August 30th, 2010 by Kris
Just quick post today, I’ve got several deadlines this week and of course I’m already behind. I did want to post up so advice that I’ve gotten from the collective wisdom of Google and the interwebs. When I started this photography business ten years ago, I started it with $450 and no real direction, so it was essential that learned how to buck up and make the few deadlines I did have as perfect as possible. As you freelancers and Sole Props know, when you’re the boss, you kind of have to be a jerk to yourself. Anyway, here are a few things that I do to stay on track.
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August 24th, 2010 by Kris
Now, we all know how tricky it is to shoot black on black and I get a lot of questions about how I manage to shoot black on black and white on white. My answer is simple, hire a great retoucher. ONLY KIDDING, but seriously a great retoucher will make your life easier. We all know though that I am a huge fan of shoot it right the first time and will make post easier, your retoucher will thank you. Even if your retoucher is you… but I digress, here’s the shot that I’m going to talk about.
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August 23rd, 2010 by Kris
I’m working on a post about shooting black products on a jet black background. I did a little job for Energy Logic, who build waste oil heaters and we shot their black products on black. Now, we couldn’t go as minimal as a european sports car add, but we used very similar lighting techniques. Stay tuned.
August 20th, 2010 by Kris
So, I saw this on my twitter feed this morning and I thought it was too good not to share. Thank you “Johnston on Photography!” Here’s a few of my favorites, link to the full article follows:
- Use either a very big camera, or a very small camera. People seldom feel threatened by a tiny camera the size of the Sigma DP-1 or Panasonic LX3, but they also don’t feel very threatened by a giant, clumsy view camera on a tripod (they are also seldom aware of “the moment it clicks” with a big view camera, since you’re not looking through the camera when you take the picture). I suspect that setting up a big camera makes you less of a threat because it immobilizes you; you can’t go sneaking about with one of those. You’re also given an opportunity to confidently pretend that you have every right to be doing what you’re doing. Of course, you’re subject to tripod restrictions in very public places such as crowded city sidewalks and tourist attractions, so do your homework ahead of time and be sure you have a permit if you need one.
- Carry a business card and give it away freely. If you’re stopped or threatened, a card goes a long way toward explaining who you are and implies that you have nothing to hide.
- Ask them for help. Asking someone for help changes your relationship to them. This works with potential thieves—you turn yourself from their prey into their beneficiary, and them from predators into good Samaritans—and it works with cops and guards too, whose job it often is to help people, after all. Have a question ready to go for when someone approaches you or hassles you.
- Work on your camera skills! Good shooters work fast. Cartier-Bresson could reportedly get his Leica to his eye and back almost literally faster than people could notice. If you want to avoid attracting attention, don’t stand there like a big dork futzing endlessly with your camera controls and staring through the viewfinder for minutes on end. Waist-level finders help with this too, because when you look through an eye-level finder, people feel like you’re looking at them, whereas when you look down at some device you’re apparently fiddling with, people assume you’re looking at the device and not at them.
- Adjust the camera while looking in a different direction. Then take the picture you want to take as though it were an afterthought, and do it quickly. A bored bouncer at a bar doesn’t have an excuse to stride across the street and hassle you if you’re pointing the camera down the street and not at his bar; and if you take one shot in his direction and then turn and leave, you remove his opportunity to challenge you.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Have a great Friday!!
August 16th, 2010 by Kris
Just a quick post, but I feel like I get a lot of email and phone calls about folks wanting to work with us, but they are either not sure how they can help or they are hyper niche focused that we could work together on one job twice a year. Trust me when I say, I know how you feel. For years I went around to agencies, big and small, saying “I just want to shoot.” Before that I’d call these photog’s with these huge studios and say “I just want to help!” So, can we take votes on how many of those jobs I was awarded? Yeah.
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August 10th, 2010 by Kris
As several of you know, I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the last few weeks. We were in San Francisco, Napa, and Sonoma, then in New York, Atlanta, and soon out to West Virgina and North Carolina. Almost all of this work is coming from a wonderful realtionship based around food. It is always interesting to me, to see how certain passions can make way for opportunities.
Several years ago, when I left my job as a server and bartender to pursue photography full time, I left for a big(ish) gig shooting holiday foods. And up until recently I have only photographed a handful of food images, mostly for fun. So, in a manner of speaking food has kept our family “fed” for a time in the past and now it’s “feeding” us again.
I share this with you only to say, follow your passions. Do what you need to do to make sure you can still pursue your art, but don’t loose sight of your other passions, they will lead you. Stay in prayer about your business, put your family first, and the rest will fall in line.
Now go shoot something amazing and go show it off!
Till next time.
-KD
