One small soft box from top left and one small soft box on the background. That's all we could do in the space.

For Samsung Project in NYC.

If you click on the image you can see it bigger and I think that makes this better...

OT: An amazing day on the stock market. Congratulations to those folks who bought Apple Computer stock last year. Or the year before. Or the year before. Or.....

I remember sitting in a meeting for vendors, at one of Apple's main competitors back in the 1990s, when the CEO was asked (in a Q&A session) about Apple as a competitor. The young and brash CEO chuckled and said that Apple was on the way out and if their management was rational they would give the cash and assets on hand back to the shareholders and turn out the lights. That was then....

Today the company run by that CEO has a current market cap of about $39 billion while Apple hit a record today with a market cap of $1.3 trillion. Apple, as a company is now worth nearly 40 times what  that particular competitor is worth today. And, with just cash on hand, Apple could buy that company outright. It's an interesting turn of events. Apparently, beautifully designed products really do matter to a very large swath of consumers. So much for specsmanship and racing to the bottom with pricing. 

So, in March of 2019 you could have bought say, 6,000 shares of Apple at $142 for around $852,000 and now, less than one year later, your investment would be worth $1,800,000, not even factoring in Apple's ongoing dividends to shareholders. That's a better return than one could expect from even a decent photography business!

Of course past results are no guarantee of future performance and what goes up usually comes back down. It's just an interesting time and I took note of it because one of my friends who used to be a photographer called me today to breathlessly talk about his good fortune. I wish we were all so clairvoyant? Strategic? ...... Lucky? 

I just wish Apple would make a camera other than the ones in iPhones. I'd probably buy one...

Off to a good start this year. I hit the pool this morning for the 8:15-9:30 a.m. workout and it was sublime.

WHAC Masters a.m. workout.

Coach Jimmy was on deck today and he wrote out a daunting set on the white board. 800 yards of warm-up, followed by a 300 yard pull set, then a 200 yard mixed I.M. and freestyle set, and then 20 X 75s on 1:10 followed by 20 x 25s on :30 followed by a couple hundred yards of shooters (try to make each 25 yard length completely underwater/no breaths. We knocked out about 3500 yards in an hour and 25 minutes and then surrendered the pool to Ian Crocker's (gold medal Olympian and past world record holder in the 100 butterfly) elite group of younger swimmers (high school). 

So of us were a bit worse for wear for having been out of the water since Sunday morning but nobody dropped out. No one drowned.

Before firing up the new computer I did some dry land exercises here in the studio: 25 crunches, 25 push-ups and some work with hand weights. Hey, if you're going to buy heavy cameras you'll probably want to get in some weight training, right?

Now I'm off to clean and organize for our first photo shoot of the year: tomorrow. 

A contingent from our Masters team started the year off New Year's morning with a plunge into the cool waters at Barton Springs. Not so dramatic yesterday with an air temperature of 56(f) but in years past it's been as cold as 24 and we still had some brave participants...

Swimming Pool in breeze.

No lofty resolutions here, just the same daily practice we've done nearly everyday since childhood. If you never stop you never have to go through the agony of starting up again. Hope you're moving and moving happy. KT

A Few Quick Observations about The New VSL Computer, the iMac Pro...

 Trying a softer look. Just for fun.

Belinda remarked to me yesterday, as I was grappling with the idea of spending money on a new computer, that I think nothing of buying camera bodies that are about the same price, sometimes in lots of two or more, and yet I've been nursing along an iMac 27 inch computer that first hit the market in late 2013. Sure, it has 16 gigabytes of memory and it's been solid and reliable but she was quick to point out that I'd save a lot more time and money by getting a new computer rather than impulse shopping for more cameras....

I brought the iMac Pro home last night and got to work migrating all the apps and files from the old machine to the new one. I knew the iMacPro would be much faster but what I did not expect was that the screen (a 5K Retina) would be so much better than the screen on the older machine.

The improved image almost immediately pushed me into looking at old files on the new system. I was amazed at how much more revealing the higher resolution is (and the wider gamut). I'm happy I've bought a few new cameras that create nearly 50 megapixel files because the new monitor allows me to see some artifacts in shadows I never saw before as well as some color casts that I thought I'd taken care of by calibrating the old screen every once in a while. It also brings home to me the advantages of working with bigger files. Now I can see more profound differences between cameras.

Just as getting new cameras and lenses seems to supercharge my interest in getting out and taking more photographs getting a much more capable desktop is pushing me to dive into post processing with greater diligence than I brought to the digital darkroom before.

Also, I tested the new system against the old in a task that I do nearly every week. That's to convert batches of corrected files from raw to jpeg in Lightroom. I selected a folder with 650 24 megapixel raw files and converted them to large, fine Jpegs on each system. As I anticipated, the task took the better part of a half hour on the older machine and about four minutes on the new one. That's enough improvement right there to make me sit up, take notice, and then pat myself on my own back for my smart purchase.

I've also bought a couple of external 1 terabyte SSD drives to use as scratch and "in process" disks. That makes everything go faster as well. I can hardly wait for our first job of the year to come through the door on Friday. I'll be spending Friday evening with a big smile on my face in fast, post processing paradise....

Kicking off the New Year with a few portraits. Just for fun.

All images ©Kirk Tuck. All rights reserved.

Yay! We Made it Through Another Year!!! Let's talk about new strategies and new branding.

Lou. One of my most consistent muses.

I return to the work I did with her time and time again 

to renew my excitement about portraits.

I've thought a lot about it and I have a confession to make; I hate producing video. I'm not particularly good at it and, to be even more frank, I hate the degree of collaboration that generally has to happen to make programs work the way clients want videos to work.

Over the course of my career I've shot a lot of corporate video, been part of teams making television commercials, and done a bunch of interviews. I've shot on 35mm film, 16mm film, Super8 film, Hi-8 video, BetaSP video and most recently with a gaggle of video-ready still cameras, and I have to say that it's generally more trouble for me than it is worth.

Don't get me wrong. I like the concepting and writing of video. I even like lighting and shooting video...but...I hate the process of collaborating on a "team vision" for a project and I just detest the whole editing process ---- mostly because these two things are not strengths of mine. While I am mostly an extrovert and love being around all kinds of people when it comes to creative projects I more or less like to execute them with an iron fist. And I'm not an organized enough thinker to be a good editor either.

So, my new strategy for the business is to ignore commercial video entirely. And to ignore the temptation to create a YouTube channel and become a blithering, blathering and pontificating expert about cameras, in vivid 4K (I can get in enough pontification right here on the blog...).  If clients call and want to do video I'll offer to help them find a producer. If they want me to be involved I'll happily concept with them and even write scripts but I'll be damned if I want to stand next to the camera and prompt one more CEO as he/she rattles on  about "executing on our unique vision to be top performers and to achieve excellence in the field of janitorial data management facilitation...." 

I'd rather take a camera out and make a small movie with a beautiful pair of actors making small talk about coffee and life, and do it all in black and white. Wrap it into a three or four minute edit and share it with my film friends. 

I hate most of the effects that clients seem to like. I dislike current fashions in editing. And I really dislike performing for "likes" like a porpoise leaping out of the water to get a small fish. So, I'll be taking mentions of video production off the kirktuck.com website and re-focusing my attention to the wonderful world of making portraits. If the right video project comes along then I'll consider it, but....

In transitioning to a new computer I spent a lot of time sorting through files in order not to migrate a lot of junk to the new hard drive. In the process I saw the overwhelming trend of my work, which has always been making portraits of all kinds. It's people, their expressions, their gestures, and the life one can see in their eyes (if I get everything right) that I love. 

"Over my shoulder I do hear times winged chariot drawing near..." (From: To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell). There's not enough time to be an expert in too many fields at once. I feel I've hit the Y (or Why) in the road where I needed to make a choice. It's easy. It's still photography of people. 

Will I ever touch the video button again? Yes! But it will be for fun and games and not driven mercilessly forward by the sting of impending poverty, under the lash of corporate silliness. (Loved the drama of writing that. So silly!!!). 

This shift is one of the reasons I retooled with the addition of the two higher resolution Panasonic Lumix S1R cameras. They offer a high enough resolution to work well when used in the square, 1:1 format, and the lenses I paired them with are the finest ones I could find in the entire market. If I can't achieve my vision with them then I am doomed to failure at any rate. 

I've been viciously reducing my equipment foot print left and right in the studio and hope to hold the line by bringing in only equipment that facilitates my focus on portraiture. I've never been a great multi-tasker and the fewer things I need to consider in the day-to-day running of my business the better off I'm sure I'll be. 

I have a couple of year's left before I retire from the commercial field and I want to make the most of it. Not the most money --- I don't really care about that anymore --- I just want to be the absolute best portrait photographer I can be. When I step away from doing it as a business nothing will really change except for the fact that, at that point in time, every subject in front of my cameras will be someone I want to photograph, not someone I've been contracted to photograph. 

This is certainly not a bold step or a surprising announcement but a distillation of both my own thinking and the advice of friends and loved ones whose opinions I value very much. 

As the whole world moves toward video I'll take a contrarian point of view and head in the other direction. Maybe I'll even try to write better.....

Happy New Year. KT

Happy New Year to Everyone!!! Thanks for reading and sharing this year. More next year.

It's certainly been an interesting year. I'm glad we all survived it. 

Here's my list of goals for 2020:

Give more to charities.

Give more time to charities.

Become a better portrait photographer.

Spend less time spending. 

Spend more time doing.

Always consider: "What if the other guys is right?"

Get some mileage on all the cool cameras I bought in the last last year. 

Celebrate each victory and milestone with appropriate gusto!

Learn what's most meaningful to me in life right now.

Help young people learn the ropes in the creative life. 

Print more beautiful photographs and hang them in more places.

Write more positive stuff here on the blog and worry less about pillorying the idiots that dot the landscape.

Read more novels. Read fewer "how to" books. Read even fewer websites.

Think more about "why" and "what" and a lot less about "how." 

Become a more empathetic portrait photographer.

Love my dog as much as she seems to love me. 

Eat something scary every once in a while. 

Go hear live music that I didn't know I'd like. 

See a Rosini opera in some great opera house somewhere in the world.

Figure out how to migrate the files on my old Mac to my new Mac in less that a week.....

Keep cash in my pocket since the homeless don't accept credit cards.

Learn to tolerate the opinions of others instead of vilifying them and rejecting them.

Speak up when I know what's right. 

Try not to ever have to shoot at 12500 ISO. 

Mat whatever I decide to frame. 

Never tell a young person: This is how we used to do it!

Photograph more ideas and fewer proofs of concept, or proofs of mastery.

Spend more time with Belinda and less time with Tony Northrup, Jared Polin, Ken Rockwell, and that whole crew of lightweights over at DP Review. 

Forget that there are camera specs and remember that you only really need to know six menu settings in order to do fine work.

Remind myself often that the more we pack into our camera bags the fewer good images we'll come back home with.

Finally, it's more important to be a good person than it is to be a good photographer. I think Eugene Richards taught me that this year.

I hope I get to meet more and more VSL readers in person this year. 

Happy New Year! Don't wait, get busy and have more fun. Warmest regards, Kirk