Yesterday it was all about the Cows. Really.

Wednesday was a very cow-y day for me.  There's this thing called the CowParade and here's how it works:  The organizers plan a Cow Parade for your city.  They get corporate sponsors to kick in.  They invite artists to apply.  The find a charity to give money to.  Then each artist who makes the cut gets a cow to decorate and use as an art project.  All the cows are rounded up and auctioned off.  All the proceeds go to the charity.  In Austin's case the charity was the Dell Children's Medical Center.  Cool.  In Austin there will be nearly 100 cows.  So how do I fit in?  Well, since you asked......

I do a pretty fair amount of work for a PR agency here in town that happened to be involved in the whole project and it seems that the CowParade has much use for good photography.  One thing they need is for someone to show up during the cow "round up" and photograph each one of the cows from six different angles.  The cows need to be shot on white seamless paper so they can be "dropped out" to white and used in catalogs, collateral pieces promoting the Austin CowParade and also for use by the friendly electronic media.  I got encouraged/volunteered to become an "in kind" sponsor which means I did lots of photographs in exchange for "recognition" on the signs and other collateral.  I also got "invited" the VIP Preview Party but I was going to be there anyway since I agree to shoot the event photos.......

I usually dread shooting 92 inch long cows that weigh over 100 pounds on locations away from my studio and this was no exception.  When you shoot at a venue like a city coliseum, a music hall or other venue that specializes in live entertainment you always have to deal with people who don't understand what photographers need or how the projects need to be set up to work well for everyone.  For instance,  the cows are a maximum of 92 inches long and regular (what I can get my hands on quick) seamless background paper is about 108 inches long so, if you want to get white all around your cow you'll need to be able to stand back about forty or fifty feet from the set and shoot with a long lens.  In this case I used a 70-200mm f4L zoom on a Canon 60D.  With the cow about three feet in front of the actual white seamless I could get the biggest cow just right, with a couple of inches of white safety on either end.  But the first thought of event planners it to put you in the smallest space they can imagine a human and a cow in simultaneously.  You have to deal with that aspect in your very first conversation.

But the best spot in the Long Center in Austin just happened to be in the Auditorium Lobby.  It was wide enough to accomodate four Elinchrom monolights with umbrellas,  the seamless backdrop and an almost unlimited option for backing up to get less in (makes sense to me).  And when you want to shoot in a public, potentially high traffic spot like that you almost always end up having a very tense discussion with the security and safety people at the venue who (foolishly) believe that protecting human life is more important than our photographic projects......  It usually ends up with some sort of compromise that makes everyone feel a little used and abused and tosses a tinge of turmoil into what is usually already a costly and chaotic situation....

But NOT THIS TIME!!!!  St. Pinhole', the patron saint of location photographers, took pity on me and supplied me with a guardian angel.  His name was Bill, and this is what he looks like: