Look ma, no Photoshop!!
For those that follow my blog, I wanted to take a moment to tell you all how much I really appreciate it. I’ve had a post come out every five days for the past six plus years, and now I have a big following; again thanks so much to everyone for supporting my blog and continuing to tune in.
I love all my categories, but the one that really takes me back in time is my “Life Before Photoshop”. When I look at the production shots it amazes me that there was a time when you had to be dead on as far as the exposure and the way the photograph was set up.
When I show my PowerPoint presentation on this to my “Stretching Your frame of Mind” workshops, I tell them that there was a time when the name Adobe was a type of house in the Southwest part of the country.
I’ll show images to my online classes with the BPSOP as well, and quite a few of these photos were shot even before the onset of computers. In fact, I shot annual reports all the time back then and every company wanted pictures of their brand new computer room.
These were huge rooms with huge machines everywhere. These rooms were kept ice cold for some reason that escapes me now. Now, my iMac 27 with all the bells and whistles is more powerful than all those behemoth computers.
I was asked to shoot a picture for the New York Stock Exchange of an affluent woman in her studio that was connected to the main house. The idea was to show that investments were a good thing and enabled you to do whatever you wanted.
I came up with the idea of making this woman a potter and working on a vase in her studio. After looking for just the right place, and not finding what the art director wanted, we decided to turn one of the rooms in my house into a studio.
We moved all the furniture out and started with an empty room, then began designing/creating the perfect potter’s studio; bringing in props that one would see in such a studio.
The set up
I had two very powerful 12K Daylight balanced lights that are used in TV commercial and motion pictures outside the room on my deck. To add to the ambience, we used a fog machine to smoke up the room to give it a diffuse, moody, feel good look.
The cat was provided by a friend of mine who was a vet. My producer was actually under the table next to the cat to keep her there for the thirty seconds I needed after the room looked right.
This image is the result of one 35mm Kodachrome transparency, one exposure, one click.
Next February in conjunction with the Santa Fe Workshops, I’ll be returning to Cuba for the fourth time. My next springtime workshop will Berlin next May; an incredibly beautiful city.
If you’ll send me a photo and question to: AskJoeB@gmail.com I’ll create a video critique for you.
JoeB
