Hanging out with famous people. Orbiting, not in the orbit.

 

Over the course of my career I've gotten close access to a number of "famous" people. I was asked by Andy Roddick to photograph a fund-raiser he held at the Four Seasons Hotel here in Austin for his foundation. His friend, Sir Elton John was the main draw for the event. He did a one person set on a grand piano for a packed house in the hotel's main ballroom. But before the concert I spent a couple hours in the green room photographing various combinations of Andy's family with Elton John. Having grown up (high school) listening to "Madman Across the Water" and "Tiny Dancer" the experience of just hanging out with him and a small, intimate group including Andy Roddick and his family members was exhilarating. The image above is from the dinner before the concert. 

There's a back story that involves politics and a Texas Governor but I won't go into that here. 

Since George W. Bush's press secretary, Karen Hughes, lived right across the street from us I had ample opportunities to photograph George Jr. both as Texas Governor and then as president. But I only got to work with his father, President George H.W. Bush on two occasions; both times at a request from Dell, Inc. Once was at a conference outside of Scottsdale, AZ. where I had to set up lights in a vast museum space and then photograph the former President with about 110 V.I.Ps; all lined up waiting their turn to participate in a one-on-one photo session with President Bush. 

He arrived on set about 15 minutes early and we were surprised to find that we were both wearing the identical model of suit, (his bigger than mine as he's taller) in the same color, and from the same clothing store. We chatted and game planned our shoot together and he was amazingly cordial. He helped me stay calm. This was in the film days and I'd need to be reloading a 35mm camera at least twice as we worked through our line of folks waiting their turn (no assistant for this shoot). He was so good at the reception line photo stuff. He could tell when I needed to re-load and would keep the conversation going with whoever was with him at the time. I would nod when I was ready and he'd send off that person and welcome the next one. Together we nailed all of the shots.

I got seated at a staff table in the back of the room during his speech but was able to get up and move around the dining room to get photos of him speaking. It was a really nice event and I came away liking him, as a person. 

The image above was from a different event here in Austin. Former president Bush had spoken to a group of Dell's top customers at a meeting of about 100 people and then there was a scheduled private gathering with just Mr. Bush, Michael Dell and four or five of the senior officers from Dell. The informal reception was held in the penthouse suite on the top floor of the Barton Creek Conference Center. President Bush and I came up in the elevator (with a Secret Service team) while Mr. Dell gave a final speech to the clients downstairs. At one point I was there with Mr. Bush, his security people and a bartender from the conference center. Mr. Bush and I struck up a conversation and he invited me to have a glass of wine. In his opinion, a very good Sauvignon Blanc. I thanked him but told him that if Michael Dell walked in and I had a glass of wine in my hand it might be the last time I'd be invited back to work for his company.... 

I was there through the hour long reception. A lively give and take. And I came away impressed with the former president. A wonderful guy. 

Just two events that allowed me to be on the periphery of really, really interesting, world famous people. And so happy to have the photographs as a momento. Photography opened many doors for me. But it's important not to stub your toes walking in.

I met Jana when I was working on the LED book. It was all the way back in 2010.

I met Jana online. It was through a casting call. I didn't know if we would be a good fit to work together and I'm sure she felt the same way. A simple solution was to hire her for a couple hours on a weekend, shoot some images around downtown, and get to know each other. It would also give me time to describe what we were looking for in the book, in more detail. 

Jana was a student at UT Austin at the time. I was a 54 year old photographer looking for a model. That's an odd dynamic unless you are going through an agency. 

On the scheduled day Jana showed up with a friend in tow. Another student from UT. A very pleasant and capable looking woman. Having the "chaperone" there put everyone at ease. We spent a couple of hours walking through downtown photographing and then we put together a quick, fun shoot in a coffee shop that's no longer there on Congress Ave. The images were great and by the end of the day Jana felt comfortable saying, "yes" to the project. And that's great because we were able to use images of her throughout the book to illustrate technical stuff. 

It's important to say that she was paid standard fees for every day that we worked together. No favors asked. Most of the time we were joined on shoots by my long time assistant, Amy. It was a comfortable crew. 

On our first shoot I showed up with my typical one camera and one lens inventory of gear. No flashes. No modifiers or reflectors. I knew we'd find more than enough open shade in which to make flattering images. The camera was a Canon 5D mk2 and the lens was Canon's very nice EF 100mm f2.0. 

This is a random image shot in an alley way between two buildings. A nice, bright, late afternoon alley way next to a chic, high rise residential tower. Not a gloomy, bleak looking alley from a dystopian movie set. 

It was just another day in the flow of a photography career. Putting books together is like planning a couple dozen days of shoots based around stuff that I wrote down in chapters. Illustrating concepts to accompany the writing was a primary way of selling books. 

That book is now quite dated. Progress in LED lighting technology advanced at an amazing pace over the last 15 years. And LEDs are so ubiquitous now that revising the book doesn't make any sense at all. But I'm happy to say that the images Jana and I made together still look good. 

She is now a very successful advertising executive. Last time we spoke she was in NYC. But I think she was heading to the west coast. You meet the most fun people sometimes when you have a project that needs humans. 

It's Friday Afternoon. At the end of most days I select a few images I've made over the years to spend a few minutes with. And I remember that the hardest part of making portraits is the part where you get started. Where you have to make the effort to create.

 

Amy.

There are some people who have been blessed with faces that conform to cultural ideas of beauty and proportion. And there are some people who've been gifted with beautiful and alluring eyes. The work of a photographer is to learn how to put a collaboration into motion to capture these affects and then get out of the way. The biggest mistake I see from people who would like to be portrait artists is their impulse to rush. To rush through a sitting because they think they may be inconveniencing the sitter. Or because they've been misinformed by "experts" that there are lighting and camera formulas which are the secret to success and, that once they've mastered these techniques they are more or less assured of a successful outcome. 

Then there is the mistaken idea, spread everywhere, that if you can't get a great image in the first dozen or so frames you'll never be able to achieve a good photograph in a session. 

In my experience the default to formula and the press toward time efficiency are an effective way to turn what could have been a great portrait into just another literal documentation. A photograph which lacks the invitation to linger and really examine a face. By not taking the time to know the sitter and engage them in a meaningful and sincere collaboration one robs the audience of the chance to fall in love with the subject. To truly come away with an honest sense of the person in the frame. All surface and no depth.

When Amy came to the studio she was in the company of one of her best friends, Renae. Renae was my assistant at the time and we'd worked together for several years by that point. Amy was comfortable because Renae was comfortable. There was a triangle of trust. There was a shared objective of creating a picture of Amy that was both beautiful but also signaled a real rapport. 

I was working with a medium format camera that day. Shooting in the square. I shot some Polaroids and shared them with Amy. We talked. Renae headed into the office to do some work on her computer. Amy and I worked through a session and shot about ten rolls of 120 film. We both sensed what was working and what wasn't and kept moving in the right direction until we hit a high point, which we both could feel, and then we shot a final, gratuitous roll of film (just to make sure) and we were done with that sitting. 

In my mind this result (above) is an authentic and engaging photograph/portrait of a strong, calm person who was comfortable with herself. 

When I kept a darkroom in the studio just east of downtown I used to print most of the portraits I took as large black and white prints. Usually 16x20 or larger. Always on double weight papers. At one point an art director asked me to do some hand colored prints of subjects I'd shot in black and white for an ad campaign for a national bank chain. I bought a lot of sets of Marshall's Oil Paints and set about learning the ins and out of hand coloring ( use Kodak's Ektalure G surface paper -- perfect for hand painting --- sadly, no longer available). We weren't looking for expressionistic hand coloring for the bank job. Just subtle introductions of transparent paint over faces, neckties and other color friendly targets within the frames. Later, for my own projects, I started getting very loose, less constrained, with my applications of color. The image just above was shot with a 180mm Elmar-R lens on a Leicaflex SL2 

( the film camera, not the recent, digital camera) loaded with Agfapan black and white film. 

We were out in the Hill Country in the middle of August shooting for a magazine spread (New Texas Magazine) that would run the Fall. My model was sitting on a large, long, shaded back porch in the late afternoon. We'd wrapped for the day or I would have been photographing on color transparency film. When I got back to the darkroom I made a large print on black and white paper. It was okay but it didn't knock my socks off. It needed something more. So I started playing around with some of the Marshall's transparent oil paints and didn't hold back on saturation or even odd brush strokes. It's a photo I tend now to look at nearly every year at the start of Summer. A nod to the shift into hot Texas weather. 

I pulled the original print out this morning and tacked it to the wall near my desk. It's a reminder for me to play more and be serious less.

About fifteen years ago I bought some pre-stretched canvases and did a bunch of paintings of coffee cups, donuts, pastries and whatnot; even making some paintings of coffee cups in fields of wild flowers. Once I had a dozen 30x40 inch canvases I asked my favorite coffee shop if I could hang the paintings as a show in their store. The loved the idea. They loved the paintings. It was fun to sit at the coffee shop in the morning as office workers dropped by and waited in line to get their to-go coffee to drink during their commutes. I loved watching their reactions to the paintings.  

Occasionally one gets the desire to do art outside their usual lane. Make paintings. Write  poems. Write a novel. Sing. All the arts reinforce each other and trying new things progressively lowers our fear of....trying new things. 

The images just above and just below are of Fadya. I met her when my friend, Greg, cast her in an advertising campaign for a natural gas company. She was one of a half dozen talents we used in the campaign. Each model was featured solo in an ad. At the time Fadya was a university student. We've kept in touch. Years later I ran into her at a local Starbucks. We'd both swung by to grab some caffeine and were both delighted to see each other. I suggested that she drop by the studio when she had time and we'd do a few photos. 

She came over a couple of weeks later. B., Fadya and I had tea in the house and then Fadya and I walked the twenty feet over to the studio to play around with light and poses. 

I was already into using LED lights at the time and I was also deep into the micro four thirds camera format. The camera was set to the square aspect ratio and I shot in color; in raw. I converted the images to black and white in post production. And I've loved the results ever since. When shown in small sizes, like here on the web, I believe that nothing is lost to the smaller format. 

Fadya is now a very successful psychologist practicing here in Austin. I like to think that next time I run into her at a coffee shop she'll want to do another round of photographs. It's always a nice chance to catch up. We spent a couple hours chatting, photographing, changing the lighting and photographing some more. It's not fun to rush through a session. Especially if you finish and then realize that speed was NOT of the essence and that you lost out by letting that fussy part of your brain convince you that you had to hurry.

Selena. 

As long as I've known Selena she's been a musician. In the last ten years her career has taken off. Recording contracts. Bigger and bigger gigs. More famous. 

I asked Selena to work with me as a model for some of the lighting examples in one of my books. We were showing how to work in ambient light with small, portable LED fixtures. I liked the look above but I like the expression below even more. Shot during my brief Canon camera phase. 

And that's what I'm looking at now, before supper. And it's fun to remember the people who make the other half of the collaboration so comfortable. 

Portrait made with a mix of window light and continuous lighting instruments.

taking time to revisit lighting. It's so much more fun for me than just depending on existing light. 

 

The week got a lot better at 8 a.m. this morning!!!

 

My dermatologist gave me the thumbs up to get back to the pool. My favorite neurosurgeon who swims in the next lane over concurred. I stuck a big, waterproof, kid's BandAid over the savaged spot on my cheek and hit the water. It was cool and clean. The chlorine was just right. The sun was just peeking over the tree line. My favorite, daily lane mates were there. We swam well. I got to lead the lane for a while (pent up enthusiasm...) and I got to hang back when I felt like it. It wasn't a day of massive yardage but we got in a good, intentional hour.

While I'm not looking forward to the next bout of skin surgery (coming up soon) I did get my bad attitude realigned by a friend when I was out walking the trail yesterday. The guy was recovering from prostrate surgery. I'll take some near surface Mohs procedures any time...

I got the coolest metal box full of waterproof bandaids. It's from a company called "Welly". I like kid's bandaids because they are a lot more fun to look at than the beige stuff and they tend to stick better because they are made for the most active of demographics. 

today I wore a squid bandaid. It was very popular...

Coach explaining the next set on the board. 

synchronized flip turns.

hand paddles to practice stroke technique and provide more resistance.

Coffee. Swimming. Leicas. True Love. What's not to like? So happy to be all wet again...

If there is drip irrigation is there also drip irritation? While I ponder that I'm writing to let you know how my embrace of the TTArtisan 75mm lens is coming along...

 

Here we are on yet another Wednesday! Yesterday I had lunch at Maudie's Mexican Food restaurant over on Lake Austin Blvd. The occasion? My near monthly lunch with my favorite advertising creative director and old friend, Greg. His paintings got accepted into a juried show in Marfa, Texas and he gave me a synopsis of the whole experience. We like lunching at Maudie's because it might be the least pretentious lunch spot in Austin. Or maybe it's just the lowest common denominator that we'll both readily accept...

Mid-afternoon I caught up with a fellow photographer to compare notes on contemporary markets here in central Texas. Our consensus? Things are slow, but they are nearly always slow at this time of the year. Schools just let out and most of the folks who support our profession (the clients) generally grab their kids and head out on vacations first thing. Work generally picks back up again when the families have been back from vacation for a few weeks and then send their kids off to Summer camps. We've both been at this game for long enough to not sweat the short breaks. Go a year without a nice project and the panic used to seep in along the edges of one's conscious thoughts. I'm not concerned any more and Samuel seemed to be taking the break with no rise in blood pressure. 

At 6 p.m. I arrived at Will and Mary's house for a nice break; a happy hour with me, Will, and our friend, Mark. Will steamed up a big pot of mussels and the additions to the pot made for a great broth which we greedily mopped up with hunks of freshly baked baguette. And sometimes we ate the baguette with butter instead. Will served up a delicious Rosé with our mussels. Later, he presented a homemade flan (one of the best I've ever had!) and paired it with small glasses of a light and slightly floral flavored rum. A "secco" rum, so not too sweet...

I come across a lot of articles about older men becoming isolated and lonely but I think I'm at least making a valiant effort to hang out and socialize with friends, clients and those who fall into both camps at once. In all seriousness I think my circle of friends gets at least as much credit as the daily swims for preserving my general health and a good attitude.

Will teased me about buying yet another lens while Mark, an E.R. doc, brought me up to speed on various skin cancer treatment advances (I guess he noticed that divot on my cheek...). We soon tired of that and got back to the good stuff: Who is going where on vacation and when? And how are the kids? Followed by the usual Austin bitching about ever rising prices on....everything.

Since I couldn't go to swim practice this morning I stayed up late last night finishing up the reading of the novel, "The Oligarch's Daughter" by Joseph Finder. I finally finished the book around 1 in the morning and then slept in until 9 this morning. So out of character for me but a pleasant change from the usual carved in stone swim schedule. 

After breakfast I suited up in sun repellent/protective apparel, grabbed a camera, and did a long walk through the heat and humidity around Lady Bird Lake in the center of town. I meant to walk fast all the way around the 5 mile loop but I ran into an old friend named, George. He's an independent film maker who got his start working on the old Jerry Seinfeld show. He's also worked on several projects with Rick Linklater as well as a few other semi-famous Austin directors. George worked for my ad agency in a freelance capacity back in the early 1980s. We had a lot to catch up on. He's an amazing creative person and living proof that you can make a living doing film work while raising two great kids and paying for a house in central Austin. 

I spent the rest of the walk trying to amp up the exercise quotient but since I had the camera with me I stopped once in a while to snap photos and tease out what I can expect from the latest lens I keep chattering away about. It's the TTArtisan 75mm f2.0 AF lens for L mount. I think it's quite good. I made some images to share for after lunch. They are just below. I captioned the ones I had the energy to caption so take a peek. For $199 the lens is a bargain. And it's also available in Nikon Z and Sony E mounts. 

Still aiming to hit the pool tomorrow. I'm off to investigate waterproof BandAids at Walgreens. Have a lovely afternoon!

I ran the numbers. checked the calendars, etc. I have navigated my way around the Lady Bird Lake hike and  bike trails for over 50 years. Sometimes at a dead run and sometimes at a slow amble with a friend. B. and I walked it last week. It's wonderful to have a tree covered trail that's always accessible when you want it...or need it

Abandoned pants. But I can see why..... 

A calm morning on Lady Bird Lake. Rowing for pleasure. 

I tried rowing a couple of times. I usually got bored and hopped in to swim. 

I find this to be a most unusual name for a food company. Just unusual.

I'm sure someone smarter than me at a cocktail party will explain the 

concept to me. But....

Roses at Mary and Will's house. They always have wonderful arrangements of flowers.

They are both incredible cooks. And they throw wonderful small and large dinner parties.

How did I get so lucky? They nearly always invite me over for a happy hour, when B. is out of town,  which is a thinly veiled excuse for making me dinner. I try to bring a great bottle of wine and my full attention. Will and I have known each other since "Uni" and he's one of those successful photographers whose work is collected by museums... Jealous, but so happy for him.

Amazing rum. Weirdly it was the perfect complement to a great flan.

I focused on the "J" of June when I was sitting at the desk.

The 75mm lens was set to f2.0. The camera gave me ISO 20,000

I think the overall performance is pretty amazing. 

Feet up on the desk; waiting for some sort of Epiphany. 

That's it for today.

thanks to everyone who sent a "get well" comment. 

They are really appreciated.

Looks like Summer will be rougher than I thought. Surgical procedure to remove spot of cancer on face not 100% successful. Next step is Mohs surgery. So much time out of the water. Need to buy an M11 to amuse myself during the downtime.

 Some photos. All done with different cameras. None done with mannequins. All done with real people. 

Vrooom. 

Drinking coffee and photographing in Winter in Boston.

La Familia. Old Sweetish Hill Bakery on a chilly Sunday morning. 

Kirk meters the light before going out on a boat. Yes! A real light meter...

VSL CFO.

Alanis Morrisette at Liberty Lunch in Austin, Texas 

50mm on a Leica M3. Tri-X

Noellia at Barton Springs.

Lou.

Dani. At Medici Caffe on Congress Ave.

Amy. Photographed with a Leaf A7i medium format digital camera. 

About 15 years ago. How about that?

Pensively considering my latest medical news. 

Decided to not care and to finish reading a great novel.