Field notes and late night rambing

Pulling a rabbit

I was reading one of my industry blogs the other day and there was a bit about essentially "How can you screw THAT up?" It was in the context of if you have all the gear you could want, as large a crew of top level assistants/wardrobe/hair-makeup/post-production professionals as you want, a bunch of stunningly gorgeous models and a week at an amazing and exotic locale ... how can you not make photos that people want to look at? You have it all and frankly pretty easy to boot. Upon reading this commentary I thought, in the squeaky little kids voice of comedian Gabriel Iglacias, "Yeah!"

It's not jealousy talking here at all. It's just a statement of fact. Most of us professional photographers don't get the breaks whereby we get paid big money to hire an army of people to make everything happen "just so". Most of us have constant conversations with new and old clients alike where we have to say, often, "yeah but if that's your budget for this project we are going to have to shave something off because we just can't pull it off for that kind of money." We have to think on our feet, adapt, improvise and overcome the various obstacles that come with every job that we do. The ones that can do the seemingly impossible stay in business far longer than those who can't.

If you read the blogs of any solid working pro or watch enough BTS videos you quickly get the sense that not every photographer gets to have things go his way. That's only in the movies ya know. But some of us have it worse than others and some are used to it more than the rest.

There is a particular kind of let down which occurs when you get to the location of your shoot and you realize that everything you had hoped to find to work with isn't there. There are a million such scenarios: have to do portraits of a big leader of industry only to find a cube farm or at best yet another of the worlds most boring conference rooms to shoot him in. Or maybe it's a supposedly big event that should provide lots of energy for exciting images but it turns out to be mostly old dudes sitting around on lawn chairs. Maybe it's the performer that you admire and are supposed to get interesting and intense images of but the dude is too grumpy/tired/depressed/stoned to do more than slump into a chair. You know, that sort of thing. Hey it happens!

Well I had two of them go down last week but like the ninja that I tell myself that I am, I found a way to elevate the painfully boring to the level of "Hey! That's not too darned bad!". I take it in stride because that's what I'm supposed to do. Failure is not an option. Ever. The best part is that after delivering the goods I got a note from each client to the extent of "Hey I know that conditions of the shoot didn't turn out to be nearly as cool as we had hoped but you really shot the hell out of it and the images are great, thanks!" Now THAT is cool. Makes me fee all professional inside.

Here is a shot from a similar situation: I was to make photos of the head of a software company for a profile piece. Problem was, they had just moved into a new building that still had the old occupants logos everywhere,  everything was still in boxes, the head guy was only going to be in town for one day and had a ton of phone meetings lined up. I was given ten minutes between calls to make my shots. Luckily my subject turned out to be a super nice dude and was as accommodating as his schedule would allow. I shot the jebus out of it doing three set ups in that time and even with the cluttered mess about me made him look cool, intelligent, professional and personable.

My favorite was the last thing that I shot when he went back to his desk to answer the phone again. I saw the colors and reflections of the buildings outside and simply asked him to look up at me. Four frames later, the phone rang and that was the end of the shoot.

 

I'd love to be able to just connect the dots: this person here, light it this way, have all my trusty people do their magic and all that but I'm not sure that it would suit me. I'm not a huge fan of walking in an saying to muh-self "Argh! NOW what do I do?" but it makes me feel great when I pull off a magic trick and my clients know it.

 

Goodbye my old friend, it's nice to see you again

I was on assignment the other day to do photos for a story about an exercise trend/fad that is based on classical ballet barre work. Yadda yadda. Anyhoo the client wanted some video for their web edition. Hey, no problem. Well actually it a real pain to do stills and video but hey if that's what the client wants then that is certainly what they are going to get. While I was doing my thang when I had a quick realization that the soon to be much ballyhooed Nikon D4 was going to be announced and with it will be, for me at least, a paradigm shift. Notice the quick mirror self shot that I did upon reflection, HA! I kill me!

 

There I am with my trusty and to a large extent beloved Canon HV20 camcorder dangling from my neck along with two Nikon D700 bodies to do stills. Often when I have to do stills and video for news pieces I have a lot more gear on me: usually each body has a pro zoom, 28-70 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8 to make things nice and heavy, and the camcorder has an external mic attached, which makes for a very cumbersome working method. In those situations am quite like the guy with too few arms. Not fun but I get the job done. Oh and to make matters worse I will often wear a backpack where my extra microphones, wireless rig and a tripod with fluid head is stashed for all the video problem solving that often comes up. Again, not a simple rig to use. But soon this will be simplified with the new bodies that are coming out.

What? Why aren't you shooting with DSLR bodies that do video? Well I'm glad that you asked. First off, I don't do that much video that needs to be done at the same time as still photography which is my main occupation. Then there is the fact that except for the D3s all the Nikon bodies that do video are the consumer bodies with the crop chip and brother let me tell ya that once I got my full frame back I promised muh-self that I'd never buy a crop chip body again. You can't tell but that there self shot was done with my "secret weapon" Nikon AF-D 28mm f/1.4 that is essentially an insanely overpriced normal lens on a crop body but with full frame it's is a glorious and crazy sharp wide angle. There is no comparable lens for the smaller frame cameras so there you go.

I was not going to purchase a D3s just for video, no way. I prefer my D700's as they are smaller, lighter and less than half the price. If you are an independent such as I am you need to justify spending any money on equipment against how it will not just pay for itself but actually make you money upon that purchase within 18 months. Otherwise it costs you to own it and it is simply a waste of money. Not good business practice there. Yes I know about all the dudes shooting the Canon 5DII and all that but again there is no reason for me to purchase an entire Canon rig just to shoot some video from time to time so forget that noise bucko! Besides the 5DII has a much slower frame rate, horrible AF and is built like a toy. Yuck.

I got my HV20 before the VDSLR rage hit and within a month of me getting it it made me money and has continued to do so ever since. Also almost every client has cared not a whit about what video camera I've used. What they want is quality video that goes on the web. How I get there doesn't matter.

In the getting there even simple pro-am camcorders like the old HV20 do a better job of shooting video than DSLR's because they are set up from the get-go to do video. They autofocus and autoexpose properly and easily. They are physically set up to allow you to use external microphones and monitor the audio without adapters. They have the controls right where they need to be. Not to mention that they are cheaper to purchase than a new DSLR body. Can't go wrong. Except for the need to have another thing dangling from you while you make pictures. Oh yeah, that.

As I suspected, much of that has now changed with the Nikon D4 for three reasons: it is supposedly going to properly autofocus in video mode, it will allow you to make exposure adjustments while recording video and most importantly and fit's into the "why did it take so long?" department - you have a headphone jack so that you don't need an adapter to monitor your audio. Huzzah! Finally a DSLR that will harken the end of me lugging the HV20 about.

Does this mean that I've put in for a D4 for pre-sale? Nope. No chance. First off I never buy version 1.0 of any product much less one as expensive and complicated as a pro DSLR body. Second I'm waiting for the D800 or whatever it will be called that will be the little brother of the D4 for the same reasons as listed about my D700's. Lastly, I don't need one yet. The HV20 still works great, makes me the monies and doesn't need to be replaced. Yet. I do think that in about a year I'll put the old girl on the shelf with the other cameras from which I've moved past. The D700's will be with me for some time as they are simply superb cameras in every way. If I could get a D700 with the new video capacity then I'd honestly be set but alas it is not to be.

 

As they say "Time ... marches on!" and for this here cowboy that's a good thing.

Pixel wars

I swear. Just as ice cream is cold, when it’s not all melty, that just about every time I’m shooting out in public somebody asks me “How many megapixels has that got?” I tend to reply “More than I need” and with that I leave it to his imagination. It’s usually a guy who asks and we all know that guys love numbers that define things. Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races – we used to say. Pixels is the modern photographic equivalent to that adage. Pixels gives those who often don’t know better the impression that they are getting more for their money. But “we” know otherwise.

Or do we? Canon, not to pick on them, have just announced their new flagship camera the EOS 1DX. Unlike their prior line up there is no “s” model that will be a higher resolution version that is best described as a studio/big print camera. Up till now the non-“s” was designed with sports, news and general professional use in mind where higher ISO and frame rate performance was more important than pure “does that have a Hemi?” pixel horsepower. But no more. Well I won’t bother you with that rant as I’m sure that there are hundred of writers out there spouting a much more empassioned appeal to one direction or the other. Nope not here. What I have to say is:

“How many megapixels” matters less now than ever before. Huh? Let’s fire up the Wayback machine again and I’ll show you. Boy I love this device; picked it up on E-Bay for a pittance! Click! Whirrrr-ZoooM!

My first digital camera was a Nikon D1x and it’s file output of 5.74 megapixels was pretty darned high resolution for the time. Ok, ok, stop giggling, it’s true! The ground breaking D1 was barely 3 meg and the improved D1h, the “news/sports” version was faster than the original but the D1x was the “magazine/studio” camera. Well I had one, then two then briefly three but again I digress. Ok so there I was cranking out nearly 6 meg files and I had my newspaper editor freaking out telling me to crop these massive files or I was sure to clog their wire service and archiving systems. Really! But they had a point. A clean 3 meg file was almost overkill on newsprint being printed at 75dpi so they could print BIG and it would hold up. In their mind my D1x was insane! Who needs that kind of camera?

Then I ditched the D1x for the smaller, faster, better D200 when it came out. 10 meg capture baby! Again the newspapers and even some magazines told me to give them smaller files because again that kind of resolution was far more than they needed. Heck National Geographic with their great reproduction is only 135dpi! They were running double trucks from D1x files what the heck did they need almost twice the file for? Are you crazy? Yep.

Thus I was waiting for Ralph Nader to walk on stage when he was on the campaign trail in 2004 and was equipped with dual D200 rigs and got to talking to Steve Groer from the Rocky Mountain News. He noticed my cameras and said something to the effect of “Nice, but what do you need 10 meg for? A nice clean 4 meg is plenty for our work. Why do they keep giving us pixels that we throw away?” He was using two Nikon D2h which were 4 meg capture and yes that was for his purpose just dandy. He was a news paper dude but I submitted to magazines and did commercial work on my D200 so the higher resolution made sense.

But now? What is the paradigm? Not print. And except for large “point of purchase” displays in stores just about everything that you are reading or looking at is either magazine sized or more and more likely on some kind of screen. Who needs super high resolution cameras for a major advertising campaign when those images are only shown on TV and the web? Wha? The final output will be 450 pixel sidebar ads? Do we honestly need the new 80 meg capture back from Phase One to do that? Nah! I can dust off my old D1x and still crop the heck out of it and it will look just great!

Pixels and horsepower sells product to a degree. But the money that is made from photography that is not of the art or personal memory making (read as essentially wedding photography) all comes from advertising. Magazines and news papers survive not by the quality of their reporting but by their ability to sell advertising to the people who want to read the articles. Advertising is getting smaller and smaller not just in terms of budget but also in terms of reproduction size and in terms of how long they can have a campaign be out there. As a result of their target markets being found more and more on the web and the 700+ tv channels out there the demands upon us photographers to have cameras that produce wall sized prints has turned upside down. Maybe Canon figured this out and they are trying to stop the megapixel madness. Maybe Canon turned their backs on a small but very real market for their products. I dunno.

What I do know is that I don’t print my own photos and haven’t for a very long time. By that I mean I don’t print photos to look at them. I print the occasional image for my folio or for promo use. The rest stay on the hard drives. Those prints that I have made are not gi-normous. How many people do you know that actually make physical prints of their photos anymore? There are more photos being made now than ever before by a huge margin and most of them are going on to Facebook. No joke. Facebook is the largest depository of photographs in the world right now. How big are they displayed? 600 pixels wide? Oh you certainly need 20 meg capture for that masterpiece! That’s why soooo many people just take the photo with their cellphone rather than a “proper” camera. No need for more.

When you consider that many commercial photographers ditched their medium format film cameras, like Hasselblads, when the Canon 1Ds came out with it's "huge" 11 meg capture because it provided equal or better image quality then what I run around with, my Nikon D700, is essentially a tiny Hasselblad that shoots @ 8fps and gives totally pro quality up to ISO4000. That's pretty amazing. Why do you or I need much more than that?

Now for the ironic wrap up: I’m working on making huge prints. I’ve been fiddling with a project where big prints are the result. I’m still shooting with my beloved Nikon D700 but using the multi frame stitch panorama approach to achieve the needed buckets of pixels necessary. It’s easy, it works and I don’t have to spend a bunch of cash on a super high resolution camera that is even more overkill than what I currently have.

Given that here is a simple four frame stitch that I did at night with my D700 using my AF-S 28-70 f/2.8 with a 30 second exposure at ISO1600. It will make a seamless and grainless 16x20 inch print. It's about the same as a 24 meg capture but because my camera makes ISO1600 look much better than the "big" capture cameras in essence you couldn't get this shot with a D3x or 1Ds III and the medium format cameras are even more useless in this application. For things like this loads of pixels is awfully nice to have but for everything else, why are we all worked up? Stop worrying about pixels and spend more time making the pixels that you have fufill your needs.

A video confession

I’ve been watching a lot of tutorials on video color grading lately. For those of you not working with video in a professional context that means that I’ve been learning how to adjust and tone the video that I shoot much like you work with still images. But not at all.

 

Ya see when I become Emperor things will be made consistent. We won’t have 32 different terms for the same thing so that when you learn a new discipline that really isn’t that far away from your main body of knowledge you don’t have to pick up a thousand new words for things that you basically already know how to do. Thus I’ve been learning how to “color grade” video using basically the same kind of tools that I’d use to process a still photo. And friends I gotta tell ya I just can’t believe how picky these guys get about the subtleties of the color in their video, I mean wow.

 

So why the heck am I torturing myself with this rot? Well I’ve been editing a large-ish video project that I’ve been shooting for a local client of mine and it’s made me want to have a better and larger set of processing tools. I have an excellent video editing suite but in the past nearly all my video work has been news/editorial and just like when being a still image news photog you aren’t supposed to play with the image in post. But for commercial work it needs to be cleaner, more interesting and maybe even slick. Depending.

 

This is a lot like how I had to learn how to actually use Photoshop for more than cropping. Now when I’m shooting portraits and the client wants, for instance, some skin smoothing I can do that easily. But back “then” I had no idea how it was done.

 

Now I’m not interested in doing feature films at all as that is way too much like work for me but I do really enjoy shooting and editing video. Much like the audio based multimedia that I’ve been working with for years video is just another way of telling stories. Unfortunately in the past when I’d have my video camera rig on me I would also have two still cameras as well making for a very clumbsy me. It’s very hard to shoot stills and video of the same time and not make a mess of it. But I had clients who wanted both and since they were paying for it and knew that it means that you have at best adequate stills and passable video, I did the best with what I had to work with.

Oh and for those of you who haven’t seen the mess that video editing looks like here is a screen shot of all the cuts, bits and tweeks I had to do just to get that two minute and a smidge piece to look that way. Ugh!

I got my first video only assignment last year and it was a very freeing experience. I was to shoot the annual fireworks held at the University of Colorado’s football stadium, (boring!) but we got a torrential downpour (Yah, bad weather!) so I spent two hours with my lens not pointing up at a bunch of meaningless flashing lights. The weather became the story so I shot it that way. Considering that I put it together on daily deadline and did it all muh-self I’m pretty happy with it all things considered. It’s raw and such but for my first “real” news video I can live with it. (It’s much better than the stuff I did when I also had to shoot stills!)

 

So anyway I’m doing more commercial video now and it’s freaking great. I’m be able to get good sound, put the subject in good lighting, and do two dozen takes with varying angles to then edit it together and with some post production have it, well, look good. She-ZAM!

And it’s funny because I was at a very cool seminar a few weeks ago all about better reaching advertising clients and one of the topics was “do you need to shoot video as well” and the consensus was that if you can that’s cool but to do it right takes more than just handing you, the qualified still photographer, a camera that shoots video. There is the audio, the lighting, the direction of the subject and all the editing/grading that makes it work. But I was chuckling to myself because I am not nor will I ever be a junior Spielberg but I do think that I can fake it all well enough to have people write me a check for the work that I do.

Oh and I’m just about 3 chapters away from finishing “On Directing Film” by David Mamet and I think that his insights may have effected my still photography brain even more than my moving pictures brain. How did that happen?

Gimme some sugar!

It’s well known that when you eat at a quality restaurant that part of what makes the food so good, besides their use of top ingredients and excellent technique, is that they put more salt, sugar and fat into the dishes than you would as a home cook. In fact the amount of sugar, salt and fat – often butter, would freak many people out to the point of them questioning if they should eat at their favorite place ever again. But again that’s what makes it so yummy – all the things that our taste buds crave is there in spades on the plate. We aren’t supposed to think about what we are eating when we are enjoying it so much. Otherwise we would never really eat dessert again huh?

 

I started to realize the other day that post processing images is just like that. As a professional photographer you are expected to have excellent technique and be using if you will top ingredients in your images. Natch! But these days it has become normal to use so much “seasoning” in post production that people are now used to it and in many ways expecting that what you are showing them has already been sweetened by P-Shop.

 

I have had a number of interesting looks and responses when I show a potential client examples of my work and explain that none of my images are composites and have the barest amount of processing; just enough to set color and levels usually. Their “Oh really?!?” is because my work looks good and so many professionals transform their images in post rather than compose and create them in camera. You know, like in the old days? It almost wierds people out for me to tell them that I could shoot the job on film and it would look great “out of the can” as we say.

 

Did I mention that I don’t retouch my portraits? When you look at any publication that is non news just about every image of a person, let alone product, has been worked over in P-Shop in many cases to the point of looking like a different person. Many celebrities have retouch artists who they personally prefer to make them look “right” before the publication can use the selected images. Gad!

 

Ok, ok, I’m still that news guy at heart … yeah. But to me the deal is that people are so used to opening up a publication or seeing adverts where women are without pores or over 30 and no hint of wrinkles that they question their own reality. We produce a world where colors and contrast are surreal. One where objects that don’t exist together are stitched seamlessly within impossible circumstances.  Our ability to crank up the sensation of it all may be deadening their ability to distinguish between visual truth and fiction.

 

More sugar! Saltier! Spicer! Then they will be excited to buy the new, and rather useless, widget that we are selling. Maybe? No matter that they should have just made the widget actually work well and thus people will want it. That seems so, uh, old fashioned.

 

Given that - isn’t reality, our current one, even stranger than fiction? Can we tell when there is something clean and simple and real before us? Or is everything made glossy because we are used to making is so?

 

Thus let us contemplate the simple things before us. I propose that in our photography we should not necessarily be the illustrators of a hyper reality but rather illuminators of the glory of our truly three dimensional world. Can I get a “Hurrumph!”???

 

This to me is simple beauty: fresh picked peas from an organic garden that was started up by a fellow who wanted to grow his own food in the city. His hands say a lot about him, eh?

 

A book and it's cover

I know that this comes just after I posted a glowing admiration of great editors but bear with me. I often look a publications and wonder who is running the place. When the publishing industry is supposedly trying so hard to be relevant and not only hold on to their businesses but maybe even grow a bit why do so few seem to be capable of independent or creative thought? Is everyone so scared that they err on the side of “tried and true” and through that inaction get passed by? I had a discussion with an editor who I have a great relationship with about the power and importance of the cover of a magazine. We were talking about the strength and weakness of having a cover design that is essentially a formula. It’s easy to recognize if it’s done well and if you are a subscriber or have positive feelings about the publication you can pick it out of a newsstand easily. But if it’s a boring cover design that has nothing going for it why would you pick up that rag if you didn’t know that the content was stellar?

 

As a photographer it is my job to make the images interesting and if I am to do a cover shot it needs to be interesting while being easy to read and leave space for type. Not an easy thing to do but it can be done well with some thought and work. Then you have situations where as the photographer your design criteria are so specific and limited that there isn’t much you can do with the shot other than shoot a vertical. I saw this a while ago and it so baffled me that I took a shot of it just so that I could complain:

 

What gives here? I mean it almost looks like a rack of the same magazine but there are three different titles and they all have almost the same pose! These are major publications, (in a Rodney Dangerfield voice “Huh. No offence!”) that is incase they should decide to hire me sometime, but come on – that’s the best you can do? Wow.

 

Now I understand that there is a lot to be said for simple and clean design but there is no reason for anyone that I can think of to be compelled by these covers to walk over and pick them up. Since I’m on a roll I’ll ad in a hearty Mr. T “I pity the fool!” who had to shoot those cover shots except for the fat check that came with it. Those could have been shot by the new assistant while the “real” photographer was on the phone in the other room. So a boring shot was asked for, shot, received, edited, laid out and approved. And anyone wonders why magazines as a whole are treading water?

 

Being bold doesn’t mean being stupid but it does mean that you don’t passively repeat yourself. I’ve spoken about my unwillingness to repeat my own work even if it was with a different client. If you do what you have always done you usually get the same results. What the industry needs is to get creative and make content king again.

 

Ok, end of rant. Move along.

A toast to those looking after me

I have a confession to make: I wish that I had the benefit of having more strong editors influence and support me in my developing years. It’s not that I didn’t get to work with a few who took me under their wing. Jay Quadracci when he was at the Greeley Tribune gave me loads of support along with the excellent advice to “go have fun and the pictures will be there”. A big nod goes to Paul Aiken at The Boulder Daily Camera who always told me to “shoot the shit out of it”. Those guys were and are important to me and I can never thank them enough.

Because I didn’t go through the typical P-J school system, didn’t have internships and essentially have made, read as faked, my way from the “get go” some things took quite a while to filter their way to my head. One of which was the critical importance of a good editor. Now this is mostly because looking back at it I realize how many bad editors I had to deal with in the beginning. I think that they didn’t really know what they were supposed to do and acted as naively as I did in my own right.

I think that the issue was that I thought I was supposed to roam free, like the lone wolf, cowboy, rogue agent or something equally romantic, unencumbered by either convention or pesky people at the head office who coincidently are paying me for my photographic jaunt! On the other side of the assignment desk the editor most likely saw themselves as simply management: get things done, fill out the paperwork necessary – keep things clean and tidy.

We didn’t realize how much collaboration our work really is. Not in the sense that we are working together but that we are working for each other. The editor is not just the one who tells me to “go here and shoot this” but rather is my champion at the publication who is there to support me both in the field and in the office. To do my job well, not just properly, I need to have the time, access, information and supplies necessary. Much of that comes from the editor. Short notice, no real idea of what I’m supposed to see once I arrive at a vaguely described locale with a subject who may not be willing to cooperate and not having the critical something necessary to make the shot happen is a recipe for photographic disaster. Even if I apply the “go have fun” and then “shoot the hell out of it” principles the photos will likely be poor at best. Unfortunately I had way too many manager types and all too few who would make sure that I had what I needed to enable me to produce the coverage that the client honestly wanted. Too many times I had no more than an address and time with the instructions as fleshed out as “Need a shot of Dr. Pence. Vertical”.

As a news guy I learned to embrace being a tough intellectual loner to thus cope and figure things out as I went. Sometimes I had nothing more to go on than my instinct and work ethic. That’s when I started researching subjects in earnest so that I could have ideas to work with once I got there and found that I had little to work with. Unfortunately I had to do that so often that I tended to think of all editors as paper shufflers who were put in charge of professionals whose work they neither understood nor cared to have much interest in. I had the chance to shoot for very well known publications whose editor I was working for couldn’t fathom what it was like to have to make photographs in the real world.

Editor: We have a problem with some of the photos you took.

Me: Oh, what’s the issue?

Editor: Well the photos you took of her, (the subject of the story) when she was on stage are really red.

Me: Yeah. They had her in that deep red light pretty much the whole time. I couldn’t use flash while she was giving the presentation so that’s what we had to work with.

Editor: Ok, but they are really red.

Me: I used a tungsten white balance but that red has such a narrow spectrum that didn’t do much to clean it up.

Editor: I don’t like them – they are all red!

 

Then there is the:

Editor: How did it go? (after a three day travel story shoot)

Me: Great. I’m pretty stoked. I got excellent access, the weather was fine and there were lots of things happening.

Editor: Cool. I can’t wait to go through your shots.

Me: So that you know about 2/3 rds the way through there is a series with a couple on a bench with the big bridge in the background – the sun was going down behind them so I shot them as silhouettes. So you don’t think I botched my exposure! (laugh)

Editor: (confused) Silhouettes? Why in the world would you shoot something as a silhouette?

Me: Uh, well the colors in the sky behind them were lovely and the graphics of them on the bench with the tree on the other side of the frame with the arch of the bridge … Could make a good cover shot.

Editor: (shaking her head in wonder)

 

And the inexplicable:

Me: Wow. What a great time. I totally fell in love with that family – I hope they adopt me. Moments just happened in front of me effortlessly. We got horrible weather but it made for amazing light and their eyes and faces were just glowing from it.

Editor: Excellent. Did you get the cover shot we wanted?

Me: Not quite. As I said the weather was terrible so I had to find other options for that.  We did three different locations just for the cover and I’m pretty happy with them.

Editor: But we told you we wanted a vertical of the family in front of their house for the cover!

Me: I know but it rained both days I was there. There was no way to do the shot when it was pouring down. Take a look at my images. I have plenty of options for the cover.  Frankly their house is pretty boring looking so even if I did the outside shot with good weather it wouldn’t be that good as a cover.

Editor: No, no, no. You had specific instructions to shoot them outside their house …

(The editor was telling me this from 1500 miles away from the shoot location and had never even seen what their home or neighborhood looked like.)

Those kind ofexperiences gave me a very bad and totally unnecessary image of editors. As a result I think I became prejudiced against them fearing that the next one I dealt with would be clueless as to what I needed as a working professional. I did learn my lesson and as a result try to search out clients that understand and support their photographers. When you get a good editor you find that they are totally golden and you will bust your last nut for them as they will for you.

So here’s to the editors! You are not just looking through my images for “the good ones” you are doing all that you can for me/us so that I will in fact bring back “the good ones”.

Huzzah!

Pic of the day: A little interplay of light and shape that I grabbed on my way to a shoot in downtown Denver.

I have a confession to make: I wish that I had the benefit of having more strong editors influence and support me in my developing years. It’s not that I didn’t get to work with a few who took me under their wing. Jay Quadracci when he was at the Greeley Tribune gave me loads of support along with the excellent advice to “go have fun and the pictures will be there”. A big nod goes to Paul Aiken at The Boulder Daily Camera who always told me to “shoot the shit out of it”. Those guys were and are important to me and I can never thank them enough.

 

Because I didn’t go through the typical P-J school system, didn’t have internships and essentially have made, read as faked, my way from the “get go” some things took quite a while to filter their way to my head. One of which was the critical importance of a good editor. Now this is mostly because looking back at it I realize how many bad editors I had to deal with in the beginning. I think that they didn’t really know what they were supposed to do and acted as naively as I did in my own right.

 

I think that the issue was that I thought I was supposed to roam free, like the lone wolf, cowboy, rogue agent or something equally romantic, unencumbered by either convention or pesky people at the head office who coincidently are paying me for my photographic jaunt! On the other side of the assignment desk the editor most likely saw themselves as simply management: get things done, fill out the paperwork necessary – keep things clean and tidy.

 

We didn’t realize how much collaboration our work really is. Not in the sense that we are working together but that we are working for each other. The editor is not just the one who tells me to “go here and shoot this” but rather is my champion at the publication who is there to support me both in the field and in the office. To do my job well, not just properly, I need to have the time, access, information and supplies necessary. Much of that comes from the editor. Short notice, no real idea of what I’m supposed to see once I arrive at a vaguely described locale with a subject who may not be willing to cooperate and not having the critical something necessary to make the shot happen is a recipe for photographic disaster. Even if I apply the “go have fun” and then “shoot the hell out of it” principles the photos will likely be poor at best. Unfortunately I had way too many manager types and all too few who would make sure that I had what I needed to enable me to produce the coverage that the client honestly wanted. Too many times I had no more than an address and time with the instructions as fleshed out as “Need a shot of Dr. Pence. Vertical”.

 

As a news guy I learned to embrace being a tough intellectual loner to thus cope and figure things out as I went. Sometimes I had nothing more to go on than my instinct and work ethic. That’s when I started researching subjects in earnest so that I could have ideas to work with once I got there and found that I had little to work with. Unfortunately I had to do that so often that I tended to think of all editors as paper shufflers who were put in charge of professionals whose work they neither understood nor cared to have much interest in. I had the chance to shoot for very well known publications whose editor I was working for couldn’t fathom what it was like to have to make photographs in the real world.

 

Editor: We have a problem with some of the photos you took.

Me: Oh, what’s the issue?

Editor: Well the photos you took of her, (the subject of the story) when she was on stage are really red.

Me: Yeah. They had her in that deep red light pretty much the whole time. I couldn’t use flash while she was giving the presentation so that’s what we had to work with.

Editor: Ok, but they are really red.

Me: I used a tungsten white balance but that red has such a narrow spectrum that didn’t do much to clean it up.

Editor: I don’t like them – they are all red!

 

Then there is the:

Editor: How did it go? (after a three day travel story shoot)

Me: Great. I’m pretty stoked. I got excellent access, the weather was fine and there were lots of things happening.

Editor: Cool. I can’t wait to go through your shots.

Me: So that you know about 2/3 rds the way through there is a series with a couple on a bench with the big bridge in the background – the sun was going down behind them so I shot them as silhouettes. So you don’t think I botched my exposure! (laugh)

Editor: (confused) Silhouettes? Why in the world would you shoot something as a silhouette?

Me: Uh, well the colors in the sky behind them were lovely and the graphics of them on the bench with the tree on the other side of the frame with the arch of the bridge … Could make a good cover shot.

Editor: (shaking her head in wonder)

 

And the inexplicable:

Me: Wow. What a great time. I totally fell in love with that family – I hope they adopt me. Moments just happened in front of me effortlessly. We got horrible weather but it made for amazing light and their eyes and faces were just glowing from it.

Editor: Excellent. Did you get the cover shot we wanted?

Me: Not quite. As I said the weather was terrible so I had to find other options for that.  We did three different locations just for the cover and I’m pretty happy with them.

Editor: But we told you we wanted a vertical of the family in front of their house for the cover!

Me: I know but it rained both days I was there. There was no way to do the shot when it was pouring down. Take a look at my images. I have plenty of options for the cover.  Frankly their house is pretty boring looking so even if I did the outside shot with good weather it wouldn’t be that good as a cover.

Editor: No, no, no. You had specific instructions to shoot them outside their house …

(The editor was telling me this from 1500 miles away from the shoot location and had never even seen what their home or neighborhood looked like.)

 

Those kind ofexperiences gave me a very bad and totally unnecessary image of editors. As a result I think I became prejudiced against them fearing that the next one I dealt with would be clueless as to what I needed as a working professional. I did learn my lesson and as a result try to search out clients that understand and support their photographers. When you get a good editor you find that they are totally golden and you will bust your last nut for them as they will for you.

 

So here’s to the editors! You are not just looking through my images for “the good ones” you are doing all that you can for me/us so that I will in fact bring back “the good ones”.

 

Huzzah!

After action report: New York

It’s been a long time since I was in Manhattan. Well frankly I haven’t been there since I was a kid. Although the city has changed considerably, as have I, it’s still the most important city in the world where everything that you could want is unfortunately sandwiched between things that you would like to avoid. In my case it is filled with potential clients, read as: patrons for my art, and was unfortunately blisteringly hot.

Lots more after the jump.

Dance like no body is watching when you know that they are watching

Well, I’m packing up for a week in NYC to bang on some doors and hopefully meet some new editors. This trip is a long time coming and I’m pretty excited. I’ve gotten some great response from my hand made promo dealy – Whoo-HOO! – and a couple of appointments before I even get on the plane. It’s all very encouraging. But the process of going and showing your folio isn’t like going to apply for one of those job things that I hear people talk about. No sir.

 

Ya see in a job interview you try to dress like you didn’t need your mommas’ help and hopefully look like you might not freak out the clientele.  Then you are polite, attentive and show enthusiasm about the job without seeming desperate for work even if you are. You try to present yourself on paper through your resume and hope that they don’t notice that bit you fudged to make the award seem more impressive than it really was. In essence you try to seem professional and have enough positive experience to handle the position. Pretty easy overall.

 

But when you are an artist looking for a new patron, wow it’s different. There is almost never an “opening” that you are trying to fill. Nope they already have people doing what you do. If anything they really don’t have the time to see if you are, maybe, a far better guy for the job then the dude they have been using for years. Maybe that dude isn’t really so hot but they are comfortable with him. He’s a known quantity where as you, Mr. Hotshot, could be a very talented but egoistical and artistically inconsistent flake. Even if you are cutting edge they will often continue to hire their old standby because he always comes through and is the nicest guy. Nobody takes chances and certainly not on you.

 

Consider this: your portfolio is your resume and you can’t very easily fudge that. If your work stinks it’s all right there for everyone to see. Ok as a photographer there is always the magic of Photoshop to help you fudge the fact that your exposure on that shot was off but if the image is boring, then the image is boring regardless of what you did to make it. Did I mention that they can tell if you “shopped it”? Boy-howdy does that say something about you as a professional.

 

There on that art directors desk is not just what you’ve been up to lately, it’s your soul and it’s being scrutinized. Joy! Every image you put before them and everything that is in that frame says a ton about who you are as a person and an artist. Your choice of subject matter, your physical approach to the subject, your tendencies both compositional and technical, how you relate to your subject and the list goes on. Heck just how you pair images together says something so the pacing of your book is in itself a small treaty on you. And you need to sell them on yourself in about a dozen or so images that they will go through flip-flip-flip … “thanks for coming by!”

 

It is good to know that every meeting to show my folio is like the “final interview” where they wouldn’t bother to give me ten minutes unless they were actually considering me for work. There just isn’t the time to meet with every Guy With Camera out there. Wheat from chaff ya know? For me it’s a pretty tough experience and I never enjoy going through it. Unless that is if the person holding my heart in their hands is enthusiastic about my folio and promptly decides to give me work. That’s the rush that all the pain and suffering is worth. He likes me! He likes me!

Doris ... take a memo!

Well my little promo is finished and out the door. I’ve spent two solid days just typing simple little promo cards with 2-3 sentences on them to try and set up appointments for my upcoming trip to New York.  I have such respect for the secretaries of the “old day” before word processors and “correct-o-type”. Those people were trained beyond what most of us would have thought possible. I’m so happy that some brilliant people have made spell check because otherwise I’m certain that my attempts at typed communication would make most people think that I’m, uh, “special”. Granted my hand writing is to some an unbreakable code but that’s another deal. Oh and just to make things harder on mu-self I couldn’t use correction stuff because my fancy-schmancy paper is not white, it’s tan with flecks of colored paper in it. One type-o and it’s start over. Gad I had a lot of those!

 

As I mentioned in a prior post I decided to type my promos on “Diana” the manual type writer that I got the other month. I wanted the editors who get these to know that I spent some time putting it together. Let me tell ya brothers and sisters did it ever. I am an abysmal typist but I got it done. My buddy asked me why I didn’t just use a cool type writer font and print them out Ka-ZAM! on my nifty laser printer. Well you can tell when it’s a font, you can see the perfectly even spacing and you can tell that it wasn’t written with the impact of the font hammer. All that stuff. With the promos I’m sending out you can see the delightful lack of accuracy inherent to Diana and that, I hope, gives it a hand made touch that makes them different. I didn’t just send out a bunch of cards from a database that rolled off the press at some slick print house which were summarily addressed and uniformly shipped out. Nope I labored over these babies – and how!

 

I hand cut the speckled paper, made and trimmed the prints, manually fixed the print to the upper flap and signed each one next to my biz card which is stuck to the lower flap. Doesn’t sound like much but to me it is. I just hope that the recipient “gets it”. I certainly put myself into it. But then, isn’t that the idea I’m trying to get across – that I put myself into my work? Either that or I’m just plain crazy. Hard to tell as they look a lot alike.