A Sad Reminder That Everything Changes....

Future Driver Ben stands in front of the Silver Element and helps me evaluate the Bokeh of the 50mm Carl Zeiss ZE lens.  Excruciatingly low light.

I know you’re not supposed to fall in love with inanimate objects and it’s not that I really “love” my car in the sense that I’d marry it, but, it is the best car I’ve ever had when it comes to facilitating my photography.  I’m talking about the Honda Element and I’m writing this as a eulogy of sorts since I’ve just learned that 2011 will be its last year in production.

I wasn’t always an lover of practical cars with anemic performance.  The car I owned before getting my 2003 was a 1996 BMW 525i Olympic Edition.  It was fast and graceful and for the first few years I owned it the performance a reliability were peerless.  In the early days, while it was undented and the paint was new, the valets at the Four Seasons would park it out front.  Assignments to Dallas were fun to get to and it was never tough to get assistants who were ready to drive.  But whatever it had going for it I was always aware of the shortage of cargo space.

Over time my kid’s muddy shoes graced the leather seats in the back.  The tail lights started failing pretty regularly because I’d leave my sopping wet swim bag in the trunk overnight.  Then, around 60K miles the dark nature of nice cars reared it’s ugly head.  Expensive repairs.  $1300 for the electronic ignition switch which, as part of the theft prevention systems, had to be ordered from Germany and only after I appeared in person with my birth certificate to prove ownership.  The radiator failed twice.  The suspension had issues.  Etc.

I’d “graduated” to the BMW from a Volvo 940 Turbo Wagon which could have been the ultimate photographer’s station wagon if not for the expensive habit of burning up turbochargers every 25,000 miles.  (Yes, I knew enough to let the car idle two minutes after driving before shutting off the motor.)  It was bad enough bringing the car in under warranty, trailing white smoke, but after the first non-warranted turbocharger repair the car had to go away.  Pity as it was nice to be able to load up the back with all the stuff I wanted and needed for a shoot and drive well over 100 mph thru west Texas for the occasional shoot in west Texas......

But then, with the bitter taste of German reliability betrayal still on the tongue of my car consciousness I, on a lark, test drove a Honda Element.  Not fast.  Not quiet.  Never parked in the front driveway of a five star hotel.  But able to fit nearly the entire inventory of my studio in the back with room for an assistant and a beautiful model on board.

The sexy allure of $125 tune ups.  The amazing head room.  The stadium seating in the back.  And, amazingly, the ability to remove one (or both) of the back seats, lay out a sleeping bag and have a portable hotel room with inches to spare for my feet and my head.  It’s a car that takes photographers back to their roots as happy go lucky kids ready to go anywhere and willing to sleep in their cars to get the shots at sunrise.  And when the repairs do need to occur they are priced only in the one hundreds, not in the thousands.......and my local dealer makes good coffee and offer fresh kolaches and wi-fi.

I always thought, that when I had enough miles on this 2003 Element that I’d trade it in or sell it and get myself a brand new one.  Maybe even trade up to an SC model with the lower profile.  In fact, I could see myself buying an Element every ten years until the police took my license away. 

But now all my hope are dashed.  Smashed on the rocks of bad marketing.  Seems that the marketing people were the drivers behind the design and the demographic targeting of the Element.  They had their hearts set on creating a “cool” set of “wheels” for young surfers and groovy guys, just out of college.  In the hopeful minds of the marketers flocks of upscale millenials would rush to the dealers with their BMX bikes and their bongos, load up their girlfriends and haul off to the beaches and the mountains to sit around campfires, smiling, with their wide open Elements beckoning in the background.

Alas, it was not to be.  The primary market self selected.  They were predominantly over 40.  A surprising number were single women over 40.  With dogs.  And couples over 50 who could understand what a great value the car was.  And photographers.  I know so many photographers who have Elements that it’s become a stereotype.  In the distant future, when they make 3D sitcoms about photographers from the first decade in our new century, they’ll seat them firmly in Honda Elements.

Now I’m getting nervous.  My silver Element only has 75,000 miles on the odometer but I live in fear that it will dissolve under me and I won’t be able to replace it with a shiny new one.  And that’s made me a bit edgy.  Now I’m looking around to see what the next “photo nerd” vehicle will be.  I’m kinda leaning toward a Ford Flex because it’s nearly as goofy looking as the E.  I’m trying to keep it running because Ben gets his license next October and I’d like for him to get some use out a such a wonderful car.

  

If you have an opinion from the point of view of a photographer I’d love to hear it.  I’m nearly always fascinated by why people drive what they drive.  Anyways.  Honda Element, I loved you while you were here......

Your Focus Determines Your Reality.

Perception and reality are intertwined.  And what is reality for one person isn't necessarily a reality for the person standing next to them.  The way in which you think about things determines the outcome.  If I know a technique will work, it works.  If I think being nice is hard then it becomes very difficult.

I find that many people have a thought process based on a search for a magic bullet or magic series of steps or charms or products that will unleash that person's creativity or allow them to live forever.  In their minds there is a need to do "research."  They cloister themselves in a library created from materials they find in the orbits they search and they proceed to read everything they can get their hands on.  They put off exercising or practicing or enjoying making art until they've accrued the "critical mass" of knowledge.  And it becomes like peeling an infinite onion because with every layer they peel back another layer of knowledge and detail is revealed.  And when that layer is dissected they move on to the next layer.  And when that layer has the juice wrung out of it they progress to the next layer.

The layer peeling in photography is prodigious.  And I find myself doing it in every facet of the business that I find frightening or unpleasant.  I don't like going out of the studio to show a portfolio.  Few people really do.  Instead, I spend time researching new ways of reaching out to clients.  We all do.  We rush to do e-mail blasts because it's easy and it gives us the impression that we're doing something smart.  We're reaching all those people on our list with an example of our work.  But we know that everyone else who fears rejection and face to face encounters to ask strangers for work first and then money is doing exactly the same thing:  sitting in their office, facing a screen and wracking their brains trying to think of something clever to say about a photo that's topical and hopefully interesting to a stranger.

When we finish with the e-mail blast we know we can't do it again for a few weeks so we "research" other ways to circumvent the stuff we fear = the face to face portfolio show.  Next we might turn our attentions to a postcard or start peeling the onion about presenting materials on our iPads.  We'll research which iPad to buy.  Which programs to make our portfolios in.  Which leather cover conveys the right message of coolness and affluence?  And, if we do our research right it should take up enough of our time and attention so that we've sliced thru a few weeks and we can now go back and start working on that next e-mail promotion without fear of saturating our audiences.  Of course we have no idea of how many people sent e-mail promotions to our intended victims yesterday or earlier today or the day after we do our.  And, really, all marketing is contextual.

When we tire of the "marketing onion" there's always the "gear onion" to fall back on.  We might convince ourselves that our current equipment is no longer competitive with the rest of the photographers chasing the same clients.  We resolve to differentiate ourselves by "upgrading" which takes a lot of research....because, of course, we want to make the right investments....So back to the websites and the books.  Once that injection of courage is absorbed and we find ourselves still stuck by our own fears and our focus that tells us we don't know enough about the magic bullets, we take the next step which is to find a mentor.  Usually at a workshop.  We focus on the mentor's success and hope that by spending time and energy with him a process of osmosis will occur that causes the mentor's creative powers to undergo a mitosis that allows him to share that power with us.  We'll learn not only what the magic bullets are but also how to aim the creative gun and go "full automatic" on our prospective clients.

But that will drive us back into research in order to find a new order of clients who are perceptive enough to share the vision you siphoned from the mentor.  It's a cruel and endless loop.  And in the end your lack of success will probably lead you to reject the mentor and his arcane magic and go off in search of a "real" mentor.  And that might mean getting some new equipment which will, of course, mean new research.

But by changing the focus from "learning" to "doing" we change our reality.  We stop looking for subjects that will resonate well with our technical tool bag and start out with the magnetic attraction to things we love to see and love to look at.  And then we'll figure out, through trial and error, how to share, visually, the point of view we alone have that makes the subject magical to us, personally.

When we have a focus that comes from curiosity about the subject that focus drives our unique vision.  Impediments fall and we become so enthralled by being able to share our version of the story about that thing or event that we get over our reservations about showing our vision to the right people because we allow ourselves to become invested in the story not in the material reality of the book.  The book is just one vehicle for the story.

I guess this is my way of saying to many of my friends, and even to myself, that all of us have all the gear we need and all the research we need to be able to shoot just about anything we want to shoot right now.  We need to stop the endless cycle of research because it does three things:  1.  Our focus on "research" creates a comfortable pattern of procrastination from the actual doing.  2.  It robs us of our real power which can only come thru actualization.  Reaching out and doing.  Because it is within the process of doing that we evolve a feedback mechanism that allows us to learn and fine tune what we really like to see.  3.  Research, and it's buddy "the search for the magic bullet," rob us of our power by investing power into the idea that the people/artists that we aspire to mimic  operate creatively by a set and sellable formula and that the search for the formula trumps our search for ourselves.  But if we let go of the edge of the pool we could actually swim.

It's all about the doing.  Not the learning about doing.  I can teach someone to read a meter but I can't teach them how to feel about life and how to translate those feelings into art.  No one can.  It's only thru the process of exercise that the body becomes fit.  It's only thru the process of creating your own art that your creativity becomes fit.  And nobody wants a pudgy creative spirit.

Portraits that measure the continuum of time together.

These are both portraits of Belinda.  The one on the top was taken today, in my studio.  The bottom one was taken over 30 years ago in a makeshift studio in the top part of a rambling old house I used to live in near the University.  Portraits shown one after the other catalog the changes life has made on peoples' faces.  But what do they say about, and to, the photographer who took them?

This morning I photographed a family in my little studio.  The studio is nestled next to our house, just a few steps from our front door.  The family are old friends.  I offered to photograph the kids and the parents and then the whole group in exchange for using some of the images in an upcoming book.  I also photographed them because I've been photographing them since their children were toddlers.  Now they are teens.  And, in a sense, I'm visually mapping the ever changing relationship between the kids and the world as manifested on their changing faces.  Much like I've done with my patient wife, Belinda.

When I finished photographing our friends and they pulled out of the driveway I walked into the house and was struck at how beautiful Belinda looked, just then.  I asked her to come out into the studio and pose for a few minutes.  I started the shoot with a couple lights on the white background and two lights in front.  One as a main light and the other as a fill.  One by one I extinguished each light until I ended up with just one thru a soft white scrim.  That was the distillation,  the look I wanted, and it's what I ended up with in the top photo.  But as I was processing the file I remembered the older photo, just below.  The image had the same resonance and the same style, connected, or disconnected over the thirty something years in between.

I rummaged thru the archive and pulled it up for comparison.  Two things struck me.  First is that in all my meanderings through all the technical adaptations of photography from the beginning of my career to now my basic style had remained the same and the way I like to light and look at people is consistent.  Amazingly consistent.  And secondly, to my way of thinking, Belinda has become more and more beautiful over the years.  She would complain about  her wrinkles and the unkindness of passing time but I only see her beautiful eyes.........

It's already a Happy New Year.  I wish the same for you.

note:


In a moment of unclear thought I abandoned my twitter account.  Now I wish I hadn't.  If you are so disposed could you click on the link in my link list and "follow me"?  http://twitter.com/#!/kirktuckphoto

A fun, Texas-style assignment. And portable lighting.

This is Dr. Russell Cunningham.  He's a rancher, a Texan, and a competition horse rider.  Oh yes, and he is also an accomplished oral surgeon.  I would probably have never met him if not for an ongoing project I've been doing for the practice in which he is a partner.

To make this image my trusty assistant, Ben, and I threw some gear in the trusty Honda Element and drove out past the town of Dripping Springs to the ranch.  Ben dragged the cases and sandbags out of the truck while Dr. Cunningham and I discussed the set up.  We shot in the open shade and went back in and filled with the Profoto 600b battery powered electronic flash firing into a Photek 60 inch Softlighter 2.  It's basically a 60 inch umbrella with a black backing.  It also comes with a diffusion cover to soften the light that bounces off the reflective surface of the umbrella.  I used the umbrella in fairly close and set the control box at half power.  I set a basic exposure for the sky and sunlit background and the used a light meter to set the flash level on Dr. Cunningham and his horse.  We brought two thirty pound sandbags along because we knew if the wind kicked up we'd need them.  We needed them!

Ben hung onto the stand and the umbrella while I fired away with a Canon 5Dmk2 and the 24-105mm L lens.  This lens has some cool features.  It's got a great range for most editorial situations.  It's got a really good image stabilization system.  It feels solid.  But the thing that keeps me reaching for it is that it's so darned sharp.  Even at f4 the detail I get in the center of the frame is really wonderful.  If I didn't suffer so badly from GADD (Gear Attention Deficit Disorder)  I could easily run my whole business with this lens and the 70-200 f4L lens.  They're a nice match.

The ad ran in color but I like the feel of the black and white treatment so that's how I processed it for my portfolio.

Every month has been different.  This one really feels like Central Texas in the old days.

Remembering that photography isn't really about the gear but about the cool things you can do with the gear.

 I make silly pronouncements from time to time.  My family and friends know me well enough to not take everything I say as the "final word."  They know I'll change my mind or my point of view when I wake up and see things in a new way.  Last week I ran a post that declared the Canon 7D my "Camera of the Year."  I hope the rational response is:  "So what?"  When I did my "Christmas List" one commenter posted a response that spanked me back into the reality I wish I spent more time in.  To wit, he said he didn't really care about the gear he just wanted the time and money to go someplace interesting and to be able to shoot there.  And that's the response I'd love to hear more often.

Don't get me wrong.  Gear is a important but only as a means to an end.  But all the tools in the world are meaningless if we don't get appropriate opportunities to use them.  But one of the tools we should have in our boxes, and one that is often overlooked, is basic camaraderie.

In my culture (pampered American living in an upscale neighborhood of intact families) we pay lip service and involuntary servitude to the overarching myth that family overrides everything else.  That nothing can be more important than family.  And I'm sure that's true in its most basic meaning.  But we've re-interpreted that, as a culture, to be an imperative that all time must be spent with family.  If you have a spare second it should be spent engaged in quality pursuits with our children.  If we have an opportunity to travel it's assumed that your spouse will share in the experience (and not via long distance).  In truth we've eroded two fundamentally healthy ways to exist.  In the first place we've surrendered our ability to enjoyed spending time by ourselves.  We feel guilty when we're not including everyone even though we'd really rather have some time to ourselves to read, create or just be a separate human being.  According to everything I've read we rebel in our teen-aged years to be able to differentiate ourselves and become individuals........why do we spend our adult years joined at the hip?

In the second place we've lost the ability to create and maintain friendships with groups of like minded people.  The photograph above was done in Rome a few years back.  These men meet nearly everyday at a little table next to someone's apartment building.  They drink, they play cards, they tease each other, they talk politics and they revel in other male company.  This easy camaraderie is vanishing in our culture.  We've replaced the more intimate surroundings and easy exchange with friends with things like loud and chaotic happy hours and quick texts.  Several mental health care professionals have bought copies of the above to display in their offices.  They say that it reminds them to remind their clients to work on building healthy networks.  Not to further businesses but to further their happiness.

I look at this photo to remember the value of everything I talked about above.  I took this image back in 1995 while in Rome on a shooting trip with my good friend, Paul.  We left our wives in Austin, grabbed a couple hundred rolls of medium format film and proceeded to have a good, long shooting trip in Rome and Orvieto.  We shared information about the best routes to walk and the best sites to see and we ended most days over dinners with wine and stories about time spent ferreting out interesting stuff.

Our interests were aligned in a way that was much different than the uneasy truce that takes place when travelling with a non-photographer partners.  We didn't need shared shooting experiences but we did appreciate the easy mix of technical and logistical information sharing mixed with observations about everything from the classic beauty of Italian women to the virtues of the antipasto buffet at Al Grappolo D'oro.

I think photography is a like living life.  Too much tunnel vision is boring.  The same view every day is boring.  The same conversations, boring.  Only by stepping outside a uniform construct, even if it's just for a few days at a time, informs us and makes us happier.  Just a point of view now that we're getting close to the end of another year.  Space.  It's the final frontier.

I showed these two images to make the point that being in the right place and being awake to life is much more important than what sort of camera and lens I used.  Or how I used it.  While it's good to make sure your shutter and aperture are correctly engaged making sure you're happiness and interests are engaged is even more important.


Note:  I screwed up and cancelled my twitter account.  I've gotten a new one.  Please see the links for the new address if you want to follow my 140 character ramblings.  And let me know your twitter address if you want followers.

Anatomy of a public relations job.

I love public relations.  I love events.  They separate the real photographers from the poseurs.  They help you channel your photo Ninja skills.  A bit before everyone started to close down for the holidays I got a call from one of my clients at Dell, Inc.  Would I be available to shoot an event at a local Boys and Girls Club?  You bet.

Here's the background:  Dell, Inc has been a major, major contributor to the Austin Area Boys and Girls Clubs for over twelve years.  In addition to very generous financial support they've also be proactive in getting computers into the hands of "at risk" kids.  And they've provided the product and funding to set up computer resources within the Boys and Girls Clubs.

The event that I was contacted about was typically Dell.  Instead of just dropping by for five minutes of face time in front of the media the Dell Executive Leadership Team showed up, in force, to lead the kids thru several hours of one-on-one instruction about doing projects......and yes, even homework.....on computers.

My responsibility was pretty open ended.  I got an agenda and a "wish list" of possible shots but no one was looking over my shoulder to approve or un-approve of a shot or an angle.  The expectation was that I'd get good shots of each team member working with real kids on real projects.  To that end I took about five hundred shots and edited them down to about 300 for the public relations team to choose from.  My goal in these situations is to work like a journalist and not effect the scene any more than necessary.  No coaching or setting up poses.  Just straightforward reportage.

There are always several challenges.  People step in front of the camera from time to time.  The lighting all came from old, overhead florescent fixtures.  Nothing was choreographed with me in mind.  I had to anticipate where I should stand and when I should stand there in order to best document an unfolding scene.  I needed to stay out of the way of the Dell in house videographer so I wouldn't spoil his takes.  I needed to use flash sparingly, if at all, to keep the natural look of the scenes.  I had to be attentive to the dynamics between the children and the adults.  But above all I had to move the camera away from the front of my face and actually look, listen and pay attention.  Otherwise I'd miss the good moments and I'd tunnel vision into cliches.

I shot with two cameras.  I got the most use out of a Canon 5Dmk2 with the remarkably versatile 24-105mm f4 L zoom lens.  Even though the light was low and mixed with light through windows covered with different covered appliques the white balance in the raw conversions was quick and easy.  I shot most things at f4 or 5.6 making good use of the Image Stabilization.  At ISO 3200 the shooting shutter speed hovered between 1/125th and 1/250th of a second.  I applied a little bit of noise reduction in the final processing.  The second camera, the 7D with a 35mm f2 on it was there just as a back up.

One wag asked me later, when I was explaining the project to him, why I didn't use the 35mm 1.4 and the 85mm 1.1.2 L lenses instead.  The misconception among people who don't regularly do this kind of work is that we could always use a faster aperture.  But it's just not true.  When you are shooting scenes like the one above you need a certain amount of depth of focus in the photograph to keep all the main players reasonably sharp at the same time.  With a 1.4 lens wide open I would have been able to render Michael Dell pin sharp but the kids would have been rendered as nice, cotton candy, bokeh-blurs.  And the kids were the real story.  If I had been braver I would have chosen to shoot at f5.6 and ISO 6400 but our turnaround was quick and I haven't played with that ISO setting enough to have the confidence I would have liked.

It was a great job to do before Christmas.  Michael Dell and the Exec. team were all warm and gracious and giving to the kids.  No one was rushed.  No one reticent.  The kids loved the computers that were donated and I was jealous that they were getting the latest touch screens monitors in their computer labs.  The Austin Boys and Girls Clubs do such a great job keeping kids safe and well directed.  And the Dell people do such a great job working with the kids.

I headed home after the last executive got into his car with the last rays of a late December sunset in the background.  I checked in with Belinda and headed into the studio to do my initial processing.  I edited down the files in the input screen of Lightroom and imported the 300+ I selected.  I imported them to two different external hard disks at the same time while re-naming them with a job code.  I also meta tagged them and wrote captions for various groups.  I checked my names in the little Moleskine notebook I carry on jobs.  Once I had all the global corrections done I exported the files as 1500 pixel (on the long side) jpeg files.  While that was running I ducked into the house to see how Ben was doing on his homework and to have dinner with the family.

Then I came back to the studio to upload the images to a password protected web gallery, send the links to my corporate contacts and head back into the house to watch an episode of "Madmen" on DVD and relax.  Before I turned in I checked e-mail, grabbed the files the team ultimately selected and postprocessed them in PhotoShop.  No big changes.  Just a stringent color correction and a bit of cropping.  In the Info palette I wrote AP approved captions and sent out the images to the wire service.

Got an e-mail in the morning that everyone was happy and proceeded to write a note to myself in my little journal.  It reads, "One job done.  I'm happy.  They're happy and I hope we work together again soon.  Note to self:  Send thank you cards."

I really do appreciate the great clients out there.  I'm happy and thankful that hey do more than just business.

We've got hard light if you want it.

Want to know how I use LEDs as softlights?  Read the proceeding blog.  I cover my favorite technique there.  But I always wonder how things look with harder light so when I had Noellia in the studio today I gave it a quick test.  All three of the panels you can see in set up shot below are either 160 bulb LED panels (measuring about 6 by 9 inches) or  my favorite light, the 183 Bulb version (complete with its own big, lead acid battery pack.  That one is 90 degrees to the left of the camera position and lighting Noellia directly.  I'm using the small diffusion panel in the slot of the front of the fixture to soften the light a bit. The next light is the one that appears on the far left of this photograph.  It's bouncing into the diffusion panel on the opposite side of Noellia to add some needed fill light.  The final small panel is the one on the far right of the photograph which is providing a back/hair light for the image.  The background light is one of the 500 bulb A/C panels running at 1/2 power (two banks instead of all four).

I hated doing hard light with flash because light placement is so critical.  With the LEDs I can see the effect as we build it and I can see if I've turned my model in the wrong direction or not while I'm setting up, not while I'm chimping.  Might not make a difference to you but it makes all the difference in the world to me.  I want to set up one shoot often (SUOSO).  Not: Chimp, chimp, chimp, chimp, shoot....

What were the technical parameters?  Glad you asked.  We shot with a Canon 5D2,  the almost never mentioned but incredibly good for the money, 100mm f2.  Our ISO was 400 and the final exposure was a comfortable 1/80th of a second at f2.8.  Custom white balance before shooting.  No mixed light.  

Funny that we have three different models of LED lights and all of them have the same color balance....

Can you do hard light with LEDs?  Absolutely.