Still working through the North Atlantic catalog. And...packing for the trip to Santa Fe. Indecision is rampant.

The only hard part of photography is getting to the locations you want to shoot. Everything else is just a math problem or an emotional equation. Photograph is nothing more than the messy intersection of physics and art. 

This is another small bucket of images from the 2018 trip. I think I'll head back there in 2023, in the dead of winter, just for another taste. But in the meantime there are other trips I need to take first. 

For example, next week I'll be in Santa Fe for five days. I'm working for one evening, one full day and one half day. Mostly photographing speakers and attendees at a banking and economics conference but also a few out and about assignments like a group adventure up through the galleries on Canyon Rd. As usual I am radically overthinking which cameras and lenses to bring along. Part of the reason is that I'm driving instead of flying so I can take along anything I'd like. I just don't know what I like in the moment. 

I'm pretty much settled on taking a full frame camera and a big, long, heavy 70-200mm zoom for those tight speaker shots at the podium and I'm toying with dragging along the big, fat Leica 24-90mm zoom just to assuage my current masochistic photography tendencies. Which will require me to bring along a couple of full frame SLx bodies and accoutrement. Which will cause me, midway through the trip to wish that I'd opted for the micro four thirds cameras instead. An ongoing leitmotif this week, what with the Iceland G9 images being front and center. At this juncture I'm guessing it's likely going to be a mix of stuff. And that's okay too. 

If I go full m4:3 and eschew all the FF cameras I do need to source a longer zoom for the mini-system that I currently own. I have the 12-60mm Panasonic/Leica lens but I found myself gasping for more millimeters during a similar corporate shoot just last week. I have an Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro on hold over at the camera store but I'm vacillating because of the embarassment of having owned and sold this lens once before. My brain hates to admit to patterns of waste and indecision if I'm the target of my own withering judgement.

But I'm sure I'll get it figured out before I leave the city limits on Monday. At least I'm pretty sure which car I'm taking... 

When you look through the images below you'll find some that are variations of the same shot. I thought I'd include them to give you an idea of the way I work a shot instead of always just showing the final output. 

Two off topic notes. OMG!!! Property values in Austin are sky rocketing. How do I know? I just got my property valuation this year from the local taxing authority. I'm now officially "property rich" but if I sold my house there's no way I could afford to buy a better one in Austin. I'd have to convince B. to move someplace else instead. And we have deep roots here. The alternative is to convince ourselves that it's cool to live in Austin and just suck it up. Pay the taxes and bitch...like everyone else. 

Second. Gotta say that yesterday's noon swim practice was one for the record. Not the swimming on my part but the pantheon of swimmers in attendance. The practice was lightly attended. Just seven swimmers and a nice coach. But... of the seven swimmers two were gold medal winners from various recent Olympic Games, four of the seven were former UT hot shot/elite swimmers and three of us were just floating around watching superstars swim with perfect technique and at speeds that defied the apparent ease of their aqueous locomotion. It was pretty stunning. On the way home I thought about how irrational it is for me to even try to compare my splashing and sputtering with the performance of the "Henri Cartier Bressons and Robert Franks" of swimming. Especially the ones who are still in their 20s. Ah well. You have to have role models...I guess. 

On to the photos. Remember to view them on a tightly calibrated 27 or 30 inch 5K monitor in a darkened room and be sure to click on the images to see them larger still.... Or use your phone...

 

Some more images from Iceland and the amazing G9 cameras. And a few more thoughts about shooting.

 

It's always a bit daunting to arrive somewhere with a work agenda, dog tired after an overnight flight, and in a country and a season where daylight only stretches from 9:30 a.m. till a little after 4 p.m. During the six days I was in Iceland we had rain and overcast skies on three. In situations like this, when you have the free time to shoot, you might consider moving and exploring constantly and quickly instead of just drifting along at a leisurely pace and dallying over a small handful of shooting opportunities. 

As I mentioned yesterday I shot a huge amount of frames while there. A bit over a thousand images per day. I shot this way with the idea of going back later, in post production, and panning for whatever "gold" there might be in and amongst the mud....But more importantly, I shot an image any time I was the least bit interested in whatever was in front of me rather than waiting around for divine inspiration to strike. 

Regardless of format the real beauty of digital is having endless capacity for images at your disposal. So, in this post and the last one combined you are seeing far fewer than a half a percent of the images I took in a very compressed time frame. There are many more I could post and which I like just as much. The takeaway being that working fast and practicing seeing are two valuable skills to have.

Another advantage goes to people who can move fast, with endurance, and don't mind carrying gear with them. My suggestions for successful immersion in a location are: Walk a lot. Move constantly. Shoot anything that catches your eyes. Move some more. Explore off the beaten path. Fill those memory cards.