The thrill of editing and post processing. What a nifty way to compare lenses and camera systems. Especially for use in dicey situations.

 Corporate meetings and events can be fun and even challenging. Some parts are basic social intelligence. Getting people to pose at cocktail receptions, and cajoling CEOs into happier expressions without stepping over the lines. There are the uncontrollable parts of the events where you might follow along on an off road adventure or an art gallery tour and try to capture people authentically having fun while mostly disregarding the fact that they have a photographer in tow. And even though it seems like the predictable and easy part I always find the "speakers at the podium" to be challenging. 

There are two reasons for this. First, you are dependent on the lighting provided by the stage designers and A/V crew. As a photographer I'm happiest with big, soft light sources but you won't find them on most conference stages. Instead you'll find spot lights from the back of the ballroom or maybe assorted open face lights on a truss out in front and above the stage. If it's the former, which is pretty much standard at smaller venues (think 300 attendees instead of 3,000), you can count on the lights being right on the edge of acceptable for overall photographic exposure. 

Add in a speaker with a sensitivity to strong lights, one with the clout to demand that the lights be dimmed down, and you have an interesting session of podium-tography on your hands. And if the lights don't get you the rapid blinker speaker lurks out there. And the stage pacer. And there's always the note reader who spends his or her whole time on stage looking down at their notes and, erratically and briefly tries to make glancing eye contact with one or two people in the audience. Then there are the "rounds".  The easiest big room to photograph in is one with theater seating. Rows and rows of seats on ever ascending levels. But the "rounds" seem to be the preference for hotels and convention centers. "Rounds" refers to round tables that seat eight. The banquet people put them as close together as they can to maximize the number of attendees they can put in a ballroom. Of course sitting at round tables means that half the people in the room have to turn their chairs around to see the stage. It quickly becomes a mess of stretched out legs and chairs in the aisles. An obstacle course for the photographer who needs to move around the room to get good vantage points from which to photograph the speaker on stage. 

If the event photographer is especially lazy and well equipped I guess he or she could set up a big tripod at the back of the room, centered, and shoot with very fast, very long lenses. That gear and a comfy chair might seem the way to go. I resist it because if photographers use too long a focal length lens from too far away the smashed compression makes all the photographs look flat and lifeless. I like to work at multiple distances from a speaker to get a collection of images with different apparent depth. It just seems more interesting. 

Much earlier in my career as a corporate event photographer I was nervous about getting great photographs. When we used film cameras the whole system was very slow. You really could only count on film with ISOs of up to 800. And you pretty much had to nail your exposures. And you had to re-load after each 36 exposure dose. Of course you would probably be rewinding film just as the CEO sprung a big "reveal" on the audience. Hope that second camera still had some frames left, right?

Now, with digital camera systems and some decades of experience under my belt I am no longer nervous about getting "the shot." I see things differently now. Nothing is really that big of a deal anymore. Most of my clients who have survived the last recession and the Covid shutdown have been desensitized to self-induced stress. They just want to get "representative photos" that "give a sense of the event." 

I see conferences with day long speaker components as a fun and lively testing ground to see what different lenses and cameras, and formats can do when presented with consistent lighting and subject matter. Last week I staged three different cameras on a chair at the back of a big ballroom. I'd find a nice angle for the speaker on the stage, grab a camera and shoot some frames. Then, since most presentations are about 30 to 40 minutes, I had ample time to circle back to my "camera hoard" and change out models or lenses or both.

Over time one system presents itself and the "right choice." But perfection for all frames isn't necessarily what I am pursuing. I like to see where the limits are for each kind of system and what kinds of compensation come with faster lenses or different shutter speeds. Can I get close to the quality of a full frame camera with a long zoom if I use a smaller format camera with a shorter, faster lens and get closer to the stage? Stuff like that. 

Last week we had two days of presentations and speeches. And it was actually very interesting to me because the conference was all about banking and economics. I had breakfast one morning with the keynote speaker who, like me, was an early riser and ready to hit the breakfast buffet at 6:45 a.m. Since we were the first ones there we had time for a pleasant half hour talking about things like secondary derivatives and black swan events....

When the presentations on the stage started in the "main tent" I went for the "safety system." The safety system is the camera and lens(es) that you KNOW will get the job done in the most commonly acceptable way. The Panasonic S5 is my low light champion. I can photograph at ISO 6400 without a worry in the world. If I know everything is going to the web and nothing will touch paper and ink I'm just as happy at 12,000. I use that camera mostly with the 70-200mm f4.0 S-Pro lens. It's sharp enough to shoot wide open all the time and the range is great. From a head-to-toe shot to a fairly tight head and shoulders shot at a comfortable distance from the stage. While I can use the camera in a "silent mode" I always experiment to see if the production's LED lighting is going to cause banding. If the electronic shutter initiates banding I quickly retreat to the mechanical shutter and try to be conservative in my frame rates.

Once I know I have good expressions and a good range from a speaker at the podium while using the "safety system" I think throw caution to the wind and grab a different camera and lens. Next on my dance card one morning last week was the Panasonic GH6 with the Panasonic/Leica 12-60mm. With that camera I am comfortable at ISO 3200 and I also mostly shoot that combo with the lens aperture wide open. After I got bored with that I switched to the GH5ii with an adapted Nikon 105mm f2.0 lens. And then the new Olympus 12-45mm. Finally, I put the 90mm f2.8 Sigma lens on the Leica SL2 and played around with that. This went on for most of the program. 

All the images were shot as raw files to one card and small, 16:9 Jpegs to the other card. 

I got home yesterday, had a lovely dinner with B. and B. and then got a great night's sleep. I need one more good sleep to feel back to 100%. But slower recovery comes with the miles... not the miles on the car either...

This morning I sat down in front of the office computer and loaded in all of the raw files to Lightroom. There were 2900+ to start with. This represented three days of shooting plus some "atmosphere" shots from around the town of Santa Fe. My first task was to edit down the "take" to 2,000 files. When I couldn't find any more that I wanted to throw away I stopped and got busy fixing the surviving files for general use. 

First I set the color profile. Then I set the exposure. Then I tweak. Then I apply the settings to all the shots with matching parameters. Once you get a good flesh tone on a stage where the lighting is set in stone you can forget having to nurse it from frame to frame and just apply that color temperature and hue setting to every image of a human in the big folder. 

I don't usually add any sharpening to these event files. Most of the presenters and the general audience "victims: of candid photograph from receptions and events are not 20 year old fashion models. The demographic is resolutely "over 30" so, in fact, I generally turn the sharpening down from Adobe's preset. 

How did it all work out this time? Well, as you might expect, the S5 dominated. But the SL2 with the 90mm could be impressive when it actually nailed the shot. The GH6 is a big step forward in terms of detail and lower noise when I compare it to past samples from the GH5. And the GH5ii came in right where I expected it would. It's the replacement for the G9 in my mind. 

While I notice differences in all four of the cameras the truth is that with a more careful and deliberate approach to shooting we could make any of these systems work and provide images that our event clients would enjoy and be happy to work with. 

The one tip I rediscovered was something I used to know when shooting with flash but forgot because it's been so long since we've shot a job that required some on camera flash. If you set your camera to TTL and your flash to TTL but you leave your ISO setting at AUTO the system will default to ISO 100 and underexpose your shots. Especially obvious if you are trying to bounce small flash off a very high ceiling. Set the ISO at something like 1600 or 3200 with an S5 and you'll have a great time shooting with flash. 

Since someone will certainly ask I thought I'd answer this one: If you have stage lighting at your disposal why to you need to shoot at high ISOs? The answer is pretty easy. Speakers move around. They "talk" with their hands. They pace. I find that 1/160th of second is the lower limit I want to use to freeze subject motion. With an f4.0 lens that means you'll need somewhere around 3200 to 6400 ISO to get a good percentage of shots that are not marred by subject motion. All the cameras and lenses are well enough stabilized so that actual camera shake is rarely a concern. 

I've spent my day editing the images from the raw files and am now uploading the results to a private gallery on Smugmug.com. I'll also send along a large WeTransfer.com folder to the client so they can archive their images locally. It's all part of a process. 

Just for a change I'm photographing two attorneys tomorrow and I'm purposely disregarding all the gear I used in Santa Fe and taking, instead, the Sigma FP and the Sigma 85mm f1.4. It will be a nice change of mindset. Divorced from the idea of driving long distances in the car. 

Now packing for tomorrow's adventures. 

Home at Last. Thoughts while unloading stuff...

You'll not be out of place in Santa Fe with a wide brim hat. 

And if you are 66 you'll probably be one of the youngest visitors

they've had in a while. 

Just for the record I walked around diligently over the course of four days and 

saw only TWO people with actual cameras. The paucity of 

actual cameras was notable. Phones? Yes.

DSLRs or Mirrorless cameras. Not so much. 

 It was a long drive from Lubbock to Austin. I won't talk myself into doing a trip like that by car again until far in the future when my memory becomes faulty. It was a mistake to drive to Santa Fe. It wasn't a mistake to go to Santa Fe....just the driving part. There's nothing particularly redeeming about six hours a day of mindless driving through a flat, brownish, endless space. Sorry. No glamor there. 

I found little that would encourage me to return to Lubbock any time soon either. I did score three pairs of discounted trousers from one of my favorite brands, English Laundry. They always seem to fit just right. I could order them from Amazon for around $49 but it doesn't make sense when you can source them at Costco for $15 (an instant discount from the normal Costco price of $19). I also got to look around at a 5.11 store. Don't know about 5.11? It's for folks who want to play at being soldiers by dressing in rugged looking clothes and carrying heavy backpacks with built in holsters for your concealed weaponry. Didn't see anything I needed and they didn't have a bag big enough for my 50 caliber Barret M82 sniper rifle so why bother? 

If you are really looking for a bargain then it's back to Costco for the footlong hotdog with a soft drink for $1.50 USD. Or the $3.55 per gallon gas. Sorry...couldn't find the tactical hotdogs. 

I almost hesitate to write this next part about my trip. It will probably make me sound dumb. Or clueless. Or whatever. But I'm going to do it anyway. 

Compared to shooting with my new GH6 or my year old Panasonic S5 my Leica SL2 just plain sucked for walking around Santa Fe. I've pulled some nice images out of the big, now $7,000 Leica body but in nearly every instance those were done under controlled circumstances or with my own style of lighting. I brought along the Leica SL2 and a bag full of the Sigma Contemporary lenses with the thought that I'd shoot that system when I wasn't on the corporate clock. A way of making a demarcation between work and play. 

First of all I seem to have lost much of my long time preference for prime lenses. Or what might be better classified as "single focal length" lenses. If I had on the 24mm I found myself wishing it was the 65mm. But when I took the 65mm out of a walk I seemed only to discover potential images that would have been rendered perfectly with something like a 35mm lens. And after years of walking around with only one lens and one camera I was not about to lug around a Domke bag filled with various focal lengths. I was working hard enough already. 

In comparison to the other cameras I brought the SL2 seemed ponderous and slow. And even though the finder is supposed to be much better than the EVFs in the other cameras it seemed.....vague to me on this trip. 

This might just be sour grapes because I packed too much and complicated my photo life with too many disparate choices on this trip. Between the two m4:3 bodies, the S5, the SL2 and ten different lenses it's a wonder I could keep anything straight much less focus on fine-tuning technique while bouncing back and forth between cameras. 

The S5 was far and away my favorite work camera and the lens choice there was right on the nose. But my favorite "walking around" set up was the GH6 paired with the new Olympus 12-45mm lens. A 24mm to 90mm full frame equivalent angle of view range. The lens is sharp and the camera does really nice colors. 

I'll put the SL2 to better use on Tuesday. I'm booked to photograph two attorneys on location. Camera on a tripod, lights at hand. I'm guessing it's much closer to the optimum use profile for that camera. Lots of detail and lots and lots of dynamic range but more methodical. More attention to each step. 

It's been a banner month around here for the m4:3rd cameras. I've really enjoyed using both of them. Might need just one more lens....

health note: I mentioned a blood oxygen reading from my Apple Watch on Friday afternoon that was pretty low. It was 92. Several people suggested I take a Covid test. I took two and both were negative. I've been closely monitoring during the past two days and after that one reading all the rest have been 96 or higher, even at altitude. I called my concierge doc and ran all this by him as well. He suggested that the combination of bad air quality, altitude and the same kind of work schedule I adhere to here in Austin were probably to blame. Since Friday and since coming down from the upper reaches most of my readings are in the 98 and 99 zone. Maybe with a good night's sleep here at HQ, aided along by a nice glass of Stag's Leap Cab I'll be back at 100% tomorrow. I'm fine. 

And...not to worry. I am my favorite hypochondriac. I head in to see my physician at the drop of a hat. Sometimes it's a contest to see which one of us can discover something first. I beat him to the punch with the squamous cancer imbroglio....

The perilous journey home. Well....not so much "perilous" as boring and mind-numbing...

 The sun was just coming over the horizon this morning when I dragged myself out of bed at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe and started to organize for the day. The event I came to town to photograph ended the day before at noon and I spent the rest of my time walking around with my most eccentric camera and lens combination (Leica SL2 + Sigma 18-50mm f2.8) looking for stuff I hadn't seen earlier. I found a few images but nothing spectacular. The tell the truth the two day drive to get there and the two and a half days of documenting a company event while grappling with the altitude and the diminishing air quality (wildfires to the West) took the energy right out of me. 

Last night I came home from dinner late and started packing. I hate packing. I like having all my stuff around but I hate putting it back in the rolling cases and camera bags. I didn't have a tight deadline today; I could have waited right up till the 11:00 check out time but I was antsy to get on the road. I grabbed coffee and an egg sandwich, packed the last minute stuff (toothbrush, razor) and called down to the front desk. Five minutes later the bellman showed up and loaded all my crap onto a cart and we headed down to the garage to unearth the car from the valet guys. 

The valet services were swamped this morning so my bell guy took it upon himself to go find my car and bring it up. We loaded the stuff into the hatchback, traded handshakes and a tip, and then I drove off on the first leg of my two day trip back to Austin. I had a camera sitting on the passenger seat, ready to capture any fabulous scene I might come across but I have to tell you that after you get 50 or 60 miles outside of the mountains everything flattens out and you end up driving for long periods of time without no change to the scenery. Just dry agricultural fields. And five house "towns." The camera didn't get much use and when I did photograph something I was.... uninspired. 

While the camera didn't get much use I did decide that I like my Subaru Forester more than any other car I have owned. It's rock solid on the road, comfortable to sit in for long periods of time and also reassuringly bossy. It alerts me too frequently to mild lane departures and, every couple of hours it reminds me that I have been driving for a couple hours straight through. I think that's a passive/aggressive way of the car saying, "Hey! dumbass. Take a break." In addition to the "Eyesight" safety features the car also has a "lane-keeping" feature that constantly monitors the vehicle position between the center lines and the side lines painted on the highway and actually makes steering corrections to keep itself centered. Couple that with "adaptive cruise control" and the car nearly drives itself --- but without all the drama of a self-driving Tesla. I presumed I could take my hands off the wheel and when I did I was surprised to find that the car did at least as well as I would in keeping in the lines. But after you take your hands off the wheel for more than a few seconds the car chides you and warns you to keep your hands on the steering. I don't know what would happen if I were to disregard the warning but I don't want to find out because, as I said, the car is bossy and I'd hate to be put in time out.

I'm sure my European readers will presume that there are widely available amenities all along the route but the reality is that you can go 50 or 60 miles and not seeing anything other than cars, trucks and grass blowing in the wind. There are no restaurants, no rest stops, no toilets, and darn few gas stations. You learn to pee when the opportunity arises and you learn to keep your car's tank at least a quarter full at all times. 

Today's lunch was "enjoyed" in Clovis, NM. I checked the Michelin Guide but sadly, there were no listings in Clovis. There was a McDonald's "fine dining" facility. Texas travelers have come to count on McD's for several things. First is hot coffee at all times of the day. Second are the generally clean, well maintained restrooms and third is a general consistency to the food. I had my first Big Mac in probably a decade and it wasn't half bad. The large coffee kept me awake all the way to Lubbock. And yes, if there is a restroom I'm going to give it my best shot. 

If you drive on the most efficient route between Santa Fe and Austin the estimated travel time on a good map app (fun to say) is about 11 hours. But that doesn't take into consideration stopping for gas, stopping for food, stopping to pee and stopping because either your car or your Apple Watch are strongly suggesting that you take a break, stand for a minute, etc. What did we ever do before our devices became de facto wellness nannies? 

Lubbock was never on my radar before. It's flat, out in the middle of nowhere and its biggest attraction (as far as I can tell) is the Buddy Holly Museum. And I've never been so much into Buddy Holly that I just have to go somewhere, pay $12 bucks and learn every detail of his life. I selected Lubbock as my midway point in both directions simply because the Marriott hotel chain had put one of their hip, young Aloft Hotel properties there. It's probably the best hotel for a tired, single traveler in the whole area. And it skirts a very new shopping center. 

Did I mention that close to the hotel (walking distance) is a Costco complete with discount gasoline? After I checked into the hotel this afternoon I walked over, bought two pairs of my favorite pants and also a nice t-shirt. It was Saturday and the store was packed but efficient. Very efficient. Where else can one get $3.55 USD per gallon gas and $15, nice trousers at the same time?

Traveling alone always sounds better when you are planning the trip or just starting out. At the end of a work week out of town, and sitting alone in a sterile hotel room still 380 miles from home one can start second guessing (or ruing) one's strategic planning. I'm sitting here just starting to understand that I logged 350 miles over the course of six hours today and that after a night spent tossing and turning in a strange bed that I'll need to hop in the car tomorrow and do the same darn thing. 

If I were still 26, or maybe 46, I probably would have convinced myself that it makes perfectly good sense to drive straight through. twelve to fourteen hours behind the wheel mostly on rural, two lane blacktops with giant trucks shimmying past at high speeds just a few feet away in the opposite lane. The oncoming lane. 

I drive the speed limit not because I think it's the moral or ethical thing to do and not because I want to but because it's more fuel efficient than driving faster. So, when the sign says "65" mph, I try to set the cruise control right there and abide. This is anathema to most native Texans, and nearly every big rig driver, and sets up a dangerous scenario in which giant pick-up trucks and even giant-er 18 wheelers race up behind and then risk life and limb trying to pass on narrow roads with limited site distances. I always try to pull over onto the shoulder when I can..... but some people are impatient. Especially the guy in the dually pick-up that passed me today enmeshed in a black cloud of tailpipe emissions. I'm guessing it was from a diesel engine but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the engine had been modified to burn coal....

One thing I've known about driving my own state for most of my adult life is that the bigger the truck the faster the Texan. They feel comfortable at 90 mph. But all bets are off if it's raining, snowing or the roads are covered with black ice. In those situations they feel an urge to go faster. 

I've now shopped, had dinner, brushed my teeth and wound down from the day of driving. My last task of the day was to practice my writing. 

Tomorrow is the homeward stretch. Wish me luck so I can write again in the future.

What a Wacky Week. Also, "The Profit Pairing."

 I left Austin in the rain last Monday. My phone mapped out the best route to Lubbock, Texas where I spent the night and then routed me on in to Santa Fe around lunch time on Tuesday. It was an easy couple of drives and I don't regret my decision to drive to my assignment instead of flying. Our event and my room were at the Eldorado Hotel. I slipped into the valet parking zone in the underground garage and a bellman whisked my luggage onto a cart and followed me to the front desk.

My room was on the second floor facing in toward the infinity edge pools. I had a private, outdoor sitting area and every amenity I could think of. And nearly 28 hours to enjoy Santa Fe before our first event for the corporate client. That event was a rooftop reception at the hotel with the mountains in the far background. This gave me ample time to get settled in and to walk the town. 

I brought a lot of cameras and used all of them for odds and ends or just out of boredom but I always defaulted to one particular camera and two lenses when I was actively working for the client. My choice for work was the Panasonic S5 coupled with either the Panasonic 24-105mm zoom or the Panasonic S-Pro 70-200mm zoom. With that camera and those two lenses I felt like I could cover anything. Add in the dedicated Godox V1 flash and you have an event package that just flat out works. 

If you can't figure out how to leverage this pairing to make profitable photographs then I venture it's not the gear that is holding you back...

The assignment had me shooting in a manner I don't usually pursue. The client wanted big rich files for "later" but wanted, each morning to have a "walk in slide show" of images from the previous day. For example, the first evening there was the rooftop reception for about 250 guests. The weather and the scenery were perfect. I worked the crowd with the aforementioned combo and shot groups of two, four, six or eight along with candids galore. The production company we were working with needed relatively low res images, sized to 16:9, to show on big screens on either side of the stage. The challenge for me was my need to shoot big raw files for future use but to also shoot smaller, jpeg files already sized for video projection. 

Since the S5 camera has two card slots and each card slot can be set to shoot a certain type of file concurrently it was easy enough to direct the raw files to card #1 and the Jpegs to card #2. Knowing that even if I set a crop or a smaller file size for the Jpegs the raw files would be unaffected fit the bill. I used medium sized Jpegs shot at "standard" quality and in-camera-cropped to 16:9. The finder image showed the crop but it's not such an extreme crop from 3:2 that I couldn't figure out how the final raws would look. 

After the event I went back to my room and downloaded the Jpegs onto an SSD drive and then imported them into Lightroom. I'd shot about 500 images in the hour I was working and quickly narrowed the take down to about 200 images which I color corrected and output to a separate folder on the drive. The outputs were exactly 1080X1920 pixels. Just right for the production team to suck into their presentation program and get up on the huge monitors. 

Since I didn't know which images from each day would be in the next morning's slide show I just went ahead and made the two format capture methodology my standard for the week. It was quick and to the point. 

Everything I shot in the hotel ballroom, the reception areas and the break out rooms was done with the S5 and the two full frame lenses. And all the material was shot as both raws and Jpegs. But I spiced up yesterday's off site portion of the day by using the Panasonic GH6 and the Olympus 12-45mm Pro lens instead. 

We wrapped up the day's business sessions by noon and people went off on different fun excursions. Some played golf, some went off-roading in Jeeps with guides and some went out to a wonderful lunch at the fancy Compound Restaurant followed by a walk through the galleries on Canyon Road hosted by one of the gallery owners. You can guess which one I ended up on.... yes. The Canyon Road art tour. 

I set up the Panasonic camera the same way. Raws on one card (the CFExpress card) and Jpegs on the other. I chose the camera and lens because it was smaller and lighter than the full frame combination and I had already decided I would ditch the small tour bus at the end of the tour and enjoy a walk back to the hotel instead. The majority of my photographs from the gallery tours were in bright light and the camera worked like a champ. 

Yesterday was our only long endurance day. Breakfast started at 6:45 and we were in place for the business sessions in the main ballroom by 8 a.m. I photographed speaker after speaker at the podium. Or more likely pacing round the stage. Wide shot, waist up and a series of tight headshots timed to capture the expression that made each speaker look brilliant and interesting. After the session we separated into our groups for the fun activities. There was a non-scheduled break in the late afternoon and the we gathered together again for a cocktail reception followed by a banquet dinner, an auction and then a private concert with the Bellamy Brothers. A very popular country and western duo. They've written an amazing number of hits I only knew because of the other artists who covered them. 

The concert lasted till ten p.m. but I exercised my prerogative to de-camp at 9:30 so I could get a jump on editing down to a reasonable number the selections for the day. And to also have time to tweak whichever images needed a bit of help with contrast, exposure of general white balance. I handed off the hard drive around 11:30, showered and went immediately to sleep. 

We did one more business session in the main ballroom today and then most of the attendees scampered off to make their flights back home. Whoever home is. 

My client booked me in for an extra night at the hotel (fabulous hotel!!!) so I could recuperate and also have more time to enjoy the trip. I hit Café Doline for lunch and then hiked back to Canyon Rd. on a more circuitous route to look in on the galleries we missed yesterday and then over to a gallery on Marcy St. to look at some oil paintings I'm interested in. Of course, the one day I have mostly free is the day we get the most smoke from the wildfires raging in nearby parts of the state. Since we're at 7100 feet above sea level here the compounding of the altitude and the thick smoke started to take its toll on my interest being out and about. When my Apple Watch showed me my blood oxygen was down to 92% I decided to pack it in and head back to my hotel room. I may be in good shape but....

While I think the best image quality came from the S5 and the big lens combo I have to say that the highest degree of photographic enjoyment most certainly came from the GH6 mated with the Olympus 12-45mm. It just feels so perfect when you're actually walking around all day photographing stuff. 

I've backed up all my raw files to two hard drives and I'm leaving the camera cards untouched until I get home and get them all uploaded to the cloud. I've overshot, as usual, and I'm hell bent on thinning out the herd of photos before I start correcting and post processing.

I also brought along the Leica SL2 and a bevy of single focal length primes. They were the least used of any of the inventory. In fact, the one afternoon I went out shooting just for fun I left with the SL2 and the 65mm only to come back to the hotel with fewer than a dozen images on the card. I dumped the camera into a bag, grabbed the Panasonic GH5ii with the 25mm Summilux and headed straight back out. And I didn't come back until I had hundreds of decent shots. It's just more fun a camera to move quickly with. Especially as you become oxygen deprived. 

This blog post should be longer but I'm taking a break to take a nap... Ciao. 

Early Work. The First Book Cover. Arrival in Santa Fe.

Some time, way back in 2008, I finished writing and photographing for my first book. All except for the cover illustration. The subject matter was "professional lighting on location" and the hook of the book was using small, battery powered electronic flashes for the lighting. Seemed appropriate to make a portrait on location and to use small, battery powered flashes. I went online to look for an appropriate model and then called the historic Driskill Hotel to ask if I could use one of their nice august banquet rooms for a location. 

I guess the usual way of doing a photo like this would be to shoot a bunch of poses and then move to multiple other locations and shoot more bunches of poses. I am not so indecisive. In this case I had an idea of what I wanted. We shot the image. I paid the model and we were done.

It's not the most spectacular portrait I've shot but I liked the red dress and the model's expression and importantly, I shot it in an aspect ratio that worked well for the proposed cover. I did a bit of retouching that is not reflected here and then sent the image to the publisher as part of the whole book package. The publisher provided no feedback and ran the image as sent. So much for the idea of a tight relationship between editors and writers...

Looking back at my gear from that period I'm fairly certain I used a large umbrella on one side, a reflector on the other and a couple of flashes aimed back toward the background. The flashes were Nikon SB-28's or something similar and I used a Nikon trigger in the hot shoe to make it all go "flash!"

I thought to write about this right now because I was asked to deliver some images quickly after an event tomorrow evening and I wanted to make sure I had the latest rev of Lightroom on the laptop I brought with me to Santa Fe. I wanted to make sure I had the right password for the Adobe Creative Suite in my brain and I wanted to get a folder set up to streamline the process tomorrow evening.  And this photo was sitting in a folder on the desktop. A sign from the blogging gods…

I often think of myself as someone who flies by the seat of my pants but really I might be overly prepared instead. Why else would I bring along two quarts of Subaru's synthetic motor oil (just in case) when the car has only 8,000 miles on it and was serviced by the dealer last Monday? If I were scattered and relied mostly on luck then why do I have eight fully charged back-up batteries for the cameras I intend to use on the job and four back-up batteries for the third camera I brought along....just in case? And what about that first aid kit in the rolling duffle bag? And eight pairs of socks for six days of travel? And the portable fusion reactor?

Seems my self-image is awkwardly skewed. 

How's the trip going so far? It's been pleasant. Over the course of two driving days I think I've discovered a long lost state of calm existence. Being quiet with myself for hours at a time. No music on the car stereo, no texts, no e-mail, no phone calls. Just driving and musing about life, love and the process of existing without an overarching agenda. The drives turned out to be peaceful, non-eventful and reflective. 

The hotel is very nice. The client was thoughtful enough to put me in a room on the second floor that opens out onto a private patio which in turn opens out onto the swimming pool area. The pool isn't long enough to swim good laps in but I could practice endless flip turns --- with a breath in between each one. 

I got into Santa Fe around one p.m. and was able to check right into my room. There followed a pleasant conversation with my client and with the event director and then I got to go have coffee with a famous writer of thriller novels, John Camp. That was a wonderful two hours over coffee. He's a remarkable man.

I hope I listened well enough!

I've got 24 hours now to do with as I please. I think I'll pull out a camera and go out for a long walk. Watching late afternoon evolve into evening and then into night. 

Sometimes the benefit of getting away is just re-learning how to spend time with myself. Nice.