Do you ever hit the wall and feel like you've already done all your good stuff?

Maybe I just need to focus a bit more. Distill things down to their essence. Find the thing that interests me at the core of all mybusy motion. Stop shooting and processing so much and look more. I started a new exercise last week. I do one walk a week where I take no camera. I have no agenda. I walk and I look and I let everything soak in. Sometimes I'll just stop and watch the light reflect off the mirrored surface of one building and paint a brick building across the street in a golden tone.

Rather than concentrate on setting my camera correctly for street photography the whole not having a camera means I spend more time looking at people more deeply. Looking at their eyes. Looking for their human condition. Are they happy or sad. Disturbed or thoughtful. At peace or agitated. Busy to get somewhere or lost in their own world.

I don't think I ever wanted my work to be decorative or totally representational and yet in my quest to stay busy (thanks a lot, my Puritanical fore bearers....) I've spent too much valuable time shooting reflections and coffee cups and random people doing random things.

I've always known that the benefit of walking through my city is two fold: I get some needed exercise and fresh air, and, I know where everything is located. But as far as photography goes it's just another way I've let resistance come between me and what I should be doing with my camera (the one I already own) and what I should be doing with my keyboard.

I'm about to have another birthday. It's coming up next month. On my birthday I'll be in NYC at Photo Plus talking about a new camera. It's a job. And it's another aspect of resistance. I know long term I should be doing the things that will push me relentlessly toward my over riding goals. But I can always justify classes and presenter gigs, blog writing and things like that because I need the income and the cash flow. Just about everybody does.  Gotta put the boy through college. Gotta keep saving for retirement....

And yet there is always the uncomfortable thought that I'll put off the work I really want to do in order to be "productive" and "responsible" and just as I've succeeded in fulfilling my self-imposed obligations, just as I'm ready to do the one big thing I'll get hit by a bus or contract some dreadful disease and the whole house of cards will tumble down.

I think the feeling of hitting the inspirational wall is a signal that you've lost your way or you've surrounded your way with so much fluff that you can no longer clearly see the path on which you want to be.  If that's the case it's time to get the shovel and dig out from under all the meaningless crap so you can see just where to put your feet in order to move yourself forward, in the direction you chose. Toward the goals that you set.

Cameras and busy photography sure have a way of bogging us down. Mastering the discipline to distill everything down until it becomes obvious what you wan to do is the key. Doing it now is the schedule.

Good moves by Olympus to flesh out offerings for an advanced market...

Noellia as hippy. Shades of Donovan.

Samsung Galaxy NX 85mm 1.4

Backyard Photography.

I've been following three camera companies with much interest and mostly for three different reasons. The first is Olympus. While I didn't like the feel of the OMD EM-5 I am the first to admit that the files from the camera are beautiful and that the five axis image stabilization is little short of amazing. My many friends who dumped fat cameras to go smaller are pretty much uniformly delighted with the cameras. I kept picking up the EM-5 and trying to like it by I think there is a point at which a camera becomes too small for some people. Maybe it's decades of hand training and maybe it's just individualized haptics but there it is.  

When Olympus rolled out their announcement of the OMD EM-1 I immediately thought that they'd gone a long way to fixing the niggling problems I had with the "5."  The body is a bit bigger and the controls are placed in more convenient places. The finder, if it's the same one used in the Fujifilm x100s, will be remarkably good, and the view massive. There's one addition/improvement that was a complete surprise to a me and a quick shorthand signal to all the older photographers that the camera is intended for a sophisticated audience. That was the addition of a PC sync socket. Wow. Shades of the last century.... but oh so nice for triggering stuff when you've got a microphone or some other accessory in the hot shoe.

The second, most welcome, improvement over all the previous Pen and OMD offerings is the addition of a dedicated microphone input. If they get around to implementing a headphone monitor jack in the next rev they will finally be able to compete in the digital video department. 

When you add in the new 12-40mm f2.8 zoom you've got a pretty awesome picture making package in a nice, compact package with lots of potential.  Final point: Olympus! get to work on the batteries...

While it's a step in the right direction for Oly to admit that people routinely use external microphones the line of thought always brings me to Panasonic. While their previous designs seem less polished than the Olympus offerings they are kicking butt in the video department. I've been over every video specification of the GH3 and I've got to say that when I'm tooling around shooting video with my Sony a99 I'm always experiencing a deep seated lust for the GH3 instead. Whatever Panasonic doesn't get about marketing they more than make up for in their understanding of production video. For less than $1500 it kicks a stock Canon 5D3 right in the shins. And with the addition of the two professional, constant aperture zooms it's a tidy package. 

The synergy between those two companies is what will ensure their viability in the future. It's entirely practical and logical for anyone entering the professional market now to consider a hybrid approach (photos and videos, mixed) to the business and to do so within one ecosystem. The logical way to build a great, economical system is to pick and choose between the Panasonic and Olympus lines, knowing that they will intersect flawlessly. The smart way to make a system would be to pick up a couple of the new EM1 bodies for still shooting and a GH3 body for video production. Both use the same lenses interchangeably and make great back ups for each other. And all the Panasonic users should appreciate that Panasonic finally replaced the dumb 2.5mm microphone input of the GH2 with a 3.5mm input on the GH3. Little favors.

If more and more professionals and advanced amateurs picked up these cameras and tested them in the U.S. and the EU I think the shift toward mirrorless technologies would proceed at an accelerating pace. But who knows? Maybe generations become enamored of tradition and resist any change, regardless of its advantages. Small, light, good and inter-usable seems like a good argument to me. 

But if you are a hard core traditionalist you might be interested to know about my other new fascination. I picked up a Pentax K-01 recently because I loved the weird design and the price was too good to believe. When I got around to shooting the camera I was very impressed with the lens and the imaging done by the sensor. Really nice files. So I started researching the Pentax cameras. They had been off my radar for a long time. I walked into Precision Camera (why does that sound so familiar when I write it?) and asked to see the Pentax Kr-5ii. It's a traditionalist's camera. Nice (but still small) optical finder. Traditional hold and feel. Very solidly built and fairly compact. I brought the camera up to my eye and clicked the shutter. It sounds so good. Much like the priceless shutter on the old Olympus e-1 camera. I almost bought a body and some groovy lens on the spot. I may still.

I've been immersed in a new camera for the last three weeks. But that doesn't mean my mind's gone dark to the rest of the camera universe. I'm more and more convinced that hybrid content creation will drive the professional markets in the near future. The one thing that stopped me from buying a Pentax body was the poor video implementation. 

So, where am I on cameras right now?  Using the Sony Alpha line for just about everything and waiting to see what they bring to market later this fall. If they lose the mirror altogether and keep bolstering their head start in video I'm there for the foreseeable future. I like the full frame video. I like the headphone jack. I like the front multi-control.  If they stumble hard and become a Nex-only company I'll start considering options.

I'm also testing the Samsung Galaxy NX and while I'm loving the images I can get out of the camera and lenses I'm weeks away from writing any sort of review because the camera is still a work in progress. I'm waiting for one or two firmware tweaks before I can evaluate the camera fairly.  It's interesting to shoot two (Sony and Samsung) such different types of cameras nearly side by side. My brain had to relax a little bit to make room for two totally diverse menu structures and my hands vacillate between having a button and dial for nearly everything and having a touch screen and i-function controls for the same stuff.

It's an interesting time for the camera industry. On one hand you have Pentax steadfastly embracing the traditionalist ethos. Almost like an aristocrat in a private club. On the other hand you have Samsung trying to re-invent the way we shoot and share images. That nerdy programmer kid you knew in college. And every other camera company is somewhere in the vast middle ground.

Have I left anyone out? Oh yeah, Canon and Nikon. Inertia is a powerful marketing tool. I think they'll be surfing the cultural memories of Life Magazine and National Geographic for years to come. And, like Windows, they have the first in the market advantages. When the waves break I'm equally sure that they'll look over the landscape of imaging populated by truly innovative companies and cherry pick all the stuff that's working and jettison all the stuff that failed in the market. A strategy of letting the other guys hang ten on the bleeding edge of the board.  Hey, it's a strategy that worked for Dell Computer for nearly two decades....

Shooting in the studio. My favorite lighting set up....

I love shooting portraits in the studio. I love the feeling of total lighting control. My space isn't very big but it's pretty efficient. For these two images I used my favorite lighting set up. It's one big (six by six foot) frame, covered with white silk diffusion material at about a 35 degree angle to the subject. My camera is right at the leading edge of the diffusion panel....actually touching the frame. I used three big fluorescent lighting units to push light through the silk. What this gives me is a big, soft, but directional light source that I can use to sculpt light across a face in a very flattering way. Since my studio has an all white interior I placed some black panels to the shade side to keep the portrait from getting too filled in. 

Once your great big light is set you've got a lot of lee way to let your model move around and be comfortable in the space. 

I used the Samsung camera's touch screen to actually take the images. I would touch the part of the screen where I wanted the camera to focus and then I'd touch the virtual shutter button to take the image. It was kinda fun but after a while the novelty wore off and I went back to composing in the EVF. 

I like the look of the images. And I like the perspective of the longer, 85mm lens on this APS-C format. But most of all I liked composing in the square on that big, juicy rear screen. When I mentioned earlier that I thought this camera would make a good studio camera that's what I meant....you could compose on a huge screen so that even if you are cropping square there's still a ton of real estate with which to play. 

Why do I like continuous light over flash for stuff like this? Well, it just feels more kinetic and alive. That's pretty much my overriding rationale.

Big thanks to Noellia for dropping by and letting me put my toys through their paces. Hope you've had a weekend of shooting fun stuff.

Got a cool camera? Remember to have fun...

An 85mm lens on an APS-C camera can seem a little long until you head outside the studio and move back from your subject. Then, at least for me, the perspective starts to look really, really good. My friend, Noellia, dropped by on Friday afternoon and it was the perfect opportunity to shoot more images with the Samsung Galaxy NX camera I've been testing. Fortunately the product manager sent along a selection of lenses I really like. Most manufacturers who send cameras out for review or test send along a standard kit lens. I get it. That's the way the vast majority of people will actually buy the camera. But if they sent along lenses that photographers really shoot with they'd get more interesting sample images.

In this instance my intention wasn't to shoot "sample" images but to shoot stuff that Noellia wanted for  her website and her acting portfolio. She started her acting career here in Austin at Zach Scott Theatre and then headed off to NYC. She's done work for Disney and she just finished up a four month run of the Broadway production of The Buddy Holly Story. She wanted some different images and since we were both in town she came on by.

Every photographer should have a group of friends who are actors, performers, models and natural beauties. It's mutually beneficial: You get someone fun and interesting to photograph and they get material to help them diversify their careers. My intention is to use some of the studio photographs Noellia and I did this week to illustrate an article I'm writing for Photo.net. Fortuitous.

For these two images we shot in the open shade of my back porch. I shot them both with the Galaxy NX camera and I used the 85mm 1.4 Samsung NX lens. I'm quite happy with the imaging power of the combination.

I processed the images in Aperture because I like the one click skin color correction.

Open shade is almost always your friend....

My friend, Noellia, dropped by for a visit. We broke out some lights and make a few portraits...

Noellia dropped by just in the nick of time. I'd promised to write a tutorial piece on lighting for a website and I wanted a beautiful person to sit on the posing stool and get photographed so I could have interesting stuff for the article.

Noellia is very patient, she's 26 and I think I've known her since she was eighteen. She never seems to mind when I fumble with a new camera or try out some silly new lighting technique.

Today I was using four fluorescent fixtures behind one of my 6 by 6 foot scrims to do nice soft lighting. I was shooting with the ever present Samsung camera and, embarrassingly enough, I was playing around with the touch focus and touch shutter on the touch screen. I think it actually works but I'd only want to do that technique as long as my camera was anchored to my tripod. If I was holding the camera with one hand and poking with the other I'm afraid I'd drop the whole rig.

I shot the image above with the 85mm lens at something like f2.8. I kept poking N's eyes on the screen to make sure I was hitting focus there. I think I got it at least 50% correct.

I have accidentally found another use for wi-fi. I pulled the microSD card out of the camera slot before I unmounted the card icon. To be honest I don't think I even remembered to power down the camera. At any rate the card wasn't readable in a card reader or in the SD slot on my computer but the camera was able to automatically upload the 800+ files we took to my DropBox folder.  Nice save.

Of course that means the camera is sitting on the edge of my desk endlessly uploading while my Dropbox account is endlessly syncing with my desktop application. The endless joy of technology.

More Noellia images to come....

Shooting video today. And mixing in some stills.

Sixth St. Austin, Texas.

Samsung Galaxy NX camera. 

85mm lens.

The image above has nothing to do with the content of this blog. I just stumbled across it, like the movement in it, and the gestures.

The professional reality of intermixing still photography and video production as interchangeable parts of my business (and the businesses of most other commercial image makers) is really starting to sink in. I've been looking over the projects my business has done in the last few months and I was surprised to see that the balance is trending toward video over stills.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. One is research that seems to show people are three times more likely to spend time on a site that features video over stills. The second thing is that most web oriented photography is getting simpler in specification and easier to do. While it seems sad that the smartphones are kicking ass they are just another tool and a large number of marketers and practitioners have made the assessment that the image quality has hit the point that it's fun and easy to do some marketing stuff with a camera phone. The next reason is that while uploading an Instagram'd photo is quick and easy, almost mindlessly easy, creating a good video program still requires some skills, some gear, and a lot of editing after the shooting. It's not like chomping down on a candy bar, good video (watchable video?) is more like having to assemble, mix, melt, cook and package the candy bar parts before you can eat it. Or serve it to someone else.

I was hired back in July to do a few still shots for a financial company with chic offices in a central downtown bank building. Offices? How about three floors? While we talked about their imaging needs they mentioned that they'd also like to see some numbers for a few little video interviews which ultimately turned into two days of video interviews and two days of editing. The still remained constant at half a day. Would I like to have just the one half day or would I be happier with a total of four and a half days of billing? Oh...I think I'll take the four and a half days...

A couple weeks ago I did a phone meeting with a medical practice (114 doctors here in central Texas) and they wanted a multi-media campaign, print ads featuring embedded photos which, when scanned would take the viewer online to full motion video expansions of the original marketing message. We'd shoot stills and then shoot interviews. The stills could be done in no time at all but the videos required direction, lighting design, sound design, editing consultations, and a bit of scripting. We spend fifteen or twenty minutes shooting the still shots (full length portraits on white) before spending an hour or so on each interview. Would I like to just do the stills and let some other company handle the video? No. I'd like to keep the billing and the bulk of the project in house. I did hire an editor for this adventure but that's a benefit. It means I can shoot more projects instead of dividing my time up sitting in the dark.

The interviews are not great cinema but they are good marketing content and I try my very best to make them as good as they can be. I light them to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of video capture. I use good microphone techniques and carefully monitor sound. I help clients craft the right questions; questions that lead to good answers. The level of involvement with the marketing departments is much higher and that tightens my integration with their teams.

If I were a purist, eschewing video as "different" and not my "cup of tea" I fear that I'd find my income and my involvement in advertising projects shrinking by the month. Some people say that the disciplines are so different that it's hard to cross over. I don't buy that for a second. Yes, you have to tell a story instead of illustrating one point. Yes, it's really great if stuff moves and is visually interesting and of course we've never had to consider sound in our regular work before. But the resources to learn each part are there and are logical and well documented. The hardest part for me is crafting a story and then translating it into scenes that make sense when cut together. The easiest part is the lighting and sound craft. But it's a constant learning process.

Pandora's box is open and the video pixies have been released into the air. There's no way they are going back into the box. And with professional photography largely being democratized out of existence do we really have the option of turning our collective photographic backs on a new business avenue that can help stabilize our incomes and keep us relevant to clients? I don't think I can.

I'm taking it one step further by being on three sides of the camera. I'm shooting projects. I am working on the opposite side of the camera as talent in on-line classes and, on the third side I am writing and scripting for other projects. That adds three income streams to a career in the visual arts that used to have only one real income stream.

The gear is less important than we think. The ideas are more important than we think. And at all times what we are selling is not our time but our expertise.

Just thinking about that today during the crew's lunch break.

Square crops in camera...

...are an aid to good portrait composition. The Olympus cameras all have the ability to crop square. So do the new Samsung NX cameras. Makes me wonder why Sony didn't add that little fifty cent bit of firmware to their cameras. It certainly would have made me happier.

Olympus EP-3 with the 45mm lens.