Friday, November 6, 2009

The Hit-and-Run Portrait Assignment

Must be done in less than 1 man hour to meet the minimum specs for a viable job. The quicky portrait assignment, EVERY editorial photog reading this post knows what I'm talking about. Sometimes they're an easy "slam dunk", and sometimes they're a huge challenge. This is a good example of how it goes...

Editor email: Care to photograph subject for this week's issue?
Me: Sure.
Editor: Great, here's contact info: xxx
Art Direction: Basically just need a shot of him with some interesting/current art pieces.

Sounds easy enough. Right? Wrong. My subject is the Director of a Contemporary Art Center called Disjecta. They were prepping for a Halloween party the next night, and First Thursday showings the following week, so the place was pretty much a mess. The walls were bare except for this one little corner where a couple guys were working on hanging some pieces. Great, a background. I saw a grinder and a piece of pipe laying on the ground and asked if one of the guys could fire up some sparks to make things more interesting. Mission accomplished. I think they came out well for what I had to work with. These were shot with 2 lights; one on the subject, and one on the background. Shot at 1/13 of a second for the sparks effect.




1 comment:

  1. when I played as a ringer for the Portland Mercury Softball team he was one of the best SH*T talkers. Good guy, cool photo's. Good work with the metal, great idea.

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