Just photography. That's what I signed up for.

If you're not shooting you're wasting your time.  If we're arguing about gear we're both wasting our time.

TOO MUCH MAGIC. A book that helps explain our inability to stop buying gear. And much more.

I have a book addiction and I'm not ashamed of it.  There's a ton of great stuff out there in the book-o-sphere.  And the focus it takes to write and produce a great book means that there's more signal and less noise in a book than in most other media.  I know from past experience that most of my readers here at VSL love to read.  Otherwise they wouldn't trudge through my longer posts.  We've pretty much scared off the people who profess to not like reading much...

Today, instead of crooning about the latest cameras or doing another heartfelt post about shooting with your heart instead of your brain, I'm reviewing a book that has absolutely nothing to do with photography and everything to do with why we enjoy photography less, feel as though we have less time to devote to our photography and can't seem to get a foothold onto the steep cliff of creative expression.  And why we're spinning our wheels instead of getting stuff done.

Reader, Jason Benlevi, sent me his book entitled, "Too Much Magic.  Pulling the Plug on the Cult of Tech." (full disclosure:  It is a review copy, paperback, and no other value or exchange of services has occurred to, in any way, influence my reviewing of the book.)

The book is both a history of our entanglement with, and accommodation of, all the devices and programming and social interfaces that the past 100 years of technological advancement brought to the consumer.  Benlevi makes a very good case that every new application and device has a useful side and a dark side and that we, as consumers, are being pushed into choices and use patterns without informed consent. And without truthfully acknowledging the dark sides.

I  won't go into detail and spoil a great read for you but one of the statements that jumped out at me concerned the shift in our focus of brain and financial resources.  At one point, two generations back, we (the U.S.A.) sent men to the moon.  Now, with our focus on recreational and sales oriented websites as targets for our joint venture dollars the only way we can get our people to the international space station is to hitch a ride on a Russian spacecraft.  We our the masters of "I'm at Starbucks!"  "Do these shoes make me look fat?" and other important social interactions.  But at the same time we earn less than we did 20 years ago and work harder.

Benlevi is a good writer and he makes the concepts flow.  His time lining of our tech history helps all the concepts fall nicely into place.  His ability to show both sides of the tech coin comes from his own long history in the technology world. He is a hardly an outsider. 

If you've felt uneasy about the massive intrusion and implied necessity of social networking in your life but you don't understand why you feel uneasy or what to do about it, then this book is for you.

If you think an iPad is a tool to enhance your creativity then this book is for you. 

We are being stalked for our consumer information every minute we're on the web or on our phones.  The people who vacuum up our information are deciding what we will see and what we won't.  They are using the information to help us spend more and to spend it more often.  They are helping us relentlessly upgrade.  Find out how and find out why.

I got the book yesterday afternoon and finished the 361 pages over coffee this morning.  That's all I have to say because I'm off to pull the plug on my Facebook account.

Sometimes one light is all you need.

One of my favorite portraits.  "Creating interesting portraits one person at a time...."

You can't use that. It's not professional.

This is a homemade florescent bank.  We cobbled it together to use it as a fill light in a giant data center that was all lit with similar florescent tubes.  It worked great.  The images were exactly what the client wanted.  It worked better than thousands of dollars of filtered flash would have.  It cost less than fifty bucks.  It's held together with tape and bungie cords.  There are chunks of cardboard that separate the tubes.  It's not pretty it just works.

Marketing works harder at sucking the individuality out of art and life better than just about anything else except poverty.  When you are poor you have to use what you have at hand.  But when you have enough pocket change rattling around you can get sucked into the whirlpool of "how the professionals do it."  And pretty soon you'll be shooting just like everyone else.

I wrote a column for Michael Johnston's blog, TheOnlinePhotographer, that ran on Sunday.  In it I talked about the Panasonic/Leica 25mm Summilux lens for the micro four thirds systems.  One commenter asked, in so many words, how I could convince clients that "Kirk+G3 = Professional?"

(The G3: referencing a < $550 small sensor camera).

This comes up in every facet of being a working photographer.  It's all based on looking in the rear view mirror of working life. How we did things a decade ago.  That's how it seeps into the current idiom.  The truth is that there's no longer any even imaginary line between what tools are professional and which ones are just screaming fun.  Now that the overwhelming target space for our "visual genius" is the iPhone screen or the website viewed in a coffee shop on a 15 inch laptop the metaphorical sky is the limit.  Not the number or provenance of our pixels.

Here's how I think of the whole subject...

Old school "pro" computer = The big tower with multiple processors and the giant monitor. The rationale: Big files demand fast processors.  The speed saves me time and money...

The reality = Most photographers would find the latest i7 equipped laptops screamin' fast.  And cheaper.  I ditched big computers in 2007 and I've never looked back.  My office set up right now?  A 13 inch Apple MacBook Pro with an i5 processor hooked to a 24 inch monitor.  Runs fast and works well.  

Old school "pro" camera = Canon 1 series, Nikon D3 series.  According the the experts who don't make money taking photographs any camera used by a "pro" must be weatherproofed, watersealed, shoot at 10 frames per second, have a shutter that will last far longer than their interest in said camera, and the camera must be made out of many pounds of metal strong enough to endure re-entry from outer space and impact with the Sonoran Desert at terminal velocity.  In the current space the camera must also have tons and tons of pixels.

The reality = Given that 80 percent of the images go to the web, that very few people make prints anymore and that ever advancing digital technology makes camera bodies more or less disposable there are tons and tons of people getting paid for making images with Canon Rebels, Sony nex5's and other small and delicious cameras.  The size of the body is meaningless as an evaluation of final quality in use.  My current small cameras spank the big, expensive cameras of yesteryear and our clients aren't really pestering us for anything better or more "spec'd."  Twelve megapixels is still the sweet spot for most work from a size/quality paradigm and sixteen megapixels is huge. 

Bulletproof?  The only two cameras I've had that required major service (or any service at all) have been a Canon 1 series camera with a defective circuit board and a Nikon D300 that backfocused everything in the universe.  The smaller, cheaper cameras?  In my small, anecdotal survey?  Much more reliable.

I'll trade face detection autofocus with eye preference over extra seals every day.  Makes my job easier.  Makes the focus better.  If I spent my days in San Diego, dedicated to photographing the Navy Seals in action I'd probably want an "everything proofed" camera but most photographers I know shoot in offices and in cushy suburban neighborhoods. 

I prefer using the micro four thirds cameras when it's appropriate.  They're more fun.  And, for most of the stuff I do the images are just great.  If you shoot sports you need something different.  But that's one of those YMMV things.  For ad guys the whole live view thing is a wonderful.  Do I need an optical view finder? Only to impress my hobbyist friends.

Old School "pro" lenses = The pervasive idea is big, fat, white zoom lenses with f-stops of 2.8 and lots and lots of knobs. Or big, fat primes with gold or red rings around the barrels. Heavy, weatherproofed and beknighted with a string of letters like ASPH, ED, UD, IF, and of course, LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

Reality? =  While I've got some bigger lenses in a drawer somewhere the stuff I use looks more like fun stuff.  I like little zooms like the 14-45mm zoom I have on my G3.  Or the 14-42mm zoom I have on my EP3.  If I'm lighting stuff the apertures are fast enough.  If I'm outside the lenses are always fast enough.  If I need better I switch to cute little prime lenses (at a third the cost of their bigger cousins)  with apertures that are just as fast as the "pro" lenses but give me a little more focus coverage because of their shorter focal lengths.  But more importantly not having to carry all the prestige around with me leaves me more energy to explore and be nice.

Old School "Pro" lights = Profoto.  Big boxes. Big monolights.  Lots of big accessories.  Many stands.  Lots of sandbags.  Lots of assistants to hold everything together.  In fairness though I should mention that the great middle of the professional market has transitioned to plastic flashes from Paul Buff without too much grumbling.  

Reality? = Most of the images I see could be made with a couple of $100 speedlights and a couple of slave cells.  My five figure project in December was done entirely with three LED panels (maybe $1,000 total).  You light with what you need.  Most pros have a small set of electronic flashes, some portable flashes and a few fun lights like LEDs or florescents.  If you need more you rent more.  The real art is knowing when to turn most of it off...

This pro versus amateur thing is so silly.  When I talk to guys who've been doing it for years I hear the same story over and over again.  They started taking photos with a (fill in the blank/advanced amateur camera) simple, basic camera, shot lots and lots of fun stuff that people really liked.  Went "pro" and bought all the trappings and then spent the next twenty years trying to get back to that simpler time. Why? Because everyone, including themselves, loved the images from the time when the pictures were about the idea or the emotion instead of the magnesium alloy and product positioning.

Remember the early cellphones? Remember when you owned the Motorola "brick"?  Was that more professional than an iPhone?  Could it do as much?

Remember the Buick Electra?  Remember when you owned that Suburban? Was it better transportation than your Mini Cooper or your Outback?

"Professional" is such a lovely advertising buzzword because it connotes acceptance of a defined standard. But what is professional video in the time of the Canon 5Dmk2 or the Panasonic GH2?  Is it still a $50,000 Sony Betacam?  Will it matter on Youtube?  Does it matter on Vimeo?  What if the smaller cameras create files that looks just as good? Or better?  Now you can afford to be a videographer.  Now more people can afford to be photographers.  All they need to supply is intelligence, taste and elbow grease.

In medicine and law "professional" means more training, not more gear.  

Old School Photographer = We conjure up the hip guy in black with a warehouse full of studio space, surrounded by high power popping flashes in enormous umbrellas telling hot models to pout with more energy.  The guy is surrounded by legions of assistants.  Some look at big screens as the photographer shoots.  Some shout out encouragement.  Some flirt with the hot client.  Some flirt with the coterie of hot models waiting in the wings.  Some flirt with each other.  All wait breathlessly for the magic.  All vie to be the next one to hold the prestigious medium format camera.  All wear their black baseball caps backwards. It's only for webcasts, only for TV.  Only for the movies...

The Reality? = For most it's a process of daily marketing, a trip to a client's store or factory or restaurant to shoot.  Setting up a few lights.  Taking good photographs.  Billing reasonable amounts and delivering images that will help to move a client's products and services.  Sometimes they'll bring along an assistant to help carry some gear up the inevitable stairs or across the parking lot.  Headshots in our smaller and efficient studios.  The day-to-day needs of local commerce.

Back to the original question.  Most clients who know the difference between professional camera models are themselves deeply interested in photography and would have shot their own products or people but they needed you to do so because something needed to be lit or people needed to be posed or the client could belay their ego and admit that you routinely found better compositions than they would have and they were willing to pay for your services.

If they know nothing about the nuts and bolts of photography they probably hired you because they went to your website and looked and saw what they needed to see and have/had a reasonable expectation that you'd deliver a similar and satisfactory product.  They didn't see your camera or your lights or your computer when they hired you.  Nor (I hope) did you bring the gear along to your pre-production meeting.  If you want to be considered professional your first obligation is to deliver at least to the level that you advertise on your website.  And the kind of gear you need in order to be able to do that is something that's up to you.  My wife is a graphic designer.  She couldn't care less what camera or lens I use on her jobs.  The final tally is binary.  I got the image she wanted or I didn't.  End of story.

Professional is how you act and deliver, not something you lug around over your shoulder.

A re-posting of a "last year's favorite."

2.12.2011

Street Shooting with abandon. The joy of strolling and looking.

Rome, Italy. 

When we're immersed in the rhythm of our everyday lives we tend to overbook and underlook.  We scan for danger and opportunity.  Will the woman in the Chevy Suburban, juggling her latte and her cellphone, run the red light and slam into my car?  Can I grab that parking space before anyone else?  But when I go off to shoot somewhere (even if it's just downtown in my own hometown) there's a mental shift that moves me to disregard tight scheduling, turn off the cellphone (yes! They do have off switches!) and stop running the obsessive mental checklist that clicks away in my head.


I allow myself to succumb to the ebb and flow of the visual life in front of me.  I get up early and grab the camera (one camera) that I want to use based on how I feel in the moment.  I usually feel conflicted about taking more than one lens.  If I take two I find myself confused about which one might be best for each subject.  There is not "right" or "wrong" lens so the choice becomes mired in a web of countervailing possibilities.  My mind moves from decisive to indecisive and the energy that first attracted me to a subject seeps away, replaced with a paralyzing ambiguity.   One lens and one camera is best.  It's easier to wrap your vision around a subject than to be enslaved by choice.


I want to look like everyone else in the street.  I want people to think, "There's a guy.  He has a camera."  Instead of,  "There's a photographer."  It seems transparently the same but it's not.   And the people you encounter shift their demeanor based on the display you create about yourself.  One camera and a lens might say, "Tourist",  while a bagful of paraphernalia marks you as someone actively hunting images.  You become someone who "wants" something from someone else instead of someone immersing themselves in the milieu.  And people are wary of other people who want things from them.


I don't linger unless I'm trying to line up and image.  If I work without feeling sneaky people very rarely take notice of what I'm doing.  If someone catches me "taking" their image I smile and ask, with my eyes, if it will be okay to take another one.  Sometimes I put the camera down and just savor a thing in front of me because I know its beauty might be transient and inappropriate for "image capture."  Like closing your eyes and enjoying the song rather than focusing on how to capture an image of the music.


When I go out for my walks I'm drawn to scenes that show what it's like to be human.  The couple falling in love.  The woman who seems displeased about something.  Perhaps it's her ice cream.  Maybe she didn't pass her driver's exam.  We've all been in both emotional places and the photographs have the power to remind me of my own feelings.  That's why I take them.


When I walk often and for a long time with one camera I come to know it in a much different way than I do a camera I pick up only every so often.  It's like driving a car for years and knowing just exactly where everything is.  Then, one day you take your car in for service and you get a loaner car, and everything feels awkward and out of place.  It hampers your ability to drive in the subconscious and fluid manner that you've become accustomed to.


People choose cameras for so many reasons.  But I think they largely overlooked how it will feel and wear after months and months or years and years of use.


Street photography requires that you suspend your own greed for success.  The things you think you'll find rarely come up.  But if you have a list of predetermined images in your head when you begin you will have made it so much harder to find the images you weren't looking for.  And those might be the images that will surprise and delight you exactly because you never knew you were looking for them until they found you.  If you learn to let go of the desire for control you'll learn to stop suffering for your art and start having fun.


Might sound like "New Age" madness or hippy stuff but before you go back out to shoot again try reading the Tao Te Ching and see if it changes how you react with the world.

Panasonic G3 with fun lens on front. (Photo Only).

G3 and Leica Lens photographed by stable mate, Olympus EP3 and 45mm 1.8.


For examples see my column this morning at the onlinephotographer

Today's Walk in Downtown Austin. Part Two.

I hope you've already looked at Part One of "Today's Walk in Downtown."  I like the photo I put there and now I can report that I also like the old fashion looking telephone handset I bought there that plugs into my iPhone and makes it a retro desk phone.  Felt like being back high school all over again.

Today I wanted to spend some time with a lens I bought a few weeks ago that's been overshadowed by its sexier cousin.  I bought the Leica Summilux 25mm 1.4 for the micro four thirds at the same time that I bought the Olympus 45mm 1.8 (short tele) lens.  I put the 25 on the front of a Panasonic G3 and I haven't really shot with anything else since.  But yesterday I used both lenses and I wrote an article about that editorial style shoot (mostly about the Summilux) for The Online Photographer. According to Michael Johnston's message on his site today, the article will run tomorrow.

But I was feeling a bit guilty for having succumbed to the lure of the G3's 16 really sparkling megapixels and the magnetic draw of the Leica and for leaving the 45mm Olympus and the EP3 body in the lurch.  I tossed an extra battery in my pocket, inserted an 8 gigabyte Delkin SD card into the sleek, black Pen and headed out the door.

First stop was Whole Foods for coffee and a long overdue and highly necessary raspberry donut washed down with Sumatran coffee, laced with coconut milk.  The effects of this snack were so soporific I could do nothing at all for about ten minutes, other than photographing my own Nike, LiveStrong running shoes.

I popped off a couple of building shots so I could compare them with previous work.  That side by side comparability really helps when evaluating new stuff.  And I like the way the light is always changing on the most familiar downtown structures.

The 45mm 1.8, when used at f5.6 is wicked sharp and very quick to focus in bright light.  But you probably guessed that it would be.

Austin is gearing up already for the onslaught of humanity that will descend on the city during the SXSW Interactive/Film and Music Festival starting on the 9th of March.  If you like to shoot in the street, if you like to do candid portraits of strangers, if you like to photograph hordes of people talking, texting, photography and snuggling with their iPhones you will probably not find a more "target rich" zone in all of America than the ten or so square blocks of downtown Austin during those ten days.  Really.

The downtown area got a trial run today as people queued up at the Austin City Limits Theater, adjacent to the W Hotel, to attend the MegaDeth concert.  It was an interesting crowd.  Not the sort of folks I generally see at concerts.  

I took a few glancing images of the assembled fans and then continued my walk.  Today it really was all about just shaking out some cobwebs and dialing in an old favorite camera with a new favorite lens.  During the several hour walk I did remember just how much I like this general angle of view for camera lenses....

Man.  Austin is really, really a bike town.  

Two interesting points in the photos above and below (back at the Megadeath line).  The first is that I've never been to a concert where all the ticket holders are "wanded" with metal detectors.  I asked a security person what the deal was.  She casually let me know that this band's fans might forget that they've got their pepper spray or flick knife or chain in their purse or pocket.  They may have also forgotten to leave their live ammunition in the car.  The second point is that the Pen EP3 works very well in the face detection autofocus mode.  I used the first setting for these images and didn't worry about which eye got the attention.  I figured DOF would cover the differences....

For a moment I thought about buying ticket and attending the concert before I realized that I wasn't dressed for the occasion.  Next time.

My final shot of the walk was this couple who were working as a synergistic team to figure out the intricacies of our paper spewing, high tech parking meters.  I'm happy to report that, after trying to wedge in some larger bills, they discovered that the machine does take credit cards.  They were able to pay for parking and go about their business.

The EP3 is a wonderful camera and so fluid in use.  The 45mm 1.8 (90mm full frame equivalent) is a great little lens with no bad habits and a good, biting sharpness.

There's a great tutorial over on Thom Hogan's "Sansmirror.com" site that teaches one how to sharpen and reduce noise effectively in the smaller sensor cameras.  I used his method and found it to be right on the money.  I'd put up a link but I'm betting your fingers need the exercise.

Don't forget to head to The Online Photographer in the morning to read my take on the 25mm Summilux.

Thanks for reading.