I was shooting the Annual Report for Apache Oil and Gas. They were about to start drilling in Egypt so they sent me there to basically shoot what ever I wanted that would capture the flavor of the country.

I was more than a little surprised when I found out that the hotel I was staying in was right across the road from the famous Pyramids of Giza. Not only did my room look out to the pyramids, but there was a casino in the hotel.

For some reason most people think more on the romantic side about the pyramids, and a lot of that is owed to Cecil B DeMille for his portrayal in his iconic movies. In actuality, the pyramids are not even outside of Cairo and besides the hotel, there’s a shopping center where tourists can buy everything imaginable that has to do with the pyramids or the Sphinx. Oh, did I forget to mention the eighteen hole golf course next to them????

Upon arriving at the pyramids, you’re swarmed/accosted  by guides that promise you secret ways to enter the pyramids, and know one else knows these passages. One such man would not leave us alone, and kept showing us all his badges he had concealed under his coat. He said that he had all the necessary permits to allow us to take photographs, and was not to be denied…I liked him right away!

As it turned out several more of these guides kept bothering us about our cameras, but Mohammad was always right there to protect and defend.

Check out my website at: www.joebaraban.com, , and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our planet. Follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Come shoot with me sometime. I will occasionally put up and coming workshops at the top of this blog, so look out for them. They fill rather quick and then I take them off.

JoeB

Although it feels like centuries, some thirty years ago I was hired to shoot the annual report for Anderson Consulting. By all accounts, it was a great project that took me around the world shooting their clients.

One of their clients was the Social Security Department of Spain, and my assignment was to just shoot the people of their country. What a great job I thought to myself upon hearing what they wanted me to do. What more could I ask for since I love to shoot environmental portraits, and to travel around doing just that (with a complete free hand in what subject I picked to shoot) was just about as good as it got.

We based out of Madrid, and we were there during their Carnival…another story of really weird people dressing up and walking around the Plaza Mayor, Puerta Del Sol.  Besides shooting in Madrid, we also went to Toledo, and Cordoba to shoot there as well.

While in a small plaza in Toledo, I had a 300mm F/2.8 lens on a tripod and I felt as if I were a submarine captain in World War II looking through a periscope hunted enemy targets. Instead I was looking in the viewfinder, and after I had loosened all the knobs, I could freely swivel my camera around the crowds back and forth looking for subjects/targets of any height.

As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our planet, constantly look around you, be aware of any movements and especially look behind you because that illusive ‘OMG” photo is lurking somewhere out there and just waiting to be captured.

While scanning the crowd, I saw this woman holding a fan close to her face. The first time I saw here she quickly turned away…the game was on!! I wanted her picture, and she was doing everything she could to avoid me. What I had in my favor was her extreme curiosity as to what I was doing and she couldn’t help herself to periodically look in my direction. At that point come hell or high water, and if it took me the rest of my life, I was going to get my shot.

In those days I was shooting film, and you had to focus your own camera. While her head was turned I pre-focused on her, and since I was at F/2.8, and at the minimum distance for that lens to get her sharp; I didn’t have much latitude as far as my DOF was concerned.

Since I was focused on her, I pretended to scan the rest of the people but was not actually shooting. Not knowing whether she was looking or not I looked back in her direction, and before a blink of either her or my eye, I clicked the shutter. I got her!!!!!

I smiled at her and reluctantly she gave me a half smile back as she knew at that moment that it was game, set, and match.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog as it becomes available. onderful country.

JoeB

Years ago, when the now Maine Media Workshop was just called the Maine Workshop, I took a group out looking for the elements of Visual Design and composition. Now I call it my Artist Palette, and these elements are placed on it so your imagination can easily get to them. We work on this same Artist Palette both in my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of mind” workshops I conduct around our planet.

Probably twenty plus years ago I was taking a group out late in the afternoon, driving in the countryside outside Rockport (where the workshop Homestead is located) looking for Vanishing Points to incorporate into my students composition. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man sitting on the railing of his back porch. I quickly noticed that the railing contained parallel lines that were almost converging to a point on the horizon.

I couldn’t tell if it was a true Vanishing Point (which it wasn’t) , but the man was great looking…a true Mainer. I turned around and drove back to see what if anything was worth having my fellow photographers shoot.

We pulled up next to the house and I began talking with this man who turned out to be very warm and friendly, and a great guy to boot. I asked him if I could take a quick photo to show the students how to combine a Vanishing Point with an environmental portrait; as seen in the above photo.

I then had the class take over and just stood back to see what they could each come up with individually while the light was beautiful. I went to put away my gear while thinking that they would try their hand at incorporating a Vanishing Point and a portrait. When I returned, I was surprised (to say the least) that they had positioned this man in a chair and proceeded to photograph him. I couldn’t imagine what they were seeing or trying to see, but since they were having fun, I just let them be….and then I quietly snickered, then a giggle, then I laughed, and laughed.

I still smile when I see this photo I shot of them.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my upcoming workshops at the top of this blog.

JoeB

I was shooting for five weeks in Hawaii for United Airlines and the Hawaii Department of Tourism. Along with some of the top hotels, they had formed a coop in which they all shared in the expenses.

I had sent my producer over a week ahead of time to scout locations for me to look at once I got there and to ultimately shoot. I had told her that I wanted to include some typical well-known tourists attractions, because they would look different when I shot them….why you ask?

For the simple reason that the tourists would get there sometime after breakfast and before lunch, or after lunch and before dinner. Either way, they would be there in the worst possible light, while I would be there before the sun came up and right before it set.

In these types of locations, it’s all about the light, and very few of my fellow photographers ever thinks about that. In my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I’m always stressing that the light is critical if you’re trying to take your photography what I refer to as “up a level”.

Knowing where the light is going to be, how long it will be there, and when it will leave is fundamental in coming home with that illusive OMG photo. The only time light can be second in the thought process is when you’re street shooting and “the moment” will and can trump beautiful light…especially if you’re shooting B/W.

One of the tourist attractions my producer found was on the Island of Kauai. It was the Kilauea Lighthouse, and it was one of the more popular attractions on the Island. At a popular lookout point I checked the light for sunrise and sunset readings coupled with my Morin2000 Hand Bearing Compass. After determining that it was a sunset shoot, I set out to add something to what would otherwise be a fairly predictable photo; even at sunset…another “layer of interest “.

There was a big enough budget that I could do pretty much what I wanted in terms of props. In this case the prop was a forty-five foot sailboat I chartered to have it tack back and forth close to the cliff. Since I knew where the sun was going to set, it was easy to backlight the huge sail.

We arrived at the lookout well in advance to make sure we secured the best spot, free from other tourists that might get in the way; not an option considering what the sailboat cost.

Right on time the sailboat came around the cliff and as it did, all the tourist that were also there started hooting and hollering while clapping at their good fortune. While the rest of the ‘weekend photographers’ shot with their small cameras with even smaller lens, I had my 600mm F/4 Nikor lens on.

The crown couldn’t believe it when the sailboat started going back and forth with the lighthouse overlooking it; they hooted, hollered, and clapped some more. Finally one of them came over to me to see what I was doing since I had a headset on with a voice-activated mike.

What I was doing was talking via a powerful walki-talki to one of my assistants that was on the sailboat with another walki-talkis. I was the one that was instructing the sailboat to tack back and forth. When the word got around to all the others, they began to hoot and holler louder than they had been…and applauded my entire crew.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram, www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Now that I’m semi-retired from fifty-three years of shooting advertising, editorial, and corporate photography, I can devote my time to teaching with the online class BPSOP and conducting my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops around the planet.

There was a period of about thirty years when I traveled up to two-hundred and fifty days out of the year, and for those days I always traveled with my first assistant. When we got to a city, I would pick up a free-lancer who knew the city and could get things for me as I needed them.

My first assistant went everywhere with me and was responsible for the equipment, and the liaison between the free-lancer and myself. He was always right by my side, giving me the ever-changing exposures readings from a one degree external meter made by Minolta.

When the assistant I had at the time gave me his two-week notice (the best ones would only work for two years before going off on their own), I would begin to advertise through several channels I had at the time. When they applied for the job, they would have a portfolio with them that I basically looked at the backs to see how neat they were.  If they didn’t take care of their own work, they wouldn’t take care of mine, and there was just too much money involved for the assistant to be sloppy.  Their subject matter didn’t matter since they would not do any shooting.

What I did care about and was the first question I would ask someone that I was interested in was if they were afraid of heights. If they were, then the interview was over. They needed to be willing to do whatever I needed them to, and I never asked anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself. The question had a tendency to shake someone up, to the point of thinking I was kidding…which I wasn’t.

It usually brought the macho out of the guy and no one would ever say no. That is until we were in a position to test their testosterone quotient…as in out in the field.

The above photo was taken on the Elissa. A tall ship anchored in Galveston, and it was shot for National Geographic’s World Magazine. My assistant was fairly new and had not been field-tested. I wanted a portrait of this kid that was spending the summer on board.

The kid told me some of his duties, and right then I knew the photo I wanted to take of him. When I explained what I was going to do to my assistant, the blood drained out of his face; which in itself was fairly scary/funny. The three of us climbed out on the mast to get the shot.  The next day my brand new first assistant quit…his face was still white!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.

JoeB

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

After fifty-three years of shooting editorial, corporate, and advertising photography, one acquires stories and anecdotes along the way. Some funny, some not so funny, and some you wish didn’t happen quite the way it did. That said, I always told my four kids (the youngest being twenty-seven) that bad decisions usually make the best stories.

However, one of the funnier moments happened years ago while shooting an annual report for an agricultural company. We had gone to a farm to take a portrait of the owner, reported to be one of the largest landowners in the county. After meeting him, you could have knocked me over with a feather when we were told that he held an MBA from the University of Wisconsin.

He was a very slow talking quiet man who was not accustomed to having his picture taken. He was shy and had to be talked into it. I told him that I wanted to shoot him out in one of his fields, and he said that was fine, but he didn’t want to be photographed by himself.

He took us out to a field, dropped us off and said he would be back in fifteen minutes with his girls. I though he wanted to have his picture taken with his wife and daughters. Since the light was bad and the skies were gray, I figured the more the merrier, and what difference could it make…especially if that was the only way he would have his picture taken.

After nearly thirty minutes, he should up with his girls…two of them. He said that they were his favorites and they followed him everywhere he went on his farm. I could hardly show my excitement, and as I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, the one thing that can replace good light is humor.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. Be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I want to announce my next workshop “Autumn in France” to be next October 2nd. It will be in Bordeaux, Dordogne, and Toulouse. If you go to the top of my blog and click on the link, you can read the description. Join me for a great visual experience, seeing places that few people won’t ever be able to.

This is my first post under a new category I call Anecdotes. In my online class with the BPSOP and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops, I’m always telling fellow photographers stories of events or just funny things that have happened to me in my fifty-three year career as an advertising and corporate photographer. It’s time to start sharing these same stories with all the people that have been following my blog.

These are all factual incidents, and only the names have been changed to either protect the innocent or the people you can only look at and shake your head and wonder????????????

I was shooting a project in Ireland with my team that consisted of the Art director, my producer, and my first and second assistant. We had some time to kill and were in Cork. I had heard that the Blarney Stone was right outside the city so we decided to go and kiss it. At that time we really didn’t know what to expect, and truth be told we didn’t know that there was a Blarney Castle.

When we arrived at the castle we went looking for the Blarney Stone, thinking it was some rock nearby and all you had to do was walk up, bend down and kiss it. As the story and ritual goes, kissing the Blarney Stone gives you the gift of eloquence;or gab as some people call it. The kiss, turned out to be much harder than any of us thought. To kiss the stone we had to climb the stairs to the castle’s peak, then lean over backwards on the parapet’s edge. Although the parapet is now fitted with protective crossbars, it’s still very scary!!! Too scary for anyone else to do it but me and one of my assistants.

FYI, before the safeguards were installed, the kiss was performed with real risk to life and limb, as participants were held by the ankles and dangled bodily from the top of the castle.

Later that afternoon we were enjoying some libation at a tavern in downtown Cork. Across the room and in the corner were four really drunk locals that were boasting/laughing about all the times that after a day of consuming several pints of strong beer, they would sneak up to the Blarney Stone and take turns urinating on it. Needless to say that I immediately conjured up a mental picture and I’m here to tell you it was rather disgusting. It took two more pints to wash the taste away. The good news is that I was indeed given the gift of gab, so it’s been worth it…sort of!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and follow me on Instagram. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. I got a million stories to tell you.

JoeB

This is tone of the posts in my category that I call anecdotes. These posts are about all the seriously funny to really dumb things that have either been said or happened while on my photo shoots. Trust me when I tell you that there no geographic boundaries when it comes to the things people say. From Timbuktu to Kalamazoo, it never ceases to amaze me what can come out of the mouth of babes!!!!

As usual, the names have been changed or left out to protect the innocent, and whose little hearts you just want to bless and keep safe.

I was shooting an advertising campaign for Asics, more years ago that I want to even think about, or can remember. The first in the series put us in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah.  We were there to shoot a testimonial ad that featured Douglas Wakiihuri wearing a pair of the companies tennis shoes. Douglas was a famous world class marathon runner, whose credits put him at the top of his game.

I had chosen Arches because the agencies Art Director wanted a backdrop that created a feeling of Zen. I arrived a couple of days early  to scout the different arches and select one based on the best exposure to the late or early light. After taken readings from my Sunpath chart, and using my Morin2000 hand bearing compass I found Delicate Arch to be the best background. It was an hour and a half hike up to the arch, but worth it as it’s the most famous arch in the park.

That afternoon the client arrived with her new assistant and Douglas. After a pre-production meeting we planned to meet the next day in the parking area that was the beginning of the path up to Delicate Arch.  When we all arrived and began to get ready I started talking to the clients new assistant, who had recently received her Masters degree in marketing from a top eastern college. I told her that I was looking through a brochure on Delicate Arch and had read that it took three hundred million years to carve the famous arch.

Without skipping a beat, the assistant looked at me and said, “Really, someone carved that arch?”

There was only stunned silence. The world around me began to spin out of control, the air around seemed to have been sucked out into the cosmos, and I started to feel dizzy; dizzy enough to faint. Fortunately, as the last moment of consciousness was fading and darkness was wrapping around my freaked-out brain, I regained control without anyone noticing. I suppose they were still contemplating her response.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram Be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

 Whenever I write one of these posts it takes me back to the days when I was traveling two hundred twenty-five days out of the year, and loving it. I was fortunate enough to hook up with some of the very best graphic designers in the country if not the world, and a whole lot of them were working in Texas; Houston, Dallas, and Austin to be exact.

Working with graphic designers in corporate photography was very different that working with Art Directors in advertising in that with corporate work you had more freedom to shoot what you wanted, and in advertising you usually had to follow a layout…or at least high-comped sketch of what the client expected you to come back with.

I was hired by s designer, that in turn was hired by an oil company in London to travel throughout Asia documenting the countries that they were either doing work for or about to. I was allowed to shoot anything I wanted as long as it represented the country in a positive way.

We were in the Philippines for several days with one of their employees as our guide and interpreter and one sunrise we found ourselves at a place somewhere in Manila Bay. It was a gray day and I was about to call it a morning when we saw this small boat anchored  on the shore. The sky was opening up a little so I thought I would shoot the boat against what I was hoping for something dramatic to happen in the sky.

As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet that Eddie Adams ( a well known Pulitzer prize winning photographer) once said, “When you get lucky, be ready”. As is usually the case, sunrise shooting is very quiet since there’s no one around that time of morning, and especially when you’re far away from the cacophony of morning sounds given off from a large city.

I was beginning to compose my photo, when all of a sudden a teenage boy jumped up from inside the boat and proceeded to scare the morning daylights out of us, while at the same time those same daylights had been scared out of him.

With the help of an idea, I quickly ( as in losing the light) regained my composure and had our guide ask him if he would pose for me. I had the young boy trade places with me (it’s a great way to show your subject what you want him to do). As I started to shoot the silhouette of the boy, the sun was rising creating this wonderful sky.

I got the shot (without any post processing) and gave the boy a five dollar bill for his time. He looked at it, smiled, then laid back down in the bottom of the boat and went back to sleep. As we were leaving, our guide told us that the five dollars we gave him was more than he made in a month. Wow, talk about making someone’s day…or month.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram….www.instagram.com/barabanjoe Check out my 2023 Workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Years ago, I was asked to shoot a brochure for a printing company in New Orleans. The theme of the brochure was “something’s cooking at Upton”. The designer had me go to five of the best-known restaurants in and around the city; best known not to the tourists, but to the locals. I was to take a portrait of the owners and had received a free hand to approach the portraits in whatever manner I wanted.

As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, if you want to take your photography what I refer to as “up a notch”, scout your locations ahead of time. Know where the sun is going to be so you’re not somewhere at sunrise when you should have been there at sunset.

The fourth restaurant on my list was Sal & Judy’s Restaurant on the Southside of New Orleans. I went there the day before to meet the owners and to determine when the best time to shoot was going to be. I pulled up in front and the pink building hit me in the face. I was ecstatic!!! A pink building…wow!!! That faced West!!!

As I stood there an idea started to form in my mind. I tell my fellow photographers that if I can visualize a photo in my mind, given the time I can re-create it on film.

As I stood there I saw in my mind three bands of color spreading across the frame from left to right. I saw a band of blue (the sky), a band of pink (the building), and I needed a third band of color. something that would tie it all together…including the portrait of Sal and Judy…an idea leaped out from my mind.

I introduced myself to Sal and told him I was the one sent to take his and his wife’s portrait. I asked him if he knew anyone that had a green convertible, thinking that the odds were not in my favor. He looked surprised and said, “Well hell yes, I have one”. This was way tooooo good to be true I said to myself.

“What do you own?” I said to Sal. “A 1966 Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertible”, Sal replied. I thought I was hearing things!!! I asked him if he would bring it the next day, and explained my idea. I told Sal what to wear and to have his wife wear something that would go with the green car. When they showed up driving the car, I knew I had struck pay dirt…a portrait for my portfolio.

As I started shooting, one of the waitresses came out to tell Judy something. I immediately saw her black and white striped uniform and knew what I had to do …to add a “layer of Interest”.  I had all three women come out with a screwdriver on their trays to add yet another splotch of color.

It was great fun and it reminded me of the days before photography when I was an art major studying painting and design. I was still painting, only I had changed the medium from a paintbrush to a camera.

🙂

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. check out my workshop schedule and come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

I teach three online classes with the BPSOP, and I conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop around the planet. Before the start of my Springtime workshop in Prague, I had arrived there a few days early to scout all the locations with Katka, the woman that was coordinating/producing everything for me. I always do this so I can put my fellow photographers at the right spot for the early and then late light.

One afternoon she took me to a wonderful restaurant in Old Town Square. We sat on the roof and enjoyed appetizers with a glass of white wine. Looking down I asked Katka what the big crowd was doing at the base of the tall Old Town City Hall that seemed to be in the center of the square.

Katka told me that they were standing at the base where the astronomical clock was located waiting for the top of the hour. On the hour, a show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures—notably a figure of Death (represented by a skeleton) is set in motion. They all come out and the skeleton strikes the bell. Immediately, all other figures shake their heads, side to side, signifying their un-readiness “to go.”.

As it turned out, we were through just in time to go down and watch the action unfold up close and personal. I was standing there looking up as the skeleton began his thing, and when I looked behind me, the place was packed with people taking pictures of the figures above me. It really struck me funny and it sort of felt like they were all taking my picture. Of course I yelled out…”My people, my people” since I always wanted to do that and there was never going to be a better opportunity.

🙂

For one brief shining moment…I was a Photo God!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram. www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.

JoeB

It’s been more years than I’d like to remember, but when I do think about it I always give out a big smile since it was one of the best parties I’ve ever thrown, and I’ve thrown some damn good parties. It was for my 40th birthday, and I wanted it to be memorable so I rented out Rockefellers in Houston. It was a great place to go to hear well-known bands and solo singers that wanted to play in a smaller venue.

Renting Rockefellers for the night was expensive, so I struck a deal with the owners. I offered to shoot some pictures for them and I also explained what I was going to do for the invitation. They loved the idea so much that they wanted to create a poster and use my 53′ Caddy for their own advertising. Needless to say, I had no problem with that, especially since they were going to give me the entire place for a third of what they would normally charge for a Saturday night.

My idea was to take my 1953 black Cadillac convertible and park it in front of the building. The final invitation was a poster I sent out to all my friends working at the advertising and modeling agencies, and design studios. Well, when I did a tech scout and placed my car in front it was boring, and just wasn’t working. My next idea was to park it perpendicular to the building, but to do that would take hiring two cops to stop traffic while we shot. With a four hour minimum for each looking at me, I just couldn’t see putting good money out that should go to the bar!!!

I decided on a “gorilla shoot” (I’ve always been of the notion that it’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission). That’s when you go on a Sunday night when the traffic is the lightest and just go for it. First, we put lights in all the windows of the building and I had two assistants with a walki-talki so that when I had my car in position, I would have them fire the strobes while the shutter was open and I was recording the building on the outside and mixing it with the ambient light in the dusk sky. That was the easy part.

The hard part was next. As fast as I could (since I didn’t have any police for traffic control), I turned my car around in the middle of the street so the building would be right behind it.  I jumped out, set up my tripod and started shooting. After checking a quick Polaroid, I was able to get off three exposures before the police showed up with red lights flashing.

The young cop was reasonably nice when he walked over to me and said, “Just what the hell are you doing? Are you nuts blocking this major street?” I explained what I was doing and he again said, “Well, you’re done doing it, now get this damn car out of the street. I’m writing you a ticket, but I have no idea what to put down”. I knew that was my moment. I told him that if he wouldn’t write me up, I’d like to invite him to the party, and by the way, I’m sending an open invitation to all the modeling agencies in town.

“Really?” he said with bulging eyes. “models?”  I said yes and that all the best looking women in Houston will be there. “Ok, I’ll be there. Can I bring a friend?”. I told him yes, and with that, he started directing traffic so I could get my car out of the middle of the street.

In case you’re wondering, he and a friend did show up, and from what I remember they both left with new friends.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.

JoeB

One can’t shoot advertising and corporate photography for fifty-three years and not have amassed several funny stories during this time. Some included the client, some the designer or art director, and some when I was sent on my own to shoot whatever I wanted. This was the case when a graphic designer and his client (a paper company based in Houston) hired me to work on a brochure that was featuring a new line of paper. It was to be called “Kromekoat”.

The idea was to shoot things that were chrome, and it needed to somehow say Texas. Those were the only stipulations, and besides those two, I could shoot anything I wanted. I had read that the Texas State Fair was coming up in a few days and one of the main attractions was the giant Ferris Wheel that has the word Texas in large letters on one side. Now all I needed was something chrome to take with me.

I found what I was looking for when I walked into a CVS Pharmacy near my studio. I was walking by a rack of sunglasses and spotted a plastic pair that looked just like chrome. As I tell my online students with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, follow my Did It Do It list for good composition. One of the points I mention is to Pre-Visualize.

I quickly imagined the finished photo in my mind and the next morning my assistant and I took off for Dallas and the Texas State Fair.

My idea was to find one of the Carny men that worked the games in the carnival section of the fair, and have him put on the chrome sunglasses so I could take a portrait of him in front of the Ferris Wheel. As the sun was starting to set, I still hadn’t found just the right man to pose for me. When I had less than twenty minutes of late afternoon light still available I started to get nervous. I had one afternoon to get the shot and it looked like I was going to miss it.

The sun was getting low enough that there were only a few places left that had sunlight. I was about to throw in the towel and call it a bust when I took a quick look at my assistant and there was this epiphany that hit me over the head like a big pizza pie…”You’re perfect”, I said. “Quick JD, put these glasses on and look towards the sun.” He did and I got the shot.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

Texas Monthly Magazine, based in Austin, sent me to do a photo story on the clowns of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. I spent a week backstage in Houston at what use to be called the …and a week in Buffalo. It was a great, once in a lifetime assignment since I always wanted to be a clown when I was a kid.

I had mounted a 2400WS strobe head in a large softbox and mounted it on a boom. I rolled it around taking portraits of the clowns that were waiting to go on.  Some were resting or changing clothes, some were applying their make-up, and some were just “clowning around” for the camera.

What makes this story funny is that for the week my assistant and I were actually in clown make-up and joined in with the clowns. One of the things we did was to be part of the seventeen clowns that piled out of a tiny car and were met with mallets being swung by dwarfs…what a gas!!!

I shot the clown portraits while in costume, and found it to relax the other clowns by being a member of the tribe!!!

Here are just a few of the portraits.

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Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. come shoot with me sometime

JoeB