The Visual Science Lab hits its 4,000th Post. What a good time for a break.

Paris Metro. 1992.

Photography has changed profoundly since the inception of this blog in 2009. I've logged and blogged well over the actual 4,000 posts referenced here but a good many earlier ones were purged over time as they lost their relevance. I've typed millions of words, put up thousands and thousands of photographs and met, through the internet, many wonderful people. 

Lately, it's been harder and harder to decide what to write about. Most of the cogent points I meant to make over the years have been made; repeatedly. My plan to monetize the blog fell victim early on to my general resistance to mixing editorial content and advertising. Last month was the first month that the blog logged a negative fifty six cents for affiliate earnings....Thank you Amazon.

I'd like to think that I had something to teach about the nature of working as a photographer, or about lighting, or about the selection of tools but, in the first regard, there are so many kinds of photographic work and I'm really only focused on a tiny part of the market, and one that is fairly static. In the second regard, I have been so inconsistent about what cameras and lenses I use that I am hardly a reliable source of what YOU should be using to do YOUR work. As far as lighting goes I sometimes feel as though I'm showcasing a style of lighting (and portrait engagement) that's become more of a temporal sign post of past practices than any good learning curriculum about current styles and trends.

I am neither closing the existing blog nor abandoning my intention to come back and write more. It's just that I need to re-think what's left to write about that isn't covered more quickly and completely elsewhere. It's also necessary that I believe in, and enjoy, what I write about. 

I'll be back when I feel as though I have something to say but can hardly shake the feeling that photography as we knew it and practiced it has changed so profoundly that the Visual Science Lab is now, more or less, irrelevant. Most people now use phones to capture their day-to-day life. Instagram is a better place than a blog to show off new (and old) work. Video is the new mainstream imaging format. 

CGI and AI and a host of other technologies are already eroding the last of the market share for traditional photography, and cameras have become more or less boring. They are all good and all flawed. In the end, who cares?

I'll be back when I have a new body of work to share. I'll be back if I'm struck with new insights into the culture of photography. I'll be back when I have a burning desire to write about new work. 

In the mean time I always answer e-mail. The contact page on my website has an e-mail form. If you  just copy the address: Info@KirkTuck.com I'll never get the mail and it's set up that way to prevent spamming. Go to the website (www.kirktuck.com) and use the form. Click on the link and then leave your message. Then we'll be able communicate. 

If you want to see new images with brief captions it's easy enough to find me at Instagram: 

https://www.instagram.com/kirktuck/

Thank you for reading, commenting and adding to the atmosphere here. I very much appreciated having an audience. Especially (for the most part) such a brilliant, wise and supportive one. 

All the best,  Kirk

added later: The article that started it all: https://www.photo.net/equipment/leica/m6.lgc

added much later: Sad. I keep circling back here, waiting for that rat bastard who writes all this stuff to get back to work. Then I realize it's my blog and I'm not quite ready yet... but it's frustrating all the same.... KT

A totally different image from yesterday's photo session with Lauren.

©2019 Kirk Tuck

Following through on my intention to make more portraits for myself; in my style.

This is one of the 312 images I took today of my friend, Lauren. She is a public relations specialist and we've worked together over the years to create content for mutual clients. She is also smart, warm, a big fan of Belinda's, and an exceptionally good mother of two young kids.

I sent her a text last week begging her to come back into the studio and be photographed. She scheduled it right away, but on the proviso that we have lunch first at one our favorite neighborhood  restaurants, Las Palomas. As equals in the collaborative creative process is it any wonder that we split the check?

After a stop in the house to say, "hi" to Belinda and her noble guardian, Studio Dog, we headed out to the studio where I had already set up the lighting I wanted to use. It was a 72 inch umbrella (white interior/black backing for spill eradication...) with a white diffuser over the front. I used an A/C powered mono-light as my main light and dialed it down far enough to get myself half way between f4.0 and f5.6 at ISO 200.

During the course of the hour long shoot&talk Lauren did a second costume change and I tried out three different lenses to see which one I preferred. It really doesn't matter which one I preferred because the photo I liked almost immediately came into existence in its own time; not when I had on the "perfect" lens.

The second light was a small, battery powered flash covered with diffusion and directed behind Lauren towards the background. I used a black card on her left (the right side of the frame) as subtractive lighting on her face and I used a silver fill card just in front of Lauren to bounce additional light up into her face.

While this is my favorite image so far (I really need to live with all of them for a few weeks before I can objectively choose a real favorite) there are dozens and dozens of wildly different expressions and gestures from which to choose.

I am generally happy with my post processing but the next time I touch the file I'll try adding a bit more midrange contrast to Lauren's face so it reads differently. You never know until you try a few iterations but it's important to play with a file as soon as possible so you can start realizing the potential of the shoot.

I was using an APS-C camera set up to shoot color Jpegs in a square format and I switched to black and white in Photoshop. Seeing the square in the camera was a wonderful way to work; especially if your final target is also a square. Right?

As I mentioned, I tried three different lenses. One was a 90mm but it put me a bit further from Lauren than I wanted. The second was a 60mm and that focal length was just right. This was from a 16-55mm f2.8 zoom lens and even at its longest focal length I feel it's just a tad short....or wide.

I'm making an effort to create new work instead of endlessly re-posting older work (even if I really love the old stuff). The image looks a bit flat here but when I punch in it's got so much detail everywhere. I'd hate to bump up the contrast too much and start losing detail in the highlights and shadows.

Anyway, that's what I did in the studio today. It was fun.

For my reserved, European readers, I'm going to try and make you comfortable by NOT telling you exactly what Lauren and I had for lunch today. I wouldn't want to over share. (smiley face emoticon implied...).

Added. A version with more midrange constrast.

Here is a much more modern example of my basic portrait lighting done with an APS-C format camera.

While this is not the same style as my previous post, I was more interested in the actual portrait and less interested evoking a "look" here, it is still the same basic lighting set up. One big light over to the left of frame, a soft transition to shadows and then shadows with less fill that many people like.

I'm less happy with the background; I wish it was less uniform in tone and more out of focus.

If I remember correctly this image was done with a conventional APS-C camera but with an adapted Hasselblad 80mm f2.0 F series lens. I should have turned the flash down a tad and opened up one more stop. It would also have been in keeping with my usual strategy to use brighter but less uniform light on the background. Live and learn. That's why we constantly practice.

But taken just as a portrait and not as an exercise in lighting I am very pleased with it. I think my friend, Lou, looks amazing.

We've been dancing around portrait lighting for a while so I thought it would be fun to dig in a little bit....

Portrait of Michelle.

In this portrait of Michelle I cheated by using the perfect lens and camera for portraiture, available at that time. It was a medium format film camera with 4X the surface area of a 35mm, or full frame sensor. The portrait was also done with one of my favorite portrait lenses available then; a 180mm Zeiss f4.0.

I say that I "cheated" because I feel there is a difference that is more than just equivalent f-stops between formats, and is more about focus ramping, and by that I mean that trying to match f-stops between formats is a bit simplistic and it's pretty much impossible to match how quickly focus will fall off between formats even if you normalize the relative difference between f-stops. The formula is more complicated than a simple re-sizing exercise.

But to my eyes part of the charm of this image (for me) is how beautifully and completely the wrinkled canvas (not muslin) background goes out of focus. But it's not a sudden thing; the transition, and that sudden fall off of focus is what I tend to see when people use fast lenses on smaller sized sensors (like full frame or APS-C) when trying to emulate a larger format look. In those shots there is a discernible and more abrupt loss of sharp zone while the bigger formats ramp more gracefully but more quickly from sharp to gone.

For this portrait I used a very large soft box. It was 4 x 6 feet and I always used it in a horizontal orientation and over to one side so the light had more ability to "wrap" further around the portrait subject. The larger light source was additionally softened with several layers of silk that floated in several inches in front of the front diffuser of the soft box.

I use my light modifiers in much closer proximity to my subjects than I have seen other photographer position theirs. The edge of the soft box closest to the camera is just out of frame by a hair. It's also a close to Michelle as I can possibly get it.

Here's a quick illustration:

It's important to me that the face be lit well and that the fall off between well lit skin tone and deep shadow be a gradual effect with no hard lines. I try to get all of the front surface of the light box, or as much as possible, above chin level with my subject so the light under her chin goes into soft shadow and reinforces the line of her chin; the demarcation.

If you look at the play of light across Michelle's face you won't see conventional fall off as delivered from the inverse square law because all of the lit portions of her face are nearly equidistant from the front of the light source. Instead I'm playing with the angle of the light to create a shadow to one side of her nose. You can see that there is no light fall of (diminished intensity) on the lit side, or the shadow side of her face, because in the triangle under her left eye (on the right of the frame) and to the left of her nose has the same tone as the skin on the other side. But the bigger light source is creating a smoother and much more gradual transition from normal skin tone to dark.

The biggest mistakes I see from other photographers who might want to emulate this style are to use too small a light source and/or to position it too far away from the subject which makes the shadow transition more abrupt because there is less light surface wrapping around.

You might also notice that I tend to photograph portraits with the camera as close to actual eye level as I can. This is for several reasons. Lighting people from above makes them seem weaker, subservient or shy and I don't want to overlay a look on someone that isn't commensurate with their nature. The second reason is that "unnatural" angles tend to amplify the forehead and reduce the size of a subject's chin, which I find unflattering. What I imagine for most of my portrait sitters is what they would look like if we were sitting in a Starbucks or a café and we were looking at each other across a small and comfortable table. I'm only 5 foot 8 inches tall so I don't usually tower over most of the people I shoot. But I feel strongly that eyes at the same level as camera is the most natural and intimate way one can photograph a portrait sitter.

You'll note that I have a black panel positioned on the opposite side of the subject from the main light. This keeps stray photons from bouncing off the ubiquitous white walls of modern civilization and bouncing back into the shadow areas to undermine my beloved shadows. You may call it subtractive fill but it's just there to block stray bounces.

On the other side, just behind and out of camera range and behind my subject, is another black card which keeps excessive light from the main light off the background. I don't always need a black card there if the distance from the foreground to the background is 20 or 30 feet away but the closer the main light is to the background the more I want to subdue light coming past Michelle and degrading the shadows that edge the background.

The background almost always gets its own light and it's usually a small soft box with a light head that matches the color temperature and flash duration ( I like long duration flash, actually) of the main light.
If I want more undulation in the background I use the background light at an angle to the background instead of straight in. If that's the case I might also use a net to even out the spread of the light from one side to the other. The shallow depth of field from using the correct portrait camera and lens takes care of smoothing out what would otherwise be distracting glitches in the background.

In the days of film I would generally have the shoulder closest to the light be a little lighter than the rest of the subject and that would require me to burn down the tones in the region under the enlarger in the darkroom. I think I did a decent job blending the tones in this image of Michelle. It works best if there is always some detail there to begin with. Burning detail-less highlights generally just looks like shit.

None of the things in the illustration are hot glued to the floor at the beginning of the session. We're moving stuff all the time.

Many years ago I posted a time lapse video of me shooting a portrait for advertising at Zach Theatre. There was a giant scrim, I lit with hot lights, and there was a big, passive file on the other side --- but pretty far away (I want those shadows). I needed some fill because the space we were shooting in had black walls! Anyway, the time lapse covered the time spent shooting one person. I could count 25 times, at least, when I stepped away from the camera and made adjustments to the lighting, to the fill, to the background light, etc. I guess what I'm saying is that portraiture, done the way I prefer, is not a passive process in which one only stands stationary and barks commands to a compliant model.

When I feel it's needed I get in front of the camera and even mimic to my sitter what I'm looking for. It's easier for people to SEE what you imagine than to try and explain it to them in hundreds and hundreds of words.

This is just the way I like to do portraits. You prints will vary.

distillation: big lights, big modifiers, get everything on the front side of the subject as close as possible. Keep the background as far away as possible. Control the highlight to mid-tone to shadow transitions as you see them aesthetically. There is no "ratio." There is no formula. We work on a clean slate for almost every shoot.

Portrait of Renee. A rumination about process.

I like making portraits of people that I find attractive. Often, well meaning friends will tell me, "You just have to photograph my friend Solange!!! She is so beautiful." Not wanting to disappoint my friends, and mostly being optimistic about the possibility that I'll discover someone so photogenic that I am just bowled over, I almost always invite my friends to act as model agency match-makers and to help make an initial connection between me and the portrait subject.

More often than not I'm disappointed and, honestly, the person on the other end of the lens ends up being a bit.....underwhelmed with my photographic capabilities. The problem usually isn't that the person isn't beautiful in some way, or that I've suddenly lost any technical or aesthetic skill I had only days or weeks before; no, the problem is that what I find to be interesting, attractive, captivating, alluring or just plain photogenic in people is generally different from the tastes or cultural perspectives of my friends.

Part of this is the disconnection between the way people, who are not interested or trained in photography, see the people in front of their eyes and the way a camera would see the same person. They tend to subconsciously minimize flaws that the camera can't ignore or they are captivated by some facet of the person that doesn't translate well visually. In many cases it's just a difference in what I'd like to see, specifically, in my portrait subjects and what my friends think would just be a generally attractive person.

I never want to hurt anyone's feelings so we generally set a date, try really hard to make good photographs and I'm happy if the sitter finds some good images that I can retouch for him or her to reward them for their time and effort even if the results are something I would never consider putting into my own collection. All I will have lost in most of these encounters is some time and, sometimes, even if the imaging doesn't work out or the results are inconclusive, etc. I make a good, new friend and we are able to connect well on topics that are removed from photography.

One of my friends here in Austin, back in the days when I rented a large studio in the east side of town, was a wonderful painter named Mercedes Peña. She had, for a while, been married to another great painter named, Amado Peña. Mercedes was every bit the classic artist. She kept her own chaotic schedule and had a house that was so colorful and vibrant that many people mistakenly believed it was some sort of contemporary art museum devoted to brilliant and intense color.

Part of our connection was the popular morning meeting point in the Clarksville neighborhood, a bakery called, Sweetish Hill Bakery. I had a revolving show on the walls of the bakery which included some of my favorite portrait work. Mostly people with their favorite pastries or their favorite coffee. Some were a bit naughty such as one image of my friend, Renae (not Renee above) who posed for a black and white image nude, holding pastries over her breasts.

Mercedes and a large group of our mutual friends would gather in the morning for coffee and the most excellent pastries and we'd dissect and argue/discuss the issues of the day. One warm Summer morning Mercedes mentioned a younger friend who she described as "very beautiful" and asked if I would interested in photographing her. I agreed and days or weeks later Renee came to my studio.

At the time we were working in about 2,000 square feet of live studio space and it was my practice to have at least two lighting setups that I was interested in trying out set up, metered and ready to go. I thought it was the height of bad manners not to be prepared; to waste the time of someone who was, in turn, sharing their time and energy. 

When we start a portrait session I like to place the person on a stool or chair in the middle of the light I've designed and to start a conversation. Nothing deep or serious, at least at first, but touching on what the person's interest in being photographed might be, what their preconceptions of a session are, what they like and dislike in portraits that have been made of them before. 

During this conversation, in which the subject is in the sweet spot of the lighting design, I'm also making adjustments to the lights and to the black scrims that I usually use to intensify shadows and mid-tone to highlight transitions. I watch how the light plays across the person's face and how they sit in relation to my camera (which is generally anchored to a tripod). At the time I was doing this portrait I was enamored of a style of lighting that used big soft sources as main lights but very little fill. I was excited about the potential of the shadows and the intersection between deep shadows and flesh tones.

I was looking for the light to create a triangle in the midst of shadow on her right cheek (on the left side of the image and I was looking for a catchlight in each eye. 

Most portrait sessions start with big smiles and lots of anticipation from the subject about what the photographer might want to see. I like to suggest early on that we do more serious looks. That squinch-y eyes and a toothy smile are not at all what I usually want to see. 

In some ways it was easier for me in the time of Polaroid test materials and film because when we struck gold in a pose or expression or gesture I could share it with the person I was photographing and we could extend the thing I liked about the action in different ways. Shooting in this more intimate style with digital means taking the camera off the tripod and walking it over to the subject to share the image on the back of the camera which then invites a look-see at any number of previous frames; some of which might be counter productive. Certainly, this kind of review breaks whatever spell the two of you have woven between each other and requires some retrenching and re-advancement. 

At a certain point both the photographer and sitter feel they've exhausted one lighting set up and it's time to move to another look. We might take a break to go outside for fresh air or have a glass of wine and talk about painting or whatever but we build up from scratch new energy in the fresh lighting set up. Almost every session like this is rife with trial and error. Which lens draws the subject the way you want it? Which expression is most in line with the photographers subconscious preconception. 

And all the while you are gauging the interest and attention of the sitter; hoping it doesn't wane as you clumsily zero in on the exact look and energy you were looking for. 

Portraiture can be a classic example of "I'll know what I like when I see it." It's almost always that way for me. I'll start with a lighting idea and a general idea of how I think someone would look best and then the subject will turn their head slightly and smile in a certain way that just hits the mark in a way I could not explain in words. Sometimes we get the shot in the moment but sometimes we have to acknowledge what I saw and work back towards it. 

At some point you've exhausted the possibilities of that day. That session. You probably pushed past it to the point that you are both ready to give up for now. But if the session worked and the images emerge in post that make you both smile it's almost a certainty that you'll want to work together again and see if you can push a new set of images in a more daring or experimental direction. If nothing worked then mostly you shake hands, thank each other and chalk it up to just another mystery of the universe. 

At least, that's how it works sometimes....