This afternoon Studio Dog and I wait. We're waiting for a prop delivery.

I had a great lunch today at an Austin favorite. It's called Maudie's Cafe and it's old style beans and rice Tex-Mex. Basket full of corn chips with a big bowl of bright red hot sauce to get you going, and then you might try their really good caldo, a Mexican chicken soup with lots of vegetables and some white cheese. Me? I went straight for the Tex-Mex plate on the lunch special menu.

I was having a fun get together with my long time friend, Greg. Up until yesterday Greg was a freelance creative director but he finally capitulated and took a job he'd been offered many times before. He's now the executive creative director at a very successful public relations firm. Not old school P.R. but pretty much a public relations agency that also plays well in the purely creative advertising space.

We had a quicker meal than usual because we both had places to be by 2 pm. He needed to be in a meeting with clients but I had much less structured plans. I needed to come back to the studio and wait for a prop to be delivered.

Some people ask me what photographers spend most of their time doing and I'm beginning to think it's all about waiting around for stuff to be delivered, stuff to be returned, and then waiting around for clients to arrive and then, equally good, waiting for clients to depart.

I call what I was waiting for a "prop" but really it's more of a mission critical background...

It all sounded so good when I was on the phone with the art director. He had this idea that we'd shoot a still life and we'd use a sheet of brushed stainless steel as a background for some medical devices and some brochures. I had (and still have) a few concerns about lighting the background to show off the texture of the stainless steel without introducing hard-to-tame highlights but all-in-all it sounded better than yet another still life constructed on white seamless background paper.

The art director sent over a comprehensive layout and I got to work with a proportion wheel to figure out just what we'd need into terms of overall size. To fit everything in at 100% we needed a solid (no seams) sheet of steel that measures 48 inches by 84 inches. I started researching and soon found a supplier in far north Austin. We talked on the phone, I got a price, ran it by the client, and then headed up north to look at the sheet in person. Looked good to me. The sheets come in four foot by ten foot sizes so the metal company would need to cut it down for me. I paid for the steel and the cut and made arrangements to come back today and pick it up.

In the meantime I got out a tape measure and did the math on the interior of my new Subaru Forester. With the seats down.  And what I got from my meticulous calculations was the reality that my new sheet of steel was NOT going to fit into my new car. And, since the sheet of steel has four sharp corners I'm pretty glad it just wouldn't fit. I'd hate to tear up a brand new interior just for one photo assignment...

A swim buddy offered me his truck but I realized that not only was I uninterested in driving all the way back out to the metal shop but I also didn't want to toss this pricey piece of smooth flatness in the bed of a pickup truck and risk getting a kink, a scratch or a bend in it.

I called around and found a delivery service that would pick up and deliver the steel in the same day. I held my breath while I asked the price of the delivery. I exhaled with a smile on my face when I heard: "twenty-nine dollars." But with Austin traffic and the mysteries of commerce the company could only guarantee a window of time for the delivery. Some time after 2pm but before the end of the day.

Studio Dog and I sat on the couch in the house. I tried to interest her in a game of Scrabble but her heart just wasn't in it. We did play "go fish" with a few Pepperidge Farm Goldfish but she's not supposed to have too many carbs so we cut that game short as well.

At 4:45 pm the delivery guy, Brian, backed a large, long cargo van down the driveway and we worked together to bring the suprisingly hefty piece of steel sheet into the studio. Studio Dog barked a few suggestions from the front door.

Now the sheet is in the studio. Ready and waiting for the photoshoot tomorrow. Except. The shoot has been moved back. Delayed. Rescheduled. And I'm left to wonder where the hell to store this thing. It's a
problem.

And it just dawned on me that I have to figure out what to do with the sheet of steel after the photo shoot does occur and the ads are finished and approved. It's not really the kind of thing you can drop off at the Goodwill Store, right? Right?

Studio Dog just sniffed the corner of the prop, sighed and went back into the house where she promptly took a nap.

See just how much fun it is to be a professional photographer? In NYC or LA we'd have a prop guy specializing in steel sheets (but not aluminum) and he'd deliver the sheet, set up the sheet and then come by and remove the sheet. And it would only add three thousand dollars to the budget...

Anybody need some sheet metal? 

Oh crap! I forgot to ask! What kind of camera and lens are you supposed to use to shoot sheet metal. Can you use mirrorless? Does it have to be a DSLR? And what format? This is getting more complicated by the minute...