Elliott Erwitt, one of the last living legends of photography, passed away this week at 95 years of age. The end of an era.

 https://www.elliotterwitt.com/

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/elliott-erwitt/

https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2016/elliott-erwitt-collection.html

(Will Van Overbeek and I spent a day with Elliott Erwitt in Austin, Texas while he was here to negotiate the donation of his archives to the HRC*. We were the local facilitators for his visit. We picked him up from the airport, delivered him to his hotel, took him to the HRC for meetings, took him to El Azteca Restaurant for lunch, Progress Coffee for an afternoon coffee, over to the LBJ Museum to look around, and finally delivered him to the Blanton Museum where he did an evening slide presentation for a packed house. 

He carried his rangefinder camera (with 50mm lens) everywhere. 

He was quiet but possessed of a very dry and very wonderful sense of humor. Will and I had a great time hosting him).

What an amazing career! May he rest in peace. 

*The Humanities Research Center at UT.  Aka: The Harry Ransom Center

A portrait of two sisters. In the old studio just east of downtown.

Sisters.

At one point in a previous career I was a creative director at an advertising agency here in Austin. Mousumi (on the left) was my print representative at a local printing company. She was the person who bid on our print projects and also shepherded them through the print process. I think she secretly delighted in arranging for our press checks to happen late in the evenings to punish us for, well, being advertising people (I kid). When our four color projects were on the press B. and I would get a call from the printer and we'd hustle over to the plant to do a "press check." To make sure all the color films were lined up in sync. To make sure the color matched our pantone selections and the color proofs. A complex press check could take hours and hours. 

After I left the agency I ran into Mousumi at an advertising happy hour and I asked if she would come by for a portrait session. This must have been four or five years after my last print job. She came over and posed for me and then, later, called to ask if I would take some photographs of her with her sister in traditional Indian outfits. Of course I agreed.

We shot mostly in medium format film and mostly in black and white but I also did a whole series of them together and individually in color, on 4x5 transparency film. A devilishly hard way to do portraits!

They came out well and I made prints for them. Mousumi and I still stay in touch now nearly 30 years later. 

Photography has always been such a fun adventure.

 

Portrait of a young woman.

 

Anonymous.

When we moved to our current home the first thing I did with the property was to add a studio building. It's not large and it's not fancy but it has been convenient and a good resource for making portraits that I like. When we finished construction it was 1997 and I was still photographing almost completely on film. I had several digital cameras but they were slow and the files were never a match for the image qualities I could get from a medium format frame of film. Especially with black and white.

At one point I'd shot with three medium format camera systems. The Rollei SL6008s, the Mamiya6 and, of course, a variety of Hasselblads. But in the end I always came back to the Hasselblads, especially for the kinds of portraits I liked to do in the studio. 

I met the subject of this image at Sweetish Hill Bakery and asked her if she would come to my studio and pose for a black and white portrait. She agreed. We spent half an hour making the photographs and a bit longer in conversation. I was never looking for a smile or a typical, "sexy" pose. I wanted something more authentic to the person. I think I got most of what I was looking for in the portrait. 

And then she was gone. 

I think the portrait is balanced and "clean" looking. Nothing extraneous. 

Again, this is a copy shot of a print. The digital copy was made with an iPhone.  Even so, the image holds up well for web use...

Goat and Man in South Austin. Early digital. Kodak DCS-760 and a 50mm lens. It all worked fine.

 I was doing a lot of work for the theater and we were shooting a bunch of different images around Austin to promote the theme: "Keep Austin Weird." The writer thought that keeping a pet goat in a residential neighborhood qualified as weird and so I went off to get the pair to agree to collaborate with me. The human agreed but I think the goat had some reservations. If his owner wasn't holding on to him tightly the goat had a consistent desire to rush over to me and butt me with his horns. Other than that he was right charming...

It was one of part of a seemingly endless assignment that mostly consisted of getting into the car, then out of the car, building a quick rapport for a half hour and then heading out to the next photo opportunity. My favorite subject was an electrical engineer who made an entire garden out of dolls and doll's heads. Since he was an electrical engineer he thought it would be super cool to put red LEDs in each of the doll's eyes. At night his "doll garden" looked pretty freaky. Like something out of a horror movie. Lots of sinister doll faces with glowing eyes, all staring, unblinking, at you. 

According to the story the engineer welcomed a new family who had moved in next door by turning all the dolls' heads toward the neighbor's house. Didn't take the neighbors long to get that privacy fence built between the properties. 

I find it amazing in retrospect that I was able to spend so much time having so much fun with photography while at the same time buying a big house, keeping the family fed and healthy, and saving up for the inevitable rainy day. Or retirement. Whichever comes first. I always thought I'd have to do something boring and soul crushing for work to make it into the "good life." Seems all one really needs to do is learn how to help other people have fun too. Who knew?

Fun all around today without even touching a camera. Swimming, weights at the gym,  lunch with a friend at Whole Foods, the shameless purchase of a pecan pie there as well. Pushing out some blog posts. Making sure the comments are flowing like fine wine and ordering just one more Nanlite LED fixture from B&H. When B. gets home from San Antonio we'll head out for some really good Chinese food. All good here. Wouldn't want to trade with anyone!

Location portrait somewhere in the mountains in the midwest. Could it have been Virginia? Does it matter?

man waiting patiently to get back into his warm winter coat.

 I'd been on the road for weeks. I was working on a project for an enormous infrastructure company. They build things like lakes, damns and long distance electrical delivery systems. They were finishing up a series of high voltage lines across some rural areas and they wanted portraits of the key people on the ground for one of the projects to use in an annual report and in subsequent marketing. It was the third week of November 2018. A Monday. Probably the 20th. 

I'd been covering the wildfires out near Sacramento the day before. I got a note that we were on for the photo shoot in the mountains of Virginia, far from any major airport. The in-house travel people at the client side arranged for a redeye flight back across the country to Charlotte, NC, booked a hotel for what turned out to be a four hour rest stop, and booked a rental car for me as well. The next morning, armed with a GPS pin on my phone and a target time to meet a bevy of workers in pick-up trucks at a lone truck stop hundreds of miles away, I tossed my two cases of gear into a black Toyota Camry and headed north. By this point in the project I'd been in and out of a dozen rental cars. The one from the day before, out in Sacramento, was a Chevrolet Impala. It was not my favorite. The Toyota was a decade ahead in terms of user satisfaction. 

Halfway there I cruised through a McDonalds, used their mostly clean restroom and also got an Egg McMuffin and a large coffee to consume while driving ever north. (Just checked. The destination was Bastian Virginia). Say what you will about McDonalds but if you are traveling rural and you are on a tight schedule finding one of Ronald McDonald's golden arches can be key to survival. 

There's not much to Bastian but there was a BP gas station and that was our meeting spot. I needed to be there by 12:30 pm and I made it by the skin of my teeth. But the journey wasn't over yet. I met about twelve people there. They were spread out into four or five pick-up trucks and I was to follow them up into the mountains where, a short while later, we left paved roads and followed a crumbling, one lane dirt road up the side of a very tricky mountain. A vehicle with four wheel drive would definitely have been much more appropriate. 

We reached an overview that we all liked and I re-read my instructions from the marketing department in the comfort of my car with the heater turned up. At six or seven thousand feet in late November it was downright cold. I got out of the car and assembled a couple of electronic flashes on small, light stands. The company people took turns holding the stands steady in an increasing wind as I photographed their co-workers, one by one. 

Before we'd fired the first frame a light sleet started to fall. It got progressively worse. I covered the flashes with Ziplock bags to protect them from the moisture. We kept shooting because no one wanted to come back later and try again. We were two thirds of the way through the cattle call of portraits when the person who was managing this part of the project on the ground told me we should hurry it up because "weather was moving in." And he strongly suggested that before weather got there in force I should get my low slung, consumer rental car off the top of the mountain and onto some paved highway. We redoubled our efforts.  We wrapped a little before three in the afternoon.

The sleet got worse and the temperatures continued to drop. By the time I'd tossed all the gear in the car I could barely feel my hands/fingers on the steering wheel. I waved farewell to the convoy that followed me down the mountain and headed back South. I needed to get to Raleigh and be ready for another shoot the next morning at 9 a.m. somewhere just South of Raleigh. And my hotel was four or five hours away. 

It's fun to shoot environmental portraits. More fun if you don't have to drive for hours in either direction and stand around in a sleet storm to do them. But that's fun and challenge of commercial work.

It's so much easier when it's all just for fun. You can look at the weather report and decide to stay inside, sip hot coffee and read a good book instead... and later you can write and tell me, definitively, how I should have handled the job...

Yep. Same Godox AD200 flashes I'm still using five years later. Good investment for lighting combined with lots of travel. Might have to buy one more. Nostalgia purchase. 

Every once in a while I post a "vintage" print just because I like it. Mostly there is no story to accompany it. Unless I make one up.

Digital copy from original print. Started life as a piece of medium format film. Blossomed into a print in a traditional "wet" darkroom. A lighting test with a favorite assistant. In preparation for an editorial portrait. 

I'm in the slow process of restoring order to the little studio/office that sits just to the front of my house. We had a lot of stuff painted last month. The studio, through the largesse of the household, got a double dose of white paint on white paint. 

I wasn't in a hurry to put things right after the painters left and the paint fumes subsided so I left books and hard drives in boxes thinking I'd get right on it as soon as I figured out how to do so without depreciating the clean look of the bare, white walls. They look so....clean.

A little bit ago the CEO of a large ad group called and asked if I could "refresh" his portrait. He'd lost some weight, got into better shape, and felt that his older portrait was no longer working for him. We booked a day next week. Tuesday, I think. 

But it dawned on me as I walked into the office this morning that I had a bunch of work to do before the studio would be presentable. Workable. Comfortable for making portraits. So I guess I've started down the path of organizing and at the same time decluttering. But I'd much rather be out for a nice walk with a compliant camera. 

I met this particular CEO about 2.5 decades ago when he was an assistant marketing person at a big tech company. We've been working with each other ever since. Maybe this is what experts are talking about when they mention "compounding." Getting better at something; quicker and more profitable. At any rate I'm very much looking forward to our session. We'll catch up. And I know he's got some interesting stories to share. If I'm lucky I might get an invitation to this year's "staff" holiday party. We had a blast there last year. I promise that this time I'll be on my best behavior. 

The studio space is not very big. The working area measures about 24 by 24 feet. At the peak the ceiling is 14 feet high. Just high enough to float a generous big soft box over most peoples' heads when they are standing. But it's been quite workable over the last 26 years and since I own it I always enjoy the thought that I've been doing business rent free. And that's a big deal in Austin since the real estate market is pretty much insane and incomprehensible. 

Making one off portraits like this does not count against the idea of retirement. Mostly because I see the engagement as partly social. Touching base. Catching up. Comparing notes. Having fun. Gossiping about the industry. But since his companies are doing well financially I will send him a bill. 

Now that I have a client motivating me to get organized I'm looking forward to making more personal portraits in the space. Just for the fun of it. It feels like a good basket of reasons to get the studio back up to snuff. 

Note: Doing test shoots took all the anxiety out of client shoots. You had already dealt with the unexpected; the surprising. And so many of my favorite portraits came from those "practice" sessions. 

Satisfying when fun and business intersect.

 

Street Photography print digitized for web use with an iPhone. Expedient but somehow also appropriate.

My friend Paul called me yesterday to chat, and to let me know that iPhone 15 Pro phones were currently in stock at our local AT&T store. Fun news but not quite earthshaking. I use my current iPhone XR a lot for quick gear shots, visual reference notes and also.....phone calls. I also use it (sparingly) as a copy camera for the times when I want to show a print on the blog but don't want to spend too much time setting up a big copy stand and fancy lights to make a digital file of a physical print. 

The image above is an example of just that. And while I am sure that an upgrade to an iPhone 15 Pro would yield a "better" file I'm also pretty certain that the phone I already have does a "good enough" job already. 

I'd buy an iPhone 15 Pro if I was going to use it as a primary camera. From what I've seen the files are quite good; but like most camera files to get them "just right" requires some time in post processing. If I'm going to put in the time I still think I'd prefer to work with a bigger file, from a sensor with bigger pixels, and more choices of lenses. But the new phones are tempting. In the end, for the over-equipped photographer they just introduce yet another in a seemingly endless basket of choices one must make before venturing out to shoot...

Sometimes the real "magic" of a process is the quickness it provides. Would a bigger scan of the print enrich my life as a blogger? Probably not. Mostly because, as I've stated many times before, images on the web are meant to be consumed in the moment and very, very few people will return to look a second time...at anything. And, in all honesty, a 1600 pixel wide version of a 20x20 inch custom print is never going to translate the original in terms of impact or quality. Add to that the fact that over 74% of the views of any image on the web tend to be on handheld phone screens which ---- dumbs down everything.

*** the holidays are on us now. The canned holiday music fills nearly every store I walk into. Except for my local coffee shop. The employees there are still sampling from their own favorite playlists of contemporary music and so far, thankfully, I haven't heard a single jolly Christmas tune while buying the elixir of the gods. Hope that remains the case...

****Now is the time when vloggers, bloggers, YouTubers and all the rest make their press towards the goal of year end, personal enrichment. Be careful when shopping. Don't let the pressures of the plea and the season derail your better financial judgement. Content offered freely doesn't require you to overspend.  Just remember, the new Leica SL3 isn't going to be available until mid-year 2024 (conjecture!) so keep some "powder" dry.

*****What do the rest of you professional photographers do to get rid of the endless partial rolls of seamless paper that seem to reproduce like bunnies in the studio? Too long to fit into dumpsters or recycling bins. No photo programs exist anymore for donations. Where do they go to die?