Not this week.

I’m in Eugene for work this week. In Eugene I am straddling two different worlds; the pacific familiarity of Eugene and the invigorating unknown future of life just a few miles east of the Mississippi. The more I think about it the more I know I shouldn’t be thinking about it because this is exactly the kind of thing I can get wrapped up in. Did we make the right choice moving to Memphis? Etc, etc. Wrapped up in and subsequently taken on the roller-coaster of self-doubt, regret, humiliating self-pep-talks in front of a hotel mirror, and the inevitable return to my punk-kid nature that says “fuck it, I’ll trust myself, do whatever the hell I want and not care about what could have been.” I figure, I might as well just start from that viewpoint and save myself the energy.

So I’m here working my butt off taking photos of new and old friends and diving up to my elbows in some really interesting (for me) hardware challenges at work. I am lucky to have such ready access to two pursuits; both being part passion and profession, that help me find beauty and order in the world and in my own mind and heart. It’s nice to realize that even when my mind can’t sort through it all, I’m here (wherever I might be) for the right reasons, doing the right things.

6x7cm, 6x6cm, 6x4.5cm and 35mm Film Sizes Compared with an APS-C Sensor.

And then with 4×5 sheet film included.

Film Sizes from 4x5 Inch to 35mm with APS-C Sensor For Comparison

The brightest light source in this room was the "EXIT" sign above the back door. Other light sources include small CFL bulbs under black lampshades and cool white tube lights in an adjoining room. Yuck. 70mm 1/160sec F/2.8 6400 ISO/ASA

I do a lot of my personal shooting in miserable lighting conditions. I’m talking about tango “clubs” that are cobbled together in an old warehouse, dive bar, dance studio, or repurposed factory with high ceilings (black, of course) with Christmas lights and CFL bulbs bounced off exposed brick and dance mirrors providing the light. It’s a challenge. I think there’s a team of people somewhere brainstorming ways to make the light for tango events really crappy. Regardless, I love to shoot tango events. It’s usually my friends out there dancing and I love to get good photos of them doing what they love. It’s also good practice. Working right at the edge of what my equipment can handle is good.

Here are a few things that I’ve learned about working with fast lenses in bad light.

1. Most cameras are calibrated and optimized to accurately focus with lenses having a maximum aperture of f/2.8.

2. If your lens has a larger maximum aperture than 2.8 you are going outside of the comport zone of your camera’s autofocus system.

3. Stopping down a f/1.4 lens to f/2.8 doesn’t help because autofocus is performed with the lens wide open. It may help improve image sharpness and focus simply because you’ll have more depth of field at f/2.8 than at f/1.4, but it does not improve autofocus performance. In fact, I think it hurts autofocus performance substantially to work with a lens faster than f/2.8. If you have enough light to work at F2.8, use a lens with f/2.8 maximum aperture. Even moving from a lens with f/1.4 to f/1.8 will improve your autofocus performance.

The good news is that if you plan to do a lot of autofocusing in the dark it’s better to buy that cheaper 85mm f/1.8 than the much more expensive f/1.4 or f/1.2 version. The bad news is that you won’t have access to that extra 2/3 or full stop of light for freezing motion.

4. Manually focusing in the dark is EXTREMELY difficult, especially when with working with modern full frame cameras that work in light so low your eyes already have trouble focusing. Doing this with moving subjects is nearly impossible. Eyes have apertures as well.

5. Image stabilized lenses (either VR or IS) are fantastic, but they suffer from the major drawback of not keeping the subject from moving. I doubt anyone will ever make a subject stabilizer.

6. You can’t use the AF-assist beam on your strobe in situations where your subject is continuously moving. AF-Assist beams only work in AF-S (single-servo) mode, which does not continuously track subject movement. Believe me, I’ve tried it, a lot and single servo mode just doesn’t work for movement. Way back in my sports photography days we used to pre-focus and shoot when the subject came into that area. Trap focusing, which is a method of using pre-focusing and AF-Single mode with focus priority release to automatically trip the shutter when the subject comes into focus can work, but you’ll never get a decisive moment with that technique. It’s something that photographers use when they need to leave a camera out in the woods to capture images of animals which walk through the focus trap.

7. It helps to set your AF-C (continuous servo) mode to prioritize focus over release. Nikon’s allow you to do this.  I don’t know about Canon. This will slow down your frame rate and can be a bit infuriating when you miss that decisive moment while your lens searches for critical focus, but it will give you an almost infinitely better in-focus to out-of-focus shot ratio.

8. If you are happen to be shooting social dance styles like salsa or argentine tango, it helps to shoot with the music. Learn the timing, count the beats, shoot on the beats. It works better than trying to predict what a leader will do and how a follower will respond. Social dancing is a conversation with rhythm. You never know the words but you can count on the cadence most of the time.

Obligatory Reference Material: http://nikonrumors.com/2011/03/28/auto-focus-accuracy-a-scientific-cross-brand-analysis-guest-post.aspx/

Making prints is one of the most important parts of photography for me. When I’m shooting I’m fueled by a bit of pre-planning and a lot of willingness to act on instinct and any serendipity that falls my way. Sometimes at the end of a shoot I feel like it was a failure for one reason or another. The weather turned, I botched the lights, I forgot some important gizmo, the location was unavailable, etc… The point is that the printmaking process is where it all comes together. The planning, the instinct, the happy accidents, the magic of the shoot… it’s all brought to life in the final print. The print is photography.

Check it out at Fine Prints of (mostly) Dance Photography by Ari Denison

I think I was so busy trying to keep my head above water that I lost sight of my guiding passions and desires. I lost sight for long enough that by the time I was free to pursue them again I was a different person.

Here’s what I’ve been doing to get myself pointed in the right direction.

1. I try not to take on more than one decision at a time.
2. If the answer to a question is not presenting itself, I back up and find a method for finding an answer. For example I got myself into photography school as a way to direct my unfocused photographic passion.
3. If 1 and 2 don’t do the trick, walk away for a while and wait for inspiration. Enjoy not being under pressure.

I’m getting pretty good at looking at only one question at a time. I’ve never been that good at multi-tasking so it works for me.

I’m also pretty good at backing up and looking at the things from a meta perspective. It’s kind of a brain teaser to do this and I love a good brain teaser.

I’m not so good at walking away from things. Maybe it’s a control thing, maybe it’s just habit, but I feel lazy when I’m not actively focused on fixing or solving the issue at hand. I don’t really know how to relax. Yeah, I have an off switch, but that just means that I know how to sleep. So now I need to learn how to walk away for a while and relax. See how this works? Work on the problem and then work on how to work on the problem.

In a nutshell we’re talking business; direction, focus, logistics and the cold, hard realities of breaking into the business and working as a photographer. Right now I think anyone who is paying attention in class is starting to weigh one thing against another as they figure out whether this is for them or not. I know I am. So much is at risk… we do this, we shoot because we love it, and the financial rewards are not likely to be huge so we MUST love it, but when you put love on the line and turn it into a job… well, that’s when things get complicated. One of our teachers summed it up nicely: “there are a lot easier ways to not make a lot of money”.

I also had a really eye-opening mini-critique in class this week as well. My photos do not look anything like what other people in RMSP are doing. I can’t help but think that this tells me something. What, I’m not sure, but it is telling me something.

Again.. too tired to even think. More later.

I’ve been focusing on classes for the last few days. I’m also trying to catch up on a pile of shoots that need post-production.

Ok, so yeah. Video is a lot of fun. I think that’s all I have to say about that at the moment, but I can definitely see this working it’s way into my arsenal.