A hot day to run around the Hike and Bike Trail.
But...nice clouds.
For most of my career I've taken back-up gear with me on location shoots for clients. Why? I think the answer is obvious. If you can't make a photograph you will have jeopardized all the time and preparation that you, and more importantly, the client have invested into a project. Having a "safety" in the equipment case can save the day. I know that current digital cameras are more reliable than ever before but accidents can happen. Do happen. You can accidentally fumble the primary camera as you go to place it on a tripod. Somebody can trip over a tripod leg. Or you may have gotten a camera that just dies on its own. Mysteriously. At exactly the wrong moment.
When we go on location tomorrow we'll cap off weeks of preparation time, scouting, sourcing fresh produce as props, and ad agency time spent pitching the concept and doing all the backend work of getting a project to fruition with a client.
You can't be responsible for everything that may go wrong during a shoot day but you can take steps to ward off "Murphy's Law"; or at least lessen the impact.
I've always taken a back-up camera and back-up lens with me on photo assignments. It's rare but I have had a small number of incidents over the last 40 years of working where a primary camera stopped working and we had to rely on our back-ups. The clients were thrilled that we didn't need to scrap a shoot, send models home, or watch a couple thousand dollars of produce go bad. And, the ad agency that hired me didn't have to explain a "failed" choice to their clients.
On one shoot, on a hot and dusty day in San Antonio, we had not one but two Hasselblad MF film cameras fail during a shoot. It was project for a big box retail chain, weeks in preparation, nearly a dozen talents on a rented baseball diamond, clients and ad agency personal in tow.
The clients were nervous when the first camera jammed up. They were relieved when I pulled a second camera out of a case. When that one failed half an hour later they assumed that we were screwed. I could always have blamed a near sand storm for the failures but it was a lot cooler to pull a third camera body out of the case and continue on until the assignment was complete. (All the cameras repaired, cleaned and adjusted and then worked fine thereafter).
That made a huge impression on me and it's probably why I don't leave the office for a job without a plan to overcome equipment failures. A mainstay of the plan? Redundant gear.
Tomorrow we'll be working with the Fujifilm 50Sii camera and a couple of Fuji lenses to shoot big assemblages of fresh produce positioned on Metro shelves. All against a nine foot wide, white seamless background. The final images will be used for "wraps" on big, refrigerated trailers. The images will be used in sizes around four by six feet each. Using an iPhone as a back-up just won't work.
I'm packing the camera case right now and in addition to the Fuji 50Sii, its lenses and four batteries, I'm also packing the Leica SL2 along with its 24-90mm lens and its four extra batteries. Either camera will do the job. If I have to go with the Leica I'd want to use the in-camera, multi-shot, high resolution mode --- just to maximize potential results. I hope I won't need to switch gears/camera systems but the gear will be there if I need it.
Same with lights. We've designed the lighting to work with three Nanlite FS-300 LED fixtures and their modifiers but I'm packing two extra lights --- just to be sure. If something goes down I'm not going to sit cross-legged on the floor trying to troubleshoot a complicated fixture. I'm going to toss the offending unit back into its box and move on to a working unit. I am a better photographer than I am a service technician and we are working around a schedule; with a team in tow.
In my mind it's not just "nice" to have back-up gear. It's part of the business philosophy. You need to be able to deliver the work. Otherwise everything falls apart.
I'm out of practice with logistics. That's what I get for flirting with the idea of retirement. I'm doing pre-production all day today. Charging stuff, packing stuff and figuring out the best way to set up on location. There's a lot of gear and that's usually fine but I have another shoot, for a different client, scheduled right after swim practice on Friday morning.
That means we have a quick turnaround after the shoot tomorrow. We'll wrap around 5 p.m. and get back to the studio by 6 (traffic gods willing). I'll need to unpack everything, put all the stuff in their appropriate places and then set up the studio for a white background photoshoot the next morning.
That means working in the studio until 9 or so. If I don't get set up on Thursday night I have to skip my swim in the morning and do it then. A choice I would be loathe to make.
By noon on Friday I should have the morning shoot completed and that allows for an afternoon of post production on both projects. If I'm efficient I'm looking forward to a weekend that's free and clear of work obligations.
B. might be right. It may be easier to just retire..... but not yet.
Back-up gear is stuff you don't want to have to use but it sure is a nice "safety blanket" for an anxious photographer. If the next three or four shoots work out well with the MF camera I'll bite the bullet and get a second camera in that system as well. It just makes sense.
Does all this talk about medium format cameras mean I'm getting ready to get rid of all the full frame Leica gear and move on? Naw. I've hit the point where I don't need to move old stuff out to buy new stuff so I'm just having fun cycling through, and back around, from camera to camera.
I'm pretty excited still to shoot with the Leica SL gear. I just got booked on two day project to shoot BTS (Behind the scenes) on a food show. Everything from personality/celebrity photos to action shots of food prep to making beautiful images of the "hero" plates. I'll be three Leica SL type cameras deep on that assignment; along with a box full of lenses. The final back-up camera there? The Leica Q2.
I expect to go through a couple thousand frames over two days. Pre-prep will include charging lots and lots of batteries for the cameras. You can never have too many charged and ready batteries...
Back to the packing for tomorrow. Stay cool.
5 comments:
Questions: Where does your responsibility stop? I know that you make the images and do some post-processing, but if a client wants prints instead of just files, do you provide those, or is that the client's responsibility? Do you have anything to do with the wraps? What about aspect ratios -- the wraps must be a lot longer than the aspect ratio you pull out of a camera, so do you figure that out (what would basically be some kind of long narrow aspect ratio?) I mean, who does those numbers, figures out the crops for the wraps?
What is the back-up hat?
Hi JC, Thanks for the questions. If I was working directly with the client or directly with the company doing the truck wraps I'd contract to take over more of the post processing responsibilities. As it is we're working through a large ad agency. They are responsible for taking the files and applying them to the different media. We are working with the agency generated comprehensive layouts to create files that work on our primary target; which is the truck/trailer wraps. Rather than doing a full length of the truck image we are shooting a series of vertical shots of shelves laden with produce. The client brief is that the photos of the shelves will represent how the food is delivered inside the trucks. Each panel of the six put total for the side of a trailer or truck is 4 feet by 6 feet, as a vertical image. The six images per side of the trucks or trailers are to be applied side by side to cover the truck side. The end result will be a 24 foot by six foot composite running horizontally. This may be broken up by a panel with logos, generated by the agency. The creative director for the agency figured out how he wanted the wraps to look. The overall concept. The art director and graphic designer measured the trucks and devised a template to follow. The art director and creative director will both be at the shoot tomorrow to approve the shots and to make sure they fit within the confines of the layout.
The agency is working with the supplier who does the wraps and the technical file specs (color space, DPI, file type) are coming from them to me via the art director. We'll have a monitor set up on the location with a grid imposed on the files to check for compliance to the comp.
Depending on how much resolution they've decided they need we may either shoot just standard uncompressed raw files or default to using multi-shot, high res files. Either way we'll be anchored to a tripod and using an electronic cable release to ensure sharp, detail rich images.
My liability ends when the art director gets my raw files and he approves them. At that point it's a pretty standard dance between the clients, the agency and the vehicle wrap company.
On most shoots I do the bulk of the retouching, corrections, and file interpolations (where necessary) but the comps are very specific in this case and the produce will require some retouching (note, we are not selling the produce as the product so retouching is legit) so the agency would like to turn over the raw files to their in house team of PhotoShop specialists in order to control the final look. Having me do that work would be more expensive than using the on staff team. And I'm happy with that.
I feel pretty confident about this one as the C.D. is a person I've worked with on hundreds of projects over the last 30+ years. And the A.D. is bright, knowledgeable and experienced. It's a fun crew to have on a shoot. And their agency pays their bills with a speed that sometimes astounds me. Same agency for the two day shoot two weeks later.
Return clients are the most fun and the most profitable...
Greg, Thanks for asking. I thought a black bowler like Alex wore in "A Clockwork Orange" but decided it's too much for a Summer shoot. I'm breaking in that white Tilley Hat so I'll probably don that on. But as the shoot is an interior one I'll leave the hat in the car for the duration of the day's project.
But, of course, I'm raring to get out and sport the new hat around town. It's so, so white....
US Navy SEALs saying: Two is One..., One is None. It saves their lives, it saves your shoot.
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