Photography Thinks
So, here I am, 65 years old, wondering what the end game will bring. Taking a hard look at myself in the camera, feeling the cold pain of my failures and the warm glow of the successes. Recently celebrated my 29th Anniversary with Sharon. Still not enough years to know her well, yet alone myself. Starting a new career in art and photography. Who knows?
How many people can say that when they take their car in for service and the service manager says you need a new one of these and a new one of these, you actually believe him and order the parts? How many of you can say that when you take the car in and they say they have repaired it, that you think the car is going to be fine and the cost was fair? And, how many of you go to a place where if it isn’t they make it right? Well, I can.
Not so easy to shoot a portrait of a family in their residence. People have stuff to do. Dad has to hay. Kids have to play. And Mom, who has a responsible job outside the home, has to drive the kids to Brattleboro so the grandparents can take them to Connecticut for a short vacation. Cannot stay too long. Have to keep the camera and the models focused. Rearrange the furniture. Set up the lights. Meter. Color card. Shoot. And get out. It always helps if the family wants to be photographed and if they are sweethearts. You can see from the expressions they like to be together and that they are a family.
So, you go to a class expecting some instruction. Heisler appears with a raft of cameras. He plays with them. Shows you some of his work and then dares you to go out and shoot to kill, just like he does.
“I won’t keep this a secret,” he says. Someone taught him, mentored him and opened doors to the universe of photography that he gleefully walked through.
They be his babies. He shoots with them; fixes and repairs them; and loves them for what they should and could do.
Metalsmiths shape metal by hitting it after it has been heated in a furnace. An ancient art, it has probably been around since the Hittites, a 14th century bce group that hung out in an area which is now Turkey. Without metalsmiths, there may not have been wars, agribusiness or beauty accessories. The Morrell family, Dad Leigh and Son Justin, practice the craft, today, at Morrell Metalsmiths, relying on the same skills and knowledge as the first people with hammers to produce high quality decorations for home and office.
Phase II Final Assignment called for a revealing self-portrait. One of my classmates who drinks milk and says the white liquid defines her will submit an image of her in front of a milk locker in a grocery store. Me! On the wall hangs a portrait done by Gregory Heisler during orientation in January. Making people see more in themselves as he does defines my quest at Hallmark.
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Phase II finals at Hallmark Institute of Photography. Just about half way through the program. Only recently did I think I was getting it.
Environmental still life. Flowers from Sigda in Greenfield. Potatoes from Fosters in Greenfield. Beer stein from the Salvation Army in Greenfield. Contact paper and drawer lining from the $ store in Greenfield. Blue blotter paper from some stationary store. Total expenditures around $15, not including gas.
My potato head came up with the idea. A kid accompanying his sister on a tour of the commercial studio, turned to his mother and inquired, “isn’t that Mr. Potato Head?” Frenchy replied, “who does it look like, you idiot?” “What’s he doing here,” the kid asked? “I am a photographer.”
But the real problem was that I couldn’d find furniture to scale. Seems like they don’t make furniture for real size dolls anymore. Wanted a TV or a computer to throw light. Settled for strobes. Gels colored the set too strongly, so I post processed in Lightroom3.
Never did anything like this before.
We went to an abandoned bank in Greenfield, MA; now there is an oxymoron for an on location shoot. Heisler had previously shown a home-video of making the SI cover shot featuring Sportsman of the Year Derek Jeter. He shoots real people, has a lot of support and uses a combination of great technical skill and creative genius. He can also teach.
Our assignment included using a Pro Photo 10 lighting kit in a different way, illuminating the background with the strobe and ambient light from a window facing the street for the foreground to produce a cover shot and an inside piece. Greg and DT did a test shoot, adding some fake smoke. Then, it was up to us to create a narrative and shoot.
