Why you shouldn't shoot like everybody else.

By Kirk Tuck

Let's face it,  I don't think any of us woke up one morning and said, “The thing I love best is taking pictures of strident brides putting on yet another cookie cutter,  antique ivory white dress with the annoying little buttons down the back.....”.  We didn't.  We don't.  We do many of the annoying little jobs we do because they pay the bills.  The wedding profits pay for the mortgage and the car payments.  The bridal portraits help pay for new gear.  And the PR photos of “guys in ties”, done with the same old soft box and grid light on the background,  pays for dinners and electric bills.  But you are way off base if you think we buy for a moment that you shoot these things because you are driven by your “inner muse” to do your “Art”.  (That's capital “A” art.....).

We're not all wired the same way so if you really get a thrill running a business and making a profit and that's all you want out of your photography then I get it and we'll give you a pass on the art thing.  But the rest of you aren't getting off so easily.  Most of us got into this field because we loved taking photographs of people, or landscapes, or life on the streets.  I certainly didn't pick up a camera because I saw a cool product photograph in a catalog.

I picked up a camera because I loved taking photographs of my friends.  I wasn't drawn to images that were lit in a particular way, I really loved the stuff that was black and white, available light and relatively unposed.  When I had done this kind of work for years as a pleasurable hobby I found my self at loose ends after my partners and I sold our advertising  agency.  I had some money in my pocket and a bunch of people kept hiring me to photograph them or their loved ones in the style I'd done.

But.....as soon as the art moved from hobby to business there started a subtle erosion of the essential point of view that made my work different from everybody else's.  I learned that there was an established style to shooting business head shots and so I learned that style and began to offer it.  I had to buy lights and drag them into the mix.  I learned the “right way” to do an executive portrait and I started to incorporate what I learned into the mix.  

And if you think about it, the convergence of digital imaging and the photo sharing sites on the web has quickened a process of homogenization that now seems relentless.  How many of you think that a reportage style of wedding photography is wonderfully unique?  Really?  Even though every wedding book I've seen in the past three months has exactly the same stuff in it?  The close up of the fingers trying to button five hundred annoying buttons on the back of an antique ivory wedding dress?  The edgey images with the razor thin slice of sharp focus that just screams out, “Hey, look at me.  I got a Canon 5D and a fast 85mm lens...”  You know the drill.  We all know the drill because we presume that these are the images and styles that brides want and we want to deliver them so we can make the car payments and buy dinner.  And in the corporate world we know that the standard head shot is generally a boring piece of crap that doesn't move the game forward any more than music on your website.

I think we homogenize for a variety of valid anthropological reasons.  We have a subconscious  desire to please our tribe.  We fear striving for originality and excellence because we have a suspicion that these things aren't valued by our clients and showing different work might cause them to reject our services.  Which we then interpret to be a rejection of our selves.  We might fear the hostility that will inevitably come from those who are practicing the status quo.

But here's the nasty reality statement that I'm sure you've known was coming from the minute you started reading this:  The people who populate the top 1% of the art world don't really give a minute of thought to what might “play well in Peoria”.  They pursue their vision.  Their own vision.  And they do it in a way that basically welds them into the longer view of art history or photo history because it introduces aesthetic game changers that the rest of us will buy into decades down the road and work to homogenize into our collective offerings while some where a new generation comes knocking with the real goods.  But we won't understand the value of those goods until it's just too damn late.  Think Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.  Both of whom were incredible pioneers as opposed to the Chase Jarvis and Michael Grecco types who understand a trendy, contemporary use of the tools, and the power of good, pervasive marketing.

It's like Avedon invented Haute Cuisine while Jarvis added an extra strip of bacon to the cheeseburger.....while Grecco introduced pink mayonnaise and convinced Ludacris to put it on his bacon cheeseburger.....really, it is apt.

Consider this for a moment...two companies sell 90% of the cameras used by professionals today.  Both have the identical format!  Your choice is really sensor A or sensor B.  Processing algorithm A or   Processing algorithm B.  Can you imagine the photographers we truly admire from the film age being constrained to choose between just two different films?  Where is the differentiation?  Where is the rugged individualism?  How did this all happen?

Some postulate that every move toward convenience decreases overall quality.  That every wave of mass acceptance creates an inertia to consider whatever the masses have embraced to be the “standard”.  By that measure, clothes from Walmart are the new standard, and if you are truthful you'll acknowledge that you'd never get your wardrobe from Walmart...

So, what do you do? If you are a business person, first analyze your business carefully, and if you find that selling your current product, no matter how commodified it is, is going well and your market share is growing, then continue on your path.  But if you feel like you got into this field to do something unique and different but you have the queasy feeling that you let the weight of life and money drag you into some compromised stasis then start pushing back and re-connect with why you wanted to be here in the first place.

When I taught at The University of Texas at Austin I had a student who came to me and complained that she couldn't possibly fulfill her promise as a great fashion photographer unless she had a Hasselblad and a stable of good, Zeiss lenses.  But she whined that she could never afford them, so she was doomed to failure.  A week earlier I had overheard her telling a classmate that her parents had just bought her brand new, turbo-charged  Volvo station wagon. ( in the early 1980's this would have been viewed as radically indulgent within the student class---now, who knows?).  

I suggested that she sell the car and buy the dream.  She thought I was insane.  The money trumped the art.  The comfort quotient kicked the crap out of art.  I caught up with her two decades of “life lessons” later.  She has become a gifted artist.  She pursues her vision with a Holga camera.  She lives on the edge.  She doesn't own a car.  But here's the news flash, she's happier than she ever was because she's very clear about what she wants.  And what she wants is to pursue the vision she had in the very first gestalt moment of loving photography.

So, how do you change?  How about throwing away all the trappings and offering what you really feel compelled to offer as art, and the hell with the rest of the market.  After all, would you rather be the next Avedon or a watered down/ tarted up version of Olan Mills.  You have the “Art” with a capital “A” in you or you would have never chosen this business.  Owning a McDonald's franchise is a much more secure way to earn lots more money.  So trade down on lifestyle, if necessary, and trade up on artistic integrity.  I can almost guarantee that you'll spend less on therapy and Xanax.  And people may grow up wanting to be just like you----instead of wanting to have your lifestyle.

I know you might think this sounds preachy and high handed but it's really a synopsis of the journey of self discovery I've been on lately.  I've opened the files in my office and dragged in a big ass trash can.  Anything that doesn't feel good, special and all about my work goes into the can.  All the event negatives from the 1990's.  All the executive portraits older than three years.  And I've started showing only the styles I want to shoot.  Not everything I could do in a pinch.  It makes me feel lighter.  Like I'm freeing up mindshare.  But that's something for another month.

In the meantime my prescription for change is to go back to using your very first camera for a month.  If you learned on a Canon AE-1 or a Minolta Maxxum 7000 or a Holga, go back and get one and load it up.  Shoot the way you once loved for a month.  Live with your style for a month and see if it doesn't feel better. 

I could give you more advice about shooting with little strobes but it would all be bullshit until you figure out why you shoot, and what you want to have coming out of your camera.  Customers?  If the work is satisfying to you then you'll find the market you want.  It may not be the market that supports your BMW payments but remember, you trade you life for money and you'll never get either back, so you might as well start doing it on your terms right now!

Thanks, Kirk

Author:  Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography

      Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography

(really, two totally separate books with annoyingly similar titles.....)

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

Wondering why there aren't more formats available?

I often get accused of preaching about film because I'm some sort of Luddite who doesn't get that digital is infinitely better than film ever was. That's not exactly true and I have closet full of multiple generations of digital cameras to prove it.  The real reason I wax nostalgic for the good old days was because we had some nice choices for formats.  

Now, if you don't like 2:3 or 4:3 crops,  you're just flat out of luck. After over a hundred and fifty years you get two choices.  Both rectangles. Both kinda klodgy.  I guess their both okay for general stuff but what if you really like COMPOSING in a square? We all know you can crop square or round or whatever on your computer but what if you want to simplify the choices for your brain, cut the mindshare and make the decisions with the camera? This is a photograph of my friend, Lou.  She fits the square perfectly.  I photographed her with a Hasselblad and I never had to deal with determining how it would be cropped.  The viewfinder was my friend, knew I liked squares, and helped me do it in the gestalt of the moment.  So now my mind is always free to like the image just as it is.  

If I shot it on 35mm I would always have to repress the little script that would pull on some cortex of my brain, screaming, "Are you sure you made the best crop?  Why didn't you show more on the top?  Less on the left?  More on the right?"

I talked to an engineer at a semiconductor company thirteen days ago and he confirmed what I thought all along---laying out chip dies as squares on a wafer is the most efficient and cost effective way to manufacture our camera sensors.  To say it in a different way, it would be cheaper and easier to make square sensors than it is to make rectangular sensors in volume!

So how about a little choice here?  Nikon and Kodak has acknowledged that there is a demand for the square.  You can set the old Kodak SLR/n and the Nikon D3 to shoot square.  But what the hell good is that if the viewfinder still shows a rectangle.  It's all so frustrating.  Surely you'd like to have a few more choices, wouldn't you?

But I still have a couple of square cameras to all is not lost.  By the way, the above image was made in my old studio using a Hasselblad 201f with a 150mm 2.8 lens.  There are two lights: The main light, over to the left of the frame, was from a Profoto Acute 1200 pack with one head. The head was used in a 54 by 72 inch soft box with the front panel placed about four feet from Lou.  Another head was used in a small softbox, dialed way down on an Acute 600e pack, to put a very slight amount of light on the background.  Probably three stops down from the main light.  Agfapan APX 100 film.  Wanna see a bunch more portraits?  Head here.

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

Easter Confessional about point and shoot cameras....

I'm hardly clandestine about it but I thought it was high time I professed my fascination with what are commonly called "point and shoot" digital cameras.  I find them irresistible.  Lately I've been snapping up the Canon G series, starting with the G10.  Small and dense, this little 14 megapixel camera pulls my attention like gravity.  

Last week I found a G9 and snapped it up like candy.  I've also acquired a Nikon P5100 and a Canon SX10 and I find all of them to be good.  Better than I thought they'd be.  In fact I prefer them to my other, more professional cameras in day to day shooting and here's why:  They reintroduce an element of unpredictability and challenge into projects.  But at a basic level they can be compelled to offer the quality and control that was unimaginable in a digital camera just ten years ago. Probably five years ago.  The photo (above right) of Ben was a quick shot taken this morning with a little florescent light bank.  He resented being dragged into the studio while still half asleep but I wanted to see how the little G10 handled a fast portrait.  

While others have reviewed the G series and bemoaned the lusty noise at any ISO setting over 200 I've been fascinated by the performance at 80 ISO.  The smooth texture of skin tone and the enormous amount of real detail.  I've given up shooting raw on my little cameras.  I'm too lazy.  So what you see above is a cropped Jpeg right out of the machine.   But beyond the performance of the file I find the convenience features of the cameras compelling.  

Have you used "face detection" autofocus?  It's fabulous.  It works.  It's easier to focus a portrait with this camera's face option than it is to focus with my D700.  Really.  And when your subject moves around in the frame the little face square follows the face around, constantly keeping things sharp.  Don't laugh until you try it.  Do you ever shoot self portraits?  You've got to try "face detection self timer".  It just works.

Do you think the little electronic view finders (EVF's) on cameras like the Canon SX10 suck? Well, I don't and here's why:  I can comp a scene in the finder with the camera set to manual exposure and while I'm watching the scene in the finder I can slowly change the shutter speed or the aperture with the little command dial on the back while watching the effect in real time. Before I click the shutter.  No post image capture chimping necessary.  I can even throw in a live histogram if I want.  But I gave up including the histo because the EVF image matched the final image I see on my calibrated studio monitor really well.  Bonus, the final image always looks about 20% better on the monitor than in the EVF but in terms of exposure accuracy it's very close.

Another confession:  I already had a G10 when I bought the (lesser appreciated) SX 10 IS but I bought the SX10 to be my "take anywhere" digital web video camera.  What the heck?  Why not?  Do we really need to shoot everything in HD if it's going to end up as a YouTube video or a short tutorial on a website?  And the SX10 has almost everything I want in a web video camera, including stereo microphones, a long lens and ample image stabilization.  Pop out the SD memory card, pop it into a recent Mac and you're ready to edit your movie.  You could shoot your lighting tutorial on a Red One camera but why?  It was only after I started using the SX 10 for videos that I realized it is also a fabulous still camera.  

I'm in love with the bendy, twisty two and a half inch finder screen on the back.  I love to pop a Hoodman Magnifier on the screen and use it like a waist level finder.  It's outrageously convenient for ground level shooting.  I used it all day last Thurs. on a photo shoot outside here in Central Texas and it couldn't have been more convenient.

At this point someone will no doubt lob in the usual caveat about these small sensor cameras.  "But the depth of field is so big you can't put the background out of focus!!!!"  Oh so true.  But think about all the times you wished you could keep the background in focus.....I was shooting landscapes last week and I wanted the foreground to be tack sharp and the background to be sharp as well.  Piece of cake with my SX10,  not so piece-of-cakey with my D700 and a 24-85mm lens.  There are lots of times when you wish everything was in focus and, for the most part it can be with these little cameras.  No one who reads this owns only one camera and expects it to do everything.  If you need a blurry background in a portrait you are smart enough to grab a DSLR out of the bag and pop an 85mm 1.4 lens onto the front.

But then we venture into issues of sheer quality.  You've got me there.  The best of the pack, the G10, is no match for the Phase One 45+ (medium format digital camera) I tested last fall.  Once I get that Phase One up on my tripod, focus carefully, set the exposure carefully and use my best technique, those MF files blow away all my small cameras as soon as I start printing the results bigger than 11x14 inches.  But wasn't it always this way?  Wasn't your Hasselblad always a bit sharper than your Canonet QL17?  Didn't your RZ 67 usually show a bit more detail than your old Leica M3?  I don't know about you but I still loved shooting with the 35mm stuff. Even used it on jobs.  Even though I owned 4x5 inch cameras and medium format cameras.

So what's the real thrill?  It's all about shedding the professional photographer emotional and physical baggage and re-acquiring that early thrill of photographing.  I can dump three or four different little cameras in a small Domke bag and shoot just about anything.  I can take one small camera out for the day and play without invoking a major Heisenbergian uncertainty paradigm.  The low profile of the small cameras doesn't cause the psychic disruption that a honking big D3 with a monstrous 24-70 2.8 zoom lens on the front.  (And God Forbid you should go full Strobist Insane and try to traipse through urban streets unnoticed with three or four flash units hanging off your main rig..........).  

It's the same subtlety that has been employed by our most successful voyeurs for the past century.  The tiny cameras (relative to their day) of Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert Frank. The little Olympus digital cameras of Alex Majoli and many others.

I'm smitten but I'm fickle.  In the same week that found me tracking down a good clean Canon G9 I also arranged to get another Rollei 6008.  But I have different uses in mind for that camera...........More on that later.

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

The second book is here.

A Tourist In Your Own Town.

I'm sure you've done this many times. But if you haven't I think this exercise is one of my favorites for unblocking the creative gland and reforming the compositional capacitors that store pizzazz energy for the photo shooting part of your brain.  Here's the basic scenario:  You've spent the work week responding to e-mails, sending out bids for jobs (that keep getting postponed), you go to meetings. Some meetings are good.  You show your portfolio and walk away thinking that people like you and jobs may come your way.  Some meetings are dreadful, like the one with your banker who wants to redefine your business line of credit.  The worst meetings are the ones where horrible clients want to beat you up and get a better price on projects because, "the economy sucks".  And, of course, there are the daily obligations like sitting through your child's six hour track meet, fixing the refrigerator and trying to walk that fine line between saving enough money to go out for a nice anniversary dinner without blowing the regular budget.

So,  if you've survived a week of this you are probably sick of your office or studio, sick of the pressure and sick of thinking about things in general.  You've pretty much hit the wall.  Now is the time to grab your favorite camera, leave your family to their own devices and become a tourist in your own town.

If you live in a town like Austin you are probably aware that the city you know is in constant flux.  I like to take one Sunday afternoon a month just to walk around the downtown area with a camera and see what's new.  Today was a windy day with temperatures in the high 60's to low 70's and lots of bright, Texas sunshine.  We even had a few little high, puffy clouds.  I grabbed a Canon G9, stuffed in a four gig card and drove to the shores of Lady Bird Lake (part of the Colorado River which runs right through the middle of our downtown).  I parked on the south shores and headed for the pedestrian bridge which gives a great view of the downtown skyline. There are a bunch of high rise condo buildings going up and it's fun to photograph them against the stark, blue sky.

When the weather is as perfect as it was today all of Austin seems to show up to run, ride bikes and walk around the hike and bike trail.  Just the way a tourist in his own town likes it.  

I shot everything I saw as if I was seeing it for the first time.  The light fixtures on the bridge. The nearby railroad bridge and the river running underneath, littered with kayaks and canoes. Then I headed into downtown with stops at the power plant to shoot those big gizmos that look like ray guns in sci-fi movies and the anything with cooling fins.

I meandered through downtown shooting the sunlight licking the faces of my favorite buildings until my feet started getting sore and my stomach started grumbling.  I retraced my steps, walked past the car and headed to P.Terry's hamburger place for a single burger on whole wheat, all the way, minus jalapenos.  It was great to just sit in the bright sun on the wooden picnic table benches and slowly savor a chocolate milk shake.  I also photographed the P.Terry's sign for fun.

The little G9 or it's slightly bigger brother the G10 gives me some sort of license to shoot whatever I want.  My friends would laugh if I said I was shy but like everyone in post "9-11" America I am a bit reticent about pointing a big honking camera at strangers.  The G cams are so touristy, so amateur "wannabe" that they almost scream, "Look at me, I'm a perennial art student on a fine art scavenger hunt..."  and nobody but the drug dealers takes those folks seriously.  So, having a little "hand" camera is your license to peer into nooks and crannies, accost strangers,  shoot silly angles and generally lurch around trying to see if you got the shot by chimping the hell out of the LCD. (I know what I said last week about chimping but when you are a tourist you do whatever the hell you like!).

So what does this five hour hike around the monuments of Austin's attempt to be a real cosmopolitan metropolis buy me?  I think it gives me an excuse not to think.  An day of shooting without the pressure of having to turn out perfect work.  License to really experiment with the tools and the toys.  I know I got some exercise as I figured my route to be about five miles in all.  A chance to re-orient my engraved memory of what is downtown. And a good excuse to go off my very strict, vegan diet and splurge with a great burger.  (That last sentence was a joke.  I live for P. Terry's burgers and fries---even if it ends up knocking 1.2 months off my total life expectancy.....).

I returned home with 345 images on the little memory card and a real appreciation for what those little G cameras from Canon can turn out.  In bright light they are remarkable.  I think I'll get a few more.  

Now, here's the rant:  Stop buying big, super megapixel cameras!!!! Here's why: According to Ad Age, Adweek and the Wall Street Journal, the relentless march of advertising to the web has accelerated at a rapid clip during the last year.  Remember when we wondered when digital SLR's would supplant film?  And then it happened overnight?  What happens in trends like the move to digital imaging or the move from traditional print advertising to web and other forms of electronic advertising is the the momentum builds until the market hits a point of capitulation.  (From the latin, essentially meaning to behead the king.....).  Until the king is killed the armies keep on fighting but once the head rolls the armies stop.

We are on the cusp of print advertising capitulating to digital.  In a year or two the remaining traditional magazines will sit on lonely shelves and many of their trusty brethren will have been consigned to webmag status.  As photographers we have to understand that mastery of image files and the ability to summon tons of megapixels into the fray will no longer be effective barriers to entry to our field.  The D3x's and 1DSmk3's will become albatrosses that require learning the intricacies of downsizing.  No one will be looking for 50 megabyte tiff files they'll be looking for good compression and fast loading.  And more and more they will be looking for files that move.  As in video.

So where does that leave us as professional photographers? With the realization that many have already accepted:  We are content providers and it's time to re-orient our understanding of what constitutes content.  I'm nearly confident that I'll be doing my content in the near future with a laptop for writing and image editing and a couple of cameras like the Canon G series compacts for both still and video clip imaging.  All of a sudden there won't  be an endless need to spend on expensive camera upgrades and new models because web bandwidth will be come our new "line screen" and it will limit our need to provide huge files.  In  due time the new standard will be the resolution of HD screens and the schism between television screens and studio monitors will, for all intents and purposes, vanish.

When traditional barriers to entry into professional imaging are smashed we will have to compete and dominate the competition in three important ways:  First, we have to have better ideas. The ideas become our currency.  We'll have to be masters of lighting, at least as far as it serves our purposes in giving us an inimitable style. And third, we will have to infuse our content with intellectual assets that are unique to our own experiences.  Sounds lofty but what the hell does it really mean.  First. Better Ideas.  Instead of surviving as documenters or "picture takers" we will bring concepts and visions to the table and those will be our first line of commercial defense.  If someone asks for a portrait of a plumber it won't be on gray seamless paper with three point lighting but it might be in an underground labyrinth of crossed pipes and mysterious pools of lighting, complete with giant shrews and monsters over which our heroic plumber is victorious.  Second, the light on our plumber will be anything but formulaic.  The pipes themselves will glow.  We'll invent lighting that comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  And third,  we'll use our dreams, our nightmares and our loftiest ideals as the fabric for our creations, making art so poignant that it brings tears to the hardest heart and smiles to the hopeless.  Or something like that.

And in the brave new digital world the walls between writing, filming and photographing will be liquid, pliable and permeable and we'll master all three the way Mr. Spock used to master three dimensional chess on Star Trek.  Because clients now understand that advertising is more like movies than it is printed posters in the town square.  And they are looking for directors and screenwriters, not camera operators and DP's.  

So,  right now is when you need to start working on your first video project.  But not with an eye for technical perfection but with an ear for the melodies of seeing.  And now is when you need to start learning to turn feelings and sensations into words that reach out and move people to try new.  New what?  New everything.

The convergence came but it wasn't the stars that aligned.  It was our creative occupations and it will never be the same again.  The tools are becoming invisible and irrelevant.  The ideas and execution are becoming the linchpins that hold everything together.  And it can all be done for next to nothing.

For those of us over a certain age the biggest hurdle will be recognizing that our previous skill sets mean next to nothing.  That we need to throw away the security blankets of "ultimate camera" and "incredible flash equipment" in order to rethink the entire process.  We need to go back to childhood and see new images and new programs thru the eyes of a child.  Our child. Our most basic and undiluted creative self.

See what a walk around town will do to you?

March 29th Sunday Rants and More.

    A central Texas track meet.  Kinetic waiting.

First up:  "Live fast and die quicker."  As Americans we seem to think that living brutal, jam packed 18 hour days is a smart, productive and reasonable way to live.  But as my friend the cardiologist says,  "The faster you live the quicker you die."  And the irrational desire to do everything in your life in a rush also serves to kill your creativity.  Example:  You learn 50 things about lighting this week and intend to learn 50 newer things about lighting next week.  This presumes that knowledge is some sort of commodity that can be put in your mental bank to be called on when needed.  But the reality is that knowledge must be integrated and adjusted in your brain if you want to use it successfully.  Each step in learning must build on a base of knowledge that has to be experimented with, tried, assimilated and personalized before it becomes worthwhile.  You could drink an entire bottle of Vodka in one sitting but you might not admire the productivity gains that would ensue.  

I've looked back over the last twenty five years and tried to understand how I learned what I know now.  This is the process that comes into focus as I adjust the "way back" machine and distill how I grasped knowledge from the thousands of random facts that I tried to grab like a glutton at an all you-can-eat Mexican food buffet:  I learned an intellectual concept like "depth of field" from one of the Time/Life book, The Camera. I looked at the pictures that were given as examples and I thought I really got it.  Then I would go out with my camera and practice by shooting everything for weeks with my 50mm lens set at f2.  I would photograph my girlfriend and her friends and the salt shaker on the restaurant table and the lone, surviving flower in the pot on my back porch at this aperture like it was a sacred thing.  And then I would stand in the darkroom for hours rolling film and clanking around with developing tanks.  Then I would print the images that I thought looked coolest (Usually my girlfriend in her underwear or something else prurient).  I'd come to the conclusion that my lens wasn't spectacular at f2 and I would come to understand that maybe f2.8 or f4 would be enough depth of field to keep the important body parts sharp while also keeping the eyes sharp and putting all the non essentials out of focus.  Several weeks of daily shooting, film development and printing would be enough to give me a certain mastery of that one technique.

Then I'd go back and read some more and realize that the effect I had been perfecting might be better served by the use of a longer lens.  So I would go back and spend another couple of weeks shooting the half naked girlfriend until I mastered that technique.  And so it would continue.  At the same time I was learning about light and lighting but I also took that in one step at a time, working on it until I had achieved a certain mastery.  

In a year or two I finally got the hang of: shooting with good exposure.  Using the right focal length and aperture.  Developing Tri-x to get the right tonal balance and grain structure. Printing on graded, fiber based paper.  And the learning was built on trial and error and what my swimming coach would call, "time in the water."  That is the great secret.  Not trying to swim as fast as you can until your heart bursts or your muscles cramp but spending time getting to know the water.  Getting comfortable in the water.

Now I look on the web and everyone is begging to have all the secrets to photography right away.  But they are missing the biggest secret.  That it is the time you spend learning one step at a time and integrating it into your technique that matters most.  It's time in the water.  Or time making trials and errors that leads you to the kind of understanding of any craft that you get with your gut and your heart and not just with your head.  You have to live your craft.  It's not enough just to "understand" it.

But the real question is:  "What's your hurry?"  For the professionals who are reading this column the answer might be revenue but I would respond that trying to push the curve on learning stuff is just like trying to force someone to love you.  Never works.  Love grows over time.  Love grows with respect.  Love grows comfortably.  It's the same way with a craft that you love.  So, whether valid or not, professionals might feel they have some excuse.

But what can be said for people for whom photography is a hobby?  Is it more important to have an endless, shallow progression of short affairs or to fall in love and take your time growing the romance?  Too much metaphor?  Maybe not.  Most of the people I know who are incredible photographers are incredible because photography is a true love, not just an obstacle course to plow through.  And the love doesn't come from bragging rights of having mastered the style of the day but in having refined the style of a lifetime.  And that's the real key.

So what if you can memorize David Hill's style, David LaChappelle's style and Platon's style and haphazardly regurgitate them on command?  It doesn't move the game forward for anyone and the endless mimicry will only leave you feeling shallow and unfulfilled.  The move forward comes when you master technique because it unlocks a look that makes your own style possible.  The game moves forward when technique becomes subordinate to the subject.  The game moves forward when you show work that evolved from your personal and unique response to the object in front of your eyes.

Many newcomers to the craft have the mistaken point of view that copying the work of the people they admire in the field is part of some learning curve that will inform and instruct them in a good way.  But do you see this in literature?  Do you see groups of English majors copying Milton's poem "Paradise Lost" in order to become better poets?  Are art students tracing Picasso paintings in order to become better painters?  Do dancers put diagrams on the floor in order to follow in the exact footsteps of the master dancers?  No.  It's silly.  If you copy the masters the most you can expect to become is a poor, diluted copy of your emulated idol. And that serves no one well.

The beauty of our humanity is our diverse and individual nature.  Technique should exist to be of service to our diversity, not to squelch it.  Learning should be the process of integrating knowledge and technique in a way that builds mastery.  It's counterproductive to see your part in learning as being the absorbing "saw dust"  for someone else's "brain dump vomit".

So how do you do learn for life?  The first step is to slow down and absorb knowledge at an optimum rate.  Don't be a binge drinker of facts and step-by-step learning.  Be a sipper, a taster.

I often leave the house with one old film camera, equipped with one lens and one roll of film.  I spend an afternoon walking around with the camera on a tripod looking for the kind of shots that will make that one lens sing.  If I do this enough I come to know the lens.  I come to trust it.  Then I go out with a different lens and go thru the same process.  On Saturday, after my chores and obligations I went for a walk around Austin's Lady Bird Lake with an old Mamiya 645 camera and a 210mm f4 lens.  I took one roll of 220 film which gave me 30 potential images.  No screen on the back.  No Polaroid test film.  I slowed down and carefully chose my shots.  The tripod helped me concentrate on framing.  The central area meter got me in the ballpark but needed to be interpreted and tweaked with the experience of 20 years of shooting transparency film.

I shot one frame for every scene I thought had promise.  On Monday I'll take that film to the lab and when it comes back I'll study each frame to see what I got right and what I got wrong and that will slowly seep into the correct part of the photography brain and become sorted as good knowledge base for future shoots.  

Today (Sunday) I went out with the lens that is the Yin to the 210mm's Yang, the 45mm.  I walked through a different part of town and stopped here and there to line up a shot and work on composition.  I spent two hours out shooting and I learned some important things about composing with a 45mm lens on a 645 camera but I didn't actually take any shots.  I didn't see anything that looked just right.

And that brings up my next point:  Sometimes just going out and looking, really looking at stuff is more important than "bagging trophies".  When you feel like you've got to come back with something you burn film, you burn energy and you burn your  future discrimination.  You start to settle for "interesting" instead of "exactly the way I wanted to see this."  And that will kill your eye and your art.  It's okay to go out loaded and come back without having fired a shot.  It's a way of saying that the art exists for the art not for the sake of goals and quotas.  And really, would you want it any other way?

My favorite story about this is one my friend Wyatt McSpadden told me about his project to shoot BBQ joints all over Texas for his book, Texas BBQ.  The book was a personal project and he told me that the difference between doing it as personal work and doing it as an assignment was huge.  He once drove four hours to a BBQ joint in Texas that someone had raved about.  He was anxious to get a great shot but when he got there nothing about the scene resonated with him.  Nothing tickled his person vision.  Nothing excited him.  He told me that had it been an assignment he would have fallen back on his bag of lighting tricks or he would have put on a "trick" lens or something to salvage a shot.  Since he was working on his own dime he had his own permission to look at the place, reject it as a photo subject and to drive away.  Which he did.  He wasn't willing to waste his creative force on a shot that didn't reflect his point of view.  His style.  His way.

And if you look at the images in his book each one is a masterpiece.  Not just "pretty good" or "good enough".  Each one is jewel like in its objective measure and not one is a piece of colored glass.  You only become an artist at this level by having the courage to reject "second" quality seeing.  Or as every book on negotiation tells us, you only have power when you are able and willing to say, "no!"  and stick to your guns.  Only then do you have the leverage you need to win your negotiation or become true to your own vision.

Wow.  That was a rant!  But I'm not done yet.....

I have one more heartfelt piece of advice for anyone shooting digital cameras to make portraits for art as opposed to portraits on commission (although I believe the advice is relevant for commercial shooters as well.....) and that is to turn off the review function when you are shooting in earnest.  Oh my God, that seems so counterintuitive.  But here's why.

If you use the little screen on the back of your D3 or your Canon 1DS mkXXX  you will self limit your own creativity.  You will be shooting, worrying about the number of RAW frames you have left, and wanting that immediate feedback and you will get to the point where you see a frame that looks "perfect" to you in the moment.  You'll show it to  everyone in your entourage and everyone will agree that it is the "perfect" frame.  And you will stop shooting and go on to the next photographic opportunity. But creativity is never so simple and so quantifiable.  In a sense this truncated reaction to your art is like castrating your muse.  You'll never know how good it would have been if you had let the shoot run its natural course.  You may have been minutes from the crescendo, seconds from orgasm only to have looked at the little authoritarian screen and called the game before the goal.

I'll make the analogy with shooting portraits and seduction but it's the same in any kind of iterative photographic art.  When you begin the portrait process there is a lot of exploration and experimentation that is conceptually a lot like flirting.  Then there is a long and involved collaborative exchange that is like foreplay  and then the fine art portrait session enters a brief period where all the frames seem like magic.  The images are superb.  The constant shifting and experimenting is exhausted and yet you and your subject still dance around looking for some pose or expression you might have missed.  Finally you both realize that the energy has been dissipated.  You smoke the metaphoric cigarette and go your own ways. But the secret of this photographic intersection is that without instant feedback you feel compelled to push the boundaries, to explore new ways, to push further.  If you constantly shot Polaroid tests or slavishly looked at the screen you might be tempted to stop at the "flirtation" or the "foreplay" and have missed the magic of the photoshoot.

In these situations the feedback gives you just enough information to kill your further initiative and to render you ultimately unfulfilled.  It's enough to use the screen and the histogram at the very beginning of the shoot in order to make sure the lights are set correctly and the exposure works but any more than that and it becomes both a crutch for the weak and a diabolical mechanism bent on pushing you to a premature ending for all involved.

The "not knowing" interjects a level of uncertainty in the mix.  The uncertainty is part of the essential faith in creation that gives your muse room to operate and gives your mind more incentive to explore and expand.  Turn off the screen and turn on the potential to go beyond what you currently recognize as being "good enough" and venture into  realm where you go beyond your own expectations (which provide a concrete limit) and into the realm of the possible, flecked with chance, which provides the fresh air and faith in intuition that breath life into photography.

Final Part of the long Sunday Rant.  To consider yourself an professional artist you have to also become a professional appreciator of photography.  It's not enough to know what the top ten "hot shooters" of your generation produce. In order to get the "inside joke" or the "true enlightenment" you really have to know what all happened before you decided to take an interest in photography.  Really interested in portraiture?  Well,  Platon and Peter Yang are pretty good but you might as well go mining in the same shafts they did and get inspired by the giants that inspired them. People like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Edward Steichen, and Alfred Steiglitz.  Knowing only the guys who shoot for Maxim is like knowing what's on sale at Wal-Mart.  If that's the only place you shop then you might think that plaid, poly slacks are high fashion and that Chinese dress shoes rock your world but your truncated view may be very self-limiting.

Sadly, an education on the web seems to be like shopping at Wal-Mart.  The top information shown on a search is the information demanded by the masses.  The more esoteric the information is the less frequently the great unwashed bring it to the fore in the great crucible of networked knowledge.  Grab an actual, printed, history of photography  book and dive in.  I pretty much guarantee that you'll be blown away by the fact that many of the styles and interesting points of view that you admire today have their genesis in the work of masters from history.  And you may be additionally amazed by the fact that even without the benefit of digital cameras and massive infusions of Photoshop the actual originators of photographic taste and invention actually made superior images specifically because they had not been diluted by endless emulation and theft. 

But don't be too impressed because most of the best early work stole directly from the masters of portrait painting that came before them.  I've never seen a more compelling portrait than the face of the angel in Leonardo Da Vinci's painting,  The Madonna on the Rocks.  And perhaps I never will.  But it's advantageous to know the source of much modern fashion imagery because I tend to learn so much more profoundly from first hand sources.......

The second book is out.  The week is good.

One more thought:  About the economy.  I believe the market has bottomed and is returning to health not based on anything that Mr. Obama and his crew have done but because the generations in the ages of 18 to 40 were brought up on TV and video games, don't have the patience to read long and complicated stuff, have ADHD and have lost their collective patience with the idea of the recession.  A younger person I talked to today summed it up.  She said that back in January all of her friends were eating at home, saving money and worried about the economy. About two weeks ago they got bored with all that and went back to the way their lives were pre-AIG.  They realized that they still had their jobs, the same income, etc. and they didn't give a frick about retirement because it was so far in the future.  There you have it.  The recession has been called because the people who count (the spenders) are bored with it.

It's about time.  I was getting antsy.

Book Number Two Has Arrived.

Wham.  Opened my e-mail folder this morning and had a raft of e-mails (a gaggle?) either congratulating me on the arrival of the second book or yelling at me because I hadn't informed my friends that it was coming today.  I didn't know either.  I was working with April 1st as a delivery date.  

I headed to Amazon and there it was:  "In Stock". 

You can find it here: Kirk's Second Book.

If you live in Austin, Texas you can probably find a copy at the world's greatest camera store: Precision Camera and Video.  They try to keep all the cool photo books in stock, just in case.....

The book looks great.  I'm so happy to be working with professional designers and editors because they always make me look a couple dozen IQ points smarter and keep me from trying to put five or six different type styles on a page.....

If you are not a photographer don't bother buying the book.  You'll just get bored.  If you are a photographer or know one, are married to one, raising one, etc. you might want to grab them a copy as it will provide one person's version of lighting (described with good humor) and will keep my 13 year old in track shoes......

This is my second one to see the light of day and I enjoy the process more and more.  In many ways it's like being asked to dump all the stuff I've learned in the past 25 years onto a pile on the ground and then arrange it in a meaningful way.  Problem is there's way too much stuff crammed in the brain and not nearly enough room in 128 pages to parse it.  

That being the case, each book acts as an installment and it is through the graces of my publisher, Amherst Media, that it is somewhat organized and coherent.  But there are many volumes to go.  This is the second installment of five planned books.  

Look, we're all friends here so if you find something in the book that needs to be fixed, or something that you think I need to cover more, drop me a line at Kirktuck@kirktuck.com and let's talk about it.  It might make for a great future blog.

If you buy the book I hope you really like it.  If you buy it in Austin say "hello" to the folks at Precision Camera and Video for me.  If you buy it at Amazon I'll always appreciate a nice review.  If you hate the book you are probably too busy to review it so I'll understand. :-)

Thank you to everyone who helped out, posed, suggested, nagged or otherwise made this possible.  Next blog will be back to my usual cynical self.

Kirk

A Long Sunday Non-Rant.

   My favorite street shooting combo.  D300+35mm 1.8

The tool and the intention.  Why do I like some cameras and why do others leave me cold?  It's because good images come when the camera becomes invisible and you can concentrate on reacting to whatever is in front of you.  My latest nomination for the best street shooting tool? That would be a Nikon D300 with the new 35mm 1.8 (here's Nikon's official info...) scrunched on to the front.  Why?  If you've read my previous blog about 50mm lenses  you know that the angle of view on this lens has immediate appeal to me.  With 8 elements in 6 groups, and one aspheric element, the resolution and contrast should be just right.  But the real reason I like the combo is that it works well together as a small, light package.  The D300 is overshadowed by the D700 and D3 but is a great imaging machine in it's own right with fast focus, great metering and a really good imaging sensor.  I bought my lens from Precision Camera here in Austin for around $209.

The primary reason I gravitate to the D300 over the D700 for my own personal use has more to do with the overall feel of the cameras.  The smaller shutter and mirror in the D300 means the camera is quieter in operation with a very sweet shutter sound.  The 700 has a more abrasive mirror snap and a harsher shutter run sound.  It's like the old hi-fi analogy of "tubes versus transistors".  

The lower physical profile of the d300 with the 35 mm 1.8, along with the noticeably quieter sonic profile makes for a less intrusive candid shooting tool.  The D300/35mm 1.8 is absolutely the most ergonomic digital camera I've shot with so far.  And at $1,000 less than it's full frame cousin.

This is not intended as a criticism of the D700.  I love that camera in commercial shoots because of its low noise and because of its full frame sensor.  It's just not my first choice for personal art.

The runner up camera in this race to put together features, handling and quality have to go to one of my all time favorites, the Sony R1.  First, let me tell you everything that's wrong with it: The electronic viewfinder could be lots better (but it works).  The raw file processing time could be much faster (but it barely works).  The autofocus could be much quicker when shooting indoors.  But none of this really matters to me because the camera is so much fun to shoot with.

You may not have noticed but a lot of people like point and shoot cameras because of the ease of composition they get with the live view screen on the back of the camera.  Well, the Sony R1 has a really nice live LCD that can be viewed from a number of different angles, including flat on the top of the camera just like a waist level finder.  

Couple that with two other vital features and you've got a camera to be reckoned with:  An aps sized sensor (same size as the sensor in the Nikon DX cameras) that shares alot of attributes with the very sharp and very well regarded sensor in the Nikon D2xs.  A real, Carl Zeiss zoom lens that is sharp, contrasty and sharp.

When the R1 first came out people didn't know how to classify it.  The $1900 purchase price and the slow focusing drove off many people for whom this camera would have been perfect! After a while Sony did a rambling discontinuation that was official in some countries and unacknowledged in other countries and then, eventually, the R1 was remaindered in the U.S. market for somewhere around $600.  Since it's zoom lens goes from 24 to 120 (35mm equivalents) and the 24 has very little distortion, I use it as my primary architecture shooting rig and it has passed the critical inspection of several very savvy art directors.

If you see one of these used you might want to pick one up.  They are still highly competitive for many uses such as studio still life, landscape and other slow moving genres.  Here's what they say about it at DPReview:  Sony R1 Review at DP

And here's what Michael Reichmann says about it at Luminous-Landscape.com:  LL Review

Now,  on to my traditional Sunday Rant:  "The Cream of the Crap".  I read this quote in an article about the pleasures of still shooting film.  The whole idea is that the film shooter goes into battle with a plan and conserves his resources (which include not only film but also creative energy) and chooses his targets with forethought and discretion while the digital shooter rushes in a napalms several square miles (hundreds of digital frames) then searches through the ruble to see what he was able to bring down.  

I loved the line but I'm not sure I totally agree with the premise.  I think brilliant artists need to constantly experiment and make lots of mistakes to come up their share of good stuff.  Kierkegaard believed that genius and creativity were much like farming in that fields needed to be rotated in order to yield good crops.  And that's what creative experimentation is all about. Be like my friend, Keith.  Choose your targets.  Shoot till you know you've got the shot and then stop.  He's the first guy I've seen with a D3 who can actually shot 10 shots instead of 200 and know when to stop!

(short rant over.  now on to real Art!)

Do you really like good photography?  Really?  Then you must see Wyatt McSpadden's book, Texas Barbecue.  Two reasons why:  Wyatt is a master of natural light and his portraits and images are astoundingly good.  Really astounding.  Secondly,  his work is not that crappy, precious "cutting edge" manipulated crap you see everywhere else.  He's the real deal.  He's not trying to sell you on a style or a new set of Nikon flashes.  He's not flinging around his credentials (but has em if you need em....).  He's just one of the smartest, best shooting photographers who's work I've ever seen.  See it here at Amazon:  Wyatt's Incredible Book!

Here's Wyatt's website:  BBQ Rocks!

Finally, on the subject of books.  If you have an interest in studio lighting and you haven't done a lot of it you might want to snag a copy of my new book:  Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography.  If you need more info check my site:  kirk's site.  Thanks for reading.  Please invite photographers and other people you know who may be interested in our blog.  

Have a great week!  Kirk