Rain. Walking. Those damn Leica cameras. Diopter Philosophy. Fake reminisces of teachers from long ago. Pretend Elitism and much more.

In my experience there is no such thing as "free" coffee. It almost always comes with

strings attached. Yep. It's a pop up church in downtown. The coffee is a lure. You join

in and you're tithing forever. Avoid free coffee. Invest your pocket change.

It was like movie rain last night. Giants pounding the roof of the house with boulders of rain. Torrents. Like machine gun fire. More flashes of lightning than electronic flashes at a group swimsuit model shoot meet up. Thunder that made one think they were living inside a timpani drum, surrounded by hundreds of other timpani drums all being beaten by hundreds of monkeys, all jacked up on speed. Well that may be overstating things but it did rain, thunder and lightning a lot last night. We did miss out on wind damage, hail and tornados. Thank goodness since we just got all the furniture moved back into our living room yesterday afternoon. It would be a pity to see the whole house destroyed on the very next day...

(Joe, go look at the comments from the previous post. I answered your ??? about the flooring...).

Last week was a lost photographic week; at least to my mind. The action at SXSW was lame. The streets were as gray as the participants and the weather... well the weather was great whenever it was my turn to be at home supervising the floor install and miserable when it was my time for unsupervised  recreation. I never mind swimming in blah weather but I do get put off about doing photography when the sun hides its face. 

I decided that today I needed to go out and walk (gotta get in those 10K steps...) and spend some quality time with one of my cameras. I pulled out the camera that started my current deep dive into Leica M stuff out of the equipment drawer and put the 35mm lens on it. Then I headed downtown for a lively walk and a search for non-free coffee. 

I often wonder what other people think about when they head out to photograph. I tend to think about all the images I've seen from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that look so incredibly interesting now. Images that document post world war culture, the rise of the enormous American middle class, the protests and hippies of the 1960s, and the big recession and the (short lived) death of big cars when the gas crisis hit. Many thanks to our dear Saudi friends who engineered the first major gas shortages of the post war years. And helped deliver to us an awesome recession.

In each era the hairstyles, the clothing, the shoes, the cars, the signage in restaurant windows and the amazing billboards are fascinating because they are so different from our normal diet of visual items and trends today. I think that, if I make the right kinds of photographs and then wait 20 or 30 years they too will be the proof of how weird the era we are living through right now will seem. Red "gimme" caps? Black tights on chubby people? Tattoos? Fads like bidets for dogs? Entrepreneurs mostly selling apps that do something for you that you used to do more quickly and easily with a ballpoint pen and a pad of paper? Entrepreneurs still trying to perfect instant red wine? Electric vehicles which were originally intended to save the environment now the victims of car design steroids and dwarfing pre-EV cars in size, weight and total energy consumption; and doing so at three times the price of the cars we used to buy back before the turn of the century? What an enormous cluster fuck we're living through. And I'm here to document it so some smart ass thirty years from now can make glib comments about how stupid we were back when. Yeah, I actually think about stuff like this when I leave the house with a camera in my hands. It helps. Or maybe not...

I thought the rain was all done when I locked my car in its usual spot, just across from The Treaty Oak, and took off toward the hike and bike trail. I didn't think I needed a jacket, a hat, a camera bag, etc. I was reveling in the cool, clean touch of the air on my face. I dangled my camera around my neck on a light brown leather strap, letting it hang down just so in the center of my chest, at the bottom of my sternum, just like a tourist in a strange land. All that was missing was a pork pie hat, some Bermuda shorts and some white "athletic" socks plunging down into a pair of joggers with thick, bouncy soles. And maybe a pair of mirrored sunglasses. (If I seem to be typing a bit funny it's because I got a new desk yesterday and I'm not used to it yet. I'll start researching desks in this coming week and make sure I have the optimum one for writing. There are so many to choose from and I want to make sure that my fifth grade writing teaching, Mrs. Smithington-Wells (who claimed my writing was so good it was destined to change the world...) isn't turning over in her grave because of grammatical mistakes I can vaguely attribute to external causes). 

I was about a mile into the walk, just wandering through the park near the Dougherty Arts Center when the rain renewed its interest in making my day more interesting and began pelting me with big, juicy drops of cold water. I know that a Leica M240 can stand a bit of rain but I hate to be unprepared if nature really lets loose with a fusillade of ferocious raindrops. I had visions of Mr. Plegly, my first scout master, dropping by the house to strip me of a handful of merit badges. Though he often said my ham radio merit badge was earned through exceptional work mastering the frequencies. But nothing equals the work I did in the cub scouts with my Pinewood Derby racer... My she was yar. (Movie reference anyone? Your turn to shine... Hint: Cary Grant).

So, you've got that rangefinder camera in your hands, the rain is coming down, you are at least a mile from your car. What do you do? I looked around to see if there was a doggie poop bag dispenser any where in the vicinity. Nope. I looked through the park and over to Barton Springs Rd. where I spotted a convenience store. I hustled through the sloppy rain and went in. It has been decades since I've been in a convenience store. Like a 7-11. They haven't changed a bit. Are those Swisher Sweet cigars over there, behind the counter? They sure are.  I asked for a plastic bag and the guy behind the counter made gruff noises but then handed one over. With my new, impermeable accessory I could venture back out into the "deluge"  and keep heading toward my destination, the open air coffee shop called, Jo's. South Congress Ave. Right next to the San Jose Hotel.

Rain can make stuff look so different. The homeless are bent on getting to shelter and so just glance when passing by - instead of asking for cash. The colors are more saturated. The distant details blurrier. I was so happy I'd chosen Keen's hiking shoes instead of my usual Birkenstocks. The rain would make mush out of the cork soles on those oh-so delicate German sandals. 

When it's 58° outside and one is wearing a fairly light shirt over jeans one tends to look for shortcuts to the target destination. When one is soaked then one tends to shorten the estimated time of arrival by a good bit via faster locomotion. My philosophy teacher at St. Xavier school in Cincinnati, Dr. Blevins, taught me the expandable and contractible natures of context. He said I "got it" quicker than just about every other student ever. I forget what I replied because I was only there to swim with the Cincinnati Pepsi Marlins Swim Club. Indulgent parents indeed. At any rate, with the camera covered and safe I made good time to the order window at Jo's where I requested a nice cappuccino and a bacon, egg and cheese breakfast taco on a flour tortilla. Not sure whether my cardiologist would approve of the menu d'jour but as I've told him many times, "This is life. It's not a contest." His rebuttal? He hands me a printed sheet with a new recipe for lentil soup and kale. In a wry and subversive twist I add a half a pound of sausage to the recipe before handing it over to our cook. 

If clouds are deep and thick and moist (and which clouds are not moist?) I advise folding up a right sized plastic bag and putting it in a convenient pocket. Just in case. You'll likely thank yourself on that one time you get stuck out in the downpour. Lie and take credit for your preparedness.

I used to have no love for the 35mm lenses of this world. My north star was always the 50mm lens and, given the right opportunity, the 85mm lens. But in my high school typing and genome mapping class I was the odd man out. Most of the other students in my school swore by the 35mm lens and swore at me for my heretical preference. But lately I've softened my rhetoric and am now ready to admit that the 35mm lens can be quite a good choice for casual imaging. Especially for a day like today when, every once in a while, one wants to do a mild amount of zone focusing, and I have to admit that in instances like this the 35mm is the better choice when compared to the 50mm. Any wider than 35mm? Bite your tongue. 

I was just about soaked when I made it to Jo's. Ordered my cappuccino and my taco and I sat at the little faux bar overlooking the sidewalk that overlooks the street and enjoyed some casual people watching while haphazardly ingesting my frugal fare. Then I turned around and made some photographs of the pick up window and the people lingering around it. I love the neon signs  up on the wall surrounding the coffee portal and I really enjoy making casual snaps of the ever changing selection of couples, singles and groups nervously, calmly, happily waiting for their particular cup of caffeine to be announced. I take a lot of frames with my camera because people are animated. Sometimes multiple people's faces can be seen from the camera position and sometimes their gestures and body language become more interesting over time. Taking only one or two frames seems like only checking one or two tires before taking a thousand mile journey in one's car....

Jim Thomas asked in yesterday's blog about how best to navigate diopters and viewfinders when one becomes eligible to wear bifocals. And in my case, progressive lensed glasses. Here's my non-answer answer and I genuinely hope it's helpful even if it's nothing more than commiseration. 

If I know a camera well, and don't need to frequently check image reviews or menu items while out shooting, I find the correct diopter that gives me very sharp focus on the rangefinder patch and in the rangefinder window and ditch the glasses. I can still see fairly well in the range of about 2.5 feet to about  50 feet. At the longer range I'm better off augmenting with glasses. And in the closest range I definitely need optical help to read type and assess sharpness. I use a plus two diopter with the Leica M cameras. It provides as sharp or sharper a finder image than when depending on my bifocals or progressive lenses. But what this means is that I generally carry my glasses somewhere on my person so I can use them if I do need to consult the menu for any reason. Or if I find a convenient Wall St. Journal or NYTimes at a coffee shop and want to catch up on reasonably recent news. Today I had my favorite pair of glasses hanging off the front of my shirt collar just in case I needed them --- but not for viewfinder use. 

Now, most of the time, I can manage without the diopter on the finder eyepiece --- if I'm wearing glasses. But...but... all bets are off when I put on the 28mm lens because the glasses prevent me from getting my eye close enough to see the full frame without having to move my eye all over the place. And that slows down the act of photographing quite a bit. Too much for my taste. My options are to use a diopter which then allows a closer eye point, or to buy and use an auxiliary, dedicated 28mm finder attachment. Which has its own limitations. I broke down and bought a 28mm, outboard, optical finder just to see which I prefer. I like the optical finder; I can see the edges of the frame better...

It's a whole different thing when I shoot with the SL or SL2 cameras. Those have built-in diopters and great viewfinders with a very high eye point. I can center the diopter dial at neutral and use my glasses. I can see all the way to the edges of the frame with no swiveling nonsense. Or, I can set the diopter adjustment at +2.0 and ditch the glasses. Since I can bring the menus up in the finder I can make camera adjustments without having to look at the rear LCD panels and the same thing with image reviews. The SL cameras are really wonderful when it comes to everything viewfinder-wise. But, they aren't M rangefinder cameras. 

I remember the day I found I needed glasses. I had recently purchased a very expensive Hasselblad camera and was using it on a photo shoot at Motorola. My assistant and I had set up lights for a group shot and when the group arrived I seemed to have some problems getting them adequately in focus. My assistant, who was twenty years younger than I, jumped in and focused the camera for best focus and we soldiered on. But with all the hubris and narcissism I learned from my oh so privileged upbringing I could not accept that the blame for being unable to achieve sharp focus lay with me. It had to be the gosh darn new camera. I boxed it up and sent it back with a pithy note about spending thousands of dollars on a product only to get a defective article. I was 46 at the time and feeling immortal and bullet proof. 

Several weeks later I got a phone call from someone with a classic, Swedish accent. He introduced himself as a tech advisor for Hasselblad. He told me that they had received my camera and, using hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of optical test and mechanical measuring equipment they had discovered that the camera in question was ..... operating ..... perfectly. 

I responded that I have always had perfect vision. His response? He asked how old I was. When I told him he said, "You did have perfect vision. But now, perhaps, you need to visit your oculist." He further added, "Most photographers I have met require some sort of eyeglasses prescription when they've reached your age..." 

He made arrangements to send the camera back to me and suggested I look into purchasing a diopter accessory after I'd visited my oculist.  This was at a time before built-in diopters were routine. He was right. A +1.0 diopter did the trick back then...

And this brings up yet another niggle. I have a Fuji GFX 50Sii. I like the camera mostly. The files are quite nice and the slight difference in depth of field compared with full frame/35mm type cameras makes me happy. But... the range of the built in diopter is limited. When I use the camera without my glasses to help me I have to move the diopter control all the way over to one extreme and when I get there it's just on the edge of being sharp enough. I could use a few more clicks in order to satisfy myself that I have the right click selected. The work around for that camera is --- just to use eyeglasses. But it still pisses me off that they included a feature that isn't universal enough to serve me.

If there is a God, and by any chance I make it to heaven, I will surely take this situation up with the management. Maybe I can get an upgrade on the supplied harp.

So, I walked back over a different bridge and into the heart of downtown. I ran into someone who knew me but, in the moment I didn't recognize him. I just flat out admitted it. Turns out I had photographed him for an accounting practice many years ago. We chatted for a few minutes and it was nice. 

I walked into the J.W. Marriott to use their restroom. The one I usually use at their hotel was closed for maintenance. I asked the concierge at the desk about the location of an alternate. He left his desk, guided me across the lobby and showed me to another restroom facility on the other side. I wondered if everyone got guided tours when asking for restroom directions but it did make me feel special. He must have recognized the Veblen heritage of my 12 year old camera and acted appropriately. I wonder if he would have been responsive at all had I been sporting a Sony instead... (attempt at humor; nothing more).

Just before making it back to my car the rain started up again. Almost as a swipe at me for having the temerity to expect a dry walk. I slipped into my car and dropped the camera onto the passenger seat. Not a drop of water on it anywhere. I headed home smugly thinking that I'd gone toe-to-toe with the rain and come out with a draw. No camera destruction and a free washing of my clothes. How lovely. 

And, I like my little Carl Zeiss 35mm Biogon ZM lens. Cute and highly functional. As well made as a Mennonite horse carriage. But without the baggage. Just another day in paradise.

A full on Yeti store with a full bar, etc. Right there on S. Congress Ave. 

I still don't get the logic of spending $500 on an ice chest. Anyone 

ever heard of Coleman? Geez. Talk about Veblen...

Looking to the east the Austin skyline is starting to look a bit like Shanghai.

I count six new high rise buildings just in the tiny Rainey Street (former)

neighborhood. More at every other point on the compass.

Shade tree mechanics?

ground zero for coffee on S. Congress. At least it's covered...

The lighting in the restrooms at Jo's comes from daylight through a red filter 

as a ceiling. It can take some adjustment.

all the plants look juicier in the rain.

I am my own drone. Okay. Okay, I was on a bridge...

trudging back to the car through our dystopian reality...

Two couples on a bench. And the end of a long week.

Old school street photography. Medium format film. No AF, no AE. Just 

eyes and hands and luck.

Good stuff: It's been a long week but the floor is done and it's beautiful. B. is happy. I like it too. I don't want to put the furniture back in because the wide open space feels so good. The room would make a perfect portrait studio. 600+ square feet and ceilings that go up to sixteen feet. Now with gorgeous 

floors. 

B.'s yoga matt over toward the far side of the floor... 

Bad stuff: The diopter I ordered from Leica Store Miami was sent by the least competent freight company I know of. That would be UPS. It should be a straight shot from Florida to Texas. The item was shipped ground. But somehow my shipment made it up to Maryland. Now it's somewhere in Illinois. UPS just sent me a note to tell me that my delivery would be delayed some more because the trailer hasn't left the UPS facility in Ill. in enough time to make the first delayed delivery estimate. They are thinking maybe Tuesday of next week... Amazing. At this rate it'll go to Alaska first. A little frustrated but then I generally am when directly confronted with incompetence. 

Good stuff: The controversial Leica battery; the SCL6, works well across all the cameras that used to rely on the SCL4 batteries. According to some I must have a king's ransom in Leica batteries... Now selling battery futures. $3,135 worth of modest performing batteries. Just enough to trade for a weathered used car... 

How many batteries does one need? Always...one more.

Bad stuff: SXSW was visually boring this year. Many fewer big, bright corporate showcases. Much less action and many fewer people down on Sixth St. I made three forays into downtown to document what was billed as hundreds of thousands of people. I'm thinking it was more like tens of thousands. And mostly they seemed to be people who drew short straws and were required to come. At least that was the pervasive vibe. I looked a lot but didn't see much I wanted to photograph so I came home and continued doing chores. 

Good stuff: In years past I would have prevailed upon our son to come over and help me move all the furniture back into the living room. This time around B. decided that we'd just hire a moving company to come in and do it all. They arrive tomorrow. After swim practice and coffee. No backache next week for me. 

Neutral stuff: I've declined another project for this Fall. Sent it along to a comrade here in Austin. I looked at the proferred schedule for this event and saw that one day of the three was scheduled to start 

at 8 a.m., end at 11 p.m., and it felt like they'd like to have images the next morning. Not my cup of tea anymore. I'll defer to someone who is still highly motivated...  

Fun movies on Netflix but I know you all are too intellectually pure to enjoy my picks so I'll abstain from tormenting you. Figaro, Figaro, Figaro....

Looking forward to having my house back.

 

Inflation? What inflation? Improved luxe product sees a $110 price drop.

 

People complain all the time these days about inflation. But when I went to buy a better, more powerful camera battery to use across four different Leica cameras I found that the new battery had several advantages over the old battery. The new SCL-6 battery now has a capacity of 2200mAh while the previous SCL-4 battery only coughed up about 1850mAh. The new battery has approximately 15% more available power!!! But here's the real shocker, the old battery cost $285 per. That's a tidy sum for a mid-range camera battery. Part of what some people call, "The Leica Tax." The new battery has been selling at retail for the past year at $170. That's about 40% less than the original battery that was introduced along with the original Leica SL back in 2015. 

A 40% drop in price is nothing to sneeze at. That's real money. Now those poor, cash-strapped Leica owners will save about $115 every single time they need to buy a new battery. A voracious battery user might save thousands over the life of his or her camera.  Even better, the new battery will work in a wide generational swath of Leica cameras. Good news for owners of the Q2, the SL, the SL2, the SL2-S, the Q3 and the newly announced (and much anticipated) SL3. At least three generations of cameras at my count. Forty percent deflation on an improved product. Has that ever happened before?

It's positively DeVeblen. 

Mein new battery ist charging on the corner of my desk as I write this. Ich bin putting it in an SL2 and taking it out for a nice adventure tomorrow. The video improvement alone in the SL2 probably makes the upgrade worth it (using the older, original battery caused the camera to drop to a lower video output when the remaining power was less than half...). 

Paying only 60% of the previous new price for a better product while using inflated dollars against a weakened Euro. Amazing. Macro economics at work...

Now... let's see if we can get Leica to drop the price of the new camera by 40%. That would be a really neat trick. Then the whole system would be nicely DeVeblen-ized. So many happy dentists and hedge fund managers... Or would they all just rush to buy up new Hasselblad stuff before those prices fall?

In a delightful break from photography and business, we've had a great time swimming this week.

 

I'm just so jazzed about swimming right now. I've changed my freestyle stroke a bit. My front "catch" is much better and more aggressive. I can feel it in my lat muscles with every stroke. I'm also working on pointing my toes more in the kick. That adds some propulsive power to the kick and a side benefit is a surprising improvement in managing overall drag. The more streamlined you make your body, via technique, the faster you can go with the same amount of effort you were using to swim slower. It really works. Finally, I'm working on relaxing more in the water which helps with breath control. If your brain is constantly reactive about performance anxiety it interferes with deep, rhythmic breathing. That can slow you down. 

That was actually a simple fix. I'd gotten into the habit of having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, before swim practice. A nice jolt of caffeine. And a direct way to also raise up any anxieties you may have floating around in your brain. I didn't want to give up the warm, welcoming cup of coffee before swimming so I switched to decaf. Just for pre-practice The difference was immediately noticeable and now, after four weeks of hewing to the new routine it has become habit. A good habit. But after practice...real coffee rules!

My final swim altering improvement is currently paying dividends and I can only imagine that a few months from now I'll be faster in the water than I am now. I cut off my intake of any alcohol. But I'm not dogmatic and rigid about it. I'll have a glass of Champagne at a wedding. I'll share a glass of red wine with my hosts when we're invited over for dinner. And, if someone gifts me a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cab I'll be happy to open it up and share it with a friend or two who can really appreciate it. 

But alcohol does impair the building of muscle and 68 year old people really need to be aware of that. Not to mention that steady (not excessive) alcohol consumption contributes a 1% increase to the likelihood of developing dementia. And I'd certainly like to improve my odds against in that arena. 

So, better technique through repetitive practice, focusing on better streamlining, relaxing more, a better scheduling of caffeine intake (someone suggested giving up coffee altogether so I took their contact info off my computer...) for more relaxed swimming, and a cessation of habitual alcohol consumption for better muscle tone and a clearer brain. And yes. I'm swimming with more endurance.

How's it all working out? We'll see at the next big master's swim meet. 

What's my morning swim like? I get up at 7 am and walk into the locker room at the pool at around 7:50. Change into swim gear, put DermaSwim Pro (a barrier lotion) on any skin that's predisposed to get a chlorine rash, grab my swim fins, a swim cap, hand paddles and a pull buoy from my bag. Make sure my favorite goggles are on my head and then trudge the 50 yards up to the pool. 

The workout is segmented into lanes by ability and speed. Lane one is the slowest lane. Lane seven is the fastest lane. I usually swim with my friends, Jane and Sheila in lane five. We've "owned" that lane for a number of years now. When a workout is crowded we welcome more people into the lane but it's usually the three of us circle swimming. 

The coach on deck writes each segment of the workout on a white board. The first segment is a warm-up. Our interpretation of the warm-up set is variable. If it's late in the week and we're sore from hard, previous workouts we might be less diligent about doing the sets exactly as written. When Sheila first tackles the warm up she swims down freestyle and back doing backstroke. It's a nice balance. 

A typical warm-up is between a thousand and twelve hundred yards. A  warm-up set might look like this: 

300 swim, 300 kick, 300 pull, 400 IM, doing a modified individual medley which might be 50 butterfly, 50 free, 50 backstroke, 50 free, 50 breaststroke, 50 free. 100 free. 

Then we're ready for the main sets. We alternate who will go first, second and third in the lane depending on each person's strengths and weaknesses. Both Jane and Sheila are faster kickers than I am so if a set has lot of kick in it I'll probably (likely) go third. If the set has a lot of pulling with hand paddles I might go first. The order doesn't really matter as we go five or ten seconds apart and we all go on the same total interval. An example would be a set of 100 yard swims on 1:30. The first person leaves at the top of the pace clock, the second person on the :05, the third person on the :10. Each person gets the full 1:30 to swim the distance and get a few seconds rest before starting again. So every minute and thirty seconds we start the next one, and the next one, and the next one. 

The longest set of one hundreds we've done, that I can remember, was 60 X 100 yards on 1:40 in celebration of Bruce's 60th birthday. So, that's 6,000 yards nearly straight through. A few second rest between each 100.  And even 1:40 is a good pace, considering the sheer number of repeats. 

Our main swim in a typical workout might consist of three different sets of distances and goal times. If I feel that I've pushed myself too fast on a challenging set I might sit out a 50 to catch my breath and bring down my pulse rate while my lane mates (who are much younger) continue. Best not to cross any red lines.... I'd hate to have my head explode.

Most of us have been swimming since the age group days and an alarmingly large number have been swimming competitively since the ages of five or six. Just about everyone swam competitively in high school and maybe 30-40% of the people in a given workout swam for their college or university. These folks have discipline that is hard to explain to people who spend a lot of time watching TV. 

Most of the swimmers in our program go five or six days a week and it's typical for them to have a second sport which they also participate in. One of our lead swimmers, who just turned 60, bikes about ten miles to the pool for the early workout at 7, changes clothes quickly afterwards and bikes over to a different facility to play Pickle Ball for a while and then rides to work. He also runs, competes in triathlons and for a time held the world's masters record for the 55-60 year age group for the 200 meter, long course backstroke. Yes, he works full time --- as the CEO of a new, healthy food company. He and his wife are raising three kids. Discipline. Focus. Good Habits.

My lane swam well today. We had fun. We kidded around. We laughed. We swam hard. 

Why bother? Energy begets energy. There's a nice social component and a large number of people I consider actual friends are people I've met at swim workouts.  Research is now showing rigorous exercise is the prime determinant of a long and healthy lifespan. More so than just about any other factor. Or combination of factors. We also look as good as we feel. And that's gotta count for something...

Okay. Got the swim and the blog done, now it's time to grab a camera and take a long walk. 

Modern Norman Rockwell.

 

Seaholm Center. Austin, Texas 

Leica SL + Sigma 35mmm f1.4 Art.

Discovering infinity in a restroom mirror...

 We love to talk about process but we shy away from talking about why we shoot what we shoot. Sometimes I like to make mirror-selfies just so I can see, physically, and one step removed, how I'm doing. How I look to everyone else. How I fit into the spaces I find myself in. A detailed selfie is one of my best motivators to get my hair cut. Or to throw away a sweater that makes me look dumpy. 

Many times I'll wake up when it's still dark outside, sit on the edge of the bed in my underwear, take a deep breath and think about why I'm interested in getting out that day with a camera. My usual answer is that I might see something that changes my mind about everything. 

Someone hit the nail on the head in some comments yesterday. It was about the creative process requiring, in my mind, some bit of friction in order to make it work. That brain worm of a thought was with me all day yesterday, in every step I made with my camera. 

Part of my ennui of late might just be a profound lack for friction. Living too comfortably inside the bubble. Too well fed. Too well taken care of. Too well off. When the upholstery gets too comfortable it gets harder and harder to get out of the chair. 

But neither do I want to end up going through life as a tourist,  just jetting by for a week or two to grab some trophies for whatever has replaced the boring slideshows our ancestors used to punish dinner guests with. 

If we're actively looking for a project I think it means that we're so well off that we're starting to look for trouble in order to disrupt our complacent bubbles.

The circumstances that buffer you from the rough patches in life create the constraints keeping you from directly having diverse experiences. Maybe that's what I'll think about today when I go swim. Up and down the lanes thinking about whether or not I made the cocoon too comfortable and now hesitate to be....uncomfortable. 

Everything is a balancing act...

Whether you are photographing on assignment or just for yourself, it's nice to introduce yourself, shake hands and win a person over before you use the camera. Just sayin.

I never got this gentleman's name but he was downtown, just outside the city council building enjoying a cool, early Spring afternoon. I saw him and thought his eyes were expressive. Just like everyone else I am a little nervous about approaching strangers and asking them if I can make their portrait. But the only alternative to not following through is to stand back, out of the circle of most interest, and shoot a bit wider. And without their collaboration. And that means you get less energy from your subject.  It's a tricky choice. 

There seems to be either power toward, or a detraction from, success in making the right decisions based on your core intention. At least as far as getting an interesting photograph is concerned. On this particular day I was mostly intending to get photographs that, in combination with other photographs, which would paint a collage for me about the people I come across when I'm out for a pleasant, no-agenda walk.

I guess I could have shot wider. I could have used a telephoto lens. But it was his eyes that drew me to him and that's what I thought should be emphasized in the final image. I also knew that I wanted to have the background drop as far out of focus as possible so the viewer would have no choice but to pay attention to the man's eyes. It would have been easier to stand back, shoot with an 85mm lens and a full frame camera. I would have had more control over the camera-to-subject distance. I could have kept my distance. Stayed in my own circle of comfort.

The camera I had with me was an older, cropped frame (APS-C) Sony and the lens I had on the camera was a fast 50mm. I went with what I had. If I had a bag full of lenses I could have stopped and changed to something longer but I know I would not have taken the time because all permissions from strangers feel like they come with a time constraint attached. After all, you are pulling them away from their own self-guided free time. Their own schedule. Their own safe space. So I kept the lens I arrived with. 

Whatever dialog we had together is lost to the mists of time. I try to be honest and not fawning. I might have said I was drawn to the power and calmness of his eyes. But I just as likely smiled and said I would really like to take his photograph...if he didn't mind.

With the burden of my years of commercial experience I find it nearly impossible to take only one or two frames and then to walk away. When I got back home I looked through my images for the day and saw that I'd snapped away for nine or ten frames. And, as I expected, the frames followed a familiar pattern. Good energy but a guardedness on the first few frames. Then the  subject feels like he should deliver a different pose or expression and we do that for a few frames. Finally, the subject starts to feel either bored or comfortable and drops his guard enough so that, if you are quick, you can capture something that feels authentic. That has the right energy. In nearly every encounter you know when you've hit the peak of expression and you sense, if you are awake to it, that the subject has had enough attention. Because people aren't used to being stared at by a Cyclops camera. And most people are used to a snapshot being one frame. 

The image was taken on a camera with a 3:2 aspect ratio but the tight, square crop seemed to mirror what I was thinking when I made the portrait. I think it's successful. You may not. And that's okay. As long as you have a reason other than the idea that it's wrong to crop out the top of the subject's head. 

(Just above) Here's another image from the same day. I changed lenses and was playing around with a cheap Sony zoom lens on the same cropped frame camera. This was taken with a much longer focal length. A 180mm FF equivalent. While I think the photo is okay there's a lot that falls flat. I wish I had gotten closer and asked the man in the hat to look into the lens. I wish the lens had been faster. The f5.6 aperture at the focal length I was using did a fairly good job of defocusing the background but I would have loved a stop or two less detail back behind him. 

It's interesting to me that after making one really good photo in an outing your brain kicks in and for the rest of the walk, with every image you shoot, your brain tries to replicate the feeling and the parameters of that one great shot. Your brain figures out that this is what you are looking for. And it hardly ever works out. 

It's the same thing with a studio portrait session. You have to take a lot of images while you feel each other out. As a photographer you keep trying little changes and shifts, in framing and also in conversation, and you keep looking at the images to see how the changes affect the way the camera sees the subject. At the same time, if you are doing your part right, the subject becomes more and more familiar with how you work and what you might be looking for. At a certain point you find you are both working in synch. You keep slowly but decisively moving toward a perfect expression and a perfect emotional connection--- which you try to capture. Once you both know you got the shot you might keep working on getting more; especially more based on that successfully instant you already got but what you are really doing is winding down. Making sure there's nothing more left in the creative tank. 

Then you congratulate each other and promise that, because this was so satisfying, you'll both do it again real soon. And, unless the subject is really special you'll probably never photograph together again. Well, unless you marry your muse and spend the next (however many) years together making images for each other.

I'm anxious with every encounter in the streets. Perhaps more so since witnessing a brutal attack on the trails a few months ago. But I continue to try to make photographs of strangers because it's interesting to me. I'm also nervous before every studio portrait session because you never know what's behind the curtain of your subject's personality. Will they be cooperative? Responsive? Able to relax? And will you have skill to understand and then capture what you find to be the special look individual to that person?

Everything else I could tell you about making portraits in the street or the studio is bullshit.