14mm sunset.

Every once in a while you have to stop and scrape all the extra stuff off your plate and start clean.

I've been doing too many disparate things this year and I've found, to my dismay, that I am not a good multi-tasker. I am not able to shift from craft to craft, from camera system to camera system. From industry to industry. And it's been hard for me to shift from my role being behind the still camera to the role of being in front of the video camera. I got too scattered and too distracted. I tried to be too many things to too many people and the thing that suffered the most was the time I had available to spend taking my photographs and writing the stuff I like to write without the slightest even ephemeral pull of a client's gravity impinging on my thought process. I was drowning under hats and subtle currents.

But we're all done. The cameras I agreed to test have been returned. Collected by FedEx only an hour ago. The Craftsy.com courses are complete and online. A recent book project politely declined. A workshop left unscheduled.

And I feel free for the first time in a long time. I don't compartmentalize well. If there are ongoing projects on my plate I find my brain including them in an inventory of subroutines that uses up precious brain cells I can hardly spare. Not having the compartments occupied has given me a huge sense of relief.

At a time when executing a profitable career as a photographer has become ever more difficult financially I find more and more of my peers have done what I have recently done and jumped on every opportunity that's been presented to them, in and out of their field. They've become workshop leaders even though most of the best shooters I know are loners and the least adapted to enjoy working with groups of people to help them improve their craft. They embrace the books. They look for sponsors. In short, their (our) careers stopped resembling a straight line of intention and became a series of part time jobs that are remotely aligned with imaging but in the end have little or nothing to do with moving our own work forward. The jobs set up new barriers to becoming the artists that we always hoped we would have the courage to work toward being.  Distraction is my number one nemesis. I'm fatigued by distraction.

I have a certain amount of fear that belts will be worn tighter around here if I only do the photos and videos and writing that I want to do but it seems like a challenge I'll have to deal with because I need to be committed and working toward a goal or a series of goals for my photography to work for me.

I'm using the gear I'm comfortable with. I'm looking for projects that seem to leverage my way of working. I'm looking forward to more personal work. I'm looking forward to the equivalent of swimming without floaties in the career I always wanted in the first place.

I'd rather labor well in obscurity than feel like a hollow actor in a role that doesn't fit. I feel like I'm coming home again to my craft. Not as an "expert" but as a beginner.

I'm not selling anything here today. I'm not suggesting you buy this camera or that camera. I don't care what kind of lighting you use. I'm not impressed by any camera. I am writing this today to say that the real challenge is to peel back the layers of distraction and fear we create that keep us from doing what we love. Life is too short for everything else.

A fun assignment and a tale of three cameras: The Sony a99, the Panasonic GH3 and the Pentax K01

I had the good fortune to be hired to take images for the "Thinkery." The Thinkery is the new name for our newly relocated Children's Museum, here in Austin, Texas. The assignment called for me to head over to the museum this past Saturday and take photographs of kids, parents, staff and everyone else trying out the new museum and all the new exhibits and interactive features. It was a "friends and family" experience meant to serve as a shake out or test run for the official opening in early December.  I was to work as discreetly and minimally as possible and that meant no tripod and no light stands.

At first I decided to go entirely minimal and take only the new Panasonic GH3's along with a small collection of lenses that included: the 25mm Summilux, the new kit lens (18-55mm) the longer entry level zoom (the 45-150mm) and a few fast Olympus Pen FT lenses. At the last moment I hedged my bets by bringing along the Sony a99 fitted with the 85mm 1.4 Rokinon Cine lens and a few extra batteries. Then I figured, "Oh what the heck?" and I stuffed the yellow Pentax K01 along with its 40mm 2.8 pancake lens into the bag.

During the course of the day I took about 2500 images. Some were just motor drive sequences where I was trying to catch the peak of action or the best expression and some were gratuitous color studies. But I did use all three of the cameras under the same conditions and it went a long way toward me understanding the differences between the cameras; or at least the differences between three Jpeg engines.

The Sony a99 was a known commodity and it did its stuff correctly. It was the most cumbersome to use and I expected the image quality of the big, gnarly full frame sensor to squash the other cameras but the reality was that while there might have been less noise in the files all three cameras performed quite well and the images from all three were equally usable.

The GH3 is like a trim athlete that knows its regimen cold. It focused quickly, the lenses were uniformly sharp and the colors and metering uniformly pleasing. I saw very nice files and very nice skin tones under mixed lighting at ISOs all the way up to 3200 ISO. For a camera system purchased primarily as a video toolset I am happy to see that it's also a very usable still imaging system. Much nicer files than I remember getting when shooting stills with the GH2 several years ago. And the batteries lasted all day long!

Finally there is the case of the Pentax K01. The "clown car" of the camera collection around these parts. I used it in a cavalier way. I set the ISO to auto and let the camera roam from ISO 100 all the way up to ISO 6400. I set the mode dial to "P" and set the autofocus to face detections (till I got bored and started to play with focus peaking in manual focus...). In other words this was the camera of the three that got the least in the way of controls and mindful direction from me. I would see something I liked, bring the camera up to frame and then flail away with a volley of three or four quick exposures.

All three of the cameras were set to deliver the largest and less compressed Jpegs available on the menu. All three were processed in Apple's Aperture program in much the same way.

I was happily editing and there were no surprises until half way through the edit when the files under went a change. The colors got richer. The images got sharper and more detailed and the files got more robust to changes and processing.  I wondered if the dog had changed a setting in Aperture when I left the office for coffee so I double checked. Nope.

I had just gotten to the section of the folder that was filed with Pentax files. Even at ISO 3200 (and, under the right circumstances---a bit above...) the faces were free of noise but invested with detail. The files had a different look and feel than the files from the other two cameras. The images of one and two year olds just glowed! And I remember how freeing it felt not to totally control my camera when I was taking those particular shots.

My friend, Paul, reminded me not to read too much into the files. He reminded me that I was mostly just comparing the different ways the cameras rendered Jpegs. But given that all of my favorite files from the day came from a camera and lens combination that cost me about $200 used gave me pause. Lots of pause. Had I spent the last 26 years doing this whole photography thing incorrectly?

Should I have eschewed the technical tunnel vision from the get go and just concentrated on being in the moment and trusting to the machine? Or did someone build a machine for taking pictures that works best for me and I just now found it? Or maybe it was just one of those days but it did make me give more thought to the idea of just what is creativity and what is mastery?

My Craftsy.com video on making family portraits. Absolutely free. No money. No obligation. Just free.

www.craftsy.com/ext/familyportraits

www.craftsy.com/ext/familyportraits

Back in late September I was in Colorado making several classes about photography with the folks at Craftsy.com. The first class we did was one about making better photographs of our families. We created a video program that's a little over an hour long and it may be interesting to you on several fronts. If you are just starting your journey taking more controlled portraits you might find a lot of value in watching me succeed (and sometimes fail) in making portraits of one year olds, toddlers, groups, etc. If you aren't into gear you'll be happy that we work a lot in the video with window light, garage door light and one flash, mostly on camera. There are also tidbits and hints on posing, getting the attention of small children and managing bigger groups. The video is well shot, there are no product endorsements or mini-commercials in the actual program. There's really nothing to buy.

On the second front, if you think I'm too serious on the blog you'll find a much lighter aspect of Kirk Tuck as I lay on my stomach and make strange noises in an almost desperate attempt to get the attention of my smaller sitters. My wife and I watched the video for the first time last night and she laughed out loud at some of the things I was trying in order to get the right expressions from pre-toddlers.  If you are a VSL malcontent and think I'm crazy this video will probably confirm your point of view as well.

The Lightroom tutorial at the end of the program is basic and straightforward. You can watch the video as many times as you like.  And when you are through with it you can cruise over and see the little intro trailers to Neil Van Niekirk's classes or Rick Sammon's class.

Everyone I know who uses Craftsy.com as a learning platform loves it. This is your chance to test drive the platform for free.

Belinda and I like Craftsy because we can sit around and watch the programming together. We're both interested in cooking and wines and there's great stuff about that on the site.

It's better than a live workshop because you can watch it over and over again until you master an idea or a technique. And on the paid classes, if you hit the wall and just don't get something you can post questions for the instructor and they'll answer them.

There's also the opportunity to post projects that you do based on what you've learned in the classes and you'll get feedback from the instructors and other members of the class. Kind of like getting a group critique and an instructor critique from the comfort of your own home. Even in your pajamas.

Watch me make a fool of myself and watch as we go through the process of making fun family images.

The class is free and I would love to see some strong support from the VSL crowd. Take a minute to go and watch. Then let the comments fly!

www.craftsy.com/ext/familyportraits