In the United States, within 30 seconds of meeting someone new inevitably one person or the other will ask, "What do you do?" Meaning, clearly, "what business/industry are you involved with and what is your function in that business?"
I guess it's important in our culture to be able assign a new connection to an appropriate slot in the hierarchy of work. Easier to figure out what your relationship should be. Where you are on the pecking order. Etc.
When I tell people that I am a photographer they immediately head to the default pigeon hole and ask me about wedding photography. Or family portraits. Or.....high school yearbook photographs. Fathers might ask which kids' sports I like to photograph. And then they usually dig in for something more blunt. They almost always ask: "And can you make a living at that?" Or some variation on: "Is that a full time job or is it something you do around your regular work?"
I guess I should count myself lucky that most of my friends, as well as the members of my immediate family, are engaged in marketing, advertising or public relations and understand the enormous diversity of niches and specialities which exist in the field of photography. And most of the rest of my friends are actually....commercial photographers. Or swimmers. But swimmers are much more interested in how you swim, what stroke you favor, and/or where you swim.
A neighbor saw me loading gear into my car the other day. It was a Wednesday morning. He greeted me and stopped for a moment to chat. I'm sure I told him at some point in the last few years that I worked as a photographer and he remembers that but he seemed a bit confused. "Who has a wedding in the middle of the week?" He asked.
He was surprised to hear that I was off to shoot behind the scenes images, social media and some advertising images that were all about Texas beef. We chatted for a few minutes more and he asked me why I needed so many cases of gear. Most of the photographers he's seen on TV or in the movies were just carrying a camera or two around their necks and had some sort of distressed leather or canvas camera bag drooping over one shoulder.
I assured him that I needed the stuff in the cases to set up lights for celebrity style portraits. I needed stuff in the other cases to augment existing light in the kitchens and to use as fill light out in the sun. The other cases were full of different cameras and lenses because....I might need them for something the advertising agency and I hadn't thought about yet. He seemed to get it.
He would have been mystified had he been on the set of our project last week. I was a small part of the overall production. I was the still photographer on a video set. Sure, I had to set up and light a white background in our little makeshift portrait studio but all the heavy lifting for the live action video of a cooking show was done for me; at least a day in advance. That sure made my job easier and more relaxed.
I thought it would be fun to look through the files and find some of the BTS photos I shot in order to show just how weird it looks when you find yourself in a working video set for a while. I felt more like a tourist than part of the crew but, then again, our targets and goals were different.
Because I get bored and restless on 10-12 hour long shooting days (there's a lot of re-setting of multiple video cameras and lights between sections of the video production: dead spots, so to speak) I like to bring along a bunch of different cameras to see what works best and how different they can all look. It gives me stuff to play with during longer pauses.
On this project I shot with a Fuji GFX 50Sii, a Leica SL2, A Leica SL, and a Leica Q2. Each, in its own way, was interesting and good. Next time I'll narrow down to just the SL2 and the Q2. That will cover everything and keep the rolling case quite a bit lighter. Might sub an SL2-S instead; for the low light.
Interesting that so many think we're out shooting weddings all the time but instead we're spending full days making weird and wonderful images for advertising in its various forms. A lot has changed. Even more has stayed the same. It's pretty much always been this way in the minds of consumers. Muggles.
Here are some random BTS images from the shoot. File info where my memory allows....
Searing gorgeous medallions over a gas flame. Step one...
Leica SL2 + 24-90mm. Wide open...
Yvette. Our food stylist who duplicated some of the recipes so the in-house photographer
could do food "hero" shots for the web.
Leica SL + Voigtlander 50mm f2.0
The view from the other side of the counter. Big lights all around.
Leica SL + Voigtlander 50mm f2.0
One of our talents prepping a dish while a mobile camera operator gets ready to
do some close up footage of the dish being prepared.
Lead DP on the center stationary camera. Also calling out
camera direction to the two mobile and two other fixed location cameras.
Behind him an engineer is monitoring all five feeds on a series of monitors.
A shot of the team getting ready to video tape and photograph
the judges who are out of frame on the left...In this scene you have the two
mobile camera ops which EZY-rigs and peaking out of the left hand side of the big, white reflector
is a tripod mounted stationary camera as well.
A 90° angle from the shot one above. Little camera mounted monitors everywhere.
I should have brought mine so I could fit in...
Judges table in the background. Camera on "sticks" in the center of the frame, two operators
on the other side of the big, black panels, and another stationary camera
over on the far right of the frame.
Upstairs in the interview studio two cameras with two different focal length lenses
are trained on the interview subject to allow for quick punch ins during editing.
Sumo monitor to the left of frame.
Leica Q2.
Danielle searing fillets. In the kitchen. A clean background but if I flipped the camera 180°
you'd see at least three video cameras following her action.
SL2 + 24-90mm.
Miking up a judge for a sit down interview. Shotgun mic at the top right corner.
microphone reset after the still photographer stumbled into the boom arm.
No damage done to either....
fin.
