Confronted with Craftsmanship.

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

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

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

Small, fast cameras. Bigger is not better.

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

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

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

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

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

Beginner's Eyes. Getting them back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A portrait of a stranger's feet.

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


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


Shoot more.  Think less.  Happy photographer.

Pretty Picture. No big manifesto.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cloak of invisibility.

                              Paris Museum.


It's in the Harry Potter books and in super hero comics.  It's the cloak of invisibility.  And in addition to foiling rogue magicians and killer aliens from alternate dimensions it is also highly prized by photographers who would like to see without being seen.  Problem is the cloak of invisibility doesn't exist.  We have to create our own.  I've shot in many places and in the midst of many cultures and there are a few things I've learned about becoming invisible.  I think about this when I head out to shoot.

For a street shooter I'm blessed to be "only" five feet and eight inches tall.  This is pretty average for most of the world these days.  If you are very tall or very, very short it can be harder to blend in.  I am of average weight for my height.  Not rail thin.  Not too thick.  I don't stick out because nothing sticks out.  No jutting ribs, no belly over belt.  Nothing to take a second look at.

When I go out to shoot I try to think about the way most people dress in the city I'm shooting in.  I like to buy work clothes.  I try to never wear running shoes.  I tend not to wear shorts unless the city I'm in is routinely hot and most people wear shorts.  I tend not to look at people unless I am photographing them but I also try not to look away.  I don't wear sunglasses when I shoot.  People need to see your eyes to gauge your intentions.

I don't wear clothes with big logos or bright colors.  I'm interested in never attracting attention.  I even try to buy boring eyeglasses.

All of this would be undone if I dragged along a big camera bag and lots and lots of gear.  The reason I shot with Leica M cameras for many years is the same reason I like the new micro 4:3 cameras.  They are low profile.  Not showy.  Certainly not professional looking to the casual bystander.  Nothing like a Canon 1DS with a 70-200mm 2.8.  I want my camera to be as uninteresting as the aspect I'm trying to create for myself.  People are wary of your intentions when you bring the whole cyclotron array along with you.  You look intent on capturing something.  You distance yourself from the crowd by dint of inventory.  You move with a different cadence and a different demeanor.  You become "them" and not "us".

I'm spending more time street shooting in San Antonio.  I'm practicing my invisibility.  Why? Because if you can leave the ego in the trunk of your car with all the rest of your high end photo gear you'll have access.  And access beats glamor gear every time you go out to shoot.  One camera.  One lens.  One intention:  To look and to share.  Not to capture and harvest.

    Lottery ticket booth in Rome.  I've been spotted.  My cloak of invisibility was torn open by    the Nikon f5 and the 85mm on the front.   

Favorite Focal Lengths. I don't have many.

                             Shot near the Spanish Steps in Rome.  Nikon F100 and the
                             Nikon 85mm 1.4  Tri-x  Printed on Paper. 


Michael Johnston's been talking a lot about lenses lately, over at TOP and he got me thinking again about the "desert island" lens.  Which one could you live with forever.  But this time, rather than waxing romantic and conjecturing which lens yielded the best stuff for me, I decided to go through the collection of my prints that seems always float to the top of my attention, and actually do a quick rough count and see, realistically, what I end up using without thinking about it.

I presumed it would be one of the many 50mm lenses that I seem to take with me almost everywhere.  But after a bleary eyed stroll through the nostalgia laden Ilford Gallerie boxes it dawned on me that almost every image I've ever shot, that I like, was shot with a fast 85mm lens.  The one lens which I don't own today!!

                              Image taken in a Paris Apartment on a cold, rainy November
                              day back in 1992 with a Canon EOS-1 and the first iteration of
                              the Canon 85mm 1.1.2 on Agfa 400 film.  Paper Print copy.


If I remember correctly the first 85mm lens I owned was the original FD breech lock mount Canon 1.8.  It was big, heavy and very well made and I used it extensively to photograph my then girlfriend, now wife of 25 years, as we were dating.  I don't know what I traded it for or why I got rid of it but I remember what a delicious combination it was when paired to the almost forgotten Canon EF SLR body.

I used it to take photographs of Belinda when she was taking print making classes at UT and she looked like this:

                            Belinda at UT studio class.  Painting.  Canon FTB or EF with the 
                            85mm 1.8 FD.  Tri-x.  Probably bulk loaded.


I can't remember ever leaving my apartment without the camera over my shoulder and an extra roll of bulk loaded tri-x or HP5 (whichever was cheaper at the time) in my pocket.  We lived with our cameras in an almost fetishistic way back then.....but we knew them like the backs of our hands.....

    Same combo.  I love the OOF background.  Not an expensive lens but so much more fluid than 
    today's defacto zooms.  I can't think why I moved on from this lens and camera combo.....


Then there was the Leica M period and I have to say that the only lens that makes sense for me to this day with the Leica M cameras is the 50mm.  And the best expression of this was probably in tandem with either the M3 (100 % finder image) or the M6 .85  camera.  I wonder if I moved on from the M's because the 75 was to short and unwieldy while the 90's were just a hair to long.  Not to mention that dropping one's 75mm 1.4 on to pavement was horribly expensive and traumatic.

We'd all like to think of ourselves as fearless photojournalists but I doubt many of use are like James Natchway or Don McCullin, ready to dodge bullets and shrapnel to get in close to fierce fighters with a 21 or 25mm lens.  When I walk the streets I use the 50mm but sometimes, on a warm up day, while recovering from jet lag and still street shy, I found that I have a tendency to take......the 85mm because I can stand off a bit and take shots I might not be ready to take closer.  It's kind of a chicken thing and after the warmup day I make myself get a little closer.  But it's a comfort to start shooting with a little distance and work your way in......

                              Man carrying a loaf of bread home in the evening.  Low light 
                              long before the days of high ISO's or IS.  A quick shot.

                               Louvre.


I've been shooting with the Olympus system lately and the lenses are fantastically sharp and nuanced.  But here's a downside, there's nothing like an 85mm 1.8 in the system. There's the 50mm f2 but it's too slow to focus and it's a bit too long for my taste.  The 14-25mm only reaches out to a 70mm equivilent while the 35-100 covers the focal length but at 3 pounds is much too big and unwieldy for a street shooting lens.  If they want to capture/retain the serious shooter it's time to unleash those fast primes we've all been waiting for.  They were able to do it quite nicely with the Pen F lenses from the 1960's and 1970's, there's no reason they couldn't do a 42.5mm f2 lens for the e cameras today.  I know they'd sell a couple to me......

                                Just in front of Printemps, in Paris.  A blind man and his dog.


In the meantime I guess I'll snap up something from another system to make due.  Most of my photographer friends see the 85mm as a portrait length and I agree that it's a great casual portrait lens for loose compositions.  When I get serious about portraits I usually reach for a 100 or a 135mm but sometimes the 85 can be handy......

                             One of my favorite shots of Renae.  She was the world's absolute 
                             best assistant.  And not only because she was telepathic and charming.


That's my case for the 85mm.  Blame Michael Johnston for revving me up about lenses.  I do agree with him that they are the critical gear.  Cameras are fun, lenses do the heavy lifting.  I've used 85mm's from Canon, Nikon, Contax,and Leica R (actually an 80mm Summilux but I let it slip in....)   and I'd love to tell you which one is the ultimate optic.  But here's the problem, they're probably all better than all but the most recent high res cameras so they would all qualify as equally good.  The cheapest one I shot with was the old Nikon 85mm 1.8 ai I got used for $105 years ago.  The most expensive one I used was the Leica Summilux at around $1800 new when I got mine but if you want one today they are $4695.  The slowest one I played with the was the first generation EOS 85mm 1.1.2 which took several seconds to lock focus in good light and an eternity in bad.  The fastest auto focusing 85mm I've owned was the Nikon 85 1.4.  It focused fast in any light, and on an F5 it was peerless.  The one that shot the best images for me was the old FD 85mm 1.8.  It was new to me and very exciting.  It was the first lens I owned that did wonderfully shallow depth of field.


Okay.  I've talked myself into another one.  I'll get it figured out in the morning.  


      

A Public Examination of a Private Process.

I'm thinking thru things today, weighing a new venture and the new intersections on the great ven diagram of my life.  The process started me down the prickly path of self-exploration that we usually leave untrodden because we have to confront a topology that's at odds with our unexamined version of self.  And that implies making real choices based on our higher vision and against our default positions which usually represent the paths of least resistance around the more interesting rocks and boulders in the streams of our consciousness.  And sometimes just becoming very clear about the things we know we should be doing is a red flag invitation to nervous anxiety, stress and internal rationalization and pain.

But when I chug my way through the contents of the thought process and then examine the dregs at the bottom of my cranial container, in yet another attempt to read my own tea leaves, I'm left with the same old questions:  What am I doing?  What do I know I would rather do?  Why aren't I doing that?

I'm pretty well convinced (and I'll admit it's easy to sell myself on ideas and rationalizations.....) that, on some level, I'm trying to do what I consider my art.  But I feel like a baker whose core business is mixing the cake batter and baking the cake only to find that I can't concentrate on, or finish with any panache, any part of the baking process because I'm too busy answering the phone, meeting the flour delivery at the back door, rushing a check over to the gas company to prevent the untimely interruption of my fuel supply....and just as my cake mix hits the perfect consistency and needs to be hurried into the greased pans and married up with the ovens the process is interrupted by the metaphoric tinkling of the bells over the front door and in comes that customer who always needs more than just a cake.  They need a tangible, fungible affiliation and bond with the artisan baker.  Then I'm torn between batter separating and the necessary massage of the littered, languid egos that also need artful attention.

In the end the resources that promise an ultimate confection are squandered and diluted.  The timing is off.  The resources misallocated.  The cake is "okay", the frosting "serviceable".  And the customers, who were partly culpable, overlook the mediocre product because they've convinced themselves that they are part of the process and that, by extension, we are all bakers and all part of a confectionery team.

The emotional need to defend the choices of their patronage assures that the doors stay open so we can go another round and the ragged process will continue....but always at a level of distraction and dilution....until the only time I can really make a cake is when the shop is closed.  Where there is no customer for the cake but me.  Baking in the early hours of the morning before the heroin-like cellphones compel my patrons to share into the process and keep me multi-tasking while the milk curdles and I ask myself "why the hell did I open a bakery in the first place?"

Most of us have too many choices.  Too many ways to communicate.  And face it,  if you are paying hundreds of dollars a month for your smart phone don't you feel guilty about wasting the money you pay if you don't use it?  And we have so many choices in PhotoShop.  Don't you always try working with an image in two or three ways before you finally commit?  Just because you can?  You could eat a sandwich on the loading dock of your studio and then get back to work on that project or you could break up the momentum and rationalize that lunch with the intriguing but long-winded colleague.  Of course you need to run out for coffee.  Of course you need to compulsively check messages and e-mails and "research" that next camera, on the web.  You could also write a novel while you are at it.  Or bake a cake. Or climb Mt. Everest.  But the reality that really bites you on the ass when you reach your 50's is that you can't do all these things and do them well.  In fact,  I've met very few people who can really do more than one thing at a high level.  I mean a really high, kick ass, level.

Where do we get the hubris to think that we can do so many things and keep any proficiency at all?  So, why am I writing all this?  I told you in the title that I'm making a public examination of a private process.  How do I decide what to do and what not to do?  Everything sounds pretty cool when it's presented.  All invitations are both a logistical communication (where and when and what) as well as a gentle, seductive touch on the ego (they really want me!).  A manipulation. But if you are the least bit presentable and sociable the invitations and opportunities to fragment and dilute are nearly endless.  So how do you choose?  What to do and what to leave?

You need some quiet time to figure out your priorities.  I recently turned down a book project.  It sounded fun.  But it didn't move my process forward.  Didn't have anything to do with MY art.  It was another project that was really an attempt to monetize a knowledge base.  To squeeze some extra profit sharing stuff I found out the hard way.

I know that some people can compartmentalize stuff so they can have their cake and eat it too.  But I'm way too linear. I can't just do a project for the  money anymore.  At least not projects that will take four to six months out of my life.  If I'm not shooting for clients I want to write stuff that I'd love to read and I want to shoot images that I love to look at.  I may be out of touch with the times but the idea of monetizing everything is as appetizing as cake frosting from a can.  But every time I accept a project that branches off from my core I resent it, I regret it and I vow never to do it again.  Until the next time someone tells me that I am smart and creative and we should do a project together.

New rules:

1.  Projects should be an extension of your long term artistic goals or you should leave them on the ground for the person you are not.

2.  Life is short.  Do real work.  Not work about work.

3.  Photography is about the creative process.  Teach that and stop teaching the plumbing side of it.

4.  Money isn't everything but creative freedom almost is.

5.  Time is more precious than anything but love.

Getting it right before you go to post processing!

I'm as guilty as anyone of putting a camera in RAW mode, setting the white balance to AWB and flailing away with the idea that I can fix it all in post.  And from a purely scientific point of view I am sure you can fix color in post given enough time and a discriminating eye.  But since the eye is a great comparator and a lousy rememberer wouldn't it be better if that was one of the things that we figured out up front?  Makes for one less step in post production and it's a step (in post)  that can adversely effect exposure settings, contrast settings and more.

I started to take this seriously when I sat through one of Will Crockett's workshops and heard him talk about his Jpeg centered process of "Kill it and Bill it." His philosophy is that careful incident exposure metering, coupled with nailing white balance at the outset means that you can use images right out of camera.

I didn't go jpeg but I put the time savings of correct, upfront, white balance to the test yesterday on a commercial shoot.  My friend, Lane, hired me to take photos of doctors and clinicians for a local sports medicine practice.  I wanted to make sure my flesh tones were consistent from set up to set up and I wanted to spend less time doing corrections before putting up web galleries for selection ( you can tell people til you are blue in the face that the uncorrected galleries are just thumbnails and will be color corrected but you will prevent much friction and second guessing if you just get the color and exposure on the money before you make the jpegs for the galleries.....) so I could efficiently spend time with the finals instead.

I used a Lastolite collapsible gray target to set my white balance for each set up.  I like to use the gray because the white requires you to really nail the exposure for the most accurate color.  Cameras seem to nail gray better....... My Lastolite is custom made for Will Crockett and has a focus target in the middle so I don't have to set my camera to manual focus or let it hunt.  The regular ones don't have the target but you could add your own with a Sharpie.

Long story all summed up.  Using an incident light meter let me know that there was a half stop difference between what I saw on the back of the camera on the LCD and what the actual exposure was.  The calibration out of the box was one half stop dark which made my files half a stop too light.  The gray card custom white balance setting meant that every single frame matched and required NO tweaking.  Interesting how a sensible shooting workflow can save hours on the back end.  Very nice.
I'd gotten lazy.  I'll fix that.  We're getting busy again so it's time to figure out all the ways to be more productive in a fixed time frame.  Ahhhhhh.

Have you ever had one of those days when things took a turn for the better?

                             Fun Test Shot with a friend.


I'm out of practice.  I tried to keep shooting portraits as last year devolved into one of the circles of Purgatory but it's hard to keep the creative wheels turning when doom and gloom looms all around you.  My portrait lighting skills were starting to take a hit.  Then I ran into Selena at a coffee shop and she needed a headshot and I wanted a model.  I think we both won.

We met last week and spent an hour working on posing and lighting.  I ended up using my big Octabank and my Elinchrom Ranger RX AS pack with one head for the main light.  My studio is all white so it's pretty "live".  I'd been lighting my fill too much lately, no doubt because some corporate client I took on in a moment of self induced desperation bitched about my shadows being too dark.  I remember the conversation so well.  It was short and it went like this:

Client: "What's wrong with the light on Bob's face?"

Me:   "I'm sorry, I don't understand.  What do you mean?"

Client:  "Well, it's a very nice picture but the light on his face isn't even.  It gets dark over to one side!"

Me:  "We call that modeling.  It's a way of adding some dimension to peoples' faces.  Makes portraits look more three dimensional.  Gives the light a sense of direction."

Client:  "Can you fix that somehow?"

Me:  "Well, it's supposed to be that way.  It's a creative thing."

Client:  "Is there some way to fix it in Photoshop?  I'm pretty sure Bob's not going to like being uneven...."

Me:  "But that's the same style that's in most of the portraits on my website...."

Client:   "Hmmmmm.  So you don't think you can fix it?"

It's exchanges like this that make me appreciate my wife's adamant rule of "no guns" in the studio.  But it's weird how a few toxic clients can subtly shift that line that makes an insecure portrait photographer dilute and devolve their own style.

Before Selena came over I looked over some of my favorite work and the work by some of the photographers I really admire.  I decided to aim my taste meter in the right direction and to resurrect what I liked with the hopes that it will find its audience.

When I set up the lighting I re-acquainted myself with a favorite old tool, subtractive lighting.  I grabbed a black panel and put it on the opposite side of her face from the main light.  I brought the black in pretty close because I wanted deep shadows.  I grabbed a little Alien Bees ringlight that I use all the time for a background light and put it on the gray seamless at a really low power.  MMMMMM.  Just right.

Then I shot with a longer lens than I've used in a while.  I'm happy with the light and the skin tone.  When we finally decide on an image I'll fix the stray hairs and the few wrinkles in the shirt.  But count me happy with my lighting and the general look.  And I think her expression is just wonderful.

My portrait lighting is back and it's really changed my mood.  It's devastating when your mastery takes a vacation without putting it up on the scheduling board.  It's always wonderful when it comes back home with a nice tan, a few pounds lighter.  I don't know if Selena likes the work we did.  I haven't talked to her yet.  But for a change, the only validation I was looking for was mine.