It's all about the multi-tasking. And good food.

I originally posted this in 2010.  It's an article I wrote for a printed-on-real-paper magazine.  It's a review of Mexican food restaurants for Tribeza.  Since then I've written two more books and I feel strongly that working photographers are going to have to become masters of multiple mastery.  You need, at the minimum, to be a good writer as well as a good shooter.  Here's the kind of editorial work that comes and goes in the magic flux that keeps me busy and paid:

12.13.2010

My story on Austin Mexican Food For Tribeza Magazine. Just for fun.

This story ran in Tribeza magazine a while back.  I was driving with my kid yesterday.  I told him that good writers were rare in our society and that he should practice his writing.  I went on to say,  "If I were in charge I'd make you write a new essay every day."  He immediately countered with,  "If you did that I would be a much more rebellious child..." Touche'  This article may not appeal to everyone but it's a classic example in the editorial world of getting more work because you can put two disciplines together.  It's cheaper to put a writer and photographer on a plane if they are the same person........ And you get paid for both parts....

 A Taste of Mexico

Story by Kirk Tuck

There is a time and place for shiny, novel, ersatz, newcomer Mexican food, but the time is generally after an evening of drinking and the place is usually somewhere I really don’t want to be. Like most Austinites, I want my Mexican food to be authentic, tasty, and time tested. There has always been an uncomplimentary inflection involved in the discussion of Tex-Mex food that stems from the conceit that the clichéd gooey-cheese, orange grease, and tortilla-laden cuisine, cut with hot peppers, was invented only to insulate the human system from the onslaught of margaritas and beer and doesn’t really constitute nutrition or “cuisine.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Some of my all-time-favorite meals have come from a handful of Mexican restaurants sprinkled around Austin—meals that married incredible combinations of ingredients with masterful preparation. In fact, when “foodie” friends from either coast hit town in search of great meals, we usually default to one of three established favorites. These are restaurants that have three things in common: (1) They’ve stood the test of time and are just as relevant to diners today as they were the day they opened. (2) They’ve focused on providing engaging dining experiences that combine great food with just the right ambience. (3) The food is still the compelling reason for their existence.

The three restaurants I refer to are Fonda San Miguel, Manuel’s (on Congress Avenue), and El Azteca. They are totally different in style, presentation, and aesthetics, but each provides a rich experience in its own right.

In fairness, I should make this disclosure before going any further: We’ve been going to Fonda San Miguel for more than 25 years and El Azteca for at least that long, and we were around for the birthing of Manuel’s, which turns 25 this year.

These three restaurants offer totally different dining experiences; El Azteca is the prototypical family-run Tex-Mex-style restaurant serving traditional dishes that blend the tastes of South Texas and Old Mexico. Along with Matt’s El Rancho, El Azteca has set the standard for Mexican “comfort food” in Austin for decades. It’s the perfect place for cabrito and all our usual “combination plate” favorites. It’s very casual, with prices to match.

Manuel’s is the opposite of El Azteca’s homespun, East Side, laid-back feel. Located at the epicenter of downtown, Manuel’s is sleek and stylish. A study in black and white with touches of warm neon. The crowd on any given day is composed of young downtown professionals, a mix of advertising and magazine creatives with a blend of politicos and attorneys thrown in for flavor. The food is a perfect blend of interior Mexican traditionals with a generous nod to ongoing culinary evolution. And the presentation of the specialties is second to none.

Then there’s Fonda San Miguel: a world-class restaurant with a split personality. It can’t seem to decide between being a celebrated destination dining venue or a museum-quality art gallery, so it gracefully merges both inclinations to present a unique visual and gustatory experience beyond that of any other restaurant in Austin. Chef Miguel Ravago is doing wild and wonderful things that marry the finest traditions of haute cuisine with nuances of Old Mexico. When the food is combined with the incredible collection of art, the result is an evening that is very much a special occasion.

I’ll start with our Tex-Mex traditional, El Azteca. The building is modest and shows its age. The restaurant has been there for 46 years, after all. Walking in the front door, we were greeted by Daniel Guerra, the son of the restaurant’s founders. The walls are decorated with won- derfully kitschy Mexican calendars depicting “ripped” warriors atop Mayan pyramids and ample, half-naked women in ceremonial outfits from the ancient Aztecs, if the ceremonial outfits had been designed to be worn by Jessica Simpson at a car show. The calendars are a tradition started by Daniel’s father. He imported them from Mexico to be given away to regular customers. Now they are available for sale.

The highlight of our recent lunch was roasted cabrito (young goat) served in tasty, small chunks and accompanied by a traditional mild sauce, guacamole salad, and frijoles à la charra. The cabrito is a specialty of the house, and it was just right, almost crispy on the outside, tender and moist on the inside. We also ordered a vegetarian combination plate that took us right back to our early Austin Tex-Mex roots.

Refried beans, rice, a vegetarian taco, acres of wonderful queso, and an enchilada. Nothing heroic, just perfectly proportioned, and served promptly. From the fresh, hot chips to the easy-to-eat house-made salsa, everything about El Azteca says “rich, comforting food served up by family.” The one thing that will surprise you is just how affordable the food is.

Manuel’s Downtown is a great blend of streamlined, modern decor fused with authentic interior Mexican dishes that never disappoint. I love coming in for lunch with a fairly large party and sitting in one of the rounded, plushly upholstered corner booths with a view of the entire dining room. But the restaurant really comes alive during the dinner service, with the kind of bustling energy you normally experience in the most popular New York cafés. The waitpeople, dressed all in black, whip through the room. The patrons, also dressed mostly in black, meet and greet with alacrity, though the lucky ones who’ve already been served are oblivious to everything but the beautiful presentations and addictive smells and tastes of the great food.

On a recent visit we sampled an interesting trio of disparate dishes. The camarones veracruzanos, served on a bed of perfectly cooked rice, was a shrimp lover’s wish come true. Huge, plump sautéed shrimp, painted with a delicately spicy red veracruzano sauce, dominated the plate. The folks in this kitchen do seafood really well. Next we turned our attention to a crowd-pleaser, the enchiladas verdes. I order these chicken enchiladas covered with a piquant tomatillo sauce nearly every other visit to Manuel’s. The blend of cheese, chicken, and salsa is as close to perfection as you’ll find in Austin. On my last visit, I was pushed to try something new, so as a compromise I ordered the enchiladas banderas. The banderas are like an ultimate enchilada/ salsa pairing “taster” plate. Your choice of chicken, beef, tender pork, cheese, or mushroom enchiladas is sauced in all three of Manuel’s handcrafted signature salsas: verde, suiza, and adobada. Now I have a new favorite dish.

Most of the entrées are served with black beans and Mexican rice. Another dish that blew us away was the chile relleno en nogada. This is a roasted poblano pepper stuffed full of shredded pork, almonds, and raisin picadillo, topped with a walnut cream brandy sauce. A visual note that took the presentation to the next level was a sprinkling of brilliant vermilion pomegranate seeds. For lunch I can never resist the pork tacos, and I have another friend who is just addicted (really, in a very clinical way) to the ceviche.

I saved Fonda San Miguel for last because it’s so different from any other restaurant and even our own cultural expectations of what a restaurant can or should be. The luxe quality of the food is a given. But the food is just one part of an amazing blend of art, decor, cultural touchstones, attention to craft, and details, all of which come together perfectly. In most restaurants, waiting for your table is a bothersome experience that requires the more compulsive among us to keep one eye on our dinner companions and the other on the seating hostess to prevent “bureaucratic table loss.” At Fonda San Miguel your short stay in the atrium area will find you surrounded by exotic plants, graceful design nuances from the best of Old Mexico, and a collection of exceptional art. That would be real, museum-quality pieces that rotate through the restaurant from Tom Gilliland’s remarkable collection of eclectic and renowned international artists. Combine this with drinks from a well-versed bar staff and perhaps a plate of salmon tostadas to munch on, and you’ll find me hoping it takes at least half an hour for our table to be ready.

The two dining rooms are amazing. The larger room is delicately lit with strands of small spotlights that supplement the warm glow from a grand collection of majestic hanging bronze fixtures in the center of the room. The smaller room has some of my favorite paintings, and it also has a graceful sense of privacy about it. There is always one problem that afflicts Fonda San Miguel regulars, though. In a nutshell it’s this: If you order one dish you don’t get to order something else. Go for the Jaliscostyle steak caballero—a succulent 16-ounce bone-in ribeye served with chile de arbol chimichurri—and you won’t have any room left to even try the enchiladas suizas de jaiba (enchiladas stuffed with crab and covered with a white sauce). It’s a sad state of affairs for the indecisive.

On one of our recent visits we went with a dish that transcended the entire category of Mexican food. It was the cordero. Four plump, perfectly grilled lamb chops served with a chipotle cheese potato casserole and a mixed green salad. The lamb was easily as good as any cut of meat you’ll have at any premium steak house, while the subtle bite of the potato casserole provided a perfect counterpoint. Also sampled was a classic pescado Veracruzano. A broiled fish fillet in a traditional Veracruz tomato sauce sprinkled through with onions, Spanish olives, and capers. It was a definitive rendition of a popular dish. The range of the menu is breathtaking, and the kitchen rarely stumbles. Add in a few extras like the person in the corner show kitchen continually making hand-formed flour and corn tortillas that come hot to your table, and a well-stocked selection of fine wines, and you’ll understand why people come from all over Texas for the Sunday buffet or from as far away as Paris to sample the offerings.

So the next time one of your confederates suggests “grabbing some Mexican food” at some new place that used to be an auto shop or at some dive that puts grated cheddar cheese garnishes on the tacos, that will be the perfect time to step up everybody’s game with a visit to one of the genuine masterpieces of Mexican cuisine. From basics to blue sky, these are the restaurants that deliver what you really want. If you haven’t been to these three temples to the various genres of Mexican food, I truly envy you. Now you get to try each one for the first time!

Shoot more, think less.

Thinking really seems to get in the way of shooting.  The cooler the gear I own the less I shoot.  And the cooler the gear I own the less I like what I shoot.  There's a lot to be said for the primitive approach to any art.  The more direct and uninflected the connection the more visceral it is to your intended audience.  Maybe that's the appeal of smaller, less complex systems.  Fewer choices means more direct interaction with the art itself.

The Quiet Image is a Wonderful Thing.

We've all seen images that seem forced.  Lots of time and effort went into the preparation for the shooting and we're delivered a photo with pizzazz. But the general effect is one of instant hyperbole alert.  Especially now when everything seems to have been done and tried.  By pushing all the buttons and frantically trying to make everything just so perfect it's so easy to see the hand and the mind of the creator (that's "creator" with a lower case "c")  in every frame and that severs the suspension of disbelief by which so much photography becomes embraceable.  If we feel we're seeing a private moment, captured unprepared from the slip of time we believe more heartily in the image's verisimilitude.  We feel invited to share a wholly objective slice of time, frozen. 

The biggest obstacle to emotionally unconstructed shooting is the preparation itself.  When we signal our intention the antennae on our subjects snaps to attention and creates a different energy.  It is at once on guard and also preening in an attempt to earn the upcoming inspection.  If you make a shot a big deal then babies cry, teenagers pose, middle aged women grimace and everyone else toys with taking on the persona of everyone they've ever seen photographed on TV or in a movie.  The greater the preparation, generally, the less likely you'll ever achieve an image without artifice and posture.  A microcosm of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  Oh, to trifle with position and momentum....  We love the random and unplanned shot of Henri Cartier-Bresson when he captures a man, in mid-air, jumping over a rain puddle.  We feel betrayed when we find out that Robert Doisneau possibly staged his greatest hit, Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville).  

But for generations great and not-so-great-but-okay photographers have had a salve that could salvage much of the emotion of the moment glancingly portrayed.  They carried their cameras with them at all times and made images every so often, and for no obvious reason.  Almost random documentation but always in the service of the process of obscuring the artist's intention of the moment in order to wear down the vigilence of his subjects.  And in this way they captured and continue to capture images that give us a front row seat to the impression of reality unfolding.

There are current photographers who are good photographers but whose work is very much about the prepared and orchestrated image.  Perhaps because it's possible technically now in a way that it wasn't before, many of these photographers create images of subjects like dancers leaping on urban rooftops at sunset. They are frozen in space and lit by electronic flashes.  And the artist's hand is so obvious that most viewers take one look and start mapping out the banal mechanics of the technique rather than being charmed by the kinetic vivacity of the seeing.  The fill flashes at sunset cue us that applied lighting technology was involved.  And we (fellow photographers) , as a large part of the photographer's audience, understand that flashes were placed on stands, with modifiers, and the units were under the care of an army of assistants, and the dancer is most likely springing off a mini-trampoline that we can't see but understand to be just out of frame.  Further, we understand that she's leaping over and over again to until the photographer is happy with a shot.  And we are unable to believe that we've been privileged to see something that genuinely happened because it was going to happen rather than the event being entirely constructed for the attendant audience.

The same could be said for classical portrait work.  The best of that genre works when the surroundings are minimal and subdued and works less well when we see more and more of the hand (and taste) of the photographer.  An old gray wall means that the image could have been taken, in the moment, in any anonymous location while a brilliantly colored seamless background peppered with posing blocks and faux Greek columns disallows our ability to divorce technique from message.  In essence, what Richard Avedon was doing by shooting against white backgrounds was to divorce reference from image.  And in that way make the structure of creation recede and the collaborative interaction (which is part of the human condition) move into the foreground.

The more cues we see in a portrait that reference a manufactured reality the more we are effected by the trappings of the attempted art and the less resonance, intimacy and value we feel directly from the intended subject.

For the binary readers who've wandered in from the "how to" pages of the web let me quickly say that I'm not making a stand that all images have to be totally candid to be successful.  Far from it.  The work of David Chapelle is brilliant in its own fully manifested intentionality.  A large part of his success is that his images are constructed as inside jokes about culture and society and we, as viewers, are invited into the "special" circle for whom the joke is shared.  We feel the inclusion as well as the cultural messaging and that makes his images, obvious though they are, work on a level that others don't.  

Annie Leibovitz's best work isn't necessarily the work that is most candid but she does a good job creating lighting and staging scenarios that amplify reality instead of re-inventing it or, with inflection, re-parsing it.  In this way we look at the images she creates, even the big tableaus and we accept their believability because she's hidden her artifice so well.  To a less well visually educated audience her work could be the result of a quick candid, albeit a nearly perfect one.

All of this is to say that doing approachable images of people can be tough.  The fewer things you try to control the more believable the images are to the widest range of viewers.  But, if you do need to alter the light, create a different background or otherwise enhance or change the reality you'll do best, over the long run, if you can make your controlled parts as close to a sense of reality as possible.  And you'll work to catch the moments between the peak moments as well.

Just a thought about taking images that work for people.  

Has our almost complete adaptation to color imaging changed the way we shoot?

When I first undertook photography my perception was that most serious artists and aspiring artists used black and white film in their cameras and, by extension, in their seeing.  And, to my mind, there's a giant chasm between seeing in color and seeing in black and white.  When we look with a black and white or monochrome sensibility we tend to looks for graphic shapes and forms that are recognizable and not too finally detailed.  We look to recognizable forms that tell stories or describe objects.

But in color we tend to look for pleasing chromatic combinations or pretty pastels that can nestle next to one another in a pleasing and hue driven pattern.  Or the antithesis, a garish pattern comprised and composed of striking opposite colors which usually sit, glaring at each other from the opposite side of the color wheel.  Knowing what our final destination will generally be we select subjects and scenarios that aid our artifice.  If we know we're diving into the pool of color then the juxtapositions of colors becomes (consciously or unconsciously) our target and goal.  Conversely, when we know we'll be making images in monotone we look for content to carry the visual narrative and tickle the part of the brain that wants to know the story.

You can see this in image after image on the web.  And I'm not making a value judgement either way other than to say that I think B&W is being marginalized into a photojournalistic ghetto of photographic art and I'm hoping that, like the phases of the moon, that images about things and forms and textures come back into our perception of the orbit of art and start to re-assume precedence over the titillations of candy color.  

Soothing but empty.

A story I want to hear.....

My old camera can beat your new camera. I think. Maybe.

Back in 2005 I bought a Kodak SLR/n which, until the arrival of the Nikon V1, was the most villified DSLR camera ever introduced into the market (except for its predecessor...).  This was a camera with issues.  If you aren't familiar with it go back to DPReview and read the review of the Nikon version's Canon sibling here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakslrc.  What you'll find is a flawed but somewhat brilliant camera for the times.  It was the direct descendant of the first full frame digital camera on the market, the Kodak 14N.  In 2004 the SLR/n delivered 14 megapixels of big pixel, full frame files and it did so for about $3,000 cheaper than the Canon 1DS that followed it onto the market.

The issue is that photographers aren't engineers.  In the film camera days you could press a camera into service to do just about anything.  But the Kodak engineers were building a camera that worked very well in circumscribed situations.  It was a great portrait camera with lots and lots of RAW file headroom.  And that translated directly into big time dynamic range for the time.  But the parameter that endeared it to me (and you'll notice it's one of the few cameras in my studio that hasn't been upgraded, traded away or resold over the years) is the fact that the sensor did NOT have an anti-aliasing filter over the top.  That means a great impression of sharpness all the way around.  In fact,  at ISO 160, in a head to head comparison with the Canon 5D mk2 at 21 megapixels I think you'd give the nod to the Kodak as far as impressions of overall sharpness go.

So why didn't it sweep the market?  Well, in the hands of studio portrait photographers who could control light and lenses, it was a hit.  But Kodak marketed it as an "all arounder"  and that's where the SLR/n hit the wall.  It was pretty well controlled for noise up to about 320 ISO but over 400 ISO and it fell to pieces.  It would take six to eight seconds to start up and, as the temperature changed, it would stop to recalibrate its electronics.  Kinda of a "turn off" when you are building up to that shooting crescendo....

The whole machine was based on parts from a less expensive Nikon camera body and the finder wasn't great.  But man, could it knock them out of the ballpark when it was working in the narrow constraints that described its strengths.  I routinely used (and should still be using) its special, low ISO menus.  Choose ISO 12, 25 and 50 and the camera turns into a detail machine.  The longer exposures let the camera do iterative exposures which are then binned and sampled and in camera crafted into noise free, high quality files.  I've done 40 by 60 prints of product for clients that brought tears to my eyes and those of the lab manager who printed them our for us on a Lightjet printer.

But as a low light, wedding/photojournalists/art camera in chancy available light.....it sucked.

The files it kicks out in RAW are true 14 bit.  They are also 4,500 by 3,000 pixels.  And none of the pixels sees the image thru a blurring filter.  If you shoot at the lower speeds or at 160 ISO I think you'd find the camera keeps up with the 18 to 21 megapixel wonder cameras of the moment.  And it does so with lots of dynamic range, its own very desirable color balance and palette and an edge acutance that most camera makers would kill for.  

I hadn't used it in over a year but I felt like taking a long walk all by myself today and just doing something different.  No small cameras with small sensors today.  No film today.  No agenda today.  I plastered a Nikon 50mm 1.8D onto the front, set the camera the way I like it and hit the long route through downtown.  Walking and looking and not feeling compelled to shoot too much.  But little by little I came to remember what I liked about this camera.  I did a quick shot of a leaf on a fence with the sun behind it.  And when I got back to the studio and looked at it at 100 % I was happy.  So I made a 100% crop to show off the structure of the leaf and the detail of the edges.

I have stack of batteries for the camera and I charged them all.  I find that digital cameras really need to have a battery attached to them at least once a month and I'd been negligent by about 11 months.  The attached battery allows the camera to suckle over time and keep small capacitors formed.  I'm sure it helps maintain other electronic needs as well.  For the first hour or so the camera was antsy.  It would give me random "card corruption" messages and tell me that a file couldn't be written.  But like a spirited horse it eventually took to the bit and calmed down.  By the end of my walk it stopped giving me messages and was writing every file to memory.  I've decided to pull out the A/C adapter and put the camera onto the adapter once a month (at least) over night.  I'm hoping that keeps it happy.

I spent the late afternoon just soaking up the newly re-emergent sunlight and spinning an ancient Nikon circular polarizing filter in front of the lens.  The files that emerged in ACR were wonderful right off the card.  Very punchy with solid highlight structure and lots of sharpness snap.  The colors need a bit of nursing but that seems to be endemic with all older digital cameras.

I'm convinced that the files (at ISO 160) are just a bit better and sharper than the files I get out of my recently (Canon) overhauled 1DS mk2.  And nearly as detailed as those from the Canon 5D mk2.  Not a bad performance out of a camera that basically died of marketing neglect and was sabotaged by reviews aimed at the great general marketplace.  Like just about anything else some of the coolest performances necessitate the greatest practice and skill.  

We all love the newest and greatest stuff to shoot with but I'm convinced that for studio portraits the Kodak is just about where most of us want to be.  Long tonal scale, great bit depth and wonderfully rich colors.  Just be sure you have some substantial lighting and tripod support standing by to take advantage of the strong points and to ameliorate the weak ones.  

I came back home as the light faded in the west.  The afterglow was beautiful today.  I chauffeured the child somewhere and headed back to the studio to look at what I'd shot.  Wish I had two of these cameras, in perfect condition, because I'd love to use them to make artful portraits.  As it is I ordered yet another battery so I could be sure of at least having the camera functional for another year or so.  If it finally gives up the ghost I do believe I'll have some sort of ceremony for it.  It was, after all, my first full frame digital camera.  

One morning I got up early to go to the Acropolis.

Security Guard relieving himself on the foundation of 

western civilization.  Canon TX camera.  50mm 1.8FD lens.

Tri-X film.  Scan from Print. ©1978 Kirk Tuck.

I woke up one hot and dusty morning in Athens, pulled on my running shoes, a comfortable pair of jeans and an tee shirt and headed out the door of my hotel to see the Acropolis.  I owned two cameras at the time.  One was a Canonet QL17 and the other was a Canon TX with a 50mm lens.  I took the bigger SLR.  And a couple rolls of 35mm Tri-X film.

As I walked through the city I took tentative photographs.  The Greek temperament seemed at odds with the laid back ethos of my native Austin, Texas.  I'd bring my camera up to my eye and in the finder I would find a scowling face and a challenge to the idea that photography was a universally welcome undertaking.  I'm sure a lot has changed in the last thirty years.  Except the Greek temperament.

On my first visit I found that most hotels were not air conditioned, no trains were air conditioned and no monument had yet been totally Disneyfied.  By that I mean that people didn't necessarily line up for entry.  The enjoyment of a monument or attraction wasn't constrained by velvet ropes, defined queues, or minders, or ticket takers.  If you got to the Acropolis early chances were you got there before the officials and the security guards and you were free to walk into the unattended gates and enjoy posterity in all of its glory.

I walked up the steep hill and into the general area.  In those days pieces and fragments of statutes and facia carvings dotted the general surroundings of the ancient building.  Blocks and columns lay splayed and revealed for all who might want to climb on them or run their hands over the ancient marble faces in wonder....or for good luck. 

The sun was climbing slowly above the horizon and it would eventually be another white hot day in early September.  As I looked down the hill I could see a rising but still thin curtain of yellow tinged dust rise up from the streets.  I was one of the first souls to climb the hill that morning.

As I walked around admiring the giant columns I turned a corner and encountered my first official of the day.  A security guard for this national treasure.  He was casually urinating on the foundation of the monument.  He finished, zipped up his trousers and then turned around towards me and, while fishing a cigarette and a lighter out of the pockets of his jacket, asked me,  "Ticket?"

A Christmas present to myself...

A portrait reminds me of all the things in life that are wonderful.

Merry Christmas.

Small sensor systems. Practical commercial tools? Why not?

Corporate Executive volunteering at Central Texas Non-Profit Agency.  

Nikon V1.  30-110mm lens.  ISO 1600.  ©2011 Kirk Tuck

Love it.  One of the discussions I've been following is on an Olympus forum, and guy named "Marty" asked recently if a small sensor camera system, like a Pen EP3 or similar camera system, could be the sole camera for a photographer.  I'm going to say that, if you were a journalist or a newspaper or editorial photographer, you could do so with aplomb.  

The image above was part of a reportage coverage ( meaning: catch "it" if you can because we're not pausing or setting anything up. And we're not going to repeat anything ) of a locally headquartered, executive leadership team donating their time and energy (and no little amount of equipment) to a very worthy, non-profit organization.  In the past I would have used some flash bouncing off the ceiling to get the color balance right and to fill in shadows.  Last year I would have used a Canon 5D mk2 with fast lenses to get shots like this and I would have used fast ISO's so I could get enough depth of field to keep parts of the frame sharp.

This year I took along the Canon 5D mk2 and an assortment of Zeiss single focal length prime lenses and it was my intention to shoot the assignment with the full frame camera.  But I also took along the Nikon V1 and the lenses. I started shooting casually with the Nikon and I never stopped.

What I ended up with is an image that's slightly noisier than it would have been had I shot the same frame with the Canon. But I also ended up with a camera that could shoot silently, and quickly, and with incredible depth of field, given the angle of view.  It helped me keep the executive in focus, while he was in motion, and also held focus on the computer products on which they were working.

Because I have lots of legacy photography baggage to deal with, accumulated from the last twenty years, I was incredibly nervous about making the decision to use the smaller camera.  But in retrospect it was just right.  Do you know why?  Because all of the use will be in situations that don't require a film-based print focus.  And by that I mean that I knew full well that the images were headed to two media: newsprint and the web.  We didn't need to make 16x20 inch presentation prints or posters.  We wouldn't be running the images as double trucks in a glossy magazine.  We'd be incorporating small files into a web site and we'd be sending out images, sized to 6x9 inches @ 300 dpi for splatter onto newsprint.  Porous, gain-y newsprint.  And the Nikon V1 files could deliver all the quality, and more, needed in that application.

A younger photographer wouldn't have thought twice.  After all, they've pretty much grown up knowing that their targets don't require the level of quality that was required when the world thought of the magazine page as the gold standard.  They know that the web only needs so many pixels.  And that downsizing the files or printing in a newspaper hides the difference in high ISO performance.  Handily. 

We stick with a lot of assumptions out of habit.  And some of those assumptions can be self defeating.  I caught myself the other day processing 21 megapixel files in 16 bit depth in photoshop and making meticulous corrections in a number of parameters.  And then I remembered that the client was looking for 8 bit, srgb files, sized to 640 pixels, on the long side, for their website.

As professional image providers we can sometimes be hampered by how we did things in "the old days."  It pays to pay attention to now.  In this regard I tend to learn a lot from younger photographers.  The way they edit.  The way they post process.  And even the way they market.

These days the need for big files is less frequent.  It's good to know how to do things when "no compromise" is the plan of the day. Or when the client wants a poster campaign.  But it's also good to know when you can deliver, and prosper, from getting stuff done on a smaller scale. With agile and discreet tools.

I'm learning to stop telling art directors how we used to do all our still life work with 4x5 inch view cameras and transparency film.  Now I'm happy to use a much smaller format because it's so much easier to keep everything in focus.  And move quickly.  And process quickly.   The craft is changing and clinging to a life raft from the past is probably a poor strategy for continued financial health.  Quick, crisp and immediate might actually be the best strategy for a client who knows exactly where the images are heading. You just have to decide that you're ready to shift.

Staying relevant means constantly changing.  Not necessarily just your style but also your production  and your delivery, and your outlook.  Just a thought as we anticipate 36 megapixel cameras from Canon and Nikon....any day.  Does your client care?  Should they?

The Nikon V1 and the Micro Four Thirds, and the smaller cameras like the Fuji x10 are speaking a different language.  Are you fluent or are you still trying to sell a solution you are comfortable with and which your client may not need or want?