Thoughts about life, photography and walking around aimlessly in the heart of Texas. During a pandemic...

When I dragged myself out of bed at 5:15 this morning it was dark outside. By the time I got moving up the driveway the first light was just mumbling and shuffling over to the east and then I could see a fine sprinkling of dust across the car's windshield. Swim practice got off to a goofy start. Most coaches arrive, swing the big wooden door to the club open and then wander off to turn on lights and unlock the guard room. That's where the club keeps their digital (I.R.) thermometer. The thermometer with which the coaches now test every swimmer with before allowing them into practice.

The open door tells the swimmers, who start to arrive around 5:55, that the coach is on the premises and it's time to come in and get ready for the workout. Today coach Will got to the club early, went in and let the big door close behind him. We arrived and seeing the door closed (but unlocked!) we dutifully waited in the parking lot. After five minutes or so someone walked over and tried the door. We were collectively embarrassed by our own passivity.  We came into the swimming pool compound and rushed to make up for lost time.

Yes. I wore my face mask from the car to the side of the pool. Austin, and the rest of Texas, are seeing exponential increases in Covid-19 cases and health authorities warn we are about to exceed the capacity of our ICU's.

I saw a clever post on Instagram yesterday. It read:

"Wearing a mask is NOT a political statement. It's an I.Q. Test." 

Even with a late start the group was able to knock out about 2400 yards. A bit short of our usual target of 3200 but then nobody is perfect...

It was a beautiful morning when the sun came up. There was just enough Saharan dust to take the hard edge off the sunshine. I got home in time to walk with Belinda through the surrounding hills for an hour so I've had my quota of exercise for the day. And it's a good thing I got an early start because now it's pouring down rain. From Saharan Dust Storm to aggressive rain showers in the space of 15 minutes. So much meteorological fun here.

I posted the video above just for fun. I was playing with my phone yesterday as I walked. Later, when I thought back about my late afternoon walk through the central core of downtown, I decided that the epicenter of Austin was probably the safest place in which to walk for exercise. I passed maybe 12 or 15 people, total, on the sidewalks as I strolled through. Like me, most of them were masked.

Walking is a good time for reflection. We've been staying home and shying away from most aspects of business since near the first of March. I thought we were starting to see the virus getting under control but then came the news of spikes all over the South and Western USA. Kind of hard to believe that we, as a country, constitute only 7% of the world's populations but have managed to contract over 25% of the confirmed cases of Covid-19. It's an indictment of our cultural proclivity to be selfish to an abnormal degree.

What I'm coming to realize is that we might not go back to work for our regular clients, doing photography the way I've always enjoyed it, for the rest of 2020. Certainly, large events are off the table, and so are projects that require air travel.

But a business is not something you can toss into the deep freeze and then pull out and thaw and expect it to spring back to life. There is a constant erosion that goes on when the "store" goes black. Clients find other content.  New suppliers who are more desperate rush to take risks that more financially strong vendors don't want to accept. A high number of former clients choose to leave the workforce or are forced to change to other jobs; jobs which might not entail the hiring of photographers at all.

So here I am in my office in Westlake Hills (a suburb of Austin proper) surrounded by miraculous toys and sturdy gear with no pathway to effect their use. I've just downloaded the latest firmware for the Sigma fp but have no one to stand in front of the camera while I shoot video. I've just paid for another quarter of liability and general insurance for the business but have no venue in which to screw up and create liability.

Sure, there will be small projects. Next week I'll photograph (carefully) another radiologist in my studio. But the big, sustaining projects like annual reports, capabilities brochures and advertising campaigns remain on hold. The vital ones being done by in-house marketing people wielding cellphones as video cameras and snapping away with the company Canon Rebel someone in their public relations department bought a few years back.

I'm shelving my plans to re-open in the near future. We'll see how things look around here in September. But even then we'll be working with a reduced palette of job types. Realistically the first green shoots of business will probably come next Spring.

With all that having been said, I am still looking forward to every little personal project I can think of. I'm still impressed by the quality and functionality of the Panasonic S system. I still adore the Sigma fp even though I'm frustrated at not being able to hire models and shoot fun stuff with it. And I'm getting to the professional, platinum level when it comes to taking near perfect naps in the afternoon.

Belinda admonishes me to stop worrying about the business and figure out what I would do if I had all the time and money I ever wanted. And I do reflect on that. But sadly, the answer is that I'd love to be out photographing.

Hope that vaccine hits the market soon. Hope it works. Hope there is also an effective treatment about to be launched. I'd like to be out on the road again soon.

All good here though. Just watching the rain and typing. Time to break for a coffee. Thanks for reading.

A firmware update to the Sigma fp will add the ability to shoot ProRes Raw Video to Atomos digital recorders. Shooting down one big hurdle for video users.

It's been pretty well known since its introduction that the Sigma fp's primary reason for existence is to serve as a compact, but very high end, video production camera. While I love shooting photographs with mine most owners tend to buy the camera for the idea of being able to shoot uncompressed raw dng video at up to 12 bits. 

But video users quickly discovered that 12 bit, 4K, uncompressed raw video files take an enormous amount of very fast storage if you are going to take advantage of the format. Many users who thought they'd be fine shooting the big, raw video files (me...) soon decided that there might be a better compromise. To a certain degree our desire for smaller files is about to be answered in Sigma's firmware update to v2.0. 

Once implemented the camera will be able to save video to either of two well regarded formats: ProRes Raw and Black Magic Raw. I know from watching an interview with a Sigma developer that you'll need an Atomos recorder and updated Atomos software to use the ProRes Raw recording (I think the file conversion happens in the Atomos) but I'm waiting to see what you'll need to take advantage of the Black Magic Raw files. In either case you'll have much more control over compression which will allow for much more manageable file sizes. In the case of ProRes Raw you'll be able to take the resulting files directly into Final Cut Pro X while the Black Magic Raw files will load directly into DaVinci Resolve (available in a free version!). 

This is great news for people who want to try out, or work with, raw video files but who did not look forward to stocking up on a supply of Samsung T500 SSD drives, or the need to pull the current .dng files into Resolve, apply corrections and then output an editable file for Final Cut Pro or Premiere. 

Also included in the firmware update is the ability to completely turn off any of the "looks" or "profiles" applied by the camera when shooting raw. This will allow super serious artists to see exactly  what the linear raw files look like (very flat and desaturatured) instead of seeing them presented with what is basically a contrasty and more saturated LUT applied. 

As soon as the needed firmware is added to the Atomos devices I predict an uptick in the number of videographers embracing the fp. Of course, none of this will change the value proposition for still photographers. You'll continue to either love, hate or be indifferent to the camera depending on your ingrained perspective. And that's okay. 

the very first 21st century movie camera.

I read the press release about Olympus selling off their camera division and it immediately reminded me of the fates of Polaroid and Kodak. Salvaged for the names and parts.

There is a press release from Olympus posted over on the DPReview.com website. Go there to read it if you want the details. The TL:DR is that Olympus is "carving out" its camera division and selling it to a Japanese holding company which plans to "operate" the concern with the intention of continuing to make cameras, lenses and accessories. But I think we've all seen how this kind of corporate move plays out. It's more of an exercise in salvage than anything else. 

I know many folks will rush to blame Olympus management but it's good to be rational and admit that the whole camera sector is being beaten like scrambled eggs right now and Olympus is a small enough player which makes the beating so much harder. Even before the pandemic camera sales in nearly every category have been falling, year-over-year. Now, with massive unemployment growing in every corner of the globe the ability and desire on the part of  most consumers to rush out and buy more cameras seem like fantasy. 

The Olympus cameras have always been alluring. From the compact but potent size of the bodies to the flashes of sheer brilliance in lens design Olympus offered a fun and highly competent alternate option to all the homogenous cameras that Canon and Nikon pumped out into the digital markets over the last 20 years. Olympus has also been at the forefront of innovation with things like industry leading image stabilization. 

My first brush with Olympus cameras was playing with my wife's OM-1 film camera back when we were dating in the college years. It was the perfect camera for her smaller hands and logical way of operating. Later, when I was working in an ad agency I discovered the amazing world of Olympus Pen F, half frame film cameras. Olympus designed (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and built an entire professional system around the idea of the half frame camera. A camera that would take 72 shots on a roll of 35mm film. It featured a rotary, titanium shutter that sync'd with flash at all shutter speeds. Right up to the top speed of 1/500th of a second. The camera used interchangeable lenses, many of which were brilliant and beautiful optical tools. I still have a collection of my favorite lenses from that era (1970's) and still use them, with adapters, on current micro four thirds cameras. They are also a good match for Sony a6x00 series cameras and most of the lenses amply cover the APS-C sensors. 

It was fun to use the very robust and solid Olympus digital bridge cameras, the E-10 and E-20. We did solid, commercial work with those 4 and 5 megapixels, all-in-one cameras over the course of a year. In fact, it was this line of cameras that helped transition thousands of former film photographers into digital photographers. 

The E-1 camera (pictured above with Amy) was a magnificent camera but probably one that led the company down the path to where they find themselves now. In the early part of this century the costliest part of every digital camera, by far, was the sensor. The bigger the sensor the more astronomical the price. I don't think Olympus did a good job at predicting how quickly sensor prices would drop. They went all in on the smaller sensor and designed all of their new lenses around the geometry of a sensor that is a quarter the size of a traditional, 35mm type sensor. But over time the majority of camera buyers pined for the "full frame" they had become used to in the film days.

The lenses for the Olympus DSLRs were/are so cool. My favorite was the 35-100mm f2.0 zoom lens. It was a heavy beast but it was sharp wide open and so much fun to play with. Their lens line-up for their conventional DSLR m4:3 cameras was ambitious. It was also built on three tiers. There was a consumer line which was mostly slower zoom lenses. A step up line that featured good glass and better build quality. And then there was a professional line of lenses that were, for the most part, uncompromising. Looking back one can see that their 7-14mm lens was a game changer for the industry. Super-wide and super sharp. 

Olympus was so far ahead of their bigger competitors that they, along with partner Panasonic, killed off their first interchangeable DSLR systems and made the switch to a mirrorless concept years ahead of any other camera company. It was a brilliant move and opened up the modern, digital camera world to the use of legacy lenses from a vast range of system on a modern camera. I loved the ability to use old Pen F lenses, Leica lenses, Nikon lenses and so many other on the system. 

For a while I was all the way into the Olympus system and found a remarkably good value in the second generation of the OMD EM-5 camera, the OMD EM-5ii. The image stabilization was, at the time, like science fiction. The video capabilities of the camera were highly underrated as well. My friend, James and I used multiple EM-5ii cameras and a box full of lenses to make this video: 

https://vimeo.com/137964319  In the five years since we did this newer cameras have launched featuring 4K video files and some improvements but the files from that time frame, out of the EM-5ii never stop impressing me when I re-visit the video...

Olympus have always had a loyal following for their cameras and lenses. Even after I moved on from the camera bodies I still had a love affair with the lenses. The one Olympus lens I really regretted selling was the 12-100mm f4.0 Pro series lens which I used extensively on Panasonic G9 cameras. It is a superb lens. Absolutely wonderful. And the 40-150mm f2.8 was/is...perfect.

I'd like to be optimistic and hold out hope that the new company will take the ball from Olympus and run for some new and worthwhile goals. I'd hate to see the choice of Olympus's alternative vision removed from the marketplace. They have consistently made wonderful and inventive products and produced them at a very high level. 

If they fall into the same Hell as Polaroid then who will Sony steal new innovations from? 

I have no way of predicting the outcome. I have no idea if the products currently on the market will see a run up in price and a rush to hoard them against some future shortage. Or, when the direction of the new company becomes obvious will these jewel-like cameras hit the wall causing a sell off of orphaned system parts? 

Sad either way. The long shot hope is the new camera company rising like a Phoenix and mounting a dramatic comeback. We can always hope.

Photos from the EP-2 taken on a trip to West Texas in 2010.

I downloaded Adobe's new PhotoShop Camera app for phones and... well... I guess I need more coffee. Maybe even a pastry...

So, maybe I've already broken it. I downloaded the new app to my iPhone XR and started playing with it. The app works kinda like the regular camera app but you can use all kinds of "lenses" to take the photographs. Not lenses as we traditional photographers understand lenses but "lenses" as an alternate term for "special effects." Or just weird effects. These are from the "Pop Art" lenses. 

There are other "lenses" that will make even the blandest and grayest skies come alive with saturated blue and puffy clouds. Other lenses will "help you" take a portrait in which everything but your face, or the face of your subject, is out of focus. You can download "lenses" (treatments?) from the app and use them to make your photographs.....different. 

PhotoShop Camera is included in your Adobe software bundle for free. Even my $10 a month Lightroom+PhotoShop subscription includes this magnificent and valuable new imaging tool (sarcasm alert for the linear and humor deprived reader). 

I've packed up all my other cameras and am sending them off to KEH.com today because this new tool will revolutionize how we make photographs from this day onward. I can't wait to read the reviews on the smart blog sites. (again, alert. Not really getting rid of cameras........yet).

Are you as excited by all this as I am? 

I've been reading an enjoyable book about writing. It's a different perspective on writing than I remember from school. And...pictures.

From the reading spot.

My favorite spot to read books is on the big couch in our living room, flat on my back. In the middle of the afternoon sharp, clean light flows in through three large sets of double French doors. There are two Hunter ceiling fans moving cool air around. And a small stereo on a cabinet at one end of the room; today it was playing an old Enya album; but not too loud.

I get antsy if I'm there on the couch for too long. I'm not yet used to the quiet "schedule" and I feel vaguely guilty for not being out somewhere sweet-talking a client and trying to figure out how I'm going to light an un-light-able space before some important person in a suit shows up, ready to get on with it.

I gather up my modern necessities and head the little white car to the local Starbucks. My favorite afternoon drink is a small cappuccino made with whole milk. Please add an extra shot...

There's a place in the central park that's never crowded on the weekdays. It's in a circle of live oak trees where there's an old picnic table made from cement. Even though the table sits in speckled shade the heat and humidity of a sunny afternoon, after a hard bout of morning rain, is uncomfortable enough to present a nice contrast to the homey luxury of my living room. Sometimes a bit of friction helps concentrate my mind on what I'm reading. The bright and public location pretty much ensures that I won't take an unscheduled nap...

My friend, Patty is a good swimmer and an even better literary editor. When she discovered that Ben (my son) wanted pursue a career as a writer she started finding him more -- interesting. From time to time she'll send me over a text, which I'm supposed to forward to Ben, with suggestions for books and articles that she finds helpful in her own writing and editing practices. As a doting father I'm always appreciative of people trying to guide my kid closer to his goals. 

Last week she made a few new book suggestions, one of which was called, "Several short sentences about writing." by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I took a look at the book on Amazon and read the few pages they allow as a preview. I ordered two copies of the book. One for me and one for the boy. He'll get his copy this evening when he comes for dinner but I cracked my copy open on Sunday afternoon and I've been picking at it ever since. Or maybe it's been picking at me...

After I understood the rhythm of Klinkenborg's writing I found that I couldn't put the book down. I took it up this morning, sitting in the stuffed, white chair in our bedroom and read for several hours. After a lunch of Greek Yogurt, muesli and fresh blueberries I moved to the seductive, gray couch. When Enya finished her performance of "Paint the Sky with Stars" on the little stereo I felt like a change of venue. The park was perfect. Right on the edge of too hot and too humid but with just enough breeze to tease me into sticking around and finishing the book.

This book, along with a copy of the ever useful Elements of Style, seem like a wonderful, basic set of manuals for any writer. At any stage in their career. The last book about writing I enjoyed this much was "Bird by Bird" by Ann Lamott. If you are a writer you might enjoy it too. It's a nice way to gambol through an afternoon in the Summer. 

It's been an unusual day. At 6:00am this morning, as the early masters swimmers were arriving on the pool deck for our workout it started to rain. Hard. The swimmers hopped in and started the warm-up while the coach went to find an umbrella. 

The rain came and went and came back again. Sometimes gently and sometimes in torrents. The swimmers, already wet, ignored the rain and spent the hour following the black lines up and down the lanes. We were lucky. As everyone was exiting to make room for the next, larger group the coaches started looking nervously at weather apps on their phones. Nature made the decision for them with several bright flashes of lightning and some impressive thunder. And just like that the 7 a.m. workout was cancelled. 

The rain was constant at our house until mid-morning and then the skies slowly started getting lighter. By lunchtime it was a bright and sunny day, complete with steam coming of the rapidly warming streets. 

Since I'm not working much I've been paying closer attention to the stock market. My favorite stock went nuts and shot up by nearly $10 a share. I felt rich until Belinda reminded me that even in finance there is such a thing as gravity. 

Now I'm back in the studio and I have the urge to buy something. Anything. Maybe I'll order one more extra battery for the Sigma fp. It came out of hiding today and prodded me to include it on the trip to the park...

Ben is coming over this evening to celebrate father's day. One of his friend's fathers tested positive for Covid-19 virus two Sundays ago so he and his roommates have been quarantining themselves. He missed Father's Day. We're celebrating tonight with BBQ and a great looking bottle of wine our neighbors sent over. It's good to celebrate together. I'm looking forward to it. 

But I can't go overboard because we've got swim practice tomorrow morning at 6, and there's the next book in the stack to read. Such a busy time...

Walking around shooting black and white with my "pretend" film Hasselblad.

You're probably tired of me talking about how much I loved shooting in the square with a bunch of film cameras. Cameras like the traditional Hasselblads, the Mamiya 6, and the Rollei 6000 series. I even have a folder full of Tricks-X negatives that were made on an old Rolleiflex twin lens. I preferred the 80mm 2.8F Planar version even though I'd heard (many times) that the 75mm 3.5F Xenotar was the sharper lens...

Now I just find film annoying. Like changing your own oil filter in the driveway. But I still like the look of the square frame and the grittiness of my old black and whites developed in Rodinal 1:50. So, when I find a likely candidate to stand it as a digital "imposter" camera I'm always game to give it a try. 

Today's attempts were done with the 47 megapixel Lumix S1R. I chose it because I wanted to use the 1:1 (square) crop and I still wanted to end up with over 30 megapixels of information in the files. I tweaked the L. Monochrome settings by reducing the noise reduction, choosing the green filtration, boosting the shadows a bit and pulling down the highlights by the reciprocal amount. 

Remembering how much I liked shooting with the 100mm Zeiss f3.5 Planar on the old 500CM I recruited my closets equivalent, the Lumix 50mm f1.4 S Pro lens. I used f2.8 for most of the shots because that simulated my almost obsessive use of f5.6 on the medium format lens. 

It was hot and sticky today and I didn't spend too much time outside in the afternoon. Walking in high humidity, when temperatures are in the 90's, is much less comfortable with a face mask on.

But I was happy with the images I ended up with. I'll do this experiment again but next time I'll invite a beautiful model to walk with me so I can photograph a person for a change. But the camera and lens? They worked well for me. 

Pandemic Retail. 

A person left a comment asking why I rarely shoot from any perspective other than eye-level. Here's my answer...

Renae in studio with a twin lens camera.

Some writers come to believe that if they only had a discernible "style" everything would fall into place and they would become successful and revered. But really, writing is about telling the story you'd like to tell without distracting the reader with undue/unneeded decoration or complexity. A reader usually looks for a lack of ambiguity and a minimum of unnecessary augmentation in order to enjoy the flow of an article or book. As well as the flow of the sentences themselves.

Most often the writers that readers enjoy are the ones who put as few stylistic twists into the writing and deliver both interesting sentences and simple to understand sentences. The fewer flourishes that take the reader's mind out of the story the more successfully the reader can submerge, happily, into the rhythm and imaginative unfolding of the story.

In photography we've collectively come to conclusions about things that move us away from musing about the content of an image and, instead, make us think about the mechanics of making of an image. Stylistic embellishments brought about by techniques but without adding meaning. In this category, historically, are contrivances such as fisheye lens perspectives, extreme telephoto compression, obvious color filters, "tromboning" one's zoom lens, obviously added "film" grain, the odd focus shifts caused by mis-used tilt/shift lenses, and the heavy handed use of high dynamic range imagery and various soft focus filters. Just to name a few. 

I regard a labored and non-intuitive point of view as a stylistic exercise that also removes the power and importance of the photographic story from an image and instead offers a "trick" to provide a bit of temporary pizzazz to an image. An attempt to distance the image in question from others in the same genre. But I find super low viewpoints, captured from flat on the floor, or from a kneeling position, to be a contrivance that provides all the power (and the painful withdrawal symptoms) of a sugar high. 

When we take and share photographs it seems that we say, "Here is how I view my world, or this part of my world, and now I'm sharing it with you." But nearly all of my engagements with the subjects in my orbit are done from the perspective of a camera floating more or less between 5 feet and four inches and five feet and eight inches from the ground. It's different if I'm sitting down.

I've tried from time to time to work a forced low angle shot into my working repertoire (but never my personal work) and have never had a client use the low angle shot. And I found myself relieved by the client's editing as the low angle shots never appealed to me either. Not nearly as much as a shot, well conceived and captured, from my own eye level. 

In the world of writing editors and publishers are always (strongly) suggesting: "Write what you know."

By the same token I find myself only willing to make photographs that seem natural to me because my camera and I are: "Photographing what we know." And I know what my world constantly reflects back to me as I walk through it at upright.

But it's not just the eye-level point of view that works as a formal framework for me, it's also my desire to see vertical lines properly rendered and specific compositions respected. Any contrived technique or forced perspective that requires me to turn on my conscious thought and change my consistent approach to photographing inevitably ends up distancing me from the resulting photograph and, eventually dismissing it.

Because of this I seem immune from the charms of ultra-wide angle lenses. I can never figure out what do do with all the stuff on the top, bottom and sides of the frame. Anything wider than 20mms and I'm lost. 

But, of course this proclivity of mine should be obvious since I've had a life long love affair with portraits. A shift up or down from the eye level of the subject makes for a shift in how we perceive the subject to a very great degree. It's a shifting of the balance of power. My preference is for the neutrality of camera height to subject eye level. I want to allow the personality and character of the subject to be the story they tell instead of editorializing with various tricks. That I would carry along the same sensibility to documenting graffiti, urban art, street photos and other ephemerata seems logical; comfortable. 

To others the temptation to crouch, kneel or climb a high ladder in the service of their own vision might be more natural and even an ingrained way of experimenting with photographs and I'm not against it. But I can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've enjoyed looking at a photograph that's been taken from a very low or very high point of view. Maybe that speaks more to the rigidity of my own practice than anything else. 

Just my counterpoint.