An Anniversary Post. 31 years as a tolerant model. And Partner. A state-of-the-art spouse.

At the Louvre. Leica M4+50mm Summicron.

At the Metropolitan Museum, NY. Original Canon Rebel (film) + 50mm f1.8 lens.

Home studio on Elm St. Leica M3+90 Summicron.

Venice. Leica M3+ 50 Summicron.

Paris. Leica M4+ 50 Summicron.

Camera being carried by subject: Olympus Pen F (classic)+50-90mm zoom lens.

A quick nod to Austin film maker, Richard Linklater. This is from my Elle Magazine assignment back in 1992.

©1992 Kirk Tuck, All Rights Reserved.

A quick "thank you" to Richard Linklater for helping to make Austin the "third coast" for movies. Nice work. I'm looking forward to seeing "Everybody Wants Some!!"

Showing off some work I am proud of. I love clients who are in sync with my portrait style.

Last Fall I had the privilege of photographing the attorneys at Dubois, Bryant and Campbell; a law firm here in Austin, Texas. I worked with Envision Creative Group to create a portrait style that worked well for all three entities.

Here is the webpage from DB&C's website that showcases the photographs. Please click on the individual images to see them in their true, horizontal format. Attorney Portraits by Kirk Tuck.

All of the portraits were done on location at DB&C's offices. I used a Nikon D810 with either the 105mm f2.5 ais or the 135mm f2.0 ais lenses. The lighting was a combination of existing light and up to four, high density, LED lights --- modified by a combination of scrims and diffusers.

It was pretty much a dream project for me. Great people, a beautiful environment and a great, supportive advertising agency. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

Which portraits do I like best? The ones that have meaning for me. Connection. A reason to exist.

B.Y. ©2012 Kirk Tuck, All rights reserved.

Twenty years in in which to grow more beautiful. A side by side comparison of two black and white images taken twenty years apart.

2012.

1992.

The earlier one taken on a Hasselblad with a 150mm lens. 

The later one taken with a Nikon using a Hasselblad 150mm lens with an adapter. 

The early one scanned from a print the later one a digital file.

My continuing opinions about the use of stock photography for corporate advertising.

Here is something I wrote a while back to run on LinkedIn. It's my honest appraisal of the use of stock photography for branding by major ad agencies. I get that mom and pop operations may be budget restricted but given the cost of doing "real" branding ads and ad placement......

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stock-photography-lost-imagination-kirk-tuck?trk=pulse_spock-articles

An image from an annual report project last year.

In a hospital lobby. Talking about energy.

I love photographing annual report projects. We used to do a lot of them but many companies opt not to print the big, four color brochures that used to be more or less standard. Now they print the financials on plain paper with black ink and depend on their web content to fill in the emotional blanks. 

One of the projects I handled last year was for an electric utility company. They serve residential consumers but they also serve enterprise and corporate customers. One of the images the marketing department wanted was a discussion between a hospital engineering person and a representative from the utility. They wanted the image to say, "Hospital." 

We located a customer facility and got permission. While the image does not look lit we did use a 60 inch umbrella near camera position to create enough fill light so the faces "read" well.  The light came from a small, battery powered electronic flash, used at a low power. I feathered it as well as I could so that it didn't spill light all over the floor. I was helped by intentionally cropping out (in camera) the part of the ceiling effected by my fill light. 

I used a Nikon D810 and the 85mm f1.8 G lens, set to f2.8, to make the shot, which wound up being used as a spread in the finished report.

I was going to remove the exit sign in the top, middle of the frame because I have photographed for many architects and interior designers and they hate exit signs in their photographs. Hospital people like to make sure they are always seen to be in compliance and so having the sign show was not an issue.

Just another day out of the office with cameras...