A Portrait of my friend, Michelle. A lovely afternoon in the studio.

One of my goals going forward with the blog is to make and show more portraits. It's something I love to do. I used to worry that my best days as a portrait photographer were behind me but every once and a while a friend whom I photographed twenty years ago will drop by and we'll make fresh portraits. Then I can look and see that the portraits are somehow different than the ones we took years ago but not worse or less emotive to us.

Michelle and I spent an hour talking before we started making photographs. Once we got started we just went with the flow of the afternoon and had fun catching up and being with each other. This image was the very last one of our hour long session. She seems fresher than when we started.

I won't belabor the technical details other than to say that I used a Sony A7rii and took advantage of the eye detection AF. I used the 70-200mm f4.0 FE lens and, contrary to recent practice, lit the session with one large and more small softbox and electronic flash. The only other modifier was a soft, white reflector used to one side.  Fun.

Added a bit later: Here is original color image this black and white rendering is based upon: 

It's Photokina Week. I should be waking up thinking of cameras and lenses. But really, I mostly just thought about swimming.

The Fuji MF camera announcement was fun and interesting. The new Olympus EM-1 mk.2 looks like a really nice upgrade. The Sony a99-2 look promising but engenders some marketing confusion. It's all interesting to someone.

But when I woke up before my alarm clock this morning the dog looked at me incredulously then turned over and went right back to sleep. It was still quite dark outside; like, maybe minus 10 EV. But all I could think about was getting to the pool and jumping into the cold, clear water. I was anticipating the pure joy of fast paced swimming while watching the slow sunrise over the bathhouse and the first brush of the golden glint of fresh sun on the water.

My friends are pretty excited about the new photo stuff. They burrow down into their own system stories and geek out about things that I think are small evolutions. But I haven't touched a camera today and it's almost lunch time.

I've been working on finishing up some marketing postcards (real, physical, paper cards delivered by the post office), and doing the accounting for the state sales tax payment. Answering correspondence, responding to requests for bids on LinkedIn's Pro-Finder program and paying bills. All the stuff that goes on all the time in small businesses everywhere. The stuff we do when we don't have cameras in front of us.

This afternoon I'll address and stamp mailers. I might take a look and see if anyone has posted any breakthrough camera news. But then, at sunset, I'm heading back to the pool to work on some unhurried stroke mechanics. I'm finding that as we get older our technique has to get better and better in order for us to stay competitive.

It's exactly like photography. When we no longer have the advantages of youth, and the connections gained by age parity with art directors and assorted creatives, the thing we can bring to the table is polished vision and deep technique. The stuff you learn the hard way --- with the experience and the passage of time.

In the water, behind the camera, it's all the same. A perfected flip turn saves you time. Having lit a thousand portraits well also saves you time. Daily practice. Unwavering focus. Seems to pay off.