My book on the business of photography is available for pre-order at Amazon. I like it.

Order here (click)

Life is an iterative process. Every time you do something you build on your previous efforts, and writing books is no exception. When I wrote my first book, Minimalist Lighting etc. I was nervous and over thought the process. The book was well received but the emotional cost was outsized compared to the enjoyment of the process.

The second book seemed to sing along for me as I discovered my pace and really got into the subject.

But the third book, the one above, captivated my interest in a uniquely different way. In a sense it's a retrospective of my career in the field. Not through the photographs, in the sense of a retrospective show but rather, as a retrospective collections of thoughts and theories that have made me, if not successful, then at least ten steps ahead of my creditors while doing the one job that I've loved more than any other.

Like most I have the subconscious conviction that I am an artist first and a business man as a far second. Business practice out of necessity rather than a warm embrace of capitalism. Doubtless, with good therapy early on, I could have changed my views about the relative importance of the business end and perhaps made much more money. Or at least as much money but in a much easier way.

But the book distills all of the things that worked and continue to work into a wonderful melange that speaks to the old saying, "Hindsight is 20/20". I hope this book is one that will have readers saying, "I wish I'd had this resource when I was first starting out."

Rather than stroke my own ego I have peppered the book with gorgeous photos from incredible professionals like architecture expert, Paul Bardagjy, Advertising and editorial superstar, Will Van Overbeek, and the most amazing photographer I've met in my career, Wyatt McSpadden. (Wyatt's new book, Texas Barbeque, is nothing short of fine art---in every sense. From the images to the graphic design).

If you know someone who is struggling to make a career in commercial photography work I hope you'll think about recommending my book to them. It goes on sale the first of September but it is available for pre-order right now at Amazon.com.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging........

Examining Modern Mythologies about Camera Equipment. Part One. Intro.

Top photo: Commerce Street. San Antonio. e300/ 25mm
Majestic Theater Box Office Detail. San Antonio. e300/ 25mm
The Emily Morgan Hotel. San Antonio. e300/ 25mm
My Father. San Antonio. e300/25mm
Downtown San Antonio. e300/ 25mm
Ben with Raspa and Pentax digital camera. San Antonio. e300/ 25mm
The Alamo. San Antonio. e300 / 25mm
The Emily Morgan Hotel and Street Light. e300 /25mm
Fence detail at Austin Power Plant. e300 / 14-54mm
Austin Music Hall. e-300/ 14-54mm
Crane, Downtown Austin. e300 / 25mm

Chain Link Fence. Austin. e300 /25mm

I remember the real moment that digital camera lust sunk its teeth into my hide. I was shooting with a Nikon D70s and Nikon announced the D200. The math major that lives in part of my brain started making impassioned noises about the clearly superior resolution that I could obviously expect if only I had the courage to upgrade (spend more money) on my stuff. Then when my D200 started back focusing and had to be sent in to repair the little math voice convinced me that the D2x was a superior solution and I should rush out and get one of those "for the sake of" my clients. And of course I did.

Recently the siren call of the D700 reached my unwaxed ears and my math major segment teamed up with my science guy (who lurks around in my brain with that guy who knows "everything") and bullied me into believing that full frame finders and clean files at 3200 were the final keys to the holy grail of photography. And I plunged headlong into the full frame abyss. But it didn't make a damn bit of difference in my photography.

That's when English major/Art student guy came to the front of my brain to play "bombastic, chaotic change" tunes with my photographic obsessions. "Purge it all!!!!" he screamed, and I did. And when the last gleaming Nikon lens and the last hallowed body left the studio and was consigned to someone else's tender care I breathed a sigh of relief and wrote about it in a blog.

When people found out that I bought some Olympus gear to replace the gear I no longer wanted they got the underlying message all wrong. They thought I was saying that Olympus trumped Nikon for some obscure matrix of reasons and that I was into the discovery of some new equipment paradigm. Nothing could be further from the truth. On paper the Nikon bodies trump the Olympus cameras at almost every turn. Sharper files. Better noise characteristics. Faster processing. More bit depth. Greater lens selection. etc.

But the silly truth is that none of these are especially cogent anymore. We've hit a spot that's analogous to the car market. You could buy a Lexus, a Honda, a Toyota, a Buick, a Ford or a BMW and all of them will commute to and from work quite well. All of them will easily go the speed limit. All of them will easily go much faster than you will ever need. And they will do it with nearly equal levels of quality and efficiency. Choosing is now mostly a matter of budget and taste. One way or another you'll get from north Austin to South Austin on Loop One at the same 15-30 MPH (during our famous rush hours). And you'll arrive at your destination at about the same time.

I think we're there with cameras. Most applications for images are going to the web. File sizes are small. Bit depth is small. The only important metric/function anymore is the vision of the person behind the viewfinder. The vision they bring to the table. We did perfectly wonderful portraits with Nikon D100's. We did perfectly wonderful sports shots with Canon 1D's and Nikon D2H's that sported all of four megapixels.

Well, I could talk about this on and on but for me the proof is in the pudding that I make. With no great inventory of cameras ( I have the following Olympus cameras: e30 ($900, 12 megs.), e520 ($350, 10 megs.), and the e1 (currently $350 and 4.9 megs). I like the cameras and used them recently to do manmade landscape photographs for a road authority. At the sizes the images will be used the images from all three cameras are pretty much identical. The two cheaper cameras have the best feel. The colors and exposures from all three are just fine (I still shoot in manual for all my jobs).

So I'm happy to have the equipment I do for the jobs that I take. But do I really even need these cameras?

I started thinking about it in earnest and the opportunity came up to buy an older Olympus camera for $150. I wrote a check (how last century is that?) and I became the proud owner of an e300. It was the second e series camera that Olympus made. It's claim to fame is the 8 megapixel Kodak chip. Otherwise there is not much to recommend the body. But it is endearing in a very dorky way (a nod to the engineer that's burrowing into one of my cerebral lodes ) with it's squat and wide design and it's sideways mirror movement.

I put on a 25mm lens and spent the day shooting with the camera. I was stunned to find out that the color, contrast and indeed, even the sharpness of the files was much more pleasing to me than the files from all my other cameras. All the images I've included here come from that camera and shooting for just a few hours. I am smitten. The age and purchase price, coupled with the stellar performance totally repudiates the vicious amounts of money I spent previously in keeping up with every stumble forward by the camera industry. If you print to moderate sizes you will have gained precious little in the obsessive replacement of model after model since 2004.

I'm certain that a small handful of photographers can make good and compelling arguments for more pixels and better noise performance. But let's be frank and understand that they are specialists and that for the great majority of us who print 12x18 inches, at a maximum, the benefits of ownership are far outweighed by the reality of our craft capabilities and our chosen output.

All of the images here are from the e300. I curse myself for writing this as it may cause a run on the used inventories of this camera. Anyway. The images above work for me. Your mileage may vary. And again, I'm not suggesting that you liquidate whatever system you have to buy something else. I'm just suggesting that we've reached a point where, perhaps, the next upgrade that comes down the pike is anything but crucial.

I've downsized the images for the web but if you click on them you'll be able to see them at 1500 pixels. I'll continue this exploration. I have a commissioned portrait to do tomorrow so let's see how the $150 body handles studio strobes and flesh tones. Till then, stay cool.

Once in a While I get to Shoot Cute People.

It was 1992 and I'd been shooting advertising images in Montego Bay, Jamaica for a while. My client was a company called Adventure Travel in Dallas and they had vacation destinations all over the Caribbean. We'd shot in Negril, on Nevis, St. Kitt's, the Dominican Republic and up and down the Mexican Riviera but my favorite location was always Montego Bay.

This is how we'd do it. My rep would call me and throw out dates. We'd narrow it all down and decide. Then the client would go to the talent agencies in Dallas and cast "real people" as models for our shooting. We'd all hop on a charter and head down to the islands. Usually three model couples, a client representative, an agency representative, a make up person, a production assistant, my assistant and a gofer for the client. We'd hit the ground running and try to get as many set ups as we could in a seven day period.

One the evening before our last day in Jamaica we'd taken a break to savor a mixed drink and the sunset (we'd shoot the evening cabaret in an hour or so). That's when I looked up from the bar and saw our model walking along the beach, suffused by "magic hour" light and looking incredible. I grabbed the camera off my shoulder (I'm never without a camera---even if it looks dorky) snapped four frames and then the light changed. She found her boy friend and the serene look vanished. The moment was past. But I've always loved the image.

If you put down your camera you may miss the one unscripted moment that defines your idea of "vacation in paradise."

General Observations about Camera Equipment and the enjoyment of photography

The first three images above are swimmers from our little neighborhood pool swim team, the Rollingwood Waves. I've been the defacto team photographer for the better part of nine years because that's how long my son, Ben has been on the team. This summer I made a conscious decision to shoot the whole season with an old Olympus e1 and some older lenses. That's what pushed me into the squishy repudiation of state of the art. Here's why: I was getting so wrapped up in the gear. Do I take the 70-2oo or the 300 2.8? Full frame on the D700 or smaller crop on the D300? What if they get wet? Maybe I should brings some wides for group shots. Now my bag weighs twenty pounds.

How about I just bring a splashproof e1 and a 14 to 54 and a 40-150 zoom? Covers the equivilent of 28-300 and two thirds of the kit is relatively impervious to everything but total immersion (incidently, my favorite swimming book is Total Immersion Swimming...) and the longer zoom can be replaced for around $150. Then I started looking at the Jpegs I was getting and was loving the skin tones so much. One thing led to another......

What I discovered is that when the camera is less important it's easier to make the subject more important and the immersion in the moment more transparent and less contingent.

I just came back from the Creative Photographic Retreat in Dallas, Texas. I was one of eight photographers and Photoshop experts who were asked to participate in the workshops. I put together a one and a half hour lecture on shooting with battery powered flash and gave the lecture twice a day on Friday and Saturday. We played with scrims and reflectors and umbrellas and radio slaves. It was an interesting crowd. Most of the attendees were there to learn better photographic technique to use in creating scrapbooks. I was the only male on the roster of speakers. 98% of the audience were women.

I'm used to speaking in front of groups that are mainly men and I noticed some profound differences. Men tend to be most interested in the process. How things work and why they work. Woman want to know what to do to improve their images. The image is the pay-off. With men the pay-off sometimes seems to be, "look how sharp this is!!!!!". With the women in the CPR program it was more, "look at how beautiful my (grandson, brother, husband, father, best friend, etc.) looks now that I figured out the lighting, photoshop setting or whatever."

It sounds odd but I think being a teacher there changed the way I think about photography by more than a few degrees. Now the question I ask myself is, "why do I photograph?, What am I trying to say? Who is my audience?" instead of pondering which lens might have better chromatic aberration control or corner sharpness.

I learned different ways to explain basic photographic principles and I learned that everyone comes to photography on their own time and at their own level and it's hard to rush it. I've been doing photography for so long that everything seems old hat and technically simple. But I helped a grandmother get up to speed with her new Canon Rebel xtsi and her Canon flash. And here's the deal....I think she'll make better photos than the guy who has everything in his camera bag but no idea why he's photographing...and the difference is that the grandmother has a passion for her subject and not for her gear. Think about it. A passion for the subject, not for the gear. Stops a gear nut like me right in my tracks and makes me look at what I do from a different perspective.

After spending three days with a bunch of motivated women learning to come to grips (and grins) with their cameras I think the thing the field of photography might find useful is a much bigger dose of estrogen....

There were four gear nerds in attendance but they happened to be the instructors. All women under 30, all sporting Canon 5Dmk2's and all sporting the latest Canon "L" glass. No exceptions. All of them were quick to dismiss flash and lighting in general. If it couldn't be controlled with a collapsible reflector then the light wasn't right. At first I was dismissive of them for being dismissive of using lights. But I looked at their work and realized that they had really mastered available light technique to an extent that made most rank and file gear nerds look like beginners. A lot of mental give and take. On both sides of the aisle...

The weekend did reinforce what I had been feeling over the last month as I made my (now famous) transition from Nikon and Kodak gear to Olympus cameras. It was just as I imagined. Once I removed the idea of "superior equipment as the talisman of photographic power" I came to grips with the reality that all the best of photography is about seeing clearly. And feeling strongly about the subject. Which for me is generally people.

The only camera I took with me for the weekend was the Olympus e520 with the sweet little 14mm-54mm zoom. The camera is currently selling for around $350 on Amazon and will surely be discontinued within weeks. It is steadfastly not the "state of the art" but it is small and very light and fits into my hands perfectly.

As I stood in the classes and helped people navigate the menus on their big Canons and a smattering of Nikon D3's I couldn't help but notice that I was outgunned by all of the attendees. And at the same time I felt a tremendous sense of freedom. That I could pursue my own course rather than be a standard bearer for a brand.

Here's a news flash! The e520 gets a bit messy in the noise department above ISO 800. In the old days my mind would start screaming for an upgrade. Now I'm thinking I should just pull the monopod out of retirement and work at ISO 400. When you use the flashes on manual (with various ratios) all hooked up to radio slaves, all the cameras become equal. When you use f 5.6 or f8 all lenses become (more or less) equal.

I found my favorite radio slaves. More important than a cameras or lenses (written tongue in cheek---) is, of course, great remote triggers for my flashes. I recently stumbled across a brand called Flash Waves that are tiny, have ten channels, work really, really well and have an "on-off" switch for the receivers. They run $200 for a transmitter and receiver and have one thing other brands lack----easily and multifaceted connection options. There's a traditional pc sync, a hot shoe and a port for quarter inch plugs and 1/8th inch plugs. Wonderful. I used a set with an Olympus fl50r flash, a Metz 54, two vivitar DF 383's and a Profoto box and nothing gave them pause. They will definitely replace my now morbidly obese, older Pocket Wizards.

Speaking of flashes. When I switched camera systems the one thing that gave me pause was switching out the Nikon strobes. Even if you are a Canon or Olympus die hard you have to admit that Nikon kicks everyones' butts when it comes to flash. At least that's very true if you use TTL. I did some research and, with many reservations, I ordered two of the Vivitar Series One DF-383 flashes from Amazon for $120 each. Fired them up for the workshop. They work well, a little slow in recycling (alkalines....) but the neat thing is that they have built in optical slaves and when you put them in the slave mode it overrides the energy saver mode that usually shuts them down in five minutes to save batt juice. They worked well as TTL flashes on the Olympus cameras. The light is a touch bluer than that from the fl50r..... Nothing some filter gel won't fix.

The guys from Olympus lent me an fl50 and an fl36 for the workshop and I think the Fl50r is awesome but I don't think I'll drop $500 on a flash that doesn't have any sort of sync terminal. It's a choice between hot shoe, Olympus' proprietary (controlled by on camera flash) optical triggering system or nothing. Come on boys, let's get the plugs back on the flashes! Nice looking results, though.

A few thoughts on the business of photography. I think we are at a critical stage in the business of photography and we need to start planning for the recovery. We need to start having meetings and happy hours and breakfast gatherings with all the photographers in our respective areas and get some solidarity on moving prices up. We provide the images that move businesses forward but we act like we're selling commodities like a Walmart and the race to the bottom won't help anyone. Once all the knowledgeable practitioners leave the field clients will no longer have a "good, better, best" choice. All that will be left will be, "I'll get to it as soon as I finish with my real job." or, "Well my wife thought it looked professional!" or "I shot it with a XXXXXX it's got to be professional quality." At some point we have to educate clients about the value we bring to the table in assignment photography. Why is it that the ASMP can't talk about setting ballpark, suggested prices for photography? Why aren't more people using Fotoquote when they bid? Why are so many people willing to leave so much money on the table????? I don't have the answer but it sure is time to start the dialog.

Tired of thinking about digital. I just want to look at a few photographs.

I've been evaluating various lenses in my new system. Ordering new flashes and then working the rest of the time on a website for my master's swim team. I'd been looking at images all day long. At the end of the day I just wanted to rest my eyes and when I cleared the clutter off my desk I found a small box of prints. These were images I'd done in a printing plant in New York City a number of years ago. I know what cameras I used but I don't want to say which ones because then the discussion turns from "look at the composition", "look at the tones" into "wow, I had one of those and they're really sharp.

I remember this job so well. I'd been asked by an art director who knew my work to come up to New York and shoot images for a company called Primary Packaging. They printed exquisite packages for the cosmetic industry (among other clients). They did the little black boxes with gold foil stamp for Chanel and the lovely white boxes for Lancombe. I remember one room at the plant that was filed with gold foil for embossing. Just rolls of the stuff.

But what I really remember best is that the plant was filled with craftspeople who knew their jobs the way we know how to put on our pants or drive a car. They ran the presses with an eagle eye and a nose for ink density. There wasn't a digital indicator or device anywhere.

The whole process of shooting this de-mystified the New York Shooting experience for me. I called Michael O'Brien who owned a studio for years in the city to ask for a reference to an assistant. He put me in touch with a New York hot shot. I know he was disappointed when we met up to head over to the shooting location. I had one camera bag. A stand bag with my scarred Gitzo tripod and two old light stands. I brought along a couple of monolights and an old orange extension cord. I figured we were going to a printing plant, I could pick up a sheet of white board to use as a reflector once we got there.

My "entourage" was totally lame. It consisted of me, my very cool and highly talented New York assistant and the art director. Assist was shocked that we might be shooting people without hair, make-up or wardrobe people in tow. Just not done. He was also shocked to be not only the "first assistant" but also the second and third assistant. He was even more shocked when I decided that the plant had pretty good natural light from the hundreds of feet of frosted glass windows that ran down the length of the building. In the end I didn't even need someone to hold a white card as the light was perfect all day long.

The art director introduced me to the client. We went over the shots they were interested in and then.......the art director left. And then.......the client told me to go wherever I wanted and to shoot whatever I liked....and he went back into his office. The assistant was stunned. I felt a bit inadequate as I really didn't have much for him to do except carry the bag.

The cameras didn't have meters so eventually I let him do all the metering. And he also kept track of all the Polaroid trash we generated. Lunch was exciting. We walked two blocks to a sandwich shop. It was filled with factory workers. They all ordered two sandwiches.

I spent my day walking up to people and asking them, "What do you do?" They were all happy to tell me and then show me. If I liked it I set up the camera and took photographs. I always use a tripod. I still do.

At the end of the day I had about 40 rolls of 12 exposure black and white film rattling around in the bag. The assistant kept trying to write things on the paper but I stopped him. He wanted to keep notes so that I could "hold back" some of the film and test some of the film. The notes, presumably, would tell us how to proceed with the film not destroyed in the first run.

He was quiet when I told him that I was going to have all the film run at the same time. I asked him about good labs in the city. He had some suggestions and I asked him to get on the phone and find out what it would cost to develop and contact print the 40 rolls in the next 48 hours. He seemed excited that we could get it done for "only" $30 per roll. I laughed and we headed to a Fed Ex office to dump all the exposed film into a box and send it back to Austin Prints for Publicaton.

Jeff souped and contacted the film in one long night and had it all back to me with dispatch. It all looked great. It cost ten dollars a roll, plus shipping. I handed the art director the stack of contact sheets and he mused that he hadn't seen contact sheets that nice in years. The images were eventually used 12 feet tall at a trade show at the Jacob Javitts Center. They looked incredible.

Now when I look at the test prints I made in my old darkroom I remember being on the factory floor and marveling at how all the printing flowed through. It was such a mature process.

I don't know if the plant is still there. I'm pretty sure all of the people I photographed have retired. No one asked me about my camera. No one asked me about my film. Occasionally someone would look at a Polaroid and make a polite remark.

It was really a wonderful shoot. Just wanted to share it. Wish there were more like that.

Frenetic Action on the set of a typical shoot. Kirk style.

I recently did a photo shoot for Zachary Scott theater. I used hot lights for a variety of reasons. Earlier I posted a video that showed the clean up and packing after the shoot. Even earlier I posted a video of Martin being photographed. I thought I'd show with this video how many hands touch a project and how much distraction and stop and start there can be in a session.

The light is coming through a 6 foot square sheet of diffusion. The background light is a 300 watt fresnel tungsten spotlight and the main light, way over to the left, is a 1,000 tungsten flood from Profoto.

The season brochure should be here soon from the printer so I'll post that final piece so you can see what we ended up with.

Thanks, Kirk

Author of: Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography. Published by Amherst Media in 2009.

Practice makes competent. Plus some Sunday observations.

I don't believe anything I read on the web or hear from other photographers about cameras. If I did I would be walking around with a Nikon D3 or a Canon 5dmk2 and some giant zoom lenses. Okay. That's a bit of hyperbole. There are a few people out there who are pretty good at making the right case for the right camera but we don't always see eye to eye because there are so many factors besides sharpness and noise to consider.

Most of my friends think I'm crazy for getting rid of all the Nikon, Kodak and Fuji stuff and moving back to the Olympus cameras. And given the parameters that they think are vital they might be right for them. But after my first full week with my Olympus stuff I'm more and more certain that I made the right choice for me. And here's the kicker: I didn't make my choices based on the great reviews given the e620 and e30 Olympus cameras. Didn't give that part much thought. The lenses were half of the decision making process but the other half was pure romance. I'd just never gotten over my largely illogical but sincere and quixotic attraction for the e1 cameras. The e1 with the battery attachment always fit my hand better than anything I'd ever used and the darn things worked.

I'd let my brain be swayed by logical arguments into turning against the e1's when the megapixel wars started to heat up. "The AA filter is too strong!" everyone said, "You'll never get any sharp detail with an e1!" Then, in true herd fashion all the photographers I know decided that the only way to shoot was in raw. It must be raw to be professional. And it was obvious that the buffer in the e1 was just too slow. Gotta have the speed. The next thing was the enormous amount of time it took for Olympus to get the next professional camera out onto the market. "They just can't compete in the professional section of the market!"

Well. I bought the e30 camera last week so I could give the art directors who care a real 12 megapixel file without any explanations. And I bought some cool lenses so I'd be ready for wide ranging jobs like the three or four annual reports we do each year. But I really did it so I could keep shooting my own stuff with the e1's.

When you buy a new system, or return to an old system, it's vital to go out and burn it in. Shoot two or three hundred shots a day until your mind and your hands remember where the controls are and just how far you can go before you start burning out detail or blocking up shadows. I think the eye-hand-mind-camera interface is important to your success as an image maker. Much more so than which camera or lens you use. When I took a class with Gary Winograd back at UT in the 1970's he suggested that we take our Leica rangefinders with us to the movies, to dinner and anywhere else we were headed and practice setting the controls without even looking at the camera. We got to know how many shutter detent clicks it took to go from 1/500th of a second o 1/15th of a second in the dark. Most of us could load a Leica in the dark. For many of us a Leica M3 or M2 was our only camera and we knew just by the sound what our shutter speed was set at.

So much of the auditory and tactile references have been obliterated by new camera design. How do you count detent clicks when changing the shutter speed is done with a button and a spinny dial? Sure you an see the display in the dark but the whole idea is to be able to set it without bringing the camera to your eye or into your subjects consciousness until the moment you need it.

I knew that I'd forgotten so much of the e1 feel so after lunch today I went total photo geek. It's 105(f) here today so I put on the Khaki shorts and my rugged walking sandals. I rummaged thru the closet to find my white Columbia shirt that's made out of the really thin fabric that blocks UV and wicks away sweat. And I grabbed my rickety old Panama hat that's been sat on by several different assistants. Drank a big glass of water and headed downtown.

Nothing much happens in downtown Austin in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in the dead of Summer. The street people were out but there wasn't anyone to panhandle from. They were heading to the shelters. Heading to the library. Heading for new shade. No tourist on the streets. A few insane natives sitting at the outdoor tables at some of the restaurants on 2nd street. Car fumes and reflected heat from acres of black top swirling around them. Desperately trying to read the paper with salt sweat burning their eyes......

And then there was me. Walking down the sidewalk with an Olympus e1 fitted with a 50mm f2 macro lens. This wasn't a "looking for adventure" type of afternoon excursion. It was a "dial it in" afternoon. How well does the spot meter track the actual exposure? Where does the sharpening work best? How wide an aperture can you shoot with and still get sharp images? How well does the auto white balance work? what tricks it?

The beauty of a simple camera with straightforward menu selections is that once you've set the parameters you've come to trust there's very little reason to fire up the "menu" switch again. The ISO, WB, Compensation, and meter settings are all accessible via dedicated buttons.

I found some rotating doors on an old government building that I'd never seen before. I might actually get some images for my "industrial decay" portfolios. I found a painted sign (Joseph's) that just saw the light of day after decades of seclusion behind another building. I think the file I've posted is perfect in all regards. I shot stuff inside an old parking garage at ISO 400 and I'll be damned if I can find the noise I'm supposed to be tripping over.

Here's my quicky assessment after four quality hours in the Texas sun: The 50mm Macro lens is really great. I'm building a small altar for it in my studio. I put the camera down an hour or so ago and I already miss it. I'm so pleased with the files. The camera, even with the battery attachment, has a demur and stealthy feel. Especially with the smaller lens. My experience today makes me wistful. Here's why. I think Olympus made the perfect digital camera and nobody "got it." When I tried to explain why I got rid of my D700 i fumbled around with the foibles of a value system in a culture that doesn't really believe that inanimate objects can contain energy and intention. I blurted out that I didn't like the D700 because it didn't have a soul. And I really believe it with the same intensity that Shinto priests believe that all of nature, the rocks and all, have spirit. The D700 is the ultimate camera for a technologist because it "measures" well and tests well, and for some people it performs well.
It always vexed me. The monitor was indifferent to my need for consistency. Change ambient light, change monitor rendering. The files were always technically perfect and lifeless. Which may say more about me than the camera.

The opposite is true for the e1 and in fact for the e system in general. There are so many technical "gotcha's". The screens on the back are small and low resolution. The files are "plagued" with a new malady called, "low per pixel sharpness!". And to most reviewers all but the latest Olympus cameras are saddled with more ugly noise than all the early heavy metal music pumped through giant speakers in the back of a teenager's car. But. But. These cameras have soul. They connect with your hand and your heart.

I'll understand if you don't think this is rational. It's certainly not measurable. But none the less it's how I view the whole deal. Do I wish that Olympus cameras had great flash performance like the Nikons? You bet. Do I wish they had the high ISO noise profile of the Canon full frame cameras? You bet. But they've got at least two things going in their favor: They have wonderful lenses (and very rational focal lengths). And they have soul, energy and spirit. ( I wonder if this is easier to explain in Japanese?)

RAW VERSUS JPEG REVISITED.

I had coffee the other day with an old friend and he was talking about the Will Crockett, "Kill it and Bill it" philosophy. In a nutshell it goes something like this: With a good light meter, good work habits and well profiled cameras and assorted support gear you should be able to nail your images in Jpeg such that they need NO adjustment or post processing. No butt time. No layers and layers of adjustment and plug in massage.

I think he's right. Sure, if I was photographing the landing of Alien Beings in quickly changing light at Opray's wedding on assignment for National Geographic Magazine I'd probably hedge my bets and shoot in Raw. But for most of the stuff we shoot SHQ or highest quality Jpeg seems to be pretty fabulous. After hearing about this I've embraced it as a bit of a challenge and I'm getting a lot more careful about using and assessing my incident meter as well as shooting tests while tethered so I can have a much better idea of what the screen on the back of the camera is telling me as related to the image on the calibrated studio monitor. Even if I revert to shooting RAW I'd like to think that the practice will make the raw conversion process quicker and more effective. And even in raw lack of perfect exposure exacts a penalty. Always.

In a roundabout way I consider highest res Jpeg the "real" professional's format. Anyone can shoot sloppy raw and fix stuff. In a way it's like the old slide film versus negative film argument. The lab was the raw converter for the negative film. Interesting that the newest cameras give an unequalled amount of feedback, information and control and yet we feel constrained to hedge our bets even more. Where is the sense of challenge? Of mastery? Ultimately, where is the sense of control?

Finally, I've been reading a lot of books from my Publisher, Amherst Media. Most of the books I've read through lately are squarely aimed at portrait and wedding photographers. And when I first started going through them I was a bit dismissive about the information because we always saw ourselves as somehow more sophisticated if we shot advertising and corporate that the guys who did weddings and portraits. Fat chance. The one thing that comes thru loud and clear is the fact that there aren't any dilettantes in this group of writer/photographers. To their credit they see their business as a business and they have mastered the most important part. Not the purchasing and testing of new equipment. They've learned how to market and sell.

I learned something brilliant in nearly every copy I read. Cliff Hollenbeck's book was superb. It pays to read what other parts of our industry are doing. Just as many ASMP and other editorial photographers have discovered this decade: There's money in weddings and babies.

MARKETING NOTE: If you like the blog take a moment to check out my second book over on Amazon. I feel like it's the bastard stepchild. We named it, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography, because many of the lighting techniques were done in the studio or with studio lights. That's led a number of potential readers to bypass it because they don't have studios or they have perception that they'll need a studio to use the techniques. But, in fact, the theories and practicals are absolutely universal, and the book is full of good info about lighting in general. Maybe just go to the page and read the reviews......get your library to order a copy.


Finally, If you didn't find today's entry particularly scintillating or relevant, or you find it downright bizarre just remember I've spent most of the day walking around in the heat. The temperature may have addled my brain cells. Have a great week.