the things we think but do not say

Chelsea Physic Garden (1 of 1)

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

The last four days have gone by in ridiculously fast order. Shane (my photography partner) and I have been whizzing back and forth across London in a feverish panic and I’m frankly exhausted. We’ve still got about four days left and every moment’s going to count toward getting all our shots done.

But this post is less about the photography itself but more about the gear. I’m an unashamed camera whore and I get excited about the equipment almost as much as I do the photos. And what a great chance it was for me to get intimately familiar with my current set of tools and some new ones for this shoot.

At this point, the list of shooting gear is thus:

Nikon D70
Nikkor 35/2
Nikkor 17-55/2.8
Nikkor 12-24/4
Nikkor 85/1.8

Epson P2000, 40gb portable hard drive and image viewer

Gitzo 1540 tripod
Really Right Stuff BH-40 LRII, ball head for tripod
Really Right Stuff BD70-L, L bracket for mounting into RRS ballheads

Nikon SB800 flash
Bogen 3373 light stand
Pair of Pocket Wizard Plus II, wireless RF flash triggers
Westcott compact silver umbrella

Spare batteries for D70, flash.
4x 1GB Sandisk Extreme III CF

The camera, the lens and the batteries all go into a Domke F2 black canvas shoulder bag and the tripod and head, the lightstand, the flash and the Pocket Wizards all go into medium sized Calumet tripod bag. Since I don’t have any proper scales to weigh all this, my shoulders can tell you that it feels like about 20 lbs + 10 lbs. I could be way off, but all that Nikkor glass adds up.

So, in a Michael Reichmann (of Luminous Lanscape fame) way, what worked, and what didn’t?

The most commonly used lens so far: 17-55/2.8. A very useful range for the sort of photography on this shoot; interiors and details shots. At a constant aperture of f2.8 this lens is fast and heavy. Makes the D70 look a little wimpy.

Least used lens so far: 35/2. A big surprise to me was the almost non-existant need for this lens. After almost three years of using this lens exclusively, I’ve become just too accustomed to it’s length that now visually, I’m looking for something with either a tighter crop or a much wider point of view. My trusty old partner is becoming strangely defunct.

The most annoying malfunction: The 1540 Gitzo tripod is one of the latest and greatest new fangled ‘6x carbon fibre’ tripods from Gitzo. With a rock solid reputation and a life guarantee, I am very dissapointed with my experiences so far. The main locking collar that allows for the centre column to be at any different elevated position is all screwed up. Inside the threaded collar is a sleeve which, when tightened, squeezes onto the centre column, letting me control how high or low my final camera height will be. Somehow, the sleeve has slipped around just enough that it’s now jamming against the threaded collar, instead of riding nicely inside of it. The outcome is that I’ve got a very expensive camera support that I can’t quite trust. Argh! When I get back to Chicago, I’ll have to call Really Right Stuff (where I bought this from) to look into this.

The most satisfying pieces of kit: In contrast to the lower half of the camera support, is the top half, where the Really Right Stuff meet up. The RRS BH-40 ball head is pure CNC porn. The quality of the machined metal parts and the smoothness of the all the physical interaction is just so confidence inspiring. I know that when I dial in this knob or adjust this part, that the camera is going to do just that and nothing more. And in perfect harmony with the ball head is the BD70-L L plate.

I had never even seen an L plate until a year or so ago, but once I understood it’s purpose, I longed for a time to need one. And this shoot has easily justified the investment in both the L plate and the ball head platform in which they mate.

The RRS L plate is CNC sculpted from solid aluminium to perfectly fit my camera body. And it gives me 100% confidence in the permanence of your camera placement on the tripod head, but also let’s your flip orientation from landscape to portrait and back again without ever having to mess with the orientation of the ball head itself. After only an hour of use, I became to forget about my inexperience with tripods, ball heads and L plates and just started to think about what shots I wanted. I only wish that the centre column would bloody stay put!

The most invaluable item that lets just keep on me shooting: The Epson P2000 is one sweet piece of electronics. It’s only function in life is to be a viewing and copying station for your photos while out in the field. I have four 1GB CF cards for my D70 and I know that I can fit exactly 94 Nikon RAW files onto each one. Which means that I have only 376 exposures at any one time. And while I can go buy more cards and/or with memory per card, there’s a simplicity to it that I like.

Each CF memory card is marked in order, I through IV. When the first card is done, I return it to the case and turn it face over. The remaining, empty, cards are facing up and I reach for the card two, while trying to maintain rhythm in my shoot as best I can. Of course, I never seem to finish a card in between locations, only in the middle of them!

I keep this process basically; extract the FULL card, flip it over, put it back in the case, get the next EMPTY card, insert, resume shooting.

When I’ve reached the end of the cards, or the end of the day, I then methodically insert each card into the P-2000 and let it copy everything. When I’ve verified that the copy was successful, I then repeat with the next card. Once I’m sure that I have all the data is safely intact on the P-2000’s hard drive, I then format each card in the camera, renewing my 376 exposure limit.

Then when I finally get home, I back up everything to my laptop.

I do not want to ever, ever, lose any of work through some stupid mismanagement of data. Photography is inherently unrepeatable. Each exposure is unique. You’ve got to keep back ups and you’ve got to be careful. Keep your process simple and repeatable. Having one 8gb card for me at this moment just doesn’t make sense and makes me even more nervous of losing it! If I ever buy a new digital camera that spat out gigantic images, then I’ll buy the right sized cards that give me a nice easy number of frames to remember.

Outside Facets

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

About a year ago now, a project came up to create a guide book for the studio. It was meant to be a handy guide to the interesting places in the city for visiting clients, temporary transfers from other studios and other guests. The book was produced in record time (3 weeks) and it covered some sixty odd locations all throughout the city. We featured magazine stands, hot dog joints, karaoke bars, third generation family pipe stores - you name it. We made a tiny run of about 25 copies to share at a round table for our company.

And it was a hit.

The book’s writing and photography in this proof of concept was later shown to a publisher and they got all excited at the possibilities. Amazingly enough, they have commissioned us to make two new books for London and New York. The only sad part is that this Chicago book (as it stands) will not be made first. When is Chicago going to get the recognition it deserves dammit? Maybe on the next round if these do well.

So, in this coming week, I’m preparing for the trip to take the photographs for these new upcoming books. I have about a week in each city, shooting relentlessly and covering about ten locations a day. While I feel that I’m pretty comfortable taking photographs of people on the street and capturing images in a photo documentary style, I’m a little anxious about taking photographs of the interiors of the stores. I’m expecting that we will have permission for many of the locations we’re featuring but there’s still a lot of questions about lighting that I have unanswered. How to deal with multiple lighting types (fluorescent, tungsten and day light), how to deal with low light and a slow aperture wide angle lens, setting time for a tripod and a flash stand. And then there’s all the practical issues of traveling from place to place in a timely manner.

I think that there’s only so much one can plan for and the rest will be learnt as I go. And while I can safely say that the original book’s photographs had a ‘rawness’ that lent them a certain charm, I wasn’t shooting a book that might potentially be in the hands of tens/hundreds/thousands of people one day. I’m freaked out, inspired, thrilled, and then back to being freaked out again.

There’s a photography maxim that says, “Never take new equipment with you on a shoot” This is very good advice. I’m doing my best to balance bringing as much kit as I can and then be so laden heavy with kit that I can’t take a single photo at all.

I just want to take images that best represent the locations in their truest sense. The frenetic energy, the exclusivity, the warmth. All of these emotions that you feel in a space, or a street corner or in a retail store. I want to capture it all the best I can.

The photo above is from last year and it was taken right outside Facets, an independent movie rental store (and movie theatre too). When I saw her standing outside the store, I immediately got the sense that she was of an independent mind herself.