Photo Essay about Inconsistency on a hot, hot Saturday afternoon. It's okay to have more than one approach to your photography. Honest. And more fun too.

this is Craig and his cat. This was from the earliest days of my photo adventures in lighting. 

A Vivitar 283 flash shooting through a battered 42 inch translucent umbrella. The camera was a Mamiya 220 with the 135mm lens set. And, of course, Tri-X. Circa 1979.

Ben at Asti. Waiting for dessert. Leica M6 with 35mm Summicron. 

And...of course....Tri-X. Circa 1999.

pure magic. pour magic. por magique. Let's make coffee...

Current favorite photo-walk shoes. Oh heck; anything shoes.

An angel with a unicycle. 

Scouting.

Swimmer selfie. CL. 

a fellow photographer. I met him in the alley behind East 6th Street. 

You meet the nicest people in alleys sometimes.

Somewhere in Italy. Hasselblad 500 CM. 80mm lens. Mom and son.

Booting up. 

Somewhere Rome. 1991. Hasselblad 500CM + 80mm.

Renae. 

A display of tableware on the street in Berlin.

Taking a break for coffee. Yes. Sitting and sipping. Tastes better out of a paper cup...

Sam. The studio in Westlake Hills. Last year.

Photographers hanging out above a giant waterfall in Iceland. 

Berlin. 2013.

Outside the Austin City Limits Studios. Ready to roll.

UT does landscaping. Lots of nice landscaping. I need to go by and pick a few to earn points with B.

A rare thing. Rain in Austin. 

Highway project. Big flash. Medium sized camera. 

Sharing lunch and music on the steps of the Opera House in Berlin.

documenting one interpretation of paradise. The spring fed, Deep Eddy Pool, in the heart of Austin.

85mm rain

And more rain

Watching the yearly Ferrari Parade in the middle of Rome. 1991

 

DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEMES?

 Just such a good title for a post that I couldn't resist... Nothing to go with it though.

OT: The glorious water.

When I woke up this morning it was still dark outside. I saw that there was a slight breeze because I could see the leaves and small branches on the forest of trees that surround our house swaying and shimmying. I sat up on the edge of the bed and did a long stretch; then I looked for my shoes. Or rather, my sandals. It is Summer here after all. No matter what the calendar says...

I've been to swim practice consistently and over the last week the pool manager was having some difficulty keeping the water cool, and an imbalance in the chemistry was causing the water to be cloudy. We say, "cloudy" but what we really mean is that there was a uniformly limited visibility, more like a water fog. I had high hopes that everything would be figured out today. Yesterday the pool seemed on the mend. 

I pulled on a beleaguered pair of khaki pants and a seersucker dress shirt. I marveled that the shirt, a size "medium" was loose and floppy. I might have lost all the holiday weight I added two quarters ago. You can really feel that extra two pounds when it arrives. And when it leaves.

We have a long hallway from our bedroom to the dining room and the kitchen. I stopped halfway down to look out at the side yard which is still lovely, lush and green. The heat hasn't wrapped itself around the tender tendrils of grass and nudged it all toward dry and brown. The day lilies are in full bloom. The sweet olive bushes have recovered from two devastating freezes and are standing tall and looking confident. 

It's always good to eat something at the start of the day. It doesn't have to be something you think too much about. It's okay to wing it. I toasted some Parisienne sourdough bread, spread a light coat of fresh butter on it and then an even lighter coat of apricot jam. I have mastered the toaster. The result? A perfect brown finish. Crunchy. Full of flavor. 

While waiting for the toast I boiled water for coffee, arranged the filter inside the ceramic cone of my pour over coffee apparatus, ground freshly medium roasted Columbian coffee beans in my hand grinder, and followed the ritual for optimum flavor. At least "optimum" from my point of view. I knew it would be a tough workout this morning so I opted to drink the coffee black instead of indulging myself with an ample splash of half and half. 

After I rinsed off the coffee making parts, the cup and my plate I headed to my bathroom to apply sunscreen and to brush my teeth. None of my lane mates should be subjected to morning coffee breath. At exactly 7:45 a.m. I left the house with my towel, dry suit, swim bag full of goggles and post swim toiletries, and a bar of Newton Bay Swimmer's Soap, got into my wonderful white car and headed over to the pool. 

UT classes are over for the semester. The local high school is wrapped up, I think, and traffic was light. I pulled into the parking lot at five minutes till eight. Perfect timing. 

I stood on the deck and chatted with my lane mates, Jane and Sheila, pulled on my silicone swim cap, adjusted my goggles and plunged into clear, clean, cool water. It was at the perfect temperature; 77°. 

The pool chillers are doing their job. The chemical fog was gone. Coach Jen was on deck writing a very scary (challenging?) workout on the white board. For the next hour everything, EVERYTHING, was right with the world. 

What did I think about as we progressed through sets of butterfly swims, backstroke drills and fast, freestyle sprints? Mostly about technique but when I would get into a nice flow I let my mind drift to the camera and lens I would take out this afternoon as a companion on my lackadaisical travels through Austin. I kept coming back to the Leica M240, in black, with a 35mm Zeiss lens on the front and a Zeiss 35mm bright line finder in the hot shoe. Seems like just the camera for a day with no real agenda and no pressing commitments. 

I remember back ten or twenty years ago to a more hectic schedule. I'm reminded that no matter how crazy things got at work I nearly always set aside that hour in the morning to swim. To greet the morning with enthusiasm. To honor a routine. And it makes me feel good to know I had the discipline to show up every day. It's not just swimming; it's a way to navigate through life, feeling as well as possible... for as long as possible. 

Best just to answer one's mail, pay one's bills and get out the door with a camera just as soon as you can. You only get one life (that we know of). Why fuck around and wait for something to happen?

 

More experience with the 7Artisans AF 50mm lens for L mount makes me like it more. And more.

 

"Kirk" by David Ingram. Using my SL2 with the 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 lens @f3.5. Cropped and converted to "monochrome." At Jo's Coffee on South Congress. 

I'm not as smart or as fast as the YouTube reviewers who can use a lens for a few hours in an afternoon and then know all there is to know about the lens. Nope. I'm slow and plodding and sometimes will spend weeks getting to know a new piece of gear before I rant or rave about it. It's a failing on my part but I'd be sad to know that if I "pulled the lever" on the "awesome" control panel too quickly that someone might get a lens that, in the light of day, just doesn't work as well as I might have initially thought. And then they'd be out their lunch money...

I got my copy of the 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 AF lens in the middle of last week. I bought it with my own credit card. It's hard to send cash through the mail to an online store....  No one cares if I post this review. Meaning, of course, that no one is paying me to have a good opinion about the lens. It's totally up to me. The responsibility is awesome. 

Up until yesterday I had been using the lens only recreationally but I'm working on an ad photo for a larger medical practice and we're going to be compositing a photo of a doctor I made in the studio with either an image of a statue of Willie Nelson that sits in front of the Austin City Limits Theater on 2nd St. or an image of The Continental Club at twilight. I decided that the images needed to be made with a 50mm lens to match up best and since the 7Artisans lens was already on a camera it's the one that got pressed into service. 

Seems like all the cool, local, independent retail shops that first made South Congress Ave.

a tourist destination are being priced out and are either permanently closing or moving to 

more affordable areas. Soon, all that will be left will be national clothing stores, an Hermés store

and a bunch of pricey hotels. And upscale chain restaurants. Sad. But I guess that's 

the evil nature of capitalism. 

Back to Jo's. Which I believe is about to be owned by the Marriott Hotel Corporation.

And it too will change beyond recognition...

Mia, sitting next to me, had a cute, stuffed animal on her backpack.

I asked permission to photography her mascot.

It's always the same. Someone needs a photo of a statue or some art and when I drop by to photograph it the object is surrounded by big and unmoving objects. In this case a huge pick-up truck with a promotional wrapper. Promoting something that will happen in the Austin City Limits Auditorium; just behind the statue of Willie. We work around stuff. Or use content-aware fill....

I got over to South Congress Ave. yesterday evening about six p.m. I haven't been photographing for clients at dusk in a while and I'm afraid my timing was off. Had I looked at my phone I would have figured out that sunset wasn't until somewhere near 8:30. What's a photographer to do? I scooted by Jo's Coffee, right across the street and whiled away some time sipping on a cappuccino and scrolling through stories on Apple News. Then I got up and walked around trying to decide when to start shooting. 

I met a nice woman named Lindsey who offered me a bottle of cold water.  She comes to South Congress and sets up a table on the sidewalk most days. She reads Tarot cards for people in exchange for donations. We chatted about how to understand what to do with one's life. She is as conflicted as the rest of us. When the ambient light started dropping I mosied on over towards the Continental Club for a look. I wanted to get frames where the neon sign starts to outshine the daylight. Just like the statue of Willie, the front of the club was littered with people standing around smoking, or gawking, or trying to decide if they were ready to cough up a cover charge for a band they weren't really sure they knew much about. The dispersion of the crowd and the falling of the light more or less coincided as I waited for the perfect balance. 

And that's funny because I'm not used to waiting and I may be one of the most impatient people you know. But I had a camera in my hand and that's usually a free pass to loiter on the sidewalk for as long as you want. The doorman nodded to me and I nodded back. Once the sun dropped behind some buildings I was ready to take my hat off and pull my camera up. The sign over the club entrance comes on in stages and goes off in stages so one has to find the rhythm of the on and off cycles to get the neon sign all lit up. 

By 8:45 the last of the light faded away and my choices were ultimately reduced to getting good exposure on the signage or overexposing the sign and getting a good exposure on the sidewalk, the buildings and the passersby. 

So, what's my point? Hmmm. I guess it's that if you really want to know how well a lens works or doesn't work you actually have to spend time using it. And if you are testing lenses there are few better ways than working with the lens on a series of jobs or projects. Preferably projects that allow for some variation of subject matter. 

The lens in question is a fine lens. It's not earth-shattering but then few lenses really are. This one works, focuses just fine and is adequately sharp when used wide open and satisfying when used above f2.8. Perfect by f3.5. Not a bad deal for $228. I'm not selling them. I also don't do affiliate links. But this lens caught my attention and I'm happy to have it now. It still hasn't come off the SL2 I first attached it to. ..to which I first attached it. (Lord Byron would have wanted it this way...)

As a bonus this lens has been Mannequin Approved for various, mission critical, Mannequin Documentation Works.  Yes. Her natural tan.

Waiting in the shade for the sun to drop down over the horizon. Nice, puffy clouds.

I think we'll go with something like this. My composited doctor should cover the woman in the yellow boots just to the left of the red doors. And I like the way the signage looks. Could I have done better with a wildly more expensive lens? Probably not. I don't think I would have been any more or less talented... Would anybody be impressed by a lens that cost 20X as much? Probably not. No one even seemed to notice an older photographer in a wide brim hat standing on the sidewalks for a couple hours occasionally pointing a nondescript black camera at the doors of a famous old night club. Why would life be any different with a platinum level lens?  Nobody cares...

After a long evening waiting for the light to get right I headed back to the house. B. is out of town so I fended for myself by scrounging through the refrigerator. Leftover Ropa Viejo (Cuban style beef stew) and a thoughtfully paired container of cooked rice were right there on a shelf in the fridge with a note from B. "Try warming this up for two minutes in the microwave...." Who has time for that? I tried 1:45. She was right, it needed two minutes. 

This morning I glanced at someone else's review of this lens. He felt it was just mediocre. He was wrong. I kept thinking as I went off to buy some pipe insulation at Lowe's; wouldn't it be nice if everyone who wrote about, or made videos about, photography actually got out of their basements and did some actual photographs before they formed an opinion about a technique, a product or look?

It's Wednesday. I'm finishing up a couple of projects. Projects that clients actually assigned. Feels like just another normal day. 

This small gallery contains images created with the following cameras: Panasonic GH5ii, Panasonic GH6, Leica CL, Leica TL, Leica M240, Leica M240-M-E, Leica SL2-S, Sigma fp. All good cameras. All good fun.

Photographer's self portrait with a Leica CL

It's a cloudy day here in Austin. One best captured, I think, in expressive, contrasty black and white. I've just wrapped up several assignments even though I hinted around that I was thinking of retreating from the commerce side of photography to concentrate more fully on my own work. But after 40+ years the habit of accepting work for money is hard to shed. Hard to kill off. And, when I do have more time I tend to ruminate over what exactly it is that I'd like to do with the time I've created. What images would I really like to make and how would I like to make them?

In the 1980s, 1990s and the early 2000s I thought the secret of exciting photography was propelled by constantly heading to foreign locations to capture life that looks different from life here. Life in my own town. Life in my own milieu. But those were times when so little photography was shared. Before the web exploded and before discount air carriers opened up the market to travel to and fro for bigger and bigger swaths of humanity. And it was a time in which everything over someone else's border looked odd, mysterious, different and sometimes very cool. But the last few times I traveled to places like Germany or Iceland I noticed that everyone who traveled in the preceding years had succeeded in homogenizing pretty much everything. Most urban environments echoed most other urban environments with the main differences being the ages and the styles of architecture. 

The most popular restaurant when I was in Reykjavik was a ramen restaurant. Or the famous hot dog stand. Polartec looks the same everywhere. Germans were just, for the most part, better dressed than Texans. And more intentional about which part of the sidewalks to walk on and which to bike on. But nothing was as striking to me as when I first went to Rome with my parents in 1963. Or later to Turkey. Or backpacking through France, Italy, Switzerland and Greece back in 1978. Everything has gotten more internationally local. 

So the imagery I see from Lisbon or Madrid or any of the other "cities of the moment" for tourism look remarkably the same. And that begs the question about whether it's the quality of photography and personal vision that matters most or just convenient and trendy content that drives the popularity of images. One of my favorite Instagram photographers is Marcel Mellema (Marcel.Mellema@instagram) from the Netherlands. His portrait work is nothing like mine but is beautiful and timeless. And completely independent of location. He works in a studio. But the work rises above the need for an "exciting" location as a background. As does the work of newcomer, Yvonne Hanson. 

I'm not a landscape photographer and when I was complaining to my son about not traveling enough lately with my camera (for personal, family reasons) he laughed and said that I had always told him "if you can't make a good photo in your own home town .... well, wherever you go, there you are." 

So, I'm working through what it is I really want to do instead of filling requests from clients. I'm lucky enough to not need the paid work now. What I really need is direction but don't bother making various suggestions because I'm really, really bad at taking advice when it comes to artistic direction. Just sharing where I am and what my mind is up to these days....

Pana GH5ii

Author with Pana GH6. 2022. 

Coffee with a TL2

Leica M240 + Tri-Elmar

Sigma fp with 45mm