Packing now for a wide-ranging photo shoot on Wednesday and Thursday. MF or FF? Why not both?

Aerial Ballet.

I have to miss swim practice on Wednesday and Thursday of next week ---- but I think it's going to be worth it. We're doing a job for my favorite Austin ad agency and it feels like it's going to be both right up my alley and a hell of a lot of fun. I'll be shooting behind the scenes images of a cooking contest/show, following around in the footsteps of a big, friendly video crew, making images that someone else has spent hours painstakingly lighting and setting up. There will be food. And it's all indoors so --- comfort galore. We'll also be making still images for advertising.

I need to bring a plain background because I'll also be making fun portraits of the "celebrity" chefs, the judges, and the various gathered food luminaries. A second photographer, working for the client, will make the food "hero" shots and I'll grab looser versions after she's got the winners done perfect. 

A third "content creator" will be there to make impromptu images for social media. It's a big circus and what kid doesn't like a big circus? No elephants at this one...

I get to work side by side with a good video director. And an equally good crew. I'll be supported by agency people I've worked with on many jobs. And I'm pretty much going to be self-directed, as long as a I cover the requests on a short and vague shot list. 

So, what do I pack? I need to set up a small studio-esque area with a white background and couple of lights to make various portraits. They want consistency between the images, technically, so that's easier on me. Light once and shoot often. For the portraits I'll light with two Godox AD200 Pro flashes. One in a 45 inch umbrella and one in a 60 inch umbrella. We'll be dropping out the background so as long as there are no hard shadows we'll be in good shape. 

That station (the portraits) will get the new Fuji 50Sii and the 35-70mm lens as its camera. I'll comp nice and loose, anticipating a nearly square vertical shot that can be cropped in a number of ways. All good there. Something I've done a million times. 

The bulk of the shoot is behind the scenes and still photography b-roll stuff. That's the area that works best for the full frame cameras. I'll bring along a Leica SL2 with the 24-90mm zoom lens and a couple of Leica SLs with fun prime lenses as accent content makers and back-ups. I might even toss the Q2 in the bag just for grins. They all take the same batteries so.... it's an easy choice. The fact that everything will be lit for TV gives me a lot of flexibility as well. 

The shooting days are predicated on video shoot schedules so the days are long. Longer than I've done in the past couple of years. Our call times are 7:45 in the mornings and our wrap and go home times are 7 p.m. Two days like that and I'll definitely need an early Thursday bedtime and a nice, long swim on Friday.

Now charging batteries for all the Leica cameras. Kind of a mindless, fun inventory. 

So...how did last week's shoot turn out?

© 2023 Greg Barton. 

If you read last week's post about the food shoot on location then you'll remember that I was shooting "designed" food for a food bank. I worked hand in hand with my favorite creative director and a really smart, fun art director who came to the shoot on his Ducati motorcycle... We organized donated fruits and vegetables into groupings in industrial shelves and photographed them with the Fuji camera and the 35-70mm zoom lens. 

Here is the end result. A truck/trailer wrap on three sides with food, food, food. The back of the truck has logos and sponsor "thanks." 

It was a fun project with a tight turnaround for the agency people. How did I do? Well enough to get invited back for next week's shoot. And, yeah, with those big pixel, big files you can walk right up to the hugely bigger than life size images and see near endless details. That's how a shoot is supposed to go. Nice and fun and effective.

A short brag note: When I write about contemporary commercial photography it's never from the comfort and isolation of a padded easy chair, larded with a bunch of conjecture. Or other people's anecdotal stories.  I write about first hand experiences working with national award winning creative teams from large, successful ad agencies, and their clients. 

When I write about photographic gear; cameras, lights, lenses, I write about gear that I buy, that I use in the real world and on real paying jobs. And, if I write about it chances are 99% that I've been using it on projects across various types of clients and projects. Not conjecture. Not a recitation of a press release. And not from a day's dalliance making cat whisker photographs. Just sayin....

Don't know if that makes a difference to you but it's important for me.