The most challenging shoot you've done?

molested_cow

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I am not a pro so I don't have to worry about pleasing clients or shoot with uncertainties under stress. I have had some challenging shoots with landscape. One at Antelope Canyon, having to deal with the crowded space and the sand. The other at Jiu Zhai Gou (9 village vally) in China, where there were tens of thousands of tourists all over the place and I have to make it look as though it's unmolested in any way.

All of these challenges are not comparable to what I had to shoot recently. Product photography involving mega size toy building kit with kids.

I did it at two places, 2 days consecutively. First day was at a kindergarten where the designer(my student) of the kit had been testing designs, so the kids are already familiar with it. We rented simple lights to light up the dim indoor room. Space wasn't ideal, but I could back up enough to get ok shots. The environment was really bad for any kind of shoot. The walls are dirty and the wooden floors are old and badly scratched up. No amount of photoshop can make it look good. Also I borrowed my friend's D800 and simply couldn't make it look right as I can on my own D700. The kids were really fun to work with, a bit too fun. In conclusion, whether we can get the kids to do what we want them to, the background simply didn't work out. We had to scramble for a second place.

That night I called my friend who's got two kids and live in a pretty nice home. I went there in the next afternoon with the parents warning me about their kids being monkeys. Turned out to be not as bad as I thought, but again, really exhausting. Also because the toy itself is mostly made of cardboard, with both the background wall and floor being wood, the entire image is of the same color. Nothing popped out in the photos. Personally I've run out of options. The combination of right place + right people + right time seems to be mission impossible. Yes we can rent a furnished studio, but timing and people will be an issue.

I once went to a portrait place to get my passport photo taken and saw a poor photographer trying every trick she's got to get a toddler to look at the camera. I thought to myself "Never want to be in her shoes".
 
I shoot weddings. Clients pay me a lot of money and have certain expectations for me to deliver. Every shoot is a challenge. :D
 
Tampa Aquarium Wedding.
Blue and purple spotlights for lighting in the tunnels and almost no other lighting besides the tanks anywhere else. Almost every background was glass.
 
Camden county's football team. There are 142 players, ie more than any college or pro team. You've got the following shots to get:

1) 2 full team shots in the bleachers: a gutter shot (2 foot gap in the middle to account for the gutter of the yearbook and program) and a normal shot. These must be perfectly aligned with 142 high school kids sitting up perfectly straight, no blocked faces, somehow relatively even lighting that spans the entirety of the bleachers, mixed with ambient light because it's outdoor. also you must align them to account for perspective, since the back bleachers are further away, they want the image to be a rectangle, so you have to perspective align the players.
2) 426 individual shots: 3 for every player, straight on "mugshot" for the program, knee down holding the football, "posed action" relevant to their position.
3) 12 position group shots: QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs, OL, DL, LBs, DBs, STs, coaches, trainers, managers
4) seniors
5) captains
6) program cover
7) ref doing all the hand signals for penalties for the program
8) shots of various stadium details

For each image a camera card must be filled out giving name, player number, and image number. It's mixed flash and ambient (Norman units for the big team shot, impact lights for the individual and group shots) starting at 9 am and ending around noon. So your lighting is changing on you pretty drastically. It's also South Georgia in July, so around noon it's 95 degrees.

We have 4 people to get all of this done in 3 hours. Have to be at the studio at 4 am for gear check and load up.

You've got a team lead and then 3 junior photographers. The lead makes sure everything is organized and takes the team and group pictures. The other 3 mostly take the individual shots.

Best case scenario it's organized chaos. Worst case it's just chaos.
 
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by Forkie, on Flickr

It wasn't really technically difficult, but it was logistically challenging. It was shot in sections and getting everyone to do as they were told whilst they were all excited was a struggle, especially as I also had to make sure that the sections would fit together and stay in proportion and perspective.
 

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