How do you design light?

What does your light say? Direction, quality and the motivation of the light are all much more important than the kind or brand of instrument you use. To get it right, use the light. 

My friend, Will, likes to light portraits with one light. If given the choice I will always use two. I think the background usually benefits from its own source of illumination. 

Three lights are generally too many for a single portrait. The more lights you use the more complicated production gets and it's almost always a case of diminishing returns. 

Fun on a Sunday Afternoon. Sony RX10. Kirk Tuck at the Wall. No, not that wall...

I am fascinated by two things lately. One is the Sony RX10 and the other are the giant walls filled with ever changing, legal graffiti. One fascination led to another today as I grabbed the RX10, an extra battery, and a microphone and headed over to Baylor St. to document the wall and grab some interviews with some of the artists who come by to work on their art. 

When I finished with the video shooting (so much fun) I decided to give the still side of the camera a work out because it's still very new to me and (uncharacteristically) I haven't photographed very many people with the camera and I've withheld my opinion about the camera's portrait ability until I have more total data points to integrate.

The wall of graffiti is a great thing to shoot because I can look for tiny details as well as bold concentrations of saturated colors. 

I shot the video in the best light and I will tell you that I have already reviewed a lot of the footage and to say that the video files from the RX10 are sharp and detailed while still appearing natural is an understatement. This may be the best video camera I've ever shot with. Ever. But take that with a grain of salt because the Sony Beta SP cameras I used in the 1990's were not HD and I haven't really touched a dedicated video camera since then. I know the Sony F55 is much better but it's 25 times the cost and....well it's 25 times the cost! I'll get some video up as soon as I edit it in but I'm trying to figure out a bold work around. 

I used an Azden mini-microphone in the hotshot of the camera, didn't bring headphones, and just trusted to the fates that the audio would be fine. After all, it was perfectly good the last time I stuck a Rode microphone on the camera. Well, my hubris was smacked down by the gods of audio and they rendered by Azden mic mute. Narrator track here we come...

Back to the stills. I used all the focal lengths on the camera and then some. I engaged the digital telephoto setting and occasionally cheated by going off the reality end of the zoom and into the highly magnified, made up area of the zoom. I'll note which still is an example of that below.  

Here are my observations: The camera handles well and with the "active" setting that incorporates physical I.S. along with digital I.S. the camera is rock steady and easy to handhold at its longest focal length and at shutter speeds down below 1/50th of a second. Here's an interesting operational note; the zoom will not operate as long as you have your finger pressing on the shutter button. The EVF works well in full sun and the images on the monitor in the office match what I was seeing on the EVF on site. 

The files have really good detail to them and the flesh tones (where relevant) are neutral, non-splotchy and very pleasant. "Yes." I can use this camera for portrait work. 

Have a gander though the images below and take note of particular images which are samples of some effect or another. 

A wider shot in open shade. 

Medium shot in open shade.

Nice, neutral flesh tones and good skin rendering.

She was moving and he had paused. The slow shutter speed was enough to render the guy sharp but too slow to render the movement of the girl sharply. 

An embarrassingly awkward stance for a "fashion" photographer. But I liked her pearl necklace. And I noticed that she was shooting her images with a Sony R1 camera. What are the odds?

Here's the close up so you can evaluate skin tone (and rolled eyes) while the image below is the full frame. 

I'm not sure the clothes are a good match for the outsider art. 

Here is an image from the camera at the full 200mm equivalent setting. 

The image just above is a 2x mag of the longest setting via the miracle of 

digital zoom (and active image stabilization).

I am thoroughly satisfied with the RX10. I'll keep shooting with it until I run into some sort of technical road block but I can now recommend it whole-heartedly because it works very well and the video also looks superb. Inventory for the next out of country shooting trip? Two of these (one as a back up) and a pocket full of batteries. Plus a full on sound check with headphones for external microphones. Live and learn. Again and again.

Photo of Ben working diligently at his computer back in 2000.

Like millions of families before us we've come to that time when we are looking at colleges and universities for Ben. He'll be graduating from high school at the end of May and we're anxious to make some final choices. I was thinking about that today when I came across a little, black and white 4x6 inch print (above).  Tempus Fugit !!!

I still have the blueberry MacBook. It still works. 

Hanging out in Austin? Go have dinner at Garrido's.

Here's my favorite current chef photo. I took David's photo for his restaurant's web site. In fact, I took all the images on the website. If you can't make it for a great Mexican style dinner at least drop by the website and look at my portrait of David:

http://www.garridosaustin.com/chef.html

Charles Allen Wright by Kirk Tuck for Private Clubs Magazine.

This is an image of Charles Allen Wright, a very famous Texas Lawyer. I shot it in his office at the University of Texas at Austin Law School. I used several different cameras on my editorial photo assignment but this image is from a Rolleiflex twin lens camera with a 2.8 Planar lens.

The camera could shoot twelve images on a roll. 

I used an old, manual, Vivitar 285 flash in a small white umbrella. 

I connected it with a cable because we didn't have inexpensive radio slaves at the time.

In a strange role reversal my most important mentor, Wyatt McSpadden, came along with me as my assistant. 

After we finished up we headed back to the studio to unload and I went into the darkroom and developed the ten shot rolls of 120 film from the shoot.

I made contact sheets and sent them, via Federal Express, to the magazine. 

The art director at the magazine circle one image and sent that contact sheet back.

I printed three or four variations of the image on fiber based, double weight paper and sent the resulting prints back to the art director via Federal Express. 

The image ran as a half page illustration in the magazine.

I was thrilled. 

A few years later I was showing my portfolio to someone at an outdoor café. 

A well dressed woman walked past, saw this image in the portfolio and stopped. 

She said, "He was the greatest influence in my entire life." 

The art director I was showing the portfolio to was surprised. 

Will revisited.

Pity my dearest friends because I've subjected them to unscheduled portraits far too often. This is Will a few years ago, caught mid-statement, at lunch. The image was taken with a Pentax 645 camera and a 150mm lens. I love the way it goes out of focus. I really like the glasses. I am indifferent to the Pentax's bokeh. 

Once On This Island. With a Hasselblad....

I can hardly believe that we used to shoot show promotions in the studio with a Hasselblad. We'd shoot ten or fifteen or twenty rolls of 120mm film to get the images we wanted. If you look at the background of this image the curtain on the right side of the image had its own lighting while the three colors on the far background were made with three more flash heads covered with filter gels, firing through tight spot grids, and we had several lights on the subjects in the foreground. 

Twenty rolls of film with development would cost about $400 if you threw in the cost of Polaroid test materials. Wow. That's real skin in the game.

What did it buy us? At the time it was the only way to do the process and it bought us marketing impressions and ticket sales. But looking back and seeing the images again I can see that it (shooting medium format transparency films) brought us smooth, deep and believable skin tones, the likes of which I rarely see today. 

What have we lost? I'll leave that up to your imagination. The race to the greatest economic efficiency doesn't always have clear cut winners...