I've run out of things to say. Taking a break.

March 20, 2018.

I've jabbered on here with over 3580 posts about photography and video in the last nine years. Shared well over 10,000 images. But when I sat down and tried to think of something about photography that I have not yet shared I came up blank today. I never wanted to be a gear review blog and I never like to repeat myself. I've stopped putting up links to products, except fleetingly, so I've driven the income from the blog to zero. With nothing to say and nothing to gain it seemed like a good time to take a break. Maybe I just need to recover in a different way from the past few months of stress, strain, loss and grief. Maybe I really have used up all the knowledge I had about photography in the previous posts and need to recharge a bit. 

I'm not shutting down the VSL blog or taking my ball and going home. I'll keep everything up and readable. I'm keeping the comments open and I'll moderate them as we go. Feel free to use the comment section of this post to message me or anyone else whose been a regular commenter on the blog and who may drop by the comments. If you need to reach me just head to the website: www.kirktuck.com for contact info. 

I'll check back in soon when I actually have something to say that's different from what you can already get in a thousand places on the web. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing.  

Thoughts about conventional wisdom, cheap Chinese mono-lights and actual use and reliability.

 I've had a fair number of assignments that call for me to light stuff up to a degree that's a bit difficult for smaller, shoe-mount flashes. And I've had a fair number of assignments calling for good light that are on locations where running meters and meters of extension cords is neither safe nor practical. What I needed in nearly every situation was a light that could fire hundreds of times at half or full power with its own battery power, and one which could kick out enough light to be used 7 to 10 feet from a subject, through a softbox or umbrella, and still give me a solid f8.5 or f11 at ISO 200.

If you scout around for user articles on the web most people talk about Profoto, Elincrhom and Phottix flash equipment. I get that these companies were producing good stuff in the days before competition from China (exception: Phottix, which is sourced from China) and that it's still very good equipment but to ignore the now maturing (budget) products from China is a bit sentimental. In the past I bought into the company line from Profoto; that they were building stuff to a higher quality level, that the light itself was better somehow. But I'm not convinced anymore. I've worked with files from these lights, from Alien Bees and from various generic speed lights and if you can handle making custom white balances in your work the quality of the light can be remarkably nice across brands. UV coated flash tubes are one thing but the physics of flash tubes just isn't the new technology marvel they were in the 1950's. The market is ever changing. Get a UV filter for your cheaper lights and stop worrying....

I took a chance last Fall and bought one of the lights you see above. I'm sure it's made with a different design skin for a number of different brand names but this one is called the Neewer Vision 4. It's a 300 watt second unit with a nice lithium battery, a simple wireless remote, a Bowens accessory mount on the front end for speed rings and the promise of "Designed in Germany."

When I bought the first one I did so with much trepidation for about $279. Over the course of the quarter the price eventually fell to $219 and I bought two more. I've used them extensively indoors and it's nice not to have cables strewn about. But their real strength is in outdoor work.

I was photographing on a golf course yesterday and I had one of these lights on top of a good light stand, secured by a 30 pound sandbag. I'd created a little exterior working area where I could photograph golf professional, Zach Taylor, doing a grip-n-grin with about 50 people. The flash had an inexpensive 47 inch Phottix umbrella softbox on it as a modifier. I triggered the flash with the included and very simple flash trigger connected to the hot shoe of the (currently on probation) Nikon D700.

The flash worked well and the shoot was relaxed. The only iffy part to the day was the constantly changing wind. Sometimes it was wicked and gusty while other times it was mellow and constant. When the wind picked up I reached over with my free hand to anchor the light stand.

The flash did exactly what it was supposed to do over and over again. The unit I was using is the first one I got and now has logged well over 10,000 pops. The idea of this kind of flash at this price was unthinkable just five or six years ago. We can talk about the extra finesse or precision of Swedish or Swiss brands but after having used most brands of electronic flash on the market I'm amazed at what a bargain these lights are and how consistently they've performed.

As I mentioned when I discussed these light previously the only thing I'm not thrilled about is the 30 second duration of the built-in LED modeling light. I wish there was a way to change the duration or to leave it on all the time. I know it would drain the batteries quicker but the convenience of an "always on" modeling light would outweigh the slightly shorter use cycle between charges. Plus, if I am only using one unit on a shoot I've got two others units from which to borrow batteries. With three batteries I should be able to shoot something like 1500 full power flashes a day. I can't think I'd need more than that....

Nice to be able to position my light right next to the golf course, far from a wall socket, and fire away with abandon.

Just checked, the current price is $179.99 on Amazon. About what I would pay for a generic hot shoe flash.....

OT: A quiet celebration last week...

When Ben was young he thought I spent too much time in my office and 

not enough time hanging out with him so I set up a second desk in the office, complete with 

a "blueberry" laptop so he could work on his projects in the same space.

He was a good office mate; his computer rarely crashed and he didn't

drink all the coffee without having the courtesy to brew fresh.

Saving up for college was a long process. We started it shortly after Ben was born. We were pretty optimistic about our ability to save until it became apparent, far into the process, that he had his mind set on going to school out of state. The next escalation was his discovery of a private college that felt just right to him. 

With the help of our 529 account, my ongoing (and variable) cash flow and my partner's great management skills we were able to underwrite all four years. We celebrated last week as we wrote the very last check to his school. 

When we were childless, oh so many years ago, a celebration would have included a pricey bottle of Champagne and an evening at one of our favorite (and extravagant) restaurants. After shipping off so much money over the last four years our actual celebration consisted of sharing a $10 bottle of Prosecco and two chocolate lava cakes from the freezer at the local Trader Joe's. It seems that paying for a good education is, by extension, a good education for at least one former spendthrift parent. 

It's probably the same continuing education that led me home for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today. As a bonus I had the opportunity to play with Studio Dog for a while before heading back to work.

We held back just enough cash to head up to New York for the commencement ceremony in May. It should be delightful.

My biggest current fear? The lure of graduate school.... 

My spouse still counsels me that the investment in Ben's education was money better spent than me investing in fast cars or medium format digital cameras. Who am I to argue?

It's Monday Morning and Photography is Simmering Nicely. Here are a few thoughts about the biz/art.

Afradet.

I've been so side-tracked by non-photo stuff lately that when I finally had the opportunity to do some fun, personal  work I felt a bit paralyzed and this led me to meditate a bit about the nature of sustaining my motivation to do my own, personal work. Cash flow is obviously a powerful motivator for doing the commercial work but after 40 years or so of shooting personal work it's interesting to understand the ways to keep a current or pulse of inspiration going during times of sloth or times of stress, or just during normal life. Mostly it's about honoring the work you feel most compelled to do for yourself.

I've always had the good fortune to make my own schedule and to lard in plenty of free time in which to play with my photography. Lately though life changed a bit, tossed in a quite a few curve balls and caused me to need to pay rigorous attention to things outside my areas of expertise (if they exist). I've learned a bunch more about banking, investing, elder care issues, probate law, and finance in general. 

I've spent a lot of time arranging care and participating in care for family members. But when one part of life gets detailed and takes more time something has to give. For me, in the last three months it's been my own, selfish, personal photography work. Perhaps that explains my buying outburst of ancient Nikon products.... A projection of the desire to grab back my previous freeform engagement with the craft...

Now that I've engineered a quantum more free time I still feel hobbled because as the little gems of my free time get more precious the artificial and self-imposed demand to become more picky with the resources I have left sets up some sort of false paradigm that pushes me to take everything more seriously. Or too seriously. What is photography, as a passion, if it's not laced with fun? Schedule be damned!

After much thought it was clear that my interest in photography is almost solely related to making images of people. At one point, reviewing my older work, it seemed that I was really most interested in studio portrait; encounters in which I had the main share of control --- at least technically --- but on reflection it's always just been about having the intimate interchange with the person on the other side of the camera, however fleeting and coming away with prints and other constructions with which to share the emotion and theatre of the interchange with an audience.

Brooks Jensen at Lenswork Magazine conjectured in one of his essays that the work his magazine sees fit to publish comes from people who have a depth of work in the genre they have come to focus upon with a sense of purpose. In his research he finds that the most interesting work has either come from people who have put in the time to evolve and then perfect a vision, with years of work and development,  or from the people who dive deeply and with almost single-minded application to their work; especially if they are pursuing a contiguous project. The people who do not get published are the people who sample every kind of image making, making glancing approaches to different styles and subject matter but without the requisite endurance of a singular vision. Aimed at a single kind of subject.

Resistance to doing your important artistic work is strong, according to writer, Stephen Pressfield. When I am really stuck and have photographer's block then, ironically, I waste a bit of time (not really a waste) re-reading Pressfield's, The War of Art, and my renewed understanding of my own resistance to doing my work abates for a while and I actually get good things done. 

My work is really about making images of people I find interesting, captivating, beautiful, strange and wonderful. The reality of life is that these subjects aren't available on short notice, they aren't sitting in a small room somewhere just waiting for my phone call. Since my schedule is variable and, to a certain extent connected to the whims of my clients and other chance responsibilities, it's not always possible to have a delightful person in front of me when I have a fleeting amount of open time available. My dodge over the years has been to grab a camera and go walking. I'm always hoping, on some level, that I'll meet someone during the course of my walk who needs to be photographed by me and somehow understands the value of the chance meeting and who emphatically wants to pose for me if for no other reason than to have moments of spontaneous exercise of their own subtle performance art. It's a pipe dream that rarely has fulfillment. 

But I walk and I shoot for the sake of shooting and then return home like a net fisherman examining the contents of my erratically flung net to see if anything interesting wandered into the catch while my brain wasn't paying attention. And it's gone on this way for years. 

This morning, over pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage and hot coffee I realized that the majority sum of my "street photography" was a ruse to assuage my own psychic complicity with resistance to getting more organized, identifying the people I want to photograph and to move those studio or environmental portrait encounters to fruition. In a sense, for me, I'm beginning to see modern, random street photography as a place holder or addictive substitute for the photography I consider "real." The photography I should be doing.

Street shooting days have become peppered with ennui. It's like watching a video of Kai reviewing a camera on YouTube and of him taking random shots in the streets of normal people in interesting cities in order to show off some feature or performance aspect of some camera; the work is numbingly the same but, surrounded by his spoken (and sometimes humorous) manifestos you can almost see something interesting in it. But in the end it's just entertainment for his audience and a placeholder of the real photography he would no doubt love to be doing instead. 

The more I dabble across genres the less I get done. 

Leaving the house without a plan and a project is like shooting off an unguided missile in an unknown direction. it will get messy. It probably won't be productive. 

One of the things I hate about thoughtful writers like Brooks Jensen is that if I read carefully I almost always see where it is that my resolve has fallen apart. His words sometimes lay bare the shortcomings of my discipline. I generally always resolve to do something but sadly it's not always the thing I wish I were doing or need to be doing. 

I guess that's the nature of this whole undertaking. 

Bottom line today? If you are moving between making images of cats, then flowers, then buildings, then street scenes and then baby pictures and then food and then back to cats you might not really be doing photography, you may just be systematically testing your camera and lenses along with the state of your skill set. You could do that until you die but you might be better off thinking about what it is you are really interested in and finding a way to pursue that. 

I've got some mental organizing to do. I'll get on it just as soon as I finish my paying job at the golf course this afternoon. I hope the wind dies down, I'd like to use a softbox for some of the outside portraits....

It's Monday. This is probably the extent of my "deep" thoughts for the week. 

Old School Street Photography at SXSW and the Surrounding Area. No modern amenities exploited.

I thought I was going to go out and shoot today with my newest acquisition, the Nikon D700, but when the time came to exit the palatial Visual Science Lab headquarters I waffled a bit. I just didn't think I'd spent enough time yet getting to know my previous breathless acquisition, the Nikon D2XS. I figured I didn't really need or want to be discreet and low key in the middle of SXSW because there would be hundreds of people with cameras wandering around shooting with reckless abandon.

I checked the battery in the D2XS, put on an ancient Nikon 35-70mm f3.5, entered the information for this non-CPU lens and headed out. I spent the better part of the afternoon with the camera set to raw, aperture priority and ISO 100. With my new nano-coated, ultra acutance bifocal sunglasses focusing the hoary old manual focus lens was as easy as eating angel food cake. I did no intervention with the camera's exposure settings. If it wanted to use 1/650th I was just there for the ride. 

I am very happy with the results. No