Taking a second look at William Klein.

It's easy to assume that photography (art photography) in the 1950's and early 1960's was dominated by people like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and the talented crew who routinely shot for Life Magazine and Look Magazine. Fashion photography was widely thought to be the dominion of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. And we assume that everyone else working back then was using one or another of a small group of superstar photographers like them as role models and beacons of style; that they represented the photo-cultural avant-garde of an era.

But there is one collection of work that I keep coming back to that seems fresher and more modern than most of the famous work from that period and it was done in a short span of time by William Klein, the essential proto street photographer. 

Many years ago Aperture put out the above monograph of Klein's work. It covers his street photography in New York, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and Moscow. It also looks at some of his fashion photography, exhibition design and his graphic design. At a certain point in the late 1950's Klein moved to Paris, took up filmmaking (successfully) and never really came back to the U.S. 

While HCB spent most of his career making (wonderful) images that fit into the formalist constraints of his love for the 50mm lens; with an occasional nod to the 35mm or the 90mm, and while Robert Frank also shot with neutral focal lengths, Klein seemed to have always had a wide angle lens (or a very wide angle lens) bolted to the front of his camera. Where Frank and HCB seemed mostly to relish being unobserved while photographing Klein and his wide angle lens are almost always right in front of the subject and usually fully engaged with them. In their faces! As a result his photographs are much more immersive, emotional, powerful, and even confrontational. They have a power to them that seems to have grown while (perhaps because of saturation or stateliness) the images of his street shooting peers now seem more like exercises in formalism and design by comparison.  Even his printing of images was a rejection of the standard of the day; rejecting a broad range of gray tones from black to white and instead relying on higher contrast printing to accentuate his approach.

When I bought this book, well over twenty years ago I leafed through it a couple of times and then it sat on a bookshelf for ten years. When I took it back off the shelf ten years ago it seemed to have aged well. Better than I expected. And when I pulled the book into my reading nook and sat down for a deeper look again last week I started to develop a stronger re-appreciation for the power Klein wielded; being able to wade into a crowd and compel a group of strangers to respond (not pose) to him and his camera. Almost like the subsequent photography of modern street photographer, Bruce Gilden but with none of the implied malice, voyeurism and affected disregard for the subjects. 

I have not seen a show of Klein's original prints but I certainly want to. Learn more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Klein_(photographer). Read what William Klein's work taught modern street photographer, Eric Kim, here: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/03/26/10-lessons-william-klein-has-taught-me-about-street-photography/

And a quick Google search turns up a trove of his work here: william klein photography

I think everyone should take a dive into the photographs and life of William Klein. Much of what passes for art/street photography now owes a deep debt to his ferocious and energy filled plunge into the streets of the 1950's and 1960's, armed with a camera. 

OT: Can you help me with an ethical issue?

Kirk with light meter, ca. 2007.

My photo (above) has nothing to do with my conundrum described below.

Nothing as easy as whether or not to use a light meter...

When I had my studio built just in front of my house we installed a window air conditioning unit about eight feet up on the west wall. There was not a pre-existing window; we designed the opening specifically for the air conditioning unit. We made it a bit wide so we could have some flexibility when choosing replacement units. I'm now on my third air conditioner and it fits into the space with about five inches to spare on each side. There is a sill that runs under the air conditioner...

Well, over the winter months, during the time during which I don't use the air conditioner, I wasn't paying attention and it seems that an enterprising finch (small bird) has built a nest just to the side of the unit that is least visible. The next is amazingly well done and cozy. The entrance faces straight out and there is a rounded roof that offers the bird some protection from the rain. It's too high up for cats or raccoons to reach and in most regards it's a perfect location for a bird. And in bird nests as in all other real estate ventures the secret is: location, location, location. 

I met the bird the other day. I was looking up at the nest and she poked her head out to see what the hell I was doing. She flew away but she's been back. 

So here's the issue: Right now the weather is mild and cool. The studio has two big windows on one wall and four big windows on another wall and, in conjunction with a nice fan, I can probably use the office with no air conditioning for a while longer into the Spring. But temperatures in the 90's are just around the corner and by May temperatures in the upper 90's should be routine. 

At some juncture I'll have to turn the AC on to stay comfortable while working on my masterpiece, nano-acutance photographs, or I'll need to cool the studio for a visiting client/customer. Providing no air conditioning in Austin should be the perfect way to bring any studio business to a screeching halt. 

But what is my responsibility to this bird and,  perhaps, a burgeoning family of finches? I'd hate to drive them away from a nearly perfect nest by subjecting them to the roar of an air conditioner and, if they stay, I'll feel guilt and remorse for potentially deafening their delicate offspring. I guess I could close the studio and go on vacation until such a time when they are through nesting but I would like the convenience of using my space to work in, and I might find it constraining to try and edit all my photos and video on a smallish laptop computer outside the studio. 

Had I noticed the construction of the avian condo early on I might have gently deconstructed it and discouraged continued squatting but now I worry that by allowing (even tacitly) the construction to go to completion, and having not previously served them notice, that I have set an ethical precedent which seems to defy an equitable solution. One party or the other (or both, as is usually the case...) will suffer depending on our final solution. 

My sweet friends suggest turning the AC unit on for short periods of time to acclimated the birds to the noise but as I mentioned above I fear for the auditory health of the bird and her offspring. My less empathetic friends suggest spraying the nest with a flamethrower....

I want to be a "good guy" in this and would hate to be haunted by the ghost of St. Francis d' Assisi for all eternity....

Perhaps the answer to my poignant dilemma will come from one of you; my sage readers. Can you help?

P.S. The bird seems far too small to eat so my vegan friends need not worry..... 

Thanks in advance, KT

P.P.S. What a nice opportunity it would be to use the new Fuji 100-400mm lens for BIF (hate that acronym) except that the wall on which they've built is about six feet from the wall of our kitchen. Now that I think about it the 8-16mm lens might be a better choice.  

Help?

Bookending the Fuji XF system with the 8-16mm f2.8 and (ta-da!) the 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 XF WR telephoto zoom lens. Big, heavy and sharp.

I think I've just put the finishing touches on my Fuji "tool kit" for my photography and video production  company. I make a lot of buying decisions that might make no sense whatsoever for non-professional users and in this case I went over the top in terms of what I usually do when I adopt a system. Normally I concentrate on populating the lens  inventory with lenses that range (and I'll use full frame (35mm) equivalent focal lengths for ease of discussion) from about 20mm or 24mm to about 200mm. Over the course of my career that is the focal length range that I use most often. But when I finally decided to dive deeply into the Fuji system my intent was less about streamlining and optimizing and more about opening up new ways of shooting more things than I had allowed myself before.

My trip to Iceland pushed me to think about shooting both wider and longer, when it comes to landscapes. I've always pooh-poohed landscape photography because it never seemed to fit into my narrow idea of my core business but after that trip and the time spent shooting on (sometimes) beautiful and remote locations around the U.S.A. I've softened a bit in my regards to photographs of places.

The Fuji 8-16mm f2.8 which I wrote about yesterday, and earlier this afternoon, is the widest zoom lens I've ever owned. While my first attempts to understand interesting ways to use the lens were a bit stilted the potential, in some tight situations, is obvious and the unusual perspectives might be just the right thing to trot out when a photograph needs more of an immersive feel. In my initial tests I found the lens to be very sharp and (with a little help from computational magic) it's also a very well behaved lens. Most amazing to me is, that for a wide angle lens with such a bulbous front element, the incredible resistance to flare I saw when including sun reflections on the sides of buildings, and even in frames with the sun squarely in the frame was stunning. That makes me happy because I know that when I final figure out the best use cases for the lens I can be confident that it will deliver the results I want.

With the middle ranges of the Fuji system nicely filled out with fast zooms and nice, small primes, it seemed like it was time to reach a little bit and get more reach. The web is full of lens reviews and you can make yourself crazy trying to weigh which ones are legit and which ones are hammered out by nut jobs with no real expertise. But, on the whole, most of the reviews for the 100-400mm said pretty much the same thing: It's a really nice and sharp lens but it's priced too high! This lens should be $500 cheaper. 

But the bottom line rationale for getting one (if you need or want those focal lengths) is the fact that it's the only really long lens that Fuji offers in the system. If you need a good 300, 400, 500 or 600 mm equivalent in a zoom you pretty much have to buy this lens or switch systems (or worst case, use two systems = one for a long zoom and another for everything else). When the lens went on sale with a $500 instant rebate I decided to take a chance on one and add it in as the opposite side of the extreme bookend contingent with the 8-16mm. 

Here I will interrupt with a sad tale explaining why I have no sample images today....

I got up late today and almost missed the start of swim practice. I got out of bed at 8:15, grabbed a big glass of water, drained it, and rushed out of the house. I hit the pool still groggy and stiff but after a few hundred yards I started feeling like a functional swimmer again. We all blasted through the next hour and a half and by the end of workout I was wide awake, ready for coffee and for something to eat.

Coach, Ian Crocker, reminded me that today was the last day of the Women's NCAA Swim Championship at the UT Swim Center. I made a mental note to put a Fuji XH-1 in the car, along with the new Fujifilm 100-400mm lens. I thought a national championship swim meet would be the most exciting thing one could ever, in a lifetime, photograph through a camera+lens. I knew my readers would be amazed at the resulting images and many might even quit their day jobs just to become full time swim photographers! I knew the images would add thousands and thousands of new readers to my blog (including some who comment!).

After coffee with select member of my masters team, and a nurturing and uplifting (but non-vegan) lunch with my family, I headed over to the swim center. I parked a few blocks away and by the time I got to the front doors the lens and camera already felt heavier than anything (photographic) that I've grappled with since the days of owning full frame DSLR camera...

I presumed that, as an ex-Texas swimmer, an ex-UT faculty member, and a really nice guy that I'd be able to walk right in, find a seat and get to work making the kinds of images that people working with lesser subjects can only imagine. My first hurdle was having to buy a ticket. And you know how expensive world class sporting events can be... I could buy a ticket for the day for......$10.

I pulled out some cash and the kind person behind the counter started to burst my bubble. Before she sold me the ticket she thought it would be wise, on my part, to check with event security to see if I could bring "professional photographic equipment" into the venue. (See! all you naysayers! Officials at UT recognize Fuji cameras and lenses as = professional equipment).  They were very polite and very firm. The lens was too long, the package too cool looking. Without approved press credentials they would not allow it in the door. A big thanks to the ticket lady for saving me a non-refundable $10.

I might have been able to make some phone calls and pulls some strings but then I decided that it wasn't that big a deal and that it was kinda selfish to use a connection just to get in and take some fun test photos. The men's nationals is next week (same venue) and that gives me a few days to line up a legitimate media client and eke out some real credentials.

I walked back to my car as it started to rain. I pulled a plastic trash bag out of my pocket and wrapped my camera. I don't care what the ads say about "weather resistant designs" I figured I've paid for this gear out of my own pocket and I'd rather not risk gear death unless I was doing it trying to get a killer shot for myself or if I was creating brilliant content for one of my clients.

So, no exciting race photographs from the UT Swim Center today. Although I did hear that Louise Hannson from USC set a new NCAA record by going 49.26 seconds in the 100 yard Butterfly. Just amazing!

So, back to the lens:

The 100-400mm is a heavy lens but a compact overall package. It features a million ED elements and has image stabilization that's billed at 5 stops of goodness. It has a nice tripod mount because it would be so wrong to put a lens this big and heavy on a camera and let the camera bear the weight on a tripod. The lens is one of their WR lenses which means that it's weather resistant, and it's also a "red badge" lens which seems to mean Fuji likes what they came up with and wanted to brag about how good they think it is.

So, what will I use this beast for? Well, as I mentioned just above, I think (within the Fuji system) it's the perfect lens for photographing swim competitions and probably also cross country races. Then, of course, there is the ability to get wonderful compression effects in landscapes. And I can't discount the ability to reach in and pull out an individual face in theater productions or corporate showcases. Come to think of it shots of corporate speakers on stage would be a great use!

As with the 8-16mm, I bought this lens to open up my brain to different ways of shooting in the hopes that it would extend my creative boundaries in photography. Hoping they will both push me a bit. So far though my only advantage in owning and carrying this lens with me is to have my gear designated as "too professional" for entry to a cool event. I'm okay with that, I can cool my heels here and write about it and that's almost as much fun.

side note: What do the rest of you do with the boxes that swaddle new equipment you buy? If I kept every box I think I'd have a box warehouse here and that would just flat out be a fire hazard. Do you recycle them? Flatten and store them? Toss them in the garbage? Cherish them hoping they will increase eventual resale value? Ignore them and hope they will go away? Sell them to collectors?

The folks at Precision Camera no longer want, keep or need the boxes for equipment that they accept as trades or take on consignment. What that means to me is that after I test something, and it turns out to work as it should, I flatten the boxes and put them into the recycling bin.

It's a way of embracing my ownership and moving into the future. You might have a different approach. If it's better than mine I'd live to hear it.

A note about the new lens. I bought it because the price dropped. For the moment it's $1399. Much better than $1900....

Curious readers wanted to know what the Fuji 8-16mm f2.8 files I uploaded yesterday might look like when corrected in post processing. Here are a few I grabbed and transformed.

I pulled the files into Lightroom and used the transform function to correct the geometry of the files. Mostly I used the "vertical" setting in order to make the sides of the buildings roughly parallel to each other. I try to slightly under correct in most images with buildings so it doesn't look Stepford Wife Creepy and come off as artificially different from human perception...

These (and all the files I normally upload to the blog) files are sized to 2200 pixels on the long end and saved as low compression Jpegs. Google also seems to do a bit of heavy handed compression once they get their mitts on them so I'm not sure how literally you'll want to judge technical quality here (especially if you are viewing on a cellphone....) so just be aware that a full res file will have more detail and perhaps a bit less muddy color than what you might see...

All the images are shot at focal lengths between 8mm and 12mm. Most are shot at f5.6.

I have to say that I like the files once I straighten them out and look at them objectively. I only wish I'd had this lens a week earlier; it would have been fun to use in the middle of the crowds of people on Sixth Street, here for SXSW. 

More to come....I'm sure. 

I'm not very good at wide angle photography...yet, but my new lens appears to do it very well. A first day quick peek at the Fujifilm 8-16mm f2.8 XF lens and a confessional about wide-angle-phobia.

It was a glorious day in Austin, Texas. The temperatures were mild, the skies were clear and blue and with the NCAA Swimming National Championships in town there is swimming in the air and beautiful swimmers all over downtown soaking in the Austin vibe. Rumor has it that the Stanford team is doing some of their practices at my home pool, WHAC.org.  Of course I went out for a walk with a new lens. Think of it as the break in period.  And what a nice day on which to do it.

So, what lens are we talking about? 

It's the recently introduced 8-16mm f2.8 XF (Red Badge) lens from Fujifilm. 

The lens has somewhere over twenty elements and many of them are either aspheric or some other speciality glass. The lens is big and heavy so it's not my first choice for a "walk around" lens on any of the Fuji cameras. Here's what the lens has: a short zoom range of 8-16mm. A non-changing maximum aperture of f2.8. A very nice aperture setting ring. Weather sealing. A permanently attached lens hood. No front filter ring and a big, fat front element. It also has sharpness. Lots and lots of sharpness. 

While I'm not very cozy with wide angle lenses I'd like to do more architecture and industrial photography and the consensus is that having a few good wide angle lenses might be a positive thing for dealing well with that sort of work. I much prefer those telephotos that are just a bit longer than a "normal" lens but I'm trying hard to figure out what my wide angle vision is and how to nurture it. I know from endless reading and some lucky shots that it's great to have a foreground element in order to create more impression of depth. And I definitely know that, if I am foolish enough to attempt doing portraits with the lens, I should never put my portrait subject on one edge or the other. If I want any chance at selling a portrait with this beast it will be because I put the subject directly in the center and that someone other than the subject is actually paying for the assignment. 

I am keenly aware from reading reviews on both Lenstip.com and OpticalLimits.com that the lens measures well and produces very sharp files but that some of the performance superiority comes from crafty software corrections and enhancements. Had the lens been introduced in the days before built in lens profiles I would have my doubts about its value proposition. Since I can't see the faults through the opaque machinations of the software I'm blissfully unbothered by theoretical limitations due to it's actual optical performance. If it looks sharp and it measures sharp then I'll just applaud the work of the programmers and venture forward. 

I picked up the lens from Precision Camera yesterday, along with a second lens which I hope to test out tomorrow. I have only had a few hours to walk around and get used to shooting such a wide angle view. I've read that it's at its very sharpest at 12mm and at f4.0 but I tried all sorts of combinations with it. It's big but handles well. It's heavy but then most fast, well made zooms are. Is it worth $2,000. USD? I have no idea if it's worth that for anyone but me. From my point of view the right project pays for the lens and then I get to use it again and again. If I were shooting just for fun???? Right, I'd just be shooting with the old 50mm on some ancient (but perfect) body. 

More to come but I'll try to do some sort of from memory captioning on the images below.

Shot at 14-16mm f5.6

Shot at 8mm f5.6

Shot at 12-16mm on f5.6

Shot at 8mm at f5.6

8mm.

8mm

12mm.

8mm.

8mm

12mm

10mm

14mm.

12mm

8mm

12mm.

8mm. 

I have my fingers crossed for luck. Luck that I'll learn the ins and outs of shooting wide. 

So many people seem to like crazy, wide. Maybe I'll become acculturated. 

OT: Food, Cars, Exercise, Discipline, Tolerance.

Corn Soup. With Olive Oil garnish.

I have a really insane diet plan. I thought I'd share mine in the same week in which Michael Johnston goes off topic at theonlinephotographer to discuss his views about diet. I'm not making a case that either of us is right or wrong, but at around 63 years of experience I can safely say that we both have our perspectives about what makes the most sense for each of us, individually. 

I am not a vegan or even a vegatarian. I'm a moderationist. I believe that part of being an omnivore is the privilege to enjoy a wide variety of foodstuffs. If you talked to my close friends I think you would find that they definitely consider me to be a "foodie" in the sense that good restaurants and great chefs cause me much happiness, across many cuisines. I think the human body was designed to not just tolerate many different ingredients in our diets but that we actually crave the variety, and that it makes sustaining ourselves part the pleasure equation that ensures long life and health. 

We follow a similar pattern around here for functional reasons and for fun. Belinda goes grocery shopping for the bulk of our home-cooked food on Sunday afternoons so we generally always have fresh fish at dinner on Mondays. If you're going to buy really good fish you want to prepare it and eat it while it's fresh, right? On Tuesday Ben cooks dinner and loves to create new dishes inspired, in part, by his time in S. Korea. I'm just getting settled in with kimchi. I'm responsible for Wednesday dinners and I'm all over the map but we do have a few family rules for whoever is cooking. One is that we should have a flavorful and high quality protein at each evening meal. It could be a pairing of rice, black beans and corn (supercharged with some avocado), it could be fish, well prepared beef, or even (gasp) hummus or something soy based. Every evening meal needs at least one fresh vegetable; preferably two, and a clean starch. 

It was my turn last night and I cooked sirloin steaks. I started by trimming the fat and then searing three six ounce pieces of the beef, cut about 1.5 inches thick, in a very, very hot cast iron skillet. One minute on each side and then the edges seared while holding each piece with tongs. Then the skillet goes straight into a preheated 450 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Pull out the skillet, put the pieces of meat on a warmed plate and let rest for five minutes before serving. They generally come out nice and tender this way and are cooked to a medium/medium rare level of doneness. Pink in the middle; not red. 

Last night I paired this with freshly made mashed potatoes and a big salad of julienned fresh broccoli, kale, red peppers, finely sliced cucumbers, sunflower seeds, blueberries and cherries and a very light dressing. 

Belinda is partial to green tea with her dinners, Ben is a water fanatic but is known to have a craft beer from time to time and I'm trying to lose weight by cutting out red wine and replacing it with sparkling water with lime. 

Every breakfast is done individually; we all have different schedules. I'm partial to toasting sprouted flax bread and pairing it (sandwich style) with Laura Scudder's organic (crunchy) peanut butter and blueberry preserves. It's a perfect morning eye-opener and it pairs really nicely with good coffee (whole milk, steamed). Most cold days it's oatmeal with walnuts and fresh berries.

Ben grazes on whatever looks healthy in the fridge. Lately he's been making a pudding from chia seeds and almond milk, and pairing that with fresh berries, and sometimes a wedge of hard cheese. 

I can never keep track of Belinda's breakfasts as she's always whipping up something amazingly healthy with yogurt, coconut oil, spinach, kale and other zany stuff ---- which she professes to actually like. 

Lunch is all over the map but if I'm home I'm usually making a bowl with a mix of brown rice, sardines, chopped spinach and soy sauce. Ben is partial to veggie bowls at Cava, and Belinda --- healthy leftovers. 

I love a good glass of red wine but over the last year I've had to compromise my exercise schedule a lot to take care of family stuff and because of a crazy travel schedule. I've gone on an alcohol fast until such a time as I can take off the 5 to 7 seven pounds my doctor believes (in his heart) that I've gained in the past 18 months. He's got a good point. It's easy to get lazy when you are operating under a certain amount of stress. 

The one thing we do as almost a family ritual is to have Pizza Night on Thursdays. And NO! I am not talking about gluten free, whole wheat crust dabbled with fresh veggies and finished off with some sort of soy cheese. I'm talking about traditional crust, puddles of great tomato sauce and ample cheese that is stringy and delicious. You know, the cheese that ties you to that slice of pizza at arm's length...

We eat eggs two or three times a week. We have two vegetarian dinners a week and, most importantly, we try to maintain rational, healthy serving sizes. 

When it comes to desserts there is no carton of ice cream in the freezer, nor is there a pantry stuffed with cookies or weird sweets. Ben is immune to sweets and Belinda and I share a love for dark chocolate. A square or two of dark chocolate fills up that emotional space that calls out for the sweets of our youth.

I guess what we do is considered moderation. We don't do fast food. We rarely do frozen or canned foods. We mostly buy good stuff and prepare it in fun and tasty ways. And we nearly always eat our evening meal altogether. There is a strict rule that bans cellphones and other electronic devices at the dinner table and this has been a hard and fast rule since we've been parents (could this be one reason why the child graduated magna cum laude from his college? And can carry on interesting dinner table conversation?) We want everyone to appreciate the work and creativity each person brings to their preparation of the family meal. 

I also believe that if negative stress can cause disease, heart attacks, cancer, etc. then it only makes sense that good thoughts, happiness, connection and a sense of community can have the opposite effect and reduce those same metrics. Happiness and connection being much more powerful than lipitor, or a joyless, cardboard diet endured in solitude. 

Okay. So, all good things in moderation with occasional splurges for BBQ, Pizza, a steak, some sloppy Tex-Mex food, etc. But in context these kinds of food are much more the exception that a rule around here. We might go out for dinner at a restaurant two evenings a month. A few more times during the holidays. Maybe.

So, how do you keep from getting fat, unhealthy, and in near constant need of ever expanding clothes? 

This part is simple. MOVE. I think we thrive on exercise. It's pretty hard to overdose if you enjoy the exercises that you do. My two favorites are long, long walks and competitive swim workouts. I think the doctors are wrong when they suggest 25-30 minutes of exercise three or four days a week as a good regimen. I think the human body thrives on daily exercise and also is happier with more calories spent than less. Our swim workouts on weekdays are an hour and fifteen minutes and we don't stop more than ten or fifteen seconds between sets. Any day that doesn't include a good swim gets at least an hour walk. Usually it's a two hour walk and a swim. Believe me, there's time in the day. Especially if you unplug your TV and stop thinking of your computer as a close, personal friend. 

In my estimation a healthy exercise regimen/habit is far, far more important, overall, than diet. There is a famous swimmer who wrote a popular vegan diet book and everyone seems to credit his diet with his amazing physique and fitness. He's a genetic lottery winner. He's always had a great physique and level of fitness. How do I know? I watched him swim at UT, long before he adopted his vegan diet and he was plainly in the .001% of fit adults in the country. And I watch him each morning (because we've swum in the same program for the last 15+ years) and he is still looking great. The diet did not come first. The years of highly disciplined exercise set the stage. Years of running and biking as a professional triathlete coupled with decades of high level, competitive swimming. I think I could feed this guy a diet of Twinkies and cream puffs and as long as he can get in the water and bang out a fast 5,000 yard workout,  pacing along with a couple his fellow swimmers who are Olympic gold medalists, he'll never be fat or unfit. 

But I'd bet you hard currency that if you fed this guy his cookbook diet and never gave him time to exercise he'd be indistinguishable from all the office workers everywhere, with just a little paunch hanging over the belt line. 

The take away? If you want to be healthy exercise a lot. Get up now and go out for a long, long walk. The article will (probably) be here by the time you get back. Do it every day. Sun, snow, rain or meteor showers. Get out of breath. Get the ole heart rate up. Feel sore from time to time. You'll love it.

My take is that if you are always comfortable you are always getting fatter...

I'm on a roll; let's do cars now. Nah. Everyone who lives in an urban area knows that you only need three things in a car: Reliability, enough space for the crap you need to carry around with you and (depending on where you live) a good heater or air conditioner. Don't spend more than $35,000 on a new car. An $18K Toyota Corolla has a better reliability metric than a $90,000 BMW.  Always save up and pay cash. Moving on.... If you are buying a car just because you love the way it drives, well, I just won't be able to relate.

Discipline. The difference between a published author, the owner of successful manufacturing company, a world class athlete, a great painter, a marvelous chef, a person good at anything, and everyone else, is that the people who get stuff done know how to get started, how to stick with the process longer,  and to work until they master whatever it is they want to do. Discipline is getting up in the dark and heading out into the cold because there is something you want to get done. Now.

I have a story about starting, doing the work and finishing. When I got my first book contract it was to write and illustrate "Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Lighting on Location." The publisher read my outline, sent me a contract and an advance check. I sat down the day I got my advance and worked on the book for the first three hours of every day for the next three month. I'd arrange photo shoots to create the sample photographs in my spare time, between paying photography gigs. I finished up the project a couple days before the deadline the publisher had set arrived, sent the work along and then waited.

When I couldn't wait anymore I called to find out if I'd passed or failed, or would be re-writing for the rest of my life. The editor laughed and told me (this was weeks after I sent the manuscript via overnight Federal Express) that it was in their stack and that they would get to it shortly.

I was confused. "But the deadline....?" I think I said.

"Oh yeah. Well we always set a deadline for projects but you're the first writer I can remember who actually got us the work on time. Most are weeks or months late." Said the editor.

I must have registered some sort of amazement at the idea so many people would actually miss a deadline. 

"That's nothing" the editor remarked, "For every ten advance checks we send out only one person actually finishes their book." 

You don't have to be exceedingly bright to write a book. You don't have to have a powerful agent. You don't need a ground breaking idea.  You just have to start. And then proceed. And then finish. If you do that you will already be so far ahead of your competition that they cease to be competition. It's just discipline.

Tolerance. When I was younger I thought I knew so much more than I think I know now. I wanted everyone to think the way I did. I still do but now, at least, that's tempered with my understanding that everyone has different thoughts, tastes, skills, ideas about food, ideas about cars, ideas about exercise and ideas about life. I'll never change most people's minds and if I continue to try and have everyone think like me I'll end up alienating a lot of interesting people while missing out on a lot of good ideas.

I'd hate to miss out on such a rich mixture so I'm learning one very valuable phrase and I keep repeating it over and over again to myself: What if the other guy is right?

What do you really want from your cameras and lenses that you aren't already getting?

We're such social creatures. Even the brightest and most independent folks among us can fall into "follow the leader" mode when the stars and the rationales line up correctly. Here's a case in point: I have a friend who changes systems at least as often as I do. The big difference between us is that he's primarily a videographer who also does photographs while I am very much a photographer who happens to do some video.

While my friend owns a Sony FS 7 video camera for big, high production video projects he fell for the lure of the Panasonic GH5 system and ended up with a couple of cameras and a bushel basket full of lenses. After using them for the better part of a year, and having done a number of very successful assignments with them he decided that the files generated are too noisy for a camera that he likes to press into service for many different kinds of projects. He also is much less fond of lighting as much as I do and would love for his cameras to all be great low light shooting tools. This week he sold off all of his Panasonic gear at once and re-oriented himself back to the Sony A7xxx cameras he'd been hot and cold on before.

Seems he really likes the color of the Panasonics better but the noise rendition of the Sonys better. He's acutely disturbed by noise in video files so he's made his move back into a system that he hopes will solve his problems. With the proceeds from the sale of his Panasonic stuff he's gone into the process of cherry-picking new Sony lenses (which will work with his still cameras as well as with the FS camera) like the 70-200mm f2.8G, the 24-70mm f2.8G and several others. I wish him much happiness with his new choices; I really do.

But here's the maddening thing for me; I think my friend is an extremely creative artist and I feel drawn into his slipstream to also better sort out my camera systems. I did a quick inventory of my m4:3 gear and talked to my dealer about its trade-in value. He tossed out a number and I did what I normally do, I started putting together a list of my fantasy purchases to round out my Fuji camera system. I figured I could sell off the smaller format gear and plow the proceeds into the bigger, APS-C system. It's a kind of madness that I've done before with other systems it's just that this time I had my very own thought leader making the jump before me and, by extension, making it okay for me to consider the same kind of transitioning.

In the end I have little doubt that I'll go ahead with the whole transaction. Having one unified system has been a goal of mine for a while. The timing is good as the stuff I currently own will never go up in value while the lenses I'd like to add to my Fuji system are both on sale and will give me a $1,000 savings if I make the trade before the Fuji sale runs its course at the end of March.

If I stick with my plan I'll have an excellent collection of Fuji lenses that will give me the range of 8mm to 400mm or, in full frame speak, from the equivalent of 12mm to 600mm. Every lens I've bought for the Fuji system so far is really good and I haven't yet stumbled across a reason for regrets.

I'm trying hard to fall in love with wide angle lenses and I'm hoping I'll have some sort of epiphany or satori with the 8-16mm. Or maybe I'll just mellow out with the 14mm f2.8; I already know that lens is a keeper.

Usually, I'm more drawn to acquiring new camera bodies but in this regard I feel well situated with the three XH-1 bodies I've accumulated, along with the XT3 and EX3.

The allure of having a single menu to keep in my mind is strong. We'll see how it all pans out...