Mellow day at work. Easy client. More talking than photographing.

 An email came a couple of days ago. It was from an interesting client. A small, private investment firm with a plus-sized amount of capital. They are not the most frequent of clients but they do call once or twice a year to have me photograph people in their organization who are moving up. They needed a nice portrait of their new CFO. They called for the usual reason; they liked the previous ones I'd done for them and thought it would be a good idea if the basic styles matched so nothing looked out of place on their website.  

We didn't discuss price or terms or agreement papers. We only discussed scheduling. Today was a convenient day for both parties so we set up an appointment at their location for 11 a.m. It was Monday when we booked the appointment. I came down with a Summer cold the next morning. I was going to cancel but I'm pretty healthy and I was confident I'd heal quickly and be in good shape for the shoot. 

When I woke up this morning the major symptoms were mostly gone and my energy was returning. I felt fine with nothing really to show for my efforts at being sick other than a slight sniffle. 

I have done location/environmental portraits for this client at least seven times before so I knew exactly what I wanted to bring along; gear-wise. A couple of flashes, a couple of stands, a couple of umbrellas and a couple of cameras. And, oh yeah, a couple of lenses. Everything fit into one easy to move rolling case and one stand bag. A simple to manage package that I could get up the stairs at the client's office in one trip. 

My house and office are about four miles from the client's building in the hills just to the west. At 10:45 am the traffic was light and the drive over was pleasant enough. I got there a bit early so I spent a few minutes returning emails, in my car,  in the parking lot.

I was greeted warmly by the office manager, Vanessa. We've always had a nice rapport. We talked about the things long-tenured Austinites talk about. The traffic. The ever changing street names. Etc. She asked if I needed anything to drink. Water? Coffee? Soft drink? I told her I was fine but still, it was a sweet gesture.

The plan was to set up in their conference room. It has a nice view of undeveloped central Texas hill country. When I got to the office there was a meeting in progress in that location but Vanessa assured me that the team knew I was coming this morning and would be out at 11 sharp. Sure enough, when the hands on my watch hit eleven the person I would be photographing came to find me, introduce himself, and to let me know that the room was at my disposal. I asked him to give me 15 or 20 minutes to set up and he walked off to trade out his polo shirt for a dress shirt, jacket and tie. 

His assistant dropped by to see if I needed anything. Water? Coffee? Snacks? Was the temperature in the room okay? Very thoughtful. But I really didn't need anything at the moment. 

As I stated above I was traveling really light. I set up two light stands, put small, electronic flashes on them both and then attached a 45 inch white umbrella with a black backing on one and a 60 inch white umbrella with a black backing on the other. Both were controlled and triggered by a Godox X1Pro trigger dedicated to the L mount Leica cameras. Worked fine. But it should since I was shooting in a manual mode. 

I pulled a Leica SL2 out of the rolling case and put a 90mm Sigma lens on it. I set the camera to shoot Jpeg and DNG, mostly because I wanted to shoot in the 1:1 format and I remembered that the camera would show the cropped square and Lightroom would show, and keep, the same cropped squares in post. It was refreshing to compose all the shots as squares. Such a lovely balance to the frame as opposed to the weirdness of 3:2. 

The CFO came back in after I'd set up the lights and figured out how I wanted to compose the shots. He was soft-spoken and so very easy to work with. A guy in his mid-50s who was in very good physical shape and well grounded. And, as small town Austin would have it, his previous employer is the husband of one of my swim coaches. Once we figured that out we were off and running. We never ran out of stuff to talk about and how could I even think we would since his company's raison d'être is financial investments and we happen to be living through an incredibly interesting time for anyone who is interesting in keeping and growing money?

That's the funny thing about my portrait sessions these days. We spend more time figuring out who we know in common and how life is playing out than we ever used to in the days when just getting lights and cameras set up seemed to be a big and complicated undertaking. At our respective ages and our levels in our respective businesses there is so much common experience, and for long time Austin residents, so many common people intersections. It's sometimes like we're living in a huge Venn diagram. 

I had positioned my subject in front of a wall of windows so I could use the hill country landscape as a background. If you've lit into glass you probably know that it can be tricky. At least it seemed that way back in the days of Polaroid test materials. Now, it seems easy enough. The only "pool" I play is with lighting and I'm getting really good at predicting what's going to reflect in the glass behind the guy. Really good. Now it's getting the ratio between interior light and exterior light that mostly comes into play. Made especially fun if the sun is going in and out of the clouds in the background. But the SL2 is a beast when it comes to dynamic range and I know if can get any detail at all in the background it's child's play to recover the backgrounds --- if I need to. I'd rather get everything balanced in camera by increasing or decreasing the flash exposure to compensate for the exterior changes. But like the life jacket in the speedboat, it always feels safer knowing Lightroom tools are there. 

When I got good images and good expressions in the first location we moved back a bit, re-comped and re-lit to get a different background. And then we moved again. And finally, one more move, which gave the client and me four different looks to choose from. 

The CFO and I continued talking about things like Swiss Government bonds, currency devaluations, re-figuring local rate of return when taking international trade into consideration and...as usual...the flux of home prices in Austin housing. Once I finished packing up the gear (made simple by dint of its small footprint) my client rushed off to get me one of his business cards and asked me to say "hi" to my swim coach for him. 

I arrived for the shoot at 11 am. I left the offices with photography part of the job complete by 12:15. The fee is embarrassing. But you charge what the market will bear. Having clients who understand the business side is advantageous for everyone. They understand the cost to do things right and to work with people they both trust and enjoy hanging out with. No complaints here.

The SL2 is a fine camera with which to make portraits. Especially so if you are a fan of the square. As I am. I'm mulling over getting an SL3 just for the extra resolution. But really... 47 megapixels is already a bit of overkill for most usages and with tariffs coming this might not be the time to pay list for one of Leica's pricier offerings. 

It's now 4 in the afternoon and I'm almost completely over that pesky cold. I just booked another, similar portrait job with my oral surgery practice clients. Several versions of a studio portrait and one lifestyle portrait somewhere around Austin. Couple that with an out of town event later on in D.C. and I'm finding the my better clients are making any idea of retiring harder and harder. Ah well. At least I enjoy my work. 

I used to think the most fun part of my job was opening the envelopes and pulling out the checks but now I am convinced it's having the valuable opportunity to have insightful conversations with very interesting people. Not just once in a while but every time I leave the house on business. And that's really cool.