My response to a comment on my blog. Title and name edited.

Here is a comment from a commentor on our blog:

"A few entres ago, you started to “gear up” to business again. You’ve shown, that you also can handle a G16 and other nice cameras on tourist-like walkabouts to keep fit mentally and physically. Very commendable. And you have, of course, shown historic work in portraiture and from the Zack theatre. But... but... where’s the video business, you also wanted to keep going? Where’s the entries, that show, that you even master video and sound on a “shoestring” - or if you like: “fully geared up one man show”? Where’s that?

In many ways, your recent days, weeks and months remind me of a man, who has retired In reality, but still avoids admitting it to himself.

Acting more or less like a tourist on a walkabout for weeks on end is hardly preparing for the future, is it? Will that enable you to show any of your future corporate clients - theatre, engineering, construction, production and whatnot - that you “still have it”?

Let me provoke (you don’t have to take the following literally, but you’ll get my drift): Why haven’t you “borrowed” a pigs head, put it on a broomstick and mounted it on tripod. Give it a hat, and start experimenting with various kinds portraiture, lighting, angles etc. Use this to create a video story, that edited down tells both portraiture behind the scenes - or call it “Stillleben” for all I know - and via sound and video deliver a story of the hard work involved in pig head portraiture. You could make it funny, real life sounds could involve the curses and hurt, if you trip the tripod holding the head or a Ishtar or... and on and on.

Now you have a product to show potential future newcomers. A product demonstrating your abilities and that you “still have it” in spite of lockdown, COVID-19 and all that follows.

I’d love to see your real and CURRENT creative “product” - not only what comes your Way during your “pensioner rounds” in downtown Austin ;-)"

Here is my response:

Mr. H_____ seems to take me to task here for not moving forward with bold new video material and fresh essays about state-of-the-art assignments for national and international clients. He exhorts me to spend time experimenting with anything and everything at my fingertips. He questions why I've been spinning my wheels and walking around downtown with doddering cameras when I should be studiously and single-mindedly preparing a new portfolio of cutting edge materials aimed at the new legion of clients who will surely be waiting (just off stage) to hire hordes of creative people in twin quests for profitability and overall economic growth.

My hiatus from serious engagement is detrimental, he insists, to being able to show my clients "A product demonstrating your abilities and show that you "still have it" in spite of the lockdown, COVID-19 and all that follows." 

The gist of his comment is that everything in my life is starkly binary: either I am continuously productive and writing about my constant process of creation or.... I have thrown in the proverbial towel, put myself out to pasture and am reduced to shuffling around in my bedroom slippers (which I do not own) waiting on a pension check (which we don't really have anymore in America...) and waiting for my nurse to prepare me the "early bird special" of soft foods and weak juice. In a brief five months I've been reduced from an engaged artist and business owner to an aimless and grizzled husk just marking time with a series of silly old cameras. Even for someone as over-the-hill as me that's a pretty fast slide from productive to defeated. Being a Texan that sounds like my horse died under me, my ten gallon hat blew away in a gale and left me crying in a ditch in the west Texas desert...

So, let me break this down for K______  and anyone else who may have noticed a "slow down" in the quantity and quality of my work...

It's true that we've been on hiatus from actual face-to-face photography and video work with clients. While I have watched (with dismay) some local, small time shooters skirt the health department rules and keep on working with like-minded, individual clients I have taken the pandemic lockdown seriously, as have my clients. While Karen may still want to have her daughter's senior portrait done NOW!!! My clients tend to be larger companies and national corporations, many of whom are still having their employees work from home and have discouraged face-to-face contact across the board.

I'm not eager to spin the roulette wheel and take my chances with a nasty virus just to earn a buck, and happily (and with much gratitude) I don't have to. While many in my country feel a pressing need to return to work to earn money in the moment I have the luxury of not needing to rush in until w've got enough safety valves in place to make work fun, productive and non-life-threatening. I am my own mini-German government subsidizing my own lost income.

But as I related in a post Mr. H_____ mentions, I am working towards re-opening the business, step-by-step, and am proceeding towards that goal with diligence. But...that doesn't necessarily mean that the first and only thing that will make a real business successful is the generation of exciting new material to showcase.

We're a bit more methodical than that. The first step is to reach out and see who is still standing and which companies are planning on success in the future and which are furloughing entire staffs and shutting down operations from a lack of capital and sustainable income.  I want to create a curated client list that reflects where we are and who will be able to go forward with us. Who will be able to continue advertising and who will be able to pay for our services. That takes time, research and networking.

The next step is to reach out to those clients in the "going forward" category and re-establish or newly create our relationships with them as a trusted vendor. This requires the creation of marketing messaging and materials, which we have been doing in concert with a favorite graphic designer and with the consultation of several advertising professionals. These are time consuming activities but I think they are crucial to the marketing/ongoing branding of a creative services firm.

In the interim several of our clients have reached out to me to discuss near future projects. One is a multi-national biotech company that recently acquired a smaller company which makes state of the art testing tools. Today, after I write this, I will put the finishing touches on a project proposal and estimate that, if accepted, will require pre-production days, three shooting days and multiple days of post production. Another is a national medical services specialty practice which has affirmatively engaged me for several projects in the early Fall.

We are now currently providing portraits for a regional medical practice and will have produced portraits for five different physicians who are joining their practice this month.

On a more local scale I have been retained to photograph and create video product for a law firm here in Austin. The photographs are environmental portraits of partners and associates while the multiple video products are interviews and former client testimonials.

Most of these kinds of projects come with restrictions and embargoes on sharing publicly. I would love to show you the portrait of a physician I made last week because it was fabulous but the firm gets to use it first. That's part of being a business instead of just a dizzy artist.  

In Mr. H_____'s comment is the idea that clients want to, and must see, absolutely new work on a continual basis in order for me to win their current favor and secure future jobs and so I should abandon all work older than, say: three months, and supply a relentless pipeline of dazzling new work that shows I haven't lost my capability to actually do work between doses of stool softener or Metamucil™.  

I find that charmingly naive. Clients who work in fields other than tweener music, bargain fashion and social media have much more important considerations when it comes to hiring freelance creative resources than whether or not they fired up a video camera and made a selfie video for Tik-Tok last week. These considerations include mundane things like whether or not the person or firm in question carries enough liability insurance and whether they have the experience to provide effective producing skills = getting stuff organized. Getting scripts done. Financing a production. A history of delivering solid product. An ability to work with management teams and marcom teams and, even the ability to endure a major financial crisis and still have the tools and resources at hand to do the work during the recovery.

It may seem trivial but some of the financial considerations on the client side are real deal killers. If you, the photographer, were financially devastated by the lockdown and had to liquidate your working tools for cash you'll have issues getting the work done. If you don't have a financial reserve for production you can't very well accept projects that pay in 60 to 90 days. If you can no longer afford office and studio space then you might not really still be in business no matter how creative yesterday's test Instagram movie was.  And without liability insurance of two or three millions dollars you may not even be allowed on a potential client's property.

So, in the past five months I've tried to set the stage for a recovery in the business and have successfully engaged or re-engaged with a number of ongoing clients. I've worked on new marketing (which I almost never share on the blog) and I've done assignments in situations where the clients and I agreed felt "safe."

But beyond all this I wonder where in the fuck people get off telling me I'm not entitled to have a bit of time off as well. I lost both of my parents in the last three years and spent lots of high stress time caring for each of them. Then I spent time right up until this month settling their estates and being the administrator for my siblings and nieces and nephews. Sure, I would rather have spent the time on the beach proving I can still film scantily clad models and drinking frozen daiquiris but I wouldn't be proud of myself for dropping the responsibility ball. (Oh the joy of working with multiple accountants for estate tax preparation in the middle of a public health crisis. So fun. So creative!)

So, while I'm juggling clients with privacy concerns, bereft of my favorite theatre client (for the rest of this year) which was a fun and regular source of material I liked using in the blog, as well as being a great test bed for new equipment and sharable videos, I am taken to task for enjoying some walks around town with a series of camera and then, for free, writing about the cameras and my experiences with them. Seems like a bit of a slap in the face to me.

I have a tendency to compartmentalize parts of my life. I rarely talk about finances and investing. I spend a tiny percentage of time writing about swimming (a true and sustaining joy in my life). I try mostly to protect my family's privacy. I rarely discuss politics. With that said it seems beyond presumptuous to assume that I am not currently working on projects that leverage my knowledge of photography and film.

Some projects are long term. Some don't come together the way we'd like and end up getting shit-canned. And some we don't share on the blog because I don't think there is an audience for long form video that exceeds 90 seconds. At least that's what the perennial feedback indicates.

I'm sorry. As a reader you don't get a license to inspect and approve or disapprove of everything I do in my daily life. You don't get to dictate content. You don't get to publicly shame me as a pensioner hung out to dry. Or a person who is retired but unable or unwilling to admit that to myself. Sorry, you just don't.

If you know where to buy a pig's head then you are a few steps ahead of me. If you want to buy one and regale us with its creative awesomeness then please do so.

My plan is to re-engage with business safely and, from a marketing point of view, effectively. I'll stay in the business until such a time as clients no longer return calls and write purchase orders. At that point I'll volunteer to do photography and video for the Theatre exclusively. I'll stop swimming when I float to the bottom of the pool having breathed my last breath. And I'll stop writing the blog as soon as I get a few more comments with recommendations for how I should live my life and how I should function, day-to-day, as an artist.

I'd like to write more but right now I think I'll take a walk through downtown with an ancient and shitworthy camera and see what it might be like to be a worn and cast aside "pensioner" with nothing better to do than bother random, bored strangers with his images of life. Now, where did I put my cane, my trifocals and my shuffling shoes?

Just thought we needed to have this "talk."



note added: Let's take the vitriol in the comments down a few notches. Mr. H_____ is a long time reader and consistent commenter and it's my belief that he meant his comment in good faith. We don't need to be too quick to divide and conquer here. Just wanted to be emphatic about the idea that we welcome well intentioned comments from our regulars but we are also emphatic that they may get the "push back" delivered above. 

In his defense, I wish I had the opportunities right now to photograph like those that used to be part of normal life. We're all a bit frustrated. Let's not make it worse.

I love playing a guessing game. "Which camera and lens did I use to photograph these?" I usually lose. I presume most were made with stellar cameras.

From a Zach Theatre Production of "Harvey." 

I find I'm as susceptible to group think as everyone else. When I look at older photographs that I've shot; especially the ones that are technically very good, I presume I made them with some sort of full frame, 40+ megapixel camera and a lens lovingly crafted by German elves. Then I imagine that I was working in some sort of optimum envelope at the time which would allow me a rock bottom, low ISO and the fastest shutter speeds I could ever want.

Well....

I found myself putting together a collection of images that span 15 years of documenting performances at the theater. I pulled images based on what I liked instead of picking "most popular" shows or some other metric. And I kept coming across images that were both technically quite good and also captured at just the right moment. While I have used all manner of modern full frame cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony and now Panasonic the images I most admired and wished I could take consistently came from the oddest assortment of cameras which were not even considered "state of the art" at the time of purchase. 

Some of the front runners have been (surprising me to no end...): The Panasonic GH4, GH5 and G85. The Olympus OMD EM-5 (both I and II), The Panasonic FZ2500, The Sony RX10-2, and several ancient, pre-mirrorless Sonys. There is even one long shot that I did of the kid with the Red Rider BB gun in "A Christmas Story" with an ancient PenFT 150mm f4.0 lens adapted to a Panasonic GH3. Sharp and nice even though it was shot under trying conditions and with no I.S. anywhere!

The images I've included here are all from a Zach Theatre play called, "Harvey." I presumed I'd done them with a Sony a99 or one of the Nikon D800s, along with a $2,000 70-200mm f2.8 but that was NOT the case. All the images I've included here were done with an inexpensive Sony SLT A58 camera. It's a camera that was introduced in 2012 and more widely available in 2013. It featured a "new" 20 megapixel APS-C sensor, a semi transparent, stationary mirror and a pop-up flash. I used it NOT with a prestige lens but with a very consumer oriented 50-200mm f4.0-5.6 zoom lens. I think its one nod to high performance was a metal lens mount on an all plastic barrel. The amazing thing is that all of these images are straight from the camera Jpegs which have not been kissed by post production. And all of them were shot at or near the longest focal length on the zoom lens and as close to wide open as I dared at the time. 

If you're reading on your phone the quality context of the images will be lost. But if you are looking on your desktop click on them and see them enlarged in a bigger window. A really great performance for a camera of its price and era. But no more visually substantial that photographs from similar cameras through the years.  Kinda proves the concept that being at the right place at the right time with the right training is the most important combination.

Every so often I mark a milestone for the blog. Yesterday I wrote and made available the 4600th published blog post to VSL. I guess I am more disciplined than I imagined...

I estimate that I write an average of 2,200 words per blog post. Some are much longer and a few are compassionately brief. If you take the 2,200 words and multiply by 4,600 posts this would mean that I've pounded through ten million, one hundred and twenty thousand or so words in the past 11 years. Hell, I could have written a book... (oh wait! I did write six books during that time span...).

By now you should know that I am occasionally given to hyperbole and that I love to use ellipses (because no thought is really ever fully baked and ready to be permanently archived). In the last eleven years I've gone through four laptop computers and three desktop computers. On my last desktop I had to replace the keyboard at the system's half life because I'd worn the paint off the letters. Whether that speaks to my discipline for work or the fact that the keyboard was repeatedly and accidentally doused with coffee is largely immaterial. 

Over the time in question I've accrued fewer and fewer readers but the ones who are here have gotten smarter and more pleasant. I've long since given up expecting to monetize the site which leads to many, many people asking me why I persist. I have to say that I think it's a mix of stubbornness and a desire (somewhat universal, I believe) to share the ongoing story of my life, and my thoughts about how a middle class person in the United States has muddled through a life spent in the commercial arts for the past several decades. Parenting, traveling, marketing, eking out time for my own work and my own visual pleasures.

What have I learned? Not much. That being in good physical shape is good for the brain. That daily practice of writing makes for much faster and much more efficient writing (I spend about 45 minutes a day on posts). That general camera buyers are poorly educated and led by the nose by camera manufacturers who've trained legions of amateurs to think the camera is more important than the process or the vision or the affinity/attraction to specific subjects. That love for the cameras as objects is the overwhelming motivation for most people's avowed interest in photography. And that most people, when pressed can't name 20 great photographers whose work they love right now. Even fewer understand or care about the history of the previous century of photography and photographers. People in general are not very curious about things outside their specific area of vocational training. Technical nearly always trumps Art, for them.

This used to make me sad. Now it makes me understand how lucky I have been. How rich the supporting fabric for my own career has been. 

I've developed a thicker skin for the majority of visitors who wish I would just tell them if this sensor/lens/camera or process is the best and plainly call for me to edit my words much tighter. They want the bullet points and don't want to hear "a story." To most readers all that matters are the facts and the potential prestige that might come from the ownership of this or that. But to me the words are the most important part of the whole structure because they (and the eyes of my portrait subjects) are the only thing I really care about in each post. The images are just gift wrapping here. Bows and decorative tissue. 

On one hand keeping up a blog is work. But work born of passion is easy and happy work. On the other hand I know it will come to an end in one way or another. But not today.  Nope, not today. 

I believe the architect who designed this building got so much just right.

Why else have I returned for nearly two decades to photograph it in every

way I can?

The reflections have featured Leicas, Nikons, Canons, Olympus and Panasonic cameras,

Hasselblads and a bevy of point and shoot cameras. To me it's a reminder that 

I am the consistent part of the equation. All the other stuff is interchangeable. 

I can't make photographs without...me. 

Love the sign but unfortunately not a big fan of fried chicken. 

It's the message that's important, not the chicken.

A portrait done in the early evening on medium format color negative film. Not quite the dynamic range I remembered.

I photographed Kara for a book cover. The publisher had other ideas and, since they "own" the cover, we went in that direction. But I like to look back at some of the shoots I did around creating "candidates" for the book covers to see what I was thinking in the moment.

The first thing I thought about when pulling this shot back up was that it is surprising that I was still using medium format film in 2009. I had almost forgotten that I kept a drawer full of black and white and color negative film right up until 2012. I'm not sure what emulsion this particular film was but I'm amused to find that my own color correction in the scan from the file is so far off. Kara's flesh tones have way to much red and magenta in them. I'm also chastened by the much lower dynamic range than I now easily get from native (non-scanned) digital files. I don't have a densitometer but I'd guess that this image has about 65% of the range I would currently expect to get from a digital file from one of my front line cameras.

Also of note is that my dining room (in the background) has changed so little in the course of a decade. I'm pleased to see that I got a fair balance of exterior light playing across the floor in the background, good exposure in the lawn outside and a nice progression toward Kara. She doesn't appear to be "comped in" to the shot but seems to be an integral part of the scene even though she is brighter than her immediate surroundings.

The one aspect that I am happiest with in this shot is the (to me) perfect expression on Kara's face. That easily transcends any of the gaffs I made when constructing the nuts and bolts of the portrait.

It was taken with simple tools. A Hasselblad 500CM and an 80mm lens. That, and a small flash with a medium sized umbrella. The take from the session was done with about 24 exposures; not the hundreds and hundreds of frames I might shoot with digital today....

Hope your Sunday is refreshing and pleasant. Today is my day to retouch a newer portrait...

Random stuff that I shot while playing with my small camera. I love the flexibility of it. The Canon G16. If you find a mint condition one for $250 or less.....

If you are living life well there is always a "Fall Risk." 

The passion is in the risk. Still, it's odd to come across such a literal reminder. 

 Birds. Version one. Getting close. 

Birds. Version two. Medium shot. 

Birds. Version Three. The establishing shot. 

The Tiniest Bar in Texas. Just across the street from the Whole Foods H.Q.

(Killer prices right now on Prime Rib Eye Steaks. I know what I'm' cooking up 

on my turn this Wednesday...). 

Yes. At times stuff just floats in front of me. 

Bridge. Version one. Establishing shot.

Bridge. Version Two. Medium close up shot. 

Near the bridge. Version three. Detail B-roll. 

there's a building frenzy going on downtown. 

Usually happens just before the "big bust." 

Another afternoon misspent with tiny cameras. But it was a nice and exciting walk. The Canon G16(s) were incredibly well behaved.

My current, favorite walking camera is the Canon G16. It's an older unit that was introduced back in 2013 but the sensor, though small, is really good and the camera is so transparent to operate. I liked my first one so much that I rushed back a day later and bought a second one. It's a camera that is one of the last of a venerable line of compact digital cameras and it's a very mature and well constructed example. 

It's good to remember that compact, zoom lens cameras were really our first serious introduction to digital imaging. Most people only moved on to DSLRs and, later, mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, after compacts help prove that digital images were usable, and even good enough for work. They were the niche of cameras that helped millions of people feel comfortable making the transition from film to the extremely popular DSLR. 

The Canon G16 is a small but dense camera that sports a fairly fast 28-140mm equivalent, f1.8 to f2.8 zoom lens that also does a good job imitating a macro lens. It features a very good implementation of image stabilization and the menu is pretty quick and easy to manage. If the camera falls down anywhere it's in the design of the optical image finder which is more like a tunnel finder than anything particularly "optical." 

While the G16 is no resolution monster the 12.1 megapixels that it provides are more than adequate for most photo needs and the lens helps by being very sharp and nearly (in my experience) flare free. It does have an awkwardly high amount of distortion at the widest angles of view; these are automatically corrected in Jpegs but you certainly see the effects of extreme barrel distortion if you shoot in Raw and don't have auto lens correction enabled in your Raw processor. Easy enough to fix in anything Adobe and also, manually, in Luminar 4.3. 

So why does this camera float to the top of the stack when I'm choosing a camera to walk with? Well, if I lived in upstate New York and I started breaking a sweat once the mercury crested 68° in the Summer I might choose a different camera but in Texas when the average daytime temperature is around 100° and the humidity hits you in the face it's really much nicer to carry around a minimal camera load. I can put the G16 on a strap around my neck and never really know it's there. I can shoot for hundreds and hundreds of frames and not wear down a solo battery. And if I'm shooting in raw and setting the top plate exposure compensation control to minus 1/3 or 2/3 I find I can recover shadows very nicely and do a great job managing dynamic range even in the brightest scenes.

When I walk for fun I'm not shooting for money. There are no clients attached and no shot list to manage. I could bring along any camera I like. But there's something amicable about the G16s that make them good companions. Mostly I think it's that they require no special treatment and no babysitting. There's no lens to change so I never head down the rabbit hole of looking into the drawer of cameras and lenses wondering which ones to bring. I know the sensor is small compared to what I usually shoot with so I'm predisposed to set the ISO to 80 and leave it there. That formalist boundary predicates a shooting modality that removes a few choices and leaves me freer to concentrate on the photo at hand. I know I want to be a f4.5 because that's the sharpest aperture on the whole machine. 

Knowing that I'll be locked in at ISO 80 and f4.5 means that I keep eliminating variables. I used to think I'd spend my time with the camera shooting in aperture priority but once I've eliminated two variables I understand that shooting in full sun means I really have no other choice but to shoot at 1/640 or 1/800 to match up the exposure triangle. Easy as pie. Tasty as cherry pie. 

At a certain point the only two things I need to think about are: the focal length that makes the shot for me, and the right composition. What to leave in and what to leave out. Probably the most important two things!

But the best thing about small and simple (but elegant and capable) cameras is that they don't push me to shoot too much. With bigger cameras I take everything more seriously and shoot too many frames while I wind myself up and try to break down the images in front of me. With my smaller cameras I see one shot, line it up, comp it and shoot it. We're just dancing instead of mapping out the dance steps. 

I'm always trying to convince myself that my work with big, high resolution, full frame cameras is going to eventually end up being used large and will really push against the edges of whatever envelope I'm working in. With the G16s I'm honest with myself and understand that the final target is the blog, or Instagram or the website.

That takes any self imposed pressure off me and let's me relax into shooting. It's nice and smooth. 

Here's some stuff I I shot this afternoon:

front window of a bar on West 6th St. 

A perenial for  photographers. The Littlefield Building stands out in a wide field of boxy rectangle buildings in downtown. 

As I approached the far end of my walk I was near I-35 and watched huge, dark grey clouds come rolling in, riding on 50 mile per hour wind gusts. I could smell the rain coming. I pulled a u-turn and headed West on Second St. hoping to get back to my starting point before the rain came slashing down. 

No such luck. The wind gusts were shortly joined by on and off torrent so of rain. I pulled a plastic bag out of my super small utility bag and dropped my (not waterproof) G16 into it. 

In ten minutes or so I was pretty well soaked but still walking briskly back towards my car. That's okay, it was still nearly 90° outside. I got back to the M-Series Subaru Forester AMG LeMans just as the rain stop pelting me. After patting myself on the back for my attentive years in the pre-modern Boy Scouts of America I popped open the rear hatch on the photo/tactical vehicle and grabbed one of the two big beach towels and wiped myself off. Then I pulled off my drenched shirt and pulled on one of the scrub shirts I keep in the trunk just for occasions like this. I also pulled off my water saturated shoes and socks and pulled on the old pair of Crocs I keep for times like this. Then I draped the towel over the seat, climbed in and headed home. 

The camera was fine. My iPhone stood at the ready for aqueous duty in the interim. 

Between Belinda and I we have two G15s and two G16s, all of which take the same batteries. I'd say we already have our vacation cameras pre-selected. 

ten minutes before the storm onslaught. 

Currently making a little "swim" movie with the G16s. 

No 4K but nice 1080p. 

Very little control but that can work too.

A Pair of Portraits for Friday. Just some random observations. Nothing earth shattering here.

This image of Ben was done with a Kodak DCS SLR/n full frame digital camera.

This image of Lou was done with a Hasselblad 500 ELX film camera. 

I'm beginning to really enjoy the 6 a.m. workouts. All through high school and most of college our teams were in the pool and breathing hard most days by 5:30 a.m. so I guess I can rationalize that 6 gives me an extra half hour... But I probably move a bit slower now in the mornings than I did back then. 

I've changed my schedule because everything was getting too disjointed. We're limited to sign up for 4 masters swims during any seven day period and I was trying to devise a schedule based on spreading out the days in some sort of way that would aid in the overall training. Maybe two days on and one off. A pattern of sorts. But the problem with "on again, off again" was the interruption of a semi-sane sleep pattern. On the days I could sleep in...I couldn't. On the days after a break it was hard to wake up early enough. I decided to switch to four swim days in a row on the presumption that I'd have a fairly well regulated sleep schedule for at least four days in a row. This week was the first trial of that idea and I have to say I think it worked better. 

The sunrise over the pool was beautiful today. I first saw it when I was coming off the wall underwater, dolphin kicking on my back. The pool was not hit directly by the first light and was still distinctly blue while the sunrise painted the sky with magenta and orange. The contrast was really wonderful. In this instance the world seems to have had a very, very talented lighting designer. 

There are little things that drop hints when your worrying has turned a corner and you find yourself wracked with optimism. I had one of those on Wednesday morning. I photographed a radiologist who was quite beautiful. I asked if she would come back in the near future, off the clock---so to speak, so we could collaborate on a black and white portrait that's more my style than client style. She agreed and that flipped a switch in my brain that suggested I should ask more people more often to come by, play, and try a different approach. I'm looking forward to a new session; already working out the lighting...

My lens fascination for today is the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art. I know it's too big and I know it's too heavy but the lens makes up for all that with it's stellar performance. Especially wide open! I've bought many a fast lens only to find that I was paying for glass and speed but not really great results when used wide open. It's disappointing to pay thousands for a fast lens only to find that it doesn't really hit the zone of acceptable sharpness until you are a couple of stops down from maximum. 

Sigma seems to have understood that having a fast aperture is somewhat meaningless if you can't get solid (and I would presume: stellar) results when using it wide open. They certainly delivered in my copy of this Art series lens. I love the effect of having a tiny wedge of in focus area in a photo but I love it even more when the wedge is fully and satisfyingly sharp, detailed and contrasty!

Getting back in the saddle. Ramping up with selected, trusted clients before anybody else.

I started letting clients know that we were ready to accept assignments; at least the ones that everybody agreed were pretty safe. By that I mean jobs such as photographing one person at a time in our studio, or photographing buildings and infrastructure projects outside. I'm fine with doing environmental portraits outside as well. Once I started reaching out and conveying details about our slow motion return to work I've been getting requests for bids, and actual assignments for multiple engagements in August. And it feels good to get started back. 

Since many of my clients are medical practices (radiology, cardiology, oral surgery, oncology, etc.) we don't have to explain much about the safety procedures we're requiring from everyone. If people are coming to my studio they'll need to wear their face masks until we get ready to photograph. We have an A/C system set up to bring in constant fresh air; no recycled stuff. I'm swabbing down surfaces like a professional HazMat team. If people don't want to do it my way they don't need to book my time. 

So far only two requests for bids have come from ad agencies and both projects got put "on hold" the day after the bids were delivered. The rest of the work, and offers of work, is coming directly from the companies I've worked with a lot in the past. Most of the first wave of jobs I'm scheduling are simple headshots in the studio but we are bidding on several video projects that will have their own sets of logistical challenges. I have a feeling everything will take longer now and move slower. And the approach to craft service (the traditional food/snack tables at video shoots) will be an entirely new experience. 

There is one large law firm I work with that loved the in-office, environmental portraits we were doing for them for the last five years. Since many of the lawyers are still working from home and are reticent to all come into the office for the traditional, tightly scheduled photo sessions we're changing gears a bit and working with some PhotoShop solutions. I'll spend some time in their offices during an off time (Saturday or Sunday) with one point of contact there as a host. My goal is to photograph a bunch of great environmental backgrounds in their facility that I can use in an ongoing library to make composites with portraits that we'll do, one at a time, in the studio against a plain, neutral background. 

I would not have offered or considered this approach pre-Covid, but that was before the latest upgrade to Photoshop more or less perfected the "Select Subject" command. (It's in the selection tools). If you have not upgraded and experienced the huge leap forward in this automatic selection tool you owe it to yourself to check it out. "Select Subject" makes the cleanest drop outs/selections I've ever seen. It's about 10 times quicker than using a pen tool and you can use it in conjunction with the refine edge tools as well. 

I had occasion today to drop out the backgrounds in 16 images I shot for another law firm. We'd shot against a plain background and it was amazingly easy to click one button and see a  perfect cut out. The 16 images, working in 16 bit from 47.5 megapixel raw files, took a little less than 2 hours of time. Last year I would have blocked out a day to do this kind of detailed selection process. I'm so impressed. 

Saving between 4 and 6 hours of time today and getting great results is the best argument I can make to anyone who thinks the $10-12 a month is way too much to spend for PhotoShop and Lightroom bundled together. I calculate that I made a year's worth of subscription charges from the time saved on today's job alone. And I provided what is probably a better product that I could have produced a year or two ago. 

While it feels good to look at August's business calendar and see it filling up there are still projects I won't accept. One kind is any sort of day long event work in interior spaces. No convention hotels for me yet. I also won't fly for work. I do have one client in North Carolina I'd love to continue on with but that will have to wait until we've got a better handle on either vaccines or iron clad curatives. Even though I always imagine myself as being bulletproof I am 64 years old and the statistics are not in my favor...yet. 

On  the other hand, if someone would like me to do larger, infrastructure projects anywhere in Texas I'll be happy to drive to the locations and do the work under the same constraints I've outlined above. I'm even considering a rooftop tent for my little SUV which would free me from having to flip a coin about how safe a hotel/motel might be... But no one is asking right now so that's more or less a contingency plan at the moment. Maybe something better saved until the cooler weather arrives...

I can't predict what will happen next. I have friends who've lost long term jobs at ad agencies and from corporate MarCom departments but I have other friends who are working through the pandemic, in marketing, without a hitch. I'll be happy to work a bit after months of twiddling my thumbs and boring you with images of Austin's mostly closed up downtown spaces. But I'll be equally happy just hitting the pool in the early morning, grabbing delicious take out for lunch and lounging under the ceiling fans with a great novel on my Kindle. Whichever way the universe leans. 

Favorite lens of the moment: The Panasonic 24-70mm f2.8 S-Pro. I used it on some in studio images of people against white and was impressed by the sharpness at both ends of the focal length range. And across all f-stops. Better than many, many prime lenses I've used. And not a hint of flare or contrast flattening even though the white background was a half stop hotter than the subjects. No flare from the hair light just out of frame either. The lens and camera combination focused speedily and accurately and  working with the lens was easy as pie with the face detection AF in the camera. It's a pricey lens but it's so darn good I've almost forgotten what I paid for it. In a few months I'll forget that altogether and wonder why I didn't get it sooner. 

For everyone who suggests that if I can't find fun portrait subjects to work with I should find some other subject matter to replace them with in the interim: Go read Michael's post today: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2020/07/bill-jay-on-the-thing-itself.html

It's a bit of writing from the late Bill Jay. Pretty much sums up my POV. 

At any rate, happy that the cameras and lights still work the way they are supposed to. More adventures on resurrecting my autumnal career in the near future. Keep your powder dry. 

Troubleshooting stuff that goes wrong. Don't be so quick to blame the camera. If you are using flash it's probably your ________!!!!!

Notice how the top half of the frame is darker than the bottom half?

When I lit the scene and metered it with a Sekonic meter

the whole background was evenly lit to half a stop.

What went wrong?

And who's to blame?

As usual: operator error.

As you may know, in addition to my full time, unpaid job, as a volunteer photoblogger I also do some professional/commercial photography on the side. You know, just to pay the bills and provide a budget to pay for canned tuna fish and ramen. So, in my capacity as a working pro I accepted the amazing challenge of photographing not just one, but two doctors this morning. We set up the appointments an hour apart so I could do mundane things in between, like wiping down doorknobs with Clorox wipes or re-brushing my teeth so I wouldn't have to live with coffee breath recirculating in my face mask...

But even though I've been taking these kinds of studio portraits for a number of years, and should have some sort of competency in both setting up the gear and getting my subjects to flash winning smiles, I'm  not so complacent that I'd wait till the last moment to set up and test the gear. Yesterday evening, between watering the grass and settling in for yet another one of Belinda's ultra-healthy dinners, I decided to head into the studio and set up all the lights, the background and the camera and then test everything a couple of times. I tend to sleep better that way.

When I got everything ready and started to test the images on the rear screen looked fine...except they didn't. One half of the frame was noticeably darker than the other. Yikes. Okay. I've done this before. I'm sure it was just an errant camera setting.

My first thought was about the lights. I was using two Godox monolights. The kind you plug in the wall. The kind with big modeling lights. While they tend to be binary they were part of different lighting method than I've been using in the recent past. I had been using Godox LED lights and never had a problem like this. Could it be the lights?

I switched them out with a second set of lights, turned everything back on and did a test. The issue was still there. It was unchanged. Uh oh. Might be something wrong with the camera! I was using a Panasonic S1R. It's one that was thoroughly (and I mean thoroughly) checked by Panasonic just a few months ago and it was working fine all last week. But you never know....

I went through and checked the shutter speed setting for sync problems but the phenomenon was unchanged. If it was the camera I would be pissed off but for the moment it would be an easy problem to solve. I'd just pull a second one out of the drawer, put a piece of tape on the broken camera and get on with the job. But to my horror the second camera showed the exact same issue. Half the frame graded to darkness. Well shit.

With my platinum strategy, the camera switch out, not working I was starting to get a bit nervous. I should be able to make a simple photo set up work. I've done it....forever. My next step was to go through every single menu item on the camera to see if I had set anything, ANYTHING that might affect the flash. Two trips through the menu and I still came up empty handed and saddled with a very annoying enigma.

While logic told me the lens couldn't possibly be the issue I reached into the magic studio drawer and pulled out another lens. It showed the exactly same messed up frame as before.

In scary times like this the options seem so limited. What to do next? Call the client and reschedule? Quit the profession in shame and embarrassment? Shoot with a half dark frame and try to get away with calling it ART?

No. A true master, like Richard Avedon, would have stepped away from the situation, gotten a cup of coffee and tasked his team of assistants to figure out the issue or face banishment.

It did dawn on me that I have no army of assistants onto whom I could foist responsibility but I'm always up for a cup of coffee so I headed all the way downtown to Intelligentsia Coffee to get a double cappuccino. Sure, I had to pass sixty or seventy closer coffee shops to get there but it's really all about the journey. The longer the journey the more time your subconscious mind has to work on the issue.

I got my coffee and headed back home. I was waiting for the coffee to cool down before taking that first sip. When I crossed the bridge over the river I thought enough time had gone by and I took in that first tentative slurp of perfect coffee. And then, like an electric shock violently tickling my medulla oblongata, the solution came to me. Fully formed. Springing like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. Maybe it was the dedicated Godox X1T flash trigger!

My right foot hit the accelerator and the incredibly dynamic Subaru Forester sped up from a pokey 35 miles per hour up to a death defying 43 mph as I rushed home to get to the bottom of the exposure
crisis.

I grabbed a big, theatrical looking magnifying glass and examined every square centimeter of the triggering mechanism; paying special attention to its infernal interfaces, and: there it was. The last untested possibility. The high speed flash sync enabling switch, or THSFSES!!!

It was set to allow high speed flash sync. A totally unnecessary setting given that the monolights were in the studio where the ambient light is totally controllable. I took another swig of coffee, took a deep breath and flicked the switch to the "off" position. Then, with trembling hands and no small dose of trepidation, I turned everything else back on and took a test shot. Voila! Success. A completely coherent and even white background. I had conquered the last Everest on my list. The flashes would now do my bidding with no further wobbling or subterfuge.

I finished my coffee with a triumphant flourish that only served to spill precious brown juice on the studio floor. But after I cleaned that up I knew I'd be able to complete those two assignments and I would still be able to hold my head high as a nearly fully functional photographer. And that's my story.

Next time I'll check the trigger first. Apologies to my big, fat Lumix S1R. It's not your fault, it's me.

Medium format digital becomes accessible. People take notice.

Interesting to me that three of my good friends (who are also photographers....but I guess that goes without saying...) have recently added Fuji medium format cameras to their collection of toys and tools.  One is my friend, Paul who is a very experienced architecture photographer, the second is a very advanced enthusiast named, Andy, and the third is an eclectic and self directed art photographer named Jim. All three had their reasons for giving medium format a spin and all three of them are happy they decided to give new Fuji line of MFs a whirl.

Paul, the architecture veteran, is always looking for an edge and he's not a newbie when it comes to large and medium format cameras; both digital and film based. When I first met him Paul was working with Linhof Technica 4x5 view cameras while keeping a Hasselblad SWC/M handy for quicker wide shots. He's worked recently with the bigger Hasselblad digital cameras as well as the Leica S medium format cameras so he knew what he was getting into when he bought a Fuji GFX 50R.

Andy is nearly as crazy about collecting various cameras as I am and his purchase of his GFX 50R was, I think, his first foray into medium format digital imaging. He picked up the basics in a matter of hours and has been using the 50R non-stop since picking it up a few months ago. I've seen plenty of samples from his work with the camera and he should be a spokesperson for Fuji. He's got that enthusiast's enthusiasm especially hard for the medium format space. All his stuff looks great. (And he's reviving his appreciation for his tripods).

Jim is the anything for art and all-in member of this loose coterie. He sprung for the GFX 100 (100 megapixels) and three of the lenses and he's become a bit zealous about how much he likes the bigger format. From the west Texas desert to the Colorado mountains, he seems to drag that kit around with him everywhere. It's a change from previous years when I could always count on him to show up with everything and anything Leica.

But what all three have in common is that they are generally in the first wave of adapters for camera technologies that make a difference in the actual look of the images they create. They aren't necessarily waiting for the reviewers to give them a sign. They are willing to adapt without the safety net of the herd to bolster their resolve. And they each deeply love making photographs.

So why the sudden lunge toward medium format? (Or, in Paul's case, back into MF).

In each case I think it happened when Fuji took all the goodness of the 50 megapixel sensor that appeared in the Hasselblad HD1X and the second generation Pentax 645D and put it into a system that is rationally affordable. In the case of the 50R when the price for a body started dropping down to the $3,500 price point it entered a dollar-to-value zone that made it irresistible for photographers who wanted a different look than what they (and everyone else) were getting from the 35mm sensor sized DSLRs and mirrorless full frame cameras.

In the case of the 50R the user is getting a sensor that's about +50% bigger than the 35mm models which translates into bigger pixels, which generally means a nicer looking file. But since the tech is based on the same underlying magic across sensor format sizes one still retains all the high ISO performance of the current smaller format sensors. And, unlike Hasselblad and Leica medium format cameras the lenses you'll want to use on the Fujis don't require selling a kidney on the black market to come up with enough money to purchase. I find the Fuji lenses bordering on affordable. The second part of the equation that really works for Fuji is that they quickly fleshed out the lens line up and did so with lenses that have a lot of appeal. I'm still salivating over the 110mm f2.0 lens. Oh, and the 45-100mm f4.0 lens. Even Mitakon makes two lenses for the system; a super fast 85mm f1.2 and a super fast 65mm. And I can't imagine a portrait photographer who wouldn't be at least mildly interested in the 100-200mm f5.6 zoom for a bit less than $2,000.

They've moved quickly to introduce lots of perfectly thought out zoom lenses as well as a collection of wides, normals and longer lenses. Venus Optical (third party) makes a 17mm for about $700 that's supposed to be good and is the equivalent of a 13mm on a 35mm system. But if you just want to get your feet wet with a pancake style "normal" focal length Fuji makes a 50mm 3.5 (a 40mm equiv.) for a hair less than $ 1,000.

Compare that to the Leica S series MF lenses and you'll find you can by three Fuji lenses (or more) for the price of one German marvel. That wouldn't be as exciting if the Fuji lenses were crap but by all reports from knowledgeable users the Fuji G lens are quite sharp and perform well. And the autofocus is decent. Both from a speed and accuracy point of view.

The EVF finder on the rangefinder style 50R body is one of the 3.69 megapixel versions so it's nice and detailed. And, if you travel a lot for your photographic work (does anybody do that anymore?) the body is currently cheap enough to make a second, back-up body nearly practical. (Not so practical if you are addicted to the 100 megapixel GFX100 version = which is still hovering around $10K. But then again....100 megapixels!!!).

What do I think? I think if the pandemic hadn't shut down my entire 2020 fiscal year's business income I'd find the $3500 price tag for the 50R body, and the $2,700 price tag for that slick looking 110mm f2.0 a very reasonable and highly justifiable purchase. I might still find them to be so.

But for my own stuff, in the moment, the S1 and S1R cameras are filling the bill. When the first green shoots of new business sprout, or when that lucky lottery ticket pays off, you'll probably find me in line at B&H or Precision Camera waiting for the 50R to come off back order. Yes, "back order" in the midst of the camera industry meltdown. Fuji must be doing something right...

My friend Paul likes the camera for its files but he's equally engaged by the short lens mount-to-sensor plane distance that allows him to adapt and use a vast collection of medium format shift lenses from previous, much more expensive camera systems. He's becoming a master at adaptation. Especially with shift lenses. Maybe he'll step up to the 100 megapixel GFX100 after he sees some of Jim's work with that camera. Then he might need to get rid of the 50R. I know someone who might willingly take it off his hands. I wonder if I can adapt some old Hasselblad V lenses to it.  You never know...

So, $3900 for a Canon R5, or a Lumix SH-1, or save some cash and step up to MF for nearly $500 less... An interesting question.