Big Production

So the other, harder project is looking like a big production. Or at least it seems like it, inside my mind. Seems like:

• four photographs
• four locations
• 15-20 models
• wardrobe
• props
• hair and makeup
• permits
• insurance
• food

Hm. The pictures are about all this connectedness we're supposed to be having as a result of technology, yet it seems we're more isolated from each other than we ever were. It's an important idea to me right now, so I don't want to shortchange it. But looking at that list, that's a lot of time and money.

As usual, things look a lot more intimidating on the frontside. As I remember now, once I get into a project like that, it'll be a lot less scary.

Fact is, I'm already into it. I hooked up with a prop stylist and a wardrobe stylist already. I've begun to inquire into some models. I've done a little tiny bit of location scouting. I just need to keep doing that. And if I do that long enough, even if it is little tiny moves, I'll eventually end up with some killer new photos. Or some junky old failures. But I'd rather have some killers.

Decisions...

So I'm looking at a couple different projects to shoot. One's pretty easy, the other's pretty intimidating. It's funny...I spent the last two years shooting my portfolio, and for about two weeks I was all up onz, but suddenly I was all "I need to reshoot the whole thing". I mean, it's fine for today, but it's not fine for a year from now, and at the rate I've been going, I need to get rolling on new stuff. And then: the easy project is pictures of shopping bags. As I found out when I went to Union Square with my girl, I've got a good start on shopping bags so far. Some shopping bags are easier to acquire than others. I was after luxury store bags, and these corporations seem to have a you-get-a-bag-if-you-make-a-purchase policy in place. At one shop, the saleswomans eyes darted side-to-side before she quietly exclaimed "Oh sure why not you can have one here you go have fun!". At the next, it was, seriously, a long look down a long nose and something like "Oh....no....we.....couldn't allow that." Floor two in one store would not give me a bag, but floor three would. It was a fun afternoon.

It's strange at first that these high-end brands would have a policy, but as I think about it, it makes sense. Somehow, it's all they have - this brand, which is maybe nothing more than a weird relationship between the company and the public. And like most of us, they want to control the thing they have, resist having it cheapened by any old joe putting his lunch in the brand at home, and taking it out of the brand at the cafeteria, avoid having the 'wrong kind of people' pretending that they went shopping for high-end items when really they bought a used paperback.

Low end bags are much easier to come by. I just carry my purchases home in them.

(Hard project later).

Glamorous Photography Lifestyle

This is what I'm doing today:

removing the glass pedestal from this type of image. Approximately 155 times. Next time I'm suspending that mannequin. I think that would save me about four hours.

Since the digital photography revolution, I often encounter, on my sets and on others', a kind of 'We'll take care of it in post' dismissal of problems. I generally try to think long and hard about what the 'taking care of it' will look like. If it's something I can automate, and it's actually difficult to take care of on the set, I'll go with the Photoshop solution.

Last year, I didn't think hard enough. We built a floor out of Ikea flooring, which wasn't so bad, but the studio floor was horribly uneven, so the panels of flooring fit together very poorly. This meant that the seams were really obvious. I knew I could clone it out, but I assumed that I could automate brushstrokes, so we went ahead.

When I started doing the retouching, I discovered that one cannot, in fact, automate a brush stroke. So I had to clone out the seams by hand. On 175 images. I did the same damn six brush strokes 175 times.

Twenty minutes of fixing the floor in reality, versus 360 minutes of fixing the floor in Photoshop. Sometimes it's easier in the analog world.

Willingness

Right now it feels like my 'old career' is getting in the way of my 'new career'. This is day five of seven straight days assisting and most of the rest of the month is booked. I need to shoot new photographs, have one project pretty much ready, yet I'm occupied all day assisting, and burnt by the time I get home. Plus I have a whole set of photos to retouch from my own shoot two weeks ago. I know it'll pass, that the assistant work will dry up for a couple days or a week or, shudder, a month. And that's when I'll remember that it's only partly a question of time, and that it's mostly a question of motivation, if not willingness. Willingness to risk making a bad image, to risk failing an idea I've fallen in love with in my head.

They're always so pretty, so awesome, so effective, inside my head, with the audience inside my head that's alternately far too generous or much too critical.

The challenge for me isn't so much getting the ideas out of my head and into a picture, it's picking up my camera often enough to let them flow out. But it's coming along, coming along...

Another Middle Time

I guess I'm getting used to this. I'm in another middle time - not yet operating as a photographer, not fully devoted to assisting. Three years ago I was starting to assist and ceasing to project manage. Hey. That reminds me of how glad I am that I no longer work in an office. That I get to go to different places a lot, see different people, encounter new problems, new stuff all the time, or more correctly, new stuff when I want it. Mostly.

Anyways. I've finished the pictures for my first real portfolio. I am now trying to get the physical side of it together, get my visual identity reworked, redo that website, and start promoting. After that, it's sit back and sign for the FedEx boxes full of money.

I guess now I have a blog to take care of as well, thanks to my friend Thomas Broening, who's doing so well with his...