OT: Sometimes the old "gear" is the best... Celebrating a big milestone today.

You probably have one old camera that you'd never, ever get rid of. It probably represents consistent performance, trusted reliability and no doubt has given you the best results for years, and even decades, of time together. Sure, new models come and go but fancy stuff is often without much substance and obscures the real measure of value in cameras. I'll nearly always trade "new and improved" for "trusted and satisfying." 

By the way, we're celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary today. I can't say all 35 years were perfect. I can still remember the two arguments that we've had in all those years. Both, of course, were my fault... 

Any success I've had in my careers was made possible only with the wise guidance and unrelenting support of my best friend. And all the joy we've shared was only possible because... we've shared it. I hope you are as lucky.

my secret to success in life: Always marry someone who is smarter/wiser than you are.

With the pandemic it will certainly be a different celebration this year. No opportunity to go out and buy B. a diamond tiara. Likewise, I'm not expecting to see a Porsche with a bow on it in the drive way. We won't be going out to our favorite, fancy restaurant to celebrate either. Seems like it's one of those celebrations that will veer more toward drinking some Champagne on the couch and watching "Casablanca" for the XXth time. That's fine by me. That works just as well. 

Where am I sheltering in place? A few pix.

This little building sits just in front of our house and is

my studio, office, photo cave and storage area.

When we bought the house some 23 years ago this structure was a two car carport,

the only distinguishing feature of which was a high ceiling.

We got right to work making it into a photo production facility. 

We've literally done millions of dollars of photography and video 

production with this small space as H.Q. 

I thought it would be interesting to see where people are when they have to shelter in place. Since I can't hop on a plane and go around visiting each person's home turf I thought I'd put mine up and show you where I spend about 22 hours a day. At least from a business point of view. I'll photograph the house interior when I clean up all the stacks of books, etc. 

We are fortunate to live and work on the same plot of land. It's in the rolling hills just south of the Colorado River and a few miles west of downtown Austin. We're close to everything but we have the joy of living in a quiet and established neighborhood filled with trees and broad, quiet streets. 

The studio door sits about 16 feet from the front door to the house. 

Makes it easy to work on files up to the last possible moment before dinner...

It's always a mess because I'm always trying out a new piece of gear, 

shooting something to illustrate a blog post, or actually doing 

business for my clients. 

This is the reverse angle from the image above.

There's about 600 square feet (and it is square...) in the main room 

and then a closet with solid core doors that runs along the south side of the room (on the right) for gear and archive storage. 

The ceiling is 14 feet at the peak.

This is a wide angle view of one part of the backyard. 

It's where I used to sit on our bench at sunset with Studio Dog.

We'd smell the air together and eat treats. On the other side of the 

trees are more trees, and then more trees and, about 150 feet away....a neighbor.

A different angle of the same back yard with part of the house in the background.

Here is the overly landscaped stone walkway leading up to the front of the house.

Go right for the house door and go left for the studio door. 

Love the Japanese Maple in the center...

This is the south side yard. 

With a 150+ foot long fence built to keep Tulip and (when younger) Ben safe from skunks, 

marauding deers and the few raccoons who were 

too lazy to climb over or under. 

The screened in back porch and my favorite bench for eating yogurt with fresh blackberries

 and watching storms blow infrom the west. Quiet and peaceful. 

By mutual agreement this was Tulip's side of the yard.

She could roam anywhere but she liked this side because she could roll in the sun, lay in the grass and still keep an eye on us in the kitchen and dining room through glass double French doors. 

And we could keep an eye on her...

Early this morning, just before full sunrise, there was a nice little herd of deer out in our front yard. I suspect they were there to admire my fabulous Subaru Forester but Belinda assures me they were there to nibble on the landscape. A rock wall separates our front yard from the street so the deer feel a bit protected, I guess. 

I could tell by some of the divets in the front yard that an armadillo had been by in the night, digging for grubs, and as we set off for our first walk of the day a fox ran out of the foliage in the side yard and careened so gracefully into the neighbor's yard, and disappeared. 

Having your office at home is pretty wonderful. I'd been paying $1800 a month for warehouse studio space in downtown Austin back in 1996. We also owned and lived in a condo in Tarrytown which was not cheap. When we had Ben we wanted to move into the best school district in the state and when we found this place we had been looking for nearly two years for the right property. Being able to fold both uses into one location meant cutting our outlay for real estate by nearly half.

Now that the house is paid for it's like getting office and studio space for free. The location is super; it's about a mile to the swimming pool (I hope it will open again someday...) and we are less than a mile away from all three schools Ben attended. Being in the middle of a beautiful neighborhood I'm able to work on stuff in the studio; maybe a portrait or product shot, or some post production, then put on a pair of running shoes and head out the front door to run, with giant trees providing shade nearly every step of the way. 

Our street is a long dead end so there's no cut through traffic. We only see neighbors, people working on new houses and remodels, and delivery services. No manic speeders or lost souls...

When I finish a run I can head right into the house for a shower and a cold drink of water and then head right back out to work. 

The studio is big enough for most still life projects and all kinds of individual portraits. If we need more space for a bigger production we can move the furniture out of the living room in the house and then we have a 24 by 48 foot shooting space with 18 foot ceilings. When we're not using it for a shoot it's a comfortable place to sit around and watch movies. Or, before the crisis, to entertain friends...

This where we're hunkered down for the current crisis. I find it quite adequate. Comfortable.

A production photo from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" at Zach Theatre, in Austin,Texas. Taken with.....a camera.

I miss all those great actors and all the great crew that put together such wonderful productions at Zach Theatre. This is a moment before the doors opened to let in the audience for, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." I hope we're all back in our seats again soon, watching magic unfold right in front of our eyes...

Anne with a Rollei 6008i. After coffee at Jo's on S. Congress Ave.

Yeah. We always brought our cameras to coffee. We still do. At least I still do. Loved the Rollei. Hated the batteries... Loved the lenses.

A portrait of Neely over at the old studio on San Marcos St.

Neely. Circa 1995.

It's Sunday and I'm about to start printing. Who would have guessed?

I've got a backlog of printing to do but none of it has anything to do with commercial photography. Nope. I wanted to make some prints of my late dog, Tulip, so I've been going through thousands and thousands of family image files looking for photographs ranging from puppyhood to sparky oldster. I have lots and lots of digital files but never got around to actually making prints. That's something I thought I'd do if I retired and had some downtime...

I'm not retiring yet but there's nothing I can do, photographically, for the business right now and, from a marketing point of view I'm trying to keep my advertising budget "powder" dry until I can see the path to recovery appear. Why advertise when no one is even thinking of buying?

But what this enforced stoppage of business has delivered is plenty of time to get my family files in good shape, take a few laps around PhotoShop and Luminar 4.1, and get some printing done. And, in the process of memorializing Studio Dog, I've also found little treasure caches of Ben and Belinda images that have never been printed or even post processed well. When you are a busy-busy everything not tied to a job gets pushed forward to a vague time in the future; which generally means --- never.

I bought extra ink yesterday for my Canon Pro-100 printer. A printer that's about ten years old and still functioning well enough to kick out decent prints. I know there are much better printers on the market but printing has been such a low priority for me over the last ten years that I haven't even looked around to see what's available. If I find emotional success from my current printing jag and I find a project that just screams out for prints then I'll start researching in earnest. As a percentage of the overall budget printers are pretty cost effective; especially if you consider a 10 year + replacement cycle...

I've decided to use Canon's Photo Paper Pro Lustre for the moment. I'm sure there are wonderful art papers from a number of companies that I don't even know about but this is functional and the printer profiles for it are embedded in the system. My first tests look just fine. As with cameras I'm coming to suspect that the qualities of individual printers are very much secondary to having something interesting to print.

I'm happy to report that Precision Camera in Austin, Texas is still quasi-open for business. No one is allowed into the store so you have to go online to look for specific items and see if they are in their inventory. Once you've found what you need you have the option of ordering online or, if you are local and want to get your hands on your purchase today, calling them up on the phone and transacting that way. It used to be convenient and quick to order some things on Amazon but now that all shipping priorities go to delivering groceries and essential products I'm finding the stated delivery time for photographic items is stretching out to infinity. (I ordered a  Leica R to L-mount lens adapter about a week ago and the stated delivery date --- and only shipping option available --- was April 28th. And that's a product that's fulfilled by Amazon...). If I want to wait I guess I can stick with Amazon but if I want to use something right now I'm thrilled to still have a local merchant.

Anyway, I ordered a box of 50 sheets of 13 by 19 inch paper as well as a box of 8.5 by 11 inch paper (on which to run tests) and a complete set of inks plus some extra black ink. I gave them my credit card information and requested that I do a curbside pick-up. Half an hour later I was sitting in front of the store calling on my phone. My sales person came out with a bag filled with the products. He was wearing a mask and gloves. He put my purchases on a table just outside the door and when he re-entered the store I got out of the car, sprayed the package with alcohol and took it back to the car.

When I got home I wiped down the packages inside the bag. Now I'm ready to print...

Exercise notes: We're very fortunate to live in a long established, west Austin neighborhood complete with wide suburban streets, loads challenging hills and lots of towering trees. Since there are no "cut through" streets we have absolutely no traffic through the neighborhood other than local people going to the grocery stores. We've also been here for nearly 23 years and know most of our neighbors quite well.

Every morning Belinda and I pick from three or four routes which are mostly about 2.5 to 3.0 miles total and include at least one vicious and unkindly steep hill, and several long, leisurely inclines. When I saw "leisurely incline" I mean a half mile of ten to fifteen percent grades. You will be huffing and puffing a bit to get to the crest, if you are walking briskly enough. We walk now measured by time instead of just distance and we generally allocate an hour to our morning walks.

Afterwards Belinda practices yoga and is now watching and following along on one of the many yoga programs offered free on Amazon Prime Video. They range in difficulty from workouts aimed at leisurely stretching to tougher, "sweaty" yoga aerobics. During yoga time I tend to do my regular "dryland" exercises and stretches. Some crunches, some push-ups, as much planking as it takes to get through five or six classic rock songs on my phone. Then it's time for breakfast and chores.

At some point in the afternoons I had been going to the hike-and-bike trail that runs along the river which flows through central downtown to get in either a 4 or 5 mile run but that's on hold now. They closed all parks thru the holiday weekend and there's a rumor that the parks might stay closed for the rest of the "stay at home" order. Which might cause an insurrection. One in which I am almost certain to participate.... At some point there has to be a calculus as to whether or not life is worth living if confined solely to the most boring and mundane existence. I get the concept of flattening the curve but really, running the trails? Absurd.

Sometimes, when we feel we've seen everything good on Amazon Prime and Netflix we just do another long, slower walk through the neighborhood after dinner.

A note on buying and selling gear right now: I've bought a few small camera oriented things during this time of isolation but nothing big or earth-shattering. I bought a nice, used Panasonic GX8 for $350 and a Leica R 90mm Elmarit for $300. That's pretty much it. But I keep watching the market and reading blogs in which people write about selling off gear. I can't help but make a connection to the stock market and wondering why these sellers waited until everyone was afraid to spend money to sell, or more precisely, offer... their gear for sale. It's a classic "buy high/sell low" proposition right now. I guess it makes sense for people who might be feeling like they need the cash in the moment but it might make better economic sense to wait until the smoke clears and the all clear sirens sound before divesting of the good stuff.

I've been waiting to buy a Leica SL, which I may or may not do, depending on whether the metaphoric P/E ratio for those used cameras falls into a range that I find attractive. At some point every used Leica SL in inventory could be converted to a rent payment by a merchant. That's the calculus that makes sense for buyers. But for sellers? If you have the ability you might want to hold tight. Besides, by removing attractive venues in which buyers can actually use the lens or camera the situation at hand effectively removes most of the motivation for buying in the first place. Right?

So I am continually amazed when someone announces that they are putting (very good) lens X on the market right now. Put it back on the shelf and try selling it when the country is open for business.

On Writing: Several people have expressed surprise that I am able to write so often and so much (which also sounds a bit like a critique....but I pay myself by the letter...NOT), and on a daily or near daily basis. They conjecture that I either spend hours and hours a day on a post or that I am speaking as fast as I can into a speech dictation program (which also edits and spell checks on the fly).

Neither of these things is correct. I spend no more than 45 minutes to an hour on any one post. I used to write more when I was doing camera reviews but we don't do that so much now. So, from the time I grabbed my red cup of coffee and started typing; to this point today, the total time elapsed is 48 minutes.

People who write more slowly usually make the mistake of endlessly revising. That might be great for the creation of a novel but it's overkill for a daily blog. The other impediment is over-research syndrome. A blog isn't meant to be the authoritative text about a subject but more of an overview. I know some people who over-research for days and still only end up with a paragraph or two. And generally too many facts get in the way of reading. Get your big facts straight and stay out of the woods with the minutia.

Writing quickly comes solely from practice. Daily practice. I've written some 4,460 blog posts in the past ten years, actually hundreds more if you count the ones I hated and took down or decided were too inflammatory...  I've also moderated nearly 70,000 comments; mostly positive and happy, but some accompanied by seething and senseless rage fomented because someone might like a different camera brand better....

But like running, swimming and photographing, writing is a discipline in which the practitioner gets faster and (hopefully) better the more they do it, and the more often they practice it. It helps to read other blogs in the subject field to see what resonates in their work and what doesn't work at all. Keeps me from re-inventing another "Pontiac Aztec."

Now, off the printing races. Praying for no ink clogs....

The end of the story about the Lumix S1R sent in for repair and returned with a big-ass fingerprint on the sensor...

This it the S1R that I bought in October and which failed completely in January.

I was excited to plow into the Lumix S1 Pro system in the last quarter of 2019, not the least reason was because I'd read over and over again, in Panasonic's marketing materials and in reviews, about the "fact" that the S1 series was built to a very, very high standard of quality, with superior materials and workmanship. The shutters are rated to deliver something like 400,000 actuations and the bodies are dust and splash resistant. They are stout and feel solid when you pick them up.

Added to this, my previous experiences with a long line of micro four thirds, Panasonic Lumix cameras convincingly led me to believe that my newest acquisitions would be ultimately reliable. And it's good, in this context, to remember that I am not a photojournalist with a collection of cameras swinging from my neck and shoulders as I run from disaster to disaster with multiple cameras dangling from straps, willy-nilly, while banging into each other with gusto and creating that "great" patina of brutal wear you often see on cameras owned by P.J.'s, or other people who mistakenly believe that cameras are designed to be more like bumper cars than precision instruments....

No, I mostly use cameras one at a time. I carry them to and from advertising and marketing shoots in padded, Think Tank cases or backpacks. I don't drop them, toss them or neglect them. In fact, when I trade in cameras the general comment I get from store clerks is, "This camera looks practically new." 

Imagine my chagrin when I was in the middle of a portrait shoot (in studio, camera on tripod) when the camera became sluggish and slow to respond. Then slower and slower. And then altogether dead. Later, after I finished the shoot with a back-up camera (yes, they do come in handy) I tried every trick in the book to bring the camera back into normal life. Batteries switched out with known good batteries. All manner of card changes. Reset tricks. Everything. What I had in my hands was a catastrophically crippled, brand new camera with fewer than 1,000 actuations on it. 

I sent it back to Panasonic for their official repair service. In less than two weeks the camera returned and I put it through its paces. Everything worked just as it should. The sensor and the main circuit board had both been replaced, the firmware updated and all functions checked. All good. Until I took off the body cap to put on a lens. And there is was... like a turd in a punch bowl... a big fingerprint right in the middle of the sensor. I was shocked at first and then just pissed. And I got in touch with both the local dealer and the Panasonic rep for our area. The store offered immediately to clean the sensor. 

I pulled out the Eclipse sensor cleaning fluid and a fresh Cinema Sensor Swab and did a good job of cleaning the sensor myself, but the carelessness of it all really irked me and I pressed the Panasonic rep to just replace the camera with a new one. One complete product failure followed by a clumsy repair failure seemed to add up to a jinx'd camera. 

Communication with repair was dicey and the rep told me several times that they would take better care of me if I paid a couple hundred bucks and registered for their pro services service. My feeling was that every customer who buys a top of the line camera model deserves the same kind of service. They can't possibly have enough pros signed up yet on a brand new, not so popular product line, to be overwhelmed by priority repairs. 

After several attempts to escalate I was finally contacted by someone at Panasonic service. Here was their offer: "We might consider replacing the camera but you need to send it back to us and we will investigate all your complaints and may or may not agree and may or may not make amends. In the meantime we'll send you a loaner if you give us a credit card number and agree to guarantee the cost of a camera in the meantime. 

I would essentially be sending multiple cameras back and forth with no guarantee of either a stated timeline or final resolution. I told them I would think about it. 

Then the Corona virus hit. Then the shelter in place hit. Then the world seemed to deliver me a much more compelling set of issues to deal with. 

One day I walked into the studio and made up my mind to let it all go. I'd shot non-stop with the repaired and personally cleaned (by me) camera and, after over 1,000 actuations in less than a month I figured the camera would probably be fine. I've been using the repaired camera instead of its twin brother just to put enough frames on it to help me trust it once more. 

I think we're just about there. It seems to be doing everything just right. And it's a perfect companion for the 35mm Art lens from Sigma.

I'm lucky to have three other bodies (one other S1R and two S1s) in case the camera acts up again. But my warm and fuzzy feelings for the company itself (Panasonic) are now less warm and much less fuzzy. They need to work harder to regenerate some good will. But for the moment it's all water under the bridge. Considering how much really tough stuff so many people now have on their plates it seems downright churlish of me to give this even a moment's worry. 

I thought I'd let you know what finally happened. What happened was my capitulation to the idea that the camera is fine, the pictures are great, and all the logistics of replacing it are too silly and burdensome to consider. 

But when the crisis is over and we're all flush with cash again it's probably Leica or Sigma that's getting more of my L-mount money. Panasonic is on a time out where my cash is concerned. 

Finally, the S1 and S1R are two of the finest cameras I've had the pleasure to shoot with. In almost every respect they are a perfect match for my idea of what a camera should be in 2020 and beyond. 

Another boring lens test. Another happy portrait.

B. In "stay at home mode."

Patiently standing still at the window while I fiddle with yet

another camera and lens...

I've been slowly training myself to use wider and wider lenses. It's been an exciting exercise. Since discovering the Sigma 45mm f2.8 I've embraced the fascinating world that exists just a little wider than 50mm. Today I felt oddly compelled to pull out the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art lens for the L-mount and give it more love. What have I found?

After using some of the bigger and heavier lenses like the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art and the Panasonic 50mm S Pro I am now considering the 35mm Art to be compact and lightweight. Funny how much context matters. I like the way this lens feels and balances on the right-sized Lumix S1R bodies and I find it an interesting focal length to match with that camera's sensor. I can stand back a bit, frame wider than I do with my traditional (and well loved) 50mm lenses and then, if I find there's too much "air" or clutter around my subject I have ample left over pixels with which to crop. 

While the Sigma 35mm 1.4 is competently auto-focused by the S1R (center point, S-AF) I am much happier with this particular lens if I manually focus. The focusing ring is at the front of the lens and is wide and ample. Manual focusing doesn't seem to be "focus by wire" and if it is it does the world's best job at imitating a nearly perfect mechanical, manual focus. 

On the S1R, when I turn the focusing ring with the camera's AF switch set to "M" a window pops up in my finder with a magnified view of what's at the selected focusing point. The magnification of the image at the point of desired focus is the best implementation of manual focusing I've experienced since I've been buying cameras. The image comes into sharp focus with no messing around and, as you might expect, zero hunting. Hitting perfect focus is wonderful; especially if you are shooting with the lens at a wide open aperture where, in close up images, the plane of sharp focus is as thin as Calista Flockheart.

I was sitting around my office, which is twelve feet removed from our house, when I remembered that I had a somewhat willing model just on the other side of two doors. I took the camera and lens in and asked in my most pleasant voice. B. agreed and I asked her to stand next to one of the windows in our long hallway.  I set the camera to take a large Jpeg in a monochrome color profile and I added some tint to the image in post. What you see is pretty much right out of the camera at f1.4.

I've re-sized the file to 2198 pixels at its widest length so I don't have to pay a fortune to Google for extra storage but I can say that at 8000+ pixels in the original the sharpness and the fall off to out of focus are both pretty neato. 

Of all the lenses I've bought for the L-mount cameras the 35mm Art is far and away the best bargain; the best compromise between price and performance. I'm still happily amazed to think that I only paid $695 USD for a brand new one, late last year. 

Wide open the center two thirds of the frame are critically sharp and, when used four or five feet away from one's subject, while using the maximum aperture, you see that the focus drops off beautifully in the background. I'm happy. I'll keep this one!

Two images from a Medium Format camera from circa 2008.

Eleven years ago I was shooting a lot of portraits and writing about them in some magazines that still existed. Actual printed magazines. On paper! And everyone who was making medium format digital camera systems was sending me product to use and review. One of my favorites was the Aptus II-7 which was a 36 by 48 mm, 33 megapixel back on a Rollei body. Along with the Schneider 180mm f2.8 lens it was a superb combination of parts. One afternoon, as I was working on a photo book for Amherst Media we decided to make some test shots of Heidi, my model who was collaborating with me on the book. My assistant, Amy, helped me get the lighting set up and we shot about a hundred frames. Then the batteries for the camera gave out and we stopped. I just found the files again and thought I'd make few prints. They stand up pretty well, even in the age of breathless Sony sensors and the madcap rush to super high ISO....

Having too much time to shop online is dangerous.

Joyful Portrait of Alaina V. 

My Walter Mitty-esque day dreams...

I spent a good part of the morning today looking through current and older hard drives trying to round up a big collection of photographs of my dear, late dog, Tulip. There are twelve years of images scattered across a dozen or so hard drives and probably dozens of DVDs. Had I been wise (retrospection is so piercing...) I would have created a folder on Smugmug.com and put photographs up there from week to week so as not to get this far behind. But I promised my son I'd make a really nice print of our best dog ever last Christmas and I've been dragging my feet since she passed away. 

At some point looking through all the photos just made me sad so I did what photo nerds and people who love shoes do, nationwide; I went shopping online. It seems especially dangerous right now because I'm trying to convince (delude) myself that we've done such a good job of eliminating debt and accruing a motley handful of assets that nothing seems really out of reach right now (vast hyperbole). All that actually stands between me and financial armageddon is my very rational fear of that disapproving look I know I'll get from my spouse if I come home with something silly and impractical like a Porsche 911 Turbo S. Or something even sillier, like a pool table...

But what about a lightly used Mini Cooper S? Or maybe a great deal on a medium format Leica S3 and a couple well chosen lenses? How about that custom street bike from Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop? A new "Cheese Grater" Mac Pro, all tricked out with $40,000 of RAM and SSDs? Would it really be that bad to come back home on a Ducati Multistrada motorcycle? Especially if I got a good helmet? 

In the end both practicality and need stepped in to bring me back to reality. I order some more ink for my ancient but still workable Canon Pro-100 inkjet Printer and a packet of 50 sheets of 13 by 19 inch Pro Lustre paper. I'll pick it up curbside from the usual photo/crack dealer in the morning. And to enforce the message of exercising practicality I dug up a $50 coupon good off the purchase price. 

I've got some printing to do and I've run out of excuses to put it off. Gotta get some parental controls on my office computer and block any "for profit" sites. Self-preservation...

Every once in a while I like to post this image of Amy to remind me that I can make really good portraits. If the stars are lined up just right....

I've made portraits with so many different cameras and lenses but the thing that's always made the most difference, in the end, is the lighting. That and the rapport you are able to engineer with your subject. I photographed Amy one afternoon in my Westlake Hills studio when my assistant, Renae, and I were between jobs and a little bored of photographing each other. Renae called Amy, who came right over, and we did an impromptu session just for fun.

No stylist then. Our models mostly did their own make up. The light was a Profoto strobe in a 4x6 foot soft box hung up above Amy's head level. Angled down and slightly to one side. There was a tiny bit of light on the background. And no fill except the studio walls.

I can't remember what we were talking about when I took this frame but we were all in a fun, playful and worry-free frame of mind. This was the most serious frame of the day. A few minutes later everything devolved into Happy Hour.

Shot with a Leica R8 on slide film. The lens was probably a 90mm Summicron but could well have been the 135mm f2.8 Elmarit instead. The camera didn't print the shooting info on the cardboard slide mount.... (must have been defective).

Seeing frame like this has the effect on me of "steadying the boat." When I doubt myself I remember I can do portraits like this and then I take a deep breath, slow down and start lighting.

Hope your day is nice and cheery.

All the best, Kirk

Introverts and extroverts. How's that working out now?

I really wouldn't call myself an extrovert. I mean, sure, I love to swim every day with 30 or 40 or my closest swim friends, can't bear not meeting somebody to have coffee with, mid-morning, and like to have a lunch date booked with a friend or client (or in the best of all worlds, both) two or three days a week... but "extrovert"? Well, I have made a career out of being in the middle of events, cajoling grumpy executives into looking their best, and always tickled to go out for a happy hour with colleagues; or anyone else who will have me along... But I've never really thought of myself as outgoing. Couldn't live without blogging, and answering comments, and rarely make it back from a walk around downtown without meeting at least a couple of new people, but isn't that pretty much the same for everyone? Can't wait to get to the theater to watch shows and mix in the lobby during intermission with a drink in my left and and a friends all around (leaving the right hand free to shake hands --- oh.  Yeah. That's so last year. No more handshaking, must learn to bow). 

So being "locked down" and "sheltering in place" for over 30 days in a row is becoming an amazing exercise in endurance for me. And it's made all the more difficult by having a spouse who is quiet, self-contained, calm, not chatty, and happy to be isolated in her rambling, comfortable home, taking advantage of her home office to do "all of the projects I've never had enough time to get to." And after that? "I have a stack of books this high (motions four feet off the floor) that I've been wanting to get to." 

I'm beginning to think that if I didn't try to pull her into conversations she might go days without uttering a word...

So, as hard as it's been for me not to be out, around, deep in conversation with everyone I know, it's probably been equally hard having me around constantly trying to....engage. Chat. Reminisce. Question. and generally disrupt everything just because of cabin fever and lack of continuous social contact. Did I read somewhere that humans are social animals? Did introverts not get the message?

If the virus doesn't kill me I'm thinking a nearly complete shut down of my social network will. Don't jump in and suggest I "Zoom" with people or "FaceTime" with people; it's just not the same. Not into online socializing beyond the blog and a few texts (mostly to make sure Ben is still okay...). What I really look forward to, and what you can help with, is a bit of life on the blog. If you are an introvert (and who knew there were so many of you?) have a little sympathy for quasi-extroverts like me. If, in the back of your mind you thought for even a second about posting a comment, gird up your firewalls and grit your teeth and belt that comment out. I may not love what you have to say but I will be grateful to know you are out there....

I don't want your money and I don't have anything to sell you but I love to hear from fellow photographers and creative people. Maybe I just need to write more clickbait-y stuff and get into arguments about "Sony versus Fuji" (the current current) but maybe I just need to ask you to join in. We'll see. 

COVID-19 Pizza Acquisition Logistics. Yes, this is "off topic" from photography.

Happy Good Friday, tomorrow. 

In the time before COVID-19 it was so easy to order, receive and enjoy a freshly made pizza. You'd hop online, enter your order, enter a delivery time, toss in your credit card information and then get back to retouching something or cleaning off your swim goggles until the delivery driver appeared carrying a box with a hot, fresh and topping rich pie. We kept an envelope of $5 bills next to the front door so we'd always have tip money ready to go. If work was slow and the coffers were running low we'd save the delivery cost and order the pizza as carry out. Then we'd flip a three headed coin to see which of us would go and collect dinner.

The delivery would happen and we'd pop that box open right on the table and start the wonderful process of truly appreciating freshly melted cheese, a robust tomato sauce and whatever savory toppings we craved in the moment. No muss. No fuss. 

Now though we have a virus/pizza box intervention process that we have to go through. Once the pizza is delivered to the front door a family member receives the box and the driver scurries away (we add the tip on line so the driver is pre-tipped by the time he gets here). Once the driver has retreated to his idling car we begin the process. 

It goes like this: The designated pizza box holder remains outside the house and places the box on the welcome mat on the front porch. The same person, who has already been potentially contaminated by whomever before has touched the box, opens the box and folds the sides down to make space for a person from inside the house to approach the box and without touching any part of the exterior of the box and the person on the house side slides a pizza peel (the big spatula used to pull pizzas out of ovens) underneath the pizza until it's stably situated on said peel. At that point she (it's usually Belinda, she's a pro at tossing coins) takes the pizza into the domicile and leaves the door ajar, just a bit . 

The pizza "intermediary" takes the box and places it into the trash can outside. After the box is properly disposed of he (it's usually me messing with stuff that goes in the trash = bad coin tosser) approaches the door and opens it fully with his foot. There is a bottle of hand sanitizer just inside the door and he uses it liberally to disinfect his hands. Then there is a trip to the bathroom to wash hands for at least 20 seconds. Next up is grabbing a Chlorox wipe from the kitchen to wipe down the sanitizer bottle and pump mechanism, and finally the front door knob gets a proactive wipe and the door is closed. Only then can the (now lukewarm) pizza be enjoyed. 

It's a process. And anybody who tells you the journey is more important than the destination is full of shit. Getting a hot pizza is definitely a luxury which I'm looking forward to A.C.-19 (after Covid-19). But lukewarm, safety pizza is definitely better than nothing. 

Side note, if you think the writing here is getting daffy and distracted you might not be all wrong. Monday the 13th will mark our first 30 days of "sheltering in place." Other than a weekly pizza, enjoyed by tradition on Thursday nights, we've been doing all of our meals at home. A strange and quixotic break from the recent good old days of favorite restaurants and favorite fellow diners. I'm not sure how long it will take me to re-socialize.... But I see why there are 400% more mental health issues per capita in rural areas than in cities. One's mind doesn't get pulled into "normal" if there's no social group around to help maintain healthy boundaries.

But, tonight is pizza night! Yay. It's like a mark on the prison wall that let's us understand a relative passage of time. If you order pizza tonight I hope yours comes piping hot. 

We're doing a veggie pizza tonight. With a salad and a bottle of red wine. Takes the edge off self-isolation. Now, if only we can find something fun to watch on Netflix....

How to cut your own hair during the crisis. From someone whose been doing so for about thirty years.

I can't give you advice on how to cut or maintain long hair. I only do "short."

Blog post by reader request....

I'm the most frugal photographer in the world when it comes to haircuts. I bought a set of electric barber's clippers and guards thirty years ago and started cutting my own hair. Something like this https://www.target.com/p/wahl-clip-n-groom-men-s-haircut-kit-with-built-in-finishing-trimmer-79900-1701/-/A-579774 which I found online at Target.com works great. When I heard from one of my friends that he was spending over $100 a month on "hair care" I almost fell on the floor. And when I heard from one of my female fellow swimmers that she pays around $200 a month for her "hair care" I became light-headed and had to sit down. If you invested those amounts in an index fund......sigh....

Okay, so if you have a hair style that requires much complex cutting, trimming and manipulation I probably am not going to be much help. But if you are a typical guy who doesn't really give a hoot about styles then I'm your cheap haircut mentor. I can be capricious, sometimes I just can't be bothered cutting my hair and it grows out like weeds in a garden. But before big client engagements or when I get tired of flying a flag of white hair (which makes every young person around me talk louder and offer to help me cross streets...) I grab the clippers and go berserk. 

Well, not really berserk but I have little fear of failure in this regard. I start with a #4 guard on the clippers. This translates to leaving your hair about a half inch long. The guard keeps you from inadvertently getting it too short....

So, put your #4 guard on the clippers, don't stand on the shag carpet (my bathroom is saltillo tile so it's easy to sweep up...) and start clipping. Generally, I find it most efficient to go against the grain of your hair. Who knew that hair has a natural "grain"?

Take some time to get all that head of hair more or less uniform and you are ready to move on to step two; the hair in front, above and behind your ears. Most of the clipper sets come with guards that are slanted and meant for each specfic ear. They are generally labelled something like, "Left Ear" or "Right Ear." Start with your favorite ear. Mine is the left and that makes sense because I am left-handed. These guards are like graduated neutral density filters; they allow a closer cut on one side and a longer cut on the other. Obviously  you want the close side next to the ear and the far side away from your ear. This will get you a close cut near the ear but a feathering into the rest of your hair. Now do the other ear using its specific guard. 

Now use the shallowest guard, going with the grain of the hair on the back of your neck. You don't want to start low and go high you want to start at the hair line and go down. After that you might just look in the mirror and tune up any rough spots. 

At this point you are done. If it takes you more than ten minutes you are either paralyzed by fear of failure or you are overly obsessed with perfection. If you really screw up you can wear a hat till it grows back. 

Should you want an easier approach you can do as my old pool manager, Brian, used to do and grab the #2 guard and use it everywhere. Once all the hair is uniform you are done. 

Take a shower. Sweep the floor. Put a drop of oil for clippers on the blade and then box up your clippers till next time. 

So, how frugal am I when it comes to hair cuts? Well, I will tell you that Studio Dog (Rest in Peace) and I shared one set of clippers for the past twelve years...   

 this is a "Kirk" haircut about 10 days later. Curly hair. No way it stays flat.

this is a "Kirk" haircut maybe two and a half to three weeks on....

This is from a time before haircuts...Or razors. And yes, it's a black Canon AE-1

I wouldn't take a chance on cutting hair like this unless I had a iron clad waiver and 

a team of liability lawyers on retainer.....

If you screw up (doubtful) you can always wear a convenient and stylish hat.

If you are amazingly good looking no one will even be looking at your hair.

Why pay extra to maintain it? At $100 a month that's equal to a couple of good lenses

or really cool used camera bodies per year....

Springtime in a Pandemic. Is this time different for professional photographers? Yep.

Springtime in the central Texas area. The wildflowers are blooming.

But this year few people will see them. Doesn't make them less beautiful. Eh?

I woke up this morning with the nagging realization that this "shelter in place" existence may go on for months, not weeks. My first thought was about all the people who will be economically damaged by the shut down of our economies. I remember recessions earlier in my career and just how frightening it was for me as a freelancer and a provider to my family when people started losing their jobs, companies cut back on their expenditures and freelancers really had to scramble to make ends meet. But these times are different and worse for the self-employed. In past recessions you could keep trying to make a sale, to convince a marketing person that they'd be riding the wave of recovery with your brilliant photos leading their advertising charge. Or, you might have, in desperation, done work you would not normally do; a wedding here, a child portrait there, or maybe events or some real estate work. But the difference was that if you could convince someone to pay for it you had the opportunity to do the work. 

With the pandemic raging all non-essential commerce is fully closed down. The kinds of face-to-face engagements required for corporate portraits, work with models, events and meetings is just gone. No matter how great your ability to sell you will not be able to will the work into existence. And that's a total game changer. 

My old advice would have been to diversify your services; see if there was another type of visual art that would leverage your skills differently so you could make enough $$$ to keep the business going, the family fed, and the mortgage/rent paid. But unless your talents lie in something like web site design and construction (which you can do remotely) a lot of those pathways are equally moribund. 

It's too late for hoary, old advice about "being prepared" or "keeping six months of expense money on hand"; now that advice just seems like judgement. And I remember how hard it was in the early years of freelancing to keep the next month's expense money on hand, much less the money for a quarter or a year. No, if I were in the early days of my time in the business and I could transfer what I know now to my younger self about how to deal with this particular catastrophe I would tell myself to immediately put the idea of photography as a business on hold and find a job in an essential industry now. Even if the pay was just enough to cover my expenses and keep me running in place. 

I'd look for a job stocking groceries or working construction or doing lawn care. Anything to bring in short term cash and to stop the bleeding engendered by trying to keep a photography business alive (with the burn rate burning) in a time when NO business happens. 

This doesn't mean quit. It means find a way to get the cash needed to survive. You can still maintain your brand for the time in the future when we are all able to get back to work. You can continue to update your website, post on your favorite social media, connect on LinkedIn, but you need to stop waiting for the next project to appear and find a stop gap job with which to pay the bills. With luck, a job that will also provide health coverage (advice, sadly, mostly for U.S. citizens). But your priority is to stop the bleeding.

Is this the advice I would give to my own kid? It's exactly the advice I gave him at dinner last week. He started working as a freelance writer before the national emergency was declared and on March 13th everything he was working on or scheduled for came to a hard stop. He's been applying for all sorts of positions and will take nearly anything that provides a decent paycheck. And he's a lucky one with a great work history, who graduated from a prestigious private college, Magna Cum Laude. If he'll embrace the concept of stocking toilet paper at Trader Joe's until this all blows over then it must be a fairly logical and deliberate choice. 

To those of us further along in our careers...

I thought I'd hang up the invoice template when I either ran out of energy to work or when I just didn't feel like I was having fun with commercial photography any more. I never thought that the business would just retire out from under me. But it's the same business whether you are on your way into it or on your way out of it and it seems like, for now, we're all on hiatus. 

If you've scrimped and saved throughout your career then congratulations, you can consider this a test run of your future retirement. I'm sure the business will come back in some form in a few months, maybe a year... Time to re-design the website, send out assuring messages to your clients who still hold their positions, paint the studio, clear out the organizational paperwork, apply for an SBA loan. But don't presume, unless you do some really amazing niche in photography, that you'll maintain the income and cash flow you historically have. This time is different. 

I'm already getting phone calls from peers who are selling off gear to make payments. It's more important to have cash flow right now than that camera we just had to have last year. Or that 600mm f4.0 lens we thought we couldn't live without. Problem is that we're all pretty much in the same boat so there are far fewer buyers out there to take the gear off our hands and replace it with cold, hard cash. 

You don't need financial advice from me but my CFO is adamant that we're not touching investments or retirement accounts to get through this. You should never sell at the bottom. Even better to take on a bit of debt than to throw out investing discipline. 

Of course, the advice sounds great until the electricity gets turned off and then priorities change. 

I'm predicting that when we all get through this there will be a whole mind change in the small business community and more people will eat at home, drive older, cheaper cars, and vacation locally instead of skiing at Gstaad, or snorkeling in Bora Bora. More money will flow into contingency accounts than into funds for the next big luxury item. More people will abandon premium cable and watch more stuff on Netflix. The really frugal will also ditch Netflix and get the "rabbit ears" antennae out to watch "free TV." Or skip TV all together to work harder on getting that "emergency account" filled up. 

So, how am I handling all this? Sheer panic one moment and calm blog writing the next. We've yet to get carry out food and we're sharing the shopping and cooking responsibilities. I've sent out all the invoices from last month that I felt too paralyzed in the moment to attend to (very unusual for me to procrastinate on paper work) and I'm trying to walk enough in my neighborhood to replace the benefits from the lost swimming. I ordered one piece of swim training gear. It's a resistance band thing. Pretty simple but you can use it to mimic your swimming stroke with variable resistance. It's one thing to maintain aerobic fitness (walking up hills like your late to an important meeting) but it's just as important to maintain muscle mass and muscle memory! And, yeah, it's good to throw some flexibility  exercise in there as well. "Supple trees bend in strong wind. stiff trees get knocked over." 

We could exit the field of play altogether but it would feel like surrender. I'm convinced we'll have fun stuff to do by the fourth quarter and it'll be nice to do something I'm actually good at, for a change. In the meantime I am learning the minute ins and outs of making perfect coffee. There is always room for improvement. 

On another note, since I can't have portrait subjects in the studio, or even on location, I'm on a self assignment to do self-portraits until such a time that everything relents. I actually like to see myself with a camera in front of my face. It's lessens the shock of seeing how much I've aged. Most people who know me well know that, in my subconscious mind, I still believe I am about 18 years old...

Sorry to be so serious today but as a former college teacher and chapter ASMP president I'm starting to get some panicky phone calls and e-mails from younger people in the business. Better to write down my opinions of the options than to free form it every time the iPhone summons me. 

If you are not in the business then ignore what I've written here and continue having as much fun with photography as you can. It's a wonderful way to spend time. And now that I have no $$$ projects to work on I'm certainly enjoying being an ardent amateur!!!  Kirk Tuck, Photo hobbyist.

I'm a bit sad about letting go of the Pentax stuff last year. It wasn't perfect but the camera bodies matched what I think a "real" camera should feel like. It was fun to use. Really fun to use.

I am at the point now where the Lumix S cameras are comfortable and familiar. 

I use them frequently for my current hobby work just to keep the muscle memory intact

for the day when we return to service as working photographers. 

I loved the way the Fuji X-Pro2 looked. It reminded me so much of the many Leica M 

series rangefinders that eventually slipped through my fickle fingers. But from an 

imaging POV I'm not sad to move on. It was good stuff but nothing exemplary.

Ben's generation is really taking it on the chin. 

But he's young, smart, has indulgent parents and no debt.

I think he'll come out of this okay. 

I'm happy to see that he and his (science major) housemates are taking

the pandemic seriously. They have social distancing down to a science

and they are relentless about it. Makes a parent happy. 

That's all for this morning. Off to clean my air conditioner and cut my own hair......

One last thing: If you are a working pro and feeling awful about 

work life right now just remember than none of this is your fault and 

that all over the world all of us are in the same boat. 

No one is judging you.