Old School Portraits. Collaborating about art.

The Visual Science Lab is a great place for me to talk about photography as I'd like to practice it and then have my ideas subjected to good doses of feedback.  I'm embarking for the first time into the business of selling private portrait commissions. I haven't decided whether or not to keep the business name as Kirk Tuck Photography or to do some research and try to find something that resonates more with the market I'm going after.

I do know what I want to deliver.  Black and white, and color prints that are in my own style.

I'd like to offer one more generation of people who appreciate the tradition of photography to share the practice of creating art on real film and receiving a real, custom print.  If possible, a darkroom print on double weight paper.  I'm currently looking for someone who prints from negatives.

I'm shooting a series of test portraits the way restaurants have a series of "friends and family" days before they open to strangers.  I'm choosing people I've worked with before as well as new people I've met walking around Austin.  When I have a portfolio ready to go I'll take down my  website and re-launch with new work.

It's scary and exciting but as much as I preach spending time in the water I'm also becoming a big believer in the process of re-invention and new discovery.  What good is a lot of practice if what you're practicing is something people don't need?

Finally, I'm working daily with the Hasselblad film cameras, trying to get back into that groove.  I'm having my negatives processed at Holland Photo and contact printed there as well.  Funny how much more comfortable those cameras are to me than the digital cameras. Even after 12 years.

Re-inventing the portrait.  Sounds like a book.  What do VSL follower's think?

Portraits are short stories about the person in front of your camera.

About twenty years ago I was still taking horrible portraits when someone much smarter than me said that my approach was all wrong.  I didn't know what they meant.  I'd read just about everything ever written about the technical steps involved in making good portraits---from start to finish.  I had cool gear.  The best you could buy.  And I had been making portraits for business for about ten years.  But this instantaneous mentor was right.  My portraits just sat there on paper like wallflowers at a party.  I tried everything in the proceeding ten years to improve them.  I went to workshops sponsored by the PPofA.  I asked advice from my fellow ASMP members.  I bought new equipment and tried new film but it seemed to me that I would never be able to break out of doing formulaic portraits.  At one point I thought of hanging up the ole neckstraps and trying to find something I could be good at.

Then a crusty old English professor I'd studied with invited me over to his house for a Bourbon tasting party. (Liberal arts professors did stuff like that back then...).  After I'd tasted  a few different mashes I started to jabber away to anyone who would listen to me about my visual process dilemma and my fear that I would forever be a portrait hack.  A gruff, older character in a tweedy jacket, sporting a prodigious beard and about as far gone as I clapped me on the back and said,  "It always seemed to me that making portraits is a helluva lot like telling a short story about a person.  If there's no intrigue and no story behind the picture then who the hell is going to want to look at it?"  Then the professor of French Art History weighed in.  She was a compactly and delicately built woman with short cropped hair and though she was in her early sixties she had a glint in her eye that warned you that here was a person not to be trifled with.  Especially midway through a raucous bourbon tasting party....

Here is her two cents:  "I want a picture to make me fall in love with the subject.  Or to want to fall in love with the subject.  Or at least make me give a fuck about the person in the picture. I want to smell some intrigue.  See some bare soul or at least be entertained.  Portraits that are just a description are as boring as television."

And finally, from a snarky person around my age and in my general circumstances: "Tell me a story or go wait tables."

I had been looking for people to photograph who were examples of stereotypic advertising imagery. The busty blond, the executive in a suit with the strong jaw,  the athlete with the six pack, and the girl with the perfect hair.  And what I was trying to do, subconsciously, with all these archetypes and all my standard lighting tricks was to say to potential customers: "I can take your order and provide the same thing as everyone else in the business.  Give me a try, you might like working with me."

But when I started looking for people who interested me and made my heart beat faster the whole deal started to change.  I started shooting subjects that people described as unusual beauty and it resonated in a different way.  Lou (above) was one of my patient, early muses in the process.  And making photographs of her was transformative.

I've done some backsliding since digital hit the market but I recently found (the joys of actually cleaning up your space) a journal in which I'd written down all the spicy words of advice from the Bourbon night.  I've probably gotten them slightly wrong as post hangover memory is rarely foolproof. And when I read it I realize that what I've always wanted to do with my portraits is to tell the exciting opening chapter of the person in front of me.  To give you that person's visual elevator speech.  


If I ever give another workshop I think it will be about the process of coming to grips with making portraits.  God knows my process was/is long and arduous.  The path to the next iteration of my career and the photographic careers of many other practitioners is to learn to make the portrait potent and relevant going forward.  Someone once said that out of 100 people 99 have very interesting stories to tell.  And the one percent without an interesting story is interesting by dint of his uniqueness.

Another photographer advised: "When everyone has their camera pointed in one direction there's got to be something equally interesting right behind them.  Just turn around and look for it."

The Anatomy of a fun summer project.

Poor Ben.  He's going to be a junior in high school next year and he was looking forward to a few more days of sleeping in until cross country practice started again.  But around the headquarters of the Visual Science Lab it just doesn't play out that way.  I roused him at 7 am this morning because I was on a vital mission and I needed his help.  Today was the day we photographed 140 members of the dynamic, Rollingwood Waves Summer League Swim Team.  Our mission was to make a portrait of each swimmer individually, with the pool in the background, and then to make group shots of each age group: 6 and under,  7 and 8,  9 and 10, and the elusive 11 and overs.

I'd spent days planning our strategy.  We created a sign up form and asked everyone to be sure and pay on the day of the shoot.  The sign-up form had the swimmers name big across the top and then asked for all the pertinent information.  In a nod to the digital age and endless sharing, we also asked for an e-mail address to which we will send a digital copy of each swimmer's portrait for their family to use.

Ben and I ate microwaved breakfast tacos made by our good friends at H.E.B. We brushed our teeth, patted the dog on the head, said goodbye to Belinda and headed out to put the last few bags into the extreme performance Honda Element (I'm okay with leaving stands and sandbags and even lights in the car overnight but not the cameras.  Not the really good stuff) and we headed to the pool.  The drive felt strangely familiar until I reminded myself that I'd done this drive six days a week for the last 15 years..

I decided to set up two different "stations" a few yards apart at the pool.  One station would be for the individual portraits and one station would be for the overall age group shots.  Our portrait station was lit with an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS battery powered strobe system.  I used an 18 inch beauty dish on one head and a 28 inch beauty dish on the other head.  The pack was set to a little more than half power with the distribution being 66% to the main light (22 inch) on the left and 33% into the fill light (28 inch) just over my right shoulder and up.  Both modifiers were covered with white diffusion covers we call, "socks."  The metered exposure was 1/250th of a second @f8 with sunlight in the background and an ISO of 100.

Each age group practices at a specific time.  We knew from our own experience of Ben having been on the Rollingwood Waves that the youngest swimmers, who swim first, would start arriving around 8:15 am, and we'd need to do their group shot right at 8:55 before they hopped into the crystal clear, eighty degree water and started working like Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin.

Ben and a parent volunteer took the filled in forms from the parents and checked off payment info.  Ben was strict with anyone who forgot to bring their forms and payment.  He's learning the lessons of capitalism early on.  The kids would line up and when it was their turn to be photographed they would hold their form up, with their name emblazoned big across the top, for the first shot.  This gave me a reference frame for each child so I'll be able to deliver their images to the right folder a week from now.

I took as many photographs as it took to get a nice smile from each of the kids.  Ben kept a close watch to make sure the flashes were firing and also ran interference between me and parents who had pressing questions.

Once we hit 8:55 we gathered all of the kids for the big age group shot, which also includes the coaches.  We arranged them all over a long picnic table, along the bench which faced the camera and, when necessary we added a row sitting cross-legged in the front.  We lit this set up with one Profoto Acute 600b pack at full power, blasting happy photons through an Elinchrom modifier called a large Varistar.  Fancy name for a 41 inch shoot through umbrella with a black on the outside/silver on the inside backing.  It's a fast and easy to use modifier.

I used Flash Wave 2 radio triggers on both stations so all I needed to do was walk between the two stations, set up the kids and coaches and make the images.  Last year I only brought one lighting system and I spent the morning moving it, and two sandbags, back and forth between the two shooting stations.  That always necessitates a couple of test frames at each location.  And it's a pain in the butt to hoist the stand and two twenty  pound sandbags and move them around.

Ben was on his game today. He headed down the big hill to the basketball courts and volleyball court a couple minutes before each group shot to round up "strays" and make sure everyone got into the shots.  He whisked all the paper work and checks into folders and got them into the car before he came back to help tear down gear and he was great with all of the kids.

I shot everything with one camera and one lens.  No.  It was not an OMD.  It was a Sony a77 with the 16-50mm kit lens on the front.  It's sharp and sassy, and the electronic viewfinder is amazing.  It's fun to watch the in-camera lens correction straighten and de-vignette each image as it comes up for review in the finder.  I could also tell immediately each time we lost a frame to a blink.  No need to put the camera down from my face and chimp it.  Seeing the boo-boo in the finder meant I could keep on shooting till we got the right look.  If you stop to chimp at waist level the kids think they're done with their part and they start to wander off.  Fun when technology makes my job easier.

We finished up the project with a group shot of the oldest kids and Ben was about to start breaking stuff down when I stopped him.  "Let's give it ten minutes.  There's always some parent that come screaming in late asking if we can't please include their kiddo."  And sure enough, a small crop of them filtered in, breathless in the next ten minutes to see if we could accomodate them.  We were pleased to.  Customer service always seems to be appreciated.

When I got back to the studio and finished meeting with the plumber I downloaded the card and sequestered it's 900 images onto two hard drives and two sets of DVD's.  Now I need to go thru and pick the best individual shot of each swimmer and the best group shot of each age group, have them printed and then stuck into presentation folders.  We'll deliver them back to the pool next week.

Not the most glamorous job in the world but pretty fun and very satisfying.  After Ben and I packed everything up in the car we headed for our favorite Chinese restaurant, Lotus Hunan and had a well deserved lunch.  First thing out of Ben's mouth?  "Dad, I thought of a few things we could try next year to make this run better..."  I listened.

Now comes the back end of the job.  But once I saw that we had great stuff on every swimmer and we had four backups in place I kicked back and took a break. I love it when stuff works out.

Kirk's Website.

Does anyone remember Super-8 movie film?

When I was working in the advertising business as the creative director of mid-sized agency in a mid-sized town we shot a fair number of television commercials and hired people to shoot industrial films.  The commercials were almost always done on 35mm movie film or Super-16 mm film.  We'd moved out of the dark ages by the time I started and once the footage was shot it would be color timed and converted to one inch or two inch videotape.  The really low budget stuff was shot on video.  But then something kind of wacky happened.

Film production went through its own Instagram Fad a couple of decades ago.  Suddenly everything got retro'd and degraded and grainy and choppy.  The culprit (or hero, depending on which side of the trend you embraced) was the re-embracing of what had been an amateur tool and re-inventing that tool as a professional style.  The vehicle of the new look was the Super8 camera buckled up with Super8 film.  Most of us liked it grainy and silvery so we chose Tri-X or maybe Plus-X black and white emulsions.  People who liked living on the edge used Kodachrome or Ektachrome color emulsions.

Since just about every company in the universe had stopped making Super-8 movie cameras years before the resurrection the race among auteurs and professionals in the moving picture market was to find and acquire the best of the best Super-8 cameras.  No other way to do it right.

This was my rig of choice.  A Nikon R10 Super with an f1.4 Cine Nikkor lens on the front.  It could shoot forward or reverse, you could sync high speed flash and you could synchronize sound with an outboard Nagra or Stellavox audio recorder.  You'll note that the camera had a stepped, motorized zoom control as well as manual zoom control with a grip stick for smoother zooms.

We got a ton of use out of this camera. And we did a lot of projects. I'd leave the house in the morning and my camera bag would be equally weighted between double "A" batteries and film cartridges. (Mostly Tri-X).  While I like shooting locked down on a fluid head tripod the style of the day was a jerky, hand held style that would have made the Jason Bourne DP happy.

There was one project I wrote and directed that really showed off the artistic capabilities of the R10 Super and contrasted it with the smooth color of Sony BetaCam video. It was an industrial film, custom made to be played at a MacWorld Expo back in the early 1990's.  In those days computer memory was expensive and computers without enough ram were dreadfully slow.  Our client, TechnologyWorks made memory and specialized in making the kind of memory that Apple MacIntosh computers liked to play with.  

Our premise was to start the film in color with footage of people looking bored and waiting for their computers to process important graphics jobs.  We'd cut to angry bosses looking at their watches and then to close ups of ticking clocks (slowed down) and back to beautiful designers looking frustrated and beautiful.  All of this waiting and frustration was film in grainy, handheld black and white on the R10 Super using black and white Tri-X.

Once the new memory was installed everything became more real. And that meant smooth, lush colors, camera moves on tracks or on fluid head tripods and really clean, happy lighting.

All of the Super8 film was developed, taped together and then run through a telecine machine that would convert the film, frame by frame, to 3/4 inch videotape so it could be included in the post production.  The film was a success. Our main model was egregiously cute.  The effects all worked and the grainy, jumpy black and white footage at the front two minutes of the piece attracted a huge crowd of Mac-Groovers wherever and whenever we showed it. And the film got used for several years.  Most importantly, I got paid. 

The R in R10 Super calls out a feature which allowed the user to rewind part of the film and shoot on it again for special effects. Nikon patented this.  The "10" in the name referred to the 10X Cine Zoom that the camera was built around.  The R10 Super 8 was the zenith of movie products for Nikon but sadly it was also the last of the breed for that company as video quickly started to take the place of film for family movies and low budget projects.

I came across my camera in a closet this morning.  It's been years since I fired it up and ran film through it but I was at least prescient enough to have taken the batteries out of the camera when I stored it.

I've worked on projects in 16mm and 35mm but Super 8 is my favorite because of its minimalist profile.  I'm rehabbing the camera this week and ordering some Super 8 just for fun.  I'd be curious to know how many of the VSL readers have had parallel interests in making movies and short films and how many have worked with Super8.  It's really a cool part of the evolution of multi-media.  And according to friends in the film business Super 8 is still going strong, with yearly film festivals and the use of Super8 for effect in TV commercials.  What a crazy career I've had so far...

Final fact:  In 1971 the airlines started showing in flight movies with Super8 film projectors.  Before 1971 all in flight movies were shown on 16mm film.  Amazing.

Homage to Victor Skrebneski.

 Lou ©2012 Kirk Tuck

See his work here: Victor Skrebneski.

I was in a discount bookstore an I came across a book of portraits by Victor Skrebneski.  I was stunned at what he'd done, bought the book and looked around for more copies.  Then I started to study him.  He is a fashion photographer who has been working in Chicago since the 1950's and is most famous for decades and decades of beautiful Estee Lauder ads.  Amazing skin tones and wonderful colors.

But the book I bought, Skrebneski Portraits, was filled with high contrast images of faces and torsos.  It was powerful and different from all the stuff I usually saw in photo magazines.  

More and more my work started to reference Skrebneski's.  I find the directness of his black and white technique very compelling.

Edit June 5:  Do you need a copy of one of my first two lighting books in Chinese?

Here's the link:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=kirk+tuck

Scroll down to items 10 and 11.

Internationally published.  Yes.

An interesting lens for the micro four thirds cameras.

The Sigma 30mm 2.8 lens for Micro Four Thirds.

I am sometimes at the mercy of my readers and my lust for fun stuff.  But I'm generally happy when someone points out a useful piece of gear that doesn't break the bank.  That's what the Sony DT lenses seem to be and that's what this particular lens seems to be.

As most of you know I've been using the MFT cameras since the introduction of the Olympus EP2 and the VF-2 finder.  I have both the 25mm f1.4 PanLeica lens and the very cute, cuddly and capable 45mm 1.8 lens but there are times when I'm looking for something more in the middle.  That's where the 60mm would come in handy.  It's just long enough to give me a better perspective than the 25mm but just short enough to give me more atmosphere than the 45mm.  From reports I've heard around the web it's a good performer and nicely sharp, even wide open. While some of my friends (Andy?) swear by the 20mm Panasonic I got rid of mine because I found it to be too wide for my tastes.  The performance of the lens was great but I found myself always wanting or needing to crop before it would start singing for me.  

The 25mm is just in the ball park and the 30mm focal length would seem to me to be ideal for street shooting.  I'm still deciding but in the meantime I'm getting great results from an old Olympus classic, the 38mm 1.8 for the Pen film cameras.  It's a nice performer an a decent focal length.

And there is a companion 19mm f2.8 for those who cringe at the Panasonic 20mm price: 

The Fake Baker.

©2012 Kirk Tuck

We were scheduled to photograph a baker for a shoot for Schlotzsky's Sandwich shops because they'd just added an assortment of breads to their original sour dough bread and they were going to use their "artisanal breads" as a marketing differentiator.  The image was to impart an "old world craftsman" look so the brief started by specifying black and white.  I immediately thought of the insightful yet straightforward work of August Sander, the German Photographer who documented various craftspeople in an amazing project that spanned decades.

The Pastry Chef ©August Sander.  

The photo shoot was the first image in the synthesis of the company's upcoming campaign so the company brass was there to oversee my work and the work of the ad agency.  In addition to the actual baker from one of their stores we also had, in attendance, both the CEO and the CFO.  The only problem for me was authenticity versus the right look.  While the baker they brought to the shoot had the right professional credentials he was also about 23 years old, had some tattoos and just didn't look the part.  

I pulled the art director aside and voiced my concerns and we decided to go ahead and photograph the baker and then find a second solution.  No sense hurting feelings on the set.  As soon as we made our decision it dawned on me that the CFO had just the right look.  A bit older and with more gravitas. The art director suggested that since it was my idea I won the job of persuading the man in the suit to make a temporary career change and don the chef whites.  

Once we finished photographing the younger (real) baker we thanked him and sent him on his way.  Now we got down to the real business.  We had the CFO put on the chef's coat, pinned the back so it fit right, put a little powder on his face to keep him in a nice "matte" finish and proceeded to photograph. We had a range of smiling, not smiling and permutations that mixed both but for some reason the consensus was that this shot was our keeper.

I made a straight black and white print with no toning or softening for the ad agency to use in print production.  Later I went back into the darkroom and printed on several different double weight papers before I finally settled on the look of Agfa Portriga paper, toned in a dilute selenium toner.  The version up above is the one I put into my portfolio. 

My portrait of the CFO/Baker was lit with one very large soft box (4x6 feet) which was further softened by an extra layer of white, silk diffusion in front.  A sheet of white foamcore placed about ten feet to the opposite side provided fill light for the left side of the subject's face.

The camera was a Pentax 6x7 with a 165mm lens. The film was Ilford FP-4.

If you don't know the work of August Sander you might want to do some web research.  I find his work amazing not only for the extreme quality he brought to location lighting so many decades ago but also for the anthropological interest it kindles.  You really feel as though you have a window into the past.  You might also be interested in Irving Penn's book on photographing trades.

Oh Dear God, I Need The Latest Camera...

Renee Zellweger. ©1992 Kirk Tuck.

Shot on Kodak Panatomic X, 32 ISO black and white film (no, I did not leave off zeros..) using a 500 Watt Light Bulb shining through a translucent (and battered) 40 inch white umbrella using a Canon FTb camera and a Manually focused 135mm lens. Hand processed film. Enlarger print. No digital post processing.  No digital "enhancement."  How did I ever survive?

A Random Portrait for a Sunday Afternoon.

I've got my Nikon F loaded with ISO 100 color negative film.  I have an ancient 50mm 1.4 Nikkor latched on to the front.  I'm headed out the door to walk around my city and see what's new since last time.  While it's very un-Zen-like of me I do have a goal that's more like a consistent, subconscious pulse.  I'd like to see who is out there.  The portrait subjects I've worked with over the years of doing this for myself generally are strangers that I've met somewhere.  Something about them (a kind of beauty that falls outside the American mainstream?) that is different and hard to describe helps to guide me to meet them and invite them to sit for a portrait.  Not everyone wants to participate and I understand that.  But you'll never see who's out there unless you spend some time looking.

I don't know what or whom I will find today.  I don't know if I'll even click a frame.  But the process of walking (good exercise for the body and the brain) will be fun and I'll stop in at all the places that make us feel welcome.

When I come back to the studio I have to confront the renovation I'm about to embark on.  I'm trying to get rid of as many useless treasures as I can.  Empty camera boxes, extra filing cabinets the contents of which could be compressed into other filing cabinets or discarded. Papers from decades ago.  Prints I've come to hate and a curious assortment of black picture frames that take up way too much space.

I've replaced the air conditioning and that's made me want to repaint the interior of my space for the first time in fifteen years.  That means everything has to come down off the walls and up off the floor.  All the ghastly, giant filing cabinets have to be moved out from the walls.  Another coat of white paint.  And while we're painting I guess it makes sense to repaint the red door to the studio.  It's looking worn, faded and (thanks to my little dog) well scratched.  After we paint I'll add a kick plate that I bought years ago as a prop....

No wonder I'd rather go and wander the streets with an ancient camera, a pocket full of film and an incident light meter.  Looking for my next portrait subject.

Camera Inconsequential.

This is a frame from a 35mm portrait sitting.  I'm sure I used a 90mm or 105mm lens to take the image.  I don't remember what camera it came from and I don't really care.  At the time I was experimenting in the darkroom with a technique that involved the use of a device called a Pictrol.  You used it in between the enlarging lens and your printing paper.  Was essentially an iris with bubbly, distorted, plastic blades that could be dialed in or out making sections of the print softer or even haloed. Used to aggressively it destroyed all the sharpness in a printed image.  Used with discretion it took the edge off the details and made for very flattering skin tones.  The shadows would "bleed" into the highlights and the effect was also one of cutting down highlights that were printing too bright.

Given that I was actively reducing sharpness and contrast in pursuit of a specific kind of image, to speak about the pristine and scientific qualities of whatever lens I was using seems... churlish.

What I like about the photograph is the calm and direct engagement that Michelle gives the camera, and by extension, me.  I also like, from a design point of view, the exquisite contrast between the light skin tone, her white tank top and the inky dark shadows to one side.  The result of one big light used at what I considered to be just the right angle. 

Even before PhotoShop existed photographers have manipulated their images to fit their vision. Especially in the black and white darkroom. 

This is my Pictrol (which stands for Pictorial Control).

I couldn't bear to get rid of it when I closed

my darkroom.  

Interestingly enough, it fits on the front of  my Olympus

45mm 1.8 lenses.  I'll have to do some portraits with that.....

A post from 2009. Thought of it today as I reached for my 50mm 1.4 and my NIkon F...

Fifty Millimeters. The Glorious Optics of Yesterday. 

Ben Tuck.  Post Swim.  Nikon 50mm 1.2 ais.

My first camera was a Canon QL17 which sported a reasonably good 40mm lens.  It was soon replaced by a Canon TX SLR camera with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens that seemed to remain locked on the front of my camera for most of its usable life.

When I look through my current equipment I find that I have hoarded a large number of normal lenses including:  Nikon's manual focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, two manual focus Micro lenses (both 55mm),  Nikon's auto focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, a Leica 50mm Summicron and 50mm Summilux for the M cameras and assorted "normal" focal lengths for the Olympus E-1 and the ancient line of Olympus Pen "half frame" film cameras.  I won't even start to recount the number of normal lenses I have for medium format cameras.

All this begs the question, "why?"  Well, first of all, every one of the normal focal length lenses is a superior performer.  One stop down from wide open every single one of them starts to really shine when it comes to sharpness, contrast and intangibles.  Two stops down and they beat every zoom lens on the market.  (We can argue forever about the new top zooms from Nikon).  They sit beautifully on the cameras instead of sticking out like some Freudian flagpole. This enhances the cameras shooting profile and makes the whole ensemble less intimidating.

But all of this would be moot if the angle of view wasn't so compelling.  I love the angle of view that a normal lens gives you.  Shot correctly it can seem wide or narrow.  Shot close at near wide open apertures the 50mm can give you incredibly shallow depth of field as in my shot of Ben.  But the real bottom line is that this is a focal length that matches my residual vision. Meaning that if I distilled everything else out of a shot this is what would be left.  

Those of you who are amateur mental health care professionals will probably wonder what motivates me to own so many different iterations of the 50mm.  Clinically, you might just go with exaggerated fear of loss but in reality I think it's the idea of being like a painter and having multiple brushes, each of which provides a different and distinguishable nuance to the canvas. The 50 1.2 Nikon does shallow depth of field with a sharp "core" better than anything out there.

The 50mm MF 1.8 Nikon does great sharpness across the entire geometry of a full frame better than any of its brethren (except for a few macros), while the Summilux does exquisitely sharp center with soft, happy, mellow edges better than anything else.  Couple that with a little rangefinder focusing and you've got and incredible package.  I bought the normal autofocus lenses around the time when the only cameras you could get from Nikon and Fuji were cropped frames with smaller viewfinders which impeded the focusing of fast manual lenses and I hold on to them because I find the Nikon D300 and the FujiFilm S5 Pro to be really spectacular cameras for different uses.

And, of course the obvious advantage of the fast 50's is their light gathering capability.  A sharp fast lens wide open can be two stop faster than the best zooms.  That equals two full shutter speeds of hand-holdability and action stopping!  Just like having VR in every lens.

The sweetest thing of all for a Nikon shooter like myself (edit: now a Canon shooter!!!)  is that the current generation of Nikon digital cameras, like the D3, D3x, D700 and D300 actually make corrections for the short coming of the lenses attached to them.  I have found the 50mm 1.2 to be much improved in its performance with these four cameras.  The other lenses seem sharper and contrastier as well. One of my favorite new combinations is the old Nikon F4s (film camera) with the new Nikon 60mm Micro AFS.  The lens is impressive on digital cameras and even more impressive on the old film camera.  The combination drives me to shoot more film just so I can marvel at how well it all works together.

Even though I have lots and lot of 50's and related focal lengths I would say that my total financial investment is less than $2,000 or about the price of one 14-24mm Nikon Zoom lens. If great wide angle work is your interest you really only have one compelling choice.  I don't see that way and I'm thrilled to be able to match my optic to my vision of the moment.  I'm just about to buy the new Nikon 50 1.4  AFS just for its center core sharpness.  Stay tuned and I'll get a nice review of its performance together.

Finally, a friend really liked a quote I threw out on his discussion site the other day.  I want to share it with you:

"There is no real magic in photography, just the sloppy intersection of physics and art."

Kirk Tuck,  March 2009

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Best, Kirk

A Dancer and her feet. 35mm film. Oldest School.

I don't ever remember worrying about grain or noise when I shot film.  It was what it was.  I'd load the camera with Tri-X and try to do right by it.  Sometimes I underexposed and it looked one way and sometimes I'd overexpose and it would look another way.  But we mostly took what we got and reveled in the way the images looked.

I tried to spend as much time as I could over one summer here in Austin with a group of dancers.  They were fun, beautiful and glamorous.  We'd spend afternoons in a second story dance studio over what is now an endless row of music clubs on Sixth St. and the dancers would dance and I'd make images of them.  Most of the negatives are lost to the shifting sands of time and bad conservation.  Every now and then I'll come across another set and print them.  Not once have I thought that it would have been any better if I'd been able to reach into the future and grab a noise free,  digital camera to work with.  A guilty confession?  I like grain.

Michelle in the black dress.

I remember our session like it was yesterday.  Michelle walked into my studio in this fantastic dress and I was enchanted.  She always had a regal presence and the austere black dress against her pale skin made a wonderful contrast in tones.

We started our session as we had several times before, shooting some film and then stopping to talk.  Taking a Polaroid and then sharing it to see where we wanted to go next, what we could change about the pose or the expression to make the photographs a little more interesting.  And then we'd start again.

It was generally quiet in the studio.  We always shot alone.  No make up people, no assistant.  And we were unhurried in a way that seems almost impossible today.  We might start at three in the afternoon and not stop until after six in the evening.

The pauses between rolls of film were always longer than the actual photographing.  We'd talk about life and gossip about people we knew in common and we'd talk about things like 'what makes something beautiful?'  We'd talk about silly stuff and we'd take more photographs.

I work quietly and I try to give my subjects lots of feedback.  Nearly everyone needs to ratchet down their expectations.  We're not trying to sway to music or change poses every time the flash goes off.  We collaborate and build up slowly to an expression and a pose that I like.  That I'm sure she will like too.

Shoots done well  have a natural rhythm.  When I took this portrait we were working with film.  This camera got 15 images on a roll of film.  The camera took film inserts instead of film backs.  I would load four or five inserts and we'd work our way through them and then take a break, change scenes, or  Michelle would change clothes while I unloaded the spent film and reloaded new film and we'd start again.

In every session there's stuff that almost works but you know you're not quite there.  If you are in sync with a subject you'll both know when you've built up the energy to something special and you try to ride that wave but it's inevitable that there's one real crescendo in a session and everything after that is just due diligence.  You wind down and at some point, though you know you'll regret breaking the spell, you have to say, "I think we got it."

Then you hug and promise to get together soon to share the contact sheets or the files and you walk your beautiful subject to her car and say, "goodbye."  And then, if you're like me,  you can't sleep until you've souped the film and looked at every frame, holding your breath a little bit and searching for that one frame that encapsulated all the work you'd both done on a rainy, wintery afternoon in a big studio in another time.

Later, when it's freezing outside and you've got the time in an evening you go into the darkroom and bask in the solitude.  Tanning to the red safelights.  Listening to an old CD from a long time ago and praying that the print you just stuck into the developer tray will come out half as well as you hope it will.  And then you try again, and again and again.  You drive home at 2 in the morning knowing you have something good on the drying screens.  And then you show it on the web and write about it many years later.  That's how you know you really like an image.

Visible Means of Support.

Sometimes the cameras and lenses don't matter nearly as much as getting them into the right place to make photographs and keeping them steady.  In that regard perhaps the micro four thirds cameras have an advantage since they are lighter and smaller than their bigger acquaintances and therefore easier to secure in weird places.

I recently had a need to position a camera about ten or eleven feet in the air.  I needed to shoot a building while including something in the foreground and if I shot at conventional eye level the foreground feature would have been too prominent.  Sadly, I'll have to admit that in my collection of tripods I don't have anything that will go nearly that high.  I could buy some monster tripod from Gitzo but it doesn't make much economic sense if you can find a way around the problem with tools you already have sitting around your studio.

I have a Werner extendable ladder that is eight feet tall when used in it's "A" configuration.  It's sturdy and solid but when collapsed it fits into my Honda Element and it's easy enough for one person (usually me) to carry around on a location.  All I need was a way to add two more feet of extension and also add a tripod head that would allow me easy movement for exacting composition.

I have a Pelican case under one of my shelving units that's filled with miscellaneous grip equipment that I've accumulated over the past two decades and that was my first stop when looking for stuff that would hold a camera to a ladder ten feet in the air.  One of my over riding goals was to have the camera mounted securely so it wouldn't come crashing down on the heads of the unsuspecting and, of course, I didn't want to see if the camera could survive such a rigorous drop test.


From the grip case I chose four components.  The most important was the Bogen (or Manfrotto) Magic Arm.  This is an articulated arm with a center knob.  Position the studs on the ends where you want them, position the arm exactly where you want it and clamp down with the knob.  Everything becomes as solid as a single bar of hard metal.  I've attached Magic Arms to so many supports I can even begin to remember them all.

At each end of the articulated arm is a 5/8's inch stud on a ball.  This allows for a lot of fine adjustment and, when the knob is tightened the studs and the ball are held solid.

The next step is to outfit either end.  I needed to attach one end to the top steps of the ladder so I chose a Bogen Super Clamp.  It fits on the stud and its jaws clamp on to whatever support you are using to make a super strong connection.  How strong?  I've used two Super Clamps to suspend a hammock in the studio which easily supported a 160 pound model.   Super clamps are a steal and a must for most studios.  I don't think I've ever paid more than $30 for one and they never wear out or go out of fashion.  The Super Clamp makes a secure connection for the Magic Arm at the top of the ladder.  Now I need to figure out the other end.

I attached a Manfrotto bracket to the other end of the Magic Arm and used that to mount a Leitz Ball Head to my contraption.  The ball head is sturdy enough to support a Sony a77 and a Sigma 10-20mm lens but you'll want to use an electronic cable release or the camera's self timer so you don't move the camera too much.  It takes a few seconds for my whole "ladder/tripod" system to settle when you touch the camera...

If I owned a ten foot tall tripod I would still have to bring along a ladder to stand on to look through the camera.  With my Magic Arm / Super Clamp rig I am getting double duty out of my ladder.

Here is an outtake of the final shot....