How did my "take" from the 2006 production of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" stand the test of time. Twelve years later.....

I've had an interesting re-entry into daily work life. One of my clients whom I have worked with for nearly three decades called to see if I had "the files" for a project I'd done for them in 2000. They were preparing 50 year anniversary campaign and were looking for images taken in each of the five decades during which their company had flourished. I went over to the CD and DVD archives, stuck on a Metro shelf in the corner, and looked through the material. Nothing. No sign of the work. Perplexed, I looked at my notebooks from the time to see if they held any clues. Of course they did. Making notes is the secret to long term understanding...

2000 was a transitional year in my business. It's the year that 35mm film started to jump the shark and morph into digital. Somewhere in that year I abandoned 35mm slides and color negative film almost entirely and started depending on digital cameras as a replacement. There were still a few years left in which I worked with medium format film for the more intricate and very high image quality assignments but, as digital cameras continued to improve, these too fell by the wayside and were replaced with ever advancing digital images.

I found an entry in the notebook about the job in question. We'd done the pre-production marketing images (the highest value stuff) with medium format film and a little assortment of Hasselblad cameras and lenses and then had done the higher volume, less exacting work with a 35mm SLR film camera and Nikon zoom lenses. By mutual agreement the client had held onto the film as it was proprietary and they had bought exclusive usage rights, paying in 1990s prices. 

I talked through this turn of history with the client and they went through the process of contacting a procession of previous marketing directors until one of them led the current custodians of corporate branding (over the phone) to a small closet in the basement of headquarters, where the images languished in black notebooks, in banker's boxes, on a series of shelves. The original requestor had scanned the images he needed at the time and filed the "take" very professionally and with every intention of revisiting the work. But that was two careers ago. 

I wondered how the old work would stand up in today's market. Would the old 35mm slides and plastic pages of big square transparencies seem hopelessly outclassed

Making robots and speaking Chinese. Sure is fun to be a student these days.

Part of the Robotics Team.

Now that I'm totally finished with my photography project at the school I wrote about I thought I'd spend a little time mulling the assignment over and thinking about what worked, what didn't work, and how to improve my odds the next time I embark on helping to create an image asset library for a company or institution. 

I'm an eternal optimist at the start of every job and an anxious pessimist when I'm packing up the cameras and lights and heading home to start the post processing. I see little reason to worry up front so I'm always a tad light on pre-production planning and making tight schedules. I see little reason for hope once I've snapped the last image and I bite my nails in post production, certain that everything I tried will fail.

The reality is that I spent three days of walking through and around the (pre-K to eighth grade) school relentlessly making photographs. I seem to have arrived at the right spots at the right times to catch well over 2,000 good images (edited down from 3800), but many of them are variations of a set-up. I could get to a higher percentage of keepers if I shot less but my philosophy when shooting in a documentary mode (we did no set-ups) is to keep shooting in the belief that no matter how great the shots you already got are there's bound to be something even better, if you give it all a chance to play out. So that means I shoot the hint of a smile and wait around for that hint to blossom into a full, genuine smile; shooting all the time. Same with action. I also find that the longer I shoot the less attention gets paid to me and the more authentic the expressions and actions of most groups become. I'm sure you can make a case for being a parsimonious shooter

A blog from two years ago.......about small lights

Mike the Model for Periscope Ad. Austin, Texas

Lynn For Periscope Ad Campaign

Grant Thomas for Tribeza Magazine.

Pat Patla for AMD

Mr. Froutan for Accelerate Magazine.

When I started taking photographs most photographers were limited by their materials and the available tools. We bought lighting systems that were designed for studio work (my Norman 2000 weighed 38 lbs. without heads or attachments). Going on location was always a major undertaking requiring assistants, lots of extension cords and portable gas generators. We often shot with 4x5 view cameras and were looking for exposures between f16 and f32 on 100 iso film. Since the advent of digital we’ve been trying to make everything smaller and faster. Digital is a different animal. In most cases we’re trying to supplement existing light rather than over power it. The photo above was taken for a client called Periscope. (top: Mike the Model). We shot our model on a rainy morning in downtown Austin, Texas.

We wanted the model to be just slightly lighter than the background but without seeming obviously lit. I placed an Nikon SB-800 flash on a Manfrotto 3373 light stand and dialed down the light intensity until I liked what I saw on the lcd screen of my Nikon D2x camera. The nominal exposure was 1/125 at f2.8 at iso 100. I used a Nikon 28-70mm 2.8 lens. This was the last shot of our session and it occurred after we were officially done and the art director had left. I was loading my cameras into the car and talking with the model. I decided to go for one more variation. Total set up time: 2 minutes. Total shooting time: 2 minutes. Total tear down time: less than two minutes. This is the shot chosen for the campaign.

All the photos in this gallery were shot with the same kind of equipment. The photo of Lynn in the conference room is lit with four Nikon flashes. Several are bounced off the ceiling, one is in a small softbox and one is outside in the hallway. All are triggered with radio slaves and every piece of gear fits in one case with wheels that fits in an airline overhead luggage bin. There will always be a place for large studio strobes but that place is not on fast paced location jobs.