I never get to see myself working. This is cool.

Thank you, ATMTX

http://www.mostlyfotos.com/2011/07/kirk-tuck-bodhi-bicycles-behind-scenes.html

This was taken while we were working on the Bodhi Bike photos a week ago.  It's so fun to see behind the scenes stuff for me.  I spend most of my time on the other side of cameras.......

Just a few new edits of some ranch photos.

Just trying to do a better job optimizing for the web.

Kirk

Work/Life Balance. And the obverse. And the inverse.

The author went out to fly kites with the kid.  The kid took the photographs, for a change.


"Never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation."  - Nigel Marsh, TedX Sydney.

"I'll have a life when I retire.  After my wife has left me.  When the kids are grown.  When my health has failed....."  - Nigel Marsh, TedX Sydney.

"The small things matter."  - Nigel Marsh, TedX Sydney

I was so smug.  I'd be driving down Mopac expressway, heading for Dell Computer at 10 am in the morning to do a portrait of an executive at one of their offices and I'd think, "I'm a freelancer, I make my own schedule.  No rush hour traffic for me.  Not trapped in an office cube.  No crappy boss with sociopathic tendencies.  No hurried lunch at my desk.  How wild and free!  I must be the envy of all those working stiffs....." And then, in 2008 I woke up to an awareness of my own rigid and joyless habits.  I had become my own bad boss and I worked under the tyrannical control of freelance general fear and anxiety disorder.

Let me explain.  It's true that I can sleep till noon and not be fired.  But I also won't get paid any money.  And when the money runs out all hell breaks loose.  And it's true that I rarely participate in rush hour but it's usually because I'm too busy compulsively checking in with Twitter, Facebook, LinkenIn, and all the other little niches to see if my clients still love me, if the world still works the way I presume it works (doesn't, never did) or I'm doing accounting or frantically marketing so I have work coming in (I hope) in two months or five months or whenever.  While I'm being smug about not working in a cubicle I'm trying to become an expert in health insurance policies because, big surprise, as you get old your health insurance rates start to double and triple (what the hell happened to the Healthcare Bill?) but if you work for someone else they eat a lot of the financial sting.  Self-employed?  Suck it up and start looking for more cash.  Or never, ever plan on getting sick.

I'd like to do more fun work because I think it would be fun and it might be nice for my clients to see some more reach and flair but I'm usually hunkered down in my cheap office chair writing a blog or responding to something or trying to figure out how to light a fire under a book that's quietly succumbed to the wimpy and frayed part of its long tail.....

I wanted to shoot some video yesterday (Sunday) but I needed to write a few chapters of my new book on video.  I have a deadline.  If you are a freelance person you always have a deadline.....or many deadlines.  The only thing worse for your morale than a deadline is not having any deadlines because the way most freelance brains are wired not having a deadline is almost certainly linked with the not so irrational thought that you might be out on the street, living out of your SUV with your family in no time.

And it's not just me.  I watched another photographer put up 127 post in one day on twitter in the hopes that his followers will increase, that they'll pay to come to one of his workshops.  That his online training scam will finally pay off.  That he can ride the wave of some new social media trend and make some money.  I watch another photographer who's been paralyzed by the economic downturn and the wholesale abandonment of most forms of profitable business.  He stays hunkered down in his home studio, sitting in the dark, endlessly going through the tutorials about some dire boring aspect of PhotoShop and waiting for salvation or armageddon.  And I feel for these guys and myself because we're not surrounded by co-workers who buffer the fear and, through social pressure, mitigate our growing idiosyncrasies that may one day blossom into full bore neurosis.  No shared plate of cupcakes or uniform disregard for the manager...

We worry about younger photographers giving away the farm.  We worry about trends that move so fast we can't understand them.  We overanalyze the tea leaves looking for whispers of our own demise. and yet,  I can't help wondering why we choose to always go to the dark side.

A year or so ago I came to the conclusion that I worried too much and that worry was advanced payment for a catastrophe that hasn't happened, and may never happen.  I decided to stop worrying.  to stop paying into the fund in advance. "Don't worry, be happy."  And it's been a tough, tough sell to my inner psyche.  It's hard to simultaneously undo four decades of self-training.  But I feel more at ease and life seems less threatening.  Funny that, when I acknowledge that I have less control than I imagined over the big arc of life I simultaneously feel happier because I don't have to spend the energy trying to control it.

It's nothing big.  I didn't need to loose 200 pounds or stop smoking five packs of cigarettes a day.  I didn't need to give up binge drinking since I haven't tried it.  I wasn't addicted to any prescription meds.  Not in the middle of a messy divorce.  The kid isn't rebelling too hard.  We weren't insolvent, or even close to the edge.  In short, there's a ton of stuff a lot of people have on their plates that wasn't even on my radar.  I'd simply let my worry about business take over the rest of my life.  Irrationally.

To fix it I took baby steps.  I decided that exercise at least four days a week was mandatory.  I could always put off worrying about taxes or the lack of tax liability (logical next step in the thought process is....) or the funny sound my car is making, until after I swim or run.  I cut back on my caffeine consumption.  No one really needs fifteen strong cups a day.....   I stopped buying everything I wanted and try to only buy what I need.  I've spent more time making sure my gardens look good and get some water.  I pay the bills now the minute they come in the mail.  I write when I feel inspired and stop when I feel stale.  I try new art and I'm coming to grips with the idea that, in the Southwest, life quite naturally slows down a bit in the Summer months.

It's a firm family rule that we eat supper together (no electronics at the table----ever) and it's Belinda's rule   (since time immemorial) that we save money every month.

I'd like to say that I never worry or that since my resolve to stop worrying the business has miraculously returned to the halcyon profitability of the 1990's but those would be a couple of bold-faced lies.  Business ebbs and flows with the pervasive currents of hope and fear that flow through our culture.  I'm not out buying new Porsches and Bentleys but neither am I skimping on good food, good wine and art supplies.

I try to learn new ways to do business and new things to offer to my clients.  I am surprised that writing, something I've never worried about "monetizing", is becoming a larger and larger part of my overall income.  I'm also surprised at how quickly clients have accepted my overtures as a video producer.  I'm getting my Bodhi Bikes electric bike at the end of the month to see what it's like to be more green and less dependent on my car.  I'm swimming more and enjoying it more.

The remarkable power we have as humans living in the cultures we do is our ability to change and grow.  To look back at something we were invested in and slough it off like a snakeskin to embrace something different and better.  Lately I feel like my lowered resistance to change is my ultimate super power.  Try something new.  Abandon something that doesn't work for you anymore.  Change your routine to change your perspective.  You get one shot at this, you might as well not suffer.

Sometimes I think freelancers think too much.  The thoughts aren't necessarily better than anyone else's or worse.  It's just that we have more time to think and maybe that's part of the problem.......

Ranch Weather. Ranch Lenses. Texas Girl.

Selena.  Zeiss 50mm Planar.  

It's been in the triple digit temperatures here in Austin for the last twelve days in a row.  It was 96(f) here last night at 10 pm.  And I don't know why but that always makes me think of west Texas ranches.  I remember driving out I-10 toward El Paso in some cranky old Buick and watching the wiggly heat waves shimmer up from the ribbon of black top up ahead on the horizon.  And whenever you got somewhere you got there thirsty.  Even though Selena and I did this shoot on a cool Spring day it has that feel.  And I think it's my brain putting together the long drives of my youth, done in the Summer months when school faded away with my memory of ranches owned by the family of friends.

I've shown some images of my shoot with Selena before but the soft focus shimmer off the road outside my studio at 10:30 in the morning put me back into that little niche of combined memory and I went back to my library and started to look for images that resonated.....

Selena.  Zeiss 50mm Planar.

I like and fear the Summer in Texas.  Seems that all the clients head out on vacation and the ones who don't wish they had and sit quietly in their offices staring out the window.  The heat slowing them down and slowing down the entire process of commerce.  I like the Summer because in the one hour of swim practice we go from cool breezes and the first glow of sun over the trees by the pool to full on sun and a warm set of rays caressing your back.  When I get out I'm ready for the day.  Summer means the kid is home from school and I can't be totally selfish.  I have to make concessions.  I have to drop him off places and pick him up.  If he's around the house I make sure he gets lunch.  When Belinda is working I spend more time walking the dog.

I fear that we'll never get rain to break a long drought.  My lawn is like fresh bread left too long in the toaster.  Getting crisper and crisper as the time drags on.  We're on voluntary water rationing and we take it seriously.  But I get out every evening and hand water the flowers and shrubs and I try to get some deep water to the trees because I'd hate to lose them.

I like that Summer makes everyone a bit more casual.  Shorts and flip flops are the norm.  Suits are gone.  Well, that's not totally true.  The state capitol was wall to wall lobbyist suits a few weeks ago.  All anonymous grey with bright red power ties...  But my friends, my people are in shorts and flip flops and lightweight ball caps.  Sunglasses become really important.   And I like that the heat wave gives me an excuse to try different Riesling wines.  I like the dry Rieslings, they're refreshing after a day of.....well....kicking around town trying hard to look productive.

Selena.  35mm Zeiss Lens.

I've done a good amount of work already this Summer and I guess another reason I dug up these images was to see what the Zeiss lenses look like.  When you are finishing an assignment you've been working on you've seen all the images too much in too short a time.  You're in and out of Lightroom and burning DVD's and all that and you really don't have time to just sit with the pictures and decide what it is you like and what it is that you don't like about them.

It seems like every job I've done recently, and especially the stuff I've shot for myself, I've been shooting with my little collection of Zeiss lenses.  And it's nice to go back and look at older stuff like this and compare it side by side with stuff I shot a few days ago.  I've also been looking at stuff I shot with Canon lenses and even Nikon stuff.  And I've come to the same conclusion I always do.....

Selena.  35mm Zeiss.

All the cameras we have at our disposal are very good these days and the difference between a Zeiss 85 and a Canon 85 and a Nikon 85 is like trying to define the difference between three good beers.  They may taste different but there's no good, better, best.  It's a matter of taste.  They all get the job done.  

Once I stop the lenses down to f4 or f5.6 they are, for all intents and my purposes, identical.  Even the slower, cheaper ones.  So much of what we buy is vanity.  Or self delusion.  Or the ubiquitous search for that talisman of optical power that may (in our dreams) confer some of its power to you or me.

Selena.  35mm Zeiss.

I really have come to understand that 90% of success is showing up.  The other 10% is asking for what you need.  That doesn't leave a lot of space for the influence of "great glass."

Selena.  35mm Zeiss.

Lenses trump cameras.  Lighting trumps lenses.  Gesture trumps lighting.  A good idea, well executed wins the hand.

Selena.  85mm Zeiss Planar.

Photographers as a group seem obsessed with whatever is next.  It could be the look of HDR.  It could be the anti-camera fashion of shooting everything with iPhones.  It can be prodigious post processing.  But in the end if the subject matter and the idea are boring your audience will soon discover that what you've done is create a costume for an idea that might be better savored without the embellishment.  Without the little paper umbrella.

Otherwise we'd have nothing but "manifesto" art.  And while that's great for MFA candidates to talk and write about it's about as satisfying staring into a funhouse mirror.  

If the subject and the idea are great you could probably make a good image with even.......a Samsung phone.  Ring, ring.  Your camera is calling.  You might want to answer that.