Go Fly a Kite.

This is a photograph of me flying a kite at the Zilker Park Kite Festival in Austin, Texas.  ©2009 Ben Tuck.

The last week seemed to be a train wreck as far as the economy goes.  I sat at my desk trying to knock out more copy for my book on lighting equipment while keeping a window open on my desktop for Google News.

I watched the Dow spaz down a couple hundred points.  I heard "experts" predict the collapse of civilization as we know it, precipitated by the the decline and fall of the American Empire.  And then it dawned on me.  I had fallen into the trap of reading about life instead of living it.  I was listening to experts who developed their expertise in the "bricks and mortar" days.  They understood manufacturing and traditional demand models but something became clear to me.  The experts really don't understand the post 1999 economy any better than the man in the street and probably not nearly as well as the under thirty year old in the streets.

What do I mean?  Well, in the last downturn back in 2001-02 we all waited for the computer manufacturers like Dell and HP to rescue the economy by building and innovating our way out. But it didn't happen that way.  It was the ascendency of Google and Amazon and Ebay that rode in like white knights to get things moving again.  Business models that weren't truly understood by traditional investors were instrumental in building the new economy's momentun.

Now all traditional eyes are on GM and Chrystler and Dell, Inc. but the analysts are missing it again.  It's the Twitters and Facebooks and  some new technologies that I haven't even heard of yet (but which are well known to a younger generation) that are already laying the foundation for two things:  An increasing global interconnection and future prosperity.  YouTube didn't exist in 2002 but it may be more important than cable TV right now.  The intersection of computing and entertainment programming is almost complete.  Everything will change and the people who understand the new paradigm will benefit in the short term.

What does this have to do with photography?  Well, here it is in a nutshell:  The emerging market for images is young and totally wired.  My son spends more time with his iPod Touch than he does watching TV or cruising the web on his laptop.  His information comes from a loosely gathered network of "Touch Available" media that includes news feeds, online games, constant e-mails and more.  He's never going to be a traditional newspaper customer.  He's never going to follow network prime time television.  He's skewing the market for advertising messages more and more to the web.

So, we traditional photographers have been chasing more and more megapixels in our cameras with the rationalization that astute customers can surely see and value the improvement.  No.  It's not true because it's not relevant.  We're busy asking the wrong questions.  There's a new trend and it's all about speed and audience relevance and we traditional photographers may be on the wrong side of the equation.  Like traditional economists in an untraditional economy.

   ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Kirk Tuck with Kite.

The trend is diffusion into the market with as few barriers as possible.  It's not nearly as important to deliver the highest degree of technical complexity as it is to have images totally informed by the media in which they will exist.  And tailored for the intended audience.

Newspapers are dying off like plague victims.  The photographers who are suddenly set adrift have many choices including trying to find another newspaper at which to work or shifting their focus to a new target market.  They might find it easier to find new markets for their images than finding new continuous employment.  In my field, corporate photography, clients have gone into deep freeze. I could look for new market sectors in which to try and duplicate my past successes or I can look for new markets for my skills.

As the photography markets fragment I know I'll have to do more diverse kinds of photography and I will have to monetize my other skills sets.  As my friends know, I am hard at work on a fourth book and two previously written books will hit the market this year.  But that's not enough to offset the loss of income from corporate imaging.  I will also figure out how to market my marketing skills to aid smaller companies by providing a full production service to them.  I will need to teach workshops and have already contracted to do so this summer.  Finally, I'll take a chance on the Fine Arts market this year.

The hard part is trying to service each of these individual business units while keeping my vision uniform and fun.  But as long as I proceed an organic way, one business idea supporting the others rather than in opposition to each other, I think I'll be fine.  What won't work is trying to go back to the way things were.  Clients don't want a return to the uncertainty of the film days nor do they want to go back to a pricing model that they just don't understand.  Going forward, that will be photographers' biggest challenge.  How to align our financial needs with the position of clients who seem to have all the advantages.

The answer is in service, delivery, image differentiation and being able to rationally explain the value proposition of original imagery.  I've been reading Beckwith's book, Selling the Invisible, and I think I get it.  We need to deliver what our clients need without regard to "state of the art", "best in class" or "cutting edge".  We need to make sure that the value proposition to the client is clear.  Here's an example.  Given enough time I can light a board room until it looks like a showpiece from Architectural Digest and, given enough time with a CEO I can move a shoot to the point where I get exactly the expression and body language I want.  With an unlimited budget and total access I can create the ultimate portrait (or at least I think I can) but, the reality of the marketplace is that my clients are generally not looking for the the kind of investment of time or money that was spent producing the shot of the Queen of England by Annie Leibovitz.

They'll have fixed budgets that might allow for a half day of lighting and prep followed by 20 to 30 minutes of their CEO's time.  Their question is not what I can do with unlimited resources but what I'll be able to reliably deliver with time and budget constraints.  That's the message we need to deliver to our clients:  We understand the difference between delivering a very good portrait and a perfect portrait.  Or product shot.  Or event coverage.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with kite flying on a Sunday afternoon?  Just that the world that currently surrounds me is not in disarray.  The sky is not currently falling in my zip code.  The sky is clear and blue.  Hundreds of families were out flying spectacular kites in a sixty degree, ten mile an hour breeze.  I do have work in front of me and money in the bank.  No matter how special "old school" economist think this particular recession is I know it will pass. In fact I think the economy will turn around by June and that all these scary unemployment numbers are trailing edge indicators of a recession that is almost over.

Flying a kite is all about hope and possibilities.  And faith.  Faith that your kite will find the right wind.  That your string won't become tangled.  That gravity will not defeat you today.  It's the same as running a business.  Keep your string untangled and your eyes on the kite and you'll have success.  Just being out with your kite is a success.

Final note:  Ben is taking a photography class at school.  We went out today to play with kites and cameras.  He took some great photos of dogs and kites.  He's taking photography in little bites.  He still thinks it is fun.

    ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Bulldog at Zilker Park, Austin.

Sunday Rants and Rabid Opinions.

Don't know what it is about Sundays but all the bloggers and columnist seem to set this day aside for their pet rants about stuff that bothers them.  I thought I was immune but I spent to much time on Flickr today and now I'm in full rant mode.   Let's start at the top.  You'd think that back lighting and rim lighting had just been invented.  The lighting effect is like the iPod of the first decade, post 2000.  Unless you spend a lot of time out in the sun, facing the sun and talking to someone standing between you and the sun you don't see this effect very often in real life.  But if you look at the endless photo streams (mostly of scantily clad young woman) you'd think the sun sets continually, right over the little wannabe vixens' head and right into your camera lens.  In a word this lighting effect is like the word, "dude".  It is so overused that only "lame" neophytes still use it on purpose.  I'm calling for a world wide ban on gratuitous rim lighting!  And over the top hair lights.

Second.  I know David Hobby put his finger right on the pulse of photography in 2007 when his blog, Strobist.com, identified the style of using small, battery operated lights in lieu of bigger "plug in the wall" lights to do many routine photos.  His blog is really great and it's helped many a photographer gain a degree of competence they otherwise would not have had.  My book, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional Techniques on Location certainly benefitted from the the surge of popularity but, enough is enough!  Not every photo needs a flash in mandatory attendance.  Not every photo benefits from "just a little bit of fill",  "just a little bit of rim lighting...."  In fact, half the images I see on the Flickr photostreams would benefit from a lot less lighting and more attention being paid to the light God already conjured up for the taking.

By the same token,  not every scene can be lit only with the little dinky light poppers.  On a fast paced commercial shoot you'd go nuts waiting for the little darlings to recycle.  Especially if your set and client calls for the high production quality of low ISO's and smaller f-stops.  If you expect a shoot to progress at a good pace, provide enough juice to slam out f 11 several hundred times, etc. you'll want something that plugs in the wall and goes, "pop, pop, pop" without overheating or giving you variable exposures.  OMG, there might actually be a reason why all those pros use big heavy equipment-------beyond the cool logos on the product!!!

It's one of those "right tool for the right job" things.  Like using a truck to haul a bunch of cinder blocks instead of the back seat of your Prius......  Like bringing a bigger gun to a knife fight.  Or some silly metaphor meant to illustrate the advantages of correct gear choice.

While I'm ranting about equipment I'm going to throw this one into the mix:  Everyone who is not working for clients who routinely use images in large, glossy print publications or displays and who is constantly buying new and improved digital cameras is being played for a chump.  Before you spend another cent on new cameras do this experiment:  Take 20,000 of your images from the last 10 years of digital shooting, shove them all into Lightroom and start looking at them on a 30 inch, calibrated monitor.  Here's what I found:  Cameras improved relentlessly until they hit six megapixels around 2002.  At that point any improvement of the images used at under 8x10 @ 300 dpi is invisible.  My Nikon D100,  D1X and Kodak DCS 760, when used at their base ISO's are equal to any Canon or Nikon camera currently on the market.

I can't argue for a second that the newer cameras are not much better at higher ISO's than the ones I've listed but from a professional point of view I find the high ISO performance meaningless in most of the applications where we make most of our money.  Your mileage may vary according to your specialty.  For a studio portrait photographer I can count on my fingers the number of times I've needed to turn off the studio lights, put down the external light meter and use ISO 3200.  Just doesn't happen.  

And there is no real link between price and quality.  Not anymore.  I find the quality of the files from my Sony R1's equal to the files of the D700 at the native ISO's of each camera.  But more importantly is how well they print.  Most stuff looks interesting on the screen but the real test is how it handles paper.  And vice versa.  Wanna improve your digital photography?  Use a tripod.  Use the optimum apertures of your prime lenses.  Work on finding more interesting subject matter.  But exhaust all other avenues before you feel like you need to pony up for the new uber camera.

Final rant:  If you are a runner have you ever really wanted to run on a bright sunny afternoon and you headed to a hiking trail in your city to burn some energy only to be confronted by hordes of amateur trail users who walk with strollers in groups that span the whole pathway?  What the hell is wrong with these people.  When they drive in their cars they are required to drive up one side of the road and down the other.  Why do they become so mentally challenged when confronted with a hiking trails.  Let's get some traffic control people out there ticketing these idiots so that people who want to run can do so in appropriate traffic patterns.  Darn, that is so aggravating.

My Two Favorite Digital Cameras of All Time.

There's cameras and then there's cameras.  I've got plenty of the first kind.  They're "state of the art" pieces of industrial efficiency.  Cameras like the Nikon D300 and the D700.  I've owned most of the Nikon professional series bodies, starting with the D1, continuing through the D2x.  But along the way I've found that there's a difference between a camera with good specifications and reliable performance, and a camera that's fun to hold and fun to use.  I like the files I get from the Fuji S5 but for some reason it's just no fun to use.  Same with the Canon G10.  I really want to like it but it's more like a nice radio than a good camera.

So why do good cameras fail the warm and cuddly test?  The D700 is a much less inviting camera to use than the almost identical D300.  It's bigger shutter is much louder and has a flat, robotic sound.  The D300 has a shutter sound that's like a gradual growl.  It sounds more intuitive.  I know that seems crazy but that's the best way to describe it.  The Fuji S5 seems physically disconnected from the user.  I push the button and something happens but I don't know when or how.  It's like driving by wire.  Or those lenses on the early Olympus cameras and the original Canon 85mm 1.2 L lens that translated the movement of a turn of the focus ring into an electrical signal that made a motor move the focusing elements.  It hesitated and then overshot.  Both the D700 and the D3 feel reliable and accurate but very soulless compared to previous Nikons.

What makes a camera fun?  It's has personality.  It should have a few quirks that make it interesting.  And it should make you a better photographer.  In much the way that a Leica rangefinder became a transparent conduit for images while my Contax RTS camera felt like an unbalanced hammer in my hand.  Here are two of my favorite digital cameras of all time:

First,  the Kodak DCS 760.  It's a big goofy thing that endears itself to the user by it's protective "older brother" feel.  You know it's going to work.  You know the metering will be solid.  You know the autofocus will be quick in a way that the new generation of cameras is not.  It feels right in any size hand.  The finder is so good you'll tear up when you look through it.  But mostly there is an emotional reaction to a camera the bridges the best of the digital age with the nostalgia of the film age.  The DCS 760 has crappy performance at any ISO above 125.  Some would say above 80......  Don't ever think about using it for a long exposure.  Nightmare pixel fireworks.  But in the hand with a 180mm at an outdoor swim meet.  Heaven.  Absolute heaven. No wonder that they become harder and harder to find and hold their value better than the other cameras that came out in the same time frame.

The ulitmate way to enjoy a DCS 760?  Tethered to a big monitor on a computer running the Kodak tethering software.  It's so great.  And the software was so good.  Nikon has just now caught up.  Barely.

The second camera?  From around 2003.  The Olympus E1.  Wow, I wish the files were wonderful because the camera is addictive.  Small, agile and sensitive.  Small and well integrated controls.  The most deliciously quiet mirror and shutter mechanism ever put into an SLR.  I've pulled it out of the drawer and started using it again in the hopes that Capture One will turn the so-so ISO 400 raw files into gems.  But really, this is the camera body design and implementation that everyone should have rushed to copy.  It sublimates the "computer-ness of shooting with a digital camera and makes it as transparent to shoot as a Leica.  An added and back handed compliment to the camera:  The tiny, horrible screen on the back keeps you from chimping which helps keep the mind on what's happening in front of the camera.........

The E-1 is quiet, understated and gives you access to some really cool lenses, including some made by Leica.  The camera is weather sealed and very robust.  I like to equip mine with the LiPo battery pack because it adds a bigger grip and a second shutter release button.  Not to mention giving me thousands of shots before recharging.

These are two of my all time digital faves.  You can always pick one up cheap.  Beware the Kodak batteries.  Better to use that big beast with an external battery pack or plugged right into the wall!!!

Writing a Book in the age of instant access.

Many of you know that I wrote a book last year on the phenomenon of small strobe lighting, as exemplified by David Hobby's blog, http://www.strobist.com .  The book is entitled, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional Techniques for Location Photography.  The book struck a nerve with two separate groups.  One group was the Strobist population which is largely self-taught and looks to various web gurus for more information and tutoring about things photographic.  Surprisingly, the other group is established photographers who have been in the game for over twenty years and who needed a push to change from the way they had done things to a new way that reflected the reduced indulgence of time and budget supplied by the new clients.

I'm glad the book has sold well and the feedback that I've gotten from readers is little short of a college education in the desires of the market.  But the real reason for this short column is to discuss how  I know what the market is thinking.....

Here's how I understood the publishing business in the past (read that to mean:  pre- internet):

The author writes a book and submits it to a publisher.  The publisher and writer come to an agreement of terms and the publisher edits the book.  The book is produced and marketed through a small web of interconnected distributors.  The book becomes available in book stores and in shops dealing with the specialty encompassed within the book.

Once a customer had purchased a book he had a very limited ability to give feedback.  His recourse was to write a letter to the editor or to the publisher.  He could also address a letter to the author, "care of" the publisher.  His address wasn't printed in the book, nor was his home telephone number listed anywhere on the printed product.  The letters were read by a secretary and passed along to the proper channel or into a circular file.

As an English major from a previous generation, this is what I understood to be standard practice and I didn't pay attention to the changes through the years until I had a personal stake in the game.  Now I have been tossed into the cold water of present day and have come fully awake to the new rules.

From the first day of publishing I started getting e-mails from places like Australia and Russia. Nearly all of them were polite and complimentary.  Most wanted to point out a typing mistake or bring my attention to a misapplied caption.  A few questioned my choice in one or another particular of gear selection.  And many wanted to know if the yellow "splotch" on the chapter pages was a printing mistake or an intentional addition.  (It was an intentional design element, honest).  Three or four people took me to task for things mundane (selection of type style) and things bizarre (why didn't I mention a certain brand of light stand).

E-mail made it easy to access me.  It made sharing opinions easy and it made sharing easy.  Then the really weird stuff started to happen.  I started getting e-mails asking for payment to write reviews about the book on Amazon.com (which I did not accept!!!!) and I started getting unsolicited ideas for incredibly impractical products, as if I had some connection to a giant photo gadget making company.  I also recieved one "hate" e-mail taking me to task for "destroying the high end photography market" by making "cheap crap" acceptable as professional tools (as if I had that much power).

But the really nice thing that happened was the extension of the original feedback loop that gave me really tremendous insight as to what most book buyers really wanted to see in a second book.  Turns out that "how well the book reads" is almost important as the content to some.  That preference by many of the reader/responders to the first book almost make me want to write a series of novels about the photography business.  The next thing they want is good, solid general instruction that they can overlay onto projects the readers are attempting.  Most said that straightforward examples that clearly show what can be done with modest gear easily trump more flashy examples that require dozens of fixtures and a crew of assistants and super models.

Finally,  I sense that they want to trust the writer and are more comfortable if the writer is an active participant of a bigger community of like-minded people.  They were proud that my book came out of my participation in the Strobist and Flickr communities.  Many were surprised and pleased to get a personal response.  But it felt so natural to do so.  I feel like I am nestled in part of a big Bell Curve in which we all give and take.  And the accessibility is all part of the organic mix.  I'm proud I was there before I wrote the book and I'm proud that I'm still there adding in my two cents worth.

When I saw how accessible my writing persona could be it triggered something in my mind.  I wanted to contact two writers who's work I really enjoy and give them both messages.  I wrote to Steven Pressfield, the wonderful novelist who gave us, The Gates of Fire and The Legend of Bagger Vance (among other great books).  I wanted to personally thank him for a little book called, The War of Art, which helped to cure my anxiety and dissolve my procrastination.  To my surprise, he e-mailed me the following morning with a wonderful message which I printed out and keep at my desk.

I also wanted to reach out to Jeff Abbott, a writer of exciting suspense novels, to let him know how much I enjoy his work.  He was also quick to personally respond which cemented my fan mentality where both of these writers are concerned.  

But more importantly these interactions convinced me that we work best in an informed feedback loop that constantly refines and corrects our messages and makes them both more rewarding to deliver and more digestible to receive.  I'm not sure why I'm sitting here writing this instead of doing the taxes, calling clients or trying to do some photographic work, but I know at some level I really want to thank everyone for the time they took to tell me where I slipped, pat me on the back for the stuff I did right/write and give me the energy to keep pursuing my writing about photography.

Thank you very much!  It's nice to be connected.

Kirk

Coming to grips with the changing landscape.

Let's face it.  If you started taking photographs twenty or thirty years ago you developed a "muscle memory" for film cameras.  You learn to assess the health of your camera batteries by the sound pitch of your motor drive.  You learned that your potential for shooting a number of photographs was constrained by your supply of film and you learned that the post processing required would also limit what you "should" shoot if you were to also have a life outside the darkroom or away from the lab that processed your color film.

Beyond that you also learned what worked in marketing by the same kind of practice.  The marketing tool of the time was print.  People saw your work in print.  Whether is was in a magazine, accompanied with a byline or credit or on a postcard that you had printed and sent through the mail.  You were constrained to edit your mailing list judiciously because each card mailed represented printing costs and postage in addition to your active participation in labeling, stamping, sorting and sending.  

Few were wealthy enough to be as promiscuous as even the least financially capable beginner, e-mailing with gusto, these days.  In many, many ways digital imaging, and the web, have flattened the playing field for professional photographers.  Or so it would seem.

There are advantages to the old ways and there are advantages to the new world of existing and marketing as image makers.

The Visual Science Lab research (data free....) finds that, while e-mails work in some instances, there is still more power in a finely crafted, physical direct mailing.  In a way it's like the difference between fly fishing and net fishing.  And therein lies the dissonance for old timers.

While a fly fisher generally brings up a nicer fish, with more weight, the net fisher brings up more quantity.  The fly fisher might land a juicy trout while the net operator brings up a large bucket of sardines.

We can argue that we'd rather eat the trout, and that fly fishing is a much more enjoyable diversion but the reality is blurred.  At some point quantity will trump quality.  The net fisher will, perhaps, have more financial success.  But only if they have a ready distribution network and an efficient way to process and ship their bounty.

The net fisher looks at the fly fisher in his waders, whiling away a bright summer day, half submerged in a cool stream and wishes that were his lot while the fly fisher, does not envy the network process but lusts after the raw income.

It's the same in the business of photography.  I have one friend who does three or four big advertising assignments per year.  He doesn't want to work every day.  In his little corner of the industry that would be impractical.  He sees himself as a whaler.  He sails through the deep oceans looking for the "great white whale".  And if he lands one he's set for months at a time.

At the other end of the spectrum are photographers who need a constant stream of small sales to survive from week to week.  They are busy all the time, but not on the kinds of projects that initially attracted them to the field.  They compete against an ocean of unremarkable but "bucket cheap" stock photography.

I was complaining about this dichotomy last week to a friend who isn't a photographer.  He makes money with a traditional. professional business.  He suggested that both participants I've described above might be misguided.  He said he aims for the middle way.  Happy to go whaling, fly fishing or anchovy harvesting depending on what's biting.

Knowing that he has more money in his Christmas account than I've seen in my lifetime I quickly asked for his advice.  Here it is:

1.  Plan for the long term but be flexible enough to modify for the present.   You may want to go fly fishing but the stream might be closed right now and it's good to know how to net fish.....

2.  Don't abandon old, proven marketing techniques (he still sends targeted mailings and correspondence through the mail to his clients and select, potential clients).  Most of them still work well.  New is not always better.

3.  Don't be afraid of new marketing opportunities.  This guy has a Twitter account.  I was amazed.  Just because your current marketing is working okay doesn't mean the addition of new tools wouldn't make things better.

4.  Don't stop whaling just because there was a storm.  He likens our whaling analogy to, well, whaling.  He said most failed whalers came in from the seas because a big storm was brewing and they forgot to go back out when the storm abated.  For photographers the big jobs and sexy accounts will come back with a pent up vengence as soon as the economic mess subsides.  If you've already put all your guns into net fishing you might be loath to return to the whaling ship and you'll miss out on the next big time harvest while you work full out on small fish.

5.  When you hit big save as much as you can.  

His last piece of advice was to stop fishing and get back to work doing what you know how to do in the most profitable way.  You must beat your own inertia if you are to make it to the next higher level.

So what does this have to do with old timers and new photographers?  Not much, other than I think the most important thing you can learn is if you are even fishing in the right pool.

Take a trip to the ocean.  Look at the pond in your backyard.  Don't limit your options but don't let your selected options slow you down.  Have a twitter account and an "A" mailing list to whom you send printed materials.  You're allowed to do it both ways.  

I stepped back in time yesterday and bought a Nikon F4

It's silly.  The tidal wave of progress long since ground the champion cameras of yesteryear to the ocean floor of photography to be compacted over time into an archeological layer that future scholars will dislodge with tepid interest.  I couldn't help it.  The Nikon F4 (film) camera represented a revolution in so many ways.  It was the first professional autofocus camera.  It was the first of the Nikon F series cameras to come with a self contained motor drive.  One of the first cameras to include "predictive" autofocus.

From a manufacturing point of view it was the pinnacle intersection of mechanical and electronic symbiosis.  A blend of 1700 parts.  Each chosen to be the best ever crafted for this kind of tool.  The inner shell of the body was constructed with a specially concocted alloy that boasted incredible strength while also dampening vibration and shock.  The view through the eyepeice was designed to introduce as little dissonance between the object as it was and the object as it was observed.  Even the metering was new and spectacular.

But why would I fling $200 away on a piece of antiquated industrial art in the age of digital?  Well, precisely because this is the age of digital.

Let me explain.  In one or two generations the camera manufacturers will advance the craft of digital camera making in a number of ways.  One of which will be the removal of the moving mirror which must lift up to make an exposure and then drop down again into order to allow the photographer to see through the finder.  SLR cameras that still feature this sort of "thru the lens" viewing require precision ground, silver pentaprisms of extremely high quality glass.  The best are still pretty much hand finished.  The mirror mechanism in the professional cameras has to be engineered to rise and fall up to 12 times per second which requires appreciable mass to be started, accelerated and then stopped in milliseconds. The mirror mechanism also requires a highly precise shutter to shield the sensor from light until the exact moment of tightly timed, and highly repeatable exposure.  All this costs money while introducing less reliability than a totally electronic camera.  It costs lots more money.

So the drive is on to drive cost from professional grade cameras.  The first thing to go will be the pentaprism and the beautiful image projected optically through the finder.  The next thing to go will be the mechanical shutter.  In one fell swoop every mechanical connection between man and camera will be eliminated.  Withdrawn.  And this is generally a good thing for both camera manufacturers and people who will never experience a "real" camera because both will save money.  And the difference in images may not even amount to a hill of beans.

But it seems as though the tactile integration of man and machine will be greatly diminished.  Like a race car driver who can no longer shift gears.  A mechanic with computers but no tools.  A chef with a microwave.  The Nikon F4 represents to me the collective drive that existed in the last cenury to make a machine that wasn't sensible and efficient (or worse, cost effective), not the best in a category,  not just "good enough"  but the very best machine that could be built, for its intended purpose,  with no holds barred.  And in my mind it's come to represent something that's missing from our digital culture:  The Pursuit of Creating the Most Excellent Art Possible.  No excuses.

Since we capitulated to the power of the web, and the implied cost effectiveness of digital cameras, we've gone down a sinister path that may be more devastating to our culture than the present economic disaster.  We've allowed ourselves, collectively, to be subdued by the economics of process progress.  The web represents the lowest common denominator of quality precisely because every image placed upon it is a compromise between size and quality. Resolution and loading time.  Color depth and quickness.  Surrendering to the idea that color is just relative since no two monitors will perform identically.  We work with the expectation that everything will turn out to be crappier looking than ever before so we aim for that target.

The economic fear that we live with is already reducing the number of printed magazine pages, month by month. The driver of the professional digital camera market has been a relentless pursuit of higher and higher resolution but that will become increasingly meaningless as the drive to the web accelerates.  Even ad agencies are finding ways to make "social marketing" and "networking" profitable (in direct opposition to the intention of social networking......) which will further decay the need for true quality.

As the demand for large prints diminished so will the demand for the last remaining photographic labs and their master printers.  All photographic art will be destined for the screen or the wild interpretations of ink jet printers on papers of dubious quality and keeping potential.  We, as a culture, will have done to art exactly what we have done to the DVD player and the hamburger:  We will have commodified it, driven it brutally to it's lowest price with all the attendant compromises and we will have sucked the "humanism" out of the process in a vain and egalitarian attempt to make all things accessible to all people.

So, the F4 convinces me that the expedition in search of excellence is still part of human nature....even though it is temporarily in hibernation.  The feel of the camera is superb.  The feedback of the shutter and mirror noise is sensuous.  And the looks of my photographic peers are priceless as they try to figure out just what the hell I'm up to now.

Bottom line:  You owe it to yourself to go out and buy the industrial art of your era.  The Nikon F2's, F3's and F4's.  The Leica M3's, M4's, M5's and M6's.  The portable Hermes typewriter.  The Linn Sondek turntable or the Luxman tube amplifiers.  Once they disappear, like spirits and whimsy in old fairy tales, they disappear forever.  And over time the tool, and the imperative it represented recede and finally vanish.

That's why I bought a used F4.

Note.  I'm doing a little experiment.  I'm buying color film from Costco.  It's Fuji 400 speed color print film and it can be had for around a dollar and change per roll.  Each roll gives you 24 individual frames to fill.  When you've got a handful of the rolls shot you take them back to Costco where their lab develops the film and color corrects and prints the film and finally puts all the images on a disk for a very low price.  Then I'll come home and look at them.  And I'll be happy that the images exist in a physical form.  That they can be physically cataloged and reinterpreted.  It's comforting.

The Visual Science Lab Inaugural Posting.

     I've created this blog to talk about the commercial side of photography and related visual arts.  Visit often for book reviews, equipment reviews, opinions and insights into the future of visual imaging and more.  The Visual Science Lab is an incubator for thinking rationally about creating visual art for lots of different, and some times, intertwined reasons.

     

So,  Who am I?  My name is Kirk Tuck and I've been actively involved in photography and advertising since 1979.  I have written three books about photography.  The first one came out 1 May 2008 and is entitled, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional  Techniques for Location Photography. This book covers the ways to use inexpensive, battery operated lights to do the same kind of work professionals have done for years with large, and expensive, A/C powered studio electronic flash units.  The book has been a consistent bestseller since it's publication.

The second book is entitled, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional Techniques for Studio Photography.  It comes out on the first of April, 2009 and will cover all the different ways to light people and products in the studio.  It covers most kinds of lighting, including inexpensive work lights from hardware stores as well as top of the line equipment from Profoto.  This book contains a number of step by  step demonstrations to help readers understand the relationship between light and the final image.

The third book will be out later in 2009 and will cover what one needs to know to attempt a career as a commercial photographer.  My publisher is Amherst Media.  If you like what I write about you might also check out my monthly column at www.prophotoresource.com.  The site requires registration but it is free.

I also write regularly for Studio Photography Magazine.  Here's a link to my most recent column for them as it appears online:  http://www.imaginginfo.com/print/Studio-Photography/An-Enhanced-Medium-Format-Digital-Camera-3$4670

I'll try to be diligent in posting to this blog at least every other day.  If you'd like to learn more about my business and my photographs, please take a moment to visit my website at http://www.kirktuck.com.  I look forward to getting to know you through your feedback and gentle criticism.

Welcome!  Kirk