Traveling "minimalist" this time.

 

It's hard to pack for a photo excursion when you have a work agenda to tackle and client expectations to fulfill. Then, you have an almost compulsive desire to bring along everything you might even remotely want to use. And you have to figure out how to pack it, transport it, pay baggage fees to get stuff onto an airplane and then figure out ground transportation at the other end. I'm guessing that even though commercial photography can be fun that dealing with tons of gear is why they call it work. 

You're always trying to balance what you need with what your journey can handle. Too much and you might get weighed down and delayed at every step. Too little and your project might fail completely. "For want of a lithium battery a kingdom was lost."

But then there's the opposite. Traveling just for the pleasure of traveling. Photography just because you want to. Traveling without the burden of equipment logistics. Trips where a good dinner is as important as having time to play with making images. 

When I planned my upcoming trip to Montreal my first priority was getting a room on short notice at a hotel I've always wanted to stay at. It's a small property. A boutique hotel in the Old Town. I could have found a cheaper/less expensive place to sleep but this time I wanted to toss caution to the wind and go in lavish comfort. I didn't want to settle for a hotel that gets a nice, fat eight out of ten stars from customer reviews. I wanted a 9.9 out of 10. 

I have a list of places I want to dine in. Not the smoked meat, fine bagels and poutine list. While that fare might be fun and popular I was thinking of places with great wine lists, wonderful menus and creative chefs. I've already made several reservations. Having been to the neighborhood before my one happy nod toward rank tourism is a daily breakfast at Crew. Bagels beyond bagels. Great coffee (a given) and one of the most spectacular interiors ever imagined for a .... coffee shop. 

So, what to bring? Camera wise?

A quick and easy plan there. The new (to me) Leica M240 with the 50mm APO-Lanthar. And extra battery. The second camera is the Leica Q2. And two extra batteries. And that's it. Fits in a small Domke bag along with my phone, travel docs and a Kindle. Nice fault tolerant back-up.

Clothes? Whatever fits in my carry on case. If I misjudge the weather I look forward to buying some cool outerwear on the ground. 

It's weird to me that we no longer really need to bring paper money. Well, we do....but just for tips. Everywhere I go and everything I buy is set up to be paid for with credit cards these days. Just with credit cards. Only with credit cards. From coffee to cars. Such a change from the days of looking around for ATMs or the even older days of going into the American Express office to get travelers checks before departing. 

My client is lackadaisical this time around. I asked for a shot list and he laughed in my face. I talked about budgets and he scoffed. His one demand was that I spend my time on two pursuits. Having fun and taking photographs. So nice to be self-propelled. 

Just in case you were wondering about my plans for packing....

No itemized receipts required upon return.

Taking a break from thinking too much, just to look at photos. I've always liked this one.

 I shot this image of Renee Zellweger a long time ago. Long before I owned any digital cameras. Long before I started playing with medium format cameras. In fact, long before I could afford professional lights. Instead I used an ancient Canon camera with a lens that was unique at the time. It was a Canon 135mm S.F. lens which would allow you to defocus parts. Essentially adding distortion to the image. It was a soft focus lens for 35mm cameras. 

Since I didn't  have "pro" lights I set up a rickety old light stand, put a hand-me-down 40 inch, white translucent umbrella and aimed a $10 work light through the fabric and onto my subject. There was no fill card and no other mods. 

This image was done years before Renee launched her acting career. It was done in a time when living was cheap and easy in Austin and everyone seemed to have lots of spare time for art projects. You'd call a friend and they'd drop by and sit for a portrait. Then, maybe, you'd both head over to the Omelletry for some gingerbread pancakes and a plate of eggs. Or you'd gather a group of friends and head to Barton Springs and someone would come up with enough cash to pay the fifty cent entry fee for each person. 

I like this image because I think it's a good portrait but also because it was done on a shoestring and with the most basic camera gear. 

Ah. The good old days.

Just finalized travel plans. First solo shooting trip in a long time.

 

Lemons in the Jean Talon Public Market in Montreal. By B. She shot this with her Canon G15 point and shoot. She's a better photographer than I am. I was walking around with some big, state of the art full frame camera and didn't get images half as good. 

I really enjoyed my last two visits to Canada. I'm happy they are still allowing Americans to travel there on vacations. That's very "Canadian" of them.  I have only been to three different cities there. Once, to Montreal, pre-Covid, with B. It was chilly on our late October 2019 trip but chilly for Texans in a welcome and exhilarating way. I was in Toronto back in early 2018 just in time for a blizzard, a quick tutorial on driving on black ice, and a series of video projects that were well received by the German company funding the whole shebang. We made a daring trip to Vancouver in 2022 during a welcome pause in the pandemic and, again, had a blast. Great hotels, great restaurants, great scenes. 

Of the places I've seen in Canada the one that is most compelling to me as a photographer is Montreal. It has a wonderful vibe, it's inexpensive to operate in without abandoning a bit of luxury, and the food scene is incredible. The Old Town has some terrific architecture and some of the neighborhoods in various parts of town are just ---- totally cool. I might even get to Quebec.

I've been anxious to get out of town and spend four or five (now six) days by myself with a good camera or two in tow. When I looked at all the travel destinations out there my thoughts were that I needed to let the European hotspots recover from a satanically hot summer and the overwhelming hordes of American and U.K. tourists. I'll give them a few months to decompress from the giant swell of Summer-Panic-Oh-My-God tourism. 

So, when I started looking around for a place to spend time, shoe leather, SD card memory space and what not I immediately pegged my next destination to be Montreal. 

There are no direct flights from Austin, Texas to Montreal but if you work the schedule correctly you'll find well scheduled flights from the major carriers that can get you from here to there in about six and a half hours. And then get you from there to here in about seven hours. Not at all outrageous and cheap as underwear from Walmart. (Just making fun of Walmart. I've never actually been in one....). 

I booked a room at a nice, small, boutique hotel in the Old Town for six nights. I'll take the bare minimum of wardrobe and buy what I need if I find out that I didn't pack right. I've scheduled one arrival day, on departure day and five days of doing nothing but walking around with a camera or two photographing everything that catches my eye(s), my attention. Oh, and also eating like I just got out of prison. No vegan diet that week. For damn sure.

B. encouraged me to go and shoot by myself. She'll be here holding down the fort and relishing her days without my constant mansplaining and anxious check-ins. We'll pick somewhere else to go for a different sort of vacation later in the Fall. 

Deep down I think most photographers relish (at least they should!!!) the idea of getting away from any and all schedules, clients, chores, routines and family obligations and just having unfettered time to walk around aimlessly, or even with good aim, taking photographs with their favorite cameras. I might even bring a small tripod and stay out later than my bed time making street photos by lamplight. It could happen. 

Go re-read my post: Lonely Hunter, Better Hunt. ( https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html )

I'll be up north from the last week of September till the middle of the first week of October. If you are in Montreal and want to meet up for coffee at Crew drop me a note at the email on my actual website. I'm thinking of setting aside one morning to meet up, if anyone is interested. Don't plan on flying over from Tokyo just to meet me for coffee --- I'm not that interesting in person.

I love booking non-refundable trips. It's always the best incentive to follow through... $$$

Yeah. I really like the M240. But how is that Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 ZM lens working? Well, I shot the two together today to find out. Take a peek. Click to see them large. G'Night.

 

Damn fine color and detail in this particular shot of a very familiar subject. 

Punch in to see it at its best. 

Do different cameras affect the way you shoot in different ways? I think so. They make you look for different subjects. And different ways of photographing.

 

I Love composing with the bright frame lines of a real rangefinder camera. It's different than EVFs and pentaprism finders. You get to see past the edges. You get a taste of what else you can exclude or include in a shot. You aren't stopped cold because you see some fault more clearly with an image preview. So you shoot and hope for the best. Then you might have to fix stuff in post. But if you'd been coerced into passing by an image because a preview told you it wasn't working when your eyes clearly saw that it was you don't even get a shot to play with. Maybe you can't save it but....maybe you can. 

"I think it is not so much about what the camera can do, but what you can do with the camera." 

-Thorsten Overgaard. 

Leica M240. Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 ZM lens. f8-ish. 

"On the road again." Cars at the end of the day. Just parked along 2nd St.

 

Our prowling around again with the new camera. I can't sit still when the sun is out and the thermometer  stays under 90. I was exploring more of downtown with the M240,  this time decorated with a wonderful Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 Planar ZM. "ZM" being a Zeiss for M mount. The lens focuses exactly right and it makes files that make me smile. 

As a high school student in the early 1970s I loved cars. My very first car was a well used but still serviceable 1965 Buick Wildcat bought from a friend's dad in 1974. It had three wondrous attributes that seem lost to car design now. One was air conditioning that could keep beer cold --- if you put the beer near a vent. Another was bench seats a mile wide and more comfortable that most couches. And the third was a 425 cubic inch engine with double quad carburetors generating 360 horsepower. And yes, gas was almost free back then. A really fine car in which to head to the coast for a weekend break...

You could fit an entire photo studio in the trunk. Those times are long gone but these cars served to tickle my memory. And fond memories they are...

The M240 does nice raw files in the .DNG format. Lightroom Classic likes them. 

Portrait of a Texas chef taken on the fly. Between video takes.

Johnny S.

I like to stay busy on the set so if we're between takes on a video project, and I have the time, I try to round up people for quick portraits. They are already working "on camera" that day and they are happy to pose. Most of the portraits done for myself are tucked in at the end of other work. I asked Johnny to walk into my mini-set and stand in front of my camera for maybe sixty seconds, during a break in the action. I shot 12 frames, all intended as square format photos, and we were done. He headed back to the video set and I headed over to the small inset studio to catch a few food shots before "taping" resumed. 

Some of my favorite shots come from working through breaks on sets. 

This image was done with a handheld Fuji MF camera and what we are calling, I guess, the "kit lens." It's the 35-70mm zoom for the GFX system. It's a thousand dollar lens but I was able to buy a brand new one during a sale when it was half that price. I couldn't resist....

And it's turned out to be a really good performer. Sharp and fast to focus. And a good focal length range to boot. 

Working in between work. An efficient way to get more images.