- Joined
- Jul 3, 2004
- Messages
- 3,714
- Reaction score
- 531
- Location
- Here N There
- Website
- img24.photobucket.com
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".
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".