livebooks blog

Rose Wood ©Dietmar Busse

Q: What was it like working entirely on your own?

A: It was both very exciting and very scary. Exciting because I felt free to create and explore whatever I wanted. There was no one in the room other than me. No one with any expectations or agenda. I played around with flowers and painted all night long, and it was really very exhilarating at times. Many nights I didn’t even want to go to sleep and just worked and worked.

At the same time it was very frightening. No client, no editor, no agent for feedback or guidance. And then, though I lived in a small, cheap place in Brooklyn, I still had to pay the rent. This was not the ’60s and my savings were running out fast, since I was spending lots of money on flowers and photo supplies. But somehow I always managed to get by and I saw my work evolving.

Even though I was working on my own, I did stay in touch with a few people in the commercial world who liked my work. One art director had my flower photographs all over his office, and one day this lady who was a book publisher saw them and within a matter of days I was working on my first book.

Robert Kitchen ©Dietmar Busse

Q: What was the book publishing process like for you?

A: It was exhilarating to think that the work I was doing would end up in a book. The difficulty was that when I was approached by the publisher, they wanted all the material immediately in order to make the deadline for the spring market. One moment I was just minding my business figuring out what images I wanted to make, and the next I was on a rushing to deliver my first book. That was quite stressful, especially since I tried to make more new photos while the creative director was already working on the layout.

Everything was being rushed and finally sent off to the printer for the first proof — then suddenly everything was put on ice. Why? Because it was early 2003 and it was evident that George Bush was going to start a war. Consequently the companies involved with the book project were suddenly not sure if it was the right time. This went on for awhile and then, again suddenly, the publisher decided to just go ahead, which was great. Unfortunately there was absolutely no time for any corrections and the raw layout became the book.

It was not the ideal scenario, and I was quite unhappy about that. It took me some time to be able to appreciate all the good things that came from the book. I think the experience will serve me very well for my second book, which is in the making. After the first book was published, I also got some nice write ups, and, through that exposure, I was contacted by a gallery, and offered a group show, which later turned into a 2-person show.

When working with consumer photographers (anyone who markets directly to the public), I always like to encourage them to show images that will make their potential clients believe that if they hire them, they’ll create that same MAGICAL moment for them. Those magical moments are why a consumer client hires a photographer. Regardless if it’s to capture their baby’s first year, their family portrait, or especially that bride’s special day, they want to believe you are the person to make that moment happen.

These are my recommendations for putting together a website of your wedding photography, which have helped my wedding photographers increase their bookings from 25-45% to 50-100%.

DOs:

• Make your galleries quick and easy to look at (15 – 25 clicks per gallery)

• Tell a story with multiple weddings –- the start of the day to the end of the day. Example: Bride getting ready, father seeing bride, bride walking down aisle, the I Dos, the kiss, the bridal party portraits, reception vignettes (flowers, table cards), the first dance, the father-daughter dance, people having a blast at the reception, the cake cutting, and finally the cliché end of the night moment (holding hands walking off into the night). Yes, you heard it right, that cliché moment gets a bride every time.

DON’Ts

• Have 10 galleries – each titled: “Joe & Sarah,” “Marc & Beth,” etc. that only show the best photos from each of their weddings

• Show a bride or anyone at a wedding at their worst moment. Some photographers appreciate a photo for its caught-moment approach. I appreciate that too –- but if it’s on your wedding site, a bride will imagine herself in that photo every time. If a bride looks too heavy or someone is causing trouble, she will think the same will happen to her if she hires you. I know this sounds elementary, but every client I work with has at least one photo that MUST be taken out.

GALLERY IDEAS:

• Have one gallery showing the entire day from start to finish, drawn from different weddings

• Have multiple galleries (no more than 3-5) breaking up the categories, such as, Getting Ready, I Do, Group Shots, The Reception, and Bridal Portraits and/or Engagement Photos

Finally, remember you are being hired to help capture that special day (a.k.a. that MAGICAL moment). Everything — including your website, portfolio, and personal presentation — has to convey that you are exactly the right person to do that.

©Michael Lamotte

Let me walk you through one project we’re doing, a new frozen food product. To begin with, the designer called me and we talked about what the requirements were. This was for packaging, so she showed me the rough layout they had, the size of the package, and the area they needed for type and graphics. Then — this doesn’t always happen, but it’s good when it does — we did a test shoot. We were able to take one day with the food stylist and we tried to shoot as much as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just to get across the idea and see what works and what doesn’t work. What lighting or angle or props look good. There are so many combinations that have to work together. So we would work through that and then the designer would take those photos and create a couple different layouts to present to the client. And then, after long discussions, the client decided which direction they felt is best. And once that’s established we do it all over again. But this time we care much more about what it looks like. In this particular case we did two rounds of that. We did another round of shooting to establish what it was going to look like because they had a slight shift in what the prerequisites were.

On the production side, when we were actually doing the shoot, it meant coordinating, getting the product here, having freezer space, and having the right equipment to cook it. We had to figure out how best to do that. It’s sort of exploring how to get the most truthful representation of the product, trying to get the best out of it and still not lying about what the product is or looks like. We’re just trying to show it in its best light. The stylist in that particular case also had to work with the client to determine what side dishes they wanted. Do you want rice and a vegetable or a potato and a vegetable? What are the combinations? Or what garnishes can we use? What things can we put on it to make it look better? It’s a fine line; you don’t want it to look like it’s something that’s supposed to come with it.

Then there are the props. In this particular project we had to find the right plate to put it on to give it the right feel or atmosphere. If they want it to look casual, they want a certain kind of plate; if they want it to look upscale, it would be a different kind of plate. So there’s a whole process of figuring out, where do we want to position this? It’s a group effort. Ideally you want to have the actual product, the food, and the plates together under the lights and put it under the camera and see what works. You can’t really predict those things until you see them in context.

We have a lot of plates and dishes and flatware in the studio, but usually the requirements are more specific than that. Usually it has to be a certain size, a certain color, it has to have a red band on it or something. So being a prop stylist is actually a very difficult job. People say, that sounds like fun, to go shopping with other people’s money — it’s not that easy. It’s usually very specific. A client might say, once I saw this plate that was green and it had little speckles around the edge and it was about seven inches in diameter. And I don’t know where I saw it, but I really like that one, find that. Or for this particular project, the plate had to be a certain size because, if the plate’s too big, it looks like the portion you get is too small. If it’s too small, the portion looks gigantic. So you’ve got to find that middle ground. It’s very difficult finding the exact fit that everybody likes. The other thing that happens is the client says, I saw this plate over at this store; then you go to get it and they don’t stock it anymore. Occasionally we actually have to have a plate made from scratch. We went to the model maker and it turns out they do that for Pottery Barn and stores like that. They design a model and do a plate for them, so it was no big deal for them to do it for us.

Working with food, you have a relatively small window of time to work in. Ice cream, for instance, is a really small window. But usually the longer anything sits out, it’s not good. It’s best to capture it as soon as possible. That’s why on the day of the shoot, if we didn’t do a test shot ahead of time, we would figure out the camera angle, the lighting, get it all set up and then the food stylist would make it all over again and make sure it looks really good the second time. The first version is sort of stand-in food so you don’t care if it sits out there for an hour because you’re just getting the composition and the lighting where you want it. Then when everything is set you bring in the fresh food and shoot it right away.

Once we have the image we like, we bring it to post-production. The thing that I think is interesting is, if you know you have that option of retouching you can use it as a tool for shooting. If there is this technical issue or, particularly in packaging, if there is a size problem. One project we did was a limited budget and they wanted to do it as efficiently as possible. So we shot the food for the front panel of the package and then the back of the package there was another photo of that same dish but it was pulled way back to leave room for the type. So instead of trying to shoot the main shot then pull back and shoot it again with more background, we shot it for the front and made sure everything looked good on the whole plate. Then at the end of the shoot we pulled back, set up that other shot, kept the camera angle exactly the same, then in post production we cut the food off the plate in the front shot and shrunk it down to fit on the plate that was on the back. So it’s an exact copy without having to shoot it twice. Because the food wouldn’t have lasted from one shot to the next. We would have had to make everything twice.

Hillary Clinton perusing a New Hampshire Deli as part of a routine photo-op, this one to emphasize her appeal to the "common man." Chin photographed her pacing instead of posing to reveal the "staginess" of this kind of campaign ritual. ©Alan Chin

Alan and I met when I ran one of his pictures on the blog from when he was embedded in Iraq. We had this big conversation going in the discussion thread, and he just showed up and said, look, I’m Alan Chin, I took this picture, and you guys don’t understand, you’re not here. At first, no one believed he was Alan Chin. I remember he was getting mad and wrote something to the effect of, “I can’t believe I’m sitting over here risking my life and I’m having to defend to you people that I’m Alan Chin.”

But what Alan realized from that experience was that the view I and my readers had of the situation was completely different than the frame of reference he had as a photojournalist in Iraq. And very quickly, what the BAGnewsNotes crew realized was that we were making all kinds of assumptions because — between the Bush Administration, the embedding program, and the media’s self-censorship — we had a very obscured picture of what was happening on the ground.

After Alan returned, we started collaborating on posts where I would interpret Alan’s images, comparing and contrasting the way the traditional media defined the story and how the Administration and the political spin machines were trying to frame it. We did that for his numerous trips to post-Katrina New Orleans and various 9/11 anniversaries he photographed from Ground Zero. As we entered the ’08 election cycle, this collaboration evolved even further to the point where, to best determine the political story line and our visual plan of attack for that day, we would actually share each others perspective: mine, the tone, mood, and circumstances highlighted by the media, his, the actual mood and mindset of the various campaign camps.

The Bush Administration insisted that FEMA had everything stabilized in New Orleans by early 2006. This image demonstrates otherwise. This "town meeting," which started with a discussion on formaldehyde poisoning, broke into conflict during an attempt to elect a new committee of representatives. ©Alan Chin

It worked basically like this. He’s on the campaign trail, and having gone to one or two campaign events, he calls to tell me what is going on. For example, this couple whose daughter died because she was allegedly denied medical treatment from her insurance company is traveling with John Edwards and they are saying this and the people are reacting this way. And my response is: Really? Because the media is presenting it like this-and-this. So, from my end, I’ll sketch out the narrative the media has constructed and how the campaign messages have been interpreted, and I feed that to Alan. Often his reaction is, Wow, that’s really weird compared to the impressions and feedback from local organizers, campaign people speaking off the record, other photographers, citizens following the campaigns, and so on. So we’ll cook all this together in quick 10-minute conversations usually. The result is that he now has a picture in his head of how events are playing out between “the media filter” and “the public square,” which allows him to shoot not just what’s going on, but but to potentially capture moments and imagery that might call out the politics, the message-making, and/or what people have been conditioned to see.

There is also a check-and-balance to this process in the feedback we get from our readership. From the beginning, BAGnewsNotes has been structured as a seminar. So the idea is, I can have an idea or an agenda, or Alan and I can go out and see something that we think is happening. In posting the material, however, what we are doing is presenting it to our readership. Then they lend their eyes and their frame of reference to the edit and our interpretation of the images. Using that approach, the readers represent a SWAT team of analysts, since that many are deeply informed on politics, not to mention well versed in history, economics, in government. Still others are professional photographers who really understand the visual circumstances and dynamics around the acquisition of images. So by putting content out in a seminar fashion, we’re essentially asking, “Do we have this right?” Or, “What else is going on?” “What else could it mean?”

In setting up this kind of environment, we’re never simply looking to map pictures to specific narratives or agendas. If an image is really expressive, in fact, it will function prismatically. In other words, it’s possible that there will be seven, eight, nine different social or cultural or political implications within the picture. And if that’s the case, our audience will typically find and elaborate on most or all of them. So it’s pretty democratic that way. And that’s why, approaching political pictures this way, I’ve had a robust number of comments on the site from day one, especially in proportion to my overall traffic. And, even if a post only draws a few comments, it’s more likely than not that the feedback is pretty insightful.