Portrait done in a workshop many, many years ago. But in a style I still love very much right now...

 

This image of a person who agreed to model in one of my workshops gives energy to the argument that, at least for me, the camera, its resolution and its vintage aren't particularly important. The lighting is much more a fundamental concern for me. 

When teaching a workshop about portrait lighting it's nice to work in a dark, controlled space, with constant/continuous lighting. Everyone in the room can see exactly what the effect of one lighting style or another is. How a big, soft source is really different from multiple smaller lights. How to place shadows. How to look for the transition between the exposure you want on the important parts of a face and the shadows that help defined the overall look.

In this instance I used a 6 foot by 6 foot frame with a couple layers of white diffusion material on them. I placed the talent as close to the surface of the diffusion as I could while keeping it out of the frame. Think two and a half to three feet away. I placed the bottom of the panel just above her chin height in order to get the defining shadow under her chin. And then I stopped and took the shot. 

She is wearing a drape over her street clothes as we were just about to change outfits and lighting. 

The camera was an older Nikon camera. Probably a D700 and the lens is a 105mm. I like the look of the portrait even nearly 20 years later. It's the lighting and the talent, not the camera sensor. At least I think that's right. 

I laughed out loud this morning when I read in the newspaper that a south Austin couple went out for a walk in the very cold weather...

 

this image was taken back in 2022, in August. It was hot. So I walked. Yesterday was cold. So I swam...

I assume readers were supposed to marvel at the courage of a healthy couple who decided to continue their habit of a morning walk even though the temperatures were......wait for it......in the mid-20s. The photo in the newspaper showed the thirty something couple all wrapped up in layers. Parkas, gloves, face covering; the works. How very, very brave they were. 

"How very, very brave they were!" I thought to myself as I wrapped up my hour long workout in the outdoor pool. A pool in which I amused myself by occasionally knocking the icicles off the starting blocks at one end. "How exhilarated they must have felt to be out in the elements..."  I thought as I pulled myself out of the water and onto the freezing deck, all the while watching steam float off my body and wisp away into the 30 mile an hour wind gusts. 

Since the wind chill index was about 11° I babied myself and tossed a towel around my shoulders to keep me warm as I walked through the breezes toward the locker room. "But, thoughts and prayers for those poor walkers...."  Yes, it felt a bit chilly but by the time you hit 69 years of age you are hardly even sentient enough to notice mild changes in temperature. You are too busy imagining how your life might be different with more megapixels in your one and only camera. Every other thought, including survival, just takes a back seat...

When did our version of civilization turn so soft and discomfort averse? What would the Spartans say? 

Sigh. Such is the life of a blogging gadfly. 

In all seriousness 23° (F) with the add-on of a heavy wind chill is about my lower limit these days for swimming outdoors. The swim club agrees with that sentiment and decided to cancel today's early morning practices since the temps predicted around swim time started at 18° and also featured lively wind. Sometimes you just have to rough it and put on those shoes, a coat, a vest, a hat, another hat, gloves, mittens and long underwear and head out for a walk instead... Maybe you'll be featured in the local paper!!! Sure beats walking around in a wet swim suit...

Or you could stay home, drink hot tea and decide just exactly how many megapixels your camera needs to make you happy. Choices, choices, choices.  

I have experienced the "beating of a dead horse" on other writer's blogs. I thought I'd continue the tradition here with one of my favorite visual tangents....the lonely, paper coffee cup.

 

I'm a promiscuous coffee drinker. There's good coffee in spots throughout Austin and I've learned where many of these spots are. And then there's bad coffee. You can try to change the quality of Starbucks drip coffee by moving it from a paper cup to a ceramic cup but the disappointment in the taste is immune to gussying it up in a "better" container.  On the other hand it's tough to kill a great cup just by choosing a particular vessel from which to enjoy a standout brew.  Most paper cups offer ample transparency to the coffee taste.

Mañana Coffee makes a decent but not exemplary cup of brewed coffee. They make up for not achieving the highest tier of coffee brewing in two ways. First they do make coffee that's better than 90% of the other coffee purveyors in town. And, second, the atmosphere they provide, in which you can drink your coffee, is superb and (some readers here will be delighted to learn...) the wonderful patio, which is covered against the chance of rain, is large and well designed; perfect for sitting around while you enjoy a beverage. It's adjacent to the downtown lake (Lady Bird Lake) and right next to the very popular running trail that follows the contours of the water. Located at the bottom of two high rise residential towers there is always wonderful people watching to be had.

It's so pleasant there that I never walk away with coffee but instead enjoy it slowly and while (mostly) seated. 

When I get coffee there it's with the intention of sitting at a table in the shade and enjoying the brew slowly and with intention. It's one of my favorite meeting places as well. Last week I met with a film maker there for morning coffee and later in the week I met with an old assistant who sat with me and reminisced about the "golden age" of photography. As we practiced it. All while we remained mostly stationary. From the first sip to the last. 

There are inside tables for the coldest and hottest days as well as "wash rooms" for calls of nature. Very nice wash rooms. Clean and well maintained. 

Up until now Mañana had generic, white paper cups with a logo rubber-stamped on them. Now they have cups with built in insulation to keep one's hands from heat trauma, and a nice combination of color and design applied. So much prettier than a mug that's passed through countless hands and, hopefully, been well washed. Again and again. Ah, the chorine smell of those commercial dishwashers...

I like coffee but I also like photographing solitary cups and amusing myself by seeing how cool the foregrounds and backgrounds come in and out of focus when photographed just so. It's a treat.  

I can assure you that you can look forward to more, and different, solitary coffee cup photos. You know you love them. The mannequins told me so.....

I've recently had a renewed interest in the Leica SL2. So much so that I bought a second one as a back-up to the first. Why not? The prices have dropped so low....

I walked down to North Congress Ave., just in front of the state capitol building, to see some of the finishers from today's Austin Marathon race. It was a perfect day to run a marathon. The course was straightforward and remarkably secure. And the temperature range, 40s to low 50s, was just right for running long distances. Back in my 20s I ran several marathons. The events were much smaller then; in terms of participants. Several hundred people would enter the full distance race. A larger number would sign up for the half marathon. Now the attendance is in the tens of thousands and corporate sponsors are eager to participate. 

I was never a fast runner but in your twenties you can do just about anything physical that you put your mind to. I find swimming more enjoyable but seeing the runners at the finish made me think, just for a few moments, of training at age 69 to see if I could run just one more.... A few minutes later I came back to my senses and decided I'd just run out the clock in the pool.

But there was an observation I wanted to make that's all about photography. Up until about ten years ago any big foot race in Austin came equipped with a large number of photographers. There were teams of professionals snapping images of every runner who came across the finish line. Editorial shooters who were after great images of the top runners from around the world. And an army of amateurs out to get great "sports" photographs or to catch images of friends and loved ones as they ran by picturesque parts of the race course. 

I walked through the finish area near the end of the race and saw two or three people with actual cameras. Not phones, just cameras. And that was it. No legion of hobbyists out for fun images. No young professionals anxious to get great shots for their portfolios. Nada. Videographers? Sure, there were a few roving teams and a bunch of stationary camera set-ups. That's to be expected since video is far more popular on sharing sites than stills these days. Especially when it comes to sharing events. 

But the paucity of cameras in the downtown area today was stunning. Just stunning for me. 

I fear that our traditional approaches to photography are winding down and becoming..."quaint."

We of a certain age cling to the hobby or profession but the rest of the world seems to be moving on. Now, I have to say that if I lived in Manhattan, London or Paris I expect I would see tons more people with cameras out on the streets. After all, those cities are famous for their pedestrian street traffic and there are still ample opportunities to give the cameras and lenses a good workout. But you would think that a large event, on a gloriously beautiful day, in Texas' favorite city, would be a draw for more people with cameras. But maybe that's just an endless loop of a thought that's only shared by people who've been into photography for a long time. We constitute a small circle of people who just won't give up.

In some ways this experience plays into one of the ideas that always sticks with me when I see people participating in races, contests, and adventures. The idea is that it's a lot more fun to participate than it is to stand on the sidelines and document other people having fun... And maybe the vast majority of adults have figured that out for themselves. 

I didn't take photos of the race or the finishers. It's not a genre I'm much interested in. Instead I noted the lack of cameras and photographers as an interesting shift and moved on to walking and taking photos that interested me. And probably only me. 

I was photographing with the Leica SL2 that came in just last week, coupled with the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 that's been lurking around the studio here for years and years. It's a fun combination. I love the blue skies when a storm has finished sweeping through our area, taking the clouds with it. I like the juxtaposition of old and new architecture and I find empty train stops something of a critique of Texas city culture. 

Today's walk reminded me that I love the feel of the SL2 in my hands and I like the way it makes photographing with older, manual focus lenses easy as pie. Which also reminds me of how much I like pie ---- and that would be... a lot. 

I sat in the shade near the end of my walk and drank really good coffee from a paper cup. I paired the coffee with a croissant. I marveled at the idea that people in the northern reaches; on the east coast, have such a prejudice toward coffee delivered not in a ceramic cup. At least the plastic lid on the disposable cups helps keep the coffee warmer if you are slow to finish it. The croissant helps with the pacing....

It's always fun to get back to the office and import images from a walk into Lightroom so I can look at them large and clean on a 27 inch monitor. That process itself makes them look more grand. More fun for me. I drop a preset I got from Leica Store Miami onto the files when they import and most of the resulting files can be exported with no other changes --- and still look great. 

Life is good. Even if I decide not to run another marathon. Walking with a camera is its own satisfaction.

Loving hearing stories about camera packing. I wish my readers who travel with cameras would toss in some of their own stories about traveling with gear. Great ideas? Travel traumas with gear? Grand success stories? Logistics? And so much more. 

Fun to read about Greg planning out his journey and the science of loading everything he needs for a long period of time into a tiny car with no back seat...... More like that. 

South Congress Avenue on Valentine's Day.

 

A couple sharing a moment, eating ice cream at Amy's.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. It's a silly holiday for all kinds of reasons but it is redeemed by making us imagine, just for a little while, how good it feels to be in love. To have someone unflappably on your side. And in my mind those good relationships create concentric circles of happiness. Solid, grounded people attract others who are like them and the circle of good friends grows around you. And, of course, my partner would say that it all starts with kindness. 

I spent time yesterday figuring out some ideas for camera packing. I have to fly to Santa Fe on assignment and I'm always anxious about getting the delicate and expensive camera gear safely to my final destination. The last time I had an assignment in Santa Fe I drove there and I could take every last bit of gear I'd ever want with me. Not that I really needed a lot of gear but sometimes having redundant layers of gear is like having the ultimate security blanket. Warm and cozy and feeling prepared for anything that might crop up...

I'm sure most of you fly at least once or twice a year and I'm sure you've experienced the airlines all tightening up on how much luggage you can bring along. Both by size and by weight. The problems with transporting delicate and expensive camera gear are amplified by many of the new restrictions. Some airlines are imposing very strict rules on economy ticket holders including allowing only one personal item (computer bag? Purse? Small backpack?) and no other carry on luggage. This is a change, but an important one, from being able to bring both a rolling case that would fit in the luggage bins and a camera bag that one could manage to wedge under the seat in front of you. And it's disheartening for all photographers who would like to streamline travel and not have to check luggage. 

The elitists among you might immediately suggest that this is what you deserve unless you are willing to ante up for a business class or first class seat, but Whoa! there. Have you flown on a smaller, regional jet lately? In many cases the bins won't accommodate rolling cases that easily fit in the bins on something like an Airbus 320 or a 737. And the space underneath the seat in front of you continues to shrink... All the pricy ticket maneuvering isn't going to make the space allowed grow and you'll end up gate checking stuff more often than you might like...

If you are going to fly into Santa Fe from Austin you'll probably do so on an American Airlines flight. You'll start in Austin on a 737 variant and make a connection in Dallas. There you'll be shoehorned onto a much smaller plane with much less in-cabin storage space for your stuff. At that point you may have some tough choices to make.... And you can multiply this many times over if your journey is more complex and has more stops and plane changes. 

I'll be photographing a corporate event for a banking giant. I'd love to take everything including the darkroom sink. My first thought was to pull the Think Tank Roller case off the shelf and load it up with the gear I anticipate shooting with as well as back-up gear. The urge for redundancy being, no doubt, a hold over from the film days when mechanical cameras often stopped functioning and photographers routinely brought multiple back-ups. Even though I have yet to have a digital camera melt down the memories of going through multiple Hasselblad bodies on a shoot, or the sudden death of a poorly repaired Leica M3 on the first day of a vacation in Paris still haunt me. I should get over it and embrace the reliability of modern, digital cameras. 

To my mind, roller cases that are big enough to be useful to photographers are easy targets for gate agents. Might not be a problem if the overhead bins are ample enough and you are in one of the first boarding groups but things get dicier if you have a cheap ticket, purchased at the last minute and you are in one of the cursed last boarding groups who are quickly confronted with the fact that all, ALL, the overhead bins are totally full and there's no way you'll get a rolling case of the typical dimensions under the seat in front of you --- no matter how hard you try.

After lots of configuring and reconfiguring of physical gear I decided to reconfigure my expectations about what to bring. Instead of the super hefty Leica 24-90mm zoom lens, two SL-type bodies, the big Panasonic 70-200mm f2.8 zoom, the 14 inch MacBook Pro and a back-up Panasonic 24-105mm lens, along with batteries, phone, more batteries and chargers, I decided to harken back to earlier days and reconsider what I actually used to provide the same kind of photographs at the same event over the three previous years. Almost everything I shot in 2023 and 2024 was done with two focal lengths. Those would be 35mm and 85mm. The other focal length that saw about 25% of use was a standard, boring 50mm lens. So, three smaller and lighter lenses. 

I decided that, at this point in my career, to take a leap of faith and instead of bringing mountains of back up gear I would take just what I can fit into a Domke F1X camera bag. Why? Because I know that I can fit that bag under airplane seat. And I know it will be light enough to carry if I don't overpack. 

The Domke bag will get the main camera, a smaller, lighter back-up camera (Q2) three prime lenses, one hot shoe flash, extra batteries, and the computer. And at the moment I'm considering another photographer's advice that I switch from a bulky laptop to a smaller, lighter M4 iPad --- just to reduce the total size and weight of the package. I'm resistant but still considering. 

I'll pack a generic, rolling case with necessary clothes, extra shoes, a second battery charger, a well packed back-up shoe mount flash, and a very well packed 135mm lens ---- just in case I decide I need some more reach. If the roller needs to be checked I'll suck it up and gate check it. I can afford to lose the clothes, the lens and the flash if the luggage goes astray. But the rest of the gear will travel with me all the time. Mostly under the aforementioned seat.

Taking advice from Hanoi-based photographer, Justin Mott, I bought one of those wretched, unfashionable photographer's vests. It's muted black. It has lots of big pockets. If I feel the need to bring "one more thing" I'll pull out the vest from the roller case and put the wanted item into one of the pockets and then I'll suffer the indignity and wear the vest... The sacrifices we make for our photography... 

There is a part of me that wants to turn back the gear clock to a time when I did so much with one camera, one lens and one flash. And the lens back then was never a zoom. As a compromise I dream of working with just two camera bodies and two lenses. One flash. You could almost wear all of your critical gear on a flight. Unless the gate agents count each camera as one "personal item." But wouldn't it be great to travel and work so lightly? I think it might be plausible. And along those lines I think I'll ditch the business suit this year and lean on my work as a photographer to exclude the burden of a suit jacket. More room in the roller bag for swim gear....

And it's not like Santa Fe is at the end of the world, adrift from consumer civilization. There are a couple of camera stores there and if everything goes to hell on the journey in one swipe of a credit card could supply the bare essentials to get an event oriented job done. So I guess I should chill a bit.

Anyway, after I went through all the ideas and permutations of packing logistics I arrived at a couple solutions I'm good with and decided I'd worried enough for the day --- especially about a job that's a month in the future --- and headed out with a camera and a totally different lens to see what was afoot on S. Congress Ave. on Valentine's Day. It was a short shooting adventures. A chance to try out the Sigma 85mm f1.4 on the new SL2, just to see if my "two cameras, two lenses" idea might have value. 

I needed to be home at a reasonable time because I was the designated chef for our Valentine's Day dinner. I got lucky and cooked two filet mignons perfectly (not always the case). I made two sides. One was a cold potato salad of fingerling potatoes mixed with smoked salmon and a very subtle vinaigrette dressing; the other was a pickled beets, walnuts and kale mix. The cute looking, romantically heart-shaped, chocolate cake came from Whole Foods. Add wines and dinner was a success. 

Here's some of the stuff I shot yesterday. It was gloomy and overcast but it's always nice to get a walk in and immerse one's self in the sea (or puddle) of humanity... Hope you had fun yesterday as well.

Every day revolves around swimming. Or swimming pools. Or contrasting colors. Or coffee....

Ready for immediate application. At Jo's. In a paper cup. That's the way it comes.

 Coffee means different things in different cultures. 

Many EU cultures can't imagine coffee being portable. Or coming in 

disposable cups. We can't really imagine coffee that you acquire outside your home

any other way. And Americans, at least the younger ones, seem more comfortable 

with a warm or cold drink in one hand as they walk around. 

The French and Italian citizens become paralyzed by a cup of coffee, 

served in a ceramic cup, and can't move from the spot until every drop is 

drained. They'll never know the pleasure of being ambulatory with coffee.... Sad. 

I guess this means it's okay to bring your dog. As long as he or she is kind and 

unthreatening. Noted. 

The mannequins see the need for coffee as a very human weakness. 

They disregard people on the other side of the window who dare to bring their coffee with them.

The shop windows these days are filled with examples of very modern coats. Dress coats. Trench coats. Fashionable trench coats. Long, wool coats and so many other coat styles that look so very nice but which are only practical for about two weeks of wear, per year, in Austin, Texas. 

Sunglasses, on the other hand, are always in fashion. Always stylish. 

And then the walk was over and it was back into the kitchen.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

Photographed in front of Brock's Books in San Antonio's downtown. On Houston St.? 

Ancient film camera and a 28mm f3.5 lens from the dark ages. I've posted this photo on Valentine's day somewhere, every year, for the last 30+ years. Either as a physical print or, of the last decade or so, on social media. It's one of my all time favorite time travel photographs about San Antonio. 

I hope you are experiencing true romance. Today and every other day...

Random photos with an M240 M-E and a Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO. A sweet combo. I think John Szarkowski would have approved...

 

photographer ventures out in the frigid Winter blasts.

A bone chilling 50°.  Is able to handle his camera

even without the protection of thick gloves! 

Testing out his brand new hoodie. When did medium sized hoodies 

get so baggy? Time to eat more cheeseburgers....