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.

I had lunch with an old friend recently. To say he is currently into Leicas is a supreme understatement. He picked up this one last quarter.

 

How old is this camera? Well, it's from the time between the UR-Leica (the first prototype) and the time at which they made the lenses removable and interchangeable. Yeah. He brought it along to lunch. It reminded me that one of the early screw mount Leica's super powers was its incredibly small size!!!

No wonder the company revolutionized photography. 

The machining on this camera is wonderful and very precision. And yes, this is a working camera.

Amazing. Close to 100 years old.

Just had to share.

The studio gear inventory takes a hit. Yet again.

 I was at the hat shop on S. Congress Avenue again this week. Just walking around with that little Leica CL and that wacky 50mm f0.95 lens I wrote about yesterday. It was a busy retail day and the fine weather pulled people out of their homes and SUVs and sent them out into the wilds of urbania to try their hands at window shopping, zany coffee buying and general passeggiata activities. We'd just say that the sidewalks were packed. I stopped by the hat shop to get out of the stream and because they do such a very, very good job at merchandizing. Even stuff that would look terrible on me looks great on the displays. And I like the way hats look in photographs.

I was lining up a terrific shot when a young woman wearing a beautiful, gray Stetson, classic cowboy hat sidled up and asked me about my camera. I told her it was a Leica CL and she told me that one of her own film cameras was the Leica/Minolta CLE. I asked if she had the original 40mm lens that was generally sold with that camera and she said yes. This, of course, led us down the path of talking photography and all sorts of related topics....like filmmaking. 

As our conversation progressed I learned that she was very interested in film and video and had just taken several courses at a workshop space created by famous Austin movie director, Rick Linklater. At 33 my new photo friend just had resigned from teaching and switched careers, hoping to make photography and movie-making her focus. As we were wrapping up our conversation (because the mannequins are not going to photograph themselves!!!) I remembered that I had three big Nanlite LED panels that I was bent on getting rid of. I asked if she could use some LED lights. She did. 

We met at Medici Coffee in her neighborhood this morning at 9 a.m., chatted about the industry for a while and then I helped her load the three big Nanlites LED panels into her car. I also passed on three stout, air-damped light stands to go with the lights. She was very pleased and most appreciative but not nearly as appreciative as me since I found someone to take stuff off my hands who will really get good use out of the gear. And I now have additional more empty space in my studio. Which was my primary goal. 

While this certainly doesn't fall under the concept of mentoring I'm pretty sure it counts for the concept of helping to support emerging artists. 

It felt good to pass on gear to someone who is clearly on fire about being a visual artist. It feels good to get rid of more stuff. Kind of like the idea of "Swedish Death Cleaning" only more specialized; as in: "Swedish Death Cleaning for Photographers." While I'm not planning on dying anytime soon the basic concept here is to not leave a pile of unwanted stuff for your loved ones to deal with when you exit the fixer of life and go into the print washer of the great beyond. It takes decades of planning, I am told, to do a really clean, archival exit.

More stuff is heading to the chopping block soon. And I'm finding that giving stuff away is like losing weight. You feel better, your space is less cluttered, your pants fit right, you look better and you've winnowed down the number of subroutines your brain needs to make when you need to make choices between different piles of equipment. 

The weather here turned chilly in the middle of the night. It was 80° yesterday. It's going to stay in the 40s all day today. Fine by me. I got to try out a new jacket! 

OT: I did buy myself something special for Christmas. In fact, I bought twelve copies.

 I like pens but I love pencils. Most people's experiences with pencils revolved around the #2 pencils, yellow, that we used to write with in elementary school. Those pencils were very, very inexpensive. But they worked. And I think a hidden benefit for schools and parents is that using pencils instead of ink pens kept ink stains off clothing, desks, walls and fingers. And off the clothes and faces of the children who might have been targets of others' more malicious penmanship.

I like yellow pencils as an historic meme but when it comes to actually writing with pencils in the here and now I've come to prefer Veblen pencils... Not Leica level pencils but pencils that are clearly a cut above the standard fare. 

The pencils I re-discovered this year are the Blackwing brand and I'm loving them. 

Blackwing pencils were used by art directors, writers, journalists and pencil forward hobbyists for most of the 20th century. They were preferred by the writing cognoscenti -- and well loved. But the corporate bean counters killed them off in the earliest part of the 21st century. People sought out hidden stores of surviving Blackwing 602 pencils and paid dearly for them. People who could not find secret troves of the pencils generally sat in a corner chair in their offices with the lights off, staring out the window and brooding. A palpable malaise covering their affect like a fog. Lost. Despairing.

Someone (meaning some company...) bought the rights, and the magic pencil making roadmap, and revived the pencils in 2010 and brought them back into the market, much to the joy and relief of fine pencil addicts everywhere. 

According to the company the pencils are made with aromatic, California incense-cedar wood wrapped around imported Japanese graphite. The big, rectangular erasers on the word negating end of the pencils are, in fact, replaceable. Good to know when the eraser wears down before the graphite "lead." 

I splurged. I bought a box of $12. The price was bracing! Lofty territory indeed. The box of 12 cost a royal  $30. Even though I knew that mostly rich dentists, lawyers and wealthier photo bloggers buy these as status symbols I actually use them because they write cleaner and better than other pencils I've used. And occasionally it's nice to be able to stop writing and actually smell the wood. To breathe in the subtle scent of cedar and then reflect and continue writing that very special note. 

The company's motto is printed in gold against the dark green of the pencil shaft. It reads, "HALF THE PRESSURE, TWICE THE SPEED." 

I reckon the box of pencils will last me at least through 2026. I'm happy to have them at my fingertips. I might even start writing in cursive again. Why pencils? Because way back when we were first starting to learn to write that's the tool we used. Most people's creative writing started to fail when they switched from pencils to pens, and then worsened still in the transition to word processors. But it's not too late to go back to the good stuff. It's never too late to revisit your childhood genius.

Note to other bloggers and novelists: You don't have to endlessly re-write if you can deftly erase unwanted words with a simple and handy eraser. Just sayin'. There's a nice eraser on every pencil in the box!!!

I'm sure I'll read in the comments about my flagrant, over-the-top buying habits yet again but even though these pencils are 600% more expensive then those available in a bulk box of 250 yellow pencils  from China it's really all about the handling, the haptics and the way a good pencil can make one feel. Just like a second grader again. And, of course, in your essays you'll find that special Blackwing Look that we all envy.

Cooties. That's up next.

A portion of the profits from the sale of Blackwing pencils goes to support music and arts programs in schools. That sounds nice...

A few years back, when I bought two Leica CL digital cameras (which are APS-C format!), I also bought an odd lens. The TTArtisan APS-C 50mm f0.95. Yesterday I took it out for a re-familiarization run.

At the time I bought the lens (new) from B&H, around 2022, the price of the lens was about $125. Low enough to qualify as a low risk experiment. A couple of days ago I was looking through CameraWest.com's "Latest Drop" of used equipment and I came across the same lens as a used item, in good shape, for sale for $395. I was puzzled. I haven't done a good job of keeping up with what's going on in the APS-C L mount category and wondered if, back in 2022 I had missed something in my initial forays with the product. Was it somehow much better than I remembered? Had it risen to cult status in the market niche? I was up for a challenge and so I decided to take the lens and one of the Leica CLs out for a spin. Seemed like a good idea on a late Saturday afternoon. 

I set the camera for auto-ISO and limited the slowest shutter speed to 1/250th of a second. I mostly wanted to shoot the lens at wide open or nearly wide open because ---- f0.95! I don't have anything else nearly that fast so it makes sense to test it for its most standout feature. Right?

The CL doesn't feature in body image stabilization so setting a high enough shutter speed is important. The max ISO in the CL's auto-ISO menu is 6400 and in the dark you run out of ISO pretty quickly so it's fun to have a lens that compensates with an extremely big maximum aperture. Also, while focus peaking works pretty well with that camera the depth of field is so small with this lens when used wide open that I find it pretty much mandatory to punch in to a magnified view to spot check accurate focus.

The lens is very dense while having a fairly small profile, overall. It feels less heavy on an SL camera. 

An interesting thing about the 50mm f0.95 is that I can actually use it on a full frame camera if I'm willing to accept a small bit of uncorrectable vignetting in the corners of the frame. The closer you focus and the more you stop down the smaller the vignetting effect is. When I put this lens on a Leica SL2-S and I shoot at night I change the aspect ratio of the frame from 3:2 to 7:5. This pretties up the corners and for most images made this way vignetting is much less of an issue. 

The lens is a little soft at f0.95 and progressively sharpens up with each half stop down. By f5.6 it's on par with a lot of the 50mm legacy lenses people seem to like. But again, you are looking for things this lens offers that are more or less unique so I find myself shooting as close to wide open as I can and I depend on several fixes in Lightroom to give the lens back the contrast it needs and the sharpness as well. The contrast slider is your friend. The clarity and texture sliders are equally attractive for this lens. Finally, I tend to shoot this one entirely in raw so I can use things like the "raw details" setting to help out with the overall quality. 

Some photographers, the ones bent on distilling the very last micron of performance out of their photography, might be disappointed at the contrast and detail of the lens at its widest settings and I certainly get that. But if you like a bit of character in your lenses and love shooting in the dark you could do a lot worse. Is it worth $395, used?  God no!!! But is it fun to play with at $125? You bet. Blow up the attached photos and see for yourself. And ---- big treat --- more mannequins!!!!

Linen wrinkles too easily...

Bokeh central.

And that's the long and short of it.

 

Well, Here we are on the 27th of December and for the first time in memory I did NOT buy myself a camera or lens for Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. In fact, the last camera I bought was the DLUX8 back in mid-Summer. What happened?

 

At one point in my blogging history I was becoming famous for changing cameras and camera systems more often than most people change their underwear. (Gross exaggeration... really....gross). But since my initial foray into the world of Leica digital I've not strayed from the chosen path, into another system, for nearly five long years. Okay...somewhere back in time (2020) I did buy the Sigma fp but my intentions were to use that camera mostly for video, and it is part of the L mount system, and so it doesn't count as straying from the flock of true believers. Not by much...

But--- I did keep up a pretty good pace when it came to new camera body and lens acquisitions from 2019-2025. Entirely Leica cameras, some of which came and went (many seemed comfortable and stayed), and an assortment of Leica, Sigma, Panasonic, Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses. Oh! and also, this year, three of the Thypoch lenses for the M Leicas. While I have friends whose collection/accumulation of Leica gear dwarfs my small inventory I do think I've just about hit my personal Leica glut here in the studio. The very studio I'm in the process of converting from a work space to a recreational fortress of solitude. Surrounded by cameras, lights, computers but no clients.

In years past it was relatively easy to justify splashing out for newly advanced camera models within a system; and it would have been the same in any system. One could always make the argument that a new model camera or lens would add obvious value. The newly improved sensor would delivery more resolution or less noise; or both. That new lens would represent the ultimate in expressive rendering and together, camera and lens, would elevate my photography to new, ever higher levels of technical achievement. In the side chambers of my mind I'd pretend that clients would be savvy enough to appreciate the small improvements that came from the upgrades and they would appreciate my attention to any detail that might improve the work I would be delivering to them. In turn, they'd acquiesce to modest increases in my fees and we'd all walk away from the new equipment purchases much happier.

Of course it was always a self-serving ruse. Whatever incremental improvements provided were always mitigated or offset by an ever accelerating progression of the end results of the work from big prints to small screens --- which are so clever in their ability to disguise the provenance of the tools by dint of their tiny resolutions and eye candy saturation. The money was spent more as hedge against feeling sidelined by the ever constricting borders comprising the realm of fun projects. Projects which might show off just how good the gear might be... Or how shamelessly wonderful my honed eye and finely tuned sensibilities.

Since shuttering my mind to the lure of doing photography that chases money most of the desire for, and attachment to, the gear has clearly waned. If I am the only person who needs to be wowed by the gear it loses its relevance for psychologically bolstering the basic desire for it. In other words I don't have any competition left against which to measure my toolset collection against. Almost overnight all of the cameras have assumed an equal ranking in my mind. Each has its own character and each its own limitations but like children I've come to appreciate them all. No single one has an exclusive lock on bringing me imaging satisfaction. Not the most recent and not the oldest and smallest one in the big, roomy, legal-sized filing cabinets in which I store them when they are momentarily out of circulation. 

So, I changed gears in August. Sure, I bought a couple of new lenses. One was a used, little Leica zoom lens from the Leica R days. I didn't need it but it was so cute and earnest, and priced so well, that I just couldn't walk away. The other was the Thypoch 75mm f1.4 which I am still certain will elevate my rough and ready street portraits to fascinating new levels (right....). 

October rolled around and that was the month of my 70th birthday. In the past each birthday was an easy event or landmark which almost demanded I mark it with some sort of celebratory camera. Or camera and lens. But this year nothing really piqued my interest. Nothing felt "mission critical". Probably because the missions that seemed to encourage endless, tiny upgrades were gone. Finally at a point in my life where the expenses to buy "luxe" gear had become meaningless, paradoxically my desire for the new gear was inversely proportional to my ability to buy it. A stunning realization. 

I decided that month that this mindset was probably temporary, like those times when one overindulges in a lavish meal with many courses, and paired wines, and subsequently loses one's appetite for excess for days at a time. I was sure my appetite for shiny toys would bounce back, renewed.

But then Thanksgiving rolled around and while one friend added amply to his inventory of cool photo gear that month while another friend added to his collection of effete German cars I found myself, well, satisfied with the gear I had on hand to play with. And equally satisfied driving my inexpensive Subaru car. Desire not bubbling just below the surface. I was happy to just wander around with an old, worn, favorite camera and one of the ancient legacy lenses I've been hoarding for decades. And happy to rattle around in my two year old car with its 13,000 miles on the digital odometer... Still fearing that first door ding...

Then we were coming into Christmas. I shopped for fun things to give to my small, nuclear family. Sent cheques to nieces and nephews. Tipped the people who were most helpful this year. Paid my property taxes and my swim dues, and my USMS dues. Made some charitable contributions and still had money left over to shop for myself. To finally get my camera appetite back and snap up some clever morsel of optical engineering for no other reason than the promise of even better snapshots.

I saw a tasty deal on a Leica SL3. And some German lenses. And a monochrome M camera. And a Swedish medium format camera. But each time I shopped I realized that I had nowhere near used up the potential in any of the cameras I'd thought were so wonderful just last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that. Each, at the time, had appealed to me as the best in class. But I have not given them the chance yet to show me their full potential. And that gave me pause. 

Yesterday, on the way to drink coffee and read poems from a new book of poetry by Billy Collins (Dogs) I picked up my SL2-S, equipped with a 50mm Canon FD lens. Like a security blanket from a past life. I probably shot ten frames that morning. Would 100 megapixels instead of 24 megapixels have made a huge (or even tiny) difference in my enjoyment yesterday morning? Not that I could tell. 

Today as I left the house for swim practice I picked up, instead, an SL2 and the 50mm APO from Voigtlander. I always think the 47 megapixels in that camera are a good match for the times I want to make black and white pictures. And I'm still convinced that the 50mm APO is the best lens I own. I do test my lenses but I'm also a sucker sometimes for the advertising messages that tell me I should like a lens. I'm home now from swim practice but the camera and lens, unused this morning, are still sitting in the passenger seat of my practical car. I might try again this afternoon but I'm not sure if I'm motivated today to head back out and wander around in search of inspiration. 

All of which is to say that without a proscribed mission in mind the gear all starts to seem equally practical, equally exciting or unexciting, and not the locus for inspiration. 

I was going to buy a "throwaway" lens yesterday. I'd been hearing from some people about how surprised and happy they were with the size, price and performance of a TTArtisan 40mm f2 AF lens. A lens one could pick up for the L mount system for about $165. New. In a box. Ready to wow. 

I read a few things about it and thought buying one might do a bit to re-fire my desire to get back into the mix and do a bit of ambulatory photo therapy. Oh, excuse me! Cultural documentation.

The lens landed in my shopping cart and then I pushed the "buy" button and noted the promised delivery this coming Tuesday. Then I took opened gift boxes and wrapping paper and other detritus out to the recycling bin and when I walked back into the house I was overwhelmed with the feeling that as far as lenses go the purchase of the TTArtisan 40 was akin to running in place. Nothing new to see if you aren't running forward...

Somehow the elimination of clients calmed the irrational desire for more and different cameras that I'd been feeling for decades. And it's interesting to figure out how tied together our desires are with our self-worth and identities. Commercial Photographer = Guy Who Knows all About Cameras. Even if the combination isn't a smart way to move through life. 

I'm worried though that I am becoming too serious. When I went to swim practice today everyone was filled with the holiday spirit and there was much chat between sets and almost an indifference to the workout. I spotted a lane at the far end of the pool that was empty and moved down there. Then I put my head down and hammered through the workout without delays and without stopping to socialize at all. I'm not usually that way but I remembered a line from a favorite poem:  "Had we but world enough and time this coyness (lady) were no crime. But over my shoulder I do hear time's winged chariot drawing near." 

(Andrew Marvell. "To His Coy Mistress")

Suddenly I am approaching photography in the same way. I'm becoming parsimonious with my attention. I'm trying to match my time with subjects I really want to photograph instead of just walking around dragging a big net behind me, hoping to catch something in its weave. More intention? Probably. Or the realization that so much has already been added to the archives already and a bit more is not going to move the needle. 

On the other hand, I may wake up tomorrow with a renewed spark of interest. Ready to buy that used Leica SL-3 and test whether or not its 60+ megapixels will make those shots from the patio at Jo's Coffee sing a bit better. Or whether that 50mm APO Summicron will help me see more insightfully into the infinity of that beautiful portrait subject's perfect eyes. 

Kind of like tossing a proverbial stick of dynamite into the gear pool and seeing what kind of inspirational fish float to the surface...

But here we are, barreling towards the end of a tiresome and fraught year and I'm no closer to heading down to the camera river with my pail and scoop in order to dip in and fill the bucket with new stuff (apologies to Kurt Vonnegut). We'll see what transpires when the calendar clicks over. 

Thanks for reading!

It's the 23rd of December and I'm looking back at 2025. An interesting year of big changes for me.

 

Partner and spouse for lo these past 40 years...

Here's to 40 more...

It's interesting to have spent the last nearly 40 years self-employed. And self-employed in a business as fraught with peril and incredibly unpredictable ups and downs as this one. This Summer I made the decision to stop working as a commercial photographer. I started telling long term clients how appreciative I have been for their support but letting them know that I would no longer be providing business photographs and video for them. Most took it in stride while a few tried to talk me out of it. I had mixed feelings about leaving a gig I'd done for so long; mostly because I was just starting to figure it all out.

Since the pandemic and then with the introduction of A.I. I'd seen a falling off of assignments and engagement. Part of it I can justifiably blame on external causes but for the most part I just lost the feeling of being engaged in the process. Not the process of actually making photographs but the process of making it into a profitably business. It's hard to explain to most people but working as an "artist" is different than working at a job only because one needs the money and one has found something to do at which they are both competent to do well in and, at the same time, they are well paid. There is such an emotional attachment to the work for photographers, illustrators and writers. And painters, muralists and poets. While everyone needs income to survive in the world it's rarely, if ever, the top consideration for people entering these kinds of occupations. 

In some ways my career is a good example of the curve experienced by the photo world over the last 40 years. When I entered the industry as an advertising photographer it was generally clear who owned the rights to photos (me) and a certain amount of our renumeration was from fees for clients re-using photos we'd created for new periods of time or in new media. There were ample barriers to entry in the late 1970s and up until the advent of widely adopted digital cameras. There was no "instant" review in the image making process. We made due with expensive Polaroid tests. Not always infallible... Film had to be processed and in some cases also printed. If the exposures or colors weren't right we had to reshoot entire projects. Film was expensive and demanded a certain level of technical skill to work effectively. And one depended on labs to get the film processed correctly. Sometimes they glitched...

Most professionals in my niches of the industry worked with large format and medium format cameras interchangeably. For most studio product work and for architectural photography we had to know how to use the tilts and swings on 4x5 inch view cameras. We mostly worked with those under dark clothes so we could see the upside down and backwards images on the dim ground glasses of the cameras we used. We had to load our individual sheet film holders in completely dark environments. We had to figure out exposure compensation for bellows extensions and we mostly kept a light meter on our belt or hanging off our tripods. Tripods which we used a lot of the time. Reciprocity failure was always on our minds as exposures went long...

For the first ten years I plied my trade in the commercial world our films of choice had ISOs like 64 and 100. Going with faster films meant more noise and less dynamic range. But when using ISO 64 film in a view camera with the lens set to f32 we were constantly trying  to get more and more light onto our subjects. That generally meant huge strobe (electronic flash) systems which were heavy and expensive. And if we worked on location with these tools we also required lots and lots of heavy duty extension cords to deliver power to our flash boxes. 

Color control and color precision always meant using hard filters or gel filters in the light path. There was no magic knob on the camera that we twisted to make the color exactly 3200K or 4800K or anything else. In fact, careful workers had a real investment in a wide array of filters that would allow a small change to color. Even as small as 2.5 CC. And one had to know when and how to get the most out of the filtering.

When I started there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. No social media. No online portfolios. We had several promotion options. First, we'd print up a physical portfolio of our work and call on the telephone to make appointments with art buyers, art directors, designers and corporation marketing communications teams. If we were lucky enough to get appointment in town we'd agree on a date and time and the photographer would drive to the potential client's office to actually show them the work. If the client we wanted to work for was located in another city we got them to agree to see our portfolios and then arranged to send them, via Federal Express, to the potential client's office. And we'd arrange (via our own Fedex accounts) to eat the charges to send the portfolio back to us. 

Since returns could be delayed or sometimes not happen at all we had duplicate printed portfolios we could send. Sometimes we had three portfolios out with delivery services. Biting our nails that we'd get one back before another big, potential client called to request a portfolio show. If a client called and requested a portfolio and they were located out of town they'd pay to have it shipped there and back... The best case scenario for a cash strapped photographer just starting out. 

Once we had good local jobs under our belts and a few "bites" from bigger clients from out of town we'd reach out to editorial clients and try to get our work in good magazines, like Texas Monthly or Inc. Magazine so we could get credit lines and by extension get more people interested in the kinds of work we offered. 

The two marketing venues besides portfolio showings were the sending out of big, oversized postcards that showcased our best work, and then, secondly, paid inclusion into promotional books of photography that were sent to thousands of art directors and art buyers around the country. When I could afford to do so I scraped together the $3,000 it cost to buy a double truck ad in one of the big source books. That investment paid off with clients from as far away as California and New York and also brought me to the attention of the person from Dallas who ended up repping my business for several years. 

Post cards. Paid ad placement in annual promotional books. Sending out portfolios. Splitting fees with reps. It was all expensive. Right down to paying for the use of mailing and contact lists from companies whose sole product was researching and producing lists of people working in the industries we needed to reach --- in order to find clients. Marketing budgets for our single person businesses often exceeded $50K per year. Right up until the time one could put up decent looking portfolios on bespoke websites. And one could not forget to follow up with each connection we made. 

We had to understand how to print. How to develop black and white film. How to light ---- well. We needed to understand the color separation process so we could provide film deliverables that had the right contrast ranges to look good in printed materials. Most print materials were limited to a four, or five stop dynamic range. Paper only goes so far...

Suffice it to say that a photographer who wanted to create a solid and enviable income stream over time had to be a technician, an artist, a marketer, financially competent, a good people person and someone who could blend all of these skills without dropping the balls. In some ways it was easier because the cost of investing into a business like that created a lot of barriers to entry that reduced the number of competitors we had back then. Train clients to love 4x5 color transparencies and then the guy who shows up with a 35mm camera has a hard time getting a foot in the door. 

I adapted the business to digital with the purchase of big, heavy, pricey Kodak cameras back at the turn of the century. While many people criticized me for an ever-changing buying pattern of ever new cameras during my time with digitals the reality is that I was on a constant and consistent search for a camera which might match or exceed the quality that film-based Hasselblad, Bronica and Mamiya cameras could all deliver as far back as the late 1980s. Try to convince yourself otherwise but early digital cameras were uniformly a step behind their large format film ancestors in image performance at least until the second generation of 24 megapixel full frame digital cameras arrived, post 2013. 

My other reservation, which kept me from just zeroing in on a system and marrying it forever, was my desire that a professionally preferred, commercially relevant top line camera should be able to deliver the operating performance of a 1990s Nikon F5. And it took an awfully long time to get there. And by "operating performance" I don't mean "picture quality", no, I'm talking about the in hand feel, the responsiveness of the AF, the speed of handling, the quality of the finders and more. The ability to have near flawless on camera flash performance. Physical reality. Not spec sheet glory.  My decisions to be promiscuous about buying new camera gear generally always paid off. It also helped to keep me interested that side of photography. It made our work more competitive. I don't agree with people who have the idea that finding one camera, one system and embracing it and its results for all time is a great or even good strategy. I think it's mostly a misguided coping strategy for the perceived chaos of modern times. 

Stuff changes. Tastes change. Keeping up is a good thing, not a chink in the armor. And there were ample tax advantages to purchasing gear as a small business...

Elitist amateurs constantly decry the recent emphasis by working photographers on "GEAR" and wish that the conversation around successful photography only rotated around the "ART" itself. What they don't understand is that with the embrace of digital many of the things we routinely handed over to ultra-qualified professional sub-contractors are now handled by overburdened working stiff photographers. Us. We depended on labs to soup our Kodachrome and E6. We rewarded the good labs with our loyalty and significant, repeating revenue. We learned to be collaborative with color separation houses. We counted on prop makers and retouchers. We shared the physical burdens with trained assistants. Better and better gear helped alleviate some of the burdens of commerce.

But as digital progressed and actual (after inflation adjusting) fees kept shrinking it fell to photographers to do more and more of the digital analogies to those film routines. We didn't need assistants to time Polaroids and re-load film backs. We couldn't justify having a lab do the kinds of bulk post processing our clients required. The burden of retouching fell to the original photo creators, etc. And in the middle of the whole shifting of the market the need for prints collapsed to near nothingness while the quality required for more and more screen based marketing images fell off a cliff. Smart phones, honestly, are good enough for a huge percentage of current photo uses. Really. 

Outside the studio the real world took its toll on every business since the roaring, late 1990s. The events of 9-11 paralyzed the creative economy for the better part of a full year. The economic collapse of 2008-2010 chewed through phalanx after phalanx of freelancers, agency employees and, of course all kinds of photographers. It was pretty much a blood bath which makes me wonder why so many people in 2012 and 2013 were excited about the prospect of becoming professional creative content workers....

The negative capper in my career arc, when it comes to business destruction, had to be the Covid Epidemic which destroyed, at least temporarily, a huge portion of the markets not only for creative pros but the food service industry, the hospitality industry and so much more. Right now one continuing result of the epidemic is the collapse of CRE (commercial real estate) caused by the rise of remote working and the lower and lower demand for consolidated and expensive office space. For us in the photo business the long term result is a reset of our industry at lower fee levels, with less engagement and higher and higher overall costs. Things like business insurance and equipment replacement costs have continued in a brisk, upward spiral. 

The industry now offers lower rewards for higher investment risks. Even though professional photography has always been a relatively risky adventure; as far as business goes. 

From the beginning of our careers we've personally had good advice about investing for retirement and rainy days. My business weathered all of the downturns I mentioned above. We continued to thrive. One piece of advice I always heard was that once your investment returns (dividends, gains, reinvested profits) outpace your earned income you can be pretty comfortable with the idea of retiring. Of exiting the marketplace once and for all.  It seems like pretty sound advice. I decided to take it.

I had two medical issues (skin cancers) that sidelined me, cumulatively, for a month this year. No swimming for those two week post surgical recovery periods!!! No real desire to show up for a work project with a big, white bandage on one side of my face. And no real desire to trade continuing work against more valuable swim, walk, family time. I've watched friends much younger than myself get sick and die this year. And it's always reminded me of just how much we put off by continuing to work when we don't have to. At 70 I think I hit my limit for how much routine office work and marketing I had the inspiration for. And how little I needed the $ rewards.

This year I made up my mind and marked a day on my calendar. I'm a binary thinker so the idea of continuing to take random jobs after that date is/was very much a non-starter. I'm either all in or all out. And now? I'm all out. That doesn't mean I tossed a dozen Leica cameras in the trash, washed my hands of photography and moved to playing pickle ball or shuffle board.

Nothing has changed other than the deletion of interfacing and working directly with clients. The money coming in is about the same but now I have more time to do things my way. To walk around with a camera and not take pictures if nothing captures my interest. To hop in the car and head out of town for days at a time when I get the urge to do so. The sense of temporal freedom is ... giddy. But I'm sure the feeling resolves and one gets used to having full agency over their time and attention without it feeling too novel. 

My partner/spouse is spending three days a week in another city helping to take care of her 95 year old mother who still lives in her own home, is still ambulatory and mostly mentally sound. That leaves me with additional space to work on personal projects, lunch with friends, coffee with people who are continual mentors for me in the basic process of life. And swimming. And writing.

At 70 years old I am still healthy, completely mobile and have no medical issues other than a scare of more skin issues (my cross to bear for spending a 70 year life swimming in the Texas sun) to hold me back. I know that, statistically, I'll start to run down. Perhaps joints will begin to complain. Energy levels will drop. Maladies that seem to accompany aging will make themselves right at home. But for now my idea is to enjoy being a photographer with my own agenda for as long and as happily as I can. 

The blog has been an important part of my past 16 years in the business. I started writing this blog to help my publisher sell more of the five books I wrote for them. In that regard it seems to have done well. After I got tired of helping to sell books on the web I re-imagined the blog as being a diary of daily commercial photography work and for a decade most of the writing was about projects I was in the middle of, projects I had just completed and projects I was planning for. Interwoven in there were thoughts about the art of photography, some writing about swimming and health, some reviews of various cameras that I liked, and occasional pokes at people who I thought were horribly misguided, mostly lazy, and sharing bad ideas about our chosen hobby --- photography. 

I had the idea last week that the blog is going to be re-imagined again as a repository of what I learn going forward; from 70 to 105, about being a photographer, permanently smitten by the thrill of finding and taking images which move me to hit that shutter button. My goal is to not ossify, not to become trapped into the gear, methods, styles etc. of the present. Not to be unwilling to continue to explore and change as I go forward. And to share these experiences with anyone who might want to read about them. 

I refuse to be trapped in endless servitude to the past.

The value to me is the continued value of having a diary of sorts to reference. A place to air ideas and get push back from other (respectful) points of view. And to be a contrarian for fun and my own personal satisfaction. But to move with intention into the future.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm currently sad about the holidays for only one reason: the pool is closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and on the 26th. There goes my favorite routine. Replaced by social duty and the continued belief in good cheer. 

A side goal during the holidays is to not gain  weight and not to too readily accept too much "holiday cheer." 

I hope you've enjoyed the first 6300+ blog posts. Buckle up for the next 6300.

One hand behind his back.

 

Rome. 1991. Agfapan 400 film. 35mm.

B. Somewhere in Europe. At some time in the past.

 

I almost bought a Leica M246 Monochrome camera this morning. But after I saw some conversions from color to black and white, from the little compact DLUX8 I changed my mind...

There's no question in my mind that if your art depends on the very best black and white images in the universe you'll probably want to end up with a Leica M10 or M11 monochrom (only) camera. Every serious black and white photographer I know who has picked one up and really shot with it is totally addicted to the quality of the black and white file. Just more or less permanently addicted. But Leica has made monochrome versions of their rangefinder M cameras all the way back to the time of the M9. Their first monochrome camera, built around the M9 body configuration, was equipped with an 18 megapixel CCD sensor. People who used them raved about them but there were a few operational issues. No live view. A loud shutter mechanism with a re-cocking step that also made noise. A less reliable rangefinder calibration system, and a skimpy battery. 

Leica fixed all the issues with the next generation of M cameras; the M240. A couple years after the launch of the M240 they came out with a CMOS sensored Monochrome version complete with a quieter shutter, a more reliable rangefinder calibration, a bigger buffer, a faster processor and 24 megapixels instead of 18. Sapphire glass on the LCD.  Oh, and live view plus video... It was named the M 246 M. 

Since Michael Johnston embarked on making a stock fp camera into a black and white only camera I've been on again, off again interested in whether or not a "monochrome only" camera would really deliver an additional measure of quality and unique-eosity  to my own black and white photography. Then my friend at ATMTX bought one of the previous model M monochromes and seems to be absolutely delighted with the results he's getting from that predecessor of the M246. He seems to be driven to use it about 80% of the time even though he has lots of other significantly great cameras from which to choose.

So, this morning I found myself doing what gear addicted photographers seem to do on a weekly basis; I opened an email from CameraWest and followed the link to their latest "drop" of used gear. A weekly listing of interesting cameras and lenses that have come into their San Francisco stores. And there it was: A Leica M246 M. All black. No red dot. No logo on the top of the camera. A stealthy camera capable of, supposedly, delivering black and white (only) files elevated from the basic, converted color files from other similar cameras. The price was low for this camera. It was rated as a "9" by the store --- and they are usually pretty accurate --- at least as I've experienced. 

I put it into my shopping cart. I checked my "budget" and while I can afford the camera I hesitated. Did I really want to spend $3500 just to experiment with a black and white only camera that's at least ten years old? A camera for which extra batteries are as rare as unicorn teeth? Did I need a fourth M240 variant to keep other cameras company? Am I that driven to focus like a collimated beam only on monochrome photography? Was there a reason (yes, and very practical) for why we would carry two cameras in the film days? One with black and white film and the other with color film --- because different applications demand color while others can skate by in black and white. Because sometimes your eye is attracted to color contrasts in a scene while at other times reducing a scene to its graphic parts works better for some people's aesthetic or taste. 

I took a break to go and ask my spouse for guidance. She said to do whatever makes me happy. The issue of money is off the table. I was just looking for logic about the whole idea of yet another camera for yet another snipe hunt in photographic practice.... She said, "buy it if you really want to try it. You never really lose money on Leicas if you decide it's not for you and you want to sell it..." That was no help...

I sat at my desk and pondered. Then I realized that I have a buying pattern. At the outset I try to find a solution that's completely affordable and meets the basic criteria I'm looking for. The M246 meets that standard. The next step is hitting the limits of the new purchase and beginning the rationalization leading to an upgrade. In this instance, probably to an M10 M. Newer sensor. Better viewfinder. Third generation renovations. So I would upgrade at some point to the M10 M and be happy until I read a series of reviews from photographers smitten with the M11 M. Which I would probably buy new, dropping $10K. But if I started with the M11 M instead of working my way up the catalog "ladder"  of past versions I'd save nearly the price of the M11 M. That is, if you factor in the purchase of the two previous cameras. 

I took a break. Made an espresso. And absent-mindedly looked through a folder of images I'd taken in Chicago with a small sensor, color mostly, compact Leica DLUX 8. And I came across these images which I had taken in color and then converted in Lightroom to black and white. Not my finest camera. Not the biggest sensor. The least expensive Leica in the inventory. And I realized that I was happy with the files. Not kinda happy. Or mostly happy. Just happy. 

I emptied out the shopping cart. Already started forgetting the M246. Realized that it was someone else's dream to own a black and white only camera - not mine. Instead I bought two more of my favorite $20 camera straps from B&H. Then B. and I went out to our favorite restaurant and had a delightful lunch. 

If you can make totally fun and good black and white images from a small point and shoot camera with an older m4:3 format 17 megapixel sensor why would I ever have a need for yet another pricy rangefinder camera?

And that's how I ended up ordering the red snapper with capers and bok choy for lunch. Delicious. 

The desire for something new hits from time to time but I'm more ambivalent to it now. 

After all, it seems more fun to take up the challenge of using

a less prodigious camera to take good monochrome images with.

The friction of trying harder makes it more fun...

If I hit the edge of the performance envelope in the small camera, or the other cameras around the office,

I might reconsider.

 Some thoughts from black and white camera shooter, Paul Reid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX80tK6F1qk