Examining Modern Mythologies About Camera Equipment. Part Two.

Fonda San Miguel: Thirty Years of Food and Art.

It's a little bit scary to work on a project that spans years, or even decades. Especially if you didn't know that everything you were shooting would one day end up as a packaged project. I've known and worked for the owners of the famous Fonda San Miguel Restaurant for many years and have done numerous photographic shoots for them. Tom Gilliland is an amazing collector of Latino and Caribbean artwork and he uses his fabulous restaurant as a gallery for parts of his collection. Part of the draw of the restaurant is the five star cuisine but the other draw is the ever changing show of museum quality modern art on the walls. And the walls themselves which were recently painted over the course of a year by a very famous muralist from Mexico City.

Where do I fit in? Well, ever since the inclusion of Fonda San Miguel in a cookbook I did back in the early 1980's for Texas Monthly Press, Tom has been hiring me to document the art in its environment. Wide room shots that show the juxtaposition of the art and the dining rooms, the furniture, the murals, and even the tile floors. I've shot the dining rooms from every direction and I am particularly fond of documenting the temporary displays like the ones they do each year for the "Day of the Dead" celebrations.

But here's the rub. Some shots were done in the 1990's on transparency film, some on an Olympus e-10 in our early days of digital. Some on an old e300. More on a Nikon D100, then a D200, then a D300 and so on. So, of course, I was expecting that with the ever improving cameras that the older work would suffer by comparison. Especially the early digital work with the low megapixel count Olympuses and the early Nikons.

But you know what? It all hangs together beautifully. Dozens and dozens of images. Double truck spreads with older digital cameras. Detail shots with the latest cameras and historical shots on film. The uniformity of style is pretty remarkable, given that it is for the most part unintentional. But the whole package works.

At least that was the concensus of the International Association of Culinary Professionals who made the book the 2006 winner of their Best Cookbook Design award and the cookbook winner of the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

All the recent food images were done by ace food photographer, Tracy Mauer, from San Antonio.

For my part I relied on a few techniques that seem to minimize quality differences and these are: 1. Shoot in good light. Even if you have to bring the light. I always shoot this kind of imagery on a tripod and at ISO 100. 2. Use really good glass and use the apertures that make every photographer look like a technical expert. Those are f5.6 and f8. If you are shooting with zoom lenses you really can't afford the quality hit at the wider or smaller f-stops. 3. Trust good designers. (That has nothing to do with technique but I loved the way they used the images we shot).

I hadn't intended to blog about this book but it brought to my attention the fact that, across the spectrum, the differences between generations of cameras really become apparent to most audiences only at the edges of performance where things start flying apart. If my style had been to shoot only available light I am certain that more modern cameras would have less noise in the dark areas than the older cameras. If I shot the images using only high ISO the results would be immediately discernible between cameras. But when we equalize the playing field with good technique the differences a become minor.

I have a few copies of this book on my shelf and I really love the images because they remind me of my own experiences over the last thirty years of dining in this fascinating and ever changing restaurant but I was reminded of the book when I walked through Costco today. There was a stack on the book table staring up at me.

Next time I write I think I'll share the story of my very first cookbook experience with Creative Mexican Cooking, by Anne Lindsay Greer........It was one of my very first book projects, done in the early 1980's, on a shoestring budget, and it always comes to mind when I hear people put off projects because they don't think they have the right gear. But that's next time.

Do you have one image that is head and shoulders above the rest?

I took this portrait of my friend, Anne, in the early 1990's. It wasn't done on an assignment for anyone. She worked for me in the studio and I always liked the way her face looked and the elegant way that she carried herself. On days that were quiet, bereft of client direction and drama, we'd occasionally set up some lights and practice. Just for the love of photography. One afternoon I thought it would good to make an image using a large, soft light source with no fill to the opposite side.

We'd been doing images for a theater and set up multiple backgrounds, draped in the background at different distances. We lit those with gridded lights and small umbrellas. Then I asked Anne to sit in an old wooden, Texas bar chair. The afternoon was lazy. Nothing on the schedule. Nowhere to be and nothing pressing.

We worked quietly. Shooting at f5.6 with a long lens on an old Hasselblad. I used a slow shutter speed to incorporate the warm glow of the model lights. I can't remember what we talked about. Only that in those days I felt like I understood my path and my craft and could take the time to just relish a moment of pure photographic joy. We shot four or five 12 exposure rolls of Tri-X. Then, when we knew the image wouldn't get any better we left the set intact and went off to do our own errands and make our own separate liasons.

A few days later I souped the film and inspected it as I pulled it out of the photo flo and hung it up to dry. I stopped and stared at this frame. And it stared back at me. This was what I'd been working toward all along. It was beautiful. But not in a glamour, sexy, hot way. It was beautifully complete and rationalized. It sang out to me as a perfect score. I could hardly wait to print it.

I'm sure that the myriad computer screens that are the dna of the web won't do justice to the rich tones or the complex yet subtle nature of the print on my wall. Someone out there will dismiss the image because it lacks a hair light or the forced sparkle of HDR.

But to me it will always be a high water mark. A place to aim for. If all my work could be this good I'd be so satisfied. But it's good to have a target that you've made with your own hands because at least you have a fighting chance of getting back there some day.

If only you can take yourself out of the way of your own progress and let the subconscious core of emotional understanding that we all have inside commingle with the other skills required to make great craft and good art.

I hope you have an image that you've done that really moves you and motivates you. It's empowering to know that you've been there once and may be able to find your way back again..............




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The Joy of Work.

A photograph of Jaylen for a utility company.

There's something really great about photographing an ad and being in the right mental space. We did a series of "real people" in a campaign for a natural gas company and this kiddo was one of our real people. Kind of silly to even say that since no child under three years old can really be trained to do anything consistenty and predictably. This matched the art director's layout because we made it fun for Jaylen to be there.

This is image is one of four principle images we did for the campaign. Every piece of the campaign called for traditional photo skills. I sat with the art director and we discussed how the shoot should "feel". We determined the boundaries. How different could the laundry room we found be from the one in the comp? Exactly what kind of "feel" did our model need to convey? What kind of props would we need? What kind of outfits should we have available for the day of the shoot? Even, "will the client be there and will they need coffee?"

We scouted seven or eight laundry rooms to find one with the right configuration and enough space in which to shoot. Once we lined up the location we had to juggle days to find a slot when the location and the model would both be available. Pretty routine stuff.

The lighting was straightforward. One Profoto 600b bounced off the ceiling with a standard zoom reflector and a second 600b into a large translucent umbrella to the right of the camera. We used the 600b's not because we needed the power but because they could be turned way down, operate consistently and recycle almost immediately. At least as fast as the camera in short bursts. We also didn't want to run power cords around the room because it's just another thing to trip over.

I used an incident light meter to meter the space where Jaylen would be and metered in one foot increments so I could twiddle the aperture if he moved closer or further from the camera. I did a custom white balance before Jaylen stepped in. We arrived an hour before the model and made sure the set was lit and tested before he came in. That way we could work with him fresh.

In all, I took around 160 shots. In some Jaylen had the teddy bear upside down, or backward but whatever the orientation of the teddy bear we were all happy and encouraging. In the frame above we got exactly what the art director and client anticipated in the concept stage. In retrospect it all seem so simple. Just know exactly where the perfect, fictive laundry room is and how to get permission from a family who doesn't need your location fee. How to find a perfect model and have them come 100 miles to participate. How to be a child psychologist for the talent and a therapist for a nervous client who's "not sure this is gonna work!" Oh, and how to do all the camera and lighting work as well.

But you know, when it all works together there's such a feeling of accomplishment. And in a way we are more privileged than people in most other lines of work. We have a beginning a middle and an end. At the end of our projects we get to see a physical manifestation of our work. A finished piece of art. This morning, over coffee, our little sunday coffee group was talking about repetition in the workplace. We talked about how hard dentists studied only to end up doing pretty much the same thing over and over again through their entire careers. And how managers never see an endpoint or something they can point to and say, "I did that."

When you finish a shoot like this one there's a good feeling. And if you really like the finished piece you might put it in your portfolio or on your website. But it's always so much fun when, months later, you open your statement from the gas company and you see your work as the statement stuffer along with the invoice, and you can say, "I did this!"

Transitional Note: I closed my account at Flickr yesterday. For those of you who aren't aware of Flickr it is a big site where people can join groups like: The Strobist Discussion Forum (where people discuss how to light with small, battery powered flash unit) Or the Olympus Group (where people talk about the latest Olympus digital cameras and lenses). Each group has a pool of photos which they can share with one another and solicit comments and feedback.

I felt like I had become irrelevant to most of the group's participants. I'd posted many, many pages of stuff over the years but the nature of these giant forums is that there will always be newcomers asking the same questions that have been covered over and over again.

And like most forums composed of mostly men the questions and topics are much more geared to "how to" rather than "why". Call me cynical but I think all of the why is in the owner's manuals and the countless tutorials at YouTube, etc. I ran out of "how to" and decided that, rather than swim upstream I would bow out and leave the infinite discussions for those with more disposable energy.

The interesting things is that every resource like this starts out small and intimate. The feeling of support and mutual education is palpable. There reaches a certain point (think Seth Godin's ruminations on one's tribe never being able to exceed 450 people...) at which people see the resource as nothing more than a free web app which should correspond to their specific needs. At that point the things that made it a valuable resource for the early members vanishes. It serves a new need and a new market.

That's when the early dinner guests understand that there is a second seating and that their feast is over and the door beckons. Better to move on that trash the dining room. You never know when you might want to return for a meal.......

Important lesson: Spend less time talking about photography and more time doing it.

CEO's can be fun, patient and satisfying to shoot. Sometimes.

This is Yeurgin Bertels. When I took this photograph he was the CEO of the Westin Hotels and Resorts. We did the image for Private Clubs Magazine which is a very nicely produced publication that goes out to American Express Platinum cardholders.

At the time the Westin people were about to break ground on a resort on the west side of San Antonio. They wanted a piece of the business that the Hyatt was getting with their Hyatt Hill Country Resort. Afterall, both properties were only a stone's throw from Fiesta Texas and Sea World.

But when you are just breaking ground you really don't have a unique venue in which to shoot. So I guess it just makes sense to stay in the closest nice hotel you can find. Which for our purposes was the Hyatt. After I checked in I walked through the whole property looking for somewhere good to shoot a portait of their biggest competitor's CEO.

Of all the nooks and crannies and golf course and winding river pools I thought this generic ballroom had the most promise. My next task was to meet with the GM of the property and get his permission to shoot. I couldn't tell him who was being profiled but I could name drop the magazine and that was enough to grease the wheels of progress.

Unlike many of my peers I don't always see an assistant as a necessary or even positive accessory on many photo shoots. I mean, we were doing one portrait in one location with hours of time open for set up. And I like that one on one rapport I can get in a private conversation instead of the overblown "team" approach. Call me an extroverted loner. Whatever. The fewer people involved the easier some projects become. At least there's no one there to second guess me.....

I set up on big soft light and a passive reflector to the opposite side. I like dark shadows so I move the reflector way, way out to the side. I took a Polaroid and decided that the room would be perfect at a certain exposure but the ambient was too high on the subject. I put a black panel over his head and another one right behind the camera. I am a big believer in subtractive lighting. And I love to drop the existing light on my subject so I can provide light with direction and character instead of trying to mix unwelcome extremes.

When I thought everything was perfect I pulled the darkslide on the Polaroid back and had a passing bus boy release the shutter while I stood in. A few minutes later Mr. Bertels walked up and introduced himself. This was a time when a CEO from a multi national could actually walk alone to a photo shoot, unencumbered by entourage.

We chatted for a few minutes. I showed him the Polaroid and he loved the idea and the composition. (Later the Westin bought a rights package for two years of international usage).

We shot three quick, twelve exposure rolls, shook hands and went our separate ways.

I've always liked this photo but I think it's because I have a hard time separating the pranksterism of shooting the CEO of one's rival in the rival's own house. I do like his smile as well.

Fun with signs.

From the Guac and Roll mobile kitchen. The macho avocado.

Don't optimize your purchase, optimize your technique

The hot wide angle lens on the market right now is the Nikon 14-24 mm 2.8 zoom. And it's a technological tour de force. Exotic lens elements. Nano coating. Hyper Drive focusing (I made that up). And the consensus is that, wide open, it trounces all the lenses in the focal range. By a long shot. It's currently around $1,800 US. If you shoot fast and wide you'll want one whether or not you are a Nikon shooter. Very cool.

But....what if you're a different kind of shooter? What if your wide angle work is outside in the middle of the day? What if you had the good sense to use some of your money to buy a great tripod? What if you'd rather spend your money on food and shelter?

Here's the secret that drives lens junkies crazy: All good lenses are great two stops down from wide open. Almost without exception. Take a 14-24 Nikon and compare it to an Sigma 10-20mm lens and at f5.6 or f8 you'll probably be amazed to find that they are pretty darn close.

This is something I learned a long time ago in two different ways from two different people. Charlie Guerrero (Master Photographer par excellence) showed me on an old Leica that the 35 mm f2.8 Elmarit was actually much sharper than the Summicron 35mm f2 inspite of the fact that, at the time the Sumi was four times the price of the Elmarit. Stopped down to f4 they were pretty even but at 5.6 and 8 the Elmarit walked away with it. Same thing with 50 mm lenses. If you test them at f4, f5.6 and f8 the 50mm f2 lenses absolutely school the 50 1.4 lenses. In fact Charlie used to take cheap lenses and expensive lenses and do a test for our students. He'd have them shoot the pricey lens handheld in regular daylight while shooting the cheaper lenses on a tripod. Same aperture, same shutter speed (well about the "one over the focal length" rule...) and whatever lens was on the tripod was clearly better.

Erwin Puts, an expert about Leica lens design explains in detail why it takes a factor of 16 more precision to grind a lens one stop faster than another lens. His postulate is that all things equal the slower lens is the better lens by dint of manufacturing tolerances.

All I know is that I put my cameras on tripods when I'm looking for high quality and I try to shoot my lenses two stops down from wide open whenever quality is more important than mobility.

The shot above was done with an old, used Olympus 11-22mm zoom lens. One of the lenses that originally came out at the launch of the now "antiquated" Olympus e1 in 2003. Even though I'm using consumer grade Olympus cameras with my 11-22 I find it wonderfully sharp, contrasty and well corrected when I shoot it correctly.

I guess the point of this blog is that the lens isn't nearly as important as we make it out to be. I used to buy all kinds of super fast lenses until I came to realize that I like to see an adequate amount of things in focus. When I made this earth shattering discovery it just naturally followed that I came to believe technique to be worth more than expenditure.

Maybe it's just human nature to resent buying one's way into a craft. I think we love the idea of succeeding with egalitarian tools. As the year progresses and I spend more time shooting and less time shopping I seem to be finding that the enjoyment is not so much in attaining perfection as in having fun. And having some cash left over to buy a round at happy hour.

Loving the 11-22mm and all my recent down market purchases. I love relying on my vision more than on my wallet.

Up In Smoke. Burn the past.

I've thought a lot this year about where photography is headed and why. At first I thought the changes were scary and bad. Now I understand the inevitable push to change that comes with a vibrant culture. I understand it but of course that doesn't mean I have to like it.

It's good to get a grip on what's happening so you can plan for the future but it's best to figure out what has already changed so you can live in today.

We are witnessing the demise of print in commercial communication. Magazines are giving way to websites. Newspapers are yielding to blogs and news sites on the web. Even core advertising is moving relentlessly to video, television and webvertising. In some areas the moves are gradual but in most areas the moves sit around building momentum until they reach a tipping point and then change seems sudden and wrenching---even though the atmosphere was filling with gas fumes day by day we are still surprised by the explosion.

But here's the thing that causes photographers to be rooted in the past. Most of us grew up when print was in ascendency and we learned to use tools that stretched out to fill the most demanding parameters: tight, four color printing on gloss stock at high lpi's. We needed all the detail we could get out of cameras in order to satisfy the demanding nature of high quality printing. Especially so for double truck ads.

And in the 1980's and 1990's the paper manufacturers pulled out all the stops and provided offset printing papers that could suck up ink and return luxurious detail and depth. We needed our Hasselblads. And it is no wonder that the number of megapixels became the holy grail.

But we've lost 35% of the total number of magazines in the market in the past 36 months and the ones with the best printing quality and finest papers seem destined to be the first to savor extinction. Titles like Gourmet, which help define the high end of the printer's art.

As one medium subsides another rises. And now we have the web. A big file isn't measured in inches and lpi but in pixels and, because of bandwidth considerations, small is the imperative goal. If logic prevalis we'll see a downsizing of pixel densities and an increase in parameters that will make the files better web content. Maybe richer color or files pre-optimized for web representation. But one thing is for sure, the need for higher and higher res is slipping away. Magazine by magazine, glossy brochure by glossy brochure.

I've talked to trade show experts recently in doing research of future photography trends. Here's what you need to know: Trade show booths used to be prime display space for large prints. The kind of large prints you could walk up to and put your nose against. But a 30 by 40 color print, printed on a durable stock and mounted on heavy duty Gatorfoam, shipped across the country was a costly investment that usually had a shelf life of one or two show. And a ticket price of between $400 and $500.

Industry experts let me know that clients are quickly moving to plasma displays to take the place of last century, single image, printed graphics.

And why wouldn't they? The screens can be endlessly repurposed and can show graphics, still photographs, commercials and video programming interchangeably. Imagine you are a semiconductor manufacturer at an embedded systems trade show. Your booth faces the doors to an auditorium where breakout sessions are being conducted.

If you consult the schedule you'll know exactly what each breakout covers. You could fine tune the images on the video displays to match the interests of each audience over the course of the show. And there are study metrics that talk to the efficiency of this model. Average trade show attendees spent 17 seconds looking at a typical still photo display print but would linger for up to three minutes in front of a display with video and still programming mixed. And, purchased in any quantity the price of these almost infinitely re-usable screens is lower than the price of one static image.

You certainly don't need the resolution of a 5dmk2 or a Nikon D3x to fill any 1080p screen. You need between two and four megapixels, tops.

If our markets are moving to this paradigm, and if jobs are less plentiful and fees less juicy, then why in world are we dropping kilo-dollars into the ever escalating arms races of camera acquisition?

Pretty much the stuff we had last year would work just fine this year. It might even represent overkill.

Someone will mention fashion photography or product photography and the need for higher quality repro and you'll have me dead to rights there. But how many of us really do that versus how many of us do corporate headshots, products for the web, and lifestyle for web and lower quality print publications?

The gear anchors us emotionally to a past that is NEVER coming back. Even when the economy recovers we'll still face the reality that our media have shifted. That production has changed. Everything has progressed into a direction that is bearing less and less resemblance to the past.

WHAT TO DO??????

Well, Buddha would tell you to burn the past. Make a clean break with habit and precedence and move on to the next thing. I agree. When we hang on to outmoded routines we sabotage our ability to see and react to what's happening in the present.

I sold off all my Nikon cameras and lenses this Summer. I assume, in retrospect, that this was my attempt to make a break from the way I practiced photograph last year, last decade and last century.

You'll have to find your own way through the maze but I will tell you that the tools you'll need are curiosity and an ability to be underwhelmed by technology and focused on the content rather than the production aspects that once gave our craft succinct barriers to entry.

Here's the plan for Kirk Tuck Photography:

1. Focus like a laser on my core strength: Portraits. Understand that the camera is much less important than the rapport or the lighting.

2. Minimize my investment in stuff to maximize the creative process. Understand that gear will continue to be less important but connections and creative thinking will become primary.

3. Understand that multi-media is the new IP and clients will want a unified provider. Learn sound and video.

4. Become a true minimalist. Evolve my gear to be lighter, smaller, faster, cheaper. Put the profit in the bank, not back into the camera bag.

5. Burn the past so I never have to say, "This is how we did it in the old days." That's the kiss of death as AD's get younger and younger.

Ian Summers famously says, "Grow or Die".

I say don't let the past anchor you to the same old thing. Throw yourself your own revolution. Have a coup de grace with your last century equipment fixation. Show me how sharp your mind is, not your camera.