Acknowledging the vital role that the standard 70-200mm lens plays in my theater photography.

My theater work for main stage shows at Zach Theatre has me thinking in two opposite ways. On Sundays we generally have technical rehearsals which are the last chance to fix technical issues. Since we may stop and start the run-of-show for one of the technical crews to fix something we do not have any sort of audience or media at that run through. 

While everything is not as perfect and nailed down as it will be two day later for the dress rehearsal, for the purposes of still photography it's more than finished enough. The benefit of being close to the launch of the show and not having an audience in attendance is that I can range all over the venue; from the front row to the rafters. So, for a show like "Janis" I can shoot it more like a concert than a seated auditorium show.

On Sunday I like to explore angles from both sides of the stage and I mostly work in the first three rows and within 45 degrees of the center of the stage. Obviously, wide angle shots are going to be more immersive and show a lot more of the stage context. But it's not always the case; sometimes it allows me to get in close with a lens like the 85mm and experiment with shooting wide open or, maybe at f1.6.

I get a lot of my best shots this way and, as long as I don't use a flash or wear a white jump suit (stick to bright colors so the tech people who are carefully watching this very important performance don't get visually distracted. If you hair turned white you might consider putting it under a black ball cap....) I can move through the rows without causing shifting the focus to me. With mirrorless cameras and loud, live audio, there's so little noise from the shutter that it's not noticeable by the actors. 

Usually, I've dropped by one or more rehearsals so the actors know who I am and aren't trying to figure out why some strange guy is roaming around, unleashed, with two big cameras in his hands. In any event an Actor's Equity notice goes out to cast and crew whenever we're going to be in the house making photographs....

So the Sunday rehearsals, shot close to the stage, are the times when the wide angle zooms come into their own. My current one is the Panasonic Lumix S 24-105mm which is a constant f4.0 aperture. The lens is more than sharp enough, even when I use it wide open ---- and so I usually do. While I always would love faster lenses, now that I have a brace of cameras that work really, really well all the way up to ISO 6400 those fast apertures have fallen down the priority scale for me. Besides, I don't know of any companies that make wide-to-short tele zoom lenses that are faster than f4.0. The f2.8 lenses all tend to be 24 to 70mms and that's just too short a range for my needs. 

I try to get as much great stuff as I can on Sundays but I never miss a Tuesday dress rehearsal because 95% percent of the time every bit of the production is finished, and perfect, and ready to be shot without caveats. 

The only consideration is that we always have an invited audience. Usually a broad, family and friends audience. It's a good thing for the actors because they get to see for the first time where the audiences will react and how to time deliveries and pauses. The audiences gets energy from the actors but the actors get even more energy by having that audience to play to. And, by extension, the actors are more "on" and more "dynamic" than at any other time leading up to that first attended show. And I think it's reflected in the expressions and gestures of the cast. Since it's the "big test" of the show they aren't holding anything back. They're there to give it everything they've got. 

The compromise for me is that I can't move through the rows of seats and I really don't feel at all comfortable moving around the edges of the house, distracting the audience and the cast. What we've worked out over the years is that I shoot the dress rehearsal from the cross through row in the middle of the house. The house blocks off that center row and aisle and I share the entire row with a guy named, Eric, who shoots two camera video for show documentation.

With the whole row reserved for me I can move across twenty or so seats to get a position 20 or 30 degrees to the left or right of center. What I can do is move closer to the stage or further away. It's a bit constricting but I rationalize that I'm seeing the show exactly as an audience member would see it. 

But since I can't get closer to the stage I need the longer reach of the 70-200mm to get tight and dramatic shots. Since this production has a catwalk on the stage, at the very back of the stage, I would have loved a lens that goes all the way out to 300mm. I could have gotten a bit closer on the shot at the top of this post. Most of the time the 70-200mm is fine. Just fine. With all the 24 megapixel, full frame cameras, it's easy to crop in a bit and tighten up a good frame. 

I've been using Panasonic's Lumix S Pro 70-200mm f4.0 and it's really great. But, over the years I've also used the Nikon, Canon and Sony 70-200mm f4.0s as well as a collection of f2.8s and they are all very sharp and very well designed lenses that all deliver the sizzling steak to the clients. I'll test the f2.8 from Panasonic but I probably won't replace the f4.0. It already does everything I want it to...

As you may have noticed, when I change systems (and I do change my underwear much more frequently than camera systems; thank you very much!!!) I always buy the two holy theater lenses first and foremost, the wide-to-tele zoom and the 70-200mm. Can't leave the store without them. The fun stuff, like 50mm f1.4s and 20mm f1.4s all get added in as we go along. 

The nice thing about 70-200mm zooms of all varieties (non-entry consumer....) is that you know what you've got in your hands and if you've been photographing theater for long enough you know what your composition will look like at every focal length. You'll also know, the moment you see a great wide angle shot that you can't do it with the long zoom and you need to toss that camera into the maw of the open case sitting on the chair next to you, grab the camera body with the wide angle lens on it and blaze away. 

On dress rehearsal evenings I tend to get to the theater at 7:15 p.m. before an 8:00 p.m. show. This means I can always find a convenient parking place in one of the theater's lots (I have a staff hangtag on my rearview mirror that grants me free parking....). I get into the auditorium as quickly as I can get through the knot of staffers chatting each other up in the lobby. I want about 15 minutes of quiet time in my center seat so I can pull out the cameras, check for sensor dust, pop on lenses and then set all the menu items to the same settings. It takes the guess work out of everything when I need to quickly switch cameras. At most I end up making a quick shutter speed or ISO adjustment to match. 

Once I'm set and ready I head back out to the lobby for a quick bathroom break and then follow the audience back into the theater. I spend the last ten minutes in my seat, surrounded by seat with "reserved for photographer" signs on them because there are always people with excessive feelings of privilege who will actually take the signs off the seat back and plunk down. I move them out quickly, and I keep a small stack of reserved signs in the pocket of my roller case.....

I used to grab a glass of red wine at intermission, mostly because I could get one of the premium red wines at a discount if I'm wearing my name tag. But, since the beginning of the year I've been abstaining so I spend that fifteen minute gap catching up with the lighting designer or sound engineer. It's like we're all old school alumni. 

I used to worry about running out of space on my memory cards because I like to overshoot to make sure I've gotten just the right moment and expression. Now I buy bigger, faster cards; like 128 GB and up, and I find I simply can't run out of space. The downside of overshooting is the Herculean task of working through the next day's edit. 

I usually get home from a rehearsal shoot around 11 p.m. and drop by stuff by the office on the way into the house. In the last 11 years of shooting I've never experienced a single shoot evening that doesn't end with Studio Dog greeting me warmly at the front door and checking in to make sure everything smells good and that I'm okay. That's nice touch. 

So. The TLRIA (too long, read it anyway) is this: Two nice cameras. Two nice zoom lenses (with one being the 70-200mm) and you're ready to start shooting theater production photographs. Thanks for reading and leaving a pleasant comment...

How much really needs to be in focus? How soft can objects go in the background and still be recognizable? Does it matter?

Mary Bridget Davies as "Janis Joplin" in Zach Theatre's, "A Night with Janis Joplin.

Right up front we should consider that there are two decision making branches we take when we choose what focal length and which aperture we end up using for a particular shot, or series of shots. The first branch might be the one in which the photographer has complete and absolute technical control over all aspects of making a photograph and can choose exactly which focal length lens and what aperture to use in order to get exactly what they want to get in sharp focus, and what they don't need to have in that zone of sharp focus. This might entail being able to shoot with as much light as you could possibly want. It might also pertain to a situation in which you are shooting an exterior location, have great sun light and a crew of many who can put up giant silks to diffuse the sun in order to get the quality of the light just perfect.

If you have total control over the camera, the lens settings, and the light you get to choose the f-stop that will give you exactly what you want/need for your project. 

In many cases this way of working is the basis of advertising work. You get to cast the perfect model. Your stylist dresses them in the perfect selection of clothes. Your make up and hair people pull off the look you had banging around in your head as you planned the project. The lighting is flawless and nearly infinitely controllable. Ah, it's good to work with god-like control!

But there is a second branch of decision making which is based on pure need. The need to get a usable image into your camera in situations where the only control you have is how to handle the settings on your camera and lens, and also where you point the lens. Oh, and exactly where you are going to place the point of focus to make it all work for you. 

In these situations you will, in my experience, not be able to control the lighting, the movement of the subjects, the speed of the action, the costumes or the pace of the shoot. If you usually like to have full control over what happens on a shoot then situations in which you have little to no control are a hard learning process where your overriding goal is to get the best stuff you can while realizing that your photography is a lower priority to the process you happen to be photographing than just about anything else on the set.

In these situations you are likely trying to find a fast enough shutter speed to actually freeze most action  and, if you shoot like me, you'll probably be looking for 1/250th of second or a little faster (shorter). You might not always be able to freeze hand motion, because hands move faster than bodies, but you'll have a good chance of getting your subject still enough. Once you've got a shutter speed that both "freezes" action and allows you to handhold well enough you'll probably want to select the highest ISO you can reasonably live with. If you are in a "high" illumination setting then --- congratulations! You'll have a wider range of ISOs to choose from and more leeway in selecting a corresponding aperture. But if you live in most of the real world (or in the U.K. where readers constantly write to tell me that even at high noon in the dead of Summer the light is so dim that it's hard to even read a book outdoors...) you might find yourself selecting ISO 3200 or 6400 as your best choice, image-wise, in a particular environment. Especially when working indoors. Then, looking at your choices you find yourself locked into something like f1.4, f2.0 or f2.8 as being your best choices to balance out the exposure/motion-stopping/low-enough-noise equation.

In these cases the choice of whether or not to blur the background, to a certain extent, is largely made for you. Sure, you can try using wider lenses but you risk changing the perspective and/or the shooting distances that make for a comfortable photo.  In the photo at the top of the page I needed the right shutter speed to stop hair movement, and subject body and expression movement. It had to be 1/250th or faster. The low light had me cranking up the ISO to 4000 and that left me with an acceptable aperture of f2.5. With an 85mm lens, and the way the subject-to-background subject fell out, the person in the back, right side of the frame, is more suggestion than substance. 

In the photo just above the person in the foreground was further from the camera (I cropped in to the square) and closer to the person in the background. I think it's less trendy, at least in terms of how humans really process scenes with their eyes and brains. 

The bottom frame, just below, is the sweet spot for me. It was also shot from a further camera to subject distance than the top image and also cropped. The actor was moving slower so I hazarded a shutter speed of 1/125th which allowed for a aperture of f2.8 which, in turn, gave me a bit more focus on the stool and guitar in the background. I like it because the guitar is an important symbol for the production. 

While I was making these images I was daydreaming about putting 12 large (4x6 foot) softboxes up in the rafters and powering each one with a 1200 watt second flash generator. I would then be able to shoot as lower ISOs and smaller apertures---and with electronic flash I wouldn't have to worry much about using shutter speed to freezing motion. 

But I actually remembered doing shoots like that when we were using medium format film cameras to do the same kind of work (but with fewer soft boxes and heads). It was incredibly time consuming to rig something like that (plan on at least a day of pre-production) and to trigger all the lights. With medium format cameras and ISO 100 film though it made for really high quality images, reliably. But not much better in overall image quality than what we can get out of today's miracle cameras and lenses. 

Today's work looks different because we're playing right at the edges of acceptable camera/aperture settings. The older work had more front-to-back focus but was so much less spontaneous. And then there was the cost!!! I calculated the cost of banging off 2,800 medium format film shots with 12 shots on a roll. It's approximately 233 rolls of film (X 12 frames per roll) which, with processing included cost about @$15 per roll, and would have set the client back somewhere around $3,495. Just in film and processing; not counting Polaroid tests and the manpower to keep a bunch of film backs loaded and humming. Not to mention the rental fees on a truck load of lighting...

Choice is more expensive than working with what you have. But sometimes the unknown and the surprises make winging it a lot more fun. I've enjoyed working at the edge of wide open for the last week or so. It's an acquired taste and, like haggis, not something I want at every meal. But it works when you have to get the shot and circumstances limit your options. 

Then it's: Go wide open or go home.

"A Night With Janis Joplin" is coming to Zach Theatre and they asked me to sit in on an early rehearsal and take some photographs...

Last week was a full one for me as a working photographer. I spent a couple of days shooting corporate portraits on location for a large, national accounting firm, I photographed a couple of radiologists here in my studio for a big radiology practice, and then shifted gears for the next two days and photographed a fast moving event/symposium, produced for spinal surgeons from all over the country, at the Fairmont Hotel here in Austin, Tx. By the end of the week; the end of the day Friday, I'd already put an additional 5,000 frames on my Lumix S1 cameras. But we had one more project to shoot on Saturday. It was a rehearsal of "A Night With Janis Joplin" over at Zach Theatre's rehearsal facility. And it was the most fun job of the week. Few other jobs are so self-directed and also accompanied by lots of Janis Joplin's music. Plus, actors are a blast to work with.

Mary Bridget Davies plays the lead and has Joplin's voice and mannerisms nailed down with incredible accuracy. Living close to Austin I had the opportunity to see Janis Joplin live, at Threadgill's on Lamar Blvd., back when most of us got just about everywhere in this (used to be) small college town on bicycles and traffic was just a laughable idea. I've seen several different Janis productions in recent years but Ms. Davies just gets everything so right...

At any rate, I was just off a week of non-stop commercial work and feeling pretty exhausted when I packed up to head to the theater. I'd been shooting mostly with zoom lenses all week and wanted a complete change from the f4.0-f5.6 mentality. Knowing I could work in close to the performers I selected three lenses for the Janis project: two Sigma Art lenses (the 35mm and the 85mm) along with the Panasonic Lumix S Pro 50mm f1.4. The space we would work in has boring walls and hideous lighting so I wanted to work nearly wide open with each of the three lenses in order to drop the back walls out of focus and to eliminate as much clutter as I could. I was also ready for a bit of limited depth of field. And I'm always interesting in putting the cameras and lenses to tests at the limits of their operational envelopes. 

I chose the S1 model over the S1R cameras because I knew we'd never need these files to go really big. Most of their use will be in advanced press, and on social media, and even the 24 megapixel files will be greatly downsized before use. But my real reason for choosing the lower resolution cameras is my new found appreciation for their wonderful image quality at ISO's I used to consider emergency use only. 

Under the most dreadful lighting around I was able to generate nearly noiseless image files while shooting mostly between ISO 3200 and 6400.  And to give you an idea of how low the lighting is from ceiling mounted florescent light banks hanging 40 feet up I was sometimes using exposures like: f2.2 at 1/250th of a second with ISO 3200. The misery of the rehearsal space is that there's a wall of mirrors along one of the long walls and the stage markings (to match the actual stage next door) are faced to the mirrored wall so people can work on the choreography together. What this means for me as photographer is the banks of fluorescents that provide all the lighting in the cavernous space are behind the actors most of the time. 

I almost cried in joy when the actors' blocking occasionally placed them in the middle of the room and I could get front light on their faces....

The first thing I do after getting and giving hugs to cast and crew is to pull out the camera and set a good, solid custom white balance in the middle of the space. While this is a good thing to do you have to be aware that when an actor moves into a space where light bounces off a different part of the floor or a different part of a wall you'll probably get different color cast that you'll want to tweak in post production... But having a legit starting point makes life easier. Of course, I could just shoot it all in black and white and forget all the color stuff but not everyone wants to flash back to the 1950's with me, as far as photographs are concerned.

Nothing I'm showing here was set up for me or posed. I'm supposed to be like the proverbial fly on the wall trying to capture good shots of the actors  that the marketing team can use to generate pre-show buzz before the costumes are ready and the sets are done. I did as much as I could in terms of moving trash cans out of my view lines and moving people's backpacks and stuff out of the line of sight as well. 

The downside of shooting something in a really dark space, using lenses at or near their widest apertures, and trying to nail focus on the eyes of moving, dancing and singing people is that even the best eye AF has trouble nailing focus every time. I spent much of the day with the camera set to continuous AF at a high frame rate with face detect AF engaged. I won't call what I did "spray and pray" but at some point you have to trust that the camera will drill in and nail the focus you want and that the event of nailing focus corresponds to one of the decisive moments you might be looking for...

Yes, the S1 and S1R do the wobbly in and out of focus thing in the EVF when you shoot with the camera set as above but the hit rate can be very good if you let the camera settle in before mashing the shutter button. I used the faster frame rate with the continuous AF to give myself a better statistical chance of getting technically good stuff. It's a decent technique if you are trying to cover your ass but the downside is that I generated something like 2800 images by the end of the five hour session.

Mary Bridget Davis as "Janis."

I ended up using the 85mm f1.4 for almost everything and tried keeping it right at f2.2 or 2.5 so I could get the thin depth of field but using the hysterical edge of the cutting edge by attempting f1.4 all the time. Being down one stop gave me at least a fighting chance of getting and keeping and eye in focus most of the time. The other two lenses are great and I'm sure they are as sharp as the 85mm for what I use them for but the 85mm had the focal length I wanted so I would be able to get a tight crop without stepping across the line into someone else's personal space. Had there been more "two shots" and small group shots I probably would have defaulted to the 50mm or the 35mm.

I had always hated shooting in this room because of the flicker and exposure inconsistencies I would get from the ever present florescent lighting units. On this foray I experimented a lot with the flicker control feature offered by the camera. In the past I was too impatient and it didn't seem to work but the reality is that you have to (this is conjecture, but working conjecture on my part) half-press the shutter button and let the camera figure out the flicker rate before you proceed. Once the camera figures it out your can shoot for as long as you want in a single series --- as long as you maintain at least a half-press. Once you let go of the shutter button you'll need to half-press and hold while the camera finds its pace again vis-a-vis the lighting. 

You can actually see, in the finder or on the rear panel, a dark diffuse line slowly roll up the screen. That's the darkened line or area that you would capture if the camera wasn't helping you by getting the exact timing of shooting the frame calculated. Once you let the lines go through a time or two if you keep the shutter half pressed you'll most likely notice no repeating dark area scrolling across the screen. This is a godsend for event photographers since we are mostly now working under either flickering florescent lights or flickering, commercial LED lights. 

Shooting at a fast frame rate and not spending much time (at all) in review, I was able to get about 1250 shots out of my first, freshly charged battery. I was using the grip so the camera automatically switched to the second battery. I'm sure I could get double that rate out of a DSLR but it's certain not a "deal killer" for an very advanced mirror-free camera that incorporates such a high resolution EVF. The EVF and the image stabilization put a heavy load on the batteries...

Yesterday I was shooting to a C-Fast 128 GB card that writes at 1400 megabytes per second. I was also shooting in Jpeg fine. You'll just have to believe me that it seemed as though the camera had an infinite buffer. I could shoot sustained bursts and never have to wait for the camera to be responsive. I like the C-Fast cards, they are pricy but fast and seemingly indestructible. They are the same form factor as the XQD cards but are more advanced, internally. Now I'm back to having a mix of cards by generation. This includes: UHS-1 SD cards, V60 and V90 UHS-2 cards, several sizes of XQD cards and two of the C-Fast 128 GB cards. Some work well with conventional card readers but the C-Fast cards download more quickly and reliably just using the cameras USB-C connector.

The cast did a partial run through of the play at the end of the day and wrapped a little bit before 7pm. I was happy to join them because I felt less like a "supplier" and more like part of a very sweet and hardworking team of artists. It's a whole different mindset. 

After doing a quick edit I was able to peel down from 2850 to about 1,000 files which I then color corrected by groups and also tweaked contrast and clarity. Mostly, my post is about neutralizing color and opening up shadows in Lightroom. Easy stuff. But I did want to share that I was very, very happy with the lack of noise and the very detailed and beautiful files I came away with even when facing bad lighting....and not much of it. Good to have some fast, sharp primes in your back pocket...just in case.

Click the images to see them bigger. Look for noise. You won't find much....

A sample from the Lumix S1 and the "kit" lens. I think it all works pretty well and I'm happy with the way the camera handles skin tones and color.

I started using the Lumix stuff in earnest back in early October.

The image just above is from the "Day of the Dead" parade in 

downtown Austin. Lumix S1 + 24-105mm.

I've been pretty much delighted with the Lumix stuff so far. It's big and heavy and so it makes me believe my work must have more gravitas than usual...

The "kit" lens (24-105mm f4.0) is great and I find myself using it a lot for everyday stuff. It's fast enough and seems to be sharp enough, wide open, to match up well with the 24 megapixel sensor in the S1 camera. I tend to try and stay around f5.6 with the S1R camera. 

There are just a few things I wish were a bit different. First, I wish the batteries lasted longer. There is a power saving mode where one can select to have the camera go to sleep either immediately, or in 1,2 or 3 or more seconds after you take your finger off the shutter if the rear screen is in the quick menu display mode. That works, unless you want the camera to wake up super fast. But you have to remember to set it and, if you are in that display mode you'll have to hit the display button at least once before you review files or else.

I don't wish the cameras were lighter or smaller. I'm happy with those things.

I do wish that Panasonic would come out with a line of slower, smaller and less expensive lenses that are native to the system. I don't mind splashing out for expensive lenses in focal lengths I use most often but a second, smaller and lighter set would be nice for travel and street photography. 

I often replace the 2.5 pound 50mm Lumix S Pro lens with an adapted Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.7 lens because it's easier to walk around with. But I envision myself doing more stuff in the studio and in static locations this year, and less walking around in the street (concentration on portraits) so it's not a "make it or break it" deal. 

I'm going to say that at the four month mark I'm plenty happy with the Lumix S system and delighted with the images. 

Some notes from the field: I've been shooting with Fuji and Panasonic stuff for the last two years so I haven't fired up a Sony A7 series camera for video in a (relatively) long time. I got a text today from a friend who is shooting video at the CES show this week for a corporate client. He just ran into the nightmare scenario: important stuff to shoot, Sony A7iii in hand, and 20 minutes into a take the camera overheats and shuts down. He's concerned because he's got CEO interviews on the agenda and now can't trust his two primary shooting cameras to finish a long interview. He's shooting in 4K and my only two suggestions for him were to go to 1080p (much less processor intensive) and to set the "thermal shutoff" menu item to "high". That, and to pull the battery between takes to help cool down the camera interior. 

He took a couple of the Sony A7iii's with him because he predicted he'd spend a ton of time shooting "B" roll, and also wanted to travel light. It get that. Working on a gimbal on a fast moving, chaotic trade show floor is much better than trying to drag a big camera all over the place, or a big tripod for that matter. 

I gave up shooting video on the Sony A7 series back in the A7ii and A7Rii days for the same reason; overheating. I also never warmed up to editing 8 bit files from those cameras either, but I never had the same thermal issues with the Sony RX10ii or iii. They would plow through a 30 minute take without breaking a sweat. And I used the RX0iii to very good effect in Toronto on a long day of shooting with temperatures having around 10-14 degrees (f). No issues. 

My friend is also reporting that one of the cameras shuts down without warning when the battery is depleted. That's never fun. 

I've run the S1 in 4K for a full half hour with no temperature issues to speak of, same with the Fuji X-T3 and the Fuji X-H1 with the battery grip. Those cameras seem to be able to go all day long without fainting.

Some thoughts about the Nikon D780: I liked my D750, I really did. It was a good all around camera that produced great files and worked well for stills with the caveat that it, like nearly every DSLR Nikon I ever owned, was prone to backfocusing with some lenses. The D780 is more an upgrade and refresh than a big leap forward. Same 24 megapixels. A bit better video. More responsive when in "live view" mode. But the big, new positive improvement, in my view, would be the on chip phase detect AF sensors. That should go a long way toward curing the annoying tendency, when using some lenses, of getting nicely sharp earlobes and unhappily unsharp eyes in some portraits......

I'm setting a timer now and waiting for the first recall. You'll remember that the D750 had two or three recalls during its long lifespan. 

The one interesting thing (to me) about the new Canon 1DX mk3:  I watched a few videos about this new sports camera from Canon and found myself nodding my head about most stuff but I sat up and paid attention when they showcased what was new in video. The camera will now shoot full on, heavy duty, video raw files! Not just V-Log files at good bit rates but full raw files which should allow an enormous flexibility in changing the look, feel, color, exposure and overall quality of video files in editing/post processing. 

The downside is that a 64 GB card fills up entirely in about 5 minutes. Just like the old days of shooting with a 16mm movie camera and a 400 foot film load.....

The other feature that should be of interest to everyone who loves to shoot Jpegs is the introduction of a HEIC file which, I believe, Canon is called a HIF file. These are better compressed than Jpeg and feature a ten bit color space for thousands of colors rather than 256 colors. A big step in the right direction for future cameras. Just right if you have an upcoming assignment shooting at the Olympics...

Aqueously speaking: I've found the right mixture of antihistamines and mind altering coffee blends to mute the symptoms of Cedar Fever allergies so I was back in the pool Sunday and again this morning. We had a great set today courtesy of coach, Jimmy  Bynum, and my lane leader suggested finishing off our 3750 yard practice with five shooters (swim 25 meters underwater/no breath and then swim easy on the way back). Holding your breath at the beginning of workout is psychologically easier at the than after an hour and a half spent grinding out fast yards. 

Hope everyone is happy and healthy. I'm booked all of next week on photographic assignments so I'll probably slow down the pace of posting a bit. Don't construe that as a surrender....

A second image from Day of the Dead, 2019, in Austin, Texas.