Field notes and late night rambing

Picture a window

I'm not sure where there idea hit me but I've been glad that I went with it. Since I love to photograph things in a layered manner it often bothers me that I have to deal with things that are very 2 dimensional looking. I often think that it would be cool to be able to peer through something to get to the subject. But in studio-esque situations which are actually on location that often is either in abundance or non existent. Even if you have things to shoot through it may not give any context to the photo. Rather it may be cool but what else? Well how about maybe giving some context or a particular feel to the image?

About 4 years ago the idea hit me to go to the hardware store an buy a sheet of plexiglass for this shoot I was going to do about a guy who runs a company that does new ideas in marketing. After talking to him on the phone it was apparent that his office is a boring set of cubes and that turning it into something interesting would be a challenge. The surrounding area, like taking him to the park et al, didn't make much sense and certainly wouldn't explain anything about him or the story which was about the idea of narrow casting your marketing message. I show to his office and it was, well, a plain office space with a lot of bicycles in it. So I whip out my sheet of plexi and have him diagram out a most basic idea of what the whole thing is about while I start setting up my stuff. I mount the plexi on two stands with clamps and have him get behind it with his pen to go "John Madden" as if he's drawing out the thing in real time. It finally looked like this:

 

One soft box to camera left and one at right dialed back as fill with a third bearing a blue gel to turn the boring white wall something more interesting. The trick was that plexi is very reflective and it showed everything behind me. I had to do a lot of gyrations of angling the plexi, the camera and blocking highlights to make it look clean. But for my first time doing this it worked out pretty well and I learned how to do it better for the next time. The diagram was like this.

I've kept that sheet of plexi and have only pulled it out a few times because there just isn't that great a need for it. But when I can I do. I was commissioned to shoot a portrait of a woman, ok it was actually my wife no joke, who wrote an article about a particularly difficult time in her life and how she got through it. I wanted something moody but wasn't depressing looking. I wanted her to be strong while obviously in a difficult situation. Or something like that. I know that her wearing a silly hat was out of the question.

Since I don't have a studio I put this together in my office.

I made a 1/2 mix of water and glycerin in a spray bottle to make rain drops that would stay put. It a rainy evening ya know! I used a black muslin for the background and draped that over two saw horses with a half sheet of plywood to make a table where I put the lit candles on. There is an extra small softbox acting as a hair light that is gelled full CTO to make it match with the light from the candles behind her. I used one of my 11" sports reflectors with a 1/4CTO gel just out of frame because I wanted it to be very close to her and have no spill onto the shiny plexi. At camera right is a medium softbox with a 1/2 CTB to act as cool  evening light. That but to control reflections I had a black card keeping most of the blue off of her as well as keeping a few reflections under control. The other trick was to keep the camera out of the shot as the plexi easily made a distinct reflection of it so I draped it in black muslin and triggered the camera remotely. Diagram is like this:

Then shortly after doing that I had to shoot a local famed chocolatier. The making of chocolates is messy but most of the work is done in stainless steel machines. The hand work is well hand work and isn't very interesting looking plus you have the issue of scale where a person and a one inch truffle doesn't show well. So out came the plexi. The fun/hard/insane part was adhering her sweets to the front of the plexi to have them suspended in air so to speak. They didn't hold for very long but we got the shot.

For this I side lit the chocolates to get the most texture and shine from them. I knew that soft lighting them would make them look flat and uninteresting. But side lighting her would be unflattering so I put grid spots on the side lights to keep them from spilling. Then I put a small softbox on a boom to be right over the plexi to give her soft light. Then a touch of hair/separation light over the black portable backdrop. Again the camera was draped in black and I used the Live View on my Nikon D700 triggered via my laptop to direct her and make the final exposure. Diagram below:

Well after that my $20 sheet of plexi is pretty beaten up but it's served me well.

I love the smell of fixer in the morning ...

yes because it smells like ammonium thiosulfate which is a bit like victory but mostly because it doesn't have to do with all the issues of color balance. Gad but I hated making color prints. I used to do it and frankly only moderately well. Not like my B&W printing prowess as I must say I can make a great looking print in that realm. With a B&W print it's all about your tones and there are loads of options in that negative for your interpretation. Ansel Adams said that "The negative is the score but the print is the performance". You can give the same B&W negative to any two printers and get different end results. It's pretty neat.

But then there is color printing and where B&W guys happily spend all their time being creative about how they are going to burn, dodge, tone and bleach their print to make it sing with their voice the guy over in the color darkroom is popping aspirin like it's coming out of a Pez dispenser. "AaaaGH! It's still blue!" he yells after his 27th test print where the subject has a distinct skin tone that is decidedly purple. Forget making the print "sing" with his creative vision he has to make the thing not look horrible first. Is it the color pack on his light source? Has the developer gone funky? Is the blix doing something wrong? I bet the temperature isn't stable! No that's not it. Is the paper bad? It's still blue!

So I learned a long time ago to leave those headaches to other people. It's lovely to just go to your pro lab and drop off your order and come back in a few days to lovely looking color prints. They spend all day keeping their system in perfect order with gear that we mortals could never afford to prevent them from dealing with all the crap-ola that we have to just to get a decent looking color print. Now the B&W stuff would always be my baby because I put the time, effort and vision into the print that all but the most expensive custom B&W print specialist would bother to do. For the last 15 years that's how it's been.

Then I decided to mess up a good thing. I was having good C-41 prints made for my folio and they looked good and I got them for a price that I was comfy with to boot. But my new folio books are a tidy 8.5x11" and that's an oddball size for a C print. I was making oversized prints and then cutting them down but that seemed like a kludge. So I did the unthinkable: I decided to make my own color prints.

Hold on. That doesn't mean going into the dreaded color darkroom - thankfully. Since all my color work is digital this means ink jet prints. I had tried my hand at doing ink jets a number of years ago when the "pro desktop ink jet revolution" happened and I was at the time disgusted. The printers were to me horrible, the paper was worse and they were really expensive to make. Well after a lot of research and talk to guys who know a lot more than I it seemed possible.

Thus over the last few days I've been making nice with my printer and while we are not totally friends right now we are coming to some mutual understandings. Over the last few days I have been making a bunch of test prints to dial in my settings and ICC profile. This process has been similar to the old days with the exception that I'm not spending long amounts of time in the dark waiting to see if the print is total whack and I have far more control than I ever did even with my pretty tricked out darkroom of yesteryear. Boy you don't get to use that word much anymore huh?

So I've pretty much tamed the magenta skin tone issue which is important since nearly every photo I will show to a client has a person in it. If they look extras from the movie Attack of the Strawberry People then it's not likely that I'll get the job. 

Onward!

I'm not Gary Larson, or "How big of a pigeon do you think I am?"

I'm in the process of putting together some new folios for the spring marketing push and as chance has it there has been some interesting talk lately about promotion on the interwebs. I was reading how one photog mentioned that he annually spends enough promoting himself to buy "a nice German luxury car". Zounds! I think to myself, "Self! If you had $50,000 to spend every year just to let people know that you exist and do good work I'd think that you already have loads of people who are paying you good money to do what you do." I mean I'm talking about photographers here not companies with production lines and distribution networks and dozens of people on the payroll. The big car companies spend 3-5% of their annual budget on advertising and it's thought that 10% is a big amount for marketing your biz. So even if this guy and his buddies are spending 10% to keep their rep going they are still billing a half million dollars a year. Excuse me buy my head is swimming here. (Deep breath!)

So the whole idea is to reach out to potential new clients to let them know that 1) you exist and that 2) your work is good and 3) they should hire you because you are better and more interesting than the guy that they currently use. Something like that. Also to keep you freshly in the mind of the folks who already adore you. That's important too ya know!

But that is where things get funky. The people who hire photographers seem to have a funny way of seeing us creative types. They want to hire the guy who does that thing. Ok, cool. But if said guy decides that "that thing" is now kinda boring and starts changing up his style it can freak out the guys who hire him because he's not doing that thing anymore. Or the hiring guys get bored of "that thing" and stop hiring the guy who does it because, well we've seen it already! Can a brother get a break?

So this one shooter who mostly shoots lit location portraits gets the idea that it would be funny to shoot some farm animals in the same style as his people and does it as a lark for a promo piece. In one he shoots a cow and up to that point was the only cow he's ever photographed. Well low and behold that little post card gets him a job because to the art director at the ad agency he obviously knows his cows! (giggle)

He hires the same animal wrangler as the promo shoot and even uses the same cow for the big job. All goes well. Then the ad person moves to a different company and he sends a note to say something like "congrats on your move". He gets a reply that says "If I need any cows photographed while I'm at this agency I'll be sure to call you." Wha? Right. Check the guys folio, website and all his promo material and except for that one cow there are no animals to be found. He shot one cow twice and now he's pegged as The Cow Specialist. (Are you on dope?)

Right. A folio full of portraits of people and all he's know for at that agency is a guy who photographs cows.

They want specialists because it's easy to figure out. Need a cow shot? I know the dude to call! Need the guy who does that thing? I've got his number. Easy as eating pie. Or not. It's a bit of a catch 22: if you shoot cows, or any one kind of subject matter usually in a particular way, you can get work for doing that one thing but if you don't shoot that subject matter in a particular way you won't get that work even though you can shoot it and well. The blinders are on it seems.

But where does that leave guys like me who have to be able to shoot just about anything at any time? How do we fit into the ultra narrow vision of the people who hire us without becoming artistically leaden?

It all reminds me of this quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-Robert A. Heinlein

That sums it up for me as I sit here writing, sipping one of my fine home brewed beers (a Belgian golden), having finished a nice dinner that I made for the wife and yes my gravy is that good, and am putting together a set of fashion images for the a few lifestyle magazines that I'm targeting. Tomorrow I'm shooting a video in the morning and then in the afternoon doing a portrait of a guy who in an inventor. If I can do all these things, and if you can too, why is that not an asset but instead a hindrance to getting a broader client base?

I think that it come down to risk. We as artists risk all the time. We risk emotionally with each piece of work we take on. We risk financially with every project we do because we believe in it. We risk creatively to push ourselves as artists. But the ones on the other side don't want to risk. They want a sure thing. If they hire the guy who does the thing they get exactly that and it's comforting. 

The only ones who don't seem to have this problem are the newspapers. They expect their photographers to be able to do anything they throw at them and at any time. If you are, say, a large format portrait photog who only works with available light you will never get work from the newspapers because you can't shoot sports, news, features, food/product or any of the other things that will come you way on any given day. But if you are a news guy and are therefor not a specialist you are locked out of work that you surely can do because you don't have a book that is essentially the same shot over and over. Gad!

So I will be stubbornly me. I will show what I do and what I can do and if they don't get it - fine. In that spirit I the guy who photographs people will submit another of my still life camera-phone-o-roids.

Freedom! (or cookies. That's good too.)

Previsualizing filter

 There was a day when some hardcore B&W landscape photographers would carry a filter in a frame that sucked all the color out to render the view through it to be essentially black and white. This was to help you visually edit out the color content of what you are looking at to get a better idea of how the colors would be rendered as B&W tones. It wasn’t perfect but it helped. You still had to learn how the film that you were using actually rendered things but it was close.

 

When shooting color film you had to learn that and had no help previsualizing your shot. Photogs would often find a film that they liked and basically only use that one. Otherwise you might not realize how this scene or skin tone would be either made lifeless or garish by the way that your film saw things.

 

Digital has changed that as you can to a large degree when shooting RAW render the scene anyway you want it. For quite a while I wanted to see my flat and boring looking RAW files to look like themselves when I was doing an image review on my cameras LCD screen. But then I realized that once I found a look in Photoshop that made me happy 95% of the time I could simulate that by changing the color curve and saturation of the jpg processing my cameras do. The deal is that even if you are shooting RAW the camera makes an imbedded jpg into the RAW file for the preview. Thus the file isn’t processed but the preview is so I can get the feel of how the image will most likely look like when it comes out of Photoshop.

 

But when I started the Avery Brewing project I had in my head the idea of doing it in B&W for three reasons. 1) it makes things more timeless looking, 2) most of the brewing process takes place in white-ish rooms with big stainless steel containers and tubes so there isn’t much color content to begin with and 3) it puts the emphasis on form and lighting which I really dig.

 

So I decided to use a warm tone B&W mode for the shoots so that when I’m checking on my shots the tones “feel” right. I still will do the toning in P-Shop but after taking a few shots with my normal straight color preview preset and the warm tone, the B&W made me more inspired by a mile. And isn’t that what we want – to be inspired to make photos?

 

Here’s another from the Avery barrel room. They use a stainless steel nail as a simple plug for taking samples without introducing air into the barrel. For some reason the silhouetted pliers reminds me of that famously manipulated image by Gene Smith of Albert Schweitzer where he used like 5 negatives with the handles of tools in the foreground. Hmmm?

 

Technicals: Nikon D700 and Nikon AF-D 35mm f/2.0. ISO 400, f/2.0 @ 1/30th.

I’m not Mark Tucker but …

This has kind of the feel of his longstanding ad campaign for the Jack Daniels. I’m doing a photo project with my friends at Avery Brewing, one of the top craft breweries in the country and luckily not that far from me. I’m focusing on the hands on “craft” aspect of what they do. Unlike 99% of the beer out there the brew that comes from a place like Avery is made by just a few people and is very hands on. It’s much like when you go to that special market and buy artesianal cheese or bread – it’s made by someone who has spent years learning to get it right as opposed by a big machine or factory where they make serviceable stuff but it doesn’t have that special thing that makes you swoon. Avery puts magic and love into 12oz bottles. It's that good.

 

So anyhoo this is 3 of their head brewers doing a taste sample for one of their experimental barrel aged beer projects. The little where house has a wide array of different barrels and each one brings its own flavor profile to the same young beer that goes into it. Thus they have to learn what each barrel is doing and keep meticulous notes on the contents of each barrel and then figure out when each barrel is “done” and then they sit and blend the best barrels to make their limited release beers. It's amazing how precise their palettes are. They can detect the most minor flaw in a warm flat beer often just by it's smell. They will find a beer that most craft beer drinkers will like to be actually horribly flawed.

 

This to me is artistry and I am delighted to spend time with these guys who I admire. More to come as the project unfolds.

 

Technicals: Nikon D700 with AF-D 35mm f/2.0. ISO 400 f/4.0 @ 1/15^th. Shot RAW and toned in post.

I was dreaming ...

about developing film the other evening. Really and no it wasn't because of eating too much spicy food. Ok I'll admit that in the dream I was developing it in a fish tank while the lights were on but hey - it's a dream so cut me some slack jack! Now from time to time I am shooting film and developing it but I haven't in a while. So this all got me thinking. What does it mean?

Well I've been reading some postings about how some non-news clients are finding film interesting again if only because it doesn't look like digital. I think that's cool but when you consider that most publications ditched their scanning person/department atleast 5 years ago when digital replaced film I'm wondering that if they are interested in me/you shooting film are they expecting me/you to have it scanned properly? I mean THEY don't have a scanner anymore, right? Do they expect us to have a $5,000 film scanner for the occational job where they let us shoot film or are they willing to wait while our only remaining pro lab in the area does it? Hmm ...

Anyhoo it made me just think about the simplicity/joy/anachronism of shooting film. Maybe just maybe our digital "gotta have it now!" mentality has a sliver of a chance of slowing down and allowing our photographic vision to not be based on turn around times. Still I'm glad that I never got rid of my film cameras and am still using them.

More from the Pola-pocket-cam-o-phone

This is more from my doodling with the CameraFX application for my G1 phone camera. I really wish that it didn't reduce the file size so much but eh' what do you want for nothing huh? I is nice to make delightfully trashy photos without so much as real gear or anything that resembles professional control. Ahhhh!

Words from masters of other arts

I ran across these two short bits of thought that totally made sense to me about our job as a photographer in capturing visual moments. Unless you are doing still lives in the studio there is always some variable element. If the subject is a person then even if they are the most trained actor/athlete there are a whole range of different ways that they can perform the same action. It's our job as photographer to direct, and in camera via our decision to make the exposure and then which one of our exposures to use, edit to deliver the moments that we want. Which brings me to this though on directing from Steven Spielberg:

Then on the other hand you have the freewheeling journalist/documentary approach where you have no real control over what is going to happen and you are improvising along with the elements around you. Most of my work is like this and the jazz great Sonny Rollins puts it perfectly here:

But there there is a world where you need to combine both and be able to turn the director and improviser on and off in a moments notice. I find that this is really hard and when I do it my brain gets tired from using the clutch all the time with all the gear changing. Stay too long or too shot in one mind frame and things go wrong. It's all about balancing the knowing of what you want and letting the rest flow. Ooooooooommmmmmmmmm!

2010 - I’m so excited

Huh? Am I crazy? Nope my eyes are open and my heart is eager for the upcoming year.

Yes everything is in flux and moving too fast. Yes the economy is still faltering and markets are precarious. And I’m certainly aware that clients are tightening their already taught purse strings. I don’t care.

 

Why? Because we photographers, especially the ones who work on location, are used to adversity. Things never go “as planned” in our work so why should any of this really bother us? We always have to think on our feet, adapt, adjust and bring back the goods.

How is this current state of transition any different? If anything because of the newfound glory of all the digitally inspired niches and their various info pipelines we have more opportunities for work.

 

Ok some venues are just not doing what they used to and as such some kinds of photography are becoming “rarer than an honest politician” but that’s not that big a deal. There was never really a big market for gritty news and documentary work ever. Even during the 50-60’s with Look and Life battling it out that was only a tiny fraction of all the photographic work out there. Frankly I wonder where all the death and dying photo stories that get the big photo awards ever get published anyhoo!

 

My prediction is this: With all the venues for reaching potential customers now the power of compelling imagery is even more important to cut through the din. This will require a different way of pricing/licensing since your photos won’t be used in a specific given publication/advert space. The photos will be used essentially everywhere but for a very short period of time because in a blink everyone will have seen the image and the next time they see it it will loose its impact. Ads will have to be generated more quickly to keep up with saturation and as a result the photography will have to be new.

 

That’s the ad/marketing dude stuff. For the news dudes we are going to loose the vertical image because 99% of the venues for our work will become screens which are horizontal. Forget the cover shot as there aren’t covers anymore. Cool! We never liked verticals and cover shots, although lucrative, were a ton of work and never really any fun. Also just as with the advertising mess people are getting tired of sorting through all the information clutter and are wanting a focused source of news that is relevant and vetted. Newspapers/news magazines will mostly stop being printed and will be online but not the same as they were. But their need for serious content will be just like the old days if not more. With things happening so fast we need to be plugged in to the news stream more than ever. I mean who are you going to trust to give you the skinny on that mess in City Council, some dudes blog? Who is going to sort out this whole deal with the scandal with the Governor? A “citizen journalist” who by day works at the car dealership? The guys who run news organizations are going to realize that the simple puff pieces that they ran for the last decade don’t cut it anymore and they have to go back to doing hard news, investigative news to survive. Now from a classic news photographer’s perspective, how can that be bad?

 

I’m not a soothsayer by any means. I have no crystal ball but peering into my beer glass of wonder I’m still pretty certain that although things are making many of us feel rather sea sick, it’s going to be a fun although bumpy ride.

 

As for me I have 4 personal projects in the works, one quite long term, new energy and fresh ideas and a decidedly confident attitude about 2010. New work, new clients, new horizons.

 

Happy photo to go with the prior delusional rant: A quick snap from my phone. BTW this is an ice cream shop made to look like a milk jug. The thing is about 35 feet tall.

 

BTW, it cracks me up to think that my phone has more resolution, although not as good, as the Nikon D1 which changed everything for photographers a decade ago. The D1 made millions of film photographers cower in fear that the digital photography revolution was at their door while others embraced what it brought. My phone, my lovely Google G1, seems to represent the current digital fear - compact and instant information access and “The death of print”. With its 3G/WiFi connectivity with full web browsing and e-mail along with a digital camera and camcorder that allows me to shoot a photo/video, write a story to go with it and upload it all from a device that costs less than $200 and fits into my pocket. Our tools are pretty Sci-Fi so shouldn’t our mentality be too?

Embracing a lack of quality control

Most of us photographer are control freaks. I've mentioned that before and yes it's still true. I tend to want to have lots of control over the things that I can and let the rest go where it may. I shot on chromes for so long that I could shoot just about everything as a jpg and not really worry that the image won't work. When you shoot a chrome what you get in the camera is what you get in the image. If you are used to that then you don't even think about adjusting the image after you've shot it so you get it right the first time. Given that I don't need the control that shooting RAW gives me but sometimes it's a blessing especially when I want to be able to take advantage of all the tools that post processing gives us. So as a result I shoot everything in RAW - it's part of my workflow and to a degree part of my shooting style. I pay more attention to the moment, the graphics and to a lesser extent exposure. The rest I'll worry/play with later.

But isn't that holding on to control too? Doesn't that keep me a "control freak" by letting me have all that control in post? In the old days the film that was in the camera when I hit the shutter button determined the bulk of how the image would look. Using Kodachrome  or Velvia  would give your image a totally different look and once your image was on that film you are stuck. With RAW you can give the image whatever level of contrast or saturation or tonality that you want at any time.  So I thought the other day "Maybe I should let some images go where they will like in the film days just to mix things up". Hmmm .....

I have an app for the camera in my G1 phone that processes the images into a Polaroid-ish one. Complete with funky colors and border for the authentic look. Now THAT is a lack of control. So I'm playing around with it for kicks. Crap lens, no exposure control, no color control, no decisive moment capacity,  blah-blah-blah. Perfect!

 

I mean, I would never do this on assignment (well if you want to pay me to shoot your campaign on my phone I guess I could be enticed ...) but as an ongoing exercise in creatively letting go it should be interesting.