Kirk Tuck Photographs Food At Jeffrey's. Works For Me.

I've been eating great food at Jeffrey's Restaurant for over 30 years.  When Austin was a smaller town Jeffrey's was pretty much the only dining establishment within fifty miles that didn't had chicken fried steak or hamburgers on the menu.  Like every temple of food they've made a few tiny missteps (nouvelle cuisine compounded by raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing)  along the way but it's pretty easy to say that they've been the high end dining destination for two generations of food savvy Austinites.  With very good reason.

I still remember some of the dishes that Raymond Tatum prepared for Belinda and me on any of our many visits during the "two-income-no-child" years which were so good that they actually constitute the "happy place" in my mind that I go to in times of stress.....  I proposed to Belinda there 26 years ago and we've celebrated many anniversaries and birthdays there as well.

So when the arctic winds whipped across Austin this past week and I got a bit of "cabin fever" I called the manager, Kate, and asked if I could come by and shoot some of their food for a new book I'm working on about lighting.  She was very gracious and offered up Thurs. afternoon, without hesitation.

While I'd eaten his incredible food I had not yet met the new chef, Deegan McClung.  He is an alum of Commander's Palace in New Orleans and honed his chops at Wink, Herbsaint and Uchi before accepting the kitchen helm at Jeffrey's.  I told him what I was looking for and he headed to the kitchen while I wrestled with some bags full of lights and stands.

Above is my basic lighting set up.  I'm using a Canon 7D on my favorite wooden tripod.  The 7D sports a 60mm EFS macro lens (which is wonderul, by the way).  The lighting is vintage me.   A big diffuser positioned as close to the subject as possible without being in the shot.  Two big, 500 bulb LED fixtures blowing light thru that diffuser.  A handy white "pop-up" reflector to the opposite side. And a wee little battery powered 160 bulb LED light used with its diffuser way in the back.  I love using a diffuser panel because I can skim light on it in so many ways and subtly change the feel of the light.  I can also angle it around its vertical axis to provide more or less tip light.  Very flexible lighting tool.

The little building Jeffrey's occupies is probably 50 years old but I had no fear of tripping any breakers because, together, the two A/C powered fixtures draw only 80 watts of power from the wall outlets.  Quite different from the days of thousand watt movie lights or 2400 watt second strobe packs and 4x5 view cameras.

Here's what the scene looks like from almost directly behind the camera:

This image is a little tighter and gives you a good idea of how soft and distinct the light is:

I always start with a "stand in plate" so I can get a sense for the real estate I'll be dealing with when the "hero" dish hits the table.  I wanted to be really tight on all of the dishes because I really like to see the ingredients in a way that's different from real life.  Here's my stand in plate:

The passive reflector on the opposite side of the camera from the diffuser and the light source is what controls the quality of the shadows.  Need more fill?  Bring the diffuser closer.  Need more drama?  Move the diffuser away.  There is no "correct" ratio or distance.  We make this up to taste as we go along.  Just like good chefs.  After half and hour of fussing with lights and comp I'm ready for the first dish and Deegan brings it out right on time.

It's a fabulous, spicy, rich quail appetizer!  And it looks so good on the plate.  The chef tells me which side of the dish is the "presentation focal point" and then leaves me in the darkened dining room to explore the dish however I want to.  So I do.  I move it and the camera again and again.  I'm looking for interesting angles and combinations of colors......

When I've thoroughly explored the dish (20 variations? Maybe 23) I put it on an adjacent table and start playing with the next plate size.  Did I nibble on that quail?  Would you nibble on a great, freshly prepared quail appetizer from a world class chef as you're setting up your next shot?  If you said, "No." you've missed out on one of the prime perks of photography.

As an aside I would say that the 60mm macro on the smaller sensored Canon is wonderful.  When you are this close to the food you need more, not less depth of field at your fingertips.  And this lens is very well behaved.  When I apply the lens profile to a file in Lightroom there's very little discernable change in the on screen image....it's that well corrected.

Next up is an incredible salad sourced mainly from locally grown produce.

I start wide and then I move in.  I have this salad from so many angles but I keep coming back to the photograph below because in a small encapsulation it describes the entire salad so well.  The lush, sharp goat cheese, nuts and vegetables.  There's always a temptation to crank up the saturation on shots like this but it never really conveys into CMYK print so I tend to aim for a more faithful rendition.....

We follow the salad shot with a shot of a Pate de Foie Gras.  I found the presentation wonderful, in person, but challenging to photograph.  Finding just the right angle and just the right elevation took a lot of trial and error.  I'll confess that I'm a bit out of practice and the chef is used to cooking and plating food that satisfies in the eating.  But I did the best I could and then I ate the evidence.

The final shot, though untraditional, is my favorite.  It shows the ingredients well and it's monolithically intriguing.  I racked the tripod all the way up and stood on a chair to get the image.  On every shot I set the camera's two second self timer.  I tried to squeeze the shutter release with a minimum of movement.  Most of our shutter speeds were in the "danger zone" between 1/8th and 1/25th of a second at ISO 200.

The final dish was a duck confit that was absolutely wonderful.

Two almost identical angles but a slight difference in elevation.  I wish the photos could transmit the aroma of this wonderful, crispy duck.  It was superb.

As soon as I finished shooting the duck I started breaking down the lights and the cameras and packing up.  It was five o'clock and the dining room needed to be set and ready for service by six.  My friend, Keith dropped by and helped pack up the duck.......

Shooting food for a top flight restaurant is pretty exciting if you are really into food.  I was able to step into the kitchen and watch the chef's technique and his fluid handling of his chef's knife.  I'll share the images with the restaurant, giving them a full set of totally retouched images.  I get to use the images in my upcoming book.  And you get a front row seat of the way I shoot food.  I learned a lot over the years from a NY food photographer named Lou Manna.  You might want to look at his books.

All the "behind the scenes" images were shot, handheld, with a Canon 5dmk2 and a 24-105mm lens.  ISO 3200.  Wide open.

The quiet moments between hectic life.

I write a lot about jobs.  And those are vital to any photographer's career.  But I don't spend enough time writing about the importance of quiet time and meditation for creative people.  And when I say creative people I really mean all of us.  Everyone.

I just read a study about the value of meditation.  Not "swami-cult-chant-incense" meditation (unless you are into that....) but simple, mindful meditation.  We tend to go like the wind in our daily lives and we're confronted with new facts, new ideas and change all the time.  But we rarely make enough time to actually let our brains process the things we learn and confront.  The study, here , points to meditation as a tool to increase attention, create more grey matter and become better at learning.  Other studies document meditation as a blood pressure and cortisol lowering mechanism that could prevent disease (dis-ease) and anxiety.

We tend to reward photographers for writing stuff about daring feats of lighting, meeting heroic deadlines and jousting with evil bean counters and this focus creates a self reinforcing spiral of dis-information that makes many freelancers feel that they should be working until they drop every day.  I am guilty of presenting my version of life in this manner and I felt that I should be more inclusive in descriptions of how my life is really structured.

In this post I want to talk about the important of the quiet moments between hectic life.

Walking with a camera.  When I go out walking with my camera it's not with the mindset of an explorer on an expedition, with the goal of coming back with treasures (although I couch it that way when I shouldn't).  When I go out walking with a camera I am mindful that I'm just doing a walking meditation.  When I see something I like I snap a photograph. And then I let go of thinking about the thing that attracted my attention.  The rest of the time I'm trying to keep my mind clear of all the warring thoughts that impel us to worry and thrash around.  I follow a route and keep my mind on just experiencing everything as it opens up in front of me.  I think all solitary walking is a form of meditation because the cadence of your walk keeps your mind focusing subconsciously on being here now.

Catching some floor.  A few years ago, during the big downturn (circa 2006 and 2007 for photographers) I struggled with profound anxiety.  The way I had done things for years shifted in a heart beat.  All structure exited the emergency exits and most of us were mired in a "wait and see" mode as we watched our working capital shrink and fizzle.  I went to therapy.  I tried Xanax.  Nothing seemed to relieve the tension and apprehension.  Then I decided that every time the anxiety became overwhelming I'd grab a yoga mat, lie down on the nicely padded floor of my studio, close my eyes and meditate for half an hour.  I set my computer to ring an alarm, or I used a meditation CD with a timed thirty minutes of soft music.  This was the one thing that worked.  I could calm down enough to trace back to the quick thought that triggered my anxiety and de-fuse that mental bomb before it could do any more damage.

Eventually the anxiety went into total remission.  But I stay with the practice of meditating once or twice during the day and when I get off the floor I feel rested and calm and ready for the next task.  When I'm writing a book and I get stuck.  I hit the floor and meditate.  When I get back up the writing is easy.

Beyond meditation.  After the economic downturn started to recover here in Austin it felt good to book up work again.  There's a strong, pent up demand for new advertising and new images.  But even though my previous writing would lead you to believe that I work a lot I spend more time doing fun, human oriented things.  I book my morning swims in my business calendar.  If I miss a day because of a job I go into flex time mode and look for a place to make up the swim.  Even if it's just getting in the pool at sunset and swimming an easy mile.  When I'm not booked I make time to have lunch with friends.  Today I'm having lunch with a friend from an advertising agency.  Yesterday I had lunch at a ground breaking ceremony for the theater I shoot for.  We celebrated my 18 years of shooting for them.  I didn't even bring a camera. I just savored the moment.

Tomorrow I'll do some work in the morning and afternoon but I'll make time to have lunch with a photographer friend of mine.  We're working our way thru the "big shift" and our mutual support is priceless.  We know better than any of our friends what this struggle does to us and we're working on how to deflect the ambiguous nature of it all.

Time away is the secret to getting more energy.  You've probably heard that two photographers are getting on a bus and doing lighting workshops in 50 cities across the U.S.  While it may make sense for them economically it seems dangerous to the spirit of their work.  After big jobs I need time to read novels,  go to movies, have dinner parties and live the life I want to shoot.  If all I do is shoot and think about photography there's no reality left to reference outside of photography.  And a constant focus on tools and techniques without subject and concept is deadly to my way of seeing and being.

If the downturn taught me nothing else it is that downtime is a gift to be savored.  Experiences outside photography are the creative fuels we use to  come back and create art.  And art hits the audience it is made for.  If the art is ABOUT photography it appeals only to other photography obsessed people.  If art is ABOUT living life then the audience is infinite.

Relax.

Cold day photography. Fighting the wind.

It was mid-December and we were having our first bout of chilly weather.  We needed one more image for  an annual report I'd been working on.  The art director called to ask if we could do this photo of a rescue driving.  He drives on the major toll roads helping people whose cars have run out of gas, had some sort of problem, or need some sort of service to get going again.

Couldn't have picked a better day for this kind of shot.  It was windy, overcast and cold.  Every once in a while some fat raindrops whipped through.  The client had a location and a time in mind and I started packing.  Generic camera choice.  You could have shot this with just about any make or model and any lens better than a Coke bottle.  The real secret for this shot was sandbags.  Lots of sandbags.

I got to the location and mapped out where I wanted to shoot from and I started setting up my light.  First things first, I put 40 pounds of sandbags on the heavy duty stand before I put anything else on it.  Don't do this backwards!!!  Don't put the flash head, softbox and modifier on the unballasted stand first or you'll have a sail in your hands.  I also attached the 18 pound Elincrhom Ranger RX AS power pack to the stand for extra stability.  The winds were mischievous and teased me at ten miles per hour then whipped at 30 mph.  My little Elinchrom VariStar umbrella box fluttered like a flag on the top of the stand but everything held.

I set the camera in manual at it's highest flash sync speed and set an exposure that would give me a dreary background.  I put half CTO (orange) filtration on the lights and set the camera to a manual WB setting of around 3800K.  I shot in raw.  When I working in Lightroom I fined tuned the balance between the warmth of the flash on my subject's face and the cool of the background.  This example may seem a bit warm but I think it's the contrast of colors that I'm really seeing.

We shot a bunch of variations and then I broke down the set and packed up the car.

Why bring out the "big gun" lights on a cloudy day?  I wanted to be able to put the light far enough away and in a light hungry modifier, covered with light sucking conversion gels, and still be able to shoot and recycle quickly enough to keep the shoot moving and my fingers from freezing.  The Ranger at half power was giving me more than enough power and clicking along with a steady 2 second recycle time.  The much bigger battery, in comparison with the smaller Ranger Quadra or my Profoto 600b meant less slow down from the biting cold (well.....biting in a central Texas sense, meaning low 30's.)

Nice to have the right tools for the job at hand.  We were in an out in about an hour and the photo was delivered later that evening in order to meet a review deadline.  That's about it.

From garden variety playground to arctic wasteland in the blink of an eye.

The image above is what sunsets in Austin look like on most days.  Especially in the winter when the sun's arc is lower.  Taken around 5pm just a few days ago it was a balmy and typical day here in the jewel of the southwest.  People were kayaking and paddle boarding on the lake and I was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt snapping photos after a day spent........snapping photos.

It was a nice day for sitting at one of the azure blue picnic tables at P.Terry's and munching fries and a veggie burger.  Don't worry, the fries are done in canola oil and the veggie burger buns are whole wheat.  Even the Dr. Pepper is "Dublin" Dr. Pepper, made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  People were happy and sassy.  Girl scouts were selling cookies and co-eds were riding their mopeds.  Just another day in paradise.  But then.........the "Arctic Blast" hit.

It came barreling in with 40 mile per hour wind gusts and frenetic slurps of rain.  The chatter of branches on my rooftop woke me from a deep sleep.  The dog was disquieted.  It was winter.  The brutal, weeklong endurance event that we dread here in central Texas.  I got up in the morning and checked the thermometer (actually, I don't have a thermometer, I just looked on my iPod Touch...) and it was 25 degrees and dropping.  I made it to the pool for the 8:30 am workout and we did some variation of the set above.  In my lane, with Ann, we did 16 of the 50's instead of 10.  The water in the outdoor pool was warm enough and there was a layer of steam that extended the comfort zone about a foot above the water but getting out of the pool and over to the locker room was daunting.  A true hardship.

I went back last night to look at the pool.  The temperature had begun its descent to 16 degrees (widely acknowledged to be the end of the world around here.)  I could barely hold my Pen EPL1 and LensBaby composer still enough in the blistering wind gusts to take this image at 1/60th of a second.  I knew all was lost when I got the e-mail from Brian (the pool manager) this evening.  Seems the "wind chill factor" (who made that up?) was going to be 5 degrees in the morning and he thought it would be cruel for the coaches to be on the deck in the pre-dawn bluster.  I would have gladly gone but who am I to flout the rules of the pool?  There will be workout at noon.  We expect it to be in the high 20's.

Am I right to believe that people "up north" live thru this kind of stuff for months at a time?  Why?  Who can get any swimming done?  (and don't give me that stuff about indoor pools.  once you've tasted the freedom of blue skies above you'll never go back.)

I guess that means I'll have more time for photos tomorrow morning.  Thank goodness I have a hobby.

(this is mostly tongue in check.  Texans do tend to over-react to cold weather.  It's because it is a novelty.  But we get the reciprocal torture in the Summer.  Don't you worry.)

Random note:  go to Will's blog and see his shot of Jimmy Carter.  I couldn't do that in 5 minutes, could you?  http://willvano.blogspot.com


Love the shot of our pool, to the left.  Wild how the strong wind creates waves in the water.

Sometimes Lunch is just lunch....

Belinda at Hang Town.  Our favorite, indoor, hamburger joint.  

I spent the morning scheduling future work and sending out "thank you" cards.  By one o'clock, when I looked up from my desk, I was starving for lunch.  And with the cold, north winds howling outside and the temperature dropping quickly I wanted something hot and comforting.  Hamburger and fries.  But I hate eating lunch alone.  I grabbed my car keys and my EP2 and took the twelve steps from my studio into the front door of our house, in search of Belinda; kind spouse, vicious CFO and all around graphic designer.  She was on the phone walking a client thru a website design but when I whispered, "Lunch?" She was off the phone and out the door in a shot.

I guess that's one of the benefits of working for yourself and having a spouse who is also self-employed, I'm almost never at a loss for a good lunch date. We headed to Hangtown to get a couple of really good burgers and some (almost) forbidden French fries.  And we talked about our careers.  It's good to have spent the last 25 years doing the things that most people dream of doing once they retire.  It's still scary, even after 25 years, to take the leap of faith that work will continue to come in.  That the marketing will continue to work.  That photography (and design) will continue to be viable ways to earn a living.  But once you get over the fear and embrace the freedom and the sheer adrenaline rush of working without any sort of safety net the ride becomes a lot of fun.  

And we've learned that part of the reward of doing what we do is being able to do what we do.  So we ate lunch.  And talked about how nice life can be.

"Molly Ivins" and the Olympus EP-2. A study in black and white.

Last Sunday I finished up my review of the EPL2 camera and put it back in the shipping box to send back to Olympus (disclosure:  we don't get to keep review cameras unless we send Olympus a check or a credit card number.  And with cameras that are in short supplier for review, not even then!).  Later that afternoon I went over to Zachary Scott Theater to do a "running shoot" of the dress rehearsal of the new, one woman play, "Red Hot Patriot."  It's a one woman play about journalist, Molly Ivins.  

I took a Canon 5D2 to shoot with as my "serious" camera and, just for fun, I also took my stalwart companion, the Olympus EP-2 (no "L" in that name) with the VF-2 finder and an ancient 40mm f 1.4 Olympus Pen lens.  The old fits and focuses manually on the camera and works in both the "A" and the "M" mode.  I shot 400+ color shots with the Canon and during the course of the 90 minute play I also banged off 70 images with the Pen.  The color stuff looked great (shot at 3200) and that's what I turned into the marketing department.  All week long I've seen e-blasts and postcard mailers and newspaper ads from those shots.  They all look great.  But I forgot about the black and white stuff because I had so many things going on last week.  Today I brought the camera along to lunch with Belinda and I took a cursory peek at what was already on the card.  Eureka.  The B&W rehearsal shots.

While I was waiting for another gallery of photos to upload I pushed the "Molly" images into Lightroom and began to look around the take.  Here's what I noticed:  I used the black and white setting when I shot the Large Super Fine Jpegs.  I really like the Olympus take on black and white.  It's pretty much what I'd aim for if I were shooting Tri-X in my old Leica.  The lighting on the stage didn't change much.  Once I guessed at the right exposure I pretty much just shot everything around the same settings.  In case the Exif didn't make it intact the nerd words are these:  ISO 800, f2.5, 1/320th of a second.  Of course, no flash.

I'm including these images because people kept asking about the low light performance of the test camera.  I wanted to see what the low light performance was of the previous generation.  At 800 the background starts to show some noise but it's certainly much better than my old Tri-X days.  I'm very, very happy with the texture and the tonality of the mid-range tones and happy that, under fairly contrasty light I didn't have to worry about highlight details.

On another note I actually find it easier to manually focus lenses with the VF-2 finder, using the "shimmer" technique, than it is to focus even fast manual focus lenses on the Canon camera (yes, I have the Eg focusing screen installed.)  The "shimmer" effect is basically just an interference pattern that becomes visible when you achieve correct focus with an LCD finder.  It doesn't work with optical finders in the same way.  Any images out of focus can be blamed on my poor manual coordination or my aging reflexes.  For an 40 year old lens I'm very impressed and happy with it's nearly wide open performance.  Easily as good as my Panasonic 20mm 1.7, under similar circumstances.

And the whole experience reminded me why I like these little cameras for so many things:  They are small, light, responsive and balanced.  They're also very, very cute.

Someone took me to task about my recent review of the EPL2.  Their point was that much of the review seemed more like a review of the benefits and features of micro four thirds format machines in general and less a review of the name camera, specifically.  And maybe that's intentional on my part.  I feel like a lot of people miss  one of my main points:  These cameras aren't (at this point of development) meant to be a replacement for professional, full frame cameras used to create flawless work for clients.  They can do that in the right hands, and in the right circumstances, but they are really wonderful documentation cameras.  Cameras that go thru your day with you documenting cool stuff you see and cool people you meet.  And they do for me what Leica rangefinders did in the old days.  They provide me with the potential to take a camera anywhere and use it with aplomb.  I have the big cameras and I use them where appropriate but I came from a generation of visual artists who didn't necessarily have to have one tool do everything.

This is a camera I use because it has a small foot print.  A quiet and discreet demeanor and lots of imaging capability.

One more thing. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you live in, this is a play that will make you ask some hard questions.  And it's funny.  Very funny.  But I wasn't paying attention to the play, I was there to make photographs.  So let's not let the comments devolve into a political discussion or I'll censor them quicker than North Korean television (if such a thing exists....).

Do you remember when we used to print things?

I got just got copies of an annual report that I worked on last year.  We started in the Summer when it was hot and steamy and we finished on a freezing, overcast day in December.  The design of the annual report was very, very good but the thing I liked most about it (in addition to the photography) was the printing.  Whoever spec'ed the printing didn't mess around with skinny, toilet tissue newsprint.  They went with rich, glossy premium white stock.  The high priced spread.  And they used a six color offset printer with nice machines.  No cheesy powder dye printing.  And the result is makes this report look like the best handprinted Lightjet/Cibachrome prints you ever saw.  And you know what?  When everyone else settles for what they think is "good enough" and then something like this comes along and sits next to it, the makers of the lesser work should just hang their heads and walk away.

And maybe that's where we're coming to with photography.  Maybe so many people have settled for "just-good-enough" stock photography and "just-okay-but-really-cheap" production values and "she's- not-really-the-person-we-wanted-in-the-ad-but-she-works-in-HR-and-she-was-free" not quite there models, that they've diminished peoples' memories of what really great stuff looked like.  And when something really well done comes along it sticks out from the crowd like gold coins in a pile of...... leftover pizza.  And everyone recognizes the difference in quality.  And then clients will want something that's as good as "that piece that Bob did."  You know, the one that won all the awards and grabbed everyone's attention.

Could it be that after a decade of "good enough" the pendulum could actually swing back in the other direction toward........WOW!!!!! THAT'S FANTASTIC.  ?????

Well.  One of my clients just did it and I was blown away.  I wonder if we can make that reality the next big social trend.  We could call it.........I WANT STUFF TO BE THE VERY BEST IT CAN BE.  Because we only get to do this one time around.  And wouldn't it be great if the work of our lives was something we could be proud of?

While printing presses have been modernized, at the top it's still the same process of spreading ink across a sheet of paper.  At high rates of speed.  Yeah.  Let's do this thing right.