Sometimes lighting up a room takes some real power.

Power cables running from four diesel, truck sized generators into a 20,000 square foot ballroom.

You think professional photographers are insane about back-up and the need to prevent failure at all costs?  I recently did a corporate show in a splendid new hotel that was still working out a few kinks.  I am good friends with the production company that turned a bare exhibition space into a high tech wonderland for a week.  Acres of computer controlled, color shifting LED accent lights.  Computer controlled moving lights.  Hundreds of pedestals with tech products and demos as far as the eye could see.

They did due diligence months ago to make sure that the hotel was wired with enough juice to handle everything but that was all...........theoretical.  The day before doors opened they brought up all the lights and in a few minutes the exhibition space went dark.  Everything shut down.  The hotel worked on it.  The production company immediately got on the phone and arranged an alternate source of power.  No questions asked.  No prayerful hoping.  All business.  All on.  All the time.

Turned out to be a programming glitch and the hotel ended up having more than enough power on tap.  But the generators stayed in place.  Just in case.  The production company's motto?  "When the credits roll make sure that heads don't."  And that motto is trademarked.  They don't have shows go down.  It doesn't happen.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions over the years, are at stake thru reputation and word of mouth.

Next time someone tells you that you don't go on a job without mission critical back-up please remember how the big boys roll and save yourself from that possible career ending failure.  Pack twice as much as you need.  Make sure it works.  Get ready for Murphy's Law.  

Additional information about my Elinchrom lighting adventure....

The last time I wrote to you about lights I'd just dumped a two decade accumulation of Profoto lighting equipment and ventured toward the cheap side of the lighting universe.  I started out with one Elinchrom D-Lite-4 IT monolight and I decided that I liked it.  Pretty well.  It took a while to get used to handling a lighter and less robust lighting machine but the upside was the novelty and the digital controls on the back.

On friday I did my first corporate portrait with three of the D-Lites.  I used one as a main light in a 28 inch Fotodiox Beauty Dish, covered with a diffusion "sock" and feathered quite a bit.  I used a second light into a 60 inch Photek Softlighter with it's diffusion cover and, I used a third light with a couple layers of diffusion over an 8 inch, 50 degree reflector as a background light.

I had all the modeling lights on full and things were zipping along well.  I was shooting quickly and banged off about 35 frames over the course of five minutes.  That's when the fan came on in the fill light/Photek box.  A few minutes later the fan came on in the beauty dish assemblage.  All the lights kept banging away until we finished frame #110.  Then I was done.  The fans ran for a minute or so more and then stopped.  I looked at the frames on my monitor.  Even though I was shooting quickly I got into the pattern of waiting for the recycle "beep" to sound before shooting each frame.  The frames on the monitor were absolutely consistent.

The optical slaves worked fine on the two flashes not connected to the sync cord.

I'm using them again on Monday to make portraits of fourteen people at a medical practice here in Austin. I'll have them up and running for the better part of the day.  That's about it.

Random Portraits.

Renae G. Hblad.  150mm.  Film.

Renee Zellweger.  Canon film camera.  135mm soft focus lens (Canon) Panatomic X

Sweetish Hill Bakery.  Mamiya 6 with 75mm lens.  Tri-X

Kinky Friedman.  Writer.  Musician.  Perennial Gubernatorial candidate.  Hblad.  Film.  150mm.

Mike Hicks.  Brilliant designer.  Leaf 7afi 40 megapixel camera.  Schneider 180mm f2.8 lens.

Renee Zellweger. Pentax 645.  120mm lens.  Tri-X.  

Belinda.  Canon TX film camera.  Bulk loaded Tri-X.  Canon 135mm 3.5 lens

Mousumi.  Hblad.  180mm f4.  Tri-X.  

David Yarritu.  Yashica TLR.  Tri-X or equivalent. 

Rene N.  Leica R8.  90mm Summicron.  Agfa APX 100.  Scanned from a print.

Renae G.  Leica R8.  80mm Summilux.  Black and white film.

Rene N.  Leica R8.  90mm Summicron.  Agfa APX 100.  Scanned from a print.

At the Mean Eyed Cat Bar.  Nikon D700.  85mm 1.8.

Ben.  Olympus EPL-1.  In b&w mode.

Renae G.  Hblad Superwide.  Tri-X.  Fun stuff.

Dad.  EP-2.  60mm 1.5  b&w setting.

Sarah S.  Hblad.  150mm.   Agfapan APX 100.

Me.  With some sort of Canon contraption.  Looks like a 7D with a 15-85mm.

Old Hasselblad.  Film.  Zeiss.  Belinda.

A young Ben systematically destroys, but does not eat, a cheese danish from Sweetish Hill Bakery.

Fuji 6x9 cm rangefinder camera.  Kodak T-max 400 CN film.  Scanned.

Lots of cameras.

We interrupt my usual cynicism and gear rants to enjoy a portrait of a beautiful woman.

©2011 Kirk Tuck Photography.  Austin, Texas.

People who don't do portraits have odd ideas about the process of making portraits. They seem to think that you can meet, greet, develop instant rapport and slam out a masterpiece all in the first session with a complete stranger.  Might work sometimes.  But rarely for me.   Here are all of my secrets.  Practice, practice, practice.  My best portraits generally happen on the second or third session with a sitter.  WHAT?????  Multiple sittings?????  Yes.

There's a difference between a retail portrait sitting that conforms to both a standard style and a standard expression, and a portrait sitting that's done because you want to do portraits as art.  When I photograph some of the people you see in my blog posts the best photographs come from long term relationships with models.  Not romantic relationships but shooting relationships.  We both enjoy the process and we collaborate and creating images.

I photographed Renee Zellweger off and on for nearly a year and every session looked and felt different.  Now I have a three ring binder full of images and it's easy for me to narrow down and find the expressions that resonate with me.  I photographed Lou Ann probably once a quarter for several years and Michelle at least four times before I got the images I liked.

While this might not be a workable solution for "enterprise" or even just good business, it's a great way to get images that stand the test of time and of which you can be proud.  And it's a great way to fill each other's portfolios with work that speaks to something more than just commerce.

The image of Amy, above, came from a fun, long session with Amy and my dear friend Renae G.  While this image didn't jump out at me in the year after I created it I was looking through old files today and came across this take again and made a scan.  I like it.  It took time for my tastes to catch up to my intuition.