Shooting a series of portraits in the studio with Speed Lights.

"Those whom the gods would destroy they first make bored."

It's finally happened. I am officially bored by cameras. By cameras and all the lore and ritual surrounding their selection, their use and their supposed intrinsic power. I wanted to so love the Fuji X-Pro-2 but even though Fuji's website said all the right stuff the magic was nowhere in sight. I wanted to want to rush out and impoverish myself with their GFX 50S but when I held it in my hands there was no spark; no instant rationalization about how this camera was going to the one that would finally unleash my photographic super powers. I can't even glance at the Nikon website without thinking, "been there, done that so many times before..." And don't get me started on Canon. Not even the prospect of something new from Sony was enough to spark some neurons of anticipation. 

It's an odd realization and, like intestinal gas, this boredom with cameras may be a passing thing. But whether it's transient or permanent it doesn't mean that I've lost my enthusiasm for the actual process of photography. Far from it. What this new boredom has done is focus my attention on a different aspect of picture taking; away from the cameras and lenses and back to

The photo gear downsizing continues. The video gear upsizing is temporarily paused.

Two Photogenic Powerlight 1250 DR's with one umbrella reflector and two speed rings.

I bought my first real studio strobe (electronic flash unit) back in 1979. It was a Novatron 120, pack and head system with one flash head and a box that generated about as much power as a brawny battery powered light that you'd put on top of your camera today. The box, with two connectors for flash heads, was gray metal and the flash head, with its 20 foot cord had a black plastic case and a polished reflector. Of course there was a flash tube and a 60 watt light bulb that served as a modeling light. 

For the first twenty years of my photographic career in the studio I used only power pack and head systems. After the Novatron I bought an 800 watt second Norman flash and two nice, metal heads that had built-in fans. I liked those so when I started to get busy I added more stuff from the Norman system. I eventually ended up with two of their PD2000, two thousand watt second packs and a collection of eight heavy metal flash heads. The PD800 also stuck around. At that point in my career we were shooting advertising projects nearly every day and sometimes for ten or twelve hours at a whack. Flashes had to be robust because when we were shooting still life with 8x10 cameras at f64 we might need to pop the flashes (in a dark room) a couple dozen times at full power to get enough cumulative light on the film. There was this thing called

Kinda O.T. All the cool camera features in the world don't mean much if you arrive ten minutes too late...

Rip Esselstyn. The Austin Swim Club Pool. 

A couple of weeks ago a very nice radiologist e-mailed me and asked me to make a portrait of him. He was joining a large, Austin practice and they needed to have a headshot of him to use in the offices and on the company website. I was delighted and, after discussing our schedules, we decided the weekend would work well and that Saturday at 2pm would be perfect. I put the appointment on my calendar and went about my business.

A week and a few days later I started hearing rumblings about a masters swim meet coming up. I went to the website and looked at the info. The meet was scheduled of the same Saturday as my portrait shoot. I thought about entering the meet because it's at a new outdoor facility that features a 50 meter, long course pool. It's been years since I raced long course but I thought it might be

CAUTION!!!! BANDING!!!! OMG. OMG.

A shot on stage with LED stage lights at Zach Theatre. Sony A7Rii. 70-200mm f4.0. 1/400th shutter. While banding was not apparent to human eyes watching the play it was horrifically obvious to the electronic shutter in my Sony A7Rii.

You really don't have to go far to find banding in just about any camera that uses an electronic shutter. The camera shutters scan from top to bottom. If the light source creating the image is not a constant source there is a probability that you'll see some banding at one point or another. It's part of every alternating current light source. The only light sources that are truly constant are direct current powered light sources. In days of yore even entry level photographers knew that shooting under (badly ballasted) fluorescent lights would cause banding unless you used a shutter speed long enough to allow the band to travel all the way down each frame before the shutter closed. 1/60th was possible but 1/30th was safe. Going into shutter speeds above 1/125th of second could almost guarantee banding and I have countless examples of this fluorescent light banding in conjunction with Nikon D700's, Nikon D750's and any number of Canons. All cameras without electronic shutters. 

For the last two days the folks at DPReview have been running a "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" faux scientific article trying to explain why Sony's new a9 camera showed banding when shooting LED driven screens at a sports event. It is in response to

Off Topic: Just thinking about exercise as the seasons change to HOT here in Texas.

Warm up lanes. USMS Short Course Nationals.

We're deep into Summer here in Austin, Texas. Our swim schedule at the pool gets modified to accommodate member's pool use. We have the pool from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. So we set up two, one hour practices to make sure there is space for everyone who wants to participate. No noon workouts in the Summer. 

All this week we could feel the water temperature creeping up. It might be counterintuitive but it's hard to swim hard in warmer water. At a certain point it can even be dangerous. On Tues. this week it was about 84 degrees (f) and we were able to get in about 3400 at each workout. After a string of temperatures over 100, coupled with high humidity, the pool felt closer to 86 today. 

We don't have a water chiller built into the filtration system at our pool but we do make good use of aerators which are basically pumps that spray water into the air and back into the water. The evaporative cooling helps a great deal but depends quite a bit on the humidity to be low. The lower the humidity the higher the cooling power. The optimum temperature for a practice pool for swimmers participating at a high level is about 78 degrees. Competition pools like the University of Texas at Austin pool shown in these photos are kept to a pretty precise temperature range somewhere between 77 and 79 for practice. 

If you are swimming in warm water and going hard you'll need to be especially aware of hydration. Pool water has a different pH than your body's fluids and pulls water from you by osmosis. I keep a bottle of water next to my bed and, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I start drinking early, in anticipation of the morning workout. It takes time to get water into your system so really, you are hydrating this afternoon and this evening in anticipation of tomorrow's workout. 

I find that I need a combination of dryland exercise and swimming over the course of each week for optimum health. I swim six days a week and, since we do an hour and a half on Saturday and Sunday that's seven hours of intense aerobic effort. But it's not weight bearing exercise so I add in four days a week of running in the cool seasons or four days of walking in the warm seasons. I think people over 60 need to increase the amount of weight bearing exercise they get to offset the tendency to lose muscle mass over time. Since we need to focus on muscle mass over the entire body it's critical not to just walk or run but also to do resistive exercise for your upper body. For me, a quick and easy approach is to do 25-50 classic push-ups a day. Shouldn't take more than five minutes but you will feel the results over time. A benefit of push-ups is that they can be done in the air conditioning and they will work equally well. 

A week is 168 hours so it seems reasonable to spend less than 10% of that time having fun, getting exercise, hanging out with exuberant people, keeping body weight constant, and keeping one's blood pressure low. I can't guarantee anything but I think being in good shape makes one a better photographer. It certainly keeps your ass from spreading across that chair in front of your computer.

I swam this morning but I'm always up for something mid-day. Ben just came into the office and asked if I had any interest in walking the four mile loop at the lake, downtown. I'm lacing up my walking shoes just as fast as I can.... 

Warm up lanes. USMS Short Course Nationals.

Slow times and the need for disciplined marketing. You're not a professional photographer if you don't have any work...

Steve G. for Ottobock Healthcare. ©2017 Kirk Tuck.

Over the years I've read a lot of stuff (mostly tangential to reality) about what makes a photographer a professional photographer. The definitions and fine points range from having complete mastery of your equipment to understanding all the theories of photography. I've also read too much about what you need to have in order to be a professional photographer. The lists include: Big, Heavy Cameras. Big, Heavy Lenses. European brand electronic Flash Equipment. Business Cards. A Website. A Logo. More Big, Heavy Cameras. A Laptop with which to Tether. A four wheel drive vehicle for transport to far flung shooting locales. An Entourage of helpers who fetch coffee and hold lights. Big, Heavy Cameras that shoot at 12, 14, 16, or 20 frames per Second. Black Vapid camera straps. 600mm f4.0 lens for Canon or Nikon. Truck with which to haul 600mm f4.0 lens. Latest iPhone for Instagramming. Coffee. 

The one thing I never see on these all encompassing lists of "must haves to be pro" is the single and only thing that makes a photographer a professional photographer. That one thing is: Actual Clients who can Write Checks or Transfer Money to you. 

Photographers put in so much time reading about new gear and then reading stories about other photographers who've just gotten the new gear and want to gush about it. Occasionally they read articles about how to copy the work of other photographers