7.03.2022
A minimalist "carry everywhere" camera system for going out and just living "through" the moments I'd like to photograph. Nothing fancy. Nothing big.
7.01.2022
Revisiting an image from a Sunday afternoon at Willie Nelson's ranch. Reading in the national news about a friend performing with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones....
It's an odd end to the week. I got a request to bid on a video project for a pharmaceutical company. Came in via email about 10 minutes after I said to myself, "I wish I had a fun video project to do so I could get some use out of that new GH6...". I'll bid on the adventure and see where it goes. I did a good photo project for the same company last year and they seem to have come back around to us based on the success of that campaign.
The bidding process for video is so arcane. Mostly because you can never tell how long the edit will take. People love to make endless changes to video timelines. And endless tweaks to the motion graphics. Shooting the footage is actually the easy part.
No guarantee that I'll get the project but I decided to pull out the two gimbals we use most for stabilization and make sure the rechargeable batteries are still good. They should be okay since we put them on their chargers every three or four months.
Not sure I want to get pulled back into all the minutia of a project that requires models/talent/actors but I'm hoping that's what a good producer is for. I have one in mind. Ran into her at a recent event. She's still working on film and video productions here in Austin. It's always nice to hand off stuff like casting...
Another odd thing this week. Do you remember the video I did of Chanel as Billie Holiday at Zach Theatre? https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/search?q=chanel+video
Here is Chanel performing for the fundraiser video we created content back in the Summer of 2020. It's her Tina Turner character: https://vimeo.com/462396471 (Shot with a G9 on a gimbal, incidentally...).
Anyway, back in the fog of Covid I heard that she auditioned for and won the role of Tina Turner in a live theatrical production in the West End, London. Big time. Amazing show. Famous venue.
I was very pleased for her.
Then I read this week in the New York Times (or maybe it was the Washington Post....the heat, remember?) a short article saying that just last week, near the end of the run of the show, the management let her go. Apparently she'd been invited to perform with the Rolling Stones, in concert, in Milan, Italy. In order to sing with Mick Jagger she had to miss one performance of the Tina show. Not a tough choice in my book. I'd pick the Rolling Stones every time.
At any rate it seemed strange to read about all the drama in a national newspaper. Chanel is quite a talented performer. I just didn't know she was that famous.
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I photographed with the new (to me) Leica CL today. It was way too hot to do anything complex or even anything that required much effort. In the end I posted one photo of some chairs. Summer is starting to wear on all of us here in Austin. If I walk through the neighborhood in the evening I can sometimes hear the families in their homes praying together that the power not go out and that the air conditioning continue to work.
I hope their prayers are heard. Coolness is good.
No Competition for Chairs in the Sun. Not Today.
Walking over to the Cookbook Cafe to have coffee with my video producer friend, James. Saw the chairs. Decided to see if the new (to me) Leica CL works. It does.
James and I have decided that firing bad clients is the most fun thing to do this Summer. We're only keeping the ones that: we like. who have a sense of humor. who pay their bills on time. and the ones who hire us because they actually like our work.
I'm amazed there are still more clients in Austin right now than there are good photographers to service them.
Also can't believe that I typed that part out loud.
Time once again to raise those rates. Not just talking to myself...
6.30.2022
New Arrival. Small System Back-up Camera.
6.29.2022
You know that power plant I always seem to love photographing? You can't get this view any more. Why? It's surrounded on three sides by giant, high rise buildings. Layers and layers of them.
But at one time (2010) it was out in the middle of a field and the nearby warehouses were old cinder block buildings with one or two stories and a lot of lonesome space in between.
Time flies when you turn a city into a Boom-scape.
Ceiling Detail at the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, Russia. Just 400 meters from the Catherine Palace.
1995 was also the year I spent a couple of freezing cold weeks in St. Petersburg, Russia. I was there with a team from the World Monuments Fund documenting art and artifacts from the last palace of the Czars. While I was looking up and photographing this detail in the Palace (then the headquarters of the Russian Naval Intelligence Agency) I was escorted by my translator and a military officer who came complete with a sidearm and a list of things I could NOT photograph.
One of my "fondest" memories was standing knee deep in snow in front of the Alexander Palace shooting Polaroids to share with the two tank crews who were manning the tanks just in front of the entry way. It was a successful bribe that granted me access to photograph the exterior of the building on a chilly February afternoon.
One of my most used Hasselblads on that trip was the SWC/M. The one with the super-wide Biogon lens permanently attached to the camera body. Ah, the film days....
We were, I think, the first western survey team allowed in the Palace in about 70 years. It was an interesting time in Russia....
Summer passtime. Looking through photographs. Finding stuff I liked. Figuring out why.
"...The distinguished members of the photo-press operated in the space between the barrier and the stage. As memory serves there were exactly three photographers at the concert. It was a time of film and getting fun shots actually required some.....knowledge.
All I needed was one good shot. I was shooting in black and white and I took two cameras to the event with me. One was a Leica M4 with a 50mm Summicron, loaded with Tri-X film. The other was a Leica M6 ttl .85 with a 90mm Summicron, also loaded with Tri-X. I didn't plan on shooting much with the 90 but it sure made a nice semi-spot meter with which to gauge exposure."
The keeper image for me was the one I posted here. I used up one 36 exposure roll of Tri-X film. Of course it was all stage lighting as flash in the press pit was not allowed. It was a time when you really did have to know how to measure light with a meter, how to focus on a fast moving performer and how to wait for the right moment so you didn't run out of film.
1995 is a nostalgic year for me. That's the year Ben was born. The year I went to Rome on a personal photo adventure with two medium format Mamiya 6 cameras and hundreds of rolls of Kodak's new chromagenic film, T-Max 400 CN. along with my photographer friend, Paul.
https://filmphotography.eu/en/kodak-t-max-t400-cn/
When we got back from our Rome shoots Paul and I both made big prints and had a two person show at Austin's best Italian restaurant, Madam Nadalini's. Nearly 400 people came to the opening. It was an amazing time back when photography/art still had the power to enthrall ordinary people. And back when openings were a big social draw.
And in the middle of all that year's fun I found myself sandwiched between the stage and the crowd at Liberty Lunch photographing one of the most popular musicians of the moment. It was August in Austin and we were all drenched in sweat. The crowd of young kids, mostly women, roared every time a song started. It was a bit intoxicating.
I made a print in the darkroom the next day and that was the coda. When I look back to see what we could pull off with completely manual cameras and "slow" film I am embarrassed for all the "photographers" now who can't conceive of working with anything less than complete automation and endless technical "training wheels." Or limitless ISO sensors.
But I'm sure the guys who photographed out in the wild, with glass negatives in giant bellows cameras, a hundred years ago, would feel exactly the same about my generation of photographers.
Context is helpful.
6.28.2022
Exploring the 45mm Sigma on the Leica CL. Nice and long at a full frame equivalent of about 68mm. Always interesting to change one's point of view.
Heading quickly toward the mid-point of the year. Maybe I should do the second half in color.
I decided to skip the Jan. 6th testimony today and take a walk instead. It was rather nice. I mean, how much more evidence do we really need before we start prosecuting the treasonous, the grifters and the riff-raff? I'd rather listen to the lovely, lilting, lyrical click of the CL's shutter...
If you are out traveling right now you are braver than me. Or just heedless and not very risk averse. But more power to you. Life is short and, if not now then when?
Me? I think I'll just maximize being a tourist in my own town. At least I know some of the good places to hit for dinner...
6.27.2022
Strolling through the swampy weather with nothing but a naked fp and 90mm of optical happiness.
One Lens, Two Looks.
I recently photographed 15 attorneys in a temporary studio at a hotel. I used the Panasonic GH6 and the 42.5mm f1.2 Leica lens. I was very happy with the raw files from that set-up. But I was curious by how much the overall image quality had improved since the days when I was running around shooting everything with a Panasonic G9. I went to a folder from my time in Iceland and looked carefully at a number of images. Of course it's all apples and oranges since only a direct comparison between photographs shot in identical situations by each camera and lens combination is at all meaningful but it was still a fun exercise and showed me what I wanted to know in the moment.
The two images above are of a light house or beacon in the harbor of Reykjavik. They were taken with the G9 fitted with a 15mm f1.7 Leica lens. While I am fairly certain the GH6 would have the overall edge when it comes to dynamic range I am equally certain that the G9, and the 15mm, are very good image makers even in 2022.
While I didn't have time to review again all the 5800+ images from the 2018 trip I did look through several hundred and the only ones I found wanting were flawed by operator error or just a floundering photographer pointing a very good camera at something or other that was boring before I tried to photograph it, boring as a photograph, and which will continue to be boring in the future... I certainly can't blame a camera for lack of insightful subject selection.
Working on a small project right now and I'm having fun carting around the GH6 + GH5ii system with a handful of lenses. So much smaller and lighter than my bigger Leica system. And, for final use on the web the images are far, far better than they need to be.
The heat is taking a break today. Temperatures are forecast to stay under 98°. Thanks Mother Nature. I'm sorry we pissed you off.