Shaking up the geography of personal existence. Thinking about the sweet spot of cameras. Belaboring the obvious. Planning the next trip.

 

I posted this image two days ago. For some reason readers could see the image "inline" in the post but couldn't see it in the windowed gallery. I dug down to see why. Because of the detailed grain the actual size of the Jpeg file was 25 megabytes. That's a lot for a 4000 x 6000 pixel file! But the devil is in the details. 

Have you ever noticed that very grainy files can be much more detailed  (in appearance) than smoother files? The requirement to resolve and represent accurately a very fine grain structure allows for much less Jpeg compression. Smooth files are a breeze. Noisy files require machines to exercise a higher level of finesse. I dropped the resolution of this file down to about 12 megapixels and, when I look at the files at 100% I can see an obvious difference in how convincing the larger files is, as a "real" photograph, than the smaller version. Something to think about as you consider the level of compression at which you save Jpeg files. No wonder some raw files can look so much better...

Painters are coming on Monday. I need to denude the studio of delicate and breakable things and also remove heavy stuff that impedes moving filing cabinets and six foot high shelving around. The painters need access to all four walls and while they will move heavy furniture they are allergic to handling things like computers, cameras, lighting gear, rare books, etc. 

I started my part of the prep process by shutting down my main computer, disconnecting all the hard drives I had connected to it. Disconnecting the big, wide carriage, Canon inkjet printer and clearing out all of the power strips that had been multiplying under the desk I've been using for the past 24 years, without a break. It was an oddly emotional process since I've been sitting in that corner writing and doing image post processing for more than two decades. I got acclimated to the certainty of that spot and never expected to have an emotional response to the physical disruption. 

When I woke up this morning I felt unmoored. Adrift. A bit lost. I now have my computer (with no drives attached) sitting on a mid-century desk in an unused bedroom in the house. It feels weird. There is a window in front of me and that's weird. The desk is smaller, and that's weird. I can hear B. typing away in a room down the long hall from me, paying bills online and answering email. I miss the sense of absolute privacy of action. After all, my studio/office is mine alone and I can go out at anytime and feel nicely isolated from....everything else. Working in the house I suddenly feel guilt for going to the Boston Leica Store website to take another look at a very nice condition, chrome M 240... That's a new feeling.

The painting in the office, and the rest of the house, will be completed by Wednesday evening but that seems like such a long time away. I guess I'm just remembering the cadence of work life in years past when the idea of shutting down business resources for any length of time seemed perilous. 

I worry about "workspace creep." The idea that it might be nice, after restoring my "work" computer to its rightful place back in the office, if I might be tempted to enjoy still having computer in the far off bedroom for all those days when it's too cold or hot to venture into the studio. Or I become too lazy to walk the twelve extra steps from the house to the office. Maybe a nice, 16 inch MacBook Pro for the smaller desk. A complement to the 13 inch laptop I already keep on the kitchen table to catch up on stocks and news over breakfast and coffee. But I remind myself that the studio shelves already look like a laptop graveyard with older, now obsolete units stacked chronologically from Powerbook to Blueberry iBook (which was Ben's first computer ---- nostalgia alert!!!) to more recent models in a tower of eclipsed tech, a few feet high. 

Interesting how, at the beginning of the career there were no computers, no cellphones, and no internet and we spent our time optimizing the dark room and the studio lighting instead. When the phone rang it rang on the office desk and if I was in the darkroom and slow to repond an answering machine recorded incoming messages for me on magnetic tape.

I'm sure I'll get everything back into order but I'm noticing, as a I clean up the studio space that it's almost like an archeological dig; layers upon layers of stuff once deemed absolutely necessary now gathering dust under newer stuff now considered...obsolete. I haven't hit "hoarder" status just yet and B. doesn't tolerate the clutter of redundant stuff in the house but still....it's a visual indicator of the waste one can generate with a changing industry.

Camera Sweet Spots. There are any number of experts on the web who can make decent arguments leading one to believe that every advancement in camera technology is a welcome, vital and necessary one. I suspected all was not temporally linear when, after having much imaging joy with "old" used Leica SL cameras (24 megapixels, non-BSI, non-stacked sensors and 2015 tech all the way) I picked up a much newer SL2 complete with, at the time, a state of the art 47+ megapixel sensor and, ostensibly,  a more advanced imaging pipeline. Why then, over time and with quantities of experience, have I always liked the images I get out of the older models better? The simple answer is: The Sweet Spot. Which is also "the Ultimate Compromise Theory." 

The bigger geometry of the individual pixel wells on the older camera was a sweet spot for making a certain kind of file which just happens to align with my taste in how photographic images should look. Crispy and detailed as opposed to endless resolution and a certain, cloying smoothness. I felt the same when I compared the older Nikon D700 (12 megapixels with enormous pixel wells) versus the Nikon D800 with its much higher resolution. Sure, each of the files from the more modern and higher resolution cameras could be enlarged to a much greater extent without visible stair stepping and disintegration but did they look better when viewed in normal circumstances? Sadly, no. 

I recently had the same experience when I compared my recently purchased, decade old, 24 megapixel Leica M 240 with a much more recent Leica M10R camera that has 40 megapixels. The difference is not as obvious as the SL versus SL2 comparison or the Nikon comparison but it still holds true. The less pixel engorged sensor of the M 240 makes files I like the look of better than the M10R's 40 megapixels. Both are very good. And I'm sure the M10R has more dynamic range and --- maybe --- less noise but it lacks a certain crispy detail look that I can get easily from the older camera. Which pushes me to look for at least one more clean iteration of the older technology before it disappears altogether from the marketplace. 

What am I talking about? Think of this example when thinking about super high resolution. You know how good an iPhone photo can look when you see it on an iPhone screen? How the electronics multisample and interpolate and "enhance" the look of the photographic images? Now, take that phone image and blow it up big. Or take an image in low light and then look at that on a big monitor. The images start to fall apart, the colors look thin. And using a shadow slider not only generates noise but almost instantly generates banding. The size of the pixel wells still matters. It's physics even if software provides at convincing image when viewed in undemanding media. Or in less rigorous sizing. 

A few of my friends have purchased Leica M11 cameras and those cameras are interesting. I'd conjecture that about 30-40% of the final image quality is mostly dependent on in-camera software manipulation. Don't get me wrong. I think everyone else's high res cameras are largely beholden to software for their final appearance as well. Not just Leica. But it's a crapshoot to be too dependent on software engineering for ultimate quality. At this point anyway. And just think, the real power in software enhancement is doing it at speed. If you are doing any file processing in camera you are always weighing the quality of results against the speed of the process. Otherwise you lose the P.R. wars around operational responsiveness and frame rate. The bigger the file the faster processing you need in order to get good results. In order to just match the quality of smaller files.

Imagine instead if we took the same ultra fast processors and, instead of applying their power and speed to enormous 61+ megapixel files we applied those resources to a 12, 18 or 24 megapixel file instead. If we kept the frame rates the same we could apply four to eight times as much processing to overall image quality instead of compromising between high frame rates AND large files. How much better the images from the less crowded sensors would be done that way. Which inevitably reminds one of the engineering matrix Sony landed on when they came out with the A7S camera line, downshifting from a "standard" 24 megapixel sensor to a 12 megapixel sensor, and delivering a low noise champion in the process. But it's not just noise that can be affected; you could make different compromises that might entail things pickier traditional photographers value such as color discrimination and high bit depths. 

So ----- hey Leica! Give me a 24 megapixel, new M camera with all the cool stuff like USB charging and .....USB charging. And use all that hard won software expertise not to make the sensors more densely populated but capable of delivering discernibly higher image quality for real world use. 

Belaboring the obvious. I've been taking advantage of the new A.I. stuff in Lightroom and PhotoShop. I'm not using it to create wholly new photographs but rather I use it in the fine tuning of my usual photographs that I deliver to clients, or to the blog. Things like "depth blur" filters which create a 3D map of an image and can selectively blur the images from back to front. It's much more realistic for projects on which you have a separate background image (like an architectural interior) and you need to realistically composite an image (portrait of a CEO?) on top of it. Another wonderful filter which is mostly non-intrusive is the use of A.I. in noise reduction via the DeNoise filter in Lightroom. The tools are here and now and if you use them to create something you were able to visualize before but didn't have the tools to perfect then these features are more of a step forward that a complete re-imagining of photography. 

The same cohort of "you kids get off my lawn" photographers who thought digital imaging would never displace analog/film photography are now grousing and posturing their discontent for anything A.I. But they are missing the distinction between "generative" A.I. and more basic enhancement A.I. which, in many forms, can be nothing more than convenience calculations aimed at allowing one to do something they already do in their workflow but with more speed and better overall results. Not a "deal-killer" by any stretch of the imagination. 

So, put down your Speed Graphic cameras, change out of your Lands End shearling slippers and into some walking shoes, fire up that Buick sedan, put down your paper copy of USA Today, and takes some time to make some test new and improved test photographs, and then use them to try out some of the new tools. Life in the photography world is not completely about printing long scale landscapes on double weight printing paper in your chemical darkroom. Broadening one's horizons is a good thing. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself in my new, temporary office. 

Planning the next trip. I like to travel. The weeklong adventure a month ago in Montreal whetted my appetite for it. So now I'm trying to balance the weather, the season, the flight availabilities and whatever obligations I have locally in order to plan the next one. My friend, Andy, just got back from a couple weeks in Japan. He wrote about it and it sounded wonderful. Ben is currently hopscotching across Japan for two weeks and I can hardly wait to hear his stories and recommendations. But a silly part of my brain is bent on seeing Montreal again but this time in the dead of Winter. I'm thinking of a quick re-trip in January to see what a "brutal and savage" Winter really looks like. And how the city operates when everyone heads indoors; into the subterranean city. 

And why not give it a try? The off season rates for hotels and even flights are so low for that time frame that it seems like they are paying you to come up for a chilly visit. 

It's not like I need to choose only one place to go. But it's so rare I've been north in the Winter months that it's almost like science fiction to me.... Well, except for that blizzard in Toronto in 2017....

I guess I should wrap this up and head back out to the studio to keep the pre-paint process rolling. Monday morning will be here before I know it.... Oh, and there is a nice, noon swim practice available today. Might be good to store up some extra, natural vitamin D.

Dialing in a camera. And a lens. It's more of a process that most of us think. And it takes time....

Cameras all have their own color and tonal personalities and getting familiar with them makes a difference in how easy or hard the files from them are to correct. And by writing "correct" I really mean how the colors look to you and how different they might be from other cameras that you are used to. I really don't think there is one correct/absolute standard. 

I've had the Leica M 240 for a little over a month now and for me that's not a lot of time to spend getting up to speed on a camera. My own slow warm up to many camera is why I'm always fascinated by the idea that "camera reviewers" on the web are thought to be able to pick up a camera for a week, or even just a few days, shoot some images in bright sunlight and then embark on a full fledged review of the camera. It sounds more like "love at first sight" or "hate it at first sight." 

Of the digital Leica cameras I've owned the only one with a more perplexing menu than the M 240 was the TL2 --- which I never fully mastered. The M 240 is different enough from the more modern SL, CL and Q cameras to cause me to stumble from time to time.  And that's evident to me even when it comes to setting up the camera to shoot; either in color or in black and white. For instance, there are only three settings under "color profiles" and one of those choices is...off. "Off" turns out to be both an excellent and a poor choice. Poor as turning off any profiles gives one a much less processed color file out of the camera (when shooting raw) and a flatter profile when shooting Jpeg. You probably won't be using this setting if you hate post processing and just want the camera to handle everything for you. 

 If you just adore spending "butt time" working on raw files in post production the off setting is a very pleasant alternative since the images don't arrive already "infected" with someone else's idea of what color should be. Even if that someone else happens to be the engineers at Leica.

The other color profiles include: "vivid color film" and "smooth color film", terms which are less than helpful or perhaps just too general. When I tried out the camera for the first week or so I experimented with the "vivid" setting and decided they should instead call it the "ultra-high contrast" setting since everything south of middle gray was blocked up to black and everything higher than middle gray lived in perpetual danger of dancing too close to the "burning highlight" level of excitement. Fortunately, you can go ahead and set "Vivid" and shoot, and then dump the profile for something else in post processing but that hardly gives you a clear understanding of what you are getting in the moment. In the field.

The other choice is "smooth color film" and this is the one I end up setting most often since it more or less matches the contrast curve I've come to expect with "calm" camera color and the color itself is not too saturated. Not at the "comic book" level that comes standard with "Vivid." 

Since the camera (M 240) was designed and produced starting in 2012 the rear screen of the camera is nowhere near as bright, detailed or well calibrated as current LCD screens on cameras and that makes the process of coming to grips with the files pouring out of the camera a bit trickier and more time consuming to master. I often look at the screen and find it to be washed out only to later find that the actual image is just fine. But working with that entails taking a leap of faith which can be a hard thing for technically oriented photographers to accept.

But here's what helps me in this grand experiment: The camera and the screen are consistent. If you look at the screen after shooting a raw image and it looks "bright" you discover, over time, that it's just right as the basis for raw post processing. If your black and white portrait looks flat and also bright (but not obviously burned out) you'll find the incoming file on your computer to be very workable and in need of only an overall exposure adjustment (think "minus") and a curve adjustment (think contrastier!!!). But since the effects, and the screen that shows the effects to you out in the field, are consistent once you've shot enough samples and spent time; serious time, evaluating them you'll learn how to proceed. If you take the time and are patient with the process you'll be rewarded with a camera that makes beautiful color files. Just beautiful.

But here's the final thing and it plays a part in the overall quality of the image making as well. It's the higher ISO noise. The camera is great at ISO 800. Very useable at ISO 1600 and a bit noisy and dodgy at 3200+. The higher you go the more important it is to get the exposure just right. Especially important if you usually depend the just making the file a bit dark and then flagrantly try saving it using the shadow slider in post. If you do that you'll be in a noise forest with no map out....

Magic bullet? The new Denoise control (in the "develop" menu) in Adobe's latest rev. of Lightroom Classic. I've experimented with it extensively and with the right files this feature can buy you about two stops of better high ISO performance. It makes decently exposed files up to and beyond 3200 very usable; even beautiful, depending on the subject matter and style of presentation. The caveat here is that the files have to be raw files or .DNG files. Or both. 

When using the Denoise feature you can control a lot of the noice reduction parameters but I've found the middle ground ("factory default") to be a very good starting point and I rarely have to make many corrections to it. If you incorporate this setting/feature into your post production it will cost you extra time as the program analyzes the file and decides exactly how it should be corrected. Think 30 seconds to one minute of analysing, depending on file size. But the bottom line is that it does work and, mostly, it works well. It's now part of my routine when shooting with the M 240 and the most compelling reason to skip the Jpeg setting altogether. Unless you are sticking with ISO 200-800 only.

These are some of the things you learn which are different with each camera but which need to be taken into consideration when you are photographing. 

Yesterday was Halloween. B. and I pulled a little table out to the very end of our driveway so little kids wouldn't have to venture down the long, dark driveway. We lit the small table and the big bowl of candy with an LED panel covered with a purple/lavendar filter and also added small Jack-O-Lanterns and witches and goblins to the mix. Making it easier on the trick or treaters was one reason for the table at the end of the driveway but it was also a good way to see all the neighbors (grown ups) as they shepherded their kids around. 

It got cold yesterday just as soon as the sun went down. The temperature was in the low 40s by eight o'clock. We kept warm in layers of down and wool. We also made hot apple ciders with a bit of rum in them. It was quite a festive evening. New and old neighbors came by and hung out for a while meeting each other. A very nice vibe.

When the candy ran out we broke down the "set" and headed into the house where B. had a great beef stew simmering in a Crock Pot. Delicious. And to cap the evening off we watched the newly remastered version of "Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin" on TV. Delightful. Good Nostalgia.

But before all of the Halloween cheer, before the sun started to set. I took an hour or so to walk around the University of Texas neighborhood to keep working out the imagined kinks in my relationship with the Leica M 240. I'm sharing the results with you here. I like the camera more every time I shoot with it. Sure, occasionally there is some back-sliding but the forward trajectory is obvious. 

One more point: The Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO - Lanthar lens makes every camera look better. Really.

did you get the candy you wanted? did your remember to brush your teeth after? All good now.

One thing the Leica Cameras in general do not lack is good saturation. 

Sadly, this restaurant which sold Korean style spicy fried chicken survived the pandemic

but did not survive the employee shortage of 2022-2023. Closed. 

A few blocks further on a new Ramen restaurant opened. Sadly, not on my usual route.

Yes, this is the mural on the outdoor patio of the now defunct K-KFC. 

The final closing of a restaurant ---- when the taps run dry.

And highly detailed as well. Blaming the lens for that...

Everything might shut down here at VSL for the first three days of next week. We are having the studio interior re-painted so all the computer gear will be wrapped up and moved to a paint free zone. We are also having the living room and one of the bathrooms completely re-painted. Much prep work (sanding, smoothing, caulking, etc.) will be done but not by me. I'd rather pay experts to do it right the first time. 

Revisiting the Texas Hill Country Wine Project after some time has passed. A nice process while waiting for a different project to upload....

I had a lovely portrait session in my studio today at 11:00 a.m. My subject, Steve C., is the new president of an insurance company that provides coverage for Texas lawyers. I've been making portraits for this client for around ten years and several years ago we (the ad agency and I..) decided to change up the style a bit and photograph each board member and company officer against white, and then composite the selected portrait image with an interesting architectural background photograph . Steve was one of a long list we've done in this fashion since we started it. 

I photographed Steve against a long roll of white seamless paper and used a 200 watt LED light in a big octagonal softbox as my main light. A second, gridded LED fixture was used to light up the background. Steve is around my age ( maybe a bit younger) and we had a very nice conversation about raising kids (he has three, all in college) and travel (he's just back from an Italy trip with family). 

I used the big Fuji MF camera with the TTArtisan 90mm f1.25 lens stopped down to f4.5. The images turned out well and since I had to wait for 90 big files to upload to a Smugmug gallery I opened the "old" Texas Hill Country Wine folder and started looking at my "keepers" collection. There are about 125 frames in the keeper category but I only included a few here. 

I would have put up a portrait of Steve but he hasn't seen them yet and we have protocols to follow there. 

The wine photos came mostly from four different cameras used pretty much interchangeably.  They were the Pansonic S1, the Sigma fp, the Leica SL and the Leica SL2. The lenses that got the most use were the Leica 24-90, the Sigma 24-70mm Art lens, and the Sigma 45mm f2.8 (mini) lens. It was a fun project for me. I'd happily sign up to do another one. 

Now that I've typed this the other files (Steve's portraits) are ready so I'm off to complete that gallery. Then it's out for a lovely Halloween walk. And the weather is beautiful.  

About a year ago. I'd just gotten the Voigtlander 50mm APO and I was anxious to use it on the Sigma fp. Loved the test shots. But what doesn't look good out of the fp?

I like walking around taking photos. It's a nice way to pass the time, learn a camera, better understand where you live and even get a little exercise. It's interesting to me but I think the oldest camera I currently have in inventory is the Sigma fp. I got it back in 2020 and every time I use it I love the way the images I take look. Then I remember that it's slow, I don't have an EVF for it and the batteries suck. So I toss it in a drawer and start working my way back to it by starting with the easiest camera to use and sliding back toward the camera that provides the most challenges. So, segue from the Panasonic S5, through the Leica Q2, then the SL2, then the CLs, then the SLs and now the M240 until I'm frustrated by not being frustrated at which point I pull the fp back out of the drawer and recharge the batteries. 

It's a process. I don't recommend it to most people. And it gets messy if real work intrudes and then you forget where you were and backtrack across the inventory. 

Last year I bought myself a 50mm APO Voigtlander lens. It was an M mount even though a year ago I didn't have an M mount camera. Instead I used it with an adapter on the various L mount cameras. Including the well loved/much maligned fp. It's a good test for the lens as the sensor and color science in that camera are wonderful. And since I had to work the focusing myself it's a good test of my current ability to make a manual lens behave and play friendly. 

I've come to appreciate the quality of the lens but I've also come to appreciate the fp just as much. 

I can't believe I've had that camera for as long as I have. I must like it. Really, I must. 

 

But....isn't coffee supposed to be hot?

 

I saw something in the Wall St. Journal this morning that gives me pause. Probably not a good subject to discuss on a photo-oriented blog but I was surprised to see statistics showing that 16 million families in the USA have a net worth of over one million dollars. Which, of course, makes them millionaires. Eight million people over the age of 50 are multimillionaires...  Far more than the 1%.

We are routinely deluged with stories about poverty and deprivation and so it's interesting to see these kinds of statistics. Especially so for people who've spent their careers in the commercial arts industries where there is a prevailing mythology of people mostly working for peanuts. The article goes on further to say that this increase in the number of families achieving this net worth rose rapidly from around 8 million only a few years ago to the current 16 million (12% of American families). The statistics also pointed to a relative (tiny) narrowing of the "wealth gap"; meaning that middle class made more advancements than the vilified one percent in that window of time. 

Of course a lot of the increase in wealth is less liquid with most of the gains occurring through the course of home ownership and rising real estate prices. But college graduates; especially those between 50-70 years of age, also saw increases in net worth because 80+% are invested in equities which also rose from 2019-2022. There was an average increase in net worth of 37% in the USA between 2019 and 2023, adjusted for inflation!

It's interesting to me to write a blog for an audience that is almost completely opaque to me. In advertising we targeted our messages and chose our media based on accurate analysis of demographics. We had a good (now great?) idea of how well educated our target markets were, how wealthy they were and what their overall spending patterns were. With current analytics (via web experiences,  data rich transactions, etc.) marketers have a much clearer picture of their customers. But as a single person blogging operation I have none of those numbers or trends at my disposal. I can only make wide ranging guesses.

Based on comments ( which are a small fraction of total visitors ) I can guess that most of my readers are between 50 and 80 years old. Predominantly men. And most worked in professional jobs ( medicine, tech, law and as executives in various other industries ), are currently retired or nearing retirement and have enough disposable income to at least "consider" non-essential camera purchases. 

I make bad assumptions from time to time. My current potentially flawed assumption is that the majority of us were not wealthy during most of our working years and lived, well enough, in the middle strata of income. Able to afford a decent house, a working car and all the necessities but not "big spenders." I further conjecture that compound interest, inheritances from parents who were part of "The Greatest Generation" combined with the appreciation of house values and 401K holdings, have made many of you relatively wealthy but you have not fully embraced the reality of those rather recent increases in your net worth. After a life time of budgeting, saving, sometimes scrimping, that it's hard to think about spending any of the new wealth you've been lucky enough to accrue. We seem unable to process that times and our fortunes have changed. And, if you are like me, you are probably worried that this is a temporary bit of financial euphoria that could vanish overnight.....

My interests in photography are wide ranging. I love the history of the photo industry and also the art of it but I also like the technical side and, especially, the art of cameras and lenses. I like using different cameras and I like writing about them. But even though I seem to plow through cameras like crazy the reality is that I purchase only a handful per year, mostly used, and constantly sell off the ones that I've tired of. 

When I write about new camera purchases there is always, ALWAYS someone in the audience who takes me to task for being a compulsive consumer, a spendthrift, a capitalist tool, and they seem to take pride in the fact that they are still using a camera from a decade ago and that the idea of prying open their change purse to actually buy a new camera is so abhorrent to them as to make us enemies. Hardly a week goes by without someone jokingly blaming me for their own camera purchase. As though I had grabbed their last dollars from their shaking hands and forced them to buy a new Sony or Leica camera instead of bread for their family. Always posited as a joke. But always with the underlying message that spending their own money is somehow bad. Or wrong. And that my example is consumerism at its worst. 

It's a precarious position. To now have the means to buy whatever you want but being emotionally unable to pull the trigger and enjoy it. But I think this is a condition that's widespread. 

I understand that people with close family ties are hellbent on leaving everything they can to the next generation but.....wouldn't it be fun to loosen up just a little bit and have some fun? Just askin'. 

I'm sure there are many readers who are not in the demographic described above and who are dealing with real challenges. I don't mean to minimize their situations. But it amazes me to live in the middle of the most affluent society/nation in the history of the world and yet, at the same time, to feel like you're barely getting by when, in fact, many of you are actually.....wealthy. (statistics, statistics).

So, (smiley emoticon implied) next time I buy a used Leica just let it go.....

Here's the WSJ headline: 

"Never Mind the 1%. Mini-Millionaires Are Where Wealth Is Growing Fastest."

Alaina V. Sitting for a portrait. Now on stage in NYC.

 

It's been an interesting Sunday. I went to swim practice and swam well. We knocked out good yardage and left tired and happy. I was standing in the parking lot afterwards, talking to my swimmer friend, Patty, when the wind picked up and the temperature dropped about ten degrees in ten seconds. A small splash of rain and ever since then the day has gotten progressively cooler. We may make it all the way down into the 30s by Halloween. 

I figured we'd be turning the heating on soon and, being ever cautious, I went to the hardware store and bought two carbon monoxide monitors. They both plug in the wall and also have battery back-ups. We were late thinking about winter so I haven't had the HVAC company we use come by and check out the central heating. But that's on the list for sometime after the 6th of next month. We get the heater and air conditioning inspected and serviced once a year. And I have some extra routine maintenance I do for the A/C. Mostly just making sure the condensate lines are unblocked. 

We had new windows installed all over the house last year and even though the temps have already dropped into the low 50s the house is hanging in there at about 76° for most of the day. Windows, good windows, cost a small fortune. But when it comes to energy conservation they sure do rock. We also had the house/doors entirely re-weather sealed this Spring. These are two things that got us through the hottest Texas Summer on record without, proverbially, breaking a sweat when paying electric bills. Wish we'd done it ten years sooner. 

Ben usually comes for dinner on Sunday evenings. We really look forward to it. But he landed in Tokyo earlier today and will be there, and all over Japan, for the next two weeks. He's taking a well deserved vacation. Did he take any of the many cameras I offered him? He did not. He pointed to his recent model iPhone and that was the end of the discussion.

I can't wait to hear all about his adventures. He's one of those lucky ones who gets paid vacations. 

I spent a couple hours cleaning the studio today. The place was a mess. The impetus was a booking for tomorrow. I've got the new president of some legal association coming in to be photographed against a white background. Once his ad people select a photo we'll separate him from the white background and drop him into a nice, industrial background. Which will be slightly out of focus. Not the guy....just the background. Adobe is making this so easy these days...

So, the studio is now nice and clean. The electric heater works. Just in case. I'd conjecture about which camera and lens I'm thinking of using but I'm pretty sure you know I'll just change my mind between now and then. 

Still booking jobs here and there. Hope I don't put myself in a higher tax bracket... 

Finally, this was the first year in decades that I didn't impulsively rush out and buy something decadent and unnecessary for my birthday. I was saved by someone else's need for a used Leica M 240. I had the mint condition body in and out of my shopping cart a couple of times before someone else stepped up with less wishy-washy-ness and clicked the "buy" button. B. suggested that perhaps I was becoming more mature. I didn't want to tell her I had just equivocated for too long and lost my chance. 

So, nothing new to report - gear wise. I'll work on that.

ready for one more portrait? Here's one from Paris: https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2015/06/backstage-at-karl-lagerfeld-show.html