From multi-tasking to tunnel vision. Choices, choices, choices.

You know how it is when you check into your hotel room and start flicking thru the channels on the TV?  There's usually about 120 options, not counting the in room pornography channels and the movies that cost money.  The ones that you can't really expense.  And in the end you end up turning off the television and trying to find something to read in the gift shop because no matter what you choose on TV you'll regret the time you wasted and you'll be certain that, while you were watching a Seinfeld re-run or a Steven Segal movie for the 5th time, you will have missed something even better on another channel.

There have been a few good books written in the last few years about the "tyranny of choice".  Seems the more choices people have the less happy they are in life.  If you get to a shelf with sixty different kinds of peanut butter the need to choose wisely becomes overwhelming.  And no matter which jar of organic extra crunchy you pick you end up with the queasy feeling that you've overlooked something that might be a better value or even a better product.  In the end shopping becomes a form of torture.

And that's just for those of us who are usually decisive and have a good, built-in "decision tree" mechanism.  Pity those who are already wishy-washy.

Okay, Tuck.  What the hell does this have to do with photography?  Well, everything.  As photographers I think there's a tremendous force of market that makes us feel as though we should have a style.  Any style----as long as we have a style.  But it takes years of shooting and shooting to develop one on your own so the conventional wisdom is to "adopt" a style by emulating someone else's style that catches your eye.  And in the course of "appropriating" the style there is almost assuredly the wish or hope that whatever deficiencies are perceivable in your rendition will be chalked up to your "unique" interpretation of your "appropriated" "homage" to this "adopted" "emulation". 

But you know the whole idea of copying a style to learn is absolute bullshit and only serves to prolong your omnidirectional apprenticeship.  It's like trying to learn how to swim with a giant intertube around your waste.  So why do we copy other people's styles in a vain attempt to create our own?

I think it's because there is the perception that there are too many styles to choose from and the tyranny of choice is paralyzing.  In ancient history photographers were inspired (could copy from) only the styles they saw in magazines, books and newspapers.  The craftier ones (better schools?) could also draft behind pieces of fine art....paintings, sculpture and the like.  But the range was finite and soon exhausted.  At that point an artist had to make some declarations and plant his flag in the creative firmament.  You could only copy Henri Cartier Bresson for so long before the rubes got wise to your plagiarism.

Now you could go your whole life just aping stuff you see on Flickr, and the other share sites.  But what does that buy you?  Perhaps it's better to labor in ignorance, unsullied by anyone else's influence.  But that may be impossible in our highly visual culture.

Why am I thinking about all this?  There is a personal angle.  And that's my realization that choices can negatively impact your own art.  Here's my brief story:  I love shooting portraits.  I love shooting stuff like the image above and I should have spent the last few years diligently doing this work.  But I started writing stuff.  And it was fun.  And the more I did it the easier it became.  Then I was approached by a publisher and have since done four books on photography.  Each book consists of between 50,000 and 60,000 words.  Each book consisting of between 75 to 100 images.  And writing and producing all the images was only part of the deal.  You soon discover, no matter how good your publisher is, that you will best be able to do the social marketing and personal marketing required to drive significant sales.  

When the bottom dropped out of the commercial photographic market I also started doing various workshops to supplement my income.  These are a real blast.  Add to that some speech writing for a big client, some advertising writing for another and a few video projects and you've got a formula for disaster. Write a book?  Take a picture?  Help with someone else's speech or book?  Take a picture?  Make a video?  Take a picture?  Teach a workshop? Take a picture?  You get the point.  Death by a thousand dilutions.  How thinly can you spread your energy and attention?

Having multiple skills is a blessing and a curse.  Do you focus like a laser on the one thing that brought you into the fold in the first place or does short term expediency drive you to accept diverse kinds of work that prevent you from concentrating on what you love best?  2009 is over.  The relentless economic panic is diminishing.  Decisions have to be made.  Everything or one thing.  Mastery or coverage.  The tyranny of choice hovers over me like a buzzard.  But once Pandora's box was opened......to be continued.

Penny's Pastries. Getting the feeling right.

We were doing an article for Inc. Magazine when I met Penny. She'd opened a baking business and had been pushed into bankruptcy because a big customer pushed her to grow too quickly and then moved on to a different product from a different supplier.  She learned a lot from the experience and set out to start over. That was the story.  It was a cold and gray day outside and we were still working with film.  Medium format transparency film.  Probably 100 speed Fujichrome by the look of this frame.

I knew I wanted  to light Penny with a big soft light and I knew I needed to light the ovens in the background to give the image a sense of dimensionality and place.  But the biggest thing that was needed was to make some sort of connection with Penny that would make the image genuine.  We talked about baking and food.  We talked about the challenges of business.  Once the lighting was set I didn't monkey with it for the rest of the shoot.  I figured that if there wasn't some sort of rapport all the lighting in world wouldn't make a difference.

We all hit it off.  Penny got a nice profile in the magazine.  We got a bag of great cookies.

It's nice when everyone is on the same page.  Makes me happy to think about it even now.  I guess that's why photography is so cool.

The Goat Man of South Austin

I wrote an earlier blog about the goat man of south Austin but I think the post got lost when I shifted everything to blogger.  So I thought I'd do a quick one.  Back in 2005 the artistic director of Zachary Scott Theater, David Steakley, wrote a play called, Keeping Austin Weird.  The play showcased many of the characters around Austin that make it such a blue spot in such a red state.  Steakley interviewed several hundred people, both famous and not,  over the course of his investigation into the eccentric side of the city.  There was the family that used latex paint to create a giant Twister game in their front yard.  The entire front yard.  There was Gov. Ann Richards and also the lady with the pink pig car.

I shoot the season brochure for the theater each years and we decided, since this would be our "anchor" play, to include the wild personalities as the art in the brochure.  I was given a list of people that the marketing department thought would be most visible.  I was also given a board member who would act as a producer, getting in touch and scheduling our shoots.  We needed to go on location because in most cases the practical location was in some way part of the thing that made these people less ordinary.

I traveled around with a car filled up with lighting gear that ran the gamut from big electronic strobes, powered by inverters and car batteries, to tiny strobes and little florescent lamp tubes.  Some times we used a few lights.  Some times we used them all.

But when I got to the Goat Man's house in South Austin the light was perfect.  No light necessary.  Not even reflector.  Gotta watch yourself.  There is some truth to the idea that "when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail".  Sometimes you have to step back and really assess why you're dragging the gear out of the trunk.  And then you have to have the good sense (or heightened laziness) to leave it all in the car and use the light nature gives you.

The Goat was crazy aggressive but his best friend couldn't have been nicer.  Offered me a cold beer after we finished but there were other interesting people who needed documented so I pushed off.  A hot day and a job well done.

One more thing.  For some reason I decided to shoot this with my old Kodak DCS 760.  I'd bought a Nikon D2x but still preferred the colors and the tonalities of the Kodak.  I still have it in the studio and use it when I want a different look for people.  It's wicked sharp though.  You have to make sure you need sharpness if you go to pick up this camera.  With the AA filter removed it's almost illegally sharp.

If you have the chance to photograph a man and his pet goat you should do it.  It's an interested way to spend an hour on a hot, dusty friday afternoon.  Be sure to follow up with a man who has his own doll garden (fun fact:  All the dolls' eyes light up at night.  When new neighbors move in next door he turns the hundreds of doll heads in the garden to face the new arrival's house!).

Never a dull moment as a photographer.

A few more from my NYC packaging job.+Go Chaps.

I woke up this morning feeling greedy for photography.  I was up before dawn.  It was a cold, steely gray outside.  I made a quick cup of coffee, grabbed my EP-2 and headed out to shoot anything.  It all looked so fresh and sharp and alive.  When I came home around 8am I started downloading cards into my computer and I sat there wondering, as the little ball went round, what was it that compels us to spend time photographing.  Or doing art.  Or writing.  I think it's our desire to be connected and to share.

As I was cleaning up the files I sorted out my desktop and came back to this folder and decided to share a few more images from this shoot in NYC. 

So after I wrote the paragraph above I changed my whole Sunday.  Usually I walk through downtown in the afternoon and shoot for fun but today I did a studio shoot at Zach Scott Theater with an amazing actor named, Jaston Williams, one of the two famous guys from Greater Tuna!  What an incredible actor.  I can hardly wait to post process the images and show them.  Just amazing.

Then the day became downright strange.  Totally off the subject of photography.  I never watch football.  Ever.  But my kid goes to the same jr. high school that Drew Brees attended.  Drew Brees was the quarterback at Westlake High School which is where Ben will go next year for high school.  Since we felt like hometown folk we bought a few bags of chips and some different dips (bean dip, French onion, piquante sauce, etc),  I bought some beer and a bunch of root beer for Ben and we spent the evening like typical Americans.  We watched the Super Bowl.  I couldn't believe how excited we were when the Saints won.  All I can say is, "Go Chaps!"

Valentine's Day Fashion Special.

One of my favorite holidays.  An excuse to eat chocolate like a glutton and send silly cards to loved ones and wannabe loved ones.  But most of all, a day to think about gingerbread cookies from Sweetish Hill Bakery.  Like the fine examples in the photograph above.

At studio Kirk, we sometimes do things just for fun.  And one year it seemed like a lot of fun to photograph cookies.  Notice the fine "penmanship" of the message on the right cookie.  The line of frosting stays consistent and none of the letters crowd or collide with the other letters.  The design around the edges of the cookies takes them to a much higher level than store bought cookies.

I used my favorite cookie shooting lens on a 35mm film camera.  That would be the 90 Summicron on a Leica R8.  Shot on color negative film and scanned on one of the many scanners we went through in our quest for the great scan.  The image would be much better if we shot it now because we'd be able to shoot it with some sort of ultra-high resolution camera which would allow us to zoom in on the cookies and even count the separate crumbs!  But alas, it was shot early in the century before the widespread adaptation of cutting edge technology.  Much to my chagrin.  Another frame into the trash heap of history.

Thinking about thought in a media rich environment.

Revolving doors on West Sixth street, Austin, Texas.  

Camera:  Olympus EP2

There are a lot of thoughts that I think I've generated in the vacuum of my own mind which I'm pretty sure are just the manifestation of years and years of immersion in a media rich culture.  I think my subconscious spends a lot of time stealing and borrowing fun snippets of concepts and visions that I catch and snatch across time and experience.  And that makes me sad because I wonder if our culture mediates against the chance of having an original thought.  Just as people say they were "standing on the shoulders of giants"  when they accomplish something profound; I wonder if we as a creative class are just the culmination and revolving door synthesis of all the "Leave it to Beaver" and "24" and "Gilligan's Island" shows we've watched, mixed with a dose of Dr. Suess, a little Susan Sontag and stirred around by some "Blade Runner" and "The Sound of Music".  I know the accompanying sound track is a raucous mix of Beethoven, The Beatles, Mozart, The Rolling Stones and Joni Mitchell and disco.

With six billion people in the world are there still original thoughts?  Or are we destined to sample and mix?

I came up with an idea for a new book recently.  I thought it was pretty cool and pretty sexy.  When I pitched it to a publisher they said, in effect:  "You seem to be on to a very important trend.  But we've already signed a writer for that project."  When I go out to photograph I struggle with a saturated awareness of the history of photography and the work that's happening everywhere around me.  Am I referencing previous work by artists?  Am I using a "melody line" in reference or is it a visual cliche that we're all destined to rework until the next swirl hits?

Photographers tend to be of two minds.  In the first category are compulsive researchers like me who look and look and look.  And the research is promiscuous;  I can probably tell you what camera and lens were used as well as who took the picture and where it first appeared.   So I am paralyzed by over consuming information.  I curse the web for that.  But the other extreme is the photographers who curmudgeonly refuse to know what's going on in their field  and who resist the computer at all costs.  They consider their vision unsullied until someone points out to them that the opus they've struggled with for decades has already been done, many times, and usually much better. Because few are truly resistant to the persistence "the messages". Paralysis or re-invention of the wheel?  There has to be a better choice.

At this point I'm sure the cliche minded have already jumped to the story about the patent clerk who, well over a hundred years ago, suggested closing the patent office because he was certain that all the good and original ideas had already been considered.  But that's not quite where I'm headed here.

I think we make so much work to please our audiences.  We shoot what we shoot because we want to be perceived as creative and cool.  Our map for coolness is the compilation of greatest hits that serially litter our attention.  We reference and tweak and bend them like Stephen Fairey with his poster of Obama, which started life as someone else's photograph.  And the problem is that we sometimes, unintentionally, step over the line into pure plagiarism.

Most of us started careers as artists or commercial photographers because we had a sense of our own visual sensibility but over time we've subjugated that clear vision for one we think will serve us better among our peers and our clients.  Little by little, we've hidden away the things that makes the art uniquely our own and that renders it  as just a souvenir of our culture.

To understand what I really mean it's enlightening to study the best known work of the writer, Vladimir Nabokov;  the novel, Lolita.  There's very little in this book that is really prurient or shocking by most standards and yet, when the book was first published in 1955   it was banned in the United States for a time.  It was regarded as so unpublishable that Nabokov was only able to sell it to a European publisher with a shaky, porny reputation.  It may be the best novel of the 20th century.  And not because of the subject matter but because of the writing.  And the unique point of view.  And the wonderful storytelling.

Now the book is celebrated by scholars.  Kubrick did the movie and it is astoundingly good. (It should be, Nabokov wrote the screenplay).  The book gets better and better, and over 54 years later still has relevance and power.  It was a set of "giant shoulders" to stand on for the next generation of authors who could now write in a more revealing and intimate manner.  But the "take away" is that Nabokov had the courage to create art that was in sync with his own nature while being profoundly out of sync with the prevailing culture. 

Of the books written in 1955 the vast majority have been consigned to the dusty card catalog of history. Lolita grows in power and influence.  If we are to create work that is meaningful to ourselves (and we can have no idea of the work's intrinsic value to anyone else) then we have to be as fearless as Nabokov and shoot from the heart.  Show uncomfortable work that has real meaning to us, and use a visual language that isn't a mirrored reflection of our social construct's greatest hits.

A clear vision may be influenced by the immersive media culture that swirls around us but the courage to shoot differently is the power that could make work that matters.  Even if it only matters to an audience of one.  That's the true nature of art.

commercial message:  If you are in Austin, Texas on the 13th of February I will be teaching a unique portrait workshop at Zachary Scott Theater, sponsored by Precision Camera. We'll discuss lighting and aesthetics, have a guest appearance and demo by the amazing photographer,  Will Van Overbeek (see:  www.willvano.com), a make-up demo by famed MUA, Patricia de la Garza and hands on sessions in the afternoon.  Yes, there will be donuts...

Info and registration:  http://www.precision-camera.com/product/CLASS6

Without a doubt, the perfect Valentine's Day present.

Thanks, Kirk

Pervasive video and the Apple iPad change everything.

Untitled from kirk tuck on Vimeo.

I don't think still photography is going away. There's a lot to be said for the print and unique moments in time. But you'd have to be ostrich-like not to get that video is becoming pervasive. This month I've partnered with a friend to shoot a couple videos for an online magazine. Being photographers we were seduced by the rampant hype on the web to shoot with the Canon 5Dmk2 camera as a video camera. It works well but there are some limitations. The biggest stumbling block is sound. You have one amateur microphone input that feeds into an auto level control preamp. You essentially have no control over sound. One is the inability to really see fine focus on the back panel screen. Another is the short "timing out" of the lifted mirror. If you don't get ready to shoot quickly the camera times out and you have to go back and reset all over again. Finally, in opposition to all those people who are enamored with the incredibly shallow focus you can achieve, too little depth of field can be a pain in the butt.

If you've read my past blogs you'll know I'm loathe to jump onto the "high priced" bandwagon. I know we might be able to fix the 5Dmk2 sound with the Magic Lantern aftermarket firmware. I could learn to meditate and become patient with the kludginess of the still camera interface, etc. but I thought I'd take a stab at iconolasm and just pull a cheap camera out of the bag and see what I could do with it. I call this the "Ultimate HD video on a budget" rig.

The footage above is not meant to be a polished piece of film making. My goal was to test the visual quality and usability of a $349 point and shoot camera. Let's face it, whether you use a $2500 Canon 5dmk2 or a $10,000 professional video camera you're still just getting 1400 by 1000 pixels per channel for a file of around 2 megapixels. I figured that, with good lighting, the Canon SX20is might be up to the challenge.

If you go cheap here's what you get: A 12 megapixel still camera that also "moonlights" as a 720p HD camera. Two decent, directional microphones (and, what's this? settable manual audio levels----if you want them). How about a zoom that works (sllently) during taping as well as several autofocus and manual focus options. I'll let you judge the cleanliness of the files.

So, is this the painstaking work of weeks? No. It's an hour of walking around in downtown Austin on a sunday afternoon and about 1/2 hour of editing on an old copy of iMovie 08 a couple of weeks later, after finding the footage on a card I was about to reformat. That's about it. Coupled with canned RF sounds from Apple and a free upload to Vimeo. Need to see what the HD version looks like on Vimeo? You can go here: http://www.vimeo.com/9094309

So, what did I find out? That it takes practice to do smooth pans with a fluid head. That cheap cameras don't always zoom nicely. That the image quality with good light is very usable. That I'll be buying a separate audio recorder and a shotgun microphone sooner rather than later. And that Apple and Canon have made it easier to capture video but no less easy to come up with a great idea and great direction. My take away? The real magic in video is the planning, the script and the sound. Getting pretty pictures is less complex.

So how does the Apple iPad fit in to all of this? Well, I think it's going to become the default device for all future magazines and newspapers. The iPad and other similar devices will reconstruct media as "apps" and people will buy them the same way the do games and songs on the iTunes store. Think about it. Great content that mixes still photos, video, type and audio interviews in one device that's large enough to comfortably take and read everywhere. Books, magazines, movies, TV shows, presentations and portfolios all in a device you can carry and use just about everywhere. And you can argue about whether or not it should have come with a camera or the ability to read flash but you just expose yourself as a previous generation thinker. Rev up those credit cards. This is one of those tectonic shifts that will revitalize the economy and our relationship with art and media. When everything is available you'll always want the good stuff. Prepare for the ascendency of the creative class. Get those IT guys out of the way before they get trampled.....

Let me know what you think of the Vimeo interface because I'm thinking that will become my default for sharing video. Now let's get back to work on some interesting photography. Thanks, Kirk