Tag Archives: Austin

Austin, Cityscapes, Colorful, Downtown, Events, Photography, Sports, Zilker Park

Zilker Kite Festival

March 7, 2013 Gregg 7 Comments

Last Sunday, March 3, 2013, was the 85th annual Kite Festival held at Zilker Park here in Austin, TX. Barb had an engagement with one of her friends for that afternoon. Since the weatherman said it was going to be a spectacular spring day, I headed downtown to catch the shuttle.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, a circular polarizer, and my hat. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery.

I only had to stand in line for 45 minutes before boarding the yellow school bus. The ride to Zilker Park took more than 30 minutes, in what would normally be a 10 minute ride at 1:00 PM on any other Sunday afternoon. I took the photo above just moments after I got off of that school bus. Even though the trees still haven’t yet leafed out, it definitely felt like springtime, and it was a great day to be outside!

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

My first reaction was to get close and try to photograph some of the more interesting kites.

Zilker Park is just across the Colorado River (and slightly west) of downtown Austin. As you can see, there were a lot of people and a lot of kites!

It was definitely a warm, springtime day. The TV news and the newspaper both reported that 20,000 people made it out to the park that afternoon.

The circular polarizer can make the blue sky a unnaturally dark. I usually tried to rotate is so that the sky wouldn’t appear that way, but sometimes the action just happened so fast….

There were hundreds, if not a thousand kites in the air simultaneously. With that many kites in close proximity, there were bound to be some entanglements.

Some kites just never seemed to get off of the ground – it was usually the ones without a tail that didn’t seem to take right off.

Note the condition of the grass in that previous photo. While I wouldn’t say that dust was a problem for the people, but with all of the wind, the dust that was in the air was quickly accumulating all over my camera – and especially the front of the polarizer. I kept blowing it off. I was glad that this camera and lens combination is supposed to be weatherproof. I was also glad that I had only brought one lens, as there was no way that I was going to be changing lenses under these conditions.

This tree seemed to be a very popular final resting place for many of the kites. I was wondering just how many Charlie Browns came out to the park today.

After a while, I found the official Kite Contest Field, where people would enter into actual kite flying contest. I think they have different contests for smallest kite, steepest angle of flight, a 50 yard dash (where you kite must remain in the air). When I got there, they were about to start the contest for the largest kite.

I positioned myself with the downtown buildings as my backdrop and waited for that black “balloon kite” to take off. This is as high as I saw it get.

While I was standing there watching that black blob of a “puffer fish”, I noticed another animal was watching me. The owner told me that this is an African Grey Parrot.

Everyone was watching that black balloon kite roll around in the dusty field, including this other kite!

After an hour and a half, I decided to start heading out of there. But first, just one more look northeast towards the downtown buildings, with all of the kites up in the air.

During my one hour wait in line to get back onto the shuttle bus, I took this parting shot looking to the northwest.

It was certainly fun to get out and enjoy the weather, photographing something completely new to me.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Austin, Flowers, Macro, Photography, Texas, Trees

Searching for Signs of Springtime

March 2, 2013 Gregg 2 Comments

A week ago today, on Saturday February 23, 2013, after what seemed to be several gray and dreary weekends here in Austin, TX, we finally had a nice day on a weekend. I noticed out our back window that our Bradford pear tree was looking kind of fuzzy out on the ends of it limb, so I grabbed my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera and headed outside to have a better look.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

I had the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens on, and since it was a cloudless sky, I put on a circular polarizer, just to cut down the glare of the mid-day sun. That lens is considered a “kit lens”, but even so I still use it more than all three of my prime lenses combined. And since it also has a macro mode, and I went in for a closer look.

Yes, even though it was still in late February, our Bradford pear tree was starting to produce buds that will soon turn into leaves and brilliant white blossoms! That might be a little early, but since our average last frost in Austin is before mid-March, it’s not that unusual.

This was exciting to me, and even though it was just after 1:00 PM on a basically cloudless day (supposedly the worst possible time to be outdoors to make pleasing photographs), I decided right then and there that I was going to walk around my neighborhood with my camera, on a mission to be “Searching for Signs of Springtime”.

I saw these cat tails, and thought it might be fun to capture them with the sun coming from behind them.

I was looking to see if ANY flowers were out yet, and yes there were a few small ones that people had planted in various locations of their yard.

The flowers that I did find were all pretty small in size. This reminded me that the last flowers that I saw in the late fall were also all small in size. Maybe the small flowers are the ones that can tolerate the dozen or so freezes that we get here during the winter.

I stumbled across this pink dogwood tree, which was just starting to blossom.

I was glad that I could tilt the rear LCD on the camera down, as I was holding the camera well above my head as I took this next photo of the dogwood tree.

By now it was 1:30 PM, and the sun was directly above, and I was wondering if any of the photos that I was taking would be “good enough” to put on my blog.

Well, they will not win any awards in a competition, as the sunlight was very harsh and direct. But hey, I was having a great time just being outside and playing with my camera! Robin Wong calls this sort of activity “Shutter Therapy”. I decided to keep going…

Pretty soon, I stumbled upon this strange little flying insect. I assume it is a bee, but I have never seen a bee that looks like this before.

And just a couple of blocks later, I spotted this spotted butterfly!

There were flowers out, but they were few and far between. They were rarely in the shade, and I didn’t have my portable diffuser, so I just photographed them in the direct sunlight.

The variety of flowers was good, and I wasn’t just finding the same type of flower everywhere.

This was the ONLY garden that I came across that looked like it had been freshly planted with new plants. That’s the same bunny that was in the overgrown garden last summer that I photographed just for Libby of ohnostudio. (Libby often photographs the little yard and garden ornaments at her house in New York.)

I walked another half mile and didn’t see any flowers or other signs of springtime worth photographing, so I turned to doing some “Street Photography”. 🙂

I spotted another butterfly, but it would not stay still. It took me six tries before I caught it with its wings spread open.

This photo shows the relative scale of the size of the flowers that I was seeing.

In the same place as the photo above, I used my own shadow to block the sun, and got in close to snap this photo.

I was getting close to home now. I spotted this unusual little flower wagging wildly in the breeze. I took 9 photos of this little red-violet flower, and ended up deleting all but this one – it was just moving too quickly to not be blurry.

OK, so I live just around the corner to the left in this next photo. You can see that even though I was able to find some early signs of springtime, the general vegetation in northwest Austin is still very much in its dormant winter state. The greenery that you do see is green year round.

This is the same street sign that was in the center of the previous photo. Even though the circular polarizer has darkened the sky pretty dramatically, I like the way that it contrasts with the yellow portion of this sign.

In the week since I took these photos and today, the Arizona ash trees have fully put out their vibrant light green leaves. Our Bradford pear tree is just about to “pop”, but the buds are still brown in color. That should change dramatically in the next few days, and I’ll try to capture a “nice” photo of it when it is full of its brilliant white blossoms.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Austin, Downtown, Food, Photography, Texas, Travel

Lockhart BBQ Tour – Part 1

February 14, 2013 Gregg 4 Comments

This blog post is one that I am really excited to share with you! Way back on January 9th, Kirk Tuck put out a blog post announcing that there was an opportunity to sign up for a photography excursion to Lockhart, Texas, which would be lead by Wyatt McSpadden. Wyatt is famous for his photography of family-owned and operated Texas barbecue establishments. He has published a beautiful book on Texas BBQ, named appropriately enough “Texas BBQ: Photographs by Wyatt McSpadden“.

Now I saw that blog post right before Barb called me downstairs for dinner. While we ate, I mentioned that I had seen that opportunity, and that I thought it would be great fun to do. There wasn’t really any discussion, other than Barb told me that she thought I should do it. Right after dinner, I followed the links that Kirk had provided. Even though the event was sponsored by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and I am not a member, I had no problem with registering or paying.

Now all I had to do was to wait for a month to pass, which gave me plenty of time to wonder if I had gotten in over my head. I eventually came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be judged by anyone, and that this could be a golden learning opportunity.

Now nobody judged me that day, but those of you that read this blog post, and see my pictures will judge my photography, even if you are not conscious of actively doing so, and even if you withhold your criticism. And that brings me to my “after trip” dilemma. Do I only show my “best photographs” taken that day, or do I continue my usual blog style of telling a story?

In the end, I have decided to tell the story, which necessitates showing several “filler photos”. That isn’t what Scott Kelby says that I should do. What the heck, this is my blog, and I’m not trying to sell anybody anything. I would like to be recognized as a competent photographer, though….. It’s a dilemma, I tell you!

A week ago today, on Thursday, February 7, 2013, we were to meet a block east of the Texas state capitol building to get on the bus by 8:15 AM. I got there about 7:50 AM, and saw another person walking around with what appeared to be a camera bag and a tripod. It turns out it was Frank Grygier, who I’ve met a couple of other times (both when Kirk Tuck was doing a book signing, or speaking to a group). I was very glad that I had already met at least one other person that was going on this tour. I asked Frank if I could get a photo of him with the Texas capitol building in the background.

We spotted the bus, and we had to tell the bus driver that she wasn’t where our map said she was supposed to be. We walked across the intersection, and while we were waiting for the bus, I noticed the early morning light was peeking through the clouds just enough to give the capitol building a nice glow.

And just to document this trip, I walked across San Jacinto Blvd. and snapped this photo of our bus in front of the capitol, with Frank and the driver.

On the bus, there were the 12 photographers that had signed up for this excursion, Wyatt McSpadden, a couple of people from ASMP that were helping to organize the event, and the bus driver. Fortunately we were going against the traffic as we headed out of town during rush hour. It didn’t seem to take us very long to drive the 35 miles (56 km) to get to Lockhart, Texas.

Lockhart is one of the “Meccas” of Texas BBQ. Our first stop, and the only one that I will cover in today’s blog post, was Smitty’s Market.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

That’s the Caldwell County courthouse with the spire to the left of Smitty’s sign above. That courthouse was only one block away. We had parked in the gravel parking lot by the back door, which you can see in the next photo.

We all walked around the side of the building to get to the front door.

Wyatt had told us that we were free to go anywhere that we desired, but to remember that this was a place of business, and this was a regular workday for them. Of course, where there’s BBQ, there’s fire.

And smoke!

Now this building was built sometime around 1890, and I believe that they have been smoking meats, as BBQ, for over 75 years. During that time, it appears that they have accumulated some very “interesting” items, such as this deer skull – and what appears to be an alligator skull on top…

Since I didn’t know what to expect before we went into the place, I had put my Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens on my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. That’s a versatile lens, but with those small aperture openings, it is considered a pretty “dark” lens. As a result, to get a proper exposure, I had to leave the shutter open for relatively long lengths of time – which required me to also use my little Gitzo GT1542T Traveler tripod.

I drifted back to what appeared to be the “real kitchen” where they will pull the BBQ out of the pits, and carve it up right there for your take-out orders.

Evidently, a lot of the other photographers also had the same idea….

That is Wyatt in the white shirt in the center of the photo above. He was mulling over where to get set-up to show us how he would light and photograph such a scene.

I decided to drift around the place on my own for a while and to check back in with Wyatt in a little bit.

One of the cooks had raised the lid on a pit with beef ribs and sausages inside. It was only 9:30 AM, and I was suddenly starting to think about lunch!

I wandered back out towards the hallway that lead to the front door.

From literally the very same spot that I took the photo above, I turned around, and here is what was directly behind me.

Back out in that front hallway, something about that stairway on the left was attracting my attention.

One of the workers said that we were welcome to go upstairs, if we wanted to. Of course! There was a large dining area with long wooden tables. I put myself next to the large windows (behind me), and shot into the room, which was lit by numerous lovely fluorescent lights. I left my camera’s white balance setting on Auto, and prayed…

Over by the door that was at the top of the stairs that we had come up, was this old scale. BBQ in Texas is usually sold “by the pound”, and not “by the sandwich”.

I headed back down to see what Wyatt was up to, and he had a pit master posing in front of his camera. I listened intently as Wyatt explained how he was going to use a remotely triggered flash in a small softbox to the left, and slightly behind his subject. I took this photo with only the ambient light – which was a large window behind me, and lots of fluorescent lights above us.

Now for the “gear heads” out there, here is something to study for a minute!

This is the tethered shooting set-up belonging to Taylor Jones of Texas Grip. (Be sure to click on that link after you finish with my story.) Note the image on the screen of that laptop. Obviously, Wyatt’s photo looks waaayyy better than mine! He must have been using a pretty wide angle lens, as he wasn’t very far away from the pit master, and you can see a lot below and above him…. including the fire at his feet.

I noticed that they had pulled up a brisket out of one of the pits, and were slicing it up for a customer’s order. Without any hesitation, I just walked up to the carving table and quickly snapped this photo.

Back to my spot near the window to watch Wyatt perform some more of his magic.

And here’s Frank going in for the kill.

Wyatt had noticed a wall just 7 or 8 feet (2.3 m) to my right that had a lot of light streaming onto it through the back door. Taylor Jones provided a “stand-in” while Wyatt got his lighting set-up the way that he wanted.

He had Jeff Stockton put a CTO gel inside a remotely triggered softbox in a hallway just to Taylor’s left. It made a very dramatic environmental portrait! (Since I had no way of triggering that remote flash, I simply cropped that hallway off of the left side of the photo above – it just appeared black in my photo.) Here is a “behind the scenes” (BTS) photo with Taylor, Wyatt, and Jeff evaluating the results of their efforts on Taylor’s tethering station.

I headed back toward the front cooking area, and this pit master was checking on the progress of his ribs. All of the light was pouring in through a door behind him, to my left.

I went back to the front hallway, and Wyatt had positioned this BBQ customer on a bench, and was about to conduct “class” on how to light this guy in a dramatic fashion.

Here Jeff is adjusting the position and power output of the flash in the small softbox, while Taylor and Wyatt monitor their progress.

Now, just to the right of the customer in the previous two photos, James was watching everything through the screen door to the small office.

James and the owner, Nina Schmidt, offered to take anyone who was interested on a private tour of the areas that most customers never see. Of course I was up for that!

We first went upstairs to the dining area that I previously showed with the long wooden tables. Wyatt noted the “beautifully weathered wall” that might make a great backdrop for some portraits. Here is a photo of Wyatt. Again, there was a large bank of windows to my right, with numerous fluorescent lights directly above. I was wishing that I had brought my collapsible round reflector to bounce some light back onto Wyatt from my left.

I know that shadows are good, but that is just a bit more than I normally like.

After that, the tour went up to the third floor, where a modern central heating and air conditioning unit had been installed. It was rather odd to see the duct work just running through the middle of walls in a room that still had an old claw foot bathtub in it! (There was much more duct work directly behind me.)

After that, the tour took us down 3 flights of stairs, down to the “basement”. I don’t know what this old piece of equipment is, but it looked much darker in that dimly lit basement. This was a 15 second exposure, lit by bare tungsten bulbs hanging from electrical cords!

I was tired of the long shutter opening times, and so I finally changed my lens to one with a much more appealing maximum aperture of f/1.4. Here, as I was changing my lens, I was talking to Frank, who seemed content to watch what I was doing. I asked if I could take his picture, and he seemed OK with that. Unfortunately, I had left my aperture setting on the camera to a rather “dark” f/5.6, so my handheld photo of Frank was very blurry. I instantly recognized my mistake, and pleaded with Frank for a “do over” (very unprofessional). I opened up the aperture on this Panasonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 lens to f/1.6, which let me take this handheld photo at 1/15th of a second (ISO was 200).

The light in the above photo was entirely from fluorescents, and it appears that Frank was pretty much centered between two of them.

OK, it was about 11:15 AM. Time to actually eat some of this great BBQ for lunch! Smitty’s brought us all of the brisket, ribs, and sausage that the 15 of us could eat. It was served on plain butcher paper, and the only eating utensils that we were given was a small plastic knife. You eat this kind of barbecue with your hands.

We enjoyed a half hour of pure BBQ heavenly bliss! We still had two more establishments to visit on this Lockhart BBQ Tour.

I hope that you will return a few days from now for Part 2 of my Lockhart BBQ Trip story. (It should be posted by Monday, Feb. 18th.) In that next post, we will visit Kreuz Market (pronounced “Krites”), and Black’s Barbecue.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Austin, Landscapes, Photography, Trees, Winter

Bare Trees

February 3, 2013 Gregg 4 Comments

It’s been a long winter here in Austin. We haven’t had any snow or ice, but we have had several mornings where the temperature has dipped well below the freezing mark. I guess what makes it seem so long to me is that I rarely get outside between mid-December and early February.

It’s not because we have cold winter temperatures here, but it is because of what the local Austinites know as “cedar fever“. It is during this time of year that some of our trees pollinate, and it causes many Austinites to suffer.

This is actually a misnamed phenomenon. It is not really a fever, and the trees that pollinate are not actually cedar trees, but rather a type of juniper tree. They are the trees that appear green year-round, and you can see they come right up to our backyard.

When I first moved to Austin in 1972, I was 17 years old. When I first heard about “cedar fever” I simply thought that these Texans were just a bunch of genetically deficient bunch of wimps. I arrogantly probably continued to think that for the next 14 or 15 years – until I also began to suffer from this allergy.

This year hasn’t been a particularly bad year for cedar fever, but I’m not one to go out and taunt Mother Nature.

Even though my blog post activities have dropped considerably, I have managed to stay pretty active with my photography. Last Thursday I took the day off of work to attend a Lightroom 4 seminar, where the presenter was Matt Kloskowski (one of Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Guys). Except for the January 9th rain, all of my photography has been indoors…

Now that the juniper trees are at the tail end of their pollinating season, it’s time to crawl out from the winter cave and enjoy the warm temperatures that have been prevailing here in Austin for the past month or so. It seems like every weekend in January, while the temperatures might have been very favorable, the constant gray clouds have pretty much killed any desires that I might have had to take a walk with my camera. It seems like all of the “pretty days” have been for me to observe from my office window, while I’ve been at work.

This is another view off of our patio. The bare tree on the right is a Bradford Pear tree. That is a fruitless variety, with magnificent white blossoms in the spring, and vibrant red leaves in the fall. As you can see, right now it is in “winter mode”, just like our yard grass.

From a photography compositional perspective, I like this next view looking to the northeast the best.

Here’s a view looking due north.

That giant willow tree in my neighbor’s back yard doesn’t seem to ever shed its dead leaves until the week right before it puts out the new ones in the spring. The photo above made the giant willow tree the center of attention, but I thought it had too much of the pretty blue sky, so I took this next one aimed a bit lower.

That photo seems to summarize the state of the trees in Austin right now. The trees are all bare, except for the green cedar (juniper) trees. At least those cedar trees are no longer heavily laden with their rust colored pollen!

The Super Bowl is going to start in about 3 hours. We haven’t turned our TV on yet, and we don’t want to until 30 minutes before the kick-off. There is only so much pre-game hype that I can tolerate. No, instead, I’m going to head outside and take my 3 mile fitness walk and enjoy the beautiful day that we have today in Austin. To hell with the cedar fever!

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Austin, Events, Music, Photography, Uncategorized

The Austin Lounge Lizards at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

January 20, 2013 Gregg 3 Comments

This blog post will be quite a bit different from my previous posts – and it might not stay up long. If asked to, I will remove the photos of the band, but I’ll just leave my story here in place.

Barb and I have a social group that consists of us and two other couples. We get together every 4 to 6 weeks and rotate whose house we have dinner and play table games at. That is, except during December. Everyone is always so busy during that month that we don’t want to add any extra burden on whose turn it would be. Instead, every year, for the past 6 years, we have met at a local restaurant for a meal and then afterwards we head over to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar and enjoy seeing a local Austin band perform in a rather intimate setting.

This year we met our friends at Threadgill’s Restaurant on Riverside Drive for brunch on Sunday morning, December 16, 2012. We were finished eating by 11:00 AM, so we drove the 2 blocks over to the Palmer Events Center, where the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar has been held for the last 3 or 4 years.

The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar is one of those things that helps “Keep Austin Weird“. It is a place where all sorts of artists come together to sell their wares to those who are shopping for different or unusual Christmas presents.

As a means to help draw in more shoppers, they have local musicians perform 2 or 3 times a day. The talent that they bring in is great!

In the past, we have seen some outstanding shows by Marcia Ball, Albert and Gage, Jimmie LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson, and one my very favorites – Ray Wylie Hubbard!

I have brought a camera to a couple of the shows in the past. I have some pretty good photos of Eliza Gilkyson (2010) and Ray Wylie Hubbard (2011) that I took using my Canon PowerShot G12. In 2009, I used my BlackBerry to get a few shots of Jimmie LaFave, but the image quality was pretty darn bad.

Eliza Gilkyson – December 2010

Ray Wylie Hubbard – December 2011

After buying my Olympus OM-D E-M5 this past May, I have been able to take what I consider a “nice camera” with me into places that I never would have attempted to take my Canon 5D or 5D Mark II into. Maybe you read my earlier posts about the Tour of Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Complex, my adventures at Ruidoso Downs and Grace O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and the Univ. of Texas vs. Wyoming football game. I am rather certain that I would not have been allowed to bring in a large DSLR camera into any of those places, and take the types of photos that I did manage to get with my little Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera.

In previous years, I never tried bringing in either my Canon 5D or Canon 5D Mark II into the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. I just didn’t believe that I would be allowed to bring it in. On the other hand, when I did bring in my Canon PowerShot G12, I made sure I had it hanging from the strap around my neck – and in plain sight. No one said anything at all about it – not as I entered the building, or when I used it during the show.

So it was with all of this in mind that this year I thought I would see if I would be allowed into the event with my Olympus camera hanging around my neck. If not, I would only have to walk a few hundred yards (meters) back to the car to hide the camera and then return to the Bazaar.

Now I knew that the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens wasn’t going to be very useful in this environment. I was going to need some lenses that would allow in much more light than that otherwise very useful zoom lens would. I put the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens onto the camera, and wrapped the Olympus 12mm f/2.0 and the Panasonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 lenses into some Tenba 10 inch square Messenger Wraps, and dropped them into Barb’s suitcase-sized purse.

As we entered the front door, I scanned the lobby for any “No Photography” signs, and didn’t see any. We purchased our two US$8.00 tickets, which I’m pretty sure the only words printed on them were “Admit One”. We walked all of 8 feet (< 3m) from the ticket counter to the person that we handed our ticket to. Everyone was very friendly, and nobody said anything about the camera hanging around my neck.

It was only a few minutes after 11:00 AM, and while the shopping was all open for business, the band wasn’t going to start until 12:00 noon. We headed straight for the area where the stage was. We were in luck, as nobody was sitting in any of the chairs yet. Barb went straight to the front row and claimed 6 chairs just to the right of the center isle!

The photo below was taken right at 11:30 AM, as the Austin Lounge Lizards were performing their sound check. I show you this photo just to get the “big picture” setting for where we were. Notice the person sitting on the left side of this photo with the orange cap? That chair on the front row, in front of his cap, is where I would be sitting for the show. Barb is the blonde in the front row, and those are our friends Diane and Stan sitting next to her. (Holly and Bryan had to head back to Threadgill’s where they had accidently left their credit card…)

The photo above was taken with the Panasonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 lens. I had the ISO cranked up to 1600, and had the aperture almost wide-open at f/1.8. I had the exposure compensation cranked down to – 2/3 stop. Even with all of that, the shutter was open for a relatively long 1/20th of a second. The 5-axis in-body image stabilization of this little Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera is incredible!

I went to the restroom, just to make sure I wouldn’t need to go later, during the show. On my way back, I stopped to talk to the person manning the sound controls. After a few moments, she walked off to take care of something. Even though the lighting was very dim, I thought the sound board looked pretty cool, so I snapped this photo.

1/20 second, f/2.8, ISO 1600 and the sliders in the lower left are due to the depth of field, not due to camera movement during the 1/20 second.

OK, now it’s show time! The next photo was taken with the Olympus 12mm lens and the aperture set to f/2.8. 1/50 second and ISO 1600. I was sitting in my chair, and I had the camera to my eye. The electronic viewfinder made it pretty easy to tell that I needed some negative exposure compensation to keep the black curtain background black. The 12mm lens could get all four musicians into the frame of the photo, but I could tell right away that it wasn’t going to get in close enough for some really interesting photos….

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

The Austin Lounge Lizards are a very talented band! They have been around for quite some time, and have gone through a few personnel changes. The current members, from left to right, are: Conrad Deisler (guitar and mandolin), Bruce Jones (bass guitar), Hank Card (rhythm guitar), and Darcie Deaville (fiddle and mandolin). They play some very lively songs that always contain funny lyrics or satirical views. Every song makes you smile – big – and most of them actually cause you to laugh!

During the “sound check” photo that I showed earlier, they were playing a song that explained what was the cause of the sorry state of the American economy today. That song is entitled “Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs”. Yep, I think that pretty well set the tone for the rest of the show!

After you finish reading the rest of my post, you really should go check out their web site by clicking here, and then clicking on the “Listen” link right above their group photo (but don’t select “Lyrics” under “Listen” – just click on “Listen”). Scroll down to just the 2nd song (highlighted in purple) and you can listen to “Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs”. That’s pretty representative of the type of energy that they produced on stage – just a few feet in front of us!

While you are there, be sure to check out the songs “Old Blevins”, “Stupid Texas Song”, and even “Shallow End of the Gene Pool”. Great music with funny lyrics!

OK, so enough of my ramblings… Let me show you some of the photos that I took. Remember this, though. I never stood up, I remained in my chair, and I didn’t dare use a flash! I put on the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens, set the ISO on the camera to 1600, and took a photo of each member of the band.

Darcie Deaville on fiddle – 45mm, f/2.0, 1/60 second, ISO 1600

I left the White Balance setting on the camera at Auto. They all came out very close to the Tungsten setting in Lightroom, so I took the average of all the temperature and tint values, and set every photo in this series to the same values (temp = 2750, tint = +5).

Bruce Jones on bass – 45mm, f/3.2, 1/80 second, ISO 1600

I set the auto focus point to be the area dead-center in the middle of the frame. I would aim the center of the view finder (the frame) right at the musician’s eye, push the shutter button down halfway (which would lock the focus and set the exposure), then move where the camera was pointed to that would give me a more pleasing composition (i.e. not having their face always being in the center of the photo).

Conrad Deisler on guitar – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/60 second, ISO 1600

I left the metering mode set to what Olympus calls “Digital ESP metering”, which is the same as what Canon calls “Evaluative” metering, and Nikon calls “Matrix” metering. That got me close to a “correct” exposure when I had pushed the shutter button halfway (to set the focus). From there I used the extremely useful “Highlight & Shadow Display” mode of the electronic view finder (EVF) to tell me how much exposure compensation to use to “fine tune” the exposure.

Hank Card on guitar – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/125 second, ISO 1600

On all four of the previous photos, I had dialed in -2/3 stop of exposure compensation, to keep the blacks in the background very near black. (I didn’t know it at the time, but I would later add back between +1/3 and +1/2 stop of exposure during post processing in Lightroom 4.3.)

What I did realize though, was that I was getting a faster shutter speed than I was expecting. I could drop my ISO to a lower sensitivity setting, which would result in less noise in the image, but it would also mean that I would be using a slower shutter speed. I have shot enough with this camera to know that the image stabilization would allow me to do that. I would just have to time my shots to the moments when the musicians wouldn’t be moving quickly – or that movement would be blurry in the photo.

OK, so I dropped the ISO sensitivity from 1600 to 1000, and opened the aperture as far as I could, which is f/1.8 for the 45mm lens. After reviewing the photos later on my computer, I was really glad that I had changed the ISO to a lower setting. When viewing the images at 100% magnification on my 24″ monitor, the amount of graininess is much less, especially in the facial skin areas of the musicians. You probably cannot see the difference by viewing the small, highly compressed images here on my blog post, but the difference is certainly noticeable when viewed “large” (on my monitor and on 19″ prints).

Hank Card on guitar – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/80 second, ISO 1000

Bio from their web site: Hank is one of the founding Lizards. He grew up in Oklahoma City, went to Princeton, where he met Conrad Deisler, and graduated from The University of Texas School of Law. Hank is one of the main songwriters of the Lizards.

Darcie Deaville on mandolin – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/50 second, ISO 1000

Bio from their web site: Starting at 16 as a street performer in Toronto, Darcie Deaville is an accomplished actor, singer, writer, producer, musical director and coach. She’s collaborated with artists including Ani Di Franco, Tom Paxton, Ray Wylie Hubbard, John McEuen, David Lindley, and Eliza Gilkyson. Darcie’s toured from the Yukon to the Yucatan and throughout Europe.

Darcie Deaville on fiddle – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/40 second, ISO 1000

Now you can clearly see the motion blur in the photo above, and it gives you a real sense of just how smoking hot of a fiddle player that Darcie is!

OK, that gets us to intermission, where I put the 12mm f/2.0 lens back on.12mm, f/3.2, 1/15, ISO 1000

I agreed with my previous assessment that even though I was very close to the stage, it was just too wide angle of a lens for this situation. I later learned something very valuable about this lens when I had this photo up on my computer monitor. Nothing in that photo is very sharp. It is supposed to be a very sharp lens. The depth of field on a wide angle lens usually extends from just a few feet away, all the way out to infinity. The aperture was set to f/3.2, which should give the equivalent depth of field that a 24mm lens set to f/6.4 on a full frame sensor camera would.

It should, but it wasn’t. What I later learned, by reading a review of this lens by Ming Thein, was that this particular model of lens has a ring around the barrel that you move back and forth to change from auto focus to manual focus mode. As you are putting this lens onto the camera, it is very easy to move that ring back towards the camera, which puts it into manual focus mode. That’s what happened, and I didn’t realize it until after I was at home.

Still during intermission, I changed back to the Panasonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 lens.

25mm, f/2.0, 1/40, ISO 1000

I then wandered to the back row of the seating, and waited patiently in the small line to purchase CD and other souvenirs of the band. While I was standing there, I took this photo, looking back into the shopping Bazaar. You can see just how big of a place that we were in.

25mm, f/2.5, 1/25, ISO 1000

I bought two of the Austin Lounge Lizards’ CDs: Small Minds (1995) and Employee of the Month (1998). I’ve listened to them both several times now, as still enjoy them very much. I played them in the car when we went to Barb’s sister’s house the weekend after Christmas, and Barb quickly recognized the songs that we had heard them play live, just two weeks before hand. The lyrics just make you laugh out loud at times!

OK, intermission is now over, and the band is back on stage! With the 25mm lens, the field of view was now wide enough to get two musicians into the frame, so I took a few photos of the musicians in pairs.

First to my right….

Hank Card and Darcie Deaville – 25mm, f/1.6, 1/60, ISO 1000

And then to my left.

Conrad Deisler and Bruce Jones – 25mm, f/1.8, 1/50, ISO 1000

I was pretty sure that I had at least a few good “keepers” by now, but just for good measure I put the 45mm lens back on and occasionally took a shot when things seemed to get “interesting”.

Conrad Deisler on mandolin – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/50 second, ISO 1000

Bio from their web site: Another founding Lizard, Deisler has been monkeying around with music and electronics since the first grade. One of his earliest memories involves singing along with his mother’s Electrolux vacuum cleaner. His first paying gig came in eighth grade. In 1974, he woke up at the Union Grove Fiddlers’ Convention in North Carolina. Since then, he has been devoted to bluegrass and (real) country music. Influences include George Jones and Spike Jones, Frank Zappa and John Hartford, and Bela Bartok and Emmylou Harris.

Conrad Deisler in ski mask and on guitar – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/60 second, ISO 1000

The Austin Lounge Lizards really have some unique entertaining talents!

Bruce Jones on bass guitar – 45mm, f/1.8, 1/125 second, ISO 1000

Bio from their web site: The newest Lizard is Bruce Jones, a Texas Songwriter who spent 16 years playing bass with Omar and the Howlers. This involved a lot of bad behavior, close calls and lucky breaks, including an album on CBS records and tours around North America and Europe with artists including Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Johnny Winter. In 2004, he released his first album of original songs, including “Fight Like a Girl,” which won Second Place in the Austin Songwriter’s Group Songwriting Contest in the “Rock” category. In 2008 he released another album of original songs called “Rough Tough Game”.

Lastly, this next photo with Bruce Jones really “getting down”, is one of my favorites of the whole bunch. I suppose that I could have cropped out Conrad and Hank, but in the end I chose not to do that.

Bruce Jones on bass guitar – 45mm, f/1.4, 1/100 second, ISO 1000

Man, Bruce has played with some GREAT Austin bands. Omar and the Howlers, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Wow! I have at least 2 CDs from each of these three artists.

This post has taken me quite a while to put together. I went to the Austin Lounge Lizards web site and obtained their email addresses to contact them. On January 3rd, I sent a message requesting their permission to post these photos on my blog. After I didn’t get any response from them, I sent a follow-up message on January 7th. I never got a response to that request either. After another week, I had changed my thinking to “well, they didn’t say yes, but they certainly didn’t say no, either”. If I am ever contacted by the Austin Lounge Lizards asking me to remove their photos, I will do so without any hesitation. If you have read this far and you do not see the photos that I referred to in my blog post, now you know why you don’t see them!

I certainly hope that the photos stay. We really enjoyed the show, I continue to enjoy the CDs that I bought, and I hope that others that see this blog will someday go to an Austin Lounge Lizards concert. I am sure that you will enjoy the show as much as we did!

Thank you for visiting my blog.

Gregg Mack Photography

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