Street Shooting in Rome. Getting close.

Robert Capa is reported to have said, "If your pictures aren't good enough you aren't close enough." It's a great quote for photographers. A while back I spent a couple weeks shooting for fun in Rome. On one of the first days there I was shooting in the main train station and trying to get good candid shots of arriving families, vendors and porters. Then I spied the guy with the cup of espresso. I tried to blend in but the medium format camera I was using was hardly stealthy. The man caught my eye and motioned me over. I thought he was going to lambast me for trying to photograph him. Instead he waved me in, smiled and said, "You need to get closer!" I smiled and snapped the shutter. We both laughed. A huge print of this has been on the wall in our kitchen for 12 years. It makes me remember to enjoy coffee and enjoy life. And to get closer.

After that experience I stopped trying to sneak around with my camera and realized that I could just ask, gesture, smile etc. and I'd get better shots. By the time I shot the card players I'd switched from my "stand-offish" 75mm normal lens and I was leaning into the group with a 50mm wide angle. I learned that you need to invest time instead of zooming by and snapping. It's so much fun to catch a milieu instead of a scene. Although I really can't explain the difference.

These two images have withstood the test of time. I have copies of each in my studio and every time friends drop by they comment on them.

A friend who is a psychologist bought a copy of the card players. She says that it opens up dialogue with other clients. She points out that the Italian culture brings older friends together. A harder thing in America's transient culture. You can be an honorary member if your are kind with your camera.




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A Favorite Portrait from the film days.

This is Senator, Kirk Watson. A Democrat from Texas.

This is one of my favorite portraits. I probably like it because I really like Kirk Watson. He was the mayor of Austin for a while and did a great job. He's always be personable, kind and patient with the people working around him. He isn't a prima donna politician. And finally, I think his heart is in the right place...which has meaning no matter what side of the political spectrum you call home.

It's also one of my favorites because it is informal, relaxed and collaborative. So much gets written about lighting and gear but the real magic, where the rubber meets the visual road in portraiture, is getting that elusive quality called "rapport". A meeting of the minds. The intersection of greatest commonality. Shared experience and shared purpose. That's what makes people "smile with their eyes."

And fortunately, or unfortunately, it's not a component of photography that you can buy. There are a lot of books about lighting and portraiture but none about how to talk to portrait sitters in a meaningful way. Or why you should read novels and magazines and see some movies that don't always have scenes where stuff blows up. Why you should read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Many times your photographic knowledge and creativity takes a back seat to keeping up your side of a conversation.

Technical stuff: Shot with a Hasselblad 501 CM, 150mm lens, Fujichrome. Lit with two Profoto Monolights. One large softbox. One grid spot on a zoom reflector.

Getting Kinky in Austin, Texas

There's nothing I like better than an interesting portrait subject and a big, soft light. This was shot for a magazine cover and it's one of the outtake outtakes. That means the magazine assigned me to do a 35mm color image to run on the cover (vertical, saturated, etc.) and when we finished with that we switched cameras and mentalities and started shooting big black and white images that were square and fun. The color outtakes are the first outtakes and the stacks of contact sheets and negatives are the second outtakes.

I've tried portrait shoots a lot of different ways. Many photographers I've worked with or hired (back in my ad agency days) were strong believers in the "big crew". They made each portrait session a big deal. A really big deal. There was always a first and second assistant, a make up person and maybe another person for hair or wardrobe. Everything always seemed tense. Like a preparing for surgery. And sometimes the big crew is client driven. The portrait may be of a CEO or some other "very important" company officer and short timelines may have been set.

There's always a good rationale. And for some people it may be the only way to comfortably work. But I've always been most comfortable hewing to the opposite extreme. If I brought along assistants it was usually because I couldn't carry in all the gear by myself. If I hired a make up person I generally wanted him/her to do the make up and then leave me alone with the sitter.

I think it's hard for a lot of people to have their portrait taken. They have a certain amount of fear that they won't meet expectations or that they won't be able to project what they want people to see. With more and more people on the set it can become harder and harder for inexperienced sitters to relax and get with the program. Even if the inexperienced sitters are world famous business people....

Here's the way I like to do it. I like to spend hours by myself setting up and testing my lighting. Which is kind of silly since I tend to light things the same way most of the time. I guess it's a ritual. Before every major portrait sitting the first thing I do is to clean the studio. Then I start planning the shot. Seems like the biggest thing is getting the background just right. If I can get the background hung and lit just right everything else falls into place. I usually have vision for how I would like the photos to turn out. Sometimes it goes that way and sometimes it doesn't.

I'm always trying to get the most distance between my background and the subject. I like to use long lenses and compress the background as much as possible. f2 on a 4:3 camera, f2.8 on 35mm and f4 or 5.6 on a medium format camera. The last thing that gets set is the main light. Right now I'm setting up for portrait tomorrow at 1 pm. I'm using a Profoto 600 monolight into a five foot octabank and I'm diffusing that thru two layers of diffusion on a six by six foot panel. Maybe a little piece of foamcore to the opposite side for fill.

For this session I'm working solo. Just me and the sitter. We'll talk about what we want to get from the session and then I'll have him sit down and we'll start. The session goes in fits and starts. We might find a subject of mutual interest and chat for several minutes between bursts of frames. ("He burst into Frames!!!")

When we both feel that we've got what we came together for we'll end the session, talk a bit more and go our separate ways. No big drama, no big production.

I'll head out to lunch and then come back and start processing. And we'll do it all over again the next day. And that's the fun stuff.

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.