I went to the Pecan Street Festival today. I took a camera and two lenses. I shot three hundred+ photos. I post processed them right afterwards. I put up a huge gallery right here. I think I've figured out "Street Photography."

 

Fellow photographer roaming the festival with a Nikon Z9 over one shoulder and a Nikon film camera over the other. Fist bumping happened. Sweet guy. 

The Pecan Street Festival is pretty lame but it still draws a crowd. Lots and lots of vendor booths selling everything from jewelry to grape free "flower wines" to timeshare vacation packages. And lots of art. And food that isn't very good for you. And beer. And more beer. 

I drove down and parked a mile away from the five or six blocks that have been closed off for the event (continues on Sunday). I needed the walk. Nice to get out of the office, out of the pool and to wander carefree with a small package of gear. 

I took a Leica SL camera. I guess I have to admit that the older SLs are my absolute favorites at this point. I pick them up first and put them down last. I was going to go with just the 58mm Voigtlander lens but at the last moment I put the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon ZM in a very small sling bag. The slim sling bag I bought as a hedge against rain on my visit to the Blanton Museum of Art on Thursday. The sling bag held the extra lens, two additional batteries for the SL (not needed), my phone and a lens cleaning cloth (also not needed). 

I split my hour or so of shooting between the two lenses. I started with the 58mm and transitioned to the wide angle about half way through. Just wandering through the crowds stopping to snap a frame whenever the spirit moved me. When I felt hungry and thirsty I looked around at the culinary offerings and determined that I'd be much better off raiding the pantry at home. When I left the house there was a new triple creme brie, a demi baguette fresh from the bakery and a nice bottle of Bordeaux Superior lingering on the butcher block table in the kitchen. I thought some variation/combination of those ingredients might refresh me. 

But first I sat down at the computer, edited down the take to about 70 images, went through to crop and tweak them and then edited down the stack to what you see here. Took about as long to do the post production work as it did to shoot the images in the first place. 

I have to say that the endless depth of field of a 28mm lens, stopped down to f11 and used with auto-ISO is an infinitely faster way to shoot in the street and get stuff that's nearly always in focus. That's nice. The 58, shooting wide open, needs care and practice if you are going to nail stuff. My "keeper" rate for the 58mm was pretty dang low today. Much, much higher for the 28.  Which leads me to suspect that the legion of street photographers don't really "LIKE" the 28mm focal length no matter how vociferously they laud that focal length, they are just too afraid of failure to shoot with a manual focusing, fast 50+ mm lens; even if it's secretly what we ALL think we should be shooting with ALL the time. In this regard I think the 28mm is a cowardly choice.

Out of all the images I took today only one person objected to having a picture made. It was the mom of a toddler in a stroller who had his face painted like Spiderman. The mom didn't want her child's photo on the internet. I totally agreed with her and promised I wouldn't put it there/here. Sorry. Of course it was the best shot of the day.

Here's some OT.

I heard on a secret information sharing site just for bloggers that the latest ploy for goosing up readership of photography  blogs is to go completely off topic and discuss anything at all about cars. Not cameras. Just cars. So, not wanting to be left behind, here goes. I buy cars when I need them. I buy them new. If inflation raises the price of new cars I'm pretty sure that the yearly increases in my fee income compensates for the higher prices and renders the idea that cars are getting more expensive mostly moot. Things only seem more expensive if you are not raising your prices to match market reality. I'm driving a 2021 Subaru Forester. It has 15,000 miles on the odometer. I wrote a check from my business account to the dealer to purchase the car. I don't do car payments. My father (wise and kind) once told me that if you had to pay over time for something that means you really can't afford it. The only exception he made was for the purchase of houses. (He drove Honda Accords even though he could easily afford to purchase any car on the market).

All current cars seem pretty good. I never really exceed the maximum Texas speed limit of 75 mph so faster cars or cars with bigger engines are meaningless to me. My CPA handles the math for depreciation and the like. A car is like a utility (gas, electric, water). If you live and work in Texas you more than likely need one. You can get a very good and reliable car for about $30K, brand new. When my current vehicle feels "old" I'll buy another one. After a day or two of research. I've owned a number of different cars. The most costly to buy, service and "enjoy" was a BMW 540i. Went from a "magic carriage" to a "costly piece of shit" as soon as the 48K mile warranty expired. Not much fun but a quick "good riddance" and off I went to buy something reliable. That time it was a quick transition to a new Honda. The cars most people consider fun or desirable I think of as poor bargains. I rarely hear complaints about reliability from Toyota Corolla owners. I hear complaints endlessly from Range Rover owners and BMW owners. I also hear that it's painful to point a loaded handgun at your foot and pull the trigger. And that sums up everything I need to know about cars. 

I seem to be rotating through my cameras almost like rotating crops. Yesterday I pulled a Leica CL out and photographed my visit to the Blanton Museum in Austin.

 

New sculpture on the walk way from the State Capitol to the University. 

The hallowed Horny Toad. 

Yesterday was another gray and lackluster day. I slept in and missed morning swim practice. Sometimes just getting those eight hours seems like the healthier play. Especially since there's always a noon workout on the schedule. I made breakfast, drank coffee, read all the depressing news online and decided that I needed to do something fun and uplifting --- so I took a trip over to the Blanton Museum. And I decided to take a small and light photographic toolset with me instead of depending once again on my larger, heavier cameras and lenses. 

I snooped around in the camera cabinet and saw the CL cameras. I realized I'd been ignoring them lately in deference to the full frame choices. I also elected to take one small, fast prime lens and my choice for the morning was the TTArtisan 23mm f1.4. Is it sharp enough? I guess you'll have to judge for yourself. I found it to be very good, all around. Yes, there is a little barrel distortion but I've given up worrying about that. The only distortion I dread is the terrifying "mustache" distortion that a number of wide-to-standard zooms seem to exhibit. And the terror is mostly because the distortion is hard to correct manually when there is no profile available. 

With the small, light, but potent image making package sorted out I stuck an extra battery in a pocket and headed out. I parked on Lavaca St. but, just between you, me and 10,000 other readers, I've given up paying the parking meters. In fact, I've taken my chances by not ever paying the city parking meters since the onset of Covid; and I've only been ticketed once or twice. I figure that's about 1% of the times I've parked in the downtown area. I happily paid those fines and then did the math on the total outlay. I figure I've now paid about three cents for each parking experience committed over the last three years. Not bad. A classic risk versus reward exercise. 

I parked the high performance studio staff car in front of this 

shuttered sandwich shop. It used to be a Thundercloud Sub shop.

An Austin original. But not to worry, there are plenty of other 

Thundercloud locations around Austin.... 

I was interested in heading to the Blanton Museum to take a second peek at the "Day Jobs" show. And also because, after what seems like years of construction, the grounds in front of the museum have re-opened and I wanted to see how they changed the plaza between the two buildings. More on that below.

The first floor exhibit is very interesting because it showcases fun, insightful art but it also "discusses" what artists have to do to make a living/survive while working on their own art. Some worked in the service industry, some in graphic design and even a few in banking and law. The caregiver industry was well represented by a small collection of Vivian Dorothy Maier's black and white, square prints while Barbara Krueger was representative of artists who worked in publishing. Sol Lewitt had an interesting work path before his success as a painter and, of course there were four prints from Andy Warhol who was the poster boy for commercial artists who made  the leap into highly collectible fine artists. 

It's a well rounded show and nicely hung. Well worth an hour or so, or a first and second viewing. Yesterday I had a much more positive reaction to the show than my first contact as there were far fewer people in attendance and that always helps. 

I had almost forgotten, but was reminded as I walked around snapping photos, how small and convenient the Leica CL camera is when used with an equally small prime lens. Emboldened by recent experiments with the "Denoise" function in Lightroom Classic, I set the auto ISO to give me a minimum shutter speed of 1/125th of a second and a maximum ISO of 12,500. I thought it would be a fun, real world test of both the camera's sensor and the Lightroom application's prowess in cleaning up files. (Just be sure you are shooting in raw because the "Denoise" doesn't work with Jpegs...). 

The camera's viewfinder (EVF) is good and the 24 megapixel, APS-C size sensor is nicely detailed and, at most ISOs, pretty much noise neutral. 

This is a detail of the exterior of the newly revamped museum exterior. 

The camera's dynamic range is wide enough to open up the deep shade across the 

greenly decorated wall while holding on to highlights outside. 

I did apply an auto transform to correct for the converging verticals. 

I have not gotten a tilt shift lens for this camera system...

Again, I was quite happy with the camera's ability to "see" in the shaded, covered 

areas but to also grab detail outside, through an arch.

I don't know about anyone else but I love reading the curator's 

notes next to individual pieces of art as well as the written introductions

to unique galleries. The writing generally goes a long way toward

explaining the art and the rationale for its inclusion. 

And I just like the way type sometimes photographs. 

Yes. I see the vignetting. Not all vignetting MUST be corrected.

Works by Andy Warhol. 

A fun observation by a fine artist who started out working on TV shows

and movies. 

I was going to wear my fabulous Birkenstocks again. Even though the idea of 

open toed shoes seems disturbing to Canadians. But since we had heightened 

chances of rain yesterday I opted to wear a pair of Keens. They are fine

if you are into imprisoning your feet... Feet want to be free. Or is it 

the internet that wants to be free. 

Send me money so I can buy more and more shoes! 

I think this painting has been my long time favorite of all the paintings in the 

permanent galleries of the museum. It's just..... I can't put it into words....but

I don't know; wonderful?

This image and the one below,  of one of the upstairs gallery of "modern" and "contemporary" 

art, were my test images for high ISO combined with noise reduction.

Each image was shot at 6400 ISO and then the raw files were modified 

by Lightroom's "Denoise" tool. I find the results pretty amazing and it makes

high density sensors cameras even more likable. Great for dense sensors on APS-C, 

but equally good on a high res camera like the Leica SL2.

On the left, a painting by one of my new favorite Painters, Deborah Roberts.

Click in to try to find the noise.... Magenta cast thanks to some ill-considered

neon art, out of frame....

I don't know why it took well over a year to assemble and implant these 

giant shade structures that are the focal point of the plaza in front of the 

museum buildings. They are interesting but.... eh.

this used to be a trashy street with tons of intersections and stop signs.

After years and years of construction it's recently reopened as an expansive 

walkway and pedestrian paradise in the middle of town. Connecting the 

UT campus with brand new, shiny state office buildings and, at the 

far end, the State Capitol building. Which is also architecturally interesting.

When I got back to my car I noticed the new rack in front of the 

shutter sandwich shop. I liked everything about it so, of course, it got "documented." 

It never rained while I was going to or from the museum but I got a bit paranoid about having a camera with me that's not particularly weather sealed. Same for the lens. Usually, on sunny days I have a hat and can cover my gear with the hat should a rain shower pop up unexpectedly. Yesterday I found myself under equipped. I dropped by the museum's gift shop and found a small sling bag that was just right. And, for the first time I also bought a Blanton Museum T-shirt as well. The sling bag joins a veritable mountain of camera bags and backpacks here in the office, but for a short amount of time I felt better about the health of my gear. It never did rain. Just looked like it all day long. 

I made it to my car in time to cut through Austin's lunch hour traffic and make it to the noon swim practice; by the skin of my teeth. (I should brush more). During the entire hour of practice the sky was dark and ominous. Gray and glowering. But it never got around to raining and we didn't experience any of the lightning or thunder the meteorologists were try to sell. 

Later in the afternoon I met a photographer friend, let's call him "Paul", for a mid-afternoon coffee. He brought along an extra lens hood and companion hood cap for a Voigtlander 58mm lens. He bought it for his version of the lens but his has a 58mm filter size while my version is a 52mm. He tried to send it back to the seller but the seller told him he'd just credit the selling price and not to send it back. Paul gifted it to me. I was doubly glad because bit of post coffee research was enlightening. The hood will also work on the 40mm f2.0 V lens without any vignetting!!! Very exciting. And a savings (to me) of about $60.

I suspect that my photographer friend had an ulterior motive for our visit. At the end of our coffee meeting we walked outside so he could show me his latest automative acquisition. Seems the hot car to have these days (and proof that photography doesn't impoverish every practitioner...) is the Porsche Macan Turbo. A lovely car. In white with black leather interior. Not sure I would call it an "investment" but I can sure call it a fun indulgence. I thought for a moment or two that I should splash out for one of those cute and outrageously powerful SUVs but I'm too financially conservative to take the plunge. 

It looks good on him. I just can't pull it off the same way. So glad I love my Subi Forester. In some odd measure of compensation I took time to wash my car and vacuum the interior yesterday. Not 400 horsepower but a lot easier to buy gas for. 

That's about it. I'd write a much longer and much more interesting blog today but B is coming home this afternoon and if I don't clean up the house a bit....maybe get rid of some of those pizza boxes.... well. You know.

Great Response to Tuesday's invitation to share information about each other. I wish there was a way on Blogger to "pin" a post up at the top of the main page. But there isn't. I'll keep posting comments to that post as long as the comments keep coming. Thanks to everyone!!!

 

Birkenstock Atacamas in action. 

I like Birkenstocks and now that I've attained full adulthood I have 

no fear of even wearing them in cooler weather with wool socks. but...

I love the way Birkenstock's original sandals feel on my feet. The arch support, the footbed, in fact, just about everything is perfect. But the originals have one big issue that bugged me. My two pairs of Arizonas have very thin and wimpy soles on them. The bottom tread. It's definitely a sandal that's made for indoor use. On tile, on carpet and on hardwood floors they are very much in their element. But if you take them outside and walk on roadways, sidewalks, and over any rough ground you'll wear out the bottom tread within a month. At least I will. I had almost given up on considering wearing my comfy originals past the threshold of the front door of my house --- which is sad. But do you really want to blast through a pair of $160 sandals on a monthly basis? Seems a bit wasteful to me.

Austin is a weird place for shoes. It's rare we need or want to wear big, insulated hiking boots and there are so few places left anymore to wear those bespoke, formal suits and fine oxfords and still fit in Austin Fashion Wise. We've got a couple months of comfortable, temperate weather and then most of the Summer, at least till November, we're dealing with hot, sweaty, sticky weather. The kinds that begs for short pants, thin, moisture wicking shirts and almost bare feet. Or at least feet exposed to air flow...

Of course you can't really go barefoot as the pavement everywhere is hot enough to quickly cook pancakes on. You wouldn't make it two blocks without third degree burns on the bottoms of your feet. So the solution for the heat, humidity and just plain awfulness of feet confined to shoes is sandals. I have all manner of other brands but the Birks are the most luxurious. The "Leica" of ventilated footwear. 

In anticipation of the upcoming Summer I started doing research and found that Birkenstock has introduced a bunch of new product with ---  much more rugged and durable soles. Big tread. As thick as the grippy tread on the bottoms of my Keen hiking shoes. Oh joy! I bought the first version they introduced. They are called Atacamas. They don't have the famous suede leather over cork footbed. They are made of some sort of composite materials. But they work, and were comfortable enough for me to have done a handful of three to four miles walks through the city. I'd put a link to them but I don't want to rob you of the joy of doing your own research. 

Yesterday I circled back to the Birkenstock website to find yet another product that melds the best of the Atacamas with the best of the traditional sandals. It's called the "Arizona Rugged." Oiled leather uppers, tranditional suede leather footbed but with a much more rugged bottom. Advertised as an outdoor, adventure shoe. I'll be ordering a pair of these as well since the suede footbed insole will most likely be more comfortable than the non-porou, poly material of the Atacama. Sadly though, they are about $25 more. 

The Atacamas are perfect for wet environments (going to the pool) and getting caught in the rain since they won't be bothered by water. That's the biggest trade off. The Arizona Ruggeds will eventually experience deteriorated cork inner soles if you don't take pains to wax the surfaces regularly.

So, what the heck does this have to do with photography? Well... happy feet make for happier photographers and un-sore feet mean more potential ground covered during photo walks. The rationale works for me. And...they are made in Germany. I can hardly wait for the Leica Editions. Where to put the red dot???

So, yesterday, after all my office chores were done, I slipped into my Atacamas and headed downtown to make some more Carl Zeiss empowered photographs. I was out to see how well the colors and the general contrast of the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 matched up with the 28mm and 35mm CZ Biogons. But what makes visual lens testing a bit of a challenge is the changing quality of light from day to day. 

With the two Biogons I was making photographs on bright, sunny days. Whereas yesterday it was pre-stormy, grey and sodden. And cloud cover, etc. sucks the saturation and contrast right out of most images. I decided to give it a go anyway. After all, I was there with a camera and lens in hand. 

There is a family resemblance between all three of the lenses. They render subjects a bit differently than the Voigtlander lenses. A bit more contrast and slightly harder tonalities. And the Zeiss lenses are just a bit cooler in color than the Vs. I like the idea of tromping around with fixed sets of lenses. One day might call for the 40mm and 58mm Voigtlanders as a nice duo for uncrowded urban shooting while the Zeiss trio might shine in a more crowded space. 

Oh. And I heard or read something from a street photographer that interested me a lot this past week. He was talking about what lenses he uses for street photography (what I might call 'urban landscapes') and he suggested that a 28mm is a good lens for crowded and tightly configured spaces like the ones he finds in Asia. Think Hong Kong. Think Tokyo. Places where there is a lot of sidewalk traffic and less space to back up. 

His choice for the spread out cities of North America (think Austin, Vancouver, Seattle) is a 50mm because that focal length tends to compress space better. And in Austin there is nearly always room to back up...

Now I'm thinking of my lens groupings by their real potential. The 40 and 58mm Voigtlanders for general use in spread out cities. The 28mm and 35mm for crowded cities and smaller spreads. Adding the 50mm CZ for those times when a classic portrait is called for. I know it's a bit short for a real classic portrait but that's why the photo gods inventing judicious cropping. I haven't been to London since the 1990s. Is it a crowded space or a wide space? I don't remember.  Let me know if you can...

At any rate here are some images I shot yesterday. I was underwhelmed with everything so it's fine with me if you are too. I'll toss some captions in for fun. 

50mm f1.4. All lenses are good-to-great at f8.0. This one is no exception.

The 50mm has some barrel distortion but very little vignetting, even wide open.

And the sharpness is deceiving. The depth of field is so thin that you have to 

hunt for what's in focus to make any sort of accurate assessment. 

Hot. Humid. And with the sun peaking out just enough to make

sunscreen desirable but annoying. Nice colors though. 

50mm focused as close as I could. Stopped down to f2

Fascinated by fast food buildings. Not that they make fast food there but 

it seems the construction is aimed more at getting the stuff up quick but ignoring 

any imperative to make the buildings at all attractive. Or interesting. Or both.

50mm. This is one of those images with a lot of sharp detail that would 

probably look its best enlarged quite a bit. There's a lot in the frame; especially the right hand side building, and the sky is interesting to me as well. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't translate well 

to a small screen. Now I'm starting to sound like MJ...

downtown Austin is now commissioning artists to paint original work (not graffiti) on

all the downtown utility boxes and traffic light control boxes. It's a nice touch. 

I'm not always a fan of all styles but there is something for just about 

everyone. 

I saw this just after reading JC's comment about how many hundreds and hundreds of 

real photographs he found while looking though a copy of Architectural Digest Magazine. 

I get that there are still a lot of print magazines. And most of them still have photographs. 

But as a percentage of overall creative content I judge most of them to be outliers aimed at 

a certain limited range of generations and certainly at higher income demographics. 

I think the young man wearing this t-shirt might agree. 

I disagree a bit with JC on this. I think the robots have us in their sights.

Since we always talk about the blog as a community wouldn't it be great to get to know each other? Better still maybe we could create social connection locally by getting in touch with other blog readers local to us and maybe have coffees and discuss photography? Maybe?

 

First off, my name is Kirk. I live in Austin, Texas. I'm 67. I love taking photographs. Mostly casual people images but urban landscapes as well.  Now it's your turn. Who are you? Where do you live? What did you/do you do that you'd like to share? What's your particular interest in photography? Do you have friends close by whom you meet for coffee? 

Now to the crux of this post: Wouldn't it be cool to know someone near you who shares a lot of your interests and who might be interesting to talk with about photography? And life? And stuff?

I was talking to B this morning over breakfast and she mentioned an article about loneliness and how it's epidemic in post Covid times. Especially for people over 50. And the health ramifications are dour. I could list them but the one I disliked reading most was: "early mortality." The cure, it seems, is to spend more time with people and to work on maintaining old friendships and building new ones. 

She asked me what I was doing with the blog to help with that. And while I think there are benefits to having friends spread out all over the place (and I do consider a large number of you to be in the "friend" category) I'd love it if we could encourage each other to reach out and connect with at least one new person, local to us, that we could actually meet face-to-face, have coffee with, discuss photography with and get to know. Mutual photographic support. Human face-to-face.

I have a friend here in town named Frank. He took the initiative and reached out to me at least a decade ago. We've met, on average, once a month since then to catch up with each other, trade information about gear we're using and techniques we either tried or read about, and to be mutually supportive. I always look forward to our morning coffees. We don't always agree on every aspect of modern life but we respect each other enough to dodge around subjects that might engender conflict and stay on a brighter, happier path. His advice about business and finance is always so welcome. I know I've benefitted from knowing Frank and I hope he feels the same way. 

I bring up my friendship with Frank because it happened as a result of the blog. We met at a book signing for Michael O'Brien's book on the homeless. A book signing he read about here; on the blog.  

So after talking with B this morning I'm trying to figure out how we can use the blog to help readers all over the place make some local connections that would bring the same kind of benefits to other readers. 

I was thinking it would be good to drop a first name and general (city-wide?) location, from anyone interested in taking a chance, into the comments below. I'm trying to figure out a safe way to connect people via the web so if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them. I want to make sure no one gets scammed or taken advantage of but it would be great if a couple readers in San Antonio, for example, could connect and at least introduce themselves to each other. Share some good news.

It may just be a pipe dream but if you know how to make this work please help me out here with more/better strategies. How can we make connections with other VSL readers?

Another thing that brought this to my attention was a phone call from a long time reader's spouse. She was calling to see if her husband and I might be able to meet up when I finally get to Tucson to see the McCartney show. I was flattered. I'll make sure to get to Tucson and meet one of my long time but never met in person friends. But during the course of a phone conversation it was suggested that calling me or contacting me might be somehow wrong. As though they were intruding. I assured them (honestly) that I'm always open to people getting in touch with me. I don't have an entourage. No one is screening my calls or email. I'm always open to answering question via email. And as long as my schedule permits I don't mind phone calls; especially from long time commenters whose names I recognize. 

But my real intention today is to motivate VSL blog readers here to reach out locally and find like minded folks who might meet up occasionally for a bit of camaraderie and photo/knowledge sharing. Please let me know what you think with a comment. But don't share your social security number, drivers license numbers, credit card numbers or your home address!!!! (I know you wouldn't but I had to say that even if it's partially just a joke). A first name and a city is a good introduction. A few short sentences about what it is in photography that interests you. Maybe even your focus on photography, examples: landscapes, street photography, portraits, or any other interests. 

This may just be a blogger fantasy that results in a complete face plant but most of my readers are way smarter than the average person in the street and perhaps the guidance that emerges in response will add to our success with this. As usual, if this doesn't appeal to you at all you have my permission to ignore the post, and the intention, and just read the stuff you like. 

Fun days ahead. Waiting with trepidation for the budget ceiling drama. Focusing more and more on swimming, vitamins, and playing the role of artiste. Thanks for sticking around and reading my stuff. 

What? Me Worry?

There's so much that feels unsettled. The generative A.I. evolution is pushing everything else off to the side when it comes to content for business publications and technical websites. A financial analyst even went so far to suggest that Apple is lagging behind in A.I. and its stock price will get nicked as a result. (I would never count Apple out. They can buy their way to the top of the A.I. mountain).  Most people who are writing on the subject are pretty glum, bordering on paranoid. I'm not sure where I land on the whole wide spectrum of angst about our computer overlords but I'm not as optimistic as Chase Jarvis who wrote recently about this just being another step, like the move to digital and the popularity of smart phones. A step that savvy creatives might use to their advantage (hmmmm.). Capitalism has a way of weaponizing new technology directly against its own participants. And many big companies love racing to the bottom when it comes to cost cutting; human capital be damned. 

I hate to use the phrase: "It's different this time." But since A.I. covers so much of the work landscape already, from call center prompting and automated phone response systems, to online service chats, to writing everything from marketing copy to technical briefs and certainly, soon, also novels, screenplays and so much more, I can only imagine that anything that's not subjective but is fact based, like accounting and radiology, even law is going to get slammed as far as human pay scale value goes. And in the realm of continuing careers and job tenure.. .. .. .  (my ellipse fascination is just a ploy to trick the A.I. learning algorithms into screwing up... .  .. ) I think we're about to see a very different kind of disruption than we have in the past mostly because this one will affect white collar workers to a tremendous degree. Another metric to be factored into the decline of the value of a university degree. The working press is seeing evidence of this across industries already.

This doesn't begin to cover the destruction of democracy that deep fakes and endless but highly believable visual and aural misinformation destined to come blasting out of the fire hoses of the internet in order to push bad agendas. And both sides of the political system should be equally worried, including the bad guys who already have a history of endless lying in the service of greed and power... 

How it affects photography and how that affect affects you personally will depend on whether you do work for money or you do photography for the fun of the process and the joy of sometimes getting great results. I'll wager that with working photographers if you don't hit two or three must have skill sets in the next year (tops) your days of making $$$ from owning and knowing how to operate a camera and work in PhotoShop are quickly coming to an end. I'll bet that the demand for video of all kinds will continue to explode and, for a few years at least, the ability and patience to navigate creating in collaboration with A.I. will be sellable. Once processor power makes A.I. video creation widely available then all bets are off. Personally, if you've done your financial homework and have saved adequately this might be a good time to step away from the business. If you're still in your working and must earning years you might consider re-aiming or re-training for a new business target that depends less on your skills at knowing your way around a keyboard and a camera menu and much more about critical jobs that people need and can't do for themselves. 

And if you are securely retired and doing photos for fun you should count yourself lucky and more lucky. Because you don't have to change a single thing that you are doing right now. Keep shooting that 8x10 black and white sheet film. We love it.

If I were counseling a young person about career choices and they lived in Texas I can almost guarantee that all but the top 10% of students will, over their lifetimes, do a lot better in the skilled trades than in business administration, advertising, information processing and the like. Plumbers never go bankrupt because when one's toilet is overflowing or a pipe has burst in a wall people will pay whatever they have to in order to get stuff fixed. Ditto electricians. Ditto air conditioner and heater install/repair people. No, I fear for anyone who works with information. From teachers to bank staff to psychiatrists. Everything can be eventually overtaken by ever evolving A.I.  

I've decided to pretend that the only thing that will change in my business is the steady loss of clients and revenue. Other than that I intend to go merrily along, buying random zany lenses, titillating camera bodies and new breeds of lights. After all, my paranoia could be totally misplaced and the value of a human point of view might come to be cherished and  considered luxe in the future. I'll hope for the best and the rest of the time I'll shoot what I like.

And swim. And do strength training. And read inane blogs. And take long walks. This is the way of all things. 

Welcome to work place dystopia.