I got my hair cut this week. I bought a fleece pullover that was on sale. I used my phone as a remote for an ancient Leica SL camera so I could make a selfie. I swam hard all four days that the pool was open this week. Well, five days if you count last Sunday. Two more workouts to go this week. I lifted some weights. I went for a bunch of walks in the hills around our house. I had dinner at a friend's house and he made pasta with a clam sauce, and garnished the edges of each plate with fresh mussels steamed in broth. I brought the wines. I took my resting pulse rate. It's 54. I walked through downtown looking for fresh new projects. And I finished up two of the jobs I've been shooting. A busy week. A fun week.
Last Fall I was toying with the idea of abandoning work altogether and declaring myself retired. I'm sure you've been there. You feel like you've been over the same ground too many times before and you're tired of it. Bored with work. You find yourself doing dumb stuff while trying to challenge yourself. Things like trying to do a CEO portrait with a cardboard, disposable camera. Or trying to light an ad shoot with an emergency flare you had in the car. Or bungee jumping with a video camera to make some interesting b-roll. Or you retire. I guess.
At some point I realized that watching the S&P 500 bounce up and down, putting my nap schedule on a spreadsheet, and watching re-runs of "The Price is Right" was not the healthiest plan for aging well. Or happily. Or productively, or whatever other poetic mantra people blather on about when trying to convince people to abandon work for .... retirement fun?
I changed my mind about the whole thing somewhere between Christmas and New Years. I missed hanging out with creative people. I missed joining in the complaining about bad office coffee. I missed the motivation of living off cash flow; the joy of using other people's money. Instead of my own...
And just about the time I decided I'd work for a while longer the proverbial phone (really email and texts) started ringing and here we are nearing the end of the first month of the year having completed three multi-day jobs and having the delicious pleasures of both billing, and also figuring out how to use the new work to justify buying another camera or lens. Just for fun. Again.
Sometimes I feel like I have too much energy. I don't like to sit still. I don't like "down time" and I don't like wasting time. But I really do love meeting new people and then taking portraits of them.
Several of the jobs I've worked on recently involved making portraits in a studio setting. Against white or green backgrounds and then compositing the images together with urban/industrial landscapes. The image above is a shot I did as a fun sample. No, it's not perfect. I think we're beyond the need for images to be perfect --- as long as the images are fun and do their jobs.
It's fun and quick to make portraits against neutral backgrounds. Clients like it because doing things this way saves time for them and, with a big catalog of urbanscapes, they have lots of choices at their fingertips. Regardless of the actual weather. It's just a lot more convenient.
We did a variation of this method last year on an extended shoot for a medical technology company. I worked with an art director who is about as old as my son. 28. The art director was incredibly smart and a good collaborator. She sent me a text this week. The work we did on the previous big shoot is testing very well internationally. Sounds like we'll reprise all that again this year.
I'm having fun again. Working for the fun of it this time. Just because I want to. It's different. But no less fun. And while the work might be fun...yes...I continue to bill for it.
6 comments:
For 11 years I had a small photography business. It was not my primary source of income and a major reason for starting it was to find more opportunities for photography. I deliberately kept it small scale since I did not want my life-long passion for photography to start to feel like work. I only chose the jobs I would enjoy, and the additional income help support new gear acquisition. Sounds to me that you are on the right track.
Thanks Luke. After 35+ years doing commercial advertising photography I realized that ..... I really, really like most of the process. I'm just winnowing out the parts I don't like and keeping the rest.
there's a technique in 3d graphics where you can extract the lighting from a photo (or video still) to light a 3d scene, wondering if there's a way to do something similar, probably easier to do something a bit more old school, did you take the backgrounds with your studio lighting in mind? light direction etc
Adam, I'm not sure. I haven't looked into that yet. Let me know if you find some info. Thanks!
When I was in the book store yesterday, I ran across a book titled Ikigai (worldcat.org). I glanced through a few of the early pages and one thing stood out: the Japanese don't have a word for "retire" (or so the book says, haven't researched any further) and that's one reason they've attributed to some communities there living very long lives compared to the rest of us. They basically maintain their life focus/purpose and work as long as they possibly can. Who knows whether that's a fact or not, but something worth thinking about doing and seems like you're sort of in that frame of mind.
Also, along with adam's question, when you take your backgrounds, do you use a portrait lens and set the focus point about the same distance as if you truly were taking a portrait on-site? You've probably said that before, but I've forgotten.
Sad news for swimmers around here.
https://santaclaranews.org/2024/01/17/breaking-santa-clara-international-swim-center-closed-suddenly-and-indefinitely/
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