I ate a piece of quiche Lorraine at 6:30 this morning. It was good. I made the quiche last night, ate it for dinner and decided it was tasty enough and convenient enough for breakfast. My morning coffee was spectacular. But I assumed it would be. I've spent about 35 years perfecting my brewing techniques. And I'm paying a fortune for custom roasted coffee beans.
The mainstay of the photo gear got loaded into the car last night. Lights, stands, backdrop, cart, cables, etc. The only thing I'm not comfortable leaving in the car overnight is the rolling case filled with cameras and lenses. They are the second to last addition to the car in the morning. Just before me. We live in a very, very safe neighborhood but why tempt the fates? Lights are cheap to replace --- cameras less so.
I headed East through my part of town and out onto the freeway system around 7:15. Got to my destination; the Capitol Area Food Bank, about 15 minutes early. But as they say in the service: If you're not early you're late. I found a bit of shade under a small tree in the parking lot just across from the entry and hauled my gear out of the hatch and onto a collapsible cart. Wheeled that over to the door and sat down with my phone to read today's news and to wait for the guys from the ad agency to show.
The doors to the facility opened at 8:00 so I hauled the gear in and then went back to the car to pick up the long roll of white seamless paper. The roll we didn't need to use. The doors to the large conference room we'd be using as a studio space were open so I started setting up the five LED lights and various light modifiers I planned to use. The agency guys arrived around 8:15 and got busy building our subjects: Metro shelves filled with vegetables or fruits. Carefully and artistically arranged.
After I got the lights set up and tested I worked on priming the camera for the day. I was shooting with the Fujifilm 50Sii and the little 35-70mm lens and I'm happy to report that we got through all six hours of shooting on one camera battery. The little Atomos Ninja V we used as a monitor made it through on two batteries but, in its defense, it was on and live all the time. The camera was set to go to sleep if not in use.
The agency guys worked hard to put together 12 subjects. 12 groupings of produce that will form the image content for the truck wraps that are the end target of this assignment.
Around 2 in the afternoon we called it a "wrap" and the agency guys fled to find lunch or whatever. I broke down the set, the lights and the camera gear, packed it away and then loaded it all back into the car. We had a good time shooting. Everyone was in a great mood and the collaboration was rampant, fun, productive.
Before the art director left we pulled an SD card from the camera (I was backing up on second card). He popped the card into his burly laptop and downloaded the uncompressed raw files right then and there. 119 files. Variations. Tweaks to the produce. Spritzed and non-spritzed. He's happy to have choices.
We didn't stop during the shoot for snacks, coffee or craft service. We just plowed through. I was hungry by the time I got back into my neighborhood so I stopped and picked up a tuna sandwich on whole wheat from my favorite sandwich shop; Thunderclouds.
When I pulled into the driveway it was 105°. I decided to have lunch and an iced coffee before heading back out into the inferno to unload all the goodies from the car. It's not as much fun as one might think, the hauling of a couple hundred pounds of gear from the car to the studio. The studio that was blazing hot because I forgot to turn on the air conditioning this morning. The power grid people sent out a request for electricity conservation last night and today. Nobody wants a blackout so I complied as best I could.
Tomorrow's shoot is easy and straight forward. A bunch of detail shots of golfing grips and golfing paraphernalia for the book project I started working on with Jim last Saturday. All in my studio. All against a white background. The same background I didn't have to use today.
Working on all these projects with LED lights. Perfect for slow paced, thoughtful work.
The camera is wonderful. Incredible amounts of dynamic range. Shooting at ISO 160 means no noise anywhere. Shooting at f10 means the images are incredibly sharp. Of course, being anchored on a tripod makes a big difference as well.
The priority tomorrow is to make it to the first two swim practices. One for tomorrow and a second one to make up for today. It's kinda fun to be almost 68 and still able to keep up with the kids at the ad agency. Not in the pool. They're no competition there. But on the job. I guess it's all about not wanting to slow down.
We're still writing mostly about photography here. Photography that's been a daily practice for about 35 years. I write about it because I actually do it and love it. Hands on.
Grab a camera and head out to shoot. Or not. It's up to you.
Camera battery on the charger, now heading out to Baldinucci's to grab a great pizza. B. is home. Pizza on Thursday is a long standing tradition. We'll eat something healthier tomorrow....
10 comments:
tell us about your coffee
Just perfect coffee. what else is there to say?
I imagine atmospheric conditions in a car overnight and in the morning if it's sunny might not be that kind to cameras etc, that said I met a photographer who used to have all manner of things in the back of his car at all times, flatbed scanners and the like
Hi Adam, Things like light stands, soft boxes, umbrellas, most tripods and other gear without semiconductors inside are relatively immune from any effects of being left overnight in a car. The ambient temperatures overnight settle in to around 78° (F) and won't cause damage to cameras or film but my worry is theft of expensive cameras.
I would never willingly leave a camera, lens, light meter, lithium batteries, etc. in a hot car; especially a car in this particular Summer sitting in direct sunlight. Too much risk for damage. I especially worry that heat causes lubricants in lenses to get a lot less viscous and may end up in bad places --- like on the internal glass elements!
While I don't dread leaving most gear in a locked car overnight the really expensive gear is another story. And I feel the same way about leaving cameras and lenses in hot cars. It's ill advised. If the interior of a sunbaked car is too hot for a person it's probably too hot for cameras and lenses.
Just got a B&H sales catalog. $800 off a GFX 50S II.
I never asked this guy about his trunk full of scanners, I was thinking about the extra fuel he must have used by giving them a ride every time he went out this morning
I would think that the biggest overlooked risk for being on time to a photoshoot would be a dead car battery. As a fellow Subaru owner I recently found that when I had a dead battery I couldn't move my car out of my garage to get a jump. This is due to the fact that you can't get the transmission from park into neutral if the battery is dead without using a special tool found in the trunk. To make matters worse the trunk won't open if the battery is dead! I ended up having a friend drive me to an auto parts store, where I bought and installed the new battery myself.
Ha. People made fun of me several years ago when I mentioned that every three years I replace the batteries in my cars. The cheap bastards were adamant that I could get "at least" one more year of service from the battery and that changing it out made no sense at all. Since the cost of a battery is something like $120 I figure I'm spending $40 per year per battery. If I spend an extra $40 to make sure my battery never leaves me stranded, never leaves me in the lurch for a multi-thousand $$$ per day shoot, etc. then have I really "wasted" money by changing out a battery every three years? If one's time has no real value I guess fucking around with a battery on its schedule instead of your schedule might seem practical. To me it seems odd and ineffective. Same with tires. 30K miles and we change the tires. Tread wear has nothing to do with it. It's the decomposition of rubber over time. The sidewalls, etc. Just spend the money and change the tires before you have a blowout on the way to a shoot while driving on 150° asphalt. In fact, these two tips could save your life!!! Unless you did the math and found that saving your life is too expensive....
(I don't actually, personally change my battery. I take the entire car in to the dealer here in Austin and, during other regular maintenance AT THE DEALER, NOT IN MY DRIVEWAY I have them install and test a new battery. If you all have time to run around and do all of this yourself you are NOT in my OPINION operating a profitable business.
I'm waiting now for someone to tell me that changing A/C filters in my home's central air conditioning is a scam and that I should make my own filters from scratch.... Those are people who have moved on from self-brain surgery to home maintenance as hobbies...
Karmagroovy. If the car doesn't start and I am supposed to go to a shoot wouldn't it be most sensible (since it's a time certain engagement) just to move the gear into one of our other cars? Surely not all the cars we have access to will have dead batteries at the same exact moment in time... just sayin.
Kirk, yep moving the gear into another car is the logical solution if B. hasn't already taken the other car on a half day excursion. If you own three cars, nevermind. ;-)
BTW, since I'm retired installing my own battery was no big deal... actually kind of enjoyed getting the tools out and doing the job myself. Used to change my own oil and tune up as well, but that was quite a while ago!
Hi Karmagroovy. It's more fun to work on your own stuff if you are retired. That's for sure. There's always an extra car around here somewhere...
I have an issue in that nearly every time I try to do something mechanical I end up breaking more than I fix and it ends up costing me more. Don't even ask about the time I bought one of those tree saws on a pole. The saw with the pole was cheap. Maybe $60. The broken Armani eyeglasses, the dent on the hood of B.'s new car and the bill from the minor emergency clinic brought the total of my attempt to cut a branch down to about $2800. B. demanded I donate the saw to our landscape people immediately and promise never to try to work on trees again. And I was standing on solid ground. Think how much worse it could have been if I'd been up twenty or thirty feet...
Then there was the time I tried to fix my own camera. The mysterious parts are still in a baggie somewhere...
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