Visions, a Blog

How I Work: During the Shoot (Part 1)

It becomes very hard to analyze what I do on a shoot. After so many years photography becomes so intuitive that I seem to just roll with it, and the next thing you know, the shoot is over. I won’t go into detail about techniques, lighting and the like-mainly sticking with procedure here.

First off, when working at night, once I start working I usually don’t stop. I would rather get the job done and try to get some sleep than to take a break sitting on a hard floor. Besides, I can’t rest knowing that there is more to do. The most important things as you might guess would be camera angle, merchandising and lighting. We work as a team with the art director, merchandising, and store crew (if there are any) to set each shot to its full potential within the given time parameters. I like to start at the front of the set and move back as foreground is most important. Many times, little things in the background can be taken care of with a little cloning in Photoshop later if it means we can maintain a schedule.

I like to get as close as I can to a final image on set as possible. As I do final work on each image back in the studio, I believe the place to correct each shot is while shooting it. If I know that I have to do any work in post later, I will shoot for the optimum files to make that as easy as possible.

While shooting, I bring up the image on my laptop to view for any possible problems. I check focus, lighting and merchandising and will discuss if there are any ways to make the image better. Once again, we have to be aware of time constraints and change plans accordingly. I have the ability to work fairly fast on a shoot. Much of what I do becomes intuitive so while a new client may think I’m just placing lights at random, there is a reason for my placing everything where it is. If there are any concerns about an angle, I might shoot the image two ways to speed things along, and allow for a later decision. Like I said, I like to keep it moving…