Red Flowers in the Hill Country.

Stop and smell the flowers?

It was an unusual day yesterday. I got up and went to swim practice. Had breakfast with Studio Dog and did little webby things. Then I went to the noon swim practice and afterwards had lunch with one of the young star swimmers. We were talking about the direction that "enterprise" seems to be taking. We each had anecdotal stories to tell of efficiency over humanity. Plans by major companies to eliminate as many human jobs as possible, replacing, for instance, retail clerks with iPad-based ordering systems, robots, consumer self-order software and the like. The gap widens.

We also looked at his iPhone 6. Specifically at the still camera and video capabilities. Suddenly, a thought jumped into my brain. I looked down at my Olympus EM-5 and what I saw, clearly, was a typewriter. Or a Burrough's data entry console.

I went home and took a nap. It's been years since I swam a double. I was tired. But recognizing social shifts also takes it out of you.  It's clear to me at this moment that we're going through a structural change. If you are smug about it then it just hasn't hit your area of expertise or your industry yet....

Typewriter. Do they even make the ribbons anymore?

Connection. Collaboration. Creation. Realization. Sharing. The five steps of creating portraits.

Connection is the first step. Out in the real world you find people who look interesting to you. But that's not enough. You then have to engage with them and convince them to be a part of your project. Which then because "our" project. Connection can be tough because it can cause you to need to step out of your comfort zone, out of your neighborhood and out of your demographic. You have to approach the person for whom you feel the connection. There is a very big (and ego deflating) possibility that they will turn you down. Then you have to move on to the next person with whom you feel a connection. It's a process.

Once you've made a connection you have to bring them into the realm of your ideas. Your vision. In making them an ally you may need to compromise. You give. They give. They try your idea and you try theirs. By working and sharing over time you can create an understanding and unspoken agreement that makes the process of creation flow.

The creation is the process of making the ideas real and tangible. The creation of a portrait is about lighting matching mood which matches pose which matches props and costumes. It's the process of working together until the expression is just as you imagined it would be when you started the collaboration. The light is important. The emotions are important. The camera is less important.
You have to capture the essence of your ideas and visions during this phase because you really can't fix much after the fact. Unless you decide to become an illustrator.

The realization is everything above with the added ingredient of editing. And by editing we mean choosing just the right image from everything you've created together. First you find the image that most closely matches the best outcome of your initial concept and work and then you distill it down by working with the file until it fits happily into or onto the medium you want to use to share the image with your audience. It can be different if the images is destined for a print than if it is destined to be viewed on a small screen. But the medium must be conducive to sharing. Both your connection and your realization will be examined via whatever avenue you choose. A big print demands quality. A small image demands impact. There is a sliding scale of subtlety and nuance.

Finally you get to share. What you are asking your audience to do is to step into your shoes and see a person as you see them. Or as you and the subject both saw the subject in collaboration.

What do you hope to get when you share? Insight into how different everyone's ideas of portraiture are. How different we are when it comes to selecting our collaborative partners. How different our engagements. And how much alike we are when confronted by one or another idea of what is beauty.

I think the person in the image is very beautiful. I want to share my feeling that there is beauty everywhere for us to find. Happily, what is beautiful is subjective. Sadly, what is beauty is subjective.

The Lisbon Portfolio, The story of photographer, Henry White, is now available as a 472 page, 5.5 inch by 8.5 inch printed book from CreateSpace. To get a copy right now click here.  In about a week the book will be in stock on Amazon.com in addition to CreateSpace. If you'd prefer the Kindle version, click here.

I was first alerted to the arrival of the UPS truck by Studio Dog. She leapt from the couch where she had been getting the space behind her ears scratched and raced to the front door either barking out an alarm or, maybe expressing unfettered joy perhaps because she knew what the man in the brown uniform might be delivering.

I brought the box into the kitchen (all important boxes seem to get opened in the kitchen) and sliced it open. Inside were the three proof copies I'd ordered of the novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. Belinda insisted on proof copies as she wanted to make sure that the cover printed exactly as she designed it. When she got home from her real job as a professional print graphic designer she gave the book a thorough exam and declared it fit for consumption. 

Frankly I am shocked at how elated I am to see the book in actual print form and to hold it in my hands and turn the pages. I guess it's because I grew up reading real, paper books with the fervor of a true addict. Something about having a print version makes it so real for me. You've got to consider that I've worked on the story for so long and in an electronic format one's reality is comprised of one visible, tangible page at a time. With the printed copy I could feel the weight and promise of all the pages in my hands.

I abandoned everything else I had scheduled last night and crawled into my favorite chair to see how the book reads. As a book, book. I was intrigued to find that the story seemed so new to me, so exciting. I stayed up late and read my favorite parts. The part with the weaponized Leica. The chapter with the bloody restroom. The mysterious woman in the glowing shaft of light. Every passage, translated onto paper seemed almost new to me. I loved the experience.

We are producing the book at CreateSpace. It's Amazon's print on demand company. You will be able to source the book from CreateSpace at the first link above, right now. In about 4 days the book should (almost) magically appear on the regular Amazon.com site, right along with the list of other books I've written. When that launch happens I will announce a link there as well. Finally, CreateSpace distributes books to most major distributors so there's a good chance that you can order a copy through your own favorite bookseller if you'd like. Fulfillment should be pretty quick.

After reviewing the book I ordered a case of 12 copies to give out to reviewers and my favorite bloggers. I am thrilled with the way the electronic copies of the book are selling and I'm hoping that our readers really come to like the character, Henry White. I'm already hard at work on the sequel.

One thing checked off the bucket list of life. A novel. Now I need to start training for Everest...

Here's the link for the Kindle version: The Lisbon Portfolio

#novel
#actionadventure

Just how sharp and contrasty is that Olympus 70mm f2.0 lens from 40+ years ago? Well, after I got a flu shot I thought I'd find out...

Thought I'd go to the most compelling example. Here's young man at the Graffiti Park (Hope Outdoor Gallery). The image above is a 100% crop of the image just below. Click on any of the images to see them larger and to launch them as a gallery. Do I think the 40+ year old lens acquits itself nicely? Yes, I do. It doesn't auto focus but other than that I find it to be.... in the same league as the new optics. These were all shot on an OMD EM-5 at ISO 200-ish and using f2.8 and f4.0. 

I know what I think after seeing them but would love to hear from the assembled, crowdsourced, super resource of brains and experience... The lens is the Olympus Pen-F 70mm f2.0. It was made for the Pen half frame film cameras sometime between 1968 and 1974. I like it.

Print Copy Now Available!!! Click Here!!!

I have a 75mm 1.8 Olympus lens on loan from a friend, and on a whim, I also pulled out the old 70mm f2 Pen lens....Yikes.

It's fun to try new lenses. I've been walking around with the Olympus 75mm 1.8 lens on the front of an OMD EM-5 and I have to say that it's just wonderful. I shot an image wide open yesterday that made me really stop and look at the out of focus areas. But the killer stuff is the area of the image that is in focus. Very sharp and detailed. But after reading so many people praising this lens I really didn't expect much less. While I have the lens on loan from a VSL reader (Platinum Level) for the next two weeks my first, knee jerk, response was to think about pulling out the credit card and ordering one for myself.

I was half way to the computer to order when an odd thought stopped me. 'What about that old 70mm f2.0 Pen lens you have sitting in the cabinet with its peers? Wanna give that a side by side kind of thing?'

The last time I tried out the older 70mm was on an EP-3 and the EP-3 wasn't exactly a darling camera for the use of manual focus lenses. No focus peaking and the ability to magnify the frame seemed different than our current cameras; certainly less convenient. I'd tried it and gotten so-so results and the truth is that I probably missed focus more often than I nailed it. Since I was shooting nearly wide open a near miss is as good as a mile. After more than my share of fuzzy files it went back into a drawer. Until Monday.

I decided to give the 70mm a fair shake. I'd seen what the 75mm could do and I figured that there was no way 40 year old, half frame film technology would come close. I evened it up as well as I could. Off came the front filter. Then I spent half an hour carefully cleaning the lens. I found the Pen-f to M4:3 adapter that had the best track record for reliable performance and I was off. At f2.0 the lens was okay but by f2.8 it was right in line with modern lenses. At f4.0 it was difficult for me to see much difference between the 70mm and the 75mm. By f5.6 we were slicing electrons to see the difference.

While the 75mm modern lens is much more resistant to flare with light sources in the field of view the older, 70mm lens stood up quite well at most apertures. How well? Hmmm. Yesterday I had an assignment to shoot 4 executives (individually) in the same way that I'd shot a previous executive for the company a few months ago. They have an east facing conference room and we were shooting in the afternoon. The wall of windows facing east was like having a tremendous soft box at my disposal. The last image was available light so I tried matching up the same look and feel for yesterday's shoot.

When I left the house to go to the client's location I was hell bent on using the Nikon D7100 and the 85mm f1.8 G lens. It's sharp and methodical. But I tossed the black EM-5 and the 70mm Pen lens into the bag just so I'd have a fun play camera to use around the edges of the primary shoot. But when I got into the conference room and got my tripod set up, opened the blinds and measured the light I decided, "What the hell..." and pulled the Olympus combo out instead of the Nikon critical mass ensemble.

I locked the lens at f2.8, did a careful custom white balance, and proceeded to shoot all four of the executives with the same set up. What I was seeing on the rear screen was very nice. I took time to hit the image magnification often to double check critical focus. On the way home I had one of the "Oh my God, what was I thinking??!!" moments. My anxiety is never too far away and perhaps it's because I take chances instead of doing the logical and rational thing each day.

I brought the files into Lightroom and started looking around. I was impressed. Then I jumped into wholesale pixel peeping and I was more than a little shocked to find the files to be pretty much critically sharp right there at f2.8. I shot a few frames at the end with the 75mm 1.8 in exactly the same way and setting. f2.8 etc., same camera. And while the newer lens might be microscopically sharper it's not, "Oh Gosh! Let's drop another $900 for something we've already got covered."

Will the new lens out perform the old one? Probably in every single metric. Do I really care? Not as much as a might have in years past. If the eyes in the portrait are critically sharp and the expression is wonderful and expressive then I think we've hit the bullseye in most portrait set ups. Both lenses are great. I'm glad I gave the old one another chance. It now has a new leaf on life. Right now it's glued to the black EM5. The 17mm 1.8 Olympus is on the chrome body. I'm saving the Panasonic GH3 and GH4 for use with the zooms. All is right with the universe.

Thanks for all the great feedback on the new 75mm. When the 70mm gives up the ghost or gets run over by a horde of Austin bicyclists it's the one I'll buy as a replacement. In the mean time the A/B test continues.

Creating portraits is an interesting occupation. So much depends on the kindness of strangers---and on your kindness toward them.

I love portraits of young people because they keep my own connection with the joy of my own youth strong and present. A portrait of a young person can seem filled with promise and energy. But then so can a good portrait of someone at any age.

I did this image of Victoria in Denver a year and a few months ago. I was using a Sony a99 at the time and almost certainly shot this with a 70-200mm Sony lens. I've moved on since then but it was a camera with a lot of promise. As was the lens.

For me the camera was less important than the realization, even as I was shooting, that the image needed to be in black and white. I could see the tones in my mind as I set up the lighting and looked through the finder. The rest of the process was just going through the steps to get what I could already see onto the sensor.

I find a big, soft, directional lighting design so comfortable...

I am always happier when I remember that my cameras can make black and white photographs. Not just color.

 Susie W. 

I'm out shooting portraits today. When I have the time I like to look through folders of my favorite images before I head over to a client's location. It makes me reconsider what I really want to do and what outcome I'd really like to enjoy. I've packed light. My concentration is not on the technical aspects of making a portrait---that should be second nature by now---my concentration is focused on figuring out how I can make each sitter my accomplice. How we might make some fun art, together.