Portraits.

I made this portrait in Denver. It's from the production I did for Craftsy.com last month. We made a video that's all about lighting portraits in the studio. I used my favorite lighting, one light through an big (six by six foot) diffusion scrim.  A light on the background, and....just for a little spice!, a hair light from the right. What do I really love about the image? Victoria's expression.

Shot on the Sony a99 with the 70-200mm 2.8 G lens. No manipulation or post processing beyond correcting exposure and contrast...

It got hot this week. I'm pretty lazy but when the temps. reached 104+(f) I decided to head out into the sun, walk around and shoot some video.

http://vimeo.com/71979352

Be sure to click "HD" to see it in high def.

I shot this with a small camera. It was the Samsung NX300. I was surprised at how well it handled the lighting extremes. Not a big project just an afternoon of shoot and edit and upload. All done now.

No client. Just playing.

I did it. I figured out the "secret" of photography!!!! Just shoot subjects you love and only shoot the subjects you love so you can share them the way you see them.

It was too hot to cook at home last night. The boy abandoned us to go to a concert in the park with friends. So Belinda and I did what we used to do years ago when we worked together at the same advertising agency, we headed out to have a fun Tex-Mex meal. Not fancy food. Just Tex-Mex. If it's reviewed in Texas Monthly Magazine or raved about on Twitter chances are the venue has been discovered and destroyed by the monstrous invasion of hipsters that have descended upon Austin like loud vultures at a buffet. We headed to the place we know with the fewest stars on the review sites. We headed to El Mercado where the staff is friendly and laid back, the regulars drink at the bar and there's hardly anything on the menu that costs more than $10 bucks.

We crunched on a basket of chips and sloshed them around in a comfortable but indifferent hot sauce and nursed a couple of ice teas. It was so pleasant and unpretentious and so not loud.

And it dawned on me as the last light of the day tumbled and flowed and crept through the window that I had just, in that moment, figured out the whole secret of why I take photographs. I photograph people to show everyone else how amazingly beautiful these subjects are to me. If I'm out scouting for images on the street I tend to substitute easily accessible subject matter for what I really want to shoot: beautiful people. When I shoot stuff on the street I sometimes come home feeling empty and indifferent to the practice of photography. The times that I'm happy with my work are the times I've found an interesting person to photograph and had the courage to engage them.

The subjects we really choose to photograph are a mirror to who we are. They are our aspiration. They are our intention. There are really only a few critical choices in the art of picture taking. The most important is choosing your subject. If you aren't shooting something you love or are deeply, deeply interested in then you are just wasting your time. The selection of subject is the critical thing. It's the  only important thing. I know I love to make portraits of people. Why take anything else?

The next important thing that you get to control is where you stand. And then you get to control when you click the shutter. Everything else is window dressing. The techniques and esoteric lenses and all the rest, when used to shoot something you really don't care about, are really just window dressing and obfuscation. They are pink saccharine icing on a mediocre and stale cake.

The secret to success in photography is to shoot and show only what you love. That's it. It's so easy. It's amazingly easy. And it makes me wonder why we've worked so hard to make it all seem so complicated.

This is a photograph of Belinda. She is a never ending source of inspiration for me. The Muse who informs and adds some residual energy to every other portrait I make for me. It's all about the subject. Not about the craft or the frame or the manifesto. Just the love for your subject.

Too easy.

Tech note: Samsung NX300 camera with 30mm lens.

Portrait.

Gearing up (or down) for more change. Incessant change.

Who moved our photographic cheese and what are we going to do about it?

Isn't it funny how the relentless wheels of progress make the (antiquated, 20th century) idea of buying permanent gear seem quaint and foolish? I'm sitting here in the studio doing clipping paths and thinking about how everything felt four or five years ago. At the time I thought, "if I can just find the right camera and assortment of lenses that really produce great results I can stop buying gear and hold onto it for a long time and be more efficient." But that was several brands ago and many different models within those brands. 

It's a hoary cliché now (and so are the words, "hoary cliché) but progress is changing so rapidly that, if we are to respond to our clients and markets, we feel that we must innovate our gear to keep up. I would never have thought, pre-Canon 5D mk2, that I would require, need and want high res video in any future camera I bought. It just never occurred to me. But once Sony stuck good video into the a99 and then went a few steps further by adding a headphone jack and audio level controls on the front of the camera I can't imagine going back and depending solely on a camera like my Sony a850 or some previous, non-video enabled camera for my business. For art? That's a whole different topic. For the pleasure of the hobby? Again, a different calculus all the way around. But as a creative content creation business the whole idea is to be on the tip of the spear. To innovate faster and better and to hop to something profitable from something dying. We're no longer in a market where one jewel like image carries the day. We're in a market that expects us to do a great still image and then turn around and construct some video to wrap around it. Again, I'm just speaking about requirements only for people who are doing this stuff for a living.

It's no secret that Samsung sent me an NX300 camera to play with this Summer. I like the files from the camera and I've been sneaking it into my regular jobs now just to see how a $699 camera with a kit lens holds up against full frame cameras with esoteric lenses. It's interesting to see just how little air there is between them for a remarkable amount of stuff.  Samsung is about to launch their next big camera. You may have read about it, it's NX (Some Model Name) running Android. It's supposed to be a really cool machine but I don't think anyone has gotten their hands on one yet.

I mention it because in one sense, while I have no fear about changing systems and embracing new cameras, I am slow to embrace new technology that is at a remove from my admittedly 20th century beliefs about what "a good camera is all about..."

I fought the viewfinder-less wars and lately I've worked on trying to leverage the good stuff about working on a rear screen. My other prejudice has always been against the need to add stuff like wi-fi to cameras because I didn't see a need for it in my work (I am Kirk-centric and feel that if I don't need a feature no one does..).  But now I'm trying to figure out how to make dynamic accessibility a feature I can leverage back to  my clients. As they get younger and younger (perception only) I find that there's disconnect between the way they access content and information and the way I traditionally delivered work.

I'm trying to learn more because I'd hate to have my reticence to learn new delivery methods negate my value as a content creator. I see the day coming when I'll be on location, shooting portraits, and my client/art director/creative director/buyer will be in their office and I'll be shooting test shots and streaming them to a shared folder in the cloud for instant approval. Without being tethered. Without a laptop.  We shoot a test shot, click "send" wait for the phone call (oops! I meant "text") that either gives us the big "thumbs up" to shoot more in that style or the phone call (oopski! "text") that says, "what the hell was our model thinking wearing that purple, paisley shirt with the Budweiser logo on the pocket? Can we change that?"

I need to get over my resistance to fast access and fast image sending, for the business. If it's my own work, done for my own enjoyment then I'll get to it when I get to it. If it's for my clients I want to make the whole process as streamlined and transparent as I can.

Perhaps, since we'll be able to add apps to the new generation of cameras coming down the line I'll be able to add a billing application. Imagine, shoot, send, bill and process credit cards all on the same camera body. Insane, scary and kinda fun to understand that this is probably what some version of the future looks like.

So I'm ready to get rid of more stuff. I think the professional shooter of the future will own a small, personal system. A couple of really good bodies and maybe three lenses. Maybe no lights or stands or auxiliary gear. You come to work with one little Pelican case of gear and everything else is rented for the day or the week. Need LED panels? Rental package. Need big Fluorescent panels? Rental Package. Need high speed studio flash? Rental Package. Need a really fast, really good lens? Rental package. You get  the picture.

It just doesn't make sense anymore (as a business) to make the big investments in gear that changes so quickly or in specific gear that can't do a wide variety of day to day stuff well.

I'm currently happy with the 2K video performance I get from my Sony camera but I know that clients whose work ends up on television are already spec'ing 4K video cameras; regularly. And today I read an article about a new 6K camera from Red that movie makers are salivating over. And two years from now it will be all about the 8K cameras....

And no small, single person business has any business actually thinking about investing in that kind of  gear just to have it sit around the office more than it's in production. Only bonafide trust funders can play in that arena.

The idea going forward will be to rent as needed. Own the bare essentials. Own the specialty tools for your niche but the minute you step outside your gear comfort zone you might be smart to rent and charge back the rental fees to the clients. They are, after all, paying for your eye and your expertise. Not an endless inventory of gear.

To that end I'm anticipating another round of downsizing. I'm looking at the video cameras in GEAR's rental department and figuring that I can do home made projects with every successive generation of hybrid cameras like the Sony Alphas and the Samsung Androids but it definitely makes more sense to use a dedicated (rental) video camera for big client projects. Out goes my endless and expensive duplication.

I looked into HMI lights and I've used them for a few projects. I like the smaller ones that you can run off household currents. But I can't justify buying a set of lights at $3K or so per fixture. I can justify renting them (and charging the client) as needed.  A day of rental may run me a $100 a fixture but I don't need to make the capital expenditure for them when I'm still using flashes for some work, fluorescents for other work and even portable flashes. You just can't justify owning everything just because you may have the need to use it from time to time.

I've noticed as I've sold off stuff over the past year that the lighter the inventory gets the more creative and free I feel.

Not owning stuff means you get to cherry pick what you'll use on a project by project basis and, when your business hits a soft spot you don't have capitol tied up in something that only produces ROI emotionally...

I've got another box full of cameras and lenses to put on consignment. And some more big strobes as well. The load is getting lighter and lighter. We are becoming more intelligent about the way we use our capital.

Who would have thought that everything changes? Now, how do I get this wi-fi network to recognize this camera????

The smaller jobs are the respite I need to just feel secure and engaged.

Photographer bloggers tend to write about the big and impressive jobs. I assume they think it's what their audience wants to read about. But I really like the smaller, calmer and less challenging jobs that come through the business. They are easier to produce, there's less emotion involved in the projects and the fact that they are less high profile also means that if and when you screw something up it's not a big deal and can be easily re-done with very little loss of "face."

I have a small, high technology client that needs straightforward images of their products from time to time. The products are systems that run on generic platforms. Today we were photographing three different desktop computer and server boxes against white. There are some custom design implementations that visually differentiate each product from the computer boxes that you could buy off the shelf but in the end, to state it plainly, we were photographing the same, basic rectangular boxes we've been photographing since the dawn of commodity computers. The real mission is to get nice images of the boxes, add a bit of drama with the light and drive attention to the cool, new logos on the front that are the client's signature. Just to make it easier, I shot them against white seamless paper. I'll clip the images and deliver them with clean backgrounds. 

The client and I discussed the job over e-mail last Friday and I asked if I could arrive at 10 a.m. to try and dodge the rush hour traffic that happens in Austin from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. That presented no problems. I loaded up the Honda CR-V with rudimentary stuff. Four of the Elinchrom moonlights, a couple of soft boxes, four small light stands, a background stand set up and a short roll of white seamless paper. 

I took some Sony Nex cameras instead of the bigger, full frame cameras because I remembered that the last time we shot this kind of stuff we had trouble getting enough depth of field with the larger sensor cameras and I wanted to see if a move to an APS-c sensor would be helpful. It was. I put a Wein infra-red slave trigger in the hot shoe of a Nex 6. I remember buying that particular trigger in 1987. It's never failed me and seems to run forever on two double "A" batteries.

The boxes were waiting for me when I dragged my little cart with my photo-junk out of the elevator and into the conventional conference room. I set up the paper across one end of the conference room table and then set up my lights. The final step was setting up the camera on a tripod and then going through the menus to make sure I had all the settings optimized. Had I turned off the image stabilization? Was the white balance set correctly? Had I formatted the SD card? Did I set the camera up for manual focusing? Do I remember which button enlarges the frame in order to check focus? Did I remember to turn off the DRO and HDR and all the silly art modes? Did I bring extra batteries?

Once everything was set up I put my iPhone on the table in front of me, out of the frame of the camera, and turned on the music. I listened to some Bach today. The Brandenburg Concertos as done by Consortium Musicum, to be precise.

I played around with the lights and I played around with lenses and the camera. Eventually, I got some images I was happy with and I went to the break room to find a cup of coffee and then to find my client. We reviewed the images, talked about post production and I could tell my client was happy with the work. I took all the stuff back down, loaded it all on the cart, put the conference room chairs back where they go and then headed down the elevator to my car where I took everything off the cart and put it back into the cargo area. 

I'll spend some time tomorrow making clipping paths, looking for smudges and fingerprints to clean up and generally sprucing up my initial work with a bit of post processing. Then I'll upload the relevant files to the client's FTP site and also send them a DVD with the same images on it as a back up.

Before I leave the studio tomorrow I'll write a nice "thank you" note because I really do appreciate having some calm, quiet and consistent clients, and then the next day I'll send out an invoice for my services which will include a charge for a usage license as well. 

If this jobs goes just like the dozens of other ones I've done for this client there will be no drama, no hysteria and no tense moments. Just a nice project. A nice batch of deliverables and a reasonable payment.  

It's fun to read about the big, exciting jobs that require split second timing and perfection on demand. But it's much healthier to live through the quiet and happy jobs.

You'll have to excuse me now. The sun is setting and I finally feel like it's cool enough to pull the lights and stands and cases out of the car....

People don't read so good.

Photo Forums are going to the dogs. 

Let's shed some light on that.

I wrote a piece yesterday that attempted to explain what might be behind the recent metrics on camera sales. The fact  is that, worldwide, (and in N. America) camera sales are falling right off a cliff. Some readers assumed that I am cynical or bitter or upset at the apparent demise of the camera industry's recent prosperous sales cycles. Those readers assume that since I explained why many men are abandoning the hobby for greener pastures that I have pronounced the death of amateur or hobbyist photography.

And, of course, the astute reader will see that I said no such thing, am in love with the general practice of taking photographs and write about my own immersion into the warm pools of imaging ambrosia nearly every day. And I still make my living selling/licensing images to clients instead of trying to figure out why someone's password doesn't work for their Entourage account on a third rate network run for a boring corporation.

I stand by what I said. That many people adopt hobbies to master them. It's fun to master them when it's a challenge or technically difficult. Then your victories seem much more heroic. You seem more like a smart guy. But when the challenge is mitigated by fool proof machines or wizard-y software, and cameras are festooned with "Hello Kitty" logos and pink trim the mastery of the technical challenge is largely a forgone conclusion and therefore not very darn alluring. And when an industry reaches that point a certain part of its market becomes bored and moves on. There's no way to measure the value of the content so that can't be fun.....

The happy, positive, upside to all that is, perhaps, a return to the idea that the images matter and the content has value beyond proving a technical point. I'm just as happy to take images today as I was before the market (according to CIPA) fell on its face. I'm ecstatic to work with my various cameras, all of which seem adequate to make the images I desire. I'm happy that I don't have to concoct some sort of matrix of metrics to enjoy the craft. Happy, happy, happy. 

I also remarked on the overwhelming number of images put up on the web every hour, minute and second of every day and how hard that makes it to sort through and find things to like. But I didn't say that all the new images were crap. I said they became instantly homogenous. That's different, kinda.

So, to summarize: Reading good. Reading with comprehension, better. Reading well helps people think well. Sometimes, when you read, it's good not to try and read between the lines. If there was stuff to put between the lines my regular readers would quickly tell you that I am more than verbose enough to supply the needed content. 

And yes, I know that "People don't read so good." is incorrect. That was the point.

 I can explain this stuff to people but I can't understand it for them. (Apologies to Mayor Koch.)