New York Yankees Foundation
Last week the New York Yankees Foundation held a reception at the Ernst & Young headquarters at Five Times Square. The purpose of the event was to promote a foundation dinner ($50k per table) benefiting various charity projects funded by the Yankees. The Commissioner’s Trophy was brought along so that people could have their photos taken with it as well.
It mostly a grip and grin assignment and pretty run of the mill. However, at one point I wandered over to the trophy and happened to catch a great moment. Bud Selig’s signature is engraved in the bottom of the trophy and the former NYPD cop who guards the trophy tilted it up to show the bottom. The group of guys were clearly big Yankees fans and were very excited to see something that most people don’t. It was one of those occasions where I was in the right place at the right time and made a great image. I don’t aspire to be a reportage photographer, but I certainly do appreciate these little snapshots (literally) of the human experience.
On Being Prepared
There is no such thing as being prepared enough. As evidenced by shoot yesterday, nothing I did in advance could help me when the assignment went off the reservation. On one shoot, no amount of prep prepared me for the fact that the subject showed up with her own backdrop and props. I had not been prepped thoroughly in advance and probably looked like a stammering idiot when she rolled out the backdrop).
But no matter what happens, you’ve got to think on your feet with this job. Even if the client shows up with their own set, you’ve got to stay calm, take things in stride and get the shot. The more times you get blind sided the better prepared you are for being not prepared.
Fist Model Test
One of my shoots last week was for the current and previous three chairmen of the client company. It was a tough shoot, due to the fact that I was working alone as I frequent am, and the fact that these were very busy and important guys. I was able to get into the space and hour or so before the shoot and spent the entire time, right up until the point where the clients walked into the room setting up as many different shots as possible. This was fairly difficult to do alone, and I was sweating the last set up, to be sure. When I’m working alone, I frequently use my hand to see how my light is falling (fist versus flat hand to be a little closer to a round head) and then usually I try to step in front of the camera myself. However, I don’t like to use a tripod, so it’s often just quicky hand held shot. It’s not ideal, but working alone without an assistant, I’d rather have a goofy shot of myself as a general guide then walking in blind when the client arrives.
I’ll post the final shots from the session once they are published.
Minneapolis
It’s been a busy week, and today was the first day back in the office. My last assignment before the long weekend was in Minneapolis, and after some trials and a frightening run in with a corrupt flash card, I’m back. Overall I feel pretty good about the shoots thus far and now I’m getting keyed up for a grueling few weeks of almost non-stop shoots. It’s going to be intense, but I’m liking the work. I’m evening getting some variety in there, so more to come.
In the meantime, here is a shot from the nearly lost corrupt flash card of Minneapolis in the morning…kinda has a sci-fi feel, no?
Chicago
I am in Chicago for a shoot, then off to Minneapolis this afternoon for another shoot. It’s hectic and I’m tired of traveling alone – the excitement of traveling for photography has worn off. I miss Dr. Girlfriend and I’m ready to come home. The work itself is still exciting. I even got up early this morning to get some exterior shots of the Willis Tower (formally the Sears tower) as part of the project. I really like this one…
Corporate Event Photography
One of the aspects of my job is to shoot events. It’s one of the things that I am least good at, and although when I look at my work over the years it’s clear that I’m improving, at the end I feel unsatisfied. I am never 100% happy with the work I produce at these things, and I always feel like I should be doing better. Which is to say that I think more seasoned event photographers would do better than me.
Now, a note on that last statement. I am not talking about wedding photography when I say events. I’m talking about corporate event photography. And while I risk starting a flame war here, I would be willing to say that there are far more competent wedding photographers than there are competent corporate event photographers. When I try to locate examples and tips and advice about event photography, it is almost always about weddings, which is an entirely different animal to your basic corporate event.
Let me break this down a bit. At a wedding, people expect, if not beg, to have their photo taken. There is an understanding that having your photo taken at a wedding is part of the gift you are giving the bride and groom to remember their day, and that to avoid the camera would be depriving them of their happy memories. The photog usually is able to use flash, have an assistant, and have a dedicated period of time for photography (for at least the wedding party). And for the guests there is usually tons of booze making it easy to forget about the photographer.
At a corporate event things are very different. First, there isn’t any booze, at least during the day sessions. And if there is booze at the cocktail hours and dinners, they don’t want anyone having their picture taken while they’re drinking, so you have to get creative to crop out wine glasses etc. But most of all, people don’t really want to have their photos taken at corporate events. They are there to work, and not to have fun. Sometimes they fake having fun if they need to for their jobs, but they don’t want photographic evidence of it.
So here’s the problem that I face. I walk into the room usually with a slightly hostile crowd who doesn’t want their photo taken in the first place. Furthermore, they are generally sitting listening to a lecture, or taking notes, or sleeping. Hard to get exciting shots under those circumstances. There isn’t time for me to build up a rapport, or to be there passively for so long that they get used to me. I have a short period of time to build a library of images for the client, so I can’t mess around. And then there is the problem of how to get the types of shots that I want from a technical standpoint.
What kind of shots do I want? I want candid expressions, people interacting. I want shots of people who have forgotten that they are on camera and are reacting to the event in a natural way. These events usually take place in large hotel ball rooms which generally don’t have windows, and do have very high ceilings. For me, this makes lighting a particularly tough challenge.
Option one is to use on-camera flash. This is particularly difficult for a number of reasons. First, your standard speedlight, although powerful, is very small in comparison to the size of the room. In order for me to get the quality of light I am looking for, I have to be very close to my subjects. However, this usually isn’t possible because hotels generally pack tables so close together for these events that it is very difficult to navigate more than the edges of the room, and there would be large portions of the room that my flash won’t reach. Not to mention the fact that I’d really be getting into people’s faces, which wouldn’t get me the shots that I want. And the constant flashes would be a distraction to the people at the conference.
Off camera flash? The only way I could think of doing this would be to set up a series of fill strobes to raise the ambient light in the whole room, while at the same time being hidden enough so that I can shoot from any angle. But then I’m faced with the same problem of the lights causing a distraction.
Last week I photographed a tax event for college students that my company sponsored. 100+ students listening to lectures and doing team-building activities. After a few stuttering tries to capture the event using my on-camera strobe, I put it away for the rest of the event and decided to shoot the whole event using available light, long exposures, and high ISOs. I shot most of the event using my new 70-200 with image stablization and I couldn’t be happier with the that! Having been used to the non-stablilzed 70-200 I felt like a zen master, snapping crystal clear shots at 200mm at 50/second, handheld. This may not be that exciting for some people, but for someone without super-steady hands this was a real breakthrough for me.
As you can see, even though I’m using the high ISO, I was able to get some great detail (click on the image to see the full sized sample on Flickr). For the pixel peepers, sure, when blown up these images are a bit grainy. You won’t be seeing them on giant billboards or even large posters any time soon but the quality is more than enough for my client and what they were looking for. I shot all of these images with available light on a Canon 5D on or around 800-1000 ISO.
So what happens if the client does need better quality? What if they needed to use these images larger? That’s when I’d start to sweat, and would probably tell the client that it wasn’t something I could do. One part of me is like, anything more than I was delivered is asking too much and I shouldn’t worry about it. But the other part of me wants to be able to solve the problem. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else has any ideas I could try when photographing these kinds of events. Again, the challenges to be over-come are:
- Large, windowless hotel ballrooms with overall low ambient light
- Inabilitiy to get close to the subjects due to layout of the room and/or semi-hostile attitude towards the photog
- Flash photography could distract from the event
Business Meeting
I had to shoot a meeting the other day and was faced with one of the common challenges with my job: create publication worthy marketing images of real people, while they are having a real meeting, without disrupting the meeting. When I say marketing images, I’m basically referring to stock-style images rather than reportage. This is tough because for most of these shoots I can only use available light, and usually it means that I have limited movement because of the necessity to stay out of the way of the meeting.
For this particular meeting I lucked out in both respects. The room had both black out blinds and solar blinds, so I opened up the black out blinds completely and pulled the solar down half way. Solar blinds are translucent so they act as nice diffusers for the light while still keeping the room bright. The conference room was on the 26th floor, and I caught the sun at a great time. By the end of the shoot I had lost the good light, but I was in great shape for the most of it. If I could have controlled wardrobe I would have made some other decisions, but overall I’m pleased.
The View
Last week, I mentioned a shoot on the streets of New York commissioned by our London office. Apparently they were pleased with the shots that I delivered and asked me for another shoot. This one, however, was to be a landscape of a city. Because it’s being used for the cover of a global publication, it had to be generic, and not immediately recognizable of a particular city. Additionally it had to be taken at night, had to be an aerial shot, and I had two days (over a holiday weekend) to turn it around. Oh yeah, and practically no budget.
So I pulled together the location resources I had available: First things first, I need a city. I live in New York City, how convenient. City, check! Next, I need a helicopter. Crap. Ok, new plan, I need a tall building. Obvious choice, the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, the ESB doesn’t allow tripods or any other equipment. I would be going this one alone with my camera, my less than rock steady mitts, and about 1000 German tourists.
A side note to tourists: When you go up to the 86th floor observatory, you first are taken to the 80th floor, then you have to take a second elevator the last six floors to 86th floor. They give you the option of taking the stairs instead of waiting for that last elevator. Those of us who are used to climbing stairs and doing lots of walking can bound of up those six flights pretty fast. If you are old, disabled, or overweight and not used to climbing stairs, WAIT FOR THE ELEVATOR. Apparently, this advice comes too late for all the elderly, disabled, and fat people wheezing and limping up the stairs in front of me last night.
Anyways, I’ve submitted my images to London for review. Hopefully they’ll find something they like. Here are a couple of outtakes.
A good week
I don’t have a ton of time to do a full post, so I wanted to share a preview of a project I shot this week. I’m really excited with the results, and I’ll share the full story as soon as I have time write it up. In the meantime, here is a small sample of the results – rough and unretouched. I’ll do a fill “on assignment” post later, probably next week.
Working So Hard You Get Carpal Tunnel
One of my clients wanted to add some images of people with disabilities to the library of stock they keep for the company. So over the last few weeks I’ve been shooting people signing, a guy in a wheelchair, crutches tucked into the corner of an otherwise standard office scene etc. I think it’s amusing though, that one of the disabilities she wanted to include is carpal tunnel. I raised my concerns (mainly, advertising that if you work for our company you’ll get a horrible repetitive stress injury), and the client agreed with me, but wanted to capture the shots anyway. Here’s a sample from that shoot – I love the expressions and the blown-out quality of the light and focus…just wish it they didn’t involve a wrist guard. This is the happiest carpal tunnel sufferer in the world!
In retrospect I should have shot the same thing without the guard, but like most of my shoots I had only limited time with my “models” and was concerned about getting through my shot list before all of them left to go do their real jobs.
Also, these shots were done with my new cheapo 50mm lens
View from the Rainbow Room
I shot an event one of the event spaces at the Rainbow Room on the 64th floor at Rockefeller Center last Friday night. The whole place has the feeling of past opulence that has gone to seed. Everything seems like it was totally posh in, say, the fifties, but hasn’t been upgraded since. The wallpaper is faded, the doorways scuffed and dented from years of bus-carts bashing into them … overall the place just seemed worn out and sad.
One of the most distinctive features that I noticed was the sash-style windows. Clearly at some point these windows would have had the ability to open, but they have since been covered by solid glass. Rather than removing the now useless sashes completely, they have been left, I guess as an architectural homage to the original design. The overall effect of these window treatments is that they highlight how old everything is, and in many of my shots the windows in the background resemble warehouse windows rather than a high-end ballroom. This is made even more apparent when I watched the staff tugging on old school spring-recoil window blinds. Did those things ever work, even when they were new? I remember struggling with those as a kid at my parent’s house. Add on to that the fact that the sashes are all crooked and are layered with peeling paint.
At one point the wait staff was running around the room pouring water for everyone…chic chic bottled water no less; after all, this is a high class establishment. One of the waiters set a tray of perspiring bottles on the windowsill right in front of the Empire State Building 20 blocks south. I grabbed the shot above which over the last few days has really grown on me.
The room itself may be kind of busted, but you can’t beat seeing New York from 700 feet in the air…
DIY Small Format Snoot – Silver Edition
As I’ve mentioned before, a large part of my job is to make portraits of executives at my firm. The new visual identity for the firm which was officially launched today calls for environmental-style portraits rather than studio shots. The more of these that I do, the more I realize how similar all the shots in our office is becoming. There are only so many straight portraits I can make in our building before they all start looking the same.
I had to make a portrait of a new executive last week, and since she was able to give me 45 minutes (as opposed to five or ten minutes) I took the opportunity to explore a few alternative options to the basic conference room table shot.
For one of the shots, I opted to experiment with my home-made snoot which I made a few weeks ago and haven’t had a chance to play with before. Rather than using and old cereal box (which has become the blog-favorite material) I chopped up a silver pocket folder from an old design job that I had laying around. I put the silver-side in, and then taped up the outside with gaffers tape to make it look pretty. Then I added an extra strip of tape to the top with a piece of velcro to hold it snugly onto my 580EXII. The added velcro turned out to be very usefl when I was moving the light around during the shoot -I never had to worry about the snoot sliding off even though it was angled down on the subject.
Initially I thought that the silver would help intensify the light, which would in turn allow me to use a lower setting and increase my recycle time. This turned out to be true. However, I got an interesting added bonus to the silver interior: the light when absolutely bonkers inside the snoot and came bouncing out in a really cool pattern on the wall behind the subject. The main light targeted the subject’s face where I aimed it while the secondary light patterns coming from the reflected interior shown on the wall with less intensity around her.
I love the hard shadow behind her and then the softer light patterns all through the frame. You can see where the direct light is hitting on her face and shoulder and then the lighter reflections all around. All this from just one light on 1/4 power. Obviously, in a situation where it would be more critical to focus the light to a specific area, my silver snoot wouldn’t work as well, but in a case like this it added much more depth to the portrait.
Photo in TimeOut New York
I had a photo published in TimeOut New York this week. It was from a photoshoot of a theater company that I did some pro bono work for last year. It’s the size of a large postage stamp, but still, always cool to see your work in print.
Update: Here’s a link to the article for those of you who don’t get TimeOut New York
Business Traveller
Note: This post was written Thursday evening at SFO in California
I am currently sitting at a cafe in SFO, awaiting a flight that doesn’t begin boarding for almost three hours. I have a beer and an electric socket for the laptop, so I’m in good shape until I have to get up to go to the bathroom and risk losing my spot. Going to the bathroom is one of the things that I like least about traveling alone. When you are with someone, you can simply hop up and run to the bathroom; when you are alone you need to pack up all your stuff, pay your bill, and risk losing the sweet spot by the electric socket.
Traveling alone for business is something that I am doing more often these days, probably at least once every month or so. When the jobs come up I get excited – after all, travel, in my mind, means vacation. And in a lot of ways it is all a bit like vacation. Because the photoshoots that I am scheduled to shoot generally don’t take more than a few hours, and at most they’re a 9-5 affair, that generally leaves me with at least one, if not two nights to hit the town of whatever city I happen to be traveling to. Because my company generally only has offices in major cities, this means a night out on the town in Chicago or Dallas, or in this case, San Francisco.
The only problem for me though, is that all the exciting things that I want to do in these cities are things that I don’t want to do alone. This wasn’t always the case. In the past I used to love hitting up the bars on my own. Being in a committed relationship has definitely made this less attractive; I’m always surprised to remember, once I’m at the bar drinking alone, that the main thing that fueled my entertainment while at the bar by myself was the prospect of meeting women. I rarely actually did meet women drinking alone, but the thought that I might kept me entertained far longer than seemed possible.
But now that I’m not interested in meeting women, drinking alone on a business trip seems kinda sad. This is why more often that not I end up drinking at the hotel bar rather than going out on the town to explore. At the hotel bar, everyone is out of their element and most people are there by themselves, so there is subtle camaraderie there. Perhaps this is in my mind, but at a hotel bar, you’re not just some sad loser out on his own. You’re a non-loser put in a loser situation by your job, and everyone understands that.
The hardcore travelers are usually the ones who talk to you the most. As a relative newbie to the business travel world, I certainly am not in league with the people who spend the better part of their life either on airplanes or in hotel bars. These are people who have traveled so much that they no longer see the appeal of the hotel rooms (which I do) or get excited to be in another big city. These are people who have homes in the suburbs of a large city, but only see these homes on weekends or holidays. These are the people who know every airport (and airport bar) in the country, and know how to pack everything they’ll ever possibly need into tiny carry on bags.
These are also the people who talk your ear off about bullshit for hours at a time, because they realize that you have no where to go, that you’re not meeting someone, and that you have nothing better to do. And so they never stop talking. They talk about their kids (that they never see) and their newly remodeled kitchens (which they never cook in) and most of all they talk about their wives/husbands, that they are no longer married to.
While I am always excited for the opportunity to travel for photography, and I’m thrilled that the people I work for think enough of my work to send me across the country for photo shoots. But I’m also very happy that at the end of each trip I get to head home to my worn out mattress, in my apartment where Dr. Girlfriend is waiting for me, and we can go get martinis and talk about my trip. And if I have to go the bathroom, she can watch my stuff while I pee.
Mexico City
Sometimes the travel aspect of my job seems like it will be a whole lot of fun, but in the end seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. Last week I was sent to Mexico to shoot a portrait of a partner in our Mexico City office. Initially I was very excited – My first international photo shoot. No small part of the excitement was the fact that my company has a policy of flying business or first class for international flights. This was short-lived however when I was told that policy wasn’t applicable for Mexico and Canada…doh!
Regardless, I was excited to be going to another country, even though the resulting portraits, shot in a style to match the visual identity for the firm would be essentially pretty dry stuff. Over the last couple of months I’ve been working on refining my Strobist-style portable lighting kit for travel portraits, and this trip was the maiden voyage. I now have a travel kit where I can carry-on all of the equipment without having to risk checking anything, which is a huge weight off my mind. It isn’t particularly a weight off my shoulders, but my snazzy new Pelican 1510 case has sturdy little wheels and worked like a charm. The case is a bit heavy, but you can’t beat the price and strength. The nice thing is that with this case I can also ship my equipment in a pinch without having to get another bag. My current travel lighting kit includes:
- 3 Canon 580 EX Speedlites
- 2 Manfrotto Lightstands (collapsable to 19 inches, expandable to six feet)
- 3 Umbrella brackets
- 2 Super clamps
- 4 Pocket Wizards
- 3 Double collapsable umbrellas – two silver, one translucent
- Flash cards and card reader
- Extra AA batteries and chargers
- Various gels
- Gaffers tape plus other odds and ends
I have also organized everything within the case into components so that if I need to, I can pull individual pieces out. For example I have a pocket-wizard kit, which includes the Pocket Wizards, sync cords and slave adaptors. I found a $1.99 black pencil holder that was meant to go in a trapper keeper which works perfectly for this. Now I know that if I need my Pocket Wizards, I can grab that little bag and be confident that I will have everything I need.
Then in addition I carry a camera bag with my 5D and 30D bodies, along with however many lenses I feel I need and/or can fit. I am in the market for a new camera bag which is a bit bigger and would allow me to carry a laptop as well. Currently I’m putting my laptop in my pelican, which isn’t particularly convenient either on the plane or going through security. In fact, nothing was particularly convenient on my trip to Mexico while going through security. They took every item out of both pelican and my camera bag and sent them through individually. Luckily it was an early flight and the lines were short so I didn’t get held up too much.
Once in Mexico, I started to realize that a 36 hour stint out of the country may not be as fun as I thought it would be. Long lines at both immigration and customs had me wishing I’d hit the bathroom before the plane landed. Eventually I made it through where a very friendly, Deep Purple listening driver picked me up and took me to the W Hotel. Unfortunately, due to the schedule and the travel warnings issued by my firm, I spent most of my time in the hotel bar and in the neighborhood directly around the hotel, which I was told was “about as safe as it gets.” If I’d had more time, I would have explored more but as it was I really could have been anywhere. It was warm though, so that was nice. I didn’t get to do much shooting because I was told that since I was alone I shouldn’t wander around and I definitely shouldn’t be showing a camera. I made the portrait of the executive I was sent to shoot, but then I pretty much sat around drinking Victoria beer and waiting for my return flight.
Best thing about my trip? The shower in the hotel. It was one of those rain-style direct from the ceiling jobs with side jets shooting all over the place. And there was a hammock in the shower by a floor to ceiling window, which was a nice novelty. Four showers in 2.5 days…yee haw.
All in all, I’m glad for the experience, and I’m certainly glad to be getting the work, but hopefully I won’t have to take such short jaunts in the future. I may be headed to Canada next, but at least there I’ll speak the language a little better.
Tough Meeting Candids
My company is launching a new visual brand over the next couple of months, and the photography is changing dramatically as well. The new spec calls for more environmental type shots, which means that I’m likely to get a lot more work. In the past, people have been able to get away with the “stand against the wall with a point and shoot headshot,” although that usually meant that we had to spend a lot of time retouching to make them presentable. But the new spec calls for more natural, candid style portraits, which means that in most cases people are going to need a professional to do the shooting. While my firm does hire photographers on a regular basis, I’m the only in-house photographer in the firm doing this sort of work. So I’ll probably end up doing a lot more portraits, and a lot more travel. Time will tell, of course, who knows if all this additional work will make it to my desk, but I have high hopes. I’ll be in brand training next week in Dallas, so I’ll probably get the full spec on the new branded photos then.
One of the things I said that I wanted to do in 2008 was to build up a portable, strobist-style lighting kit using speedlites. If I’m going to be doing more travel, I want to have a lighter-weight, more flexible system. I got lucky right off the bat a few days ago, and was rewarded with three Canon 580Ex IIs, which is super cool. While not without faults, these speedlites are exactly what the doctor ordered. I still need a couple more Pocket Wizards and some smaller, lighter weight stands, but getting the speedlites is a major coup for the beginning of the year.
I tried out my new strobes for the first time yesterday shooting a business meeting that featured panelists talking to a group. It was a challenging shoot for a number of reasons, the least of which being that the panelists were not crazy about having their photos taken and the people running the event weren’t real happy about it either. The brief was to capture candids of the panelist speaking to be used in brochure promoting the initiatives discussed at the meeting, and it’s tough to get the kind of shots that can be used in collateral when you can’t control any part of the shoot.
Because the room was lighted with really horrible fluorescents, I overpowered the ambient with the strobes. Prior to the meeting, I lighted a zone around the stage, bouncing the strobes off the ceiling. This was complicated by the fact that on one side of the stage was a large video screen, which I couldn’t block with my strobe, so I was forced to put it farther back than I wanted. Because of the vagaries of the room, I lit my zone with safe, flat lighting rather than trying to go for drama – I had no idea where anyone would be sitting, who would be blocking light from who, and most importantly, I wouldn’t be able to adjust the lights once the session started. So I played it safe.
Throughout the shoot, I tried to be very selective with my shots, so as to draw as little attention to the process as possible. I didn’t want to overwhelm the panelists with paparazzi-style flashes every ten seconds. This meant that I had to stay crouched in front in awkward, yoga-style positions for long periods of time, trying to anticipate expressions. A few of the people seemed to be doing their best to avoid making any movements or, I dunno, smiling.
I’m not an event shooter, although I’ve been considering taking more of these gigs here at the firm to increase my skill set. I’m hoping I’ll start learning some tricks as I do more, so it’ll get easier. Seeing as I work for accountants I doubt the subjects will get more cooperative, but hopefully I’ll be able to work around that too.
Kidsplay at Work
A couple weeks ago I trekked out to New Jersey for an editorial shoot for a corporate magazine. It was a really exciting shoot for me, as it was a good bit beyond the normal corporate work that I normally do. It involved four child models (ages 9 to 16), their parents, the partners who bankrolled it, myself and my assistant. It was by far the biggest production shoot that I’ve ever done. I had full creative control as well, which is always good.
The concept was about consumerization in the workplace; basically, how consumer technology will affect the workplace of tomorrow. Today’s children will be tomorrow’s professionals, and when they enter the workplace they will want to continue using the technology that they have grown up on – technology like the xbox, the wii, the iphone, ipods, facebook, myspace, World of Warcraft. In case your wondering, I’ve already heard about stuffy accountants setting up conference calls in WoW rather than over the phone. Scary, but true. The concept of the shoot was to capture the “nextgen” as they might be “working” using the technology.
From an equipment standpoint, it was also one of the most complex shots that I’ve shot professionally. It featured three Hensel monolights and my Alienbee Ringlight. I have had the ringlight for a year or so and haven’t used it much, and was itching for a chance to try it out. Additionally, I put my foot down and asked for a camera upgrade for the project. Ordinarily I do most of my work using a Canon 30D, which is a bare minimum for the type of corporate work I do, and I wanted much more power for this project. I ordered a Canon 5D online from Adorama a few days in advance, and went to pick it up on Friday in anticipation of Sunday’s shoot, only to find that somehow the order dates got switched, and they didn’t have a 5D in stock. However, I can only say great things about how Adorama handled this potential emergency – they upgraded me to a 1DSMark II for the same price. “Will this one work for you Mr Gayman? We’re really very sorry about the mixup” Um…hells yeah that works for me! I danced out of the shop with love in my heart for Adorama, to say the least.
And I wasn’t disappointed. The Mark II is simply the best camera I’ve ever had a chance to use professionally, and it was everything and more that I dreamed it would be. It is actually very difficult for me to go back to my 30D. Its like driving a Honda Accord for years and then switching to a Mercedes. To get an idea of just how amazing the camera is, check out the larger version of the image above and check out the detail. And keep in mind, that larger version is at 50% size from the original raw file. The 30D is a great camera; I love it and if an when I upgrade to something bigger I’ll still hang onto the 30D, it’s a great camera for street use, and even a lot of the smaller projects that I shoot. But the Mark II is a dream to use. While the interface is a bit clunky (and may be fixed on the Mark III), the feature list and the picture quality are so superior that it would be a no brainer if I had $8k rolling around. I’ll definitely be renting one again, at least until I can afford one. Actually, I need two so I have a backup. Anyone want to get me a Christmas gift?
Corporate Portraits
A couple of weeks ago, I booked a shoot for a corporate portrait. Like most of the assignments I’m getting these days, this shoot was scheduled for a conference room, and we had plenty of time to accomplish what we had to do. Plus, there was the added bonus: the clients had budget for hair and makeup. Shocking. After some negotiation, I booked a guy who I’ve worked with as an art director and we were all set.
Then, of course, the client started adding people. Once the word got out that I was shooting portraits, we started getting calls. Before I knew it, the project manager had five portraits booked for the same time period, and then the next day another client added one more. Six total, in the time we’d budgeted for one. I scoped out the conference room that was booked, which featured nice, soft, northern exposure daylight…and not much else. White walls, conference table, windows. Oh, and it was tiny. I had to leave space for the makeup guy (Alberto) to set up, I needed space for lighting, space for the client, space for the subjects…it was a tight squeeze. No space for a massive light set up.
The challenge was to shoot six different and unique portraits within the space, in a very short time period. I ended up using a single hensel monolight and a shoot-through umbrella to push the interior light a bit, and then leveraged that great northern exposure light as much as possible. In the end, I’m pretty pleased with the results.
I was pretty nervous about the shoot for a number of reasons, and I felt that while I was shooting I was totally winging it. The subjects all commented during their sessions that they were having fun, and that I was making it easy for them, which I guess means that my banter covered up my nervousness. Every shoot I do is a new challenge for me, and I often wonder at what point it gets easy and my shoots flow smoothly. As long as my subjects and clients don’t see how nervous I am, I guess I’m doing something right.
Shots You Don't Plan
Most of the professional work I have done over the last year has been high-key white seamless work for my company’s latest advertising campaign. The general brief is for portraits of a number of individual employees for a particular ad or poster with the understanding that they used individually, or comped together in group shots with their peers. In most cases, the group comps are only made from people photographed in the same day, which means that for the most part, the lighting and setup is identical, and is pretty easy. Often though, individuals from different shoots are comped together as well, without rhyme or reason, so I need to be as careful as possible with my lighting setups as possible, so that all of the final photos look as though they were made at the same time. Additionally, for the most part, we don’t have a hair/makeup person or a stylist, so I make the photos with whatever the subjects arrive in.
Consistency is sometimes difficult when I’m traveling. Most of my shoots take place in conference rooms, and in many cases, the tables can’t be moved, or they give me a closet-sized room with dark panel walls and not enough space for a backdrop, let alone lights. The most stressful part of my travel shoots is the moment I walk into the space I have to work with, have small panic attack, and then get busy working out a solution. Sometimes the results are passable with some post-production, other times they are spot on and seamless with the other images in the campaign. Sometimes though, I get some really interesting photos as a result.
This image is one of my favorites from one of the travel shoots I did. This shot was made in Atlanta, in probably one of the smallest conference rooms I’ve had to work with. The room was so small, in fact, that my background lights were only inches behind where the models had to stand. I was pressed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows with just enough space to get my head between the camera and the glass, praying that the window could handle my weight without either shattering or popping out of the frame, causing me to fall ten stories to my death in a W hotel parking lot. Rather than set up a backdrop and stand, I cut a sheet of paper from the backdrop, and taped it to the wall, reaching up as far as I could while standing on unstable and wheeled office chairs. It was a hoot, lemme tell you.
The set-up worked pretty well, except when the subjects strayed off mark and stepped back too far, catching some overflow light from the background. In retrospect, I should have flagged or gobo’d those background lights to cut off that overflow, but there seriously was so little space I couldn’t have done it without having to edit the flag out in post for every shot – which at the time I wasn’t prepared to do. In the end, I had to do a good bit of post-production on the comped photos to remove some of the hot edges I got as a result.
The upside is that among the shots that weren’t optimal for the campaign, I made this shot:
I love this image, and I’m at a loss to say exactly why. While Jill Greenberg has made a career out of shiny highlights and glossy skin through retouching and I’m sure some comparisons could be made to her images, that wasn’t the intention. I think I just like this woman’s expression, and the facial shine give her an uplifiting and, for lack of a better word, angelic look. Perhaps it’s because her skin and features are faintly Nordic which give it a European feel to me. Additionally, while I wasn’t a fan of her shirt when she showed up, the color matches really well with her hair and pattern are working for me when I see the image completed. I love the fact that even though I never would have chosen it, the shirt works. This is one of my favorite images from my travel sessions.
I’m working on a collection of images like this from my corporate shoots – images that don’t fit the bill for the client, but images that work for me on a visual level beyond the “big-smile-right-at-me” picks that end up in the ads.
Under Pressure
Ok, so I had an experience today which hopefully will have taught me a lesson about reacting smarter under pressure. A request came in today for me to shoot one of our employees for a Spanish newspaper that is doing a profile of him. He was standing at the desk out front and the photo had to be taken immediately. He wanted a shot of himself in front of the building with the company’s name-sign visible. The adrenaline hit and I had to drop everything and rush outside with this guy to take the photo.
There are a number of challenges to the shot. First, the sign he wanted to be visible in the shot is 15-20 stories high, starting at about the 6th floor. It is composed of neon lettering on an open grid, and it’s visible on both sides, but there is nothing solid to frame the letters. It only really looks good in the dark, or when there isn’t light reflecting off the buildings behind it. Unfortunately, it was just after noon – super bright, and barely visible.
The building is also located in Times Square, which adds to the challenge. First of all, I couldn’t use lights or a tripod without a permit (no time to get one). In order to get both the subject and the sign in the shot I had to stand literally in front of the police station that is located in an island in the middle of Times Square. So off camera lighting was out – it was too risky to even attempt a quick run and gun, especially since I’m not experienced enough to grab the photo in one or two tries. Next challenge? My office hasn’t bought me a speedlight, and I’d left mine at home, leaving me with the craptastic Canon built in flash. I tried stopping down to capture the ambient light and get some sky in there to frame the sign, but the on-camera flash was too wimpy to make it work really well. I had to be very close to make the flash work and all, and basically lying flat on the ground to get the sign and the subject into the frame. Not. Fun. And finally, it’s Times Square, and it’s not easy to find a shot that doesn’t have 4000 copyright violations waiting to happen.
In the end, the image I prefer the most is one which only shows half of the sign, and none of Times Square. Not to mention that hard light of the on-camera flash and the unsightly glare on his glasses. Kinda works as a portrait, but probably not the one that the paper will use. Not my best work.
Overall the results were dubious, and as I review the shoot and look at the mediocre photos I made, I realize that the worst part of the whole shoot was that I was more concerned with the technical aspect that I forgot to do the obvious. I forgot to focus on the most important part: composition. My photos are awkward, the subject is badly posed, and the city isn’t framed well around him. I was trying to do too much too fast, and while I ended up with a few passable shots, I realize that I should have spent a little more time carefully composing the shot. I’m not going to lie, in a pinch and under pressure, I didn’t perform very well.
In the end I was able to salvage a few shots with post-production, and I made a few photos in his office with lights and a bit more prep, but I need to remember to compose, compose, compose. And to practice more, so that the technical aspect comes naturally while I’m worrying about the creative side.
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I feel like I should be able to take a good photo, regardless of the conditions or the available equipment. Bresson once said “Your first 10,000 photos are your worst.” He said that in a time when he was shooting rolls of film, so maybe 12, 24, or maybe 36 shots at a time. I think that number goes way up in the age of digital when shooting a thousand frames at a half-day shoot isn’t that outrageous. I’m just shy of 20,000 shots in my “professional” library. Is it now fair to say your first 100,000 photos are your worst?
Corporate Portrait
As I mentioned last week, I hopped a plane to Dallas last week to shoot a portrait of an employee for a career magazine for people with disabilities. It is the first editorial type shoot that I’ve done and I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. As I mentioned, I was worried that the subject wouldn’t have much time for me in the first place, let alone time for me to fiddle with lights and experiment with things.
I arrived in Dallas late Thursday evening and was chauffeured to my hotel by a driver who pretty much confirmed my worst assumptions about Texans. He praised George Bush, complained about the Cowboys and made a bad joke where he thought he was comparing evolution and creationism, when in fact he was comparing creationism with intelligent design. It was almost amusing how many stereotypes he confirmed in a 25 minute car ride.
That night, I had a couple drinks with a coworker in the hotel bar where I was perplexed to find a sign warning of fines and imprisonment for carrying an unlicensed handgun in the bar. I couldn’t figure out why this sign was necessary, but then it occurred to me that in Texas it’s totally cool to carry a gun around to most places, which is why it is important to specifically mention the places that are illegal. Gotta love Texas.
The next morning I scouted out possible locations for the shoot and then met my subject at noon. He is much younger than I was expecting and luckily enough for me was good looking as well. And most importantly, he was completely into the photo shoot which made the whole thing go very smoothly.
I’d picked out about five different spots to shoot in the area, one of which was outside in front of the building. It was a bit tough to work without disrupting the people working around us, and with the exception of the conference room we’d reserved, we couldn’t do much with lights. I used some small portable strobes for a couple of the shots with mixed results. In the end, I’ve got four or five safe corporate shots for the magazine.
Unfortunately there weren’t any large signs with the company name anywhere, so that was one of the shots I couldn’t get. An in the end, I wasn’t able to get the outside shot either because we were chased away by building security. One thing I’m going to research and carry with me is a photographer’s bill of rights, for situations like that in the future.
Overall the shoot went very well. 90% of the shots were standard issue corporate shots based on the specs given to me by the magazine. At the end of the day however, I asked the subject if he’d mind hanging around a bit while I did some experimentation. He was actually excited about the prospect, especially when I assured him that I’d make him look cool. The resulting photos were really exciting to me as it was stuff that I’d never done before, and they turned out really excellent. Below are two quick samples of the two different kinds of shots I took: on the left is a sample of the corporate shots and on the right is one of the more creative shots taken at the end of the day – obviously a bit too fashion for corporate work but fun just the same. The great thing was that both of these shots were taken in the same room with the same resources.
We’re going to submit one of the more creative photos for the magazine cover, along with the safe ones and we’ll see which way they go. I assume they’ll choose one of the safe ones, but you never know. I’ll be posting more from this shoot once we get through post production and make the final choices for the magazine.
Off to Dallas
The one thing I have to say for my silence here at Exhibit 5a is that I’ve been busy. I wish I could say that I’ve been busy taking tons of great photos, but unfortunately it’s been much more banal work that I’ve been attending to. I did spend some time yesterday on some self portraits – 1-2 hours worth of work for one pretty decent shot (which I’ll post later in the week once I get a chance to process it). It was great to spend some time playing around with light using some of the techniques that I’ve been reading about on Strobist.
I am heading out on another assignment this Thursday, this time to Dallas to shoot the cover for a small trade magazine about careers for people with disabilities – an offshoot of the project from in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. While I’m looking forward to the opportunity and the warm weather, I’m a little apprehensive about how the project will go. It will be a few more firsts for me, and I’ve been spending a lot of time planning and trying to think of all the scenarios that I might face when I get out there.
There are a number of interesting challenges to this project that I have to keep in mind. First of all, since my subject is the feature of the cover story, I need to shoot a cover image as well as at least one secondary image to accompany the article inside the magazine. I was given a detailed spec list for shot with helpful instructions like “remember to leave at least 2 inches above the subject for the masthead.” Given the fact that I’m only shooting with a 8.2mp camera, I don’t have a lot of pixels to spare for mastheads and background, while still getting reasonable resolution on the subject. What I wouldn’t give for a 16mp 1DS Mark II!
The need for two different images will be tough for me as well. Since I’m relatively new to this, setups take a bit longer than I’d like. I’m concerned a bit about being able to find two locations and get them set up without losing the patience of the subject. Even in my limited experience I’ve found the subjects are not interested in hanging out while you fiddle with lights. Most people are used to snapshots which are over in five seconds and often get anxious after even just a few minutes in front of the camera. My plan is to scout out spots in the morning, and try to do set ups that involve only one light. I’m hoping for good weather, so I could do an inside shot and an outside one.
The final challenge is that the subject is hearing disabled, although to what degree I’m not sure. As I’ve mentioned, I am able to cover my nervousness with banter and chatter, but if my subject is unable to hear, I’m not sure what kind of dynamic we will have. And of course there is the added challenge of trying to capture a photo which illustrates that the subject is hearing disabled. I’m betting in the end the headline will have to capture the concept and I’ll just have to pull out a strong portrait.
All in all, very exciting. I’ll post updates when I get back.
Candid
One of the candids I took while I was on location in Philadelphia. I love the way the man in the chair is headed into the bright light streaming into the windows, completely blowing out the details making it look like he’s rolling into some sort of abyss. Is mentioning the exit sign too obvious…?