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I haven't written in a while.
September seemed to be the month of jewelry shooting. It took me around 2 days to learn the way these folks like their jewelry captured for proper printing but after that it's been full steam ahead. After 10 or so days, I'm through with jewelry for a while.
Then came this job...
It all began with an emergency phone call. I was asked to shoot 2 packs of gum and end up with them HUGE. First I had to run around and find the new gum design because there was no time for the client to send them up to me. Once I found them, it was just a matter of shooting them with a macro lens to fill the frame, shooting it raw, blowing it up to the proper size and resolution and then stripping them out and retouching them.
Not bad. Pretty quick and a happy client. Then he asked me a new question: "You are good with Photoshop, can you do one more thing?" Of course I said yes, so he sent me a jpg of a shot of a NYC news-stand. He told me he needed all of the too-sexy magazines replaced with different magazines and the man behind the counter removed totally. It ended up taking about 5 hours, but by 11PM it was done... almost. A quick phonecall, and I added some new gum packages to the front of the shot.
So all of the shots involved Photoshop, some more than others, and in the end, the client is happy. It's still a great life.
I have been very fortunate. The one thing I can't stand is boredom. I love to shoot but the high end jobs don't come every day. I landed a new free-lance job working for a high end jewelry catalog house. It's helping to fill in the empty days between the big jobs and keeps me doing the thing I love, studio photography. I've taken three days to fine tune my shooting to they way they like and now I think I'm ready to shoot for production. The company I'm working with is great. The people who work there are wonderful and the work is fun. Hey, it's making money with a camera. What could be better?
Eco-fascists - leave us alone!
I am happy to report that Bill Truran Productions is pretty green!
We have been increasingly digital since 1994.
Leaving film and processing behind has been a big help toward caring for our environment. Film used to involve acetate, silver and tons of chemicals. In the 1970's we shot a lot of Kodachrome 25 film because the colors were amazing. Kodak had to discontinue making the film because the chemicals used to process the film were deadly. Less scary Ectachrome and Tri-X used massive amounts of chemicals for processing. The labs that served commercial studios poured tons of chemicals down the drain in the 70's (who knew or cared?).
In 1994, we began the journey that was digital photography. The first step was to replace film and processing with a digital chip and CD's. That was a big step toward eco-health. The chips capture an image with no waste. No film and no chemicals for processing. Digital cameras since 1994 have even greatly reduced their energy usage, from large AC power supplies, to fire-wire and rechargeable batteries. Today, there are many ways to recycle old computers. Not everyone loves old Macs like I do. We still have our first Apple 8100 (we don't use it, we just can't part with it).
I would say that in the last year or two, our industry has improved even more.
Each year between 1994 and 2006, we saved client's images to CD or DVD and Fed-Ex'd or messengered disks to them. We then printed out bills and mailed them.
By 2008, almost all of our clients access their image files from our ftp server (no waste) and accept bills vis email (no printing).
Our company owns just one lowly Taurus wagon. We've discussed it in past blogs. This car is set up to hold a gurney with all of our studio equipment, a photographer and one assistant. No truck, no pick-up and trailer. We just drive to the location unload and park.
I think we have eco-improved greatly, with no damage to image quality. It's a win - win situation that I am very happy with.
I just recovered from 3 days of location shooting for my clients at Gerber. I was exhausted! I did things I have never done before for any of my clients.
I've been shooting commercially since, well, for a long time (before disco!). In all that time, I have shot available light and I have shot using studio strobes, but I have never used an on-camera flash. I don't do weddings or parties, so I never really needed to use one. There is a Sunpak flash in my camera case however because it belonged to my dad and I took it. It's been in there for maybe two years and this week, for the first time, I used it. A lot.
I bought a new lens for this job from one of my former students, Steve at Unique Photo. It's a Tamron 28-300mm zoom with vibration correction . I used it with my Sunpak flash and spent the days shooting meetings and parties for Nestle, the new owner of Gerber.
This job required three very long days. I worked with Kim Lime the coordinator for the meetings who arranged for there to be a room for me to set up as a portrait studio. I shot over 50 portraits, the opening meetings, the closing party, 7 breakout meetings, and a few other shots. 13 GB of files in all.
Aside from the portraits which involved a full studio set up (brought in on my gurney), for this job I used a 10-20mm lens, a 28-300mm lens, a Sunpak 333 flash, 2 sets of 4 AA batteries & charger, and my trusty Fuji S3.
Here is where the "professional" in professional photographer comes in. When you are a true pro, there is NO place for mistakes. For this job, I knew that I didn't know much about on-camera flashes so I assembled my preferred set up (28-300mm lens, flash and camera), and shot an informal dinner at our church on Sunday night. Everyone there knows I am a photographer and was patient as I made all of my mistakes and learned how the equipment worked. I discovered which settings were best, and that practice served me very well over the next three days on the real job.
This week it has been corporate portraits. 68 of them over two days on location. Each lit, cleaned up, retouched and placed (by me) in a powerpoint presentation to be ready tomorrow for the foreign heads of this company. They are flying in to see the American company they recently purchased. We used our gurney to move our studio to the corporation, set up in a conference room and shot on Friday and Monday. The people, all of them, were great. It really is an amazing company. They work very hard, for very long hours but they are all very nice at the same time!
Here is a hint for present day and potential commercial photographers: Learn the software. As much as you can. To shoot, I have to be an expert with Photoshop, Lightroom and CaptureOnePro. I have to have a passing ability with Illustrator, InDesign, and Quark, and I have to know Word, Powerpoint and Excel so that just like this portrait job, I can be as big a help to my clients as I can. Commercial photography is a service business. Service: the best photography, every time, and anything extra to make your clients life better. It's a great life!
This job was different (I guess every one is different).
This job came because a client gave my name to one of his clients and they hired me to shoot this job. Pearl Media does huge advertising displays just like the one above for Fox's new show Fringe. They wanted a lot of people around their display, so we shot during the All Star Parade (see the red carpet?). Even with over one million fans on 6th Avenue in NYC, my 6' tall 19 year old son and I (he watched my back and carried the laptop), got good spots in front of installations on 47th street and 57th street. The sun was hot and the day was great, the people were fun but nobody understood why I was shooting the buildings while everyone else was photographing the old baseball players. It's a nice way to make a living... hanging out on 6th Avenue in New York City on a beautiful day.
I know this looks like an office window. It might (I hope) make a nice background for a corporate portrait. My client at Gerber is hiring me to shoot 2-3 days of portraits. The shot that is 2 entries back was for him too, but required a great deal of stripping and retouching to include an office window background. This image at 5x6 feet will save me a lot of effort and time when shooting many people.
It looks like a real shot, but actually exists nowhere but here. I took a picture of one slat of a small window mini blind. Next I shot an image outside the window of trees and sky. I rotated the mini blind slat 90 degrees, transposed it to fill the image vertically and copied and repeated it across the image. I added some walls above and below the window and soft shadows where the blinds cross the walls, not the window. This image will please a good client. This image will make my life a little easier. This image could never have been created if I wasn't so experienced in Photoshop®. There you have it. To succeed, a photographer needs to expertly control light and focus, and know Photoshop® very well.
I haven't written in a while.
