Reading the blog on small iPads. Hmmm.

 One of my readers wrote to ask about the readability of the blog on an iPad. I'll take a stab at answering but I probably need some additional info from other readers who have a successful time reading the fonts on their iPads. 

As I understand it, Blogger, who hosts the blog and provides templates for content creation, makes several formats available. One is formatted for traditional desktop viewing and another is set up for iOS or phone operating systems. The iPad uses iOS as its operating system so the hope is that the iPad automatically gets the slimmed down version with font sizes optimized for viewing on the smaller screen. 

When I open VLS on my phone it seems to automatically select the right format and it is readable even on my small phone screen (10XR). 

There might be an icon up in the bar with the URL that one can click to switch between systems or formats. 

Can someone who uses an iPad to read the blog respond and flesh this explanation out a bit?

Thanks, Kirk

Thanking Phil for pushing me to research the intent of the T-shirts in a previous post.

 Turns out it's anti-Joe Biden, anti-Liberal, hate thing promulgated by the reich-wing here in the USA. You can Google the t-shirt slogan if you want more info. I'd suggest you not bother.

I'm not a fan of fascism or child indoctrination in hate speech so as soon as I researched this I raced back to the blog and deleted those images. 

Sorry to not have done my research sooner. 

I have friends on both sides of the aisle but I draw the line at nasty hate speech and adolescent innuendo. 

Reasonable people can disagree but there it is. Ageism is just as nasty as rascism. 

thanks for the push Phil. 

Revisiting the Panasonic G9. Diving a bit deeper with the Panasonic/Leica 42.5 "Nocticron". And embracing today's dry heat.

Walked. Shot. Posted. 

 

An unedited, editorial style, street portrait.

 

couple on Sixth St. at 2:00 pm today.

Panasonic G9 + Pana/Leica 42.5mm f1.2

Brain fried after a week of retouching and compositing portrait files for two different clients. Be careful what you bid....

 Ab Astris Winery. Grape Harvest. Summer 2021.

Camera: Sigma fp

Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f2.8

Over the last several weeks I had a couple of clients who really wanted to get a bunch of environmental portraits done of their people. When I talked to the people requesting the photos they each suggested that they really liked environmental shots done either outdoors or in various locations that were indoors but showed the outdoors through windows. 

When we first started talking the temperatures in Austin were already stultifying. In fact, we just set a new record last week for the highest average temperatures in a seven day week. Our average temperature (coolest night time and hottest daytime - averaged) was 92.5° Fahrenheit. Over the last week, during working hours, the high temps ranged from 110° and 105°. And we are not living in a super dry desert; we bundle the heat with the humidity for heat indexes as high as 115°. 

After talking to both sets of clients I realized we needed to deal with two different issues. One client wanted all outdoor shots and the heat made that ... inadvisable. No matter where we shot in Austin anyone in work clothes would have to get to a good location and there were none we know of (or that the client liked) where someone could drive up in an un-air conditioned car, hop out, get photographed in a few minutes and then leap back into the comfort of their still running vehicle and drive away. So we needed a solution for shooting exterior Texas location portraits without dragging employees into the great, baking outdoors. Otherwise I'd need to take a crash course in retouching sweat covered faces and melting make-up. 

The solution I presented was to photograph each employee against a light, neutral background, in an air conditioned space, and then drop them into a previously shot image from one of the environmental backgrounds we all agreed we liked. So that's the way I photographed them. A bunch of people on soft white seamless and then a bunch of actual location backgrounds from a quasi corporate location. I brushed off the whole process of doing convincing composites as being "easy as pie"; especially when armed with the new selection tools in PhotoShop. 

With the second group we didn't have to discuss much to get them "on the bus" when it came to photographing everyone inside. In fact, it worked well for them because they had their annual board meeting at a local hotel and were happy to rent an extra conference room there and schedule all of their people into a four hour time chunk of time. The bigger challenge was getting a good selection of background images that represented corporate environments and which would also read well when made out-of-focus so we could keep the attention on the human subjects. 

The shoots came off without much of a hitch. I did learn one thing that was interesting to me. I've heard for years from other photographers that some lenses are just too sharp to use when taking portraits. I never really experienced that, or believed that, before. But with both of these portrait sessions, just days apart, I used the new (to me) Panasonic/Leica 42.5mm f1.2 short telephoto lens on the new GH6. Okay. The lens is too sharp for portraiture. When I opened the files in Photoshop they revealed every nook and cranny and every pore on every face. In the raw conversions the preset for sharpening is something like +40. I had to set the sharpening during raw conversion to "off" (or zero). Anything else was just cruel. 

I've been making portraits of people on locations for .... decades. I have that part of the process down. But the part that's relatively new to me is compositing something like 32 different people's images onto a collection of backgrounds of office interiors, industrial exteriors and general corporate environments. 

I bid a day to do the post production work on the second job. It took two full days of sitting in front of my computer fixing double chins, getting rid of layer matting, matching colors and general contrasts, and even just trying out a certain background with a certain person and quickly realizing that the two images just didn't resonate well with each other --- which sent me back to the "selected backgrounds" folder to try a few other options instead. 

I'd never really admit it to a client but a lot of the time was spent using the liquify tools to take the appearance of weight off various subjects. That, and fixing double chins were the two most time intensive parts of the process but I'm happy to let people believe that I'm just really good at lighting them well. I never really want to explain just how much retouching actually gets done on some photographs. It would be borderline cruel. 

I delivered the files to both clients this week. The bigger job just went out yesterday, at the end of the work day. I took a few notes:

I'll never bid a project with intensive post processing without first testing the procedures I'm going to use first, and keeping track of just how much time each image will take. Especially the worst case scenarios. I thought I could ballpark it but I guessed wrong. I'm also out of practice at sitting still for long periods of time and my attention would wander over to that newish pair of hiking boots in the corner....and the lovely camera and lens on the edge of my desk. And that hot dusty trail that might need human company...

So, why would I put myself through this work stuff? Why not just stop working and retire? Hmm. When you've built a client base and have been successful at raising prices to at least keep up with inflation there's always the lure of potentially living from your cash flow. You may have saved up a huge nest egg of cash and you may have done so well that you'll never run out, but if you've been running a business for decades, and living completely from the cash flow that the business generates, then actually accessing your own savings instead is a new and painful process that has (yet) to be mastered. And I'm not about to learn this new trick yet. Especially when the markets are down.

I know my brain well enough that I can almost hear the little hamster wheel spin when I think about which jobs to accept and which ones to pass on. Knowing our family's general burn rate and also my general tolerance, or intolerance, for being trapped by scheduled work I'm always looking for jobs that can be completed in three days or less which have the potential to return enough in fees to cover one month of our minimum burn rate. If I can consistently do three days (or a few more) in a month and hit the needed budget then that's one more month that retirement investments can remain in their accounts and create more future money. "Photographers become exhausted. Their money never gets tired of working...." (Robert Adams).

The balance is to find the types of jobs, and the clients who have the jobs, that provide a good working base. The other part of the balance is to get rid of the clients whose jobs you don't enjoy, who don't want to pay what you need to offset your burn rate with the least amount of long term work or commitment. 

Next time I'll know to bid more on the post processing part of a job. It's part of the ever-present segment of the learning curve. 

Oh, and next time I shoot a portrait for a client I'll find a less over-achieving lens with which to do it.

The Nocticron is great for shooting gritty, contrasty, ultra sharp art portraits and photos but there's no instance in which I would describe it as "flattering." 

Learning to live well with the heat. Or in spite of the heat. Pray for our fellow humans in the UK. They are about to experience the same kind of intense heat wave but, for the majority, without the gift of air conditioning.... Yikes.

Morning out with a Leica TL2 and the Sigma 24mm f3.5 lens; complete with an L mount...

 

automation comes to Barton Springs Pool. 

Pre-purchasing tickets speeds up the line to get in. 

Having a pool pass makes things even quicker.

It's a little after noon and the heat index is already at 109°. That's okay. I got out earlier this morning when it was still a brisk and cool 90°. Complete with a refreshing four mile per hour breeze --- but only if you were walking a 15 minute per mile pace...

As reflects my ever advancing chronological age I was able to park in front of Barton Springs Pool courtesy of my newly acquired "Senior Season Pool Pass." It's good for free admission to all of the Austin public pools and an added bonus is a hang-tag for the car that gives the holder free parking as well. Double bonus. 

I wanted to walk before noon because my TL2 came to me in a dream during the night (I blame the full moon) and indicated that I wasn't using it enough. It felt neglected. I can understand. There are only so many days in a week and there are so many cameras that need walking around. So after early swim practice and a meager first breakfast I put on some long pants, grabbed a big hat, slapped on some sunscreen and headed out the door. Oh yeah. I also took the TL2 outfitted with Sigma's dandy little 24mm f3.5 Contemporary lens. A far more amiable package than the Art series 24mm 1.4 and the big SL2. 

I really liked being able to park near the pool since it's on the hike and bike trail around Lady Bird Lake. It's a good spot to start a walk from and an even better end point for a long walk on a hot day. 

I've gotten better at dealing with cameras that have no eye level finders or EVFs. I even had luck today shooting in bright sunlight. I guess it's a matter of training oneself. It's not my preferred way of shooting but it's not as odious a routine as I once suggested. Either that or rear LCD panels have gotten a lot better. 

A quick shot before starting my walk. Pool attendance was brisk today. 

And remember, if you want to come and swim laps for free you can do so between 

five a.m. and eight a.m. It's not crowded then either. But there are no 

guards and there are no underwater lights. Keep clear of the sides 

in the dark so the snakes don't get you......

One silver lining to the tremendous heat is that as the day goes along

there is less and less traffic on the walking trails. 

funny. That building wasn't there last time I looked...

I am enjoying the colors I get out of the .DNG files from the TL2

They are also very easy to work with in post. Lots of D.R.

Just on the other side of the bridge is the spot where a garbage truck driver 

tried to take the curve too fast and lost control of his huge vehicle. It skidded over

the curb and right into the hike and bike trail just as then governor, George Bush, was jogging by the same spot with his security entourage. The truck missed him by "that much."

And now we'll never know what history would have been like if we hadn't been 

manipulated into attacking Iran's arch-enemy, Iraq. Only to find that,

just like voter fraud, there were no weapons of mass destruction....

Thanks George. It's a Wonderful Life.

The 24mm lens and the TL2 body work seamlessly together. 

The angle of view is much like that of a 35mm on a full frame camera.

At the end of a long walk I was hot, tired, covered with sweat and a bit drained from the heat. But since I parked across from the pool and I had a brand new pass I.D. card in the car, I tossed my camera, wallet and pocket junk into the car (don't ever try this in San Francisco...), grabbed my swim pass and headed into the pool. Minutes later I slid into the 68° water and could actually feel my core temperature dropping minute by minutes. Once I felt good and cold I got dressed and headed back to the neighborhood on the daily search for coffee. Oh, and a blueberry bran muffin. Second breakfast. Now heading for lunch...

My first attempts with the Leica TL2 were misguided. I tend to treat every camera as I would a professional camera. I expect to spend time intervening in the settings, carefully examining the frames, adding my input where I felt it was appropriate. But the TL2 isn't like a Nikon D850 or even a Leica CL. It's really designed, I think, to be about as welcoming of "outside" instruction as a cellphone or an artist. 

I've decided that the optimal way to use the TL2 is to consider it a smartphone without any telephony capability. You trade the ability to make phone calls and trade on the stock market for a bigger sensor and interchangeable lenses but your approach to this camera should be the same as your approach to your iPhone. Wake the camera up, point it at the subject you'd like to capture, half press the shutter button to focus and then....commit. 

I have my TL2 now set up to shoot Raw+Jpeg Fine. AWB. S-AF. Single Frame. Auto-ISO. I point, make sure the green square lights up and then shoot. That's it. I never check a histogram but that's because I permanently have the camera set for minus two thirds of a stop with the exposure compensation. I figure if the frame is too dark I can easily fix it in post. This is, for all intents and purposes, a point and shoot camera; the iPhone of mini-cameras, etc. If you want to be more serious in your pursuits you might want to consider something more festooned with controls.

At some point my obvious contrarian nature will rear up and present itself by taking this small camera (with no finder) and putting the biggest and most expensive lens on the front of it. Something that absolutely dwarfs this little box. Then I will attempt to shoot a big and complex project with the odd and totally counterintuitive pairing. Stay tuned. 

For now I'm getting comfortable learning to enjoy this little camera in the way I think it was designed to be operated --- and enjoyed.

Also learning to ignore (for the most part) the heat and get on with life. It's all a mindset. 

Just remembering the great bar at Manuel's Restaurant on Congress Ave.

 

We shot more than a few ad campaigns there. It's been closed since the beginning of the pandemic. The north location is open. I keep wondering if the (hugely popular) downtown location will ever come back. 

Cameras and martinis. A good photographic combination. Add in great Tex-Mex food and you're set.

Untitled. Shot as a three story tall background for a Stephen Dietz play. A play with a constant reference to Jack Kerouac and "On the Road."

 

Erin Barlow. "Honey."

The photo looked great when it was projected thirty or forty feet tall. At the rear of the stage. We also projected video in exactly the same image style. It was nicely slow motion.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2013-03-29/mad-beat-hip-and-gone/

Portrait from 1979. Scanned from a print.

 

B. 1979

Everyone was beautiful and mysterious back then. It was a time before the "great rush" of life. The cellphones, the overnight delivery expectation. The instant "proof" on the rear screen of a camera. People had time to work on stuff and to sit for a while in conversation. Wish we could just grab some giant handle somewhere and slow everything back down. 

rumor on the web today is that Nikon (and by extension, Canon) are fully exiting the DSLR camera market. Now more moving mirrored mainstream cameras. I guess the real question is: "Does anybody care?" 

Visualizing Cooler Weather. Thanks Jennifer.

Jennifer heading out to ski.

On film. Hassleblad Camera. 180mm Carl Zeiss lens.

The weather people were all over the map. Predictions of another 110° day and dire warnings about the fragility of the electrical grid. It did get up to 105° but then, around 3:30 pm, we got a cooler front in from the West and even enjoyed about 17 minutes of mild rain. And a bit of wind. Nothing dramatic but in the space of thirty minutes we had a temperature drop of about ten degrees. And that was most welcome. 

Snow skiing. Yep. That's what I'm visualizing in the late afternoon. Goggles ready. Now we just need snow.