A refresher post for Karmagroovy who slyly suggested that I might be booted out of a "Club" photowalk....

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html

Not bloody likely....

Last year's model. Cameras as a fashion statement.

Fashion is predicated, to a certain extent, on making aesthetic gestures and flourishes different from season to season and from year to year. As in most industries there are influencers in fashion who drive the dialog about who will wear what in the upcoming months. The clothes that are custom made and worn by super models on the catwalks of Paris, Milan and NYC are the referents for high productions of the same basic styles in the mass retail markets, but at a lesser price, made lower by the magic of mass production. Some fashion, conservative and aimed at the highest demographics, stands the test of time and becomes iconic, almost immune to going "out of fashion." The Chanel inspired "little black dress" or the classic Armani blazer. Oxford dress shoes (not Brogues --- according to a reference from the movie, "The Kingsman.") and the meme-worthy black turtleneck shirts, a la Steve Jobs. 

A lot of over the top fashion is meant to shock or amaze. Most fashion trends are tired and over with in a short stretch of time. The influencers move on the next rhinestone studded frock or Nehru collared blouse, only this year they are available in different colors and with subtle changes to shapes and fabrics. They also switch from Summer to Winter and all the seasons in between.

All of the above refers to wearable fashion. Especially in the realm of ready to wear. 

Funny. I feel as though this is the year we embraced annually depreciable fashion in camera buying, fully and without acknowledging a sense of irony and excess. 

For a while, during the arc of improvement in digital camera technology we had reasons and rationales for rapid but fake obsolescence we felt in the camera market. Improvements in sensor tech and image processing tech kept giving us less noise, more dynamic range, faster AF and more resolution. Given a facile and quick ability to switch from camera to camera one could, at least theoretically, continue to mine the improvements in successive generations. Not "upgrading" seemed a false economy.

But in the last five or even seven years, if you were looking for excellent image quality and ease of use, all the top level cameras had already made the grade and were delivering the goods. Everything afterwards were just tiny, incremental improvements. Not observably better than what you already had nestled in the folds of that Billingham bag. 

But the influencers have now turned to camera fashion. How do I know? I gauge it by how many "influencers" on YouTube have, this year or the end of last year, flocked to cameras like the Leica Q2 and have elevated them to almost mythical, "must have" status. Even though the Q2 was already long in the tooth, not nearly as well spec'd as many cheaper alternatives and even deprived of the usual "helpful" features like in camera charging, input and output ports, phase detect AF ( which amateurs use to measure the times before and after camera evolutions into the "acceptable" category). 

Now cameras like the Leica Q2 are getting more attention in the influencer space than top Sony, Nikon and Canon professional cameras. Gen Z has become fascinated with Leica M series film cameras. The Ricoh GR111 and GR111X are now getting massive attention by everyone who couldn't find a Fuji X100V which is also an influencer driven camera.  Perhaps the ultimate influencer driven camera. Cameras as fashion. Cameras as a statement. Millions of the same camera sold to help you express your own individuality. Frankly, even though I am often eager to follow along, in retrospect it's just downright embarrassing. 

And it's not just cameras. Consider the move from the good, old fashioned camera strap that came packaged for free with your new camera. The strap demanded an upgrade to the Domke strap or the Tamrac strap (my favorite) and the rationale was being able to instantly unhook the camera from the bulk of the strap and use the camera freehand. This was quickly followed by an excruciatingly unfashionable evolution to the Black Rapid straps; mostly worn bandolier style and oh so ugly. The platform shoe of camera straps. Or perhaps the combat boot of straps. These have been replaced in short order by the Peak Design Straps which, as far as I can see, boast only that you can quickly detach or reattach your camera equally quickly via the red disk anchors, complete with delicate "strings." Each permutation or strap fashion change costing more and more. Now? Oh, the fashion forward photographer has eschewed all manner of shoulder or body strap and now embraces the "hand" strap. Just enough fabric and poly-something to hook your camera to one wrist. Unless you hanker after a newly re-traditional neck strap from Arti Di Mano at a cool $228 (Arte di Mano Reinforced Comodo Neck Strap - Minerva Black with Black Stitching). And then we've gone full circle. $228 for a camera strap when you can get one for free in the box? And I complained about expensive batteries --- what was I thinking?

Ten years ago all the buzz was around speed lights. Now an influencer would not be caught dead shooting with one. LED lights had their ascendency until the new sensors with noise free performance in cameras came along, which doomed using any lighting at all. So much talent now unleashed. 

But back to cameras....

Seems to me that the old Leica M series film rangefinders have become the "little black dress" of the fashion world while everything else is a nod to ever-changing fashion. Everything else is more Thierry Mugler and Versace and much more topical. And Leica has assumed an immediacy in the minds of so many YouTube photo enthusiasts....

I was struck by watching three videos by photo fashion plate, Peter McKinnon. In short order he embraced a Leica Q2 which then gave way to a Leica SL2-S which was trumped by a Leica film camera which he is just now learning to operate  (poorly). But he has expressed that he's now driven to explore film cameras because ----- "digital has no soul." This from an influencer whose sole experience over the course of his always on camera career has been with digital cameras. 

Then I watched YouTube influencer, Evan Raft, bumble through a Leica SL2 to a Leica Q2 transition and basically give up in despair before going back and trying Leica yet again. Apparently the lure of the click throughs was too great to deny.  No question that either Peter and/or Evan can make good photographs and may even make money directly from their photographs, but my bet is that the bulk of their incomes are from performances as camera reviewers and lifestyle influencers. Expert at driving legions of people to buy stuff and then, subsequently, reject it all the instant a new product comes into fashion. 

Ever practical James Popsys evolved on his channel from Panasonic M4:3 cameras to full frame Panasonic cameras to Sony cameras (which he suggested were the just right) until --- Lo and behold! He showed up on his channel one day fondling his latest purchase --- a Leica M digital camera and 50mm lens. Today's video compares the performance differences between the Leica rangefinder and his Sony A7xx camera. He can see no differences.... Tune in to see what's next. 

Likewise, Thomas Heaton, whose videos are long on cameras and vans and objects like tripods and propane RV stoves while wandering around endlessly in various UK landscapes getting cold and wet and muttering about not being able to find the "good light." Which is, I guess, okay with everyone who subscribes to his channel. And, admittedly, looking at someone's landscape work over and over again would get awfully boring. But he does a good job at showing his audience just how miserable it can be to go outside and chase after the perfect landscape in an area beset by frost and rain and....flat light.

I bring this all up because, absent a personal profit motive there are really, very, very few reasons to "upgrade" through various cameras now other than to stay abreast of the latest fashion trends. 

A few years back I had lunch with Elliott Erwitt when he was here in town. (Big and obvious name dropping...)  He was carrying a Leica M7 and a 50mm Summicron. Shooting film. Mostly Tri-X. But he never mentioned his camera. It was just there; hanging off his shoulder. He gave no reviews. He didn't sing its praises. He shot it sparingly, as the opportunities arose but his conversation revolved around life, food, art and travel experiences. The camera was, to him, as comfortable as a favorite sweater or a well broken in pair of shoes. Nothing you needed to talk about. Nothing you needed to rush out and buy. Easy for him to say...

Of course Erwitt wasn't making his money hawking cameras and being camera stylish. He was earning money the old fashioned photographer way: He was selling prints of his images to an audience that loved,....the images. Not the camera. Prints made by cameras so primitive that most current generation photographers would be baffled by their operation. Which speaks volumes in itself. (Where is the USB plug on a Leica M3??? Why can't I find the light meter switch? Why does the bottom come off? What? No wireless charging?).

It's funny to me that, as I wind down client driven work the desire to buy cameras for client's sake, which was my my rationale for camera churning, has also wound down. I had coffee with a very wise and dear friend this morning. I mentioned that without the profit motive the act of buying new cameras had become less and less fun. Less rewarding. And without an active audience of fellow photographers to oooh and ahh over a new purchase the buying buzz became so much less buzzy.

He responded that without a good, solid rationale behind the purchase of new gear the purchase itself was bereft of justifiable value. And by extension, much pleasure. 

It's been a while since I bought a new camera. Nothing seems to tickle my acquisitive bones. Nothing has persuaded me to click, "purchase." 

Kind of nice. Less gear to worry about. But I'll quickly lose my photo-fashion credentials without the requisite and showy purchases of new gear --- if I had any credentials to begin with. 

Turn up those collars, grab a pair of Guccis and make sure you have a matching camera to complete the outfit. Yikes ----- photography has now extended its reach into yearly fashion turnover. What next?

Oh...and just so you know....new tripod purchases are so.....last year. As are gimbals. And please....try not to show up with a long zoom. So gauche. 

So, if Leica rangefinders are the perennial "little black Chanel dresses". What are the rest of the cameras? 

I guess Sony would be the Abercrombie and Fitch selection. Nikon for Eddie Bauer and Canon as the Gap plus Old Navy of cameras. Fuji seems very comfortable as Lulu Lemon while Pentax brings up the rear as Burberry's; the classic belted trench coat of cameras...  Olympus has become a Costco store brand of stretch waist Cargo shorts while Panasonic is toiling away trying to become the Carhartt's of photography. An exception for their MF cameras, those are aspiring Tactical 5.11 wannabes.

Sorry, just got so tired of the car analogies....

Revised: Leica, the Hermes of cameras.... That's all I've got. 

 

Another day at work. A pleasant morning photographing medical products for Abbott. A wonderful and jovial art director presiding.

 

I worked as a photographer today. Not a pontificator. I didn't spend time bragging about stuff I did twenty years ago, I concentrated on doing the workmanlike steps required to supply a client with a number of photographs to use in international marketing and advertising right now. There was nothing glamorous about the shoot. I didn't have a video crew document my shoot and show off my collection of silver and turquoise rings nicely contrasted by tattoos all over my hands. I didn't hold a wide angle camera in front of my face and walk around. I actually did stuff real photographers who earn their livings taking photographs have done for decades and decades. 

It started yesterday when I swept and then mopped the floor in the studio. Then I set up a table which we would use to lay out products to be photographed against a neutral background. After the basics of cleaning and furniture moving were taken care of I pulled out cases of gear and made sure I could put my hands on the Atomos Ninja monitor I wanted to use, which led to a search for the correct HDMI cable and batteries for the monitor. Since the monitor has been stored, unused for a couple of months, I also needed to find chargers for the big NP-9xx batteries. Once I got those charging I started setting up lights. I've given away all of my big studio electronic flashes but that's fine as still life work is better, in my opinion, with continuous light sources.

It took a while to set up the ungainly octa-bank with all of its finicky rods and velcro closures. I also set up a smaller box with a second light fixture. I tested both of these to make sure they were fully functional. Then I took a break from the tyranny of the rods and speed rings to put up fitted pieces of Foamcore over the windows to prevent mixed exterior light from messing with the light from the LED fixtures. It's a little thing but who wants mixed color casts? And who's going to correct the resulting files?

I built a tripod shooting rig that allows me to shoot straight down on products and to check composition and focus on the Atomos monitor so that even when I have to go to the full height of the tripod and head (about seven feet) I can see with great clarity exactly what we'll be getting in the final image. The crossbar I use will allow for two cameras to be set up side by side or you can do as I have and hang one on either end, facing down. But I anchor the camera with a ballhead to give me more flexibility if I want to shoot at an angle or double check that everything is level and make adjustments if it's not. 

I'm a worrier so even though I've done shoots like this for about 40 years I always (always) set up the camera, the lenses I'll be using, the cards I'll be shooting to and the cables I'll be use to connect it all together the day before the shoot. Early enough in the day so that if there is something giving me problems I have the time to source and grab a replacement --- if it's something I don't already have in studio. 

The afternoon before the morning shoot I will have set up all the tools and materials I think we'll be working with and will have turned them all on. I have done a custom white balance, formatted two memory cards, metered the exposure with a handheld meter and then confirmed it with the in-camera meter and the histogram on the test files. I have five fully charged camera batteries ready to go even though I don't expect that we'll be shooting for much longer than the first half of the day...

I knew I wanted to shoot in the .DNG format so I could make use of the A.I. Noise Reduction and Raw Detail features of Lightroom Classic in post production. Those features are currently unavailable when using non-RAW files. .DNG is the raw file format for Leica SL cameras and I knew that I wanted to use the SL2 camera for its high resolution capabilities. And the lovely color. 

The last thing I did in the studio was to change the filters in both the air conditioner and the HEPA air cleaner because I like working in clean air and feel my clients deserve the best environment I can give them. But the day before the shoot doesn't end at the studio door. 

I went into the house and straightened up. Our master bathroom was already spotless and it's at the far end of the house from the studio. We don't take clients that far into the house usually. But we do get a lot of traffic in the guest bathroom so that was next on my pre-shoot checklist. I swept and mopped the floor, cleaned the countertops, the sinks, the bathtub and the toilet. I looked at the window in the bathroom that looks out over the garden. It was too dirty. I went outside and washed a number of the windows. Much better. If you are going to use my guest bathroom you deserve to have a nice, clean view of the garden. 

I made sure the toilet paper roll was still bountiful and that the liquid soap container on the counter was filled. Guest towels hung up and ready as well. 

With any shoot that starts in the morning your "evening before" chore list is never done until you make arrangements for coffee and snacks. I didn't know how many people from the client side would be attending so I guessed. I went to the grocery store and bought fresh baked banana nut muffins, some Cliff Bars, some fresh fruit and a variety of granola bars. I also bought a pint bottle of half and half for anyone who'd like to add a bit of saturated fat to their coffee...

When I got home I put the snacks on a big serving trays and then double checked my coffee supply. I also got down, from a high shelf, my stainless steel, insulated coffee carafe. I draw the line at trying to figure out how to make coffee in advance. That seems immoral. 

So, all of that falls into the realm of pre-production. I think it's important. It's why, I think, I rarely lose a client once I've worked with them. I try to actively make sure that their experience is as problem free and hassle free as I can make it. 

I made one more pass through the kitchen, the dining room and the great room and headed to bed. But before I turned the lights out I picked out a "uniform" for the morning's shoot. Best to look like a well put together photographer rather than someone who just doesn't care. 

My big sacrifice was having to hit the early morning swim practice which allowed me to be a back at home base 45 minutes before the scheduled client arrival. It gave me time to make a nice, smooth pot of coffee and to shave my scraggly face. 

The art director arrived, solo, and I poured her a cup of coffee and offered food. She's photographed with me here before so she knew the lay of the land well enough. Emboldened by coffee and food we headed to the studio and started the process. Nothing at all glamorous. In fact, the bigger the client the more layers, and layers of "style guides" and graphic rules, there are to follow. That's okay, we're nothing if not disciplined; on both sides of the "aisle." 

Once we started photographing my art director would place high tech medical products on the shooting table and arrange them so their features and control points were well positioned. I'd spend time carefully focusing and staying within the comp boundaries. Focusing very small products, like cardiac devices that are about a quarter inch by an inch, and have braided cables attached, requires very careful distribution of focus if one is to get focus over the entire object. And certainly products with greater depth are more challenging. 

With the attached monitor there to share the images in real time we worked quickly and in close collaboration. I shoot two frames for each set up because once processed the images are about 250 megabytes each and, at some point,  excess becomes unwieldy. 

We started photographing at nine and we wrapped up the last shot around 11:30 a.m. I suggested to the client that instead of just taking the raw files ( She is at least as proficient with post production as I am...) I could take the images and run them through Lightroom to apply metadata, put them through the A.I. Denoise feature, coupled with Raw Detail Optimization. I'd output the finished files as .DNGs and delivery them on a thumb drive. I suggested WeTransfer.com as a file transfer option but like many big companies that need to take security into account at all times those web-based programs are off limits at her company. 

After the A.D. left I took a break to eat a peanut butter and blueberry preserve sandwich and then I sat down to process. Since the background on the photos will be dropped out (not by me!) I cleaned up the files as well as I could and trimmed some that had a lot of blanks space on the top or bottom. The added Lightroom processing was good and while the effects can be subtle, in aggregate they do make for a better looking final file. 

After handling that exercise of the post production I pulled a 32GB thumb drive out of a desk drawer and formatted it. They generally come already formatted but mostly it's for (pre-historic) MS DOS fat 32 so if one is using the thumb drive in conjunction with a current computing system running a superior OS it just makes sense to start out fresh with a better format. Even if you are just using EX-Fat. 

Once I confirmed the integrity of all the files I wrote out a "thank you" note and slipped the thumb drive into the envelope with it. I drove over to the client's offices and hand delivered the files at 2:15 p.m. Since the project is being done under a very tight deadline the client was very happy with a speedy delivery. We cut a day off her production time by being a bit earnest. 

The sexy part of the day came next. Breaking down the gear and putting everything back in the cases, on the shelves, etc. And putting all the used batteries back on the chargers. Oh, I almost forgot, I also wanted to create a couple redundant back-ups of the original files as well as an online folder of the processed files but the ones for online needed to be Jpegs. So those needed to be processed as well. 

Then...I took out the trash. Tomorrow, after swim practice, I'll write out an invoice and send it via email. The client indicated that they'd like to pay very quickly, with PayPal, instead of getting bogged down in internal accounting. Fine by me. 

After all the excitement and drama of the shoot (there was none) a friend came over to buy several of my lenses. I used to have an enviable collection of longer, fast glass for theater work but since I've passed on that torch I feel lighter and happier getting rid of stuff that, for the last year or so, as just been gathering dust and depreciating. 

Tonight's excitement? B. is home and it's Thursday so that means "pizza night." Might get crazy this time and order a mushroom pie. I'll go pick it up and bring it home after I sort the recycling. 

No bungee jumping over a gorge for me today. Just working as a tradesperson, getting a job done. Knocking down a paycheck. So cliché I should be drinking a Bud Lite as I type this. 

The glamorous life of a real, working photographer. In detail. 

Camera: Leica SL2

Lenses: Sigma 70mm Macro Art,  Leica SL 24-90mm Asperical. 

Lights: Nanette LEDs, various. 

There you go. Lots of excitement. ta da.  Oh...forgot the composting. My turn.....

We're currently getting huge numbers of page views from Singapore. A thousand percent more than from anywhere else. We're closing access for 24 hours until we better understand what's happening.

 Starting at 5pm today. Should be back up tomorrow. Thanks. KT

What can you shoot in an hour with a 40mm f2.0 lens and an older camera body? Daido Moriyama sez: (paraphrasing): "blaze away and shoot anything that captures your interest. No hierarchy of subject matter. Don't think! Shoot! His first piece of advice for newbies? Get Outside!!!

Sometimes it takes me a while to warm up to a lens. Not so with the 40mm f2.0 Ultron Aspherical, version 2, from Voigtlander. I bought it brand new, in a Nikon F mount, adapted it to the L mount, put it on a Leica SL and only take it off if I want to use its bigger brother, the 58mm f1.4 Voigtlander --- also in a Nikon F mount. They even share a lens hood...

Why a Nikon F mount and not a Leica M mount? Cheaper. More real estate to park your fingers on. Bigger (more standard) filter ring. Exactly the same optical formula. Easy to adapt to any mirrorless camera AND --- who knows? We might devolve back to DSLRs in which case my choice would have to be a Nikon D850. The lens has the electronic contacts to communicate aperture and exif to digital Nikon bodies.

Do I like the lens? Hell yeah. It's easy to focus, it's pretty sharp wide open. It's deliriously sharp at f5.6 (where I find myself using it most often) and the colors out of it match up well with the color science embedded in Leica's first gen., full frame mirrorless camera body = The Leica SL 601. A camera so nice and so cheap on the market that I bought two. (Cheap is relative; I know. But $1800 bucks for a body that cost $7500 just a few years ago works for me. Plus, you know, I sell the plasma...).

Here's my assortment of images from a brisk walk through the area just to the West of the UT campus. When I lived there it was all hippy co-ops and weird re-dos of old houses into tiny apartments. Almost everyone rode bicycles for basic transportation. When my bike got stolen I walked. Or rode the bus. 

Now it's a sprawling neighborhood of giant, high rise luxury dormitories and condos. Looks a lot like Dubai but with scruffy, rich kid students roaming around in flip flops, board shorts and odd t-shirts. Boys seemingly are required to wear their baseball hats backwards. Sunglasses at all times. 

Several of the newer high rise dorms have lobbies that look to have been designed by the same folks that design the Four Seasons Hotel and Ritz Carlton Hotel lobbies -- only these are bigger and nicer. And get this: Five of the high rise dorms have, wait for it, valet parking for the students. 

That never happened when I went to UT. And back when I was on the faculty we drove old VW bugs or harshly used Volvo station wagons, not the latest M5 BMWs or the almost ubiquitous (all over West Austin) Porsche Macans. You can now tell the students from really wealthy families apart from those who are just well off...The really wealthy ones have the Macan S Turbos while the "riff raff" are driving the standard models or the Newports.

Nobody to photograph on the streets....they're all driving around behind tinted glass...

But here are the images my house manager selected for me to share. I hope our personal chef agrees.

(both would be --- me). 

 A message from Daido Moriyama: "Get Outside!"

Post processing versus "tweaking" a file. Big difference? Little corrections?

 

Original Version from the camera. 

A greenish wall of construction material with barbed wire in the foreground.

I've spent a lot of time this week reading about and researching topics around A.I. and photography. There is not just one slippery slope to contend with, there are many. While I'm opposed to creating fantasy images out of a combination text descriptions coupled with the endurance of being able to hit the "generate" button some 2,000 times before selecting a machine proffered, computer-created picture that one likes ( his practice according to an A.I. poster of such images on Instagram), I'm also reconsidering where one draws the lines/boundaries in something as simple as image tweaking. Or its more complex sounding brother: post processing. 

It's important to remember that even digital cameras set to all neutral or standard settings are still a design team's working idea of what a digital image should look like and are just two dimensional representations of the reality existing in front of the camera. Move from RAW file to Jpeg instead and the ability to introduce these kinds of subjective "tweaks" goes up dramatically. But where is the line between "sin" and "salvation" for a typical image that's meant to be shared with an audience?

I walked by this elevation of a building project when I was over near the UT campus yesterday afternoon. I liked the color of the wall but the added attraction which actually stopped me and convinced me to take a photograph was the barbed wire running across the bottom fifth of the frame. When I got back to the studio and looked at the .DNG file on my computer the overall image seemed flat and lacking the "pop" I experienced when I initially saw it. I'm sure the top photo is more accurate a representation of what's there but if you consider that I was wearing my polarized, anti-reflection coated, prescription sunglasses at the time of the reveal you might understand why my memory of the wall doesn't quite jive with the reality of the wall. At least from my point of view. Probably a good reason not to wear your sunglasses around when you are out photographing....if you are looking for faithful concordance with the "facts."

Here's what I did to make the image match what my brain first saw when I turned the corner and happened on the wall...

The first thing I did with the RAW image was to go to the lens correction menu in Lightroom Classic and look to see if the lens I was using was represented. I scrolled down to the Voigtlander submenu and a then scrolled through a couple dozen profiles to find the 40mm Ultron f2.0 SLii Aspherical profile and I selected that. On the screen you could see the building straighten out and the gentle barrel distortion get corrected. Look closer and you could see the vignetting in the corners brighten and the corner details tighten up. The image also seemed brighter overall; a result of subduing mid-frame vignetting perhaps. 

My next step was to see what the noise reduction menu would serve up. I wasn't so interested in noise reduction as I was with another selection in that submenu; it's called: "Raw Details." This uses some degree of A.I. to bring more observable fine detail to the files. Yes, it's perhaps technically A.I. but not sentient by a long shot. I think the extent of the feature's intelligence is to look at the basic structure of the file and make assumptions about how sharpness gets robbed in the process of going through a camera's circuits and internal processing and then trying to reverse that sharpness and detail degradation by interpolating using existing structures and then augmenting them with presumed "lost" data.

It seems to work very well but the effect is subdued. At least in the files I worked with. Why not just click the noise reduction option? Well, the file was shot in bright light at ISO 50 and a close observation at 100% didn't show me any reason to fool around with noise reduction in what was basically a noiseless file. 

My next step was to apply a "user preset" I've engineered for Leica SL 601 raw files. It boosts the white slider in the basic control panel, also increases shadow exposure, adds a +20 to the clarity slider awhile adding +20 to the vibrance control and +20 to the saturation slider. 

Most of these settings are "canned." Which basically means I've processed enough similar files to establish a look that I like. Not a neutral look, or even a more accurate look, but a look that conflates with my own subjective appraisal of what a generic, sunlight scene needs to have added in post production to make it look the way my brain wants stuff to look. Call it my "Pollyanna Profile" since it is almost inevitably brighter and more colorful that the camera's initial point of view. 

If I was incredibly busy, day-to-day, and a lot of my work involved endless post processing of similar files, I would probably spend a bit of time creating individual presets for not only every camera's raw files but all manner of subject types and lighting conditions. Examples: Portraits in open shade. Portraits in full sun. Portraits in artificial light interiors. Portraits at dusk. Architecture on cloudy days. Architecture on sunny days. Architecture at dusk, etc. etc. 

While I bump up against a prejudice (mostly from engineers and people firmly and fully invested in some form of linear logic...) that states that we should all be invested in creating photographs that are as close to the objective reality of a scene as humanly possible that's really not for me. Sorry, that's not part of my "religion" as a photographer. I know that we're "interpreting." That's where the fun lies...

I think my work should match my subjective intention for a scene instead. But where are the edges of the slippery slope and at what particular angle does it become dangerously out of whack? I guess that's for each of us to figure out in our own work. The steeper the slope the more exciting the journey; but the same thing that makes the journey exciting increases the chances of peril.

Just thought these samples might give you some insight into my point of view. Thanks. 

"Lightly" processed wall. To my taste. 

Camera and lens?

The fabulous Leica SL (601) and the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron ZF.2 SLii. 

And here's one more, just for grins:

Advertising aimed at anyone who might want to shave their armpits. 

When writers or bloggers or vloggers write about processing I think

it's only correct to supply samples of their own work when 

explaining their choices. Just pontificating isn't as 

instructive. 

New Eyeglasses arriving Wednesday. Can't wait.