Learning to enjoy the hot afternoons. Bring comfortable shoes. New 100°F workshops!!! Learn how to suffer better. Sponsored by Gruff and Associates, Experts in Provocation.

 

Finished painting the fence this morning, ate left over Father's Day BBQ for lunch and then got bored with staying indoors. Grabbed some comfortable sandals, the Leica CL with the 23mm f1.4 lens and one of those obnoxious hats and drove downtown. The heat wasn't that bad. You learn to walk on the sides of the streets with the most shade. Seems obvious but it's taken me a lot of tries to get it right.

At the end of the walk I found myself at REI buying my favorite REI t-shirts because they were on clearance sale. Still too expensive but whatcha gonna do? I bought six more. They're soft and cool. They're UPF 50. They wick moisture. They're antimicrobial. And did I mention they were on sale?

Today's exercise was to figure out how I make the skies in my urban landscapes so nice and dark. I didn't set anything special so I have to tell you that I don't have a clue. Maybe I'm generating some sort of electro-magnetic field that makes skies bold and sassy. Or maybe all those "elitist scum yuppie Leica owners" are actually on to something here. Who knows?

We took the day off from "real" work but the week looks like non-stop post production. I guess it could be a lot worse.

Go snap up a Leica CL before they disappear altogether. Or wait five years until everyone decides they've become collector's items and you can snap one up for twice the price. But don't forget to buy the super-cheap TTArtisan lenses to go with yours. That's the secret magic ingredient. 

B. Scolded me last year when I told her I was thinking about Crypto. 

Since she scares me a little because she's so smart I decided not to 

take the plunge. I asked her about it again  in January but she was too

busy shorting the market overall to answer me....

And if you believe in Crypto I'm here to tell you that Lawrence Welk had the 

presidential election stolen from him back in 1956.

no. The sky was not stripped in...

A mannequin with intensity.

Austin City Limits drops the hammer on cellphone addled fans.

and one in color as the "control group".

Seen around town in black and white. Plus...."wealthy" suburbanites painting residential fencing...

 

Seen in black and white on the streets and in the galleries of Austin, Texas.

I'm really enjoying photographing in black and white, in the streets of Austin,  across a selection of fun cameras. The Leicas have the fewest controls or settings for their monochrome settings but seem to do a great job of rendering black and white images with the tones I like best. Who knows why? (And that's not really a rhetorical question...). 

Today is too freakin hot to care about technical details and the "pursuit of perfection" so I'm making do with the little (and lightweight) Leica CL, paired up with a TTArtisans 23mm f1.4. And I may switch that lens out for the Sigma Contemporary 24mm f3.5 just so I don't have to waste the energy focusing for myself. 

Like many other Americans we're currently roasting in place with a high pressure dome overhead and record heat all around us. We're in good shape to "weather"  it if we stay inside but I'm already suffering from permanent cabin fever and I'll go out walking this afternoon; at least for a little while...

In a related story, I did "blue collar" work today. We've been trying to get our wooden fence repainted this year. Sure, the costs/charges have gone up a lot since the times before the pandemic, but our biggest issue is that the labor market in Austin is all screwed up. House repair and maintenance demands are at an all time high and the myriad waiting lists for.....everything are untenable. 

For example. In the Fall we ordered new windows for the house. It took nearly four months to get them built and delivered to Austin but another two months to get on the schedule with the company's installers. Half a year for a dozen windows.  Used to be two weeks. 

I finally got tired of looking out of our new windows at the ever-weathering fence and decided that I'd just do it myself. I've been getting up each morning at 6 a.m. for the past couple of weeks to get in a few hours of painting before swim practice. I finished today. We don't swim on Mondays. The pool is closed for maintenance. So I wrapped up with a marathon painting session and even remembered to clean all the brushes. 

I guess physical labor can be fun. I don't find that to be the case for myself. I'll work harder in the future to sock away more cash to trade for someone else's time doing that kind of work. I think I'm more productive when I'm taking photos. Not when I'm (carefully) sloshing paint on a fence and trying to schedule the work around staying out of the brunt of the heat. 

But someone had to do it. And those waiting lists....

In another related story I discussed with a long time restaurant owner on Friday, the unintended consequences of every economic action. She's had a tough time staying in business. Her vendors are being hit by everything from a shortage of truck drivers to the ever escalating cost of diesel fuel (which has gone up more dramatically than gasoline). The prices they charge her have gone up. Some dramatically.

It's harder than ever to retain employees even if you are paying unskilled people twice the minimum wage and offering some benefits. But on Thursday the city of Austin announced that they were raising the lowest tier city worker wages to $22 per hour + benefits. A good thing for workers but another blow to small businesses.

Most people believe that working for any part of any government is easier and cushier than working in the private sector so now lifeguards, gardeners, parking ticket issuers and many others will start at the new wages with the city and create yet another huge diversion of workers out of the service industries and into "public service." My client's prices will have to go up if she is to stay in business. 

But with all the talk of a pending recession and the collapse of various financial markets the customers she is counting on are tightening belts, learning to cook at home, reining in non-critical credit card expenses and generally becoming highly price raise resistant. It's anything BUT a virtuous circle...

It's at times like these that not having employees seems to have been a wonderfully wise decision. And it seems that even something as droll as painting one's own fence is a decent strategy for capital conservation. And a quick way to ruin a pair of pants...

It's a changing world. 

Finally....Texas Republicans. Really? "Thoughts and Prayers" that Texas survives the colossal vitriol and obvious insanity of the State GOP. Just astoundingly evil. You can't make some of this stuff up!

I've been cleaning out the studio. I looked in some boxes I hadn't gone through in half a dozen years. I found lots and lots of prints.

At one point in my photo-trajectory I had a habit of printing my favorite frame from every job or project. The only exception was the typical "headshots." Nobody really needed to see large prints of modern office workers standing or siting in front of seamless backgrounds. But everything that looked good to me as a print got the treatment. 

My process was simple. I'd select a frame, do a bit of post processing that would make images look better on printing paper and then send them over to my local Costco to be printed on their lustre surface paper at a uniform and mostly uncropped size of 12 by 18 inches. If I was impatient or just wanted to see what variations might look like I'd fire up the inkjet printer and make prints on Canon's Photo Paper Pro Platinum or Lustre. I always had the idea that the process of printing all the work I liked would quickly give me a huge variety of really nice photographs that I could place into custom configured portfolios when needed. 

But over time I realized that I never got around to showing a book anymore and that all the art directors and creative directors I wanted to work with were more than happy to go to my website and look around there. So now I have storage boxes upon storage boxes and hundreds and hundreds of large prints that I can't bear to throw out. I still like most of the images very much. 

It's fun to look through the boxes and shuffle through the prints. I can see the evolution of digital cameras over time but, also the disappointing realization that, in these sizes, the quality differences between the 24 and 36 megapixel cameras and the more "primitive" 6 megapixels cameras comes nowhere near to matching the hysteric promises and marketing of camera makers and their legions of reviewing minions. 

I guess if we all shot everything in very, very dark settings, and needed all of our printed pieces to be made as large 48 by 60 inch murals, you could make a decent case for the constant camera upgrade mania but if you are a rational human being (rare) and you can put images shot decades apart side by side for evaluation you'll most likely be disappointed to discover that every dollar spent after a certain point was just money being tossed onto a hot fire. 

In the images I randomly tossed in to fill out the visual component of today's blog there is an older (2012 era) micro four thirds camera represented, an older Nikon APS-C camera, a Canon 5Dmk2 camera, a Nikon D2X camera, and even a Fuji S5 camera. But laid out on the floor, adjacent to each other, each printed image looks sharp, mostly noise free and aptly color balanced. Much more alike than they are different.

Of the prints here the one of the kids is the one I like best. And it was taken with a camera most would consider the least competent. Sometimes perspective can be both valuable and a bit painful...

And in book publishing news.....

 https://www.kut.org/life-arts/2022-06-13/bringing-us-together-the-ann-richards-legacy-project-releases-new-book-the-one-ann-only

Gov. Ann Richards. ©Kirk Tuck

I appreciated being included in the writer's very short list of photographers along with Annie Leibovitz and Ave Bonar.

A Couple More Indulgent Pix on Father's Day. No text.

 

Happy Father's Day.

 The greatest gift I think a parent; a father, can receive is the success of their children. Raising smart, kind, curious, and bright children into adulthood is a project that is by turns a frightening responsibility and ultimately rewarding. There are always stumbles along the way but it's the aggregate result that matters. 

Ben is 26. He's happily employed in a job that's near the cutting edge of high technology. He's financially successful and a good steward of his own future. He runs. He bikes. He climbs rocks. He analyzes and writes for a living. He is surrounded by friends.

And on Sunday evenings he comes over to our house for dinner and conversation, and a recap of his week. And many times he makes us all dinner. He is a much better fish cook than his mom or me. He makes great salmon dishes. He's adept at making Brussel sprouts in many different, novel and delicious ways. 

And that's really all I ever dreamed of having on Father's Day.

Let's talk about black and white in the age of digital. It's no big deal to do.

A reader complimented the black and white images I posted yesterday. Another reader asked about my black and white technique. I've always liked black and white photographs very much and spent about 25 years going in and out of my own darkroom, making black and white prints of all the personal work I was making. In one way it was easier to make good black and white work in the "paper" darkroom because so much of the aesthetic heavy lifting was done by the variety and different "looks" of the photo print papers available at the time. And the wonderful and varied tonal renderings of films like Tri-X or Agfapan APX 25. Before the web got popular it seemed, at least to me, easy to lose myself and lose track of time working on a series of nice, double-weight prints. I'd work on images I loved for hours and sometimes would look down at my watch to see that it was 2 in the morning and I had been printing since just after dinner...

I find that it's harder for me to go out now with a camera that's set for shooting raw files, and shooting them in color, and actually visualize how they'll look at black and white images that I'd want to share. My brain really prefers it when I go out with the intention that the final result of my effort will be in black and white. With that in mind, and knowing I have a limited imagination when it comes to previsualilzing things like monochrome results or after-shot cropping, I decide at the outset that I'm going to work in black and white. 

I set the camera to shoot Jpegs and then I adjust the very few controls on my Leica cameras that allow me to shoot the files in black and white. On the camera I used yesterday; a Leica SL, I go into the Jpeg Settings menu and, under saturation, I choose: "monochrome." Then I turn up the contrast. There are only really three settings for contrast in that camera which interest me. There is the null point; the neutral position. There is "medium high" (which is the setting I choose for normal daylight work -- direct sun, etc.) and there is one more step: "high" which I only use on very cloudy and overcast days.

There is also a sharpness setting with the same course choices: Medium, Medium High and High. Again, I default to Medium High almost always.

Now, I understand that most pundits on the web advise photographers and videographers to use low contrast settings and even lower sharpness settings with the idea that all will be fixed and optimized on post processing but I'd rather see it in my camera while I'm making the images. It seems more efficient and, for want of a better explanation, braver to me to try to get close to what you want to see in the viewfinder. 

There is no option to set color filters in the Leicas that I shoot with. That option does exist in the Lumix S1 series cameras and in my (wonderful) Sigma fp but they never seem to have much effect, or more importantly, the effect I want to see when I use them.

I generally import the files into Lightroom Classic to get them into my system and to archive them. To my eye all the images benefit from an increase in "clarity".  I'm liberal with the slider and dial in between 15 and 40 points of clarity for most street scenes and landscapes. I am usually more prudent with portraits. 

I don't have the option to use the HSL settings as I've made my stand to monochrome in the camera. I could only make color channel adjustments with a color file. I can use the color temperature sliders to make the final image warmer or cooler, greener or more magenta. But those are options that are not too useful for the way I like to see my photographs in final form. Though I did play with color temperature on several images in yesterday's batch.

Portraits benefit from a bit more contrast and the addition of some fabricated grain. 

This image was taken several years ago when the big "Sail" buildings was just getting started. This is infrastructure below ground level. I have photos from the inception; from the digging of the enormous pit to the final fitting of door knobs and hand rails on the newly unveiled entrance doors. 

This image has some "clarity" added but is otherwise as it came from the camera. 

The image just above had some contrast added and the exposure was increased from 

the original setting in post production.

Gloomy and rainy days beg for more contrast and clarity. But it's important not to go overboard with contrast to the point where the darker tones block up. A judicious use of the clarity slider and the shadow recovery slider, in tandem, is sometimes called for....

I'm a simple photographer so I try not to make more, and more complicated, work for myself in post production. I also prefer to roam the streets looking for interesting stuff than to spend too 

much time micro-processing every square centimeter of an image. If you didn't get it 

mostly right in camera chances of making radical improvements in the "digital darkroom" are negligible. 

See first. Fix as a last resort. 

Hope this is helpful. 

Happy Father's Day. 

HeatWaveTography. Getting out before noon. Walking slower.

The total anti-UV experience. Long sleeves, a bucket hat, enough sunscreen to paint the side of a house...

Another glorious morning in paradise. The pool temperature is holding constant at 80°. Cool enough to make the first jump in a little thrilling. Cool enough to allow for fast swimming and longer distances. I think all the swimmers are saying little prayers under their breath for a continuation of perfect water temperature. 

The sun is already on all four corners of the pool by the middle of workout. I've started applying sunscreen before I leave the house. I'd hate to have to admit to my dermatologist that I didn't work at a bit of self-protection if we hit another "rough" patch. Hard to admit to a guy with a sharp knife in his hand that your lackadaisical attitude made his work that much more difficult...

After a quick breakfast I headed downtown to take some photographs. Sure, I shot about a thousand frames this last week but there's something delicious about photographing exactly what you want without a client in tow or client expectations throttling your creative choices. 

Last night I had the idea that I might enjoy revisiting the recently acquired Carl Zeiss zoom lens. The 35-135mm one made for the Y/C Contax mount and adapted for the L series cameras. I also had the idea that I'd want to photograph in black and whites and I'd want to use Jpeg files. So I put a fresh battery in my pristine Leica SL (the first gen., 24 megapixel model), fitted the lens and grabbed the functional but fashion impaired bucket hat and got moving. 

A blogger recently talked about creativity ebbing and flowing. That sometimes inspiration just doesn't arrive.  My response was that I believe in the discipline of work. Creative things happen when you are working and if you can muster the discipline you can be working with your camera all the time and deeply engaged in the creative process. It's when you start looking for excuses NOT to go out with your camera and play that you've hit a pivotal moment which could go either way. Either you'll spiral away from the process, finding more and more reasons to delay or postpone, or you'll have the epiphany that the Muses strike mostly when you are already immersed in your craft and intentionally practicing it. They rarely make house calls when you are sitting around in your pajamas watching reruns of "Jeopardy" on the TV. The goddesses of creativity are especially resistant to people who want to procrastinate and whine about not being ---- inspired. 

I wanted to walk with a camera today to more closely align my practice with my own vision. These walks are like "palette cleansers" after a week of commercial work. You are essentially giving yourself permission to do "stream of consciousness" photos for as long as you want to. Or, in this Summer, for as long as you can take the heat. Consider yourself well blessed if your photo play takes place indoors, nestled in the chilly but comforting blossom of air conditioning. 

After a busy week of photographing with the SL2 and then the GH6 I had almost forgotten how much I like working with the simple, minimal and industrial SL. It's so well built and so rationally laid out that it becomes about as transparent as any of my other favorite cameras. And since I paid less than a third the price I parted with for the new SL2 I have no trepidation about taking the SL into any environment. It feels as if it can meet any challenge my staid walks can toss at it. And its demise will sadden me but it's easily replaced.

The Contax Zeiss 35-135mm zoom is a monster. The slower apertures (f3.3--f4.5 variable max) make manual focusing a bit less sure because the depth of field tends to muddle the exact point of sharp focus. I usually have to magnify the frame to make sure I'm putting the laser-edge of sharpness at just the right point. But so far I've been delighted by the look of the files from that lens. Even today, shooting in black and white, I am impressed with the bite of the images and the way the files work in black and white. 

I started my walk at 10:30 but by noon it was just too darn hot to continue. The heat just weighs on you after a while and you start to pass up shots and at some point you become so weary that the idea of pulling the camera up to your eye seems like too much of a burden. That's when you know it's time to head home, drink ice tea and scare up some sort of light lunch.

 

 

                           

 

 

A new version of "giving someone the finger." 

"I look at things from both sides now...." Thanks Joni Mitchell.

Stay Frosty out there. But still....get out there. Somewhere.

Photographic Projects and Errata. A week of mostly innocuous work. Remembering the cadence and slippery parts of commerce.

one of the saddest images in my archive. An empty pool.

 It was an odd week for so many reasons. Most of the frisson came from client inadequacies but on the whole it was a week in which I worked in the pedestrian role of a commercial photographer and not wholey immune to their vague concepts of planning and action. 

One project was started months ago. I was tasked with making portraits on location for a local marketing agency with three or four dozen employees. I'd meet them at a location downtown which we all agreed was both symbolic of Austin's progress but at the same time a location that looked quite nice as an out of focus background. When the weather permitted we'd schedule up people and photograph until the wind picked up then we'd wait and start again when the hair-raising breezes died back down. 

The equipment required was minimal. I brought a camera and a lens in a small backpack. I packed a flash but decided that as long as we were photographing in "open shade" it was unnecessary and served mostly to weigh down my backpack so it didn't blow away in a renegade wind gust. 

We must have hit some sort of stopping point that I can't quite remember but after photographing some 20 people the project seemed to come to a close. It was restarted with an email last week. But with clients there are always complications. Few of which are insurmountable but all of which are at least....annoying. 

The client/agency wanted to finish out the photography of their staff and seemed motivated in the moment to proceed as quickly as I could schedule them. But, there were some changes to the program. Much as they liked the look of the past photographs, and the look of the out of focus location behind them, the powers that be at the agency decided that it was too "time intensive" to send people half way across town into a high traffic, high parking cost area and that they would prefer we find a location within a 60 second walk from their offices. Could I come over and scout?

I met with the creative director last Friday and we walked around the area near their offices. The flat, almost treeless, retail center next to which their building is nestled was not overflowing with visual opportunities. In fact, we almost simultaneously blurted out, "This is all crap. There's nothing here." 

At that point I suggested that we do what many of my clients are doing this Summer and that would be to photograph each person in front of a neutral background and then drop them into a background that we all liked. A background that would match in spirit and flavor with the background we'd used in early Spring. 

The promise is mostly that everyone could be photographed in the air conditioning of their nicely renovated offices, with no wind to muss up hair, no oppressive heat to provide a more than healthy glow (and trickles of sweat....) and no commute to and from work. The CD agreed on the spot and we walked back over to their offices to scout the interior space and make some plans. 

We found a good spot on the first floor, in a large and open space with tall ceilings and just the right feel. We checked in with the office manager and traffic manager and "secured the location" for first thing the following Monday morning. I took note of the convenient ADA compatible ramp and sighed with relief. It would be an easy and straightforward process to make the initial portraits but would also take a bit more post production on the back end. I drove off thinking pleasant thoughts and anticipating several very pleasant weekend swims, interspersed with a bit of packing. Monday was set.

With the car loaded full of lighting gear, photo gear and a nice, collapsible cart I left the house Monday morning with ample time to get through traffic and arrive on time. I was very clear on Friday with the person who would communicate the program to the staff that I would need a half hour after my arrival to set up the lights and background. I would do the set up from eight until eight-thirty. We would start the sessions in earnest at eight thirty. 

When I dragged the cart through the door one of the managers rushed up to me and said, "All our plans have changed." Never something I want to hear after locking everything down in advance. Seems there was a big meeting scheduled in the same spot as our initial scouting choice but no one seemed to actually know about it until that morning. This triggered a search for some sort of (vaguely) appropriate space we could use by way of a "plan B". 

We ended up in a small office on the second floor at the end of a hallway where the air conditioning didn't really seem to reach. How small a space? Hmmmm. I don't know exactly. You could lay down in it and take a nap but you certainly weren't going to back up more than six or seven feet from your subject who, in turn couldn't be more than three or four feet in front of the roll of seamless paper I brought. And thank goodness I brought along a short roll of seamless since the 109 inch roll certainly wouldn't fit in amongst the furniture and bric-a-brac. We also lost that tall ceiling that was a valuable and much loved feature of the first floor location.

The 60 inch umbrella was a bit too big for the space but we made it work. The 42.5mm lens on the Panasonic GH6 was just barely short enough to get me the comp I wanted but it was a tight squeeze.

And of course there was no elevator so I carried the gear up the stairs and back down again. Ah well. It was over quickly and the people were nice. But it kind of set the stage for the other scheduled assignments in the week. 

Next up was a high tech product a bit smaller (but not by much) than a regulation bread box. I got the call from the client/engineer/CEO at the end of the day Monday and he was in a rush. A desperate rush to make some sort of publishing deadline so after swim practice the next day, Tuesday, (and after signing the requisite NDA that seems to accompany every prototype) I re-packed the Subaru and headed north of Round Rock, Texas to the lab. 

I got there a bit before lunch and we found a (very) small conference room in which I could start setting up lights. We also chatted about the project and what they needed from the shoot. The client was excited because their prototype was supposed to arrive via Fedex delivery before noon. Once I had my lights roughly in place and my camera set the way I wanted it for this project we all started looking at our watches as one of the engineers started obsessively hitting the refresh on the Fedex delivery webpage --- but with no satisfaction or clarity. Someone offered me a diet Coke. I declined. I checked my email. Then I checked my texts. 

Around 2:30 the client finally got a message from the supplier who was supposed to have sent the product. Seems it was sent to an office somewhere near San Jose, California and would NOT be arriving in the Austin area in time for me to immortalize it and for the client to then deliver the files under their stringent publishing deadline. We negotiated a "kill fee" as I disassembled the temporary studio, repacked it all and dragged the cart back to my car. "Ah!" I thought, "Just in time for the absolute worst rush hour in the central Texas corridor." And, par for the course, it took an hour and forty five minutes to get back to my idea of civilization. Most of the time spent going 5 mph in heavy traffic while the sun bore down relentlessly.  Another wasted work day.

One of the calls I got during our adventure in patience at the tech company was from a hedge fund that had scheduled an executive photo shoot for their new CFO --- months in advance. It was to take place the next day. Wednesday. At their offices which are (thank God!) just a couple miles from my office in central Austin. Seems their CFO had a "schedule conflict" and we pushed the appointment back to next week. They graciously asked if there would be a fee for the last minute rescheduling and I skipped my usual client-centric, misplaced enthusiasm and just said, "Yes. Our CFO insists on it. It's a company policy for cancellations that occur in less than 24 hours before the shoot appointment." 

They were very understanding. But why not? This is the kind of company where people might ask about your vacation. You might tell them you had a delayed flight on Southwest Airlines and their honest reaction might be: "Oh? You still fly commercial??" 

It's good to get  the cancellation fees but I was starting to feel like I was more valuable diligently not working than actually working for the week. But of  course it never stops there. 

Yesterday (Thursday) was yet another classic photographic assignment and also one scheduled far in advance. The client was a statewide association of attorneys. We were booked to go to one of my favorite downtown hotels, set up another temporary studio, make portraits of about 15 people against yet another neutral background with the plan of dropping the final selections into out-of-focus images of corporate-y looking backgrounds. I've put together an online catalog of about 500 potential backgrounds from which to choose. What could possibly go wrong?

I was scheduled to arrive at the valet parking stand at eleven thirty in the morning, go straight to the large and commodious conference room and spend an hour setting up the lighting and background. The agenda called for starting the portrait sessions at 12:30 pm.  Having been bitten in the same week by changing client plans I arrived even earlier. I walked in with my cart loaded with gear at 10:45 and started setting up. 

I was in the room hanging seamless background paper for about ten minutes before the first of a stream of people; some in full, dramatic make-up, others in suits that hadn't been worn in years, started coming through the door. Apparently no one got the agenda or everyone got the agenda but presumed they were immune from the temporal fine points of the process and could establish their own timelines. 

Everyone was asked to come back at 11:30 at the earliest and we'd start photographing an hour before the "official" start time. 

A memo had been sent out telling people that we were photographing in front of a white background and would be compositing the portrait image with a different background but one person, of course, showed up in a white jacket! Argh. I made a point about being light-handed with facial make-up but several people showed up with enough saturated base to cover a canvas. They weren't doing themselves any aesthetic favors....

We were supposed to have a hard stop at 2 pm for their board meeting but several people were "running late" and we had to extend my stay. A bit crunchy since I needed to get back to the office, drop off lots of gear, change clothes and get down to a book debut at the main public library by 5:30 pm. I hate cutting things tight. But the book is a photo collection of Gov. Ann Richards photographs and one of mine is included and runs a full page near the front of the book. I wanted to get reacquainted with the other photographers attending and also spend some time with the board members for the various foundations underwriting the book. Also, it never hurts to spend a few minutes with the wonderful people at Pentagram; the designers of the book and the earlier banner program I wrote about here last year.  

I made it with time to spare which was good since I had to park pretty far away and it was about 103° as I trudged across the shimmering caramel consistency blacktop desert of downtown to the packed reception at the CookBook Cafe. 

Our family tradition has it that Thursdays are "pizza" days. It's a routine we started with our  advertising agency back in the "Golden Age of" advertising days and continued through all the years with Ben -- and even beyond. But when I got home we decided it was too hot to sit around and eat pizza. We defaulted to whatever was on hand. 

I'd just gotten a deliciously soft brie cheese the day before and a baguette. I toasted a few slabs of bread, spread some Dijon mustard on one slice, lightly drizzled some mango infused honey, and made an ample brie sandwich for myself. We collaborated on a mixed green salad with Kalamata olives sprinkled around, and avocado on top. I washed it all down with a couple glasses of nice Cabernet Sauvignon from some California vineyard that has a label on which the wine is called, "Educated Guess." I should have remembered to re-pack the gear before the second glass of wine because I had yet another shoot scheduled for the next day photographing seafood. (Today).

Yet another advertising shoot and one featuring the guest appearance of one of the my very favorite art directors. After swim practice and with yet another permutation/selection of photo and lighting gear, I left the house early enough to stop at the Epoch Coffee location in central Austin for a cafe au lait. The AD and I both arrived at our location ten minutes early which seems to be a tradition lost amongst more recent generations. 

We stepped into a famous Austin seafood restaurant and seafood wholesaler right at 9 am with me dragging the wonderful, back-saving and reliable cart full of photo industry wonderment. We were propping and lighting a big handful of fresh caught jumbo shrimp, on top of a bed of ice, for use in a double truck magazine ad and for use on various seafood association websites. 

The AD and I have worked together for about 30 years and we've collaborated on so many projects that we seem to have done away with the need for much discussion and mostly communicate now through shrugs, grunts and telepathy. We tried a bunch of different options and finally got what he wanted. The ad campaign has a tight deadline so I went straight back to the office, imported the files, did a bit of good post production and then sent him big files via FTP. And that's it. Done for the week. It feels like most of next week will be filled with post production from this week's jobs --- and also a fun episode of billing.

GEAR. For every single engagement this week I used the same basic lighting kit, only changing between big umbrellas and soft boxes as each job required. The basic kit is comprised of three Godox AD200 Pro electronic flash units. A radio trigger for the same. A combination of bare tubes and round heads. And a collections of lightweight, aluminum light stands for support. Today, for the first time in my career, I dropped and broke a flash tube. Maybe it's a sign that I'm over the hill.... Probably just a random sign of momentary clumsiness.

The Godox lights are reasonably powerful. The batteries last for hundreds of flashes. The radio triggers have been 100% reliable across all the cameras I use with them. Everything packs down into a small package. There are adapters that allow the use of Bowens speed rings. They don't cost an arm and a leg.

I shot both portrait assignments with the new GH6 camera fitted with the new (to me, Thanks F.G.!) Panasonic/Leica 42.5mm f1.2 lens. Mostly at f4.0. It focuses quickly and accurately with face detect AF and the files look really great. 

The food shoot today was one of those projects where you aren't sure of all the potential uses of the images so we thought it would make sense to switch gears, camera-wise, and pull out the bigger stuff. We used the Leica SL2 along with its companion lens, the 24-90mm f2.8-4.0 Vario Elmarit lens. Is that system sharp? Amazingly so. It's a bigger combination to haul around but did well in its inaugural voyage in the Gitzo 30L photo back pack. 

I ended the day as I started the week. Mostly baffled by clients and their basic lack of organizational skills. The exception being today's fun food shoot. All good on that front. 

Throughout the week I was able to make it to all but one of my scheduled swim practices.  Who in their right mind would ever want to miss coach Jenn's Thursday Individual Medley practice??? 3,000 yards of mixed strokes (including nearly everyones' nemesis, Butterfly) banged out in an hour. That'll get your pulse rate up. 

This would have been tallied as a "lightweight" week back a few years ago. It seems busy to me now. I guess I've gotten spoiled. 

Hope you are staying cool, dry, relaxed and happy. It's a weird enough Summer.... Just wanted to check in with the VSL folks.