The Visual Science Lab : 12 January 2014

1.23.2014

Stupid camera tricks. This is the future of camera tech?

Suddenly every camera I own (hyperbole alert: statement does not include mechanical film cameras, the august Pentax K-01 or any camera purchased more than a year ago...) has some sort of "connectivity" included. You can wi-fi stuff or you can NFC stuff and, if you want to you can drag my Galaxy NX camera out, put in a SIMM card, pay for a data plan, and even cellular data transfer your stuff. Each one of the protocols, in some way, has the promise of being able to move the image you just took, off the camera and, through some circuitous route, onto your favorite social image sharing site.

Let me put aside the buzz words for a second and explain this for someone like my non-technical older brother: I can snap a picture and it will be automatically sent to my iPad or iPhone. I can look at the picture and even "fix" it and then send it to Facebook."

At which point I'd probably be asked, "Couldn't you always take a picture and send it to Facebook? Isn't the only different now that you don't need a wire?" Well. Yes. There is no wire.

But I would quickly jump in and tell him that I could control the camera remotely by using this new technology. He might ask, "So you can change exposures and colors and sizes and sharpness and all that on your camera just from your phone?" And I'd have to tell him that no, I could zoom the lens and tell the camera when to take the photograph. That's about it.

"But didn't you buy a fancy camera with a nice finder so you could make careful compositions and quick setting changes?" Well, yes, that is the reason I spent over a thousand dollars on a camera. I wanted to compose through a nice viewfinder and make quick changes to things like exposure and color balance but....isn't it cool that you can tell your camera to shoot NOW! and it will do it? From your phone!!!

And then he might ask, "So, if you can't control everything you could when you have the camera in your hands is the real advantage that the transfer of the images is so much faster than the old way you did it? Like, faster than when you used to stick the little card in the slot on your laptop and transferred files directly. Does this new, remote method save you a lot of time and work?"

Then I'd have to explain to him that it really is a LOT slower to transfer big Jpeg files over a wi-fi connection but I can do this just about anywhere and I can even use my phone! I can make the files smaller to compensate...

"Wait a second!" He'd no doubt reply. "A couple of weeks ago you gave me a big lecture about shooting pictures onto something called "RAW files" so you could get the highest quality. Are you able to transfer these RAW files to your phone or your iPad and send them right away?"

Well, no. Maybe I could with the Samsung GNX, after I pay for a separate cellular data plan. But none of the social sharing sites accept RAW files....

Then, being an academic, I'm sure he'd start to drill down... "Well, it seems to me that if you are shooting your art or for a client you'd probably be using RAW files which you couldn't really use with the connectivity in your new cameras. Is that right? And it seems to me that you'd probably want to make your Jpegs smaller and more compressed so they transfer over (camera) wi-fi a bit faster and then upload to the sites a bit faster, right?"

Being honest I would have to admit that he was right.

"So, if you can't send files that you'd use on a job for one of your clients, and you can't control all the camera controls on a phone or pad that you could if you had the camera in your hands, and everything takes longer to transfer and you can't even use the raw files, then why don't you just shoot the stuff you want to put on Facebook with your iPhone? Didn't you tell me the camera in your phone was pretty good?"

Then he might add: "You know, you spent all that money buying a camera that would do your mysterious RAW files and I've heard you talk (too ) many times about how nice the new electronic finders are on the mirror less cameras, and you can transfer more files more quickly and even do better processing with them on your laptop. So why did you waste all that money?"

Anyway, I noticed that Sony has an app called Play Memories that you can load onto your iPhone (or Android phone) or a tablet and it will show you on the device screen what the camera sees. It will allow you to zoom and it will allow you to trip the shutter. Once you trip the shutter it will send the resulting Jpeg file to your device. I downloaded the app last night. It worked as I described it. The files transferred pretty quickly. I was able to work on them in the tablet version of SnapSeed and then send them along to a sharing site. I e-mailed myself one of the photos to use on the top of this blog post.

The only reasonable application I can see for such a sparsely featured transfer program is to check composition on a remote camera that's positioned in a place that's hard to get to. That place is not my tripod. The only other added benefit I can see is to allow a client to review or preview the image the camera sees on a bigger screen. That is not a new feature. In the ancient days we could do this via an arcane process called, "tethering." It even worked with my circa 2002 Kodak DCS 760 camera via Firewire. But when I tethered I had a lot more control over camera parameters.

So, explain to me, exactly, what is the benefit of having wi-fi or NFC in my camera? I really want to know. Maybe I'm missing something golden.

1.21.2014

Enough love showered on the Sony RX10. Now I turn my attention to the NIKON !!!!!

Yeah. You heard me. I said, "Nikon." But no, I don't mean the ponderously large cameras or the antiquated camera mirror antics. No, when I say "Nikon" I mean Nikon lenses for my micro four thirds cameras. Today I was packing up to go and photograph some kids at Project Breakthrough so we could select one of the kids for the cover of the annual report. (Project Breakthrough is a non-profit organization that prepares underserved high school and middle school students for successful college careers...).

I put together a really small and straightforward kit but enough to do exactly what the comprehensive layout and the attending art director asked for. I took a Panasonic GH3 to shoot with and a second one as a back up. I grabbed the kit lens, the 45-150mm lens, the 40mm and 60mm high speed Pen lenses and, just for grins I tossed an old Nikon 50mm 1.4 (pre-au), rigged on a couple adapter rings, into the the bag. I took a couple of flashes but assumed (correctly) that I would only need a manually set Sony A-58 HVL flash firing into a big, 72 inch umbrella, triggered by a Flash Waves radio set.

My intention was to use the 60mm 1.5 lens as my primary lens and have the others along in case someone chimed in with, "as long as you are here would you mind shooting......XYZ ???" But when I started setting up that old, battered Nikon lens kept calling out, "Try me. Try me."

Of course it was just the right focal length and these color corrected but otherwise un-retouched images tell the story. The lens is sharp, well balanced and gives a very smooth rendering to the various tonalities. It's a different look than the exaggerated over sharpness I see in lots of modern lenses. The ancient Nikon, shot at f2.8 is subtly rounded in its rendering while delivering detail you can see in the enlargement of our subject's eye, below.

When used properly the GH3 is a wonderful camera. The files are neutral and transparent and, I think as good as anything out in the market at 16 megapixels. At least on par with the Olympus OMD EM-1. The camera requires the operator to make good choices and to use good technique. I find it to be equally transparent in its usability. It just gets out of the way and facilitates the process for me. It's an interesting choice of camera. Even more so if you are also inclined to want to make lovely video files...

I have three Nikon lenses left over in my drawer. I tried the 50mm 1.4 today. I have an older 55mm f3.5 micro lens and a 58mm 1:1.2 Nocto Nikkor and I look forward to testing each of them on the pixie-style camera bodies. You never know what you'll find when you mix stuff up.

I guess I read a lot of lens reviews that are done by people who photograph watches and wheat stalks and micro fine wiring harnesses. Clockwork and landscapes, intricate weavings and giant, industrial architecture. They all seem to like their lenses sharper than wire through cheese. And sharp everywhere, even in the hidden parts of a photograph. Seems like scalpel level sharpness is the general vogue.

Portrait photographers might do well to break from the herd and seek other metrics of lens selection. Everyone would benefit from trying a number of lenses in the focal lengths that are most important to them and then choosing the ones that feel right to them. In a way it's like selecting wines. Some people like big, bold, high alcohol content, Cabernet Sauvignons while others enjoy softer but more complex wines.

We can be like that in photography if we are mindful and fully engaged with our choices.

No. I will not pick out lenses for you!

(Note, these files are reduced from their original size to a maximum of 1500 pixels on a long edge in order to fit in the parameters of the Google Blogger format. I will note that the detail in the originals, while not bombastic and obvious, does go on and on).

A re-post from 2009 about re-launching your career and why to kill off the previous one.

5.13.2009

Time to talk a bit about marketing. Yikes

Is it possible to be in the market for too long? I'm not talking about the stock market. We all know the answer to that one. I'm talking about the photography market. If you are forty or fifty years old and you've been a photographer for the last ten or twenty years you know that we've been through some gut-wrenching changes. We've all devised some self-serving and optimistic ways of looking at the decline of our traditional markets. Some people walk around telling anyone who will listen, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" But they never mention the scar tissue... Others say, "This too shall pass!" Implying that the pain we feel now is but a temporary sting that will give way to a rosy and prosperous tomorrow. "If you can make it through this economy you can make it through anything." As though it isn't possible for the economy to get any worse.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've come to some conclusions about our position as photographers in this new world and how things might work out. I'll say up front that if you are twenty five and surrounded by marvelous designer friends in some cool and unaffected part of the economy then just don't even bother to read the rest. Everyone's kilometerage will vary.

Let's start by going around the room and admitting we've got a lot of baggage. I know I do. It's hard not to. If you were working in the booming 1990's you no doubt remember when one of the hardest things to come by was a day off. Day rates were climbing and corporate clients were throwing out stacks of money to advertise new web based companies and services. Traditional agencies with long pedigrees understood the rationale of usage fees and were willing to negotiate based on these historical payment agreements.

We used real cameras that spit out physical products. We lit stuff and the lighting looked good. Clients didn't (and still don't ) understand lighting and they were willing to pay well for people who did. Checks came from local offices and agency people understood mark-up.

We remember all this and some part of our brains feels like that's the marker for what should be a normal photo market. But that's our baggage. Can we still feel the buzz and get all enthusiastic after the whole model irrevocably changes? Can we get pumped to do amazing stuff for less money? For much less profit?

The market has flattened and once clients have tasted nearly free stock, used it and waited for an apocalypse (loss of market share, damage to the brand) that never came we are confronted with their version of a genie that's been released from the bottle, a ship that's sailed, a horse that's already out of the barn.

The selling mantra against dollar stock was fear. "What if all the businesses in your sector used the same stock image in their campaigns? Wouldn't you be devasted?? Wouldn't you perceive the tremendous value of a commissioned shoot? You'll never get fired using a proven supplier!!!" That's pretty much a paraphrase of an essay up on the ASMP site. But here's the disconnect: Many of the art buyers, art directors, creative directors and marketing directors who learned their trade in decades past have been swept into other areas and out of negotiation with photographers by two big, catastrophic economic downturns in the first nine years of this century.

They've been replaced in legions by much younger and cheaper people. These people were raised with dollar stock use or limited rights managed stock as the norm. That's their baseline. There is no nostalgia driving these people back to the traditional assignment model. There never will be. They add their own value to the stock stuff with tons of manipulation. To be clear, clothing catalogs and product catalogs will continue being shot. CEO's will continue being photographed. Stuff will still be assigned. But it will be the exception rather than the rule. Only a tiny percentage of images will be assigned and only for specific, proprietary products.

Here's another critical driver: Advertising clients have scaled back in all print media and have poured more resources into online advertising. By some counts webvertising is up 20% this year over last. Consumer magazine ad pages are down nearly 35% over last year. What happens when the recession finally ends and clients find that web and cable satisfied their needs almost completely? I think they will channel more and more dollars into the web and TV and less and less into print.

Let's face it. The web isn't a challenging medium. My medium format cameras are definitely overkill for most web uses. For that matter my Canon G10 is overkill for most web use. The subordinated quality of web versus traditional media is just another barrier to entry knocked down. The challenge on the web is pushing people to the site but that seems to be the provence of social marketing and viral marketing.

I think that by the time this market recovers 80 to 90 % of the people we veteran photographers dealt with before the collapse will have moved on to other jobs and other industries. More and more we'll be dealing with a brand new crowd. None of them will know anything about your brand or your history in the market. In fact, having a history in the market will mark you as a dinosaur. Everything that we've learned over our careers, in terms of marketing, is going to be upside down. New is the new good. Fast is the new production value. And coffee is the new martini. The Canon G10 is the new Nikon D3x. Just as Strobism is replacing studio flash equipment.

This is just my perception. Everyone else's mileage may vary. But the real question is what to do about it. I think this year is going to be a wash out. It's a great time to get personal projects done, it's strategically smart to stay in touch with as many clients and potential clients as you can. It's important to build some new portfolios and some new self-promo and get the website ready. But here's my "from out of left field" "brain-stormed" (or lightning struck) idea for 2010.......

Shut your existing business down at the end of this year. Shut down everything. Close the doors. Toss out all your preconceptions about how a photography business should be run. Toss out your nostalgia and your mythology. Everything. Total purge. Career colonic.

Then, on the first of the new year (or when your gut tells you we're heading back to a prosperous overall economy) emerge and totally re-invent yourself from the ground up. New look. New marketing. New point of view and new ways of doing the business. Because no matter what you do you will be participating in capitalism's biggest "hard reset" ever and it's pretty much and even bet that, except for premium brands like Coca Cola and Apple and IBM and Starbucks, everyone else will be sitting in on the same reset.

Tired of buying endless gear? Maybe your new business model calls for rental of all lighting and grip gear. Tired of getting tooled around for payment? Maybe your new business model calls for nothing but credit card payment. Tired of your old clients? This is a time to reset. Tired of that filing cabinet of legacy headshot files your clients will never need again? You've gone out of that business, remember? Toss the stuff you don't need and make room for the stuff that will make you money in the new paradigm.

I've been in Austin a long, long time. My old clients will use me for a long time to come. The people who've been here as long as I have and haven't used me aren't about to start because they've already pigeon-holed me for one reason or another. When new people move into existing jobs they bring their own people or they go out looking for those people. By killing off our old business persona we get to be the people they bring in to replace us.

Let me repeat that: By killing off our old business persona we get to be the people they bring in to replace us.

Being a new business gives us an excuse to get pumped up again. To throw a big opening party. To invite people into our new process.

I'm still thinking about all this and working the kinks out of it. But it seems right to me on a number of intuitive levels. Everything changes and everything evolves. I don't want to wait around and be a miniature GM when I can be the next new thing. I know there are many holes and pitfalls to this new idea. And I'm not saying that I am rushing to implement but I do think it is interesting and we should discuss it.

I know it's not as sexy as talking about gear but that's the next thing I'm looking at. Really.

Looking forward to the re-launch. What form will it take for photographers?

1.20.2014

Think That Fancy Bokeh Isn't Possible with a Sony RX 10? Let's put it to the test.....again.

For some reason I can't let go of zeroing in the Sony RX10. Something in my photo brain tells me that this camera is something special and that I should play with it more and with a more serious attitude. I've only got my first six hundred frames on it and I'm of the opinion that you need to be somewhere near your ten thousandth frame before you really have a good camera figured out.

I'd been reading comments on various peoples' web reviews of the camera and the biggest single issue most people bring up is the inability of the camera and lens to make images with a narrow depth of field. Okay. I get that. I can look at DOF tables and see as well as anyone that your options will be more limited than they might be with a larger sensor and a faster lens. But where do we call it quits? I can trot out stuff we shot with a 110mm f2 Zeiss Planar on a Hasselblad 201f and we can laugh at all the people who think you can get decently narrow DOF on 35mm (full frame) cameras. But I get what they are saying. The RX10 isn't the right camera for you if you find you always want wide shots with narrow focus. But just how much control do you have?

Well, I met these two guys on the street today and they stopped to ask me a question. Here's the question: "Who do I think will go down in history as the most famous between these two athletes; Mohammad Ali (Cassius Clay) or Michael Jordan?" We bantered about that for a few minutes and then I posed a "Between Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps?" question. They left no doubt in my mind when they asked, "Who is Mark Spitz..."

I was about to walk away when I remembered my question: How do I show off the available control of DOF with an RX10? I asked if they would pose for a test image. I stuck the guy in the sleeveless shirt about 7 or 8 feet behind the guy with the glasses, opened up to f2.8 and zoomed out to the 200mm equivalent focal length. This is what I got. By the way........Nice Bokeh ! Here's some more samples:

Utility pole at 25 feet and crane at approx. 100 feet.

That was fun but guess what? I did my entire walk wide open. Well, I mean I left the lens aperture at f2.8 and I engaged something I haven't read about elsewhere. I engaged the automatic setting for the three stop neutral density filter. That's right, an automatic setting for the neutral density filter.

I set the camera on "A" mode, ISO 125, f2.8 and walked around banging out stuff I liked without a care in the world. And that's BIG since the shutter in the RX10 doesn't go very high. I think it caps out at1/3200th of a second. slower at wider apertures...

Here are some of the images, all shot wide open at f2.8....even the corners....

Above. A couple of shots at the wide end of the lens. Wide open. Auto ND.

70mm equiv. at wide open.

Need a lens with some range?

The next four images are a progression of shots from a very wide, establishing shot to an extremely tight shot done with the digital zoom. All were shot from the same position and with the same basic camera settings. Including the wide aperture and the auto ND filter setting.

24mm EQV.

Above = maximum real optical focal length.

Above = Maximum focal length with digital zoom engaged.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Filling Information Requests About the Sony RX10. Well, two of them.

One of our readers tasked me to do two things. One was to shoot a portrait wide open so he could sample the depth of field that the RX10 yields. The second was to shoot a portrait near the long end of the lens so he could see how that looked as well. The third point of information is one that I added to the test inadvertently but which to me was the most important test....

I asked Belinda to take time our from being the best graphic designer in all of Texas (need a logo?) and to stand still for me in the living room of our house so I could do the test shots. Late afternoon sun light was coming in behind me and bouncing off the glossy surface of our Saltillo tiled floor. The camera needed a little help with exposure so I dialed down a stop and a half to compensate for the confused metering difference between the light on her face and the much darker living room space. I was cued to do this by the zebras that came on when I pointed the camera in her general direction. I'd set them at 95%. Once properly compensated (nice EC dial on the top right of the camera with firm click stops) the camera was successful in also producing a very neutral color balance in Belinda's face despite the orangey-warm color reflection off the Saltillo tiles as the main light source. (The bounce off the floor also explains the "spooky" under lighting....).

The camera nailed focus on her eyes and I noticed, when zooming in to 100%, that the tip of her nose is just starting to go soft. The window in the background is very soft.

But here's the crazy thing. I picked up the camera and it was in Aperture Priority so I didn't bother to check the other settings. I presumed that with all the light bouncing around that the camera would set something like 1/125th at ISO 200 or 400. I misjudged the light intensity and it was only when I inspected the image at 100% that I noticed my "mistake."

I noticed it because I could see just a trace of noise reduction on the image file that I didn't put into the image in post and I started to worry that maybe the camera was being too aggressive in its anti-noise intervention. So I checked the info palette and was stopped cold.

The frame was shot at 1/250th of a second, f2.8 at ISO 1600 !!!! The noise performance is a factor of three better than my Sony a850 full frame camera and as good as the performance I've been getting in careful use with my Panasonic GH3 at the same ISO. I think the files are big enough and juicy enough that I may go into the menus and turn down the standard levels of noise reduction in Jpeg to minus one or minus two. I wouldn't mind a bit more believable noise at 1600 ISO !!!!!

So. There it is. The camera can make things in the background go out of focus. The camera files are sharp and detailed, even at 1600 ISO. And the situation looks pretty nice at f2.8.

I decided to do a screen shot of the sizing menu so I could show off a real 100% (in relation to the top file) image blow up.

The head Visual Researcher here at the VSL lab was confabbing with our secret board of directors and we're in consensus, the RX10 is a good camera.

Getting into the right mindset to take good portraits. A re-post from 2009.

5.06.2009

Right Place. Right Time. Right Intention.

By Kirk Tuck

So. I've written about my proclivity for shooting with medium format film and I've made a case (I think) for using the tools that inspire you most, but there's an image up next to my desk that kicks me in the shins every time I get the gear lust and start to covet yet another camera that's destined to make me the "hot" photographer of 200x. It's the one on the right. The image is of Rene Zellweger, circa 1992 and it's a constant reminder to me just how secondary all the equipment really is. I was trying to replicate a shot I'd done of my wife Belinda, years earlier. That shot was done on an old Canon TX film camera. A real beater of an SLR, with shutter that capped out at 1/500th of a second and a little "stick and lollypop" metering system. I was living in an old house at the time and I'd set up a quickie studio in the living room with a rickety old tripod and a 500 watt photoflood in a utility reflector. The light was aimed into a 40 inch white umbrella in the "shoot thru" position and placed fairly close to Belinda. It had to be pretty close because for some silly reason I was using ISO 50 Ilford Pan F black and white film. The lens was wide open. The result was wonderful.

Flash forward ten years and I'm in the studio with (at the time) unknown future movie star, Rene Zellweger, and we're trying to get that same look. I'm using the same old Canon TX and I was using the Canon 135mm Soft Focus lens. Same old, tattered umbrella and some variant of a 500 watt continuous flood light. It's one of my favorite photographs. Partly because it reminds me of the silly projects that Rene and I did together (like an art video entitled, "Coffee. Is it a gift from God or a tool or Satan....." lots of long shots and coffee cups, and girls with leopard print scarves and little black dresses......) but mostly I like the image because it reminds me that all the gear is so secondary to the power of my intention. If I intend to do an image I generally carry through and do what's needed to realize my ideas. The momentum of my intention is what makes a project successful or just another piece of crap. The equipment is so much less important.

A second, and most important point.

After my last blog post I got a wonderful personal e-mail from a photographer in Alabama who basically said, "The lights don't matter. The camera doesn't matter. The lens doesn't matter. The only thing that matters (to a portrait photographer) is, how do you get that look in their eyes? That rapport?" She went on to say that she'd searched the web for a while and felt that some of the images I shot had the emotional quality that she was interested in. She wanted to know how to get to that.

I've thought about it all week and I have an answer that will, no doubt, infuriate people who love to be surrounded by an entourage. The answer is: you must make a portrait sitting a very intimate relationship. You must eliminate any distraction for you or the sitter. No people in the room. No tight ended schedule. No fluttering make up artist. No eager and relentless assistant. If you want to truly connect with a sitter you must throw out all the crew and friends and the people who get you coffee and look at crap on the monitor. It is like making love and very few people are comfortable doing that with a crowd looking on.

People will open up in front of the camera if they trust you and they don't have to entertain or make allowances for other people. This whole mania of carting around assistants for every project, no matter how small, is one of the things that's killing good portrait work. Send them outside to clean your car or to paint the fence. A good portrait is a one on one sharing. A collaboration and very little else matters. Shooting a portrait, whether for fashion or your own art, with other people in the room means that you've abdicated your intention to do an intimate portrait and you are tacitly content just to do self serving theater about photography. At that point you've become a hack. A workshopper. The kind of photographer who cares more about how he looks on the video his assistants are shooting of him than how the image in his camera looks. At this point one has abandoned the true practice of portraiture and become a hollow caricature of a photographer.

One sitter. One shooter. An empty silence filled with potential.

A final thought.

One sitter. One shooter. An empty silence filled with potential.

As Long as I am in a "re-posting" jag I thought I'd remind you that: "The Passion Is In The Risk."

11.26.2010

"THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK"

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We had a houseful of people. My parents were here and Belinda's parents, too. Nieces and nephews and new additions to the family. Belinda and I teamed up in the kitchen and put out some nice food. My mom brought some fun wine, even three bottles of my favorite white wine, Conundrum, from Caymus Vineyards. Everyone was happy and the day went smoothly. I was so proud of my kid, Ben (you've seen his photo many times....). We have a three step drop from the kitchen to the dining room and we were serving buffet style. My dad is in his 80's and walks with a cane. Ben waited until my dad filled his plate and then walked over and quietly offered to carry his plate to the table.

Most of our family lives in San Antonio and everyone headed back home in the late afternoon and early evening. Ben got invited to go surfing, down in Port Aransas, with family friends and he was gone by 6:30 pm. Once Belinda and I finished washing pots and pans and dishes we decided to watch a movie from Netflix and we settled on a mindless romantic comedy called, "When in Rome."

Near the end of the movie the female protagonist is trying to decide if she should take the risk and marry her new boyfriend. Her father threw out a line and I grabbed for a Post-It (tm) pad and a pen. It's a line that resonated with me like a bell. He said, "The Passion is in the risk."

THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK.

That's pretty much the culmination or distillation of what I've been trying to say here for the past two years. The magic dust that makes art work is the passion you bring to it. And the passion is proportional to the risk required. I've included two photographs to illustrate my point. In the top photo I'm photographing life in the Termini train station in Rome. I'm determined to get a shot of the baggage handlers. I go in head first because I know they may (and did) object and I'd only get one chance. Before I started I thought that there might be a heightened chance of confrontation. There's a certain risk in a direct, "looking into the eyes" presentation. I had to be quick with my technique. I could be embarrassed if they got pissed off and made a scene. All that stuff that goes thru your mind when you're out of your own neighborhood, out of your demographic and out of your own culture. But you move forward because you embrace that level of risk and deem it acceptable for the potential reward. That being said, this isn't my favorite photo. But each time you risk you get more comfortable with the risk and you understand that something moves you to do this thing that's beyond a staid calculus of accrual.

In the arts the passion is never truly about money. It may be about fame and with fame may come money but in reality the arts are about the passion. When I step out the door I'm looking for a photograph that makes me feel something out of the ordinary. Art is never a reaffirmation of the value of the ordinary.

The second photograph is passionless. We make these all the time. It's a quick, furtive shot that shows nothing but the back of one person and the profile of another. There's no engagement. There's little passion. And when you look at this image you tend to pass it by because it's something you've seen a hundred or a thousand times before from every photographer who shoots in the street. There's little reward because there's little risk. And without the risk there's no passion. And the passion is what gets transmitted to the viewer.

But the idea that The Passion is in the risk goes way beyond street shooting or even just the practice of the arts. In fact, I think the slow building of passion comes with taking multiple levels of risk that correspond with access to the passion. An example. If you want to create great work in any art it takes constant practice. I've used the analogy of competitive swimming as an example. If you want to be a great surgeon you have to use those brain and hand skills all the time or you get rusty. I have many friends who are doctors and when they need to have a surgical procedure done they never settle for the guy who's done a couple hundred successful procedures they search out the guy who's done thousands of successful procedures because they know that with practice comes expertise. The guy who's done 2,000 procedures has dealt with every permutation. In art parlance, he's become a "master". By the same token I don't think photographers can be at the top of their art unless they live it with the same "hands on" intensity. If they pick up the camera every once in a while they just aren't fluid enough to make great art. And it's not just knowing where the buttons are and when to push them....for a people photographer it's also about knowing how to work with people in a fluid way.

So, that means that it's almost impossible to do photography at a passionate level and still have the time and energy for a real job. And there's the risk. Freelance photography gives you the time but it also delivers risk. And if you can accept that risk and move forward even with the knowledge that you may end up hungry and poor, but you still feel compelled to move that way then you may be driven by your passion and that passion may reward you with art you can love.

Beyond that, risk also means removing yourself from a comfortable situation to an uncomfortable situation that elicits responses in a photo which in turn make it interesting to you and your wider audience.

The ultimate risk is working when you are the only audience. When you stop caring what other people think about your work and you make work that is uninflected by the subtle pressure of others. In this arena the risk of total isolation is so strong that only the most courageous passion will drive sane people forward. It's a level I've not achieved and I'm not sure I can. I have too many responsibilities. I have too much to lose to risk everything. And yet it's something I am jealous of in other photographers.

The person who finds a $100 bill on the street is just a bit richer. The person who pulls a diamond from the jaws of a pissed off, deadly dragon has a story to tell for the rest of his life. And he creates a legend.

That's what the few real artists in our lives do. They battle metaphorical dragons that come complete with real risks. They've already signed a blanket waiver with life and they're ready to strap in and take the ride. They're the test pilots and we're waiting for someone to come along and pressurize the cabin.

So. Why have I decided to work with LED lights in the last few months? Do I think the results will be technically better than what I can get with state of the art flash equipment? No. But I know the results will be different. I know that some stuff will be riskier (like subject motion and color correction) but I know that intangible and tangible differences in the way portrait subjects respond and react makes the photographs different and it's a risk with a return.

If I know how to do a technique forward and backward why do I constantly abandoned the safe techniques and try new stuff? Because the risk of maybe failing makes the process more exciting. If the risk pays off I have something that's new and maybe closer to my vision of what an image should be. If I fail I learn and I come back and try again.

If I never try then I master one technique and use it, safely, over and over again until it's so stale and old that no one ever wants to see it again and I've squandered years and years when I could have been investigating and playing and failing and succeeding and doing new stuff.

The turn over of gear is open to many interpretations but unlike most amateur practitioners I seem to go from the highest iteration of equipment to the lowest instead of the other way around. I'll start with a Canon 5Dmk2 and slide down the product scale where the risk is greater because it's more fun to work without a safety net. Buying better and better gear is a way of trying to manage risk. And managing risks is the perfect way to suck the absolute passion out of your art. Perfect risk management means sitting in a bunker with the air filters on high. But nothing moves forward that way.

Here's an odd thought. One posited by a character in Stephen Pressfield's magnificent book, The Gates of Fire, "What is the opposite of fear?" The eventual answer? "Love."

We work through the fear that everyone feels. Fear is a very uncomfortable emotion. Most people feel fear and move away from the thing that made them feel fearful. Or they work to contain the process or action that caused the fear. Some work through the fear to feel the love. The work is the love. The process is the fear, The fear is the risk. And the risk is the thing that artists embrace. And that's what makes the best work work. Knowing that you might fail.

Someone asked me the other day if being 55 and in a field that seems to be falling apart and crashing and burning scared me. Yes. I'm as scared as I can be. But not because I won't make money. I'm scared that I won't have the time and the courage to keep going out every day and doing something that rational people don't do. Every time I go out and shoot it scares me. And every time I go out and ignore the fear I get into zone and the photos get better and better. When I stop getting scared the work falls apart.

The scariest moments for me are the days when I wake up and I've lost the determination to go out and try it all over again.....as if for the first time. When I'm working from a "playbook" of greatest hits I know that it's over. The passion is gone. It's time to stop. But the scariest thing of all is that all the inspiration and vision and passion comes from a well within. There's no way to inspiration other than to wake up and want. And to be willing to accept the risk that creates the passion. And that's why it's worth it not to copy anyone else but to create your own art and take your own risks. Because:

THE PASSION IS IN THE RISK.

The passion and the risk are different for everyone. And so are the rewards. And that's why people talk about gear instead. Because it's so hard to say why you do what you do. And it will be different for you.

added at 5:22 pm.

I never did get around to explaining why I took the image of the guys in the train station. Let me go thru that process and see if I can put it into words. We really don't have a train station here in Austin. The closest we have is an airport and it was built in the last ten years and doesn't look much different than a nice strip mall with a bunch more chairs. I have a romantic nostalgia for train travel. But even more to the point, I have a bittersweet memory of a time when travel was civilized and special and much, much less stressful. The guys in the top photo are remnants of that earlier time. It was a time in which you and and your family could travel for weeks with multiple suit cases. You would have suits and ties and nice shoes to wear to fancy restaurants. Hiking boots and heavy jackets for romps through the Alpine plains outside of Chamonix and you would have also packed some casual clothes for evenings wandering through the old neighborhoods of Rome. You'd find a nice cafe and have hot chocolate while your parents enjoyed a few glasses of wine and some savory treats.

And it was all made possible by men like these in the train stations and airports who would take care of the logistics of moving your heavy cases from the train to the to taxi's and back again. And you were pretty sure they worked for tips and they worked hard every time a train came in. They were freelancers like you are now. Somedays no one would want to pay for their help. Other days the work would be non-stop. There were no guarantees. No safety net. But it was what they knew how to do.

And slowly all these men have have faded into oblivion as wheeled totes and "carry on" only became the vogue. And now we travel with only what we can carry and we're more like overnight visitors than real travelers. But at the same time these guys were brusk and sometimes unlikeable, with a street smart cynicism that put you on your guard. And there are now no more young porters. It's a dying art. Like dye transfer or black and white darkroom printing. And it's sad when an era passes.

And they know it's only a matter of time before their knees give out and their lungs protest the decades of smoking and they won't be able to lift the heavy boxes that often replace the luxe leather suitcases and trunks. And they're pissed. And resigned. And how can I get all those emotions and all those thoughts into something as insubstantial as a photograph?

I look over and see the scene come together. They are resting on the cart, looking for customers. They are smoking. I walk closer. I've already set my Mamiya 6 camera to the exposure I think the scene offers. I bring the camera to my eye to fine tune the focus with my rangefinder. The man raises his hand and as he starts to wag his finger I click. Then I drop the camera down and gesture that I get it. I understand. I won't shoot another frame. I'll hope I have what I want and spare them the indignity of overt and obvious study. Young life swirls around them. One man smiles in a resigned way. Two others continue their conversation, oblivious of my transgression. And the man with the wagging finger follows me with his eyes, just to make sure I got the message. Yes. I did. I got the whole message.

When I develop the negative I wish I'd gotten closer. Much closer. But cropping is not the same. I wish I'd gotten closer and wider. The 55 instead of the 75. But I got what I got and I learned that my reticence to walk in closer with the wider lens is like a slap to the face and I know next time I'll take the risk or not take the photograph at all.

the holidays are upon us. I humbly submit that a good book about photography will be most welcome by the photographers on your list. Here are a few suggestions: