Walking the lake instead of downtown. Using a prime lens instead of a zoom.

A view of Zach Theatre's main stage from the Hike and Bike Trail.

As of now next week is fully spoken for. We have portraits to shoot in Knoxville, TN. A video project to complete at UT Austin, and a photo assignment after the Friday show of "ANN." I've been swimming in a pool that's too hot and I figured I'd take a break, change the scenery and get my exercise this morning with a long walk around the Hike and Bike Trail that surrounds Lady Bird Lake (which is also the Colorado River). I've talked about running and walking on this trail in my blogs for about a decade but I haven't really shown many images of the actual trail so I thought I'd take the "eccentric" camera out of a spin this morning (Friday) and give you some idea of what the trail looks like.

Plus, I thought I'd play around with captions; just for fun. For the curious camera lovers out there the "eccentric" camera is the Pentax K1. I attached the 50mm f1.4 AF lens to it and just blasted away at the scenery. It's kinda fun and kinda retro to hoist and operate an "old school" style DSLR once in a while. The whole experience has its PROS and CONS. Sadly, no pre-chimping. One actually has to commit to an exposure and the REVIEW the image afterwards to make assessments. Very primitive indeed. 

It's an interesting contrast for me since I spent time at the museum yesterday with the X-Pro2 and the 35mm f 1.4 lens which is a whole different photography/gear experience even if the lenses are a relative match for angle of view..... 

One nice thing about such a weather sealed camera body is that I need to wipe the sweat from my hands off the body but will probably just take the camera into the shower with me.....Do you think I'll need a lens or body cap on the front????

This is part of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge which crosses Lady Bird Lake. The bridge runs north and south while the river runs west to east. It's a beautiful bridge and even has gardens and flower boxes along the edges. It's nice to be able to cross the lake without having to do so with a line of stagnant cars in rush hour. Very civilized and one of three good pedestrian options for navigating the north/south transit of the lake/river.

This is the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge as seen from the Hike an Bike Trail on the south side of the lake.

The view from the area below the Pfluger Bridge looking west to the Lamar Blvd. Bridge which used to be the only convenient north/south bridge for cyclists, walkers and runners. And a dangerous option it was....Narrow walk ways butted right next to lanes of fast moving cars. And yes, a number of pedestrians lost their lives on that bridge...

A view of the newest downtown construction project, recently completed. 

This view is from the Pedestrian walkway on the First St. Bridge. 

That walkway is totally separate from the part of the bridge open to cars. 

At the south intersection of the river and First St. are a bunch of water fountains, out door showers and a large dog park. It's a hub for so many runners and walkers....

This is a view of the "Jenga" tower from the north shore of the lake. I'd never seen this particular view of the building before but I've become a bit fascinated by the project. It's so odd to see a building that looks so .... unbalanced?

When I first started running the Hike and Bike trails some 45 years ago there were far fewer trees, and the trees that were there were much shorter and smaller. Now, if you are running the five mile loop on the trail you'll have shade from the big, mature trees for about 1/2 of your walk. It really makes a difference when that "feels like" temperature settles in around 110 degrees for days a a time. 

Because, really, you can't just give up on your running....

Part of the city's old power plant which has been unused for many years. 

It would make a great studio but it's only zoned for municipal use. 

This is a circular ramp way that allows runners and bikers to descend from bridge level to train level without having to use the stairs. It's kind of cool that it's covered with ivy now. Nice place to stop and hit more water fountains. This is on the north side of the lake.

When it's not 96 degrees at 8:15 in the morning the trail is utilized by many more people. Today was a light day but I'm guessing it's because everyone is getting ready for their kids to go back to school next week. Traffic coming soon.

This (just above) is a historic site. Just past the arch of the bridge is the spot on the trail where then governor, George W. Bush was nearly run over when a speeding garbage truck lost control and jumped the curb, barely missing him. George W. Bush was a regular trail runner back then. 

Lousy president but turning out to be an interesting and quite likable fine art painter.

This is a view of the Lamar Blvd. Bridge from the opposite side. I'm always a sucker for the reflections.

From underneath the Lamar Bridge, looking south.

On the north side of the trail and heading west.

There's a five mile loop that runs from the Mopac Expressway to First St. and then back to Mopac. Mopac and First St. are the book marks for this but the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge is kind of in the middle of the two. You have longer options. There is a part of the trail that goes over to IH35 and is about 7.5 miles and a longer loop that goes all the way to a dam in east Austin. That's a 12 mile loop. 

If you go from Mopac Bridge to Pfluger and back you're at a bit less than 3 miles. 

When I was younger and in better shape we'd do the 12 mile loop. Now, as a point of pride I won't go less than the five mile loop. Maybe when I turn 80 I'll pare it down to the three mile route....

But maybe not.....

Looking west from the Mopac Bridge. That's the part of town where the real money lives. 

Overpass grafitti. 

Electric scooters are banned from the trail. That's a great thing. Now there is a pilot program being run to slow down the bikers so the danger of pedestrians and bikers intersecting at blind corners is cut down. Funny to see a radar speed thing on the trail. I tried to run toward it but could only get it to 8 miles per hour. I'm not a moving hazard....

That's the trail I've been walking and running for nearly 44 years.

I hope it is here forever. Now it's Ben's favorite running destination.

He's been on the trail since he was a tiny guy in a baby jogger thingy.

I tell him to keep the habit up so he can run fast when he gets ..... more mature.

Walking through the Blanton Museum with a "normal," prime lens on my Fuji X-Pro2.

If I'm not booked on a job for a client on a Thursday I like to head over to the UT campus and spend some time at the Blanton Museum and sometimes the Humanities Research Center. Yesterday was hot and sticky and I think every potential client within 100 miles of Austin was either getting their kids ready for school or taking the week off to find a cool place in which to hibernate. That left time in my schedule (after swimming and napping) to give the Blanton a visit. 

As you probably know, if you are a regular VSL reader, I've been cornering the market in Fuji X-Pro2 cameras lately. I'm convinced it's a classic and might represent the apogee of digital camera making in our time (give me a little leeway for hyperbole, it's the house special....). 

I say that I'm cornering the market but what that really means is that I've managed to squeak together enough loose change to buy three used camera bodies. One looks brands new while the other two are scratch and dent free. I do like them a lot and I'm carrying one with me wherever I go. And recently I've been trying to branch out away from a myopic obsession with normal focal lengths to become more competent with semi-wide and even "classic" wide angles. To me this means the focal lengths from 14-23mm (which full frame translates into 21mm to 35mm equivalent angles of view).

But yesterday, with the heat and humidity clouding my usual endurance, I drew the line at the unfamiliar and the excessive and stuck with the Fuji 35mm f1.4 (classic) and used it mostly as a manual focus lens. The combination of the bright line finder aesthetic of the OVF and the ability to magnify a part of the frame to check focus makes the system (camera and lens) a different experience than either the mirrorless+EVF or the DSLR+OVF set-ups. The camera and lens, stripped of things like grips and flashes are actually small and light (everything in context) and even though I had to trudge four or five blocks through our heat storm the photo-gear barely registered its presence. 

I chose the X-Pro2 and the fast 35mm as a bit of an experiment. The idea that image stabilization is a "must have" feature has permeated every part of the photo industry. I'm coming to believe that it's an addiction, like cigarette smoking and the reckless consumption of sugar. I was beginning to believe that it would soon become impossible for anyone to even make an interior photograph without the jiggling of a sensor or the wiggling of some lens elements. I wanted to see for myself if the era of film photography was somehow a magic moment in time during which all photographers were steady as rocks, all our lenses above average and all of our models graceful and thin because of something in the construction of those ancient cameras; or perhaps something that was or wasn't in the water.....

I used the camera as I would have used one of my film rangefinders; conscious of holding it still and steady, exhaling softly during the shutter press, even down to visualizing the proper stance for maximum stability. I also think that to hold a camera perfectly during the moment of exposure one should be free of distraction and conflicting desire. I think just having a live cell phone in one's pocket is enough of a psychological vergence in the Force to deflect attention in little microbursts in which one wonders if they've gotten a text from Gloria, a reminder from their calendar, a 'like' on their social media feed. Those small but acute and repetitive distractions pull away one's focus and interject a bit of discord in the clarity of seeing and the coherence of visualization. The small vergences interrupt the clear and linear process of engaging in the moment.  Same with a fat wallet wallowing around in one's back pocket, or the pressure of those gaudy sunglasses cantilevered across one's skull. 

I find I'm at my best, when it comes to concentrating on photographic technique, when my only accessory at the time photographic engagement is a simple wrist watch. One with hands. But even that may shift the balance...

At any rate, I used the camera carefully and also left my phone in my car (and everyone else should too; I hate hearing inane telephone conversations in the middle of an otherwise quiet museum visit....). I used the lens at its widest apertures and chose logical, handhold-able shutter speeds like 1/60th and 1/125th of a second when making the images. Sometimes I could use ISOs as slow as 320 but mostly I kept the camera around ISO 800. That should be child's play for today's (or even yesterday's) sensors. 

So, how did I do? Well, I posted some images from my visit here:

I was able to examine each frame at 100% and I think I did pretty well. Actually, I think the camera system and I worked well as symbiants. The lack of "shutter shock" and a well implemented shutter button went a long way toward keeping the camera's vibration minimal. The bright line finder was useful in composing as I was able to see what was outside the frame and what really needed to be inside the frame. The bright lines also acted as a steadiness guide because I could gauge hand movement by the relative movement of the bright lines to the subject(s). The less "jump" I got between the lines and a reference point on the subject the less image degradation I got. 

What I found in the end was that photographing without image stabilization is entirely possible. It's possible even without a tripod. I feared that decades of caffeine saturation, and long nights editing in front of a computer screen, would have inflicted more damage to my ability to hold stuff steady but it wasn't the case. That said, I think my days of hand holding an unassisted 1/15th of a second with a normal lens are long over. But I was never that good at those kinds of speeds anyway. 

An artist covered one of the large, replica sculpture casts with very thin color 

fabrics to make a statement that art historian can vouch for; that original Greek and Roman statues were polychromed and painted when they were created and our perception of

white marble statuary as being the normal state is not so. It's a result of centuries of wearing and fading away of the colors.....

Tungten-esque light on the front of this statue combined with daylight through yonder window mostly means that one must take the reins of control and make a conscious decision as to whether you'd like a warm, yellow statue or a correctly colored statue in a room filling up with blue light.

Two versions of "Woman With Striped Dress, and the Saturated Red Seat." I could not decide which I liked better so I included them both. I should have requested that this person walk all through the museum with me, standing just so and just enough out of focus in the background of every scene. It would make a nice variation on the usual, too serious images from the museum....

The same kind of conundrum as with the woman in the stripped dress. Does this collage of objects work better in the photo as a standalone object or does the out of focus person in the background add a contrast between the sharpness of the detail and the soft and ephemeral image of that person?

This image is not from the museum but was a test shot in my living room.

I have these sconces on all the living room walls and I use them as targets when playing with lenses prior to a shoot. Yesterday I was using this one as a target for the Kamlan 50mm f1.0 on the 

Fuji X-Pro2. It's actually a sharp lens in the center, if you get the focus right.

Finally: One man's idea of minimalism.

I love the museum. It's filled with fun things to look at,  powered by sometimes goofy ideas. 

But even the goofiest of ideas is important. 

Oh, and you probably don't really need image stabilization all the time. In fact, outdoors in the sun you probably don't need it at all. Maybe it's a "rainy day" feature. 

A short video featuring Holland Taylor discussing her play, "ANN" at Zach Theatre.

This is a short edit of our video interview with Holland Taylor discussing the Austin performance of her hit play (I can say that since it did well on Broadway!) ANN. We shot this on a hot Sunday afternoon in a location that featured all the roadblocks any video production could stumble over. But it's genuine and I like it. The Zach Theatre has been using it to good effect and the show is selling briskly.

All shot in 1080p with the Fuji X-H1 cameras and assorted Fujifilm lenses.

To see more about the play go here: ANN

Our next Fujifilm, multi-camera production is next Thursday at UT. So many toys to play with, so much fun....


Added in the afternoon: for some reason this post is one that got a lot of traction in our "stats" today:
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/were-back-both-of-us-all-of-us.html

Scouting. It's part of the job. Sometimes it's a job-saver.

I'm shooting some video for a department at the University of Texas. The project revolves around interviews with six or seven students and five or six lecturers. The interviews are quick and informal but I still wanted to see what options we might have for locations and whether or not we could shoot in multiple locations so that all the interviews don't look exactly the same. I suggested that we scout the location at least a week before the project day, just to make sure there's no lurking job destroyer that might show its ugly face just when we have a stack of people waiting and no other options. Scouting is a magic thing that not only gives us a good idea of where we'll be but also how the light looks in each location and what sort of audio challenges there might be. 

Once we've put together a list of options the gap between the scouting day and the shooting day gives the client the opportunity to reserve the spaces we've selected and to make styling adjustments and technical fixes to the locations, if necessary. For example: we'd like to shoot in one lab but there is a vent hood in one corner and it seems as loud as a diesel lawn mower. I'd like to turn it off when recording video but it might be critical for the vent hood fan to be running continuously. There is a "guy" the client must check with before we know what options we'll have at that particular location. Without the check-in with the expert turning off the fan is not an option. Multiply this by every location. 

Scouting also means that we know where we're supposed to park, how long it will take to get equipment into the building(s) and how long it will take to navigate hallways and the spaces between buildings. We have three different macro locations selected in the campus area. Within each of these master locations we have two or three "micro" options. We got answers to questions like: Is there a usable elevator to get between floors? Are there conveniently located electrical outlets? What's the air conditioner noise like? And the perennial question, "Can we turn off those florescent lights?"

We also now know that under no circumstances can we mess with the air conditioning. The discontinuation of air conditioning in Texas in August is (justifiably) a reason for instant dismissal. In a University of Texas facility it is close to a capital crime. This means that it will be comfortably cold while we make video but that we'll need to use lavaliere microphones to minimize the noise. 

I brought along my consumer camera (an iPhone XR) to take visual notes as we walked around and scouted. The images below are either germane to the scouting or are of things which caught my attention. The camera you have with you....

Un-digital archiving.

Yes. Acres and acres of magnetic tape.

flat files with secret maps.

20th Century Filing Systems.

And gear. So much gear.

This is...emphatically....not the gear we'll be packing in....

We spent a couple of hours scouting which will save us at least twice as much time on the shoot day. It also gave me and the two main clients time to get more detailed about our shooting plan and our goals for the production day. I have a much better idea of their expectation and also a better understanding of what kinds of gear I need to bring in order to do the job.

We're going to do a two camera set up for the interviews and we've been promised a treasure trove of b-roll from expeditions all over the globe. We will need a small light kit (3 units) and a couple sets of wireless lav. mics. Some stands, a couple cameras, a bag of lenses and a relaxed attitude. I'm hoping this video project will be heavy on the fun side but I want to be ready to do it right.

I wish I could scout next Tuesday's portrait assignment in Knoxville, TN. but the only chance will be on Tuesday morning, just before we ramp up and get our lighting in place. If we didn't bring something along with us then we'll just have to amp up our ingenuity levels and be creative. That's the flip side of the scouting equation. Nice to have, not always available.

Finally, we scouted the cafeteria. I think we'll certainly be able to find healthy options here. On my plate you'll find about two pounds of vegetables along with a vegetarian enchilada entree. That, and a bottle of mineral water. I might live forever.....

Golden beets and Brussel sprouts???

Belinda and Dr. Rhodes will be so proud.....