The interesting shift continues; from DSLR to Mirrorless to Phone Cameras. From a brief period when everyone wanted to be a "pro" to a current span when "pro" is almost a pejorative.

Annie. ©Kirk Tuck

The battle lines keep getting re-drawn. In the infancy of digital we scampered around trying to find cameras that had enough megapixels to use for professional work (to take over from our 35mm film cameras) that didn't cost as much as a decent used car. Once prices dropped the aspirational target for nearly everyone practicing any kind of photography with enthusiasm was the "professional" quality DSLR. We fine-tuned that, modifying the "ask" to include a full frame sensor. And then the insurrection started. The shot across tradition's bow were the mirrorless cameras from Olympus and Panasonic. 

Many people imagine that the main selling points of the cameras were: "Small" and "Lightweight" but what really connected for most people (even if they don't realize it, consciously) was the introduction of workable EVFs, with all the new promises of workflow immediacy and instant near visualization of the final image....before you even pressed the shutter. The new aspect of the mirrorless revolution that resonated with photo nerds specifically was the shorter lens mount flange to sensor distance which opened up the adaptation of hundred or thousands of lenses designed for all other systems which could be easily adapted and used with little penalty (except that we learned that a lot of lenses we thought were great were actually mediocre on the smaller format because they lacked resolution and bite).

We've now seen the completion of a circle combining all the things we thought we wanted when they were scarce or non-existent; we have full frame sensor cameras that deliver most of the promises of EVF technology and can also be used in conjunction with a wide, wide variety of older lenses! 

But, of course, no photographic manufacturing target, dependent on consumer interests, can stand still for long and now, after everyone has finally leapt aboard the full frame, mirrorless train (hurry Pentax, the rest of the guys are leaving the station....) We see all that hard work (at least on the part of camera makers and retail marketers) come to a period of slowing or negative growth as previously adamant amateurs and pros of each camp now come to grips with a subject that we've mulled over here on VSL for years: Do top flight cameras matter anymore in an age where 75% of all images are viewed on telephone screens?

I've seen a growing cadre of young and old users who have discovered the new potential imaging quality of phones from Samsung and Apple who are re-thinking their previous dependence on traditional cameras. And, I hate to tell you this, but among people under 40 (maybe under 50) that video capability, which traditional camera users maligned for years as an expensive feature no one wanted, has now become a vital and much used part of the whole camera/phone package. Among younger photographers I'm seeing more video being made than still images....

People push back by talking about the poor handling characteristics of iPhones as cameras but it's only a matter of months before their complaints turn into a torrent of Kickstarter Kampaigns aimed at building cases for phones that add handling features and mimic traditional camera handling niceties. 

I'd count on that. Pop that flat and non-grippy phone into a case that allows for a traditional set of controls and play "street photographer" at will. 

Yes. 12 megapixels will not match the image quality of a Phase One camera with 100 megapixels when it comes to printing a 40 by 60 inch print. But how closely do they match up when the final images are compared on a phone screen? An iPad? A 60 inch 4K television monitor viewed at 10 feet? And do you really need the full potential of whatever top of the line camera for every shot you take? Really? 

It's going to be interesting to see where all this takes us. It seems like a sea change has happened and a bunch of us weren't paying attention and we're still in denial. Not saying we never need to use better cameras than the ones in our phones, only that we're far, far, far from the mainstream market whose mainstream buying previously subsidized the ritzy and technically masterful cameras we've usually embraced. 

I hope my next standalone camera doesn't get priced up into trust fund territory. But the way clients are acting now for many photographers I'm pretty sure the iPhones and Galaxy phones will be more than enough for a number of markets....I have the feeling that full frame, high res cameras are the large format and medium format cameras of our time. The phones are the 35mms and point-and-shoots.

Evolution is tricky, especially when you are in the middle of the process. 

Just to add a little chaos to the beginning of the week, here's why I like the Pentax K-1.

It happens the same way a lot of the time. I'll go into our bricks and mortar camera store here in Austin, Texas; Precision Camera, with the intention of picking up some ink cartridges for my ever thirsty printer, or I'll have a pressing need for a specific shade of gray seamless background paper, and as I'm standing around chatting with my sales associate I'll spy a camera that's still a mystery to me. 

It happened about a month or so ago. I was finished with my business (buying yet another microphone) and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a used Pentax K-1 nestled at the bottom right hand side of a massive mountain of used Nikon cameras. I asked Tamara if I could take a closer look and she pulled it off the shelf and put it into my hands. This is a camera with that exudes toughness and it's denser and heavier than it looks when sitting dormant. I played with it and deliberated for a few minutes. The purchase price was under $1,000 and I'd casually looked at prices a week or so ago so I knew it must be something the store didn't think would move quickly because typically a very mint condition K-1 sells used for somewhere around $1300. I decided to buy it. I asked about lenses but the store is no longer a Pentax dealer and had no inventory of full frame lenses; used or otherwise.

So, exactly what is the Pentax K-1? In a nutshell, it's Pentax first effort at producing a full frame, high resolution, professional caliber DSLR. Not mirrorless but a traditional DSLR. With all that entails. The camera is obviously over engineered and feels like it's milled from a solid block of metal. All the buttons and dials are inspiring examples of good fit and finish. And the 36 megapixel, full frame sensor is much lauded by reviewers all over the web for both its incredible dynamic range (at least equal to the Nikon D810 when matched for ISO) and it's really good noise performance when used at high ISOs. 

The camera has its own idiosyncracies and it also has some charming features that haven't shown up on cameras from other mainstream makers, yet. My favorite "far out" feature is the inclusion of LEDs all over the body which can be turned on to help a photographer find his or her way around the controls in dark environments. There are lights on the rear of the LCD screen so that when you pull the screen out from the body and push the "light bulb" button on the top of the camera four LEDs illuminate all the controls on the back of the camera. Guess work eliminated. There's an LED in the card slots area so you can be confident you are engaging slot one instead of slot two, if that's your goal (another weird twist is that unlike all other two slot cameras I've used the "first," or number one slot is actually closest to the front of the camera instead of being closer to the user. In other words, the slot closest to the back of the camera is actually slot #2. Weird, but then whose to say which is the "correct" orientation?

There is also a light just under the front of the pentaprism hump which illuminates the aperture ring and is a wonderful help when changing lenses in very dark situations. It's actually a godsend for theatrical photographers. Lens changes no longer have to happen in complete darkness....

Even though the camera is bereft of an EVF the actual optical finder is big and bright and sexy to look into (even if it shows you only a fraction of the valuable information spewed forth by a decent EVF). The body is chunky and amazingly comfortable to hold onto for long periods of time; if you can handle the weight. I've bought four lenses for the system so far. I initially bought the HD 28-105mm f3.5-5.6 FA WR lens because it seemed like the smart thing to do if I ended up relegating the camera to being an expensive "point and shoot" camera. But I quickly added two different 50mm f1.4 lenses because; well, you know ----- 50mm!!! Right?

While all of the lenses worked well and did nice stuff optically I ended up craving a portrait type focal length that would be faster than the 105mm f5.6 of the zoom so I bought the 100mm f2.8 macro lens. It's nice and also a bit Quixotic, at least when it comes to its industrial design.

The camera is pretty much just a summary of what professional DSLRs were like for the last decade= big, robust, fast to focus, full frame-y, and with lots of bells and whistles. The main differences between this camera and the Nikon and Canon variants really comes down to the health of the eco-system. How many different lenses can you buy to use on the camera? How many different third party lens makers supply their better lenses in Pentax K lens mounts? Etc. 

The Pentax faithful will tell you that there are currently 13 billion lenses (mostly left over from the film days) that will fit the newest K mount cameras but most are a compromise as far as utilizing features is concerning. Most are manual focusing and a large portion don't work in most automatic modes. Frankly, lens design has changed and there are things that need to be taken into account when mating any lens with a state of the art, high def sensor. The coatings must be different than those used with film and special care has to be taken to avoid light reflecting off the sensor surface and bouncing back to the rear element where it has the potential to cause artifacts and also create flare. Additionally, film lenses were never designed and calibrated for very high resolutions. Most were designed to favor acutance over lines per mm. 

Don't get me wrong. You can put together a modern system with current lenses, designed for modern sensors but the pickings outside the system will be slim. Only a handful of Rokinon/Samyang lenses are made in the Pentax mount (24mm f1.4, 35mm f1.4 and the 85mm f1.4 as well as the 100mm macro and the 135mm f2.0) but again these are all manual focusing and have no communication between camera and lens. You can put together a Pentax full frame version of the "holy trinity" with the 15-30mm, the 24-70mm f2.8 and the 70-200mm f2.8 and you'll be covered for most shooting situations. There's a pricey 50mm f1.4 that's supposed to be as good as anything out there (and a bargain compared to the price of the 50mm f1.4 for the new Panasonic full frame cameras!!!!) but if you want current, affordable primes you'll really need to pick and choose. I bought two different 50mm f1.4 lenses. One is the last MF model (SMC) and the other is the (still current in the catalog) inexpensive, screwdriver drive version that's potentially a remake of the MF lens. 

One does get the distinct feeling that if Ricoh doesn't pay a bit more attention to fleshing out the full frame product in the next year that they'll be partially responsible for driving the Pentax line into extinction. 

So why did a I bother? Why did I buy a second body? Why do I keep buying additional lenses (like one of those old ladies in Las Vegas who wears a glove to prevent blisters as they keep feeding quarters into a slot machine and pulling down the lever? I guess I like the novelty of the whole experience. Then again it massages my nostalgia for a way of working that goes all the way back to the film days. The files from the camera are as good as anything out on the market at any price, up to (but not competing with) medium format. It's one of the few systems that has really, really good IBIS and that means all my lenses (the small handful I currently have) are now stabilized. The lack of lens choices helps to keep me from spending all my money on ever newer lenses and tricks me into taking seriously the idea of being a Pentax full frame minimalist. 

On the other hand my left brain loves the fact that it's mature technology. That the shutter is rated to 300,000 exposures. That the camera is incredibly well sealed and completely gasketed. And then there all the features that I love the "idea" of even if I may never get around to using them. Things like the multi-shot high resolution feature and the astrophotography feature. The composition fine tuning, horizon adjustment and other weird stuff. When you realize how much full frame goodness you can get for a very satisfying price, in a body built like it's tough enough for a moon launch, the K-1 makes a good candidate for a second system to use during those times when you just want to go old school, or deliver files with even more resolution and sharpness than you can get when you pull out all the stops in your APS-C system. That said, my recent hit rate with a Fuji X-H1 and the 90mm f2.0 Fuji lens far exceeded the success rate I got from the K-1 in a small, dark theater.

I like using the K-1 cameras for personal work. It's just a different feel and a different mindset. One that I'm not immune to enjoying. I'll be taking one of the K-1s, a 50mm and the 28-105mm on vacation with me in a couple of weeks.

Personal note: Though I travel a good bit for clients (about 30 roundtrips in North America and one to Iceland last year) I haven't paid out of pocket for my own travel since Ben graduated from his college in upstate N.Y. I haven't taken a real vacation since my parents started faltering.... So, Belinda finally put her foot down and mandated that we take a real vacation; not a "write off" vacation. We decided to go to Montreal early next month and explore the area around that great Canadian city. We're committed. Tickets booked. Non-refundable hotel suite booked. Passports and Global Entry cards at the ready. Camera selection just beginning. Any VSL readers in Montreal? 

OT: Maintaining an optimum weight and BMI is pretty easy if you have steely discipline, a highly competitive nature and a couple good pairs of running shoes...

Ben Tuck #418. A cross country race in Texas in early September. 

Occasionally we photographers seem to like to go off topic and talk about our philosophies regarding fitness, diet and weight control. A common belief circulating on some photo blog sites around the web is that finding the correct combination of foods and beverages will do the trick. I don't believe it for a second. I think weight loss is easy. Same with maintaining an optimum (healthy) weight and BMI. Here's the secret formula = At first light (or earlier) haul your butt out of bed, strap on a pair of running shoes, don on some weather appropriate clothing and head to your favorite running trail. Warm-up gradually for the first ten minutes and then try to hold seven or eight minute miles (or faster) for the next hour. Warm down a bit at the end. Go home, take a shower and then eat anything you want. 

Get up the next morning and do it again. Get up the next morning and do it again. Get up the next morning and do it again. Get up the next morning and do it again. Get up the next morning and do it again.....

During the day be sure to take the stairs instead of the elevators, walk to lunch, take a midday break to do some push ups. Eat whatever you want. This has been Ben's routine since his sophomore year in high school. My preference is to swim but I still run a couple of days a week. If you move (and move fast) you will burn calories and you will regulate and attain a good stasis over time. 

It was well over 100 degrees yesterday by early afternoon. I swam in the morning but the workout was a bit truncated because of some (coach driven) scheduling mistakes. After a post swim breakfast and some time spent helping around the house I pulled on my running shoes and hit the trail to do the 7+ mile course. I'm sixty three and had already swum for 1.5 hours so I set a brisk walking pace instead of trying to over do and run it. Too hot to go hard on a second workout...

It was hot enough to thin out the crowds on the trail but I spied someone coming towards me fast. Oh, yeah, that's just Ben getting in a Sunday run. Doing the course in the opposite direction.

He came over to the house for dinner last night. His mom made a healthy salad full of cabbage, lettuce, kale and radishes. She also roasted a bunch of cauliflower. Me? I bought the steaks and I was in charge of cooking them. Ben and I ate steak like we hadn't seen food in a while. I got up this morning and......I'd lost a pound. 

Wanna lose weight? Move to Texas and run. Run in the heat. Or just run. Don't be too easy on yourself; you need to get tired and sweaty and sore. Then you'll know you're doing it right. Swimming is a good substitute if you've already trashed your knees.  Or......you could just search aimlessly among the millions of self-certified diet gurus to find yet another "magic bullet" theory, complete with boring food and no discernible pay-off. 

I prefer to do my dieting in the pool or on the trail. If you are swimming or running I can pretty much guarantee that you are NOT snacking. Just don't fill that water bottle with anything but. 

YMMV but it should at least be mileage and not just yards.....

Marion, Head Chef and Owner of La Traviata on Congress Ave. in Austin, Texas. For an editorial assignment about the best chef's in Austin. Back before everything was sushi...

©Kirk Tuck

35mm Tri-X film. Printed and scanned.

Editorial Portrait of Chef, Emmett Fox, for an article on Austin's Top Restaurants.

©Kirk Tuck

On 35mm Tri-X film.

Horse Photo. Somewhere in northern Colorado.

©Kirk Tuck

Portrait.

Get close. Metaphorically and actually. Be nice. Respect your subject. Collaborate. Don't dick around with all the controls on your camera and your lights. Be ready to photograph when it's time to photograph. Nothing ruins the flow of a portrait shoot worse than the photographer diving into the menu to sort stuff out. Waste of everyone's time. If your work doesn't flow then you are not "working" on a project, you are just playing around with your toys...

Must be Monday. I'm in that kind of mood.

I'm not a person who bets money on stuff but if I did I'd say it's a sure bet that the new, three lens iPhone 11 is the nail in the coffin for much of the traditional camera world.

Selena at Willie Nelson's ranch. 

I bought an iPhone XR a few months ago and I'm pretty impressed with the images I can get out of the camera. It's not a "real camera" replacement for me for a zillion reasons (the lens isn't long enough) but it does a good job for all the times when I just need some quick, wide angle documentation of "stuff."

But when I saw the introduction of the new phones from Apple that include a portrait lens, a slightly wide lens, and a full-on super wide angle lens, along with even faster processing, and computational tools that enable users to easily blur backgrounds, and also shoot very good 4K video, I more or less found myself thinking that the writing is on the wall for the mass abandonment of traditional cameras by a whole new tranche of former camera users.

The Xs and X iPhones that are the current flagships in the phone line (until next week) have great cameras in them already but the "11" models seem to me as though Apple stopped thinking in terms of designing a set of phones with cameras and started thinking in terms of designing brilliant, little cameras that can also text, make a call, or assist me in making a mobile deposit of that check I got last week from a client. The mindset changed; now they are designing communications tools with a hard and sharp emphasis on photography and videography and they will pull in a large number of former stand alone camera buyers for whom photography is no longer the center of their universe. But I don't even mean that these people have downrated their enjoyment of or participation in photography but that they no longer want to buy cameras, test lenses, learn antiquated rules and aesthetic "guard rails".  (cough, cough, looking at you Rule of Thirds). They just want to easily take photos and videos and share them with friends, family, and far flung strangers who might just hit the "like" button on Instagram or Flickr. They want a transparent experience and one that's more or less instantaneous, from capture to share.

Before you run screaming from the room I have a few pieces of anecdotal evidence I'd like to share...
One of my close associates is a videographer with many years of hard won experience. He is sooooo not a millennial. Anyway, he works with large clients like Subway, USAA, NXP, Purina and many others. His video work is superb and usually he does his work with a Sony FS7, or a couple of Sony A7R2 cameras, and a box full of great lenses. He wrapped a daylong shoot a few weeks ago and packed all the cases into his car only to remember that he needed some beauty footage of the headquarters building for his client. He was exhausted and didn't feel like pulling out the cases of gear, assembling cameras and lenses and putting them all on a big video tripod. His choices were to either use his iPhone Xs to do the video or come back on another day when he had the energy to set up the whole assemblage.

He opted to use his phone for the footage. His phone was ably assisted by a $15 app called, FilmicPro. It gave him a better codec than the one built in by Apple, as well as total control over all the usual, professional video settings. The built-in image stabilization worked perfectly and he ended up with some very beautiful video of the building and the surrounding campus. He incorporated it into the final video project and it was, for all intents and purposes, a seamless inclusion. Proof once again that the camera is secondary to the eye and the experience of the user.

I have another friend who is a full time photographer. He pooh-poohed my standing rule about always bringing along a back-up camera on a paying assignment and found himself stuck near the end of a location shoot on which he was responsible for making portraits of a number of execs. His newish Sony camera crapped out/died with two exec portraits still to go and he momentarily panicked, then he pulled out his phone, dialed in a good exposure for his LED lights and completed the shoot with his iPhone.

He needed to do a bit of Photoshopping to match the out of focus backgrounds he was able to get with his full frame camera but when he showed me the final, retouched images and asked me to compare it was a very close call. I'm certain his clients had nothing to complain about. Sure beats him flying back to Vancouver on his own dime to pick up the two people who were scheduled at the end of the job....

I'm not saying that I'm ready to give up my "single purpose" cameras yet. There's a ton of work that I and others among us do that can't be handled right now by iPhone cameras. Stuff that requires long lenses, low noise under low light, fast focusing, total control, etc. But there is a lot of personal stuff that's easily handled by those little Swiss Army Knife communication tools.

But it's the video field in which the newest iPhones currently hold the most promise. With an application like FilmicPro you can have nearly absolute control over the "camera" in your hands. There is even a Log setting for increased dynamic range (although the computational exposure control seems to provide an optimum level of D-range already). It's no exaggeration that I could easily shoot interviews, stage documentation and art video with any of the latest cameras and the only stuff I'd have to compensate for is how to work with audio. There are tools that allow you to bring the signals from professional microphones directly into the phone/camera but the interface (screen area) gets too crowded to work with fine-tuning levels, and also there are limitations to monitoring the audio as well.

But filmmakers have worked for decades with dual sound systems, using external audio recorders for many of the same reasons. Even with fully outfitted dedicated video cameras. A small, separate audio recorder provides a lot of flexibility....

The latest thing to pique my interest is the flood into the market of very able and very inexpensive gimbals made for the phones. You can now do "Steadi-Cam" work that rivals the stuff we're were raised with in movies and all it costs is an additional couple hundred dollars and a few weeks of practice.

If I was to recommend a new camera to someone who wants to record their daily life, record family vacations, take portraits of their kids and generally do all the photography most people use conventional cameras for I would probably steer them towards a great phone. The only caveat would be if they required the reach and focusing acumen required for shooting fast moving sports. If they have a kid playing soccer then all bets are off but if the mainstay of their oeuvre is taking snaps of their lunch, and selfies with the city skyline in the background....then what the hell?

My kneejerk reaction to "iPhone-ography" when it first popped up (2009-2010-ish) was to be dismissive. The cameras in the phones weren't at parity yet. But now? Now my only objections to embracing the phone as a fully functional imaging tool for many uses is my (dumb) nostalgia for the form factor of traditional cameras and my habituation with them. Strip all that away and just judge the images on an objective basis and you'll find conventional cameras quickly becoming more and more niche.

If I were zooming around the world taking travel videos I'd be at the Apple store right now, standing in line waiting to get two of the newest phones. (You still always need a back up......).

Will traditional cameras survive? Sure, until all of us old guys die out and photography moves past our collective memory of those super star photographers from the last century who carried a worn Leica over one shoulder on a leather strap well seasoned with ample gravitas. Or our memories of the great studio shooters of our time looking casually over the tops of their motor driven Hasselblads.

We shoot what we shoot (in terms of cameras) because we know and trust what we're most used to. But I'm already thinking of tossing my new iPhone XR to Ben and having a (manufactured) reason to get an iPhone 11. And, yes, I'll use it in 4K for my next video project, securely clamped onto a $200 gimbal and giving me new capabilities that I only dreamed of a few years ago.

Yes, just as I stated a few years back that we could use a Sony RX10ii or iii for 95% of our commercial projects, I'm just about to that mindset with the latest phone tech. And too many people have already proven the concept for anyone to argue otherwise....

My new Pentax camera(s) are NOT perfect....

Maybe that's why I seem to like them....

So. 36 megapixels. Old tech/DSLR. No big selection of current lenses. A bit heavy. Kinda bulky. But oh so cute and formidable looking. I'm having a blast shooting "old school." I bought a second body just in case.... I think I'm good on lenses for now....

An interesting counterpoint to the Fujis, for sure.

Any Pentax users out there? Have you played with the K1? 

Packing up for today's video project. Yesterday's swim. A trip to the dermatologist. How to invest? I guess I could call this a "end of week wrap-up."

The "Goatman" of South Austin.

Today's project: The folks at Zach Theatre are producing a family oriented play based on Rudyard Kipling's, "the Jungle Book." I'm doing the cinematography for a TV spot we're producing to market the play and I have a feeling that this will be one of the more fun video projects I'll get to do this year. I don't need to light it because the lighting designer for the show is part of my crew and he'll be handling the lighting board and adding or subtracting light at my direction. That means I don't have to pack lights, light stands, modifiers and power cables. All of the audio will be done in post (announcer bed, special jungle sound effects, etc.) which means I don't have to boom in microphones and watch audio levels, etc.). Finally, this is a traditional, one camera shoot which means I only have to make perfect files on one camera; one scene at a time. Since the target for the video is a thirty second TV spot it also means I won't be shooting endless amounts of footage. The cherry on the cake is that the theater is doing the editing in-house. They have a really good person in marketing whose specialty is video programming and stuff related to marketing.

I'm shooting with the Fuji X-H1 camera (and grip) and, of course, I'll bring back-up cameras just in case. I'm hoping to get a lot of use out of the fast primes but will also be taking along the three Fujicron (f2.0) lenses in case we decide to try some push-in moves that might benefit from autofocus. Those are the three lenses I trust most with locking in and maintaining focus within the Fuji system. 

I'll be using a tripod on a dolly, a big, industrial strength slider, a chicken foot monopod for fast b-roll takes, and a shoulder rig in case I want to go off the more stable rigs and create a bit of the "Jason Bourne" handheld freneticism. My only question now is about color profile. I'm partial to ETERNA but it's flat if you use it straight out of camera with no grading. I'm not sure how much experience my editor has with color grading and we'll have a quick conference about it before we get cranking. If he's not totally up to speed with color grading we may select something like one of the NPS profiles just as a safety. 

And, yes, we are shooting in 4K even though the final deliverables will be in 1080p. I think the whole team would always like the option of being able to edit into the files (crop; Ken Burns action, etc.) without any penalty (note to self: get those V60 cards in the camera now!). 

I'll let you know how it turns out and will post links to the video. Seems like fun to me right now....

A few fun shots of a kid's swim meet at the lake...

Yesterday's swim practice: I've been pushing myself to swim faster and to that end I'm doing two different things. First of all I've moved myself up to a faster lane where I am constantly challenged to make the intervals the rest of my lane mates are setting. I'm having to repeat intervals five to ten seconds faster per hundred but the focus on speeding up has paid benefits in adding some muscle and losing a couple of extraneous fat pounds. I'm trying to keep my body fat index under 12% as measured by my doctor's diagnostic device. 

In order to get faster for longer periods of time in practice I've had to really work on my strokes and get more efficient. My coach chided me about a month ago for not using a good, high elbow recovery. A high elbow recovery (as opposed to just muscling through and swinging one's arms around) takes much less effort and is more effective for good initial hand entry and a nice body roll. I'm also working harder than ever to make the front "catch" fo the stroke, and the first third of each freestyle stroke, more powerful. Trying to really grab the water way out front and hold it through the stroke. Since I am about ten years older than the next oldest lane mate I have to be more efficient and work harder on taking out sloppiness in my swimming by streamlining off the walls and getting a sustainable kick tempo in order to keep up. I could care less about keeping up with people my age. My goal is to hang with athletes 20 years younger. Might as well set tough goals. If the goals are all easy ones you just get fat and lazy...

So, I swam with Matt yesterday. A tall, in-great-shape, triathlete. The one way in which I could keep up with Matt is to hit each of my flip turns perfectly. He was not a swimmer in his formative years and his turn takes too long. It gives me an opportunity to make up lost yardage at each wall. When you age up you have to get more strategic. Cunning. The days of depending on muscle power and raw stamina are fleeting. Good technique is golden. I guess it's the same in photography. 

Random Swimming Pool in a Lisbon Neighborhood. 

My field trip to see the dermatologist. Here's an interesting fact, people who visit their doctors and dentists on a regular basis actually live longer and suffer less from debilitating and sidelining medical issues. Who knew? Well, I guess it's something the very wealthy have known for a long time since they outlive the general population by a relatively wide margin...

A few years ago my family practice doctor, whom I've had in my corner for several decades, decided to do a "concierge" practice and to stop accepting most insurances. You have to pay a set charge on a yearly basis but you get ready access to your doctor and, basically, all-you-can-eat primary medical care. I thought the relationship of 27 years was worth retaining so I signed up. It's been three years now and I'm very happy with my decision. I get seen promptly, have my doctor's direct cellphone number in my pocket and I can indulge my once in a while hypochondria without fear. 

Where is this heading....?  Well, I've been swimming in Texas for about five and a half decades and I spend a lot of time out in the sun photographing and making little movies. I get ample UV exposure and I have a English/Scottish/German ancestry with all that encompasses when it comes to skin health (and timeliness). It seems that often when I post a self portrait here on the blog someone will comment on my "red" skin and admonish me to cover up and coat myself with sunscreen (I used SPF 40, reef safe, non-nano tech, zinc oxide sun screen when I walk and when I swim....). 

After my last yearly physical, earlier this Spring, my doctor asked me to book an appointment with a dermatologist and get a baseline skin check. Just as a second set of eyes on my many little spots and self-generated but boring "tattoos". I took his suggestion and sallied forth into the arms of modern medicine. Long story made somewhat shorter: no questionable spots. no melanoma. no "interesting" growths. Basically, a clean bill of skin health and an appointment for a follow up in a year. Dear God, they even checked the bottoms of my feet!

I assured my new dermatologist (who I liked very much) that I would skew toward pre-dawn swims, would wear my wide brimmed hat when working or playing outdoors, and would continue to buy technical shirts that offered SPF values. I'm also testing out a pair of half gloves from a company called "O.R." The gloves are called Active Ice and they protect the backs of one's hands from sun damage while wicking away moisture to keep hands cool. So far I love them and will probably get a couple more pairs (so I can prevent those actinic keratosis spots from forming.....). I'll review them when I've used the tipless gloves over the course of a long day in the field. They look a bit dorky but hey! I'm already happily married and Belinda is rarely out in the field with me to see just how dorky I can really look when outfitted to combat sun damage. 

He's Alive!!!!!!

Investing: We're always supposed to be smart about investing but boy oh boy, do I have misgivings about tossing hard earned money into the current equities markets. Dare I say it? "Over-valued." So what's the consensus advice for self-employed, freelance artists?  Buy lottery tickets? Play that hunch Bob's uncle mentioned? Just copy Warren Buffett? Suck it up, buy some index funds and stop looking at the day by day, week by week returns? Inquiring minds and all that....

I have one friend who more or less refuses to invest for the future and spends every cent that comes through his hands. He thinks I'm way too conservative, financially, because I save money and don't buy expensive stuff (no BMWs or trips to Vegas here), but I've seen that people in my family can live into their 90's and I think it's better to be 90 and have some cash in the bank than to be 90 and depend completely on Social Security. So, what's your (successful) strategy? Willing to share it? 

And, just to create a baseline for discussion: I do understand that not being in debt is a given in any discussion about investing. No debt here (even though it seems I must be swimming in it given my propensity for buying new cameras......hello! Pentax!!!) but how do you make the money you do have grow faster? 

Pushing off the wall when swimming is the closest most people will ever come 

to the experience of flying.

this is what investing currently looks like to me....

And this...