What to do when the mercury hits 105. Get shooting.

Rollingwood swimmers go round and round in the baby pool at Barton Creek Country Club to stay cool while waiting for their events at the swim meet.


It was very, very hot yesterday.  There was no breeze.  The glare off the water was not helpful.  But the cameras kept working, the kids kept swimming, the parents kept timing and judging and the staff manned the full bars.  Ah, a Texas swim meet among the captains of industry in the citadel of privilege.

Two 60D's.  One with an 18-55 kit lens and the other with the 70-300 IS.  Nice and light.  Cheap enough to be splashed without panic.

Hairspray. Zachary Scott Theater. A stationary shoot during a preview performance. Praise for the Canon 7D.

The last play I shot at Zach was a very intense, three person performance called the The Book of Grace. I shot that with my Canon 5D2, my 1dmk2 and the holy trinity of Zeiss primes, the 35, 50 and 85.  All manual focus.  All super duper sharp.  That photoshoot was a workout.  Since the theater was "in the round"  I had to:  anticipate where the action would unfold,  get to the right spot to shoot, choose the camera with the focal length I wanted,  focus dynamically with the action and.....watch the exposure and shift it manually when the light changed.  We ended up with a bunch of good photos but I had to shoot a lot and work the ratio to get enough coverage to make me (and the marketing director ) comfortable.

Last night we shot the musical comedy, Hairspray,  and I approached it from a totally different technical point of view, largely driven by some tight constraints.  This is a big and complicated show with lots and lots of cast and lots of movement and lighting changes.  We've had a tough time scheduling a dress rehearsal shoot because I'm booked with lots of conflicting corporate work and, a show like this is always a work in progress.  Our one day to shoot without an audience would be next Tues. but as luck would have it I'll be in San Antonio shooting at a conference for a production company.  Last night was a "preview" show with a small audience.  The marketing director and I decided to try shooting during the show from a seat that's just off the center seating area, near the front.  It's a one seat row with no one in front or on either side.  From a line of sight aspect it worked well.  The big task would be shooting quietly so I didn't disturb the audience.  And for the first time in years of shooting performances I would not be able to move freely around the sides of the stage.  In fact, I spent the entire evening in my seat.  That called for different gear and a different approach.

Choosing the right camera.  I knew the minute we talked about shooting in a paid house that we'd need to do something to ameliorate the camera noise so I started by choosing the camera with the quietest shutter.  And the shutter whose frequency is least annoying.  In the Canon line up that's the 7D. When I shot Nikon that would have been the D300.  In Olympus it was the E1.  All of these cameras are far quieter than full frame cameras in their families because the mass of the shutters is much smaller and they are incredibly well damped.  But I thought I needed to take it a step further and I fashioned a homemade blimp.  Not a full on Jacobsen blimp, ala Hollywood, but a Kirk Tuck blimp ala Zing.  I grabbed a thick Zing brand neoprene camera cover, one that was made for a camera with an attached motor and I cut a hole in the front snoot so the lens could stick thru.  Then I cut out an oversized hole in the back so I could look through the finder at eye level.  The Zing was oversized for the 7D but that worked to my advantage because I could stick my fingers in and around the pouch to work the controls and quickly pull down the back to check images from time to time on the LCD screen.  The black KT blimp did a great job cutting down sound and it blocked out light from the LCD review so I wasn't guilty of "texting" the audience with a blast of light every time the camera reviewed.  The assemblage wasn't beautiful but it worked well and took only a few seconds to remove for lens and card changes.  I always wanted a blimp for my cameras and now, with an old Zing and a few deft moves with scissors I have it.

Choosing the right lenses.  Since I knew I wouldn't be able to compose with my Nikes I gave some hard thought to lenses that would cover the scenes, work well with the 7D and also give me image stabilization.  I knew I wanted to use the 24-105mm L lens but the long lens was giving me pause.  I have a 70-200 L f4 lens but it isn't image stabilized and I wanted a really long reach on the off chance that I'd want to reach out and pull in a tight head shot......from my seat.  I picked up a lens I've been researching for swim meet use recently.  It's the Canon 70-300mm USM IS f4-5.6.  Totally counterintuitive until you start thinking about big crowds on a well lit stage show.  While we all think we'd love to shoot all theater with an f1.4 or f2 lens all the time the reality is that some shows call for shots of multiple people in the frame and those multiple people are rarely in the same plane.  When I shoot at f4 with the 24-105 I get enough DOF to cover a couple of people and make sense of what's going on in the background.  So, if the light levels are high enough slower lenses don't really present that big a problem.  

The 70-300 gets great reviews, is much lighter than the L lens and has the most recent version of IS.  I found a nearly new, used copy at Precision Camera yesterday, at a good price and I decided to bring it along as the long end of my tool kit.  (See the second shot from the top for a quick assessment of how this lens worked, wide open at 300mm.  On the 7D this is the equivalent of using, handheld!!!!, a 450mm lens.  Two things about lenses:  1.  The Canon 24-105 is a miraculous lens.  It may have some geometric distortion but in the center of the frame it's quite sharp wide open.  2.  It is totally fun to have image stabilization for telephoto lenses.  If you can't put the lens on a tripod it's the way to go.  

Camera set up.  Once you've decided on a camera and lenses you need to take stock of the light levels in the theater and decide just where you'll be comfortable with the old ISO versus Noise versus Action Freezing equation.  Where do all the curved lines on our graph intersect?  If I'd been using the Canon 5D2 I would have been comfortable with 3200 ISO.  On the 7D I'm totally comfortable shooting at 1600 ISO.  In this production the light levels were generally high enough to get me between 1/125th of a second to 1/250th of a second, wide open.  When you add in the image stabilization you'll rarely miss a shot due to camera movement.  And if you shoot for the apogee of the action you'll find there's typically a spot where the action freezes before cascading down.  (See above shot.)

RAW or Jpeg?  I generally like shooting Jpegs because I can go for quantity and look like a hero based on statistics.  But last night, being chair bound, I wasn't sure I'd have light where I needed it and decided to shoot raw.  And I'm glad I did.  Most of the images have a bit of fill light added to them in Lightroom.  And I cooled the color temperature down a few hundred degrees.  They are slightly sharpened.  The one compromise I did feel comfortable making was to take advantage of the Canon's raw flexibility to set different pixel dimensions.  I set the camera to shoot medium raws which are around 11 megapixels.   More than adequate for direct mail printing and the typical use on the website.

Workflow.  I shot 800 images last night which took up nearly 12 gigabytes of card space.  I was using Sandisk Extreme cards (a 4 and an 8 gig).  I only brought the two cards with me so I kept an eye on the frame counter and shot more judiciously than I usually do.  I could tell that I wasn't losing images to subject or camera movement and since I wasn't moving around I could concentrate better on expressions and timing.  It seemed to make a difference.  The percentage of usuable frames was probably my highest yet.

As soon as I got home from the show I plugged in my UDMA CF card reader and started ingesting the images into Lightroom.  I used the import interface to re-name the files as "HRSPRA-original filename" so I would know what job they belong to and to prevent them having duplicate names (which is very likely since Canon won't let you personalize names for each camera.......idiots).  I also set Lightroom to save each file to two separate 3 terabyte hard drives.  That way I'd have back up.

This morning I opened Lightroom and got to work.  The first thing I did was to assess the overall color balance and make a universal correction for that.  I also enabled the automatic lens correction during this overall synchronization.  Then I got to work batch correcting for changes in density, slight color shifts and corrections in contrast.  During this process I'm sending to the garbage any images I don't like and any which are over represented.  Finally I select all the remaining files and export them as Jpegs using the 92% setting with the longest pixel length being 4000.  Of course they are profiled as srgb's.  I burn two DVD's for myself and one for Zach Scott Theatre.  The marketing director dropped by the house at noon to snag a disk.  The last thing I do before I finish with a job like this is to burn a set of DVD's as additional back-up.  Time consuming.  But that's why I blog.  It fills the time I spend waiting for disks to burn.  :-)

(loving the 70-300mm USM IS)

 But......how was the show?  I can't remember watching a musical play this funny since I watched "Das Barbeque."   It was uniformly good. This theatre has their technical chops down.  The music was great, the miking of the actors was perfect and the choreography and blocking was very well done.  I'm planning to go back several times and bring some groups of friends to see it.  It's happy, upbeat and witty.

I'm sure, as other photographers read this, they will think that the whole thing could have been done better with M series Leicas and fast German glass,  or "see in the dark" Nikon D3's and fast Nikon glass. And the hordes of Canon shooters will opine that I missed the mark and should have shot this with a brace of Canon 5Dmk2's and a tiara box full of L primes.  And I'm sure they are all correct.  For them.

The bottom line is that I shoot what I'm interested in.  If it works I'm happy.  And so far, whether I've shot plays with an Olympus e10,  a Sony R1 or an old, manual focus Hasselblad, even a Leica M3,  I've always been able to deliver what the marketing people want and need.  So I guess that begs the question:  Is there a single "right" answer when it comes to gear?

I'd say it's like hairspray.  Everyone has their own preference.  And sometimes you change brands.  You still have hair.  If you're lucky.

Paean to an ancient camera. Kodak, please come back to us.

This is Missy.  I swim with her.  I also cast her in a series of photographs of athletes for Austin Sports Medicine.  This was shot back in 2003 or 2004.  It's one of my favorite advertising images for a number of reasons (not the least of which was quick payment by the client).  We were shooting on one of those obnoxiously bright days and we were in the middle of a little league baseball field.  I used a 3/4 stop silk on a frame just over the top of Missy to cut the direct light of the Summer sun.  You can see one of her knuckles sticking out into the sunlight but miraculously still holding detail!!!!  I used a small white reflector near the camera to pop just a little front fill onto Missy.  The way the camera handled the giant range between the sun drenched clay field, the tree line and the sky is amazing.  And the other amazing thing is that this image (and other from the same shoot) was blown up and used on posters and looked sharp and rich.

It was shot on the Kodak DCS 760, a six megapixel camera.  I used the Nikon 80-200 2.8 zoom lens.  And, importantly, I used the camera with only the UV filter in place, not the optional anti-aliasing filter. And I think that had a lot to do with the detail the file yielded.

Would my Canon 5D Mk2 do as well?  From a resolution point of view?  Yes.  Probably much better.  But from a tonality and rich color point of view?  Maybe yes.  Maybe no.

For a while this was my favorite camera.  And then I got lured away by the Nikon D2x and the promise of high sharpness and higher resolution.  Silly me.

This image was shot at the Austin Kipp School and used in an annual report for the school.  It was lit by one large softbox (54 by 72 inches) using a one Profoto Monolight and placed just out of the frame.  There is no fill.  I used the light in such a way that it mimicked the light coming into the window and across the white board behind.  A month later I went to a luncheon honoring the school's donors.  They decided to take all of the images I'd shot for the annual report and blow them up into four foot by six foot posters.  Austin Photo Images took 16 bit raw files I made for them (unsharpened) and made LightJet prints.  I almost fell over when I saw them at the luncheon venue.  I hadn't tried printing many of the early digital images much larger than 12 by 18 inches and had no idea that, in the right hands, they could be blown up so large and retain so much detail.  And with so little noise!

The camera?  Once again it was the Kodak DCS 760.  And again, the 80-200mm Nikon zoom.

I had occasion in the same year to do big enlargements with the Nikon D2x and, to be honest, the results were not nearly as good.  There was more pixelation, less sharpness.

You would think I would have trusted this camera and continued using it but there was the almost universal drum beat consensus that all digital cameras should be able to handle high ISO settings without noise and with more grace.  The DCS 760 was beautiful at ISO 80 and 100 but beyond that it generated enough blue channel noise to make your eyes go crazy.  And it was impossible to really remediate with Noise Ninja or its competitors.  A succession of cameras followed.  All worked okay but none really made such a convincing and robust file.  To be fair,  I did shoot them at ISO like 200 (a must on Nikons) and even up to 1600 on a Fuji S5, and while the noise was better.......well.....maybe it was a nostalgia for the early days......

At any rate, as I collected more and more cameras whose files were easier to process, whose batteries lasted days or weeks longer than the Kodak batteries, whose LCD screens were actually usable, the Kodak(s) ended up in a drawer in the gear cabinet, unused.

I thought about getting rid of them lately and I pulled them out of the drawer and fired them up.  The ancient NiMh batteries spit out ten or fifteen frames before dying.  I couldn't sell them to anyone like that.  So I hit Amazon.com and started looking for replacement batteries.  What once cost $125 each was now replaceable for around $30.  I bought a couple batteries thinking they would help me find a willing buyer for the whole package.  Then I made the mistake of putting a CF card in the adapter that fit into the PCMCIA slots that were part of the camera's "early days" design.

And I went for a walk around town.  Actually, I started in our kitchen and shot the plates in a drying rack.  And then I moved to downtown.  I couldn't tell what I was getting during the day because of the dismal screen but when I came home and processed them I was amazed at how different the files look that those I get from my Canons or those I got from my Nikons.  The color was richer without being overly saturated.  And the tonality was amazing.  Very long tones.  Very smooth transitions.

A gracefulness that belies the ancient technology.

I'm putting the camera back into service in the studio.  I'm using it to shoot portraits.  Not with little battery powered units but with big Elinchrom monolights pumping photons through giant Octabanks and layers of diffusion.  I love the style and the look and I'll be showcasing some of the portraits here. 

While some technical factors work to obsolete some technologies I think we just didn't understand how advanced Kodak's grasp of imaging technology was and how well it was informed by over a century of making film.  I wish they would re-enter the market with their sensors and their electronic pathways.  It would give us more choices, and perhaps better ones than we have at hand right now.  Wouldn't it be cool if you could choose which sensors you wanted in the camera body you wanted?

I'd love a Kodak sensor (like the one in the Leica M9) planted right in the middle of a Canon 1dMk4 body.  That would rock.

Kodak DCS 760 with Nikon 50mm 1.1.2 Lens.

Luddite thinking?  Not hardly.  I've used and owned newer cameras.  At some point you need to acknowledge that for some steps forward there can always be a few steps back to accomodate the changing tastes of the market.  We've talked about wanting dynamic range and long tonal range for years.  Now if we could just wean ourselves off the megapixel buffet table........

KRT_6528

KRT_6528, a photo by KirkTuck/photo on Flickr.

It's getting hot here in Austin and now I'm nostalgic for the low 90's that we had during Eeyore's birthday party a few months ago. This was done with the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 and the Canon 1Dmk2n. What a wonderful combination.

Changing Gears. A brief blog about marketing for local photographers.

I just got off the phone with a dear friend who started a landscaping business here in Austin, last year.  She's doing okay with her business but like most of us she needs a stream of new clients to keep her business going and growing.  She'd like every client to be a big client  but we were talking about how human nature really works and after mulling it over for a while we settled for doing marketing the way big companies do when courting consumers.  We like the classic model of retail marketing.

The biggest obstacle companies of every size face is getting someone to effect initial trial.  To take active steps to work with your company the first time.  To make the move to buy your product the first time.  And there's a lot of logic to the customer's resistance.  Most things people spend money one aren't really necessities.  If your product (photographs) or service (photography) isn't in the same category as food, shelter and electricity they've probably done okay without it for a long time.  If your client is an ongoing business, like an advertising agency or marketing department within a company, they probably already have a trusted supplier or a list of referred suppliers.  Something may have changed in their situation and you've showed up on their radar as someone who can potentially  add value for them.

The customer may have determined that they'd really like to hire a photographer for their daughter's wedding.  The ad agency may need some photographs for a series of ads.  But there are doubts that you'll need to overcome to get the work.

Since the clients have never worked with you before they will have doubts.  Will they like the final image?  Will it be worth the money they have to spend?  Will you be able to deliver?  If the need is timely, are you reliable?  Will they enjoy the time they'll need to spend with you to make the job work?
Their fears as retail customers are:  Will I get what I'm paying for?  Will I like what I get?  Could I spend this money on something else and have a better emotional reward? (Better cake.  More flowers.  Nicer food. Cooler dress.)

For the responsible party at the ad agency or marcom dept. the emotional reticence is the same.  Will this supplier be able to deliver a good product?  Are they reliable?  Will we get our monies' worth?  And the fears sound something like this:  If this supplier messes up will I lose credibility with my client?  Will I lose the trust of my employer or supervisor?  Will we have time to pursue other options if this doesn't work?

Having never worked with you before all these responses are a natural part of the divining process.  On some level people hate to make bad purchases because it calls their competence into question.  I firmly believe that online product research will (or already has) outstrip porn sites in our society because people are so determined to check in with everyone else and to research each purchase in detail.

So, how do you handle getting in the door?  I'd suggest that you do it by finding a product or service your business supplies that has a low purchase cost and a very high probability for success and offering that product or service to customers first.  The price has to be low enough so that, in the event of perceived failure, the client isn't afraid of taking a risk.  You'll need to finding a pricing inflection point at which your offering value potentially outweighs the risks involved in buying it.

In my business it's the head shot or business portrait.  In the coffee business it's a small cup of coffee.  For a camera company it's 4x6 inch color prints.  I price my in studio commercial headshot sessions at $250.  This includes the sitting, a web gallery for selection and the retouching and digital delivery of a file (in three sizes) for their use in public relations and promotion.  When business slows down I'll have a sale and provide the same service for $199.

Starbucks often introduces new products by sending out coupons for a free, small serving of the product.  It takes away the "what if I don't like it?" fear.  My favorite camera store will do give aways of prints that only require that you come into their store with a coupon.  Starbucks assumes that most people who try their product (and their service and store environment) will like it and come back for more.  They've removed all the risk for you to try them.  The camera store has provided an incentive for people who are interested in photography to come in and check out their store.  They'll assume you've never been to such a good photo retailer, that you'll be impressed by their prices and their knowledgeable staff and that you'll enjoy the experience enough to make them one of your vendor's.

I know that most companies won't blink at spending $199 to get a great marketing image of one of their important employees and I hope they'll have a positive experience with me, with my delivery and with the image.  And to back that up, if they don't like what they see in the galleries, we offer a money back guarantee.  If you aren't happy with my work I'll refund your money or reshoot you for free.  Your choice.  Once they are in the studio they'll see nice work on the walls.  They'll see how I handle portrait sittings and they'll see how well people respond to their new portrait.  They get to see us in action.  They get to see the result for a low financial risk.  We've found the inflection point and used it to get them to effect trial.

Now, when they return to Starbucks they'll feel more confident about their chances for satisfaction if they order a larger, more expensive treat.  Having been treated well and having gotten wonderful color prints on their first visit, the camera store customer will feel more at home coming back to talk to an "expert" about a new lens or camera.  And now that they've had a good experience getting their portrait done at a good price (with great service) they'll feel a lot more confident talking to me about a bigger project.  With a bigger budget.

Each interface with a customer gives you the potential to strengthen the relationship (or kill it).  But in each step you have the opportunity to make them feel smart about their original decision to buy.  And that's the crucial decision for your business.

Consultants in our business love to talk about getting in the door at Nike or a big ad agency in New York but in reality only a small percentage of photographers will play in that rarified arena.  The rest of us need to understand how to work, survive and thrive in second tier markets and with normal, day-to-day clients.  Getting that first yes is critical.  It's the stepping stone to bigger and bigger projects.  And it's the financial foundation for organic growth.

So, when we got into the subject of landscaping we talked about the current reality of central Texas.  We're in the middle of a severe drought.  There's water rationing in many areas.  And the big trees on our properties are starting to be affected, not just the lawns.  And a big tree can add $50,000 to the value of good properties so it's important to do what's possible to keep the trees healthy.  A simple step is to surround the base of your trees with mulch so that when you deep water them the mulch holds in much of the precious moisture for the tree to use.  We decided that people will be slow to add new plants or undertake big landscape projects during the worst of the drought but they would have a keen interest in taking care of their trees.  My friend is putting together an offer to "remediate" effects of the dry weather on the trees by enriching the soil and putting down a healthy mulch spread, with a ringed dam, to retain water and help the trees use it efficiently.

She's determined to keep the cost per tree low.  She'll offer the service to her existing clients and target new people within her target market with a simple mailed card.  The cost point will be negligible compared to the value of the trees.  And the people in the demographic she markets to would much prefer using this service instead of sourcing mulch, transporting it and then working in the 100+ degree heat.  She'll also put together a little paper about proper tree watering as a "leave behind" piece.

Given that bigger landscaping projects can run into the tens of thousands of dollars or more getting people to effect a first trial is a great way to build the business.  It may be basic marketing but I get the sense that most people are looking for the big splash in their marketing and that may just be counter productive.  Fish in a good stream before going out after whales.  It's all about sustainability.  In landscaping and in photography.

Hope you are having a cool, fun, happy Sunday.   I'm heading out to buy some mulch.

P.S.  Once you've gotten someone to try your photos, your mulch, your coffee or your prints be sure to drop them a nice, handwritten note and tell them how much you appreciate their business.  You wouldn't be in business without them.