I hate, CAPITAL H, HATE, posed portraits of people standing in a line. But sadly, it seems to happen here more frequently than I am comfortable with.
Basically it is a self preservation thing, anyone could take a photo like that. So why do I need to be there? If I don't need to be there and people get used to these stupid photos, they won't realize how good a photo can be and professional photographers won't be around. Like real reporters vs. blogger/twitter news jerks.
I'd rather have a whole, well done story than 140 characters some jackhole wrote while on the toilet.
So I had a few ideas for the All County basketball team photos that I figured would be coming. I gave them to the sports editor and it seemed like we were going to talk about it, maybe plan a bit. But then it just came up.
Didn't get any input on when/where the photo would be taken. Which is kind of a pain.
Luckily the other sports reporter had talked a bit to the editor about doing something creative, so I had a couple days notice. I was able to work on some ideas and scout the location.
I had a good idea that involved a high angle, cool lighting and a long exposure. I was having a geek party in my head. Get to do creative stuff and climb a big ass ladder! Come on!
It was looking very promising, the assistant principal said they would have the ladders setup in the gym for me before I got there. I was in a good mood about the photo.
Then on the day, of course, nothing was ready. There were other kids in the gym playing basketball and no ladders. So I was losing all my time to figure out the lighting/setup situation. I had to track down a janitor and dig the ladders out of this room by myself.
Ya know what? (I actually sighed very dramatically after writing "ya know what?" Jeez.) I don't even feel like venting on this topic. That's how frustrating it was.
I've got some other stuff to do and this has been a mind block for the last week or so. "Gotta get that damned blog post out so I can do some other fun ones." I try to keep this mess somewhat chronological, so I'll fast forward to the end.
(insert sped up mental images of Ryan swearing, sweating a bit and looking very frustrated)
It worked. It wasn't perfect, crap was frustrating, some of the people involved were annoying, some were awesome. Basically it boiled down to a time issue. Photography is part art and part technical. Good ideas and fine tuning the process take time. Sometimes it's quick and easy, sometimes it's not.
Here is the result.
Everything was done in camera, no Photoshop. Whew.
It usually isn't hard to do long exposures like this, but I had to run up and down a ladder every time, so it was less smooth than I had hoped.
After this I had about 2 minutes to the girl version...and one of the girls wasn't there.
Can you guess which one wasn't there? It's kind of obvious.
Okay, well...that's out of the way.
Tomorrow is going to be a massively busy day, so I imagine I won't be updating anything for a couple days. Might spend Sunday recovering at the beach with a beer or two. :D
I'll try to get back to a more frequent post schedule, eventually I'll get the internet at my apartment and this won't be such a process.
2 comments:
Is it number 11? She doesn't have a shadow.
Good eye, old man.
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