I don't show as many portraits of men. I'll try harder. This is from the very early years. Back when I was in my "Richard Avedon-white background" phase.

 Back in 1978, when I was just getting started in photography, I lived and did portraits in an ancient building on East Seventh St. in Austin, Texas that used to be "The California Hotel." It was a flop house back in the 1960s and was shut down sometime near the end of that decade after there was a double homicide on the second floor. Peter, who was a museum curator, and Lou, who was an impresario/entrepreneur/eccentric, found the shuttered building and got a long lease. With a lot of work they made it into a downtown live/work commune for artists and musicians. 

Some tenants had real jobs. My neighbor across the hall was an art director for Texas Monthly Magazine. Peter was a curator at a wonderful art museum. Mr. Sexton was a musician. Those people rented their spaces as studio; they had houses or apartments to go home to.  I made photographs during the day and worked at a short order/fry cook in the late night hours and on weekends. The hotel was my base camp.

My space had amazingly high ceilings but it was just one big room. The two things it lacked were a telephone and air conditioning or heating. But man, it was cheap. We had a shared phone down the hall.  We had a commercial kitchen downstairs, and also a huge gallery space. I had my first show of sixty 16x20 inch black and white prints there. All portraits. That show effectively launched my journey as a picture maker/taker. 

We were all mostly artists/hippies back then. I rode a moped to work. It had a sturdy milk crate bungee'd to the back rack and I used to haul my camera gear around on it. We all wore sandals. We bathed in an outdoor shower in the courtyard. It felt like we were living in a movie and it was one of those fun, "Coming of Age" light-hearted comedies; for the most part. 

Any way, back then I would ask anyone I thought was at least somewhat interesting to come by and have their portrait made. They'd let me shoot exactly the way I wanted to and in exchange I'd make them a nice, fiber based print.

While trying to get my fledgling career off the ground I was working as a cook, in odd shifts, at a mid-city diner called, Kerbey Lane Café. If you guessed that the owners named it that because it was on Kerbey Lane you'd be right. It was one of Austin's first all night, comfort food + beer and wine, restaurants in what was then a sleepy, little college town. Gingerbread pancakes or migas anyone?

The guy with the cat, above, was Craig. He was one of the owners of Kerbey Lane Café and a really great guy. He'd hop into the kitchen and help us cook during rushes. He taught me how to flip over easy eggs in a pan without the use of a spatula. I asked him to come by the studio for a portrait and he brought his cat. 

I was pretty much broke at the time but I'd managed to buy my first "real" camera. It was an ancient, highly used, Mamiya C220; a twin lens camera with interchangeable lenses. I had two lenses for the camera. One was a 135mm which I used all the time for portraits. The other was the stock 80mm which I used for group shots. My "arsenal" of lights back then consisted of a Vivitar 283 which was a powerful but barebones shoe mount, electronic flash. If I could afford double "A" batteries then we had light. When the batteries died the shoot was over. No lithiums or NiMh rechargeable batteries back then. We did have NiCads but they were so much crap. 

What I did have access to though was the Ark Cooperative Darkroom. That's where I made most of my prints. I got pretty good at souping film in D76 as well. I always hated the drudgery of making contact sheets.

It was very much a hand-to-mouth existence back then but I wouldn't have traded it for the world. And we thought it was grand. Yuppies had not been invented yet and eccentricities were seen as a major plus. How else would I have gotten my start?

I guess it was an Austin thing...

Vegetable seller in Venice. Empty streets. Cloudy skies.

 My iPhone XR is an unusual copy stand camera. One side or the other of the image I'm shooting is always "toned" or darker in the corners. It's because I'm lazy about stuff like this and not willing to do much more than lay a print down and shoot with the light coming through my windows. 

I see images on the blog as illustrations of something also written down, like notes, not as "Art" in a standalone gallery. 

This image was taken 30 or so years ago and what I wanted to draw attention to is the wonderful texturing of the vegetables. The image started life as a black and white snapshot, on Tri-X, in an old Leica CL with the little 40mm Summicron on it. I printed it on a matte surface paper (probably Kodak's Ektalure G) in my studio's darkroom; back when I had the studio on San Marcos St. in east Austin. 

I liked photography life better when shots could be taken that were casual and informative but didn't suffer under the expectations of perfection. Just notes between friends, not a hoary manifesto used to beat each other over the head. Sometimes I didn't even care if a photo was totally in focus as long as the content evoked memories for me that I enjoyed. 

I know it's strange now to contemplate Venice, Italy (sans Covid) without pressing crowds, noise, litter and high prices but back when I first visited the city it was so inexpensive that we opted to stay for ten days and roam around. We were traveling in late October and the weather was cool, the skies gray. Our president at the time had just bombed Libya which scared USA tourists from traveling outside the borders at all. Which, of course, meant for us lower hotel rates, easier access to good restaurants and streets no more crowded than the ones at home. 

What a wonderful time to travel.

No Cheat Street Photography. Tell me again why it's crucial to have dual pixel, phase detection, auto focus in order to get close candid images of people...

I get that PD-AF means a surer chance at getting stuff in focus. Just as evaluative metering and a plethora of automatic exposure modes ensures (maybe) better exposed images. But I find people tend to use their lack of access to the absolutely latest tools as a dodge to explain away their fumbled photographic results. 

I thought about this today as I opened up a few boxes of prints done years ago and rifled through them. All of the images here were taken with a medium format camera. The cameras I used (mostly a Hasselblad 500 C/M) were absolutely manual in every regard. Lenses were focused by turning a big ring. By hand!

Exposures were set by adjusting both the shutter speeds and apertures individually. And by hand. And the logic behind getting the right exposure setting came either from experience or referencing a handheld meter. Which was/is also totally manual. But somehow I was able to walk into strangers' worlds and make photographs that I found interesting. And most of them printed up well. 

I conjecture that we've made photography so easy that we don't take it very seriously even when we say we do. The manual methods required a modicum of thought, planning and an allocation of resources; you could only comfortably bring along a limited amount of film. No pray and spray with a 12 exposure roll....

I guess we'll relegate all this to the idea that it was another time and everything has changed. But after looking through a fat box with hundreds of prints I feel compelled to set my cameras to manual exposure, turn off the AF and take a bit more time before maniacally pushing the shutter button over and over again. 

Who knows, I might actually get good enough to compete with myself from 25 years ago... (ellipses mandated by subject matter!). 

 

Remembering early inkjet printers. Another trip in the time machine.

Ben was a well documented kid. We have lots and lots of images to choose from. Literally yards and yards of albums and file drawers full of negatives. Opening up a flat file is like opening up a treasure chest. 

When inkjet printers first hit the market in full force we were still doing a lot of printing. And by "we" I mean the collective we. I think photographers huddled together and spoke about printer technology in the mid-1990s far more often and intensely than they did about cameras or lenses. 

Like many photo nerds I had several printers including one Epson 1280 that I had converted to using only gray and black inks. For every print I got that I liked I got five or ten that were horribly flawed. When I moved to the Epson 4000 the prints looked better but clogging arrived with a vengeance. 

I don't print much anymore because there's really no place to show and nobody asking for them. I keep a big printer near the desk and bang off the random print for myself but really, the printer mostly gets used for very mundane things like printing out invoices. But even there it's a rare event as nearly every client is happier to get PDFs. 

I loved the photo of Ben above and made prints on various paper stocks. The one I like best came from a dye sub printer. Probably a Fuji. I found a copy today and put it on my "new" copy stand/communications device and fired off a frame. 

Funny to stumble across images from 20+ years ago and to remember how simple things were back then: family, work, love, sleep and food. Nothing else to really worry about. How charming!

Portrait of a painter. Circa 1979. In the painting studios at the Fine Arts College. University of Texas at Austin.

I came across a box of prints today and it was like firing up a time machine. I find that I have deluded myself all these years with the mistaken belief that better and better cameras and lenses were somehow vital to realizing a vision of some sort. How woefully misguided I have been. 

This image was shot with an ancient SLR camera; the Canon TX. It was a totally manual camera in every regard. The film is, no doubt, Kodak's Tri-X. I'm sure because I was so underfunded in those days that I could only afford film that I bought in bulk rolls and spooled into 35mm cartridges myself. 

The lens was a well used 85mm f1.8 Canon FD. I bought it from a photographer friend who needed to sell it in order to pay his tuition.

I made the original print in the Ark Co-op Darkroom on some sort of wonderful double weight paper and here we are 40+ years later and the processing is still holding up well; no yellowing beyond the original tone of the paper.

The camera doesn't matter nearly as much as being completely infatuated with the subject. Which continues to this minute. 

If you can't make good images it's probably not about the quality of your gear but perhaps you are just aiming the equipment at the wrong subject.

Looking through boxes of old prints is a nice way to spend a cold, short, rainy day. Ah, we were so young and thin in those days. 

How many here use Halide Mark II with your phones? I installed today and I'm heading out to play with it. FirstLight versus Halide. Should be interesting.

Just a traditional camera and lens. Sunset.
 

Many are asking why Sigma would bring to market a 65mm lens. Why would they not?

shot from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge with a GH5 and the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4.

If you've looked through the images I generally post here and on Instagram you'll know that my taste skews, emphatically, toward focal lengths that have an angle of view of a 50mm lens on a full frame (24x36mm) camera, or longer. With the exception of images from crazy masters/artists like William Klein I have little to no patience for photographs shot with wider angle lenses that are generally jammed packed with tiny details. Photos that drag your eyes all over the place, desperately trying to decipher what the hell the photographer had in mind when he shot the image. Is there a main subject I should be looking for? Well, where is it? It's almost as if wide angle fans were indoctrinated by whoever created "Where's Waldo?" and have been trying to mystify their audiences ever since. 

I've been cruising around the web today, while trying to take it easy, and I'm a bit distressed at all the blogs and vlogs that are, themselves, mystified that Sigma would have the audacity to introduce a 65mm lens. The implication being that we are in dire need of yet another 35mm or 28 mm instead? Geez, why not end your wide angle suffering (or increase your visual torture of others) by just getting a 12mm lens and cropping from time to time. With something that wide you could give up taking responsibility for rational composition altogether and just pick and chose your frame well after the fact. You could change your mind and re-crop every time you look at whatever collage of subject matters you've thrown together in a photograph. Who would care?

Real photographers are able to make up their minds at the time of exposure as to what needs to be included and what's best left out. They know that images are so much more enjoyable when there's a subject to the work instead of a collection of endless datum. In fact, it's almost a responsibility.

Most of the people talking down Sigma's new 65mm f2.0 lens are busy mentioning how, for them, the universe revolves around the 35mm lens; a focal length I regard with no small amount of disdain. If the world really needed one more iteration of the 35mm lens you wouldn't know it from looking through the nearly endless selection of 35mm lenses at B&H, Amazon and Adorama. The photo world is clogged up with that ubiquitous and boring focal range. That, and the 28mm are among the most over-rated focal length choices in the world. Sure, I get that you might be working in a small space and can't back up. I get that use. But if you are out in the wide world and that's the one you're still choosing to use ---- well, I just don't get it. 

With the announcement of the 65mm from Sigma there are now, I think, just two products in that focal length for full frame cameras. Sure, you can buy a zoom lens and pick the exact focal length you want but that's an argument you could use about any focal length between 24 and 200 these days. What you are really getting, with the 65mm, is a 50mm lens with just a bit more discretion and selective integrity. It's a focal length that says, "Let's look at the main course." instead of a focal length that says, "f8 and be there. Hail Mary! Hold it up high and we'll get the whole park in the frame!!!" 

And according to reviewers Sigma has made a single focal length lens product that should outperform even the best zoom lenses at that particular focal length while adding some speed to the mix.

As I understand it (with no confirmation or exact data) Sigma is following Apple's lead. You know about the Apple phones, right? The most popular enthusiasts' camera in the world. Their big flagship model has a new "telephoto" choice among the three lenses it offers. The "long" one is a 65mm equivalent. I predict that it's just a matter of time, now that phone users can easily compare between Wider, wide and best that the entire market will train themselves to understand better and to appreciate the longer focal length. I'm sure Sigma wanted to be first in line, behind Apple, with a product for the more advanced and motivated iPhone users who will also buy and use dedicated still and video cameras. And who will want to emulate the choices offered by their phones.

Certainly I am writing this partially tongue-in-cheek (or what's left of it...) but the gist of my thinking is this: most people put a 28mm or 35mm lens on their camera and go out looking for pix with the mindset that they have equipped themselves with a Swiss Army Knife of optical options. They convince themselves that they'll not only be able to work in tighter spaces, or show more background, but that they will also be able to shoot images with their super high resolution cameras and then march back into their digital offices and crop the resulting photographs into a wonderfully compelling, and much more aggressively framed composition. One in which a prominent or "main" subject will stand out from the incessant clutter. But the sad reality is that so few take the time and energy to follow through on the crop. Perhaps the marketing by Leica of the Q2 is to blame. 

Leica makes a reasonable (but highly flawed) case for post-shot cropping made possible and available because of the quality of their fixed 28mm lens and the very high resolution their 47.5 megapixel sensor. But have I seen any samples in which the images have actually been cropped? Not so much. It's one step too far for most people. What would HCB think of all this gratuitous cropping?

I like 50mm lenses but I like longer lenses even better. The 65 is a nice spot between too much and too little in a frame. It's a focal length that allows one to back up a bit and make a nice headshot without too much distortion. It's long enough to come close to a subject and make it stand out. And at f2.0 and the close focusing distances it seems perfect for tight still life shots and images of food. 

For years Leica has produced a 60mm macro lens. So has Nikon. Sigma produced a very popular 70mm macro as well. Nearly every camera maker has a 24-70mm lens and no one ever questions those makers about their choice of longer focal length lenses. With the macros most careful workers understand why that focal length is a great overall compromise for so many types of photography. 

The zooms are teaching tools. People buy them to have a "full range" of options. Newbies fire away at 24mms until the people they want to photograph, horrified by their distorted faces and awkwardly enlarged bodies run screaming from the room upon the hapless photographer's approach. Eventually, hopefully, the photographer learns to experiment first with the moderation of 35-50mm until, at some point in their visual education they come to the realization that the real magic generally happens once you go longer than 50mm. 

Since everyone already makes a 35mm and a 28mm (and dozens of variants as well) and they are available in flavors from f1.2 to f2.8 there is no reason for Sigma not to offer a rarer and more desirable option for a focal length. They need only put it on the market and wait for people to come around. Nice to see some initiative in the midst of a cruel and shrinking market. 

Yes, I pre-ordered a Sigma 65mm for the L-mount system from my friends at the local camera store today. 

You can argue for the lesser focal lengths or just ignore all this...it might be the extra strength Tylenol talking.