Good Apple honoree at the Texas Appleseed Gala last night.
Having fun at the Four Seasons Hotel for the 22nd year in a row.
The honoree: A. Shonn Brown
When last I blogged I had just wrapped up a day of photographing small products and cables with a camera tethered to a computer, in my studio. We lit stuff, wrangled the camera, shared images on a laptop screen with two people from the client side, made clever adjustments and then committed the products to short term "memory" with the push of a virtual shutter button on the laptop screen. It was all very calm and mellow. After the clients left I backed up the images from our engagement in a zillion places, broke down the set and started packing for the next day's shoot. All part of the same assignment.
On Wednesday I had a stack of photographic gear in a collection of cases sitting in the studio awaiting the 7:45 a.m. arrival of my assistant for the day. He was right on time and we got straight into loading the amazing Subaru Forester while talking over which gear we were going to use and what the run of the day looked like. The client's new H.Q. is about five miles from my location and, wonderfully, it's in the opposite direction from the morning traffic flow into downtown. We arrived 15 minutes early. Nice.
I'd met the security officer for the building two days before, during the scouting, so we were waved right through and hopped into an elevator with a (severely) overloaded cart. The marketing people we were working with had commandeered a beautiful 6000 square foot meeting room with high ceilings to use as our working studio for the day. Since we had already decided on the location my assistant, Perry, and I started setting up lights.
I used a nine foot wide, bright white muslin backdrop in the background lit by two Godox SL150Wii LED lights. The main light, thirty feet in front of the background, was a Nanlite FS300 LED fixture aimed into a 60 inch white umbrella with black backing (to control spill). The overall fill light was a Nanlite FS200 LED fixture firing into a 60 inch, white, shoot thru umbrella on the other side.
Since every shot we did on Wednesday would include a person or people I chose to tether to an Atomos Ninja monitor instead of going the slower route of tethering to my laptop. The monitor was connected to a tripod mounted Leica SL2 and, for the most part we used the Leica 24-90mm zoom, supplementing when absolutely necessary, with the Sigma 70mm Macro Art lens. Sometimes you just have to get in a little closer...
The SL2 provides the monitor with a live view image via the HDMI output so the client can watch the shot build in real time. In many situations the models had to hold small products in a very specific way and in a very specific area. After some trial and error with the spoken language we all realized that it would be easier and quicker just to turn the on set monitor around so the talent could see exactly where they needed to be, or where their hands needed to be to get the shot right. I highly recommend, at least on fast paced shoots with lots of moving parts, that commercial photographers reconsider their reliance on computer tethering if they don't need to deliver finished files on set at the time of the shoot. The HDMI monitors are capable of keeping up with the recycle rate of the camera without issue and the connection, at least with the Leica, is rock solid. Not always my experience with computer tethering....
Our make-up person, Jessica, was right on time and grabbed a corner of the room to set up her station.
The client arrived right on the dot at 8:30 with a cart full of products and props and a sixteen page, color catalog of the images she needed us to create during the day. Super organized and with comps of the set-ups. Photographer's paradise!
The talent arrived and all three were exactly what we needed for this medical product shoot. We were able to get our first talent into make-up by around 9:15 and started photographing in earnest. With a great monitor solution on deck, a well organized client, super-professional talent and a great roadmap we were able to get the bulk of our model+product shots on white done in time to break for a late lunch.
The client had tacos from an Austin favorite, TacoDeli, delivered (in quantity) and even had gluten free and nut free options for one member of the crew who has some allergies. We talked about our progress over lunch and mapped out our next steps.
We moved our lighting and camera to a surgical operating theater that was set up as a catheter lab, complete with a lifelike dummy on the imaging table. This side of the shoot involved more interaction between the models who were portraying a doctor, a medical imaging tech and a patient. Our biggest task, beyond constructing authentic looking scenarios was to keep reflections from our multiple light sources off a large, reflective wall in the background. With some deft seat of the pants geometry my assistant was able to work the lights into position perfectly.
We finished our last shot around 4:30 p,m. and started breaking down the gear, re-packing and doing our administrative paperwork with the talent. I spent a few minutes talking to the client about file delivery and post production, the assist and I packed up the car and headed back on the arduous 7 minute drive to the Visual Science Lab world H.Q.
During the course of our shoot day we shot 1285 full resolution raw files which took up about 116 GBs of card space. The camera was configured to write to both card slots for simultaneous back-up. Nice to have an option to do that when the model costs were $$$$ and any reshoots for file-fuck-ups would come out of my pocket. We are now backed up across about six hard drives and I've temporarily stuck a set of compressed DNG files up on my WeTransfer.com account pending final client delivery. Can't be too safe.
After I downloaded back up copies of the files I realized it was my turn (Wednesday is a designated day on the family calendar) to cook dinner. I punted. Headed over to Trader Joe's to get a bag salad and a chicken pot pie. Comfort food to make me happy during our damp cold snap, and my fatigue from two days of commercial shooting.
After I got the dishes squared away I headed back out to the office to pack for two different shoots we had on tap for yesterday. The first was easy. One portrait on location (exterior) at a law firm. I packed a Leica SL with the Panasonic 24-105mm zoom. Why not the Leica zoom? Because I wanted the extra 15mm in order to compress the background a bit more and I didn't feel like cropping after the fact.
The lighting was one of the Godox AD200 Pro lights (flash) firing into a Westcott Rapid Box Octa. A nice and fast to set up 32 inch octa-box. I shot a bunch of raw images of a very nice attorney, repacked the car and headed home to start work on the post processing from the day before ( I also post processed the attorney shots and made a nifty online gallery for her....) and to re-pack yet again for the Thursday night gala for Texas Appleseed at the Four Seasons.
This is a shoot that's the polar opposite of the controlled and high budget shoots we did earlier in the week. I show up in a suit and tie and weaved through the crowd of 400+ attorneys photographing couples, small groups and bigger groups during an hour long reception. We had an honoree and all of her friends and family to photograph as well as organization staff, board members, contributors, big dollar patrons and various law firm partners from Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. I even met the judge who was presiding over the Alex Jones case. Wild.
Lots of people, lots of loud conversations punctuated by clinking glassware and a constant flow of young, well-dressed legal associates and various non-profit staff. My "job" during the reception is to get as many of these "social" shots as possible. I've done this event, mostly pro bono, for 22 years in a row. I was originally talked into it by a nice friend who helped start the organization and she's corralled me in ever since.
So, I flow through asking and gesturing for people to stop their conversations for a moment and turn their small groups toward the camera. I fire two quick frames to give me a better chance at getting a frame in which everyones' eyes are open and I smile warmly and thank them. Over and over and over again.
I've used every imaginable camera, lens and flash combination you can think of over the decades. On the very first event, according to the brief account I wrote into a notebook back in 2000, I was using a couple of Leica M6 rangefinder cameras, a 35mm and a 50mm lens along with a Vivitar 285 flash on an off camera cord. I was shooting the event with Kodak's Ektapress 800 film and praying that the lab not screw it up.
Last night I took a Panasonic S5 and the 24-105mm lens, along with a dedicated TTL flash but I also took along the eccentric Leica SL, the Sigma 35mm f2.0 i-Series lens, and one of those delightfully retro looking Godox Lux Senior flashes. In fact, I brought two since the internal batteries are not interchangeable and I did know how long the flashes would go on one charge. I still don't know.
Here's the flash:
I had wanted to find a current "automatic" flash for a couple of years. Not a used one from the 1970's and 1980's but a brand new product that "featured" a more limited feature set than other contemporary flashes. I might use the manual flash mode with power settings from time to time but I wanted a flash that I could use in that old automatic mode with various Leica cameras; which provide a very, very limited choice of good flash options.
I selected ISO 800 and f8.0 for my automatic setting and gave the camera and flash a spin just before the reception opened. It seemed to work well so I defaulted to that combination for all of the social photos I took before we entered the main ballroom and started our program. The flash pattern vignettes a bit. With a 35mm lens it's not at all bad but on a wider lens you'd really see the corners go dark, dark, dark.
I enabled the AF illuminator on the Leica and I was pretty shocked that, when coupled with a fast lens, the AF was fast, accurate and pretty much foolproof. The flash was accurate for the most part. If it erred it did so on the dark side and since I was shooting Leica raw files at a mild ISO being able to lift the exposures in post or to open shadows in post was a piece of cake. There were no irredeemable files in the mix. Nothing that was unsalvageable and, for the most part, the exposures were right in the half stop on either side safety zone.
And, since we were working pretty close, 5 to 10 feet, the recycle was mostly spontaneous and the flash went on forever. A big win in my mind. I originally bought two of these. I thought they looked funny and whimsical and would be a conversation starter at events. Sadly, no one cares anymore about any permutation of camera gear. Nobody gave these odd little flash creatures a second look.
As I stated up above I bought two because you can't switch out batteries. They take a while to charge (a couple hours at least). I figured that if I liked using them and wanted to use them for the entire event I should have a second copy to sub in if the battery in the first died. I also had a more traditional flash that takes double "A" batteries in the bag --- just in case.
Just out of caution I switched out to the second flash when we moved into the on stage awards section of the program. Both worked flawlessly. Pretty amazing for $119 each.
I got home after the event, kissed the spouse and headed out to the office to offload the memory cards. This morning I did a nose-to-the-grindstone post production session and sent last night's client an online gallery link from Smugmug.com and a full set of downloadable files from Wetransfer. It's all in the client's hands now. I hope it helps them with their marketing.
After over two decades of this event I'm ready to hand the reins off to someone new. I'll let the client know and they can figure that part out. I don't want to become a referral site.
Today? or what's left of it? A good, long walk with a camera, some unpacking and studio organization and mapping out an adventurous out-of-town trip over the upcoming holiday. Something that's just all about making photographs for myself.
