Re-learning how to be a beginner.

I love this image. I love it because it's photograph of Belinda from decades ago. We were sitting in our favorite restaurant, Sweetish Hill Restaurant, on a warm Spring morning on a Sunday. We spent many Sunday morning there eating wonderful egg dishes and savoring pastries and coffee. It was a slower,  quieter, less nervous time. 

I'd brought along one of my favorite little cameras, an Olympus Pen FT half framer, loaded with Tri-X film. The lens on the front was the svelte but hefty 40mm 1.4.  The camera spent the morning mostly hanging from its strap from the back of my chair but I loved the way the light came through a skylight and put Belinda's face into a mix of shadow and highlight. I picked up the camera and shot a number of frames and then I put it down and we drifted off onto another topic. 

We were both working in ad agencies back then and photography had reverted from an early, halting career back into a hobby for me. Belinda had given me a black Pen FT and a collection of lenses as an engagement present. I still have them all (and many more) today. The camera went with me everywhere. 

I knew that the lens was sharp a stop and a half down from full aperture so I am sure I had it set for f2 or f2.5 and I'm sure I set the shutter speed according to the in camera meter. I knew enough to be dangerous but there was certainly no over thinking going on. No ruminations about introducing fill flash or augmenting the angular light with some sort of white reflector. The beginner mind was content with the scene as offered. 

One of the reasons I now like this image is because of the jaggedy black line that runs horizontally behind Belinda's head. It echoes and and mimics the black lines that run across her shirt. I love everything about the almost frenetic background even though it is seemingly at odds with our notion that the only good bokeh is smooth bokeh. 

I find myself now trying sub-consciously to control every aspect of images I shoot and I think it's a natural response to years of controlling light and composition in the service of paying clients. But when I look through collections of earlier images. Images made when I was not a professional photographer I find that I consistently like them better. I am attracted to what attracted my eye in the first place. 

It's not that I like the images because I am willing to overlook whatever perceived flaws are resident in the early images but precisely because there are flaws in the early images. It's the flaws that  reinforce the authenticity of the photographs for me. The rawness is part of the original way I saw whatever is in the frame. I like that I wasn't compulsively correcting myself back then. 

I aspire to that now. 

Revisiting a favorite portrait shot for Restaurant Business Magazine.

Vic's Dinner. At the "Y" in Oakhill, Texas.

Vic's is long gone. There's a bank building or something where the diner used to be. I was asked to photograph the owner by Restaurant Business Magazine to illustrate an article they were doing on how new smoking laws were effecting restaurants. Vic's was a last hold out for smokers. You could tell the minute you walked in the front door. It's odd to remember a time in the Austin area when there were ashtrays on every table and a gray-white cloud of smoke lingering almost invisibly around the upper corners of the room...

Shot note: Mamiya 6 camera with 75mm lens and color transparency film.

When cameras go all Frankenstein.

Setting up a Panasonic G6 as a "b-roll" camera for an interview.

I love the way those wacky guys in the video industry trick out their cameras. They put 'em on rails, have follow focus knobs hanging off the sides, put them in cages with all kinds of cables attached and make lens hoods into dramatic, architectural structures. Then they put the whole mess on top of fluid heads that look as serious as the cameras. How many knobs per square inch (kpsi) does it take to make sure a camera is ready to roll a few minutes of interview? I'd say plenty. 

Above is my basic starting point for a Frankenstein camera. I'm sure the product manager for this consumer item presumed that the main use of a $600 digital camera would be handheld recording of kids blowing out candles and first bike rides. And studies have shown that 94.067% of all owners of digital interchangeable cameras use only the kit lens that came with the unit. Kind of makes all those arguments about the safety and long term security of composite lens mounts meaningless. 

I figure that cameras with interchangeable lens mounts were intended to be used with multiple lenses. If the photo gods had wanted us to work with only one lens they would either have made all cameras like the Sony RX10 and put Zeiss zooms on them (and made them par focal as well....) or they would have made all camera with only 50mm equivalent lenses and been done with it. I'm happy it didn't turn out that way because few things make me as happy as putting wildly inappropriate lenses on crazy small bodies. 

In the illustration above I'm using a Rokinon (Samyang? Bower? etc.) 85mm 1.4 Cine lens on the G6. Our main camera for the project will be a Panasonic GH3 sporting a 50mm lens. I really like shooting video with the G6 because I can set up and fine focus with the focus peaking and I can punch in and magnify the frame to confirm really spot on focus. The 85mm is something like a 170mm equivalent on the m4:3 bodies and in this application, where I want a really tight shot of a person talking to use in editing as a cut away, it's just right. Since it's such a long focal length I can put the camera much further away from the subject and still get a nice, tight frame.  

Why not another GH3? Well, the color between the G6 and the GH3's matches up very well and I don't feel like I have to shoot at super high res for my quick b-roll shots. The other reason is that the focus peaking on the G6 makes set up and focus confirmation with this long lens quicker and easier. I can punch in with the GH3 but I can't monitor zebras as I go. 

A lot of people are writing about "hybrid" use of small, inexpensive digital cameras like the Panasonics and the Olympus OMD EM-1 and I think that everyone is on the right track. Done well these inexpensive cameras can rival much bigger and much more expensive DSLRs. That opens up the field to everyone. But where I think a lot of people are missing the boat is in not using multiple cameras for production. Many traditionalists, from the video and the still sides of the aisle, still have the idea of having one "perfect" camera to do everything with. In video that means setting up and shooting one angle and then setting up and shooting another angle over and over again. In many situations, such as conversational style interviews you need to be able to cut back and forth between two speakers and to make things more interesting and have more footage to use in edit it would be nice to have head and shoulders shots of each person in the conversation as well as a wide shot that covers both people. 

Now we can do that inexpensively by adding several six hundred dollar cameras to the mix. One on the wide shot and one each on the tighter shots. With all the cameras running simultaneously you have so much more material to choose from.

And the same holds true for dramatic work. You can have one camera on a scene that's handheld, a wide camera and as many different points of view in other cameras scattered around the scene. Total coverage for each scene in one set up. The low priced cameras are a boon to film makers.

I'm extending the idea into stills. I have a portrait shoot with a series of professionals this week and I'm planning to use a big Sony camera for the "hero" portrait. That would be the classic, looking into camera shot. But I'm planning to have at least one additional camera set up to do a series of more casual shots from a slightly different angle. I'll be able to trigger that camera remotely with a radio trigger. That way I can get double duty from each sitting. 

Shot notes: The image of the G6 and 85mm Rokinon was shot in studio with a Sony RX10 using a combination of florescent light and a Fiilex P360 for backlight. It was shot at ISO 100 and processed normally in Lightroom. Blow it up and look at the quality. It's reduced to a bit less than half the original file size. I think it looks pretty good. 

Finally. FINALLY!!! Four of my five books about photography are back in stock at Amazon.

The LED Book. It's finally back in stock.

While the end of 2013 was fun and calm and happy for the most part for me there was one little burr under my saddle. One scorpion in my cowboy boot. One little rattlesnake hiding on the floorboard of the pickup. Three of my best selling actual, printed on paper (soon to be collector's items?) books were out of stock at Amazon.com for the entire month of January. I thought it would get resolved quickly as in: more books printed. more books delivered by the distributor. more proactive retail braininess on everyone's part. But I watched America's most potent buying season fade, watched the Christmas trees get recycled and watched the Valentine's Day adds crop up in the stores and coffee shops and the website still showed:  "Brilliant. In high demand. But unavailable at this time."

So much for my careful financial planning and my resolve to be able to buy new track shoes for the boy this quarter....

But now, like a Super Bowl Miracle, four of my five books are back in stock (although in limited supplies).  If you didn't get one from the holidays and it's been driving you crazy then now is the time to rush to your keyboard and place your order. Maybe next quarter will be the time Ben will have more shoes....

Seriously though. I like to think that there's a lot more information and examples in each of the books than you'll ever get in one day long workshop and the price of the books is about what you'd budget for coffee en route to a workshop and happy hour afterwards. Each of them is under $25.

Please go and buy a book today. Even if it's nothing more than a souvenir of our time together here at the blog.  Thank You!

If there's a special camera you need to buy on Amazon you can use one of the links above to get to Amazon, navigate to your much needed camera purchase and VSL will earn a small commission directly from Amazon at no cost to your, your loved ones or your heirs. Thanks!

Checking in to see how my first course at Craftsy.com is doing.

Victoria. My model for our Studio Portrait Lighting Workshop at Craftsy.com

It was the middle of July, last year, when I headed up to Denver to do my first photography class with Craftsy.com at I was nervous, filled with trepidation and a little overwhelmed. I had been asked to teach a class on portrait lighting which I've done many times but this time I'd be doing it in front of two cameras with a microphone attached to my shirt and a radio transmitter stuck in my back pocket. 

I guess I assumed that classes like these, educational programming that would be streamed to the web, would make use of teleprompters. And, as most people here know I can write fast and fill pages. I'd have no problem producing reams of information I could have read back on a teleprompter. But Craftsy.com doesn't work that way. They like spontaneous. Maybe the producers there like to see the "talent" sweat a bit.....(just kidding) but they don't use teleprompters or traditional scripts. I worked from an outline that we collaborated on and put together weeks in advance. 

Most of the first workshop explores portrait lighting and I made the decision to use mostly continuous light sources as we could see the effects of the different lighting instruments as we worked along. 

The finished class runs about two and a half hours. I feel like I look nervous for the first few minutes but I later get into the teaching and everything smooths out. I've come to like teaching this way since it allows me and the producer to go back and try stuff again. It allows students to back up the video and go over parts again for more reflection. And the course is available to the student for the life forever. 

An interesting addition to the platform is the ability to ask questions about the lessons or about lighting in general, on the website, and get a response from the instructor. The best part of the overall value proposition is that, if you don't like the course you have a money back guarantee. Buy it, watch it, evaluate the value and decide. 

My profits from the course come solely from royalties for each class sold. Craftsy takes some risk, I take a risk. They put in lots of production and editing time, pay their crews and producers. I put in a days or preparation and three solid days of on camera production, followed by an hour a week of online "office hours" answering questions. 

You can think of this class in two ways. One is that you'll learn basic portrait lighting and posing techniques so it's educational.  The second way is as entertainment. You've been reading my stuff here on the blog for who knows how long so now you can put a face and a voice and body language onto this mostly anonymous writer and enjoy the contrast between how you thought I would be and how I really am.

Anyway, here's a link to the class for 25% off. I hope you'll give it a shot and see what it's all about. 

Thanks for reading through this brief marketing message. 

What format is this?

 

I've been playing a lot with the Sony RX10 camera for the last two weeks and admit I am a bit obsessed about it but I've been reading too many ill informed opinions on the web and the whole subject of shallow and deep depth of field are starting to drive me nuts. Everyone seems to consider so much aesthetic stuff in photography in purely binary or black and white terms. Something is either good or bad. Sharp or not sharp. In total focus or totally out of focus. Even when the rest of us see things in shades of gray, subtle gradations of settings and effects. Zones of focus...

The difference that most amateurs are perplexed and binary over is the idea that the depth of focus on all bigger formats is tiny, almost razor thin, while any camera with a sensor smaller than whatever sensor they are currently championing is only able to render scenes with an infinite range of sharpness. You can show people stuff and you can explain ideas to them but you can't understand it for them....

So, above is a shot of a sausage maker that we did in Elgin, Texas. Tell me which camera and lens you think I shot this with and why. If you've seen it in an older blog before please don't give away the technical details until people have had the opportunity to weigh in.  Thanks.

(edit: added a second shot. Take a guess at the camera and lens on the one below, as well...)

Have fun!

The reveal: the top photo, sausage maker, was done on a 4x5 inch field camera equipped with a 135mm f5.6 lens. The bottom image was done with a Panasonic GH3 using an 85mm Rokinon lens.

One night at one theater then the next night at another. Bag of mini-cams in tow. ISO and mixed color insanity.

Sony RX10 at 3200 ISO.

When we last left off the chairman of the Visual Science Lab had just written about a lovely evening at the theater shooting an hilarious but traditionally produced play called, In the Room Next Door. The folks at Zach Theater were rehearsed to the nth degree and the production staff were as flawless and accurate as a computer.  And not just a generic computer....a really good computer. Go see that essay (which is a paean to the RX10) here: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-theatrical-test-of-sony-rx10-and.html

Well, yesterday I went to a different kind of theater production. No less fun but where the production the night before was perfectly regimented yesterday's fare was all about improvisation and on the fly, on the stage direction. The production was: The Bowie Project: A Rock and Roll Soundpainting. And you can read more about it in the Austin Chronicle, here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2014-01-31/the-bowie-project-a-rock-and-roll-soundpainting/

I was pre-recession busy yesterday with raw post processing in the morning, some accounting for Ben's college apps over lunch and a bunch of portrait retouching for a large medical practice for the first half of the afternoon. I remembered (almost at the last minute: thanks, iCal!!!) that I'd promised my friend, Colin, that I'd photograph the final dress rehearsal for his project (The David Bowie Soundpainting) and I needed to be right in the middle of downtown in less than half an hour.

Fortunately it's VSL policy to charge batteries and back up cards the minute we walk into the studio from assignment so the cameras were packed and ready to go. One Sony RX10, two Panasonic GH3s and a couple of fun lenses for the m4:3 camera. Should have just left it at home since the RX10 worked charmingly.

So, here's the deal. The Bowie play is completely improv. There's no script. There are snippets of choreography. There is a modern dance company involved. A Bowie singer. A rock band. A guy who let the fog machine run wild and two guys named Steve who loved playing with all of the cyberlights and catwalk mounted gelled spots---sometimes all at the same time. The direction? Shoot whatever you want from wherever you want. The play will last for between about 45 minutes to maybe 70 minutes. It might be longer. There's no intermission. Go!

I love most of David Bowie's music and it's always fun to see entertainers engaged in pure play so I just went for it. Here's a selection.....

 Panasonic GH3. 25mm.

 Panasonic GH3. 25mm.

 Panasonic GH3. 25mm.

RX10 wide open at 3200.