Sorry for the postus interruptus this morning. False start.

Ann Richards ©1994 Kirk Tuck

I worked late last night photographing the new play about Ann Richards that's opening at Zach Theatre this week. Usually I can post fun images from the play the day after I shoot them but this production is different and my public relations manager asked me not to post images until after they are approved by the production company. I started to post one image from last night and quickly removed it when I got the e-mail from P.R.  Too bad, because I wanted to show off the capabilities of the new Sony a6300 as I experienced them on a real job.

Instead, I thought I'd go straight to the original source and show a photograph I did of the real Gov. Ann Richards, right in front of the Texas Capitol, holding a bouquet of yellow roses.

I'll share the production photos from the play when we get the green light.

Hope your week is off to a great start.

Kirk

By the way, the play should be a great experience, especially for people who were active in Austin and Texas politics in the early 1990's. What a time!

Additional edit at 4:04pm. I dug around and found the original, full frame version of the above image and I like it even better than the cropped one. Here it is:

A Favorite Selection from my Photographic Assignment. Making Marketing Photographs for the "Ann" play at Zach Theatre.

From the play, "Ann", starring Holland Taylor

at the Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas.

From the tech rehearsal. 

Photographed with with Sony a6300

Sony 18-105mm G lens

Shooting product in the studio with a small sensor camera. What the heck?

I enjoy shooting products in my little studio. I've got a shooting table that's just the right size and a crazy range of lights so I can customize my lighting based on the subjects at hand. Recently I had an assignment to shoot this product for the manufacturer. They went on to use the photographs for trade show graphics and general marketing, and public relations. 

The product is fairly small, as you can see by the size of the back panel connectors. When the product first came through the door I took a few test shots with the Nikon D810 and a macro lens but the process was kludgy and the depth of field issues were annoying. Now, I am sure I could have extended the depth of field to cover what needed to be covered if I had done some accurate focus stacking but that takes time when shooting and even more time in post production. I had another idea. I would photograph the products with a smaller sensor camera and take advantage of the increased depth of field. 

The first time I photographed the product I used the Olympus OMD EM-5ii camera and various lenses. The images were very good and were quickly approved by the client but in several instances, while shooting, I found myself wishing

Book Excerpt. The Lisbon Portfolio.

http://thelisbonportfolio.blogspot.com/2015/11/henry-white-hero-of-lisbon-portfolio-is.html?showComment=1446902369071

A few more from the wall. It changes every day. Adventures in Austin, Texas with a camera in tow.

All images: Sony a6000 + 18-105mm f4.0 G.

I hate unexpected brushes with the intimation of mortality. I was on location yesterday, getting ready to shoot a public relations job, when I reach down and grabbed a heavy bag of cameras and flashes the wrong way. If you've ever had a lower back spasm you'll understand when I say, "Ouch."  It's been years since I've tweaked my lower back but it's something most photographers eventually deal with, and it never gets easier, or more fun.  I finished the shoot and made the mistake of grabbing the camera bag again and swinging it up onto my shoulder. "Ouch." Again! 

I've taken it easy since then and the whole issue is resolving many times quicker than it has in the past. I credited some of that to strengthening my core muscles with the push up regimen I wrote about a while back. At any rate I skipped swim practice today (emotional "Ouch") because the idea of doing a hundred or so flip turns with an achy back wasn't particularly welcoming. But after lunch I decided that it might be therapeutic to take a bit of a walk. I grabbed a small and non-combative camera and headed downtown. I thought I'd walk to the Graffiti Wall and then do a long circuit of downtown. 

After spending half an hour shooting at the Wall my back warned me to knock it off and I surrendered to my physical self's higher awareness and headed back to the car. One more day off and then we'll get back into the groove. 

Aside from the physical trauma ( a new reminder of my advancing maturity age ) the walk was pleasant and the park was filled with graffiti tourists; myself included. I didn't see a whole lot I felt like I needed to document but I did enjoy using the small and light camera and lens. They work well together, and that 24 megapixel sensor is pretty outrageous. I'd read some review that were lukewarm about the lens but in practice it does a great job with high sharpness, and the image stabilization is as advertised, pretty good. 

As Robin Wong reminds me, sometimes getting out and shooting for yourself is a form a therapy. In this case a brief warm down from the day before. Go ahead and click on any of these to see them bigger. They are jpegs that came popping out of the camera. Good, clean fun. 

Doing stupid things like bending over to pick up a camera bag reminds me of an old saying:

"With Age Comes Wisdom. Sometimes Age Comes Alone."

Just another afternoon photograph in Austin, Texas.

At the Graffiti Wall with a Sony a6000

and the 18-105mm f4.0 G lens. 

"Through the portal."

OT: The house next door is for sale and they are having an open house. No, more like an OPEN HOUSE!!!!!

Our neighborhood was quiet and affordable until about five years ago. That's when the speculators and people arriving fresh from S. California showed up with bags of extra cash and the desire for their own, "West Austin/Hill Country Homes." A couple of speculators bought the large, rambling house next door. It was decades old and not particularly well cared for. Over the course of the next two and a half years, up to the present, the speculators tore down the old house and built a nouveau riche dream home, of sorts. The construction was stop and start. We never knew if we'd have peace and quiet or an army of saw and power tool wielding construction workers next door.

Soaring windows, multi-level pools and a hot tub big enough to hold Shamu. Faux Modernism in every kitschy architectural touch. They even built a recirculating "stream" along the front of the house which runs for about 200 feet and ends near the storm drain at the corner of their property. (Water rationing anyone?).

So, now they are (almost) ready to sell the house. The price tag is a choking one million, seven hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars, U.S. Today is the open house. They've spent weeks "staging" the house with trendy furniture, plants and throw rugs. The landscape company came this morning for one last "spruce up." There are balloons and "bandit" signs at every street corner, throughout the neighborhood. A three piece ensemble of musicians showed up to perform. They have cakes from "Nothing Bundt Cakes" and tea from one of the boutique tea shops that have sprouted up around oh-so-current Austin.

And the big draw for gentleman home buyers is the opportunity to test drive either the black or the bright red Tesla S automobile. How amazing? Right?  Look at a $2,000,000 house and test drive an electric car at the same time. Chic.

After having been inconvenienced over and over again by the speculators' contractors we are disinclined to help out with the marketing of the house. To that end I've parked an ancient, pollen covered, Toyota Corolla with no hubcaps at the top of our adjoining entry way. It's there mostly to keep the herds of black Range Rovers and BMW X cars off our driveway. I've put the trash bags full of leaves out on the curb for the trash collectors and our lawn guy took a couple of weeks off. I was thinking of hiring some people from the theatre community to do, "Trailer Trash Homecoming" in the front yard, complete with Colt 45 malt liquor and big, bare bellies with tattoos, sitting in lawn chairs but my spouse said, "No!"

There are several problems with this whole gentrification thing that I'm having trouble getting over: One is that the asking price is ten times what most of the surrounding neighbors paid for their homes twenty years ago (when the neighborhood was casual and middle class) which means our property tax comparables will skyrocket (and we live in a state with no income tax which means everything comes from one of the highest property taxes in the country). The second is that when projects like this are successful in a neighborhood it opens the floodgates to an army of wannabe speculators and then all hell breaks loose.

Ah. The maturing of Austin, in which we get to pay in advance for the next generation's expenses and live day by day and month by month with fleets of cement trucks and dumpster deliveries rumbling up at all hours of the day and night. One issue I dealt with this year was not being able to do videos in our little studio. Couldn't do audio with all the jack-hammering. Sometimes it seems like the only answer is to sell and move along but ......

I sure like my house and my studio. And my dog loves her yard.  Ah crap.