Jack of All Trades, Master of One

Commercial Photographers need to know a little about lots of things. It is one of the things I like about being a photographer. It helps when you are shooting to understand how the product works, or why it’s better. It helps because you can better illustrate the product, so you can tell the story. The story behind this product is that it helps protect soldiers. It absorbs energy that would otherwise be absorbed by the feet, ankles and legs of soldiers unlucky enough to be driving over an IED. As ever, let me know what you think.

Commercial Photography

One of the really great things about being a commercial photographer is the glimpse we get into processes or industries that normally go unnoticed. We did a shoot for a company that makes, among other things, speaker grills for cars. As we shot, our client  explained why his product is superior to his competitors’. This is not only interesting, but helps us highlight or emphasize the important features or manufacturing processes.

I suppose you could call this industrial photography. It is for business to business communication. It is as likely to be used in a powerpoint presentation as in a trade show, trade ad, brochure or web site. The key point is that our images help clients communicate their story more effectively and help enhance their overall image.

Product Photography in a Car

My assignment was photographing coffee cups, and what more natural place than a cup holder! I have shot cup holders for other clients, so it was not much of a stretch. Of course we shot them in table top situations too, but I feel at home when I'm shooting in a car. As always, I'm interested in your thoughts.

Automotive Detail Photography

I love beautiful details. A well designed car has loads of great details, like badges, tail lights, door handles, side moulding, headlights or air scoops. Lighting and design become key to making a good image. Red helps too! As always, let me know what you think.

Mixed Drinks Photography

I’m not much of a drinker - couple of beers or glasses of wine and I’m done. But I did have a smashing great time shooting some vodka drinks. Designers & Partners’ Jim Tocco art directed and did much of the styling. We did 13 shots so it was a busy and productive day.

Industrial Parts Photography

I recently had the opportunity to work with Designers & Partners again. This time shooting industrial parts for large prints to be displayed on office walls. As ever, it was a pleasure to work with such a talented designer. Enjoy!

Jewelry Photography

One of my best friends is a jeweler. I have been shooting his jewelry for years. He was in fact, one of my first clients. He is producing a brochure for wedding / engagement rings. The graphic designer on this project, Jim Tocco, is amazing! I have been working with Jim for decades. I have high expectations for the final piece.

Working with Richard has always been a blast. Collaborating  with someone to create unique imagery is always exciting; Richard has a finely tuned aesthetic that is just different enough from mine to create a synergy larger than either one of us singly. I like the contrast between his fingers - the fingers of a craftsman, and artist, working fingers, dirty with polishing compound, and the perfection and brilliant beauty of the rings. There  is a literal contrast as well, of the dark hands and the shiny, sparkling jewelry. Richard will also use the images on the wall of his Birmingham shop, Grinstein Jewelry and design.

As always I am interested in your comments or thoughts.

Your Hard Drive Will Fail, Back-Up your Photography!

In the digital age, there is a truism that warrants our attention; it is not if your hard drive will fail, it’s when. I have had several hard drives fail; I know that it is true. It is crazy expensive to get Drive Savers, or some other company to rescue your data. So, back-ups are important. A back-up strategy that fully protects you must have several components.

1. Provide a means to continue working if your computer’s hard drive fails.
2. Keep a back-up of current projects.
3. Keep multiple archives of completed projects.
4. Must be automatic. (so you cannot forget to do it).
5. It must have an off site component (in case of fire or theft).
6. There must be multiple copies.
7. You’ve gotta check regularly to make sure it’s working.

The computer on my desk, backs-up to a local (firewire 800) hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. The Time Machine backup provides hourly back-ups while the Carbon Copy Cloner back-up provides a start-up disk should anything happen to the internal hard drive.I have divided our data into two separate parts, business data – QuickBooks, estimates, word processing files and the like, and job data – project folders, images and Capture One folders. We use a server, well..., it’s a computer with a boatload of drives hanging off of it where all of this data lives. The business data is backed-up with Time Machine hourly, and with CrashPlan, a cloud back-up service. Job data gets backed-up at the end of every day with a program cleverly called Data Backup. I like Data Backup because it does versioned back-ups, and keeps versions from the last 30 days. It uses standard compression utilities to compress files, and if it is the most recent version you are looking for, you can just go get it using the finder.When a project is completed, it is copied to an archive drive, and removed from the working drive. The archive drives are read only so nothing can be inadvertently changed or deleted.Once a month, I bring hard disks from home and copy all of the new data to them, again with Data Backup, then take them home.It sounds like a lot of work, but most of it happens with no supervision. It is, I believe just part of taking care of your clients and you livelihood.  As always, I am interested in what you think about all of this. Please leave a comment.

Industrial Photography

We recently completed a project for Raymond. I’m not sure I’d call what I was doing in the studio industrial photography. It feels more like large product photography. Dave shot the other half of the project in a warehouse, so I guess it’s actually a large product that’s industrial. Having a good-looking, well-designed product really helps when you’re trying to make photography that's dynamic. Red is a great color, and there is no question that it makes the lift trucks distinctive and attractive.

I like using lower angles on this product; it doesn’t deliver as much information, but it makes it look bigger and heavier, more substantial. I added the blue background. Our client put them on white, more appropriate for their purposes, but not as striking.As always, I am interested in any feedback or response you might have. Please let me know what you think.

Food Photographer on Location

I recently had the opportunity to do some food photography at Isabella’s, a restaurant in the Soaring Eagle Casino. I spent the day there shooting in a separate dinning room so we would not disturb the patrons.Working with an assistant, we brought in studio strobes, and set up at a couple of different tables. There was window light as well, so I used a mix of strobe and ambient light. I think it can be a little more interesting when there is a mix of light. The Chef was great, and we had lots of assistance and cooperation from everyone. We shot appetizers, entries and desserts. Food photography is always challenging and lot of fun. Unfortunately, there was not much time to do any gaming or see any shows. As always, I am interested in any feedback or response you might have. Please let me know what you think.

Product Photography

I completed a shoot for Letica not long ago. They make, among other things, plastic and paper cups, and plastic food containers. I shot the product in action. The photos were used for trade show banners – 84 inches high! Pour shots are challenging. It is necessary to do a fair number of pours to get exactly what you need. This shoot combined product and food as a prop. Ordinarily when I shoot food I like to work with a food stylist, but since the food in these shots was only a prop to help show off the containers, it was not essential to work with a stylist.

Automotive Studio Photography

I had the opportunity not long ago to shoot a FIAT 500 Lounge. Many thanks to James Houfley at Golling. I like shooting red cars and this one is no exception. It has nice badging and some excellent details.Automotive photography is challenging and rewarding. In some ways it’s like shooting a huge piece of jewelry, but it’s a lot bigger!. It’s all about what’s reflecting in the paint. You want it to look shiny, but still have color. My studio is ideally suited to automotive photography by design. There is a complete eggshell to help control reflections. Picture the inside of an eggshell, with a floor; that’s pretty much what I’ve got. A space that’s fifteen feet high with all of the corners coved. Let me know what you think!

Photography Web Sites

Great post on photo web sites!

Advertising Photography Tools

I just discovered a feature in Capture One that simplifies post production - smart albums! Typically during a shoot, I’ll mark photographs that I want to deliver to my client by pressing the minus key. This marks the photograph with the red color tag. Later, when I want to process the images, I sort by “color tag”, and all of the marked photographs are together at the top. This makes it easy to work on the selected images, adjusting and processing them all at once. On shoots with a large number of captures, I’ll create multiple capture folders. Capture One tends to slow down when you get several hundred captures in a folder; I think it’s actually because of the system software. In any event, I end up with a bunch of capture folders with marked images. In the past, I would move the marked images to a “selects” folder, where I could work on them all together. Now, I can create a smart album that works much like smart folders in OS X. I can select images using a large array of criteria including color tags. It’s a virtual folder, so the files are not actually moved. Now I can work on groups of images without moving them. This makes it easer to go back and look at selected images, change my mind, remove or add selects, and see them with others shot at the same time. This is going to save me a lot of time!

Food Photography

I love food photography, partly because I love to cook, and eat, but also because it’s quite challenging. Everything must come together at the same time. Often the window of time that food looks good is quite short, so everything has to be ready. I think food stylists are absolutely essential. It’s true that they are expensive, and that they can slow things down, but the difference in outcome is dramatic. Really! Absolutely worth every penny. I’ve had clients tell me that their chef is great at presentation, but making food look good in a photograph is fundamentally different. This is especially true for advertising and packaging photography.

Great food photography starts in pre-production with meetings with the client / chef, the art director, the food stylist, and the photographer. Everyone has to be on the same page about the recipes, the look, the props, and the schedule. There is usually a lot more to pull together before a food shoot than for normal product photography. Before and during the shoot, client involvement, good communication, and teamwork are all essential.

Anything with Wheels!

Dave and I recently finished a shoot for Raymond. The project included shooting in the studio (Tom) and on location in a warehouse (Dave). The project included video as well, so we had to coordinate closely with the video crew to make everything work smoothly. We had two excellent models from Productions Plus. Thanks to terrific clients, organized pre-production and teamwork, the shoot came off smoothly!

Recent work

I recently finished a project shooting a TurfEx RS7200. A motorized spreader / sprayer for commercial turf management. It’s a new product, so we spent a little more than half a day shooting a few different angles in the studio. We started with what I call catalog angles, that do a good job of describing the product. If you are buying something, it’s a good idea to know what you're getting. Then we did some more interesting angles, that while less informative, have more visual impact. I love shoots like this!

Password Security

I realize that this is off topic for a photography blog, but as you are reading this on a computer, or perhaps an iPad, it becomes relevant. Over the last year there have been a large number of news stories about security breaches, such as Sony, Steam or Sega. The list goes on and on. Just search “database hacked” on google; there are a lot of bad guys out there.  Not much you can do to prevent that, but you can protect yourself by using a different password at every web site. That way if a site gets hacked, the hacker can’t use your username and password at every bank web site till they find yours.

It’s impossible to remember all those passwords, so there are software solutions. I use a program called 1Password. Put simply, there is one password to rule them all. You need to remember only one password to access them all. The one password encrypts the others so they are not accessable to any one else. It is necessary to use Dropbox to make this strategy work. Dropbox is a cloud storage service that is pretty handy in any event. With Dropbox you can use 1Password to share your encrypted data with other computers that you use or the 1Password app on an iDevice. My wife uses Lastpass, also a secure solution that rolls the cloud based portion right in.Now that your using a tool to remember all those passwords, why not use strong passwords? Don’t use “password”, for a password! Hackers have lists of commonly used passwords. A good password has uppercase, lowercase, a number, and a symbol or punctuation mark. Length matters too, longer is better. There is a great illustration of this  by Steve Gibson at his password haystacks page.Whew, I sound like kind of a paranoid geek. I like to think of myself as cautious and prepared, but in any event, my online life is a little easier and safer.

Merry Christmas - Happy Hanukkah - Happy New Year

As the end of the year draws near, I want to thank all of our clients and vendors for their hard work and support. There have been lots of changes in Michigan, advertising and the photo industry over the last few years, and with everyone’s help we have been able to continue doing what we love. Lets hope that the year ahead holds health and happiness for all of us.

The Value of Post Production

At the end of a shoot, after cleaning up the studio, the post production begins. This can vary between simply adjusting exposure, color, and contrast, all the way to extensive retouching, compositing and digital imaging. I have had clients ask for raw files, (sometimes called digital negatives) and that always makes me uneasy. It’s not that I think no one can process them as well as I can. I am certain many people can do better; I am afraid that they will not. I am judged by the outcome, and I have come to enjoy the control that being involved in the post production affords me.

 Rare is the photograph that cannot be improved in post production. Even while shooting in the controlled environment of a studio there are usually things that can be done to improve it. I should say that if I come across an image that is six months old I can usually find things that I would like to change! After carefully capturing the best image possible, the next step is to process the raw files. I use Capture One for both capture and processing. I recently upgraded to version 6. I am now able to do many more of the things that were once done in Photoshop, while processing. The advantage is that these edits are non-destructive. That means the clients (or me) can change their mind and I can go back and make changes. In addition when these edits are done while converting from the high bit format of raw files to the standard 8 bit format, a higher quality is maintained. I generally start with the exposure, because the color and contrast are dependent on the exposure. Color balance comes next, most often starting by sampling a gray card included in one of the captures. Then I further adjust the color to suit the shot. Finally I adjust the contrast. I am not fond of the contrast slider in Capture One. I prefer the more granular control in levels or curves to get the look I am after. Finally, I make sure that the pre-sharpening is correct. Ever since I read an amazing book by Bruce Fraser called, Real World Image Sharpening, I use a two-step process for sharpening. The first step is the pre-sharpening. I used to do this in Photoshop, I am now able to do this during processing in Capture One. The second step is output sharpening. For this I use NIK Sharpener. It sharpens an image differently depending on output device and size. Output sharpening is always the final step, performed after all the retouching or imaging.

Done well, post production can make a great image greater, or an average image acceptable. Done badly, well, it’s just sad. All of the pieces need to be in place, pre-production, planning and preparing for the shoot, production, the shoot, and the post production. Surrounding all of this of course is the concept, and execution of the piece the photograph is in. Without an idea to communicate, and excellent design...