I had the opportunity to use the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art Lens in the Nikon Mount this morning and this afternoon and I am buying it. It's really good.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART

One of my friends is an avowed Canon shooter. Dyed in the wool. Full contingent of Canon T/S lenses at the ready. Fifty-four megapixel cameras pre-ordered, etc. He also frequently uses a Leica medium format digital camera in his day to day work as one of the country's best architectural photographers. For some strange reason he became enamored with the supposed mythology surrounding Sigma's very well reviewed 50mm f1.4 Art lens and when he saw one used, in a Nikon mount but at a very incredibly good price, he bought it immediately. Then, realizing that all of his camera bodies were of the Canon variety, he also bought a Nikon D610 to go with it

Since then he's come to realize that going too far across cameras systems is probably counter-productive and costly and that the learning of new menus takes time and can ultimately cause confusion under the pressure of shoots for money. (Yes, I know there is at least one of you out there that can compartmentalize information with ease and float across all menus without stumbling or hesitation but the rest of we mortals think you might be full of B.S.).  He decided to get rid of the Nikon and pick up the Canon version instead. But he's as mercurial as I am when it comes to gear and it won't surprise me at all when he chooses the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Otus lens instead. But that's another story altogether.

He handed me the lens earlier in the week and I put it in my Think Tank rolling case and intended to use it liberally.  I used it on one of the exterior, environmental portraits we did yesterday but really, what can you tell about a prime at f5.6 that isn't just about the same story with every decent prime? They're all really good at f5.6, or they should be...

Yesterday's portrait images were well behaved, convincingly sharp with no intervention from Lightroom and the color was neutral and impressively complex. But again, it was all shot at f5.6 so I expected most of what I was observing in post production.

Today was another matter. We are on day three of an annual report project and I got to shoot the lens nearly wide open and in a few situations I tried it wide open just to see. I was shooting the Sigma 50mm on two different bodies just to see how different they might look. I used a D610 and a D810; both at their lowest rated ISOs. I used double the shutter speed I would normally use with this focal length and faster. Once I got back to the studio I opened the files up and went right to full on pixel peeping. 100%. Blow Up.

The files were not exciting in the sense that they were unreal in color or that the resolution or sense of sharpness called attention to themselves. It was more like looking at an actual scene instead of looking at the representation on the monitor. The lens is really, really good. I've just started playing with it but I am already very impressed with its quality and look. I need to spend at least a month to get used to it and I intend to do just that. Once I've amassed a collection of representative images I'll circle back and share more complete thoughts about it.

There are two downsides to this lens. 1. It's very big and heavy. And, 2. It's expensive for a 50mm lens. But I guess that's really relative when the Otus lens from Zeiss is over 4 times the price and the Leica M 50mm Summilux 1.4 Aspheric is three and  one half times the price. Based on the performance I saw today, and the advantageous price I got for buying used I think I'll count this one to be an absolute bargain.

Thanks for reading.

On an exciting adventure with Super Assistant, Amy S. Tales of Nikons and flashes and electricity.

It was still dark when Amy pulled up in front of my house, grabbed her grip gear and headed over to the studio car. She had a look in her eye that said, clearly, "You want me up at this ungodly hour you damn sure better be stopping by Starbucks!" I had loaded the car up with all the things I thought I would need last night and just had to put the case of cameras and lenses in (we don't leave cameras in the car overnight...).

After swinging by the coffee shop we headed up Mopac Expressway and on to our destination in a small town on the other side of Lake Travis. We were off to shoot day two of an annual report project for a utility client.

Our first shot was the CEO standing in a field in front of a row of several of the company's trucks. We positioned the trucks in the early dawn using a compass to make sure we'd get light on the sides of the trucks in the time window in which we were shooting. We started ultra wide, using a Rokinon 14mm f3.2 Cine lens on a D810. Amy put up a two stop diffusion scrim to the right of where we would be our main subject, the CEO,  to block direct, angled sunlight from hitting him and then we lit  a sweet spot of our exec to stand in with a large softbox (30 x 40 inches) from the right side of the camera. The box light was powered with an Elinchrom flash head and an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS system (1100 watt seconds at full, we used it at 3/4th power).

All through this shoot we had the new Marshall Electronics monitor plugged in to the camera; not so much for my use because I had the monitor on the back of the camera to reference, but so the art director, the marketing director and the CEO could look at the images and buy into the project as we were producing it. I was taking advantage of some of the D810's special features to make the shots I wanted. The first cool thing was to use the ISO 64 option. ISO 64 is not some pushed or pulled "extra" setting on the ISO dial, rather it's the native ISO for the camera. It's at this setting that the dynamic range is widest and the light transfer is at its highest efficiency. It also allowed me to use a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second with f8.0 so I could sync flash and control the ambient light in the background in an optimum manner.

The second two features would of course be the wide dynamic range of the camera and its high resolution and sharpness.

I had the monitor attached to one leg of the tripod via a Manfrotto Magic Arm. In this way I could angle the monitor away from the sun and over to the side away from the camera so I could continue working while the clients reviewed the images on the monitor and we wouldn't step on each other in the process.

I had forgotten how wonderful it can be to work with a diligent, professional and highly trained assistant. Amy was totally focused on making the shoot work smoothly for me (first) and then the client. Light stands got sandbagged as a matter of course, apple boxes magically appeared when I was ready for a higher elevation on the tripod. Bottled water appeared in my hands at just the right moment and disappeared when I was ready to re-embrace the camera. One thing I particularly loved was having Amy provide a "courtesy" flag for me when I was working in direct sun. We'd set up the camera and if I was standing in full sun Amy would appear with a black flag and hold it over me to minimize reflections on the camera screen and to keep me from getting sunburnt.

When I stopped to talk with the client Amy would immediately head to the equipment cases to bring order to gear chaos, to wrap cables, find errant lens caps and stuff soft boxes, hastily tossed to one side, back into their correct cases.

Another advantage of a good assistant is their patience in "standing in" for the final subject so the photographer can make sure the diffusion scrim will cover the subject with good shade and to make sure the composition really works once other humans are inserted.

I worked with an interesting assortment of lenses today. We started and ended with the 14mm Rokinon Cine lens and I will readily admit it's getting a lot more use since I uploaded a custom lens profile for it into Lightroom CC. I shot raw all day long and I immediately selected the profile when I got back into the studio and batched it to all the 14mm shots in the folder. It was fun to watch the previews pop into corrected-ness as the program churned through the giant files.

The lens that ended up in second place (as far as number of frames goes) was the older Nikon 25-50mm f4.0 ais Nikon lens. It requires a bit more contrast and bit of a sharpness boost in post production compared to some of the other lenses but once treated correctly it blossoms and is beautiful and highly detailed, but in a nice, calm way. I used it for abstract/technical shots in an electrical substation and I also used the longer end for some environmental portraits; both inside a substation control center and out in the field.

I used the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens for one series of the CEO standing with a series of transformers behind him. It's my first encounter with this lens and I was duly impressed with the high resolution and drawing of that lens. I need to experiment more with it but it's a very fine optic, especially used the way we did, at f5.6 and focused manually to about 10 feet.

I got good use out of the old 80-200mm lens when we we're photographing electricians working in bucket trucks and being lifted up into the nose bleed heights and also for tight headshots of the CEO and other key employees. A nod also to the 24-85mm Nikon G lens for helping me get a bunch of quick moving, hand held images of truck crews.

Once we switched locations and concentrated on getting a good selection of environmental portraits of the CEO we also switched from using the heavy and powerful Elinchrom Ranger flash system to using a low cost, low weight combination of two Yongnuo electronic flashes triggered by Cactus V6 transceivers and ultimately triggered by a Cactus flash with built-in transceiver in the hot shoe of the camera. The flashes were firing into a 48 inch Softlighter umbrella that was postponed about six feet from out subject. With both flashes set to half power and a double net cutting sunlight on the CEO the lighting output was just right and the recycle time was good.

Interesting tip: We usually use a light, silk diffusion cloth on a Chimera ENG panel to block sunlight from hitting our exterior portrait subjects directly but we had a consistent wind today that threatened to either flip the panels around in their clamps or act as sails and knock the stands down altogether. In situations like this you can use black "double nets" to knock down the effect of sunlight coming from one side or above. The net allows air through the mesh and so is less prone to becoming sail-like and creating mischief. The net, when compared to the silk, also gives you a different and more intriguing look in portraits. A certain harder quality to the skin tones that can work well.

The flash and camera batteries worked all day long without slowing down but when we hit frame 700 at about 3 pm the batteries in the field monitor finally gave it up. I was about to have Amy replace them. We had plenty of spares as it uses the same batteries as the big Nikons. But I held off because I could tell that the darkening and surrender of the monitor gave the client the suggestion that we'd done what we'd set out to for the day.

All the batteries are back on the chargers. I've downloaded and color corrected today's files in groups. I am currently in the process of uploading them into a private gallery on the service I've used for online proofing since 2005. It's Smugmug.com and so far it's rare for them to ever miss a beat. I have over 150,000 files uploaded into the site for my clients and even folks who worked with us ten years ago can go back and reference their galleries at any time.

I am halfway through the uploading of photographs to my online gallery and thinking about the rest of the project. We have two or three more days of shooting and I need to supervise a drone shoot before all is said and done. I am happy to say that we're providing the client with a fast moving team, quick and effective lighting designs and good, general problem solving and we're collaborating on the look and feel of the images for the annual report. In the end my goal is to work hard at making all of this easy. I want the client to end up with a cohesive selection of images. I want their biggest problem to be that they are unable to choose because they have so many good options.

I've been working since 6 am and it's now almost 9:45pm. When the last of the files is uploaded I'll take my sore, tired body and crawl into the house, grab some water, brush my teeth and get ready to do it all over again tomorrow.

Amy's contribution of services probably saved us two full hours of time today and made the project much easier and more pleasant for me. By extension the client is getting better quality work because I can concentrate solely on my part of the job. Holding the silver sun umbrella over my head in the hot afternoon sun was a definite plus...

After tomorrow we take a break. Utility companies don't push their employees ( or suppliers) to work all weekend. We'll take up again on Monday. But that doesn't mean that freelance photographers can kick back and just enjoy the weekend. We have a shoot for Zach Theatre on Saturday; we're making new images for their season brochure. And as you probably know I always think working with actors and their creative teams is fun. On Sunday I'm spending the day shooting advertising images for the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Also a fun client and this year their newly redesigned website took gold at the annual convention of museums in the U.S. I was thrilled that my photography was so well represented.

The countdown is one week and a day until the boy is back in Austin and Studio Dog is once again euphoric.

Hope you are also having a fun and productive week!

Upcoming field trip to the great north. Traveling for fun.

Studio Dog puts her foot down and demands we organize a party to "fetch" our 

young college student back home. She is tired of having her own room and having 

to scratch her own belly. "Bring me the boy!" she growled. 

So next Wednesday I'm heading up to Saratoga Springs, NY, by way of Albany to help Ben pack up his winter gear, have dinner and coffees with my friend, Fred, and generally take a three day break from the constant stress and responsibility of being a Texas artist. I am sure Ben can hardly wait to leave his enchanted enclave at Skidmore College, trade the bracing freshness of 60 degree days for the 95+ with bountiful humidity of his home town, and rush to the chaffing, unfathomable boundaries of once again living at home with his parents after almost a year of freedom. 

I have only been to Saratoga Springs once before and that was last Fall. The leaves were turning colors and there was already a briskness to the air. It seemed like a foreign country to me. But I quickly came to love the small town, it's great restaurant scene, the community feeling of the Uncommon Grounds coffee house and the ten minute walk through a majestic neighborhood that connects the college with the town proper. 

There is one perplexing decision to make for this trip....Which camera and which (one) lens should I bring? The front runner at the moment is the Olympus EM5.2 with the Panasonic 12-35mm lens but I do have a line on a Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens and I may just be a big enough sucker for new gear to snag that and slap it on the front of my Nikon D610. I'll decide the night before. 

While I am excited about the trip and also the prospect of having boy around for the Summer I once thought of buying a place up in Saratoga Spring to use as a Summer home. Then I woke up from my Disney-like dream sequence and remembered that I am still a freelance photographer and am lucky to own one home. But I will make the most of my three days unencumbered by the hard work of making photographs so I can have fun making photographs. It's all very confusing but I think I know what I mean. 

That's Weds. through Friday of next week. If you read the blog and you happen to see me at Uncommon Grounds don't hesitate to drop by and say hello. If you seem nice I might even buy you a cup of coffee.

Kirk buys a seven inch Marshall Electronics video monitor and uses it all day on a still photography shoot. What the hell?

There I was with my big Nikon D810 on top of the Manfrotto cinema ballhead ready to shoot some incredibly cool video content of super-superstar vocalist, Jennifer Holliday, for my friends at Zach Theatre. The four big florescent light fixtures were slamming around electro-luminescent craziness and I had a Sennheiser lavaliere microphone clamped to Ms. Holliday's collar ready to record every ounce of perfect conversation that got uttered.

I had carefully focused my 85mm lens, marked a spot on the floor for Ms. Holliday and then stopped down to f5.6 to give me enough depth of field (or so I thought) to cover small amounts of talent movement. It all started out in the just right category. The voice through my headphones was wonderful and the image playing across the 3.2 inch screen on my camera looked just like the footage I saw earlier this year on the Academy Awards.

And then Ms. Holliday became a bit more animated and my day started falling apart. She took a step forward and I knew she would be out of the sharp range of focus. I went to manually focus only to be thwarted by a combination of eyes that have long since lost their perfect performance coupled with a camera screen that's great for composition but sucks for trying to achieve sharp focus. At some point I switched out of video mode and refocused. Thanks goodness for the off camera interviewer's interjection... But for a few minutes I was praying for focus peaking.

While Nikon may, at some distant time in the future, add focus peaking to the D810 I'm sure not counting on it. But then I remembered that a lot of video field monitors have focus peaking as a feature. I started looking around. I wanted to be prepared for the next session. I wanted to re-master sharp focus.

I made pilgrimage to Precision Camera and looked at their monitor selection. The one that made sense was the Marshall Electronics M-CT710. The screen looked pretty good, the controls are pretty straightforward and it has focus peaking. It also came with two batteries, a charger, an A/C adapter, a sunshade and two different HDMI cables. The batteries are copies of the Nikon EN-EL 15 batteries I use in my two Nikon cameras and one of the HDMI cables, the HDMI standard to HDMI mini fit my two cameras. At that point I made a note of the price, $345, and decided I'd wait and buy the unit the very next time I got booked to shoot video for a client. The very next time....

Miraculously, I exited Precision Camera without making a single purchase. Not even a lens cleaning cloth or a battery!!!

I got into my car and, in accordance with Austin's new hands free cellphone ordinance, decided to check my e-mails and texts on my phone before firing up the automobile. There was a message from the client that I will be working with all week long. We're working on an annual report project and she wanted to know if I had a monitor or laptop we could bring along to really look at the shots as we went along.

Now I hate shooting tethered to a laptop outside of the studio. Just hate it. It's ponderous and plodding and the big screens are hard to shield from bright, ambient light, and if your battery runs out in the middle of a field there's really nothing you can do----Apple Macbook Pros now "feature" non-changeable batteries (really, it's a good thing?). But I don't mind being hooked up to an HDMI monitor.

After I read the message I returned to the store and pulled out my wallet. That part where I talk about being a good steward of the family's money? That's over. Again. But I do have a snazzy, new 7 inch field monitor.

I charged the two batteries last night and spent time going through every control until I knew how the new monitor worked with the D810. I packed extra batteries and an extra HDMI cable and tossed a little Pelican case full of video capability into the car.

This morning we were shooting in a huge water chiller facility in a medical center. The "heros" of the shot were a rep from the company I am shooting for and his customer/counterpart at the medical center. I set up the camera and comped in the shot. A nice, wide one that showed off big, industrial gear and featured the two guys right in the middle, talking shop and looking at an iPad.

I set up a couple of background lights to keep the back wall and area from going too dark. It's a nice way to add depth and make sure the image fits into a usable tonal range. I used a large light as a main key and a fourth light as a back lit to subtly rim my human subjects. All of the lights were battery powered electronic flashes being triggered by a brand new set of Cactus V6 transceiver/receiver units. I was also using a new Cactus flash as a master unit to trigger everything else.

When I got the lighting set up and dialed in I added a  super clamp to the leg of the tripod and a Magic Arm to the clamp. At the other end of the Magic Arm I attached the new monitor and fired it up. Then I put the sun shade on it to make it look even cooler. All at once my client and I could see the live view image up big and personal. The color was fine (we were shooting raw but still making custom white balances as we went) but the cool thing was being able to see the image so big.  The client was able to see the composition clearly and quickly let me know how to fine tune it. I could "punch in" on the image and see the level of detail.

When I switched from a wide angle zoom to a manual focusing 85mm f1.4 I was able to call up the focus peaking feature on the monitor and see, very clearly, exactly what was (and wasn't) in sharp focus.

I left the monitor attached for the entire shoot and it gave my client additional piece of mind while allowing me to dodge the burden of a bigger, heavier (and more flare prone) laptop and all the inefficiencies of actually shooting tethered. We're charging the batteries now for tomorrow's shoot and we'll be bringing it along.

While I bought the monitor ostensibly for video it seems to serve a useful purpose for still imaging as well.

One more addition to the gear list for those shoots where clients are adamant about assessing the images before, during and after we shoot. I've decided to like it.

Thanks for reading.

The Luminance Conundrum. Why some video might look off.

Engineers know that you can't optimize for everything. Something in the triangle or dodecahedron of choices has to give in order for something more important to spread its wings. The people who design cameras must be plagued with issues like this all the time. Questions like: Do I make the chassis big enough to conduct heat away from the circuitry or do I limit clock speed of processors in order to keep the components cool enough? How many screws do I need to put into the lens mount in order to make sure big lenses don't cause problems? How simple do I have to make the image processing in order to have the camera shoot fast enough for the marketing people? Do I vent for heat or give in to the mania for "weather proofing"? Should the lens be fast or sharp or small? --- I can't have all three.

I've written before about my misgivings concerning the Olympus EM5.2 video but I'm starting to mellow as I dig into the files and come up with some workarounds to the standard shooting set ups. I was frustrated that a camera with some of the prettiest files I've ever seen (as still images) seemed to have issues with detail and sharpness when shooting video. I used the neutral color profile and turned various settings like contrast and saturation down to keep the files from seeming too thick. What I was getting was files with bigger sharpening interfaces that I wanted. It was as if the camera was set to use bigger radius settings in sharpening for video rather than using small radius settings and a higher percentage of sharpening. I wanted the files to be more subtle and more detailed---or at least as detailed as 1080p video files could look. My reference standard is the GH4 but I would be satisfied if the EM5.2 came close. In its standard set-up the files looked as though they were not as well sharpened as they could be and then had a layer of noise reduction over-layed on to them.

I had a little epiphanal insight about the whole mess this week. I was playing around with the camera and switched the profile to monotone (green filter setting) to make some black and white images. The camera went from sharp (in color) to ultrasharp (in monotone). I sat down along a babbling brook to meditate on what might be the deal when it dawned on me that Olympus's engineers must be doing most of their image sharpening in the luminance channel so they could prevent excess noise in the chrominance (color) channels. This would give them good sharpness with low chroma noise when people make images in color and in Jpeg (although I am sure somewhat the same choices are being made in raw).

While they have mastered this technique for still images where there is ample processor time to make everything match up video works in a different way. In the long GOP files noise in color is probably being handled as a median, homogenous setting that requires less speed from the processing engines. And, in fact, when I shoot black and white video, which throws away the chrominance channels I find the video to be sharply detailed and nearly immune from aliasing. Something is happening when the color is applied.

I went back into the menus and made a few changes that helped me produce video files that I am happier with. To wit, I have started using the muted color profile, leaving the saturation and contrast sub controls zero'ed and then bringing down the sharpening to its minimum level. Of course I am using the image stabilization without digital manipulation (mode 2) and I have tried to be very careful not to under or over expose. The final step is to go to the custom curves setting and flatten out the profile just a little bit more; raising the dark part of the curve and lowering the higher tones.

When used this way the camera delivers a flat file that can be messed with in post processing to bring back the contrast and saturation I am looking for. Minimizing the sharpness in the shooting portion of our program is helpful but there is still some sharpening going on. I can live with it.

With the help of these settings the Olympus EM5.2 is quickly becoming my "go-to" camera for any situation that requires me to go "off tripod" and follow something or someone around. It's a great little ENG (electronic news gathering) camera and the constant movement largely masks some of the shortcomings I was seeing earlier in my ownership.

When using the camera in this way I have also found that the best files come from my slower FPS settings. I am happiest with the files (color and sharpening) that I am getting at 24 fps. I would also say that lens selection is helpful. While someone from Olympus suggested that I would get the best quality from their branded lenses it's not really the case. I'm getting my best files (not over sharpened...) with older, legacy Nikon lenses as well as manual focus lenses made for the ancient Olympus half frame series of cameras. These lenses don't seem to have the clinical sharpness of the newest glass but their "rounded" quality and lower contrast seems to help when the camera translates stuff into video. Yes, the newest Olympus glass, like the 75mm f1.8 and the 45mm f1.8 are nifty sharp in still imaging but they are a bit too sharp for video rendering that I prefer.

Every time I get better results I get closer to thinking that the EM5.2 could be the best all around camera on the market today. It's clearly the most fun to shoot with, if it fits in your hands.....

Perhaps the engineers at Olympus decided not to have a separate sharpening protocol for video and depend on the sharpening for full, 16 megapixel files, the result being the over bearing sharpening characteristic when the frames are down sampled to a bit less than 2K for video. I don't know. I've never been a software/firmware guy. But I do know that they understand the issue. Whether or not it's cost effective to fix it is another matter. At this point I am very comfortable shooting good video with these work arounds. I'm glad I spent the time to "zero in" the cameras for the way I want them to look because I think the image stabilization is a big evolutionary step in shooting video.

My favorite rigging is to use the uber-sharp Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 on the camera, a set of Apple earbuds plugged into the headphone jack on the HLD-8G grip and a small, Azden shotgun mic secured to a tripod socket mounted accessory bar. The camera focuses quickly, the lens renders things in a nice way and the Azden mic is a surprisingly good little shotgun microphone for under $100.

Yes, I have better headphones. Yes, I have better microphones. Yes, I have a fluid head tripod. But the whole idea is to come up with something that is small, light, agile and capable. I think of my rig as the video counterpart to Henri Cartier-Bresson's little screw mount Leicas with collapsable lenses---ready and infinitely available. It's a new age for videographers and these smaller cameras are a bridge between accessibility and ultimate quality. For me it's an engineering compromise I am now ready to say "works for me."  Thanks for reading. 

Most interesting musical instrument at Eeyore's Birthday Party.

I wish I had been able to also show the front of this dress because the whole thing was pretty amazing. The woman who wore it also played it, as a multi-faceted percussion instrument, with drumsticks to actuate the different sounds. It was kinetic fashion at its best. 

Shot with the Oly EM5.2 and the 60mm Sigma dn.

My big acquisition for the day? A chocolate pecan pie from Whole Foods Market. Finally a purchase I can eat. Certainly trumps lens lust for pure enjoyment at a reasonable price...

Have you seen one of these in the wild? it's a Voitlander 17mm f0.95 and it's a pretty amazing lens.

You never know what Frank will bring to coffee. Last week it was this combo, the EM-1 and the Voitlander 17mm f-superfast. I played with the lens for a while and was quite impressed. You can emulate the look of a 35mm on full frame right down to the narrow depth of field and from what I could see it was sharp, sharp, sharp. Of course where I was seeing the sharpness was in the center because the sides and edges were at a different focusing distance from the center and the depth of field limited the theoretical sharpness we could expect. As it does in nearly every fast lens. But, of course, no sane human is using these high speed optics to do copy work, right?....

My tiny review? Great build quality, nice finder image. Perfect heft.

I went to Eeyore's Birthday Party and I felt the magic but I just didn't get any great images.

Eeyore's 2015, Acrobat.

I'm guilty of going to Eeyore's with mixed feelings about photography. Every year the party gets bigger and bigger and every year I feel more and more like a tourist there instead of a documentarian. I guess that's how you come to know that you are really tapped out. Now, don't get me wrong, I still think Eeyore's Birthday party is one of those quintessential Austin events. 

The drum circles were operating a full intensity and ringed with an asteroid field of observers that was so dense photographers defaulted to a "hail Mary" approach to shooting, holding their cameras above their heads and craning their necks to see the images on the rear screen in live view.

The forest was filled with cliques of counterculture types looking defiant while trying to be surreptitious in their consumption of cannabis. Jugglers juggled and topless woman bounded through the throng with their breasts painted in bright colors and funny patterns. 

It was 94 degrees by the time I got there and the heat was oppressive after our mild Spring. I tried to force myself into a formalist exercise by taking only one small camera and one inappropriate lens (or maybe my lens was appropriate but my brain wasn't properly calibrated for it. Whatever the reason I felt as though I was just "phoning it in" and so I dropped the camera to my side on its slender strap and just watched the people play. And that was alright too. 

I can't really blame the camera or the lens. I was shooting with the Olympus EM5.2 and the Sigma 60mm f2.8 dn lens. It's just that everywhere I looked I had seen it all before....

Time to search for new experiences. Thinking about a shooting trip to Mexico City..... more later.