The blog is back and I'm back at work. "They keep pulling me back in...."

 

The best, and cheapest photo backpack I have ever acquired...

From Bagsmart. Via Amazon. 

Info here!

By the first of July I'd pretty much decided that I was finished working and that I'd settle into retirement with a heavy dose of swimming, walking and traveling. I knew I'd be out of the pool and sporting a dramatic bandage across my face for the first week of the month or maybe two. Not the look you want to be sporting if you are still interested in attracting and maintaining clients in the advertising field...

By the end of the two weeks, after the stitches came out and the bandage was gone, I got back in the pool with a pervasive sense of euphoria washing over me. But I realized that I could only get in a couple hours of swimming each day and needed to do something additional to fill the time. I was getting....bored. 

So, when one of my clients called and asked me to come over and make a portrait for a new hire I reflexively said "yes." The client is the big law firm I've been making environmental portraits for over the last ten years. Dozens and dozens of them. Why do I like making portraits for them? Because unlike the "cattle call" mentality that many clients seem to have this client calls me when the firm adds each new associate (about one or two per quarter) and has me come over and do a session just for that one new arrival. It's become a welcome and leisurely paced project. Added bonus? No one is art directing me besides me.

I schedule each one to happen about an hour after swim practice, in the mornings. That gives me time to grab coffee, check emails and make an unhurried trip into downtown. The is firm has two floors in a high rise building in downtown and there is a connected parking garage, the elevators of which empty into the lobby of the actual building. It's an easy ramble with gear and the client always validates my parking. 

I spend anywhere from twenty minutes to half an hour deciding on an interior location and then lighting it for the kind of portraits I like to take. The new hire generally shows up right on time and we spend about fifteen or twenty minutes conversing, getting to know each other and then making the actual photographs. I generally fix poorly knotted ties, pull wrinkles out of dress shirts and otherwise fine tune the subject's appearance. 

The photo of a new hire named Patrick was my first job back after my insanely truncated attempt at retiring. And I was happy to do it. It provided a nice anchoring for the day. And I enjoy my visits to this particular client because they handle my own legal stuff so the client/artist relationship is bi-lateral. 

After the process of getting the latest portrait the office manager let me know that they are planning to redo all the attorneys' photos for the website and P.R. applications. Sometime in the near future. As I was leaving my portrait session she asked me to put together an estimate and some style ideas for handling the photography of the 34 people the project would entail. I had to think about whether or not I would "pass" on the project and cling to the idea of being retired or to go ahead and stick around for at least one more project... I went ahead and presented a proposal...

But later that same day one of my favorite ad agencies sent along an email. Could I work with them next weekend on a real estate development project? It's the same agency I did the fun Hill Country wine stuff for two or three years ago. An agency I've worked with since their inception decades ago. I'd be working with a videographer as part of one team while two folks from the agency would make up a second shooting team. The next day I had lunch with the creative director for the agency. I was waffling about taking on a project that was mostly exterior, in the first two weeks of August, in the middle of central Texas. He suggested passing but again, I was already feeling bored and restless so I sent along an estimate. Which the agency team gleefully accepted. 

Today we had my first "Teams" call (like Zoom, but from Microsoft) with the producer for the project and the three other members of the creative teams. It went well. We'll be out in the middle of a big development making photographs and interviewing some early residents. And that brings us to the rationale for the camera backpack I stuck at the top of this post. 

When I pack for this (mostly) exterior photoshoot I'm taking along two Leica SL2 cameras (both black), several Leica zoom lenses (both black), Some flash gear (all black) and some batteries for the cameras (all black). As you know black stuff tends to do a stellar job at soaking up heat. And the weather people are expecting lots of heat on the shooting days. It dawned on me that I'd be carrying around heat magnets for hours at a time. And even the best of cameras, lenses, and flashes aren't really at their optimal performance parameters once thoroughly heat soaked. So I started looking around for camera bags or camera backpacks that are anything but dark gray, darker gray or jet black. And I had damn little success in my initial research. 

Most of the options were small bags that might hold a pixie camera or something from Sony. But a bag that would hold two Leica bodies, two lenses and some flash gear seemed kind of unicorn-ish. I found an Oberwerth bag that might work....for $1200. But I'd didn't want to part with half my fee for a one time bag experience... 

I finally lucked onto this backpack from a company called, Bagsmart. It was $45. And it is, as far as I can tell, absolutely perfect. So, why? First of all, it's a good size. I can fit all of the camera kit and one of the flashes inside. Second, it's made of thick, very light colored canvas so it breathes and reflects IR energy. Third, it has a well padded pocket for a 15 inch laptop. Fourth, the part that resides next to my back is very well padded. Fifth, the shoulder straps are wide, comfy and highly function, with additional anchoring points for stuff. Sixth, the top compartment, where I would put a camera, is very accessible! Seventh, bottle holder pockets on either side for hydration during hot days. And Eighth, it was so incredibly cheap for the quality and usability it provides.

I am smitten with the backpack. 

Now back to my truncated and premature retirement: After the call from the ad agency and the confirmation on the job, I got an email from the V.P. of the big infrastructure/engineering company I worked with, extensively, in 2018. Back then we did 18 days of work and 12 additional days of travel over a bit more than one month. It was a fun project which had me making environmental portraits of engineers and construction supervisors at locations from the depths the Everglades (super hot and humid) to the top of some small, snowy mountains in very rural Virginia. And to the wildfires in California. Would I be available to do another project for them in September ? --- details to follow... Sure, why not?

A couple days later I got a call from a small college I've worked with a bunch in the recent past. Could I come over in the second week of August and make portraits of their new faculty members? They are such nice folks, how could I have turned them down? ... Those portraits will be done against a neutral background in the (well air conditioned) studio over on campus and I'll drop in appropriate backgrounds that we shot around campus last year in post.... 

I guess what I am trying to say is that I'm not quite ready to retire from the field of photography. But at least when I go out to shoot in the next few weeks I'll have a really nifty backpack to cart my black/heat sink equipment around in. That's gonna be good.