Portraits? Read this interview with Kurt Marcus.

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2012/06/11/kurt-markus-the-portrait-finding-your-voice/

Lots of interesting things to read over at http://www.aphotoeditor.com

Here's one of mine:

©Kirk Tuck.  Russian Girl on the Spanish Steps in Rome.

Lisbon Pool. Snapshot.

I'd just finished shooting for five days at a trade show for Tivoli Systems (now part of IBM) and I was out walking through the streets of Lisbon with an old Leica M3 and a 35mm lens.  I walked by this pool and shot just as the boy jumped.  Of course, since the camera was already focused at its hyperfocal distance there was no delay for autofocusing and no shutter delay. I was able to capture the action as it unfolded.

I didn't have a light meter with me but I had the paper with the exposure pictograms that used to come in every box of Kodak film taped to the bottom plate of the camera and covered with Scotch tape.  I'd set the shutter and aperture for sunlight and didn't need to change the exposure again until I walked into the open shade.

Because of these two technical aspects my film shots from 14 years ago are more consistent and more in focus than what I get from the most advanced digital cameras.  Besides the immediate gratification have we really come so far?

I know that the feisty ones among you will immediately respond that all the current cameras can be used in manual exposure as well.  And that's true.  But I sure am finding fewer and fewer lenses with distance scales and even fewer with depth of field scales.  And that's a pity for street shooters.

Getting Theatrical. Do you go to the theater or does the theater come to you?

The Majestic Theater, San Antonio.

Belinda and I went to see a performance of Dividing the Estate at Zachary Scott theatre last night.  I wasn't there for a shoot so I had to leave my camera at home.  As I sat in the theater I started really thinking about the positive, symbiotic relationship I have with the theater.

Zachary Scott Theatre has a collection of over 100 framed and matted, 12 by 18 inch, color prints of my work spread across three buildings, in public traffic areas.  Each one has my credit boldly displayed.  My work for each production gets prime newspaper display with a large credit line next to each image.  The marketing people chose one archetypical image from each dress rehearsal shoot and make it into a beautifully designed, printed postcard that gets mailed out to sometimes as many as 25,000 very well targeted and very affluent house holds (approximately 250,000 local impressions per years in print). I am listed in every program as a sponsor.

And I am well presented by them on the web:  http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/dividing-the-estate  http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/xanadu  http://www.zachtheatre.org/show/fully-committed

I get all the comp tickets I can handle and last night there were four complimentary drink tickets paper clipped to my tickets.  I love a theater where you can take your glass of wine in for the performance...

Every year Zach sponsors a Christmas party for me at their production of Santaland Diaries  which means I get to invite 100 or so of my friends and business associates to an incredible night at the theater.  I've learned more about lighting than I can possible imaging by watching the ultimate lighting pros of live theater.  I've learned at the actor's feet.  They've taught me about the importance of gesture and timing and even improvisation.  I've gotten an advanced education in theater with over 200 different plays under my belt.  And they've taught me so much about marketing.  Because they do it non-stop.  And they do it well.

And I've recruited the actors as paid talent for advertising campaigns and even a corporate trade show presentation, all with great results.

The performance last night was so much fun.  Real people, acting, just a few feet from my seat.  Every show, every performance is an original piece of art.  Nothing is canned.  Nothing can ever be perfect but it can make you laugh, make tears drip down your face in public and move you emotionally in a way pre-recorded stuff never can.  In short, it's always amazing. Even when it's a genre I don't usually care for it's amazing. And Zachary Scott constantly expands my idea of what it's like to be alive and unique.  From Angels in America to Jesus Christ, Superstar every single play examines what it is to be a part of humanity.

As I sat in the theater last night I remembered the first time I shot a dress rehearsal for them so many years ago.  It was a play called, Six Degrees of Separation.  In those days we'd shoot "set-up" shots on medium format color transparency film.  We'd put the cast into a scene or a close up moment and then light it and shoot with a Hasselblad on a tripod.  We shot the actual dress rehearsal with whatever 35mm camera I was shooting at the time.  And the dress rehearsal shots were done in black and white because that's what the local newspaper and all the smaller publications printed at the time.

I shot Six Degrees of Separation with two Leica cameras.  I used a 35mm f2 Summicron on one body and a 90mm f2 Summicron on the other and almost certainly I was shooting Tri-X.  I had a Pentax one degree spot meter and I'd use it sparingly.  The light changes weren't as dramatic in the days before programmable lighting boards...

How much fun it was to see my work, just a few days later, splashed across a quarter page in the Austin American Statesman newspaper!!!  The cherry on the whip creme was the large cut line right under the photograph.  I can't remember what I got paid for that first shoot.  Iy couldn't have been much because the theater was struggling 19 years ago.  This year we're about to open a new, $20 million theater.  It makes me smile to think that all those past evenings of shooting in some small way helped to make the theater successful enough that we could raise $20 million for the new theater complex in the middle of the biggest economic downturn our generations have ever seen.

If you don't get out to see much live theater you might consider giving it a shot.  As a photographer you'll find the lighting very interesting.  And the way people move through light.  But I think you'll also have a growing appreciation for gesture, expression and movement.  It's one of the arts.  We might as well integrate it into ours...

The 50mm focal length (or its 35mm equivilent) continues to be my favorite focal length.

Odd that I've only had the Sony cameras for a short time but I have already acquired two 50mm lenses, one 35mm lens and one 30mm lens, along with a zoom that also covers the 50mm focal length as well as the 35mm focal length.  I don't have anything wider than a 24mm (35 equivalent) and yet I don't feel nearly as naked as I did when I didn't have the middle of the optical range well covered. (This was written a while ago.  I'm editing:  I've added a Sigma 10-20mm lens to round out the wide end.)

All of my current photography happens between 16mm and 200mm. The lenses are used on APS-C camera bodies so the range actually covers 24mm to 300 mm, in old school speak. But no matter what I intend or what I head out the door with the images that make me happy are always in that narrow band of focal lengths that emulate what I learned on with that old Canon TX film camera and its bulky but stalwart 50mm 1.8.

When I shot everything with the Canon 5Dmk2 I ended up collecting at least five optics in the "normal" range, including:  a 50mm Zeiss f1.4, a Nikon 50mm 1.2, a Canon 50mm 1.8,  Canon 50mm 2.5 macro and a converted 60mm Leica R macro.  I guess it's a bit of an obsession.  But one that makes sense.  We're  seduced by candy and sexy super models and loud music but we spend time with nutritious food, approachable girlfriends and soft music in our ongoing lives.  We think we love the sparkle but we stay pretty firmly in the comfort zones.  It's no different with optics.

From 35mm to 85mm or even 135mm we feel safe and sound.  We're excited to play with a 15mm wide angle but we soon tire of its uncomfortable novelty effects.  We marvel at some shots taken with an 800 mm lens wide open but after a very short while we long for the context that comes from seeing more of a scene.  And seeing more of it in focus.

I've owned the high speed, high priced normals and I've owned the cheapos and I'm here to tell  you that, unless you  spring for something esoteric like a Leica 50mm 1.4 Aspheric, you're not going to notice a heck of a lot of difference between the lenses once you hit 2.8 or so.  You know, the range we mostly shot at or above.

What's in my bag today?

Portrait of a student for the Kipp School Annual Report.

It's a guilty pleasure but I'll admit it.  I'm enough of a gear junky to be curious about what's in other photographers bags on a day to day basis.  When my friend, Paul, the architectural photographer started using digital Hasselblads for his high end projects I invited him to lunch and made sure to invite his camera bag along too.  His rolling case had two Hasselblad bodies and two backs at the time.  A 31 megapixel back and a 40 megapixel back.  He had the Hasselblad shift adapter and just about every medium format shift lens you can think of in the case.

I recently changed over from shooting Canon to shooting Sony.  I thought the Canon cameras and lenses were just fine.  I could shoot them without caveat but I like new technology that makes my life easier and I was anxious to move to cameras with EVF finders.  When I bought into the Sony system I swore I'd just get a couple of really good zooms and try to be the ultimate minimalist.  I should know myself better by now.

I did a location shoot with lots of variables for a client last week.  I didn't know exactly what to expect because we'd be shooting interiors with people and machines, some narrow DOF portraits and some very wide exteriors.  What to pack?

Here's what ended up in the camera bag:  Two Sony a77 bodies (doing this for money? You gotta have a back up camera!) Four batteries for said cameras.  16-50mm f2.8 zoom lens.  70-200mm f2.8 G zoom lens.  Sigma 10-20mm Zoom lens.  Sony 30mm DT Macro lens. Sony 50mm 1.4 lens.  Sony 85mm 1.4 lens and the Sony 35mm 1.8 lens.  As you can see from the selection my sweet spot for optics is between 24mm and 85mm.  Everything else is a specialty focal length.  We've got them but we don't use them a lot.

I brought circular polarizers for all the filter sizes as well as a Minolta flash meter.

I brought along a Tiltall tripod because I like it this week.  I also brought along two small light stands and two small umbrella in case I wanted to diffuse the LEDs.

I mostly lit things with several Fotodiox LED Panels but I hedged my bets by sticking in a couple of the big Sony flashes in case we suddenly decided to rush outside and try to do portraits in full sun.  I also brought along my Swiss Army Knife, a few Cliff Bars and extra batteries for the lights.  I brought a Moleskine notebook and a good pen with which to take notes and an old Ian Flemming book in case I had to wait for someone.

It all fit in one Domke camera bag and one Think Tank rolling case.

This is a case of rolling light and moving fast.  We did 12 set-ups that day without really missing a beat.

When I left the studio today and went for (95 degree (f)) walk downtown I carried only a Hasselblad 501cm camera with an 80mm lens.  Two rolls of film (Fuji Velvia 100)  in my pocket and no meter.  Hell, everything was in Texas sun.  It's always 1/250th, f8.5 @100.  Unless someone snuck and ND filter on the ionosphere.  And judging by the need for good sunglasses I'm discounting cosmic neutral density.

Don't know if this is interesting to anyone but it is what it is.

Old School Portraits. Collaborating about art.

The Visual Science Lab is a great place for me to talk about photography as I'd like to practice it and then have my ideas subjected to good doses of feedback.  I'm embarking for the first time into the business of selling private portrait commissions. I haven't decided whether or not to keep the business name as Kirk Tuck Photography or to do some research and try to find something that resonates more with the market I'm going after.

I do know what I want to deliver.  Black and white, and color prints that are in my own style.

I'd like to offer one more generation of people who appreciate the tradition of photography to share the practice of creating art on real film and receiving a real, custom print.  If possible, a darkroom print on double weight paper.  I'm currently looking for someone who prints from negatives.

I'm shooting a series of test portraits the way restaurants have a series of "friends and family" days before they open to strangers.  I'm choosing people I've worked with before as well as new people I've met walking around Austin.  When I have a portfolio ready to go I'll take down my  website and re-launch with new work.

It's scary and exciting but as much as I preach spending time in the water I'm also becoming a big believer in the process of re-invention and new discovery.  What good is a lot of practice if what you're practicing is something people don't need?

Finally, I'm working daily with the Hasselblad film cameras, trying to get back into that groove.  I'm having my negatives processed at Holland Photo and contact printed there as well.  Funny how much more comfortable those cameras are to me than the digital cameras. Even after 12 years.

Re-inventing the portrait.  Sounds like a book.  What do VSL follower's think?

Portraits are short stories about the person in front of your camera.

About twenty years ago I was still taking horrible portraits when someone much smarter than me said that my approach was all wrong.  I didn't know what they meant.  I'd read just about everything ever written about the technical steps involved in making good portraits---from start to finish.  I had cool gear.  The best you could buy.  And I had been making portraits for business for about ten years.  But this instantaneous mentor was right.  My portraits just sat there on paper like wallflowers at a party.  I tried everything in the proceeding ten years to improve them.  I went to workshops sponsored by the PPofA.  I asked advice from my fellow ASMP members.  I bought new equipment and tried new film but it seemed to me that I would never be able to break out of doing formulaic portraits.  At one point I thought of hanging up the ole neckstraps and trying to find something I could be good at.

Then a crusty old English professor I'd studied with invited me over to his house for a Bourbon tasting party. (Liberal arts professors did stuff like that back then...).  After I'd tasted  a few different mashes I started to jabber away to anyone who would listen to me about my visual process dilemma and my fear that I would forever be a portrait hack.  A gruff, older character in a tweedy jacket, sporting a prodigious beard and about as far gone as I clapped me on the back and said,  "It always seemed to me that making portraits is a helluva lot like telling a short story about a person.  If there's no intrigue and no story behind the picture then who the hell is going to want to look at it?"  Then the professor of French Art History weighed in.  She was a compactly and delicately built woman with short cropped hair and though she was in her early sixties she had a glint in her eye that warned you that here was a person not to be trifled with.  Especially midway through a raucous bourbon tasting party....

Here is her two cents:  "I want a picture to make me fall in love with the subject.  Or to want to fall in love with the subject.  Or at least make me give a fuck about the person in the picture. I want to smell some intrigue.  See some bare soul or at least be entertained.  Portraits that are just a description are as boring as television."

And finally, from a snarky person around my age and in my general circumstances: "Tell me a story or go wait tables."

I had been looking for people to photograph who were examples of stereotypic advertising imagery. The busty blond, the executive in a suit with the strong jaw,  the athlete with the six pack, and the girl with the perfect hair.  And what I was trying to do, subconsciously, with all these archetypes and all my standard lighting tricks was to say to potential customers: "I can take your order and provide the same thing as everyone else in the business.  Give me a try, you might like working with me."

But when I started looking for people who interested me and made my heart beat faster the whole deal started to change.  I started shooting subjects that people described as unusual beauty and it resonated in a different way.  Lou (above) was one of my patient, early muses in the process.  And making photographs of her was transformative.

I've done some backsliding since digital hit the market but I recently found (the joys of actually cleaning up your space) a journal in which I'd written down all the spicy words of advice from the Bourbon night.  I've probably gotten them slightly wrong as post hangover memory is rarely foolproof. And when I read it I realize that what I've always wanted to do with my portraits is to tell the exciting opening chapter of the person in front of me.  To give you that person's visual elevator speech.  


If I ever give another workshop I think it will be about the process of coming to grips with making portraits.  God knows my process was/is long and arduous.  The path to the next iteration of my career and the photographic careers of many other practitioners is to learn to make the portrait potent and relevant going forward.  Someone once said that out of 100 people 99 have very interesting stories to tell.  And the one percent without an interesting story is interesting by dint of his uniqueness.

Another photographer advised: "When everyone has their camera pointed in one direction there's got to be something equally interesting right behind them.  Just turn around and look for it."