I had a gig shooting my friends blues band in a sports bar in Oceanside. It was a dark corner without a stage and without any existing lighting. This was much different than any concert shooting I had done before, where stage crews set up expensive lights for the band that I can piggyback off of. This was a show with no existing light whatsoever. I had full freedom to use off-camera speedlights if I could find places to put them that didn’t get in the way. I placed a couple strategically and tried using RF-transmitters. (Calumet Litelinks) Big problem! The flashes fired very reliably, but I was unable to focus on anything in the darkness! Shooting active musicians is a focusing challenge in the best of times. This shaped up to be a disaster.

But, I had an idea: I switched to the Canon IR transmitter (ST-E2). Since it was indoors, this worked fairly reliably as well, plus had the huge — HUGE — bonus of having an auto-focus assist beam, which the Canon 5D lacks on its own. As I discovered, this is actually a very big deal. I had a little problem getting the AF-assist beam going, even after I enabled it in the camera settings. I resorted to erasing all camera settings to factory default, and then it worked. That was annoying.

Near the end of the night, I noticed the bass-player had moved off to the side near an alcove with a great backlight. I went over to him and exposed for the backlight, then placed a speedlight to add some fill on him. I chimped it three or four times to get the proper power on the fill, but on the very last shot, he looked up at me and smiled. I nailed one excellent shot. Seconds later, the whole show was over.

Three Lessons Learned for Lighting a Live Music Setup:

One: If you have the opportunity to set a backlight to color the back wall, you damn well should do it. I didn’t think of this until it was too late.

Two: In hindsight I was very intrusive setting up lights. Getting in the band’s face and doing a lot of flashing for shots that weren’t worth it. Had this been a more popular concert, I would have been a very unpopular guy. Since nobody was there, I was OK. I would be more selective if doing this again.

Three: If it’s too dark to focus, hope that IR triggers can work so you can leverage auto-focus on the ST-E2.

This was good experience for me and I’m sure these lessons will serve me well in the future.

Play this now: “Blinded By The Light” – Manfred Mann

“Old Things” – Codeine

How did I end up with a Leica? Good question.

I visited Scott Hevener in Montana, and during an off moment he handed me his Leica M2. I responded badly. The correct response would have been an enthusiastic yelp as I grabbed it and begged to try it out. I should have been peppering him with questions and learning. However, I reacted with fear, hoping only to not break it. My life is often poorer for fear. Then doubly poorer for lamenting the fact without being able to do anything about it. Maybe triply poor because I know how lame the analysis cycle is. The Leica: I gingerly held it, looked at it in quiet fascination, then passed it back. Failure via fear. This is not a sign that I’ll never be a photographer, but it is evidence that I’m not one now. I have yet to step fully into the light.

I cruise Craigslist and eBay hourly, it seems, looking at marvels of photographic design history. I am thrilled by the existence of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese cameras, I coo at ostentatious displays of luxury, I imagine owning rare and wonderful cameras. A Leica, though has the weight of history behind it. Capa, among many other legends, used one sometimes. Despite the boutique prices, the Leica somehow retains an aura of hard work and determination, of serious business.

I saw this sad Leica on eBay, at first it seemed like something to be wary of. The condition was atrocious, it looked beat-up. The viewfinder was impossibly warped, as if it had been dropped from a very great height or hit with a very great hammer. It was hard to imagine the force required to do that to a camera. Surely the insides must be a sock full of screws. What must have happened to this small machine since its birth as the model M2 in 1958? Yet, still I took notice. I mentioned it to Scott, who said he had already seen the listing and that he had thought of me when he did. I’m not sure how true that was, and initially I was even a bit disheartened. Was I only worthy of some last-legs Leica? Scott then told me that he knew of the seller personally, that the man was competent in his work and honest in business. The seller was named Youxin Ye, and he made a habit of acquiring questionable Leicas, fixing them up, and selling them. In fact, were I to acquire a Leica through some other shady dealing, Youxin Ye would be where I would have to take it to be properly overhauled. If his auction description promised a cosmetically flawed but solidly working camera, I could be assured that is what was available.

So this was actually a very good opportunity to get a reliable Leica that other bidders, collectors, may ignore due to the immaterial cosmetic blemishes. This was one that had the cleaning, lubrication and adjustment already performed by one of the best. Could this be The One? Then, Scott dashed my hopes by opining his estimate for what price the camera would eventually sell for — something so high I still could not afford. With a day to go, poor auction strategy to be sure, I put in my maximum bid, far below what I now believed to be the ultimate selling price.

I slept on it.

The next morning, I checked without much curiosity. With long hours still to go, the bidding had reached my maximum bid but had gone no higher. I was still the high bidder, but I knew from experience that this was a standard tactic from snipers to determine just what price they’d need to beat. Complicating matters, the seller was selling multiple cameras. In fact another example of the exact same Leica model in slightly prettier condition was set to end mere minutes before the one I wanted. I knew that anyone who lost out on that higher priced one would swoop in for a consolation prize — the one I’d pinned my hopes on.

At that point, I knew I was out of it. Rather than dwell on it, or even contemplate going higher, I let it go. Even I knew it was better to move along and wait for another chance down the line. I’d bookmark Youxin Ye and wait for him to offer another. I’d keep hawking Craigslist.

Three hours later, I went to compose an e-mail and discovered that I’d won the thing.

It’s just an object, a tool — fifty-one years old. I still need to find the light. But, a week later I’m still happy about it. I’m going to go outside now to take pictures now.

“1958” – Skalpel

Song of the Day “Waste It On” – Silversun Pickups

I just want a film camera that can use my existing Canon EF lenses — that means an old film EOS. When I saw a Canon Rebel II on Craigslist for ten dollars. I figured that would be a good try. When I picked it up, I tested the shutter without actually looking at it. It sounded fine. When I loaded film, I noticed how beat up the curtains looked. Hmm.

So most of the frames came out like this:

I am highly bummed because I had some promising shots, some portraits of some people hanging outside a smokeshop last night. Four out of thirty-six came out all right. But I wouldn’t like to risk it. I don’t know how I’d flatten out those curtains. Probably a sunk ten spot. The search continues.  I’m looking for a cheap working film EOS. Whatchugotfome?

The post title refers to Pacman Jones.

On April 5, there is a FUNdraising event for TransitPeople –  “an all-volunteer Los Angeles non-profit that conducts educational, one day trips for school groups using the public transit system.”

What is it?

“Five competing teams of grown-ups will use public transit trains and buses to race (well, race kind of; how can you race while holding a strap in a bus?) from meeting points in Hollywood, Pasadena, Echo Park, Glendale and the Wilshire district to an ultra hush-hush, super top secret, only-revealed-at-the-start-of-the-race destination.”

Why is this mentioned in RedFishingBoat? Because your humble host, me, will be following one of the competing teams, documenting their every move along the way. One of the organizers is Tim, and he did an awfully kind write-up about me and some other volunteer photogs. Check it out: TransitPeople News.

Play this song now: “Get On The Bus (feat. Abstract Rude)” – Busdriver

Anonymous tip leads police to dead body in car trunk. My hood.

http://www.mymotherlode.com/News/article/id/D96PJTBO5

I can see the killers now: “Who knew we did that? Who owns a fax machine? Oh your ol’ lady! Get her!”

We gotta watch out for each other VV Massive. Throw ya VV up!

It was my fault that I lost control of the car. I shouldn’t have leaned on the gas. Now my heart was skipping a beat or six as the tractor trailer — as much of it as I could see in thirty foot visibility — loomed large off my right front bumper. Steady were my hands, but steadier still was the Pontiac’s traction control. Technology kicked in and the moment of danger passed me by, at least for the moment. The weather conditions included red-ink phrases like “high wind,” “blowing snow,” and my favorite asterisk, “freezing fog.” I resolved to not die in Idaho and to take it a little slower on southbound interstate fifteen.

I mention this in passing: Edward Weston was a photographer legendary for documenting the faces and landscapes of the Great Depression. I’m woefully uneducated in photography,  but I’ve been making an effort to learn more. I’d spent an afternoon with Weston last month in the local library.

By and by, my rearview racked up the miles, and the sky cleared. My seven-day roadtrip was winding down, and I was honestly satisfied with everything I’d seen and done. My mental calculations suggested I had just enough fuel to make Salt Lake City. Perfect. I didn’t need any more adventure.

Or, did I?

Near the border before Utah, I saw an exit off the long, hypnotic fifteen for route thirty-six eastbound to a town called Weston, Idaho. This perplexed me. I double-checked.  Neither route thirty-six off the fifteen — nor indeed Weston the destination –  existed on my map! Remembering Edward Weston’s legend and glowing at the idea of uncharted territory, I yanked the wheel and took the exit.

Route thirty-six wended its rural way past remote creeks and hills, twists and turns, empty and deserted. I chewed up miles cheerfully, a sense of adventure sloshing around in my soul.

I slammed on the brakes.

I had less than a quarter tank of gas!  What in blazes was I doing? I was maybe halfway to Weston. Maybe. I stopped in the middle of nowhere, with a choice to make. Keep going, not knowing if gasoline existed at any point ahead of me, or turn back to the known, the freeway, safety. Decisions, decisions.

I started on again. To Weston. Easy does it. I glanced at my phone. Bonus points for no reception. Of course there wasn’t.  I turned off the radio because this was tense business. Still onward, over hills and valleys, coasting where possible.

I rolled into Weston to a few amusing signs. One announced a population of four-hundred twenty-five, the other led this way to “City Center” — two opposing concepts made me chuckle bitterly.  Was there gas? So, city center sure, but, not a gas station in sight! Except my interloping outsider eyes didn’t see it immediately: A small, white pump outside a general store of some vaguely impossible decade.  Of course. Relief.

I went into the store and announced that I’d like some gas.

Yeah? was the baffled reply.

Don’t I need to pay in advance?

No, sir.

All right, then.

I started pumping, transfixed by the analog dials spinning, spinning. Counting off the gallons as well as the spinning the years back into the past.

You’re a long way from home! A man’s voice behind me announced, slightly amused.

How could he know? Of course, the car had California plates. Otherwise,  I’m sure I blended in  seamlessly.

Sure am, I replied to the old man who had appeared from nowhere. Just passin’ through, I said. But he was already on his way. And, the pump has spun past the twenty-dollar mark I was shooting for. Oops. I went back in and paid twenty-two dollars to the now mute cashier.

I parked in the silent and deserted center of this tiny town, and started to walk around. More silence greeted me. I saw the City Office. I saw a peculiar enclave home to decades of cherished broken machines and, of course, a very ominous bomb. Welcome, I might not have been. I saw a curious schoolbus that was not of this earth. I saw Weston Park, strangely in memory of nobody at all. The sound of my footsteps on gravel and snow awakened the sun, which started to peer down disapprovingly. I took pictures.

And, there he was again. The old man was walking down the street towards me, a bundle of mail in his arm.  I hailed him. He told me he was out getting his mail. It was his exercise.  I introduced myself as Michael and offered my hand. He shook it warmly, and told me that Michael was his brother’s name.  He told me he’d lived in Weston his whole life. I told him I liked it there. It was quiet and pretty. He told me he helped build the church behind me. It was nineteen fifty-two. No, no it was nineteen fifty-three. I asked if I could take his picture. Is your camera insured? he quipped. I snapped, and with that we bid each other good day.

I walked back to my car, and loaded my cameras into the back seat. Down the street, a loud buzzing. I looked up to see four-wheeled all-terrain-vehicle roll into the street, another human. But, it turned and sped off in another direction.  I paused for a very long time.

Silence returned. Nothingness. Did I even remember my own name?

I climbed in to the car, far from home,  and drove off out of Weston, Idaho, back towards the the fifteen and Utah beyond.

With a mostly full tank of gas and abnormally high spirits, I was fired up! I turned the radio back on. Incredibly, “Stranglehold” came on. One of my all-time favorite jams! With a giddy smile, lucky as sin, I leaned on the gas, turned up the volume, rounded a bend, and disappeared.

Robert Capa died a good death. For the world’s greatest war photographer, to go out by stepping on a Vietamese landmine, Contax in hand has to be wholly satisfactory. “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” were the famous words attributed to him. One can’t imagine he would be that disappointed.

Blood and Champagne; The Life and Times of Robert Capa by Alex Kershaw

I got this book out of the library because of that quote alone. In brief, I figured Capa was an ultimate badass. And, my own photography needs a whole lot more badass in it. And, of course a book report would be easy money for a blog post, right?

I used to write album reviews for a living, and I was terrible at it. Objectivity kills rock writing, and my heroes all figured that out. I did too, but a little too late. Guys like Robert Christgau or Dave DiMartino inject themselves into their writing in such a way that you are simply forced to care. They’re there in the middle of the music scene, and so you are too. If you’re gonna write about a book, it’s probably even more important to provide that immediate context. So, for me to write about this book, I’d need to talk about how, say, when I was out shooting, I’d recall a moment from Capa’s life and had it inspire me. Good plan.

Except, photography was so incidental to Capa’s life and times, that it’s rarely — and for justifiable reasons — mentioned in the book. The guy hung out (and feuded) with Hemingway, banged (and dumped) Ingrid Bergman, and started (and embezzzled from) Magnum! He faked his name and got into photography to pay the bills. He didn’t develop his own film. Apparently he never spent one braincell on what he was doing photographically, it just allowed him to travel and gamble and party all night.

Any parallels between that and my day-to-day would be some motivational Tony Robbins bullshit.

So, I’ll recap my favorite anecdote from the book, in my own words:

It’s World War Two and Capa needs to get from point A to point B but can’t get there because the roads are too dangerous. Hemingway is nuts, losing his mind, and starts some sort of mercenary operation on his own and commandeers a Jeep to traverse the particularly dangerous bit of map, so Capa tags along behind in another Jeep. Inevitably, Hemingway comes under fire and gets pinned down. He shouts for Capa to turn around and go back. Capa, frozen in fear, or something just stays under his cover. Hemingway, like I said, is nuts and convinced Capa is sitting there hoping that Hemingway gets popped so Capa can get the ultimate shot. That was the end of their friendship.

So that’s the book: An astounding compendium of similarly outlandish stories about this guy, written with extreme credulity. I couldn’t really separate the photographer from the myth. The author, Kershaw, sets it up that Capa, an introverted Hungarian named Andre Friedmann, thought war was a fun game, invented the fictitious American photographer named Robert Capa to be able to sell more photographs, and may have possibly faked his first big scoop, laughing it up until his girlfriend got killed covering the Spanish Revolution, and then spent his life running from (and to) the horror that took his first love from him by becoming the mythical dashing persona he had invented. Capa preferred women over photography, but preferred gambling over sex. Who knows what really drove him? Where did his eye for detail came from? What he thought when he actually took the pictures themselves? That’s all a mystery the book doesn’t even try to answer. But, the man sure was an exciting character.

And, if they make a biopic, Michael Imperioli (pic) has to play Robert Capa (pic) right?

For some reason, I haven’t been moved to take many pictures since finishing Blood and Champagne. Maybe I need to start palling around with Mark Cuban or something. Or, go to Afghanistan.

Not likely.

Postcript: I Imagine Capa, broke after a three-night bender, all his money lost on poker, drinking his last dime to this Ellington piece.

“All The Things You Are” – Duke Ellington

Wait, was that a rifle shot?

Another booming crack echoed arced over the foggy hilltop.

Yes, those are rifle shots! I realized, and decided leave this anonymous roadside scene I had stopped to take a picture of.  As, I quick-stepped it back to my rental car, I had visions of explaining bullet holes to a spectacled Hertz agent.  I suppose I should have also considered what a bullet would do to my knee or skull, but I’m a photographer! I dodge bullets by default.

Welcome to Montana.

I’d never been to Big Sky Country before, and when a Flickr friend announced a unique exhibition of his work, I figured there was no real reason not to journey to Missoula. So, I’d plotted a trip starting five hundred and twenty-seven miles away at the Salt Lake International airport. A lot of driving and a few hotels later, I got to spend a solid three days in Montana.  It turned out to be quite a task convincing my pal I’d really made the trip. It’s not like we’re old friends, so this was admittedly a little random. My posting of a mobile photo showing a flyer for the photography show that had been stapled to a pole in the neighborhood finally cemented the reality.

So, being out here on a rural highway in intense fog was a microcosm for all that. After going to the show, and having dinner with some wonderful people, and sampling some unique Missoula nightlife, my friend suggested I check out Lake Arrowhead, a fun drive north of Missoula. A great suggestion, despite some stubbornly intense fog.  It got so gnarly that I really wanted a photo of a scene of the sun losing a battle against the icy blanket. I stopped along the side of the road by a snowed in path with a little pastoral fencepost, and took some photos before the shots rang out, eerie and completely insane in the frosty silence. Balancing the best case scenario — that someone was shooting a rifle in the fog not knowing I was there shooting with a camera — against the worst case — that someone didn’t like me nosing around their property takin’ pictures– I felt a quick exit was the best policy in either case.  I get in the car and accellerate smoothly, thankfully, shiveringly away.

Where do I really begin about the place Missoula, Montana though? Love at first sight with a town? This never happens to me. I felt a mesh while strolling the streets and talking with people, and I felt a part of that mesh, intertwined with the strands of community. There was something human there that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I wish I had the craft to describe the warmth of a collective of buildings, streets, roads, and wonderful people. I don’t know what the future has in store for me, but I know that it would be profoundly tragic if I never do create new footprints in Missoula again.

I did so much driving on the trip, over sixteen hundred miles in all. I listened to a ton of country music on the radio. I saw more horses in one week than the rest of my life combined. I got drunk with new friends, I got sober in strange motels.

Also, I took pictures. I got only a sliver of the full experience recorded in images. The rest is stuck in my head waiting to be written. For now, here’s a slideshow from the one week adventure: (and, a song to go with it)