As I was looking in the archives for shots of live theater production photos I kept stumbling across portraits that I love.

This is one of Afradet. I found her eyes to be amazing. I found her when an art director cast her to play a part in an campaign we did for the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Afradet was just finished with college and launching her career. We did a bunch of photos together after the Chamber project but we've since lost touch in the mad swirl of life...I'd love to photograph her one more time.

Photography as cultural record keeping. Looking at vanishing "Texas" in growing Austin.

This shot is part of a series of original buildings that lined Congress Ave., the street that leads right up to the state capitol. Congress used to be lined with many two and three story brick or stone buildings that had been there since early days. The image above is of the side of a building that started out as a clothing store and at some point became the home of one of our city's most beloved Mexican food restaurants; Las Manitas.

The whole block was recently demolished and flattened to make way for the amazingly bland J.W. Marriott Hotel. A cookie cutter convention hotel that, I am sure, generates money hand over fist for the Marriott corporation. I'm sure the property now also generates thousands of times the tax revenues of the old restaurant and also the surrounding businesses that proceeded the hotel. We've gained some revenue and lost a bit of our heritage.

Progress waits for no one. At least we have a continuing series of photographs that tells a two dimensional story of what was there.

Shot eight years back with an Olympus E-1 and a 50mm macro lens.

Photograph the stuff you grew up with before it vanishes. You might want to reminisce.

It's about one hundred and one degrees here in Austin, Texas. I thought I'd find a ski shot to look at for a while.

A few years back Jennifer and I decided to do a series of sports photos with a bit of a twist. We'd shoot them as portraits in the studio. Back then I was working with one big 4x6 foot softbox as my main light, very little fill light and then one light on the background for separation. Here's the shot we did with Jennifer in a down ski jacket wearing a pair of goggles.

We shot the series with a Hasselblad 201f camera and a 180mm Zeiss lens onto Agfapan APX 100 film and then printed them. This is a copy shot of one of the prints. When I see the photo it reminds me of how cold it was on the day of the shoot --- and how much fun we had doing it.

In retrospect I should have toned it a bit cooler (more blue) to align with a wintry theme...

Playing with new photos over on Instagram. A quick way to put up an new gallery: https://www.instagram.com/kirktuck/

Going a little nuts today over on Instagram. You might want to see new (and old) stuff.

https://www.instagram.com/kirktuck/

Crazy times.

Kirk Tuck Presents his Ideas About Photography for Live Theater this Thurs. in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Practice something enough and you tend to develop some proficiency at it. I've been doing photography for live theater production marketing for over 30 years now and I think I'm just about getting the hang of it. I've been asked to do a presentation about photograph to a group of photographers in Dripping Springs, Texas this coming Thurs. (June 28th) and I decided to actually talk about something I know: The Nuts and Bolts of Live Theater Photography.

Here's a link to the group's website about the evening: http://photographersofds.us/2018/06/19/pods-june-meeting-june-28-2018-630pm/ 

I'm going to concentrate on walking people through my methodologies. I'm not going to set up and shoot anything. But I promise to at least try and be interesting. Now I've just got to spend a little time going through the archives with the idea that I might want to show some work.....

If you're in the neighborhood I'm sure you are welcome to drop by.

In other news: The West Austin News interviewed me and ran a full page profile. It made me sound smarter and more interesting than..... Sadly, it's print only and they seem picky about copies ending up on the web. I'll ask once more if I can publish just the article here on the blog but it's nothing you won't glean from reading the "Contact/Info" page on my website....