Paring down on camera and lens inventory makes for easier day to day choices. Swimming on Thursday is rough. Coach has designated it I.M. day. In my mind that stands for "ouch."

 I've been working on reducing the camera inventory over the course of this year. I wanted to get rid of excessive duplication (also referred to as "redundancy" or "back-up" gear) and I was strongly motivated to get rid of different systems with different menus and different batteries. For someone who spent a large part of his career juggling different cameras for different work scenarios it took time for me to get comfortable with winnowing stuff down and being rational (or as rational as possible....) about it.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about getting a new Leica Q2 yesterday but what I didn't mention was that I've sold off, over the last couple of months, five cameras from other systems and at least ten lenses. Gone. Out the door. I've gifted a few lighting units and have given away other peripherals. 

Once I started shooting with Leica cameras I decided that I'd pare down as much as possible to only that family's products because it's nice to have consistency and it's nice to have all of the lenses be interchangeable; even between the APS-C Leica CLs and the full frame SLx cameras. 

At this point I only have two non-Leica cameras left. One is the Panasonic S5 which is too useful to part with. It's a go-to camera for video work and also a great camera for use with dedicated, on-camera, TTL flash work. Think galas, social events, etc. But I'm not in a hurry to part with it until I find a bullet-proof on-camera flash system that works across the Leica universe. 

The other camera is the eccentric, wonderful, quirky but capable of beautiful files --- Sigma fp. 

Both the fp and the S5 use all the L mount lenses interchangeably and both are worth so little as trade-ins or sellable products that it just makes economic sense to keep them around. And a bonus feature of the Sigma fp is that it takes the same batteries as the two Leica CLs. Nice. Swappable. Wish the S5 could use Leica batteries; or even better, that Leicas could use S5 batteries...

Since I sold my two Fuji X100V cameras last December I've been casually looking around for the right camera to replace them. A couple of times I almost back-slid to the Fujis but they have been unavailable for so long that my interest in them collapsed altogether. The Q2 has been on my radar for a couple of years now but I never quite figured out if the camera would work for me; both for jobs and financially. 

But selling off more and more cameras and lenses made the purchase at least fiscally do-able. So I took the plunge. 

Why that camera? Because it makes sense considering the direction in which I'm pushing my primary working cameras. It tucks into the overall system quite nicely. And, as with the Sigma fp and the CLs, it takes the same battery as the SL and SL2 cameras. I can see using it in concert with the bigger cameras when I want something quick and no nonsense while on assignment. 

I've often argued against the Q2 because I'm not a big fan of the 28mm focal length and that's what you get, permanently installed, on a Q2. But a quick tutorial with a friend who was already a Q2 owner showed me just how well the camera works with the zoom-in feature. It's really a well done work around for a fixed focal length. I can choose to shoot in a 35mm A.O.V. space and still come away with files that are over 30 megapixels in resolution. While the 50mm frame lines are smaller that crop too is usable and gives one about 15 megapixels of resolution. 

But the features I like best are the sharpness and performance of the Leica lens, the color science, the sensor (which I think it shares with the SL2) and the uniformity of the menu with the SL2 --- which is my most used camera for $$$ work. A well designed menu doesn't get the gushing credit that things like super snappy AF do but in my mind is a primary benefit for a camera --- and by extension, a system.

The Q2 is much smaller and lighter than my SLx cameras so it's easier to always have around. I'm also happy with the I.P. 52 weather resistance rating and look forward to moments of nonchalant indifference when the rain starts to pour down.

But the biggest selling point is the image quality. 

I wanted to buy a leather half case to protect the bottom of the camera --- since that part gets set down on rough surfaces sometimes when we're all moving quickly. I looked at a version of a leather half case at a Leica store and was shocked (really --- shocked) to see a price of $350. I opted for one advertised on Amazon and the cost was $34. I'd ordered one before for the TL2 and it was perfectly fine and fit well. Some things  you really don't need to splurge on....

One more thing. Just because a camera is made by Leica doesn't mean it can't be voted off the island.

Just recently I mini-celebrated (nice coffee) the departure of my most ill-advised Leica camera purchase. Yes, the Leica TL2 is now someone else's interface nightmare. Gone and at a $ loss. But I'm happy just to see it go. I'm sure there are many who bond with the camera and the cellphone-like menu system but the camera was just a non-starter for me. I'm touchscreen illiterate. And when you don't look forward to using something it's time to let it go. Unwanted cameras just take up space in the drawer and in your brain. Once gone you can use the space for something better.....or just enjoy the space itself. 

It was an interesting attempt by a company that was brave enough to take chances. But it should never have left the lab. At least not before a good test run in the hands of many ham-fisted photographers....

Several readers have asked if I considered the Q2 Monochrom when making my purchase but to be truthful it never crossed my mind. I find the controls in camera (Profile: Monochrom HC) and the breathtaking flexibility of Adobe's Lightroom all I need to create B&W images that match the style I like. 

I would love (not really) to write a series of blog posts about the 20+ years I spent in my own commercial darkroom souping film, making contact sheets, printing on fiber based paper, testing sodium vapor safe lights, toning in selenium solutions, using Spotone and tiny brushes to dust spot prints, fixer staining many beautiful shirts and pairs of pants, pouring chemicals down the sink, and so much more but I find the whole subject .... incredibly boring. Like describing to someone how to dig a hole with a shovel, fill the hole with dollar bills, set them on fire and the cover the ashes with the dirt. 

Many, many years ago, when I worked in advertising, we used to have to order type from a service for print ad production. When the type (on sheets of paper like material) came the leading and spacing wasn't always perfect and we used a waxer for adhesion on the backside of the page of type and then carefully cut some words out letter by letter and aligned them and pressed them onto the boards we sent to the printers. It was careful, time consuming work but it was always just cutting type out with a sharp blade and repositioning it to make the type look better. Once we were able to kern and space type on our computers we never had the misplaced nostalgia to go back and heat up the waxers and hunch over a drafting table lining stuff up sticky type with a Mayline. Never. 

That's about how I feel when I see people waxing sentimental about the actual drudgery that was darkroom work. We only really cared about the prints. The final piece of art. How we got there wasn't the source of joy. It was getting out of the darkroom alive and with a nice print in our hands that was the happy part.

Going backwards? Not on your life!

So, what's on your holiday list of "most wanted" stuff? And please don't say, "Dektol."

Finally, swimming. We have a mean coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays but we're growing to like and respect her. She upset our routine by making us lean into all four strokes and also to up the effort level in our workouts. Not necessarily more distance but a lot more speed work. Keeping those heart rates over 150.... at least mine...

Today, by her declaration, was I.M. day. It stands for individual medley. There are three races in the Olympics that are I.M. The 200 meter I.M.  the 400 meter I.M. and the 400 I.M. relay. In each the first quarter is butterfly, the next quarter is backstroke, then breaststroke and finally freestyle. In the 400 (non-relay) the first 100 yards is the killer. It's 100 yards or meters of butterfly stroke --- which most people could not finish for any reward. It's too hard to do for occasional swimmers... Even fit ones. And then the turn. And then right into backstroke, etc.

Our workout today consisted of mostly I.M. sets but also three main subsets that concentrated on one main stroke for each. You have not started out your morning under physical duress until you've knocked out five or six hundred yards of butterfly. It's just a whole different thing. In fact, I've been sitting here typing this post just to rest up and have the energy to get up and go find another cup of life-giving coffee....

Just a warning if you were planning to come to Jen's 8 a.m. workout next Thursday. 

No commercial links here. 

Santa said my Holiday Bonus is coming today. Can't wait to see what it is....

Well. Santa was right. My boss here at VSL got me a Jellies of the Month subscription. It was a bit of a let down. So I grabbed the company credit card and headed out to do a bit of impromptu shopping. You know, just something simple and nice for myself. After all, I do all the work around here.

My biggest decision was whether to get green or black. So I had the clerk pull both versions out of their packaging and put them on the counter so I could stand there and compare. The minutes ticked by. My sales person shifted his weight from one foot to the other. And back again. The clock in the back office ticked loudly. The sun moved across the sky. And the harder I looked the harder the choice became. I was deadlocked. 

Then a guy named Noel walked over and casually glanced at both and said, laconically, "You'll get tired of the green one pretty quick." 

That little push was enough to get me off dead center. I went with black and I couldn't be happier. I'm just not sure my boss is going to be happy when he gets that credit card bill at the end of the month...

I decided to give and receive my year end bonus today so I could enjoy it and also have a measure of gratitude for just how well the year has worked out for me and my family. So I quickly wrapped it, surprised myself, unwrapped it and was struck by my boss's generosity. What a swell guy...

I took it out on a hot (over 80° f) December afternoon and put it through its paces. 

Oh...I forgot to tell you what I got myself from the CEO of VSL... It's a brand spanking new jet black Leica Q2. It won out over the "Reporter" version which saved me a whopping $200 and change. Don't ask. It was too much...

Here's a photo: 

Delighted that this camera and my other full frame Leicas

all take the same kind of/model battery. Yay! finally.

Is it everything the bloggers and reviewers say? I don't have a clue. I walked around and photographed a couple of buildings, some signage and a few urban landscapes. Nothing litmus-test-y. The camera handles well. The EVF looks great and the menu is pretty much exactly like the menu in my SL2. What's not to like? I'm sure I'll have lots more to say if I take it on the road with me and shoot a couple thousand frames so let's plan on that. I might need to do a roadtrip anyway to escape my boss's displeasure at my raiding of the corporate coffers. But I'm pretty sure the CFO will smooth it all over....she's really sweet.

 

full frame.

35mm crop.

50mm crop.

50mm crop.

full frame. 28mm

cropped as 50mm.

My boss took the credit card back and threatened to freeze it inside a solid block of 

carbonite. I'll call his bluff because I know carbonite only exists in 

Star Wars movies.

I'm pretty much done with commercial work for the rest of the year.

You'll be thrilled to know that because you will intuit that I'll have 

much more time to write about swimming....

Go Santa!!!

For those that don't get the joke: I am self-employed. I have no employees. My boss is me. I can't really fire myself because as Buckeroo Bonzai famously said, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Looks like I'll always be working for the man in one sense or another.

Finally, aren't you glad I didn't drag out this camera buying decision in a long series of agonizing posts? Really. This time it was just a quick Bandaid (tm) pull.

Breaking up is hard to do.

 "It's not the clients you keep that make your business successful. It's the clients you fire." And, "The quicker you fire them the better." 

Today I thought I'd write about something topical to my business. And offer some perspective about the way I handle clients who've become less fun or less well aligned with the way I work. 

Many years ago I was asked to donate my photographic services for a charitable organization. Each year I would show up and photograph their fundraising gala at a posh hotel and make prints to send out to donors. And during the year we might have a quick "cattle call" headshot session and make portraits of 5 to 10 people who were hired into the organization. Not a big time commitment, for sure, but I felt good about doing the work because I really liked the goals of the organization and the founder was/is a good friend. 

But people move on and organizations grow. 

At some point all of the people I started with on the adventure left to either continue the work elsewhere (new national office) or to pursue other interests. 

Now, the people I started this adventure with had no clear titles and no experience with photography and its potential. They left the working methodologies to me and counted on me to know what to shoot and how to shoot it. I worked autonomously. And I'm always fine with that. In fact, I prefer it for this kind of work.

As the organization grew and my friends peeled off a corporate structure of sorts evolved. Heads of finance were hired. Specialists in various legal fields were hired. A new director replaced the interim director. And, more cogent to my experiences, a new marketing director was hired. It was a person half my age and possessed of absolutely zero experience commissioning or using photography. But they liked the idea of control. And they slowly but surely started to exert control over how I practiced my photography and had a growing list of parameters that they thought I should follow. 

At some point they decided the organization had grown large enough to actually pay a small amount for each project or event I photographed for them. And, I think the sub-conscious logic of paying for a service comes with an assumption of control. In other words, if you pay someone they move from donor status to vendor status and vendor status comes with guidelines and demands. Interestingly, payment was never something I had requested. I was happy to donate my services as long as I was having fun/satisfaction.

Still, the time commitment was minimal; a couple days a year, and I still liked the intentions and the successes of this non-profit organization. But I increasingly felt that the marketing director and I operated with a underlying current of ever growing friction. Their email became more minimal and terse. Their "oversight" more micro-management than collaboration. Their expectations started to diverge from the way I like to work. And I'll be the first to admit, I am headstrong and liked my way of doing things. 

At some point a relationship like that doesn't work for either party. I sent an email and asked if we could "clear the air." This evolved into an hour and fifteen minute telephone conversation which started with acrimony and defensiveness on the client side but ended up being collegial and gracious by the end. I explained what was causing me frustration and they did the same on their end. Eventually we both came to understand that the progression from autonomous teammate donor to vendor status was at the heart of the issue. My suggestion was that the marketing person would be happier working with someone more aligned to their needs. Someone young and enthusiastic who could benefit from the exposure the association might bring (and I reminded them that with their next photographer it would be nice and appropriate to give them photo credits anywhere they could). Someone who could grow with the non-profit and also grow their working relationship with the marketing person and vice versa.

By the end of the call (NOT a Zoom call !!!) we both agreed that it would be in the best interests of both parties if we ended our vendor/boss relationship and moved on. I converted back into an actual donor (yes, I still contribute financially to the charity, as I have for 20+ years) but I would no longer photograph for them. 

I thought I'd be a bit let down to relinquish the account but my original contributions were originally meant to help my friends get the non-profit off the ground and become successful --- and we did that. My allegiance in one regard (the social aspect) was to the first crew. The people with the big vision and not to the successive functionaries. The people I would sit around with and have a celebratory glass of wine  after a successful project. Since I had no real social relationship to the current management team there were no moments of regret or feelings of loss. Just a feeling of completion. A closing of a circle.

The organization is growing. My photos helped. But it had been obvious to me that the photos they've needed for the last five or so years have only required entry level skills and could be handled by someone entering the field and didn't require the ego and the expertise of someone with decades of experience and a calcified way of working. 

The comparison was stark last week as I finished up a contract for an international client's next project. A project with much complexity and a budget bigger than a new car; and in the same day was asked to come over on a specific day at a specific time to shoot one headshot against a very specific background for a fee that might finance a good lunch. 

There is always ego involved even when I know there should not be. I really don't think the marketing director at the non-profit knew or knows anything about my background. They just "inherited" me from previous management and I was the path of least resistance. They had no idea about my teaching, advertising or writing background. My roster of clients. My investment in my work. But maybe a client doesn't need to know all that.  They just knew to call and I would show up. No one was wrong here. Just different ways of communicating and working. Perhaps a generational disconnection. And a little lack of curiosity. Maybe on both sides.

The nice thing for everyone in a situation like this is we all get a clean break. They get to explore new options and try new vendors. They'll find someone who will work well in their system. 

On the other hand I get to remove a source of friction and concentrate on more profitable and fun stuff; or more swimming. As my partner would say, it's yet another step towards downsizing and doing my own projects instead. I think she means transitioning out of commercial work...

Hopefully the industry always wins because we've opened up an opportunity for a new person to evolve as a commercial photographer. We've educated our former "client" in a respectful but information filled manner and we've established with them an understanding of fair compensation for the new photographer along with respect for giving photo credit and working with an understanding of copyright laws. 

We parted the call as friends and allies. Both committed to the organization's success.  That's the best one can hope for. 

Finally, although I used the word "fire" just under the photo at top it's not really accurate. I should say instead, "resigned." It's more accurate. At some point things come to an end and a lot of us have a tendency to hang on to what we know. Fear of the future? Fear of loss? Or just another notch in the personal loss of relevance? Or all three?

"Know when to fold em." 

 

VSL blog reader, K.B. Dixon's review of Laura Wilson's book of writers' portraits.

 https://www.orartswatch.org/the-writers-portraits-by-laura-wilson/

K.B. Dixon's stuff is always fun to read!

And my fave from the show: 

Photos by Laura Wilson. At the Ransom Center.

Spending the afternoon relaxing with a camera and a lens. B&W. And one color.

Packing up for the last shoot of the year and wistfully thinking about donuts. And vacation.

 I say that tomorrow's shoot will be the last one of the year but it never really happens that way. People get panicky when they realize that they haven't spent their budgets for the year and crazy things happen. I'd really like to get everything wrapped up this week and just take a month or so of solid downtime. I'd spend a good part of the time in the pool and on the trails but I'd also like to spend more time in some of Texas' great state parks. Or on some sort of photographic field trip to someplace interesting. Someplace I've never been to before.

But first there is tomorrow. It's going to be an unusual day. One of the advertising/P.R. agencies I enjoy working with is using the occasion of an "all hands meeting" and their holiday party to multi-task with their favorite photographer. A catch-all for the end of the year. 

I can't get Tim Horton's donuts tomorrow morning so I'll settle for some Pumpkin Spice waffles and some really good coffee at home. Then it'll be time to load up the car and get moving. There's not too much gear to pack and carry; just enough to get a bunch of mini-jobs done during the course of the day. It's kind of crazy to realize the sheer amount of packing and unpacking I've done over the last ten days to two weeks. And since every job is a bit different so is the daily load out.

When I arrive at my client's H.Q. the first thing I'll do is set up a white seamless background and some lights in their small video studio. It's upstairs and I'm kind of lazy so I'm bringing small lights. Less to carry up and down the stairway. I'll be setting up to photograph 10 to 15 headshots that will join about 25 previous headshots on the company website. We've been photographing the people against white and dropping in well considered backgrounds we've shot around downtown. The small range of backgrounds provides the overall continuity. 

I'm planning on bouncing two Godox AD200Pro electronic flashes off the ceiling and adding a small reflector near the camera to bounce light into people's faces. These lights are so much smaller and lighter than my traditional monolights and faster to set up and use as well. I'm scheduled to shoot the portraits from 11:30 till 12:30 or 12:45 and then we strike that set and haul the two lights outside to set up for a group shot of 40-45 people right at 1:00 p.m. 

Those are the two set-ups I'm sure about and the rest is up in the air. I know we have a bunch of speakers who will be addressing the group in an adjacent conference space and I'm sure we'll get photos of them. There's an awards ceremony and a dinner as well, and then a party afterwards. The portraits and the group shot are the key things I've got to get right and the rest is catch as catch can.  aka: optional.

I'm currently charging batteries for three different on camera-style flashes. One is the Godox V1 which is dedicated for Olympus and Panasonic interfaces (but not current Leicas!!!). One is the Godox TT685 which is also O/P dedicated and then there is a tiny Godox TT350 which is also set up for O and P. All three work well with the Panasonic S5 so that will be my primary camera for the day. These flashes are all intended to enable me to light all the non-setup social photography that happens after the group shot. But only used one at a time...

Interesting that when I look through my tool bag of on-camera flashes every single one of them is a Godox model. Even my 400 watt second monolights (not accompanying us tomorrow) come from the same company. I've accrued this stuff over the years and the sad truth of it is I keep coming back to this brand because the camera maker's branded flashes are less reliable. And are too feature laden. At least that's what I've found in practice. 

There are three lenses being packed for the S5 system. The 24-105mm S Panasonic lens is my all arounder. 

It's lightweight relative to the Leica 24-90mm and has more effective image stabilization; especially when used in tandem with the S5's in-body stabilization. It covers a great range of focal lengths as well. Next up I have the Sigma 35mm f2.0  Contemporary which has worked well for me when using flash in dimly lit rooms. The extra aperture capability makes it easier for the camera to focus and nowadays I am not above turning on the AF-Assist lights as well. The final lens is the Sigma 65mm f2.0 just because I'm currently infatuated with it and want to use it for everything --- even when I know I shouldn't. 

Since the Leicas don't work in TTL or Auto with my collection of flashes I chose an interesting sub-system as a back up for my long day on location instead. I'm bringing along my trusty Panasonic G9 paired with the Panasonic/Leica 12-60mm zoom and, just for kicks, the Olympus 150mm  75mm f1.8. 

I might use the latter lens if I'm called on to make photos of a speaker at a far off podium...

Except for the fact that the two cameras don't share lenses the G9 is a good choice because the menus are so familiar to me. The flashes work exactly the same across the two systems. And, finally, because both cameras can use exactly that same batteries, which are plentiful around here. That alone is a source of great joy for me!

Also, I've logged 20 to 30 thousand shots with G9 cameras and trust them 100%. 

All the cameras, lenses and batteries go in an Airport Essentials backpack. All of the flash gear goes in a Gitzo photo backpack and the light stands and background gear get stuffed into a stand bag. The goal is to be able to carry all three containers up and down stairs and between the two locations which are located about 200 yards apart, by myself. That should be enough exercise for tomorrow, right? 

There's not much stress surrounding this particular shoot. The agency, from the owner down to the production people, is filled with old friends, collaborators and congenial clients. There's not much here to stress about. Group shots tend to fall together on their own and we've logged hundreds and hundreds of portrait shoots for this firm. We know and they know what to expect and they also know there's not much here we couldn't reshoot if we had to....

But I don't want to get cocky so I'm bringing back-ups for everything and going through the checklists as I pack. Doing the job by the numbers. Checkmarks required. I'm even tossing two SD cards in each camera and setting them up for redundant backup. I might even shoot in the raw format!

So, by the end of the shoot I will have photographed over the course of the last week: multiple attorneys at various locations in their downtown offices, about 20 accountants in environmental portraits around their offices, one oral surgeon whose name I had to "embroider" onto his white doctor's coat via PhotoShop, several intricate piece of cutting edge medical gear, four models doing medical lifestyle stuff, and a couple of portraits in the studio for friends.

And I will have spent far too much time sitting in front of the computer trying to wring the best looking images I could make out of the best shots from thousands of files. And not nearly enough time walking aimlessly downtown with some odd camera. 

And, with that in mind I'll end this post, grab a Sigma fp, put a 50mm lens on the front and go out to shoot some random black and white images of downtown Austin as it gets ready, in its own way, to celebrate the holidays.

Wish me luck. 

Quasi-Landscapes. From a corporate photographic adventure at The Breakers Hotel in West Palm Beach. --- the coffee was decent too!

 

I sometimes laugh at how seriously most of my photographer friends and I take the gear. We're always so quick to move on from old stuff to new stuff. Almost like we're running marathons and switching from running in hiking boots to running in progressively better and light shoes. Too bad it doesn't really work out that way. Maybe it's even more like moving up from a Porsche to a Lamborghini in an attempt to get through commuter traffic fast... when, perhaps, a nice economy car makes the difference when everyone is going forward at 12 miles per hour....

When I recently came across a small collection of images I took in my free time at a project location I reflexively searched for the file info to see what camera and lens I used. Not a Leica. Not a Hasselblad. Not even a full frame camera. Nope. It was a Nikon D7100 and the early 24-200mm VR zoom lens. Yeah. I was a bit surprised too. 

But there it is. I guess this just adds to the idea that being in the right place at the right time is much more important than having the latest and most spectacular gear in your hands. These images are pretty much right out of the camera. Minor exposure tweaking not withstanding. 

Can't imagine they'd be any better if taken with a camera that's twelve years newer. Sometimes we might want to stop and look at what our gear (and we) were capable of doing back in the "dark ages" of digital photography. It might slow down the frantic research to find the next great thing. 

And I'm so glad you asked about swim practice this morning...

A nice, gray day. A smattering of splattering rain on and off during the swim. No lightning or thunder but fun gusts of chilly wind. Reminds a swimmer to stay low and streamlined in the water. 

Warm water and cold air mean the insides of one's goggles tend to fog up quickly. The cure? Lick the insides of the lenses before putting them on. It's a temporary fix but it beats not being able to see where you are going.....

Spit. who knew?

Landscape attempt. Vancouver. Stanley Park.

 

40mm f1.4 Voigtlander lens. Panasonic S5 camera. 

Every once in a while I try my hand at a landscape photo.

I think this one actually works...

Notes from an extremely happy assignment. They actually do exist. Still. Even now.

 

This image has nothing to do with the written content of this post. I can't upload images of my clients from yesterday until the client publishes the images on their website but I didn't want you to get here and stare at a non-photographic page.... And everyone likes red/blue contrasts...

About a month ago I wrote of my experiences going on location to the Austin offices of a national accounting firm to make portraits of their employees. The company has been a client now for over a decade and in the past they've always asked for portraits photographed against a gray seamless background. A while back a new internal marketing team took the reins and engineered a completely new branding strategy and a new look for their materials. Gone were the headshots against gray, incoming are environmental portraits taken in the offices, complete with nicely out of focus backgrounds. I couldn't be happier about a style change. 

On the first round we spent a day on site, shot in six or seven different locations and ended up making portraits of 19 people. Yesterday I was back for another full day in their Austin facility doing the same thing for 17 more people.

The first time out I photographed everyone with a tripod-mounted Sigma fp camera and the Leica 24-90mm f4.0 lens. I lit almost every portrait that day with a big LED light aimed into a 60 inch, white umbrella. It worked out really well so --- I couldn't do it the same way again. I wanted a little friction of change just to shake up the day a bit.

So, this time I decided to use the Panasonic S5 (one of the most under-appreciated, full frame cameras on the market today!) and I brought along only prime lenses instead of the usual zooms. The lighting was pretty much the same. A 48 inch circular light blocker to put between the portrait subject and the icky fluorescent lights in the ceiling and then a small octa-box with a powerful LED light aimed inside.

In a huge split with past practices I'm lighting and white balancing for the subject and the subject is shielded from the bulk of the ambient light in each location by the light blocker. My in-camera color correction is just for the LED lit subject. I let the background fall wherever it's going to fall. But there is good logic behind this. If I use the ambient light exposure and balance for relative intensity with the subject's light I don't have to do any additional lighting beyond the LED main light. But wait! Won't the background color be icky?

On this particular location the subject was well lit and accurately color balanced but as a result the background was all lit with very yellow/green, icky (VSL technical word), fluorescent lights. It was the kind of color no client really needs to see. So.....why do this?

Well, in the latest rev. of Lightroom Classic you have an extremely powerful set of selection and masking tools. If I include, say, 50 shots of a person in basically the same pose but with a wide range of expressions and tweaks of expressions I can now go in and make an instant selection of the subject and fine tune color, etc. on them. Then I can create a second mask  -- automatically -- that includes only the background and quickly color correct and tweak the background any way I want --- including getting a tight match to the foreground/subject color. If that's what I want.  Each mask containing its own exposure, color, contrast and sharpness or de-focusing tweaks. Once I have one file looking really nice I can sync that file's settings and masks across all 50 of the similar images in less than a minute. Amazing.

When you think about the sheer control you have over both sections of the image; from subject alone to far background, and you are able to correct for each of the person's files quickly, you can imagine how much improved are the proofs (online galleries) you can share with the client. You no longer have to talk them through how you are going to "fix" files post by "saving" the background. The tools are an amazing addition to LRC and the fact that you can more or less automate giant tranches of the work is game-changing. 

Why was this shoot so fun? Well, the client's office has a killer coffee machine, the client trusts me to figure out the locations I want to shoot in and how I'd like to photograph. No one is standing next to me impatiently waiting to "approve" stuff, all the people in the office are half my age but we find each other fun to talk to, and fun to hang out with. The corporate culture is..... mellow.  One person stopped in the middle of her session to launch into a long discussion about Birkenstock shoes when she saw my now hard to acquire Birkenstock Bostons. Seems I share a specific shoe appreciation with a 27 year old accountant. She was wearing Arizonas with socks. And she was one of the cool kids. For an accoutant. 

The office reminds me very much of the software start-up offices, pre-2001 market crash. There's a fully stocked pantry of snacks that range from vegan and nutritious to crazy delicious but addictive and with borderline dangerous amounts of sugar. They cater-in every lunch. We had delicious ciabatta style pizzas yesterday along with an ample selection of salads. I like working for clients who order, among other things, prosciutto topped pizzas, garnished with arugula and drizzled with a fig sauce. Can't beat it. Not your standard Pizza Hut or Dominos stuff. 

I work at a pace I get to set and sometimes I change gears in the middle of a sitting and just try something else. Maybe a different lens or a different light placement. At the end of the day I get really nice feedback from senior staff and they thank me profusely and genuinely for having been there. One partner who was on site came to my last location of the day to chat while I was packing and he said, "It's fun to watch someone work who so obviously loves what they do. Especially when they are so good at it."  That's probably going to be the best holiday present I'll get this year. From a client. And I really cherish little moments like that. 

Since I wasn't using my typical zooms I guess I should mention what lenses I took along and what I ended up using to do the portraits. I brought along the Sigma 90mm f2.8 lens, the Sigma 85mm f1.4 lens and the Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens. I used the 85mm for the first half of the day and then switched over to the 65mm. 

I was composing in landscape format and putting the subjects off center to either the left or the right hand side of the frame. The brief from   the new marketing team asked to be able to see both shoulders and to leave some space for the background to read so it was okay to use wider lenses than usual. 

My favorite for the day was the 65mm f2.0. It's sharp, neutral, able to be used without fear of failure at f2.8 and I'm pretty sure it's equally sharp at f2.0 (wide open) but I needed some depth of field for the images to work the way they needed to. 

I have one more job to complete before I break and start turning everything else down between now and the end of the year. It's on Monday and it's a long day with the agency I did the wine stuff for a year and a half ago. I have a bunch of friends there and I'm going to shoot some portraits in the early part of the afternoon and then stick around and snap some pix at their annual holiday party. Should be fun and mellow and then the remainder of the year is just for me. 

If I were to buy another camera right now (which I'm pretty sure I'm not....) it would be another Lumix S5. the camera is close to perfect --- for the money. Loved using it all day yesterday. 100% unfailure rate.