Putting up clean glasses after doing the dishes. Two days a week of no adult supervision...

I like glassware that casts interesting shadows. 

I think I like it even better in color. There goes my 

rationale for wanting a Leica Monochrom Q2...

It's been an interesting day. I've been thinning out the inventory of equipment in preparation for donating some of the gear to an enterprising, young photographer, or two. The amazing thing is how quickly one builds up a hoard of equipment and, on the other hand, how little equipment one really needs in order to do photography well. 

Over the last thirty years or so one of my most used and underrated pieces of gear has been my background stand system. It's been everywhere with me and has held up countless rolls of seamless background paper, home made canvases and more muslin drapes than I can count. The background stands are staying with me. Basically two stands and a crossbar.  They are on their last legs. Almost an allegorical nod to the photographer. But they've done such good service that not letting them ride off into the sunset together would feel heartless. 

All the big flashes that plug into a wall socket are going away. I did a portrait session with one set yesterday, for old time's sake and then wrapped the cord, put the trigger on the pile and said "goodbye." The same with any number of soft boxes which seem to breed faster than bunnies. I have always both loved and hated soft boxes. So bitchy to set up but when positioned correctly, so sweet and easy to light with. (Maybe too easy....).

I'm keeping my LED lights as a reminder that I was right, and prescient, thirteen years ago when my publisher asked me what I would like to write new book about and I said, "the future will be LED lighting." And now they are everywhere. I like lighting with continuous light; especially for portraits. You see pretty much exactly what you are going to get while you are shooting your project. Once you've set up your lighting and dialed in your exposure you can turn off the automatic review on your digital camera and just get down to a more concentrated workflow. If nothing changes then nothing is going to change.

The big, C.O.B. LED lights I've ended up with (and will keep) are a joy to work with and have enough power to do anything but go toe-to-toe with sunlight. 

I'm getting rid of five different on-camera flashes. Too much mindless duplication. But I am keeping a couple of the small flashes that are dedicated to the Panasonic camera. They might come in handy when I'm asked to photograph an event. And I'm keeping three of the Godox AD200 Pro lights because they are useful and cute, and eminently portable and fun. I did order an adapter for them that allows me to attach two AD 200 Pro power sections to two bare tubes on one device which also doubles as a speed ring and stand adapter. It also gives my battery powered units a decent LED modeling light. So, with two of the AD200 Pros firing into one modifier you get the equivalent power of one 400 W/S flash. Just about right.

What I won't be thinning out just yet is the collection of seven cameras and a million weird lenses. Why? Because for some strange and unexplainable reason I like all of them. And I can carry them around and have fun with them. Eventually I'll distill the collection down. First on the chopping block will no doubt be the Panasonic Lumix 70-200mm f4.0 S lens. It's lovely! It has a tripod mount that works well and the lens itself is "Leica Certified"; whatever that means. But sadly, I haven't used it since I passed the torch on theater photography a year or so ago (it's always a process...). It just sits in an equipment drawer looking heavy and neglected. Same with the Panasonic 24-105mm zoom lens. Since the Leica 24-90mm Elmarit got here the Lumix has barely seen the light of day....or night. And so on, and so on. 

I wish I could get rid of the two, big filing cabinets next to my desk but they are filled with negatives, transparencies, hard drives, DVDs and CDs. I need to hire someone to go through them and dispassionately separate family photos from business stuff. One pile for disposal and one pile for keeping...

It feels good to reduce the pile of stuff. It doesn't at all diminish my joy for photography or my passion for taking photographs but at some point I realized that there are always sub-routines running in my brain trying to keep track of all the gear, when I last charged the endless parade of batteries, where all the adapters live and, in fact, I always feel a bit guilty when I buy stuff and then end up not using it. Or not using it enough. Everything has some sort of expiration date implied and something in my mental make-up is sensitive to the lost potential of a piece of gear that becomes wholly obsolete before it's actually used up. Even now I worry about how well I'm rotating through Leica batteries in order to keep them well formed and healthy. You can imagine how much brain power I waste worrying about ten times as many rechargeable batteries spread through the office and the gear bags. 

Wow. I just realized that this will create a lot more space in the office. Enough space for more lenses? I'm sure we'll find out. 

Why, today, does this feel to me like the last photo blog standing? Something wacky going on with the universe....