Gloria. A happy, one light set up. In the midst of chaos.

I will readily admit to being a spoiled photographer. I like working in a studio with lots of space and lots of quiet. I like being able to work uninterrupted and at a leisurely pace. And I love having everything set up just the way I want it. When I imagined going to the PhotoPlus Expo in NYC I imagined that all the exhibition spaces would be enormous and we'd have lots of space to spread out, create majestic lighting designs and work at a tempered pace far from the retail excitement of the show.

When I got to the Samsung area the first day I was pleased by the general design of the booth until I saw the tiny area in which Nick Kelsh and I, along with our models, Gloria and Naomi, would be working. The actual lit space couldn't have been more than ten by ten feet and the lights were attached to a truss frame and could only be moved by union electricians. The glamorous Swiss flashes I'd imagined turned out to be very inexpensive Photogenics and the 4x6 foot softbox that I imagined would be the Nexus of my lighting demos had been shrunk down to about 24 by 36 inches. We had a background light with a scoop and two small strip lights on the sides, each with their own Photogenic monolight.

I was a bit dismayed (because I am so spoiled...) but it never seemed to slow Nick down and so I took my cues from him, bucked up and worked with what we had. It was part of a re-learning experience. By working with smaller, less expensive lighting (and a lot less control over the atmosphere) I had to push myself to work in a different style and with a much different cadence. It turned out to be quite refreshing and even.....fun.

The image above is one of my favorites from the show. I'm wedged against a counter and the counter is covered with sample cameras. On the other side of the counter are clumps of photographers who are alternately watching what I'm doing, shooting their own images of Gloria with any and every camera brand under the sun, and asking questions of the booth staff and of me. One gentleman had parked himself to my right and was demanding that I immediately stop what I was doing and shoot sample video for him to evaluate on the spot. The noise level was amazing as every booth doing a demo was using their own portable PA system to amplify their presenters (as were we). The idea of working under these conditions had never really occurred to me before.

The way we had the Samsung Galaxy NX camera configured was to enable it's wi-fi capabilities and send the images, as they were being taken, to a 60 inch, 4K television screen above the booth. That way everyone in the crowd could watch my every fumble and misstep. But they'd also see, honestly, how the process of taking portraits might work. The camera would do three things simultaneously: It would write the files to the internal microSD card, write the files to a group Dropbox account for easy access by the client and also send a full res, clean screen file to the television monitor.

All my photographic life I've looked through a viewfinder and composed and shot. With this camera I spent the three days doing portraits by looking at the big screen and using the on screen touch controls to focus and take the actual exposure. It's a different way of looking but it works really well when your preview screen is a 60 inch, super high def TV instead of a three inch LCD on the back of the camera. I don't need my reading glasses to see the menu on the 60 inch screen....

It's also a great way to review images you've shot with clients, or, in this case 50 or so of your new friends who you are demo-ing for. I'd shoot for a few minutes, review the images, make my selections of ten or so and then configure a slide show on  the camera which would wirelessly play the images on the big monitor. If someone had a question about sharpness or wanted to look at the shadow detail of Gloria's jet black hair I could touch one image, bring it up full screen and using my fingers in the cellphone squeeze or separate method, enlarge the image to see parts of it. What a quick way to dispel a preconception about sharpness of noise in the shadows....

In any case I am proud of the image above, done in the chaos I've tried to describe. While I am sure Samsung would like for me to make the case that the camera was the linchpin for the image it also showed me that the tools are secondary to the intention. Our intention was to make the best portraits we could with the tools at hand. I don't need to hedge about this one. I really like it without equivocation. More so because it was created in such a wild (for a quiet portrait photographer) venue.

In the end good portraits are much more about a collaboration between photographer and sitter than anything else...

More to come.

My Most Amazing "Find" in the entire PhotoPlus Expo in New York this week was.....

Photographer, Nick Kelsh.

photographed at the Samsung booth with the Samsung Galaxy NX Android camera and the (incredibly good and drool-worthy) 60mm f2.8 macro Samsung lens.

I didn't know what to expect. Nick and I were thrown together by the public relations agency. But I quickly came to understand that I had been given a really nice gift. 

We were in NYC to promote the new camera which we've both been using for a while. I got to the Javits Center quite early the first day but Nick was there before me. He was fine tuning lights and getting stuff ready. He's tall, thin, wiry, happy and intense all at once. And smart. I liked him from the moment we shook hands.

At 60 Nick has been living photography nonstop since his early teen age years. He is masterful with people. He's the kind of guy who does a quick demo for an eager crowd, makes amazing work look easy, and then he literally wades into the crowd asking, offering and inviting people to come up and shoot the camera for themselves. He helps them get oriented. He guides them gently.  He makes them feel comfortable, smarter and more courageous and by the time they hand the camera back to Nick they feel like they've made a friend and learned from a wise mentor. And for a short spurt, they have.

Nick went on first of the first day of the show and I stood by and watched and I learned more about lighting and posing portraits in a short, concentrated burst than I have in years. I like tripods, Nick tossed his away. I like to be in control. Nick likes to collaborate. But he never relinquishes the artist's final say.

By the end of the three day show I felt as though I'd made a friend for life. We're already planning future projects and I came home encouraged, inspired and buoyed up by his example. Wow. 

Go see his work: http://www.nickkelsh.com

And look at his teaching website: http://howtophotographyourlife.com

I thought I would be enthralled by the new cameras or the new lights at the show. I had no idea the best feature of the show was the guy I shared the Samsung demo stage with...

Golden Oldie about EVFs....

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/01/kirk-4.html

This one came up in a bunch of searches today.  It's something I wrote for  Michael Johnston's blog a while back. In light of recent announcements I thought it might be fun reading. Again.

Smooth sailing into NYC. The fun starts tomorrow. Best, Kirk

Old School is good school.

Back in the film days we made lots of portraits. Now it seems like everyone is only interested in documenting their lunch. Do we really have that close a relationship with our lunch?

Belinda in the 1970's with an OM-1.

Over the last seventeen years and 364 days Ben has been photographed with an enormous variety of cameras and lenses...

....and I've loved every minute of it.

Tomorrow Ben turns 18. He'll be a full fledged adult (at least in the eyes of the government...) and I am amazed at how quickly the time has gone by. When he was tiny most of my documentation of his every move, burp and giggle was done with Leica and Hasselblad film cameras. He inaugurated the first Kodak professional digital cameras to hit the studio, patiently posed for Nikon 100's, Fuji S2s, 3s and 5s, and a whole litany of Olympus digital cameras starting with a DL 2500 and progressing through the e10, the e1 and the e3. He sat patiently while I fiddled with Canon D70s, d60s, 5dmk2s, and even a 1DSmk2. I can't begin to count the m4:3 versions he grimaced at and lately he's tolerated (barely) the Sonys and the Samsungs.

This was taken at Asti Trattoria, his favorite restaurant for at least the last 14 years, with one of my all time favorite camera and film combos. It was a Leica M6 (.85ttl) using a 50mm Summicron and ISO 400 black and white film.

I've made prints. Lots of prints. So even if GoldenEye goes off in the upper atmosphere and the EMF blast wipes out all the digital information I'll still have the actual artifacts, the black and white and color prints.

On a sad note tomorrow will be the first birthday for him at which I will not be present. I will be traveling to New York for the Photo Plus Expo. We'll celebrate when I get back on Sunday.  Maybe I'll have a bag of free samples to share. One can only hope.

Have kids? Whip that camera out and make some beautiful images. At the core that's what this is really all about. Then, take that next step and have a bunch of prints made. It's the only current future proof guarantee. And they're fun to have around.





If you are in New York at the PhotoExpo consider dropping by the Samsung area to say, "hello." I'd appreciate it.

New Look for VSL blog factory. Logo Mania.

A week ago I sat in the offices at Clutch Creative and looked at 13 really cool logo designs that my friends had created for this site. I instantly loved the one above. I think it sums up the "feel" of what I want the Visual Science Lab to be about. There was only one problem, the dynamic template I was using from Blogger isn't really customizable without a great deal of skill and patience. I wanted to use the new logo but the site conspired against me. I decided I liked the logo more than the template so I switched to one of Bloggers simpler and more customizable templates and now we're right here....

Positive feedback always welcome!

The new life of professional photographers: Endless, shameless self-promotion.

Self portrait for PhotoPlus intro.

Little known facts about me: I like to wear suits or jacket and ties. I like vintage ties best but I've bought four ties in the last few months and I found a nice source of knitted silk ties that are understated and look great. The tie in the image above is not one of them. It's what Ben calls my "candy cane" tie. 

Another little tidbit about me is that I loathe self promotion on any scale larger than that needed to keep basic projects coming in the door. I always feel weird about it. But I think that for the working professional with the need to generate income from multiple sources the grim reality of self-promotion will be the wave of the future for everyone who has something (however remotely valuable) to sell. 

Five or six years ago most of my time was spent meeting with clients who bought or licensed photography and then doing the pre-production, actual production and post production for those projects. I spent a good deal of my time with my nose in PhotoShop followed by a witless romp through QuickBooks Pro and then on to the next job. When things slowed down I sent out post cards to clients and people that I wished were my clients and then when things slowed down more I would get out the contact list and make those dreaded cold, lukewarm and also comfort calls. Comfort calls are those you make to clients who you already work for, who consider you a friend and are always happy to go out to lunch with you and look at new work for a few minutes followed by a long, enjoyable and mostly social meal.

Now it feels like it's all changed. Part of the new reality of being a photographer trying to make a good living is that we feel the need to diversify. The need to branch out. I was thrilled when I started writing books and I was happy when the royalties would roll in because it helped keep the enterprise afloat and gave me a new reason to buy and experiment with fun toys. It's been two years since I started writing the book on LEDs (my most recent book) and I'm almost ready to get started on the next book. 

But what that really means is that I'm trading time and freedom for the feeling of security and in reality I"m feeling more and more pulled apart and separated from the thing I love about photography which is just the pure act of taking photographs. Or more clearly, making portraits. So far this year I've spent a lot of time outlining photography courses for Craftsy.com and then flying to Denver to do the production for days and days at a time. I've also traveled for Samsung in order to help them get the word out about their new camera. I'll be a paid speaker next week in NYC for them as well. But it's not just the presenting days that stretch me, there's also the time spent getting to know the new cameras and the fourth new menu structure I've memorized so far this year. When you add a book project on top of those things it starts to feel like I'm something other than a working photographer. And that's scary for me since I've spent the years since 1988 doing mostly nothing but photography. I'm not sure I'm good at career multi-tasking and I guess I need to figure out where all my boundaries are as I move forward. 

I put on a coat and tie today and went out to meet with a prospective client. I got there early and walked into the business with my little notebook and my favorite pen in hand. I listened intently, offered suggestions where appropriate and went over the possible financial arrangements. I jotted little facts in my notebook.  It felt so streamlined and elegant. It's only one day of shooting and one day of post production. The project has a clearly defined start and end. The expectations are well laid out. It's a job that's perfect for me and I hope I get it. I know it's right because I felt that old anticipation and nervous energy that I always used to feel when meeting straightforward clients. It's just straightforward  photography business. I didn't even bring up the possibility of video because I wanted to savor the purity of the job in its most direct form.

In a sense I think I've been fooling myself in the execution of my multi-threaded career for a number of years. I'm not good with long term projects. They are like bad shoes that blister your ankles or the back of your heel. They go on and on long after the thrill has dissipated like a vodka martini in your blood stream. But if you do good work on them, if you exercise your Calvinist tendencies and work till you drop  you always get invited back. And that's a blessing and a curse. A blessing because money comes in, but a curse of sorts because you believe that you've traded your freedom and poverty for some security only to find that it's bound with Sisyphean routine. You now have resources but no joyful quarter in which to spend them.

And, if you are an artist the thing you originally chased after the money for was to buy the freedom to do your own work on your own terms. But that always gets short circuited as  your lifestyle grows and mutates to take advantage of whatever level of income you become used to. And you find yourself limited by the time obligations of the projects that incessantly bookend your photography...

How does one handle multiple projects across diverse disciplines? You have to change gears a lot and that's tough on the clutch. I've completed three projects for Craftsy.com. I'll be inviting you all to sign up for the free hour long course I did on photographing family. Next week is the culmination of my Samsung project and I'm looking forward to working with the final permutation of the Galaxy NX camera. But the truth is that I'll welcome the break from doing both projects for a little while. And I may decide to hold off the next book for a little while longer, too. 

I really think I'd like to see if I can re-invent my business as a portrait business for a whole new cultural era. I'd like to see if I can make the nut with only my cameras and lights as my tools. And I've been thinking back to the early 1980's when I was teaching. A student and I were talking and he said to me, "If you were really as good as you think you are you wouldn't be stuck here teaching the same shit over and over again....you'd be out doing it." And it was that conversation more than anything else that led me to abandon teaching and embark on a wild adventure in freelancing. 

I can hear echoes of that same challenge today. Can I step back from all the things I've been embracing to assuage my anxiety about the economy and the changes to the industry and practice the pure craft again? I'm willing to try. My current mantra is "to re-invent the portrait."  And even if it's not entirely possible to do it would make for a great book project on the other side. 

It's easy to sell a product or even a service but selling one's self is difficult. It requires many periods of reflection and recharging. And in the end it's probably inefficient to have a "product" that is self aware.

The image below was added by request. A more traditional rendition.