Just a few odds and ends as we wait for either the end of the world or the re-opening of global commerce. Caution: Caustic Content Ahead.

I have a two part plea to make today. First, I would like for the city of Austin to try every possible workaround to prevent ever closing the Hike and Bike trail again. Fit people need a safety valve and with all the pools, gyms, basketball courts and such closed tighter than a clam's ass the hike and bike trail, for purposeful walking and running, is the last resort. I'll be happy to wear a face mask, practice good social distancing, even pay a fee, but for God's sake we can't expect people to sit in abject fear, staring into their TVs and monitors, watching Trump evolve fully into Emperor Palpatine before our very eyes (not being political here; you'll understand if you saw Monday's horrifying press briefing/campaign rally/psychotic ramble...) without a meager carrot of hope dangling in front of us. Which would be time on the trails.

The second part of that plea is to the runners and walkers. Please, please, please follow all the rules so we can keep this resource alive. Run far apart from each other. Practice good situational awareness at all times. Stop spitting when you run!!! And for the love of all that's rational and pure, please treat the f*cking trail like a two way street instead of spreading all the way across, or running straight  down the middle. 

We have to do our part or the authorities will start to channel the current federal government and try taking away all of our most basic rights. The most basic is the Hike and Bike Trail and our freedom to run.  

And here's a personal request to all the type "A" business guy assholes using the trail for the first time: Hang up your stupid cell phone and stop making loud, obnoxious, arrogant 'business' phone calls in a very, very loud, braying voice as you trudge up and down the trail. I don't think the female runners are impressed. At all. And I know I'm not.  Not having a phone in your face might help with your situational awareness and increase public safety. I don't want to hear about how your company is planning to game the system and take money intended for poor waiters, retail employees and health care workers out of the current stimulus bill. I don't care if you need it for the down payment on your next Escalade. I just want you to walk forward in a straight line instead of weaving all over the place as you bluster...

Okay. We're through with that rant. 

I'm ramping up my marketing, it's something we do when we perceive that we're about 60 days away from a new seller's market. Come hell or high water the politicians are going to open up the economy on May 15 --- June 1st at the latest, no matter how many additional deaths that might cause. Something about shareholder value and using those new tax incentives... But whatever the reason it might be an opportunity to make some cash before the system crashes again with the next sloppy outbreak of contagion. (see today's news from China and Singapore).

Part of the new marketing is finding ways to make virus preparedness and virus workarounds into stories that allay client fears about doing video and photography work. We'll talk a lot about sanitizing things, using longer lenses to distance ourselves, we'll wear protective gear instead of those stupid photo/fishing vests and we'll have belts with a holster on either side to hold our spray bottles of hand sanitizer. 

When it comes to actual production we'll turn our own fear of driving to jobs with assistants or crew crammed next to us in cars to pitch the benefits (both health/safety and economic) of having a solo person instead of a swollen team to interact with on location. What could possibly go wrong?

I wanted to write something here about travel and vacations but that would be too mean and may be impossible for a good long times as all the places I want to go are being too careful to welcome me from my home country. 

Instead I'll write about how I was thinking it would be cool to shoot more video in a style similar to what we do with street photography and less as though we were trying to shoot big production movies. To that end I've been thinking about getting a smaller and less complicated video camera that could be used more nimbly than the typical interchangeable lens, hybrid solution. Full frame, 4K cameras are great for measured and carefully planned shoots but I started thinking how great it would be to have a camcorder or palm sized video solution. Something with built in neutral density and a long zoom range. Fast focusing and more depth of field...

Thinking about this for nearly a day seemed to work and I pulled out a Panasonic FZ2500 that somehow magically re-appeared. I'd forgotten what a great, little camcorder substitute this thing is. More to follow on that later.  Extra batteries charging (uses the same battery as the Sigma fp and the Panasonic GX8. Happy days.)

In lighter and happier news we had a great anniversary. We ate scrumptious Chinese food and drank Moet Chandon Imperial Champagne. Belinda made a delicious chocolate cake with walnuts (my fave) sprinkled all the over the top, in the icing/frosting. We watched a fun movie on Netflix and generally said nice things to each other. We promised to hold it all together for at least one more year.

Novoflex Leica R to L-mount adapter coming from a place called CameraWest on Friday. Can't wait to be able to use the 90mm Elmarit lens on one of the big S1R bodies. Should be fun. 

Finally, I was reading Thom Hogan's blog today and he was writing about the market for cameras in the USA being down by 60% this March versus same time last year. I never thought about it until he mentioned it but both Canon and Nikon must be taking the global economic shut down especially hard. With no sports being played, or broadcast, or covered for ESPN, etc. and the postponement of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, those two camera makers must be getting endless cancellations of all orders of Nikon D6s and Canon 1DXmkxxxxx cameras. Why bother buying them if no one, NO ONE is paying you to use them? And as I was writing this it dawned on me that this would also adversely affect lenses sales...I foresee endless rebates on a forest of white and gray lenses. But even with rebates will mortals take the bait? And where will the extra cash come from?

And if no one is in the market for these cool cameras then is DP Review still going to write 20 or 30 different reviews for each one? And why? Amazon won't be selling anymore as a result. Oh, the trickle down is merciless...

Finally, as the ad revenue at the big site dries up have you noticed that new camera reviews have been largely replaced with soppy articles and videos about which camera the writers started out with as photo-children and how to shoot film with that old Konica you found in your parent's attic. Sexy writing for sure. Can't wait to read all over again about the Pentax K1000... Or the Nikon FM. Or to read the younger writers as they wax poetic over their bromance with their first Nikon D70. Canon Digital Rebel or Sony Photo Magic camera. If the market for cameras doesn't recover will we soon be reading quasi nostalgic articles about how to develop your first roll of film. I want to see some video of Barney trying to load a roll of 35mm onto a developing reel. That should be sweet. We'll tell them afterwards about how you have to turn out the lights first. 

Go and buy a camera from your local camera store. Maybe they'll appreciate the gesture. Me? I'm still waiting for the next price drop on used Leica SLs. Do they read this on the west coast???

OT: Sometimes the old "gear" is the best... Celebrating a big milestone today.

You probably have one old camera that you'd never, ever get rid of. It probably represents consistent performance, trusted reliability and no doubt has given you the best results for years, and even decades, of time together. Sure, new models come and go but fancy stuff is often without much substance and obscures the real measure of value in cameras. I'll nearly always trade "new and improved" for "trusted and satisfying." 

By the way, we're celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary today. I can't say all 35 years were perfect. I can still remember the two arguments that we've had in all those years. Both, of course, were my fault... 

Any success I've had in my careers was made possible only with the wise guidance and unrelenting support of my best friend. And all the joy we've shared was only possible because... we've shared it. I hope you are as lucky.

my secret to success in life: Always marry someone who is smarter/wiser than you are.

With the pandemic it will certainly be a different celebration this year. No opportunity to go out and buy B. a diamond tiara. Likewise, I'm not expecting to see a Porsche with a bow on it in the drive way. We won't be going out to our favorite, fancy restaurant to celebrate either. Seems like it's one of those celebrations that will veer more toward drinking some Champagne on the couch and watching "Casablanca" for the XXth time. That's fine by me. That works just as well. 

Where am I sheltering in place? A few pix.

This little building sits just in front of our house and is

my studio, office, photo cave and storage area.

When we bought the house some 23 years ago this structure was a two car carport,

the only distinguishing feature of which was a high ceiling.

We got right to work making it into a photo production facility. 

We've literally done millions of dollars of photography and video 

production with this small space as H.Q. 

I thought it would be interesting to see where people are when they have to shelter in place. Since I can't hop on a plane and go around visiting each person's home turf I thought I'd put mine up and show you where I spend about 22 hours a day. At least from a business point of view. I'll photograph the house interior when I clean up all the stacks of books, etc. 

We are fortunate to live and work on the same plot of land. It's in the rolling hills just south of the Colorado River and a few miles west of downtown Austin. We're close to everything but we have the joy of living in a quiet and established neighborhood filled with trees and broad, quiet streets. 

The studio door sits about 16 feet from the front door to the house. 

Makes it easy to work on files up to the last possible moment before dinner...

It's always a mess because I'm always trying out a new piece of gear, 

shooting something to illustrate a blog post, or actually doing 

business for my clients. 

This is the reverse angle from the image above.

There's about 600 square feet (and it is square...) in the main room 

and then a closet with solid core doors that runs along the south side of the room (on the right) for gear and archive storage. 

The ceiling is 14 feet at the peak.

This is a wide angle view of one part of the backyard. 

It's where I used to sit on our bench at sunset with Studio Dog.

We'd smell the air together and eat treats. On the other side of the 

trees are more trees, and then more trees and, about 150 feet away....a neighbor.

A different angle of the same back yard with part of the house in the background.

Here is the overly landscaped stone walkway leading up to the front of the house.

Go right for the house door and go left for the studio door. 

Love the Japanese Maple in the center...

This is the south side yard. 

With a 150+ foot long fence built to keep Tulip and (when younger) Ben safe from skunks, 

marauding deers and the few raccoons who were 

too lazy to climb over or under. 

The screened in back porch and my favorite bench for eating yogurt with fresh blackberries

 and watching storms blow infrom the west. Quiet and peaceful. 

By mutual agreement this was Tulip's side of the yard.

She could roam anywhere but she liked this side because she could roll in the sun, lay in the grass and still keep an eye on us in the kitchen and dining room through glass double French doors. 

And we could keep an eye on her...

Early this morning, just before full sunrise, there was a nice little herd of deer out in our front yard. I suspect they were there to admire my fabulous Subaru Forester but Belinda assures me they were there to nibble on the landscape. A rock wall separates our front yard from the street so the deer feel a bit protected, I guess. 

I could tell by some of the divets in the front yard that an armadillo had been by in the night, digging for grubs, and as we set off for our first walk of the day a fox ran out of the foliage in the side yard and careened so gracefully into the neighbor's yard, and disappeared. 

Having your office at home is pretty wonderful. I'd been paying $1800 a month for warehouse studio space in downtown Austin back in 1996. We also owned and lived in a condo in Tarrytown which was not cheap. When we had Ben we wanted to move into the best school district in the state and when we found this place we had been looking for nearly two years for the right property. Being able to fold both uses into one location meant cutting our outlay for real estate by nearly half.

Now that the house is paid for it's like getting office and studio space for free. The location is super; it's about a mile to the swimming pool (I hope it will open again someday...) and we are less than a mile away from all three schools Ben attended. Being in the middle of a beautiful neighborhood I'm able to work on stuff in the studio; maybe a portrait or product shot, or some post production, then put on a pair of running shoes and head out the front door to run, with giant trees providing shade nearly every step of the way. 

Our street is a long dead end so there's no cut through traffic. We only see neighbors, people working on new houses and remodels, and delivery services. No manic speeders or lost souls...

When I finish a run I can head right into the house for a shower and a cold drink of water and then head right back out to work. 

The studio is big enough for most still life projects and all kinds of individual portraits. If we need more space for a bigger production we can move the furniture out of the living room in the house and then we have a 24 by 48 foot shooting space with 18 foot ceilings. When we're not using it for a shoot it's a comfortable place to sit around and watch movies. Or, before the crisis, to entertain friends...

This where we're hunkered down for the current crisis. I find it quite adequate. Comfortable.

A production photo from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" at Zach Theatre, in Austin,Texas. Taken with.....a camera.

I miss all those great actors and all the great crew that put together such wonderful productions at Zach Theatre. This is a moment before the doors opened to let in the audience for, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." I hope we're all back in our seats again soon, watching magic unfold right in front of our eyes...

Anne with a Rollei 6008i. After coffee at Jo's on S. Congress Ave.

Yeah. We always brought our cameras to coffee. We still do. At least I still do. Loved the Rollei. Hated the batteries... Loved the lenses.

A portrait of Neely over at the old studio on San Marcos St.

Neely. Circa 1995.

It's Sunday and I'm about to start printing. Who would have guessed?

I've got a backlog of printing to do but none of it has anything to do with commercial photography. Nope. I wanted to make some prints of my late dog, Tulip, so I've been going through thousands and thousands of family image files looking for photographs ranging from puppyhood to sparky oldster. I have lots and lots of digital files but never got around to actually making prints. That's something I thought I'd do if I retired and had some downtime...

I'm not retiring yet but there's nothing I can do, photographically, for the business right now and, from a marketing point of view I'm trying to keep my advertising budget "powder" dry until I can see the path to recovery appear. Why advertise when no one is even thinking of buying?

But what this enforced stoppage of business has delivered is plenty of time to get my family files in good shape, take a few laps around PhotoShop and Luminar 4.1, and get some printing done. And, in the process of memorializing Studio Dog, I've also found little treasure caches of Ben and Belinda images that have never been printed or even post processed well. When you are a busy-busy everything not tied to a job gets pushed forward to a vague time in the future; which generally means --- never.

I bought extra ink yesterday for my Canon Pro-100 printer. A printer that's about ten years old and still functioning well enough to kick out decent prints. I know there are much better printers on the market but printing has been such a low priority for me over the last ten years that I haven't even looked around to see what's available. If I find emotional success from my current printing jag and I find a project that just screams out for prints then I'll start researching in earnest. As a percentage of the overall budget printers are pretty cost effective; especially if you consider a 10 year + replacement cycle...

I've decided to use Canon's Photo Paper Pro Lustre for the moment. I'm sure there are wonderful art papers from a number of companies that I don't even know about but this is functional and the printer profiles for it are embedded in the system. My first tests look just fine. As with cameras I'm coming to suspect that the qualities of individual printers are very much secondary to having something interesting to print.

I'm happy to report that Precision Camera in Austin, Texas is still quasi-open for business. No one is allowed into the store so you have to go online to look for specific items and see if they are in their inventory. Once you've found what you need you have the option of ordering online or, if you are local and want to get your hands on your purchase today, calling them up on the phone and transacting that way. It used to be convenient and quick to order some things on Amazon but now that all shipping priorities go to delivering groceries and essential products I'm finding the stated delivery time for photographic items is stretching out to infinity. (I ordered a  Leica R to L-mount lens adapter about a week ago and the stated delivery date --- and only shipping option available --- was April 28th. And that's a product that's fulfilled by Amazon...). If I want to wait I guess I can stick with Amazon but if I want to use something right now I'm thrilled to still have a local merchant.

Anyway, I ordered a box of 50 sheets of 13 by 19 inch paper as well as a box of 8.5 by 11 inch paper (on which to run tests) and a complete set of inks plus some extra black ink. I gave them my credit card information and requested that I do a curbside pick-up. Half an hour later I was sitting in front of the store calling on my phone. My sales person came out with a bag filled with the products. He was wearing a mask and gloves. He put my purchases on a table just outside the door and when he re-entered the store I got out of the car, sprayed the package with alcohol and took it back to the car.

When I got home I wiped down the packages inside the bag. Now I'm ready to print...

Exercise notes: We're very fortunate to live in a long established, west Austin neighborhood complete with wide suburban streets, loads challenging hills and lots of towering trees. Since there are no "cut through" streets we have absolutely no traffic through the neighborhood other than local people going to the grocery stores. We've also been here for nearly 23 years and know most of our neighbors quite well.

Every morning Belinda and I pick from three or four routes which are mostly about 2.5 to 3.0 miles total and include at least one vicious and unkindly steep hill, and several long, leisurely inclines. When I saw "leisurely incline" I mean a half mile of ten to fifteen percent grades. You will be huffing and puffing a bit to get to the crest, if you are walking briskly enough. We walk now measured by time instead of just distance and we generally allocate an hour to our morning walks.

Afterwards Belinda practices yoga and is now watching and following along on one of the many yoga programs offered free on Amazon Prime Video. They range in difficulty from workouts aimed at leisurely stretching to tougher, "sweaty" yoga aerobics. During yoga time I tend to do my regular "dryland" exercises and stretches. Some crunches, some push-ups, as much planking as it takes to get through five or six classic rock songs on my phone. Then it's time for breakfast and chores.

At some point in the afternoons I had been going to the hike-and-bike trail that runs along the river which flows through central downtown to get in either a 4 or 5 mile run but that's on hold now. They closed all parks thru the holiday weekend and there's a rumor that the parks might stay closed for the rest of the "stay at home" order. Which might cause an insurrection. One in which I am almost certain to participate.... At some point there has to be a calculus as to whether or not life is worth living if confined solely to the most boring and mundane existence. I get the concept of flattening the curve but really, running the trails? Absurd.

Sometimes, when we feel we've seen everything good on Amazon Prime and Netflix we just do another long, slower walk through the neighborhood after dinner.

A note on buying and selling gear right now: I've bought a few small camera oriented things during this time of isolation but nothing big or earth-shattering. I bought a nice, used Panasonic GX8 for $350 and a Leica R 90mm Elmarit for $300. That's pretty much it. But I keep watching the market and reading blogs in which people write about selling off gear. I can't help but make a connection to the stock market and wondering why these sellers waited until everyone was afraid to spend money to sell, or more precisely, offer... their gear for sale. It's a classic "buy high/sell low" proposition right now. I guess it makes sense for people who might be feeling like they need the cash in the moment but it might make better economic sense to wait until the smoke clears and the all clear sirens sound before divesting of the good stuff.

I've been waiting to buy a Leica SL, which I may or may not do, depending on whether the metaphoric P/E ratio for those used cameras falls into a range that I find attractive. At some point every used Leica SL in inventory could be converted to a rent payment by a merchant. That's the calculus that makes sense for buyers. But for sellers? If you have the ability you might want to hold tight. Besides, by removing attractive venues in which buyers can actually use the lens or camera the situation at hand effectively removes most of the motivation for buying in the first place. Right?

So I am continually amazed when someone announces that they are putting (very good) lens X on the market right now. Put it back on the shelf and try selling it when the country is open for business.

On Writing: Several people have expressed surprise that I am able to write so often and so much (which also sounds a bit like a critique....but I pay myself by the letter...NOT), and on a daily or near daily basis. They conjecture that I either spend hours and hours a day on a post or that I am speaking as fast as I can into a speech dictation program (which also edits and spell checks on the fly).

Neither of these things is correct. I spend no more than 45 minutes to an hour on any one post. I used to write more when I was doing camera reviews but we don't do that so much now. So, from the time I grabbed my red cup of coffee and started typing; to this point today, the total time elapsed is 48 minutes.

People who write more slowly usually make the mistake of endlessly revising. That might be great for the creation of a novel but it's overkill for a daily blog. The other impediment is over-research syndrome. A blog isn't meant to be the authoritative text about a subject but more of an overview. I know some people who over-research for days and still only end up with a paragraph or two. And generally too many facts get in the way of reading. Get your big facts straight and stay out of the woods with the minutia.

Writing quickly comes solely from practice. Daily practice. I've written some 4,460 blog posts in the past ten years, actually hundreds more if you count the ones I hated and took down or decided were too inflammatory...  I've also moderated nearly 70,000 comments; mostly positive and happy, but some accompanied by seething and senseless rage fomented because someone might like a different camera brand better....

But like running, swimming and photographing, writing is a discipline in which the practitioner gets faster and (hopefully) better the more they do it, and the more often they practice it. It helps to read other blogs in the subject field to see what resonates in their work and what doesn't work at all. Keeps me from re-inventing another "Pontiac Aztec."

Now, off the printing races. Praying for no ink clogs....