The VSL Blog was offline for maintenance. We're back---- but on a more limited schedule. Photography is quickly becoming less and less interesting to write about...

It was interesting to read that this will be the first year in which over a trillion images will be uploaded to the web (See M.J.'s column from yesterday). 94% of which are either being done with cellphone cameras or created out of the ether by artificial intelligence. When you consider the dilution of individual photographic work it's beyond daunting. It's demoralizing and seems to make individual efforts like those of current VSL ramblings mostly pointless. 

In the first two thirds of VSL's tenure many of the posts were written about day-to-day jobs that I had undertaken. I discussed what the goals of the jobs were, how we planned them and what gear we used. I also included descriptions of the processes. Most popular of the posts seemed to be the one's where I wrote about photographing theatrical dress rehearsals for marketing. And what made those articles interesting had a lot to do with the evolution of digital cameras from noise rich solutions to, progressively, low noise champions. The upgrade to a new camera or a new camera system was more important than it might be today because one could see the progress of new sensors as we were able to shoot at higher and higher ISOs with relative impunity. Theater documentation was a small niche but it was interesting to the people considering upping their camera's game for low noise performance. And people look more fun in costumes and under stage lighting.

So much changed in my practice of photography back in 2020 when Covid hit. And when we started ramping back up it became apparent to me, and a large number of my peers, that the game had changed profoundly. Companies were reticent to spend the same kind of money they had before. Quick videos took over a lot of the heavy lifting in online advertising that had been the broad-based bread and butter of our photo industry. By 2023 A.I. was starting to make inroads in a way that was not unexpected. Ad agencies and typical end users of photography could use a phone photo as a template for a full on post production production and create their own work to use for clients. They were no longer constrained by usage fees, copyrights etc. 

I've spent a good part of the last two years backing away from the business of photography entirely. I still enjoy taking photographs but I am not longer as connected to the paradigm we worked under in the "old" days ( Pre-2020 ). Back then we were still pursuing the Boy Scout theory of the craft in which we owned a whole tool kit of different kinds of lighting, cameras and lenses. We owned specific stuff for specific kinds of projects and never thought that one set of gear could do everything generalist photographers might need. And in most cases we had duplicates or back-ups for each piece of vital gear. So while we might not use longer zooms for much else I did depend on them for theatrical production photographs--- live on the stage in front of me. And since we were committing to that practice we owned (at least) two. Always being sure to have a redundant back-up on hand. We were...Prepared.

Same with lights. Flashes for some work. Continuous light for video. LEDs for a hodge hodge of situations in which we wanted to use cool running continuous sources. And then support materials (lights and modifiers) for every permutation. There was a certain amount of churn in the gear as battery powered flashes got smaller and lighting solutions got better. LEDs improved by leaps and bounds from the time I wrote the original book about LED lighting. And, as we touched on above, camera performance kept improving. 

Now all of this redundancy and inventory for specific types of photography seems a bit pointless. Most of the projects we undertake are simple portraits or running documentation of processes or events that can be handled by any number of inexpensive cameras and a small selection of lenses. As clients clamor for more and more "authenticity" we have come to understand that authenticity really means less polish, more available light, and a general disregard for noise in an image. Gone are the days when we did lots of day long, week long or month long projects like annual reports which required a big hunk of planning and logistics as well as travel and days spent working to shot lists of things that art directors might want to include in the final brochure. The kinds of jobs I now get are more along the lines of a law firm or medical practice asking me to photograph one subject and sometimes get fancy and drop in backgrounds that we might shoot separately. The most recent job done for an oral surgery practice was done completely with a basic, full frame camera and one 50mm lens. Most are jobs that could be done in several hours...

But doing easy-to-produce jobs like these is hardly the material for exciting writing and riveting reading. And I can only walk through Austin looking for good coffee and different images for so long before it becomes old hat for everyone. The push back on mannequins is already disheartening...

While some bloggers need to keep writing, and pretending that this is all fun and vital work, to make a living I've never depended on the blog for any income. Or future jobs. But I can't think of any of my art director/ad agency friends even read the blog --- although they all like to see work on Instagram --- for the moment.

What exciting thing did I do today? I went to swim practice and then came back home to deal with the death of our home's central air conditioning. It's fixed for the moment but I decided to go ahead and drop $15K on a new system (includes the heater...) since the old one is going on 20 years of service and that's a long and rewarding tenure for an air conditioner in Texas. The $15K didn't come from affiliate income or Patreon members, I wrote a check for it. (Yes my UK readers! People still take personal checks. For cars and air conditioners. Amazing!!!). No big excitement. No thrills or spills. After the current AC got a few bits of maintenance today I feel like it will keep running until Monday. If not, I have an office just 12 feet from the house that's well air conditioned as a .... back-up. Or maybe it will be time for a stay-cation at one of the glorious hotels...

With nothing fun or exciting to work on and write about, and nothing really happening on the streets of Austin in the dead of Summer, and my general laziness, it seems rather silly to continue trying to find reasons to keep blogging on an earnest and every day schedule. 

I have surgery for the cancer on my face scheduled for July 1st. I have several trips planned for post suture removal and general scar recovery. I have way too many cameras begging me for attention. And I'm unsure that there is even an audience for the kind of work I'll want to do on my travels. 

I think we'll just coast for a while and see what happens. Usually I like to be binary and when I decide I am finished with something I shut it down and walk away to start something else. But many of my readers let me know that they value the archive that exists here. Out of 6053 blog posts I do get things right every once in a while. So I'll leave the blog as it is for now and maintain the right to come back on my own schedule and add things as I see fit. Check in and see what's new when you have a chance but be forewarned that the days of a post or two a day are coming to an end. Jeez. I'm gonna to be 70 in the Fall. I've got some other priorities to get to. 

The blog is here if you want to re-read some old stuff. There might be new stuff from time to time. That's all I've got for you today. 

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And no! I won't be documenting the air conditioning install or writing about it. That's just boring. I'll have an assistant here to shepherd the project through but I'll be out having a fun lunch somewhere and hitting a gallery or two. I expect to come back home to a chilly house served by a more efficient and "green" unit. 

Bored just writing about air conditioners. And heaters. And installations. Now heading out to give one of the rangefinder cameras some love...

 

Juliet. In the studio. Photographed with a Fuji GFX 50S.

 

I like working in the studio and I like working in black and white. It's fun. 

This portrait was a "non-work" portrait in that we did it just for fun. I used to swim with Juliet but she moved to pursue a career in the arts. The photograph is a fun memento. 

Photographed earlier this year.

Can a 50mm lens be.....too big?

Five years ago I bought a 50mm f1.4 S-Pro lens made by Panasonic. On the bottom side of the lens (when mounted on the camera) it claimed to be "Leica Certified." That 50mm was the biggest, heaviest and least fun lens to carry around that I could imagine. My memory of it is that it outweighed Leica's own gargantuan 24-90mm zoom lens for the L mount cameras --- and that lens is legendary for its bulk and weight. 

The Panasonic 50mm f1.4 was, at the time, the best "standard" or "normal" lens I had ever used. When one put it on a tripod and paid attention to technique the lens delivered an amazing performance. But in less than a year I sold it and never looked back. Mostly because I came to realize that the price/performance/handling equation was fatally flawed for most users. Myself included. 

 When I tried to use the Pana 50 monster for street photography it was perhaps the least discreet prime lens I had ever used. Less subtle than an 85mm f1.4. Less visually unassuming, almost, than a typical 70-200mm f4.0 zoom. And it dwarfed even the full size SL bodies and Panasonic S1R bodies on which I tried to use it. Made those cameras part of a package that was on the outside of the curve of happy use.

So even though it was the most amazing optical performer I'd ever come across it pushed me to look for much, much smaller options. And it helped me realize that once I stopped down just about any 50mm lens to f4.0 or f5.6 any visual differences were truly masked by expediency of actual use and/or the fact that great 50mm lenses aren't always just about micro contrast or edge performance. In fact, the first lens I bought after selling the Panasonic was a Voigtlander 50mm APO for around half the new price of the former. It is about 1/5th the size of the Panasonic. But even wide open, at least in handheld camera photography, it is competitive. Stopped down to f2.8 or f4.0 there's no discernible difference for most users. Myself included.

And I bought the Voigtlander 50mm to use on a Leica SL type camera even though that lens is made for native use on an M series rangefinder camera. The reason? Because it delivered high quality images while making the SL2 camera seem almost agile. It lowered the weight of the whole package by a lot. The camera and lens didn't strain at the strap. It was a nice package. It's still a nice package.

Since those experiences with the Panasonic 50mm f1.4 I've shied away from buying "ultimate" performance lenses or lenses that are tweaked without compromise for optical performance over handling. I own Panasonic's wonderfully cheap and lightweight 50mm f1.8 and I find it to be a great lens. Especially so since it's nearly always available new in the US for under $400. It's a delight because it's mostly made of high quality plastics so it weighs next to nothing (comparatively speaking). It's the handling that makes it worthwhile but it's no slouch at making great images...

I also picked up a Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 Planar for the M mount and I use it occasionally on the bigger cameras for the same reasons as the VM Voigtlander. Small, light but effective. The Zeiss and the Voigtlander lenses each have their own looks. Both are delightfully uncomplicated and robust. I bought the Zeiss used for around $500 and if it gets damaged from accidents or overwhelming user error I would be less sad than if a similar fate fell to a $2200 Panasonic 50mm f1.4. So much needless cost.

There has been a trend among companies that make lenses to build no hold barred, optical masterpieces without regard really for price, size or weight. The trend might have started with the original Zeiss 50mm Otus f1.4 from Zeiss. It was huge, dense, massive and priced outrageously. Then came the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens. Slow to focus but super sharp and contrasty and equipped with a complex optical formula that perhaps goaded other brands to start responding in kind. I owned the original Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art series lens for the L mount system and while its optical performance was something to write home about it's focusing performance was horrible and, again, it weighed down a camera bag like an anchor. 

Now it seems that everyone's high speed 50mm lenses are endurance tests in a lens mount for photographers who have to carry gear all day. Is the trade off of high performance enough to justify high prices and possible hernias? That's something every photographer must decide for themselves but if I was about to walk through a large city to take photos for 10-12 hours a day, weeks at a time, I know I'd rather have a most humble, old Canon 50mm f1.8 FD manual focusing lens on an adapter than an Otus or an Art. But only if those were the only choices. 

My first grab for a lens on the mirrorless SL cameras is the Voigtlander APO, followed by the 50mm M Zeiss, followed by a 50mm Zeiss Planar f1.4 ZF (manual Nikon F version) on an adapter, or the Canon 50mm f1.4 FD also on an adapter, or the smaller, cheaper, lighter Panasonic 50mm f1.8. You can keep the big ones. I don't see enough difference to put up with the overkill lens design philosophy. It just doesn't work for me. 

Yes. A lens can be too big. And too big will slow you down, tire you out and make for a miserable shooting experience. Unless you can relegate it to tripod use but.....really....a fast 50mm stuck on a tripod? Just doesn't make much sense. 

Caught out in the rain with my camera. Not a problem. Jo's Coffee to the rescue.

Coffee in focus and taco out of focus.

New café at the downtown library.

It was "Austin Summer Hot and Sticky" when I left the house this afternoon around 2 pm to go and take some random photographs on South Congress Ave. A sweaty Father's Day walk with that new 75mm f2.0 lens I picked up a week or so ago. As I walked north on South Congress I was already starting to perspire. By the time I got to Jo's I was hot. 

I ran into my friend, David, there and we chatted while live country dance music played in the background and people with lots of tattoos drove by the front of the coffee stand on loud motorcycles. All of a sudden the sun dimmed, gray clouds rolled in accompanied by stronger and stronger wind gusts. The sky to the north turned dark gray. Zone 2 or 3. Seconds later the rain got into the act and for the next half hour we had an amazing storm complete with near horizontal rain and wind that dispersed the rain under all the sheltering roofs and soaked the assembled crowd with mist. 

The band unplugged their electrical instruments and amplifiers and rushed to get their gear out of the downpour. I instinctively covered my camera and lens with my hat --- just to minimize droplet fear. 

And then, an inch of rain to our credit and twenty degrees cooler temperatures  with it, the rain stopped and the winds died down. Of course David and I were shooting photos with water resistant cameras but old habits die hard and my gut reaction to rain on cameras is always to cover them up. Especially if I'm just out having fun and a client isn't there as a rationalization to power through a storm no matter what. 

After the atmosphere settled down I headed home to play with photos and then clean up and get ready for a Father's Day dinner with B&B at a new (to us) restaurant over in Central Austin. We have high hopes....

So pre-rain and post rain images below. Click on them to make them bigger. 

Rain drops in the pool at the San José Motel.

A MacBeth color chart painted on a wall for the convenience of photographers

and cinematographers in the area. Gotta nail that white balance. Right?

And then? Back home.  

Going through the files. Thinning out the archival preponderance of endless photographic stuff that most likely would never see the light of day again....

It's always interesting to see just how many photographs one has taken over the course of both a business career coupled with having the same pursuit as a passionate hobby. We're well passed the million photo mark over here. In fact, just in Blogger's attached galleries for this blog site we've got stored away 36,363 images. We've used most of them over the course of the last 16 years to populate the visual component of the Visual Science Lab. There are about 700,000 more files sitting in various galleries on Smugmug. And on 30+ different hard drives (migrating constantly) we've logged another 1.1 million images. And none of this counts the black and white and color negatives, as well as the various format transparencies that exist as film. That's a lot of stuff to store and keep track of and the sad or emotionally debilitating aspect of this mass collection of work is the fact that only the barest fraction of it will get re-seen, re-purposed or re-used. It just won't. 

So, year by year I resolve to winnow out everything I won't mess with ever again or even look at ever again. The easiest way is to go for the low hanging fruit. If we shot headshots for a tech company 20 years ago and that company has either gone away or shuttered it makes no sense at all to keep thousands of files of people who are now 20 years older (if they are still with us...) on my hard drives and in the cloud. It's a clean sweep. Everything in those folders gets trashed. Same with client files that aren't very creative and which were done 20 years ago. And in my personal work if I didn't enjoy a photo shoot I'm dumping all the original files as well as all the finished files. If I didn't like something the first time around chances are I'm not going to like it after the passage of time. If I was to ever get around to looking at the work in that category. Into the void it goes.

Some work gets a pass and will be around (hopefully) until such a time as I am no longer functional and the big dumpster comes to clear everything out of the office. These include most of the work I did on film, all the family photographs. All the beautiful photos of beautiful girlfriends. All the vacation photographs. All my favorite models' photos. And the photos of eccentric trips to places like Rome or St. Petersburg. And these already make up quite a big stack, metaphorically speaking. 

I'm getting to the same point with cameras. For some reason I keep buying extra copies of my favorite Leicas but now I don't have any compelling reason to sell off the older ones I purchased four or five years ago. I like having a bunch of spares around but it's totally illogical. Someday I'll figure out how to let go of most of them but right now there's no pressing motivation to do so. I'm good at getting rid of lighting gear and studio support gear but less able part with cameras and lenses. There's gotta be a good therapist out there somewhere...

I photographed the model above as a test. I had just read Leonardo da Vinci's daybooks and loved the idea of huge, top mounted diffusion between a model and the light source. So I tried to replicate the look in the studio. I think the experiment might have worked better in color. But it is a very different look for me. 

Staying cool and finishing up post processing on projects today. Mostly for friends and family. Shying away from accepting new work stuff that will lock in my schedule too far in the future. I'm booked for the 1st of July for surgery on that pesky skin cancer on my left cheek. I've been through this before and I'm pretty sure I'll be more or less useless for the first couple of days, post surgery. Not because of anything physical but from the emotional stress caused by the idea of surgery. Then it will be at least ten days out until I can get back in the pool. And then there is the healing after removal of stitches. So, basically, half of July is shot to hell. It seems obvious to me that there are many long walks in my future as well as much Netflix and Apple TV binging in my near future. That and learning how to effect food deliveries to the house....  Maybe I should take up golf. Or, God Forbid, pool.

Speaking of food, B&B took me to a restaurant called, "Carve" for Father's Day yesterday. It was a very large space and, given the holiday, it was filled to capacity at 7 pm. It was loud as only restaurants on holidays and special occasions can be. Lots of small children. Amateur restauranting at its finest. 

But the restaurant amazed me. They handled so many parties and, at least in our experience, never dropped the ball. And, finally, I have found a restaurant that does flaming desserts, flamed and finished table side. So much fun. Hello Cherries Jubilee! I can hardly wait to go back on a quiet Tuesday evening and see how much more aurally calm Carve will be then. But it's a comfortable spot. Not snotty or pretentious. Geared to the middle class. Something we find comfortable. 

A fun and happy Father's Day celebrated at the end by a viewing of the movie, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" which is in fact a sweet and endearing look at the last days of Life Magazine through the movie magic of Ben Stiller. It's an amazing movie that gets better with every viewing. Ah.

Monochrome all around us. My Leica "Monochrom" camera. It's really "dual use" capable.

 

Enchanted Rock State Wildlife Area.

Fourteen miles outside of Fredericksburg, Texas.

I'm not a big fan of black and white landscape photographs ---- for the most part. There are too many shortcuts in most image processing for the genre. I nearly always see increased contrast, "amplified" sky tonalities and very high sharpness as part of the mix. But sometimes it's fun to play with files on has shot in color, in raw, just to see what they might bring to the table as black and white images. 

When I went to Enchanted Rock to hike and photograph on Wednesday last week I knew I wanted to start with color raw files no matter which direction I might finally go in. There is just so much more potential to play with the files than when one shoots solely with a monochrome camera or when using monochrome file settings in combination with Jpegs. 

There was no question that the files would end up being very sharp and noise free. After all, I was shooting in Texas daylight which meant I could keep my chosen camera for the day at its lowest ISO (200) and I could use one of my sharpest and best corrected lenses for the M cameras; the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO. For the majority of my photos I used f8.0 and a shutter speed of either 1/500th or 1/1,000th of a second. Not likely to be affected by user inflicted vibrations and nothing within the frames was moving.

While the lens is extremely sharp the sensor in the camera is reputed to use a very thin filter stack which translates again into even more resolution and sharpness. Very much a win, win.

When it comes to monochrome landscape shots the nature of the sky is important to the overall look. An overcast sky with no differentiating details usually looks dead in landscapes. But worst of all are the bald, white skies one sometimes gets. I felt lucky that a storm had moved through hours earlier and the sky was constantly changing which gave me a range of looks. The third and fourth frames were done early in the day when more rain was threatening. The top two images were done later in the morning as the skies started to clear. 

All the files were processing in Adobe Lightroom using a simple conversion to black and white. These may be your cup of tea but they may not and that's okay. I don't profess to being a master landscape shooter nor a post production genius. I just had fun shooting the images and playing around with them in post. 

Shooting landscapes from the hip. Shooting everything from the hip. Oh, my mistake, I actually looked through the finder. It just made more sense.

 

A few more images from my hiking adventure yesterday at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, outside of Fredericksburg, Texas by about 14 miles. Wonderful place for a rock climb or a challenging hike. Bring a camera, there's a lot to see....

A lot of vlogging street shooters are presenting their arguments these days for shooting from the hip. In other words trying to be a furtive and secretive about taking photos of people who are unaware they are inadvertent subjects of the photographer. Okay. So I tried the same thing with landscapes and all I got were crooked horizons and misplaced focus. Fair enough. It seems like the same problem one sees with so much street work. 

I will say though that none of the landscapes I saw yesterday were intimidated or made to feel awkward and abused by my camera's shoot from the hip gaze. The hills and rocks and flowers just took it in stride. 

While I have not had much practice shooting from the hip I have found, in the short term, that I'm not comfortable with the practice --- when it comes to landscapes. It's the ole Heisenberg Theory Catch-22. Observation changing the object. Or maybe it's Schrodinger's Cat all over again...never sure if I'm getting a great shot or a dead cat.  I'm no physicist so I don't know. Or, perhaps I can't know...

I also tried to hold the camera at arm's length and squint through the bright light at the screen on the back of my camera. The way a man might hold a really stinky diaper as far from his face as possible while running to place it in a bucket of other stinky diapers. But that didn't work well either. 

The optical finder at the top left of the camera (as you correctly hold it) was a much better option; at least for me. But regardless of approach or technique I certainly had fun shooting Not Mannequins yesterday. It was just different enough to feel novel to me. Maybe camera makers designed eye level finders because they work so well for so many of the conditions under which we find ourselves taking photographs. Or maybe they just like including unnecessary features...  I love my Sigma fp. I just wish it had come with a very small, very easy to use, EVF. But then again, that's why I use rangefinder cameras and EVF based cameras for so much of my work. 

Going all "Stinky Baby Diaper" hold just doesn't hold as much appeal for me. But YMMV.  

The branch that looked like a snake at first glance...

I stopped here to drink water from one of my three water bottles (all reusable, none disposable).

I stopped here to eat some trail mix. It was good. Little pieces of dried mangos, walnuts, almonds, peanuts and dried pumpkin seeds. Instant energy with a long energy buffer built in. 

I stopped here to finish drinking my coffee from the coffee shop in Fredericksburg, Texas.

All photos produced with a Leica M240 ME and the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO lens. The VM.

The backpack. The Rock.

Three or four years ago I had some cash burning a hole in my pocket and B&H was having a sale on these Gitzo photo backpacks. Couldn't help myself so I bought one. It came with lots of padded, velcro panels inside. Way too many and way too padded. Enough protection even for the most frightened of camera packers. I used the backpack a couple of times and then relegated it to shelf duty. Where it sat vigilantly for the past few years. 

When I decided to make the trek to Enchanted Rock to hike the "mountain" and the trails I glanced over and saw this poor thing languishing on the Metro shelving and thought to resuscitate it and rehabilitate its inner workings. By which I mean I pulled out all of the pillow like dividers and left only the padded shell of its sides intact. It felt much better and it because much, much more useable as a day pack for climbing and hiking. It packed more.  And it weighed less. 

Inside I packed three one liter bottles of water, an extra shirt, extra socks, a small first aid kit (happily, not needed), a bag of trail mix, a big bottle of SPF 50 sunscreen, a couple of hand towels, a Leica DLUX8 camera along with its companion spare batteries, my phone, a nice Kershaw lock blade pocket knife, a small notebooks and a couple of pens. 

You can strap lots of stuff to this backpack but all I carried on the outside was a big kerchief for sweaty hand wiping. I kept one of the bottles of water shoved into a side pocket. I came to like this backpack a lot of hiking because it has a waist belt and if you adjust it property it takes some of the weight off your shoulders and puts it on your hips --- making it all feel as though it has a lower center of gravity.

I'll definitely keep it handy in the future. I just won't put those damn dividers in again. Now it's just right. 

When climbing steep rock make sure your shoes have great, grippy soles. Shiny soles on the shoes just means you'll slip and slide all over the rock. Especially the parts that are still damp from the rain.

A good backpack is one that just becomes invisible and well balanced. 

"Be Prepared."