What I do. Camera. Obscura.

One fun aspect of my career as a designer is to art direct photo shoots. I just emerged from a five-day shoot -- the longest contiguous shoot of my career, perhaps -- thus explaining my lack-of-blogging this past week and a half. I was casting, meeting, pre-producing, then on location in and around the San Antonio metro area (sorry, no Belize or Hawaii shoots here) art directing corporate 'lifestyle' photography for a fortune 500 company's photo library. it was a lot of fun, but as i was telling my friend / pastor / partner-in-crime Cliff, after you spend a week giving orders to grips, wardrobe folks, stylists, production assistants, and the talent (and the talents' parents -- we had a number of little kids in the shots with requisite stage parents), it's hard not to bark orders back at home! so, i'm detoxing from order-giving this weekend.

I made a lot of friends and rediscovered some old ones during the shoot. we have one of the best all-around stylists here in san antonio. rose is an expert on wardrobe, costumes, makeup, food styling, props, etc., etc. she's like an instant mom to all the talent, which makes for easy work conditions. she's also fluent when it comes to photographers and their terminology. and she keeps me on schedule, which is invaluable.

we cast and shot five families in three locations, one day apiece.

but to shoot one family of five, you have a three-to-one ratio of people behind the camera.... a makeup stylist, a hair stylist, an on-site military advisor (long story), the lead stylist/property manager, her assistant, my intern/assistant, two photographer's grips, the photographer, caterers bustling in and out, location owners, and me. Oh, and the client. Turns out one of the grips is an accomplished letterpress operator. The wardrobe assistant went to college where my parents attended. One location owner knows my wife, as does the lead female talent from another day. Our talent (mostly casted from San Antonio, Austin and Houston) have great acting credits including networks series, hollywood films, and recognizable commercials... note to self: it's so much worth the extra money to work with good talent.

On the last scene of the last shoot we were creating an all-American backyard cookout. the talent had already eaten earlier so we could grill "prop" burgers without them drololing with hunger. We had lit the set, set the props, had the grill going, had the whole cookout set and talent in place when dark thunderclouds rolled in, wind started blowing, the temperature dropped ten degrees in 30 seconds, and we heard thunder in the distance. I have never in fifteen years of doing this, seen a scene move as efficiently. But it worked. The clouds let us soft-box light the whole scene, which allowed for even lighting. The wind cooled off the talent, and gave some dynamics to the whole scene. And the adrenaline-filled set probably injected some life into the talent as well, who had been shooting outdoors for the whole day in the hot Texas heat. God-given serendipity.

Anyway, I'm tired, but back again in the blogosphere. Missed you all.

Paul

Comments

[rabbi bartonowski]

cool stuff, soup. The blogosphere is glad to have you back!

[Jason Young]

Any chance we could see the pictures sometime? Or be directed to a client's page?

[soupiset]

probably little chance of that, due to the fine print in my contract with the client. but if any of the shots are used in a finished printed piece, i believe i could show you that. but that could be months from now...