3.15.2024
Two couples on a bench. And the end of a long week.
3.14.2024
Inflation? What inflation? Improved luxe product sees a $110 price drop.
In a delightful break from photography and business, we've had a great time swimming this week.
I'm just so jazzed about swimming right now. I've changed my freestyle stroke a bit. My front "catch" is much better and more aggressive. I can feel it in my lat muscles with every stroke. I'm also working on pointing my toes more in the kick. That adds some propulsive power to the kick and a side benefit is a surprising improvement in managing overall drag. The more streamlined you make your body, via technique, the faster you can go with the same amount of effort you were using to swim slower. It really works. Finally, I'm working on relaxing more in the water which helps with breath control. If your brain is constantly reactive about performance anxiety it interferes with deep, rhythmic breathing. That can slow you down.
That was actually a simple fix. I'd gotten into the habit of having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, before swim practice. A nice jolt of caffeine. And a direct way to also raise up any anxieties you may have floating around in your brain. I didn't want to give up the warm, welcoming cup of coffee before swimming so I switched to decaf. Just for pre-practice The difference was immediately noticeable and now, after four weeks of hewing to the new routine it has become habit. A good habit. But after practice...real coffee rules!
My final swim altering improvement is currently paying dividends and I can only imagine that a few months from now I'll be faster in the water than I am now. I cut off my intake of any alcohol. But I'm not dogmatic and rigid about it. I'll have a glass of Champagne at a wedding. I'll share a glass of red wine with my hosts when we're invited over for dinner. And, if someone gifts me a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cab I'll be happy to open it up and share it with a friend or two who can really appreciate it.
But alcohol does impair the building of muscle and 68 year old people really need to be aware of that. Not to mention that steady (not excessive) alcohol consumption contributes a 1% increase to the likelihood of developing dementia. And I'd certainly like to improve my odds against in that arena.
So, better technique through repetitive practice, focusing on better streamlining, relaxing more, a better scheduling of caffeine intake (someone suggested giving up coffee altogether so I took their contact info off my computer...) for more relaxed swimming, and a cessation of habitual alcohol consumption for better muscle tone and a clearer brain. And yes. I'm swimming with more endurance.
How's it all working out? We'll see at the next big master's swim meet.
What's my morning swim like? I get up at 7 am and walk into the locker room at the pool at around 7:50. Change into swim gear, put DermaSwim Pro (a barrier lotion) on any skin that's predisposed to get a chlorine rash, grab my swim fins, a swim cap, hand paddles and a pull buoy from my bag. Make sure my favorite goggles are on my head and then trudge the 50 yards up to the pool.
The workout is segmented into lanes by ability and speed. Lane one is the slowest lane. Lane seven is the fastest lane. I usually swim with my friends, Jane and Sheila in lane five. We've "owned" that lane for a number of years now. When a workout is crowded we welcome more people into the lane but it's usually the three of us circle swimming.
The coach on deck writes each segment of the workout on a white board. The first segment is a warm-up. Our interpretation of the warm-up set is variable. If it's late in the week and we're sore from hard, previous workouts we might be less diligent about doing the sets exactly as written. When Sheila first tackles the warm up she swims down freestyle and back doing backstroke. It's a nice balance.
A typical warm-up is between a thousand and twelve hundred yards. A warm-up set might look like this:
300 swim, 300 kick, 300 pull, 400 IM, doing a modified individual medley which might be 50 butterfly, 50 free, 50 backstroke, 50 free, 50 breaststroke, 50 free. 100 free.
Then we're ready for the main sets. We alternate who will go first, second and third in the lane depending on each person's strengths and weaknesses. Both Jane and Sheila are faster kickers than I am so if a set has lot of kick in it I'll probably (likely) go third. If the set has a lot of pulling with hand paddles I might go first. The order doesn't really matter as we go five or ten seconds apart and we all go on the same total interval. An example would be a set of 100 yard swims on 1:30. The first person leaves at the top of the pace clock, the second person on the :05, the third person on the :10. Each person gets the full 1:30 to swim the distance and get a few seconds rest before starting again. So every minute and thirty seconds we start the next one, and the next one, and the next one.
The longest set of one hundreds we've done, that I can remember, was 60 X 100 yards on 1:40 in celebration of Bruce's 60th birthday. So, that's 6,000 yards nearly straight through. A few second rest between each 100. And even 1:40 is a good pace, considering the sheer number of repeats.
Our main swim in a typical workout might consist of three different sets of distances and goal times. If I feel that I've pushed myself too fast on a challenging set I might sit out a 50 to catch my breath and bring down my pulse rate while my lane mates (who are much younger) continue. Best not to cross any red lines.... I'd hate to have my head explode.
Most of us have been swimming since the age group days and an alarmingly large number have been swimming competitively since the ages of five or six. Just about everyone swam competitively in high school and maybe 30-40% of the people in a given workout swam for their college or university. These folks have discipline that is hard to explain to people who spend a lot of time watching TV.
Most of the swimmers in our program go five or six days a week and it's typical for them to have a second sport which they also participate in. One of our lead swimmers, who just turned 60, bikes about ten miles to the pool for the early workout at 7, changes clothes quickly afterwards and bikes over to a different facility to play Pickle Ball for a while and then rides to work. He also runs, competes in triathlons and for a time held the world's masters record for the 55-60 year age group for the 200 meter, long course backstroke. Yes, he works full time --- as the CEO of a new, healthy food company. He and his wife are raising three kids. Discipline. Focus. Good Habits.
My lane swam well today. We had fun. We kidded around. We laughed. We swam hard.
Why bother? Energy begets energy. There's a nice social component and a large number of people I consider actual friends are people I've met at swim workouts. Research is now showing rigorous exercise is the prime determinant of a long and healthy lifespan. More so than just about any other factor. Or combination of factors. We also look as good as we feel. And that's gotta count for something...
Okay. Got the swim and the blog done, now it's time to grab a camera and take a long walk.
3.13.2024
Discovering infinity in a restroom mirror...
We love to talk about process but we shy away from talking about why we shoot what we shoot. Sometimes I like to make mirror-selfies just so I can see, physically, and one step removed, how I'm doing. How I look to everyone else. How I fit into the spaces I find myself in. A detailed selfie is one of my best motivators to get my hair cut. Or to throw away a sweater that makes me look dumpy.
Many times I'll wake up when it's still dark outside, sit on the edge of the bed in my underwear, take a deep breath and think about why I'm interested in getting out that day with a camera. My usual answer is that I might see something that changes my mind about everything.
Someone hit the nail on the head in some comments yesterday. It was about the creative process requiring, in my mind, some bit of friction in order to make it work. That brain worm of a thought was with me all day yesterday, in every step I made with my camera.
Part of my ennui of late might just be a profound lack for friction. Living too comfortably inside the bubble. Too well fed. Too well taken care of. Too well off. When the upholstery gets too comfortable it gets harder and harder to get out of the chair.
But neither do I want to end up going through life as a tourist, just jetting by for a week or two to grab some trophies for whatever has replaced the boring slideshows our ancestors used to punish dinner guests with.
If we're actively looking for a project I think it means that we're so well off that we're starting to look for trouble in order to disrupt our complacent bubbles.
The circumstances that buffer you from the rough patches in life create the constraints keeping you from directly having diverse experiences. Maybe that's what I'll think about today when I go swim. Up and down the lanes thinking about whether or not I made the cocoon too comfortable and now hesitate to be....uncomfortable.
Everything is a balancing act...
3.12.2024
Whether you are photographing on assignment or just for yourself, it's nice to introduce yourself, shake hands and win a person over before you use the camera. Just sayin.
I never got this gentleman's name but he was downtown, just outside the city council building enjoying a cool, early Spring afternoon. I saw him and thought his eyes were expressive. Just like everyone else I am a little nervous about approaching strangers and asking them if I can make their portrait. But the only alternative to not following through is to stand back, out of the circle of most interest, and shoot a bit wider. And without their collaboration. And that means you get less energy from your subject. It's a tricky choice.
There seems to be either power toward, or a detraction from, success in making the right decisions based on your core intention. At least as far as getting an interesting photograph is concerned. On this particular day I was mostly intending to get photographs that, in combination with other photographs, which would paint a collage for me about the people I come across when I'm out for a pleasant, no-agenda walk.
I guess I could have shot wider. I could have used a telephoto lens. But it was his eyes that drew me to him and that's what I thought should be emphasized in the final image. I also knew that I wanted to have the background drop as far out of focus as possible so the viewer would have no choice but to pay attention to the man's eyes. It would have been easier to stand back, shoot with an 85mm lens and a full frame camera. I would have had more control over the camera-to-subject distance. I could have kept my distance. Stayed in my own circle of comfort.
The camera I had with me was an older, cropped frame (APS-C) Sony and the lens I had on the camera was a fast 50mm. I went with what I had. If I had a bag full of lenses I could have stopped and changed to something longer but I know I would not have taken the time because all permissions from strangers feel like they come with a time constraint attached. After all, you are pulling them away from their own self-guided free time. Their own schedule. Their own safe space. So I kept the lens I arrived with.
Whatever dialog we had together is lost to the mists of time. I try to be honest and not fawning. I might have said I was drawn to the power and calmness of his eyes. But I just as likely smiled and said I would really like to take his photograph...if he didn't mind.
With the burden of my years of commercial experience I find it nearly impossible to take only one or two frames and then to walk away. When I got back home I looked through my images for the day and saw that I'd snapped away for nine or ten frames. And, as I expected, the frames followed a familiar pattern. Good energy but a guardedness on the first few frames. Then the subject feels like he should deliver a different pose or expression and we do that for a few frames. Finally, the subject starts to feel either bored or comfortable and drops his guard enough so that, if you are quick, you can capture something that feels authentic. That has the right energy. In nearly every encounter you know when you've hit the peak of expression and you sense, if you are awake to it, that the subject has had enough attention. Because people aren't used to being stared at by a Cyclops camera. And most people are used to a snapshot being one frame.
The image was taken on a camera with a 3:2 aspect ratio but the tight, square crop seemed to mirror what I was thinking when I made the portrait. I think it's successful. You may not. And that's okay. As long as you have a reason other than the idea that it's wrong to crop out the top of the subject's head.
3.11.2024
As commercial photography changes more and more quickly I am running out of things I want to write about here. Validating my long held hypothesis that everything has a parabolic trajectory which starts at zero and inevitably ends at zero. The longer the curve up, generally the longer the curve down.
I have to confess that I'm feeling less and less connected to the rapid evolution of photography. You can see it, I think, in my purchasing habits when I buy older cameras designed in 2012 and use them in the same way that my old photo-heroes used their rangefinder cameras in the 1950s and 1960s. My selection of favorite lenses is also boringly traditional and echoes what better photographers have preached for decades. I'm attached to the iconic old focal lengths of 35, 50 and 90. Trained by my parents' subscriptions to Life Magazine, National Geographic and Look Magazine. I am a product of my own history and the era in which I grew up, and during which I started working as a photographer.
In the arc of my career I've mastered everything from shooting still life photos with an 8x10 inch view camera and color transparency film to shooting 4K digital video on small, sleek digital cameras. But to me, now, nothing is as attractive or alluring as the older digital rangefinder cameras and lenses that could have come straight out of 1965.
I'm slowly winnowing down my client list and re-directing myself toward more and more fun, self-assigned projects. And here's the issue for a blogger doing work for himself; it's less prone to fit into norms and structures of mainstream photography. I can frame a photo the way I like to but bristle when I post it and get feedback that it doesn't work because I didn't consider the rule of thirds, or impart into the image a full range of tones, or that the noise in the file is too obvious. Or the subject matter is boring. The reality is that I've never posted to the blog with the intent that the photographs represent some sort of online portfolio and I've never really looked for feedback of my work. Having a representative gallery of images was never the intention for this blog.
While I impulsively pre-ordered a Leica SL3 last week I doubt very much that I'll follow through and buy one. I already have too many choices to make every time I go out the door. While the price isn't an impediment what's stopping me is the fact that, over the last year or so, none of the new additions and features to new cameras do much to excite me. Cameras are already so good that it would take something truly spectacular to move the needle from "oh that's pretty cool" to "Oh Dear God I must have that NOW!"
It's always enlightening to have a long history with a practice. One can look back at work done over decades and see what was and wasn't important to your own art. The work that truly made you happy and satisfied. The work I did for myself in 1980 - 2000 is still very satisfying for me to look at. Not because the cameras and film were so great but because of my enthusiasm for the subjects. For the "look" and for the entree photography provided for social observation and cultural literacy.
It's inevitable that one becomes jaded by experience and age. Lost is the newness of things.
As I look across the blogging and personal video landscape what I'm finding everywhere is repetition, repetition, repetition. Since camera introductions have slowed down and the progress of camera and lens technology has become less and less important content producers/creators have stumbled about to find things to fill the space (and time) with. I can't imagine that my descriptions of walking through the streets of a car-centric, middle class city are so riveting and fascinating that they fill a need for my readers. I can't imagine what people are thinking when fellow photo bloggers veer into posts about mid-brow, mid-century home architecture or tube amplifiers. I can't share the enthusiasm over videos of younger people with cameras roaming around urban landscapes pontificating about the perfect street shooter lens while sneaking zone-focused shots of inherently banal subjects. I guess that's when you know it's time to move on and mark the end of an era.
And by saying that I'm not implying that these are not the "golden years" for someone else. Kids just now discovering the magic of photography have their own point of view about what is relevant and what is cool. It might not be shared universally but it's good for them. It all has value for them.
I have never had the intention to steer the blog into being a geriatric entertainment channel. I don't want to write about high blood pressure, compression socks, senior discounts, the benefits of Metamucil, or how we used to do things in the good old days. I'm not interested in how to "slow down gracefully." I'm already tired of writing about my hobbies (swimming. more swimming. food that's not "health guru approved" and so on).
I think I wiggled under the lowest bar my younger and more interesting self might have set for me when I started to write about the installation of a new floor in our living room. I can't imagine for a moment that anyone thought that was the least bit compelling of a subject.
And then there are the comments. Most of them are fine. A lot of them are wonderful and insightful. But so many are about some favorite camera from the 1970s that you love and which is not even on my radar. Nor does it need to be on my radar. I'm resistant to every comment that tries to shame me into traveling more. I'm not the world's greatest or most fervent traveler but I have been to over a dozen countries and many of those countries I have visited more than a few times. So much we've done that isn't in the vitae. Have you been to Russia? How about the Dominican Republic? Turkey? Jordan? Or even Mexico City (as opposed to the tourist towns on the Mexican coasts...)? And, oh my gosh, I spent most of the 1980s through the early 2000s traveling from one corporate event location to another. From one advertising location to another. Including some annual report jobs that kept me on the road for weeks at a time. All over the world. I'll travel for my own pleasure and on my own schedule now...
My least favorite comments have always been the ones that insist I be nicer. That I overlook dumb content elsewhere. That I cut every content "creator" more slack. But why? There's never a good reason to shy away from delivering deserved criticism. My readers do it to me all the time. Not ad hominem attacks. Just honest critiques written out plainly and without pulling punches.
I've tried to walk away from blogging before but something always pulled me back in. I do love the practice of writing but I think there must be some more effective venues in which to do so. While we can't all be a John Sanford (and here's where a more mercenary/desparate blogger would add an affiliate link to his latest book...) I can do a decent job of writing like Kirk.
Blogs are dying off and the ones that remain are ripe for the contagion of generative A.I. Sooner than you expect you'll inadvertently be reading the musings of a computer program as you savor that morning cup of coffee. And you might never suspect it... We'll all be living in the matrix.
Just a few thoughts on a Monday morning. I'm not angry, sad, disgusted, frustrated or otherwise emotionally stressed. To be frank I've become bored and by extension the writing is getting boring. Long in the tooth. Time, I think to try something else and to leave the photo space to writers who need to generate income from their writing work. And the audiences who will support them.
Writing out loud. Mostly just for me. Feedback not necessary.
3.10.2024
A lot of times it's the necessary nuts and bolts of camera gear that makes the difference in photography.