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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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Entries in commercial work (5)

Tuesday
Apr162013

making a buck

Work product • no embiggenOnce again, some might wonder where I've been. At least one of you, Jimmi Nuffin, was driven to write:

I know you have a life and things to do…BUT…could you PLEASE post something for those of us who don't?

Now I am certain that most if not all of you weren't that desperate. Nevertheless, I do apologize for being remiss in my posting endeavors ... BUT ... as Mr. Nuffin acknowledged, I do have a life and, at times, it does get in the way of getting done everything one might wish to get done.

In my particular case, one thing I had to get done - gotta raise money for more picture making gear, after all - was the project pictured in this entry. It's a direct mail marketing piece and (not pictured) the start of a related ad campaign. As you might guess from looking at the pictured piece, identifying and making arrangements for 9 different (and relatively far flung) locations, coordinating my schedule with those of 9 very busy subjects and then finally making the pictures is a time consuming activity.

And that's just the picture making part of the project. The design and production time is not measured in hours, it's measured (incrementally and cumulatively) in days.

In any event, it's mostly over but for the shouting. Consequently, I have a couple entries ready to go and, hopefully, Mr. Nuffin will have something to do with his life.

FYI, the pictured project from top to bottom:

1. back and front cover - lightweight card stock, front cover with embossed and foil stamped logo
2. inside spread (front)- 4 panel, tri-fold (accordion fold)
3. inside spread (back) - blank panel affixed to inside of back cover

Wednesday
Feb222012

making pictures ~ one way or another

1044757-16748286-thumbnail.jpg
Maggie with Maggie Parts ~ illustration for portfolio • click to embiggen
1044757-16748374-thumbnail.jpg
Brahms To Blues • click to embiggen
In the medium of photography, there are two kinds of picture makers. Those who make pictures as opposed to those who take pictures. The difference between the two, of course, is in the making.

Those who make pictures are generally considered to be "serious" amateur/pro picture makers, while those who take pictures are generally considered to be snapshot picture makers. The former expend a fair amount of thought and effort together with technique / craft in the making of their pictures, most often in the pursuit of creating art (Decorative or Fine). The later are true point-and-shoot practitioners whose primary motivation is to create memories.

However, within the ranks of "serious" picture makers, there are also (IMO and that of many others) 2 kinds of picture makers - those who make pictures of the found/seen variety and those who make pictures of the world inside their heads. For the former, think Henri Cartier-Bresson - although the found/seen is much broader than just HC-B's "street" work, to include referents such as landscape and nature. For the later, think Jeff Wall (or closer to [my] home, think of my son, The Cinemascapist) - once again, the picture the world inside your head camp is broader than Wall/Hobson-the-younger style work, to include genres such as still life to name just one.

In my mind, and once again that of many others, the best discriptive difference between the 2 "serious" picture making camps is to state that the found/seen practitioners make pictures which are often considered to be Art whereas those who make pictures of the world inside their heads make images - using the medium of photography and its apparatus - which are also often considered to be Art. The first camp's practitioners consider themselves to be photographers, aka: picture makers. The second camp's practitioners consider themselves to be artists first and foremost, and, most often, emphatically not photographers.

In my picture making life, I have, on numerous occasions, ventured into the camp of artist using the medium of photography and its apparatus to make images which would not necessarily be considered to be photographs in the strictest sense. In many cases, the work was for commercial clients. Two examples thereof accompany this entry.

At first glance, the first image, Maggie and Maggies Parts, looks less like a photograph than the second image, Brahms to Blues*. However, Brahms to Blues is a hand-colored BW photo of the Gibson guitar merged with a background picture of rice paper (the shadow was computer generated). The original print - on fiber-based matte paper - looks more like a photo-realist painting / illustration than a photograph.

It should be noted that, as the work of Wall and Hobson-the-younger demonstrates, images made in the artist using the medium of photography and its apparatus to make images genre do not have look like painting / illustrations. In fact, most often, those images appear to be regulation photographs, no matter the manner of their making. It is also worth noting that, despite the fact that many artist using the medium of photography and its apparatus to make images genre images (which appear to be regulation photographs but, in fact, are complete "fabrications") do, nevertheless, address very real truths.

I haven't delved much into the artist using the medium of photography and its apparatus to make images genre of late. One notable exception has been my recent life without the APA series - body of work I intend to keep expanding.

Have any of you delved into the artist using the medium of photography and its apparatus to make images genre?

*One of 8 images made for the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Monday
Dec122011

and now for something completely different # 3

Enviromental portrait • click to embiggenDuring my commercial picture making life, in addition to making Norman Rockwell-like tableau people pictures, I also made lots of environmental portraits (people in their environments, both work and personal activity wise).

One of the more interesting and enjoyable such assignments was an annual report for Gould Pumps, a manufacturer of industrial pumps for mining, gas & oil, and power generation industries. At the time of the assignment, the company was aggressively acquiring quite a number of smaller pump manufacturing companies. Consequently, a large number of new employees were added under its corporate umbrella.

As a result, the decision was made to feature in that year's annual report some of their employees with interesting or unusual outside of work activities. The featured employees were spread out across the US of A in a variety of interesting locations which ranged from the middle of nowhere on the Texas panhandle (outside of Lubbock) where I pictured the 2nd runner-up in the Tarantella Chili Cook-off, to an "iffy" inner-city neighborhood in Newark, NJ where I pictured a community service volunteer.

Obviously, meeting interesting people and visiting interesting locations was what made this assignment ... well ... interesting and quite enjoyable. However, the was another aspect which added considerably to the interesting and enjoyable thing - my traveling companion (in addition to my assistant) was a former newspaper reporter / local tv news anchor turned freelance copywriter (some Rochester, NY readers may recognize the name, Ron Robitaille) who was an expert at living-large expense account travel.

Everywhere we went, Ron's first question, upon greeting our assigned Gould Pump representative at each location, was always the same - "Where can we sample the best local/regional food and drink". Getting that info was always the first order of business. Once obtained, it was then on to the other business of making pictures or, in his case, doing interviews with my subject.

Needless to say, the food and drink we had on that 2 week trip was incredible - BBQ chicken and ribs in a Texas roadhouse, the best paella I ever ate in a Portuguese neighbor restaurant in Newark NJ, some delightful haute cuisine in a tony LA restaurant, and local beers galore, to name just a few of the delights we sampled.

All of that said, the thing which has stuck with me the most from that whole experience was my introduction, from Ron Robitaille, to the appreciation and consumption of fine Kentucky bourbon (I already had the fine food thing down pat). Unfortunately, a few years after the annual report assignment, Ron also reminded me of another lesson as result of his too-young-to-die demise - don't over do it (drink and fine [rich] food).

FYI, the picture in this entry is not from the aforementioned annual report assignment. It is from an assignment from a Pittsburgh PA ad agency which featured agency people in their work environments but with props from their outside work activities - pictured in BW before BW was an "effect".

Friday
Dec092011

and now for something completely different # 2

illustration / risks of creative thinking • click to embiggenHave I ever mentioned that I have done a fair amount of commercial digital illustration work? No? Well, I have.

Thursday
Dec082011

and now for something completely different

Kodak - America's Storyteller • click to embiggenOver the years during which I have been blogging, I haven't posted all that much about my commercial work. I guess that's because I never thought of this blog as a vehicle for self promotion of that work.

However, I have noticed that, in the photo blog-o-spere, there is a certain amount of gravitas which comes from having / having had a successful commercial picturing making career. That is especially so if one has made pictures for many of the biggies - the biggies being companies on the Fortune 500 list and my client list included many Fortune 500 companies such as Kodak, Xerox, Heinz, Corning, Bausch & Lomb / Ray-Ban, Quaker State, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, R.T. French, and the like. So, why not harvest a little gravitas of my own?

One of my areas of expertise in the commercial picturing world was making pictures of people in a Norman Rockwell tableaux kind of way. "Real" people doing "real" things with a dash of gentle/kind humor thrown into the mix. Of course, the "real" people were most often professional models (but not always) and the "real" things were very carefully scripted, staged, lit, and propped productions.

The picture with this entry is from one of several shoots I did for Eastman Kodak's (you remember them, right?) America's Story Teller campaign. This campaign was primarily an in-store (cameras stores) campaign which featured quite a number of "all-American" themes. Each "story" in the campaign required 5-6 pictures which were used for a large counter-card, a life-size stand-up cutout, a window poster, an in-store poster, a counter mat, and a large (6-7ft.) hanging banner.

The story theme from which the attached picture was pulled was based around a cute young girl (there were never any thing but cute children in Kodakland) making a birthday cake for her grandfather's birthday - to include both the making of the cake and the party. The cast included her mom, dad, little brother, grandmother, and a dog. The dog, dad, and brother were all bit players. The "story" was all about the little girl, grampa, and to a lesser extent, mom.

Finding the "perfect" cast usually took about a week. First by sifting through model agency books / head-sheets, then selecting quite a number of possibilities for each character, followed by in-studio Polaroid tests of each potential subject. Those results were then shown to and discussed with the ad agency in order to make the final selections which were then shown to the client for final approval.

While model selection was going on, I was also working with a couple photo stylists who were tasked with prop gathering - in this case, everything from clothes, to baking/cooking paraphernalia, and household stuff. There was also a food stylist who was charged with making the "perfect" birthday cake.

Because the project spanned 4-5 days of shooting, all the pictures were made on studio sets (in my studio) rather than on location. Set construction ran concurrent with all the other pre-shoot preparations.

Since the end use of the pictures were quite large, the project required the use of a large format 4×5 camera - not the ideal choice for shooting people wherein the objective is to capture "perfect" gestures together with "perfect" expressions. Using a view camera to capture that "perfection" is made exponentially even more less than ideal when 2 (or more) actors are acting together.

Example: notice how in the above 2 exposures, in the top exposure (chosen as the final) the girl and grampa are in perfect sync, gesture and expression wise. Whereas in the bottom exposure, the girl is still "on" expression wise (although her hand has dropped to a less than desirable position), but grampa's expression and gesture seem to say,"Ya little bratty smartass, I'm gonna shove this stinkin' frosting right up yer stinkin' nose", which, while it might often be rather true-to-life, it is not exactly the message Kodak was trying to get across.

This type of assignment is best handled by some sort of roll film camera, 35mm, or medium format. Cameras which can make exposures in rapid order, which allows the "actors" to get into character, act out, and get into a flow. That is just not possible when using a view camera - each exposure requires loading a film holder into the camera, pulling out the dark-slide, cocking the shutter and and the flash-sync thingy, tripping the shutter, re-inserting the dark-slide, removing the film holder and then, do it all again for the next exposure. All of which is very far cry from shooting with a motorized roll film camera.

In addition to the slow-going, getting-in-the-groove inhibiting factor associated with shooting with a large format camera, the film is also expensive. Although, in this case, film cost was a non-issue because of course I could just walk into Kodak's film cooler and walk out with as much film as I could carry.

The view camera shooting procedure was sped along by the fact that I had 2 camera assistants - 1 to load and reload the film holders and another to handle the shutter / strobe sync thingy cocking. This allowed me to concentrate solely upon the actors - move this body part / move that body part, chin up / chin down, lips together / lips apart, fix her hair / fix his tie, more of this / less of that, and so on. A 3rd assistant was keep busy in the darkroom, unloading and reloading film in the film holders.

If memory serves correctly, each of the 6 scenes in this campaign required the making of about 80 exposures each in order to insure we got the "perfect" shot - that single sheet of film that got it all right, "perfect" gestures together with the "perfect" expressions ...

... all in the cause of capturing the picture-perfect "perfect" American story.