Small sensor systems. Practical commercial tools? Why not?

Corporate Executive volunteering at Central Texas Non-Profit Agency.  

Nikon V1.  30-110mm lens.  ISO 1600.  ©2011 Kirk Tuck

Love it.  One of the discussions I've been following is on an Olympus forum, and guy named "Marty" asked recently if a small sensor camera system, like a Pen EP3 or similar camera system, could be the sole camera for a photographer.  I'm going to say that, if you were a journalist or a newspaper or editorial photographer, you could do so with aplomb.  

The image above was part of a reportage coverage ( meaning: catch "it" if you can because we're not pausing or setting anything up. And we're not going to repeat anything ) of a locally headquartered, executive leadership team donating their time and energy (and no little amount of equipment) to a very worthy, non-profit organization.  In the past I would have used some flash bouncing off the ceiling to get the color balance right and to fill in shadows.  Last year I would have used a Canon 5D mk2 with fast lenses to get shots like this and I would have used fast ISO's so I could get enough depth of field to keep parts of the frame sharp.

This year I took along the Canon 5D mk2 and an assortment of Zeiss single focal length prime lenses and it was my intention to shoot the assignment with the full frame camera.  But I also took along the Nikon V1 and the lenses. I started shooting casually with the Nikon and I never stopped.

What I ended up with is an image that's slightly noisier than it would have been had I shot the same frame with the Canon. But I also ended up with a camera that could shoot silently, and quickly, and with incredible depth of field, given the angle of view.  It helped me keep the executive in focus, while he was in motion, and also held focus on the computer products on which they were working.

Because I have lots of legacy photography baggage to deal with, accumulated from the last twenty years, I was incredibly nervous about making the decision to use the smaller camera.  But in retrospect it was just right.  Do you know why?  Because all of the use will be in situations that don't require a film-based print focus.  And by that I mean that I knew full well that the images were headed to two media: newsprint and the web.  We didn't need to make 16x20 inch presentation prints or posters.  We wouldn't be running the images as double trucks in a glossy magazine.  We'd be incorporating small files into a web site and we'd be sending out images, sized to 6x9 inches @ 300 dpi for splatter onto newsprint.  Porous, gain-y newsprint.  And the Nikon V1 files could deliver all the quality, and more, needed in that application.

A younger photographer wouldn't have thought twice.  After all, they've pretty much grown up knowing that their targets don't require the level of quality that was required when the world thought of the magazine page as the gold standard.  They know that the web only needs so many pixels.  And that downsizing the files or printing in a newspaper hides the difference in high ISO performance.  Handily. 

We stick with a lot of assumptions out of habit.  And some of those assumptions can be self defeating.  I caught myself the other day processing 21 megapixel files in 16 bit depth in photoshop and making meticulous corrections in a number of parameters.  And then I remembered that the client was looking for 8 bit, srgb files, sized to 640 pixels, on the long side, for their website.

As professional image providers we can sometimes be hampered by how we did things in "the old days."  It pays to pay attention to now.  In this regard I tend to learn a lot from younger photographers.  The way they edit.  The way they post process.  And even the way they market.

These days the need for big files is less frequent.  It's good to know how to do things when "no compromise" is the plan of the day. Or when the client wants a poster campaign.  But it's also good to know when you can deliver, and prosper, from getting stuff done on a smaller scale. With agile and discreet tools.

I'm learning to stop telling art directors how we used to do all our still life work with 4x5 inch view cameras and transparency film.  Now I'm happy to use a much smaller format because it's so much easier to keep everything in focus.  And move quickly.  And process quickly.   The craft is changing and clinging to a life raft from the past is probably a poor strategy for continued financial health.  Quick, crisp and immediate might actually be the best strategy for a client who knows exactly where the images are heading. You just have to decide that you're ready to shift.

Staying relevant means constantly changing.  Not necessarily just your style but also your production  and your delivery, and your outlook.  Just a thought as we anticipate 36 megapixel cameras from Canon and Nikon....any day.  Does your client care?  Should they?

The Nikon V1 and the Micro Four Thirds, and the smaller cameras like the Fuji x10 are speaking a different language.  Are you fluent or are you still trying to sell a solution you are comfortable with and which your client may not need or want?

One of my absolute favorites from 2010. As an antidote to my last post.

8.14.2010

Are you showing off your skill or are you joining the conversation about art?

   This is a desperately bad photograph.  It's blurry.  It's not sharp.  The shadows are blocked up. The white on the headlight/handlebars is burning out to white.  It's too tightly cropped.  It's one of my favorites.....  Rome.  1994.

There's always some way to technically improve a photograph.  I was jarred into thinking about the difference between the joyful discovery of beauty and/or truth via a camera, and the hard work of compulsively honing both equipment and technique in the pursuit of perfecting the recording process of capturing a photograph.

I say "jarred" because I seem to have forgotten, almost entirely, the time I spent in the retail audio business back in the 1970's.  For me it was a way of making some extra cash to spend on dates while pursuing a degree of some kind from the University of Texas at Austin.  For everyone else around me;  customers and fellow employees, audio was a passion.  And, if you read carefully you'll see that I wrote "audio"----not "music".

You see,  the pursuit of perfct audio has nothing at all to do with music other than the fact that recorded music is used to show off the clarity, richness and noise free fidelity of the sound created by the machines.  Sound familiar?

So, this morning I had coffee with an "audiophile" and he was telling me about a new turntable and tone arm.  He sold off a world renowned "reference" turntable in the every escalating compuslion to squeeze even more "transparency" and accuracy from his collection of long playing records (LP's).  Vinyl, of course.

We spoke for a good while about audio and I still don't know what genres of music he enjoys or who his favorite artists are.  We never got around to talking about music.  He did mention that the current "state of the art" home audio system currently costs around half a million dollars.  We also reminisced about a zany friend of mine, also an audiophile, who was so obsessed that dreaded "low frequency, vibration induced rumble" might be affecting the ultimate sonic performance of his turntable (this was in the late 1970's) that he cut thru the floor of his "pier and beam" house,  poured a reinforced concrete pillar that reached down to bedrock, and mounted his machine on that.  Then he surrounded the whole assembly in an insulated closet. His next task was to tackle the obvious problem of convection currents......

Surely the emotional need for the illusion of perfection has its roots in the human need to quantify and qualify the parameters of an experience while ignoring the experience itself.  After the series of reviews I recently wrote on the Leica M9, the 35mm Summilux, and the Canon 7D,  I got the usual e-mails (never comments) that pointed out ways that I could improve my technique, adding various suggestions for cameras and lenses of even greater performance and generally took me to task for not providing charts and graphs....as though the experience of handling the camera has become meaningless.  As though the image itself, and the clear path to its acquisition, was secondary to squeezing the ultimate technical juice from whatever image I might be able to capture.  All assumed that I was avidly looking for specification driven and measurable perfection.  I generally am not.  I'm pleased if anything at all comes out......  Usually it's my human approach and my timing that are the limiting factors, never really the equipment.

In music a good musician might appreciate a great piano or violin but the interpretation of the music is all that ultimately matters.  (My tattered LP's of Pablo Casals, Bach Suites for Solo Cello readily attest to my belief that the artistic rendition beats quality of recording every day of the week).

I'm beginning to understand that the pursuit of an idea vs the pursuit of technical prowess is the dividing line between artists and the great unwashed.  Not between pro and non-pro.  There are a ton of pro's who are fixated by the process and don't have much to say.  There are many non-pro artists making good and valid art with any old camera they can get their hands on.  The quality of the equipment is wildly secondary to the well thought idea behind an image.

I guess the universe was trying to punish me for even suggesting that various cameras might make you a better photographer.  I've tried to write about the holistic experience of using various lenses and cameras but someone did point out to me lately that "all the lenses I review are 'devastatingly, breathtakingly, rivetingly' sharp and wonderful.  But if you read between the lines maybe what I've been saying all along is that all this equipment is pretty damn good if you use it in the service of your vision.....

The universe can be cruel.  Perhaps it is just random and chaotic....

At any rate I had coffee in the afternoon with an friend and his acquaintance.  The acquaintance asked me about getting a photographic education at one of the three main local schools of higher education here in Austin.  I described all three programs to him.  (I feel competent to do so since I've been on the advisory board of one program for four years,  I taught in another program and am a frequent guest lecturer still, and the third program is headed by a friend....)

First up is Austin Community College and I described the 2 year associate's program as a "blue collar" curriculum.  Which to me means,  "Teach me how to make money with photography by showing me how everything works.  And the steps required to do business."  (My use of "blue collar" is not intended to be at all perjorative!!!!  It's a really good program).  They'll teach you how to set your camera, how to use lights, how to compose and shoot, as well as all the steps you'll need to know in order to have an efficient and knowledgeable PhotoShop workflow.  But they won't teach you how to do art.  They won't teach you "Why" to shoot.

They assume you had a reason, an angle or a vision that you likely wanted to pursue in the first place. Or that you (misguidedly) thought commercial photography might be a high profit business opportunity.

The second program, the school in the middle, for all intents and purposes, is a private four year college named, St. Edwards University.  It's four year curriculum teaches the basic nuts and bolts.  Enough to provide you the tools to move forward in the service of your artistic vision.  Bu they also teach art history, and critical theory behind photography, bolstered by a traditional and vital liberal arts education. They help you hone a philosophical point of view as it relates to creating photographic art.

They assume that you were motivated to be a photographer in order to communicate an aesthetic, an idea or a way of seeing that deeply resonates within your psyche.  They give you the tools to dig out the vision intact.  They deliver the rudimentary practical tools you'll need in order to get your points and styles across.  But they assume you DO have a point.  Or at least a point of view.

The third school is a major university, my alma mater and home of my first teaching job,  The University of Texas at Austin.  Their four year, fine arts curriculum is nearly devoid of technical hand holding and almost totally consumed by aesthetics, art theory, artistic voice and expression.  They assume that you are able to read your camera's owner's manual and that you get the rudiments of a subject (photographic technique) that you've chosen as your university major at least competently  mastered.  They teach the "why" and assume the "how" is a given.....or something you should pursue on  your own.  And let's face it,  photography in the age of digital is hardly complicated.  There are only four or five camera parameters that are essential for image creation...... and now we all have litte TV sets on the backs of the cameras that iteratively feedback information to us on our progress.  You can experiment day and night pretty much for free.  How complex could it be?

All three programs assume you are coming into the mix because you have something you feel compelled to offer to the "discussion".  (And by discussion I mean in the context of the world of art.  Or commerce).  None assume that technical mastery of your camera is an end goal.

But as I spoke to the acquaintance of the friend  it became clear to me that he considered the valuable part of education to be the technical mastery.  He  deflected the higher values of the pursuit.  He consistently devalued the creative impulse as it related to direct transmission of ideas and gave value to the output of the machines and their ultimate transparency as a product of ever more technically advanced tools.

The desire to gain proficiency in something that can be quantified "sharper than",  "highest acutance",  "more accurate" color,  x degrees faster, etc.  He saw art as something to conquer, a medium solely in which to actively display his proficiency.

And it became so clear to me over the course of the conversation that  obsessing over process, workflow and technical proficiency were the surest signs that people with these priorities would not make art.  Were not capable of making art.  Copying its trappings, yes.  But a clear physical creation of their own visual voice?  No.

Well...........sorry.  There's no guarantee anyone will be able to make meaningful art.  Art which tells us what it is like to be human.  And there's no fast track to becoming good at the intangible parts of the photographic process.

But in the end the only things that really do matter are the absolutely intangible properties.  In a photo:  The story.  The narrative.  The rapport.  The message.  The feel.  The vibe.  And the point of view.

And all of the technical candy won't do squat to fix a poorly imagined or poorly seen photograph.

My bottom line message for anyone looking to spend some money and time on a photographic education?  If you don't have a passion, a message, a voice.....a visual thing you want badly to show to other people because you think it's important or beautiful or disturbing......You'll be wasting your time.  As an artist.

I'm going to be pre-emptive here and state that none of this means you shouldn't buy a camera and have a great time using it and making photographs that you enjoy, regardless of how far you want to push your vision.  Cameras and the taking of photos have no greater or lesser value than doing puzzles, collecting stuff, skateboarding or any one of a thousand popular pastimes.  I take family photos and they are not intended to be art (though I'd love it if they were) and I shoot lots and lots of commercial images that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, art.  But I do it because it supports my intention to do art in my personal work.  Seeing, exploring and, most important for me,  sitting in front of people, sharing a moment and capturing an expression that can be translated as the shared transmission of a human experience is the essence of photography for me.  The more I know about you the more I come to know about me.

What started all this rant?  The revelation that some people don't truly understand the passion to do art and instead use the medium as a way of showing off their chops.... I might have over reacted but maybe not...

My top gear of the year. The stuff I bought that made my photographs more fun and some of my images better.

I know a lot of writer/photographers end the year with columns on their favorite gear but it's almost irresistable.  I narrowed my list radically and came up with a top camera based on the following criteria:  The camera had to bring a smile to my face when I put it in my hand to shoot.  The images had to be wonderful and outrageously beautiful within the context of their class and price.  The camera had to do more than just be a really nice camera with good feel; it had to bring something extra to the table.  And because I tend to use my cameras a lot and spend time with them, it had to be well designed, visually.

I thought I'd narrowed everything down to one camera.  For me that would be the Olympus PEN E-P3

.  And my reasons are weighted to both the way I like to shoot as well as the collection of legacy lenses I have sitting in the "Olympus" drawer in my studio.  The "extra" thing that the Olympus EP3 brings to the table is the ability to use my beloved, manual focus Pen lenses with few limitations (I know that the Panasonics have the same capability, and that's good because if Olympus goes away as a result of their board's financial chicanery I won't be left high and dry.  It's just that I haven't liked the look and feel of the Panasonic line as much as I do the jet age styling and wonderful VF2 finder of the Oly camp...).

Here's my quick summary of why I like the EP3 so much.  1.  Absolutely wonderful to hold in my small to average sized hands.  (If you are a massive bruin of a photographer your mileage will definitely vary... by miles.  If you are a smaller person you will adore the Pens.  I think.  I know my wife does.  It's the only camera line she currently shoots with).  2.  Unlike all you old, crank, curmudgeon guys who will "give up their optical viewfinders when they pry your cold dead fingers off the shutter button..." I have to admit that, for most stuff, I like the working methodology of using a good EVF better than using an OVF.  When I'm working with one of my Pen FT (older) lenses I can see the effects of the changing aperture in the finder as well as changes made by changing color balance, filters and other settings.  It's wonderful to see exactly what effect I'll get when I commit and push the shutter button.  It's also wonderful to be able to do a quick review with the camera at my eye.

I worked with a Leica M9 recently and loved the optical finder in that rangefinder camera but I've come to the conclusion that I can no longer afford to be a digital Leica shooter.  I'd rather adapt the M lenses that I still have to the mirrorless cameras, going forward.  If the professional market changes I might reconsider but...for most of the uses now I'll take the convenience and customization of the Pens, coupled with whatever esoteric lens I might need hooked onto the front with one of the ubiquitous adapters.

The Pen EP3 is good with batteries and also let's me shoot in whatever format (aspect ratio) I want.  And if you've read my stuff for any length of time you know I have a deep and abiding love for shooting portraits within the formalist constructs of the square.  While most of my use of the EP3 is with my older manual focus Pen FT lenses I have played around with the AF lenses (both single focal length and zooms) and am happy enough with the quick, crisp autofocus.  Finally, the camera is customizable to the extreme.  I am happy to be the kind of photographer that uses the camera with 90 % of the settings in the same place all the time.  The only things I routinely change are ISO, metering patterns, aspect ratios and color temperatures and all of those can be accessed by the Super Control Panel on the main LCD.  

The camera is agile, beautiful, well made and puts out wonderful images.  While it gets noisy at 1600 and beyond the files at 800 and under are great.  Added benefits are all the new single focal length lenses coming into the system space.  Of special note are the 12mm and the 45mm Oly lenses and the 25mm Leica/Panasonic.  This is the way a system should be and this is all the camera most people would need for tons of different tasks.  Olympic sports or NFL shooter?  You already know what you need and don't need my two cents worth.  The targets for this camera are experienced photographer who shoot art, landscapes, portraits, street work, etc. with a measured pace and deep concentration.  Or with a light hand and a quick eye.  Don't start your studio portrait business with this camera but when you become successful in it then reward yourself with one of these for the sheer pleasure of shooting.

But don't dismiss ergonomics.  Make sure you have the same fit as I do for maximum enjoyment.  Try one in your hands before you buy it.  I love the smaller systems and have ever since I took the EP2 and some lenses to West Texas back in 2009.  (It's somewhere in the blog.  Search for "Marfa" to see more images.)

So, if I were starting from scratch with a Pen, how would I configure my system?  Easy enough, I'd do the "holy trinity" of primes.  The 12mm is easy since there's no competition in the focal length.  I'd choose the new Leica 25 1.4 over the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 because I like a longer focal length, love the Leica optics and might use the 1.4 aperture from time to time.  I round out the system with the 45mm 1.8 Oly and then backfill with longer lenses as needed.  All done.  Nice system.

But just as soon as I had my mind made up to make the Olympus Pen EP3 my personal best camera of the year I started playing in earnest with the new Nikon Series One.  This threw everything up into the air like a three year old with Pick-Up-Sticks.  

So I'm declaring a tie.  If I could only have one the nod would go to the Olympus if only because if the ability to hang just about any lens made off the front of the camera.  With the right combination of adapters I could even use my Hasselblad lenses on it.  But the Nikon 1 V1 seems to be more of a closed loop system to me.  And that lack of having to make decisions beyond which of the three (four, if you count the zany video lens) lenses to put on the front when you head out the door is part of the system's charm to me.

Yes.  The Nikon sensor is tiny compared to the m4:3rds sensor size.  Double yes.  It's miniscule compared to a full frame sensor.  Many dedicated buttons and knobs are missing.  This camera won't win the "knobs-per-square-inch" contest (KPSI) against anything but a tyro cam.  But, I love the 1950's Soviet inspired industrial design of the V1 body.  I love the bright and accurate EVF and so far, the files that come barreling out of this thing are as good as what I get from the EP3.  Here's what it does better:

1. Total silence mode. (courtrooms, theater, under cover work, spy cam, and wedding ceremony friendly).  2.  Faster than anything in the universe frame rate. (Not really faster than anything in the universe but you'd be hard pressed to beat 10, 30 or 60 FPS in just about any other camera).  You will never miss the decisive sequence again.  Shooting your kid's soccer match? 10 fps and be there.  3.  The VR or IS or whatever we're calling Nikon's implementation of image stabilization is profoundly good.  And I'll admit that I like it better when it's in the lens because you can actually see the effect in the finder.  I've shot at 1/2 second and gotten good results.  It's just important to understand that it can't freeze subject motion, only the coffee induced tremors of your own hands.  And it does that very, very well.

The lenses are well done and sharp and, suprise! The camera does ISO 1600 as well as the m4:3rd's cameras.  Maybe a tiny bit better.  The high ISO performance so blows away that from big SLR's of just a generation or two earlier that it seems yet another proof of Moore's Law.  I know, I know, all you old, cranky and grumpy curmudgeons will jump in and denounce the fact that, even in raw, the Nikon is applying noise reduction.  Well we modern and courageous cutting edge photographers don't care because the files look better than most of the stuff I try to run through noise reduction on my own.  You'll just have to get with the times or shoot with a more "traditional" camera.

But the bottom line of why I like the Nikon V1 is this,  the combination of high speed, fast AF, intergalactically incomparable IS and natty good looks just makes the combination more fun to shoot than almost anything else out there.  In good light the files are superb.  In bad light the files are still in the hunt.  And with recent price drops you can just about cobble together a system for around $1,000.

Not meant to compete directly with entry level DSLRs it's a camera for someone who wants sure, fast performance in a smaller, simpler package.  And it does this well.

Now, here's the disclaimer.  These systems are designed and implemented at this point in their evolution to serve only one market well.  (This is my opinion and may not reflect what the manufacturers had in mind).  This market is nerdy/cool experienced photographers who already own a full bore DSLR system like a Canon 5Dmk2 or a Nikon D3 or something of that ilk, and a bag of hyper sharp, pixel peeper glass, who want to keep buying new stuff to keep the adrenaline hit going.  The smaller system is purely an adjunct for those frequent times when the raw cubic inches of the big gear is either socially, physically or temprementally untenable.  Heading out to the pool to race and to snap some fun images.  That's perfect for this type of gear.  Or, invited wedding guest, NOT the official photographer, but can't bear to be without a decent picture taking machine.  Under your Armani sports coat, just in case you see something cool on your way to a nice dinner.  Any time your spouse looks at you and says, "You're not planning on bringing that giant camera bag filled with crap to the recital, are you?" And you realize that, maybe less is more.  Or just for those days, after a week of shooting professionally with eight pounds of lens and pro camera body in your hands, when you wake up and think: "minimalism.  that sounds good."

Honesty:  While I often fantasize about giving up all the Canon 1D series cameras, and the Hasselblads and the L lenses and the 5Dmk2's and just getting a small system for my work, like: 2 Pen EP3's, the "holy trinity" and a few bits and pieces like a longer zoom and an M mount adapter for a few other choice optics, I'm dragged back by the kind of job I did last week where high resolution and very narrow DOF were the main creative technical parameters in the service of our creative approach to a good paying advertising job.  As I've said, if you are a professional or a traditional and committed amateur you need to think of all these smaller systems as adjuncts, for now.  Their time will come.  For many it might already be here.  For me?  Some higher speed lenses and a few better interfaces for studio flash triggering need to come first.  

Acknowledging craziness:  The crazy thing is that I can't decide (with any regularity) between the Swiss Army Knife flexibility of the beautifully designed EP3 and the stoic high speed performance of the "collective" camera (Nikon).  So I bought both.  Why not?  They're both incredible video production cameras as well.  More on that in the new year.

When I had the idea to write about my favorite new cameras of the year I thought I would also throw in the lens that made me re-think lenses.  Preamble.  I've owned the Canon 85mm 1.2 when it first came out for the EOS film cameras and it was very, very nice and very, very slow.  I also owned the Nikon 85mm 1.4 AF when I owned that system.  But the 85mm that slapped me in the face, kissed me and then demanded I buy it was the Carl Zeiss 85mm 1.4 ZE.  It's amazing and it's sharper than people give it credit for.  It has some focus shift as you stop down so you either have to focus stopped down or focus with your live view camera when you are close up and personal, and wide open.  Used correctly the center 2/3rds, even at 2, 2.5, 2.8 and 3.5 are wickedly sharp.  By f4 it's beyond sharp, if you've focused correctly.  We've got split image rangefinder screens in the 5D2 and the 1D cameras so it's not that hard to nail.  But I'm only describing my experiences with the CZ 85 as a way of introduction into the system of good optics.  I like the warmth and the look of the Carl Zeiss better than the other two brands I mentioned.  It's probably a personal opinion but it just seems to put more depth and weight into the images.  Once I developed an interest in the Zeiss product for Canon I started looking at more and more of the offerings.  I bought the 50mm 1.4 and while it's nowhere as good as the late model Summilux or Summicrons I had when I was shooting R series Leicas it's a hell of a lot better than the Canon 50mm 1.4......if you learn to focus it correctly.  After the 50mm I bought the 35mm f2 after reading Lloyd Chambers comments on that optic and he's right.  It's amazingly sharp. 

This last Summer I was heading out of town to shoot interior architecture in a very high end country club some investors built in the middle of "nowhere" Texas.  I don't shoot architecture very often because I have a friend I usually recommends who does it much better than I ever will.  But the client wanted me to shoot it because we had a track record and an ongoing business relationship and....I could use the cash.  

I was packing up the Canon 20mm and the 28mm and a few other optics when the Zeiss rep called and asked me if I'd like to test out the Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 Distagon T* ZE .  I did.  It was good but not great.  Then my architecture specialist friend looked at the front of the lens and immediately found a big nasty, dirty spot right near the center.  As he expertly cleaned the lens he suggested that my first trial was void and that the lens deserved a second sortie.  This time, being careful to keep the lens clean, I was initiated into the circle of people (very small) who've actually used a nearly perfect 21mm lens on a DSLR.  It was breathtaking.  And the clients I was shooting for could see an immediate and profound difference.  When I compared it with the Canon I assumed that the Zeiss would win, hands down, with both lenses wide open but I also assumed that both would even out around f8.  But while the Canon got marginally better in the middle and somewhat better in the corners the Zeiss lens was already better at f4 than the Canon had a prayer of becoming, even at f8.  

The 21mm is amazingly sharp, and, when cleaned, flare is absent.  At f5.6 the corners and the center are as near to perfect as I can imagine.  In fact, the only fault with the lens is the purchase price of around $1800.  But you only need to buy it once.   For all of these reasons I felt that I had to include the 21mm as my "lens of the year."   

The funnest gadget I've gotten in 2011 is the Kindle Fire

.  It's not as productive as an iPad.  You won't be writing a novel on it or doing your taxes with it.  The screen's not as big and the software is a bit primitive when compared to the unsurpassed market leader....but....if you think of it in a different way it's a $200 bargain.  I use it to read books, to check and send e-mail and to casually show people images.  For all these things it works great.  If I lose it all the content (less the photos) exists in Amazon's cloud and will come pre-installed when I order a replacement.  The screen is good and the size is pretty much perfect.  I read an old James Bond book in my dimly lit living room last night and the screen was perfect.  I prefer my original Kindle for bright light reading environments but I amazed at the values of the Fire.  Just amazing how far technology has come.  And it's fun to read that we're buying the product at less than Amazon's cost of parts and construction.  Recommended for those who just can't bring themselves to buy an iPad.  For whatever reason.  (My reason?  The iPad is too close in performance, size and usability to the ever growing stack of small 13 inch MacBook Pros that proliferate around the house and studio.  But the laptops do more, faster and better.)  The Kindle Fire   didn't necessarily make my actual photography better this year but it made showing new images more fun.

Finally, in the category of newly "re-acquired" gear is the ever morphing collection of Hasselblad film cameras that came into the studio in the middle of the Summer.  My favorite is the 501CM and the standard 80mm pictured above.  I don't think I'll shoot tons and tons of film with the camera but it reminds me that there is value in slowing down, thinking about what I'm shooting and tackling it with really focused intention.  I walked through a gray and smoky downtown yesterday on my way to meet a friend for coffee and I carried the Hblad combo above.  I found 8 shots that would work just right on black and white film.  In a square.  I shot a total of 14 frames.  I was stopped by three curious photographers.  It was fun.  I put it in as my film camera of the year.  And really, film is far from "dead" it's just that film and digital are becoming two different disciplines.  More about that in the new year.

A break in our usual programming for a commercial announcement.

Yes. I am an opinionated curmudgeon at times and you don't always agree with me.  But I've worked hard to put up over 800 articles that are at least tangential to the art/craft that binds us all together here: Photography.  Like most freelance photographers in our modern milieu I have to wear several hats to keep the home fires stoked, keep sustenance on the table and afford running shoes for our in-house cross country runner.  I do this in a fragmented and multi-threaded way that requires me to be passably good at several things and to mix them all together at once.  It's not enough to write about concepts and trends and favorite cameras without some "proofs of concept."  Namely, photographs. I write the articles and I'm also the VSL staff photographer.  I spend a lot of time chasing new and existing clients because I forgot to sign up for the trust fund.  I also make money by writing books about photography and that's where this commercial announcement is headed.  If you would like to support the VSL blog it would be great if you would consider clicking on the links below and ordering one, two, three, four or all five of the books I've written.  You'll get the usual hefty discount off the cover price and what I hope you'll think are valuable books.  I'll get a commission from Amazon (that won't cost you a cent) and I'll get a royalty for each book sold from my publisher.  

Now,  if you are the marketing director of a multinational (or national, or even local) business that uses photography and you've already purchased the books in the past, please consider hiring me for your next project.  I promise to do a really nice job for you. :-)

I've also tagged on three books from Texas based photographers who are all good friends and wonderful photographers.  Michael O'Brien's book, On Hard Ground, sold out in a little over five months but you can pre-order now to be sure and get a copy from the next printing, which is already in progress.  My LED book is also at the printedrs and I'll let you know when we get close.  It's generating lots of interest and I've had numerous requests for review copies from magazines and large, photo oriented websites.  It seems that using LED panels for production lighting is now coming on to everyone's radar.  In a big way.

That's it for my glancing commercial message.  Help move VSL forward if you can.  If you can't, or don't want to don't worry, the content is free and you are always welcome here.  Happy Holidays from the "management."

My Lighting Book

My Location Lighting Book

My Studio Book

The Business Book

The New LED Book

I also wanted to throw in links to my two favorite cameras of the year:  The Nikon V1 and the Olympus EP3.  I bought both, with cold hard cash, and have no regrets about either purchase.  Both are great "system" carry anywhere cameras.  You might want one for the holidays....

Thanks for your support.  Kirk

The Work Print.

This was a test print that didn't get washed very well.  It was rescued from the trash and re-washed and I love the way it looks.  It's naturally, chemically and physically distressed.  It didn't happen randomly.  It happened over time.  


I like stuff that's part of the thought process.  When we process on the computer we rarely save the interim steps.  With prints they are all interim steps because, if we like the actual image enough, we're always trying to reprint it to get everything just right.  We never get there and that's part of the joy and challenge of the process....

Portraits and space.

When the days of large studios for every working photographer came to an end it changed my style of doing portraits.  I always liked the look of long lenses for portraits and even longer distances between the subject and the background.  The further back from a subject that I could put the background meant two things:  1.  I could keep all the unwanted light off the background and I could light it as a totally separate plane.  And, 2.  I could place just about any surface or texture in the background and be able to render it totally out of focus if I wanted to.

My last "real" studio was in a music warehouse in east Austin with a shooting space that was sixty five feet deep.  I shot many of my portraits with a 250mm lens on a medium format camera and routinely placed the background 25 or 30 feet back from my sitter.  This gives you an awesome control over the intensity and depth of your shadow areas and goes a long way toward creating drama in a photograph.   Now, when I'm scouting locations I'm always looking for the longest unencumbered space I can find.

My dream studio would have 24 foot ceilings and a shooting space that's 30 feet wide by 100 feet deep. I'd paint the ceiling matte black and the floor a neutral, battleship grey.  I'd leave the walls white so I don't go crazy but I'd make sure I had lots and lots of black drape to put over them as needed.  Then I'd spend all my time trying to do portraits like the one above.  And that would make me pretty happy.

Hope the holidays are coming along well for you.  Keep in mind that not everyone does well with holidays and give them some extra space or some extra love.  Whichever they need.  And if you can swing it, consider setting up a simple, temporary studio in your home for the holidays.  It's so rare for families to come together and it might be nice to get some small group shots and individual portraits.  Maybe even print them out and give em away.  You'll find that people love portraits more than they think....

I turned in my last job this morning and returned all the props.  I had my first afternoon totally free from work today.  I swam at noon with my master's team, had lunch at the vegan bar at Whole Foods and strolled around town with both the Nikon V1 and the Olympus EP3 stuck into a new, little Lowepro Sling bag.  Comfy.  The Pen for high speed lenses and the Nikon for the zooms.  Not a bad way to decompress.  Cappuccino at Caffe Medici on 2nd Street and Congress Ave. and then back home to nap on the couch with the dog.  Happiness is a warm dog.

Prints. Sharing. Archiving.

Lou.  Printed on Oriental Seagull Warm Tone Paper.  From a 35mm negative shot in a Contax RTS 3 camera with an 85mm Zeiss Planar lens.  

Back in the hallowed days of yore we needed to share the images we made with our friends, clients and collaborators.  But we did not have a thing called the "internet" that was useful in any way to artists of the time because simply loading a scanned image (if we'd had scanners that could do great file from negatives.....) would have taken forever because we used a process called, "dial up."  A one meg file might take hours and hours to upload.  And where would we have uploaded it too?  There was no Flickr or Shutterfly or Piccasa.  Nothing.  

Put it on our website?  Pre-1996 very few of us actually had websites.  Very few.  

No, we shared in a quaint and inefficient way back then.  We made paper prints.  

Here was the process:  We'd photograph our model or subject in the studio and when we finished and had exchanged pleasantries and promised each other that we'd do this again "real soon" we parted company and I would get down to the other 95% of the work.  First I'd go into the darkroom (we called it that because it really was dark.  It had to be dark for the processes to work) and I would carefully open a canister of film  and even more carefully wind it on a metal reel.  If you didn't do it just right the film would stick together in the developer and become ruined.  I'd do this with four rolls of film at a time.  Once the film was on the reels I'd stick it into a metal developer tank and make sure the light tight lid was firmly on top.

I'd mix developer and water and then, with a baggie of ice cubes or a baggies of microwaved rocks I'd raise of lower the temperature of the solution to 68 degrees (f), figure out the time needed for development in the style I wanted and then pour the solution into the tank.  Suppose my process called for eight minutes.  I had to pay attention the whole eight minutes because the tank would need to be agitated every 30 seconds. (If you were using a highly dilute solution of Rodinal for better edge effects you might only agitate every minute but your developing times would be longer).  

As soon as the timer hit the right time I'd open a little cap on the top of the lid, quickly pour out the developer solution and replace it with a solution of glacial acetic acid and water.  This was called stop bath and would stop the developer activity.  A thirty second time period, with constant agitation was usually just right.  Then I would dump that solution and replace it with a fixer solution, which also required manual agitation.  Joy of joys.  Once the film was fixed I would open the tank and rinse out the fixer with fresh water.  Then the film would go into a series of wash steps intermixed with a dunk into a fixer neutralizing solution.  Once washed (an hour?) the film would be dipped into a dilute solution of a Kodak product called, Photo Flo, which helped the film dry without water spots.  The wet film would be carefully squeegied between my fingers and placed to dry overnight in a dust free cabinet.  The film would just hang there like bats...

If I shot more than four rolls I would need to repeat the whole process until all the film was developed.  

In the morning I'd carefully take down the dry film, cut it into strips of five negatives each and put it into archival pages.  We did this both for storage and because it was a great was to hold the film in place for making contact sheets.  I won't bored you with the construction of contact sheets but it was just like printmaking and it gave me a thumbnail of each image on the roll.  Very helpful for editing.

Once I'd selected an image I would put the negative in the enlarger.  But I need to step back and say that each film format used a different negative carrier that would hold the film flat and in place in the enlarger.  It was the fashion (for about 50 years) to cut out the negative carrier so you could see the edges of the film.  This was to ensure that the negative carrier didn't encroach into the "live" film area so you could print all the detail on the negative.  It was also an artistic affectation which was, when used, meant to show that you had not cropped any part of the negative in your print making.  Attesting to the fact that you had "seen" the final image at the time of capture.

The carriers generally did not come filed out and this meant that each practitioner would sit around in the evening after buying his new enlarger or just a new negative carrier and file out the sides.  Too much and the negative waffled in the gate.  Not enough and the carrier covered a small portion of the frame.

So the line you see around the image of Lou is raw light shining through the clear edge of the film negative.

To print you needed three basic chemical solutions.  Developer, stop bath and fixer.  You also needed a print washer.  Especially in the days before RC coated papers which required shorter wash times.  I won't bore you with the techniques for getting exactly the exposure you wanted or the manual and largely unrepeatable process of burning and dodging but it was a skill acquired by hard experience and there was never an "undo" command.

All the actual work was done under red lights that limited your ability to see the actual tones you were producing on the paper.  You were, for some intents, flying blind.  After developing (with agitation) and stop bathing (with agitation) and fixing (with agitation) you would then wash the print very, very thoroughly.  Think hours.  And I won't go into selenium toning because the pleasures and pains of the process are still vivid to me in an uncomfortable way....

Once you made your double weight, fiber paper prints and they turned out alright (ask me about "dry down") you would need to dry them face down, on clean screens, overnight and then, if you wanted them to live life flat you might also need to smash them between pieces of smooth art board in a hot dry mount press.

Now you were ready to show off your work.  Well, not quite.  No matter how much you tried to eliminate dust it found its way to the negative and became little white spots on my prints.  Just like dust on your camera sensors now.  With "modern" technology we can just clone those nasty little suckers but, back then, we had to do yet another time consuming process.  One that, if you haven't done your own darkroom work you won't even believe.....

We took little bottles of dyes and tiny thin brushes and actually "spotted" our prints.  It was painstaking and took remarkable patience and hand skills.  And since every paper emulsion had a different color tone or color cast, and since the spot toner had to match the emulsion color, you had to become an expert at mixing colors for the papers you'd use.  Think months of practice and hours per print for perfection (rarely fully achieved).

Now you could put them in a box, use a land line telephone to call a friend and meet for coffee so you could show them your prints.  And given how difficult the whole process is we were very careful to keep our coffee cups far way from the box of prints.  We might even wash our hands before sifting through the two dimensional treasures.  And when our friend, client or collaborator had finished looking at the prints we'd carefully put them back into the box where they would wait for the next showing.

That's the reason I scanned and put the results of an actual print on the top of this post.  I thought it would make a nice decoration for the short process history lesson.

As you can see photography was a very intensive process for the people who wanted total control.  Certainly I could have taken my film to a commercial lab but what most people didn't know was that black and white development was/is a very sensitive process and different times, different developers and even different agitation methods produced remarkably different negatives that looked and printed differently.  We didn't do our own stuff because we wanted to, we did it because we felt we HAD to.

I know, I know you spent a whole weekend calibrating your new monitor and making profiles for your printer.  Now you're a craftsman.  Well, maybe so but the next time you hear a photographer talk about how frustrating it is to have learned so many techniques and skills only to find them out of fashion in the current milieu you will understand how arduous the processes once were.

And if a photographer from the 1930's read this he'd laugh and call me a "wuss" for not mixing my own chemicals from scratch or having to depend on super fast, ISO 100 films.  And he, in turn, would be called a "dandy" by practitioners from the 1890's for not handcoating his own glass plates.... and so on.

The real bottom line is that the only important thing is the vision....and yet, the process, to a large degree, determines the vision of each generation and that's what we are constantly building on.

Digital has done much to make photography accessible to an enormously great percentage of the population who, in earlier times, would not have been able to afford either the time or the materials needed to undertake imaging as a hobby.  That they can do so now at the touch of a button is a two edged sword.  Efforts are always more focused the more skin you have in the game.

Anyway, that's how it was and is still done in the traditional film space.  Just thought the younger photographers might find it interesting.  The hardest part was and is finding the right models and figuring out what it is you want to say.

Well...the weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful...

Paris.  Late October.  Contax S2.  135mm Sonnar 2.8. Tri-X film.

It's turned colder in Austin.  The city is bustling with holiday shopping and the frantic last minute attempts to finish out business and bill it before the calendar comes to a close.  I've been working on a wonderful job shooting books as three dimensional products and then shooting the same books in lifestyle situations.  Books with gardeners.  Books in coffee shops.  Books in art galleries.  Books in your new home.

I've been working with one camera and one lens for the lifestyle images.  That would be the the Canon 1ds mk2 combined with the Zeiss 85mm 1.4.  We shoot all of it at ISO 160 and if there's not very much light we go "old school."  We use a tripod.  Amazing, the quality you can get if you do your techniques correctly.  The client was looking for narrow depth of field so we spent two days shooting at f2.5 to f3.5.  Occasionally we'd get all nutty and shoot at f4.  I've spent most of the day working with the files.  The client chose 38 for their national campaign.  The images are amazing.  A core central area of extreme sharpness that slides smoothing to totally ambiguous and romantic areas of soft focus in the backgrounds.  The side of an iPad in razor sharp relief and three feet away the arm and hand of a beautiful woman almost abstractly out of focus.

In the studio we were aiming for absolute sharpness.  I used a Canon 5Dmk2 on a sandbagged tripod and shot the books with big LED panels.  You could see every nuance of light and reflection.  Making corrections to optimize the light was child's play compared to the same set ups using flash. (Believe me, I spent two years and shot thousands of books for a national bookseller, using flash and large format film back in the late 1980's).

I used the camera's live view settings to set up the shots and to counter any mirror slap.  My lens of choice was the 90mm Tamron 2.8 SP macro.  Amazingly sharp.  And it doesn't fall apart at f16 like other optics.  I used a remote trigger to make it all go without ever having touch the camera.  The hard part was determining the correct distribution of focus over the book.

After I shot all the books I went into Photoshop and carefully, using the pen tool, created clipping paths for the art director.  We did 70 books over the weekend.  We clipped and retouched irregularities in the book's surface and did stringent color corrections.  In fact, I had the books right next to my work station just to compare color.

The client is happy and I'm happy.  It was the last job of the year.  I'll deliver the final images on DVD's tomorrow.  The year is wrapping up.  It's been so much better, business-wise, that the three that proceeded it.  Billings are up.  The quality of jobs is up and my satisfaction with the jobs is commensurately higher.

On a personal note it's been a good year.  I'm swimming with people like Lance Armstrong and Olympians, Shaun Jordan and Aaron Peirsol.  I can't keep up with them but I'm doing the same workouts.  I've finished all the work on my best book yet, the one on LED lights.  The more I use the LEDs the more convinced I am that they WILL become the dominant light source for working photographers and videographers.  My book will (hopefully) be the very first one to market with in depth information about using the lights to their highest value.  Belinda is busy working on many design projects for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Ben is excelling in academics and holding his own in cross country.  In fact, his school swept all categories in their district this year for all levels of cross country.

I could complain about things that are not perfect but it would be churlish and silly.  Life is wonderful and I hope it's the same for you as well.  

My plans for the rest of the year are to shoot as many fun images as I can and to write about photography here on the blog.  I hope you'll come along for the ride.  Can't promise it will all be sweetness and light but if you've been here for a while I don't think you'd expect that....

Best, Kirk

The final blog about phones here at VSL. That would be "mobile" phones...

No photo for this one....


Can we talk frankly for just a minute? Thanks. I wrote a thing last week about iPhoneography and I pissed off everyone on the web. And I finally figured out why. As human beings we love the idea of freedom. We love the idea of individuality and charting our own destiny. It's hard to admit that we sometimes sabotage ourselves. The biggest problem for alcoholics and substance addicts, when it comes to kicking the bad habits, is being able to admit that they have a problem in the first place. Most addicts get angry whenever someone points out how their addiction is ruining their lives and the lives of everyone around them. They lash out. They write angry comments to bloggers.

I was temporarily blind to the big problem. Sure. The cameras in current phones are great. And there's no reason not to use them for lots of different imaging stuff. I guess I'm just hard wired to think that when we go from easy usability to cult status that something's out of kilter. But that's just me. If you can only afford "just a phone" or "just a camera" I think most people probably will take the phone. Especially if it has a camera inside. But most people living in the U.S. never really have to make that choice. Dump your cable or satellite TV fees and you can have....pretty much anything you want.

The camera caught my attention and I lashed out. But it was the wrong target. The reality is that it's cellphones themselves that really piss me off. iPhone-ography was just collateral damage for my rage. But why do I hate (yes HATE) cellphones?

Because of everyone else. Not you and me, of course. We're perfect gentlemen and ladies with our communications gear. No, I hate that woman who just drove her Chevy Suburban through the red light because she was glued to her phone. ("Sorry!" kids in the cross walk. Good dodging skills. Nobody got hurt). And I'm pissed because I met a famous photographer for lunch and, out of the hour we spent together 45 minutes of it was on the cellphone giving directions to his assistant or taking random calls. And I'm pissed because I went to see a movie and it seemed like half the people in the audience popped on their cellphones to text. And instead of the singular glow of the big screen we also had the multiple glow of dozens of hot little light spots in our field of vision. Very, very distracting. And I'm pissed off that I had to wait twice as long for a cup of coffee at Starbucks because the very important man in front of me was....on his cellphone having an inane conversation while the coffee person was trying to use mime and mental telepathy to divine the nature of his order. And I'm pissed off at the cop who ran into the stopped car in front of him because.....he was on his cell phone. And lets not forget the five or six people who literally ran into me at the grocery store while keeping their heads down, texting on their cellphones. And how about the guy who pretty much ruined our night out recently at a very nice restaurant who took a call and talked really loud about his real estate deal at the table next to ours? I was very impressed by his business acumen. But I was trying to use the dark side of the force to choke him with his own steak. And then there's the couple who came to see the one man play in a small, intimate theater, who actually took a phone call in the middle of the play. Oh, and let's not forget the people on Congress Ave. last week. One was so engaged in her cellphone call that she walked out in to traffic when the light was red and caused an accident as cars braked to prevent killing her. But let's also not forget the meeting last month where three "under thirties" and one "over fifty" had their cellphones in their laps so they could read texts while we discussed pre-production. That didn't hurt anyone but all three called, individually, to "get caught up" because they were "pre-occupied" during the meeting. That was an extra hour out of my life.

Of course we've all heard that talking on a cellphone while driving is as distracting and dangerous as having two or three beers before driving. And we know that thousands of people in the U.S. were killed in the last two years by people who lost control because they were.....talking on their cellphones or texting.

So, back to the idea of freedom. We live in a free country and that means you can do stupid stuff to yourself. You can go massively into debt and spend a third of your life working just to service debt you'll never be able to pay off. You can eat yourself to death. You can buy stupid stuff. And you can enslave yourself to your gadgets. Remember the days before cellphones? Your mind was clear and you understood your purpose in whatever moment you were in. There were so few distractions you were able to complete complex tasks in one sitting. You had real friends and you cherished your time together. You were able to look into your lover's eyes without thinking about who might be texting you.....right now.

I watch people and I've read studies. The average person with a smart phone seems to check for text messages every seven minutes. More often if they are not with friends. The average user seems to call "just to check in" with someone every fifteen to seventeen minutes.

"As long as they're not hurting anyone...." Oh, but they are. Men are earning less than ever before. Why? Because they can't multi-task. And women complain about not having enough time in the day. Why? Because studies show they are, on average, consuming 240.9 minutes of media a day. Yes. A day. That's roughly six hours, divided between their computers (non-work related) their iPads and their smart phones. This is time away from family and work. Time spent not exercising. Time not photographing or dancing or painting. Time not spent reading to their children. Time not being productive. Time not earning taxable income. And, recent studies show doctors getting much more involved in practicing malpractice by cellphone chatting during surgery. Pilots talking instead of paying attention to flight control. Police texting while driving. And construction workers texting and talking in unsafe areas. So, no one is getting hurt? Not so, according to statistics.

And I'm mad that we, as a culture, want to give people yet another reason to keep a cellphone in their chubby little hands by encouraging them to use it as a camera. It's already boyfriend, girlfriend, family substitute, time waster, traffic catalyst and social retardant. What more damage can we inflict with a few cubic inches of plastic and circuitry?

So, to me the whole idea of encouraging yet another use of the cellphone (as in photography) is like adding extra nicotine to cigarettes or extra alcohol to your can of hard lemonade. We are enabling a flood of addictive behavior like never before. In fact, if you can disable the voice, e-mail and text capabilities of cellphones and use them just as cameras then.....I'm all for it.

Does the application of technique, de facto, make everything it touches "art"?

Gary Winogrand taught photography at UT when I was a student there.  He would stroll the main drag looking for interesting people to photograph nearly everyday.  He would also stop into the stereo (home electronics) shop where I worked part time to listen to the exciting audio gear that was hitting the market at the time.  He generally carried two old, banged up Leica M's with him.  A 28mm lens on one and a 35mm or 50mm on the other.

He is widely quoted as saying that he "photographed things to see how they would look photographed."  Which implies that photography itself changes things and it does so, sometimes, in interesting ways.  But he didn't manipulate his images in post processing.  He presented straight black and white prints to his audience so they could share the slice of the past that he captured and hence, owned.

He was a voracious shooter and left behind thousands and thousands of rolls of film that were shot but undeveloped.  And more film that had been developed by not contact printed and examined.  He was obviously in a hurry to shoot as much as he could.

In a very real sense we've made an enormous aesthetic and theoretical schism from the photography of Gary's time to present work.  A current and powerful aspect of photography is the routine post processing and random manipulation of images we take.  Since many of the applied effects are supplied in a random fashion by the software used I wonder if the thoughtful practice of either previsualizing or conceptualizing the final effect is still in play.  Or whether the idea of "satori" and instant recognition at the time of capture is still relevant.

But, at the core, the question really is this.  Does the random and yet nearly statistical homogenous application of effects (canned or otherwise)  bring value to the core image or, through its overuse does the same manipulation actually devalue the image?

The analogy that pops into my mind is hot sauce.  Lots of people like the tang and bite of good salsa and, taken in moderate quantities it adds a special flavor and spice to regional foods.  But there has become of subset of hot sauce fans who, having burned out their taste buds through egregious overuse, look for hotter and hotter versions of the sauce and take delight in their ability to ingest it without running for a huge glass of water (best to try milk instead).

It almost seems to me that instead of working to find more interesting things to see or more interesting ways to express the things we can already see that we have developed an immunity to subtlety and grace and are on the "hot sauce" search for more and more "heat" in our images.  And we apply liberal canned manipulations like salsa fans dumping more and more habanero sauce over their plate of enchiladas, huevos rancheros or even meatloaf.  At some point the power of the spice and pepper overwhelms the dish we're trying to savor.  The salsa becomes the quest rather than being the adjunct to fine foods.

People move through their lives quickly and I'm guessing that the fragmented quality of modern existence requires more and more stimulus in order to capture attention.  And the preponderance of images also demands that ever more "hot sauce" be applied to make them "burn" and stand out.

At some point we realize that the "wrapper" has taken precedence over the content.  We're buying the shiny aluminum foil and not the chocolate.  I don't have any answers.  I just know that we're heading in a direction where style trumps meaning.  It's nice to be able to perceive intention and direction in content, not just in the wrappers.

I get that every new art form is challenging at first.  But the real question is whether the application of glitter to the canvas really counts...

The joy of ambient light portraits...

...even if the ambient light is well controlled.  We did this portrait of Heidi for book #2.  That's the one about studio lighting.  We (Amy and I) bounced light from the morning sun in the east off a 4x4 foot silver panel sitting ten feet up on a stand outside the studio, in through the bank of west facing windows, thru some soft diffusion and onto Heidi's beautiful face.  A little bit of passive fill to the opposite side, with a piece of white foamcore, and we were done.  Can't do it today.  It's gray and cloudy now.