Thunder, Lightning, Downpours, Oh My! It all adds up to....no swim practice this morning... But that's okay, I had a backlog of retouching to do on some portraits.

Every day is a little different (or a lot different; depending on your perspective). Yesterday was soupy and a bit chilly and it felt like the rain was going to arrive suddenly and with vigor. But it didn't. At least not until my stroll was complete. I'd written something about the sensors in both the Leica SL and Leica M240 cameras and I thought I'd just double check how I perceived files from that set-up since I had some spare time. 

I put a Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 on the SL with an adapter, set the whole mess to operate in aperture priority with auto-ISO, set the exp. comp. to minus (point) .7 and ambled out of the house wearing a hoodie as a jacket. Then I just photographed anything that interested me with the intent of applying my favorite Leica Store Miami SL color profile and seeing how everything looks. I thought of using a bit of the ole A.I. noise reduction but decided just to go older school and let the files end up where they landed. 

Back in the studio, before I set out on my walk, I was compositing portraits of an executive I have known for decades into backgrounds of bustling trade shows. Backgrounds I generated in PhotoShop's version of Generative A.I. I was working hard at matching the color and feel of the foreground portraits with the fabrications in the background but after much trial and error I started to get the hang of it. And a slight layer of gaussian noise over the entire finished files helps cement them, perceptibly, as all of one layer. One solitary scene capture. 

But any time you find yourself in the weeds of a project that requires subjective decisions galore you'll know when it's time to put the project to sleep for a while and take a walk. At least I hope you'll know.

It's probably obvious but the things that make a composite work are have depth to your blur, matching the color palette between foreground and background and, of course, matching the direction of the light in both parts. After that it's all tweaking. 

The industrial and primitive nature of the hulking metal construct that is the original Leica SL (digital) is a nice antidote to a quasi-fantasy existence inside an image processing program. You feel the cement of the sidewalk under the soles of your boots. You feel currents of cool, moist air tickle your face and your exposed hands. You feel the weight of the gear over a shoulder, dangling from a strap when it's not in use. But mostly you see a never ending collection of visual delights as you motivate yourself down the street and around the next corner. There is also a willingness to give up the fiction of complete control one has when sitting tense in front of a computer and its addictive monitor. Stuff might happen. Dynamics in real life might fling a curve ball at you or toss you some delightful little award. Like bright magenta shoes...

And then it's back to work. Back home before the rain hits. And you barely have time to assess the files you've shot before moving on to the next event on your personal agenda. But here's my takeaway:

The SL files and the M240 files alike have a feeling of richness that's missing from more modern sensor cameras. Colors are richer. Shadows deeper. And there's a contrast that's almost like a nostalgic rendering of the best color slide films. Better? Up to you.... Reproducible from other cameras in post production? Sure. What's not? The thing I come back to again and again in the older Leica sensors is their ability to make the color red in a photograph seem both accurate and strangely exciting at the same time. Reason enough to change systems? Naw. You're probably already happy with what you've got. Why rock the boat? 

The café tables on Mañana's Coffee patio are battened down and secured in anticipation of heavy rains and strong winds scheduled into the first few hours of the evening. 

And the chairs. But not the leaves.

I know. I know. More mannequins. But this is different. This time I was responding to the way the clothing draped on the model and  the stark difference in scene color between the model in the window and the product all through the background. A reminder for myself that auto white balance generally sucks and the idea that sometimes you have to decide on one or another white balances in the same scene knowing you can't have both and a compromise between the two is just that.

Whatever I wrote just above applies here as well. Fun to see through the windows to the space around the corner. Guy mannequins sometimes look lame.

Currently in love with red shoes laces. Always in love with the look of industrial gratings. 

Austin, for the last twenty years, has been fascinated with big, outdoor bars and bars with big patios. 

I'm not a fan. If you are going to go out drinking with people it should be either in seedy bars with bad lighting or in the gorgeous lobbies of elegant hotels. Nothing in between. Outside is for swimming, walking, playing. Not for getting hammered. 

Shiny trees in the window of a sushi restaurant. 

Now back at work making trade shows and executive guys look natural and somewhat cool. 

Kinda lonely with one blog in the photo-sphere down for maintenance. I hope MJ is actually taking it easy and getting some restorative rest. Missing those occasional posts about photography....