The contrast between work and an open-ended, freeform schedule of not working.

 

I've been bouncing back and forth from renouncing work to embracing work. It's odd. In the weeks when I really don't have anything commercial to do I find myself getting bored. I start thinking about all the things I like about my job. I enjoy the puzzle solving of packing up a kit of gear that's comprehensive enough to do the project at hand but light enough and in few enough pieces of luggage that my choice allows me to carry and care for it all by myself. Then there's the selection of just the right camera and just the right lenses for the work at hand. I could use anything but what do I want to use? That's the fun part of the process. 

There's something fun about the challenge of problem solving on the fly. Walking into a classroom or a chapel or onto a production floor and quickly piecing together the best angle to shoot from, how to light a space, a product or a person, and how to do it all with the least amount of fuss. And then, when we've got the needed shot "in the bag" the next question seems to be: "Okay. Now what can I do to make this look better?"

It's always fun when you arrive at a location and the art director or production manager greets you with a big white cup full of your favorite coffee. There's a ritual first thing in the morning at the shoot of saying hello to everyone on the project and then sitting down for a quick meeting (over coffee) to make sure everyone is on the same page. Even better when fresh donuts are involved...

This might sound strange to most people who've only had office jobs but there is a wonderful satisfaction, at least for me, in being able to physically handle a day of constant moving, and constant collaboration with a client or an art director. On a recent job we moved locations about every thirty minutes. My client carried his iPhone and an iPad. I carried a camera backpack with about 25 pounds of lighting and camera gear in it as well as a stand bag with four stands, three umbrellas and a tripod. At the end of the day I was still getting up flights of stairs with that load and enough energy to arrive at yet another location, take a depth breath and get right to work. It's almost like a contest to see who the weak player who throws in the towel will be... 

The worst part of every shoot for me is the very end when we've wrapped up the last shot of the day, conferred with each other about post processing and delivery schedules, and then, after I wave "goodbye" to the client I have to confront the mess I've made, with gear strewn across the location, and the sinking realization that I have to knock all the stuff down, carefully pack it into the right cases, the right pockets and the right bags and then get it all back to the car. That's the low ebb of being a solo operator. But it's a tiny part of the process. 

I'm an extroverted introvert so I both love and dislike meeting new people. I like the process of getting to know a new person but if you look at statistics you are probably going to be bored, or dislike, about 25% of the people you are required to spend time with. The other 75%? Fun. Interesting. A free education about something they do really well. 

The flip side though, if you do continue to accept jobs, is that you then have to operate by certain inflexible rules. You have to show up on time. You have to know how to do the job you signed up for. You often have to navigate around really bad coffee and wince when someone hands you the powdered coffee whitener after you've asked if there is any cream or half and half. You have to put up with odd scheduling and sometimes surprise subject matter that never really got discussed before you signed up for the day. Just because you  could be retired doesn't mean you are. If you've signed the contract you have to deliver just the same.

We were working on a college campus this week and one of my fears was that we wouldn't have time to leave campus for lunch and, in addition, that the proferred food will be crap. This week was a good one. The food in the cafeteria was really well executed. And healthy.

You have to commit to being at the shooting location, usually, for the whole day. You have to constantly manage client expectations. Can we fix this in post? Do you have a budget for me to fix this in post? You had the ability to deal with all this when you desperately needed the money; can you still put a good  face on it when you are no longer motivated only by the cash?

When I haven't accepted a job to fill a perceived gap in a week I get to do whatever the hell I want. Which is also good and fun. I can get in a morning swim practice. If I want to sleep in I can go to the noon swim practice. I can make myself breakfast at home. Alternately, I can head up the street to my favorite coffee shop for a good, hot, fresh cup of coffee and a breakfast taco. Hell, if I worked hard enough in a workout I can even rationalize getting a nice pastry to keep my coffee company. I can take my time reading the news of the day. I can go for a walk with my spouse or head downtown and walk with my camera. I can go to lunch with one of my long time friends. I can take a nap in the afternoon. I can waste time looking at used Leica rangefinders on the web. I can hop on a plane and go see a play at my friend's theater in Oklahoma City. 

Today I did stuff like: Pay bills. Kill ants. Change air conditioning and air cleaner filters. Have coffee with my two swim partners. Run a load of laundry. Make reservations for tomorrow's dinner in San Antonio (oops! back in a second...). Okay --- reservation made. Back to ruminating...

This week I've done two days of work and have a half day scheduled for tomorrow morning. The busy day was Tuesday. I got to my location at 8:15, beating my client by fifteen minutes. I had dropped by the afternoon before to set up a temporary portrait studio inside their video suite; right there on their new, white cyc. We had about 20 portraits to shoot during the course of the day but they were not scheduled contiguously. We ended up doing the portraits in chunks of four. Between each flurry of portraits we'd leave the portrait camera and lights set up and ready and then I'd grab the alternate camera backpack and a few other lighting odds and ends and, with the client, I'd head out to classrooms, the library, the administration offices and the dean's office to make an environmental photo documentation of the school and its students and personnel. 

I used a Leica SL2-S and the 24-90mm for all the location stuff. If I needed flash I used a Leica SF64 on a Manfrotto Nano stand and modified the light with a 60 inch umbrella. That's about as much as I want to carry around at one time. 

Oh Kirk!!! Why didn't you just use an assistant? 

To be honest Austin's gotten so expensive that there are no longer a lot of young assistants who can afford to have flexible schedules and still afford to live in the city. Finding a good assistant who is also available on fairly short notice is usually harder than just doing an easy, quasi-reportage project by myself. 

For all the fuss about working I really did have a blast yesterday. Most of the people I met and photographed were fun and interesting. The ones who missed being in that category were only in the studio for a short time and everyone everywhere was on good behavior. 

People alternately keep asking me either why I keep working or why I would ever retire from such a fun job. I have no real answers for either question. Perhaps it's just that I can't make up my mind. There's good and bad about both. 

I spent all day yesterday doing post processing and it was actually pretty much a fun and meditative experience. I shot nearly 1,500 raw images on Tuesday and it's alway interesting for me as a continuous learning experience when I go through the work to edit and process. I took more chances with lighting and high ISO settings at the shoot. The post processing is an opportunity to see what worked and what didn't. You get to see how a camera will react to the light and the mix of ambient color versus added illumination color and then you get to see how you need to handle that in post. 

My takeaway is that the new selection tools in Lightroom are a game changer. I could choose "select background" in an image of a speaker in front of a window and treat the speaker and the background as two separate images when it comes to color, exposure, blur, etc. And, using the batch capabilities of LR I could overlay those choices to all the successive frames that were shot the same way. 

We shot a lot in classrooms and sometimes you need to tilt the camera down to get the angles you want on the subjects. The automatic tools in the "Transform" menu make quick work of dealing with keystoning and "wandering" horizons. And frame skew. Finally, the "facial enhance" presets make everyone look just a little better (and can be controlled easily) which makes putting together portrait galleries for the purpose of image selection a much better experience for everyone. 

Continuous learning is a wonderful thing but putting what you learn into an intensive practice helps you learn better and faster. Nothing beats the learning experiences one gets from stitching together a bunch of eight hours a day of fast moving photography.

Yes. We did have a contract with the client. Yes the client is responsible for making sure the props and their people look good. No, I don't need enthusiastic feedback from my clients to feel good about my work. And, for the most part, I never give up on a technique or a look I like until I've exhausted all the possibilities of a process. That's the way you put together a 40+ year career and cobble together the financial resources to actually retire....if that's what you want. 

In swimming there are two kinds of people. The ones who find it hard and quit early and, on the other hand, the ones who find it hard and love the challenge. The discipline to return again and again is what makes everything work to your advantage.