Street shooting outside in the Summer? Do yourself a couple favors....

I know I'm probably being bitchy but the first thing to do if you want to have fun street shooting and you want to spend less time thinking and strategizing and logisticizing, just choose one camera and one lens and leave all the other crap at home.  This is me.  This is all I take.  One camera and one lens.  Why?  Because my brain works in mysterious ways and I'm going to guess yours does too.  If I bring two lenses my brain is constantly evaluating possible shooting scenarios and trying to wedge them into one lens profile or the other.  Wide? Long? In between?  How long?  How wide?  How in between?

If you have one lens on one body you certainly get to know that lens.  Especially if you are a "prolific" shooter.   Do it enough and the scenes appear like magic, ready made for the focal length you just happened to bring.  You know the old saw that goes, "When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail?"  Well when you have a 50mm lens on your camera everything looks like a normal lens shot.  Your mind likes formalist restrictions as much as kids love boundaries.  Wanna hedge your bets because you're a bit scared?  Bring a zoom as your one lens and then you'll have it covered.

But don't do what countless legions of rank hobbyists do.  They load up a Tamrac or Tenba bag originally designed to hold microwave ovens and assorted furniture, with every piece of camera gear they can find.  In goes the wide angle zoom.....because you never know.  In goes the mandatory 70-200mm f2.8 zoom (just the right aperture and weight combo for mid day street shooting).  And, just because people have an irrational need to "cover" all the in between focal lengths, in goes the 24-70mm f2.8 zoom.  But of course none of these is a  real macro lens so that's the next thing to go into the bag.  And having read someone's gear site recently, all the filters go in the bag.  Polarizers, "protection" filters, gradient filters,  and wild filters that I don't understand.  We're talking bags that tip the scales at a good 15 to 20 pounds.  Good news for chiropractors but bad news for photographers.  Adding weight to your shoulder is like adding bags of concrete to the trunk of a Prius.  All of a sudden the gas mileage goes down dramatically.  By the same token your imaging productivity also drops through the floor.  You'll want to rest more and leave sooner.  None of which is conducive to being there and making images.

I know all about the "Strobist" thing.  Love the little flashes.  Love the SB-900's and the 580ex2's and the fl50r's, but let's just go ahead and agree to leave them at home.  If you're fly fishing you don't generally dynamite the stream.  Let's use the same logic when shooting real life.  Just bring your rod and reel and some waders and go looking for images that fit.  Flashes work best when you have a photo in mind and you have the time to set it up and recreate your alternate reality.  Using flash for documentary or street photography is like "bringing a handgun to the opera."  (Credit to Henri Cartier Bresson for that one....).   

Tripods are only acceptable for street shooting at night or with view cameras.  That's all I'll say about that.  If you are hauling a 4x5 or 8x10 out and around your city you already know what you need and you probably don't want any advice from me.  

Next up.  Let's dress for success.  You won't be interfacing with clients so you can leave the pressed chinos, button down,  and dress shoes at home.  But you do need the willing complicity of various people you meet so you'll have to look a bit respectable.  If it's 95 degrees and the humidity is in the 90% range you need to dress right or you'll drop quick.  Let's start at the top.  If you don't mind looking like the kind of guy who still wears a calculator on his belt and makes his own trail mix at home you should go ahead and opt for the bucket hat.  It'll protect your head and the tops of your ears.  And you'll feel fine, fashion wise, about wearing it to Sea World or one of the fabulous water parks.  If this isn't you then let's go with a light weight and light colored baseball cap.  Black ball caps look cooler but they get a lot hotter and that pretty much defeats why you're wearing it in the first place.  The visor will keep the sun off your face while the rest of the cap covers the rest of your head.  Toss some sunscreen on those ears or your dermatologist will yell at you down the road.

Next up, let's talk about sunglasses.  My best advice here is to not wear polarized or colored lenses.  A pity too since I have a beautiful pair of Revos I bought in the airport on the way home from the 2000 Democratic Convention (I covered it for a newspaper) in LA.  But the glasses strike out on both counts.  Too much color tint and very polarized (are there degrees of polarization?).  Too bad because when I wear them everything in the world looks better.  But that's the point, your eyes should be calibrated to your camera.  Who cares if the screen looks sexy if it bears no relationship to the images you're capturing?  Same thing with the sunglasses.  It's like having a really great preview with no way to get there in the end.

I've got an old pair of RayBan Wayfarers that fit the bill.  They're neutral, non-polarized and they save me from squinting and getting those little lines in the corners of my eyes.

Next we're into controversial fashion statements.  I like shirts with collars.  They protect more of your neck and they look better.  So, if you are overcome with heat and exhaustion and you just happen to be down the block from the Four Seasons Hotel you'll feel better about flopping down in the Lobby Bar and sucking down a Margarita while you wait for your energy to return.  And the staff will feel more comfortable too.  Living in Texas and working outside a lot for the last twenty years I've discovered that time and research have largely made the cotton T-shirt obsolete.  Cotton sticks to your skin, is heavier and wick moisture much more slowly than some of the new, super lightweight nylon blends being used in what are being called, "technical shirts".  

I've gone both ways on successive 105 degree days and I'm here to testify that the synth stuff is miles ahead when it comes to breathability,  moisture wicking (and its attendant evaporative cooling powers) and general comfort.  I'm wearing a Columbia shirt in the photo but I don't like the styling all that much.  The sleeves are too long and I don't need two big pockets.  The medium sized shirts are also cut too fat.  Do the manufacturers really believe that everyone now is five foot eight with a 40 inch waist?

I've narrowed it down to one brand and one shirt.  My current shirt of preference is the Ex Officio Trip'r.  It's a short sleeve, blocks UV radiation, has a vent in the back and one sleek pocket on the front.  I just bought out their current stock on Amazon in white mediums.  It's wonderfully comfortable and I could put it under a navy blazer and go into a restaurant without a moment's hesitation.  It is also the coolest (termperature-wise) shirt I own.  I get white.  It reflects the most heat.  If I were heading to the desert I'd get the long sleeve version for more protection.  The pocket's not too big but will hold an extra CF card and your driver's license and Amex card.  Now you're all prepared.  Except for the bottom half......

Golfers know a bit about comfortable.  I wear thin, nicely tailored Alan Flusser golf shorts made out of cotton.  Somehow they're  just right.  The shorts variant I abhor are the ubiquitous "Cargo Shorts" which would even make a buff, 23 year old model look like crap.  Cargo shorts are sometimes given out as punishment in more enlightened societies.  Try not to be caught dead in them.  They scream, "I bought these at Costco/Sams/Sears/Old Navy because they are loose and hide my bulk, and I can bring a big fat wallet and all my batteries and my iPhone and my iPad and a box of matches and a flint and a flask and a screwdriver set and........"  They do serve one important purpose.  They keep stylish young woman from breeding with geeks.  Sometimes.  Just because we are photographers doesn't mean we need to look bad.  

Amazing thing is that decent short pants cost about the same as monstrous short pants with hundred of pockets.  The Swiss Army knife comparison does not apply to all things.  Your pockets really only need a credit card, a small bit of paper cash and,  if you live in a police state, your ID card.  With current cameras you're good with one battery in the camera and a nice 8 or 16 gig card nestled in the right slot. Don't make walking a chore by loading up your britches.

I won't even mention go into the folly of wearing "photographic" vests, especially in the Summer and especially over a nice, Ex Officio shirt.....just don't do it.  Not for street photography.  Save it for the Outward Bound adventure or the software engineering team building exercises.

What should your assistant wear when you are out shooting in the street?  I don't know.  I guess it depends on how she'll be spending her day because she shouldn't be traipsing around with you if you are out shooting your art.  As Elliott Erwitt, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand would all tell you, shooting art is a solo gig.  (Guess Gregory Crewdson didn't get the memo...).  Maybe the assistant has gone to a career fair.  And you sure don't want to bring along your spouse or your kids......

Now we've come to the shoes.  This part is tricky for me.  I'm a sandal wearing southerner who loves to feel the hot breezes on my feet.  Also kinda goes with the rest of  the outfit but feet are infinitely varied and somewhat fragile so I'm willing to compromise and sanction the wearing of running shoes or cross training shoes with short, appropriate socks.  Nothing over reaching.  Whatever you wear on your feet should be comfy and discreet.

I know that artists as a rule hate to hear this, and photographers wedded to their dark, cool caves, even more but;  shooting great images in the streets means moving around alot,  paying attention and being ready physically.  Not only ready to carry gear and pounce but ready to be socially conversant.  And all of this means you should be in good shape so you're not panting and sweating buckets while asking polite permission to invade someone's space and steal their soul with your magic box.  If you are wavering from the heat there's no way to nail a great shot.

Even though I'm a swimmer and stay in pretty good aerobic shape, when the thermometer heads skyward and the grass starts to turn brown I add two or three days a week of three to five mile walks to my exercise schedule.  I do it during the hot times.  I always carry a camera.  I want to be in good enough shape to spend time in the heat looking for people and stuff I want to photograph.  That way the physical stuff goes to autopilot and the looking and shooting are unfettered by discomfort.

Now, admittedly, this is my personal take on shooting in the Austin Summer.  Everyone will have their own fashion point of view and, as long as I don't have to stand next to you, I really don't care what you wear.  The stuff I've picked works for me on a wide ranging social level as well as a survival level so I'll stick with it.  Funny that this particular blog got started when a famous photographer e-mailed to let me know he'd passed through Austin on a plane change.  He was amazed that it was 95 degrees with very high humidity.  He mentioned that murders rise the closer you get to the equator.  I think we could cut down on the hot weather murder rate just by changing people's shirts.  But as you no doubt know by now I'm pretty opinionated and you have to take everything I say with a grain of salt.

The Fed Ex man was here earlier today delivering two more white shirts.  Just in the nick of time.  I'm photographing a swim meet that starts on Friday afternoon and goes till sunset.  Should be in the mid 90's with enough water in the air to fill a pool.  Might have to break out the soaked bucket hat for this one.  That way I'm sure my kid won't want to come up and ask me for money for junk food.

Marketing Note:  If I survive the swim meet I'll be meeting people and signing books over at Precision Camera in Austin on Saturday, from noon til 2pm.  Bring a cold drink and drop by for a chat.  I'll be the guy with the nice tan.........

Be sure to drink some water and save the beer for the end.

   

What's in a lens?

In an article I wrote several weeks ago I talked about 85mm focal lengths.   I love this focal length.  Just look what it does for the background.  I've owned lenses in this range from most camera systems and I'm going to let you in on a secret.  But first the list:  I've owned the Canon 1.1.2 (version one), the Canon 85mm 1.8 FD,  The Nikon AIS versions of the f2, the f1.4 and the f1.8,  Both versions of the Nikon AF 85's.  The Zeiss 85 2.0 for Contax and even the 80mm Summilux for Leica R.  Now I own the Canon AF 1.8.  I've shot tons of stuff with all these and there's only one that's just "good".  The rest are astoundingly good, regardless of brand or hype.  The one "only good" lens was the old, manual focus Nikon 85 f2.  And people snapped them up in the past because, wide open, they took the hard edge off portraits of women.

I'd feel comfortable using any of them.  I also chuckle when I read the DXO tests or the other definitive tests and I see that they've cautioned people about the mediocre performance wide open.  Maybe in the supercomputer but not on the prints.

People have just kinda gone nuts in the digital age.  It's sharpness at any cost, for any use.  Well that's okay.  All the lenses above will do wide open sharpness just fine.  But then we always have to go back and smooth out the skin tone.  One step forward..........

Program Note:  Just a reminder that I'm doing a book signing at Precision Camera in Austin, Texas this Saturday from noon to 2 pm.  Well be talking photography, maybe looking at prints, definitely drinking hot beverages and so forth.  I hope to see you there if you live in the area.

A strategy for shooting with a new talent.

I'm not much of a team player.  My friends would say that's an understatement by a long measure.  But I do love the collaboration with a great photo subject.  With a crew or a workshop or even with a tag along boyfriend you have this dynamic that subliminally pushes you to keep things ticking along.  Stay on schedule.  Stick to the plan.  But when you go out shooting with one person you can guage each other.  If you have any sort of rapport you can see when your talent's enthusiasm is wavering.  You can tell when it's time for  change of venue or a change of pace. But I think the important thing, when you take someone out to shoot in the streets, is to make sure you are both on the same pages as to what it is you both want to accomplish.  To have an "emotional theme" for the images.

In a typical portrait shoot I can't stand to have my subject's eyes off camera.  Looks weird to me.  But in the shoot we did on Sunday I was working with a narrative that went something like this.  Boy moves to new town for job.  Girlfriend decides to come for a visit and is having a hard time hunting him down.  She is lonely, a bit lost and looking around every corner in anticipation.  

We talked about the feel in our pre-shooting e-mails and again on the shooting day.  I call it a shooting day but I can't imagine a more relaxed and laid back couple of hours.  We had locations in mind (remember?  I walk this area about once a week...) and we just went with the flow.  It's nice to shoot for yourself,  or more correctly to shoot for each other.  No crew, no make up, no hair person.  No assistant holding stuff up that you really don't need but thought you wanted.  

What's the old Elvis Costello Lyric about the "lip stain on the coffee cup that you poured but didn't drink.  But at least you thought you wanted it that's more than I can say for me..."?   That's how I would feel if I were one of my assistants......  Sometimes vital.  Sometimes necessary.  Like a flu shot.

And, of course, in the last frame he walks through the door......

Go shoot downtown.  It's fun.

Here's one that's been post processed in Lightroom 3:

No cameras were hurt in the shooting of this series.  Canon 5dmk2 and 85mm 1.8 for everything.

Sunday afternoon walk around downtown. With a beautiful model in tow.

Jana standing in the alley next to the children's museum looking incredible.

If you've been reading the blog for a while you probably know my Sunday ritual of walking around downtown with a camera just to see what's new and what's worth shooting.  It's been a jam packed weekend so I didn't go solo, I met up with Jana and Chrystal at Little City Coffee House on Congress Ave. and we did a little walk around Second Street and Sixth Street.  This is from the alley next to the Children's Museum.  The last time they painted the walls green they did a few test strips on the wall no one looks at.  I've been shooting the strips for a while and thought they made a nice background.

I mentioned my plans to a few of my photo-friends and they all volunteered to come along and help.  Since when did street shooting, or art for that matter, become a team sport.  I'm sure they had in mind some sort of assisting role like holding a reflector (which I did not bring) or helping to set up lights (the I did not bring) or perhaps chipping in with witty chit chat and wise guy banter (which I did not need but brought buckets of anyway).

I really can't think of many things more disconcerting for a model than trying to maintain a fun rapport with one 50 year old photographer much less a gaggle of them.  If I wanted a bunch of people tagging along as I shot a model for our mutual portfolios I would announce a workshop and get these eager guys to ante up some cash.

I did a quick post processing of one image out of about 300 and I'm really happy with it.  I can hardly wait to get busy on the other images.  It's fun to find a model who:  A.  Shows up on time.  B. Is witty, charming and seems to be able to read your mind about how you'd like her to pose.  C.  Brings a friend of equal model potential, just for fun.

I worked with a modern camera and a short, fast telephoto zoom lens.  No lights, no modifiers.  We accomplished what we set out to do.  We had fun and we made photos that both of us liked.  That's the best you can hope for on any Sunday afternoon.

On the way home I bought a really great bottle of Riesling and four walnut brownies from Whole Foods.  Belinda made some Pad Thai and we kicked back.  Nice way to slide into Summer.  More Jana images to come during the week.  Stay tuned.

Thanks, Kirk

   

Aquatic Saturday. Dateline Austin.

Ben and I left the house around 7:45am this morning after a breakfast of egg and bacon tacos on whole wheat tortillas.   Just another saturday morning swim meet with the mighty Rollingwood Waves.  We got to the Westwood Country Club right on time and headed in.  You have to prod 14 year olds to do stuff.  This morning Ben announced that he didn't "do" warm up.  No matter that his coach requires it.  And now, so does his dad.

In many ways I'm just like every other parent pacing around the deck;  I want my kid to go fast and get a few ribbons and make the "A" relay team.  I'm happy when he hits a good flip turn and peeved when he breathes six or eight times on a 50 meter sprint.  But I have an extra perk:  I'm the official Rollingwood Waves Team Photographer.

What does this get me?  We'll it's more what it gets me out of.  I don't have to volunteer to be one of the timers or stroke judges.  On the flip side, though, I have to be at every meet.  I try to get  at least a handful of pix for each kid on the team.  I get some of them hanging with their best friends,  a few starts and a few races.  At the end of the season I rent a big monster digital projector from my favorite A/V company and we have a slide show at the swim team award picnic.

When I started this adventure we shot slides.  A costly affair for the volunteer photographers.......

Back in 2003 we went digital and haven't looked back.  Here's the truth though, the slides look a hell of a lot better.  That's not a dig at digital cameras but cost effective projection technologies are still way behind the curve vis a vis film.  Really.  I have a couple of LCD projectors and I have a Leica Pradovit slide projector and it's Yugo versus the Aston Martin as far as I'm concerned.  But we decided not to care and everyone loves to watch and giggle at each other.  We also put the images up on a web gallery and they look much, much better there.

The meet started at 9 am and lasted till 2pm.  The other team had legions of young kids and that always takes more time.  A lot more time.  But that's part of the deal.  We always have to remind the teenagers that they were once "six and unders" and they didn't move any quicker than this set of six and unders.

Today was  a good photo day because we had a nice overcast.  Not a dark gray, English style overcast but a thinner, southern california overcast with a small layer of Texas clouds thrown in.  I shot 735 images over the course of the five hours and edited down to about 600 for the web gallery.  I took one camera and two lenses.  A Canon 7D, the 70-200 f4 and the Canon 15-85mm.  I took along two 4 gig cards and made a solemn promise to myself that, when I filled them,  I'd just stop and smell the roses......or the chlorine.  I was a lazy photographer today and shot large jpegs with the camera set to Aperture Prefered Priority.  It all came out just fine.  I watch the light and shove in plus or minus compensation pretty accurately when I need to.  I didn't have to dump any files for exposure or focus issues so I think 735 out of 735 is pretty darn good.

The camera worked fine.  The boy swam well.  The photographer stayed hydrated.

So that was this morning.  Then we went out for lunch and I came back to edit, color correct and upload the stuff to a Smugmug gallery.  Now it's almost six o'clock and I'm ready to take it easy and do some stuff just for myself.  I know, I'll grab a camera and a lens and go out for a long walk in downtown Austin.  You know,  just to stay in practice.......

The metrics of joy and the prison of assumption.

There are some things like joy and love and anticipation, affection and aesthetics that defy measurement which is a dicey proposition since we've devolved into a culture that falls back on "metrics" to explain everything.  Even whether or not we're having fun.  Here in the states we have a history (at least men do...) of buying things based on specifications.  How many horsepower in your car's engine?  How many megapixels in your digital camera?  We also analyze our recreation the same way.  How would you rate this on a scale of 1 to 10?  We're pretty sure now that cholesterol isn't a good way to predict heart attacks but it's one of the easiest things to measure so our doctors do the test and accept a vague and unproven causality.  Cardiologists could measure homocysteine levels but it's more costly and the usual remedy for high levels of homocysteine is more folic acid and B vitamins and nobody makes any real money from that.  But I have digressed.  My point is that we've become a measurement culture and we seem less and less disposed to understand the value of things that can't be measured.

For example:  art, serious music,  live theater, great books,  gentle talks over coffee,  time spent just thinking,  any experience that can't be labeled, "extreme", "intense", "wicked" or "hot".   We're edging that way in photography all the time.  I'm sure someone will soon come out with software that measures the "quality metrics" of your images and gives you a grade for the technical achievements.  83% for that headshot because you didn't have sharp focus on the tip of the nose and the backs of the ears.  97% with the extra credit for perfectly matching back lights.  

But, of course, by the time you create the metrics all you've really done is codify the progress of photographers at the top of the Bell Curve.  Institutionalized a new stasis.  A new middle of the road.  Created a new speed bump for a generation of artists.  If we are to grow as artists we need to accept stuff that looks different and stuff that's not even on the metric radar.  Next time you see art that you don't get, don't dismiss it out of hand.  It might be the next great thing.  Very few revolutions come with their own set of measurable markers.

And that drips over into another thing I've been thinking about today.  The life of the artist.  And the assumptions of our culture.  Which is tremendously aspirational.  We don't seem to aspire to art the way we aspire to make millions, live in a house the size of a factory, drive fast cars, live with supermodels or tip doormen outrageously.   Even though we are, as a culture, aspirational we can be rational and in our pervasive rationality we expect people to expect certain assumptions.  Here in Austin the assumptions go like this:  You WILL need to own a car.  The closer you live to downtown the cooler you are.  You will want to eat Sushi.  You do want to own a $6000 bicycle.  You will go out.  To fuel these priorities it's assumed that you will have a job, predicated by a college degree and you will work at this job for 50 to 60 hours per week.  You will do this with the vague aspiration that you'll strike it big on a start up or an IPO and you'll retire at 40 to go off mountain climbing for the rest of your life in Nepal or somewhere equally cold and cool.

But the rational underpinning assumption, by the time you reach your forties and have the responsibility to pay the mortgage and for kids and their braces and French horn lessons and soccer camps and all the other trappings, is that you better like what you're doing enough to keep at it until at least 65.  Because all that money you've been making seems to be covered with Teflon and slides through your wallet like designer bottled water through a mid-day jogger...... And you work and work and at some point you look over your shoulder and it's too late.

While the storybook artist hits "delete" on all those layers of responsibility and gets directly on with the process of doing the art at any cost.  The material trappings of successful life  don't have the same allure and value to the committed artist.  The reality is somewhere in the middle and everything is a compromise.  I'm unfair because I presume that everyone secretly wants to do their art and they don't want to do it in the two weeks a year they have off from their job or in the evenings when they are already exhausted or on the weekends when there's so much to do that was put off over the course of the work week.  But the reality is that we're all somewhere on the continuum.  You may think that doing art is total bullshit and that you're happy doing just what you're doing.  And I'm good with that.  You may think anyone with a "real job" is a robot moron and I'm not going to say "I'm okay with that".

Somewhere along the line I think nearly everyone buys into the assumption that it's impossible to have a life outside of the 9 to 5.  Not just after the 9 to 5.   I know too many entrepreneurs and artists and swim coaches and writers to totally buy into the "must have a real job" deal.  But you must be willing to confront the idea that you might be miserable doing your art.  Not enough money.  Not enough socializing.  No quick fame.  etc.   Sometimes you trade the job for freedom and the steak for macaroni and cheese.  And trying to juggle both worlds requires incredible discipline.   Everyone has their equation for sacrifice and comfort but it's good to pull out the calculator and check it every once and a while.  You never know when the numbers might have shifted.

It's friday. All I can think about is swimming.

There's this moment when you push off the wall in a perfect streamline and the water is rushing past all around you.  It's the closest that human beings come to flying.  Shut down your computer.  Leave the office and find a pool.  Jump in and push off the wall with your hand locked together and your arms stretched over your head.  Keep you head in line with your body and push off hard.  Point your toes after the push off.  Then feel the glide.  You'll never want to go back to work.