I hate packing. But I'll have help with the unpacking and the re-packing and the unpacking that goes with it.

This is my secret weapon.  Her name is Amy and she's smart, strong and fun to hang out and shoot photos with.  I wish every job came with an "Amy" budget.

On most shoots I try to handle as much detail as I can by myself.  The reason is that business has been slow for the last year.  Slower than I'd like.  And I usually have enough time to handle stuff without running into too many roadblocks.  Where it all falls apart is on shoots that have tight schedules, require lots of gear, and require leaving the studio to make it all work on location.

Tomorrow is a great example.  I'm going on location to shoot a bunch of small groups of people against a white background.  I'm pretty boring when it comes to lighting white backgrounds.  I do it the same way nearly every time.  Here's the way it goes:  1.  I set up a nine foot wide white seamless at the far end of  the biggest room the client can find for me. That takes two light stands.   2.  I pray that we don't need full length portraits because, if we do, I'll have to bring a couple of shiny white boards with me for people to stand on.  They have to be shiny so they bounce enough light that they burn to white.....  3.  I'll set up two lights as far from the sides of the background paper as I can and about 45 degrees out from the center.  If you look at the set up the center of the seamless is the sharp point of a "V" between the two lights. There's two more light stands.  4.  I'll overlap the light beams a bit so they lights are almost pointing toward the opposite side of the white seamless.  5. Once I do that the lights end up hitting the subject or wrapping light around the subject so I need a black flag on either side to keep any direct light off  the subject.  Each black flag requires a light stand.  6.  Then I'll use a big light like a Photek 60 inch Softlighter for the subject.  There's another light stand.  7. Occasionally a client will want a total, bland, fill light so there's another light stand.  8.  I'll want a stand so I can use a small flag to help block light from hitting the lens and causing flare.  There's another light stand + magic arm + black wrap flag.

(For a more detailed discussion of my method of white backgrounds, please check out my Studio Book)

Add in the cameras, lenses, loupes, meter, batteries, extension cords and everything else I might need and you've got a ton of stuff.  Could I go Minimalist?  Sure, but on this job we'll be shooting 60 people in 20 or 30 groups, shooting 20 or 30 variations for a worst case scenario of up to 900 shots.  That's a lot of battery juice, a lot of waiting around for recycle or a handful of fried flashes coupled to high output batteries.  For a one person portrait I'd definitely roll with speedlights.  On an agency job with 60 people?  Thanks, I'll go with Profoto or Elinchrom gear and back-ups.  

So tomorrow I'll use a small set of Profoto lightheads hooked to an Acute 600e pack for the background and an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS pack and head or heads for the foreground.  Why two different sets?  I want to be able to precisely control the ratio between the front and the back.

So I spent a couple hours packing today.  I found the umbrellas I wanted to use.  Made sure the camera batteries and the flash batteries and the back up flash batteries were all charged and ready to go.  I packed my main camera, the Canon 5D2 and my back-up camera, the 7D.  I chose prime lenses that have the fewest elements so I'd have a fighting chance against background flare.  Then I cleaned out the Honda Element, checked it with a Geiger counter just to make sure there was no residual creative radiation from the last shoot, took out the back seats and started to load it up.

All you professional photographers who use assistants for everything you do will laugh at me for loading up the day before but our call time is 7 am, the location is about an hour away, (add 15 minutes for a Starbuck's Run) and there's no way I'm going to get up at 5:30 am in the morning just for the privilege of watching my nice assistant break a sweat before the sun comes up.  The idea that a team of assistants will work from a check list and load up your Bentley station wagon while you have fancy donuts with super models is so last century.  If you still have clients with budgets like that you don't need to be reading this ragged little blog......

So I loaded one car up this afternoon but I'm taking another car to another job tonight.  Why the second car?  Don't want a car full of Swiss and Swedish lights sitting unwatched on the mean streets while I photograph the dress rehearsal of a Shakespeare play.  Go Tempest!!!!

When we hit the client's office tomorrow we'll have to drag everything out of the Honda, put it on the big multi-cart and drag it down endless corridors to the designated temporary studio area.  If we're lucky they will have taken out the tables and chairs.  If we're unlucky there will be an unmovable conference table right down the middle and they'll expect us to shoot around it or use alien technology to make it invisible.  So, from 7am til 8am we're unpacking, setting up, testing and re-testing.  We'll mark the floor with white tape and mark the exposures at those marks.  It'll save time in the long run.

The final thing I'll do before the first group walks through the door at 8 am will be to use a lastolite gray target (on of those pop up things) to make a custom white balance for my raw files.

We'll shoot all morning long and then, at 11:30 am we'll reverse engines and pack it all up.  Put it back on the cart, move it back down the hall, stick it back in the car, drive it all back to the office, unpack it from the car to the cart and then from the cart to the various shelves in the studio.  So,  look what a big percentage of photography involves the logistics of packing and moving!!!!!

With luck we'll have a bunch of files with animated, gesturing employees.  With more luck the backgrounds will just have crested 255 in PhotoShop.  Once the client makes their choices it should be an easy thing in PS to make selections and send the files on their way.  If it all works the way it's supposed to.

This is the kind of shoot that you really need to use an assistant on.  The logistics are too odious otherwise.  I hope to be back in my part of town around "late lunch" time.  

The afternoon will find me doing global corrections and making web galleries in Lightroom 3.  Can't put this off because we start a three day corporate job on Sunday.

That's a behind the scenes look at the glamorous, "white background" shooting day of an average commercial photographer.  Does it really sound better than sitting in a comfortable chair, eating pizza, drinking Mountain Dew and writing code?  Didn't think so.  I'll let you know if we EVER get to do a shoot with the super models.

Thanks.

   

The five minute portrait. Just checking in.

This is my kid, Ben.  I'm blessed to have such a good kid.  I had some lights set up in the studio from my photo session with Alexis, last friday.  I walked past Ben's bedroom on my way out of the house and out to the studio and I was amazed at how much he'd grown.  I was also amazed that he was sitting on his bed studying his Spanish.

I asked him to come with me to the studio and spend just a few minutes sitting for a portrait.  I wanted to see how the light looked and I wanted to see if my memory of the Kodak SLR/n having better skin tones (by far) than my new Canon 5D mk 2 was just optimistic or if the Kodak really is a better portrait camera.  It is.  I also wanted to photograph one more subject before I tore down the lights and got ready for the upcoming work week.

To light this I'm using one gigantic 84 inch Lastolite umbrella with shoot thru diffuser on the front.  It's firing through a 6 foot by 6 foot diffusion silk that about five feet from Ben.  The background is lit by a little light in a small softbox five feet from the canvas background.  I'm using various black flags to prevent to  much "fill/spill" from hitting the shadow side of Ben's face.  This took, literally, five minutes and 20 frames.  I'm happy with the look.

I'm using a Kodak SLR/n with a 135mm f2.8 Nikon lens (MF) that I picked up last year for $60.  The light for both sources was from the Elinchrome Ranger RX.   The file is a conversion from raw with no levels or color controls.  I love the flesh tones.  That was my question.  I love that my kid dropped his book and followed me to the studio without a moment's hesitation.  Life is good.

The Anti-Workshop was a smashing success. No one got hurt and we saw art. Great art.

Let's get the important stuff out of the way first.  I shot with an Olympus EP2 camera and a 20mm Panasonic lens.  I thought it was perfect and tiny and light.  Nice to carry around all day, especially if you have a skull and crossbones wrist strap, carefully selected for you by a teenage boy...  I can't imagine any working photographer that doesn't have a collection of self portraits in bathroom mirrors from around the world.  This one is from a bathroom in the new section of the McNay Museum.

Speaking of Museums, the McNay utterly blows away the Blanton Museum in Austin for architecture, the breadth and depth of the collection, and just plain coolness.  Here's a newly acquired Picasso which joins the other two in one of the intimate galleries in the original part of the museum.  My shooting companions were as amazed as I at the stellar collection of twentieth century masters that  are hidden away in this treasure of a museum.  I guess I'm a sucker for sentiment because I really liked the Monet water lillies.   But the Renoir nudes are the raison d'etre of being an artist......

We spent a good amount of time rummaging thru the collection.

I found this sweet person at the market square sitting with a similarly dressed companion.  I asked them why they were dressed up.  They smiled and said, "We're celebrating the fact that we're still alive!"  Sounds good to me.

I guess I was channeling my "inner Stephen Shore" with this shot.  I love the many meaningless juxtapositions I find all over San Antonio.  That, and the famous Olympus Jpeg colors make every image a bit juicier.

But I guess I should report on the actual anti-workshop:

We met in front of the Alamo at 8:30 am.  Bernard brought ample copies of my maps of downtown which had areas of visual interest marked and noted.  We pulled together the group of 28 intrepid shooters and talked about the mechanics and ethics of street shooting.  I gave a vague itinerary which basically suggested that we meet up again in two hours, at Mi Tierra restaurant in Market Square for a brunch.  There was tons of activity around the Alamo and many stayed for a while to shoot.

I headed off to see the San Fernando cathedral and was charmed once again.  I'm also very happy with the new park in front.  It's very cool.  Then I made my way over to the Market Square.

Being Labor Day weekend things were hopping.  Food merchants had booths set up everywhere. The smells of cooking food were intoxicating.  Bands were playing on three stages and diverse groups of tourists ranged everywhere.  (Free range tourists?)  I put us on the waiting list for a big table and I could see our people having a blast, shooting everything that moved, just outside the windows of the restaurant.

If you're a Texas photographer and you haven't had a meal at Mi Tierra, shame on you.  It's not about the food (although it was very good, especially if you are a lard snob...) it's all about the giant mural, which now contains film maker, Robert Rodriguez's image as well as Eva Longoria's.  We're talking a painted mural at least 60 feet wide by 18 feet tall, painted with a wild impasto/realist style.   It's also all about the 50 foot long case of Mexican pastries and candies.  It's all about the carefully trained staff and the endless, over the top, decor.  We stayed for two hours and could have stayed one more if the street hadn't beckoned.  Amazingly, for such a large group, no one shirked their part of the check.  We actually had a surplus of cash.  First time I've ever seen that.  And I'm 54.

Off we go to shoot the swirl of activity in the market square.  Off to see the old buildings on Houston St.  Down the Riverwalk to see the Southwest Craft Center (beautiful!!!!!) and then back to the heart of downtown.

At 3:30pm some people peeled off and a core group of about 14 rendezvous'd at the fabulous McNay Museum.  I think I've described the experience pretty well, above.

When the guards and docents kicked us out a closing time we headed one block away to La Fonda restaurant on N. New Braunfels to get our second helping of great salsa and Tex Mex, layered in with a little alcohol.  Lively discussions ensured:  Who's the biggest online photo poseur?  (you had to be there) What does the future hold, technically? What the hell is diffraction and why is it intent on limiting things.  Which was the favorite painting at the museum?  Who got to photograph the teenagers learning to throw knives at the Alamo?  And so much more.

Best part?  I think everyone quickly learned that they didn't need a big name teacher or a fancy venue in order to practice their photography crafts at a high level and to really enjoy the day.  At least that's the vibe I felt.  If someone disagrees I'm sure we'll see it in the comments.  And if anyone had a bad time I'll be happy to refund their full tuition!!!!!! (What?  It was all free???????).

A pretty damn cool article. About one of us. A real photographer named Dave Jenkins.

Go here and look at this incredible article that will shortly be in your mailbox in the form of Rangefinder Magazine:  http://www.rangefindermag.com/storage/articles/RF0910_Jenkins_Jenkins.pdf

Dave does incredible architectural photography work, is a successful photographer,  and incidentally is a regular reader of this blog.

Getting a profile in Rangefinder Magazine is an achievement I've yet to figure out how to get.  I think you either have to be really good (like Dave) or be able to pay someone off.  And it's kind of a Catch-22 because if you're not good enough as a photographer to be able to make it into the magazine on the strength of your own work you're probably not good enough to make the kind of scratch it takes for a pay off.  At least I haven't been able to.......(I'm kidding about the second half.  I don't really think the magazine accepts payola.  Sorry but my lawyer makes me add these disclaimers for the humor impaired and the very linear thinkers.  Go HDR....).

But back to my point.  I'm reading the comments with a finer tooth comb these days and finding that we have an audience of very, very talented people.

Go to the link.  Read the article.  Look at the great work.  And then come back here and give some well deserved "Kudos" to Dave Jenkins.  Pretty damn cool!!!

Way to go, Dave.

"It reads better than it lives." -Ian Fleming

I think my friend, Alexis, looks like a glamorous spy from a movie.

There's a lovely line in one of my favorite Ian Fleming Novels, Diamonds Are Forever,  it's actually the last line of the book.  The character, James Bond, ruminating on the life of a spy, says, "It reads better than it lives..."


To a certain extent, that's the way I feel about photography.  I grew up reading about the swashbuckling adventures of Magnum photographers and Life Magazine photographers who were chartering planes to fly deep into the Congo or over the South Pole, drinking Rum punch in Paris right after the war with Ernest Hemmingway, and then dancing the night away at 21 in New York City.


The camera seemed to be a magic talisman of incredible power and the men and women who could wield them effectively were the surrogate eyes of the world.  The best of them were paid like princes (Avedon would amass a personal fortune of over $50 million !!!  Annie Leibovitz was able to loose nearly half of that without even trying.....) and even the most workman like of advertising photographers seemed to earn like plastic surgeons and orthodondists but with the added benefit of not having to play with blood or buy malpractice insurance.


Somewhere along the line, the wheels came of the profession and now even the top dogs struggle from time to time.  But I think we all persevere because we can't imagine having to do a real job.  Being leashed to a real schedule.  The world is changing.  It won't always be the way it was.  And not everyone is bringing wonderful new stuff to the table.   Another quote from the bond book,  "Tell them  in Chicago that their guys suffered from delusions of adequacy...."


There are still a handful of photographers making good livings shooting advertising.  Many fewer are making a living at all shooting photojournalism.  The ones that are hanging on are doing it by mixing in new visions and technologies.  Slide shows with captured sound.  Video clips, etc.  Maybe the wedding people are still ordering caviar and drinking martinis but my take is that it's rough all over.


I still think people look in from the outside with rose colored glasses on and think that photographers are living a dream.  They see the iceberg part of a photographer's life.  The scant time spent on the actual shoot.  They don't see the "Titanic sinking" business end of the iceberg which is all about waiting and negotiating and PhotoShopping and begging the clients to "please send the damn check so I can keep the lights on...." and then spending every free minute marketing and cold calling.


Maybe the opacity of the surface makes people too optimistic about the business.  Maybe a few more stories of talented shooters going down in flames and celebrated visual translators getting stiffed by multi-national corporations would open a few eyes.  Then they might understand that this has become a tough game.  I wouldn't give it up for a minute and yet, even with four good books out and twenty something years of experience, I still get nervous near the end of some months.  I still loose sleep wondering if the jobs and the checks will keep coming in.  In all I guess what I'm trying to say about photography is,  "It reads better than it lives...."  (apologies to I. Fleming)


The photo above, of Alexis, was shot this afternoon in the studio.  I used a Canon 5Dmk2 and an 85mm 1.8 lens.  I'll let you figure out the lighting yourselves......  Alex is one of the people I swim with almost every day at the pool.  One of the projects I've decided to do is to photograph everyone I swim with, one by one here at the studio. 


Note:  Get a good night's sleep.  Tomorrow is the anti-workshop.  Cruise around, break the rules and take all the photos your memory cards can handle.  I'll be playing "lifeguard" on the periphery.  Remember the Alamo.  8:30 AM

   

An interesting campaign for a Japanese Tech Company.

We talk a lot here about philosophical issues pertaining to photography.  I thought I'd take a break from that and just show a nice, cohesive campaign I did recently for a Japanese company.  The art director was very good with direction and I feel like the combined images worked well.  This campaign is all about branding and very little about actual product.

The shoot was really straight forward. We used a Nikon D2x and a small assortment of lenses.

The art director was Greg Barton, owner and creative director at Dandy Idea.

On another note:  We're doing out "anti-workshop" in San Antonio starting Saturday Morning.  8:30 at the Alamo.  Free.  Open to all.

Request:  If you enjoy the blog could you pass the URL along to someone else who might enjoy it?

Reminder:  I've written four books that have been well received and well reviewed.  Would you have a look at my Amazon author's page and see what you think?  If you've already read the books would you consider leaving a review?  Here's the address: Kirk's Authors Page.

Thanks, Kirk

RICHARD AVEDON: "Listening to Avedon" (1995)

RICHARD AVEDON: "Listening to Avedon" (1995)

Do you ever do photographs just for fun? Really silly fun?

This is a photo of my friend Lou.  Here she is normal, beautiful and happy.

Then we get the idea to wire her up to a special device that will be tripped with our Pocket Wizards in the hope that, with enough probing, we'd hit that part of the brain that controls automatic smile responses.  I'll be the first to admit, we got greedy.  We figured if every shot was a sure deal for smiles we'd save consumers a bundle on film, processing and prints.  And, of course we'd miniaturize the circuitry just as soon as we found the right nerve bundles and the right nodes........

But as you can see from her expression we were never able to quite hit the "smile center" even though we had an amateur neurobiologist along for the ride.  Word leaked out and we had to agree to pay some fines and sign a piece of paper stating we'd never play with a model's deepest emotions again.  But, the device is selling well in several other countries----but in entirely different markets.

(This is total fiction.  Don't wire your friends up at home.)

Has the entire paradigm changed or are we just experiencing extended suffering from "the downturn"?

I had an interesting portfolio show with a creative director at a smaller agency here in Austin.  He and I have worked on fun projects with the agency and he's always been a proponent of my work.  I showed him a bunch of new photos.  Things I'd done in the months between our meetings.  He looked thru my large prints (please, everyone, keep showing your work on iPads while I drag around a box of 16x20's.  I don't mind wiping the drool off the protective sheets.....) and he said very nice things about my work.

And then we put the images aside and he became philosophical in the way that creative directors can be, sometimes.  He wanted to discuss the future of the advertising industry.  And as we spoke it reminded me very much of the earlier decay of the market for commercial photography.  While we had bread and butter assignments to sustain us the ad agencies had the profit from large media buys to wallow around in.  Over time the consolidation of media and the demands of clients have eroded what was once the profit center for every major agency into.......nothing.  Agencies can still charge retainers or by the hour to figure out where to place the media but no longer get much or any cut of the media buy.  That leaves the agencies two or three profit centers:  Traditional creative concept and production,  marketing strategy and branding strategy, and social and viral marketing.  And most of these charges are based on hourly expenditures/charges at various rates.  Which flies in the face of what Andy Warhol always advised; "Charge for the art, not for the labor".   And it also negates the model of doctors and entrepreneurs which is all about, "Charge for what you know, not for what you do." After all isn't a great idea worth a lot? Even if you think it up in a heartbeat? You know the brain storming might last weeks until the epiphany hits.

As the profits decline the agencies also find themselves smack up against the same kinds of market killers photographers have encountered.  There are fewer big placement, national ad campaigns because the demographics have become so splintered.  If the total market buy is fractionalized by multiple demographic customizing then the percentage for each ad production budget drops enormously.  There may be more ads than ever before but they've been, by necessity, cheapened and loaded with homogenous and warmed over concepts and given budget resuscitation by the use of dirt cheap stock instead of (sometimes) more appropriate custom assigned images.  Then it becomes an ever cycling and self fulfilling race towards the bottom.   And, with a decline of people with wide ranging (liberal arts) educations there are fewer on the client side who can tell good from bad, funny from banal and so on.  I remember trying to tell a client about an ad concept based on "The Rites of Spring".....He'd never heard of it.  Didn't think anyone else would have either.....It was a sad testament to the decline of western civilization via business schools.

If the ads only have to be "good enough" and "cheap enough", and if everyone else is doing good enough and cheap enough then gradually the whole industry succumbs to wretched visual and verbal deterioration.  At some point the clients will decamp toward in house suppliers, stock design templates and home made solutions.  It's easier now to make a website than it is to change the oil in your car.  The great middle of the market is seeking independent web designers who reject the overhead of the big agencies.  And yet I can remember the days of the half million dollar websites.  With Canon 5Dmk2 cameras every photographer who stumbles thru a client's front door is ready to do a "TV Commercial" and at prices that make traditional television producers shudder.

What was my colleague's position? He firmly believes that traditional, big broadcast, mass market advertising is on the way to the graveyard.  He believes everyone will eventually spend their days glued to one screen.  This one screen will bring them all of their content, become their workspace and their entertainment.  It will also be the de facto communications center.  Everyone will rush to create "killer apps" in order to cement their brand in the minds of loyal customers and would be customers.

Imagine this bleak, 2016 (riffing off George Orwell's 1984, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World)  future where it might actually be illegal to go around without your personal screen device. It might the nexus of all your commerce.  All meetings will take place as conference calls on your screens.  All news and even television programming will flow to your device.  The apps you use will be branded in a frenzied attempt to keep your loyalty in a sea of cascading images and offers.  From the moment you wake till the moment you turn out the lights----and beyond--- you'll be locked to the screen.  Earbuds jammed in hard.  Oblivious to everything but the content.

No more shared experiences.  No more face to face socializing.  Oh sure, you might virtual "face to face" with someone while you wolf down a dinner your GPS enabled screen  sourced from the crowd sourced food approval list.  But probably nothing beyond that.  And since no one will want to read anymore all the programming will be moving pictures, video.  And rock music and more video.  Books as we know them will be used as fuel for power plants desperately churning out juice for a zillion battery chargers.  By 2020 everyone will have reading glasses from the 18 hours a day of screen viewing.  Exterior decoration will be a thing of the past.  People will no longer care what they or their surrounding compatriots look like because no one will be inclined to look up from the screens.

Of course this is such a cynical point of view.  The other way to look at this is to understand that the ad agencies are trying to find their footing much the way photographers had to a few years ago.  I think that the economic slowdown is much to blame for a lot of what ails the advertising communities.  Surely it is always profoundly changing but the more it changes the more it stays the same.  The new concept and the new idea kicks out the old.  Only the delivery methods change.  Everything will recover in lock step with the money.  The basic currency will always be the value of the human connection and the power of the ideas.

Looked at from a third point of view the destruction of traditional paradigms of ad agency/client relationships means that the agencies are no longer such powerful gatekeepers for their clients.  Clients understand that creative ideas and productions can come from almost anywhere.  The barriers to direct client assigned work are being torn down, campaign by campaign.  If the photographers and video producers focus their pitches they can supplant much that agencies control now.

It's all mixed up and it might get worse before it gets better.  I think the conceptualization of the app as the next step is overstated and will, in fact, be no more than a small tool in a big tool kit.  I think HD TV and other re-creations of technology mean television is just coming into its golden age.  Enormous clients will still want enormous agencies to handle a cohesive look and feel  to brands.  And the photographers with vision and staying power will remain.

When the economy recovers the creative campaigns will return.  They'll be different.  The media may be different.  But we'll figure it out.  We always do.

Bottom line?  Follow the money.