What role will instant access have in the working lives of photographers?

It's no secret that I've been playing with a camera that is nearly always connected to the web, if I want it to be. And it's forced me to start thinking like a 17 year old instead of a 57 year old. To wit, what will the next generation of cameras bring me when it comes to workflow, efficiency and value to my clients, if anything? I've more or less come to grips that it's really all about changing my mindset.  I think there are rewards for being in the forefront of new ways of delivering images. That's why I'm exploring them.

I grew up in the golden age of traditional photography and made a relatively quick and easy transition to digital in the late 1990's. The technology isn't an issue but the baggage of "how it's done" is almost a crushing burden. If you started out with black and white film in your hands and the print was your target then speed wasn't the real driver, just getting through the process correctly and with a good end product was the driver. We came to value craft and repetition as the secrets to making uniform products that we could sell, lease or license to our clients. We were creating artifacts. We were creating physical products. But that really isn't the world I live in today. Now we're making Virtual Consumables. And part of the consumable ethos is relentless freshness. We're now creating images to consume rather than images as permanent artifacts. At least commercially...

It's the same in parts of my photo business as it is in my blogging. If I don't provide timely new content for the blog the audience falls off in some sort of mathematically proscribed fashion until we hit single digit readership. The fresher and more relevant the content the more readers and the more growth the site enjoys. In making and disseminating images I'm finding that more and more clients are using the content on their sites they way I am using content on this blog. They are looking not for news but certainly for fresh. I'm not at the point yet where all my clients want everything right now buy we're getting closer and closer as our businesses get more intertwined and collaborative.

When I worked for Dell, Inc. at their Worldwide Conference last year there were parts of our shooting that required immediate turn around. When I photographed President Clinton with 60+ different people one morning part of the brief was that I would hand off a copy of the images to his public relations people before they left the building. And they were leaving the building about five minutes after the shoot. I brought along a computer and a couple of flash drives and we transferred as fast as I could. We made the deadline, but just by a nose hair.

As I worked with the new, wi-fi and cell enabled camera I've been tested it dawned on me that I could have set up a folder in DropBox and sent each image to the folder as I was shooting at the Dell Event. The client would have their copies in the cloud immediately. And in a format and "place" where everyone in their team could have nearly immediate access.

Then I started thinking about the basic format of shows and the need to send images to so many people. I would be shooting one part of an event and get an urgent call from someone in another department who had an immediate need for photography we'd taken a little earlier. If we were constantly streaming into a shared folder I could take myself out of the equation and let the PR people handle the access to the images internally.

When I started down that line of reasoning I immediately thought of our shoots for the theater. We end up shooting dress rehearsals the day before the first openings and the PR folks need images to send to websites and press first thing in the morning after the dress rehearsal. Our routine is to shoot, head home, download, back up, do a rough edit and then put all the images on a portable hard drive and either deliver them to the theatre or have them picked up by a harried marketing person from the theater.  Wouldn't it be much cooler and less agonizing to start uploading images to a shared folder from the very beginning of the show? Depending on the speed of the network the camera would inevitably get ahead of the upload but it would catch up during intermission and on the drive home. Maybe the final files would load from wherever I left the camera (in my own wi-fi or cell zone) when I went to bed.

The delivery is happening during the process. If time is of the essence a marketing person could be sitting in the office reviewing the images as they populate the folder and do a rough edit and cull. Once I hit the house I can head to bed. Later on I can go back to the shared folder and download all the images in order to back them up or I can go "old school" and back them up from my cards.

I have a client in California who hires me to shoot portraits of her company's executives here in central Texas. How great it will be to start sending test images as we set up and wait on make up and all the rest of the pre-production. I could get immediate approval or input on lighting design and the overall look.

But even thinking more traditionally, Wi-fi networks and NFC (near field communications) networks can be much quicker to use for virtual tethering than actual tethering or FTP based sharing systems. Make one shared folder and invite everyone to share via tablets or even phones and you can do a big production shoot with everyone collaborating and sharing.

All this stuff is scary for me but it works. It's not scary for people who never shot film and who grew up interfacing with screens and menus all day long, all life long. And they are our competition going forward. I'm not sure I want to be left out just to be a champion for the "the way we've always done things." I don't want to be in that part of the graph with the people who were sure that color television would never catch on. And I don't want to be the last guy selling color prints to people whose wall space is a big monitor. I'm not willing to sacrifice my access to a new generation clients just to bolster and defend an anachronistic set of traditions.

I know that a lot of my readers have been perplexed by my decision to accept and embrace this learning experience, especially given my long history of being a curmudgeon and a person who pushed back on trends. But the bottom line is that this is a business where you learn, grow or fade away and take early retirement. My CFO counsels me that the last choice isn't an option for at least the next four years so I've made the conscious decision to swallow my pride and step up to look through the window and see what the future is delivering right now. And to find a use for it or even reject it totally. But even if I reject it I owe it to myself to understand it.

Who would have thought we'd be shooting digital video? Or sharing work and production in the cloud. In a few years most cameras will probably also be communication hubs and resources. I'd rather learn about it all in the front end and be able to pick and choose how I want to use the new technology. It was sad to watch the last hold outs of digital trudge through the well worn path so many had already passed by before them. Change is scary. Not changing can be even scarier.

Note that this particular blog is not about a specific camera. There are several companies doing wi-fi capable cameras. The whole point is finding the sweet spot of the technology and deciding where, if anywhere, it fits into your business instead of waiting and letting it blindside you.

If you do this for fun instead of as a capitalist enterprise you really needn't worry about the subject. But you might find it interesting. First thought my amateur brain had was "instant back up of travel images from anywhere in the world. No computer required." Just food for thought.

Getting back to basics. It's all about the portrait.

Jacob is an actor and next week he's moving to NYC. I've seen him in several productions at Zach Scott Theatre and when he asked me if I'd work with him to create some new head shots to take along I was both flattered and thrilled to work with him.  I set up a simple lighting design in the studio and we concentrated on getting fun expressions and a lot of range so that we could pick and choose.

The main light is a 184 cm white umbrella with black backing used over to the right of frame. The bottom of the umbrella is just a bit above Jacob's chin level. The background light is a a small 12 by 16 inch chimera soft box. The fill (when used) is a 4x4 foot Chimera white reflector to the opposite side.
The lighting for this set up is powered by an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS unit with two flash heads.
The A/S stands for asymmetrical. The head on the background gets 1/3rd of the output while the main light gets 2/3rds of the output.

All the images started life as large, extra-fine color Jpegs but, on a lark I decided to toss them into DXO Film Pack 3 and make them into Tri-X wannabes.

I shot with the Samsung Galaxy NX because it's a fun camera to use in the studio. I love the big screen and being able to touch the point I want in focus and then tap to shoot is kind of intriguing. The camera is extremely responsive to screen taps and the process of shooting reminded me of shooting with my old Hasselblad. There is value, I am finding, to the new, hipster way of composing on a two dimensional screen. I do pay more attention to composition. You might not appreciate that here as I've waded in and cropped the images with impunity. The star of the shoot (besides Jacob) was the 60mm f2.8 macro lens I've been using with my camera. It's like a 90mm lens with a full frame camera and that's right at my sweet spot for portrait lenses. This one is sharp and focuses quickly and surely.

After we shot I dumped all the files into Aperture, edited out the blinkers and stinkers and exported them as smaller Jpegs, destined for a Smugmug gallery. Once that was done I started doing my own edit (see above) and corrupting the images via DXO's black and white conversion program.

Someone is sure to ask about the color images so I'm including one below.

One last word: All studio cameras should have big screens like this one. It makes instantly reviewing with clients or art directors a LOT more rewarding. And I can see the images well even without my reading glasses. Sorry, no connectivity features were used on this project....

One lovely reader asked to see my images from the LES MISERABLES dress rehearsal at Zach Theatre.

You know, the ones I took and ran through post production late into the night just before I left town for Colorado for eight days. I finally had time to go back and look at them and now I want to go see the musical again, but this time without a camera stuck in front of my face.

Technical Details: No big news here. No tripod, no monopod; all just handheld from the top row of the orchestra setting about half way into the theater. Two cameras and two lenses: Sony a99 and Sony a850 cameras. Mostly shot at 3200 and 1600 ISO. 70-200mm G f2.8 on the a850 and a Tamron SP 28-70mm f2.8 on the a99. All images shot as Large (24mp) extra-fine Jpegs. Breath out slowly and massage the shutter button. Recompose and repeat. Wait for the "peak of action." Shoot again. I generated about 2200 files over the course of the show (it's a longer one) and someone else edited them down. Delivered on a pixie sized 500 GB hard drive. Great show!!! Wonderful actors. Cool lighting.

Wanna see em bigger?  Keep clicking on them...

I'd been fighting a camera. Then I went into the studio and we became friends.

Jill. For Zach Theatre. 

I took a chance today and took my new, pre-release, Samsung Galaxy NX camera to Zach Theatre as my only camera. Well, not entirely true....I took a second Galaxy NX along as a back-up. When I first got the camera I looked at the huge screen on the back and immediately thought that this particular camera was just begging to be used in the studio. Working with art directors and controlled light. Sharing the huge screen with my fellow collaborators. And I was right.

We were shooting some pick up shots today that will be used in the 2013-2014 season brochure for the theater. Nothing earth shattering but I did light the set with three Elinchrom flash units. A main light in a 48 inch umbrella (black backing, of course) and a 60 inch umbrella as a fill to the other side. I also tipped a third light (eight inch reflector, on low power) over the top of the seamless to work as a backlight/hair light. It was the perfect set up for the Galaxy NX camera.  The art director and I were in a darker area so the massive screen on the back of the camera was bright and detailed. I used a little black card on a stand to block light from the back light from hitting the lens. We comped up the shots and started playing around with poses and expressions.

It's the second time I've ever done a studio shoot entirely without looking through a view finder or an EVF. But with the enormous screen and the dark surroundings behind the camera there was absolutely no reason not to. The art director could see exactly what I was seeing and she and I got into a good rhythm, going back and forth with suggestions and on the fly approvals. Every once in a while we'd stop and check the frame in review. Just like the screens on iPads and cellphones you can pinch and unpinch to magnify or shrink the image and you can scroll around the window by touch. Something I disregarded in a street shooting camera but came, in a few short hours, to love in a studio tool.

Even though I shot the whole project in Jpeg I think the flesh tones are nice and there's no banding I can see in the backgrounds. I took some esoteric lenses with me but wound up using the 18-55mm kit lens for everything. Using the camera like this harkens back to the way we used to use view cameras but with a much more useful rear screen which doesn't (in these kinds of situations) require a hood or a dark cloth.

I must eat a bit of crow with my friend, Andy. With the right screen on the back of a camera this kind of composition can be a convenience and a plus during shoot. It was certainly easier to see the details of the image in the frame.

I have no idea how the images will finally end up being used in the brochure and on the web but I'm pretty sure the art director will be dropping the main part of the image out. By that I mean Jill will end up on a white or colored background. I shot mostly at f8 so we'd have enough depth of field to give her a nice edge with which to use PhotoShop's powerful selection tools.

At the same shoot we did some fun images with Jaston Williams (of the Greater Tuna fame). He's written a new play called, Marian, and we did a ton of tongue in cheek images to use in promoting it next Spring. We loved sharing the images on the back of the camera and the five inch screen kept me from having to go to all the bother of tethering with a laptop and working with two computer systems at once. 

This is a whole new ball game for me and now I'm excited about dragging my family and friends into the studio to play around with everything. Another plus today? Face detection AF. Easy as pie.

Sharing some night time images from the Galaxy NX. Just for fun.

There's were taken on the first night I arrived in Berlin...

These were taken in Berlin with the Samsung Galaxy NX camera and either the 30mm f2 (nice) lens or the 18-55mm kit lens (really nice for a "kit" lens). I think the camera is a great low light shooter. No problems with focus or exposure even though there's a lot of light and dark.

I now have two of the Galaxy NX cameras and I'm starting to use them for some of my client projects. I've gained confidence in the camera and even more so in the lenses.

I'll be speaking about and demo-ing the camera at the Samsung booth in a couple weeks at Photo Plus in NYC. If you are heading up for the show be sure to come by and see me. I think I'll have plenty of time to chat and meet. Coffee is just assumed. I'll be there the 24th-26th.

Hope to see some VSL readers. 

Monday's location. Red Rock. Wow!!!

The Pentax K-01 lived on the passenger seat of my Fiat 500 rental car all week long. The only lens I have for it is the 40mm pancake so of course all the images were ones that worked well with a slightly long focal length. The video crew loved the yellow camera. We even used it in a shot...

I have to admit that it was fun to drive the tiny roller skate car around the curvy roads. With a little more power to play with we might have been able to out accelerate that ancient tour bus....

Fiat 500 not recommended for any photographer with more gear than a cellphone and one of those hipster hats....the Pelican case almost didn't fit in. We used some teflon grease as a last resort.