Monday, April 22, 2013

The relentless rhythm of the freelance life.


It's nine thirty in the evening. We've had dinner and we're all settled into working on unfinished projects. For me it's getting the lighting set up for a morning video interview in the studio. I could put off dealing with the lighting until the morning but I would have to put off going to my early morning swim practice and I don't want to do that. I wish I had put aside enough time to light this project earlier in the day but I was already deep into other projects. And so we repeat a pattern that's been going on for about 16 years. That's how long it's been since I moved my business from the huge and costly downtown studio to the smaller building just in front of my house.

The trade off for less space is less cash out paid out each month, and a much easier commute. The downside is that, unless you are more disciplined than me, the work is always right at hand and there's always something more that could be done to move everything forward.

Part of the pattern is heading into the house to cajole or beg my spouse or child into following me back out to the studio to "sit in" and let me test the light. I want to know before everyone gets here in the morning if this is going to work the way I think it will (and after so many years you would think I would know) or whether I need to tear everything down and start over again.

Tonight Belinda is more accessible. I ask her for five minutes of time even though we both know it will be ten. I look through the camera and I'm happy but I know my client will ask for a hair light so I put one on a stand and test it as well. Belinda escapes back into the house as I make a few notes on exposure settings and color balance. 

Tomorrow's job is not a very complex one nor is it very lucrative. But it's a job and it's ultimately for a client who runs a small advertising agency and who has pushed work my way for years. In the worst of the recession he always seemed to find a law firm or medical practice that he could convince/cajole to hire me...and pay me. So I do the job happily. It's all part of an interlinked puzzle of connections and friends in this business.

This job is all set up now but I'm not ready to leave the studio yet. I know that this job will go from ten a.m. to noon tomorrow but I have another project that will take most of the afternoon. I'm going through my check list. The second project will be a combination of still photography and digital video. I'm the art director on this one as there is no ad agency. The project is direct to the client which means I have to wear the hats that an ad agency partner usually sports. Some of the gear will be used on both jobs so that means putting extra batteries on the charger tonight. And packing the pieces that don't cross over.

The week is like this. We meet for dinner as a family and then retreat to unfinished work, manic studying and the relentless flow of busy-ness that makes up an artist's existence.

At some level there's always the fear that if I stop or slow down everything will come shuddering to a halt and we'll exist in some sort of impoverished limbo. Irrational since it's never happened and work doesn't seem to be trending down the slope of some PowerPoint curve, just yet.

I'm setting a limit tonight. I'll be gone by 10 p.m.  My treat of the day: A re-run of the Big Bang Theory on the local Fox affiliate along with a glass of red wine. It's 9:58....goodbye.

Trimming down the blog and starting over from scratch. Goodbye old writing...


In the next few days I'll be stripping off all the old blog posts and starting over from scratch. From my point of view the practice of photography has changed so profoundly and in such interesting (and frightening) ways that most of the content has become antiquated. If you are looking for a favorite post from earlier than this Spring chances are it's already gone. Content lives forever on the web so you might be able to find what you are looking for but I'm done with looking back. The future is much more interesting.


Sunday, April 21, 2013

Ultimate Lighting Minimalism.

Come to my "One Light" workshop.
We'll start at Lowe's Hardware Store
Where we'll buy four under the cabinet
fluorescent light fixtures for $12 each.
Then we'll buy some packing tape to tape 
them all together with.
We'll add a bungy cord to 
anchor them on the fence post
"light stand."

Then we'll take a picture,
pat each other on the back 
and go home.

And the whole time we'll wander why 
the hell we just did that when we 
have a ton of lights on the shelf just
to the left.


A very busy week means a quiet blog...But I still wanted to thank you for the 13 millionth pageview.

Sculpture. San Antonio Museum of Art.

I'm sitting in the studio making clipping paths for thirty or forty still life images I made for one of my clients on Thursday and Friday of last week. In the same week I also shot some video interviews and also a video shot with scores of people all yelling out one sentence in unison. I wrapped up another job for a joint venture capital company (mostly portraits) and had pre-planning meetings for a handful of video and photo projects for next week. Once you factor in swim practice and walking the dog there just wasn't a lot of time to water the blog. Too many hats?

I have a few observations for anyone who wants them: If you know you're going to have to do clipping paths it sure is a good idea to get as deep a focus as you possibly can so you don't have to mess with diffused (airy, feathery?) edges. When getting into the Zen of clipping paths you should  have a really good, calm music mix you can listen to so your brain doesn't fry. You should get up every hour and look out the window so you don't get vision cramps.

In the pool, if you are swimming with young people in your lane (say 26 year old triathletes and the like) it's important to let them go first so they can wear themselves out while you draft off their wake. In this way you'll be able to keep up for the first half of the workout while they tire themselves out. If you are good at pacing you'll have the stronger second half of the work out.

Another pool suggestion: If you've been pounding away at work you probably should take it a little easier than usual in the pool. Anything more than 4500 yards in a workout is just garbage yardage if you are already worn out.

A few observations about video: Even if the clients say they know exactly what they want make sure to do a pre-production meeting to go over the details. You might find you need an extreme range zoom to get the kind of shot they describe as "not a big deal."  Bring your own microphones! You might find that the ones they swear they have on hand and ready to go never materialize and you don't really want to be that guy who had to use the in camera mics, right?
Video tripods with fluid heads are nice and all but few of them go really tall. Need to shoot someone who's six foot five from above eye level? You'll be happy you had your conventional Gitzo 8 footer in the trunk of the car.... And a hard Pelican case to stand on.

One more point about microphones: If you are running the signal from the microphone directly into your camera be sure to pack extra cables and adapters. Borrowed or supplied microphones are probably XLR plugs and might need phantom power. At the least you might need an XLR or quarter inch to 3.5mm adapter or two.... Don't be that guy.... (Been there..).

Wanna make photo-life easier in general? Custom White Balance All The Time! Custom White Balance All The Time! Custom White Balance All The Time! Custom White Balance All The Time! Custom White Balance All The Time! Custom White Balance All The Time!

My location shoot on Saturday reminded me of the importance of checking the local events calendar when you discuss a location with your clients. We wanted a fun shot of the downtown skyline with the lake in front and my client in front of that. We've shot that shot before and there's a perfect spot down at Auditorium Shores in Austin. As we headed there it became clear to us that this was also the spot of the weekend long Reggae Festival and the attendant 100,000 people. Thank goodness we had a "plan B." 

It's also a good idea to bill as you go. The end of every job should mean having you sit down and bill right then. Nothing worse than looking up after three weeks of work without having time for bookkeeping and realizing you're about to suffer "check lag." A nasty reality of the one man band business model....

Good stuff this week? The a58 is a great little camera and the files are good enough to interchange with the a99 for a lot of critical work in the studio and around town. The new kit lens is good but unless I'm wanting to travel as light as humanly possible I'd rather use the 16-50mm 2.8 DT just for the faster f-stop.

The new fluorescent lights are good. Again, CWB!!! But actually a pretty good balance in with diffuse sunlight. More when I slow down.

We logged our 13,000,000th pageview last night. Thank you for reading and taking time to comment. I routinely just edit out the people who are difficult but I appreciate everyone else's input. Hope you're out shooting while I'm sitting here listening to vintage Rolling Stones and working the Wacom Pad.

Don't forget to bill for usage.  And have a great week. At the end of next week.......Eeyore's Birthday Party at Pease Park. Wear a costume if you are coming. A khaki vest and a heavy bag of old school voyeur cameras doesn't count......

Friday, April 19, 2013

Celebrating your successes. A record of happiness and fun.

Many years ago I was the director of an advertising agency. It was an interesting time in the business. This image comes from a shoot we did in 1983 or 1985. Our crew had just finished shooting images for an ad campaign for a retailer who had upscale flower shops that also sold good Champagne and chocolate, as well as fresh blooms.

We we're photographing models doing explosive openings of Champagne and trying to capture the moment bubbly wine came rushing out and spraying all over the place. I can remember that we were shooting on a couple of Pentax 6x7 cameras and our lighting consisted of a bunch of Novatron power packs with their cheesy plastic heads.

Back then we capped every shoot by celebrating. We'd all have some Champagne at a shoot like this one, then we'd assume the "Jet Pose" and, if we were still reasonably coherent we might all go out to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican food dives.

Somewhere along the line photo sessions seemed to become more and more routine and we started only celebrating the big budget shoots. But when I looked at this image I was instantly reminded of the words of the CEO of a 1990's telecom company. His mantra to his "troops" was always: "Celebrate Your Victories!!!!" His company succeeded in "celebrating" through over a billion dollars of stock holder's cash in a little less than 18 months, so you know he took the idea of the morale building party seriously. And I was thrilled to be along for every mile of that sybaritic journey. :-)

I've decided to re-institute the idea of celebrating our victories and the victories represented by good shoots for my clients. Obviously, it's now a different time and the celebrations will be a bit more low key. But now, while I'm visualizing success, I'm going to remember to stock my refrigerator with a case or two of good Champagne. I'm just starting to remember that this is supposed to be a really fun career. Screw the recession. Raise a glass.

Celebrate your own victories and successes. There will be more than enough time to ruminate over the bad stuff...

Friday. Thinking about intersections between gear, new synergies and portraits.


Derma by Kirk Tuck (kirktuck)) on 500px.com
Derma by Kirk Tuck

When you take the burden of flash out of the mix portraiture seems to be easier for everyone involved. I've recently added more continuous light sources to my inventory. In one case are five large LED panels. Just under that case are two, new V-Lights from Lowell (compact tungsten halogen instruments) as well as a couple of Lowell Tota-Lights. But the newest and, so far, the funnest new additions are the three Fotodiox Day Flo Max fluorescent fixtures. They all use Osram Dulux tubes and seem to have master most of the spectrum issues that plagued earlier fluorescent lights.

I'm using them with the Sony a99 and that's where the idea of synergy comes in. You probably know that the a99 has an electronic viewfinder. You probably also know that to work with studio flash in a productive way you need to turn to a setting where the image in the finder is amped up all the time. It makes sense. If you set f8 at 1/125th of a second ISO 100 for the flash and you leave the camera in the "Setting Effect On" setting (meaning that what you see in the finder is exactly what you are going to get) you'd get a dark, dark finder while working in the studio under 100 watt modeling bulbs. Change the settings to let in more light and then the flash exposure is wrong. But when set to "Setting effect Off" you are basically working with the camera the same way people with OVFs always do...with your eye compensating for the various brightness levels in the studio.

Switch over to continuous lighting and you never need to turn off the "Setting Effect On" setting in the menu. You are always operating in a mode of the camera showing you exactly what you will get. It's showing the effects of your settings.

So, in the portraits I did with the new flo's on Wednesday I set up a six tube fixture and pushed the light through a layer of diffusion. Nice and soft.  I added a second light to illuminate the background. You could see the effect immediately in the finder. Then I added a little bit of backlight from the smallest fixture with only one tube live and my set up was complete.

The second synergy comes with the way the a99 handles lower light. I have no hesitation at using ISO 400-3200 in making portraits. I'm old school so I really like to work at ISO 200 when I can. But it also means that I'm using slower exposures and that can introduce lack of sharpness due to camera shake. The elimination of the moving mirror goes a long way toward stabilizing the camera at 1/30th of a second, or really anything under 1/125th of a second. If I want to be hand held the combination of the fixed mirror and the image stabilization means decent handheld work with impunity at 1/30th of a second. Very nice.

The final synergy in working with continuous light and the Sony a99 is the electronic first shutter. Not only does it also reduce overall mechanically induced unsharpness but it also takes away the somewhat startling (for people not usually in front of the camera) noise of a typical DSLR camera's operation.

For me it's a much more pleasant way to work than with a moving mirror and flash.

Today I'm doing still life work and the idea of the synergetic interplay is the same. The continuous light allowing the use of any combination of shutter speed and aperture while the camera dutifully shows me exactly what I'll get before I even push the shutter.

In fact, if I were a conceptual artist I could forego the push of the shutter button and just describe, within the context of my manifesto, exactly what would have been in the frame and how it made me feel. Further, what it meant in the time line of the history of conceptual art. Maybe I just did...

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Cameras are fun. Working with them is more fun. Making good portraits is the most fun.

Amy by Kirk Tuck (kirktuck)) on 500px.com
Amy by Kirk Tuck

I've rarely heard a person, when looking at a portrait, exclaim, "Oh, I wish that were sharper so I could see the details in my pores. And I'm disappointed that my wrinkles aren't more prominent." When they complain it's usually because I spent too much time geeking out on the gear and not enough time trying to unlock the secret of a person's great beauty. Never proud of myself for figuring out how to make use of all those pixels if it means living outside the moment where you engage with your subject...