This is my new cat, Cindy Sherman. The image is unrelated to the post, but I wanted to post a picture and didn't really have anything relevant. Deal with it.
As some of you might know, I have been assisting Greg Ceo for the last few months and every now and then he passes me a gig of my own if he’s unavailable or already booked. At the beginning of the month he put me in touch with a small publishing company that produces magazines and brochures for (among other things, I assume) chambers of commerce in different towns and cities.
The gig was not something I was totally stoked for, but it was paying $650 and honestly I need every dollar I can make at the moment. They needed me to travel to a small town about an hour away to shoot for the chamber of commerce there. They gave me a shot list of somewhere around thirty images in various locations in and around the town. I was given points of contact but no addresses– that’s something I was told I’d have to get on my own. The images included everything from portraits to architectural interiors and exteriors as well as lifestyle shots of people water skiing, shopping, and eating at restaurants. I was told up front they expected it might take 2-3 days, but I did some very rough planning and I didn’t see how I could get it all done in less than 3 days, probably 4.
So let’s look at this overall now. 30 images, 4 days of shooting, with two hours of travel each day. $650. About $160/day, or just over $20/image. Okay so this is admittedly way way way lower than I would have billed them had I been asked for an estimate. However, as I said earlier, I needed the money. Did I mention I wasn’t very stoked about the gig? Read the rest of this entry »
Added a couple of new fashion images in book two of the portfolio! Of course, if you follow me on Flickr, you probably have already seen them. I desperately need to update my facebook page!
This image is from a little editorial I shot for my friend, Meret Goetschel, featuring her senior collection for SCAD. All of the garments were amazing and bizarre and super awesome. I had the idea for an alien-esqe fashion shoot at this location for a while, and when I went to the fashion building at SCAD to talk with some designers with clothing that fit the bill, I ran into Meret. That was a surprise because she was a photo major– we had had several classes together. Turns out she was ALSO a fashion major. Talk about ambitious!
Anyway, her line was PERFECT for my idea and she loved the concept and location. Everything went well, we had great models and awesome assistants (An Le and Brittany Sturrett). The only kink was the weather. We shot in late May, which in Georgia means summer was already in full effect and it was easily in the mid 90’s out there. The clothing was all knitted so the models were dying. Even though I was in a tshirt, I was feeling faint! One of my assistants held a reflector over my head shot shade me as I shot. I work with only the best, haha.
We had everything wrapped two hours and eight liters of bottled water later.
No, I didn’t shoot the lighting setup, but it was pretty simple. Just one or two AB1600’s high and on full power to fill in for the sun, which was almost directly overhead and we used as the key.
I’ll post a breakdown of the other new image in my next post (yes, with a lighting setup).
Gizmodo posted a video yesterday by Chase Jarvis detailing everything that goes into safeguarding all of his studio’s digital media, from the moment it’s captured to the moment they hand it off to a client. I’m not a huge fan of Chase and all the pomp and circumstance he constantly surrounds himself with (though I guess I can’t blame him and would love to be his Canon equivalent), I thought the video was really interesting and would be of benefit to anyone working in digital media.
Have a look, and remember above all else: backup, backup, backup, BACKUP.
So over the last few weeks I’ve been working with a local rock band called “Sinister Moustache” on some promotional images for their press kit. Their music really can’t be categorized, though with my limited knowledge on the topic, I’d say they sound somewhat metal. They define themselves on their Facebook page simply as “Other (Prog Rock/Jazz/Metal/Nintendo Music Hybrid Monster).” Haha.
Anyway, they are really into sci-fi and comic book style villains, that sort of thing. They also didn’t want the images to focus too much on the guys themselves so much as their ideas and sense of humor; in the words of their agent: “yeah they’re not models.” So we knew we wanted it to be an open, narrative scene with the band members in some sort of funny scenario. And robots. They wanted robots.
Robots? Sorry, I’m fresh out. No, but really, it took some thought. First I came up with a rough sketch of the scene I envisioned. A very, very rough sketch. Let’s just say there is a reason I put my hands to work with a camera and not with a pencil. Luckily, I happen to be friends with an extremely skilled sequential artist, Andy Hirsch (another recent SCAD grad, already published and trying out for Marvel as we speak– go check out his site!). I sent him my sketch and some directions and he produced something much more helpful:
I showed it to the band and they loved the idea. Basically all the guys have escaped to the wilderness outside a city under siege by evil, mustachioed robots. They’re out in a field at dusk as they find that the horde of metal monsters has caught up with them. They are not defenseless, however– each wields an improvised weapon of some sort: chainsaw, shovel, baseball bat, molotov cocktails, etc.
Okay, fun shoot. The location is not a problem; there’s plenty of options here around Savannah (incidentally we shot on Hutchinson Island) for something like this. Props: again, no problem. I can either rent or borrow all of the weapons, and the guys will just wear whatever clothes they’re comfortable in. Lights, well I’ve got lights and and a battery pack. So that’s a check, too.
Robots? Not so easy. I racked my brain for costume ideas but nothing worked. I didn’t have the time, resources, or skill to pull off anything convincing and this shot’s humor did not rely on a low-fi aesthetic. Tin-foil-covered boxes were out of the question.
While looking for ideas at a local costume shop with a friend of mine, he suggested CGI for the robots. The thought had never crossed my mind as I had never done something like that before. But right away I could think of a few different friends of mine who were great at rendering in 3D. I got in touch with another friend, Jackie Wu. Jackie works at a motion graphics firm called UBER in London. In addition to being a very talented photographer (that’s how I first met him) Jackie is brilliant with 3D modeling. I told him about the project, sent him the sketches and he agreed to help me out!
Everything fell into place and we set a shoot date for February 28th. My friend, An Le, and I got there an hour and a half early to start pre-lighting and found our location to be overrun with rednecks. Turns out this is the weekend spot for everyone in the Savannah area to come and race four-wheelers, motorcycles, dune-buggies, and anything else with four-wheel-drive. And they had a barbecue set up right where I wanted to shoot.
These things happen. We must adapt, and that’s what we did. It took us about twenty minutes but we improvised a new location that may, in fact, have worked better than the original. We couldn’t escape the roar of their engines, but we did have plenty of space to stage our lights. Adapting the setup took some time and the band showed up twenty minutes early, but all in all, it was going as well as I could hope. The wind that threatened my softboxes several times even died down after the sun started setting. My other friends/assistants showed up and we got things rolling. We had fire for the molotovs, smoke for ambiance, and gels for the lights. It was looking good! We shot until the light was uselessly low, and then wrapped. And the reason you’re reading this post– My good friend, photographer Chris Hannant, filmed the whole thing in gorgeous HD with his 5D MkII (I’m picking one up this week!) and has done a great job editing it together to make me look much cooler than I actually am:
Hopefully that got you hyped up! I’m currently working on the compositing and retouching for the final image and I’ll post it up here before the end of the week. Stay tuned and check back later!
