Square Bottle Debut

David from Clean Bottle contacted me recently. He's launching a new product, and wanted new photography to kick it off. 

We decided to do one heroic shot as a leader, and...

...a sort of survey in a more catalog style.

I wanted to do the water shot, and I wanted to give Dave a straight black shot, and I didn't want to light it twice, so I elevated it over black plex, and my assistant, Josh, built a short lip around it, to contain the water later.

To make ripples, we tried jiggling the plex, hitting the underside with a mallet, and streaming water in from a hose. After all, we found that shooting air down the front surface worked the best.

Channelling Irving Penn. 

The bottle comes in four colors, but at shoot time, Dave only had a black bottle, a white bottle, and two Pantone codes.

I created the green and orange bottles from the white bottle, and put the four together in post, although the group shot above was done on set. I am slightly allergic to Photoshop, and much prefer to get it in camera, but at time like this, it just makes more sense to do it in post. Getting the colors right, since "color" is such a complex phenomenon, took a lot of finessing with the hue, and the value, not to mention different qualities and colors of light in the various shots.

A fast, very technical shoot to kick off a very interesting new product!

More info: There's a Square Bottle Kickstarter on through Oct 11, and they're already 75% of the way there.

Clean Bottle Website

The Clean Bottle Boy at the Tour de France

Eye Candy vs. Big Ideas

I can be real dogmatic, in my work, when I'm trying to get to the expression of some grand or clever idea. And that's, you know, useful. At the same time, I always seem to have some line on something more abstract, more open-ended and maybe just pretty. Which, pretty is important too.

In advertising, there's pressure to make efficient photographs, with an instantaneous message, that will sell a product. And so, in an advertising photographer, there's an inclination, maybe a habit, to avoid spending effort toward something that seems mushy, compared to the hard glitter of an ad photo.

Of course, there is great advertising that uses art without a point, or even art that doesn't have anything to do with the product. It's not axiomatic. Just a current that babbles along.

Recently

I recently shot these rings for a client; she's submitting her work to big book of rings. I think these rings are pretty cool. I didn't actually try them on, so I'm not sure if they're comfortable. But maybe it doesn't matter.

This composition is fun! I can see why this shot gets done over and over again. With rings and cookies and bread and frisbees and whatever else you can stack.

...but you really need more than two I guess.

Gems are funny things. I know the first thing anybody does when looking at a gem is wiggle it around. Which, of course, you can't do in a still photograph. So there's that. But also, they reflect light, they absorb light, they transmit light.

You could probably spend a lifetime figuring out the best way to photograph gems.

Shelf Life of Ideas

I like to think of my ideas as mine, and that's a convenient shorthand, but really, the routine way I think about ideas is incorrect. I think of an idea as something I come up with in my head, or something that appears in the intersection between my mind, my heart and my body. But that's not quite right.

Creativity is more like a window that appears, sort of inside me and outside me at the same time (like the windows in your house). And the...thing...that somehow becomes a photo eventually, comes through that window. The speed at which it travels through that window, through me, through my camera, and out into the world affects the final characteristics of the manifestation.

It's possible to try to manifest an idea too early, before it's had time to develop, but the opposite case is far more common.

There are ideas that live too long in my head, taking up residence, and becoming more detailed and rich, until they become too precious, and I won't shoot them, because I won't risk losing that glittering dream in my mind.

There are also ideas that roll around too long, picking up lint and dust bunnies from the space and from other ideas, and by the time they come out, they don't make any sense.

And then there are ideas that fester in there, until I become sick of them, but they won't go away and I have to make them anyway, but they come out overwrought.

Anything that hangs around too long gets ruined somehow. But that's too passive a way to say it, because it's more like any idea that I hold in that place too long after it's ready to come out starts to get ruined (and I just realized that has already happened with this very thought.

I mentioned that it's possible to try to bring out an idea too soon, but not likely. It's not likely because the even the act of trying to bring out the idea modifies the idea, usually either fleshing it out, making it more coherent and fuller, or poking it full of holes and showing how it's not such a great idea after all.

I like to think that the idea is mine, but at the basic level, what's mine is whether or not I open the window, and what's mine is my posture toward the ideas that appear there. So, ideas are not really 'mine' in a possession sense, and in the next post, not really 'mine' in an exclusive sense, either.

Necessity is a Mother

So, yeah, that is a $700 tablet computer rigged to a $2.99 paint roller frame. I stuck a baby plate into the thread collar of the frame, and taped the tablet to the plate.

I paid attention growing up, so long as it was cartoons.