How's that negative scanning coming along? Can you really make a decent black and white by rephotographing the negative? I think so.

 

A group of young people in Italy. I asked if I could photograph their group

and they instantly coalesced into a line. Sometimes you just have to ask...

I took a trip to Europe in 1996. No reason for the trip other than to get out of town and try out the new, at the time, Mamiya6 camera and its trio of lenses. A 50mm, 75mm and a 150mm. The camera was a rangefinder model and made 6x6 cm images, just like the Hasselblads I was using at the time for work. Kodak gave me a bunch of film to shoot with; no strings attached. While the 50 and 150 were nice to have I got the most use out of the normal focal length; the 75mm (equivalent field of view in Leica world format would be 50mm). 

I had no itinerary and no family in tow. For the next seven or eight days I set my own agenda and roamed through Rome at random. I shot through several hundred twelve exposure rolls of black and white film and one day, just for something different, went through about 60 rolls of color negative film. 

My favorite hotel in Rome is the Victoria. It's at the top of the Via Veneto, just across a busy street from the Borghese Gardens. It's an older property and at the time it was also very laid back. I'd eat breakfast in their very regal looking dining room each morning then grab my camera bag and head out for the day. I kept a journal so I could share interesting locations with friends who might also head to Rome. 

At the end of each day I'd head back to the hotel to dump off the day's shot film and to clean myself up for dinner. I had a friend in Rome who is a native. I met him one day at a restaurant. He was Italian but studied photography at Queens College in London. One night he and his wife took me to a secret restaurant that was off the beaten tourist track. It was Fellini's favorite restaurant in all of Rome. He made me swear never to share the name or location. The walls of the restaurant were covered with signed photos of Fellini, some even on set of his most famous movies. 

There is something very freeing for an artist or photographer about being unencumbered by schedule or a companion, if your goal is to explore the visual space of a city.

The issue when I got back home was that there were far more fun negatives than I had the bandwidth to make into prints. I rushed through an overall edit and picked out 30 or 40 negatives that just popped off the contact sheets and made prints of them for a show and for a portfolio. Say 40 negatives out of several thousand. We were busy parenting, working for clients, being part of a sandwich generation. For one reason or another the negatives sat in a binder on a shelf, undisturbed for the next 28 years. 

Last year I bought a copy stand, a light source and a set of negative holders in various sizes and experimented with using a Lumix S5, in its high res, multi-shot mode to try "scanning" some of the images from Rome. Yes, it's really just copy shots of negatives but I'm still going to call it scanning. 

The process worked. I practiced for a couple of protracted work spells until I ironed out most of the kinks involved in shooting and then post processing the negative files and now it takes about 30 seconds to insert a strip of film, blow the dust off (there is always dust. No matter how careful you think you are), line up the negative and then shoot the copy. You'll nearly always need more contrast in post but you want to shoot "flat" in the capture to make sure not to burn out highlights or drown the shadows. 

Now I can walk into the office, grab some negative sheets and get down to a much more granular approach, to really seeing what is in those negatives I shot so long ago. I can bang off about 20 frames per hour with some fine tuning of exposure to get into an acceptable target range. 

In Adobe Lightroom I bring in all the raw files and on the first one I use custom Tone Curves to convert from negative to a positive image. Then I batch apply that setting to all the images in the folder. Now they are all very light, very low contrast positives. They all require a bit of work in post to make them satisfactory. Mostly adding contrast and clarity. 

It's a fun way to revisit negatives that escaped attention the first time around. And, the passage of time makes them seems a bit exotic. Like a window into a totally different era. Here are some scans I liked yesterday.....

When I was scanning the streets I saw this father/daughter scene from a distance. 

You can see the first shot just below. I hoped they would continue in the same basic "pose"

as I walked through the crowd, past the dog and over to the little family to grab this

shot. Scanning ahead is a good skill for someone who wants to shoot in the streets. 

The wide shot that presaged the shot one frame above.

Sometimes good shots are made good by the process of distilling down.

I must have had my cloak of invisibility with me on this day because I stood about eight feet in front of these two woman and made six or seven exposures with a fairly big, medium format camera. 

I wanted a range of expressions because it told some sort of story with no discernible 

plot. Like movie stills. They never seemed to notice me...

Hard to imagine that there was once a time when the Spanish Steps weren't overwhelmed with tourists. 

A random portrait. Yes. I asked permission. 

These women were modeling for a workshop or photo class. The one on the right is the same 

person as the one in the direct portrait just below. 

I asked this young woman for permission to photograph her. 

She was happy to oblige. We had a very brief conversation, I took 

a few frames and we moved on. I have a print on the office wall that's 

24 by 24 inches. It looks fantastic. 30 seconds of photography

but a pleasure to look at almost 30 years later. 

Yes, I went to swim practice this morning. It was wonderful. 

A Sad Surrender to the Heat...

 

I don't think the heat is getting so much worse, I think I'm getting older and the very basics of aging mean it's harder to carry around a big camera and withstand high heat. When I was younger I often ran the five mile lake loop in the late afternoons in August. Sometimes in conditions that seem insane to me now. One day I ran the loop and when I got back to my car an sat for a few minutes with the air conditioning blasting I listened to a favorite local radio commentator who mentioned that it was currently 105°. In the next minute he told his audience he was going out for a run after the broadcast. Why? In the hottest part of the day? "Because, the trail is far less crowded. Nobody else is crazy enough to run in this heat..."

For the last ten years I've been out walking around with a camera through most of the Summer's wretched excess. Back then my line in the sand was a "feels like" temperature (heat index) of 105°, anything higher than that got me back into air conditioning and skipping the melting point insanity. 

Everyone told me that I'd be less able to handle hot environments when I got older. I didn't believe them. I didn't want to believe them. I thought I could go on ignoring common sense for... well, a long time.

But this Summer seems different. It's not that I couldn't survive the heat it's just that too much heat isn't fun anymore. I think we age in spurts no matter what our best intentions are to try and hold the effects of aging back. A faltering at around 40. A slow down at 70. Another drop at 80 and so on. But each person starts at a different level of fitness and resilience. If one is sedentary, eating poorly, plagued by chronic conditions they are starting out at a much lower level of fitness to begin with compared to a healthy marathon runner of the same age. A fit seventy year old might be in better shape than an average 40 year old (and have less stress into the bargain) so that gives all of us something to aim for. But we'll all decline at some point. 

I'll be seventy in October. This is the first Summer I can remember; maybe the first time I can remember, that I grabbed a camera, hopped into my car, headed downtown and looking at the outside temp gauge on my dashboard (100°) said, "fuck it!" and headed back home. I surrendered partly because I knew that carrying around a heavy camera in that heat, combined with the heat sink properties of all the blacktop running criss cross through downtown, amplified by dozens of reflective buildings bouncing the sun back into the mix, would be no fun and could be...actually...dangerous. A negative "bonus" that affected my decision was the fact that there weren't any people anywhere walking downtown and it's hard to photograph when there are no subjects. 

I felt foolish to have wasted half an hour only to come home feeling defeated by the elements. But, on the other hand, I didn't suffer the heat load and physical stress of trying too hard for too little reward. 

I pulled up to the house and grabbed my shiny, black camera off the passenger's seat. I walked into the house and luxuriated in the 74° air conditioning. The 40% humidity. The comfort of a it all. I pulled some iced tea out of the fridge and thought about all of this. 

Remedy? Tomorrow I'll get busy earlier. Like right after swim practice. When the "mercury" has yet to crest 90°. When people are getting their stuff done early as well. Out of the heat. Like sane people.

This is where I make the case on the blog that I need to have a chrome/silver finished camera with a silver finished lens on it. So it reflects heat. So it doesn't transfer heat to the electronics inside. And just like that I can rationalize a limited edition, silver SL2 or a silver M240. So, something good came of this truncated exercise today after all....

blog note. the near relentless accrual of massive page views here seems to have subsided. I was noodling around in Google Analytics and found that my current total pageviews have crested 92 million. Wow! That's just insane. But I guess nearly 18 years of daily typing tends to attract some readers over time. 

I just wish I knew how to make better use of this...

that's the look of a beleaguered runner in mid-Summer. 

At least the trail around the lake has tree cover in many places. 

And if you get too overheated you can always jump in the lake to cool off...

the hat brims are getting bigger this year. And the sunscreen is getting stronger...

Virtual desert? Naw. The weather here is more like the tropics these days. 

Still my favorite hat. Not my best hat but my favorite. 

Somewhere out in New Mexico. Where it can also get quite hot. 

Get some altitude and at least the humidity calms down. 

Swims going well. Back in that groove. 

In the heat I take a small, light colored camera bag with me.

I keep my black camera with its black lens in the bag until

I'm ready to shoot. And I stuff it back in when I move on.

that's a fat, western Haiku. 

This came back up in the feed from earlier days:

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2009/07/practice-makes-competent-plus-some.html

Borghese Sculpture Museum. Thoughts about modern photography...

 Photography today is in search of its own relevance. There is so much of it out there that it's hard to understand what is truly new and innovative. Judging by endless articles and vlogs about photography there is an undercurrent of desire to go back to the simpler, more documentary style of black and white editorial journalism. Or classic, black and white fine art work. Photographers who love photography seem afraid that A.I. is here to ruin everything. And that may be so. But maybe not. But it sure explains why we praise the standouts from the 1940s until the days of digital. 

It used to be that photography was something that was connected in a way to aspirations of getting exposure via magazines, books and early curated websites. Now it's different. Maybe not for you specifically but in a general way. Now photography has become analogous to the ping that your cellphone continually sends out to cell towers letting them know that you are here and your phone is on. Your photos, uploaded to Instagram, Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook and more are a consistent ping that lets your cohort of friends and followers know that you are still alive, that you had a visually interesting lunch, dinner, sailboat ride or fashion moment and you are pinging it out as proof of life. Proof of contemporary existence. Proof of your idea of personal coolness. And the photos don't really serve that much more of a purpose anymore. Even in advertising.

It seems like uploading photos to your favorite "share" site is the modern version of tricking people into watching your slide show of vacation photos. "Here's is Gertrude in her new hat at the beach. Here we are eating hot dogs at the fair. You can't really tell from this angle but just around the corner was a big statue of Mickey Mouse. I didn't really get this one in focus but it's a shot of the twins eating cotton candy... etc. etc. etc. And really,  you'd have to have given birth to the twins to accept every shot of them as "brilliant." The unspoken presumption is that if I look at your stuff you'll look at mine. Like em or not.

I'm of a certain generation. We thought we were hot stuff because we could get things in focus just using our own fingers. We could figure out exposures; sometimes without even a meter as an aid. Printing well was hard to do so when we got lucky we had something we really felt we could show off. When we watched TV and wanted to change the channel or the volume of the program we actually had to get up off the couch and physically touch the actual television set. There was more friction in every day stuff. 

There are billions and billions of publicly displayed images that are instantly accessible on the web. It's easier to do now that it is to drive a car, or make decent toast. As a reaction to the overwhelming nature of this "bounty" the folks of my certain generation seem to be regressing back toward that time of more process friction. There are altars made to worship the folks who became famous for their photography from 1900-2000. Made famous specifically because they had fewer points of competition to consider and so stood out as beacons. Magazine pages were very limited and editors played it safe by mostly showcasing proven stars. A virtuous circle. Few people were willing to put up with all the friction and uncertainty and embrace the profession at that level. Sometimes it was just the realization that making good photos took some talent and some taste. That made our predecessors who had these attributes into standout examples and we lavished attention and approval on them. 

Now? Taste? When a large chunk of the population thinks wearing track suits or "coach" shorts out in public as day-to-day wear I don't think we can rely on requisite taste to make or discern good photos. Or to recognize valuable work either. I guess that's why we look backwards. Most people looked so much better in tailored suits than in lumpy Spandex or stuffed into sleeveless t-shirts. Men wore hats then but now everyone is hatless in order to show off poorly conceived and badly executed hairstyles. The disintegration of culture through mis-directed attempts at style...

I continue to do photography because the process is fun for me. It's habitual now. It's an excuse to see the world around me each and every day. But I have no expectation that anyone shares my enjoyment in the same way I do when I make my own images. And, for the most part, I don't enjoy looking at most other people's images. Why? Because at this point in our combined history everything looks pretty much the same. There's very little new. Sure, half naked female model images will always get a "like" but I'm equally certain that the expressive photography involved is not even close to being the primary driver of that big "thumbs up." Go look on Instagram. Do the math. Mostly naked, non-chubby young woman, poorly composed and badly exposed, gets thousands of likes. Wonderfully done images of anything else? A casual nod. 

That's okay as long as everyone is having fun. But underneath we wish someone out there was actually the god of curation and could find and show us the real, current "good stuff" that's hidden under miles tall piles of nearly identical images. Wouldn't that be nice?

Remember a time when cameras were considered so dear an expenditure that many people kept them in leather "ever ready" cases to protect them from bumps, scratches and other forms of camera mortality? People felt invested. Now we go from camera to camera like food reviewers going from restaurant to restaurant. It's different. In the same way we try on new style after new style.

Photos. Used to be artifacts and souvenirs. Now as consumable as a Mojito at a swim up bar. 

1990's Street Photography. Rome. Chapter 2.

©Kirk Tuck 

1990's Street Photo. Rome.

 

©KirkTuck

Homeostasis of Joy.

From Google: Homeostasis is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in external conditions. It's a dynamic equilibrium where the body regulates various factors like temperature, pH, and glucose levels to ensure optimal functioning. This regulation is achieved through feedback mechanisms, which detect changes and trigger responses to counteract them.

So, that's the way the term homeostasis is used in the physical world, but I have a secondary use for homeo (same) stasis (staying still) and that is about the homeostasis of joy. 

I think I am, for the most part, a happy person. In the realm of Maslow's Hierarchy of Basic Needs I am fortunate. Physically, I live well and am privileged to live in a time of great affluence and "relative" peace. Even though the world seems to argue that relative measure. 

However,  the different but equal need, based not on physiology but on psychology and happiness, is to maintain an overall homeostasis of joy as well. Not every day or week or month will be perfect and filled with things that reinforce our feelings of wellbeing and satisfaction but taking life as a "long game" I find that there is very much, in people disposed to happiness, a stasis or baseline of joy to which they seem to return to as surely as the body regulates temperature or blood pressure. 

The last couple of weeks were bumpy for me. But that's so relative. My overall health is good and I'm secure in that all my physical and fiscal needs are well met, but things pop up. The air conditioner died and needed replaced. I needed to scrounge up nearly $20K to pay the bill. The installation took longer than I wanted. My dermatologist called with news of a biopsy. A malignant and somewhat aggressive skin cancer diagnosis. I sat through a four hour procedure and dozens of pokes with pain numbing injections. I wore a bandage the size of a Maxi-Pad to coffee out later with an old friend. I've been temporarily banned from the pool by my surgeon. My face looks icky under the bandage. I'm not allowed to exercise until the end of next week. I have to take antibiotics for seven days.... etc. etc. Oh, and America is stumbling into a  dictatorship...

But surprisingly, after being glum for a few days I woke this morning feeling a renewed surge of my usual, basic joy and satisfaction with life. When I experienced this I thought about it and realized that, to a certain extent, my resilient feelings of joy come from a life time of things and people that have made me happy and continue to make me happy.

It was then that I thought about there being a thing such as the "homeostasis of Joy." That our cumulative life experiences create a buffer that protects us from going too long with negative feelings --- if everything is working as it should. Meaning: If I keep interpreting my feelings about my life in a way that benefits me that's stasis. A mindset that fills me with a sense of gratitude. A sense that I can do anything. 

I have so much to be thankful for that sometimes I take the good stuff for granted. Sure, I was in a chair having my face carved up with scalpels for half the day on Tuesday. But what I really took away from it was that a beautiful and high energy Mohs Surgeon named Megan was chatting with me as though I was an old friend --- while she worked. That she was doing something that would, in the long run, extend my life and extend my enjoyment of life. And there were all the little things I always appreciate, like walking in for an 8:15 a.m. appointment and being greeted warmly and offered coffee. That my nurse, Bree, came out to find me in the waiting area exactly at 8:15 a.m., and with a big, welcoming smile. That Bree is a magician with numbing injections which dissolved any anxiety I might have had about that part of the procedure. That my surgeon never seemed rushed or in a hurry to move on with some schedule. The kindness both showed me at every step of the way.

The Haagen-Daz rum raisin ice cream my wonderful spouse left for me in the freezer. The DVDs of my favorite sitcom she gifted me so I could chill and not get too bored. The endless stream of texts from my swimmer friends and photographer friends either wishing me well or demanding to be brought up to speed. And all questioning how soon I could be back in the pool. 

I constantly hear about how bad medicine is as practiced in the USA but when I told my team of medical experts that I was squeamish about taking off the big, pressure bandage today and cleaning and redressing the site myself they instantly invited me back to the practice at 9:00 a.m. today so they could do it for me. The surgeon was waiting for me when I arrived and removed the huge and dramatic looking bandage and spent time examining her handiwork. Asking me about my antibiotic compliance, telling me how great I looked. Her nurse, Bree, redressed the wound and put on a smaller, less imposing bandage and then spent time showing me how to do it myself going forward. But, as I was checking out, she said that any time I didn't feel up to it I should come by and they would continue redressing it.

My out of pocket expenses so far? For everything? A $40 copay. 

Since every appointment was warmly and professionally conducted, started right on time and ended with sincere fist bumps and satisfaction, I couldn't imagine in the moment getting better care anywhere. Which, of course, adds to my store of good feelings, which keeps my homeostasis of Joy clicking right along. 

On my way home I dropped by my locally owned and wonderfully managed coffee shop where I ordered a large coffee and a piece of banana bread. The owner noticed (how could he not?) the bandage and wanted to know what the deal was and, more importantly, how I was doing. The coffee and banana bread were on the house.... Amazingly, people do care. 

There was the gift bag from my long time friend, Debbie, (our former CFO) at my front door when I got back home. It had a plush, stuffed puppy that you can stick in the microwave for a minute and warm up. Or stick in the freezer and provide a chilly compress for swollen tissues. And a note that was so dear it made me tear up just a bit...

At 69 I've never felt more loved by more people than ever before in my life. That bolsters my homeostasis of Joy. And these are feelings you can bank against the rough spots in life. 

When I got home I had this phrase, "The Homeostasis of Joy" in my head. Don't know where it came from but when I sat down to write this I looked through a gallery of images to pull out some examples that exemplify for me just basic happiness. I'm blessed to have an archive just brimming with happy, alive and wonderful images. It's like having your own Louvre Museum of Personalized Happiness right there on one's screen. 

Damn. That banana bread and coffee is a wonderful combination!!! It's 79° outside and raining again. Joy! A break in the Summer heat. 

Listening to "Happiness" by Pharrell Williams. Waiting for the next great thing.

Here's some happy photos: 

 

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.