One of the things that people, who presumably know better or more than I, have always said to me is, "You have to have a place to work," if you indeed have any worthwhile work to do.

Photography falls very much into that category, and a while back, Cindy and I put the precept to work, setting up a place in our basement to do photography related tasks, fiddle on our computers, and store photographic equipment.  You will note that so far, at least, I have not offered photography instruction or advice on this site, as I consider that I myself remain a learner and probably always will be.  That state of being notwithstanding, I think we did a pretty good job of setting up our photo and computer work room and am passing along the result on the chance that one or more of you who read these words will find the information useful.

When I lived here by myself, staking out a particular area for one activity or another was not much of a task.  I just dropped my stuff wherever I figured it would be handy and moved on.  But when Cindy and I married and began to share the property...each of us having previously lived by ourselves in a family home...we really did have to make some adjustments, accommodations, and compromises.  As easy as that was to do for something we both wanted so much, each of us did give generously of our former possessions to the Salvation Army and Goodwill.  Once we took up joint residency, it was time to take the camera gear out of the wet bar cabinet, stop leaving lenses, flashes, and other accouterments laying around on the kitchen counter, storing camera gear bags in the pantry, and to get organized.

So we did.  I first had Contemporary Woods Furniture build a couple of oak bookcases and then, subsequently, had them build an additional one just for loose equipment like flashes, tri-pods, remote shutter triggers, etc. I "built" Cindy and myself each a desk out of a door, stained to mostly match the bookcases, and two inexpensive two-drawer file cabinets. Nothing fancy, but they offer an ample work surface and are the perfect height for working at a computer keyboard, plus, the drawers offer additional storage. We also moved downstairs a couple of pressboard bookcases from each of our houses to hold a major portion of what turned out to be a pretty considerable joint library of books, movie DVDs and music CDs. Later, I fashioned the photo rail so that we can put up and take down pictures without each time pounding a nail in the off-white painted -(formerly "pecan") - paneling.

And that's pretty much it, except for one particular touch, which has turned out to be super useful and of which I'm kind of proud.  With day-in-day-out access to the kitchen counters out of the picture, I needed a place where I could set out my gear, select the particular pieces of equipment I wanted to accompany me on a photography outing, clean lenses, work on items requiring maintenance or assembly, etc., and do so standing at a comfortable working height...especially important to a guy with a gimpy back.  So, I returned to Contemporary Woods (they like me down there) and had them custom build a 3x6 oak table to match the other furniture, but at kitchen counter height. It's a pedestal table, so they could take it apart to get it down here, or maybe one day, to take it out.  And it's great.  Very useful and used constantly.  I really don't know just what I'd do without it.

So that's the deal.  Both Cindy and I truly enjoy the room and especially like to dither away a winter Sunday afternoon in it just enjoying each other's company and doing things that aren't especially important...at least to anyone else...but satisfying and fun to both of us.

That, in fact, is the best part.

My late friend, Everett Phillips, had that slogan, along with an attractive pinup, painted on the nose of his P-38 photo recon plane, which he flew throughout the European Theater in WW II.  When I searched my mind for a title for this blog entry – which is actually a product endorsement – it came immediately to mind.

 

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog, if indeed there are any of you out there, know that Cindy and I are traveling to Alaska this summer where we will, among other things, photograph the Alaskan Coastal Brown Bear.  From the time this decision was taken, I’ve known that I have all the camera gear and more than I’ll need for that trip.  What I did not know was just how I would be getting it there.  Traveling with photo gear is a balancing act.  You want a carryon bag or pack that will just fit in the overhead of any aircraft you are likely to fly on but not so big that they’ll try to take it away from you at the gate.  That simply can’t happen.  You can not turn several thousand dollars worth of camera bodies, lenses and accessories over to the tender mercies of the airline baggage handlers.

 

So I went looking for something that would accommodate a big telephoto, two bodies, three additional lenses, a speedlight, teleconverters, lens cleaners, filters, etc.  My tripod I’ll carry in the biggest roller bag I have, which I’ll check.  AND, the carryon has to fit in the overhead storage of the regional jet we’ll be taking on the first leg of the trip.  I went at this project pretty deliberately and checked the dimensions and considered the features of several possibilities, measuring them against the published airline maximums.

 

Having gone through this process, I ultimately settled on the “Think Tank Airport Addicted” backpack, which sells for a little more than three hundred dollars.  It arrived today, and I’m absolutely delighted with it.  It is extremely well made, intelligently laid out, and comes with all kinds of useful information regarding such things as the slickest way to pack your gear in order to walk it efficiently through airport security and make sure it goes in the cabin with you.  It has a detachable computer compartment, which does have to be detached for it to meet the international dimension requirements, but again, my notebook – which I use as a photo safe on location - is small enough and rugged enough to go in my roller bag stowed in its neoprene case and padded with clothing.  There is a cable which can be used to lock the bag up, and I intend to get a TSA padlock for it, if I don’t discover one packed with the bag.  I think it will be as close to perfect as perfect gets.

 

Of course, that still leaves the possibility of a flight attendant meeting me at the door of the junior jet and telling me the bag has to be checked.  But like Toby Keith says, “We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”  I’ll courteously but firmly ask to demonstrate that it will indeed fit in the overhead, and I’ve reserved our seating on the regional jets to make certain we’re among the first to board, so there should be space available.

 

Of course, what I’d like to do in that situation is to have a screaming fit, but then I don’t think that either I or the Airport Addicted would get to Alaska!

Saturday I again this year attended the second day of Photograph Nebraska, a two-day photography workshop held in Hastings, Nebraska.  Only it was more fun this year, as Cindy attended with me.  Somehow, she always seems to bring the entertainment, and I love it!

 

We heard interesting and useful presentations by NEBRASKAland Magazine Associate Editor, Jeff Kurrus, Lincoln’s Randy Hampton, the Omaha World-Herald’s Alyssa Shukar, and this year’s featured presenter, Joel Sartore.  Where last year’s event was held at the country club in Hastings, this year it took place at the Hastings Museum, which also houses the Imax theater, although I understand that facility is no longer an Imax designee.

 

Whatever, the advantages of co-locating the workshop with the Imax were obvious before Saturday’s program ever kicked off.  After having signed in, Cindy and I joined others in the theater, which was running a slide show of images.  All of a sudden, there was “The Kid” displayed 25’ by 30’!  I’d actually forgotten that we had submitted that photo (or rather Julie submitted it for me) when I registered for the workshop, so it was quite a jolt to see that picture that size…something that every aspiring photographer should get to experience.

 

The kickoff speaker…in the Imax…for Saturday was Alyssa Shukar, the very able young shooter for the Omaha World-Herald, who recently spent (if I recall correctly) some three weeks with Nebraska and Iowa soldiers in Afghanistan.  Listening to this young woman and seeing her work displayed Imax size were a real treat.  One of her photos displayed the equipment she carried around Afghanistan on her back, along with her clothing and personal items, and body armor.  It was pretty impressive.  She noted that she prepared for the trip by taking a UNO course on Afghanistan and also taking up weight lifting in order to cope with the physical demands of being embedded with the military in a war zone.  I visited with her briefly after her presentation and observed for her that her picture should appear in the dictionary to illustrate “plucky.”

 

From Jeff Kurrus, I got some helpful ideas on what NEBRASKAland is looking for in terms of both words and copy.  Jeff has recently authored a children’s book…illustrated by the photographs of Michael Forsberg…on Sandhill Cranes.  He discussed just how you get from a photo project to a published book.

 

Randy Hampton, as always, was totally engaging and almost paradigmatically informative.  I told Randy that we have to find a way to franchise him and go worldwide.  His rather dry humor together with the solid and practical information he combines it with really hold your interest.  I’ve lost count of the number of Randy’s workshops I’ve attended, but every time, I come away with something to put to use right away in my own photography.  Cindy has observed that I also always come away with my eye on some piece of gear Randy has exposed me to, and this time was no exception.  I’ve long salivated over the Pocket Wizard remote flash triggers but have been put off by their cost.  Well guess what?  At this presentation, Randy identified a similar product available at a fraction of the cost of the Pocket Wizard.  Even though I don’t do that much flash photography, I don’t think I’ll be able to get by much longer without this bit of technology.

 

And Sartore.  I’ve wanted to meet and hear from him for maybe five years, and finally the chance presented itself.  He also showed his stuff on the Imax screen, and even this photography veteran and world traveler enjoyed seeing his photos at King Kong size.  Suffice it so say that Joel Sartore lives a life that I have trouble imagining.  He’s gone from home maybe six months a year and travels to the remotest corners of the world, shooting thousands of photos of subjects most of us can only dream of.  The chief hazards of his career seem to be the exotic ailments that can be picked up in the places he journeys to for Nat Geo.  He showed us pictures of an expedition to photograph bats in their cave in some remote corner of Africa, where he was hit in the eye by flying bat fecal matter.  While that may sound like a pie-in-the-face bit, some eight to ten percent of folks exposed to the disease harbored by these particular bats, in this particular cave, die, and Sartore was immediately sent home to see if he would be one of them.  He survived but has not been back to that cave and those bats again, and who could blame him?

 

At the end of the day, the thing that I find most intriguing about folks like Randy, Shukar, Sartore, or Michael Forsberg, for example, is how they manage to sustain a passion for something like photography for an entire lifetime.  None of those guys have ever really done anything else other than the normal marry, buy a home, raise a family, etc.  I kind of drift in and out of things without ever going head over heels for a particular interest of activity or ever quite giving it up entirely.  Things like hunting, cycling, photography, mountain climbing, and flying have all at one time or another been a major interest in life.  I cool on them but never totally walk away from them, and most of them have come around again at least once, if not two or three times.

 

But people like the ones I got to see and hear in Hastings this past weekend, somehow manage to maintain their original focus on an undertaking…photography in this case…right on through their adult lifetimes. And it’s that kind of dedication and commitment that makes them the sort of individuals the rest of us go to for inspiration, information, and example.  Thank you Photograph Nebraska for the opportunity to share some time with some of the outstanding picture-takers in the Cornhusker State.

A big part of the fun of any big trip is the planning and preparation.  And in the case of this jaunt north to explore Alaska and photograph grizzlies, I absolutely have to (tsk-tsk) carefully review the gear I will be taking with me to make sure it’s appropriate.

 

Last week, I ordered LensCoats for both my 200-400mm and 600mm Nikon telephotos, even though I’ve decided not to take the 600mm.  This is actually something I should have done when I acquired each lens, as the neoprene LensCoats do offer protection against cosmetic damage during transport or use.  It will be important for the Alaska trip because, after a lot of careful (really) research, I’ve decided to buy Moose Peterson’s MB-3 photo backpack.  Moose himself warns prospective purchasers of this item that it does not have a lot of “excess padding.”

 

Nevertheless, I’ve opted for this medium size bag over the larger MB-1 because we will be flying from Omaha to Minneapolis in a regional jet and will be using bush planes for transportation from Anchorage to Lake Clark and Katmai National Parks for the bear photography portion of the trip.  Though Moose swears he’s never had an airline refuse to allow him to carryon the MB-1 for cabin baggage, with my luck, I’m just liable to be the exception that makes the rule.  However, I absolutely, positively know that I can carry the MB-3 on the small airplanes, and not lugging along both of the big heavy telephoto lenses will make for a much pleasanter trip as well.

 

Plus, the 200-400mm…especially as I will be bringing along my 1.4 and 2.0 teleconverters…will be more than adequate for the kind of bear viewing we’ll be undertaking.  In Alaska, the way you photograph bears is to go to a place where they are known to congregate and wait for them to show up.  In this case, that will be where they’ll be catching fish in the annual salmon run, where they will be too busy and in fact, too habituated to worry about some camera toting tourists.  Doing it this way is far more productive in getting to see bears and a heck of a lot safer than just going out and walking around in bear country.  While grizzlies are not out looking for people to chase down and eat, they are also quite unpredictable and can run faster than a horse.  Years ago, I walked up on a cub grizzly in the Tetons.  Like they do most of the time, this bear ran away, and I could not have believed how fast he ran without having seen it.  Anyone who tells you they were charged by a bear and ran away and climbed a tree could also go to hell for lying.

 

Finally, it rains a lot in Alaska, even in July, so I ordered a rain cover that will mostly protect a camera with a big lens on it while still allowing me to go on shooting photos when things get wet.  I have to confess that, as much time as I’ve spent banging around in the outdoors over the years, I’m really not very hardy when it comes to climatic conditions.  I absolutely hate to be cold, and there are few things I enjoy so much that I can even have fun doing them in the rain.  Actually, none at all, come to think of it.

 

However, after traveling several thousand miles and spending several thousand dollars to take pictures of bears, I’ll not be letting a little shower get in the way…at least not this time.

Cindy and I did have an extended discussion on what to do with "Summer 2012" and after re-visiting the Africa idea, as well as considering a rambling run to the left coast,  we wound up right where we began, heading to Alaska next July.

That was the easy part, just like taking an airplane off.  The hard part is what comes next...a landing you can walk away from and/or making all the arrangements for a trip that will involve transportation by airline, bush plane, and train, as well as lodging in four different venues.  And, the first of February isn't getting stared any too early to nail down stuff in Alaska in July.

We'll be both going and coming home on American Airlines out of Omaha, and I was fortunate to get flights both ways that depart and arrive on the same day (due to the distance and time difference, traveling from one day into the next is not uncommon when going to Alaska).  Because we'll get to Anchorage early evening of the day we leave Omaha, we are actually going to take two one-day trips to view and photograph bears.  Ironically, it's actually less expensive to take two day-trips than to stay overnight at one of the "bear" lodges.  IF you can get in, that can run eight or nine hundred dollars per person per night.  Sooo, we are going to world famous Brooks Falls, in Katmai National Park the first day and to Silver Salmon Creek, in Lake Clark National Park, the second day.  That also means that if we get weathered out one of those days, we'll still get to see bears on the other one...unless of course, we get weathered out both days (but that's not going to happen).

Another advantage to going out and back each day is that we don't have to take overnight luggage, the size and weight of which has to be limited in a small aircraft.  That will allow me to take and check with the airline my bigger roller bag, while carrying on my photo equipment back pack - which will fit in the overhead of even the smallest regional jets - while I stuff the roller bag with clothes and some not-so-fragile photo equipment that my backpack won't accommodate.

After the two "bear" days, we will take the Alaska Railroad up to Denali, where we'll spend two nights in a cabin near the entrance to Denali National Park.  There's no private motor vehicle traffic in the Park, so we are taking a full-day escorted tour of it, leaving the cabin at 6:15 a.m. and returning about that time in the evening.  It works because in the summer the days are so long up there.

After Denali, we'll take the train on up to Fairbanks, where we'll spend two nights and one day, and then train back to Anchorage the following day.  Sadly, the next day we'll climb on an airplane early in the morning to get back to Omaha late that night.

Expect to see some Alaskan Coastal Brown Bears pictured on this site, beginning early August.

 

I'm not sure what big trip Cindy and I should take next summer, if we should take one at all.  Since my mid-twenties, I've wanted to visit Africa - which to me has always pretty much meant Kenya.  But I've never been in a position to do it, or at least that's what I've thought.  We were going to do it last summer, but what with marrying Cindy - something way, way more important than a trip to anywhere - and the inherent selling and buying of houses and re-configuring of living arrangements, etc. - it just wasn't the year.

And this is not the year for Kenya in that it's election year there, and to celebrate elections, they usually come close to an all-out civil war.  It's a country still pretty much ruled by tribal politics, and the tribe that loses the elections takes up arms, or at least they did for the last election, killing thousands of innocent citizens.

That being the case, we have more-or-less decided this is the year for Alaska, where in addition to just seeing and experiencing the place, I want to photograph the Alaskan Coastal Brown Bear.  But lately it's dawned on me that the expected unpleasantness in Kenya does not have to preclude travel in Tanzania to observe and photograph the great East African game migrations.  Or at least I don't think so without checking the State Department travel advisories.

So that's where I am, but it occurs to me that Michael Forsberg and Moose Peterson - my two greatest photographer heroes - have spent careers making stunning photos without ever having gone to Africa.  They've mostly shot what they've found around them, in various parts of the West, bringing a kind of focus to their work that eludes many other photographers.  Heck, Cindy and I love travel by auto, and I know we'd be as happy as clams to load up the Pilot and take a couple of weeks to roam around the Western U.S., heading out to the Tetons, up through Yellowstone, on to Glacier, maybe even Banff, and then over to the west coast and down to Yosemite, before turning for home through Bryce or Moab.

Even though summer is a ways off, and I've got a session of the Legislature to get through, trips to Alaska and Africa have to be reserved well in advance to get to where you want to go and do what you want to do.

I'd better talk this over with Cindy, and fairly soon.

I’ve been looking around for a used Nikon D3, mainly on ebay and Amazon.com.  I’d managed to convince myself that, when I carry two DSLR’s – which I frequently do at the sprint car races and other action events – having to switch back and forth between the control systems on my D3s and the D700 is unhandy and a hang up.  (Yeah, I know, but any old excuse to buy yet another camera, right?)

 

I bid on a couple on ebay, but on each of them, the price seemed to jump way out of reason right at the last second of the last minute of the auction.  I wanted a cream puff, and they were selling not much more than a thousand dollars cheaper than a new D3s.  I finally just gave up on the idea for a few days.  But then I found myself once again slipping over to the ebay site just to see what was going on.  On this second “just browsing” tour, I limited myself to cameras that were clearly in mint condition with low shutter actuations, and available on a “Buy it Now” basis.  The heck with the bidding wars.

 

The other evening, Cindy and I were downstairs in the “computer/photo lab” mousing around on our respective machines (her laptop, my desktop) and there it was.  A truly mint D3 with 17k shutter actuations…the camera equivalent of a cleaner-than-a-whistle, 7,000 mile used car.  And, it was priced right…just a little over half of the cost new.  I visited with Cindy about it, slept on it, and the following afternoon, hit the B.I.N. button.  A few minutes later, the seller phoned me just to make sure I was legit.  We had a pleasant conversation, and he said he’d ship it right out to me.  I assumed I’d see it some time next week and then walked into my office after lunch on Thursday, and there it was, sitting on my couch!

 

I un-packed it kind of holding my breath, but it is absolutely as advertised.  It and the accessories were packed in each and every little plastic bag that came with them the day of original purchase, and it is in simply perfect condition, obviously having had wonderful care.  And the guy who sold it is an excellent photographer!  I could tell, because when I went through the menu, entering my personal preferences to maybe fifty items, I changed his own settings only a couple of times.  I told Cindy that I’m sorry I won’t ever really know the seller because I think we’d have a lot to talk about. 

Thanks, Michael.  I called and left you a voice mail thanking you for taking such great care of and selling me the camera, and also participating with me in a neat little adventure that I won’t forget.

 

I'm adding a couple of new photos to the website: "Kids on the Rocks" and "South Arapaho Peak."  

The "Kids" photo is pretty much self-explanatory.  A couple of summers ago, I was privileged to spend three days with Weldon Lee - one of this country's outstanding wildlife photographers - on a high country photo safari.  I took literally hundreds of shots of mountain goats.  They really don't seem to have much fear of humans and will allow us to approach remarkably close to them so long as you don't invade their personal space or do something as stupid as try to touch them.  [Saw a kid almost get butted in the ass for that, and he deserved it] The young goats, the other kids, were of course a special treat.  They never get too far from their mothers but nevertheless will wander around in groups of three or four, almost constantly in physical contact with one another and gambolling about.  Goat adolescents.

 

I hope you like this photo.  I myself can't look at it without smiling.

 

I can't look at the photo of Colorado's South Arapaho Peak without a smile either, but for quite a different reason.  The picture was shot in April of 2008 from the Peak to Peak Highway.  I don't think the photo is any world beater, and will be quite surprised if anyone ever buys a print of it.

 

But it will always be an important mountain to me.  See, I climbed that sucker...all 13,500 feet of it...on August 9, 1974.  If that date seems to ring a bell, it was on that day that Richard M. Nixon became the only U.S. President ever to resign the office.  And because of the significance of that date to the world at large, almost forty years later, I can still tell you the exact day I stood on the snow shrouded peak distant in that photo.

 

South Arapaho, at 13,500 feet, misses being a "fourteener" by 500 feet, but don't let anybody tell you it's not a long way up there.  Because you need to be off the summit by, say, 1:00 p.m. to avoid the afternoon thunderstorm build-up and accompanying lightning strikes, it's a good idea to be on the trail shortly after daylight.  As I remember, this mountain took some five hours to climb and three hours to descend.  On the top, there is a round bronze plate, set in stone, that has the line of sight and distance to other mountains as far away as Pike's Peak, which is clearly visible.  There's also a tablet in a metal canister sunk in the stone, where you can write your name and make an inane comment if you wish.  I wrote, "It was a long climb up, but the view is worth every step."  Profound, huh?

 

I was a young man in August of 1974, but it's been some time since I have been able to claim that status.  In subsequent years, I tried Long's Peak and got up to the boulder field before being weathered off the mountain by a summer snow/hail storm.  I still dream of standing atop Long's but most likely that's all it will ever be now.  Along with August 9, 1974, a remembrance and a dream of a man no longer young.

I've posted a couple of photos of Cardinals and probably need to do some explaining about one of them.  Nature photographers are not ever supposed to exhibit a picture that has a bird feeder in it.  At the same time, it's darned hard to just go out walking around, shooting arresting photos of birds when and if you happen to see one.  It's both easier and better to rely on a facet of bird behavior that many folks are probably not aware of.  It's this: birds, when coming to feed, will almost always perch for a bit on a tree or something higher than the food location.  They like to fly down to feed after briefly surveying the area for predators, etc.

A trick many bird photographers use is to construct a perch, higher than and near the feeder and typically made from a bare tree limb or branch.  I tried this myself, but there are over twenty trees in my backyard, every one of them standing a lot taller that my bird feeders.  Accordingly, the birds cheerfully ignored my branch-perch and continued to do what they probably always have done in my yard...perch on a "real" tree limb and then fly down to feed.

I know all of this and yet have chosen to include in the photos on this website one picture where both pictured birds were obviously perched on a feeder.  I did this because the photo in question shows some bird behavior that until recently, I've been quite unaware of.  What I'm talking about is the fact that Cardinals build a nest and tend to raising youngsters as a couple.  The male Cardinal (and the female as well) bring food to the baby birds both in the nest and after they fledge.  I didn't know that until I saw a dad Cardinal actually exhibiting this behavior, feeding safflower seeds to a Cardinal youngster, both of them perched on one of my feeders.

I was so struck by this that I did a little looking in one of my bird books and confirmed what I had witnessed.  I've always thought that male Cardinals were, if anything, kind of cocky and self absorbed, probably led to that conclusion by both their appearance and mannerisms.  But it turns out that this colorful and raucous guy is a liberated male, working together as a team with his mate to provide for their off-spring.

That may be extra meaningful to me because my parents both worked when I was growing up, and as I remember it, my Dad really did shoulder an equal share of the household load, though he - and the rest of us - drew the line at cooking.  And if I had a dollar for every diaper I changed and bottle I fed when Kristi was little, well, I'm sure I could finance a get-away weekend in New York, or at least Chicago.  Well, maybe Omaha.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

Whenever a person compliments me on a particular photo, I’ll often respond with a self-effacing, “It isn’t me; it’s the equipment.”

But really, it isn’t the equipment, and in contrast to some other photographers’ websites, you won’t find a link here entitled, “my equipment” or “what’s in the bag” etc.  That’s because, in truth, that stuff isn’t really that important.

Almost every photographer has been asked by some one admiring his or her work, “What kind of camera do you use?”  It’s a legitimate question from an individual contemplating a camera purchase and wanting to compare results by brand.  On the other hand, if they are thinking that by duplicating an excellent photographer’s equipment, they’ll also be excellent – forget it.  Doesn’t work that way.

The truth is that any of the quality cameras on the market, in these days of computer-aided design, will take a good picture if aimed and operated correctly.  Nobody ever asks a successful writer what kind of word processor they use.

True, there is an equipment fetish that goes with serious photography, and I plead totally guilty to being a worshipper.  But I hope I’m honest enough to admit that I breathlessly await each of Nikon’s new offerings simply because that new gear is so cool, elegant, and even smells good; not because I truly believe the new stuff will make me a better photographer.  Depending on what you seek to accomplish photographically, there are certain pieces of gear you want to have in your inventory.  When I decided I wanted to seriously pursue wildlife photography, I sold a pretty nice pickup to finance an upgrade of my camera body as well as the acquisition of a 500mm f.4 telephoto lens.  That’s because you can wait forever for the deer and the antelope…especially the antelope…to come to you.  But, if you want effective pictures of most wildlife, you have to be prepared to optically reach way, way out and touch them.  And that does take some specialized equipment, but the brand of that equipment is of little to no consequence.

That said, the best camera is always going to be the one you have with you when an engaging photo presents itself.  As the saying goes, “The important thing is f.8 and be there.”