Theater photography tonight. Travel tomorrow.

Tonight is the dress rehearsal at Zach Theatre for the blockbuster opera/musical: Les Miserables.
I'm doing photographs tonight for press releases and initial marketing of the show so I'll be camped out dead center of the orchestra nursing an armful of cameras and trying to capture the fast moving action and the even faster changing lights. But I hate to be unprepared or surprised when I'm doing a job for a client so I dropped by the Theatre on Sunday evening to catch the first half of the show in a technical rehearsal. No audience, no photos (Equity rules...) and no stress. I wanted to sit quietly and watch how the overall lighting design worked and how the choreography looked. The actors were great and the play was well polished.  I stayed for a couple of hours and now have kind of a running mental inventory of how the cast comes together for little finales, little group shots just before the lights dim to change a scene. Those are the signature shots that papers and websites love to run.

When I walk into the theater this evening I'll have a good idea of which cameras and lenses to use to cover the wide shots and the tight close ups. I'll probably go with two Sony a99's and a wide to slight telephoto zoom plus a standard 70-200mm 2.8. I like shooting the a99's at ISO 1600 but I'll probably go up to 3200 on the wider zoom just to add more depth of field. The show is darker than some of the recent, upbeat musicals and I'll be watchful about dipping below 1/125th of a second. I do like to keep it all sharp.

Tomorrow I travel. I'm headed to Denver, CO. to spend a week with my friends at Craftsy.com. We're doing two video programs this time for their website.  Both have to do with portraits, lighting, posing and family photojournalism. I've done five solid phone meetings to flesh out the details and we've revised the outlines a few times.

To be clear, I'm actually appearing in the programs I'm not part of the crew or in charge of the direction. I'll be teaching, on camera, and as nervous as any of the talent I've worked with over the years. It's a whole different thing to be on the other side of the lens. I warmed up to it last time and I don't have nearly the trepidation this time. I'm actually looking forward to ten hour days on camera since I don't have to haul lights or make sure technical stuff works right. Someone else will be stringing the extension cords and tugging on sand bags.

I've got my laundry list of things to do today. I need to make time for a haircut, I need to go over the packing and make sure I have the right cables to connect my cameras and my laptop to Craftsy's video equipment. I have to find that great little can of shaving cream I discovered last time I traveled. I have a couple of hours of post production to do on an ongoing job and, of course, I'll need to turn the Zach Scott rehearsal images around by the end of the night tonight. One more swim workout before the sun comes up tomorrow and then wheels up. There's so much to do when you are a one person business. If there's a detail that makes a difference it's up to me to see that it gets done. But I like it that way. I like it because when I finish a big project there isn't the feeling that I have to jump right into something else to keep the payroll flowing. If I want to chill for a few days or a week that's my call too.

I suspect the blog entries will either be less frequent or shorter or both for the next week. If Samsung gets me a new camera today I'll have some stuff to report on the newest version of the Galaxy NX. If they don't then the big Sony's will have all the fun. I guess it all hinges on that one Fed Ex truck....

I am turning into an instructor. I'll have to think about this for while and decide if I like this direction. I can see where it would interfere with my goal of being a fully eccentric artist......Sounds like it's time for a little meditation when I get back.

Swim well. See well. Speak well. And enjoy the arrival of Fall.

Learning to love reading. That was a special year.

Now he's meeting with colleges and trying to make up his mind about where to go off to school.
That was a fast few years.

Leica M6, Summilux 50mm 1.4. Neopan 400.

How did one get "hooked" on photography, circa 1978?

I think the big difference between photography now and photography in the "good old days" of film and printing paper can be found in the sheer investment and risk of the former. While in the days of magical cellphones and instant uploads to sharing sites we have almost zero investment in creating images the days of yore demanded a whole different level of attention and intention on the part of the artist.

This print, above, is from my earliest days as an amateur photographer with a light. I had one flash and a umbrella of some sort. There were no screens to tell you if you got stuff right or if you totally fucked up everything from exposure to flash sync to focus. If you were a poor student with a very small budget you probably developed your own film, which was also fraught with peril. Did you get the temperatures of the chemicals right? Did you agitate the developing tank correctly? Did you dip your film in Photo Flo and distilled water in just the right way to keep the negatives from streaking? Did you dry your film in some area that was relatively dust free? There were never any guarantees in the process and if you did mess up you'd only find out about your mis-steps days or even weeks later. Long after the statute of re-shootablity had expired....

And none of this takes into consideration that learning to print well continues to be a multi-year experience. I got lucky with the print above. I got it with a relatively small investment of test prints and test strips. But to get to this one image there was, for me, a profound investment in time, money and learning curve. There was required investment to even get something so simple and singular. Maybe that's why the end results were so precious to use back then. In a sense we were creating a permanent artifact of our memory and our way of seeing. Not a consumable meant as Facebook candy.

Maybe that is why so many older and more experience photographers have such a hard time letting go of an idea of photography.  We hold onto the idea of enduring artifacts that had intrinsic value based on our investments of time and skill. Now, for the most part, we're engaged in a process that's not much different than creating a beautiful and tasty main course for a fine dinner. We might fuss a bit and throw in some lighting and post production but in the end we know that the product is more transient. More....consumable. And we get the sense that we need to increase the output to feed that gaping maw of social sharing. If we want to somehow remain relevant.  It's a whole different medium by dint of its use.

The moment that hooked most of us back in 1978 was the moment that your first decent print started forming in a tray of developer under the soft, dim glow of the red safe lights with a little transistor radio humming away in the background. When Belinda's eyes started to come up in the print. That's the moment I decided that I was "all  in."

Hmmm.

Are they "street photographs" or are they portraits taken on the street?

Claire remarked a few days ago that she likes my portrait work but has never really warmed up to my street photography. And I thought about that for quite a while. Then I started thinking about images like the two above. Are they portraits or are they some form of street photography? Both were spontaneous and neither was set up in the sense that I posed them or directed them in any way. So, what would you consider them?

And while everyone's taste in street photography is different I do like these (below) for various reasons.
I wanted to share them again today.....

Big lights make nice portraits.

I've been using large lights for portraits for a while now and I love the way they look. My favorite tool in doing this kind of lighting is the black card I use on the shadow side to make the deeper tones more dramatic. This is a scan from a print and as such it's probably hard to see much detail in the shadow areas but on the negative and in the original fiber based print there's sill detail all the way down until the tones turn black. Difficult to represent on the web with only 255 shades to work with....

My current favorite lighting tool (yes, they change from week to week and sometimes from day to day...) is a 72 inch white umbrella with a black backing that's made by Fotodiox. The image above was done with on of my largest soft boxes used close in.

One of the things  I like about portraiture is the ability to constantly experiment with different light sources and modifiers.

When I re-visit portraits like the one above it reminds me how much I like the longer focal length lenses for the style of portraiture I like to do.

An alternative to watching re-runs of Breaking Bad this weekend? Tired of all that Downton Abbey stuff?

Well, you could sign up for my portrait lighting course at www.craftsy.com and watch 2.5 hours of information about portrait lighting in the studio..... Here's the ad I just saw in my e-mail. And if the thought of me shooting and talking for a couple of hours isn't enough there's also Neil's classes... Or Rick Sammon's Landscape course...

I'm heading back up to Denver on Weds. next week where I will spend eight days working on the next two programs. Should be a lot of fun. One of the two programs will also be offered free of charge. I'll keep you posted.

Up to 75% off ALL classes & supplies! You'll love this week's favorites. On sale through Saturday! Join 150+ students in Studio Portrait Lighting with Kirk Tuck $59.99 | $44.99 Join 450+ students in Portraits with an On-Camera Speedlight with Neil van Niekerk $59.99 | $34.99 Join 240+ students in Landscape Photography with Rick Sammon $59.99 | $34.99

A link: www.craftsy.com/studiolighting25