Lou. ©2012 Kirk Tuck
Click to enlarge....
3.18.2016
When I light stuff for me as an audience it's always with big, soft sources. For this image of Heidi (for book number 2) I used an 82 inch Lastolite umbrella box. No retouching required.
©2011 Kirk Tuck
Just use your boxes high enough to get a tiny bit of shadow under your subject's chin...
click to enlarge....
click to enlarge....
Blue Collar Chic Camera Bags. A discovery made when buying a flush valve at the hardware store...The real bag deal...
But seriously! I've got stuff from Lightware, Tenba, Think Tank, and even Tumi. I've got a Kata rolling case that flips the old saw about "looking so much bigger on the inside." Mine seems capable of shrinking internal space.... All of these equipment cases above were "designed" for photographers but they were also designed to be quick wallet draining devices.
Now, I'll admit that the Think Tank Airport Security Case does roll nicely and it fits in the overhead compartment of any Southwest Airlines plane. I'll have to buy a slightly smaller one for international flights, flights on parsimonious airlines and most of the puddle jumpers. And I'll admit that my big, Pelican cases do a great job protecting gear in the belly of those planes, and more importantly, in the hands of airport baggage handlers but....... All of the stuff listed about can start at $400 and go up.
But the truth of the matter is that most commercial photographers aren't flying that often. Not like we did in the 1990's, or the earlier part of this century. The talent pool spread out and the buyers have much better tools for searching localized markets for talent. No, most of the time our very, very expensive luggage is enjoying local, "domestic" duty with out of town trips coming less frequently. We've also changed the way we shoot and the way we pack and we need bags that go beyond just a bunch of cut-outs for lenses and bodies.
I don't know about you but I'm tired of spending hard earned cash on something with wheels that helps me drag some cameras and a few lights from my car into my client's building and back out again. These bags aren't taking bullets from insurgents, floating away in tsunamis and we're not tossing them out the side doors of jet aircraft. We just need stuff we can cram full of gear and get through the doors with. I just want bags for most stuff that are functional, mostly water and dust resistant and have good, unstructured space inside.
The new bag initiative started when I took a walk through a big box hardware store looking for some pliers, a few monkey wrenches, and a flush valve. I came across the Husky brand tool section and looked at their hand tools. Then I turned around and found myself face to face with the Husky bags. I looked and then I took a second look. Mostly at the prices.
I found a bag that was a good match for the all purpose grip bag I'd purchased at a cinema supply store in Los Angeles. The "film industry" bag was $149. The same basic product from Husky, aimed at working craftsman and construction workers, was priced at a whopping $19.99. When I got back to the studio and compared them I could see that the Husky bag used thicker material and had a shoulder strap that the more expensive bag did not. That bag instantly filled up with XLR cables, cable "cheaters" and audio rigging gear. I've used it out and around and it's perfect.
The next time I was in the hardware store, on some other domestic mission, I went back for another look at the Husky bag inventory. That's when I discovered the "hold-all" in the front position of the image above. Its interior is voluminous and it too comes with a shoulder strap. I had an assignment coming up that required me to shoot portraits on location so I bought it for the princely sum of ......$29.99. On my shoot day I packed in 3 Manfrotto 3373 small light stands stands, with stand adapters, two umbrellas, three battery powered flashes, a set of Cactus radio triggers, Two Olympus OMD EM5-2 cameras and a bevy of small lenses, huddled together in some neoprene bags. Essentially everything I needed for the shoot except for a tripod and a Westcott collapsible soft box for small flashes. The unstructured interior allowed for about 50% more capacity than one of my "pro" luggage options, all the insulation/padding. Was the gear unprotected? Naw, it was riding in the car and then on my shoulder. No pounding included in this project.
With the early success of the first two "investments" in Husky paraphernalia I started gliding by their website, you know, just to look. And that's when I found WHEELED CASES. See the one behind the hold-all.
It's cavernous on the inside and, to all appearances, uses the same extendable handle system as the most expensive cases. I'm using some thin sheets of harder foam as dividers, where needed. The wheels are also 50% bigger so the whole case rolls easier. The exterior material is denser than that used on a Think Tank or Tenba case and holds its shape well. On a recent job I loaded the rolling case with two large Nikon bodies, three lenses, two Panasonic cameras, a laptop, lots of extra batteries, two flashes and a couple of books. I still had ample space to add more.
These bags are made for people who use tools. Like hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers and all kinds of other stuff that I have no real knowledge of. Since they are designed and made for years of daily use they seem to be stout and reliable. I like the heavy duty zippers across the top and I like the fact that the bags have bright red tops. It make them easier to see when they find their way into the backs of closets or dark corners of ballrooms. I also like that they are ultimately unpretentious.
Yes, I was feeling pretty darn smart and just like a guy who's discovered something none of his peers have discovered yet. That was until my cinematographer friend dropped by the house to drop off some gear I'd lent him. The entire back of his SUV as filled with various sized Husky bags and cases."Oh Yeah," he said, "We've been using these in the film industry for years. They're great. And you'd be surprised at how cheap they are..."
Did I forget to mention that the rolling case is about $70? Yeah. $70 buck for a first class rolling case. Sold. Or rather, bought!
Husky, the anti-Billingham. Function versus fashion.
One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and
still one of the best!
I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver
and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable
this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on
workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as
cool places around the U.S.
How to make what we shoot into a cohesive
train of visual thought.
My favorite portrait of photographer, Nick Kelsh.
©2013 Kirk Tuck. NYC.
I met Nick when we worked together at the Photo Expo in New York a few years back. Whenever I look at the photograph I am reminded that, even though I presume to know a lot about portrait lighting, one is never too old or too brilliant to learn something new from a master of the craft.
I despaired when I arrived at the Samsung booth to find the one softbox Samsung had acquired for us to use in our demos was not the 54 x 72 inch one I had requested but a much smaller, 20 x 30 inch model. Not what I had in mind. Not what I had planned for. But then I watched Nick use that modifier closer, and at angles I'd never thought of. He played that little box like Van Cliburn played a Steinway (or a Bosendorfer).
The portraits he made were wonderful.
I played at it after I watched him work and I got it. I loved the fall off. I loved the proximity effects. I had my eyes opened. I got less attached to my preconception of what kind of raw materials I needed to make nice work.
I'm just posting Nick's image to say, "Thank you for the impromptu and unintended workshop!" I'm glad I decided to pay attention.
On another note: The busier Austin gets the less busy it gets. When the city is filled to capacity with SXSW attendees, and in the middle of Spring Break, the city feels full but the actual level of work done by the natives drops to some sub-baseline level. Just like the week between Christmas and New Years. Large swaths of the creative community bag work to go see music, hear about new technology and listen to panels about making movies. People wha aren't interested in the Festival know it's a good time to rent out the house for two weeks and get the hell out of town.
One more weekend of music and then everything goes back to normal. Just letting you know why there are a few more posts than usual here.
Curious if ANY of my VSL blog readers are here at SXSW? Anybody? Let me know if the comments...
We'll arrange something social next week.
ads....
One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and
still one of the best!
I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver
and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable
this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on
workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as
cool places around the U.S.
How to make what we shoot into a cohesive
train of visual thought.
Walking through downtown. Stop and say, "hello." Welcome collaboration. Get nice photographs.
©2016 Kirk Tuck
I know this shot doesn't fit into the usual definition of street photography. It's too close. The man in picture is totally aware of both my presence and my intention. I stopped to say, "hello." I asked permission. Too much of what's done in the name of street photography these days is nothing more than "hit-and-run" photography. Lots of images that pass by on the web show people from the back. Lots more are done surreptitiously, with cameras held out to the side; shooting blind.
While I'm sure those images have their place they don't bring a smile to my face the way street portraits do. It's a different way of working with people and a different way of shooting. We can't always work the way we want to and, I've done my share of anonymous shots, but when I have the time and can get over my innate shyness I find that the images I make, person to person, are the ones that make me happy.
On a totally different note: I've walked through SXSW several times this week and thought I'd give an anecdotal camera inventory appraisal. This year the young, future film makers and working photographers using Sony A7x cameras were a plurality rather than an oddity. I saw dozens of them. Mostly used by still photographers but also a good number of them being pressed into video camera service. Interesting, as the last few years saw Canon with the lion's share of the hipsterama market...
Camera life changes....
Black and White in the West Austin Studio. Just for fun.
©2003 Kirk Tuck.
I had just finished a long day and evening photographing food for a restaurant in the downtown area. I wheeled my gear out the back door of the restaurant and packed my car. I went back in to say, "goodbye." The restaurant was in a U shaped building that was filled with restaurants and bars; the central courtyard area was a popular venue for local bands. I went down to see who was playing and saw "Anna" in the crowd in front of the stage.
During a break in the music I approached "Anna" and her boyfriend and introduced myself. I gave them my card and told them I would like to photograph "Anna" some time. Why? Just because I thought she was beautiful.
A week or two later I heard from them and we arranged a session in my studio. I was shooting with a Rolleiflex SL 6008i at the time. That, and a 150mm Schneider lens. It was a quick shoot. Five or six 12 exposure rolls of black and white film and a few rolls of color negative. We all shook hands and, they left. A brief and singular intersection that led to some good prints for me.
I was so fearless then. Has the world changed or is it me?
Below are a selection of online classes from Craftsy.com. Click the links to go and check them out.
Thanks!
One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and
still one of the best!
I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver
and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable
this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on
workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as
cool places around the U.S.
How to make what we shoot into a cohesive
train of visual thought.
3.17.2016
Breaking in a camera that is new to you. Each camera has a personality, you have to spend time understanding it to make good work with it.
This is a Nikon D810. Widely believed to be the best "all around" DSLR
in the marketplace today. Can I just pick one up and shoot it
and get perfect files right out of the box? Nope.
The web is packed with articles about how to choose a new camera, reviews of the latest camera products, and charts, graphs and infographics about how they perform. But in very few cases are there articles that tell you how to go about breaking in a new camera so that it consistently does what you want it to do.
I'm sure we each have a different approach to getting familiar with the way our cameras operate but I'm equally sure that we're all looking for similar things: Good color. Good exposure. Good focus, Just the right sharpening. Pleasing or accurate tonality.
If there was one universal camera menu, and if changes in that menu effected all cameras in the same ways, we'd only have to figure out one universal camera workflow and then overlay that to all the cameras we shoot with. But, clearly, this is not the way our camera universe works right now. Every maker has their own color palette, their own ideas about what constitutes the right exposure formula and so much more. We all want consistency but sometimes we really have to work at it to get what we want.
I am using the D810 as an example because
3.15.2016
A repost from the earlier days of the Visual Science Lab. Six years ago, January 2010. The anatomy of a wet shoot...
Fun for me to go back and re-read stuff from a while back...
Another image that convinced me the time had arrived to re-appraise one inch sensor cameras. It's a "lab test."
A laboratory in New Jersey. ©2106 Kirk Tuck
I'm pretty sure I'm going overboard with all this "one inch" enthusiasm but please know that I'm not rushing to abandon all other formats or denigrate their use as great imaging tools for photography. I guess I'm sharing this succession of images and stories from my experiences shooting smaller format cameras on real jobs because I am personally so amazed at how well they work in lots of different situations. I believe that the smaller format cameras are important tools to have along on most projects and offer an ease of shooting that, in many cases, is unparalleled.
We all have a prejudice, based on digital camera history, that tells us that all big sensor cameras make better images than all smaller sensor cameras. If you are just measuring noise response at higher ISOs you'd be more or less correct but there is so much more that goes into the success of an image and a lot of it has nothing to do with the noise formula. Even in that arena the one inch sensor cameras I am currently using outperform the noise characteristics of even full frame camera from only a few years ago. I have only to pull up images from the Sony a850, a900 or Canon 1DS mk3 to know that this is true. So, here we are five years down the road from the introduction of the full frame
3.14.2016
Graffiti. Panasonic fz 1000. Austin, Texas.
I think that this week the Wall is a more popular tourist attraction than the state capitol building or Barton Springs Pool.
I shot this a few months back as a first run test of the Panasonic fz 1000, the slightly slanted doppelganger of the Sony RX10 and RX10ii.
It's a fun camera in its own right with a longer lens and a more cavalier build quality. But on the sensor, where it counts, it's just as nice a photographic machine. If Panasonic had only included a headphone jack I might never have leaned back into the Sony camp.....
Both great cameras and, to my mind, the direction photographers and the industry should be going...
One Man Band. A Workable Rig for "Man in the Street" Interviews. Sony+Rode+Beachtek.
I had the idea that I might want to go down to the big SXSW Festival this year and do something a bit different. I've walked around and photographed many times before but at some point the single, untethered image just starts to seem superficial.
This year seems to be the year to go down and make a long video snapshot of the event, as it occurs in the streets, over the course of a few days. I'm a loner by nature and wanted to put together a video shooting rig that I could handle by myself. No army of assistants or producers in tow. No one to hold a big boom microphone or stand around with a notebook, getting names and jotting down timecode.
The camera has to be small and mobile. The microphone should be something that works well in a crowd or on a noisy street. And I should be able to operate it all with very little intervention. Given my current inventory of cameras it seems as though the Sony RX10ii fits the bill nicely, where the camera is concerned.
After a fair amount of research, and some discussion with people who
3.13.2016
Random Shots with Captions. Total non sequiturs. Shot with a Sony RX10-2.
This shop used to sell kitchen supplies. Corkscrews. Dinner Plates. Esoteric Coffee Machines.
They are no longer in business. There is a short term rental for SXSW in there now.
What will go in next month?
Virtual Reality demo while sitting in a pedi-cab, just off 2nd street.
It's all part of the SXSW Interactive Festival.
This giant rhino was being prepared by a team of pyrotechnics pros. He will be featured in a parade down Sixth St. Believe it or not --- he will breath fire!
Pizza. Pizza right now. On Sixth St. No wristband necessary.
It becomes obvious that it is painfully hard. Almost impossible. To look
cool while standing in a big, big line to get into a third rate bar that
smells vaguely of urine, overlayed with floral scented disinfectant spray.
That horrible moment when you find out that your name really isn't on the list....
The first (and only) evidence of political advertising at SXSW.
And this year the badges are so big you can also use them as serving trays.
Yes, I have my phone.
God Bless Willie Nelson. Austin area treasure.
You may be a cool guy at SXSW but this guy is here to remind you that you are still in Texas.
Red Utility Cover.
Blue(ish) Utility Cover.
Greenish Utility Cover.
Yellow Utility Cover.
Purple Utility Cover.
Old Electrical Infrastructure.
Looking Northwest from the Seaholm Center.
It rained all last week. Dank grey skies. No horizon line. A week lost to computer chores and accounting indoors (as opposed to outdoor accounting?). So, after dropping Ben off at some computer conference at SXSW Interactive I headed downtown to just soak in the sunlight and made random, unstructured photographs with my Sony RX10ii.
I brought along a 62mm polarizing filter. Hey, guess what? If you use a polarizer that's not got thin rings you will get "filter-on-the-edges" vignetting at the widest focal length of that particular camera. I saw the first hints of vignetting at 25mm on the Panasonic fz 1000 but the Sony had obvious corner occlusion. Live and learn. Get skinnier polarizers or just use the camera without. At anything over 28mm (equiv) it wasn't an issue.
I was partly invested in finding good SXSW photos and partly invested in getting a good walk done in the sunshine. I succeeded in getting a good walk done. At some point I turned off the camera, slung it over my shoulder and just enjoyed the scenery.
Not everything needs to be photographed.
3.12.2016
Spring time in Austin. A print from the old Leica "R" days.
Winter was more or less non-existent here in Austin this year. The last week has been warm and wet and everywhere you look every plant is blooming, yards are saturated green and our peach tree in the backyard has already bloomed.
The heaters are off at the (outdoor) pool and we're back to applying sunscreen before our noon practices.
The Spring weather always makes me think of photography outside. Not that I don't shoot outside year round, but this is the kind of mild and happy weather which coerces you to spend full days out of the house, just wandering with a camera.
The image above is from a shoot done long ago for a state wide lifestyle magazine. We were shooting models and fashion. It was the middle of the summer and we found a front porch on an older house that gave us shade and relief from the sun. One of our models was on a porch swing resting.
I photographed her with a Leica R8 camera and Leica's 135mm f2.8 lens. I used Astia slide film.
It was just a quiet shot that seemed to sum up the feeling I was having today, embracing Spring.
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