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The Photo I Didn’t Take: Strix Varia
Photo of the Strix Varia, aka the “Barred Owl”, courtesy of Wikipedia
We all hear it echo in the back of our heads, “The best camera is the one you have with you.” You can’t take a photo if you don’t have that camera within easy reach (or even within reach at all). And we’ve all done it. Gotten in a hurry, I mean. Gotten so frazzled that we were late or that we thought we wouldn’t need it, so it stayed in the camera bag sitting on the kitchen table. Back at the house. 20 miles away.
That’s where my camera was on Saturday night. Sitting there, all pristine and warm and cozy with the 50mm f1.8 slapped on it on this chilled Central Texas winter’s night. I looked at it right before I walked out of the house thinking I wouldn’t need it. You see, I was going to a Christmas party and didn’t want to burden myself with having to play the camera guy for the evening. I’ve been roped into doing that before. It’s fun when I want it to be. But this night, I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, not worry about recording the evening for one and all to cherish.
… and out the door I went.
My friend’s place is out in the boonies. Far enough out of town that you can begin to see the stars again, but not so far out that the light pollution is gone and you can see the Milky Way. Close, yet so far. Their place is a bit set back from the road. And by a bit, I mean, you turn onto their drive way and travel for another five minutes as it winds back through the narrow strip of land that leads back to the rest of the ranch. Half-way there, you come to a small one-lane concrete bridge that they built over a wet weather creek.
So, like I normally do whenever I’m out there at night, I’m driving slow, driving careful, high beams on so I don’t hit anything that looks like a skunk, and making sure I don’t bottom the car out on the drive way. This night was no different. But then, it was.
As I said, I don’t like speeding on their property. It’s rude. Plus, with the recent rain, the driveway was a bit torn up coming up to the bridge. I took it slow and was creeping up onto it, avoiding the mud and the bottomless puddles.
I almost missed it.
The owl, I mean.
It was fully illuminated in my headlights, not more than five feet from the hood of my car. It just sat there, looking at me intently, perched all by it’s lonesome on the bridge guard rail. It stared and stared, as if it was willing me to turn off those blinding deer illuminators bolted to the front of my car.
The first instinct was to gently hit the brake. Check.
The second instinct was to reach over and grab the camera with my nice, wide open 50mm and get a photo or three before the owl flew off.
I reached. And felt. And scrambled. And where the camera wasn’t, a glass plate of brownies was. CRAP! My camera, my trusty sidekick … was AWOL. And then I remembered.
It was at home. 20 miles away. In the warmth of the house.
I knew it was back there, silently mocking me. If Nikon had an Easter egg in it’s bodies, that Easter egg would be a voice chip and speaker that would laugh hilariously at you whenever you needed the camera most, but failed to keep it at hand.
So, I just sat there, watching the owl watch me back. It was a face off for no more than a dozen seconds. And with that, he leapt from his post guarding the bridge to fly off into the pitch black darkness that wasn’t pierced by my headlights.
And this, my dear reader, is why it’s important to always have your camera. Because when you’re faced with an owl in the dead of night, you want to have something to remember it by. Otherwise, it becomes the photo you didn’t take.
And before you ask, it might not have been Strix Varia. I’m pretty sure it was based on the coloring, the markings, and photos of the common owls in Central Texas. But hey. I could be wrong. It was still pretty !@#$% cool to see an owl in the dead of night.
Fewer Shots? Why yes, I think I will.
Today, I was catching up on tweets from the photo world and this blog post from Scott Bourne happened to come up.
Become a Better Photographer by Taking Fewer Shots « Photofocus:
“‘Okay, I’m done.’
‘That’s it? You’ve only been shooting for ten minutes!’
‘Yep, got about 50 shots, I should have 4-6 proofs for you from that bunch.’
‘So we’re done?’
‘Pretty much…I mean I can keep shooting, but there’s really no point, it’ll just be duplicates of the same stuff.’”
Every Thursday night at a local coffee joint called Spiderhouse, burners from around the area filter out into the night to meet up, catch up, burn up, and live up the evening. Some nights you’ll only find one or two people there. And still other nights, the crowd will be thick and awed by these people knowingly dancing with spark and flame, mixed in a combustible hydrocarbon cocktail. Spinners, young and old, greenhorns and gurus alike come out to play.
I was out this Thursday.
Man, Thursday night was cold. Not bitter cold like we’ve seen in the last few weeks, but cold enough that I should have remembered my recently acquired +5 gloves of comfort. Not a good thing when you’re trying to photograph someone outdoors, at night, with a bit of wind at your back. Exposed fingers become icicles in mere moments. The last thing you want is to have a finger freeze to your camera trigger and break off at the decisive moment. Nothing good would come of that.
So, like I was saying. I was out this Thursday and happened to be at Spiderhouse. Out back amongst the cobblestones and picnic benches, in fact. Lisa, one of the regulars, and a new guy, Wesley, were out by the stage prepping for a burn, so I walked over and watched. No. It’s not so much that I watched. I was drawn in. Captivated and hypnotized by this new guy’s fluidity with the poi. He was very good, to put it mildly.
And herein, I decided I need to grab the camera and take some photos. Lisa and Wesley were gracious enough to allow me some time to play. I wanted to try something new, so out came the Ezybox. Now, I’ve done a fair bit of photography in the local burner community, so I’m always interested in trying out new ideas here. In fact, the cover of Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries is very inspiring for me; I want to do a shoot like that with one of the local burners.
This night would be a step in that direction.
But, before I go on, what does this all have to do with the quote from Scott’s blog? Having spent quite a bit of time photographing fire spinners, the one thing I’ve found is: there’s only so many moves you can do with each type of fire spinning prop. Poi, staff, meteors, swords: they all have limits to their showmanship, so there’s only so many ways you can experiment with photographing them. After you take a few hundred shots of someone spinning something in a circle, all you have is a few hundred shots of flaming ring photographs. It looks all the same.
And knowing this, I’ve been trying to cut down the number of photographs I take of people playing with fire.
When I first undertook to photograph fire spinners, I always saw it as a race against time. Get as many photos of the flames before the wicks flamed out or grew too lacking of fuel to get the rich oranges and yellows of blaze. When I started seeing the blackness of the wick itself, I knew it was coming to a close. The camera sounded like a slow-motion machine gun as the shutter clicked open, waited a second or two, and then clicked closed. And then again. Again. And again. And … again. Until I filled up a card and was forced to swap to the next.
One of the things that fire has begun to show me is that this can be so. unberably. repetitive. Boring almost. Of the few thousand photos I have now, I can point at maybe a hundred that have become artistically interesting for one reason another. And many of those have been caused by something different that happened during the burn. Maybe it was someone I’d never seen before. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was me trying something I’d not played with before. But, whatever happened in the photo, it was different. Unusual. Something to be remembered.
And knowing that, I’ve begun looking at what I’m doing in my other photographic interests and trying to apply the same aesthetic. I don’t want it to be repetitive and I believe that this often causes the mental blocks I’ve so frequently been encountering with my camera. Because, if you’re shooting the same thing over and over, where is the art? Where is the fun? Where is the blade of unusuality that takes ahold your interest and leads you into the photo?
Gone. It’s just gone.
So I’m forcing myself to look anew at what I’m doing and try to evaluate what should be different. What should be played with. Like Thursday: I don’t normally add flash to my fire photos. I’ve always found it difficult to balance and clumsy to work with when you’re playing with longer shutter speeds in order to capture the arc of fire.
But here’s what I learned: it’s still no different than other flash photography. You can easily over power it. You’ve got the control there you need. Now, rightly control it. In many of my photos from that evening, I let the flash over power the scene. Why? Because the chimper in me kept seeing the scene as too dark on the back of that god forsaken camera LCD. And second? What I want to do is fire within a portrait. I want to go for that McNally photo and make it my own. And doing so is going to make me think differently about what I’m trying to achieve with the local fire spinners, moving from a passive documenter, to an active photographer and engaging them in the photo, so they can engage you in the photo.
I ended the night with about 50 photos. Three came out good. I think that’s a fair haul for 20 minutes of shooting filled with experimentation, don’t you?
The photos above are of Wesley and Lisa. Both were photographed using a 15″ Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe with an SB-900 at 1/2 power and a full CTO to balance the color of the flash to that of the flames.
Early Christmas! I heart Lastolite Ezybox … a review
For months, I’ve been searching for a portable softbox that would work well with my speedlights. I looked at the Creative Light setup. I looked at Lastolite. I looked at crap Ebay stuff. I went back to working with my umbrellas just to make sure that they were truly annoying me. They were. And I kept searching.
After a month of hemming and hawing, I narrowed it down to two systems: Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe and Creative Light’s system. Both looked really good on paper and both came with good marks from people on the Internet that I follow and trust (David Hobby and Joe McNally). Joe is a fan of the Lastolite equipment. It’s prominent in many of his videos and photographic grip lineups. David recently expo’d the Creative Light stuff on his blog.
The big differentiator between the two is that the Ezybox Hotshoe appears to only have two sizes: a 15″ and a 24″ square box. The Creative Light system is a speedring that has a cold shoe on it and fits any of their strip boxes, softboxes, and other setups. Plus they have a wider range of sizes and shapes. With a speedring, that also meant I could still use the Creative Light softboxes if/when I purchased some Alienbees (or something beefier) just by purchasing the appropriate ring attachment.
Not so much with the Ezybox Hotshoe. It’s designed to work with their specific speedlight speedring (which is made of plastic, by the way).
So what did I end up with? The Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe. I looked long and hard at the Creative Light system and the most significant down-side was that you just can’t get the speedlight speedring right now. No one has it. Everything appears back ordered with no timeline for getting it back in stock.
It arrived at our doorstep today and when I got home, I immediately tore into the B&H box. Lots of happy little packing pillows cradled my lovely little light modifier of happiness.
For some reason I expected the bag to be smaller and more portable, something I could hook onto my camera bag and just carry everywhere. Not so much. It’s manageable but will be awkward, so I’ll keep it in the photo box and pack it with me when I know I’ll need it. Looking in the bag, I found that I had received not one, but two of the 2414 flash brackets. I don’t know if this is normal or not. If not, merry christmas to me!
The bracket assemblies pretty easily. It’s plastic, but feels solid enough. I had no problem putting an SB-800 on it with a stofen. The SB-900, being larger, was a tighter fit and more awkward to get in place, but I think that will become easier as I get used to working with it.
The softbox itself is a foldable setup. It looks like four Lastolite Tri-grips sewn together. The internal structure seems pretty solid. I’m not sure if it’s metal or steel, but it’s certainly thick. The box is stiff and doesn’t really lay flat by itself when folded up. When it pops open, a quick squeeze of the opposite corners gets it nice and squared up. The inside of the box is layered with a silver lining to help increase the efficiency of the light.
Opened more …
Pop goes the weasel …
The opening in the back side of the softbox is just large enough to accommodate the SB-900 with a bit of maneuvering room to spare.
The diffusion panel is held on by velcro on all four sides. Mine seems just slightly larger than the opening at the front of the softbox, so it’s fairly easy to get on and off.
Next, we attach a flash to the flash bracket. It’s sturdy. I would avoid overtightening the two screws. The one that holds the ring to the shoe needs to be snug but not so much that it starts flexing the bracket. Mine already has a slight indentation on the groove of the ring part where I over tightened. Also, the pin holder where you’d attach the bracket to a light stand is all plastic. I was careful not to overtighten this part for fear of splitting the collar.
The ring doesn’t really attach to the softbox as much as it slips inside the lip of the rear of it. The softbox boning is fairly sturdy back here, but gives you enough slippage to spin the softbox around the circumference of the ring with ease. I could adjust it one handed with no problem.
And here’s a test shot with the softbox in view.
I was working with iTTL CLS while playing with this (which is still a new thing for me being used to working in manual mode with Pocket Wizards). I was finding that I had to push the flash exposure up by 0.7 to 1.0 EV to get something that wasn’t under exposed. I’m not sure if that was just me not yet fully understanding CLS or the conditions under which I was playing.
Here’s a second photo. Softbox to the left and behind the wine bottle with an SB-800 in it. To camera right was a large sheet of floppy paper with an SB-900 bouncing into it to provide a bit of fill from the right. Uber light control. I like it.
Overall, I love this thing. The 15″ softbox was a good investment and a great addition to my lighting gear. I’ll be putting it through further paces to see what problems I might encounter with it.
For those looking to purchase, I just got the basic Lastolite LL LS2438M2 Ezybox M2 Hotshoe (15-Inch x 15-Inch)
Ready if I want it now, Danger Boy…
It’s 1:30am on Thanksgiving Day. I’m wide awake, Johnny Cash is fitfully playing from some show on the Biography HD channel, and there’s a frozen turkey sitting in a blue plastic tub in the kitchen. And yet, instead of dozing off or preparing for a wonderment of victuals delicately prepared and teased, I sit here thinking about my lighting style.
I am frustrated by it.
Let’s back up a bit. I’ve been re-reading the Hotshoe Diaries again (and watching some recent McNally videos on the Nikon site) and realizing what difficulty I continue to have with my lighting style. I think I’ve been so abused of this notion that light must be grand and soft, that I find it a terribly grim notion to try something else.
Lately, I’ve been limited to using umbrellas. I know, there’s nothing quite wrong with them, really. You can shoot through them. You can bounce into them. But controlling that light is a pain. It just goes everywhere. And generally, some of it is reflecting back some place I don’t want it to go. 
I suppose I could get smart and flag out some of the light more, but in the heat of the moment I forget that I can do that. Or that I can collapse the umbrella. Or feather it. Or just take it off.
And herein lies the rub. I get wrapped up in what I’m doing that I can’t defiantly remove myself from the scene and observe what’s going on within it. Or even know what the scene should really be about. For the longest time, I’ve taken the mindset of letting things occur and reacting to it. No real foresight or planning occurs. I mean, what right-minded pirate would think of being so rigid as to stick to some photographic code! They’re guidelines, people!
But, really, they’re not even that. And I’m beginning to observe that not having some sort of reasonably gelled idea, not having some set of guidelines for what I really want out of the photo, not having some set of rules and checks that I want to purposefully constrain myself within is affecting my not very well-formed vision of the shoot from coming to fruition. A plan you must have. You can have a plan and choose not to follow it. You can’t choose to not follow a plan that doesn’t exist. Just doesn’t work very well.
Take this latest shoot, for example. The idea was simple: Aeon Flux. That’s it. I would show up with the camera, take a few photos, and be gone. I asked about what they specifically wanted but didn’t get very good direction beyond, “We’re going to suspend her and try to recreate one or two shots from the original TV show.” Ok. Didn’t know that until I got there so I had no idea what those shots would have or should have resembled.
I’m fond of the phrase, “a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” Only, in this case, it was my lack of planning that made it a struggle. We tried a few positions, took some shots. 
Mostly, it was an evening of aimless fucking about until something kind-of, sort-of began to gel together if you tilted your head to the left, squinted your right eye, and covered your left with the back of an aching, sweaty palm.
And yeah, I was fighting the light the entire time. I wanted something mood-filled. Dark. Reminiscent of what I recalled the cartoon to be. Tried using two lights. One in a large umbrella, one bare to get some separation from the background. In most cases, it just did not work out the way I kept envisioning it. I’m still mulling over why. Could have been the space we were shooting, the lack of a real shooting plan, the phase of the moon. I’m not sure. Frustrating, it was.
So like any good non-plan following jack, I did what I thought best: killed the second light, pulled the first in closer, and dropped to a smaller umbrella. And this helped. I was dealing with too much light. Well, not so much that there was too much light, but that there was too much being illuminated. The walls, the ceiling, the carpet, the midget in the corner. I wanted to layer light in a pleasing manner, but I could not do it. Just wasn’t working and I was tired of bashing my head against the wall.
Lately, I’ve been playing with the idea of using smaller light sources. more controllable, more directional. And the umbrella makes it difficult for me to achieve this (or maybe it’s just that I don’t know how to do it effectively yet). So, I’m getting a small 15″ softbox for my speedlights. 
I think that’ll be a good first step to get what I want. Blast all the light forward, don’t have to worry as much about light coming from places I don’t want it (like reflecting off the beige wall behind me). And this is what I really needed for this Aeon shoot. More control.
Once I got to a smaller umbrella, things started to work better. I felt less and less like my clutch was slipping and more like I was making positive forward momentum (even if I was squealing tires and redlining the engine). And looking back at what I was doing before, I begin to realize that what Joe McNally is doing is second nature to him. He understands just what light mod needs to be in place to achieve a particular effect (plus a bit of magic and luck) and I’m still figuring that out.
Only, in my case it feels like “shoot, shoot some more, shoot again, and then ask questions.” Not a great way to do it.
So, some things I walk away with from this shoot:
- Get a good idea of what the shoot is about. Include a list of photos you want to get.
- Plan your shots, even if it’s only a tiny bit of ordering. This will help you know when you’ve got it … or when you should just move on.
- Don’t forget that you have control of the light. If something is broken, change it. Feather it, flag it, move it, change it, turn it into a duck. Whatever. Just try something different, but make sure it’s a positive and directed different.
- Breathe.
- Think about what you’re lighting before you get there.
- Think about what you’re NOT lighting before you get there.
- Make sure the place you’re shooting is appropriate for the subject you’re shooting. Had I fully realized what the shoot was intended to be, I would have pulled them to a much better location.
- Someone spinning around in the air really needs a tagline to hold them steady, otherwise you just cuss and frustrate yourself while attempting to get focus lock.
- Spend some time after the shoot to review what you did and what worked (or didn’t work). Just writing all this down has helped me figure out a few things to keep in my mental checklist of shooting.
My Aeon is a local friend who’s moving out of town. This was a Halloween outfit she created a year or two back and she wanted some good photos of it before she departed. She’ll be away for quite awhile and likely will only rarely return for visits. My only regret was never being able to photograph her in her Mystique costume. Damn was that thing sexy.
Cartier-Bresson never played with fire.
Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.”
Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China
Yes. I’m watching Big Trouble in Little China tonight. I love this movie. It’s an 80′s classic. I bring it up because of a scene in the movie where Jack and Wang Chi have bet each other that Wang Chi can’t split a bottle in two with a large knife. Wang Chi hits the bottle. It, of course, does not split in twain, instead rocketing towards Jack’s head. The hand being quicker than the eye, shoots up and snags the bottle before clocking him in the face.
Why do I bring this up?
I’ve been thinking about Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment and trying to better understand sensing or predicting the moment where the photo is “right”. I tell you, I’ve shot more losers than winners trying to figure this out. Losing photos that is, not loser people. Anyway, this idea of capturing the decisive moment is difficult to grasp. It’s difficult to know what exactly this idea really means. There’s a group on Flickr to cover some of this. I spent some time reading through the discussions, as well as going back through some of Cartier-Bresson’s books to glean some useful information.
Heh. “Useful information”. There is none. All the talk I’ve found doesn’t make up for the act of doing. I’m beginning to think it’s like pornography … you’ll know it when you see it. And not one second before. Ironic, isn’t it … understanding what the decisive moment should be requires knowing when the decisive moment occurs.
Cartier-Bresson is quoted in a 1957 Washington Post article, saying, “Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”
You see. Intuition. You need that. And that only comes over time as you take crap photo after crap photo. At least, that’s what it appears to my finely untrained eye. It’s like trying to drive down the road, blindfolded, while steering a northerly course by the sensation of the road turtles under your tires. Bumpbumpbumpbumpbump. Get good enough at it, and you’ll be able to judge not only distance and speed, but direction just from the sheer force of the ripple in your shocks.
But, back to Cartier-Bresson. He had years to develop this idea. I imagine he took his fair share of crap photos while slowly charting his course towards the decisive moment.
When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”
Jack Burton Big Trouble in Little China
Yes. I’m sure Henri paid his dues and that’s why he understood what it meant to feel his way towards a better photograph. Intuition. A gut check. Using the force. Whatever you want to call the alignment of the planetary photogenesis (hey, I don’t know what that means, it sounded good … go with it). It ends up manifesting in a tiny, imperceptible muscle twitch that impregnates the image upon our photographic medium of choice right before the moment divests itself from our very sight.
And what do you know. Sometimes it’s even a great photo.
The woman above is a local fire spinner in Austin. This was the first time I saw her spin. Very hypnotic. I’ve gotten to the point where I want to photograph something different with fire. Something I haven’t seen or tried to see before. Here, she’s up on a stage, replete with a large white background. You’d never know it from the photo, but ’tis true. She’s kneeling on the stage, arching back towards the screen, twirling the fire ever closer to her face in between her stripped arms. If the music hadn’t been loud, you would have heard the crackling get louder and softer, each time the poi flipped around closer to you. Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. Lovely fire. Lovely photo. Lovely woman. And this is me dancing with that decisive moment.
I think it worked.
Bullet time.
This has been making the rounds. Makes you want your own highspeed camera, doesn’t it?
Lost in a forest
There’s a scene in the movie Jarhead, towards the end where the marines are walking through the desert. You can see the waves of heat simmering up from the sand. Swofford is narrating, “A story. A man fires a rifle for many years. and he goes to war. And afterwards he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life – build a house, love a woman, change his son’s diaper – he will always remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying, they will always be me. We are still in the desert. “
That last line always gets me.
Somewhere, someone is doing the only thing they know and they’re … lost. One of the hardest things we, as artists, have to do is recognize when we’re in a rut. It’s difficult. Damned difficult. Sometimes you have to force yourself to do something different.
Last weekend I decided it was time to find myself lost in a forest with a camera. It has been wet and cool. We trekked out on a grey and somber day, happy to not be walking in the rain.
There’s a distinct crunch to dirt when it’s wet. It’s not so much that it crushes, but that it grinds and slips beneath your feet molding into the crevasses of your shoes. Then there’s the slow sucking lurch as your foot melds in with the red clay mud. It was a hard pudding and we were sloshing through it with wild abandon.
I like walking in the forest. It’s quiet. Not like the city where you can’t get away from the buzzing sound of engines, squealing tires, yelling, rumbling chopper blades, and the sounds of activity. The forest, it is a death knell, quiet and eerie.
And this lets you relax and unfocus. There’s an old saying about being unable to see the forest from the trees. It’s right. As an artist, I tend to focus deeply on getting right the very thing that’s in front of me. So focused that I completely pass over the detail that comes with everything surrounding.
“A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.”
The combination of the grey, overcast day with the break in rain left the flora and fauna in quite a brilliant light. Everywhere we looked the greens were rich and lifelike, the browns were warm and inviting, the sheen left upon the world invited you to stop, crouch down, and navel gaze upon the mushrooms (and boy, were there LOTS of mushrooms). The decay out there was amazing.
And here I sit, one week later, staring at these photographs wondering why I’m still in this rut photographically. And all I can think is …
I’m a photographer and I am still in the forest. Lost.
Taryn Simon on Crimes and Forbidden places
Another interesting video from TED. Who knew the CIA had such interesting abstract art hanging on the walls of their secret bunkers?
Are you a God?
Gozer: [after Ray orders her to re-locate] Are you a God?
[Ray looks at Peter, who nods]
Dr Ray Stantz: No.
Gozer: Then… DIE!
[Lightning flies from her fingers, driving the Ghostbusters to the edge of the roof and almost off; people below scream]
Winston Zeddemore: Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “YES”!
Ghostbusters
Inspiration strikes at the strangest times. No, I wasn’t watching Ghostbusters at the time, but I was staring at my big, beautiful 54″ DLP TV (that now has one lovely pixel that’s stuck in the on position). It’s a nice TV. Has a great picture, especially when the high def channels are running on it.
I was watching something on one of the Discovery channels when inspiration hit. I had been thinking about backgrounds because of the cookie setup I used for some recent portraits (written about in Boot to the head!). One of the things I look for now is an interesting background. Ok, maybe not interesting … different. Something I haven’t seen or done before.
So, this particular TV show has some very colorful moments in it when I realize that, if unfocused, would make some unique and easy backgrounds. I wouldn’t have to do much to make it work. But, what about a subject?
We have this statue in our living room. It’s a glorified candle holder. My wife says it’s some sort of Buddha-ish thing. It has quite a bit of detail in it. Bumps and curves and folds. 
Plus the candle, must not forget the pale green honeydew candle sitting upon it’s lap. In other words, something curious and attractive photographically.
Background. Check.
Subject. Check.
What’s next? The lighting! I’ve been playing with collapsing my umbrella to help control the light a bit more. I wanted something more directional than shooting through a white umbrella (which has WAY to much light, I’m finding). But, without access to a softbox right now, I make do with what I have on hand. So, collapsed umbrella with the flash bouncing into it, as opposed to through it. The light was certainly a bit crisper in the shadowline.
Toss in a flickering flame and you have something where the light is sculpted just enough to bring out the detail in the statue.
So, Background, check.
Subject, check.
Lighting, check.
Three simple things needed to make a good photo. In this particular case, I tossed the light to camera right and feathered it away from the subject. Pushing it so it was directly on and above put too much light and killed too much of the shadow for me. You can see it a bit better in the setup shot. The hanging edge of the collapsed umbrella is lined up so it would be just on the edge of the face.
One of the things I’m finding is that it’s worthwhile just trying something. Using the TV as a background was a stroke of chance (and man, timing the shot so the background was something useful was quite a pain in the ass). The two shots I have above were taken shortly apart from each other and you can see the big difference in style. I love the separation of the head and background made by the green sliver combined with the smoke trails vaporing off into nothing. I also love the fiery red background of the second combined with the single flick of orange flame. It works.
Oh, and the TV show? I think it was some documentary about the solar system, how it was formed, and how it would all come spiraling in to a despotic end, crushing our tiny little Earth. Makes for a cheery day, doesn’t it?
So remember: try it. It might work. It might not. And if it doesn’t, you’ve still learned something: how not to use a light, a background, or an idea in a particular way.
Boot to the head!
Master: Ed Gooberman, you fail to grasp Tae-Kwon Leep. Approach me so that you may see.
Ed: Alright, finally some action.
Master: Observe closely class. Boot to the Head [boom].
Ed: Ow, you booted me in the head!
Master: You are lucky Ed Gooberman. Few novices experiece so much of Tae-Kwon Leep so soon.
Headshots. No, no, I’m not going to perform the moves of Tae-Kwon-Leep on you. Humorous as it may be, that’s not the subject of today’s post. Today we’re talking about photographic headshots. Or rather, as close to them as I’ve gotten in the last month. Maybe a bit of background is in order.
I’m a member of a non-profit organization. August was the first month of the new term for the organization’s Board of Directors. The organization is relatively new and still getting on it’s feet. Slowly, but surely, it’s getting there. I happened to be in the area when the meeting was occurring and offered to take photos of both the BOD and the organization’s staff. Nothing fancy was needed, just something simple and presentable.
One of the things I’ve learned from the entire Strobist movement is that simple is good. 
Remember, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” I didn’t have much time to get the shoot together. All I knew walking into it was that I wanted a two light setup: a key light through a big white umbrella and a background light gelled blue to provide just swash of color. Why blue? Blue is a dominant color in the organization’s marketing scheme.
I was hoping to find some textured background to give some interest to the photos, but when I arrived at the meeting place, I discovered it was in a plain-Jane office building. So, no dice. Sad photographer, no biscuit. But, the galaxy had one final hope!
A plant.
I found it tucked away in our meeting room behind a door. It was some sort of leafy bamboo-ish thing. Long thin leaves. Just enough to make a great cookie. Or cookaloris. What’s a cookaloris? It’s a basic light modifier used to filter light through to create a pattern against your background. 
I’d never used one before (because it’s always an after through when I’m shooting). This time, I jumped at it because I wanted something to make the background not so dull. Aside: I think the affect was great. I want to try doing more of these and make my own cookies with paper and shapes cut out of it. But, moving on.
Using a cookie is simple. Place it between your light and the background. The closer the cookie is to the light, the sharper and more defined the projected shadow is. So, with the plant acting as my cookie, all I had to do to spice up the background was to make sure my blue gel was firmly planted on the flash, zoom it in a bit and pop it for good measure. Mostly, I wanted to see if it was appearing on the blank wall correctly. It did. I was happy.
Next was getting my key light set up. I noticed recently that I tend to shoot A LOT with the key coming from the left. Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck doing this and is counter to my need to try and keep it working from both sides. 
Plus, there’s the whole issue of making sure I’m lighting the correct side of the model’s face, but that’s a wholly separate issue and post.
So, key to the left and … needed some fill to the right. I only had one light stand and one umbrella with me and that was already in use for the key, so I couldn’t use another flash (a third, which I did happen to have). What else do I spy in the room that I can press gang into use? Why, I have a useful human c-stand and a big, poster-sized white Post-It note. PROFIT! A bit of arrangement and I had my three light sources for the portraits.
And the magic of all of this? Ten minutes of setup to achieve an impromptu portrait studio suitable for photographing nine people in rapid succession.
Sorry, no setup shots for this. I’m sure you can figure it out from the lighting in the photos. If not, let me know and I can draw a picture that’ll help diagram it out.
You can see the rest of the board and staff photos on my flickr stream.
The folks above are Lois, Jesse, Dan, and David. Good folks. I think Lois’ portrait is my favorite from this entire setup.
A month! Where have you been!?
So there I was, stuck in the jungles of Borneo fending off the attacks of never before seen lovers of longpork and the delightfully disgusting dance of durian when …
Wait, that’s not it.
So there I was, sitting in first class on my way to grand Paris when the co-pilot rushed out of the smocking cockpit proclaiming the need for a professional geek. I, being a professional geek, raised my hand and …
Wait, that’s not it either.
So there I was, wondering how I was going to explain to my wife that I’d been arrested for trespassing in some rancher’s field while trying to get my nude, feather wearing model to mount a cathartic bull when …
Nope, nope. Not it either.
Ok. I admit it. I’ve just been busy. The month of August, while blazingly hot, has been nothing but work, work, more work, hey, look it’s work! and … lastly, more work. Mixed with a bit of fun, mind you.
I did manage to get out and do a brief photowalk early August. I ran across a troupe on the south mall up on campus. What drew me to them was the taiko drum thundering through the six-pack as I walked near the tower.
They were practicing a routine with one of the traditional Chinese lions. Bright, golden yellow was the color of their costumes. The dancers were engaged in what was going on and paid no attention to me, lurking some yards back. One thing struck me as I watched: the troupe was well-polished and practiced. You could see it in each leap and weave, each bow of the lion’s head, each rhythmic strut following the beat of the drum.
As the taiko thumper pushed the pace faster and slower, the troupe had dancers diving in and out from under the lion. The troupe lead was shouting them on, encouraging them to keep it tight and smooth.
The drummer went slower.
The lion paced.
When the last thump of the drum was heard, all the dancers emerged, lined up, and gave the lead a bow. All in time, as if they were saluting a lieutenant.
I packed my camera and walked off. I thought about giving them my card, but when I went back a few minutes later, they had gone.
Blueberry, blueberry, where are you?
You ought to have seen what I saw on my wayTo the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drumIn the cavernous pail of the first one to come! And all ripe together, not some of them greenAnd some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"Blueberries by Robert Frost
Have you ever pulled a well-ripened blueberry from it’s comforting container and just … admired it? Hold it between your fingers. No, don’t squeeze it; it’ll burst at the seams. But, just cradle it. They have a delicate skin, a deepest of blue. Some of mine were just past the age of ripeness. You could see it in the skin, wrinkled like the skin of a well-worn man aged in the sun and retired from the orchard.
When ripened, blueberry skin becomes waxy, almost white and milky. This aging of it’s coat protects it from spoiling too quickly. But, at the same time, reveals a mottled and textured appeal for the camera. It gives life and depth to this tiny blue planet.
On one end a crater has formed from the tips of the flower petal. It resembles a miniature (yet mighty) impact of rock and ice on a planet surface. Really, go look. Tell me you don’t see it.
Anyway, I took up the idea of blueberries one evening recently after having seen a photo of this delightful little fruit falling into a bowl and leaving a trail of light in it’s wake. I wanted to recreate that image to see if I could do it. Sadly, I came to the conclusion that it’s not as easy as it looked.
I’m still mulling over why I failed here. The scientist in me could give you a hundred different technical reasons on why I couldn’t capture it, starting at “not enough ambient light” and ending somewhere around “not enough hand-eye coordination to coordinate the falling berries and the shutter”. The storyteller in me just wants to say that the idea, however much I had chased it, just wasn’t in me. Frustration set in when I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
So, like every grand experimenter, I tried something different.
A little side journey here. One of the things I’d promised myself recently was to shoot every Strobist Bootcamp II subject presented to me. I did the first. Failed on the second (but made up for it with my coffee beans). When the results were announced, I went through the entire 700+ list of entries just to see what people were doing. I declare that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here. The one that caught my eye (before it was announced as the winner) was this one. Peppers in a well-seasoned skillet. Now this … this has character. This pan has a story to tell, of all the wonderful and comforting dinners it’s sizzled away at. You can see the scratches and dings and pock marks. A hedonistic patina built up by years and years of use.
And this is how ideas start.
I wanted something like this, something showing off the well-used baking stone we have. Our second stone, in fact, lovingly built up through years of curing under the scorching oven heat, saturated with the oils leached out of the foods we’ve cooked on it. French fries, battered fish, bread, pizza … you name it, we’ve cooked it. This has taken years. I was crushed when, in a moment of idiocracy, I took our first stone and set it under a fountain of water coming from our kitchen sink. It was the CRACK! heard ’round the world. Yep. The sudden change of temperature from hellfire and brimstone to cold, cold river water did me in. And I remember that moment every time I’m cooking on our second stone because of the time and effort it takes to season one of these well. An unseasoned stone is no stone to cook on.
So, I had my stone. And I had my blueberries. Like chocolate and peanut butter: two great tastes tasting great together. I had the soul and depth of my background with the life and zest of my subject. So, what to do? Be like any great artist and just plop my load of tiny planets down on this dark brown thingy. Make it look not-so-arranged and neat. Order is the bane of inconsistency. I played with the light a bit combining a bit of flash with a bit of incandescent and didn’t like it all that much; the blue and the orange just didn’t work well with this. 
The orange just detracts from the color of the blueberries, warming them up too much. They’re blue. They needed to be stark and cold and inviting that way.
I labored on. I spent hours upon hours arranging each and every berry in the most articulate of ways. You know, pushing and prodding gently with a toothpick, picking them up one by one with tongs like a little berry crane, and gingerly dropping them down upon the other without a moments hesitation. Ok, not really. They were unceremoniously dumped from the bowl I was eating them out of and finger-kicked until it looked
right, I realized I was still missing something. Steel! Cold, hard steel. Everyone loves a good blade right?
I’m still debating which photo I like more: with the blade or without. I wanted to see some of the detail and striations in the knife’s makeup. It really is a pain in the ass to get that angled correctly so the detail is teased out without blowing out the stripes. I tried adding some drops of water blown on to the entire arrangement but it looked contrived. I also thought about crushing some berries but … by that point, I was just eating them before I could sufficiently place the crushed ones back on the board.
Oh well.
The lighting setup on this wasn’t too difficult. One 32″ white shoot-through umbrella on the far side of the baking stone to give me that broad northern-looking light. I had a second light on-camera but aimed directly up at the ceiling to create a large fill source. I wanted just enough light to bring up some of the shadow detail without killing it and without blowing out the detail in the knife. I think it worked well enough.
But again, I’m still not sure which picture I like more. One thing’s for sure: the berries were good. I’ll need to go and get some more before the season dies out.
Hoppin’ the waterplug just for old HDR’s sake.
Spent Thursday afternoon filling my camera with more sources of mediocre HDR down at the University. I have to admit: trying to see this stuff is much harder than I expected. You don’t really know what you’re going to get until you’re staring at the tonemap and you’re clicking on commit.
It’s somewhat frustrating, I must confess. You think you have something good in camera and when you get it loaded it … well. It’s just utter crap. I like the look of HDR photography when, to the naked eye, it appears delicately painted on, brush stroke by brush stroke. I suppose it will get better with time, but we’ll see.
I think my problem with the latest HDR trash was that I was photographing subjects that were in full sun so I didn’t get the under-exposed part of the range that I wanted (or needed). It was just bright. The photos didn’t look all that good. In fact, I ended up deleting a few hundred because they just didn’t work out well.
But, we’ll see how this goes. I need to read up more on the topic to see what I’m missing. This whole shooting blind idea is not very fruitful. I’d be better off throwing it all up against the wall and seeing what sticks. But, we’ll see. The worst that happens is that I delete more photos. C’est la vie.
The photo above is the side entrance (well, the exit) of Garrison Hall on campus. This was the first (and probably the best) attempt I made on Thursday. I love the hint of detail on the windows. I need to work that more deeply whenever I photograph buildings this way. You can see the sky reflection if you look closely.
For this round of photos, I did 5-stop spreads (five photos, one stop apart). I don’t know if that’s enough. Or too much. And I don’t yet know how the size of the stop really affects the final outcome. For all I know, I’m spinning my wheels because I’ve chosen to deal with too much data on my eye.
I seem to have a fetish for fire plugs. This is now the third that I’ve taken and added to my collection.
And, of course, we cannot forget to photograph the biggest balls of them all. I like the rusty bits. HDR really makes them pop out at you like a bad 3D b-movie.
HDR Playtime!
Last month when I flew up to Chicago, we got diverted to St. Louis because of the nightmare that was the storm front rolling through the area. The sunset was beautiful. It was just us, the plane, the tarmac, and our fellow stranded fliers in the other planes around us. We were all in the penalty box and no one knew if we’d get out alive.
I didn’t have much else to do, so I popped over to the left side of our plane and just started playing with the bracketing on my d300. I had intended to play with HDR a bit, but never got around to touching the photos when I got back to Austin.
Until now.
It’s not great. I’m definitely no StuckInCustoms, that’s for sure. But hell, for a first attempt, it’s pretty damn good. Check it out in
large on black.
This was created with 7 RAW images all at f8, ranging from 1/100th to 1/1600th and tonemapped in Photomatix. I had to let it re-align things because I was handholding the camera and shifted around a bit while the photos were being taken. I think it did an excellent job.
Definitely need to play with HDR some more and see what I can come up with.
Links Plucked from the Ether
I think I’m going to start something new on here. Well, restart is probably more apropos. I spend a decent amount of time feeding my hunger for photography (and other interesting stuff) on the web every day. Probably far more than a sane person should. So as I come across this stuff, I’ll drop it on here for you.
President Obama’s first 167 days in office — Man these photos are awesome. Very engaging. I really enjoyed #16, #18, #32, and #36. Makes me wish I could step into a photography role like that, where I get to follow someone in the limelight and document their lives for posterity.
Kind of old and not really photography related, but this cover of Stand By Me is just damned inspiring. The amount of collaboration it took to pull this off is just amazing.
Over at the Lens, Todd Heisler discusses his work on the One in 8 Million series and answers a question about his black and white workflow. I love the photo of the violinist, Henrique Prince. The one thing about Heisler’s workflow that struck me as worth trying out was setting the camera to b&w while shooting to help better visualize what the end result was going to look like. I’m going to have to try that and see if it helps me to better visualize the play of light on scenes.
Found at A Photo Editor, Ten Things I Have Learned by Milton Glaser. Number 5 revved me up the most. The emphasis is mine. I’ll have to read some of his other essays.
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’
And finally, I’m all about a good belly laugh. Really, there’s nothing like one to shove a happy mood into someone. And with that, I leave you with Old Jews Telling Jokes. A warning: some just aren’t safe for work because of language. I leave you with A Meeting with the Pope and Broccoli
Juan Valdez, eat your heart out!
I promised myself I would do every Strobist Bootcamp II assignment this go-around. I swear I did. When I failed at doing the second one (the food assignment), I went out and bought some random vittles at Whole Foods to make up for it. A good strobist I was. I chose a random smattering of things: serrano peppers, fresno peppers, coffee beans, spaghetti (spinach AND wheat), two-bite brownies, and pints of blueberries.
Sadly, the brownies didn’t make it out of the evening alive. But the coffee beans did! I’m not sure about the photos though. I need to take a step back and re-evaluate what I did and figure out how I could have made them better. I think the biggest problem is that they’re just too uniform in color. All brown, no biscuit.
Biscotti might have helped.
But that’s ok. I still managed to spend over an hour working the light and coming up with something that looked good. Compared to many of the 2nd assignment’s submissions, I think they suck a bit. For the reason mentioned above. I just didn’t think enough about what I wanted to do with what I had.
I have a few more ideas to work through for the berries and peppers, but that’s going to take a day or two before I’m ready to even work on that. The hard part is trying to re-create northern sunlight coming in through the window in the dining room. It’s just too hot during the day to try and shoot back there.
I’ve included a few lighting setup shots so you can see what I was doing. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
What I’m realizing now is that, while the umbrellas do really well at creating a large, soft light, they’re extremely challenging to control. I mean, it’s a big round light. At one point, I was getting hot spots coming through because of how close I had the umbrella to the kitchen table. Solved that by slipping a piece of paper inside the umbrella at the point where it came closest to the table top to help diffuse out more of the light. That definitely worked great.
But, I need a good softbox. I need more light control for something like this.
In time.
But yeah, take a look at my coffee. Juan Valdez ain’t got nothin’ on my coffee bean yumminess! I think I’ll have to play with this idea some more. Add some piles of white cane sugar, maybe some cinnamon sticks. And a different mug. The brown is definitely just too much.
Oh, and next time I’m buying cheaper coffee. Something I can throw away when I’m done; or at least keep away from my wife who kept trying to act as part of the coffee bean thievery guild of greater Austin. Maybe I’ll just buy her her own coffee and that’ll solve my problem.
More photos from the evening. Click through to see the explicit lighting details.
A Thousand Points of Light
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. — Thomas A. Edison
In one of the photography forums I so frequently haunt, a new photographer threw out the age old existential question: “What makes a better photo, film or digital? Discuss.” Yikes. Let’s just lob the Holy Hand Grenade of Photographic Antioch into our midst and see what carnage we can make!
Ok, it really wasn’t that bad. The responses ranged from the obvious of “The photographer” to “it depends on what you’re shooting and it’s intended use.” But the one that caught my eye was the guy who said:
“I shoot both. I do nature with film as I love the whole process but shoot people with digital due to ease of use and most of my shoots with people are typically upward of 1000 – 2000 photos which would be ungodly expensive with film.”
I’ve never really focused on shooting film, but I do understand the expense of it. What I question about his statement is the “1000 – 2000 photos” per shoot with his digital camera. And I have to ask: why? Why would you want to do that, especially for people? Is there something I’m missing here?
I get that there’s a desire to create the perfect photo. I really get that. But what is it about digital that makes people think shooting 1000+ photos will get them perfection? Don’t get me wrong, there’s probably a time and place for it. But really, is that needed all the time? I wonder if people’s photos would improve a notch or two if they stopped taking the shotgun approach to their art (or work) and thought a bit about what exactly they were trying to create.
From what I’ve encountered, some photographers look at digital as the panacea of recording media. I get the sense that these photogs just snap and snap with wild abandon because, hey, it’s digital … it’s free! But that’s not entirely true. What you’ve gained in saved film processing costs, you’ve now lost due to increased time dealing with more photos during post. You’re now saving large amounts of data off so your archiving costs increase. There’s a larger wear-and-tear factor on your camera. You may or may not care about any of these things.
Now, I’m guilty of doing this on occasion, taking photo after photo of the exact same pose or moment … or maybe even slightly altering it to see if that changes the dynamic of the content. But … does this really help me, as a photographer? I realize I can’t shoot every thing I see (well, I can, but I won’t). I’m going to miss some things. That’s just the law of averages.
But, thousands of images at a sitting? Sounds like a bit much to me.
As for the whole digital vs. film debate? That rages on.
The model above is Scarlet. We were trying different things in the studio. This was my third attempt at this setup. I tried a few times and moved on when I thought I wasn’t getting it. Lucky me, it turned out.
Fireworks or Bust!
If your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand … you might be a redneck. — Jeff Foxworthy
I, of course, don’t want to own a fireworks stand. Now, I’m not knocking those who do, but that aspiration just isn’t my style. Nevertheless, I did my photographic duty yesterday and camped out with the hundreds of thousands of other people at Town Lake in the blazing July heat. Yes, that fantastical Texas heat. As if the showering sparkles of gun powder laced in burning smoke, the army of fire ants, and warm drips of sweat weren’t enough.
For all my heat-induced bellyaching, I have to say I did enjoy the show. I made the colossal mistake of parking close this year. You know, to save time getting to the show. Because I’m Lazy. Yes, with a capital “L”. Hung out with a few friends before the show so I could suck up some of their marvelous air conditioning. It was like seeing one of those signs out in the desert, “Last chance for gas, 180 miles.” You knew you’d better stop and partake of that brilliant resource before you found yourself out in the middle of nowhere, miles from relief and help, while pissing into the wind.
By 8:45, I knew I had to get over to the park or I’d miss my chance to etch the pretty sparklies onto a flash card for posterity. Say goodbye to Mr. A/C. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
I found a spot on the hill in front of the Palmer Event Center. It’s a shame it was the wrong spot. See, what I neglected to realize in my excellently sketched out plan was … well, you’ll see. Sadly, leave it to me to draw this plan out on the back of a napkin. When the ink soaked in like a bloodied pool, I discovered error of my ways. What was so wrong?
Well, everything was fine with the playing of the 1812 Overture. The guns were booming, people were jumping up in fright. And when the fireworks started, they … were. not. in. front. of. me. No.
They were off to my left. Right behind a lamp post. It was at that moment I wished I had one of two things: a rifle and scope or Dumbledore’s lamplight killer thingy. To say I was annoyed would be the understatement of the moment. Shame I had already unpacked all my camera gear and dug in to my little photo foxhole. I was fully engaged and had nowhere to escape to. So, I did what any good photographer would do.
I shot.
There’s a scene in Wild, Wild West where Artemis, acting as the President, is chastising West on his investigative style: “Shoot, shoot again, shoot some more, and then ask questions.” This thought bubbled up to the front of my mind as I laid on the camera trigger and didn’t stop shooting until the last explosive pot launched above the Austin skyline.
And as quickly as it had begun, it ended. Fifteen minutes to get in and find my spot. Fifteen to setup. It took me two to pack, and ten to hoof it out. I wanted to beat the rush. Sadly, I, like every other optimistic party-goer in Austin, decided that they would beat the rush too. Dave Mustaine kept my company the rest of the evening while I … moved a foot, stomped on the brake. moved a foot, stomped on the brake. Moved three feet … stomped on the brake.
Fireworks shows put on at Town Lake are an exercise in patience. But, only at their end. There are only five major north-south thoroughfares through Austin to get over the lake: IH35, Congress, South 1st, Lamar, and Mopac. South 1st is always shut down for big events. And the rest, well … imagine a parking lot. Only with pissed off drunk people. And it’s 47 bazillion miles long. It goes without saying that I wanted my bloody hovercar last night. I even called my wife and asked here where my hovercar was. I bet she stole it from me just to make me suffer.
But I digress.
Eventually, I made out of the area and onto IH35 wherein, I stomped on the gas, popped some Digital Underground into the CD player, and cruised through the city at high speed, deftly avoiding the drunk yahoos and their mishmash of weaving and bouncing off the concrete walls.
And that, my friends, was how I spent 4th of July in Austin.
If you’d like to see bigger versions of the photos below, check out my Fireworks Slideshow on Flickr.
When the doors open, if it’s hot, don’t get out.
[In high rise elevator]Tim Kizminski: How are we supposed to know if the floor is on fire in one of these?
Lt. Steven McCaffrey: When the doors open, if it’s hot, don’t get out.
Backdraft 1991
Do you remember Backdraft? Came out in the early 90′s, starring Kurt Russell, one of the Baldwin boys, Jason Gedrick, and good ol’ Robert De Niro. All of them are fire fighters of sordid experience, playing with Old Man Fire in Chicago. Little Billy Baldwin and Gedrick are probies. You know, the FNGs. Fresh out of fire fighter training and eager to fit in. It’s a feel good coming of age story. Or something.
Anyway, there’s a scene where Gedrick (Kizminski) and Russell (McCaffrey) are riding up an elevator handling a fire call out. Kizminski’s nervous. I recall this being his first real run. I recall that quote above very distinctly. It’s pragmatic and soberingly snarky. Something you’d expect from a master teaching a young student. A firefighter’s koan if ever there was one.
This scene popped into my mind last Thursday as I was reading a notice from the City of Austin after it was prominently stapled to the front door of the Hostel. Err, I mean the warehouse. Rather, the building where our studio coop is.
“… tenants have until July 16th to vacate the premises …”
“… unsafe conditions …”
“… condemned …”
Whiskey-tango-foxtrot. Ground control, we have a problem.
So, good for us, we don’t own the building. We’re just a tenant. Bad for us, we’re just a tenant and we no longer have a studio. In my faux shock and awe (“I’m shocked! SHOCKED I say!”) I continued to read through the three pages of violations that the landlord was being charged with. In no particular order (and the ones I could remember) are:
- No sprinkler system
- Wrong zoning (zoned warehouse, instead used for multi-use tenant)
- Dead end hallways leading to entrapment condition during fire
- Lack of inside lighting
- Improper building materials used indoors (fire retardant ones)
- Improper hallway sizes for emergency egress
- Improperly built stairways
- Illegally built stairways
- Electrical system not up to code
- Insufficient exit signage
- Additions to the building without a permit … both minor (walls) and major (whole additions to the building)
- No certificate of occupancy for any of the tenants
- and last, but not least, ignoring multiple court orders to close the warehouse down
Yeah. No shit. Who knew it was a fire trap? I’m shocked, SHOCKED I say! Honestly, I’m really not surprised. The fire marshall came a few weeks back to do his inspection. This means someone got pissed at the landlord at some point in recent history and reported him.
I feel sad, really. As many warts as that place has, I had some good times and some good shoots there. I feel sorry for some of the other tenants. One lady put in $25k worth of improvements to her place there. The guys at the Hookah shop had only been there about two months I guess. Another photographer had just moved in the week before and prepaid three months of his rent.
Rumor has it an angel investor has come in wanting to take over the place. They say they have good relations with the fire marshall, city council, and the mayor’s office. They own a few other properties in Austin and are willing to get things fixed and right.
But, only if the current tenants stay.
What a quandry.
The tenants met Friday night to discuss their options. They’re investigating a lawsuit for return of all back rent and deposits because the landlord made the contracts under false pretenses. At a minimum, it was illegal for him to lease out the place without getting it rezoned for multi-tenant use and getting certificate of occupancies.
We looked at a new place on Sunday. All seven of us met there after the Austin Strobist meetup. At first glance, this place would be an absolute dream. Sadly, it’s too much. The owner of this property was willing to cut us a deal for the first two months, but even with that, we’re still talking over three grand once you include deposits, utilities, and first month’s rent. I knew it would be too much for us when I walked in. Going from a one room studio with a community restroom to a four room plus storage and a private restroom is just too much for us at this point. Especially with the economy still in the dumps. But man, it would have been a dream.
Realistically, we need a slightly larger studio with an additional room for prop storage. We’ll find something, I just don’t know when.
In the end I’m kind of glad to be out of the fire trap. While it worked as a good studio in a central location, it just didn’t look all that professional walking into the building. It’s a warehouse, plain and simple.
I’m just glad to know what to do in case of a fire: when the doors open, if it’s hot, don’t get out.
The photo up top is of Adam. He’s one of the local fire spinners here in Austin. He’s whipping flaming poi around his body to the sound of music swimming out of his iPod. You can see the body’s silhouette amidst the flames.
Panning for Gold
Photos from the meeting mentioned in the previous posting. It was fun, hilarious, contentious, thought provoking, maddening, and occasionally filled with “WTF?!”. This is the second time I’ve done this. It’s definitely interesting to listen to the plethora of opinions that come out from the papers we have to review for this conference.
Ian
Mario
Hoon
Andrew and Paul
Adam
Narayan
Nicole, Mark, and Paul
Narayan and Doug
Bill and Mark
Cory assaulting the food
McEniry Photobomb
Cory
John, Mario, Chris, me, Nicole
We have the POWAH!
Nicole
David
Oh foul weather, I am not impressed.
What a disturbingly long weekend. I had to make a trip up to Chicago on Friday. Why, you ask? Why, I had a day long meeting to attend on Saturday for a conference I’m helping to organize in November. The conference doesn’t matter here. What matters is my Gilligan’s Tale and my 12 hour winged boat trip, over hill and dale, passed an archway you couldn’t touch, and finally into a rain-swept city that’s famous for it’s pizza.
Friday started out fine. Austin, as usual, was blazingly sunny, creeping into a mild hotness that’s only seen on the outskirts of Hades during their flaming winter break. I took the day off so I could have a relaxed flight up there with some time to spare. 
Because I was only flying up for the weekend, I wouldn’t have much time to explore and some of the others en route were planning a trip to one of the museums. The plan … it was good and golden and smelled of sweetness.
Things began to go sour when I came close to missing my flight when Schlotsky’s employees at ABIA stepped up to a new level of dumbery that I’d not seen since … well, do you remember that I Love Lucy scene where they’re in the chocolate factory and the chocolate just keeps coming and coming and coming? No? Here’s a refresher.
Anyway, the sandwich makers were doing everything possible to screw up orders. The bread just kept coming, slamming into orders ahead like a bad pileup on IH-35. No one slowed down and everyone with a receipt just got closer and closer, rubbernecking with the best. When I finally got my food, they were one group away from closing off the door to the jetway and launching the plane. I boarded, found my seat with every intention to eat on the way to Chicago, and settled in for a short three hour flight.
We were all summarily booted from the plane 10 minutes later. O’Hare was closed thanks to Mother Nature. No problem, take off time reset to 3pm. I sit out in the waiting area munching on my food and chitchat with a female soldier on her way back from Iraq. She’d been over there for a 12 month tour. She’s ready to go home. She’s on her way to New Hampshire to pick up her kids, one of which she hasn’t seen since the kid was 15 months old. It was pretty heart wrenching listening to her talk though. You could tell she was done with flying.
So, 3pm comes and goes, we all board and … the O’Hare that had been opened had just been … closed. Again. This time we were booted from the plane only if we wanted to be booted. 
I stayed on the plane and read. The camera got pulled out to start documenting the hilarity that I knew would ensue.
5pm comes and everyone starts piling back into the plane. O’Hare is open! Mad rush to the seats. Mind you, we’re at groundstop number two and we haven’t left Austin yet. It’s now freaking hot in Austin. It’s also storming in Chicago so badly that they have tornadoes. Or warnings, at least. But, the pilot thinks the can time the flight so we land in between two of the larger feeder cells that are swamping Chicago with cats, dogs, and wicked witches with striped stockings.
We taxi out and … no, no ground stop. We actually make it off the runway. Now, every time I take off in a plane, I’m reminded of the scene in Firefly where they’re zooming through the planet and Wash is piloting the ship. He says, “I’m a leaf on the wind, see how I soar.” Well, I think about this line every time I fly. 
I don’t know why. Just a weird quirk. It’s not like I expect a wooden spear to slam through the fuselage of the plane and stab me in the chest. Hey, it could happen, but I’d prefer it didn’t.
So the flight is merrily cruising along. We’re singing Kum-ba-ya, Leavin’ on a Jetplane, and other campy things. Well, not really. But the image is cute. So, again, we’re cruising, we’re cruising, we’re cruising, we’re … why did the plane just slow down and begin descending? It’s only 6:20.
The captain comes on and says, “Uh, folks, I’m sorry to tell you this, but O’Hare is closed again. They just had a feeder cell close up our one projected opening. They’re not letting anyone in, so we’re being diverted to St. Louis.”
Groans throughout the plane.
I got to see the arch in St. Louis though. Well, from about 10 thousand feet up. We land at the airport and get parked out on the tarmac. People are pretty antsy by now, unsure if they were even getting to Chicago by Friday night. By this point, I texted a few folks to give them a heads up.
Ever play the game “Telephone”? You start it by telling something to someone, they tell it to someone else, and eventually it gets back to you? I was doing that with SMS. Found out that one of the other folks flying into O’Hare was also stranded in St. Louis, but he was off his plane and renting a car. We agreed to meet up if my plane didn’t make it off the ground again. As all of this is occurring, people are requesting to be let off the plane, so someone comes out to the area we’re parked in and hauls them back to the terminal. I decided to play the numbers and see if we’d take off again.
As time drags on, we’re all getting a little more restless and … one of the passengers coming from Austin pulls out this box of cupcakes from Hey, Cupcake! He proceeded to cut them up and pass them out with the help of the flight crew. That made everyone a bit happier. I’m not sure if he was a Hey Cupcake employee or not (he was wearing one of their shirts), but no matter what, it was a great thing to do.
8pm comes and the pilots come on the air. They’re negotiating with the tower and ATC to get us off the ground before the other planes in line because their reset time is quickly coming. If we didn’t make it off the ground by 8:15, we’d immediately go to the terminal. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. And then we’d have to wait even longer for a new crew to arrive. Damn legalities. I managed to get a beautiful picture of the sunset in St. Louis. I wish I had been on the left side of the plane when we took off again because the view was gorgeous.
So, we got off the ground a few minutes shy of the reset time. There was much rejoicing and cheering for the pilots. The remainder of the flight was uneventful. Off to the east, we could see the ginormous cloud fronts trailing off towards the east. We were traveling at 27 thousand feet. The cloud tops were easily up at 45 or 50 thousand if I had to guess.
We got to O’Hare and visibility was about five miles. Crystal-f’ing-clear. All that was left to do was land, get to my bus, and get over to the hotel before I collapsed.
The Sunday flight back was relatively uneventful. Thankfully. I saw the soldier again. By this point, she had managed to get up to New Hampshire and retrieve her kids. 
They were walking off to some other gate so I didn’t get a chance to say hi. She looked happy and more relaxed with her kids in tow.
Spent a few minutes at O’Hare on Sunday taking photos. Airports are an interesting place to capture the lives of people. Always in a rush. Or not. Always pissy. Or not. Just a daily grind, all compact and neat, shoved into a building surrounded by tankers of jet fuel and exhaust.
Links for 2009-06-17
Interesting links gathered from all over the Internet
FlashZebra.com: Clamp Style Flash Shoe (Item #0137) Flash coldshoes for speedlights. (tags: photography equipment flash shoe coldshoe)
Holy Exploding Thermostats, Batman!
Yes, if Robin was my assistant on Saturday that’s the phrase that would have ripped from his mouth. By 10:30am, it was 85 degrees and I was dripping wet. I’d been talking to this new model for a few weeks hammering out what exactly we were going to do. The place was the Cathedral of Junk. The color was pink. Funny. I had that Aerosmith song playing on the stereo the night before and thought nothing of it.
We arrived at the Cathedral a few moments apart. There was a crew pulling up in a yellow box truck, delivering stage parts for a show from the look of it. I hadn’t thought much about it until after she stepped out of her car and they all just stopped and stared. She was decked out in a black and pink corset, pink fishnet gloves and, and black fishnet stockings with matching pink stripes. It all went together pretty well. But yeah, these guys stood there for a moment taking her in.
I walked over and introduced myself and we went into the backyard after I’d pulled my gear out of the car. She’d never been there before so we did a brief walk through so she could get a feel for the place.
Now, if you’ve never been to the Cathedral of Junk, let me describe it to you. First the Cathedral lives in a quiet south Austin neighborhood just off of South Congress. You pull up to the residence and … well, you don’t see it. It’s a nice little neighborhood. You have houses and flowers, trees and dogs, and the occasional white picket fence. But as you approach the gate, you catch your first glimpse of the Cathedral. The structure is ever growing. 
It lives and breathes as it’s owner, Vince, finds new ways to build upon it. There are bottle sculptures, junk walls, the inner throne, buttresses, stairways to heaven, and even a crows nest of sorts.
One of the photos I’d wanted to get was of her sitting on the throne in a distinctly magnanimous and noble way. The Cathedral is a fantasy and she just fit into it like a pink and gothic fairy. Unlike the cake, this is not a lie. We chatted a bit while I set up one light. With space tight within the inner workings of the Cathedral, I opted to ditch the umbrella and go with a hard light. It was sunny inside, so I just needed to offset the blast of light and try to overpower it a bit. One thing I realized is that I miss using my D40 for times like this. Extreme ambient control and still usable with the SB’s and the Pocket Wizards. 1/1600th of a second was sorely missed that day. But I made due with the D300 and some stopping down.
One thing new that I decided to try was CLS in TTL mode and just using the flash compensation settings. I’m mixed over this. Because there was such a large amount of ambient coming from the sun, I had problems with it picking the wrong exposure value to set on the flash. If I had to do it again I’d use it in manual and just dial everything in. But, it was hot, getting hotter and I wanted to move fast before I passed out from heat exhaustion. Glad I picked up a few bottles of water for us to partake in during the scene resets.
We ended up shooting in four areas: the throne, the bench, the alcove, and the archway. The throne was my favorite. I just love the way she looks there. The archway followed. I wanted some fill coming in from the sun bouncing off the ground and light coming in from the clear, blue sky. I really like the look of that northern light. It is delicate and different from flash. The slightly blue tinge to it just does it for me (and I really want to play more with it; just need to find a good place with a bunch of quality northern light coming into a large window).
By 11:15, I was packing up and calling it done. It was just too hot to be comfortable. I knew I’d gotten at least one good shot. We chatted for a few minutes and then parted ways. The Cathedral was definitely a worthy place to shoot. Even if the heat DID almost kill me. ;-)
The lovely lady in the photos above is Lacey Starr. I met her through Model Mayhem. She was definitely fun and easy to work with. I had her laughing shortly into the shoot. Once that happened, I knew I’d be shooting with her again. And as for the pink? Yeah, I can see how Aerosmith finds it an obsession.
"Where’s your missionary?"
Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but afer all, the Scotchman would shake his head, and say, “Where’s your haggis?” and the Fijan would sigh and say, “Where’s your missionary?”Mark Twain A Tramp Abroad
Southern fried catfish. Covered and smothered in the hardiest cornmeal batter you can find and dropped into a vat of oil rolling and seething with the fury of the seas boiling before a hurricane. Add some golden fried chips, a splash of tartar sauce, and a hushpuppy or three? You have the makings for some good eats right there.
Work had their annual picnic recently. The main course that was catered in was catfish, cooked on the spot, served hot, and all you can stuff down your gullet. Definitely a photo-op to be sure. I don’t remember the company they brought in. It was the Manchaca Fire Department (Manchaca Firehall). They pulled in a large trailer replete with refrigerators packed with catfish, a rather large prep area, and four or five deep fryers. 
The more people ate, the more fish they battered and sacrificed to the gods of Canola and Flame.
The lines for the food stretched from one end of the building to the other. People chattered and kibitzed, but only in the politest of manners. There was a table full of lego men. Yes, I said lego men. One of the odd traditions, I’ve discovered. They (as in the group, not the lego men) have team building exercises wherein groups race to build dozens of lego men and the winners get … more lego men. But all the ones that are built throughout the year get bundled up and given away at this picnic.
Strange, I know. What more could you ask for from a team building experience?
Now, where was I. Yes, they gave out lego men. I picked up one of the medics. Why a medic? I used to work with a Vietnam Vet and he’d occasionally pipe up and yell, “MEDIC! I’M HIT!” whenever something bad went down in the environment. So, I had to pickup a corpsman and stretcher to keep on my desk. Oddly enough, the medic and I soon parted ways when I gave it to my office mate. He objects to the lego men. Something about zombie hordes of little plastic men coming to take over the world or something. Or maybe not. I can’t exactly remember. I just recall the look on his face when I placed it on his desk.
But, back to the story. I’m finding that the camera is going with me everywhere most days now. Especially with the new lens cranked on there. I swear, it’s practically welded on by this point. Knowing that there’d be a few hundred people at this picnic, it went along with me. I encountered a few other photogs there. They were focusing on the event in general. 
I was just having fun. With my camera and my heaping plate of food, I grabbed a chair and camped out at a table next to my friend Scarlett. I stole a few shots of her food because it looked more interesting than mine. But then, it was more interesting because I’d eaten most of my catfish and hadn’t yet gone back for seconds.
I ended up being joined by a few of the associate VPs. Funny that. I had to be on my best behavior. Wouldn’t want to make a resume-altering statement in front of three of the most powerful people in the group. So, I mostly ate in silence and occasionally took a photo or two. When all was said and done, I finished off the afternoon with the remains of what was on the table. Empty plates, full bellies, and nothing but trash.
One of the AVPs commented how good my camera was when the photo of the trashed remains came up on the screen. I pointed out it was the photographer that made the photo. The camera, unlike the photog, was just a tool.
I think it went over their heads.
They still liked the photo, though. And me, I was fat, dumb, and happy. Full of catfish and ready for a nap.