Having fun working on projects. Beats sitting around waiting for the pipes to freeze...

 

I spent time last year conjecturing about retirement. I was a bit premature. At least as far as my clients are concerned. We started off 2024 with a project for a tech start up. Five portraits in the studio over the course of two days. When they selected their finals I retouched them and composited them into urban landscape backgrounds (mostly against tall, out of focus buildings).  I wrapped up the final processing on them last night and sent the large .Tiff files off to an art director in NYC. All good there. 

The photography for the second project of the month started yesterday morning and wrapped up just before lunch time today. Five advertising partners against green screen. I've just finished creating galleries for each person and once they make their selections I'll composite them into defocused industrial backgrounds. It's a style they wanted from the outset. 

We did the first shoot here in my studio just before the weather went bad. It was very straightforward and went smoothly but nothing compares to photographing on site at a very fun advertising and public relations agency's headquarters. That's where we did the second shoot. 

Sure, I have to pack stuff up and transport it. I have to snag just the right conference room for my temporary studio and set up equipment. But the energy in a bustling ad agency is so much fun. These are people I have known and worked with, in some fashion, for nearly 30 years (the principals...) and they are surrounded by young creatives and marketing people. The conversations we have during sessions are eye-opening and totally at odds with the understanding of the markets and the trends that most of my peers cling to. Wanna know what's trending? Ask a 28 year old, social media ad buyer. And they don't work on conjecture or anecdotal evidence --- they've got the data to back up their viewpoints. Data, not opinions.

I worked across two days at the agency. The first day I was still feeling the glow of the new (to me) Zeiss 50mm Milvus lens so I used that on a Leica SL2. I set the camera for APS format to get the equivalent of a 75mm lens. It worked great. But when I was in the middle of post production yesterday evening I kept looking across my desk at the older Leica SL camera and started thinking about how it might work when paired up with another recent lens acquisition; the Voigtlander 75mm f1.9 --- for the M. I tossed a Leica M to L mount adapter on the older camera, clicked on the lens and took them with me this morning. It was glorious and the photos look just as good at the ones from yesterday. 

On the job in my studio I used an FS-300 Nanlite LED fixture, aimed at a big umbrella, as the key light and on a white background I lit with two more Nanlites for even illumination. Those images were all shot on a tripod to compensate for the potential movement of the camera while using continuous lighting. 

For the job on site at the ad agency I used electronic flash instead. It's smaller, lighter, easier to carry, etc. My "go to" kit for location flash consists of three Godox AD200Pro flashes and two Godox V1 flashes. All of the AD200Pros are equipped with round flash heads which match the round heads on the V1 flashes. They all put out a nice light and all of them can be used with the same front of the flash accessories. I only used three lights yesterday and today. Two AD200 Pros, each into an umbrella. One into a 45 inch umbrella as the main light and one into a 60 inch umbrella as a fill light. I used a very small Godox TT 350 flash to light the green screen. It only needed a small splash of flash.... (see above).

On one of the days of the "big freeze" I also got an email from the marketing guy at our big radiology practice which has spread out to serve most of central Texas. Now we're trying to schedule nine individual portrait shoots between now and the end of January. These will all be done close to home; in my studio just across from the house. Since I don't see any schedule conflicts I hope to be able to light one time and then leave everything set up for successive appointments. This will be my 23rd year in a row to provide doctor and P.A. headshots to the practice. A really nice run!

It feels like a typical January month for business. It's a bit strange since I really haven't done any marketing in a long, long time. The last time I sent out a marketing blast of any kind was probably since before the start of the pandemic....

I've increased all fees and expenses by 20% this year and, so far, no one has so much as squeaked. The reality locally is that business is brisk, suppliers are hard to come by, skilled suppliers harder to come by and budgets have become largely immaterial. Surf while the waves are good. 

One rule I have been following though is that Tuesday through Saturday no job can start until after 10 a.m. I figure if I don't set boundaries people will try to schedule earlier and that will mess with my swim workouts. The swims are now much more important to me than the work so the rules are hard and fast. You need an early morning start? Try Monday. The pool is closed then. 

What does this all mean? Not much. It's just more of the same. I am kind of amazed though that I still find this to be so much fun. 

Fussing around with the lights. Waiting for the onsite barista to bring me a latté. 

the luxury of traveling light. someone should write a book about the idea.

I have a good suggestion for a title. They could call it: 

Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Lighting.

It might sell...