On a visit in March Paul asked what I was currently working on. What projects did I have on the books? I answered glumly that I had...nothing. That I might never work again. That clients had stopped calling. That we were destined to became destitute. Woe is me.
Paul laughed. He said, "For as long as I've known you when January, February and March roll around, you are always filled with doom and gloom. You always go to the worst case scenario. And then, like clockwork, we hit April and your new complaint is that you are always too busy. It happens every year."
Sometimes we need external reminders.
Several weeks ago things were slow. Work microscopic. Whatever income I had was from my own savings. Now? Booked again. Just as Paul predicted.
Yesterday I was downtown making portraits for a law firm that's hired me to photograph every single one of the 73 new hires that have come through the doors in the last ten years. These are not "cattle call" sessions. No lining up subjects with a gray seamless background behind them. Nope. They are environmental portraits and we do them on a "unique" schedule: When a new associate or partner is onboarded to the firm the manager reaches out and books a portrait session. Usually it's for one person. Occasionally two people in one day. It's the way I always dreamed that portrait work could be. Unhurried. Photographer directed. Pleasant. Collegial. And the partner I work with is a big photography buff. Loves photographs. Imagine my surprise when, one day I walked into the law firm's lobby and there on a dedicated book stand was a huge and absolutely impressive copy of the Sumo production of Annie Leibovitz work. An amazing thing to find in the lobby of a company...
I got up early and went to swim practice. I stayed for some more yardage in the second practice. Then I headed home to eat breakfast, swill coffee and pack for the shoot. We had one person to immortalize.
Over the last month I've been experimenting with working lighter and less encumbered with gear. Yesterday I packed one 300 watt COB LED fixture, one light stand, one camera and two lenses. Also a 60 inch umbrella. And a regular umbrella because it was pouring down rain. It's the first time I've done a commercial shoot with only one camera in the camera bag. But I did cheat. I had a Leica Q2 in the car.
All the gear fit in a roller case and the stand and photographic umbrella fit in a soft bag. It felt weird not to drag the heavy duty equipment cart around.
I tossed the stuff in the trunk of the car and headed downtown. Traffic was miserable. Texans absolutely can't drive well on rain, or snow, or ice, or dry roads in sunny weather or..... at all. The roads were newly wet and people were traveling bumper to bumper at 70 mph in the 50 mph zones. Every mile fraught with peril.
I pulled into the adjacent parking garage, dragged my stuff out and headed in. Up to the 23rd floor. The set up of one light and one umbrella was quick and easy. The camera was a Leica SL2-S and the lens I ended up using with the 75mm f1.9 Voigtlander Ultron. I shot every frame at f2.8. No tripod --- just a complete dependance on image stabilization and a faster than usual shutter speed. Not a problem with the almost noise free SL2-S.
The new hire was a really sweet guy, just turning 40 and very comfortable in front of the camera. He arrived right on time and we worked together to make about 150 exposures with lots of little changes and tweaks as we went along. Twenty minutes later I was packing up to exit. I was out of the garage in a little less than an hour from my arrival. It felt... refreshing to work so unencumbered.
Back to the office where I pulled selected files into Lightroom Classic. I edited down to about 40 files, checking focus on the subject's eyes as I sifted through. I made basic batch corrections for exposure and shadow lift, then I used one of the presets to enhance the portraits. The preset smooths skin and balances it a bit, enhances eyes and makes just about any portrait look better. There's a slider if you think the preset presets are too...dramatic. After the 40 .DNG files were close to perfect I output them as full res Jpegs and put up a gallery on my Smugmug account so the client and the new hire could collaborate on a choice of images that I'll do a final retouch and enhancement on. There is a light switch panel and a door knob that I'd like to excise from the final image. And a spot on the subject's necktie.
I dropped the bags in the studio. Put the camera battery on a charger and headed out to lunch. A good morning, a decent fee, and a continuation of a good working relationship. Nice.
In the afternoon I got back into doing some composites for a different clients. A really fun A.I. start-up filled with young, smart people who love portraits that are a bit outside the box. I'll outline it in an upcoming blog post.
Hope you guys are staying as busy as you want to be or having as much fun not being busy as you'd want to be. See you on the next one.
Don't be too hard on your fellow Texans. Seattle residents are crap drivers in the rain, and it rains here about nine months out of the year.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see that an AI startup still wants actual photos taken.
ReplyDeleteA.I. is not all about just photographic imaging. The client's product has nothing at all to do with imaging. It's about information resources and predictive analysis. No one on their staff is a photographer or graphic designer. They like the work we do and that's why they use my company. Photographic point of view is still valuable to high end companies.
Deletehearing you talk about doing portraits with 180mm on 6x6 the other day and 75mm on 135 today has reminded me of the thought that things seem to be getting wider. Over the last 70 years it seems that the default angle of view for casual photography has gone from 50 to 40 to 35 and now is about 28mm. Portraits have gone from 105 to 85 and now perhaps even shorter. To have a dynamic wide angle look for a group shot of some dancers yesterday i found myself using 18mm. It used to be that 28mm was very much wide angle, now it doesn't really feel truly wide angle until i am in the region of 20 or wider. You talk about feeling happier and happier with your Q2 as your modern Canonet. Perhaps some of this is due to the much better croppability of modern files compared to 135 film? Or is it that our collective eyes are getting wider?
ReplyDeleteHi Nicolas. I think it's a bit of both things you mentioned. There is a style trend among younger users who've grown up with wider lenses on many smart phones that is very influential. I think people are more and more interested in showing the context and environment around a portrait while in previous times getting a close portrait was the prevailing style which nudged the usage of tighter lenses. We've also, as a culture, become a bit immune to a bit of foreshortening from the wide lenses; especially in the realm of selfies and group selfies that is less flattering but kind of built into phones and also the need for a wide angle to get a whole group in or to show both the user and something in the background. As to the Q2.... I love the way the camera operates but I am saving up cash to get the Q3 43mm version because --- that's the angle of view I have been programmed by the last 50 years of working with cameras to prefer. When I use the Q2, which I do quite often, I find myself using the crop mode to toggle between 35mm and 50mm. So there is that. The colors out of the Q2 are wonderful. The 30+ megapixel file at 35mm is more than fine. The 15 megapixels from the 50mm crop is satisfactory but.... Still looking at the Q3-43.... After a few days with 28mm lenses I find myself grabbing an SL2 variant and putting a 50mm on it before leaving the office...
ReplyDeleteAs I suspected, the Sirens have prevailed.
DeleteThe only good news I've read this week is that you're back at work!
ReplyDelete