A giant "Street Photography" portfolio. From an earlier post...

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2023/06/well-shit-who-gets-to-decide-what.html

Go see.

Prepping for a different photo assignment on Thursday. Finally going to get some use out of three LED panels I bought on a whim. And why...

 

the protagonist of this story. Grasping a camera in the heat of the day...

As part of a series of questionable choices about work I agreed to do two jobs for clients this month. Both are "ten year plus" clients. I worked on a real estate project last Saturday and I've agreed to work on a portrait project for an Austin seminary this Thursday. While it's always pleasant to have cash flow I'm financially ready to retire --- but not turning down paying work is a hard habit to break. 

At least Thursday's job will take place indoors and we have control over the thermostat so while I'm working in the temporary portrait studio it will be chilly. Thursday's job is pretty much the same as one I did for the seminary about a year ago. I'll set up lights in their smallish video studio and photograph a number of faculty and staff people during the middle part of the day. I'll use a neutral background with the goal of separating the individual subjects from the studio background and adding each person into one of a number of location backgrounds that we shot last year for the original project. 

Once the lighting and composition are set  in the studio I'll welcome each person, get them comfortable on the set and then photograph as many frames as it takes to get a flattering but honest portrait of each subject. 

Last year I used flash equipment but because I'm about the farthest from being a creature of habit as you will find I'm switching up the camera, the lens and the lighting from what I used last year. There wasn't anything wrong with last year's results it's just that I hate repeating myself. I really do. There's a certain joy in mastery but there is a certain thrill in trying new stuff. And that's my intention for this project. 

I haven't settled on a camera yet but I'm thinking of using one of the rangefinders with a 75mm lens and also a 50mm lens. Choices, choices. I'll bring an EVF to check on stuff but mostly I'll use the camera in its most bare configuration. The part of the project that's more random will be the lighting. More following the image just below: 

A younger version of the protagonist fitted out with an ancient Leica M3.

Heading to Europe in a grand 747. Ah, the good ole planes....

The lights I think I'll use are all LEDs. Last year I bought three of the Nanlite Compact 100-B panels. They measure about 16x20 inches and are set up for vertical operation. They have ample output for studio portraits and have a completely diffused front panel. Color temperature control from 3200-6500 Kelvin. The output is steplessly adjustable from 10% to 100%. I like to use them close in so they look softer. 

Here's what they look like: 

This shows one of the units with a fabric grid spot on the front.

It keeps light spill to a minimum for more control. I have grids for all three lights. 

this is the rear view and shows how very simple the controls are. 

An on/off switch, a power adjustment dial and a color temperature setting

dial. Easy as can be. And no sync to worry about. 

As you are probably aware I like working with continuous light sources because, for the most part, what you see is what you get. And with LEDs there is very little heat generated, one doesn't need flash triggers and they don't misfire in cellular phone rich environments... I'll also bring a round diffusion disk that's about 48 inches round if I want to make the main light softer. But we'll see. I like things a bit crisper lately...

I'll arrive at 8:45, drag gear into the studio space, set up and be ready to welcome the first person scheduled right at 9:30 am. There will be a marketing person from the seminary to keep the schedule, find tardy participants and keep up with the logistics of getting people in front of the camera. I'm sure the schedule will be fairly loose so there will be gaps which are perfectly filled by the quest for coffee. And later, the search for lunch. I'm pretty sure we'll be finished by mid-afternoon so I'll be able to dodge the vicious rush hour traffic on the way back home. At least that's the plan. Everything is always subject to change. Flexibility is a good trait for photographers working on location. That, and patience. 

The continuation of the film "scanning" saga. Images from Paris in 1978.

Afternoon tea at the park.

L'Opera.

Tuileries. Reflection.

Sarah. Ready for an evening out.

Currently shooting with an antique Leica digital camera and liking it a lot.

I woke up and staggered to the kitchen this morning and while I was pouring water to make coffee I turned around and saw a shaft of morning sun shining through two decorative bottles B. had placed on a credenza in the dining room. It looked cool to me so I reached for the closest camera to photograph the scene. I knew in a few minutes the shaft of light would move further to the right and the fun reflections and bright colors would be gone. 

The only camera in reach was a Leica M typ 240 that was on the dining room table. It had a 50mm Carl Zeiss ZM Planar on the front. Not exactly a still life camera set up but as Texans say: "You dance with them as brung you." Loosely interpreted to mean that the camera at hand is the one you'll use.

I spent all day yesterday with a big, modern, mirrorless camera and a fat lens and as a result I was looking for something more fun, less intimidating and slower to use. The M240 was just the thing. The M240 that was on the table is my oldest and scruffiest one and since we Americans profess to root for the underdog it's just natural that it's the one I reach for most often. The 50mm Zeiss lens was on the front because it's a nice lens that's small and unobtrusive while having high contrast potential and good optical performance even wide open. 

I spent most of the day yesterday in the heat so it was only natural that, after swim practice and a late lunch today that I should lather up with more sunscreen and head over to South Congress Avenue to buy a donut, some iced coffee, and take a walk around the area with that camera and lens. 

Today I did something with that camera that I rarely do. When I went to photograph in the afternoon I put the EVF-2 finder in the hot shoe and used it with live view to compose and then to check the results. It's slow going but it's a nice way to be certain you got the shot you wanted. The screen res is nothing to write home about but the framing is exact. And the color is decent. The newer Leicas can use newer EVFs which are multiples better in terms of resolution and color accuracy but, again: "you dance with them as brung you." 

I ran into my friend, David so I didn't get a lot of photography done. That's okay because he is so well read and so interesting to talk with. But I did manage to get a few shots and while they show the M240 in the best light (pun intended) they're not that special. Still, I love the process of photographing with rangefinder cameras so I will persevere. 

the files do make for beautiful, clean, Texas skies.... (ISO200) 

At Jo's, the epicenter of South Congress Ave. 

Love the Austin Hotel. Need a pool? Get a day pass. And not at all pricey. 

I'm sure it's a fad everywhere to stencil stuff onto sidewalks. I just think it can be funny or sweet.

This is David. We had enough of the heat and we were heading back to our cars. 

His was that way. Mine was this way. This is where we parted ways. 

blue truck under a blue sky. Skewered by a huge utility pole. 

But only as an optical illusion.

I have heard that the M10 is a much better camera. A less noisy sensor. A thinner, lighter body, an improved rangefinder and an improved viewing window with more optical offset/eye relief. But I don't want to look through the finder of an M10. Or an M11 for that matter. It would be like test driving a much better car than you can afford. You'll always want to upgrade. I've convinced myself (ha!) that I'm satisfied with the M240s. We'll see how long that lasts...

 

Way over-prepped for today's job. I ended up using one camera, one lens and one flash for the whole day. All 944 exposures.

 

The image just above has absolutely nothing to do with the content of this particular post. I just like the look of this tumble down building, next to the train tracks, near the middle of an ever bustling city. Leica SL2-S + TTArtisan 75mm. 

Today I was part of a four person team. Two photographers and two videographers. We paired up to gain a lot of coverage for our client --- a big, new, rambling real estate development in the far east corner of South Austin. In addition to the camera jockeys we also had in tow someone from the client side and a producer from the advertising agency side along with seven different talents/models and a couple of small children.

It's August, it's hard, bright sun all day long, so of course all the shots were exterior shots. The crusty veteran content producers showed up with big, floppy hats, long sleeve shirts and glistened with layer upon layer of luscious sunscreen protection. The less experienced among us chose ball caps or came head naked, wearing shorts and t-shirts. By the end of the shoot the red faces of the less experienced looked like they'd been lit by color gels. Red color filter gels. 

We photographed people walking to school, visiting a retention pond, coming out of their spiffy new houses, walking through a pedestrian underpass and so much more. Some swimming pool shots. Some pickle ball courts. Lots of new homes with bright color touches, etc. My videographer partner did some testimonial interviews. He also spent a lot of time flying his drone. I don't know what the other crew did because we separated after our brief logistical meeting; a meeting complete with client supplied donuts, kolaches and other odd pastries, and wee didn't catch up with the other team until the clock ran out on the models and we wrapped the shoots. People were starting to run down...

When I started out at the location this morning, around 8, it was already flirting with the 90s. Typical humidity in the morning caused clothes to stick to skin in an uncomfortable way. When we wrapped up the project around 2 pm the ambient temperature was already over 100° and climbing. The temperature on the black asphalt of the roadways clocked in over 130°. Just another August day in Texas...

When I started planning my part of the project my biggest two concerns were reducing the light contrast on people in sunlit settings and keeping myself safe in the heat and extreme UV environment. Two bouts of surgery for skin cancers on my face is more than enough for me right now....

I tested and then packed a set of Godox AD200 Pro II strobes and an accessory that allows for them to be joined together in one fixture to power two bare tube flashes in one Bowens reflector. At full power they can toss out 400 watts seconds of flash. Used in an umbrella it's a nice fill light. Used directly with the 8 inch reflector you can go toe-to-toe with the sun; as long as you are close enough to the subjects. 

Along with the powerful light came a big light stand, a sandbag, some back-up batteries and a dedicated trigger for Leica. With the flash trigger and these lights I could do HSS flash (high speed sync) and shoot beyond the usual maximum sync speed of 1/250th. Nice. But you know what? The big flashes never came out of the car. So much for the hour I spent on Thursday testing them in the afternoon, out on the driveway... We were moving too quickly and nobody wanted to wait the five or ten extra minutes I might have taken to move a lighting rig around. 

Instead I depended completely on the HSS output of the Leica SF64 flash unit. An oldie but a goodie. And it's a true EV flash. No magnesium is burned. No flash powder. No green house gases emitted. And after several months of daily, hourly, minute-by-minute research I found a battery charger that plugs into the wall of my own home and re-charges the batteries for the flash for free. And really, the research into flash battery chargers is the most fun part of photography. So much more fulfilling than the process of problem solving, building rapport with talent or using all the stuff to make photographs and to make some real money over the course of a day. The SF64 takes double A batteries. Don't even get me started on my near endless research to find the exact right batteries. And at a budget I could afford!!!

It feels good to have all the bases covered so I packed with purpose. A primary shooting camera. An identical back-up body. A Leica Q2 camera with a leaf shutter for those ample shots that might need a puff of light from a flash while zinging along at a high shutter speed. A big ass, very expensive zoom lens. A couple of back-up lenses for the very expensive zoom lens. Endless batteries for everything. Even a back-up Leica flash for the Leica flash. 

Wanting to be prepared for the heat I bought a white photo backpack and that's one thing I did use all day long. I also clipped a small, white towel to the backpack to wipe the sweat off my hands and off the camera as well. SPF 50 sunscreen on every exposed piece of Kirk flesh. A variety of hats...

But here's the kicker: when you work in the heat with talent and ad folks who spend their lives in air conditioning you have to move fast, work close to shade areas in order to give the talent breaks, and proficiency and speed take precedence over fine-tuning the details. So I ended up using one camera, one lens, and one flash for the entire day.

The camera I used was the Leica SL2. I shot it in the raw .DNG format so the person doing the post processing would have the widest dynamic range files possible. If you are careful with exposure you can have really great dynamic range and possibility of recovering lots and lots of shadow detail. Even more so if you are shooting around ISO 100 --- because of the brilliant sunlight. Even with fill flash there are times when the overall contrast of a scene is overwhelming. Fill flash helps but being able to "lift" the shadows in post is like free money.

The lens I ended up using, exclusively, was the Leica 24-90mm zoom. The wide range of focal lengths is just right for a fast moving job and the comfort of knowing for certain that whatever f-stop I chose would be bitingly sharp, but with a pleasing rendering, was great.

The off-white photo backpack I wrote about last week performed quite well. The gear inside stayed relatively cool and the compromise between padding and intelligent use of space was well thought out. I'm very happy to add this one to the inventory of bags and anticipate getting a lot of use out of it. I had a water bottle in one of the side pockets and the flash in the other side pocket. The pack fit me perfectly. A bargain at forty something dollars. Now I will laugh at all the expensive Peak backpacks I see people tote around. 

So, here's an interesting question that I just was asked at Sunday morning swim practice: "I thought you were going to retire from commercial work! Why did you take this job? Why spend a day in the heat?"

Frankly...I was getting a bit bored and in a moment of weakness I accepted the job. In retrospect, having lived through it, I probably would and will turn down future projects like this. While the budget was fine I'm no longer working in the realm of having to make ends meet with work. I'll likely fritter the money away on better coffee and prettier lenses. I guess I was trying to prove to myself that I could still handle the constant movement, the harsh heat and the day long mental focus as I could in the past. Chalk part of my acquiescence to nothing more lofty than ego. 

And, I guess I felt a certain allegiance to the client since they've been a loyal partner in the ad game, in one form or another for nearly 30 years. Through thick and thin. The reliable source of ample billing...

Plus the chance to see whether work looks different now that I'm nearly seventy and the agency people were all less than half my age. But in that aspect things were as neutral as ever. No one seemed concerned about the age differences. No one treated me differently. And in return I took care never to reminisce about "how we used to do this kind of stuff in the golden years...."  Or to offer unsolicited advice of any kind. 

During the course of the day I downed two liters of water. I wasn't hungry until I got home. B. got a text that we'd wrapped and when I got home she was returning from a restaurant called, Cava, where she'd gotten me a big bowl filled with veggies and strips of spicy chicken. Pita bread on the side. After lunch I was ready for a big coffee from Trianon.

Revived by food and coffee I spent the next few hours unpacking, battery charging and looking through the files I'd shot. I backed up every shot to both SD cards in the SL2 and since the agency offered to do the post production I gave the art director one of the cards at the end of the shoot. I'm keeping the other one safe until I hear from the agency that they were able to pull the images off the card and back them up properly. 

This particular agency is very, very tech savvy and I trust them to do even better post production on the images I shot than I could do. Plus they know the specific way in which they want to use them. They also have ready access to influencers in their market niches and are becoming very fluent with A.I. so it will be interesting to see how they use the work.

It's nice to keep up the connection so I don't lose touch with what's going on in the industry. 

And that, in a nutshell, is how I spent my day on Saturday. In the evening we spent a couple hours at an opening at one of our favorite art galleries. One we've been frequenting since the 1980s. Ran in to several artists whose work we've collected and marveled at the huge crowd size. No photography in this show. All paintings and sculpture. By 50 artists. Celebrating the gallery's 45th anniversary. A fun capper for the day. 

This morning? Just swim practice and quick lashing at the keyboard to type out this post. 

Hope you have a great week planned ahead. I'm going to a play at Zach Theater on Tuesday and on a different day I'm doing yet another photo project I should have turned down. At least it will be inside, in Air Conditioning. And yes, Air Conditioning should always be capitalized....

 

Loving one very cheap lens in particular. An amazing imaging investment for a bit less than $200. USD. How did they do this???

 

About a month ago I took a small chance on a lens I knew next to nothing about. I felt fine experimenting with something new because the price was so low, but at the same time I presumed that because the lens was so inexpensive that the performance would be nothing really to write home about. Or to write about here. As usual, I was wrong. The lens turned out to be a really good performer and it's one of the few lenses that I carry around with me almost all the time. 

Part of that is because of how good the lens actually is coupled with its relatively small size and weight. It's so manageable. But it's partly because of how much I like the focal length and the smart compromise between focal length and moderate aperture. 

The lens is the TTArtisan's 75mm f2.0 Autofocus lens for the L mount camera systems. It's smaller than either of my similar aperture, big brand, 50mm AF lenses and about half the size and weight of the ponderous Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens (type2) that I bought years ago and only use when I have a very specific use in mind. Why do I mostly ignore the Sigma 85mm? Even though the optical performance is surely state of the art the darn thing is too kludgy and weighty to be a fun walking around lens. In studio or on a client project? We'll suck it up and bring it along but for a walk down Congress Avenue with a stop at Jo's for coffee? Nah. Not likely. But the TTArtisan? That's just the ticket. And it's a nice break from all the wide and semi-wide focal lengths that are ubiquitous out in the photo wild. 

Over the last decade or so people's tastes in lenses has changed. A lot, I think. Because of phone cameras and popular compact cameras like the Leica Q series and the Fuji X100 series people have become acculturated to seeing photographs that are mostly taken with wide angle and semi-wide angle lenses and largely presented un-cropped. The iPhone cameras for years sported a 26mm equivalent focal length and people seemed happy enough to use it for portraits and all kinds of documentation. 

I think the wide angle embrace moved the classic use of lenses into wider and wider zones. In the 1970s one of the most popular portrait focal lengths was the 100-105mm. Followed by the 85mm for people who wanted a bit more context in their portraits. Now lens makers are presenting 50mm lenses as "perfect portrait" lenses. I'm old school but I get the appeal of wider points of view than those we embraced earlier in our careers. For me 75mm is the new 85mm. 85mm is the new 105mm; and so on. 

As we progress I'm almost certain that we'll end up using the 50mm focal length on full frame cameras as the de facto "formal" portrait lens. But in the meantime I find that the 75 matches the way I like to see things very well. 

This TTArtisan lens is sharp enough at f2.0 and as sharp as anything out there at f4 and f5.6. I have no fear whatsoever using the lens wide open nearly all the time. Since it's an AF lens with electronic contacts for the L mount system (also available in lesser mounts as well....) it works and focuses well with all of my Leica SL and CL cameras as well as on my Panasonic S5 camera. With focus assist turned on and the camera set to manual focus when I touch the focusing ring the system punches in and shows me a highly magnified image with which to focus. Same as my Leica lenses, my Sigma lenses and my Panasonic lenses. 

The lens even has a USB-C port built into the mount to enable firmware updates. 

All of the images in this post were done with the combination of the 75mm f2.0 lens and a Leica SL2-S, 24 megapixel camera. A nice pairing for walking around making random photographs. 

I paid $185 for my brand new copy. After I bought one my friend, Andy, who is far more patient than I, picked up his brand new one during one of Amazon's sale days for a whopping $158. Amazing for a lens that works as well as this one does. Now we'll have to see about reliability, etc. But really? Can you go far wrong at that price???

Gone totally RED at Jo's Coffee on South Congress. Happy to have had my trusty Q2 at hand.

 

I've been hanging out with David Ingram at Jo's. David brings his very fast Canon camera and a longer lens and mostly catches great shots of motorcycles and fast, loud cars ripping by. But he also photographs lots of people as they drop by Jo's. Now, when I see someone interesting at this long lived, outdoor coffee venue I have no hesitancy about walking up and asking if it would be okay for me to make a photo of them. Nine times out of ten it's perfectly alright. That one out of ten that demurs? I totally respect that. 

I didn't catch this fellow's name but I wish I'd also included the red shoes on his feet. Next time...

OT: What the heck happened to the weather in Austin, Texas in July? Whatever! I'll take it.

The view out of my dining room doors. End of July.

Here in central Texas, for the last five or so years, we've been in droughts of all kinds. Severe droughts. Persistent droughts. Moderate droughts. And, just the plain ole Abnormally Dry kind of drought. By the first of July it's typical for high pressure systems to start hitting the area and locking in triple digit temperatures on an almost daily basis. With heat indexes as high as 114°.  In one recent July 28 days out of the month saw us in the triple digits --- that's 28 out of 31 days. Brutal. Not so much on most of the populace because we've become proficient at air conditioning the heck out of anything you can live in, work in or ride around in. But the heat and lack of moisture is murder on the vegetation/landscaping and also on the animals that live all around us --- but without the benefit of air conditioning. 

By this time every year we've been hearing dire warnings almost daily about the Hill  Country lakes being dangerously low. And they are a major source of the area's drinking water. Restrictions on watering are put into place and fines are levied against those who insist on watering their lawns more than once a week ---  on the day allotted to them. Most of us follow the rules and as a result the luscious green lawns of yesteryear (oh the luscious lawns of the 1970s) will, by this date each year, give up the ghost to turn brown and crunchy underfoot. Like a finely textured sepia desert.

If I were to have shown the image at the top of the blog in any of the previous half dozen August months I would quickly be pilloried by angry conservationists (and rightly so) and perhaps even turned into the authorities as a irrigation criminal. A water scofflaw. But not this year...

We have just gone through the coolest July in 20 years. Twenty Freakin Years! It rained on more days than we had days with sun shine. We had a full week of sub-90° temperatures combined with day after day of soaking rain. In areas to the West of Austin there were flash floods and much tragedy this July. Lives were lost. Properties gone. Houses and cars swept away. But we dodged that here. In my area we had mostly days of long, continuous rain but nothing too dramatic. Nothing unmanageable. 

And right now I can point to the yard over on the South side of the house and say, "See how green this all is? I haven't used a lawn sprinkler since the middle of June!!!!" And that may not seem like a big deal to folks who live in more moderate and wetter areas. But to us? It's almost like fantasy. 

Our major lake is within five feet of being at 100% full. It's amazing. And even this week, in the Dog Days of August, we've been close to 100° but not quite there yet. Not unbearable. Not subjected to the withering mercilessness of abnormal heat. It's amazing to me. And so far the high pressure systems have protected Texas from the smoke of the Canadian and US West coast wildfires. 

Someone asked us where we were going to go on vacation this Summer. B. and I both said, simultaneously, "This is the best Summer in Austin in decades. We're staying right here. We'll be at the pool, over at the club, about a mile and a half from the house. And the rest of the time we'll hit all the new restaurants we read about but which were too crowded to visit before everyone else left to go someplace hotter on vacation..." 

The electric bill for the month of July? To air condition several thousand square feet of house plus an office and studio? $119. Doing our part to save the environment. One Summer at a time.

Succulent gardens rim the house. Amazing. 

Even the secret pathway to downtown coffee is lush and green.