Do or Not Do, there is no try... little green wisdom for life and photography.

  Not sure why, maybe it's because we just passed through another May the 4th, maybe because I just finished reading another Star Wars expanded universe novel, maybe because the next installment of the Star Wars films just started production today, maybe something else entirely, but I have had Jedis on the brain lately and yesterday as I was finishing up a run I had Yoda on the brain.

  There are lots of Yoda quotes out there, but one of the most famous is his admonition to Luke,  "Try Not.... Do or Do Not, there is no Try," really stuck in my head. I have written before about going all in and betting on myself with this photography endeavor, but hadn't really thought about it in Yoda's terms before. What does this mean really?

  There are lots of interpretations out there, but here is how I have decided to take it. I think that when you say, either to yourself or someone else, "I'll try," you are making room for failure before you even start, which means you are not fully committed to what you are doing and don't really have the deep seated belief that you can succeed. Entering a new endeavor with this mindset is almost a guarantee of failure as you will not truly be giving your all and throwing yourself full tilt into your work. When faced with a challenge, I believe what Yoda means is that you should commit yourself fully to the task at hand, throw everything you have at it. Leave no room in your mind for failure. Maybe you will do, maybe you won't, but there is no middle ground- and even if you don't reach your goal, you still DID something. Even if you fail, you made an effort and you can learn from that and decide whether to do again, or move on to something else.

  The most obvious example I can think of in my life is my first attempt at riding a tall bike my first year at Burning Man. Back when I had more free time in my life I was a triathlete. I raced one full Ironman, a couple of half IM races and lots of shorter triathlons. I was spending a lot of time riding bikes around training and racing. During this time, I wound up with a recurring nightmare in which I was strapped to a bike which somehow grew to incredible proportions such that I was riding with my head in the clouds. My feet were clipped in and I could not stop because I would fall over and it was so high I wouldn't survive. Read what you will in the symbolism, but I woke up many times in a cold, sweaty terror because my giant cloud bike had fallen over and I was heading to the pavement really fast. If you happen to know me in real life and know more of my history, there was lots more going on in my life that could have played a role in that dream and its' meaning, but it doesn't matter in the final analogy. Bottom line is I got to my first Burning Man with a lot going on in my life and a lot to issues I was trying to move past. As I went around, there were lots of people riding tall bikes all over the place. I decided that as part of dealing with my fears I would try to ride a tall bike and get over the fear from my recurring nightmare. I found someone with a bike that was willing to let me try, and went at it. Turns out the hardest part of riding a tall bike is getting started. I tried several times and failed miserably. Finally, I realized that what was holding me back was fear or failure. I was "trying," but not fully committing because I was afraid of falling. I was going slow and leaving myself a safe out in case I fell, which guaranteed I wasn't going to make it. Finally I committed and decided in my head I was going to get up on that bike and ride or I was going to wind up in a bloody, broken dusty heap, left caution to the wind and threw myself fully into the attempt to get up on the bike. Sure enough, when I could breath again I was riding a tall bike around the playa. Stopping was another bag of fear, but once I was going, I had to stop sometime so I had no choice but to face that fear of falling and get off the bike. When I stopped "trying," I DID, and it was awesome.

  So how does this apply to my photography? Lots of ways actually, but thinking of Yoda finally gave me the angle I needed to finally talk about a shoot I did a few weeks ago, which is what I will focus on here. I have been on Model Mayhem for a while not, using it to connect with models and network. Usually, I am the one sending out the messages, but about a month ago I got a message from a model saying she would be coming down to my neck of the woods and wanted to shoot with me. I looked her up, and I have to say she has quite an amazing portfolio. The quote from her profile was that she only took paid shoots and did not do anything on trade unless she thought your work was exceptional, but here she was asking me to shoot her on trade. I have to say that I was a little intimidated, much like back when the first model I was going to shoot casually mentioned that she was one of Helmut Newton's models earlier in her career. I had a couple of good locations in mind, but no clear idea of what I wanted from the shoot. But I decided to "try."

  Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that there is really no such thing as "trying" is that as long as you make the effort, you did something, even if it fell short of your intentions. Although we did get some good images from the day, I can't help but feel that there was more "not do" than "do" in the day and I wasn't able to really capture any great, stunning images to compare with what the model already had in her portfolio. Anyway, the images throughout this post are from that shoot, and the whole gallery is available here, so you can let me know what you think. I could come up with plenty of excuses about distractions from a full audience of homeless people under the bridge and too much wind to use any of the lighting setups I had in mind, but really I just wasn't able to deliver and make some super awesome shots happen. Maybe it was intimidation, maybe it was just laziness, I don't know, but while I got good shots, I didn't get great shots. The shoot did end on an interesting note through, we had corresponded using only my first name and her stage name, when we were done and filling out releases with out whole names we finally figured out that we actually knew each other from a past life and had actually last seen each other about a decade ago. Small, strange world.

 

    It seems like the last few months or so have been full of too much try and not enough DO. I need to get my head around fears of failure, worries about not being good enough or talented enough, wondering whether I will be able to make a go of this, even when I haven't really been able to define where I want to take it, or what success will look like.  Outside of photography there are a few areas of my life that could stand to have a bit more DO and a lot less TRY these days. In many areas I have felt stuck despite my half assed promises to "try" and turn things around. I need to get over the fears of failure that are holding me back and just DO; let the results fall out however they will, because the alternative of Not Doing is not where I want to be anymore. 

    Luckily, there is no shortage of DO to be done. I will be traveling a lot this summer for my full time job, whenever I wind up in a port I am going to try and connect with locals and do some shoots. I have also decided that while I am stuck on a ship with nothing to do I am going to write a couple of ebooks. I may not know everything, but I think I have some good ideas to throw out into the world, and it'll just be fun to call myself an author. Worst case it falls flat, but at least I am going to DO. Lots of people with nothing meaningful to say get rich saying it every day, watch Fox "news" sometime if you doubt that. Time to stop trying, it's Jedi time. (and for the record, Han shot first!)

    

What you don't know may hurt you - The pitfalls of buying used gear...

  Like most photographers (excepting those who are lucky enough to get sponsored or those who are independently wealthy) I am always on the lookout for opportunities to get the best gear I can for the least amount of money. I have found out that there is a good way and a bad way to go about this and very recently had the distinction made very clear to me.

  I'll start with the right way. Use an established, well respected gear reseller like Keh, Adorama, B&H, or your local camera store. These guys know what they are doing and want to maintain their good reputations. I haven't done much business with the other big two, but I have made several purchases from KEH and they are easy to deal with and very conservative with their rating system.

  The wrong way. Unless you are an experienced camera technician, I don't recommend ebay, amazon, or craigslist. Ebay/Amazon I haven't even tried out, because buying used gear sight unseen always seemed to me like too much of a gamble and I haven't been willing to roll those dice. I have made two major gear purchases from craigslist and both turned out to be lemons despite my best efforts to protect myself:

   Purchase two: You will see the reason for the reverse order shortly. I bought a used Nikon 24-70mm F2.8 from CL for about 1/3 less than I would have paid new. Guy's excuse for selling was that he was switching to Canon. He did mention that the soon ring was a little sticky. I put it on the camera, tried shots wide open, stopped all the way down, and middle apertures at both ends and the middle of the zoom range, they all looked fine on the camera LCD, so I paid him, took the lens and went my merry way. Wasn't able to tell until I got home and looked at the images 100% on the computer that none of them were sharp. Thought maybe I needed to custom focus adjust for the camera/lens combo, tried that, nothing worked. Eventually took the lens in and had to get it serviced and repaired to the tune of $500. As it worked out, I wound up paying the same total that I would have paid to get the lens brand new initially, so at least in that respect I broke even, but after lesson two I decided that I would never shop CL again for photo gear.

   Purchase one: This is actually the reason I made purchase two, because I didn't realize I had gotten screwed basically until today, even though I bought this lens on CL over two years ago. Actually, since I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this lens, guess I can't really say I got screwed, but I really didn't realize what I had missed until today. The first lens I got on CL was a 70-200mm/F2.8 VR I lens. I got it for about 1/2 the price of new, guy selling it said it was because he was upgrading to the VRII. I put it on the camera, shot it at a range of apertures and focal lengths, everything worked fine. I have used the lens a lot and gotten awesome stuff with it. The first issue I noticed with this lens was last August, when I shot a soccer tournament and realized the lens would not work with teleconverters that it was supposed to work with. Based on conversations with some other shooters, I figured this was just a one off thing, apparently not uncommon. Recently the lens developed a new issue, it would occasionally just decided to stop autofocusing. At first it was really sporadic, then at the speed light workshop last week it started happening every 10th frame or so, really annoying. I knew it had to be the lens since it happened on both Excalibur and the D800. So last week I shipped it up to Nikon. They said it was a bent mount and quoted my $432. I sucked it up and paid, and just got it back this afternoon. Turns out there was more to it than the initial report. I slapped the lens on the camera and started to play, focus was awesome, if anything faster and smoother than before, everything was great, except there was this weird whining noise that the lens had never made before. I tried both bodies with no change. I thought it was weird that Nikon would send it back to me with a flaw so obvious, so I did a little goggling. Turns out that the noise I was hearing for the first time was the Vibration Reduction motor system working, which apparently had not worked for as long as I had owned the lens. I hadn't noticed the lack of a sound I didn't know was supposed to be there, and since this is the only VR lens I own I had nothing to compare it to. So even though the lens had functioned well for me, it had been crippled for the entire time I had been using it. It was shooting pretty sharp even with slower shutter speeds before, can't wait to see how it really performs now that is back to factory condition. And I guess it still didn't cost me much more than it would have to have bought it new or refurbished originally, and I also bet it will now work with the teleconverter.

  But twice bitten, forever shy. No more CL for me, I obviously am not equipped to properly evaluate used gear, so I will stick to buying from people who are and provide a warranty with their used gear.

Disappointment and the Bag of Holding (aka ZEN and the Art of camera bag packing)

  So, this started off as a pretty disappointing weekend. I had a sunset shoot scheduled for Friday afternoon with a really amazing model I have been waiting a while to work with. A few hours before the shoot she texted to ask if I had left yet, because apparently she had a really rough day and had been crying for hours. She still would have come out to shoot because she's a trouper (according to another photographer, she actually sat in a tree getting stung by ants repeatedly with no complaints until he got the shot) but we decided to reschedule because we both wanted her to be her best. Turned out to be serendipitous because once again the clouds rolled in and a totally clear day wound up with a useless grey in stead of a good sunset.

  What hurt worse was that Saturday I was supposed to do a pretty lucrative corporate gig, the start of a multi shoot arrangement. Or so I thought. We had talked on the phone, agreed to a rate and set yesterday as the first day. So this week I left a couple of emails and a voice mail to confirm and get the address of the job site I was supposed to shoot on and....... nothing. Client just evaporated. Guess I should expect this to happen more as I go on, once I don't have the Navy and a regular paycheck to rely on maybe I will have to start requiring deposits, because I did turn down some other opportunities for this one.

  So pretty much I had the entire weekend off, which is strange for me. I took some of the time to see if I could reorganize my Airport Accelerator, which - if you missed my review a while back - is my primary kitchen sink bag. I had just been keeping Excalibur in it, the D3200 was living in my car as a ready camera just in case, but now that I have the D800 as a second body and some more toys, I needed a better storage solution. I was debating buying a larger bag, but decided that since I had some time I would play with the dividers and structure and see what I could do. At first I was stuck because I wanted to keep the cameras ready to shoot with a lens attached, but between reading something about keeping lenses attached being bad for the mounts and having my 70-200 fail because of a bent mount, it was pretty easy to let that go. Once I was past that, options opened up, and I am happy to say that now not only can my current bag of holding hold all of my gear it needs to, I think I have room to also add the next pair of speed lights I will be adding my lighting arsenal.

  So, financially and artistically the weekend was a downer, but practically I got a lot done and emotionally it was awesome, because I got spend a lot of time with my two favorite people in the whole world. Took the D800 out to capture the fun on Mothers' day, and even though they seemed to find every shadow in the universe to hide in, had fun shooting my favorite people. I really think I need to see if I can sell my son out as a model, he's cute as heck and totally photogenic. So overall, despite the initial disappointment and loss of potential revenue, it was still a productive weekend and a good Mother's day.

Jayne Cobb Cosplay Shoot (my first Cosplay shoot, first shoot with the D800, first attempt at Photoshop actions...)

    Last week was a week of firsts. Had my first Cosplay shoot, which just happened to also be my first time really shooting with my new D800 (other than playing with it the night before at a lighting workshop) and during editing I wound up using Alien Skin Exposure 5 for the first time as well as creating and using my first photoshop action.

    Where to start? Let's backtrack a bit. First off, my D3200 was a great camera, I don't think I could have picked a better starter body, but I found I just wasn't using it as much anymore for a couple of key reasons: First, I just liked the depth of field and general look better from the full frame sensor in Excalibur and Second, now that I am starting to play around with more advanced things like time lapse, long exposure, stacked star trails and HDR I want a body that can do all these inherently. Been thinking about it for some time finally pulled the trigger because I am starting to line up more model shoots as well as getting ready for some travel to places where I want to shoot some good landscapes and scenics. Once again, got a good deal on a pre-loved body from Keh camera... not sure I will ever buy a new piece of photo gear again. So, sold off my DX stuff and ordered the D800.

   First and foremost, holy crap 36mp resolution is incredible. I am talking count the eyelashes resolution. It's awesome, much closer to the medium format look commonly seen in publications, but much cheaper and more convenient. That being said, the ergonomics aren't as well done as on Excalibur, and for shooting with the 70-200 I will definitely have to get a battery grip so it will balance out correctly. (I want to do that soon anyway just so I can share batteries and charger between the two cameras) and the large files are eating my processing power. It's been a little over 4 years, I think it's time to upgrade the computer soon. Despite being slow, it seems like the extra resolution and detail really expands options for post processing because there is simply much more to work with. The D800 is not the see in the dark speed beast Excalibur is and it isn't as easily handled, but for controlled shoots it is going to become the weapon of choice.

   Now on to the shooting. Since I decided to start setting up more staged shoots and adding to my portfolio, I have been spending a lot of time looking around ModelMayhem for cool people to work with.  While browsing I came across the profile of the incredible Alanna Safarik, who mentioned wanting to do a Cosplay shoot from FireFly, which may just be my favorite series ever, so I was all over it. She just happened to have a Jayne Cobb hat and the outfit lying around, and a friend with some airsoft guns to use. We weren't able to get together and shoot before my last bit of travel, but that wound up working out pretty well because after I got back I found the Sweetwater Steel Bridge,  which was perfect for the feel I wanted for the shoot.

  We shot for about an hour, Alanna was a trouper because it was 100 degrees despite being May, and the very accurately named steel bridge was pretty darn warm to sit/lean/stand on, not to mention she was in spike heel boots and somewhat afraid of heights. Despite all that, we got some great shots.

  This was one of the first shoots where I really went in with an image of what I wanted the final edited shots to look like, and I wanted an old west daguerrotype look. Writing about this reminds me of my initial discussion of "photoshopping." I am still far from being a master of digital image manipulation, but I think even with the work done on these, I am staying true to my ideals in that the editing directly contributes to the artistic feel of the image while keeping the model completely recognizable as herself instead of a caricature barbie.

   I decided to give Alien Skin Exposure 5 a try to get a start at the look I wanted, because I am lazy and not up to the level of skill I need to be to do it all by myself in photoshop yet. The first thing I tried was just using the Aperture plugin functionality so that once I was ready I could batch process the images as a final step, but I didn't like the all or nothing look, something about it wasn't right, maybe it smacked too much of just adding an instagram filter and calling it done, I wanted more control, so I went into PS where I could use the original image and the filter as layers and blend them to my heart's content until I got what I wanted. But I still didn't want to have to individually work each image if I could avoid it (lazy, remember, and I am hoping one day to have to deal with high volumes of shoots and tight turnarounds, so I need an efficient workflow) so I decided to learn how to build my own action. Took a few tries and haven't worked out all the bugs yet, but I was able to get to a point where I only had to click once per image and the action took care of all the rest, so I consider that a victory.

 

    Overall it was a great experience. I enjoyed working with Alanna and hope to collaborate more in the future. I got to test out the D800 and put into practice some of the things I learned at the speed light workshop the day before (which I will post about later most likely). I was pretty happy with what I was able to do lighting wise. The shot above looks like it could have been shot/lit in a studio, but it was just a couple of speed lights and a neutral density filter shooting in bright 3pm desert sun. I got to play with some new editing techniques and toys (speaking of which, if you are serious about photo editing, get a Wacom Tablet- trust me. Editing without one is like driving a stick shift with a sprained left ankle compared to working with one) and learned the rudiments of action creation. All in all a good shoot. You can see all the results here and decide for yourself.