It's New Year's Eve. Time for retrospection...

Can't wait to see my new series hanging next to Thomas Struth 

at the Museum of Indulgences. Mine is called, "Strange Restrooms

in Strange Places." It's a masterpiece of a concept.

Note the Justin Mott style hat! And the new jacket. Styling for Winter.

If Social Security works out I might even be able to afford gloves...

What an interesting year was 2025. Not one I want to repeat. There was some good and then there were the usual, uncomfortable brushes with mortality, with career changes, and all the geo-political crap. But this here is a photo blog and we're going to skip the regurgitation of the skin cancer surgeries, the tariffs, the wanton corruption of the current ruling party --- along with the horrible mess they've made of the world. We'll just talk here about work, and non-work, and some cameras and some other fun purchases. If that's okay with you. 

We're in our fifth year here without any wholesale equipment system changes. No rush to divest of Leica gear. No need to wring hands and re-learn other system menus and interfaces. I count that as a big win. And something calming for me. It feels like, in some ways, I have conquered the addictive clutches of the gear acquisition syndrome. But not completely...

Short version. I have to say that the particular Leica called the SL2-S makes the best color files I have ever seen come out of a digital camera. Shooting with it makes the process of getting good, rich, accurate colors almost bulletproof. I find myself grabbing that camera much more often than the other 10 Leicas strewn about the studio. It's really that good. I reach for an older SL2 when I think the extra resolution will be helpful. I reach for an M camera when I want to feel like an artist, it's bright daylight outside, and I'm feeling fifty millimeter-ish. Channeling my inner Elliot Erwitt. Just a bit.

I bought two Leica cameras in 2025. When the bottom fell out of the used SL2 market I picked up a second one for a really low price. It's in perfect condition and goes along with my philosophy of having two identical work cameras. Appropriate because for the last five years my original SL2 has been my full time work camera. The second camera to join me this year was the Leica DLUX8 which I have absolutely no regrets about purchasing. It's small, light, very capable and easy to bring along anywhere. 

I think my favorite job of the year was the one I did back in the Spring, in Santa Fe. It was a banking conference for the seventh largest banking organization in the USA. The keynote speaker was from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. A business school set up and funded by a great, great, uncle from my father's side of the family. The banking part of the family. The presentations were lively. I flew in and out of the local airport and got an upgrade to first class on American Airlines. The entire contingent stayed at the Eldorado Hotel which was comfortable and convenient. The food service was right on the money and my room was right next to the swimming pool. Who could ask for more?

The highlight of the trip, beyond the paycheck, was meeting world renowned author, John Sanford, for lunch at the diner on the Plaza. That man has more energy and more interesting things to talk about than just about anyone I've ever met. That's real fun. He even took a photo of me with my new DLUX8. Now a collectible photo, by default. 

I did buy a few more lenses this year; just to round out the collection. One of my photo friends dropped a Leica R series, 35-70mm f4 ROM lens, in mint condition, into my hands for the very affordable price of $600. It's an amazing lens and I used it to make the two images below. There's even a profile for the lens in Lightroom Classic. No bad for a product from 25 years ago. Is it good? No, it's great!

After a thorough testing of the Thypoch 28mm f1.4 lens I'd bought earlier I went ahead and bought both the 50mm f1.4 and the 75mm f1.4 Simera lenses as well. They are both really good; especially for the reasonable prices. 

I have divested myself of several tripods, three big Nanlite LED panels, a bunch of audio gear I bought when I was making video content, three enormous and weighty C-Stands with arms, three large, air damped light stands and a bunch of smaller flash equipment --- all since I decided to retire from the field back in August. It feels good and now there's more room in the studio. 

Yesterday I made one last purchase of gear for the year. I bought one Nanlite FS-300-C RGB fixture. An LED monolight, if you will. When I wrote the 2010 book about LED lighting for professional photographers there were no RGB LED lighting fixtures available anywhere outside of Hollywood. At least none that were available for less than the price of a new Toyota Corolla. I'd been reading up about the two technologies involved in RGB LED units and decided to see how much more accurate the color could be by upgrading from a typical bi-color LED unit to one of the newer RGB versions. Having a magenta/green control alone is probably worth getting one. B&H had the 300 watt unit for sale at nearly half price and it was too good an offer to pass up. It gets here this week and I'll most certainly experiment with it and write about it in short order. I hope it fits in well with my multiple daylight balanced units and also my 300 watt bi-color model. Or....if they don't match well I could become a "one light" portrait shooter. 

When I say that I've retired I think a lot of readers consider this a binary decision: all on or all off. But it's more nuanced than that. I'm happy to volunteer if the project is fun, and supports a non-profit that I like. I'm also more than happy to collaborate with friends on fun, personal projects where none of us get paid. And, if the budget is enormously huge and the potential client remarkably creative, and the fun quotient off the charts, I can be dragged back in to some sort of commercial project. As the last James Bond movie declares in its title: NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN.

But I am no longer actively pursuing commercial photography work. No more promos. No mailers. No phone calls and, thank God!, no more Zoom Calls (a torture tool surely invented by Satan). 

Below are two images I took this afternoon. I'd been getting ready for New Year's Eve celebrations at the house and decided to take a break and walk through the Austin downtown area that I've been using to make photos that have succeeded in boring many VSL readers since 2009. Just one last circuit before the new year. I have other images to show from today's walk but I wanted to show two images shot seconds apart. 

To one side of me, close in, are five big incandescent light bulbs. Bare, not shielded or controlled. The rest of the room I shot in was dark. I noticed when I looked through the EVF that there was a lot of veiling flare because of the lights and the lack of a lens hood (the curse of buying old lenses with odd filter sizes and no ready supply of accessories).  I added some contrast in post to the offending image. 

The image just below this flare-y image was taken with all the controls and stuff at exactly the same settings. The only difference, as you can see, is that I used my hand to shield the lens from the light that was striking it directly. Instantly the flare was (mostly) gone and the contrast in the image elevated. 

Just a reminder that lens hoods are good. Lens hoods should never sit, reversed on a lens that's in use (horrible, amateur move), and that, in the absence of a lens hood, one can and should use anything available to "improve the lie." *

*I think that's what they say in golf. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong. 

"....Stop! In the name of love..."

One sad aspect of the past year was having to sit out nearly a month of much needed swim practice. Two weeks for a surgery on my beautiful face and another two weeks to recover from removing a pesky tumor on my left shoulder blade. The time out was pure hell. Not just for me but for everyone around me as I complained incessantly. Loudly. Unrelentingly. All that wasted energy.... Swimming keeps me from being --- whatever.

Did I swim this morning? On the last day of the year? You bet I did. I showed up half an hour early. While the pool will be closed tomorrow there was some talk amongst three of us (the more dedicated or renegade swimmers) of accessing the key in the lock box on the main door to the pool (two partners in crime are former board members who know the code...) and surreptitiously doing our own, self-guided workout tomorrow in the early morning. In the chilly dark. Before witnesses wake up. But it's only talk right now...

*******************************************************************************

Some worry that by skipping the pleasures of clients and their projects I will become complacent, lazy, unmotivated and will rot away here at the VSL compound. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have an ever growing list of things I want to get done, things I need to get done, and places I want to see...now! More to discuss in 2026. 

I hope everyone has a safe and happy last day of 2025. Hey! 2025! Don't let the door hit you on the way out.