Cars on South Congress Avenue on a Saturday Afternoon. 50mms rocks.

The Mannequin Cadre watching intently for interesting cars to come by....

Yes. Plastic Jesus on the dashboard. 

Australians fascinated by old American Muscle Cars.

Watching their mum almost get run over by cars as she dashed into the street to photograph an old hot rod, with her phone.

Yep. That's really the owner of the '57 Cadi.

Back when Americans really knew how to design cars. Real cars. 

All pix: Leica M 240 + 50mm Zeiss ZM

tourism on South Congress at Max capacity.

 

Just Another Day in Austin. Sharing the Crosswalks with Horses. Riders Waiting for the Lights to Change. Same as anywhere else. See this in Paris all the Time....

Austin is still a little...different. Today I walked down South Congress Ave. I ran into my friend Paul, and his wife at a café. The drink special at Chapulin was tequila and watermelon. A motorcycle "club" called, The Banditos was having a BBQ in the parking lot of Hudson's Meats. The street in front was layered with endless Harleys. I left before the classic car parade but was in the area long enough to see tons of nicely restored (and badly restored) classic and antique cars. In Texas, legally, if your car is over 50 years old it's considered a protected antique.

I was walking north on the east side of the street when I came to a cross walk and waited for the signal to change so I could cross. And across the street three people on horseback were waiting to cross the same street; coming in my direction. I thought I might take a few photographs because I am so keenly interested in horses.

No fancy camera work. Just a normal lens on an old, digital rangefinder camera. But I thought I should share what an average day on the streets of Austin looks like right now.

making a call while waiting for the next light change. Very casual.

  A few people actually looked up from their phones...

Saturday. Back on track.

 

It was an interesting morning. I was back in the pool for swim practice today and was practicing a new technique for imagining freestyle stroke mechanics. Most swimmers think of their arm stroke as a way to push water behind them in order to move forward. Advanced swimmers and coaches (the .01%) don't think that way. Instead they see the point of furthest extension of your hand and arm (one side at a time) as a whole different thing. They understand the process to actually be an anchoring of your hand at that forward spot in the water and then using that anchor and your stroke to pull your body past the anchor point. Placing your hand in front isn't just the start of your usual pull back for thrust; instead it's establishing an anchor point. And with that the idea of pulling your body forward instead of forcing water backwards. It's a surprisingly effective visualization. Or a reframing of expectations for a process. 

Sometimes re-thinking, or even better, reframing a thought can be a powerful tool for changing habits. I noticed that when I let myself think of the furthest extension as the establishment of an anchor point I slowed down the turnover of my stroke but then engaged with more efficient power. Two results: a more fluid exchange of power in the water and an increase in sustainable speed. 

What does this have to do with photography?

B. and I have a family tradition of always (or nearly always) having lunch together on Saturdays. I spent some time cleaning up the mess I'd left in the studio after returning from a shoot while she finished up her daily yoga practice. I lost interest in cleaning up so I walked down the hall to my home office and looked through one of the bookshelves. I came across a journal from the early 1980s and sat down in a comfortable chair to see what had been on my mind back then. 

I came across handwritten pages which were my draft notes for the syllabus I made for my fine art photography students, for a Summer semester at the University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts. Several pages in my words reminded me that I made it a requisite that all advanced students and my two grad students learn how to use a 4x5 or an 8x10 view camera. I noted that no one was required to use one for their personal use or in order to make portfolios for the class but all would need to know how and why to use a camera with movements. How to tilt and shift. How to control fields of focus. How to load and shoot sheet film and, finally, how to process and print black and white sheet film. There were many complaints at the start of the semester. "View cameras are too hard!!!"  I had anticipated that there would be. I had written this into the syllabus:

"Using a view camera requires some logic and persistence. But mostly it requires an open mind for new experiences. If you fight the camera it will take all semester to master it. If you embrace it you can learn the essentials in a couple of days. Which will make you happier?"

I had to learn view camera technique on an 8x10 view camera. When I started as a teaching assistant to Tomas Pantin a few years earlier I was conversant with 35mm SLRs, 35mm rangefinders and 120mm Rollei twin lens cameras. Tomas's course was all about studio photography and his courses included the use of 4x5 cameras, and 8x10 cameras with 4x5 inch reducing backs. He insisted that I get up to speed by the start of the semester. I'm pretty sure it was because he didn't want to field student questions about large format all day long. 

I got a well illustrated book about using view cameras from the UT Fine Arts Library and plowed into the black arts of large format. It taught me a lot about the principles of photography and how cameras, at their very basics, work. Here is the currently revised edition of the book that helped me learn: https://www.amazon.com/Using-View-Camera-Creative-Photography/dp/1626540772

My students mostly chose to embrace the learning experience with large format and to make it fun for themselves. I gave them ample printed handouts and we spent a four hour session in the first week of the semester going over and over the view camera basics. It stuck with almost everyone and I was gratified years later when several of my students dropped by my studio to let me know how they were getting along in their photo careers. 

A shift from: view cameras are hard to master and mysterious to: embrace the process and relax, you'll get it in a couple of days was just the re-framing they needed to understand that it wasn't at all difficult. 

Same with swimming. It just took me a lot longer to figure it all out. 

B. and I went out for a nice lunch and she reminded me that everything can be approached from nearly an infinite number of angles. Some of them work and some don't. Just relax and flow through the process. 

The bulk of my commercial work during the first ten years of my career was done with one 4x5 view camera and three inexpensive view camera lenses. Worked well. 

The Tariffs Are Here. The Tariffs Are Here! What's Next?

 

Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning, checked email, and learned that

the point n shoot Leica DLUX8 I bought last month had gone up in value 

by $1,000 overnight!!!

Well. Here we are. The first wave of tariff shock came rolling in. Leica prices in general jumped by anywhere from 10% to 20% and the tariff contagion spilled over onto my Leica-loving Canadian friends as well. Seems that the US is the North American distribution center for those German products and since all Leicas come in here first before some are sent on to Canada everything gets hit with the same increases.

I guess today is the day to bitch about how sad and depressing my life is on May 2nd. I had to pay bills today. I paid off the balances on my credit cards. But I do that every month. I set aside money for property tax --- the tax that never sleeps --- and a bit more for federal income taxes, paid my swim dues, my concierge doctor's monthly charge, the gas bill, the electric bill, water bill, the various phone bills and internet bill, club dues, made my usual donation to the household account and, finally, paid my gardener. Woe is me. So sad.

But the thing that really chaps my hide is the idea that, going forward, when I need a little pick me up from Leica -- say a new M11P or a nice lens to fend off the economic blues I'll not only have to save up extra couch cushion change to cover the new tariffs but I'll also be participating in the "world economy" in which, under our current administration, the US dollar has dropped in value by about 9%. If you add the 10% increase in the cost of German retail therapy from tariffs to the 9% drop in the value of the dollar against the Euro it means I'll be paying about 19% more than I would have for my emotional support camera gear if I'd bought it just a few months ago.

But it's always good to remember the current mantra: "Tariffs are not a tax on American Consumers!" My grasp of macro economics is far from sterling but these price increases sure feel like a new tax to me...

I read that three of Fuji's most popular cameras; the new GFX RF, the X100VI and the XM-5, all of which are manufactured in China will no longer be imported into the USA. Too expensive now to sell to a shrinking market of people with less disposable income. So, bit by bit our choices will become more limited than ever before. Not just too expensive but literally, physically unobtainable. 

I guess I need to starting cutting costs where I can. Using the coffee grounds two or three times before composting. Move my grocery shopping from Whole Foods to Walmart. Switch from French wines to, gasp! Texas wines. Bust out the dial up modem. Pull the ole flip phone out of a dusty drawer. I've never had them but I'm sure I'll miss those opera box seats I've always had my eyes on...

On a serious note I think the financial pinches caused by the tariffs will be really hard on lots and lots of Americans who plainly never signed up for this. Economists are forecasting rolling shortages of foods, medicines and all kinds of staples. The last time I was at a Trader Joe's I noticed people now stocking up on toilet paper. The food banks are already starting to feel a recent surge of newly food insecure families. And with the Canadians responsible these days for a large share of our oil and gas supplies I can only imagine they'll be retaliating in kind and driving our gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. "What????" my European readers might say. "Did you mean $4 per liter???" Yes, we're spoiled but we've got lots of space between our homes and everything else and a lot of black top we've already payed for that someone has to use....

Unhappy to know that we live in a country where it's okay for school children to go hungry so billionaires can skirt paying taxes. And now the Leicas..... It's just too much.

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. 

Daily Practice.

When I need to tighten up my photo techniques I reach for an M rangefinder.

It isn't quite as easy as the big mirrorless cams or the tiny compacts.

You have to pay attention. Lots of attention.

I felt lazy yesterday. And the allergies (Austin is famous for them--and their intensity) had my sinuses buzzing. I spent some time re-reading "The Great Gatsby" (a great re-visiting for our current times) and when I couldn't stand the physical inaction anymore I gave up comfortable sloth on a comfy chair for a walk down South Congress Avenue. Partly to get out of the house and mostly to look at stuff and try to get better at photography while using a rangefinder camera. Plus, I fear I put on one extra pound in Santa Fe (Thank you, Pasqual's....) and thought now would be a good time to walk it off. I try to keep my weight right at 160 pounds. It's a good weight for swimming and if I can maintain it then I can still wear pants I bought back in college...that's a bonus.

Working with a rangefinder camera (a true rangefinder camera) is different than working with a mirrorless, EVF camera. The edges of the frame are less certain. With older cameras, like the ones I own, the exposure metering is a bit less precise, and the files have less dynamic range so saving an image I screw up while shooting is, at best, iffy. Also, the immediate feedback loop is less valuable since the older rear screens are hardly state of the art...

I tend to go out with only one lens at a time when the photography is for me and not for a client. My usual preference is to use a 50mm lens though I am trying to get more comfortable with 35mm and 28mm lenses. It takes time. At least for me it does.

I've played around with lots of Leica M series rangefinder cameras, both digital and film. I seem to have settled on the M240 cameras because they are accessible, price wise, have all the features I want and have a battery (and battery life) that seems to last forever. I've stopped even thinking about grabbing a second battery to put in my pocket when I go out because I can be shooting for hours and still come back with an 85-90% charge left on the in-camera battery. It's comforting. It feels the way battery usage felt in the film days. It's one less variable to consider. One fewer line on the mental checklist. 

When I went out to shoot I selected one of my favorite M series 50mm lenses. It's the Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 Planar ZM version. Being made for rangefinder cameras it's small, doesn't draw attention to itself but at the same time feels dense and well made. Even wide open the lens is sharp and contrasty. Many users find it's a bit too contrasty; almost brittle. But my sloppy handheld technique, for all of its faults does a good job at taking the hard edge off the images. I have used both this 50mm lens and also the Voigtlander 50mm APO Lanthar lens on SL2 cameras, via adapters. I tested them both with the big camera mounted on a tripod and both lenses, even at f2.0, are just superb. If they have a flaw it's the same flaw you see on most M lenses from 21mm to 50mm and that's vignetting. It's not "out of control" but the darkening of the corners when using the lenses wide open is there.

A week or so ago I spent several days embedded in a large group of bankers and finance people doing what I've done for decades. Taking candid and posed photographs of many, many people in a short amount of time. Making friends quickly. I really enjoy being in the middle of large groups of like minded folks and being at a conference confers permission to get in close and take photographs without worrying about how someone is going to feel if I temporarily violate their personal space by a smidgen. It's also great practice for focusing quickly, framing even quicker, and making good use of flash. 

When I was doing jobs like this; conferences, etc. all the time it felt natural and easy to work through a crowd and make portraits and group photos. But since I've initiated the "glide path" to commercial retirement these sorts of shoots are only getting done for the clients I always loved working with the most. So we're down to doing this sort of work only five or ten times a years. If that. And what that means goes back to the idea of consistent practice making work easier. When I am "out of practice" it takes a bit of time to warm up and get into a productive groove. 

At the other side, after working an event for a couple of days non-stop, I find that I need more time to wind down afterwards. So, when I went out shooting for myself yesterday I wasn't looking for fast moving subjects, interesting people and quickly forming (and dissolving) photo opportunities. 

I wanted the camera in my hands but I wanted to set a pace that felt like "vacation." A slow and comfortable ramble rather than a frantic Easter Egg Hunt. I've gotten comfortable using Auto-ISO with the rangefinder M240 cameras. I protect the highlights by shooting with the exposure compensation set to minus two thirds of a stop. I set the shutter speed to 1/500th outdoors and 1/60th indoors and usually work around f5.6 for outdoors and f2.0 for indoors. Then I let the camera decide how it wants to handle metering. There is one flaw with this method and the above mentioned camera. The M240 doesn't have an electronic shutter option so one is limited to 1/4,000th of a second as the fastest shutter speed. It's also limited to a low ISO of 200 -- not 100 or 50.  If it's bright sun outside and I want to shoot at f5.6 I'll often run out of low ISO too quickly. Stuff gets overexposed. When that happens I'll move to 1/1,000th and above and also adjust the aperture to get even more wiggle room. There's always f8 in a pinch.

I know the merchants at the hat store and the boot stores don't mind if I come in and make photographs of their products but I always ask anyway. No one has ever said, "No." And it takes away the fear that you'll be snapping away only to be stopped by an angry shopkeeper. It's a way of keeping focus on the photography instead of worrying about "getting caught." Permission goes a long way to make taking the photos more fun...

Walking up and down one of the prime shopping streets in the S.W. is fun and reminds me that not everyone is broke and suffering. Some people can afford whatever they want. And the crowds buying $300 cowboy hats and $1,000 boots on a Saturday and Sunday can be amazing. Often, I'll also sit at Jo's Coffee and watch the parade of young men loudly show off their prize, new cars. Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and various Japanese hot rods. I'll spy a new Porsche GTS 111 and wonder how the twenty-something driver can afford the six figure price tag that comes with the car. And I wonder even more at their willingness to spend a fortune on insurance. But whatever makes them happy...

One funny thing, though. When I drag around a big Leica SL2 and a cool lens I never get a second glance, much less a comment. But when carrying around an old M digital camera I get stopped at least once or twice on every urban walk by people who want to know whether the camera is film or digital. 

It's certainly got a look of its own. 

The walk was good and fun. People out shopping always look happier to me than people heading in to work. As I have gotten older with hair that skipped gray and went straight to white, I sense that people have become more benevolent and courteous to me, and my camera. I'm sure they posit that I can't be serious. Or at all dangerous. I must be a retired dude strolling through the street in full tourist mode. And that's more than fine. Any reduction of process fiction is welcome. 

Gliding through the streets with a camera and no agenda, no goal, and no time schedule is refreshing. Even more so after a big event where I needed to be "on" for hours at a time. I like both sides of the coin. I guess I'm just lucky that way....

What am I reading right now? I finished "The Great Gatsby". It was short and fun. It stands up well. I'm now on to a re-read of "The Sun Also Rises" and enjoying Hemmingway's brisk writing style all over again. Next up is "Death in the Afternoon." There's something about 2025 that has me dredging up old classics. The early 20th century certainly sounded like it could be fun ---- if you were rich and carefree.

Do you like poetry? Some only read non-fiction but I think not appreciating poetry is akin to a vitamin deficiency that gives one literature scurvy. If you like poetry you might like the latest book of poems by Billy Collins. It's wonderful. Just sayin. 

 

OT: Staying young, staying fit, staying engaged in "now."

 

My goal in going to the big bash at the park yesterday was not to come away with specific, planned, premeditated photographs. My goals were more over-arching: To have fun, to get some good exercise, to have a hands-on experience with my craft, to see what other generations consider fun and relevant, to polish my skills at asking for portrait collaborations with people 1/3rd my age, and to tweak my camera handling skills with a relatively new camera. 

Too often I see or read that some people my age are content to sit passively and reminisce about "the good old days." A recurring theme is that the younger generations don't want to work as hard as "we" had to. That the "golden age" of existence just happens to coincide with the time in the old guys' lives when they too were young, vital, filled with hope and able to move through life with vigor. A time before they gave up trying.

I started my day yesterday with 30+ other competitive swimmers and one coach at our weekly Saturday morning swim workout. I'm one of the older swimmers there but there are no demarcations between what the more experienced swimmers tackle and what the younger ones try. We all swim the same workout. We go on the same intervals and we do the same yardage. Several of my peers who are in their early 70s are incredibly fast and in great shape. They are the elite group. They've never stopped pushing and excelling. No one would ever think to relegate them into "slower" lanes or truncate the workouts for them. And, importantly, they would not stand for it. 

We had a visiting college swimmer with us in the pool that day. She's NCAA fast. One of the coaches remarked, "Kathleen is really crushing it today!!" Failing, I guess to notice, that "Bob" Smith, a former college swimmer, now in his late 50's was matching her speed; stroke per stroke and lap per lap. And they shared a lane. Another swimmer, overhearing the coach said, "Of course she's crushing it, she's 18." 

Only one of us is going to be the fastest person in the pool. That person will finish each interval first. Touch the wall first. But in the end we all do the same workout. And, when we walk away from the pool you can look around at the participants and find that no one is overweight. No one is physically hobbled. No one is gasping for breath after a two mile plus swim. No one is exhausted. The 70 year olds and the 20-something competitive swimmers have mastered one of the important parts of staying young and that is staying fit. Continuity of effort. Daily practice.

Another interesting factoid about the swimmers I know in our program and in other masters programs around Austin (and the country) is that swimming isn't the only exercise they undertake. Most also do weights. Many are still doing triathlons and so are integrating biking and running into their mix of exercise. I do weights but I'm also a big fan of long walks. Not on an alternating schedule but daily. Along with swimming. 

So, when I left the house yesterday to go photograph at the park I packed a small camera bag, put on a wide brimmed hat and parked my car a couple miles from the park. There's a great hiking trail from our center of the town lake to Pease Park. I hit the trail and got walking. It was hot yesterday. It hit 90°. I took it easy on the walk over. Then I spent nearly 3 hours walking through the park looking for photos of revelers to take, talking to photographers in attendance whom I knew, and mostly soaking up the ways in which the event feels different every year. When I felt my interest wane I hiked another couple miles back to the car. So, 3200 or more fast yards in the pool followed by about three and a half hours of walking. 

By the time I got home I was fully recovered from the swim and the walk and ready to go out to dinner with friends. That's how energy should feel as one approaches one's 70s. Not hobbled, slowed down, weak or fatigued. But there is no magic bullet --- and fitness, I believe, has very little to do with genetics. It has mostly to do with developing the discipline to get stuff done. To not look for artificial borders between generations. To go swim when it's freezing outside. To put on a jacket or grab an umbrella and walk, happily, through the rain. To enjoy the music of Billie Eilish as much as that of Thelonius Monk.  Or to enjoy the movies of Ben Stiller at least as much as those of Louis B. Mayer.

The other secret I've learned is to stay engaged in a way that reflects current society instead of pining for some rosy version of the past which probably never existed in reality but seems nice, emotionally comfortable and unchallenging. When I worked in Santa Fe two weeks ago I worked mostly (almost entirely) with people who are younger than me. Some far younger. But I had no presumption that they would treat me differently or that I would, uninvited, "bestow" some hard won (but obsolete) advice upon them. Instead I saw them as peers. As equal working partners engaging for the benefit of the client. We worked together, ate together, drank together and shut a few restaurants down at the end of the night together. No deference for age and no reverse deference for youth. 

All of these things are learned behaviors. Discipline is a learned behavior. Inter-generational cooperation is a learned behavior. It takes intention to build forward from "trying" into a habit of succeeding on a day-to-day basis. 

It's the same with diet. It's the same with keeping up with current art, movies, literature, and social events. We don't just stop the clock at some point in time at which we were most coddled and secure and then wait to die. That just doesn't make sense. To live well it's necessary to live in the moment. Now. 

Yeah. We got a lot done yesterday. Stayed out too late at dinner. Drank some red wine. But none of that was an excuse to miss this morning's workout. So I didn't. And this afternoon there's some walking to be done. And this evening we've got dinner with the kid. We'll talk about current events over dinner. Not my "understanding" of current events but his, based on having spent a week in Chicago getting smarter and better informed for his data science company. 

I think the biggest disservice people my age can visit on themselves is to capitulate. To give up. To spend their remaining time turning the past over and over again. So much better to get up every day and go out of your house to look at the world in a fresh way. 

In my business of photography there is constant stylistic change. If I had been resistant to change I'd still be trying to sell a style I liked back in 1985. But my clients, all much younger, would be resistant to buying the style, or hiring me. I need to be able reflect current tastes in my work. And you are only capable of doing that by staying current. Listening to younger generations. Always seeing new work. Not by relentlessly looking at work by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.... Or HCB, et al. 

Cultural fitness is just as important as physical fitness when it comes to aging gracefully and well. And all it takes is daily practice and an open mind. Pretty simple.

Just checking to see if my instincts about the future of photography were good or crap some 13 years ago...

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/01/some-predictions-about-future-of.html