Can't get enough of those crazy LEDs.

Regular readers will know that I am the "official" photographer for Zachary Scott Theatre, here in Austin, Texas.  I was reminded today of why I like doing photography there so much.  They have great actors and the actors can make great faces.  And I get to capture those great faces and show them to the world.  It's a wonderful collaboration that makes me painfully aware that "out there" in the "real world" our sitters are generally nervous, self conscious and reticent to do anything that might make them look....."creative."  In the theatre we work toward "creative."  

The other reason I like working with the folks over at Zach is that the whole environment is one that's open to experimentation and "edge." To art as process and process as art.

Next month they start a new run of August: Osage County.  I don't know much more about the play than anyone else.  I know it's being billed as "one bitch of a family reunion" and that most of the characters have their share of social and mental dysfunctions.  That's about it.

The marketing people for the theater are going to collage all thirteen characters together for the advertisings materials and our job for this morning was to shoot each person in character against a light background so that they would be easy to select in Photoshop CS5.  Two years ago I would have meticulously lit the background a solid white to make the drop out easier by the new selection tool (with refine edge) in CS5 is soooo good I don't need to worry about a little tone in the background areas.  And if I use the images without dropping out the background I find I like the image better.

As it is Saturday I went to swim practice first and then headed over to the theater's giant rehearsal studio a little after 10am.  Even though I stuck the LED book manuscript in Fed Ex yesterday I was still excited to use the LED panels for the shoot today.  Something about tossing them on stands and covering them with a gauzy layer of diffusion then plowing right into the shooting really appeals to me.  The big panel (1000 LEDs) works so well as a main light.  Almost as soft as a beauty dish and harder than a small softbox, it has a certain authority I've come to enjoy and it's a look I don't get easily with flash.

Here's the basic lighting set up:   One 1000 LED panel with a thin layer of diffusion positioned so that the bottom edge is at the subject's chin level.  Just to the left of camera and about five feet from the subject.  I placed a 500 LED panel back near the plane of the seamless background facing back toward the subject.  I would use one of the other but usually not both depending on which side of the collage the person would appear.  I wanted that "rear lit" highlight for a change.  The ambient light levels were fairly high in the space so I didn't need to add any fill to get what I wanted.

The final addition was a little 160 LED battery driven panel on one side of the seamless paper, just behind the subject's plane, kicking some extra "clean up" light on the background.   The direct and I ran the actors thru their different emotional affects and we shot a ton of frames.  Our final tally was close to 1200 and the whole shoot lasted about and hour and a half. 

No filtration over  the lights and they were still a really nice match for the cool daylight that came fluttering down from the ceiling skylights, two stories up.  What did I learn?  Nothing.  I re-visited the idea that I love continuous light because the actors don't "play" to the flash.  There's nothing to cue them besides direction from the creative staff.  And, in my usual contrarian manner,  I used the Canon 1dmk2n instead of one of the newer, higher pixel count cameras  like the 7D, or the 5Dmk2.  

The shot just above is my favorite.  It shows off the effect of the light falling off as it cascades down from head to toe.  His face is well lit and by the time our eyes get half way down the frame the exposure on his coat pockets is a stop and a half, or two stops down.  And I love it.  I also love the idea of cocktails.....

While I have a bunch of cool lenses sitting in various toolkits in the studio, for some reason I'm having a brief infatuation with the Canon 50mm macro lens.  Yes, the cheap f2.5 version with the "noisy" focusing motor.  It's sharp, impressively well behaved and very sharp at f3.5 or f4.  My exposures on this shoot were approximately this:  ISO 800,  1/200th of a second,  f3.5/4.  

After "meeting" the characters I can hardly wait for the running shoot (dress rehearsal) in a week and a half.

Buy some tickets.  Come out and see some live theater.  I can pretty much guarantee that it's better than just about anything you'll see on TV.....  And it's real 3-D!!!!!!  The 3-D effects are incredible.  It's just like you are sitting in the audience......

Why the older camera?  Why not? It focuses at least as fast as the 5Dmk2 or the 7D, the files are just the right size for most of our marketing uses and it just feels so sexy in my hands.  

Nerdiest LED configuration of the day. Kirk Tuck's nutty contraption with a nod to Syl Arena.

I know now that I have become truly a lighting nerd.  I was reading Syl Arena's good book on Canon flash when I came across a small section in which Arena needs more power and manufactures a "light bar" out of wood and nuts and bolts and proceeds to festoon it with six or ten Canon 580 EX2 flashes.

Not being a carpenter and not owning power tools I meandered over to Precision Camera, looked thru their bewildering collection of lighting stuff and found an already assembled and ready to go model that was under $50.  With shoe mounts.

I came home, put four of the DLC-60 LED units on it, threw a sheet of diffusion over the top and lit a portrait.  Those four little guys can really belt out some light.  Don't know what I'll do with the assemblage now but I'm sure it's enough to earn me membership into the GEEKS OF LIGHT private club.  If I can just  scrounge up a couple dozen of these units I could probably go toe-to-toe with Joe McNally himself......

Done. Finished. Happy. Satisfied. Complete. A-Okay.

If you haven't written and photographed a book I'm here to tell you it's a sneaky undertaking.  By that I mean that it sneaks up on you, sucks away your time and energy and makes you a bit......compulsive.  So what's involved?  Well,  over 42,000 words,  a distillation of 12,000 images,  lots and lots of experimental shoots,  four very patient professional models (whom you've seen from time to time represented here in the blog.....),  approximately 260 captions and lots of time spent learning everything there is to know about buying and using LED lights for photography.

Of all the books I've written this is far and away my favorite.  It's a subject I  really wanted to write about because I think it will overwhelm and engulf the whole practice of photography over the next two or three years.  I think it will also make good video accessible to so many good photographers.  It's cool technology, literally and figuratively.  It's also available at relatively low cost for people who want to experiment with it.

For the past two weeks I've been declining social invitations, missing some swims and spending way too much time with a laptop burning my thighs.  I'm sitting here burning DVD's full of images for the people at Amherst.  In an hour or so I'm heading to the Fed Ex office to send out the whole bundle.  And that includes my hand drawn lighting diagrams.

All of a sudden the post partum depression is settling in.  What will I do tomorrow?

:

Getting really clear on what you WANT to do.

Life is really strange.  There's a lot of stuff that sounds like good ideas.  But then you try it on for size and realize that while it might be a good idea for someone else it's not necessarily a good idea for you.  Take social networking for example.  One of my friends insisted, a couple of years ago, that I would be left behind unless I embraced Facebook. According to him all social information would essentially migrate there and  if I didn't have presence and lots of "friends" I'd probably never get another invitation to........anything.

You may be having a different experience but I think most of the stuff that makes it to Facebook is pretty lame.  And since I never check the mail there I'm probably missing out on incredible parties I'll never know about.  But interestingly enough we still get lots and lots of invitations from Evite and we actually have friends who still know how to use e-mail and even the U.S. Postal Service to get in touch with us and tell us about upcoming actual (face to face in the same room) social networking activities.  We just don't call them "social networking activities" we generally call them "dinner parties."  Some of the functions we call, "Cocktail parties."  Those functions  have more alcohol than most of the dinner parties but much less food.  We talk to each other instead of sitting around "tweeting" about sitting around.....

I tried Tweeting but it makes me feel like......a twit.  I don't have a lot to say to people on Twitter except, "Go and read my blog!!!!"  Or the always popular (with me), "Go buy my books!"  And people get tired of reading that over and over again, even if I do it in only 140 characters.

Most of Twitter is different now.  A year ago it was all, "I'm Mike and I'm watching a train wreck here in North L.A."  but now it's mostly retweets of links that refer to something like:  "Ten ways to be a better photographer."  Or "Don't make the mistake of charging for your work when you can easily give it away for free."  Or,  "Tune in tonight for my Podcast of how to edit Podcasts."  And, of course, my favorites,  "Come to my workshop."  "Here's a link about my workshop."  "Here are ten things I learned at Bob's workshop." "365 ways to use social netwhoring to build new business."

It's basically become a clearing house for corporations that used to write press releases but  can no longer afford stamps, or lone photographers, writers, and IT people who want or need attention.  And who doesn't need a little attention?  But really, at some point "Give me Attention" Fatigue (GMAF) settles in and we realize it's mostly marketing messages disguised as "useful???" information.  Shouldn't there be "social" pressure to limit "Tweets" to ten a day?  Or fewer?  And please,  stop texting while you drive.

So what does this have to do with photography?  Well, we have a  tendency to believe we should be doing what everyone else is doing when it comes to marketing and even the kinds of photographs we should be taking.  We assume that the people who got there before us are more steeped in the magic and lure of the latest "social marketing" thang and that, if we only work at it hard enough and diligently enough, it will make us successful too, and clients will beat a path to our doors.

But does it work?  Does it ever work?  One could bring up the examples of Chase Jarvis or David Hobby.  They've made social networking pay.  But chase is talented, and driven, and connected enough to have made it anyway so we'll never know how critical tweeting was for him.  David needed a new gig and he did a great job of inventing it.  But he did it early, and often, and established himself before the big crush.  And, to his credit, he brought together a depth of understanding about lighting and a different set of tools about blogging, the combination of which propelled his Strobist.com to stardom.  Could he do it today?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  We'll never know.

But here's the real question:  If you wanted to be a photographer,  were passionate about actually taking photographs,  felt the greatest satisfaction when in the process of making photographic art,  would it make sense to re-launch a new career doing something totally different because the tides of marketing made it sound like a great business idea?  To wit, giving up shooting to stand on a stage, or tinkle a keyboard "teaching" other people to light or shoot, and growing older by the day?

All the time you spend tweeting and holding workshops in the icky ballrooms of "second tier" hotels in secondary markets is time you'll never get back.  All the time you spend "loading" more stuff into Facebook and the countless other supposed social marketing media are days and weeks that you'll never get to spend working on the stuff you love.

When money managers talk about one thing displacing the other they talk about "opportunity loss."  If you spend $50,000 on a new BMW you end up with a depreciating product but you lose the opportunity to make money with that $50,000.  When you decide to monetize your social network the very act skews you to aim toward whatever market you think you have prayer of hitting and dilutes both your spirit and your creative "true nature."

And it's easier to justify that the money you bring in will pay for shooting trips and opportunities of time but there's only so much time to go around.  If you sell your art you sell your art.  But I'm beginning to think that when you try to leverage social media into a money making machine you sell a little bit of your soul.  (Apple doesn't make money by giving stuff away.  Or wasting time on Twitter.  They charge for everything they do.  They are old economy kicking new economy's ass.)

And, I'm not pointing the finger at anyone else.  I'm as guilty as all the rest.  I write this blog because I hope it will help me sell books I've written in the past and books that I'll write in the future.  I hope that people click thru to Amazon from time to time and buy diapers, or mail order wine, or a car and that I get a small percentage of that.  And it's true that I'll never get the half hour a day that I devote to writing a blog back.  When you multiple that lost half hour by all the other half hours that you dribble away because it's "expected" of you, or because you think you are participating in the "new economy" they start to add up.

How does it help me do my art?  How does it help me connect with clients?  How does it free up my time to print or find new subjects?  The answer......it doesn't.  It helps sell books. But even though we all do it let's try to be honest with ourselves,  and by extension, to our potential clients.  We all wish we had the courage to say, "Screw it." to everything else and spend our time doing the projects we love.  We don't live and breathe just because we're sooo excited about the next workshop or, even for that matter, the next unexciting headshot.  Some of what we accept is because of our fear that no more money will come in if we don't  but mostly it is because we believe the current of information that ricochets around the web and tells us how important it is to be.......there.  Enmeshed.  Engaged.  Connected.

What if being un-engaged and productive with real (non-virtual) projects is even more important?

In case you haven't guessed......I've finished writing the LED book and I'm sending it off on Monday.  I'm going to read it one more time to see if I can catch any errors.  Then,  I'm getting in the car and going off for a long weekend to shoot some stuff that I like.  Even if no one in the entire webspace likes it or even cares.  Because I want to be really clear about what I like.  For me.  You might think of doing the same.

To wrap up, the photo of Jana, above, was done for the new book.

The single most important marketing tool of the 21st century.

Coercing people to work for free and then calling it "crowdsourcing" doesn't make it moral or ethical or profitable.

I don't have a photo to go with this one but I do have a king sized rant.  Recently on Twitter a local photographer, who loves the idea of being an social networking guru, posted a link that pumps 99 Designs, a company that "crowdsources" design, logos and a lot of different graphic design work.  I think it's wrong to advocate "crowdsourcing" because it damages the fee base by which most designers earn a decent living.  It's a price grab that really only benefits  99 Designs.  The designers lose out on their normal income and security while the clients lose out on well thought out, custom designs from the real pros (who wouldn't touch this crap with a thousand foot pool).

So, what is this flavor of "crowdsourcing"?  The company mentioned invites you to throw a "design contest" (which they host and profit from)  and suggests that hundreds or thousands of designers around the world will slave away working on a design just for you.  Hey, logos start at $249!!!!  It's disingenuous to call this a contest.  It's speculative work.  It's a tiny carrot.  On a hundred sticks.

So thousands and thousands of man hours (and women hours) get thrown into creating a logo.  And you get to be the final arbiter.  And the capper is, if you don't like any of the hundreds of designs you get your money back!!!  How exciting.  The problem with all this is two fold:  First, it pushes people to work for free in a slow economy with the hope that something will pan out. And second, since the "design contest" initiator sets the price, even if you win it will be for a price that isn't enough to sustain a decent standard of living.  That means fewer dollars into the local school taxes, the city taxes and the state taxes.  More people marginalized.

But it also sends a message to every potential client who explores the market that there is some sort of fixed price for design and art.  That the creative process has become a commodity.  Sound familiar?

Oh yeah, stock photography!  Which led to "dollar stock" which led to the decline of the an industry.  Now the only people making money in stock photography are the stock photo companies themselves.  And even they are now victims of their every shrinking price/value bullshit.  They initiated a race to the bottom and now seem surprised that most of the value has been sucked from their companies.

So,  it takes a good, committed designer many hours to create a truly creative and valuable logo that provides ongoing value for a client.  Technology doesn't make the process of creative design any quicker than it was ten years ago and there's certainly no way an artist who licenses intellectual property can industrialize their process and earn additional revenues by increasing throughput.  There are no efficiencies of scale in real custom art.  All this new process is able to do is to deteriorate the perceived value of art in order to debase the pricing.  And the value of debased pricing works in only one direction.

This is a win/lose proposition.  It hurts even more when people who are ostensibly related to the art process side with the aggregators to push an idea that harms an entire industry.

Some will say that this process separates the wheat from the chaff but what it really does is separate highly trained, insightful and hard working people from their income stream.  It's a cold, callous and calculating business model that Goldman Sachs would love.  As long as they are on the other side of the equation from the artists.

The sad thing about self appointed experts with big microphones pointed back at the web is that they have an audience they didn't earn and their sole intention is to monetize their bully pulpit.  Sad days for real artists.  Thankfully, lots of clients can see thru this kind of horse shit and still hire professionals to design, create and help them market successfully.

I guess in a pure market driven economy the thought is that naked cannibalism is good and ordained by some god somewhere. At least some of the population will get fed.... When did the actual value of art exit the market?  When did it get replaced by a bunch of Ayn Rand clones bent on destroying all markets by reducing them to the equivalent of pork bellies?

This is not a question of being unable to compete on talent.  It is a moral question of who should benefit from true value.  There is an intrinsic value in all we do.   There used to be an understanding in marketplaces that you would sustain your providers and they would sustain you.  Now is it just every man or every business for themselves?

Thank goodness that this drivel on the web hasn't penetrated into the general public consciousness, yet.  Not all of us nor all of our clients have walked up to Jim Jone's table and drunk the Koolaide.  Not every author has given away their books to drive their corporate speaking engagements.  Not every photographer has walked away from their copyright to embrace a royalty free existence (and impoverishment).

If someone offered you a contest instead of a job would you take it?  If you were a freelance electrical engineer and someone came to you and said,  "Design the next great cellphone for us on spec (with 1,000 other engineers)   and if we decide to build the one you design we will pay you a wildly reduced fee?"  If you were a chef and someone came into your restaurant and said, "Make us your best entree.  We'll sample yours and those of all your competitors and then we'll pay the check at the restaurant whose food we liked best.    What a great opportunity for you to connect with diners!"  I hope you would have the gumption to throw them out of your restaurant or tell them to stick their cellphone contest someplace where only trained proctologists could recover it.  Because what they are basically saying is,  "Let me exploit you."  And we're supposed to pretend this is the new economy.....?