Your favorite shooting destination.

A balmy August day at Barton Springs Pool. Austin, Texas  2008.  sony r1 camera.


So, we're closing in on 200 posts.  Probably get there by the end of the week.  You guys know a lot about me but I know next to nothing about most of you.  I wish we could just sit around at Threadgill's bar or at the Mean Eyed Cat and have a drink and get synced up. But some of you live in India, some in Florida and other spots around the world.  But I think the one thing that gives me insight into other people is to hear where they would go to shoot if they weren't on assignment,  didn't have to pay for the airfare and didn't have to drag their families along.


If you'd like to let me (and 350 or so other people) know about a cool location you could always post it as a comment, appended to this blog.  I'd love to know about places that other people think are cool or powerful.  And I'd especially like to know about places that are fun to shoot.

Let it rip.  Be our Google Earth! (Google Earth is a registered trademark...)

Thanks, Kirk

Why you shouldn't run your life like a business....

image of an actor portraying the famous Louisiana governor, Huey Long, for Zach Scott Theater.  Hasselblad 201f, 150mm 2.8 Zeiss lens.  


When I was young I never thought about money.  There was always enough.  Never too much.  Only rarely did I long for something I couldn't afford.  I was happy chasing beautiful women, eating euphorically great Tex Mex food and sleeping on a futon on the floor of my small downtown studio.  (Now we would call this a "live/work space").  I stayed in school at UT for nearly ten years if you count the teaching jobs.  And I certainly wasn't thinking about the money as I abandoned electrical engineering for English literature and then for photography.

What I was thinking about is how to make photographs.  And why to make photographs.  And how to enjoy my working life.  Even though it seems harder to make money in photography now I know that there is a flip side to that perception.  It may be that now I've had the inertia of hundreds or thousands of people in my life who either tell me directly or thru their actions that making money is vitally important, being a "smart" businessman is vitally important,  that dying rich is mission critical.  And for a moment I started giving in to the inertia.  I started to believe the upscale, white bread vision of the American Dream.

Thankfully, this blog, which generates no real money and sucks down hours of time delivered me a left handed gift in the guise of a reader who suggested that I run my business in a way that makes sense.  He read about the death of my favorite umbrella on yesterday's blog offering and took me to task for not taking an assistant with me everywhere.  No matter what the logistics of a shoot the entourage trumps my comfort and my "working methodology".  He went on to say that my belief in focusing on my portrait subject with all my conscious intention, and not being distracted by other people, and not letting my portrait subject be distracted by other people was "BS".  And I don't think he meant, "Bachelor of Science".  This is not meant to be a spiteful rejoinder to his well intentioned (I assume) post but as a paean to Hunter S. Thompson and the spirit of having fun in your own special way.  All fictional, of course.

So, according to the great, homogenized business plan of universal commercial photography a smart businessman would have an assistant at his side in every shoot.  Ready to lunge for falling light stands and take one for the team, when necessary.  To sweeten the pot I get the unalloyed joy of spending all my waking hours in the presence of said assistant.  They are to provide me chauffeur services when I get all noddy-offy.  And I'm sure I can look forward to hours of lively conversation about all sorts of things that twenty somethings are interested in during the endless dinners, lunches, breakfasts and coffee breaks we'll be taking together.  Sounds worse than dating and I've succeeded in avoiding that particular pleasure for over thirty years now.

But, indeed, this would be a smart business thing to do.  I can picture it now:  Yukio, all dressed in assistant black with tattoos , and I, are heading down farm to market road 123 in north Texas.  Yukio is at the wheel and is a picture of intensity.  The lines on the road whip by like the bullets in the Matrix.  Scenery? Screw the scenery! We're on fire.  I've got an iPhone in one hand and a laptop in the other.  I'm manically calling my clients every five minutes to check in.  When I'm not calling the clients I'm calling suppliers trying to bargain down their pricing to maximize our profit.  I'm on one call when the other phone rings.  It's my broker.  They need an answer right away.  Back to the first phone with my broker on hold and I'm speed dialing my attorney to make sure that the insider information I got from yesterday's client won't land me in hot water if I short a butt load of that client's stock before the closing bell.  We resolve that and I look over at Yukio.  She's in the zone.  We're making good time.  She's holding the Element right at 105 (mph).   At this rate we'll get paid for a travel day and a shooting day all in the same day.  To maximize profit.  Yukio hasn't slept in days.  I keep putting amphetamines in her coffee.  Makes her much more efficient.  And a much faster driver.

West coast should be awake now so I start dialing anyone who will listen to me.  The prices went up on a bunch of stuff I bought last week, some Canon stuff, and I haven't had it shipped to me yet but I'll probably sell it at a profit to some guy in LA who needs it bad and can't find the cool stuff in stock.  Is it wrong for me to screw the whole market and corner needed gear, selling it a week later at a much higher price?  Naw.  Gotta keep moving relentlessly forward.  Like a shark.  Or with Yukio, like a whole school of sharks.

We stop at a small gas station in Armpit, Texas to scrounge up Red Bulls and No Doze.  I notice Yukio shaking violently and think this can't be a good thing.  When she heads to the restroom I start dialing replacement assistants just in case.  Yukio comes back looking refreshed and starts crying when I offer to drive for a while.  She's out cold on an equipment case in the back, seconds later.

I stop a bit later with the intention of running into a Starbuck's for a quad shot latte and I wonder if I should wake Yukio.  Who am I kidding? It's been so long since I've carried my own coffee to the car I wouldn't know how to do it.  And I'm not very good with the lids on top either.

We stop in Texarkana where I've agreed to do an evening shoot in return for a slightly higher fee.  Yukio and I sleep walk through this one.  You gotta hand it to the assisting school the Yuk-ster attended.  She can dive for a falling light stand like no one I've seen.  I have her set up ten or so lights to impress the client and, at the end of the evening when I get bored I randomly knock them over to see just how many Yukio can handle under pressure.  Haven't lost one in months.

My turn to nap in the car while we drive on toward Dallas.  I wake up to find that we're somewhere west of El Paso and the engine is on fire.  I leave it all to Yukio while I sun bathe next to the interstate to build up my reserves of vitamin D.  Don't know how she pulled it off but apparently we've (she's) loaded all of the gear into a minivan that she commandeered at gunpoint and we're racing off to catch up with Dallas. We toss a couple cans of Red Bull to the elderly couple whose minivan we're borrowing so they don't get too dehydrated while walking across the desert.

I'm bored with the music I brought along on my cheap MP3 player (can't buy an iPod.  Not a sound biz decision) and I pout for a few minutes till I remember that I have an assistant in tow and I force her at gunpoint to start singing Beatles tunes for me while I cold call on the phone and look over some spread sheets I got from my business coach.  Real estate, baby.  All counterintuitive.

We make it to our location with minutes to spare and I watch with awe as Yukio loads the equipment cart high.  It would be easier on her if I could make up my mind but, because of the perilous nature of my business I require her to bring all four brands of lights I worship,  and three brands of cameras into each location so I can decide based on the spiritual vibes of the space.  What's six hundred pounds between friends.  No, scratch that.  Between employer and freelance contractor, uncovered by insurance or tax withholding.  Magnanimous photographer that I am I do hold the elevator door so that it doesn't crunch that bag of my favorite lenses.

It's a portrait shot and we've done thousands of these before but for the life of me I just can't make up my mind.  Six lights?  Ten lights?  Double backgrounds?  I leave vague instructions for my assistant and wander off to find the client and some coffee.  My client is a bit concerned because she's sure we discussed the exact lighting set up on the phone and in e-mails.  She even produces drawings of the intended shots which she claims to have sent me weeks ago.  I do what any self-respecting photographer might do.  I blame Yukio.  I dress her down right there in front of client and camera.  She doesn't mind, she knows that every once in a while everyone has to take one for the team.  As long as it's not me.  I gobble down a few Xanax to offset the coffee jitters.  Thank God for chemistry.

I'm on the phone with another client and Yukio is skimming Craig's List looking for a new job when the CEO of the company we're working for comes in.  He's ready to be photographed and he's like a beige bowling ball with a shiny, sweaty complexion.  No problem, Yukio will take care of that in a heartbeat. She's the Swiss Army Knife (TM) of assistants.  Ready to powder a "glistener" in a heartbeat.
Thank God I've got an assistant in the room because I haven't got a clue which direction we're shooting in.  All looks and feels the same to me.  She gets me lined up and ready.  Focuses the camera and sets the exposure.  We shoot.  She stands behind me making faces and twitches, staring at the client to get his attention.  We have a strict rule:  the client should never directly engage the camera.  It's the assistant's duty to distract them into a more natural pose and expression.

Just as we're about to pull off the perfect shot the power in the building goes off.  Not a problem,  the crafty and enterprising Y pulls a contraption that looks like an exercise bike out of one of our cases and sets it up.  On either side of the back wheel is a heavy grey casing that looks a lot like a car generator.  She plugs the power packs into the contraption then gets on the bicycle seat and starts peddling like Lance Armstrong running from the French.  She's sweating buckets but the packs are back up and recycling.  We finish shooting the CEO and as the last frame gets saved to the CF card my assistant falls to the floor, insensate.  She's inarticulate for a while.  Then we dowse her with a bucket of cold water and she comes to.  Just in time,  there's packing to be done and a bucket's worth of cold water to sponge up off the client's floor.

Looking back, we've billed three shooting days and two travel days in the space of two 24 hour days.  I wonder if I could be more efficient with a second assistant.  Seems counter productive but both Madonna and Oprah have larger entourages and they are far wealthier than me.  Seems like it's worth a shot.  Can I keep up this pace?  Will Pfizer and Sandofi keep making interesting chemicals?  Will the coffee run out?

Then,  I wake up with a start from this bad dream and realize that the assistant thing is an acquired taste.  And every photographer has a different comfort zone within which to work.  I don't mind coming early to set up.  I don't mind having dinner alone.  I'm okay handling most stuff. I don't have an iPhone.  I cherish my time writing and thinking.  I think I'll leave things just the way they are.  In the days of digital assistants are for big productions, or complex stuff.

Now,  when  it comes to post processing, Yukio and I handle it so well we've already post processed the stuff we're going to shoot next year.

To bring the whole blog back around to the beginning I have an observation to make:  When I actively think about doing things to make money stuff rarely  works out.  I do my due diligence. I send contracts. I follow up.  But when I focus on money as the reward everything always goes south.  When I enjoy the process or the challenge, when I love what I do, the money rolls in.  The more I desire the less I get.  The less I desire the more I get.  So, by that logic, if I desire nothing I'll get it all.  Whatever.  I just like the feel of a camera in my hand and a project in front of me.

Business note:  The IRS is busy redefining contract workers, employer obligations and YOUR tax obligations to contractors whom they may (almost certainly) classify as regular workers.  They (assistants) do work under your direction, with your tools and all the stuff that serves as a litmus test for who is an employee. If you think that freelance assistants are vital to your business you owe it to yourself to check with an attorney who is very familiar with payroll issues so that you don't wind up getting a big, unintended consequence in the pursuit of photographic business practices from the film days.......

Another day in photography. The death of my original Photek Softlighter...sigh.

nothing to do with today's adventure but continuing in my series of early Rene Zellweger images.  This taken back in 1991 with an EOS-1 camera (the original) and the totally cool but largely overlooked 135mm soft focus lens, also from Canon.  This is a scan from one of my favorite prints but you can see some spots where I neglected to spotone.  Life moves fast.  Spotting moves slow.


Zang.  My alarm clock on my phone starts ringing at 5:45 am.  I am deeply unhappy to ever be up at this hour but for the sake of a good client I persevere.  In the shower I'm thinking about the schedule for the day.  I start out in Texarkana taking a group portrait and then individual portraits.  On this project I'm shooting a formal portrait against a very  fun, light grey (almost metallic) seamless background using a big soft light and a reflector.  Then I take the subject down the hall to a really wonderful library room and use the soft, diffuse light coming through the windows to make an available light, environmental portrait.  I'm using a 100 mm f2 lens for these and I love the soft yet hard look of available light.  Whatever.  The client will have a selection of images both ways of every person we shoot.  I'll set up from 8am till 9am and then spend a half hour trying to do some really nice interior architecture shots.  The company I'm working for has exquisite offices in every city I've been in.  I make it to the offices early and start scouting.  Fun to scout when no one is there as their consciousness doesn't flood the space and skew what I feel when I look at a room.

Funny, but I really think that to be a good portrait photographer you really have to be attuned to a person's emotional energy.  You have to sense the sensitive points to avoid and ferret out the things that bring energy and joy to a sitter.  The more empathetic you are the more you'll be able to distill from the collaborative dance of a portrait sitting.  Some people open right up.  Some require careful handling.  But it's a double edge sword for a photographer because when you are really in tune with other people their thoughts and emotions have a way of impinging on your thoughts and emotions.  An art director in tow changes the energy of a shoot by changing the way you might selection a position within a room.  You have to leave space for their collaboration and this diminishes your insight driven choices by dint of the shared vision and shared responsibility.  Anyway, there was no one in the offices except for me and the housekeeper and I was able to feel my way through the space and try to connect to areas of interest to me.

We start early and finish right before lunch.  I've shot eight gigabytes.  The worst part of every photo shoot is the moment after you've shot the last image because you know that you'll spend the next half hour or so cleaning up, repacking, dragging your gear to the car and repacking the car.  There's an extra layer for me this morning...I have to navigate through road construction and detours and find my way back to Longview, Texas.  Google tells me that it's about two hours and nine minutes of driving time but I disagree.  With the additional construction on the roads it's closer to two hours and forty minutes.

I hit Longview around three pm.  I'll need to eat lunch and find my way to the regional airport before 4pm.  I'm not flying anywhere, I'm doing a bunch of photos of two jets.  I swing into a Whataburger.  Haven't been to one in a couple of years.  Did you know you can get whole wheat buns now?  The burger is okay.  It's just energy at this point.  I get my bearings and, with the help of a local person, find my way to the airport and to the private hanger I need.

The pilots are fun.  We move a Lear jet and a Citation jet around with a cool little tractor thing that's electric.  When we get them positioned just right in relation to each other I work em over with everything from a 20mm equivalent to a 105 equivalent.  Then we bring in the models and have them meeting on the tarmac and then working inside the Citation.  We don't fire up the engines so the plane's AC is not on and the cabin starts to heat up as the sun beats down.  Next up is a shot of four pilots with the planes in the background.  I decide to use my precious Profoto 600b battery powered light with a 60 inch Photek Softlighter 2 umbrella to fill in the guys' faces.  Swear to the photo gods (or at them): it was as calm as a Buddhist Priest on Prozac when I set the light and umbrella up.  I even clamped the strobe box to the stand for ballast.  But the 5 o'clock American Airlines flight taxied past us and I turned around to watch the light and stand rush to kiss the concrete in excruciating slow motion.

And here's what separates the pros from the ams:  I looked over my shoulder at the (potential) death of my favorite light, shrugged my shoulders and said to the client,  "Well, that's why I've got another one in the car."  We continued the shoot and didn't stop to deal with the stricken light until after the last frame was shot and the last model sent on his way.  The bad news?  The Softlighter 2 will have to be retired.  It's bent and bashed.  I'll save the diffuser.  Maybe even the black cover.  But now the back up will move to the number one position and I'll order a new back up when I get back to the studio.  The good news?  The umbrella acted as parachute and shock absorber for the precious light head.  No other damage was done.  Flash tube, pyrex cover and box are all in "like new" condition.  Lesson?  There is no lesson.  Sometimes crap happens and if you want to be in the business you need to know how to deal with it and move on.  And you always need a backup plan.

Once the planes were back in the hanger and the photo gear back in the Element I drove off to find another wonderful hotel in which to rest my weary bones.  By this point I had 12 gigs of data to catalog and back up on multiple drives.  Tomorrow I drive to Dallas (2 hours with the good graces of the travel gods) and stay at the Four Seasons in Las Colinas.  A much needed down day after three fast paced shooting and travel days.  Thurs. we head for the last lap with a full day booked in my client's incredibly modern Dallas offices.  Tomorrow morning I'll wake up in another $100 "Inn" (homogenized across the United States) figure out the "make your own waffle" bar and then move on.  I won't suffer through the weak, light brown coffee because the gods of travel have seen fit to reward me with a Starbucks just a block away.

Before I go to bed tonight I'm going to do a little memorial service to this particular Softlighter 2.  You see, this was my original.  I've had it for over a decade.  We've bonded over many a good and even a few bad assignments.  It's lovingly softened the light on a thousand faces.  It's always been graceful to set up and gracious to take down.  I can't remember when I've ever been as sad about the passing of a piece of gear as I am about this simple umbrella.  That in itself is a testimonial to the power of well thought out products.  Here I hang my head and stop.  Grief forbids me to add any more.

My monday went like clockwork. How's yours?

Didn't Rene Zellweger have fantastic legs when she was a student at UT?

I always thought so but this image from my San Marcos Street studio has nothing to do with today's blog.  It's just here to visually anchor the post......

I crawled out of bed this morning at a quarter till six in the morning.  Might be normal for a Dell Executive by not for this pampered Austin photographer.  But that was the core issue.  I wasn't in Austin, I was out on the road for a photo shoot.  So I spent the night in the Wingate by Wyndham hotel in exciting, downtown Longview, Texas.  I hit the lobby at 6 for a little breakfast and I knew we were close to Louisiana because biscuits and gravy were front and center on the complimentary breakfast "buffet".  I was on the road by 6:30 and in greater Daingerfield by 7:30.

The plan was to get a bunch of great exterior images of the client's building.  Actually, two buildings.  But when I got there the rain beat me to it.  It was pouring down so I sat in the car and listened to NPR.  What else could I do?  The rain lightened up and the client's people started arriving around 8:30 so I loaded up the cart and headed in to scout and set up.

Three things right off the bat.  Set up a seamless background and lighting set up for formal portraits that would match the lighting and the look that we established in the Austin offices on Weds.  We did that with the Elinchrom gear in the main conference room.  60 inch Softlighter as the main light and, for kicks, an Alien Bees ringlight on the background.  Fill light via a big reflector opposite the flash.  One room set and ready.  Gitzo tripod with camera and 100mm lens.

Second set up.  Our first shot of the day would be eleven people in one group.  I found a great stairway and a great place to put a light so the Profoto 600b with a Photek Softlighter went there.  I needed a little more light for the background behind the group so I pulled an old Metz 54 MZ3 out of the case and slapped on a radio trigger.  Same frequency as the one on the Profoto.  I set up a second Gitzo and tested the set up with the second camera.  On to the next task:

I needed to find a space in which to do environmental portraits with natural light.  I found what I was looking for in the firm's library.  Lots of space, a big skylight and some really pretty window light.  I marked the floor with tape so I'd know where to put the tripod when I broke down the set up for the group shot and moved gear around.  If we'd been in Austin I probably would have brought a third tripod and a third camera system so I could keep everything in place.  But out here I working naked.  Only two complete set ups and two camera systems.

So here's how the day was planned:  scout and get interior architecture shots from 8:00-9:00.  Set up three locations fromm 9-10.  Shoot the group photo at 10 am.  Then, for the rest of the day I'd take each designated person and shoot a formal portrait in the conference room, walk them upstairs to the library and take a cool environmental portrait and then release the subject, unharmed, back into the wild.

We got a little ahead, which was all for the best since the person who scheduled the day for me forgot to leave a bit of time for lunch.  At the end of the day I'd shot about 600 frames and logged in over 20 gigs of data. An hour to break it all down and then in the car to drive onward to Texarkana.  I didn't make a hotel reservation so when I hit the town I drove to the client's location and then looked around for a decent hospitality property close by.  I always bargain for rates when I walk in the door.  I struck gold at the Holiday Inn Express.  

Back to the routine.  Download the cards to the hard drive on the laptop.  Back em up to a portable, external hard drive.  Burn a DVD.  Rinse and repeat.  Walked across the hotel parking lot for what I thought would be a lonely dinner at an Outback Steakhouse only to be seated next to a couple of attorneys that I knew from my neighborhood in Austin.  What a small world we live in.  

Back here to work on a presentation for the Austin Photo Expo.  These things always sneak up on me.  Back in the hotel I was typing and had the TV on in the background.  Saw a commercial for adopting dogs from the shelter and immediately became incredibly homesick for my rescue dog, Tulip.  

Laid out new clothes, repacked, took the batteries off the charger and brushed my teeth.  Tomorrow I get up, do a shorter version of the same thing I did today and then head back to Longview to get photos of people working on a private jet.  Wish I had a private jet but that's one of the things you give up when you decide to become a photographer.  Not even Annie Leibovitz has a private jet.......

Tomorrow I'll spend another night in Longview and then head to Dallas for the last leg of the project.  So far the client is great, the files are nice and the deposit check (shame on you if you don't ask for one) has cleared the bank.  Life is good.

Nightfall finds me three hundred and twenty miles from home....

No photo!  Sorry bout that.

I'm on the second leg of a multi-day assignment for a law firm that has offices in cities around Texas.  We started on Thurs. shooting portraits and interior architecture in Austin.  Last night I loaded up the Honda Element (photo car) with a full complement of gear minus cameras (I won't leave them in the car overnight even in our relatively safe neighborhood because I never want to tempt fate.....).  This morning Belinda and I met our friends at Sweetish Hill Bakery, as we always do on Sunday mornings, for coffee and pastries.  Then around noon I kissed Belinda goodbye and headed on the first leg of today's travel: Right up Mopac Expressway to the north Austin Costco to buy yet another small, portable USB hard drive.  This time the one on sale was a 320 gig HP drive.  It's sleek, it's black....it's cheap.

I always do double back ups when I'm out shooting on the road.  I've got a little case full of DVD's and my laptop as well.  It's easier if I put a copy of all the raw files on the new hard drive, that way, when I get back home I can plug it into the flamethrowing Mac of universal supremacy and get to work on the raw files.

I picked up a sandwich at the bakery so I put the car on autopilot and didn't stop until I got to Kilgore, Texas.  This is north east Texas and the highway "features" a series of small towns with speed limit signs sprinkled behind generous tree boughs and state troopers sprinkled just a little further on.....

When traveling the back roads the gold standard for bathrooms and now coffee is McDonald's.  Say what you will about corporate food, they actually have a latte that's at least as good as Starbuck's (and more consistent, shop to shop) and their bathrooms are always clean.  I asked the young and very clueless girl behind the counter if they could make a decaf latte and she stared into space for a few seconds and then said, "I don't think so but we can put a flavor in it."  Serves me right for trying to weenie out and drink decaf when I already had quite a good caf-buzz going on.  Just to the edge of anxiety but not quite.

After Kilgore ( home of the Rangerettes who were immortalized by Elliott Erwitt in the 1970's ) I decided I was smarter than everyone else.  Much to my disadvantage ( hubris always comes at a price).  The office manager of the Austin branch of the firm I am shooting for told me several times=  "There are no hotels in Daingerfield, Texas.  Of course (and having never been there myself) I blew right through Longview, Texas in the Element and drove the thirty extra miles to Dangerfield.  Guess what?  There are no hotels in Daingerfield.  What do you know?  Counted myself dim as I turned the ultra high performance beast around and headed back to Longview.

No Ritz Carlton's or Four Seasons in Longview but that's okay because after last year I'm not taking any chances with expenses or cash flow.  So, how do you choose between the Fairfield Inn, The Wingate by Wyndham,  The Comfort Inn Suites and the La Quinta?  I chose the Wingate because it had the most lighting in the parking lot and the price was okay.  What part of training to be a professional photographer covered which hotels to stay in?  For that matter I didn't see seven hours of straight thru driving in the job description either.  At least the room is big and the wi-fi and breakfast is included.

Tomorrow I'll be down for breakfast at 6 am, hit the road by 6:30 am and be in Daingerfield again by 7:30 for some exterior shots.  We're planning to wrap by 5 pm and I'll be in Texarkana for the next shoot by 7:00 pm.  We're shooting for four days this week and we wrap in Dallas on Thurs.  then it's a straight shot back down from Dallas ( four and a half hours if no one flips an SUV on IH35 in the rain this time....)  to Austin.

I'm using the Elinchrom system as my main lighting.  Using a 60 inch Photek Softlighter as a main light and a circular reflector for fill.  Another head in a small softbox, at low power on the background.  I'm also doing an environmental portrait of each person.  In Austin we were blessed with a big window and perfect, soft light from the cloudy day.  I hope I find something similar tomorrow.

Finally,  I'm recharging the batteries for everything out of habit.  I feel kind of dumb.  I didn't bring anything new to read and I am a read-aholic.  Guess I'll either read the hotel directory or I'll grab my already dog-eared copy of Lighting Equipment for Digital Photographers out of the car and re-read it for the fifth time........

Nighty-night.

Kirk's Top Ten List of Great Lighting Gear.

I photograph lots of different subjects and most of them require lighting that's designed to work best for a specific situation.  Fast and furious PR and event documentation?  Anything that can't be done with available light probably gets lit with a battery powered flash.  Shallow DOF portraits in controlled environments?  Usually big silks and hot lights.  Portraits in red hot Austin sunlight?  Gotta be battery pack driven flashes.  Big studio shots?  You can pretty much count on a couple of electronic flash packs and an assortment of heads.  I have a reputation of being fickle about gear.  I buy new cameras regularly.

I finally broke down and asked a psychiatrist friend who knows me very well, why I seem to churn through cameras like a stock broker through my SEP.  He had an interesting take.  His interpretation was that methodical engineer types run the numbers and shop carefully.  They check all the boxes after establishing rational parameters.  Then they use the gear over and over again in precisely the same way.  This ensures predictable results.  On the other hand, the very nature of being an artist is to master  a tool and a style, followed by the evolution to the next style and set of parameters.  The next step.  In photography, for better or worse, we are wedded to our tools.  They shape our vision.  A new tool means a change in vision, a shift in point of view=  A new way of looking at things.  This sounds right to me.  And it's not a judgment thing.  It may be why artists master more ways of looking at things but die starving in trailer parks.   The constant search and evolution will never equal the production line for productivity and ongoing profitability.

But for the most part the artist doesn't care.  To do the same thing over and over again would be the death of the artist's soul and he might as well give up and do something entirely different than walk the same circular path over and over again.

So this guy has multiple degrees in the science of the mind and I'm ready to believe him.  While I churn through cameras in an endless search for the next step I am not nearly so fickle about lights.  I tend to buy them and use them for a long, long time.  And maybe that's because I can change the shape, quality and the texture of the lights at my will.  That being said, I do want to play with high quality gear because I don't want to become wedded to the necessity of maintenance.  Fixing stuff sucks.  It should just work.

Cameras are critical but somewhat interchangeable.  Lights are the bedrock of our craft.

Without any further inspection into my weathered psyche I'd like to talk about ten pieces of equipment that I love and would not like to create without, even if I change cameras as often as most people change their underwear.

In no particular order:

1.  When I'm shooting a large set or scene in full sun and I need my light to match or overpower the sun's pervasive power I reach for my favorite big battery light, the Elinchrom RX AS pack with attendant flash head.  It's a highly efficient system with a big ass battery that cranks out 1100 watt seconds 250 times in a row before moaning and groaning.  If you need to put a light in a softbox and go outside to shoot, this is the light that makes the slow sync speeds in most cameras worthwhile.
Check it out here:

2.  When I'm moving quickly outside, without the benefit of an assistant (happens more and more these days in the times of "no budget")  I grab the Profoto 600b battery powered flash system with it's cute, black flash head.  It's half the weight of the Elincrhom, takes only one head, has a smaller battery but......it's totally reliable and I can easily carry it in a backpack.  At "only" 600 watt seconds, I might have to use the flash and softbox combination a bit closer than I would with the Elinchrom but I can still get the job done.  Newsflash for anyone who already owns one:  Profoto just came out with a Lithium battery version and the batteries are backwardly compatible.  Cuts down on the weight, adds additional flashes per charge and cuts the recycle times.  If I could only own one flash I'd have tough time deciding between the two.

Check it out here:

3.  When I need a smaller flash I turn to the Metz line.  I've owned Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Vivitar flashes but for my money the little 48 afi flashes are the best price/performance ratio light on the market.  I bought one for my Olympus stuff and have been impressed by the performance.  It's not the top of the line.  Those are too big.  This is the next size down.  It still takes four double "a's" and since it is slightly less powerful it actually recycles quicker.  The quality of the light is great and, at $229 they are a bargain compared to the manufacturer's flashes.  I also use an older 54 MZ3 in a totally manual configuration (without a dedicated shoe, only the standard middle pin shoe.) it works great in both automatic and power ratio settings.  TTL is mostly overrated.  Works okay if you have time to chimp every shot but if you get your chops down and learn to gauge distances then manual is hands down more reliable.

Check out this version for Canon users:

4.  If you shoot portraits you're going to need to soften the light coming from your flash.  There are thousands of products on the market to do this but the physics are basic.  The bigger the total square inches of light emitting or reflecting surface area the softer the light will be.  You can spend over a thousand dollars on an Octabank, hundreds of dollars on softboxes of countless configurations or you can just get over it all and get the most cost effective and beautiful light source out there, the Photek 60 inch Softlighter Two umbrella.  It's basically just a well made 60 inch umbrella with a white translucent "sock" that fits over the front of the umbrella and flash head to make the whole thing a combination softbox/umbrella.  It's much quicker to set up and will only cost you around $80.  Talking attention to detail:  Two different shaft sizes to interface with various flash heads.  If you have European lights like the Profoto or the Elinchrome you'll want/need the thinner shaft.  Super good bargain/must have.  I keep two in the bag in case on overly zealous assistant destroys one.

Here's a peek:

5.  If you do this for any amount of time you'll find that some of the photographers from the 1950's and 1960's had a lot of stuff figured out that vanished from the scene and would be missed if people really knew what they were doing.  You're pretty smart so you probably realize that getting people posed correctly for portraits is tough and it would be nice, for a seated portrait, if the subject had somewhere to rest their arms or elbows.  In the old days every photographer who did nice portraits had a posing table.  Very sensible.  It anchors subjects in place and make the shoot more comfortable for them.  Get one. Make sure it's solid. 

6.  If you are going to put someone at a table it just makes sense to put them on a stool that can be adjusted.  Everyone should be able to sit with  their feet on the ground.  Or maybe one foot on the ground and the other on an apple crate.  A pneumatic stool is just the ticket.  Mine comes from one of the background companies like Denny and is solid and comfortable.  I think just about any good, adjustable stool should work.  This one looks good:

7.  My lighting life would be empty and sad if I couldn't use my big scrim.  A big scrim is just a translucent fabric on a frame.  It diffuses the light.  And the bigger the better, within reason.  You still  have to be able to both afford and transport the thing.  That's why I like collapsibles like the inexpensive one from PhotoFlex.  It's 74 by 74 inches, folders down to half that length for packing and has very few parts to break.  You'll need some adjustable clamps to hook the panel up to a couple light stands but I'll let you research those.......

Sorry, couldn't find an illustration.......

8.  When I work in the studio I really love to listen to music.  Not loud.  Just in the background.  It's calming and helps everyone focus on the job at hand.  I've had stuff hooked up to my computer before but I didn't like that solution.  I wanted something for my workspace that sounds great but doesn't take up too much space.  Believe me,  I've been through a lot of systems over the years.  Got tired of powered subwoofers and all the arcane digital stuff.  I finally settled on a Tivoli Stereo Radio system and a 120 gig iPod.  Who would need anything more.  If you are a rap enthusiast you'll probably want something that will play louder........

I swear by this radio.  It sounds absolutely wonderful.  I bought one in the middle of the great depression of 2009 when the price actually dropped to $139.95.  But back then you could also get a brand new Panasonic L1 with the Leica zoom for around $650........

Everything was on sale then.  Damn, should have bought a factory.

9.  If you work in the studio just skip the light stands and buy a C-stand (Century Stand) from Matthews or Manfrotto.  Super heavy duty and the arm does double duty as a small, strong light boom.  You can get them in black or in Chrome.  I've got both.  I like the look of the black one and in the studio you don't have as many problems with reflections back into the photo.  But the chrome ones are nice working in the Texas sun as they don't absorb heat the same way......you choose.

10.  Finally,  who can get any work done without Foamcore?  This stuff is just essential.  It's the gold standard as a reflector or light blocker and it's the only thing on my list that costs about what morning coffee for me and an assistant costs.  I keep all the scraps.  The small pieces are great for still life set ups.  The large chunks as portrait reflectors and the full sheets, taped together, as 4 foot by 6 foot "V" panels.  Great stuff to bounce a light into.

We cover this kind of stuff in the new book.  If you are interested in lighting, especially in different ways than you have in the past, it might be a handy resource.  I worked hard on the book.  It's pretty darn good.

I'd love to hear some feedback from people who've read the book.  This is one I'll likely want to revise every few years to update new products and new techniques.  It's a world of constant change.

Heading to east Texas tomorrow to photograph some really nice attorneys.  I'm thinking about all this stuff while I'm packing up the Honda Element......

Zero to 60 in one week. Camera craziness is part of the bargain.

It's like a dragon woke up and started breathing fire.  It's been a busy week.  I've shot theater and video and portraits and interior architecture and I'm booked up with an out-of-town shoot all next week.  I'm leaving on Sunday, around lunch time and won't be back until late in the week.  Got my magazine lifestyle shot done and sent out just in time.

Book # four, my book about all kinds of lighting equipment for digital photographers is selling well on Amazon.com and has already gotten its first five star review.  Thank you Park Street.  The book is a sleeper.  It starts out with a little history of lighting and works its way up to the fun stuff. I've gotten some really nice feedback from trusted readers and I love the reproduction quality of the images inside. I'm taking a break from writing books for the next few quarters to focus like a laser on my core love, photography.  I"m really getting back into the thrill of shooting portraits.  Loving available light as long as it's available from my box full of lights......

Things are getting a little strange around the studio since my physicist friend, Dr. Charlie Martini, invented a new electronic device which aids people in their enjoyment of photography.  We've been working on a device which, when miniaturized, would allow us to casually slap it on the side of an art buyer's forehead and it would program them to like the style of work that I show in my portfolio.  It didn't work out so well and several art buyers are talking about litigation.  I don't know why they would get so worked up about a few little second degree burns and some (hopefully) temporary amnesia, but we learned a good lesson-----ASK PERMISSION BEFORE ATTEMPTING CASUAL MIND CONTROL.


With these lessons learned we have adapted the device to serve as a verbal to visual translator.  Now I don't even have to take images.  I can describe them in various levels of detail and our Imaginizer 2020 will create visual images in the minds of the subjects who wear the devices.  So far, my verbal descriptions have been described as boring and mundane but I'm buying a thesaurus and I have high hope.  When it works right the subjects stop looking at me as subject #3210z is in the mind-o-graph above and they just get quiet, like this:

It worries Dr. Charlie Martini but I am optimistic.  We haven't lost one in a while.....


On another note, the Austin Photo Expo is drawing near.  It's the weekend of the 14th-15th of May, here in Austin.  I'll be giving a presentation, sponsored by Olympus, three times on each of the two days.  I'll be showing images from a wide range of cameras and a lot of video from the EPL and the EP-2 cameras with a zany assortment of lenses.  I'm working on a title but I think I've just about settled on:  The New Generation of Swiss Army Knife Cameras.  And why you should care.  All six talks are free.  I'd love to see some of my local friends show up and heckle.  There is one guy I can always count on......you know who you are.

I've been shooting up a storm for the folks at Zachary Scott Theater (tried to sell them a box full of Imaginizer 2020's but they wouldn't go for it....).  This is a studio shot will an Olympus camera and the old 40-150 mm lens.  So far they've made some 30 inch by 40 inch posters from the files but nothing bigger.  Looks great at lifesize though.  It's a classic lighting set up meant to reference the work I did in last year's season brochure.  We start with a big, 6 by 6 foot scrim over the the left of the camera and a small reflector to the other side. The gray background is about 20 feet behind and there is a small softbox on a Profoto flash head aimed at a spot just behind Jaston.  The big scrim has it's own Profoto head, married up to a Magnum reflector.  As usual, I'm locked down on a tripod.

In addition to the above shot we just finished two days of shooting for a play entitled, Call it Courage and another day for their Season lead-off, Our Town.  Lots of photons being captured by lots of different cameras....

Love the people at Zach Scott Theater because sometimes they let me do wacky stuff like this.  Not to mention that no one batted an eye this week when I did one of the dress rehearsals with this combination of cameras:
EP-2 with a 60mm 1.5 Pen Film lens and an EPL-1 with a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens.  Amazingly, using the "shimmer method" I could actually focus quickly and accurately with the small electronic view finder.

This one was shot under pretty low light at ISO 800 with the EPL and the Panasonic 20mm.   I think it works...

This one is from the EP2 and the 60mm 1.5.  I think I hit focus on a moving target with a manually focused lens at a fixed aperture pretty well.  All metering is manual.


I'll be hitting the road on Sunday.  I've got a bunch to say about the new hybrid video/still cameras so I expect I'll write some more tomorrow and then try a couple while on the road.


Hope everyone is happy and healthy.  Think positive thoughts and maybe they'll come true.