Friday, July 11, 2014

In the mood for black and white.

Olympus EM-5 and 60mm Sigma dn.

 Don't know why but when I woke up this morning I was so in the mood to shoot black and white that I flipped on all three GH cameras and set them to monochrome, jacked up the contrast and turned down the noise reduction. Got the weird optics on the front and now I'm looking for people and places that just look black and white in my head.

I think it's a result of too much color work all Summer long. It's either that or the cool, black box of Richard Avedon postcards I got last week...

Hope everyone has a happy weekend and, if you live in Texas I hope you stay cool. It will be a scorcher by Sunday.


Catch up with Henry White, the hero in The Lisbon Portfolio,
as he takes a Leica to explosive new extremes.....

Love letter to a lens? (Chapter one).


I didn't need you. I hadn't planned on bringing you home. It just seemed to happen. Oh sure, I was messing around with micro four thirds cameras when it happened. I just spent too much money on a trio of promising, fast zoom lenses and I guess they really are nice, and have good personalities, but they lack the romance you bring to our relationship. There's just something about you single focal length types that takes me right back to my early days as a photographer.

Those were the days when zooms were the trailer trash of the camera world. Brazen thugs who could shift around into different lengths but they were mostly no good. Not the kind of lens you'd depend on when things got tough. The kind of optical system you just knew was going to leave you in the lurch the minute the smallest dollop of direct light hit his front element...

Hanging around in the camera bags they were always like, "Hey, I'm so cool. I can go from a wide shot to a tight shot and back again standing in one spot. And you," they would taunt the 50's and 105's, "all you can do is your one trick pony act."  But they always seemed to drop the ball. They'd make excuses: "what the hell do you mean 'wide open'?? I wasn't designed for wide open. Set me at f8 or don't bother taking me out of the bag!" Then there were all those embarrassing episodes with flare. And again the rationales: "Dude! I saw it in Life Magazine. Flare is cool. Flare is artistic. And watch this! I can make iris rings show up right in the middle of your photograph. I swear, I saw Ernst Haas do it...."

But those zooms mean nothing to me now.

I still remember the day I sat, bored and at the same time busy, in front of my mighty computer. I was half listening to a client on the phone and half cruising through Amazon.com's website when I came across your profile. It might have been your photo that caught my attention. Was it a selfie? At any rate it looked....enchanting. Then I read your profile and I was really interested. But the thing that made me initially fall head over heels was your price. Only $209.  I'm sure I've paid more than that for a Leica lens hood.

It was an impulsive decision. You had to be mine. I hesitated when I saw your twin sister in the silver finish but for some reason I can't explain your smooth, black exterior was too alluring.

I remember the afternoon the guy in the truck pulled up and let you out. I rushed into the studio with you in my hands and peeled you out of all those unnecessary wrappings. And there you were, naked and gleaming.  The Sigma 60mm f2.8 dn. I sighed. I was smitten.

But we were both a little shy until we went out for that big walk through downtown. Me with my hat and walking shoes, you hanging off the front of a hulky camera body. And it was magic. Over the months my regard for you has grown and, though you don't say it out loud, I think you enjoy our time together as well.

But lest all the readers think us cloying and saccharine let me take a moment to more objectively catalog your charms:

1. The 60mm focal length is really nice for tight portraits and graphic close ups with the small format cameras.

2. The lens is very sharp in the center even when its aperture is wide open. By f4 the whole thing is sharp and by f5.6 it blows the doors off the same focal length on my zoom for that feeling of edgy good sharpness.

3. It is small and light and focuses quickly on all my modern m4:3 cameras.

4. I have had no issues with flare from glancing light or little pin points of direct photonic contact.

5. It's so inexpensive I never worry about it.

I took the 60mm Sigma out on a walk with me today and fell in love with it all over again. I have the 19mm and the 30mm and like both of them as well, but the 60mm is special. If they made a wider focal length to match the existing trio of lenses, say a 12mm, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. That would be a wonderful basic system of primes for any of the m4:3 cameras.

Ahhh. Summer romance.






Revisions. The firmware upgrade for electronic books!!! A novel update.


We love firmware upgrades for our cameras because they tweak stuff that wasn't just right when the cameras first came out. They make the focus a little surer and the overall response of a camera quicker. Now I find that I can "upgrade" the "firmware" of my recently launched novel in much the same way. The biggest difference is that the install is quicker and easier for the end user.

After we launched the book back on June 16th we started getting reviews (mostly five stars!!!) that read something like this: "The book is a page turner. I stayed up all night to finish it. It's a fun story for photographers. BUT it could have used a better editor---there are a lot of typos and a few inconsistencies....still, it's a great read." I resolved that as soon as I had the time I'd dive back in and try to find the stuff I missed or, alternately, I would some day have enough free cash floating around to hire an editor to help me fix the things that needed corrections.

But because of my incredible VSL family I am thrilled to say that we've been able to make the vast majority of the corrections. I want to say a big "THANK YOU!!!" to longtime VSL reader and participant, Michael Matthews, for painstakingly going through the manuscript and finding a huge number of things to fix. Belinda sat down with his notes this past week and made 99.9 % of the changes he recommended. Would have been 100% had I not been stubborn on one use...

Because of his hard work and generosity the book is now a much better read than it was just three weeks ago. So, what does this mean to you? Well, if you downloaded the book and have not yet read it you could delete the copy currently on your Kindle enabled device and download the newest version (your firmware upgrade) at no charge to you whatsoever. Then you can plunge in and enjoy the book as it was meant to be.

If you've been on the fence, really wanting to support my book writing efforts and really dying to read the photo blockbuster novel of the Summer, but you were put off by the mention of typos in some of the reviews you can now download a much improved copy and get right into reading for pleasure.

If you participate in Amazon Prime you should know that we've elected to make the book "borrow-able" from their lending service, at no charge, for five days. Wow! Free book read. 

But if you haven't looked, haven't read or haven't downloaded I would be interested to know what we can do to make it more tempting for you. Is price an issue? If so, what price do you think is appropriate? Is it the fact that the book is only available right now as a Kindle book?  Would you prefer to be able to buy a hard copy? I'm interested to know how I can get the book into more peoples' hands and I figure the blog is a good place to start a bit of market research....

If you have suggestions be sure to make a comment. I'll appreciate it. And if you are a script reader for a major Hollywood movie producer be sure to leave your contact info....


below is the book's latest review on Amazon:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars What 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' Should Have BeenJuly 8, 2014
By 
This review is from: The Lisbon Portfolio (The Henry White Portfolios Book 1) (Kindle Edition)
Swimmer, photographer, Dad, Husband, Blogger (the visual science lab) Kirk Tuck now adds another notch to his accomplishments, action adventure fiction writer. Drawing on his background as a corporate and portrait photographer, Kirk creates just the sort of story that made Alfred Hitchcock famous. Movies like North by Northwest put an ordinary fellow into an extraordinary situation. The audience identifies with everyman who will have to out wit a strange and menacing world around him.

Some action stories like Clancy's use long drawn out narratives (how to assemble a nuclear bomb or spread ebola virus for example) interspersed with action scenes every few chapters. For my money, Kirk has bested Clancy by combining a careful narrative explaining 'about to be' high tech weaponry or skull duggery computer hacking while getting right to the story.

The best parallel would be what Fox terms 'America's Thrill Ride' the 24 television series. High Noon took place in real time with the clock counting down. Jack Bauer and his group endure a 24 hour day to end all day sin every season. Likewise, Henry White is thrown from researcher/observer to field operative. Most of the story takes place over a four day convention in Lisbon. Caution to readers, once you get to the scene in the convention center rest room, the thrill ride really gets going, you are likely to be hooked, make sure you have time to finish the book from that point on.

And so we have Hitchcock style hero, Henry White, Austin, TX photographer set against a somewhat exotic Lisbon setting. The MacGuffin ins question are plans on a micro drive which as in any good action adventure story, everyone and we mean everyone wants. While another reviewer suggested GDS was emblematic of IBM or EDS, I can also imagine United Technologies in league with other military suppliers constantly at work finding buyers for their 'products' especially when the Dept of Defense gives them a pass on some expensive R and D project. IO am sure none of that R & D is simply expensed….

I stayed up until 11:43 Sunday night finishing the book, it's that good. Kirk certainly seems to have done his homework on the high tech stuff. I don't know where he got up to speed on how all the spy guys walk, take shooting stances, etc. perhaps there are more ex Black Ops types in those Austin Coffee Shops than I realized.

Thanks Kirk, I see this is Book 1, let's hope it does not take another 14 years to produce Book 2, the Further adventures of Henry Whitel
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Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Two More "Acid Queen" images from last night's dress rehearsal and a bit about post processes.



I know I probably shoot too much but big, splashy, fun theater productions have so many things going on that you could shoot thousands of images and not scratch the surface. I was back at the theater last night with three cameras in tow. I had the Panasonic GH4 with the 35-100mm f2.8 X lens, a Panasonic GH3 sporting the 12-35mm f2.8 X lens and the nnew-ish (to me) Olympus EM-5 which cycled between two lenses, the Olympus Pen F 40mm f1.4 and the 60mm f1.5. Right off the bat I'll tell you that I had more fun shooting on Sunday because I had time to really play around with the 150mm f4 Olympus PenF lens and I feel like I was starting to get some really great images with the combination of that lens and the EM-5 body.

I recently took myself to task for shooting in much too cavalier a fashion. I've been defaulting to Jpegs any time I have to shoot a lot of images for a project on the premise that shooting raw would be too constricting and the output would take up too much disk space. I rationalized that, for most web based applications even Jpegs would be overkill. But then I did some comparisons and found that even with a modicum of extra effort I really can squeeze a better file out of a raw file. So I chastened myself severely and got with the raw program. It was such a dumb-ass move to make right before a high volume, dress rehearsal shoot for the folks at Zach Theatre...

Between the three cameras, the great music at Tommy, the incredible stage designs and the choreography I ended up shooting about 1500 images. Now, that's not as crazy as it sounds. I know that the rest of you have the uncanny ability to decide that this moment, right here, right now, this particular expression will be the ultimate one in a scene. You wait like a scorpion with your tail raised and somehow you know just when all the elements come together and then you strike! I'm sure it's a thing of beauty. How you know with certainty that the moment you've captured is the ultimate one is beyond my mortal ken. How you keep your finger off the shutter release for all the subsequent expressions, dance moves, light changes and combinations of actors is beyond my understanding. I am not even worthy to operate with the same tools as thou.....

But the pedestrian way that I shoot events is more lumbering and cautious. I try to grab good looking moments early (in case they are all that's on offer) and then keep them as safeties as I keep looking for the better and better shots. And I'll tell you a dirty little secret: I don't know how to create a hierarchy of value when it comes to emotional expressions or an exchange of expressions between two actors. Is this expression better than that one? How can I know if the marketing people will have a different of ideas of what constitutes "good" than I my set? Etc. Etc. And it's good to remember that the changing body positions and expressions are all happening while lights are changing intensity and color and moving, and while other actors move through the space, shifting the visual balance.

So, I thought I was doing well to get away with only 1500 total images. Which I valiantly edited down to 1379 images. I felt duty bound to delete images in which the principal actors had their eyes closed or those rare circumstances (gulp!) where I actually missed focus. There were, at most eight or ten variations in some scenes and as a few as two or three shots in others.

Last night I got home after the show and loaded all the raw files onto a fast 7200 rpm, firewire 800 hard drive and went to bed with the computer happily building image profiles in Lightroom 5.5. After swim practice and breakfast this morning I sat down at the computer and began the edit process. I was very happy to be able to apply just the right noise reduction to all the files at the very beginning. I found a formula that banished the (not unpleasant) tiny black dots that show up at 100% when shooting at ISO 1600. Wanna know a terrible secret? The raw files from the GH cameras and the EM-5 showed pretty much exactly the same kind and amount of noise and they all responded to the same basic noise reduction settings! That magnificent Oly color and low noise? Shared almost exactly with the Panasonic when you take time to process each to their optimum end.

But here's where the trouble started. I edited every image or group of images and then I set up the export menu and hit the button to begin batch processing the files. The progress bar looked like it was going in 10X slow motion. I looked in the "finished" folder, did a little calculation and was shocked to find that the computer I was working on would take the better part of 3.45 hours to complete the task. To output the files I needed to deliver.  This was a problem because the day after the dress rehearsal is the day the marketing crew wants to sit down and plow through the images, make their selections and get digital press packets out to the media all over the place. We usually deliver images around 11:00 or, at the latest, noon.

Well, there was no button on the computer for "faster" so let it roll while I ran errands, got lunch and then came back just as the last eight files fell into place. Now the job is done but I'm left with four future options: Shoot less, Stay up all night processing, get a much faster computer, or go back to shooting large, fine Jpegs. The problem is that once you step up the quality it's hard to regress. The next problem is that I don't want to be groggy for my swim so I'm not staying up all night.  The "shooting less" thing is silly because it limits my options. Guess it's time for a new computer.

This is the downside of assignment photography; it's always easier than it should be to justify new gear...but really, it's time to retire my blueberry ibook and try something made in this century.

(to my literal minded readers: The reference to the blueberry ibook is a joke. I own one but I have newer machines that we actually use...).

Monday, July 07, 2014

Does your insistence on using the same camera for years at a time hamper your artistic growth? How do you know?


I'm reading a book called, Letting Go of The Camera, by Brooks Jensen. The book is a series of essays by the editor of LensWorks. One of the many great essays in the book talks about the time that Jensen, who had used a 4x5 inch, film, view camera exclusively for over 20 years, finally bought a 35mm type digital camera. He describes the incredible sense of freedom and visual agility he instantly gained because he no longer was constrained to shooting carefully constructed images, on a tripod, requiring long set up times and motionless subjects. The transition helped him to realize that we all tend to be limited by the boundaries imposed by our habits. It's an example of the old saw that goes, "If all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail." 

The main point of his essay is that working with the same tools all the time trains you to find subjects and ways of shooting that convenience or leverage the strengths of the camera and not your unique vision. Another essay talks about the difference between reprising your greatest hits over and over again or finishing with a creative vein of work and moving on to another, different way of seeing. There are photographers who have early "hits" and the approval of their fans, coupled with their basic insecurities, conspire to manipulate the photographer into basically doing the same kind of (popular) images over and over again. It's what their current audience expects and the act of disappointing the people who validate their vision is too frightening to consider for some. Their growth as artists comes to a halt.

But the great artists need to keep moving forward---like sharks---or they stop being creative and become greatest hit xerox machines. I think it's instructive for people to move outside their creative comfort zones as often as possible. Jensen mentions Joni Mitchell and John Paul Caponigro as examples of two artists who are constantly re-inventing their art and their subject matter. And he writes about their constant artistic growth.  The very act of looking at something through different frames may unleash a wonderful new way of seeing and sharing. And the very act of casting your vision onto a totally new subject matter can change everything.

In my career I've experimented with everything from 8x10 inch view cameras to Pen F half frame film cameras. Every time I pick up a new camera it seems to change the way I approach my photography. The acceptance of new boundaries keeps my eye and my art fresher. 

 I was perplexed recently when a very good friend who is also a very good photographer told me that my work looks the same to him no matter what camera I use. We discussed it and what we came up with is that when your work resonates across formats you've hit your innate style. Style seems separate from curiosity or vision or creativity. Style feels more like how you put your pants on in the morning or how you tie your shoes.  It only speaks to how your mind and eyes see ingest the subjects that interest you, not in the way that the a particular camera helps to shape the way you share them.  

I suggest changing cameras. I like to change cameras.  Actually, that's an understatement. Most VSL readers would say I change cameras as often as most people change air conditioning filters. That may be so but it keeps me interested because it makes me work in different ways. And then I can always brag about my real achievement as a photographer===I've figured out the nuances of the Olympus menu.



Chaotic Frame. Fun Frame.

 no clue what it all means. It just looked so layered and at the same time menacing through the camera that I wanted to have the image. Olympus EM-5 and Olympus Pen F 150.  From: Tommy, at Zach Theatre.





Need some action and adventure in your Summer? Try the photo novel of the Summer: 




We'll both be happy you did!

Another set of images from the Olympus EM-5+Olympus PenF 150. Acid Queen.


 l love the energy this actor puts into her role. Amazing. 

Guilty admission: I posted the bottom image even though I know I missed focus by just a bit. If you look at the mesh near her ear you'll see that the lens is "satisfyingly" sharp but I missed the eyes by an inch or so. Goes along with the long lens-low accutance viewfinder-manual focus-f4 aperture and moving actors on stage....   Why would I post a shot that just missed being perfect? Because I think the energy and the overall emotional power of the shot trumps the technical miss. 

I know how to make the sharpest photos in the world. Given time, a medium format camera, some really fast duration Broncolor or Profoto studio electronic flash, a model in a fixed position, a $10,000 lens stopped down to f11, etc. etc. etc. But if you aren't going to do that (and who's going to wait for you to get it all assembled and ready?) and you are shooting on the fly shouldn't the "look" trump having all the boxes checked?

Techno stuff: Olympus EM-5, Olympus PenF 150mm f4, stage lighting. Wide open, ISO 1600. From a raw file.



Need some action and adventure in your Summer? Try the photo novel of the Summer: 




We'll both be happy you did!