone over 16. Softer light better mimics the light we see in nature. The kind of light that makes things beautiful. The kind of light that makes painters and photographers say, "Oh...the light is so beautiful..."

In the early part of my career I was obsessed with enormous softboxes. I always had a couple of 54 by 72 inch variants lurking around the studio. And they worked really well. But they take a while to set up and the speedrings always give me problems. I still have one in reserve. 

Then, after working on movie and television commercial sets, I started to light more and more with diffusion panels as my primary, large diffusion source. The light from a 72 by 72 inch panel with a couple layers of (faux) silk diffusion is beautiful but it also takes up a lot of space, takes a lot of time to set up and fine tune, and the light bouncing off the back side of the silk bounces everywhere and you end up with a next of black flags on your set in order to control contrast and kill the unwanted spill. Lots of flags means lots and lots of light stands. No problem on a big film set with lots of assistants but a basic pain in the butt for a one person studio.

All this led me to experiment more with one of the oldest and cheapest modifiers we photographers regularly use, the basic umbrella. For years my go to umbrellas have been the Photek Softlighter 2 60 inch umbrellas.  I have three and I love them. They come with a front diffuser that takes the softlight coming off the white interior fabric and making it even softer. For the most part 60 inches is pretty good, especially if you use the umbrella as close in to the subject as you can. The one downside, for me, of the Softlighters is that their metal spokes are delicate and sometimes the locking mechanisms fail. Two of my three, all less than three years old, are somewhat hobbled. One set of spokes is splinted with a pencil and wrapped with gaffer's tape. 

And, of course, no matter how big your light source is there is always the idea that it could be bigger...which means softer...which means a whole different look. At one point I bought an 80 inch Lastolite umbrella with integral front diffuser for nearly $200 but it's a mess to set up because it doesn't have a traditional shaft. It's more like a beach umbrella and it requires a messy combination of adapters to get it on a stand and get a monolight firing into it evenly. But when I take the time to use it the effect is nice.

With this in mind I often browse the bigger websites looking for something that brings all the good stuff together without any downsides. I found it in the Fotodiox 72 inch umbrella.  It's a 72 inch, white umbrella so even without using a diffuser it makes the light soft. The umbrella is backed with an opaque black back cover to kill unwanted spill. At about $79 it comes with its own white, translucent diffusion front cover and it's own packing sleeve.  The spokes are made from a sturdy fiberglas and the whole melange sets up quickly and easily.

I've been using it all week long and I've very happy with the results. I would post a few portrait images but everything I've been doing lately has been for paying clients and I won't use on of the images until they've made they're selections and approved my intention to use their likeness.

I did want to show you what the umbrella looks like so I shot the two images (above and below) and introduced myself into the frame for relative scale. I had been working with incredibly volatile images in the VSL safety lab so I still have my retina saving safety glasses on..... Some images are just too sharp for conventional use....we're trying to figure out how to weaponize them...(not really).

The image below is one of Amy that we made during the set up of a portrait project for the Kip Schools a few years ago. We used the huge Lastolite umbrella for that one. It was pretty cool. Heading downtown to see if Austin has been overrun but out of town Formula One guests yet. Hope everyone is having maximum fun. I think I am.

And then there's Irving Penn...

Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000

Irving Penn and Richard Avedon are two of the five monolithic and critical photographers of the 20th century. Both were masters of portraiture and fashion but while Richard Avedon focused like a laser beam on making images of people Irving Penn was also a dominating presence in the world of still life photography.

This book contains a comprehensive look at some of the best still life work in each stage of his life as a photographic artist. It'll cost you eleven venti lattes at Starbucks (or the equivalent) but if you have not seen his still life studio work before it will change your perception of studio photography, design and creativity. I collect Penn books like other people collect parking tickets and I am happy to have a book about Penn that is so tightly focused on one important aspect of his work.

That guy you're following on (fill in the blank website)? Chances are most of his work is somehow informed by Penn. So skip all the imitations and "homages" and go to the source. You will not be disappointed.

Still Life: Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000

Another Look at Richard Avedon.

©Richard Avedon

We can argue all day long about this but I think Richard Avedon was one of the five greatest photographer/artists in the entire 20th century and I think, in an almost subversive way, his intellectual and visual impact is still being felt by, and inspiring, enormous numbers of photographers around the world. So I was delighted to see this new book on a friend's desk last week.

Like most of the Avedon books this one is big, well designed and well produced. It features performers and performances (in the studio) that cover over 50 years of work.  The book is called, simply: Performance: Richard Avedon.

In addition to the great images of instantly recognizable (by any one over say, forty) stars and performers, there are several great essays including one that talks about being invited to dinner at Richard Avedon's place. He served very simple baked potatoes but then he brought out some garnishes for the baked potatoes including "about a pound of Beluga caviar..." 

If you don't have a Richard Avedon book/portfolio in your collection this is a fun place to start. At only around 12 Starbucks venti lattes (my preferred exchange rate. Almost as universal as the dollar but corrected for inflation....)  I consider this book to be a bargain.  It's a well printed and wonderfully entertaining volume that is also a small and tangential slice of what the cooler parts of the last century looked like through the eyes of one of the century's pre-eminent artists.

©Richard Avedon

Performance: Richard Avedon.

Indeed.

So, who are the other four?  More to come.