Does your local museum have one of the first photographs ever taken? How about a complete Gutenberg Bible? Really? No? Well here, I'll share.

On most days, between 10 and 5, anyone in Austin can walk in off the street, go through a small lobby and step into a booth which contains one of the first photographs every taken. You can enlarge the image above to read the details. The image is in a dark environment but it's on display all the time. It's hard to make out just what is happening in the frame but I guess that's part of the curatorial fun and games. Right? It's comforting, as a photographer, to know that this historically important relic is right here in my own home town. The rest of the collection of photos is awfully impressive as well. A collection of amazing depth and quality.

And while I was in the lobby, and since I am so devoutly spiritual, I had to stop by another light controlled booth and take a gander at the HRC's copy of the Gutenberg Bible. One of only five complete copies in the United States of America and one of only 48 remaining in the world. Hard to turn the pages through the thick, protective Lexan case in which the Bible resides. I had to use all of my psycho-kinetic powers to get back to Genesis....

But I'm betting you have one of these in your local library as well....

The HRC houses literally billions of dollars of rare art, manuscripts, photos and artifacts. The building has state of the art fire suppression and maintains a net positive pressure. Higher pressure inside than out. You would too if you had collected so many fragile prizes. Right?

But my story is more about this grating you see in the image just above. 

When I first came to UT Austin in 1974 I was following in my older brother's footsteps. And two years later my sister joined us there. My parents were paying for tuition, room, board, books and fun for three children simultaneously, and did so all the way through graduate school. After my first year (and remember, this was before the discovery, or the consequences of, climate change and atmospheric temperature rises!) I decided to move into a huge corner room in the ancient Roberts dormitory. Just across the creek and a wide street from the UT stadium. The room was bigger and I had the whole space to myself --- and it cost less than the previous room I shared with a roommate. 

How could that be? Well my previous room was in the Brackenridge dorm which was...air conditioned. The Roberts dorm was completely un-air conditioned. Warmish. Thermally challenging. But much cheaper. 

The problem that cropped up was...seasonal. Even though we didn't have many hot days with temperatures over 100°, late August and most of September could be ... challenging. The most challenging aspect that I found was how hard it was to study if you're sweating and uncomfortable. One evening my girlfriend at the time, and I, were walking across campus and we stopped over by the HRC. We spied these giant grates that run around parts of that huge, bunker-like building.  The positive airflow out of that building was air conditioned. Well air conditioned. Chilly. Cool. Comfortable. On the hot evenings and nights we'd grab our books (real, physical, printed books) and head over to sit on the grates and get our studying done. It was, in a way, a glorious thing. Far less crowded than the libraries and one could be both outside in "nature" while also being adequately chilled. Climate controlled. 

As I left the HRC today I remembered (fondly) the many evenings over the course of three years that I spent comfortably ensconced in the flow of the great/grate air conditioning. For the next four years I was able to enjoy the miracle of AC. I didn't drink coffee back then but if I had I might have gotten out of UT in just six years instead of seven if I had. But you don't give up comfort just for expediency's sake. There are limits. 

I should have asked for a key to the HRC building back then. They have nice bathrooms inside. And if I got bored with Milton's Paradise Lost I could have stopped and browsed through that musty old Guttenberg Bible... 

The idea of not having air conditioning in dorms now seems unthinkable. But we made do back then. We generally always do. 

 

Abandoned Red Shoe. Now an art object. A found construction. A not so subtle reference to the disposable economy. The start or end of a story?

 I was walking briskly. Walking with purpose. Playing with Mario Street Kart diligence in the crosswalks. Paying attention to pedestrian traffic signals. Dodging the perennially unobservant drivers. And then I saw the red shoe lying in the middle of the middle of the street. I looked left and right and then stepped out to make a quick shot. I wonder who lost it? And under what circumstances? And what happened to its partner shoe? And whether the previous owner had to hop home on one foot after a late night of partying? And why no one had come back to claim such a glorious shoe?

I can't know any of these things but I know when I'm having an Eggleston Moment with my camera. Here is my "Suburban Tricycle" writ large. 

I exhaled with great satisfaction and headed over to Medici Coffee a few blocks away, on the drag across from the UT campus, and celebrated with a cappuccino. The counter help asked if I wanted to have my coffee in a ceramic cup or if I needed it "to go." I replied that while I did want it in a paper cup I was looking forward to savoring it there. They laughed. Sometimes questions feel too automatic. 

Image above, on a sure glide path to a major museum, was taken with my old, crusty Leica Q2. Cropped in camera to a 75mm equivalent. Jpeg. Vivid. All done. 

"Mannequins" go Old School. Baring All. NSFW?

Today was Museum Day for me. After swim practice and a hearty breakfast I drove over close to the UT campus and parked in the shade. You would have looked for shade too. It was hot and sticky today...

Slathered up with sunscreen and wearing my most ridiculously protective hat I walked about a mile over to the Blanton Museum of Art, nestled on the edge of the campus, just off Martin Luther King Blvd. There was plenty to see today. A great show of artists who worked in collaboration with each other. A new show of print making families' work from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Scultures and paintings by Isamu Noguchi. Along with new works in the upstairs Contemporary galleries.

But as you have become painfully aware, I am more of a sculpture fan. Precisionist sculpture (yes, there was an art movement in the 20th century called "Precisionist Art"), though I do love Noguchi's abstractions. 

After looking through all the galleries in the Blanton I was drawn back to a small room on the first floor where there are examples from the Battle Collection of reproductions of ancient sculpture. These were the predecessors of the mannequins we've come to know and love in the 21st century. Anticipated several thousand years ago by the Greeks and Romans. Cool way to channel the past. 

It was hot and I walked everywhere today so I only took along the Leica Q2. What am I saying, "only!!!"??? It's a remarkable camera to take along on a Museum Day extravaganza. I tamed it down for the ancient mannequins and shot in black and white. Or.... monochrome. 

Next up. What I saw at the Humanities Research Center, AKA: The Harry Ransom Center. 

 The ancients. Rich in art and literature but too poor to buy clothes...

Interesting times. We do what we can to change what we don't like but there needs to be time to do our own work. The kind of work we imagined we'd do.

Chalk artist on the street in Berlin, Germany.

The USA, it seems to me, is heading in an uncomfortable direction. Rights and benefits are being stripped away and the impact is mostly being felt by the most vulnerable. Time to write checks to the food banks and the non-profit health clinics. Time to flex your giving to support local electoral candidates who have ethical visions about service and the ability to follow through. Time to volunteer. But once you've done all you can do to help fix the big picture stuff you have to take care of yourself. 

You only get one lifetime and if you let yourself get overwhelmed by every issue in front of us you'll spend all your time worried, anxious and paralyzed. And that's probably not anything you envisioned for yourself. Not a goal most of us want to work towards.

In times of stress most people tend to go into "hunker down" mentalities. Circle the wagons. Stay home. Watch movies on TV. And sadly, fret about the health of their 401Ks. 

This afternoon I caught myself fixated with the live, serious weather reporting. We have a big, big storm coming towards Austin from the Northwest. It's already generated baseball sized hail, non-stop lightning and possible tornados in the counties it's struck. I worry about storms. I worked in a few bad storms to document the work of the Pedernales Electric Co-op. Driving through rain and hail, dodging possible twisters and working hard not to get boxed in by fast rising water in low lying roadways. Deceptive, those low water crossings... 

When we got a serious alert today for probable severe weather I wanted to make sure the skylights around the house were protected, as well as the cars. I made sure the drains were cleaned out. That leaves weren't blocking the French drains on one side of the office. That we had batteries charged and knew where the flashlights live. We're supposed to get up to 3-5 inches of fast falling rain and the chances for big hail are pegged at three out of five. In 2023 hail damage in central Texas cost nearly $600 million dollars!!! We're in the hail zone. That's for sure. Oh, and 60-70 mph wind gusts. It just gets better and better.

When I've done everything I think I need to do to mitigate disaster I try to remember that what I really want to do is take photographs, share photographs and interact with interesting people. And then photograph them. If I'm paralyzed by all the sudden emergencies popping up I'm not going to get a lot of the stuff done that makes me happy and feeling worthwhile. 

So, after I did my storm work I came back into the office and started looking at recent work, old work and favorite work. I planned a few trips. I processed some files that I made in the past decade because I've gotten better at processing and the applications I use have gotten much better as well. Thank goodness a lot of what I shot was in Raw. So much more potential to revisit and improve many favorites. And that's really fun to do.

The rain will pass. If tornadoes damage the house, well, we're insured. Same with the cars. And if worse comes to worse and everything is destroyed, locally we'll start over, I'll buy a new computer and download all of my favorites back down from the cloud. And I'll continue to play with the images. 

I have some Texas vacations planned for this Summer while all the rest of the folks hop on airplanes and flock to crowded hot spots in the tourist world, traveling at the most expensive and least hospitable time of the year. Not me. I'll be out driving around savoring the coast, the mountains and the deserts. With a stop in our neighboring state of New Mexico for some art browsing in Santa Fe. 

But all of it is an excuse to do what I like best which is to grab a camera and lens, some extra batteries and free time and then head out to make photographs that I'll enjoy. 

The images above were done while I was in Berlin testing an ill-fated camera for Samsung. I was supposed to be in a little van, packed with other photographers, going to yet another "spectacular site" but I demurred, faked a headache. Went out on my own. For myself. And took time to photograph an artist at work. Unplanned. Discovered by turning a corner. And I really enjoyed it. 

So, put a bit of time aside to change the world. Put some more time aside to help fix your local issues. Crack open that bank account and donate to your favorite causes because you know you can't take it with you and there are only so many Leicas and Porsches you really want to buy. And then ignore every bit of external stress and get back on track doing what you love. It's really the only reason we're here. 

 

This old post came up in the blog stats today. I wrote it back in 2011. It's more true today than ever before. Lonely hunter. Better hunt.

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/10/lonely-hunter-better-hunt.html

Final Notes on the 50mm f1.8 AF lens from 7Artisans.

   

One of America's leading cinematographers? How would I know?

I spent the morning in the house. I was reading an article in Scientific American Magazine about potential new cures for auto-immune diseases and conditions. Things like M.S. and psoriasis. Inflammation and related issues that lead to poorer long term health outcomes. You might have seen the article in your news feed today if you subscribe to Apple News. Seems a lot of health impacts are related to how much sun exposure you get on a regular basis. Sure, we all know that skin cancer impacts people more who live at lower latitudes more but for every 10° further up the latitude ladder you go the risk for most auto immune conditions gets worse and worse as the skin cancer risk drops. 

Scientists are now working with an interesting theory and the theory is starting to be tested in humans. The idea is that exposure to sunlight causes a reduction in overly strong auto immune responses which lowers inflammation not just in skin but in the vascular system and in organs systems generally. The magic they are working on now is finding out just which parts of the spectrum cause the positive reductions in all systems inflammation and help reduce overly aggressive immune responses, and which parts of the sun spectrum are harmful to skin in particular. Seems narrow bands of UV-B are health positive while UV-A is the main culprit as a carcinogen for skin tissues. 

There are UV-B narrow bandwidth light instruments made for dermatologists for treatments of acne, psoriasis, eczema and other epithelial applications. Instruments that have been well tested and approved by the FDA. They are supposed to require a doctor's prescription to get one of these instruments for home use but I think that would be pretty easy to either circumvent or, if you are a ethical absolutist, get from your friendly physician. Kaiser Permanente, the big health insurance concern, did an experiment and gave a couple thousand handheld units to patients suffering severe skin disorders in the hopes of keeping the patients from having to move to drugs like Humira which costs somewhere close to $80,000 per year per person and would need to be prescribed for a lifetime. A large contingent of the Narrow Band UV-B device users in the test didn't not need to move on to Humira saving them from potentially nasty side effects and saving Kaiser potentially millions and millions of dollars.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald was fond of saying, "God bless these new UV-B emitters. Zelda loves the cordless, rechargeable models! Tally Ho."

If studies pan out the real exciting news would be using inexpensive ($350 approx.) devices to trigger a lowering of immune system over-responses and the attendant inflammation which has dire consequences  for cardiac issues, pulmonary issues and overall mortality. Might be fun. More fun with lights! Just be sure to wear safety goggles!!!

After reading this and a few other journals I was ready to get out of the house and plow into a nice walk with a familiar camera and a still new lens. The 7Artisans 50mm AF lens for the L mount cameras. 

I decided to head over to South Congress Avenue yet again. I parked a mile away from JO's Coffee and headed North with the downtown cluster of buildings far off on the horizon. It's hot today but even worse, it's humid. Every once in a while a breeze blew by and it felt like immediate air conditioning. After reading about medical stuff, and taking time to read about squamous cell cancers, I made sure to wear a long sleeve, SPF 50 shirt, a wide brimmed hat, long pants and a half gallon coating of expensive, non-toxic sunscreen. 

I've finally learned how to set up different user profiles in my Leica cameras. It wasn't hard but as you probably can figure out I am desperately lazy when it comes to enabling automation and the required precursors to automating cameras that work perfectly well without these "short cuts." I now have a raw DNG profile, a high contrast black and white profile that's square as well as one that's set up to use the full frame. There's large Jpeg profile and a full manual Jpeg profile. On that last one you have to set every parameter you want to use manually. Which, I guess actually defeats the purpose of making a fully manual profile in the first place. 

Today I toggled back and forth between the square, high contrast, black and white profile and the raw/DNG profile. Confusing. I know. 

Since it's a holiday weekend it's more crowded in this shopping neighborhood than usual but nothing compared to a few weeks back when the temperatures were moderate and Mother's Day was approaching. No big lines at JO's and no big bridal parties walking side by side across the entire width of the sidewalks. 

I plodded along and shot just anything that caught my eye. You'll see mannequins over-represented below but I so love it when the window designers put sunglasses and big sun hats on the unmoving crew. I stopped and talked to a painter who was displaying a huge range of canvases. I ran into Christopher the photographer who was just heading into the fray as I was exiting. 

The only issue I can think of in reference to the lens in the title above is that it's a bit too easy to move the aperture ring from "A" to the actual individual apertures on the dial. If you aren't careful, or you are unobservant, you may find you've shot a lot at f16... But once aware you can be on your guard against aperture ring slippage! No untoward optical effects. No lack of sharpness but no over the top "character" either. 

As Hemmingway often mused about auto focus 50mm lenses, "It was a solid lens. A strong lens. We liked it and missed it when it went missing. One could feel its authenticity. One could believe in it. And then we had rum punch. And it was good." 

You might think it would have made good sense to step back a few feet and get the whole hat in one frame but you'd be mistaken. A few steps back would have ruined everything. As Nabokov always said, "The light and lyrical lens knows just where it wants to sit --- and to move from one side to another or forward or, even worse, backwards just feels as though one is closing a door to something altogether ethereal. Too much thought is antiseptic to the creative process. And be sure to shoot the color stuff in raw. Lolita always looks better in raw color. Unless she doesn't."

A series. And witty advice for young women in relationships with mediocre partners. 

Of course it would be more fun if the other side of the sign read: "Dump her before Summer starts."

Blue table. Abandoned by chairs. Bereft of sunscreen. With only the garbage can to keep it company.

the young girl is a fan of her fan.

the holy grail. Simple, straightforward coffee. None of that Espresso swill...

I stayed in the S. Congress area for about two hours and I was hot and sweaty and ready to come home. So I did. And when I got here and ducked into the arctic air conditioning of my office I decided to make a lunch. I reverted to a consistent and often consumed dish. A couple big scoops of 2% fat Greek Yogurt (no sugar, sugars, flavors or diluting ingredients added), mixed with muesli (again, no sugars added or tolerated in my mix of grains and nuts and seeds: Go Red Mills). A liberal topping of fresh black berries and a side of remarkably good cantaloupe. Knock that back with a big glass of good Austin tap water and you are set. Or, at least I am. Then I sat down and wrote this. When I finish I think I'll clean the condenser coils on the back of the refrigerator. No sense giving an appliance an excuse to misbehave. 

Right?

Yesterday was a first for me. I did a senior portrait of a young lady who just graduated, or is graduating from high school. She's heading to UT Austin in the Fall. Her dad and I work on projects together. I volunteered. It was actually fun. To get into UT you have to be in the top 5% of your graduating class and have the test scores to match. She was witty and fun. I used nothing but a camera, a lens and one tiny, tiny flash. Perfect. 770 photos later we called it a wrap.