Horsing around with big lights for an ad campaign. Outside in the real world.

This is Dr. Cunningham, oral surgeon and world class rodeo rider. We did an ad campaign for one of Austin's premier oral surgery practices two years ago and he was one of our twelve individual subjects. The whole idea for the marketing campaign was to give a personal face to the doctors in the practice. Each doctor was photographed in a way that told a short story about his "other" life.

Ben and I loaded up the old Honda Element and drove out to a ranch to make the image above. We used a large, battery powered flash (Profoto) firing into a large soft box. It was a windy day so we anchored the light and modifier with two 30 pound sand bags as well as with the weight of the flash battery/generator. Sand bags are wonderful but often overlooked accessories. It's rare for them to become obsolete....

We used the soft box as close was we could to the subjects so the fall off would be quicker toward the back of the frame in shadow. Our only challenge, beyond anchoring the large soft box, was to position the horse correctly. Once we got everyone in the right place we shot twenty shots or so shots and headed back towards town.

Can we talk about lighting for a second? I mean isn't that really where it all happens?

Multiple Fresnel Continuous Lights.

I was thinking about lighting this morning because I was playing around with some flash in the studio and then I switched over to HMIs. But I wasn't just playing around because I was bored I was playing around because on Monday and Tuesday of next week I'll be making stylized portraits of about 96 people. The art director at the agency I'm working with has a very specific post production technique she'd like to use and I wanted to make sure we would be delivering exactly what she needed to make it all work. 

I talked the project over with the account manager and she sent me along to the production specialist who would be doing the actual post production on the files. This is always good. When you go to the source you get the best information and it's the kind of information you can really use. 

The entire conversation was about light. We talked specifically about the backgrounds and we talked about getting very little variation in the white seamless we'd be using. The specialist wanted the exposure on the white to "just tip over" into 255 but not be so bright as to throw bounced light forward onto the subject. Why? We are trying to hit a perfect level of deep, contrasty shadowing along with bright areas of flesh tone. It's pretty critical to the look we're trying to achieve. 

We're going to end up doing the shoot with four lights in silver umbrellas with black backing on the background. We'll flag those lights with black, 4x4 foot panels to kill lens flare which would lower the contrast. While we're at it we'll "fly" a black flag over each subject's head for the same reason. 

We played around in the studio with a number of versions of the main light but ended up with the 28 inch raw beauty dish at a specific angle. We'll use a two stop net to modify the bottom of the light so it falls off a bit quicker from the subjects' faces. We'll also use two black 2x3 foot flags to barn door the beauty dish so we don't have a lot of spill to the side walls in the shooting space. That helps us control contrast as well. You really only want the light to go exactly where you intend it to go! Anything else is just not cool. 

I shot a bunch of samples, zipped them and e-mailed them to my collaborator in Dallas. We talked through the look and feel on the phone and he gave me his feedback (which was good and good). 

I was about to say, "What was missing from this very serious discussion with a very important client?" I was about to say, "Any discussion whatsoever about cameras or lenses or gear brands of anything." But that's not 100% true. There was no discussion of lenses at all. But the specialist did ask me what type of camera I was planning on using. I told him he had his choice between Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic or Samsung but that's not what he was getting at. He didn't particularly care which camera we used but we'd need to send him the raw files for the kind of post production he has planned and wanted to make sure that whatever camera we used was represented in the raw converters in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Seems someone had handed him some Phase One files that he couldn't convert in his usual programs. No one wants to stop, buy a new piece of software and learn to use it well in the middle of a project.

Once we discussed the fact that all the cameras I'd consider using have been mainstreamed into the Adobe workflows many months or years ago all discussion of cameras immediately stopped and we moved back to important considerations like the look, feel and posing of the images. You know, the stuff that makes a difference to the audience. 

What do professionals colleagues talk about when they discuss most upcoming photo shoots? Just about everything but cameras. And that's just the way it should be.

Kirk stumbles on numbers in a previous post!!!!! See the corrected numbers!

I've been playing with the 5600K Lighting Evo kit (two cool, HMI fixtures and accessories) for over a month now and having a blast. Continuous daylight capable lights are the sweet spot I enjoy most because they enhance the advantages of the "always on" live view of EVF enabled cameras and, well, the light just looks so good. I'd been putting off sending them back to the folks who own em because once you've had great light it's hard to go back to good light. I wrote about them here but I made a big mistake. I put the price tag of the kit, with two fixtures, two electronic ballasts, a bunch of modifying lenses and a case at about $6,000. I got my numbers wrong. The actual price of the kit is a little under $4,000. Seems much more reachable to me. While they are not cheap they are pretty darn incredible and put out quite a bit more lumens than the higher end LED panels along with the benefit of being able to supply a never ending stream of sharp, hard light when you need it. 

So, there's my correction. Not $6,000 but under $4,000. Look for an article about a full on shoot with the lights coming soon. Including behind the scenes set up images. Too much fun. And, if you shoot video for a living these puppies will make your knees weak....

The hard thing about photography is that it takes time to do and there's never a guarantee that you'll find the subjects you want.

I have the world's least efficient hobby. I like to take photographs of people and of things I find interesting, cool, funny, beautiful, bittersweet, bizarre, sensual, or even nostalgic. I practice my hobby by  choosing a camera and a lens and then driving or walking to an area that I think holds the promise or potential of providing any subset of these thing. Then I walk around all day long just casually looking. Sometimes I'll go to San Antonio and walk around the downtown area from early morning on a Saturday until sundown. Sometimes I feel like I'm coming home with little treasures captured in my camera and other times I'll be frustrated and feel as though I'm wasting my time.

As cities become more and more homogenized there are fewer interesting anomalies to look at and enjoy. When I come home empty handed I start to feel as though I should have worked on something commercial. Instead of roaming around in old clothes and tennis shoes with a jewel like camera in my hands I should be concocting some sort of marketing piece or spend a warm and viscous afternoon calling clients and potential clients on the phone, trying to set up an appointment to show them other commercial work that I've done. 

If it's been a particularly fallow trip I consider that I may as well get a real job and spend eight hours a day in a building somewhere with canned air, sitting behind an industrial desk, working on templated software, getting up every once in a while to fetch and drink a diet Coke, all the while feeling the back of my eyes burning from the almost undetectable flicker of the sixty cycle fluorescent lights. Occasionally heading down the hall to ask Doreen in accounting if we can budget money to do something meaningless and mundane. I try to weigh the advantages of working for someone else and I always imagine that it would be in some company whose offices are in North Austin. I also imagine that the hours will be strictly enforced. I'll be on the Mopac Expressway in my little car sitting motionless or near motionless for forty-five minutes to an hour. In each direction. I'll listen to the same stories (at least they seem like the same stories) over and over again on NPR. Or I'll listen to the worshipful gun nuts on one of the other stations talk about which automatic weapon Jesus would have owned and how vaccines are turning us all into communist leeches.

But some days I go out into a city with my camera in my hand and twenty dollars in my pocket and everything is fun. Fun and strange images and juxtapositions erupt merrily with every few steps. I meet people who are a bit insane and generally far more interesting than most people you will ever meet in the sort of antiseptic, middle class existence that we create in the hopes that our isolation will ensure our personal safety. Is that scruffy guy with the old digital Rebel the next Robert Frank? Is the woman behind the counter of the donut shop really engaged in selling donuts or is she an actor playing the part of a woman selling donuts?

I'll bet I walked fifteen miles the last time I was in San Antonio pursuing my lonely hobby. I must have looked at more street level windows and doors than I could keep count of. I drank coffee at the Apache dinner but it wasn't very good. I found a Starbucks and the coffee was much better. Old men stopped to ask me if my camera was digital. Young people avoided me so I couldn't get a toehold and start off on a never ending story like their uncles or their parents. 

My uniform was inconsistent. I could see that in the eyes of the policemen I walked past. The shorts were a green that was becoming so washed out that they are starting to look tan. I've lost weight and the shorts are just a bit too baggy. I was wearing ankle high, white sports socks. The nondescript gray pullover shirt was vague but it came from Barney's. And my new walking shoes were totally out of the consistent uniform pattern. They were a brand called Ahnu and they cost $125.

The camera of the day was something equally vague. A mid level Nikon digital or an early mirror less. My watch was a $15 Casio that is more accurate than my $1200 Fortis which sits on my night table running down, automatically.

In days past a camera was an invitation to learn more and lean in. To strangers it was a fun momentary connection. Some were happy to have been considered interesting while some just acquiesced for no real reason other than it was the stream of least resistance. In days past having a camera pointed at a person tended to validate their own idea of their own image. If you pointed it at a woman she may have assumed that you were validating her beauty. If you pointed it at a person in a military uniform it validated the idea that you appreciated their service. The bottom line was that having a camera pointed at a person made them realize that they were interesting. At least to one person and at least right now, at that moment. 

Now the world is different. The mood has changed and the innocence of creating images just for the sake of creation is gone. It's been replaced by suspicion and the idea that photographers are participating in a mercantile skim in which the images, stolen from the subject, becomes so much irretrievable raw material for a giant stock photography site where everyone is getting rich but the subject. Now they want to be cut into the deal. Photograph someone of the other gender and you are suspected of devious intentions. Photograph a person in uniform and you are a de facto terrorist.

And in spite of everything I've said I still love it. I love the vagaries and uncertainty of just walking and looking. I love the challenge of winning over people to my fleeting and mostly ephemeral cause. I like the feeling of driving back up the highway with a card full of latent images just waiting their turn to promenade across my monitor and remind me of how the air smelled and how the heat played across my skin in the afternoon. I love to sift through the images of random people and piece together my fictional version of their story just from the images and from the bits and pieces we shared in our brief and shallow encounters. 

And I am reminded that, in a sense, the real value of walking around the streets with a camera is the hard-to-describe but authentic and joyous immersion in actual, real life. Not a life of trading time for money or trading blunted curiosity for safety. In some sense the walk through other people's lives is a never ending search for some sense of universal belonging and understanding that I can interpret and weave into my own existence. The images are tiny, encapsulated visual novels. I can read and re-read them into my memory at any time. And every time I engage them their story seems to change. And I know that I've changed and even though I'm looking straight ahead at the same images I know I'm looking through them at a different angle. 

Back at Zach for a second "King and I" shoot. Horsing around with an old 60mm f1.5 lens.

There are two different sets of kids who perform in "The King and I" at Zach Theatre. They alternate during the week so that no child misses too much school, homework and sleep. The marketing folks at the theater asked me if I'd come back and do a second set of images for the kids. My goal yesterday evening was to shoot as many images of the kids as I could instead of shooting the big, dramatic, adult actor moments. 

I met Belinda for dinner and we both went. I wasn't settled on which camera system I'd end up using so I brought along a couple. We'd be seated on a "walk-through" row, middle of the house in both axis. That meant an aisle in front of us and more elevated seating behind us. Still, I'd be shooting during an actual performance with a full, paying audience, so my choice of camera system was a bit more important than it would have been on a dress rehearsal night.

Originally I wanted to shoot with the Nikon D7100. On paper the 7100 has the best high ISO performance of my current cameras and I also wanted to use the CX crop mode (1.3 crop gets the camera to about an m4:3 sensor size with 15 megapixels and a commensurately smaller raw file size. Belinda and I got into the theater early to do a little sonic testing. Even in its quiet mode the D7100 was much too loud. I even tried swaddling it in neoprene but that wasn't enough to squelch the shutter and mirror noise. Back in the bag it goes. Pity since the 85mm lens with the CX crop would have given me the equivalent of a 170mm f1.8...

Next up was the Samsung NX30. I figured that it has an electronic shutter setting and if it works as the Panasonic e-shutter works it should be silent. Well, turns out the first "curtain" is electronic but there's still a loud capping noise somewhere in the process so that one headed back into the bag as well. I finally grabbed the Panasonic GH4 and put it into the silent mode----where it was absolutely silent. The only noise was my exhale as I gently squeezed the shutter button. 

I shot most of the show with the 35-100mm f2.8 and truth be told I could have used another 100mm of reach from time to time but there's always more that I'd like no matter which set up I'm shooting. 

For the dance scene above, with no kiddos on stage, I decided to try out the ancient Olympus Pen 60mm f1.5. in combination with the GH4's focus peaking (the lens is strictly manual in every sense!).

The EVF indicated exposure was perfect and, considering that I was being brave and using the lens wide open for the most part, the focus peaking was pretty darn good. Especially when one considers the lower light levels, the constant subject movement and scene contrast. The camera's focus peaking worked well and I was able to get satisfactory focusing on 95% of the frames attempted. 

I figure if you can shoot an ancient lens in manual, focus it manually and do manual exposure as well as a bit of white balance adjustment on the fly still and come away with decent images you are probably zeroed in on your technical game. It was fun to pull out and work with a classic optic. It was even more fun when the old lens is given an "assist" from a new camera.

added in the afternoon: I forgot to mention that the play was wonderful. Mel as "the King" was phenomenal while Jill Blackwood is always just perfect. Another treat for me were the huge backgrounds "outside" the palace windows. They absolutely glowed at "twilight." I'll go back a third time just so I can enjoy the whole spectacle without a camera pressed against my face.

A splashy marketing stumble makes me question Canon's sanity. Again.

Canon's ad agency bought a time machine and 

made a website from the 1980's. 

After a week of build up and a double truck ad in the New York Times all of the hoopla from Canon was for the introduction of a badly designed "interactive" website that tried to tell too many (poorly crafted) stories to too many disparate audiences. You can go and see it for yourself: http://seeimpossible.usa.canon.com

But be forewarned that the site took over a minute to load on my broadband connection.

And this on the heels of a lavishly produced but sparsely attended show here in Austin from their consumer printer division in which they showed maybe 100 framed and matted prints to an invited audience of maybe 35 people at the Austin Music Hall. They seemed desperate to fill the space even with complimentary alcohol and nice catering.

While I will make no judgement on the content or style of the images shown it was sad to hear that Canon printed all of the files themselves because the actual printing was the weak part of the show. That, and the fact that all the prints were printed in the same palette at the same exact size and format.

Homogenous. Flat. All printed on the same Lustre paper.  If these two incidents are examples of their advertising agency's best work it's high time they shopped around... maybe find some college kids in an apartment who haven't lost all of their mojo and still have some enthusiasm for stuff that's new and different.

I'm sure someone will suggest that I don't like Canon cameras and that's not the point here. The point is that maybe part of the problem in camera sales is that the damn ad agencies handling the accounts don't have a clue how to talk to photographers. That's a big hurdle. And I'm not just singling out Canon. At this point, if I was on the Canon internal marketing team, I'd just bag the traditional ad agencies and start crowdsourcing the creative. It couldn't be worse and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper.....

A reposting of an image by reader request. And a mea culpa to Aaron.

On a recent blog I wrote about using three cameras with various lenses on them to shoot in a style that used to be common in the days before pro level cameras became so expensive. A reader asked in a comment how I wore the cameras as I was shooting. The above image is from a math conference I did this Summer. Two of the cameras are GH3's and one of the cameras is a GH4. In the blog I talked about using all three cameras with prime lenses but two of the cameras above are fitted with zooms. I wouldn't want to be too consistent...

And I do owe an apology to reader, Aaron. I misread his comment about there being no difference in changing lenses to other focal lengths or zooming. I presumed we were talking about staying in one place and zooming versus changing positions and "zooming with one's feet." He is, of course, absolutely correct. Sorry about that!

I have been doing variations of the three camera shoot for about a year now and I find it a fun way to shoot. I'm down to two Panasonic cameras now so my "three camera" system is now only being practiced with the three Olympus EM5 bodies. This week I am experimenting with using the 3 Sigma DN Art lenses for m4:3 as my trio of glass. The 19mm, 30mm and 60mm. While the wide end is not very wide neither is my vision... I absolutely love the 60, and I love the smooth black lens barrels.

On a totally different note I showed up for jury duty yesterday fully expecting a painful three days in the service of democracy and the rule of law only to find out, from the judge, that both defendants in the cases copped a plea just before the empaneling which gave me back three uncluttered, unencumbered days. I spent this morning swimming, sipping a latte and eating warm chocolate croissants. This afternoon Studio Dog and I are going out for a run. Should be lovely. A nice gift from the scheduling universe.

Why are we so in love with the cameras that we own and so disparaging of those brands we don't own?

The answers seem to lie in a book by author, Paul Bloom, entitled: How Pleasure Works. The New Science of Why We Like What We Like.

I am a truly addicted reader and, contrary to legend, I do read as much non-fiction as fiction. I am currently making my way through Paul Bloom's book and it's giving me fresh insight into the endless brand wars between otherwise rational photographers.

Leaving aside our initial buying decisions for a moment, the book makes the argument that once you've chosen something and received it the object attains an "endowment value." Basically it means that the object is no longer an anonymous and replaceable thing but it is now yours and by the very nature of you possessing it the object has more value to you.

Bloom references a study of market valuation which was done to bolster this idea. Essentially, a person is offered an object of value for a set price. His example was a coffee cup for five dollars. Once the person had committed and bought the coffee cup she was then offered six dollars to sell back the cup. In general the persons in the test refused and considered the cup to have a much greater value now. While the transaction would have netted the test subject a quick dollar of profit in mere seconds they were emotionally unable to logically understand the objective value proposition. It seems that the endowment valuation is at work in every purchase that we, as consumers, commit to.

A second issue is the power of having made a choice. It seems that making a choice between random but identical objects invests the chosen object with more value and degrades the value of the identical item not chosen. The test described in this example was a bar game in which you have three identical coasters. You hide one coaster and then ask the test subjects to make a choice between two remaining coasters. Remember that the coasters are identical. The test subject is still asked to make a choice.

After choosing the tester brings out the third identical coaster and asks the test subject to choose between the previously declined coaster and the newly revealed coaster. Almost without exception the subjects chose the newly revealed coaster signaling that the previously rejected coaster was less desirable and so not a good choice.

It seems that once humans make a commitment to own something both the power of choice and the (irrational) endowment of value come into play and cause us to defend our choice and denigrate the unchosen objects. Other studies bolster these findings and speak to their near universality, not only amount humans but also among some other primates.

There is another related force at work which keeps us "loyal." We, like almost all species, are more comfortable with a known thing or experience than a new or unknown thing or experience. In happy relationships satisfaction with partners is shown to increase over the long term specifically because our partner is known and safe. Safety is the basic parameter we are all trying to achieve so we can continue living and safely pass on our DNA. As a result of millions and millions of years of evolution the compulsion to choose safety over implied, additional, but unknown benefits is an overwhelming one. The longer we work with a brand the more comfortable we become with its operation and even its quirks, even if they are demonstrably inferior to the products of competitors. That familiarity and understanding of "safety" tends to cement our relationships and, by extension, our brand loyalty.

In short, you like your camera better than my camera because you chose your camera (for whatever external or rationalized reasoning=marketing? Group persuasion? ) and you like my camera less than your camera (even if it's performance is identical) because you initially did not choose it. You have further cemented your positive appraisal of your camera through familiarity and your dismissal of my cameras choice because it is relatively unknown to you and therefore relatively unsafe.

And this is why Canon lovers love Canon cameras and Nikon lovers love Nikon cameras and etc., etc.

I know. You are an engineer, I.T. guy, math guy, and you think you made only logical choices and are immune to the psychology of choice. Paul Bloom and I think you are wrong.

I haven't gotten to the part of the book where relative rewards of new risk taking are covered but I can impute that it is risk taking that moves the species forward in an evolutionary way by uncovering the risk/reward math involved in having new methods or efficiencies made available. Either that or I am also making the same kinds of rationalization as above to bolster my camera choices.

Multi-system owners? Either they want to have the right tool at hand for a specific job or, more credibly they are trying to cover all of their bases so they can enhanced their perceived safety and ranking in their tribe.

The book and the research are eye-opening and a bit humbling. But it all boils down to sex and survival.  You might find it all interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Kirk-Tuck/e/B002ECIS24/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Am I working on Sunday? You bet, I'd hate to get behind for Monday...

Young Ben working in the studio on his first laptop.

One of my favorite medical practices here in Austin got in touch with me last week and asked me to update an environmental portrait of one of their doctors. We had done an entire campaign photographing each doctor doing what they loved to do in their off time. Hobbies, sports, crafts. You name it. The campaign was fun and I got to write the copy as well which meant that I really liked the entire package. 

We searched for schedule openings for both the doctor and myself and the only intersection that could happen quickly enough was to shoot this afternoon. We'll be meeting out on a soccer field to take the portrait. I'm taking the Elinchrom Ranger RX AS pack and a couple of flash heads with me to use. Since we'll be out in the middle of a big, remote field I'm pretty certain I won't be able to count on A/C current and I'd like a big pop of light in order to balance out the Texas sun.

The Elinchrom Ranger RX AS system is my go to "portable" electronic flash set up for stuff like this. With it I can be in  the middle of nowhere and still count on pounding out 1100 watts of flash power, through a huge soft box, at least 125 times in a row (before changing batteries). A lot more times if I set the recycle time to "slow." The pack is hefty. It weighs 18 pounds and it's not something I really want to carry very far. Today I plan to use it with a 28 inch beauty dish, covered with a white diffusion "sock."

I've used the Elinchrom Ranger for nearly five years now and neither of the two battery packs I have for it show any signs of slowing down or losing their charge. It is also the most reliable set of lights I've owned. While the initial purchase price was high I have used the system for studio work and in hundreds of remote locations over the last five years to produce dozens and dozens of jobs. In fact, I used the system for a week long, location intensive, annual report project just a month after the initial purchase and it paid for itself on the very first job. 

While packing for the project I was struck by the contrasts in equipment. The Swiss made flash system is stout and heavy. Made to handle years of photographer abuse. It's cumbersome to carry but nothing beats that big blast of clean light when you need it. Especially when you are hellbent on taming the Texas sun. On the other hand I'm packing tiny cameras. I'll be using the OMD EM-5 camera today and I think I'll try using it with the 75mm 1.8 Olympus lens that I'm still playing with. 

The camera seems so tiny next to the beefy flash generator. But I guess that's the new nature of the business. The cameras have become almost an afterthought compared to the discipline of lighting. At least that's how it seems to me. 

The only painful thing about working outside with big lights is the need to sandbag them. My favorite assistants are both out of town so I guess that means I'll be dragging a couple of 30 pound sandbags across the soccer field to anchor the light stand. Oh, the sacrifices we make just to get a good image...

editor's note: Kirk has been summoned for jury duty on Monday, Tues. and Weds. He may get out of it but he may not. That means the blog might be a bit spotty for the next few days. The following week is mercilessly over scheduled with wall to wall photo shoots right up until the minute he and Belinda head to New York on Thurs. to visit #1 son, Ben. It's a "parent's weekend" event at Ben's college.  We should resume full on blogging enthusiasm around the 20th. In the meantime, if the web gets too boring, you might consider buying either the paperback version or the Kindle version of his fun novel, The Lisbon Portfolio. A big dose of Kirk's writing in a concentrated burst. Thanks for tuning in. Stick around to hear about the vagaries of jury duty and remember, if he gets dismissed the blog will return to normal this week.