You've got to read what Michael Johnston wrote yesterday....

It's a hilarious, 26 step guide to buying just the right camera.  And you'll know his column struck a few nerves when you browse through some of the 199 comments that quickly appeared!  Internet gold.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/05/letter-to-george/comments/page/4/#comments

Not living in the past. Here's something new......

Office Lobby in the Dallas area.  April 2010.

We tend to get pigeon-holed in this industry.  Do a nice campaign with people in it and you're sunk.  You'll only get calls for projects with people.  We tend to do it to ourselves though.  We find a part of photography that's fun for us and we go back to the well again and again. But the reality is that if you are the beneficiary (victim?) of both a well rounded, liberal arts education and a good technical grounding in photography, you should be able to bring both the taste and skills (such as they are) to just about any assignment.

One of my first assignments, years ago, was for a lifestyle magazine dedicated to American antiquities.  I spent months and months on the road photographing the interiors and exteriors of historic homes.  I shot plantation houses, ranch houses and meticulous reproductions of famous historic architectural styles.  I got to know my view camera and my interior lighting from every angle and at one point could use it almost as fast as a point and shoot.

So, recently I did a comprehensive job for a law firm, shooting partners and associates and their far flung offices.  The art director I worked was one of the rare ones who really gets that styles can cross over genres and specialities.  With this in mind she also asked me to shoot the offices.

I was entranced by this lobby.  Those are huge metal doors in the background.  They move with computer controlled electric motors.  They are "James Bond" cool.

Here's a close-up of the doors.....

I used a Canon 5D mk 2 and an old 20mm f2.8 lens.  I did a few, slight perspective changes in PhotoShop but nothing too dramatic.  I remembered that I like shooting architectural stuff.  I'd largely abandoned it in deference to a close friend.  I didn't want to compete.  But now we've both decided to broaden our markets so I'm looking for more interesting assignments like this.

It's not too hard when the client and their architectural designers have done their jobs well.  The challenging stuff is trying to make a silk purse out of tilt wall construction and cheap furniture.  But that's story for another time.....

Dark and moody. It's the big umbrella used close for the right look.

Just horsing around in the studio one day, shooting portraits for fun.  No client.  No deadline.  No schedule.  I default to my favorite lighting.   It's one, big soft light in a Balcar 60 inch Zebra umbrella with a diffusion panel over the front face of the umbrella to smooth out and soften that silver/white alternating pattern.  I used it with a tungsten light (am I crazy or are other people also in love with the way continuous light softens skin and what not....?)  The background is a natty old grey dyed muslin, twenty feet behind Rene that's being lit with a small, unfocused fresnel fixture.  Three "must have" items for photographic happiness:  any camera.  any nice, large light source.  a beautiful woman.

The lighting is so simple.  Someone asked me if I would do a workshop but I'm not sure what we'd talk about after the fifteen minutes it would take to set up the lights and meter them.  I guess we could spend the rest of the day having lunch and cocktails.  The plumbing part of photography is pretty straightforward.  Thank goodness. That gives us time to work on the hard stuff.  Like finding the right subjects.  Posing and expression.  Film development or file massage.  Printing. Whatever.  You know, the stuff you really can't teach....

Available Light gets Short Shrift these days but it can really rock.

You probably are tired of hearing the shopworn old saying, "Give someone a hammer and suddenly everything looks like a nail...."  I'm tired of hearing that too.  I'm also tired of hearing the phrase, "Horses for courses".   I've never owned a horse and few of the people I deal with every day have owned horses either.  I think it must mean that you would use a quarter horse for rodeo work and a thoroughbred for some kinds of races; perhaps a Clydesdale to pull your beer wagon around.....

But, back to the hammer one.  In the last few years we've been teaching anyone with a few extra bucks how to use flash.  In fact, to read the Strobist.com discussion group or even one of my first two books you could be excused for thinking that a battery powered flash, connected via wires or radio triggers, is as important as the lens in taking acceptable photographs.

Surprise!  Available light still works.  Even with digital!  While I think it's great to be able to pull a tool out of the box (a flash?) and know how to use it when the light gets dicey and you need some help, it's not the Holy Grail of photography. Problem is that many people tend to learn a technique and apply it in every instance.

This is a reminder to look for beautiful light and use it as your FIRST line of creative tactics.  The universe has billions more years of experience (unless you are a literal Bible believer) in creating and sharing really nice and interesting light.  Part of being a photographer is learning to see the promise of fine lighting and leverage it into your images.

The shot above was very simple.  I was sitting having  mocha almond cake at Les Amis cafe on the corner of 24th street and the street one block west of Guadelupe, in Austin, Texas.  I was sitting outside covered by a patio roof.  I was a few feet in from the sun.  I had my ancient Canon TX 35mm camera, loaded with the (nearly) required Tri-X black and white film.  That day I was playing with a Vivitar 135mm f2.8 lens.  I turned around to follow the wandering eye of my guest and spotted this charming young woman.  I smiled, brought up the camera, matched the needle for exposure and clicked off a frame.  She smiled and we both went back to the important business of enjoying our afternoon snacks.  This image, though well over thirty years old, constantly reminds me to look at available light first.  And to use it if it works.

Today is actually International Available Light Portrait Day.  Celebrate by taking some low stress, high return portraits----just for fun.  Happy IALPD!

Confronted with Craftsmanship.

If you've read my blogs over the past months you probably know that I like to grab the camera de jour and point the racing Element (for the flat of humor,  the Element is the lowest performance car I've owned since my original 65 horsepower VW Beetle.  Yes, the old one....).  I like walking around because it's a fun way to get some exercise but I also have a secondary agenda.  I've been dropping in to San Antonio for over a decade because I like the way it changes between visits and I like that downtown SA is still a sidewalk culture.  You still see people out and about.  I recently grabbed my Olympus EP-2 and hit the streets.  I was walking up Houston street amazed at all the buildings and businesses gone or transformed when I walked up to the Majestic theater.

I've been by the Theater many times before, mainly because it's entrance is tucked under an overhanging  second story that provides all day shade and a cool place to walk in hot, sticky summer visits.  In that sense it reminds me of the streets in Bologna.  I'd noticed the ticket booth many times but for some reason I was really captivated on this visit.  The paint was freshly redone and the colors were vibrant.  But more than that, I took some time to really look at how much effort and craftsmanship went into building this in the first place and how meticulously it has been maintained.  It's been there longer than I can remember....

The light was low but I leaned on the camera's pretty decent IS instead of ratcheting up the ISO.  I wanted to keep the colors as crisp and saturated as possible.  I ended up shooting at 1/15th of second to 1/30th of a second nearly wide open with my 38mm Pen F lens with a Pen adapter.  The photos are no great shakes.  I'm not an architectural photographer.  But they resonate with me because I can see so much hand detail in every frame.  Especially so in the close-up below.  They are convincing evidence that spreadsheets lie and that a few extra steps and effort might have long term benefits that justify prodding budgets.  We forget sometimes that the world should be wonderous and beautiful.  Just want to share this one with you.  If you are heading to SA it's right in the middle of downtown on Houston street.  Happy shooting.

Small, fast cameras. Bigger is not better.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to spend the rest of your days walking through the streets of exciting cities and taking images of whatever caught your eye?  Sucks living in a car city.  Maybe that's why I like roaming streets crowded with pedestrians in other cities.  Here in Austin most of us live in "neighborhoods" or suburbs.  More people are moving into downtown but the street culture is very nascent.  I can hardly wait for it to catch up.  I do my part.  I head into downtown whenever I can and I patronize the cool little restaurants and bars that are starting to spill out to the sidewalks.

The photo above was taken in Paris with a small Nikon 35ti film camera and some Tri-X.  The camera fit in my hand and never had a strap.  It was easy to prefocus, the fixed 35mm lens meant that I had no decisions to make about lenses.  I could set a manual exposure and argue with the camera later when I went into the dark room.  I KNOW it is faster to use in this way than ANY autofocus DSLR with any zoom lens on the front.  And I know that the time spent in doing the process with a slower camera would change the dynamic.  I'm not concerned when shooting in the street that someone will be angry or will keep me from working.  I'm only concerned that the thing I saw, the emotion I wanted to capture, not be changed by people's realization of my presence, my intention or any other controllable parameter.

Everyone believes that their reality is the "real" one.  Except the Jedi Knights.  They knew that your focus determines your reality.   And my focus is locked at ten feet.

A more intimate image taken with a Canonet QL17 and tri-x.

Final word on the small cameras.  You will more likely carry a small camera that intrudes less on you.  And when you have it with you then you'll have more and more opportunities to connect with the things that tickle your subconscious.

Beginner's Eyes. Getting them back.

I am sad that I learned so much about the plumbing of photography because my desire to make technically perfect images has certainly gone a long way toward beating up the part of my brain that just wanted to look at stuff and go, "Hey! They would be neat.  Let's just press the button."

There always comes a time when you have to sort through stuff and file things away deeper and deeper into the warehouse of treasures to make room for the newer treasures.  You sort through in case you missed a few gems that need to be put into more convenient storage (metaphorically speaking).  And in this process you invariably come across things that disquiet your own self image.  Take for instance the concepts of "mastery".  I took this photo above in 1978 before I knew anything about photography.  I lined up the "stick-with-the-lollypop" (match needle metering)  in the finder of a Canon TX camera and pushed the button.  And then I learned how to take pictures.  But, we live in a society that loves to dissect and quantify.  In some sense our modern culture group-thinks that all phenomena can be explained if only we can subject it to a rigorous enough bisection, followed by a meticulous calculation of the components.

Our prevailing idea of mastery is to know ALL the technical steps that can be known for completing a project with "best practices".  That requires turbo-charging the math and analytical side of your brain.  But the practice is fraught with all kinds of peril.  The math brain is a very vicious hoodlum in many regards.  But mostly because he believes that everything can be reduced to a series of memorized formulae.  Eventually you will know all the reasons why every scene you come across is "compromised" and unable to be "effectively" shot and made "perfect".  You begin only to photograph scenes that can be shoehorned into the narrow definition of perfection.  At some point your technical focus becomes your reality.  You cease to see things outside the filter of this reality.  You have now gained technical master while atrophying the part of your brain that was responsible for recognizing the subjects that made you feel happy and engaged.  Engaged not because you could capture them perfectly but because you would enjoy the experience of visually encountering them even if a camera were not involved.

At this point the technical considerations become a mental straightjacket binding your creative limbs and preventing you from hurting yourself by "having to" endure the possibility of a failed photo.  How sad.  At that point you will have lost your "beginner's eyes" and the very thrill that compelled you to be a photographer in the first place.

Cameras like the Lomo are an attempt to short circuit technical thinking and just react.  But we don't really need to degrade our cameras to return to the pure joy of photography.  We only need to respond emotionally to what's in front of the camera and to click with whatever camera we have in hand.  Sometimes I am more attracted to the failed frame than the traditional keeper.

You may be more enlightened than me.  This issue may not come up for you.  But if you are a technical/research/process/workflow/measurement kind of guy chances are you've got it so bad you can't even see it.  You can work on getting back to an unguarded or technically un-nuanced  reaction to images or you can accept that compulsive reduction is part of your gestalt and just enjoy the process as you enjoy it and ignore my own self-examination.

I do know one thing.  I liked the energy in the  photos I took years ago.  A lot.  It made up for the glitches.

A portrait of a stranger's feet.

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."
Elliott Erwitt 


I was originally asked to photograph dancers.  But the image I remember from that particular photo shoot was of these feet.  It was a quick shot, recognized and recorded on one or two frames before the dancer moved and the image was gone.  You can try to create the amazing things you see, from time to time, but really it's never the same. There's a magic in the undisturbed recognition that can never be fully recreated.  That's why it's always important to shoot the moment the "every day" transforms into magic.  But just like magic, it's all gone in an instant......


Shoot more.  Think less.  Happy photographer.

Pretty Picture. No big manifesto.

A significant portion of my business is spent shooting portraits.  I shoot all kinds.  I have fun shooting corporate people because they always have a story or an agenda they are anxious to share with you.  And the higher up the ladder you subject is the more time they've spent in front of cameras.  That makes them easy to work with.  They know how to move and what expressions to make in front of the lens.

I shoot portraits of kids for two different reasons.  On the lighter side, I take photos for my son's swim team.  It's just a Summer league program at our club but they get a bit competitive and the coach is a recent Olympic gold medal winner.  This is fun and easy.  I know a lot the kids, especially the older ones and I know most of the parents.  I've been doing this for ten years.  My big goals are to make images where the light is nice and the kids are unposed.  I like to capture happy, interactive moments between the kids.  Just for fun I like to try getting each kid mid-dive (or mid-jump, depending on their skill level). They look so exuberant frozen in a highly kinetic maneuvers. Their anticipation of contact with the water is so clear....

The other reason I shoot portraits of kids is for a couple of non-profits I work with that deliver educational support services to under-served children.  Here we're making portraits that are a kind of short hand that says, "I'm a great kid,  I have lots of potential,  I'm worth spending resources on, and I am a metaphor for thousands of kids just like me."  That's a lot to say.  Fortunately, the kids are up to the task.  I am there as the conduit or transmitter but they put in the effort that makes the fundraising work.

A lot of the portrait shoots are for advertising projects.  We attempt to show an archetype of a demographic.  In some cases the archetype is aspirational ( you want to become like her ) in other cases it's purely representational (she's just like you and her life was improved by our product.....yours may be as well....).  When we shoot for the agencies we listen very hard and try to reflect everything we here in the model selection, the propping and the wardrobe.  But mostly we listen to hard to understand the look or expression that everyone is trying to express.

The image above is of a model named Kara.  I've worked with Kara on a number of projects and I really like her look.  It's softer than a fashion look and more animated than a "soccer mom" look.  I asked her to do this image with me as a possible book cover for my second book.  I liked the image a lot but my publisher chose another image for the cover.  At some point it is all just personal taste.  I like the image they chose just as well.  It was just different.

We used soft, directional lighting and balanced it with the light in the room behind Kara.  I used an older 14 megapixel full frame camera and an ancient (but yummy) Nikon 105mm 2.5 lens.  I cropped this image to a square because I like squares.

It was all good, clean fun.  I like the crisp blue of Kara's shirt against the warmth of the Saltillo tiles and warm walls of the background.  I like the large aperture setting of the lens because of the way it puts the background out of focus.

There's no manifesto here.  Just a nod to every day portraits.