Taking a break from ruminating about the future of photography to buy stuff...

 Matching the memory to the cameras. A new form factor smacks me in the face.

I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about the new Samsung NX Galaxy Android camera because I need to seem at least competent when I hit the ground in Berlin and start shooting in about a week and a day from right now.  I thought I had a good handle on the whole physical layout of the camera until I saw the dinky slots for memory cards. Far, far too small for my now standard SD cards. What the hell card type is this? Turns out the camera works with microSD cards. See that little black transcend card surrounded by the SD and the CF type memory? That's a micro SD card and it's even thinner than it looks in the photograph. I guess they decided to use it because it's interchangeable with the cards they use in the phones...

As a former boy scout I wanted to be prepared so I ordered two of the little buggers from Amazon. I opted for the Transcend 16 gigabyte versions that come with an SD card adapter. I put one (micro SD+SD adapter) into my Samsung NX 300 and everything seems to work as it should. I don't notice any increase or decrease in write time so I'm guessing the underlying tech is similar enough to be the same....to the camera. Jeez. Those cards are teeny-tiny. When I look at the one gigabyte IBM Microdrive sitting just to the left of the micro I can't help but be amazed at how far memory storage has come in a relatively short time. I'm sure I paid well over $200 for the IBM spinning miracle card when it first came out and I think I paid a whopping $14 for the little card with 16X the memory and I'm certain a much faster write time and, by comparison, infinitesimally small power usage. 

I'm planning to shoot Jpegs and I will have a tablet for back-up so I'm thinking that 32 GB is more than enough for a week of shooting. If I need more space I'll just buy a few more. Amazing to think that I could put enough in an SD case to last a long, long time. 

The rest of my gear (including the Samsung NX300 I'm taking along as a back up) takes SD cards and I've finally settled on the Transcend class 10 SDHC 16 GB cards as my standard. Big enough for a day of shooting and very cost effective. When they go on special I stock up.

The MeFoto Monopod.

I have a crusty, old Leitz Tiltall monopod from the late 1970's that Belinda gave me as a birthday present. I use it all the time and I'm emotionally attached to it. But it's a three section monopod and that means it does not pack down small enough for international travel. I got an e-mail from Precision Camera on Friday and they were touting the little monopods from MeFoto. I like the colors and it took my a while to decide between "titanium" and the cool blue you see above. There are other colors but I'm conservative about my color palettes when it comes to hardware. At any rate I drove out to see the monopod and play with it and I liked it. The leg locks feel positive and well done and the tubes are channeled so they don't turn along with the locking collars when you lock or unlock. There's a hefty matching metal ball over on the screw mount end of the tripod and it has a little compass on it but it's otherwise just a gratuitous design addition. The round metal is dense so I imagine it might be useful, in a pinch, for driving tent pegs or something of that nature. 

I like the way it operated so I bought one. The call it the MeFoto Walkabout Monopod. It's lightweight, fairly practical and pretty cheap at just under $60. I thought I'd stick it in my suitcase in case I get all Trey Ratliff-y and start taking HDR night shots. It could happen. 

Think Tank Retrospective 30 camera bag.

We could write about camera bags for days and days and the resulting effect would be one big argument as the prissy Billingham boys squared off against the rat pack-y Domke canvas boys and we argued the merits of carrying everything you own in a big hernia inducing leather steamer trunk on a strap or barely carrying a mirrorless camera and a small sandwich in a bag that, brand new, looks like someone ran it over with a car. I have lots of bags but I've just come to believe that any fun trip is a thinly disguised excuse to buy a new bag. So I did. I bought the anonymous looking Think Tank, fungus colored Retrospective 30. It looks so oatmeal lumpy that no one will think, Wow! I wonder if this guy has a bunch of Leicas in there..." The next aesthetic step down is a Walmart diaper bag. But, the inside is very roomy, the front pockets billow out to take whatever you want to throw in them and the back area holds a big tablet without stress or strain. I thought I'd give it a try. 

The first packing exercise was a success. If I can find a spot for my razor and toothbrush this may be the ONLY bag I take with me. I figured I'd go with the clothes on my back and just buy new clothes as needed for the entirety of the trip. Belinda is trying to talk me out of this....  

At any rate, the bag is comfy, the strap is good and grippy and there's more than enough room for a Galaxy NX with kit lens, 85mm 1.4, 60 macro, 30 pancake, and 16mm pancake; along with chargers and assorted other junk. The Retrospective 30 will fit where I fit...

new Think Tank Retrospective 30 from the top. Good velcro.  And velco silencers.

The Industry Ubiquitous Zoom H4n. Can you hear me now? Without noise?

I've been toying around with doing dual sound on my video productions. I like the idea of having really clean sound that is controllable. I like the idea of being about to plug in two XLR mics and not having to have more boxes attached to the shooting camera. I was torn between the Tascam digital audio recorders and the Zoom products but my friends who do a lot of DSLR video production, almost to a person, have opted for the Zoom H4n and I figured that since this isn't my area of expertise I'd opt for the safety of the herd. So far the sound out of this little box is great. I've been practicing dual audio techniques and slating my stuff but I'm just going to plunk down for the software that syncs video and external audio up automatically and be done with it. 

I decided to pick up the Zoom H4n because I know I want to shoot more video with the NX 300 and I'll want to at least test out the video on the Galaxy NX Android and neither of them have external microphone inputs (I can hardly wait to talk to the engineers about that design decision....). I'll need the recorder if I end up doing some fun video projects with the new cameras...

Azden Pocket Shotgun Microphone. My name, not theirs.

They call it an SGM-990.

I have some cool microphones that I really like. I'm very positive about the Rode NTG-2 and the new Rode VideoMic but they are all too big to drag along on a fun trip. And I don't have anyone coming along to hold the microphone pole and ride levels for me either. I wanted a little, pixie shotgun microphone that could hang out in the hotshoes of cameras and be ready at all times for those moments when I wanted to flop into the video mode and shoot some stuff moving around. But I wanted it to sound decent, run a long time on one battery and have the usual controls. I saw this little microphone in the sound case at Precision Camera and, for less than $100, I thought I'd take a chance. 

When I played with it back in the anechoic chamber in the main bunker at the Visual Science Lab world headquarters I was pleased at its well balanced sound. It's noisier that the NTG-2 and not as transparent but it does a much, much better job in most situations than the built in microphones on the DSLRs, DSLTs and Micro4:3 cameras. And it looks cool. Very important... It has a two setting control for the microphone pick up pattern. It can have more or less side and rear rejection. It also has an on off switch so you can leave the battery in and store it for a few days without coming up battery dead.

I wouldn't use it as a primary production tool but for snapshot mode, street art mode and spontaneous interview mode it does a darn fine job. I want to see how it handles German.

Funny how traveling with a whole new system puts one in the mood to go shopping. Now I'm thinking about new shoes. But I remember buying a pair of shoes in Athens in 1978 that looked really cool but almost crippled me within a day. Maybe I'll just look for some well broken in and very comfortable shoes in the closet...

One week to go before total Samsung immersion. What a fun experiment.

One more recycled but thinly read post from late 2011...I still believe it.

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.it/2011/12/its-not-who-moved-my-cheese-its-who.html

Andy Warhol knew how to find cheese. And he did it differently than everyone else.

I was depressed today until I re-read this old post that showed up in the stats. When I read the comments they brought happy tears to my eyes.

Would X

The comments reminded me that we all have something to give. Something to donate to the conversation. I'd like it if you re-read this post once more. Just because I think we need to understand how important a well rounded education is... And if you like what we've collectively said would you pass it along to new readers?

http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/05/whats-missing-from-current-practice-of.html

West Texas through the eye of an Olympus EP-2.

The upcoming trip to Berlin. Why I'm going. What I'll be doing.

 Blanton Museum. 

In late Spring I was asked to participate in a fun little program to help get the Samsung NX300 some increased exposure. The reviews of the camera are uniformly good but it never hurts to have some additional traction in social media and what not. 

About 25 of us in the U.S. were asked to use the cameras and post interesting images. People in different corners of the country are shooting and uploading some really fun work and it seems like the camera is doing well.  I've done quite a few shoots with the camera and shared a hundred or so images over the last two or three months. One of the benefits I get from the program is to keep the NX300, the kit zoom lens and the 30mm f2 pancake-y lens.

Then, a little while ago, I was asked by Samsung if I would like to try their newest camera, the Samsung Galaxy NX.  If you aren't familiar with the specs it's understandable, the camera hasn't launched in the U.S. yet and just launched in the U.K. this week. Here's a microsite about the product:

http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxycamera/nx/

While I've always thought of myself as a traditionalist I was surprised at how quickly I adapted to mirror less in 2009. And how quickly I've become interested in the intersection of flexible immediate uploads and social media. The new Galaxy camera is all about two things. One is the always on nature of its wi-fi and cell capabilities. Basically, the camera can upload images from just about anywhere to just about anywhere. If you can get a signal you can probably get to your folder on the iCloud or other service. The second aspect of the camera is one I haven't explored yet. That the Android system and the potential for an open systems approach to creating apps for the camera and apps that will run on the system backbone of the camera.  Not interesting on a 3 inch screen but more interesting, by far, on a five inch screen....  

When Samsung approached me to shoot with the camera before the rest of my fellow American photographers I did one quick check to make sure the camera shot video and I accepted. I couldn't see any real downside and maybe I'd wind up with a camera and some lenses that would be fun to shoot and helpful to my business. Then they presented the "carrot."  Would I like to fly over to Berlin on their dime and shoot my test images over there? I was delighted. I am delighted.

Samsung is bringing in photographers from all over the world in conjunction with the IFA show which is a big consumer and industry products trade show. I have a suspicion that the camera will be "presented" to the world at the show and will start to ship soon afterwards. It will probably be available near the end of Sept. This would be an opportunity for me to see Berlin, shoot fun stuff with the new camera and meet with interesting photographers, bloggers and photo-bloggers from all around the world. 

The camera and some choice lenses are due to arrive in the studio next week. I'll do a training course aimed at teaching me how to operate the camera with an app as opposed to the usual dedicated buttons and dials and then I'll do a few long walks on the boiling pavement around Austin to get up to speed on the interface and the nuances and then, off to Berlin!

I'll be flying out of Austin on the 2nd of Sept. and arriving in Berlin on the 3rd, in the early morning. For the entire week I'll be prowling the streets, cameras in hand. I'll be soaking up all the new inventions and photo stuff at the trade show and wining and dining with fellow Samsung Galaxy shooters. Of course I want to see as much of Berlin as I can before I fly back out and arrive home on the 8th.

In this bold product centric experiment I'll be blogging as much as I can. While I'm sure Samsung would love for me to concentrate on the things that differentiate the camera (apps, Android, always connected) I'll be working harder to see, primarily, how it operates just as a camera. How does it feel in my hand? How conducive is it to shooting fast? In the street? How stealthy can it be? How do the files look? I'll lean on the techie features to get images up for my blog as quickly as possible but that will be in the service of finding out just how good an imaging tool the camera is.

If you've been to Berlin I'd love to hear what you found most visually captivating. I'd also like to hear where you think I should find coffee and if there are any great camera stores left. I want to know what parks are filled with interesting people and anything else you might think of to help me make the trip more efficient and fun. Feel free to clog up the comments. You know I'll read every single one.

I hope my clients have a big pile of work waiting for me when I re-open the studio on Sept. 9th....

Do I get to keep the camera?  I sure hope so!

Try the Craftsy course of 25% off!

Today I want to talk once more about fast 50mm lenses. Because I love them.

Ten foot high painted self portrait by Chuck Close.

There are a number of things I like about 50mm lenses. Especially really good ones. I can't afford the 50mm lens I really want. It's the new Leica 50mm Summicron APO and while the price is upwards of $7,000 it may be the best 50mm lens on the planet. If I scrimped and saved I might be able to afford the actual lens but the lens only shines when you have the right body to put it one and I'm not heading down the Leica digital M rabbit hole any time soon. At least not until we're able to get those day rates well over $5,000 and the phone is ringing off the hook....

Anyway, there are a good things about all good 50mm lenses that bear telling or repeating. First, they are generally really good optics that render sharp, contrasty images onto camera sensors. If you are used to horsing around with kit zooms you'll find the difference between a very sharp f2 aperture on a 50mm and a so-so "just good enough" aperture of 3.5 to 5.6 on the zoom. While shooting yesterday in the Blanton Museum I watched the little exposure graph in the camera and realized that a lot of what I shot was snugged in a f2.5 and the shutter speeds were in the range of 1/60th of a second. Even so the images were sharp. Especially in the middle of the frame where it counts for me. If I used a kit zoom I might need f5.6 to get the same kind of quality performance and that would kick the shutter speed down into the handholding danger zone or rocket the ISO up in the negatively charged stratosphere, adding noise and sucking out dynamic range from my work. With a good 50mm 1.4 you get, not just speed, but speed with quality.

If you fill the frame with a subject and you're shooting with a fast 50mm it's easy to use wide apertures to drop stuff in the background out of focus. Really out of focus. And that can be cool too. Because with a good lens the stuff in focus isn't just "in focus" but it's truly sharp.

A good 50mm 1.4 prime is a lot cheaper than a professional quality zoom lens. And it may be better where it counts, near wide open. Sure, a 24-105mm f4 gives you a lot of range but if you look at the images from that lens at f4 and a good prime at f4.0 the primes still have the edge is sharpness, contrast and some almost intangible parameters that just subconsciously make us say, "Wow."  I paid about $399 for my 50mm 1.4 Sigma and I'm amazed at how well it performs. But part of that amazement is that I'm comparing it with zooms I've been using....

Finally, I actually consider the 50mm focal length and the 85mm focal length, on full frame cameras to be just about a perfect angle of view. The wide lenses have angles of view that seem gratuitous to me, almost garish in their frantic desire at inclusion... While the longer lenses, especially above 200mm seem claustrophobic. My eye settles down nicely when we're right in the middle.

Traveling on my own dime these days this is the focal length and the lens I put onto my full frame camera and just shoot with. Happy not to have to make too many choices. Once you have the lens figured out you get down to important issues like where to have coffee....

My favorite shots lately are coming from the Sigma 50mm 1.4. It came onto the market with some issues like front and back focusing with some cameras. It also came with a price tag of around $500.

The price recently dropped by $100 and the lens I got seems to have all the kinks engineered out. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat.

Sigma 50mm 1.4 for Sony

Sigma 50mm 1.4 for Canon

Sigma 50mm 1.4 for Nikon

Link for 25% off my Craftsy.com class on Studio Portrait Lighting.

Out for lunch with the nostalgia-cam. The Sony a850 tags along to remind me of cameras from the 1990's.

On the wall near the railroad bridge and Lamar. Just north of Cesar Chavez Blvd..

I am about to embark on a brisk learning curve with a new camera that may change the way we work with photographs. It's the Samsung Galaxy NX. It's wi-fi enabled and fully tricked out with cell capability as well. It's got apps. It's got a giant screen on the back. I may be able to read the New York Times on the back screen while I cool my heels in Gov. Perry's outer office, waiting for my photo op. But that all starts next week. So this week, when I headed out of the frigid, hyper climate controlled space we call The Visual Science Lab World Headquarters I reached for the Samsung's nearly exact opposite counterpart, the Sony a850, with a big, chunky, traditional 50mm 1.4 hanging off the front.

Thought I'd get a bit of balance before I plunge into a new thing. In one sense my Sony a850 is my most retro camera. It's big-boned. It's heavy and fat in my hands. It's got a traditional prism and a mirror that goes, "ker-thunkkkk!!!!" every time I hit the shutter. The film camera that it most reminds me of is the Leica R8. Not built to be svelte but built to be impervious. In a big, black, Darth Vadar meets Dracula sort of way. Since there's no EVF and no instantaneous feedback loop I have to keep a closer eye on the the exposure indicator in the finder. Since the finder image doesn't really change, even if I've mis-set the parameters I do have to chimp a bit more to make sure I'm not going off the rails. But there's something fun about using it.  

I spent some time yesterday at the Blanton Museum. I wanted to see the enormous Chuck Close photograph/painting. I wanted to be inside with a bunch of people, in the air conditioning. And I instantly became aware of how un-stealthy a full sized, traditional camera is. Every time I pushed the shutter button in a quiet gallery it sounded so much louder than any of the mirrorless cameras I've been using and seemed twice as loud as most of my APS-C DSLRs ever were. When to took a shot of two people in one of the painting galleries they instantly turned around to see who might be banging folding chairs together. It was a little embarrassing. It reminded me of why Leica rangefinder cameras were so popular in the days of Nikon F's and F2's. And their Canon counterparts. And it made me think about the Pentax K5ii that I played with a week ago at Precision Camera. Nicest, quietest mirrored camera I've played with in quite a while....

On my way to Whole Foods for lunch I say this spontaneous and unauthorized street art on a big retaining wall and I loved it. After lunch I braved the heat and walked down to photograph the mural as one big spread and then in chunks. The camera was heavy and ponderous but it also slowed me down and made me think about what I was shooting. I dialed in some exposure compensation because I actually looked at the scene before I brought the camera to my eye. My assessment was that the meter would disagree with me by about 2/3rds of a stop. It always likes to be a little darker = all my cameras seem to fear blown highlights. When I clicked the shutter I felt a sense of calmness and happiness.

I stopped in the shade to think about my good feelings and came to the conclusion that I'd been blindsided by nostalgia. While the images I got from the a850 were as good as the images I get from all my other cameras I felt good shooting it because it was of a form factor, sonic profile and operational personality that was so endemic in the professional cameras of the 1980's and 1990's. I was channeling the emotional satisfaction of reconnecting with twenty years of daily camera handling. Camera handling in a much simpler and direct way. Are the images "better"? Not really. Just as a 1960's Pontiac GTO is not nearly as good a car as a current (fill in the non-controversial blank) car from our current choices but, if you drove one in high school, felt the brash acceleration and listened to the throaty growl of the tuned exhausts pipes you would be equally nostalgic getting into a fully restored version today.

I'll shoot with the a850 again today when I go out. And I'll get my fill of nostalgia for a while. That way I can settle in and soak in what's new in the world of smart, connected cameras and not long for a version of the past that tickles my emotional brain cells.

When you light a wood fire and want to get it burning brighter and quicker you can add an accelerant. And accelerant is a material or highly combustible fuel that makes burns hot and quick. When I headed out with my Sony I used the the ultimate nostalgia and sentiment accelerant, a 50mm 1.4 prime lens.

In the twenty years that I carried film cameras around that was always my first choice for a lens on the front of the camera. I've owned probably 100 50mm lenses over the last 27 years and I'm always on the search of the next one. Right now I'm using the Sigma 50mm 1.4 that came out a few years ago. Mine is sharp and sassy. Even wide open the center of the frame has decent resolution and good contrast. Stopped down to f5.6 or f8.0 it's very sharp where I want it to be. And it's bulk and profile remind me of the big 50mm 1.4's and 1.2's of the past. Indestructible lenses that we pressed into doing just about anything in the imaging realm.

I am happy with the 50mm. It seems to go with my "throw back" retro DSLR.

The 25% off link for my Craftsy Class/Entertainment programming!!!

And the ad:

And some ever ready Amazon Links:

Working in the studio. The sine wave of creativity.

Anna Two. 

50 percent of the time seeking creativity, invention and connection. 50 percent of the time relaxing, recharging and playing. The sine wave of creativity.




A link for 25% off the course for VSL readers.

Anna. A studio portrait.

Anna.

In the studio with a Rolleiflex 6008i camera. 150mm Zeiss Lens. On Kodak Portra TCN black and white C-41 film.

Technique in search of a subject.

Do you know what you want to photograph today? I do. I want to photograph a beautiful, interesting person and I want to do it with a big, soft light source in a quiet studio. It's the same thing I want to photograph every day. My search for subjects isn't a general search as in: "Do I want to photograph a landscape? A street shot? Richly colored glass bottles transluminated with sparkly light? My lunch? My dog? My navel? My car? A back lit athlete?  My search is much narrower. It's all about finding someone interesting to photograph.

It's hard to find people who have time when you have time and have the same degree of motivation to be photographed as you do to photograph them. The most interesting people tend to be the most busy. They are deeply involved in whatever thing it is that makes them so interesting and, if they had lots of time to spend doing other things they might not seem so interesting in the first place.

As I get older and read too much I find that we can break down most photographers into two camps. The ones who master their craft in order to photograph the subject of their passion and the ones who get really good at their craft in order to be really good at their craft. To the first group the mastery of technique is a means to an end. The mastery gives them the potential to make images of their chosen subject in a style and a way that is unique to them. These are the people whose work comes to mind in a heart beat. Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon as people photographers. Patrick Demarchalier and Peter Lindbergh as fashion photographers, and Ansel Adams and Mark Klett as Landscape photographers. They pursue their passion. They've found their passion. And they explore(d) it relentlessly.

The second group are the universal shooters. They can shoot food, shoot a car, shoot a model, shoot a sunset or a sunrise, shoot a factory or a building or someone hanging off an enormously tall tower, or fighter jets or a child lit by a sparkler on a Summer evening. And in every situation they bring a technical expertise to the image that is arguably correct but, because it is largely a generic solution based on satisfying or solving the technical issues of the image it is homogenous and boring. Forgettable.

The images that effect culture and our understanding of photographic art come, almost exclusively, from people who have passion for one subject and a relentless desire to pursue that subject to the exclusion of all others. They may change gear like the rest of us but they stick to the subject at hand.

This makes them incredibly boring to follow. The do the same thing over and over again, always attempting to find just a nuance of new but mostly to unlock the interesting thing that they already sense in their subject. They don't make big changes. They won't be blogging about the latest light or the hottest lens.

The little circuit breaker in the brain that separates the first group from the second, as far as I can see, is fear. In a professional capacity it's the fear that they won't be asked to cover a wide range of assignments, that people won't like the one subject they choose and will seek other photographers instead. The fear for amateurs is different. And I don't really know what it is. It could be that the fear of committing to one subject is that they'll miss out on another subject. I watched the swell of image makers who had previously done street or candid portrait photos rush to embrace HDR and all of a sudden everyone was whipping out wet streets at twilight and glowering landscapes, rank with color. They'd switched subjects in order to satisfy their desire to master the technique du jour. Ditto when photographer, Joel Grimes rolled out his gritty lighting and post processing and applied it to sports photography. The same people who rushed to follow Trey Ratliff on the Technicolor V train did a 180 and began to make tons and tons of grit-o-graphs. There was a palpable feeling of the fear of being left behind. Of not mastering the mainstream. Of being passé. Attaining new visual tools was the process.

I would dearly love to say that I am of the first group but I know it's not true. While I love process of the portrait, and I can think of nothing I'd rather shoot and look at, I fear the idea that my favorite art directors will pass me over for lucrative assignments in food photography (which is enjoyable but not a real passion) or product photography for the high tech industry (which is not really enjoyable but very rewarding financially). And then there are all the times when I'm too tired or unfocused to research who I want to shoot and how to set up the sessions, and then I just capitulate and walk around shooting in the streets because I feel like I should be doing something photographic with all this gear I own. Maybe I have the hope that I'll discover my next portrait subject while I'm out walking around. Maybe I'm just convinced that I need to try out a new camera and see if it changes the way I approach things.

One of my fears is a construct of the last five or six years. I have this blog. People seem to like it. Tens of thousands of people come here almost every day to read the stuff that I write. And I don't want to disappoint them or bore them. On one hand my early rationale for the blog was to drive sales of my books, and then workshops and then affiliate links. But the books are in the long tail phase of their lives, the novel never seems to be ready to launch and, I suspect, the workshops will take care of themselves. The real reason now is that I have an audience and it feels good to be part of the community. I feel like I'm adding to a discussion that transcends national borders and has to do with the art I like.

But the disconnection is that if I wrote only about portrait photography I would have run out of anything to say in early 2009. Maybe earlier. It's a cruel two edged sword. I long to spend the time just making portraits but I have an equal need to connect and stay relevant. And I know the blog brings other industry opportunities to me. I desire them even though I know they are a distraction.

I often wonder what would have happened to my career if I stayed on one path and didn't vary. Shoot my one passionate subject with one camera and one set of lights and keep incrementally trying to improve the rapport, the pose, the collaboration and the feel of the light. I think of all the money I would have saved that's gone into gear. But I also think of the tangential lost opportunities that the solitary course would have meant.

Not shooting corporate events would have meant not being paid to see Paris, Madrid, London, Lisbon, Italy, Russia and more. Not shooting products might have meant a diminished earning power just when I needed to stretch and buy a house and studio. Not exploring new cameras and new techniques would have meant that few people outside my little, local circle would have ever heard of me. It would have meant no books. No blog. No trip to Berlin. No online class in Denver.

Fear of being left behind or professionally marginalized means I made myself into the thing that is least satisfying for me. I've become a generalist. And now I'm adding video to the long list of tricks in my bag  not because I love story telling but because I'm afraid that might be the direction in which all of our business is heading and I don't want to be left behind. Not yet.

I guess the biggest fear that mitigates against doing what you really love is the fear that you might discover that you are not as good at it as you thought you might be. And no matter how disciplined and self-confident you might profess to be there's a little (or huge) part in all of us that tries to prevent us from failing. From falling on our faces. From over reaching. That's the thing that the first group has either conquered or come to grips with. That's the thing that keeps the rest of us practicing technique in the search of a subject instead of doing the art we wish we could.

Too heavy a blog for a Tuesday morning. Sorry about that. I seem to be turning into a Russian writer...

Comfort Zone.

Have you ever had photographic sessions where everyone felt so good they could laugh and cry and howl and be totally in the moment?  No? Loosen up the controls a bit and have more fun.

I made a portrait of my friend, Jeremy, yesterday. He won an award for something and needed a portrait to send along for an article. While I normally reserve Sundays for long walks and sloth I thought it would be fun to photograph him.

It dawned on me that a good portrait session is really composed of three or four discrete and almost unrelated sections. It's good if you can turn your brain on, do the work required in each section and then turn your brain off again. Some sections of the process are all about technical stuff and then the making of the actual images is non-technical stuff. It's best to get your stuff all set up and then get your technical brain out of the way before you start shooting.

So, what are the discrete parts? The first part is planning. This is your aesthetic and technical pre-production. It's the part of the process where you ask yourself:  How do I want the lighting to look? How do I want the composition to look? Am I looking for more compression? Am I looking for more limited depth of field? How will I handle color?

I generally start with the background. I decided that I wanted a neutral gray background for Jeremy's business portrait. But I decided that I didn't want it to be boring and uniform so I figured out how I wanted a light to slash across it. Once I had the background figured out I started working through the other parameters. My choice of lens is somewhat limited by my available space in my small studio. I have 24 feet from my back to the seamless background paper when I'm shooting. I don't want to place people too close to the background because I want enough distance to drop detail on the background totally out of focus. I ended up using the 85mm lens on an a99 figuring that I could crop in if the lens was too short for my taste in the edit.

I decided I would have Jeremy sit. It works better for my lighting and posing. It was my intention to use a big fluorescent light bank as my main light because I wanted to be able to shoot almost wide open with my lens. I ended up shooting a little shy (on the fast side) of f2.8. I knew that the raw fluorescent bank would be too bright and too hard to either be comfortable for my sitter or hospitable to his skin tone so I knew I would want at least one, and possibly two, layers of diffusion on a frame, in front of the light. I chose to use a 4x4 foot Chimera Panel with two layers of 3/4 stop silk on it. A nice blend of hard and soft.

I know that my little studio has too much reflection from the white walls so I know I would need a black panel to the "fill" side of Jeremy's face to cut out some of the unintended fill light. But I also knew that I would have to add back a bit of controlled fill so I did that with small, pop up reflector.

My final bit of lighting design was to add a small, almost invisible, backlight on the opposite side of the main light and from (of course) behind. I decided on the little Fiilex LED P360 as it's easy to match color with my flo lights.

The whole thought process is the planning stage. It sets how the overall shot will look, technically. It's subject to modification as we go but it's good to start with a plan that's a reflection of your style. This is what I started thinking about as soon as Jeremy described the final use of his portrait. It would be used in public relations for a major university. It needed to be well crafted and have a feeling of solidity.

Once I had the plan planted in my brain I went into the auto-pilot mode of "set-up." I like to have time to set up my gear. Not just exactly as much time as it should take but time to re-think and test. I set up one thing and look and then add the next piece and see how it will effect what I already have set. If my main light causes too much spill onto the background I'll add light blockers. Sometimes I set up the camera and sit on the stool and click a self portrait to see how the light looks. I'm always starting with the main light too far to the side and I inevitably move it but I like the idea of the side lit drama of a certain angle. My rational brain usually vetoes that early on....

Once I have all the lighting set and the camera and lens placed on a tripod I go through a process with my camera. I go through a pre-flight check list of settings. I start by formatting the memory card. My next step is to choose between raw or jpeg. Then I go through color settings, ISO, focusing controls and anything else that might affect the process of making the image. I make sure that my camera has setting effect on for continuous light set ups and setting effect off for flash set ups. (If you use a camera with an OVF this is a step that doesn't enter consciousness...).

When everything is set with the camera I get out an incident light meter and measure the light at the subject position. Then I measure the light on the background. Finally, I pull out a Lastolite gray target and set a custom white balance. When I've done all the stuff on my check list my brain relaxes and I know it's time to switch from technical to social engagement. 

I get out our make-up kit and put it on a tabaret. I want to make sure it seems like a natural part of the process instead of something I have to fetch under aesthetic duress. I make sure there's a fresh bottle of cold water, with a napkin, for my client. I make sure the temperature in the studio is a bit on the chilly side and I go over, once again what I want to get, image-wise, from the session.

The next part of the process is to introduce my subject to the studio. I know Jeremy pretty well but being in the studio is out of our usual context. I want to give him time to look around and get comfortable. I want to look at the clothes he's brought along and help him make selections that will work well with the camera. We make small talk. We talk about the process. I look at his face and realize that he'll need some grease wipes to take some facial oils off his face and that some translucent powder will go a long way toward minimizing some unwanted specular highlights. We talk about his kids and the upcoming school year. We talk about work (his).  When I feel like his pulse had dropped and his trepidation about being in front of the camera is lowered we start.

The actual taking of the image is a totally different process than everything we've done above. I ignore any thought of technical issues. If it's not right by now we'll just have to fix it in post. I may fine tune a light or make a small adjustment to camera distance or height but from this point on it's all about getting an expression that's positive, relaxed and really representative of Jeremy. No clenched smiles, no over the top expressions.  Just the real guy. This requires light hearted feedback from me. I keep the energy going. I maintain a feedback loop so my subject knows what's working.  There's no stopping and starting to deal with technical issues. There's never stopping and starting to answer a phone call, we just work through and keep the pace going so that I'm focused on how my subject looks and my subject is focused on enjoying the process. When I finally know I've got a handful of really good images, all of which will work well, we wind down.

I tell Jeremy what will happen next (I'll edit down the sheer number of images to 20 and also mark my three favorites. I'll do a global color, exposure and contrast correction and put up the 20 images onto a gallery on Smugmug and send him a link. He'll make a selection and then I'll retouch it using a variety of software tools. Since he has a pressing deadline I'm make folder with various file sizes of his selected image and upload it to an FTP server like Drop Box so he can send it along to the editor or PR person who started this whole process.

He's already pulling his tie off and putting his suit coat on a hanger. We talk about more about kids and swimming and he tells me, "This was fun."

There are two parameters that I want to satisfy at every session. One is a good image of my subject. The second is for both of us to have fun. It's nice when it works.

Adhering to this whole process with full attention, even though I've done it a thousand times, is what makes the comfort zone real. When you are comfortable you see better, you share better and you shoot better. Three real sections but your technical brain needs only to attend the first two. Having your technical brain on line and in attendance during the actual shooting and sharing is a good way to second guess yourself into a "safe" box with boring results. Let your tech brain go outside for a break when you get down to the human to human work.