Buying habits are different for amateurs and professionals? Total bullshit.

One of the wealthiest men in my circle of friends is so thrifty that he only allows himself to go out and buy coffee at a coffee shop one day a week. A bunch of us meet to socialize and the lure of the social network outweighs his aversion to spending any money whatsoever.  When he joins us he gets a medium sized coffee. He has an affinity card (free for the sign up) at the coffee house and it buys him a refill for free. When we're all getting ready to leave he gets his refill. This is not to drink on the way home. He explained it to me once. He puts the cup of coffee in the refrigerator at his house and then, the next morning he microwaves his free refill and enjoys his "free" cup of coffee.

If he were a photographer he would buy one camera and one camera only.  That camera would be so carefully researched it would make Phd. candidates flinch. He would use it till the leatherette peeled off, the screen darkened, and the buttons were no longer usable. And, yes, he would maximize his initial investment until it was no longer possible to use the camera.

And then I have friends who have modest jobs but they spend their money with pleasure. They take vacations and splurge on fun stuff. They have hobbies and they buy books instead of ordering everything for free at the library.  They'll buy another cup of (fresh) coffee the next day.  They enjoy the things that spending money can buy them. 

If they were photographers they'd change gear when they saw real advantages from new product introductions.  Things that would make their jobs easier or, the files better. They wouldn't be focused on the gear, especially, but they would be cognizant of how innovation could bring them pleasure.  

Finally I have a group of friends who have to have the best of everything. If they vacation they do it in St. Moritz instead of Durango. They drive just the right car, own just the right automatic watch and eat in the restaurants of the minute.

If they were photographers they'd be lining up to pre-order the best of everything.  The newest Leica M10, the Fuji X1 Pro type 2 and whatever cool Canon or Nikon body was "of the moment."  And just as they have a Range Rover to drive to workout and an M6 to drive to the office they would have the "walkabout" camera system (Nex or M4:3) as well as the full bore, big dog system. If they were really into photography they'd also have the cool medium format system of the day as well.

But these are not photographer specific types, these are people types and they exist on some inexact curve from thriftiest to most indulgent.  The profession of photography is made up of all kinds of people.  There is no one successful type that dominates our industry.  There is no single set of buying habits that signals the highest probability of success.

One professional photographer I know here in town is so cheap he's probably still using the Nikon D1x he bought when he first started to dip his toes into digital photography.  He does okay in business.  There's another professional photographer who always has the latest of everything and the best. He's into medium format for his work, and the latest Canon, with all the lenses relevant to his business, and he dabbles in smaller camera systems as well.  Hell, he's even into film Leicas and Hasselblads (it's not me, honest) but even though he outspends the first photographer by a wide, wide margin when it comes to gear he is also at the top of his game and is the busiest and highest paid photographer in our affluent market. As a percentage of income his gear acquisitions are not out of line with anyone else's.  He just has more to spend.  It's like the tax argument with Mitt Romney:  He's only paying 13% but he's paying more in sheer volume than the other 99%.

Lately, when I read a forum response about my own "reckless spending" and fickle buying  nature, when it comes to equipment, some self proclaimed "old sage" will chime in and mention that "the real professional photographers would never rashly buy equipment." As if to dismiss my professional relevance and tenure with his specious pronouncement.  He always goes on to say, "They buy the best stuff out there and use it for a long, long time."  This tells me that the poster has no sample group of photographers large enough to make any kind of statistically relevant observation of fact, and also that he may live in a severely depressed market where every family and business must make due with what's at hand instead of upgrading.

There is no statistically sound basis for understanding the spending models of different working photographers. There are some with huge trust funds who can buy whatever they want.  Some are optimistic about their chances of success and so are willing to take risks to buy the ever evolving tools they see as necessary.  Some are aging out of the profession and are reticent to buy stuff that won't give them some sort of quick and guaranteed return.  Some feel trapped in the profession and are looking for a way out.  To them the easy money is gone and it doesn't make sense to throw good money after bad.

Gear has gotten cheap for some photographers. You can buy so many really great cameras for under $2,000 dollars.  Lenses hold their relative value which means changing camera systems isn't so onerous. Former president Reagan re-wrote the tax laws so professionals can write off, in the year of purchase, large amounts of equipment (ACRS). Some states have sales tax breaks for gear that you use in the creation of images for resale.  The old, film age accounting rules no longer apply.  The adherence to the old rules might actually be a hinderance for creative workers who use tools to their maximum effect and then evolve into the next tool. There is an advantage to being the first adopter of a trend or style... Who could have guessed that video in still cameras would become so good so soon? If you shoot a lot of video upgrading to a camera system with EVF's might make all the economic sense in the world. If you got a travel assignment with no budgets for assistants you might consider dragging around a huge roller full of big, heavy Nikon professional stuff but, if the subject matter allows it, you might also find it a smart investment (even for one extended job) to buy a much smaller and lighter micro four thirds system (Olympus OMD?  Sony Nex?) and save your shoulders, back and luggage overage charges. For most applications the files may be just right.

The logic that a photographer buys and holds is a logic based on a time when most equipment was carried around by assistants, used with lots of lights and didn't change much from year to year.  That logic is upside down now. Absolutely upside down. We're almost at the point where it makes more sense to buy and use your gear for the big job at hand, sell it and then choose different gear for the next, different style job. Matching your gear to the project.  Or to rent specialty gear as needed and keep personal systems small and cheap enough so that you can turn direction in heartbeat.

When  someone tells you, "That's the way professional photographers do it." Take their statement with a big grain of salt because every professional is different and follows their own patterns of acquisition for pleasure and for business. I can pretty much tell you this, the photographer who rarely changes equipment has either lost their pleasure for the business or is so involved in what they shoot that any upgrade is just meaningless.  In the first camp are the gruff old cusses who wear the khaki vests and talk about "how we used to do it in the old days."  The second camp is filled (sparsely) with artists who found their tools and can't imagine using anything else.  Then there's this giant Bell Curve in the middle. And for the reading impaired........"That's just my personal opinion."

I might tell you (out of generational spite) that no professional would ever use the LCD screen of a camera to compose and shoot with. That an OVF or EVF was mandatory "pro gear." But I would be wrong and at a disadvantage because of my reticence to use a tool in the way that thousands of younger photographers (and their clients) are comfortable with every day. When reading the forums be sure to put your bullshit detector on high. Not everything you read on the web came straight from the keyboard of an infallible genius.....

Added today (August 20th): Think that pro gear is what you really need to do great work?

Read what Michael Reichman found out: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml

I'm having fun throwing galleries together on 500px

Untitled by Kirk Tuck

I've been using 500px as a service to build custom web galleries for various clients.  I can put together a gallery in a short time and share it with customers in certain market segments. When they go to the link they see the gallery.  I can also send them to the overall page.  Then they can see all the galleries I've created.

The more avenues to a client one can create the more roads lead back to you.

http://kirktuck.500px.com/#/0

So people have "suggested" that I update my regular website. I'll get around to it. But I'd rather have fun creating lots of little websites all over the place and share specific stuff with specific people.  Next up I'm experimenting with website building on Wix.com.

I took a chance and cleaned the mirror on my Sony a77.

This photo has nothing to do with this particular blog post. I shot it to illustrate something for the first book I wrote and I liked it. I think I shot it with a Canon G10 and a Canon flash on a cable.

I saw some dust spots on some of the photos I took for my client yesterday so I took a loupe and went looking for dust on the mirror and sensor of my Sony a77.  I didn't find any on the sensor but I did see five or six bits of intractable dust on the front surface of the mirror. I grabbed some Windex and an old toothbrush and..... NO WAIT! I grabbed a can of compressed air and a Sensor Brush (and followed the instructions sent by a reader of the blog).  I blew the brush with the compressed air to remove dust on both sides.  Apparently this also imparts a positive charge to the bristles that helps lift dust off. I did a wipe from top to bottom on one side (left/right, not back/front), flipped the brush over and then did the same to the adjacent half of the mirror.

Being fearful of destroying my mirror I shot test frames and blew them up on the monitor.  Dust is gone and no ill effects followed on.  WooHoo! I did it.

blog note: Comments are off for a while. 

Seafood day. Shooting just for fun.

Somedays you're just hanging around the house and it dawns on you that you have some salmon in the fridge and a nice red piece of fabric and maybe you should make a sesame crusted fish dish and photograph it just for fun. You know, just to see if you still know how to light something and use the old camera? So you build a big wall of light to the right of the frame out of some 4x8 foot diffusion panels and pop a few big Profoto flashes into the layers of diffusion so the light glows through and onto your set. And you do it with a vintage Fuji S3 or S5 because you love the way that camera handled the highlights.  Nikon 60mm macro lens.

Other days you're hanging out with your favorite chef and he says, "I think I'm gonna make some scallops." And you're very delighted because you know that he's going to make a plate for you as well so you decide you might want to photograph them because you know that, unlike the wannabe chefs on Hell's Kitchen that your guy is going to absolutely nail those scallops to perfection so you head out to the car and grab a few diffusion panels.  You know, the pop up kind that are about 4 feet by 6 feet and you build a quick set and pop a couple of flashes through the diffusion across the plates and then you add a couple of white panels to the other side for some fill but when you woke up that morning you decided that you're usual fill just wasn't going to be enough for today so you borrow a couple of small mirrors from around the house and added those to the white reflectors on the left to get a little gleam from the scallop on the front left and then you went back out to your car to get the tripod you always keep in there for just this kind of stuff and then you bang it all out a couple of minutes after your chef friend plates all the stuff for everyone and then you hang it up, grab a fork and finally get your priorities straight.

And later, as you're finishing off the impromptu repast with a small, chilly glass of Moscato d' Asti you realize that you've melded two of your big passions together and shared in both directions and it feels really cool.  And you did it because it was fun and you wanted to remember the kind of scallop chef-ery that brings tears to your eyes because it tastes so good and you don't even care that you should have used a little oil on the sides of the scallops to get that classic glisten. Or you tell yourself that the glisten is a cliché and you didn't want it in the first place cause you don't like oily scallops....

Ahhh. The Group Shot. Here's one take.

I recently had the assignment of photographing all of the doctors in an oral surgery practice in one group shot.  They wanted a skyline of Austin in the background but they wanted the emphasis to be on the doctors.  The skyline should not compete. We scheduled a late afternoon shoot at the Long Center which is just across the Lady Bird Lake from downtown proper.

I set up the shot so that the doctors were in open shade (the shade cast by a building or natural object but in which the sky is open above...).  It was a beautiful day and the sunset was great. The scene behind the doctors is the view to the east.  I used one big light to bring up the exposure on the doctors to match the ambient lighting.

I brought an Elinchrom Ranger AS RX pack and put all the power into one head, modified with a 42 inch Varistar umbrella box. I put the box as far back as I could in order to get an even spread of light all the way across the group.  I also tried to stay away from using a wide angle lens to prevent the heads of the people on the ends of the group from being distorted.

The shot was done with a Canon 5Dmk2. Lost to the web is the amazing amount of detail in the image. The client's marketing team blew the image up to four by six feet and it was pretty impressive.  One doctor shoed up in bright track shoes but we were able to retouch them into dress shoes.

Groups can be difficult. Open shade and powerful flashes are always your friend.

A long day in the trenches of photography. Food and drinks.

Beer. American for....Beer.

I spent my day today shooting food and beverages for Hilton Hotels. The shot above was one of the last shots of the day. I backlit the beer glasses with medium size softboxes, put a diffused and warm filtered light low and aimed at the backwall, as a background light and had my assistant hold a while card above and in front of the beers to put some light into the head. I'll lighten the heads and whiten them in our final retouch.

For the majority of the day's shooting I used Elinchrom D-Lite 400IT monolights aimed through large diffusers.  For the drinks I used the backlighting described above. I used a Sony a77 camera set to RAW and, after some experimentation, came to rely on the good performance of the 85mm 2.8 Sony DT lens.

I am happy with the Sony a77 with one exception: While the sensor cleaning works perfectly (vibrates at shut down) nothing is ever cleaning off the fixed mirror.  When I shot at f11 I found two big dust spots and was unable to dislodge them from the mirror with puffs of air. I'm taking Sony at their word that we shouldn't use anything to physically touch the mirror surface. But it will bite if I can figure out a way to clean dust spots off, short of sending the bodies back to Sony for periodic cleaning.

The Nex 7 is superior in this regard.

We shot a ton of stuff today. I've downloaded my SD cards and backed up the files and I'm pretty wiped out. Been up swimming and packing since 6 am. I need to hit the pillow so I can get up tomorrow and do it all over again.

Nice to have an "old school" controlled lighting, equipment rich assignment.  We filled up the element with lights, stands, modifiers, steamers and all sorts of food photography paraphernalia. Right down to my favorite set of chop sticks for poking and prodding stuff into position. Clients are still grateful that the knowledge and application of deliberate lighting still exists.

Night, night.

I do the unthinkable and actually buy a photo back pack.

This is a Tenba Discovery Mini-Photo/Tablet Daypack.

When I was younger everything in the universe seemed so much more black and white. Real photographers didn't carry around backpacks. We carried camera bags. We shot primes, wanted quick access from a bag that would hang off our shoulder, looked down on wonky-tographers who sported big, chunky, foamy backpacks carrying everything they could imagine, just in case like grocery shopper picking up all three kinds of whipped creme, just in case. We cut some slack to the nature photographers since they actually had some righteous hiking to do.  Now my universe is upside down because I've started leaving the big cameras at home and just leaving the house with small cameras.  A few months ago it was an EP3 and now it's a Sony Nex 7.

Now my walks are more wide ranging and I spend more time wandering from urban place to urban place. When I take a break it's at a coffee shop or the big Whole Foods. I might want to bring my iPad. I'll probably want my phone in case young Tuck calls. And lately I've been breaking in the  Nex system so I like the idea of carrying a few lenses and an extra battery.  And all of a sudden I'm back in bag land.  But the reality is that I do a lot of walking before I change a lens or crack open the iPad (or buy a bottle of Bourdeaux that needs somehow to be transported home).  

In the novel I'm writing the protagonist loves and hates his camera bag. It's been a constant companion and it holds his treasures. It's part of his memories. There's even a bullet hole in one side. But he hates the bag because all the weight on his left shoulder is wearing him down after decades of hauling around old style shooting iron. I'm sure it reflects my changing perspective, though I can't speak for the book's main character.

I've looked at photo back packs from time to time but most of them are too big, too heavy, too pricey and too BLACK. Remember? I live in Texas and I walk in Texas 365 days a year.  I don't want a black backpack because it will cook that bottle of wine I just picked up on my way back home. I don't want a black backpack because it sticks out like a sore thumb against a white or khaki Ex Officio shirt. And a black interior is like black magic for losing little stuff that you'll scramble to find later.

But then I stumbled upon the Tenba Discovery (etc. etc.) and I decided in a split second that I liked everything about it so I bought one, with the proviso that I could return it if I came back to my senses and realized that the backpack made me look like a class "A" nerd.  You may not care about how you look because of your extremely evolved state but I still would like even just the fumes of coolness lingering over me if I can keep them around...

And now my trips out of the house and into the wild include the Tenba. Be aware though that it comes in two color schemes. One is called "black/grey" and the one I like is called "sage/khaki."  The Sage/Khaki just sits there looking like it's reflecting 100% of the infrared the sun is throwing at it.  The unit has a good padded pocket for my iPad. The top compartment carries my Nex-7 with shooting lens attached while I'm traveling or shucking the thing off my back and into the cargo area of the high performance Honda Element Studio Vehicle (HESV). The bottom half carries as many Pen and Nex lenses as I want to carry.  The elastic side pockets are great for water bottles, wine purchases and sunscreen.

The final feature of the backpack is the included rain cover. I don't worry about that here in Austin....it never rains.

Cute backpack with iPad sticking out.

Nice, wide straps, no waistband that 

I would find aesthetically challenging and 

would one day cut off with my Swiss Army knife. 

Hooray!

Field test:  I gave it my first field test last Sunday. I walked from my house to Barton Springs Pool (about two miles and change) in the afternoon. The temperature with a good dose of humidity hovered around 102ºf. The pack felt light and cool. Unpacked it weighs 2.1 pounds. Fully Nex 7 configured, with iPad, it tipped  the scales at a little over 8 pounds. Not too padded, not too lightly padded. Just right.

From Barton Springs Pool I headed towards downtown, stopping at the bridge over Barton Spring to photograph the teenagers jumping (illegally) from the bridge into the water forty feet below.  I changed lenses there and it seemed easy enough. I eventually crossed the lake and made it to Luke's Locker (a running and triathlete supply store) where I bought Ben a new pair of sunglasses that won't slip down his nose when he runs. They went into the top section of the backpack.

From Luke's I continued on through downtown to the legendary, Caffe Medici, where I had a small Pellegrino water and a decaf cappuccino. While there I wrote a quick blog on the iPad (electronic keyboards are not optimal) and met a new, potential portrait subject. Before leaving the coffee shop I switched lenses to my 25mm Pen 2.8 manual focus lens and then headed out to test that optic, with adapter, on the Nex7. Not bad.

I looped through downtown, pulling a small terrycloth towel out of a side pocket of the test unit to wipe sweaty hand residue off the camera. I ended up at Whole Foods where I drank more water, tasted three wines and two beers, bought a nice Argentinian Tempranillo (wrapped in several layers of paper to insulate it from the heat), stuffed it into a side pocket, just under a compression strap for stabilization, and then walked back through Zilker Park and up the big hill on Bulian to my house. My rambling walk covered about eight miles but it was spread out over four hours. Not an Olympic pace.

The backpack was a success. My shoulder didn't hurt, my balance was good and my access to the guts of the unit was fine. It worked well enough that I think I'll eventually become a convert to this method for my own personal work. Finally, a relatively inexpensive carrying device that does pretty much exactly what I wanted it to. It's still more elegant to go out with just a camera and a lens...