It was nice to get out and do a commercial portrait this morning. Fun to work with a clunky, heavy 90mm f1.25 manual focus lens.

 

Another self-timer masterpiece. 

Somebody tell this guy he looks too damn serious.

I've been making portraits for a particular downtown law firm for about eight years now. When they hire a new attorney the firm's managing director sends along an email asking about my availability. I respond. We set up an appointment. And since I've gotten more and more adamant about not missing swim workouts in the morning we've pretty much landed on having me arrive at their offices around 10 a.m. to set up lights and a camera. They schedule the portrait to take place at 10:30. That gives me time to grab coffee and breakfast after the swim ---- as long as I remember to pack all of the gear the night before. 

The gear package is simple and manageable now. After having shot over 100 different portraits for the firm I've got a good handle on how they want their images to look and where on the floor works best as a background. With a good gear moving cart there is no need for an assistant on jobs like this. Sure, if I was trying to shoot ten or twenty portraits of ten or twenty people in a bunch of different locations in the offices, I guess an assistant would come in handy. But we usually just photograph one person per engagement. I arrive, we photograph, and I'm back out to the car by around 11. Eleven thirty if we need to spend a bit longer. It's nice. I respect their time and they never question how much or how little time I take to do the work. The fee is always the same. 

Not having an assistant does mean that once I set up what I think works for lighting, composition, etc. I have to use the self-timer on the camera to test my set up. It usually takes a couple of tries to get what I want. But it's not a big deal. 

Today I photographed an attorney in a small conference room. But I really wanted the background to be the same hallway that's in the photo above. After I finished photographing him I picked up the camera and tripod and walked over to shoot that background with no people in it. We couldn't set up there today for the session because it's a passageway that gets a lot of traffic and the firm had multiple clients coming through. But a quick ten frames with some focus bracketing meant I could decide after the fact if I wanted to change backgrounds for the shot. 

I used only two lights to make my portraits today. A big Nanlite LED fixture with a 60 inch umbrella and a small LED panel light that I used to punch up the background a bit. It makes re-packing easier when you don't use every light you brought along. The floor to ceiling window in our conference room helped. A lot. The attorney was nice and interesting. We had a good connection. The shoot went quickly.

I packed everything back into two cases; actually, one case and one stand bag, and then I stopped by the front desk where the person who mans the phones looked up, smiled and handed me a small square of white paper with a QR code printed on it. I pushed the cart over to the long row of elevators and waited for the audible and visual signals that let me know which elevator to ride on back to the lobby. When you have a cart in two you can usually count on the "live" elevator being the one the furthest from where you've parked the cart to wait. Elevator "whack a mole."

Once in the lobby I steer the cart across the open space to another row of elevator doors. These "lifts" take people to the various floors of the attached parking garage. When the building first opened I remember marveling that the building management had little business card holders in each parking garage floor's elevator lobby. The cards were neatly printed business cards which told you on which floor you had parked your car. It was a thoughtful touch. No doubt thought up by someone who often forgets where their sedan ended up...

I used to dread this particular parking garage. It had nothing to do with the overall design or even the size of the spaces. No... it was because there is only one exit lane and before the pandemic the office building and its garage were busy places. People were constantly on the move.  I had two or three experiences in which the automated parking machines refused to read the QR codes on the little white pieces of paper I'd been given. My get out of parking jail free cards. There would be a steady forming up of cars behind me while I tried and tried to make the infra-red reader compliant with my needs. 

What I discovered is that two things generally happen in this scenario. One is that you push the "help" button on the machine which wakes up someone dozing the security offices, which are hidden from the tony guests and aloof tenants of the building. The guards understand that the people whose ire can interfere with their own happiness expect NOT to wait in line behind some vendor who seems incapable of executing one of the basics of downtown survival. The guards will prefunctorially raise the barrier and wish me well. The other alternative, when the guards can't be roused, is that one of the impatient lawyers or captains of industry stuck behind me will get out of their car, stalk over to the machine and wave their own, personal magnetic card in front of the reader and free me from my embarrassing inability to de-park. They are able to open the gates of the corral. I try not to make eye contact as I murmur a "thank you" and then get the hell out of the garage --- just in case the automated barrier bar changes its mind and holds me captive even longer. 

Since Covid the garage has lost its threatening potential. The elite are working from home. The worker bees don't generally come and go from the garage in the middle of the work day. The QR readers seem to have all gotten firmware upgrades and, maybe, now I just don't care. 

The car heads towards home and I don't dissuade it. It's cool, gray and rainy outside. The car heater keeps my Birkenstock exposed toes warm. As I get closer to my neighborhood I remember that Ben came home from Japan on Saturday and we had him over for dinner last night. Of course I remember all that but I'd forgotten to remember that I was so happy to see him home and well that I handed him my fresh bag of precious coffee from Trianon Coffee thinking that after having been out of the country for two weeks that he might not have fresh coffee for his first work day back. Today. But after I gave him my prize coffee and waved goodbye, as he drove off last night, it dawned on me that I wouldn't have coffee in the morning now instead. 

I drove by past the turn to our house and continued on to the coffee oasis. I ordered up another bag of Columbian Medium Roast Organic coffee and, since I was there, a cortado and a very, very nice walnut scone. I ate half of the scone and saved the rest for now. For when I would have afternoon coffee and take random breaks from post processing a dandy series of photographs of a kind lawyer, and also a break from my rhythmic typing that creates the machine code for the blog. The scone was delicious then and even more so now. The perfect capper, with more coffee, for a late lunch. 

I know, I know. For you ten shots in a portrait session and you've nailed it. Perfectly composed and precise exposure. Perfect expressions and each one profoundly different. I wish it worked that way for me but when I start talking to a portrait subject while taking photographs I can actually see their hesitation and reticence to open up melting away. By frame 35 we're done with figuring out where each of us fit in the hierarchy/pecking order and there is a relaxation that shows in their face. By frame 60 we've got genuine, warm smiles and more engagement. By frame 90 we're sharing stories about where our kids went to college and where they are now. And we have become at ease with each other like old friends from the same fraternity, drinking beer on the porch, and all guards are down. The photographs feel animated and perfectly sorted. I know I've got good stuff --- in spite of myself. And it mostly comes at the end.

For me a nice portrait session is never ten minutes of "look left. look right. chin up. A bit more smile" ten frames and you're moving them out the door. I'll take half and hour if I can get it and longer still if I think we can do better. There is comfort in taking one's time and trying to collaborate closer and closer. 

The other side of the coin is that you quick and assured shooters have time to skate into MacDonalds for a Fillet O Fish and a trash can sized diet Coke while I have to hunker down in front of the computer and figure out what to do with a hundred or more similar frames of a person I've just met. And since I pay a lot more attention to the human exchange than I do to the screen on the back of the camera I've also got to make adjustments to the cropping and composition. I've got to pay more attention to getting into the circle of non-confusion as it relates to colors and the way they look on human skin. I've got to go through all the frames and toss out the ones that are out of focus ---- because --- I'm using an "old school" manual focusing lens at perilously large apertures. And then I have to output the files that pass the sniff test and upload them to an online gallery for client consumption. After which there is the hot wash, personal to myself briefing of what went wrong and by how much and what should I do to make everything better the next time. 

And therein lies the real fun. Sure. We could do it all faster. We could do it all in a compressed manner in which ten files or even fifteen are the sole visual distillation of the sitter's existence in the commercial marketplace. But I'd like to think that by going deeper we can offer something that very, very few other working photographers want to try. The fast shooters consider the slow and virtuous session to be inefficient. A waste of valuable time. Not a profitable way to run a business. But what do I know? I don't want to short change the subject. They deserve to have something better than "satisfactory" to act as their avatar. Besides it's the fact that for me it still has to be fun, meaningful and unique. Or unique enough. And I do enjoy the social process as much as the technical stuff.

I've done portrait shoots every which way. Rushed cattle calls. Time limited CEO sessions. Long, luxurious personal sessions with beautiful friends. And the ones I like best are the sessions that we do without regard for time, budget or outside guidance. Just two people trying to make each other look good. 

I added noise to the file above to cover all manner of post processing faults. But you're not my client for that portrait, you are my audience. And I like the noise. It's fun. 

I'm happy today for any number of reasons. The equity markets are up so I feel richer. The shoot went smoothly and well so I feel like I'm still a professional at this. But probably the biggest bump of happiness was when the three of us; me, Ben and B. were sitting around the dining room table yesterday evening listening to Ben describe his time discovering Japan. The meals he most enjoyed. The hotel in Tokyo. The Ryokan in Kyoto. The six course breakfast there. The miso soup. The coffee served at the very end of the meal; like desert. And we marveled at the wonderful photographs Ben took with his iPhone and his determination to see everything all the time. But even better... he made it back safe and sound. And he seems so....adult. So sure.

So, it's a great day. I've replaced the gifted away coffee. I've used my cameras today for good and not for evil. I didn't exploit anyone.  I've dodged looking at the news. I've eaten fun meals. It's all a snapshot of one moment but I'll be happy to put a frame around the day and call it perfect performance art. 

Gotta tell you, that crazy, cheap lens is pretty nice. So is the zany Fuji GFX. But then so is that scone that was in the brown paper bag on my desk until just a few moments ago. 

Hope your week is off to a great start.