A different approach to portraits.

These are 4x5 inch sheets of Polaroid Film.  They aren't the kind that buzz out of the slot in an SX-70 and automatically process in your hands, covered with a protective plastic layer.  These are the kind that each come in their own protective sandwich of opaque paper.  To do a portrait on Polaroid you definitely need a subject who hasn't seen to many "behind the scenes" videos where everyone is always moving and purring, "Pout for me baby and I'll make you a star."

These were done on a Linhof TechniKarden view camera outfitted with a 250mm f5.6 Zeiss Planar lens (designed for a 5x7 inch camera).  I shot them at 5.6 which, at this camera to subject distance meant that depth of field was measured in centimeters at best.

Here's the routine for shooting Polaroids in a large format camera.  Open shutter and compose.  Focus on your subject.  Get a loupe and a dark cloth and fine focus with a loupe at your taking aperture (lenses tend to focus shift as you stop down).  When everything is perfect ask your subject to stay in position.  Close the shutter and cock the lens.  Put a Polaroid film holder into the space between the ground glass focusing back and the film plane.  Pull the paper envelope surrounding the film into the "up" position. Get the expression you want from your subject. Press the cable release.  The shot has been taken.  Now push the paper envelope back down over the film until it locks in place.  Push the release button on the Polaroid back and slide the entire package out.  You'll feel some friction as you do so.  That's two polished rollers breaking the gel pods that hold the developer and spreading it across the Polaroid film.  This takes place within the film and paper envelope.  Figure out the temperature  and use the scale to gauge the time needed for proper development. Polaroid sheets were both time and temperature sensitive in development. When the time is reached (45 seconds for black and white, 90 seconds for color) pull apart the paper envelope and retrieve the wet print, which will smell like glacial acetic acid.  Allow the print surface to totally dry before handling or stacking.

Now you are ready to take your next frame.  Continue until you have the desired look and then switch to regular film for your final shots.

We always started with black and white because it was more exact in exposure correspondence with films and it was half the price of the color Polaroid.  It was also more consistent because it wasn't as temperature sensitive.  Once we got to the film stage we had a really good idea of how the finals would look.  At the end of a session we'd shoot one last black and white Polaroid to make sure nothing had changed during our project.

The slow pace of a four by five shoot can be a positive.  People slow down and relax over time.  The process is a slow and effective feedback loop for the photographer and his model.  And the image is the same size as the final piece of film.

There's something captivating about going through a whole box of Polaroid outtakes.

My favorite Polaroid story happened when I was shooting the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, Russia in 1995.  We were supposed to do a frontal elevation but the building had two T-72 Soviet battle tanks parked out front.  It was, after all, a secure location at the time.  I was standing knee deep in snow pleading, through my interpreter, for a solution that would allow me to shoot the front of the Palace without tanks.

Finally we had a break through in communications.  The commander had been watching us shoot Polaroids and loved them.  He told our interpreter that he would move the tanks but I would have to take Polaroids of each tank crew and a Polaroid of the commander in front of both tanks.  I agreed and we shot them quickly.  I stuck the Polaroids in my jacket to warm them up and develop them.  The tank commander and his men smiled as I handed out the three prints and, with incredible noise, fired up the tanks and backed them out of my frame.  Instant success.  Instantly.  Well, about 3 minutes......

Say what you will about the latest digital cameras but there's something about large format that's still magical.

Wisdom and intelligence are not the same. I'd choose wise over smart any day. If I had a choice.

I'm having fun today.

I put all of my Canon equipment in a big, big box and

sold it.  All of it.  Every flash. Every body.

Every lens. Even the little flash sync cords.

No more L lenses.  No more 

promotional camera straps.

Where do I go from here?

Stay tuned.

Does photography matter anymore or has it become a video game?

Have you become your own gift wrapping?

I was just reading a piece in Ad Age Digital, here,  (the daily online "magazine" of Ad Age) wherein writer, Chas Edwards tosses out a few factoids.  According to his research and the research of companies like Facebook, and a Harvard Business School study, "70% of all activities inside the social network---from "liking" and commenting to looking at friends' content or uploading your own content-- revolves around photos."

Everyday the masses on Facebook upload about 250 million photographs. (And all this time you thought it was the witty uploads of your favorite Dilbert and What the Duck links that made Facebook popular....).   The next interesting factoid is that ten percent of all photos taken in the history of humanity were taken in the last 12 months.

But what does this really mean?  On one hand I would say that all photography is local.  And by that I mean that you photograph only the things that have meaning to you.  Your kids, your hot girlfriend, your cool car, you loyal dog and your favorite coffee.  You also photograph the world around you. And this is the stuff that most people throw at FB.  But how does all your "local" photography hurdle itself over the borders and become more widespread and viral?  From my perspective I don't think 99.99% of it ever does.  And it probably shouldn't.

Is your photography relevant?  I would say that it's highly relevant to you and the people one degree of separation away from you and becomes more and more like meaningless noise the more degrees it departs from the intimate awareness of you and yours.

Some stuff has relevance because it's outside our everyday reality.  I put in that category cool shots of SR-71 spy planes in flight,  very hot super models nude, or barely clothed,  very ferocious animals that are not in captivity, and food I couldn't afford to order on my own budget.  Your list will vary depending on your gender, social class and your global mobility.  Charming photographs of Roman citizens will have more inherent interest to liberal arts majors in the U.S. who have limited travel budgets than to people in the EU who can pop down to Rome for a weekend of pub crawling or whatever they call that activity in Rome.

A person with fabulous genetic material and perfect offspring will be far less interested in photos of other people's lesser children.  A photo of a trailer park may be boring to public assistance apartment dwellers but amusingly droll to people working on Wall St.

But I contend that while there's an enormous amount of misdirected lifestyle documentation by everyone with a cellphone or Walmart acquired "family" camera, there's also a tremendous amount of photographic shooting and posting that falls into the category of video gaming.  It's currently cool to walk around with a camera and shoot stuff.  It's cool to have a blog and it's cool to upload stuff that you think will garner good feedback from as many people as you can ping on your social network. This is true whether you are a rabid amateur or a "working professional."

It's not that you really care about the images, per se.  But you really enjoy the physicality of taking them and the implied art credentialing of "having taken them" that matters the most.  It's like earning badges in Pokemon or getting weapons in World of Warcraft.

And really, don't presume that I'm looking down my nose as a professional photographer and condescending.  I'm not saying this to drive some fictive wedge between what you do and what "professional" photographers do because,  I am here to acknowledge that I do it too.  And I think that all but a handful of photographers fall into our big intersecting ven diagram.

I've caught myself unconsciously changing notions of perceived values and historic methodologies as a response to my own video game-style stylings of photography.  So this is really a confessional column as opposed to a rant or a denouement.

I've become habitual about walking around with my camera flavor of the day and taking meaningless images of pretty girls at the coffee house, "interesting" architectural details and puffy clouds juxtaposed against blue skies.  I can pretend to myself that I'm testing some technical thing or that I'm really drawn to some facet of the images I create but in the end my disposition of the final images tells the tale.

I pick the ones I know my readers will like best, post process them to taste, post them along with whatever written rant or exposition justifies their existence and then discard them.  That's pretty much it.

In the days of film or early digital good images were hard won.  Like playing a video game without any of the hacks or hints or tutorials.  It was hard work to make a good image.  No wonder so many fewer people were interested in photography.  But we felt like artists and craftsmen.  We saved every decent frame.  We cataloged them and put them in archival folders to protect them from the ravages of time and we had the conceit that they would be our solace and a source of income (as stock) in our old age.

But somewhere along the line it all became so easy.  Not the real art, that's never been easy or hard, just relatively unobtainable.  But the process of seeing and making stuff sharp and well exposed has been transmuted from arcane practice to speed dial. And the latest generation of Sony cameras will even help you with (not lying here) auto composition !!!  Now I'll pull ten images from a folder of 400 and post them.  I'll give the rest a cursory look and drag em off to the little trash can icon and flush them without a second thought.

Why should I?  I can't take them along with me to level five.

Think about it.  Really.  I went to SXSW and photographed people I thought might be interesting.  What that really parses to is I photographed people who I thought you'd be interested in because in some mentally mathematical way it accrues me points when you "like" my photograph or "RT" my link to a blog full of images.  When I accrue enough points I become a magical bridge elf or a Pixel Ninja Warrior and move to the next level of play where my earlier accrual of points gives me access to a different part of the game. (More workshops? Sell more books? )

And when the game stops for the day I go off and do something else.  But I guess the real test is this:  If it's not all just a game with multiple players and levels and point rewards tell me how many images you make that you would consider spending money to print and mount and frame and put up on your wall and (most importantly) bear to look at every day of your life?  How's that for a test?

So, if I do it and you do it and we all do it and many of the big names do it does that make this a rant or an observation on the changing value of photography?

Clients still need people to make smart and perfect photographs and that's why we can still make a living doing photographs.  But at a certain point, with enough players in the game, the uploaded materials will be an interesting buffer to the need to pay to create more.  And if the players are playing for points instead of cash the value of an individual image will have subsided to an atomic particle level.

If you read the article I refer to you'll see that marketers have decided that big, interesting images will attract eyeballs.  Now the challenge is to figure out how to "monetize" the social networking sites.  And the randomness of the images plays against the marketing but it also provides this opportunity:  With the right TOS every image uploaded becomes a bot for an app or an ad.  You upload cheerleader Suzi  because you think your daughter is cute.  The marketers know that a large chunk of a certain market will find her to be "hot."  Marketers of products which appeal to that demographic will be able to "surprint" the image with ads.  The ad might pop up after you've had a few seconds to digest the image.  You'll have to click the ad away if you want to re-access the full image.

But it would just as easy to offer an app each time the image comes up.  If the marketers have to pay for an incredibly diverse catalog of images then profitability falls.  If every freely contributed image, regardless of mass merit, can have an ad attached then you've completed the circle.  By playing the video game of photography you have provided (we have provided) all of the content and we've honed it for the marketers to appeal directly to our very narrowly defined demographic market.  You "win" the adulation of the very group who will be subject to a relentless "micro-ad" onslaught.  And when the value of an image is placed at the microscopic level will the relentless friction of that trade eventually dissolve the profit of creating primary content for payment?

I guess it's the same as it's always been.  If you don't have some sort of destination in mind then you're really just driving around, burning gas.  Could we be at a tipping point?

I've long believed that spending time shooting hones your skills.  I may have been wrong.  You may be better off grabbing space on a comfortable couch and reading a good novel.  Otherwise you might just be creating the free content that will both compete with your aspirations of being a "paid" photographer while driving mostly effective advertising messages right back at ya.

An interesting parasitic circle, for sure.

An interesting counterpoint to my Saturday SXSW shoot with the Sony a77....

After hours of deep and tranquil meditation on the question of which camera to take downtown today I decided, in a moment of instant satori, to lay aside the bulky Sony a77 and harken back to the two most comfortable street shooting cameras in my current collection, the Panasonic GH2 and the Panasonic G3.  In the instant of satori I became enlightened about many things.  One of the them was the need to use the 14-45mm zoom on the GH2 and to honor the G3 with the 25mm Summilux.  I placed extra batteries for each camera in my pocket and headed downtown with the G3 over my left shoulder and the GH2 in my hands.  I set both cameras for face detection AF and varied the ISOs based on lighting conditions of the moment.  After a few days with the Sony I felt I'd lost weight.  The two cameras and two lenses were less weighty than my one a77 with the fast 2.8 zoom.  I saw this wonderful Buddha statue in a shop on west 6th street.  I took it as a sign that my selection process was correct.

My parking karma was good today.  I found a free space just a few blocks from Whole Foods Market at 6th St. and Lamar Blvd. which I took as a sign that I should have a slice of pizza and a local IPA style beer, fresh from the taps before embarking on my personal journey of SXSW discovery.

Fortified, I set out with the intention to shoot whatever caught my eye.  I will say, at this juncture, that I ignored the G3 and the 25 Summilux entirely.  The 14-45 is a wonderful, small lens and it fits so well on the GH2.  I also upgraded the GH2 firmware to 1.1 which gives me the ability to preview all the settings in all the exposure modes instead of just at M.  Bravo to Panasonic for increasing my usability pleasure with their camera.

The Pedi-cabs are popular this year.  I could have spent the whole day just photographing my favorite combinations of cabs, customers and peddlers.

Sony a77. First report. No Technical Jibber-Jabber.

Okay.  Let's get the "attack fodder" out of the way first so the lunatics in the forums don't start howling at the moon....  Sony doesn't know who the hell I am.  They've never talked to me, called me or offered me any sort of bribe, swag, quip pro quo or payment to either buy their cameras or write about them.  Just because I'm writing about a Sony a77 doesn't mean I'm tossing out my cameras from Canon, Panasonic or Olympus.  Just because I also enjoy shooting this camera doesn't mean my affection for the micro four thirds cameras is dead in the water.  Camera bought and paid by Kirk Tuck.  It's not the world's greatest camera.  It certainly is an interesting one.

You'll remember, if you read the VSL over time, that I'm a big proponent of the idea of EVF's.  I like them a lot.  And interestingly, the first EVF camera I owned (and still own) is the Sony R1.  While the finder is no technical wonder it was my first full time "live view" camera and I like it a lot.  I still pull it out and shoot with it from time to time.

The camera that convinced me that EVF would be, is, the wave of the future in camera design was the Olympus Pen EP2 with it's stellar little VF2 accessory finder.  I love being able to view, before I shoot, all the changes that the camera will apply to the final image.  Dial in a different color temperature, see the results.  Dial in exposure comp, see the results.  The implementation on the GH2 is a bit different.  The preview only works in the manual exposure setting.  But that's okay.

I first read about the Sony a77 24 megapixels (APS-C) camera when it was announced last Sept. which prompted me to write this:  Why the Sony a77 Changes Everything.  That entry pretty much sums up why I think what Sony is doing is so game changing.  When I had the opportunity to divest some older gear at a good price I decided I would put my money where my keyboard had been and buy one with the 16-50mm f2.8 lens.

Do I like it?  Yes.  Is it perfect? No.  Will it replace everything I own?  Not hardly.  This quick report is based on my first full week of ownership and I'll probably supplement it with more as I become more conversant with the camera.

Let's talk about handling first.  This is a big, heavy camera.  More so with the big, fast zoom on the front.  The zoom is sharp.  It's centrally very sharp when used wide open and hits max sharpness about one stop down for the center two thirds of the frame.  5.6 brings in the rest.  It has distortion at the wide end.  The camera corrects this in Jpeg.  But I've been shooting in raw.  The Sony raw software will also correct it automatically.  I haven't upgraded to Lightroom 4.0 yet but I'm sure there's going to be a profile in there as well.  I like shooting with this lens but I am a portrait guy so I wish it was a little bit longer.  Tough.  I'll get a longer lens to cover the rest of the focal lengths I shoot.

The camera is stout and fat and I don't know where all the buttons are yet.  It feels good in my hands but after walking around with an Olympus Pen it feels monstrously heavy.  The fast zoom doesn't help with the weight.  It's no more ponderous than my Canon 5Dmk2 with the 24-105 attached so I guess it just goes with the territory.

The menus are incredibly straight forward and I have mastered them to the extent that I need to.

The finder is remarkably cool.  If I'm not shooting with studio flash I have the camera set to no post shot review.  And I have it set to show me exactly what I'll get when I push the button.  After using it for a day and confirming that what I'm seeing in the EVF while I'm shooting is the same thing I would see if I reviewed I am happy.  It makes for a faster shooting experience since, for all intents and purposes, you are pre-chimping.  Love it.  PRE-CHIMPING.  And when you do it in the EVF you can disguise your lack of confidence in your mastery of technique.

Once I started using the EVF on the Sony I found it hard to go back to a regular OVF on the Canon 1D series or the 5d2.  The reason is that the 2.4 million dots of the Sony finder give me a very realistic image with so much information (the info can be turned off if you want  a clean screen to look at).  I can see exactly what I'm getting all the time.  It's amazing.  It's like science fiction.  And, the finder is better than my VF2's with which I'm already quite satisfied.

The battery life is not nearly as good as the pro Canons or Nikons.  I expect to get somewhere around 500 shots per charge with the way I usually shoot.  I'll need a total of three batteries to get me through a typical still photography shooting day.  If I'm shooting video I'll want six.  But shooting video all day with a Canon 5Dmk2 I want six as well.  No big changes in on the video side.

The camera and lens are advertised as being weather resistant.  Kai on Digital Rev sloshes water all over the combination in his video from last year.  I'm not so flippant since it was actually my $2000 that went to buy the camera but I did shoot a full afternoon in downpours last saturday at SXSW.  I tried to keep the camera covered but it eventually got soaked and it's still working fine.

I hate the weird hot shoe that Sony inherited from Minolta but I found some $10 adapters and they seem to work well for flash triggers and manual flashes.  The camera also has a PC socket for good, old school sync connections.

The camera focuses very quickly, shoots even quicker and has fast frame rates. There's a "trick" frame rate at 12fps but you give up control.  The "real" top frame rate is 8 fps and that's fast enough for rational people. So, the camera is tough, water resistant, has a kick ass EVF, shoots faster than Bruce Lee punched and cycles like a rocket (with caveats). That leaves only one real question for a preliminary overview:  HOW IS THE IMAGE QUALITY?

Well..........If you shoot in the studio and you use ISO 80, 100 and 200 you'll be in the dynamic range territory of the real medium fomat cameras.  In a word, those settings make this camera stunning.  Want to shoot portraits with total control of tonality?  Done.  Super sharp and super high resolution? Done and Done.  But what about all the people for whom 1600 is low ISO and 3200 is their general comfort zone?  I have a suggestion.  It may cause people to grind their teeth at Sony.  I suggest that, if low noise at high ISO is your over riding priority for a camera that you pass on this one.  You actually start seeing a bit of noise in the shadows as low as 800 and it just gets grainier.  Now, up to 3200 the graininess is monochromatic and looks like good, old fashion film grain.  And I personally am okay with that.  But if you are coming from a Nikon D3s or a Canon 1Dmk4 you'll be appalled.  It's just not quiet.  On the other hand, the files are huge and as you down res them the noise gets down rezzed as well.  (added: I've just discovered the MF noise reduction which stands for multiple frame noise reduction.  If the subject isn't moving the camera can be made to shoot multiple frames and process them into one, throwing out all of the noise anomalies. Very cool and very effective for night scenes, etc.)

What will I do?  For now I'll use the a77 in bright light, in the studio and under controlled conditions and I'll impress the hell out of all the people who want to see flawless, super high res files.  I'll give it a try for theater photography because I love the way the camera operates. But the files will need some work in the ole noise reduction software.

Is the camera a noble effort wrapped in a "big FAIL?"  Not at all.  It may be the best camera on the market for low ISO work and for fast work.  And even though the high ISO crowd tends to yell and scream and drown everyone else out there are lots of people who get the advantages of lighting and careful technique in the pursuit of beautiful and different image quality.  I think I'll keep it.

More to come after some studio sessions.

Here's the link to the shots I did on Saturday at SXSW: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/03/one-of-our-favorite-barristas-at-caffe.html

The time of year we've all been waiting for. Welcome to SXSW.

One of our favorite barristas at Caffe Medici.  

It's here! The event that all the local hotels and restaurants have been waiting for. 

It's South by Southwest.  The logos all read, "SXSW."  And the hipsters all just say, "South by."  Whatever.  It's here in my city.  And it's going to be happening for the next ten days.  

240,000 techies, movie lovers and live music lovers crammed into our downtown for a 

current cultural love fest. They're here.  

More are coming every day and some of them will probably end up staying.  

And that's okay as long as they sign the pledge card to "Keep Austin Weird."

If there are any visitors reading this you'll want to make Caffe Medici on Congress Ave. your operations center for caffeine replenishment.  Best cappuccinos around.

Always amazed that people travel in from everywhere to do the "face-to-face" 

and then really end up "face-to-computer.

That's my friend, Cindy Lo in the background (No, not the one in the plaid).

She's an ex-techie who now runs an event company.

Just taking a break from the first day of sessions.

Ready to photograph.

Bernard, Frank, Nathan and I met at Caffe Medici today to have 

a PHOTO SIT.  It's different from a "photo walk" in that

no one is in charge, no one's ego gets massaged, there's 

no ulterior profit or mindshare motive and 

we get to sit around and drink great coffee.

Occasionally one of us will jump up

from the bar and take a photograph of someone.

It's spontaneous.  And no one 

poaches anyone else's shots by

Leaning over their shoulder and 

Double shooting.

Cool.

This is Nathan.  And I have to admit something embarrassing.

We both showed up with the same model of camera.  We both showed up

with a Sony a77.  How weird is that? So embarrassing, right?

This is the look he gave me when he found out I was 

carrying his brand. It's his territory. He had one 

first.

(Just kidding.  We did have the same camera and lens but I asked him to pose "mean.")

When I jumped up from the bar to photograph someone it was because

I saw this person on the other side of the bar and loved her smile.

And her amazingly present scarf.  

When the rain hit a crescendo, really pounding down,

 I decided to venture out of the safety of the coffee

house and face SXSW outside.

Did I forget to mention that it's been raining for days here?

Well, it has been and we're all damn happy about it even if 

it's mildly inconvenient for the visitors.  You see, we've 

been in an extreme drought for the last 18 months and 

we desperately need rain.  In fact, when I strolled out of the coffee house

into the downpour I thought I saw our governor dancing naked up near the Capitol.

Not sure.  Could have been a trick of the lightning.

Out we go into the elements with Nathan assuring me that our

cameras are weatherproof....yikes.

Downtown Dogs. 

Bernard is sporting a camera cover and an umbrella.

Nathan has gone and decided to ignore the Amazonian-style deluge.

He photographs me photographing Bernard photographing and 

suddenly I feel like I'm in an M.C. Escher photograph.

Away we go.

I lost track of Bernard and Nathan somewhere between Congress and San Jacinto Streets.

I think they got caught in a cross current.  For all I know they're floating out toward 

Lady Bird Lake.

They were good comrades in camera straps.  They will be missed. 

But I was happy and dry in the Austin Convention Center trying to make

sense of all the frenetic activity.

I was confused. I didn't even know who the guys in the 

giant cardboard heads were supposed to be.

Everywhere I turned people were being interviewed.  I'm not sure what they 

were talking about but I'm sure it will someday be as important as Twitter.

Or more so.  And it will have all started here.

There were demo areas all over the first floor.  And at everyone of them

people were staring into laptop screens.  Staring and typing.

I don't know what the VIP Tickets are for but I'm

betting it's something very special and very good.

Talk about getting a big head.  Must be a Nikon D800 Shooter....

 This (just above) pretty much sums up the interactive component of SXSW for me.

People staring at iPhones.  Surrounded by lots of other interesting people.

Who are also staring at their iPhones.  And the messages probably read:

"I'm having dinr.  What are U doing?"

But from what I saw today typing on laptops and staring at iPhone screens is 

sporadically interrupted by the drone of presenters in big, dark rooms talking about

the latest way to "Stay in touch" while Power Point slides 

slip across the screen over their heads.

Stay in touch.

Stay in touch.

Stay in touch.

"How can we monetize that?"

And anywhere you'll find 200K attendees you will find long lines.

A pre-perestroika Soviet citizen would feel right at home.....

At least it was safe and dry.

Still not getting the hang of this one...

We could look at the wall.

Or we could look at a screen shot of the wall.

Or we could look at a cellphone screen shot of a three word Post-it note.

This guy is running sound for a video crew.  At least that's what I deduced.

He's got a microphone with a fuzzy blimp on a pole under that blue plastic and 

he's got one of those "sound guy" waist packs as well.

He is also standing alone and staring at the screen of his cellphone.

These guys are part of a club that roams the streets of random cities.

The club requires that they wear laptop bags.

The code of the club also requires that they wear them across one shoulder.

They are walking down the creepiest part of Sixth St.

And the rain is abating.

Pedi-cab on West Sixth St.  Looking good.  Love the well 

engineered shelter for passengers.

Drag coefficient? 

Darn. I missed the Third Eye Blind concert at the Moody Theater. 

They call it the "Moody Theater" because that's its real name.

The natives call it "Austin City Limits."

Austin City Limits box office doohickey.

1600 is about as far as I'd go with the a77 for perfectly clean files from

Jpegs.  I might risk 3200 in raw.  I'd rather shoot everything under 400.

But that doesn't make it a bad camera.  Just one that's not very good at ultra high 

ISOs.  And that's okay with me as long as it delivers on the low end.

We'll find out about that ASAP.

Pedi-Cab on Lamar Blvd. Just in front of Whole Foods Super-Hyper

Flagship store.  Such a euphoric look for someone in the middle 

of crazy Austin traffic in the rain...

Some hints for the newcomers:

1.  Don't swim in Barton Springs right after a big rainstorm. The run off drives up the fecal coliform 

content of the water, making it unsafe.  Wait a few days.

2.  Don't drive in Westlake Hills. Ever. The natives are ferocious.  And besides, we don't need anymore traffic over here.  Stay downtown.

3.  Don't toss out the sunscreen.  Just because it only hit 45 today doesn't mean we won't be in the sunny 80's tomorrow.

4.  Snarky comment about dressing in black removed.  I realized I was wearing black too...

5.  Try to spend all your money in local bars, restaurants and coffee shops.  We love you even more when we get to keep most of the money in the city limits...

6.  The light levels in the convention center (locus of most SXSW activity) are very low.  You will not need the sunglasses inside.

7.  None of the BBQ is authentic unless you are eating it at the Salt Lick, Artz or maybe Franklin's. Everything else is just cheap meat in spicy ketchup.  Frank just reminded me about Iron Works.  It's good too.  And they have good BBQ ribs at Whole Foods.

8.  All of the Tex-Mex food is authentic unless you are eating it in the restaurant of your hotel or at Taco Bell.  Not all of it is good...but it is authentic.

9.  If you see a really cool guy with gray hair point a Sony a77 digital camera at you this week try to feign a look of inspired brilliance and try to look really, really interesting.

10.  ........So much for Top Ten lists..

So, have a great time while you're here.  You might as well go a little crazy, clean out your 401k and really party in style but when the conference is over you'll probably want to go back to your own town.  I'm sure it's much nicer than Austin.  Have you been to Madison yet?