I’ve been a professional photographer for almost fifty years, and the number of anecdotes and stories I’ve encountered along the way still pop into my head at one time or another. Since I teach an online class with the BPSOP I’m constantly going through my files looking for photos to show to my students for any number of reasons; mostly to show an alternative way of looking at similar subjects or ideas.

Sharing a glass of wine or a martini while talking to some of my fellow photographers that take my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops planet will usually unleash a story or two.

There’s been enough time pass by so that the bad experiences have mostly melted into any lasting memory I might have had since so many years have passed. The funny memories and anecdotes will hopefully always remain in my mind, no matter how much time goes by.

I was shooting a series of posters, centered around a tennis court, for Prince Tennis rackets that appeared in pro shops  around the country. The campaign’s slogan was let the games begin, and it referred to the fact that people would do anything to play tennis, even shovel snow off the court. I was to produce four different posters, all at one time which made it logistically difficult since one of them had to look like it was shot in Winter while the others had more of a Spring and Summer backdrop.

Since the time of year was during the Winter months, a decision was finally made to shoot three of them in Santa Barbara, California while one of them needed a location somewhere in the North where we could find some snow; easier said than done…why?

I had hired a location scout around the Santa Barbara area to find just the right court. A court that would get either very early sun or one that would be a good place at sunset; to obviously get the best (golden hour) light. I was also suppose to send a scout up north to find the same thing. This is where a serious dilemma would play a big part.

Even if the location scout were to find a snow covered tennis court, by the time my crew and the people on the agency side arrived, there was no guarantee that the snow would still be there; and a lot of money would have been wasted. Having thought through that, I came up with an idea. Since the other posters were to be shot in Santa Barbara, why not just cover a local tennis court with snow? It would cost about the same as everyone flying up to who knows where and maybe not getting the shot.

Well we had good intentions, but as my mother use to say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The client had approved $4500 for enough shaved ice to cover the courts, but the day of the shoot turned out to be a record breaker and the temperature climbed to ninety degrees when we started laying out the ice; $4500 turned into $9000 and by that time we were committed.

The account executive on the account was freaked out when we told him what was happening, the client took it pretty good…why?

He was pre-occupied and had something else entirely on his mind. Right before I climbed into the giant crane so I could shoot straight down, he came up, pulled me aside, and asked me for a big favor.

He asked me if I would take a quick picture of this blonde he had met the night before in a bathing suit. It seems that he had met her in a bar and promised her stardom in exchange for…your guess is as good as mine!!!

Since he was willing to pay the extra $4500, it was the least I could do…I took one for the team…literally.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and check out my upcoming workshops at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime…I got a million stories.

Send me a photo and question to: AskJoeB@gmal.com, and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB

I love writing posts for this category, although I never know when an anecdote will pop into my brain. A story will come to mind when I’m going through my images looking for one that will help explain something to one of my online students with the BPSOP. While sitting at some restaurant having  glass of wine with some of my fellow photographers that has signed up for one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop a story will also come into my head.

I can tell you that over the course of my nearly fifty years of shooting there has been many. Some funny now but not so funny then, and some that are funny no matter how much time has gone buy.

This is one that wasn’t so funny then:

I was shooting a series of ads for Alpha Romeo, and the decision was made to shoot at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. I had shot there before so I knew how it looked and thought it would be perfect for the kind of simplistic environment the Art director wanted; he wanted something Zen.

Through the Utah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) my producer secured a permit to shoot. A contract was signed and one of the major points , if not the most important point, was that it was to be left exactly as it was when we got there; they were and still are very proud of the Salt flats and woe to those that mess it up in any way.

When a photographer is selected for the shoot, a car prep company is assigned, and it’s their responsibility to handle the car.

They unload it where you want, they take care of the detailing, and they load it back up in the car truck when the shoot is over. The photographer and his crew never so much as touch the car with their pinky finger for any reason; some of these cars are prototypes with no motors.

The two guys assigned to this shoot were from California and not the brightest stars in the galaxy. The hero car was in a long trailer pulled by a big truck, and I told Sandy where I wanted it unloaded. The salt flats are very hard in the middle and it gets soft the closer you gt to the edges; which is why it specifically states in the permit to not get close to the edges…which is exactly what Sandy did, immediately getting the back tire of the truck and the back end of the trailer stuck.

For the rest of the day he tried everything to get the tire out of what was then a small rut. Finally, after the rut became bigger, he went into town and rented a tractor to pull the truck out. Well it didn’t take long before the tractor was deep in the rut that was now closer to a gully.

So the next step was for Sandy to go back into town and rent a large back-hoe that would surely do the job…one would have thought…one would be wrong. Now the large back-hoe, the tractor, the truck and the trailer were all stuck in what was now a canyon.

After two days we finally dug everything out leaving a thirty foot crater. Needless to say we took the car, set it where it would go, slept in the rent cars so we would be ready to shoot the next morning.

As you can see from the photo above, the shot turned out great. We had to use the back-hoe to put the dirt and mud back in the crater as fast as we could and make it look like we were never there. If it hadn’t looked like we were never there, I would have been banned from ever getting a permit with the BLM…anywhere…a little too stressful for my taste.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. On July 30th I begin my 29th year at the Maine Media Workshops. I’ve had the same week since the beginning. It’s the week of the Lobster Festival down the road in Rockland. It offers a completely different set of photo ops than one would expect when coming to photograph the coastline, lighthouses, and fishing villages of Maine. Come join me and spend a week completely immersed in your love for photography.

Send me a photo and question to: AskJoeB@gmail.com, and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB

I was sent to Egypt to photograph the country and it’s people by Oil Tools Limited, a company based in London. The company was going to partner up with the Egyptian government to begin drilling in the coming year; I had pretty much a free hand which made it all the sweeter.

Whether it was the country, the people, or the historical monuments, the company really didn’t care as long as they had enough of each to use for the next couple of years. In those days we called these kinds of assignments Plums.

Early one morning I went out with a group of Egyptians to take their portraits…my transportation? A stubborn, uncomfortable, smelly camel. It didn’t take long for my new friends to figure out that I wasn’t keen on the idea of spending several hours trekking across a very hot desert that even Moses wouldn’t have willingly done; especially when he had to do it for forty years!!!

 Getting to the locations wasn’t too bad, at least it was cool since the sun had not come up. I had a real band of comedians that laughed at everything, and would not give each other one second of peace as I was photographing each of them; In the photo above the model kept turning away from the camera.

Finally I told everyone that if they would give me just a few seconds with him I would jump on my camel and shoot while riding…they did so I did!!!!

FYI, the shift in color of me on the camel is what happens when the sun had been up for twenty minutes.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my 2017 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Sign up for one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, and come shoot with me sometime…but not on a camel.

Sign up for my online class with the BPSOP, and I’ll show you how to incorporate the elements of visual design into your imagery.

Send me your photo and question to: AskJoeB@gmail.com, and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB

I was shooting the annual report for Apache Oil and Gas, and the company sent me to Egypt to pretty much shoot whatever I wanted that represented the people and country. The reason being that they were going to enter into a partnership to begin drilling there.

The one photo they did want was a photo of a new tower that was recently built in Aswan; a city just south of Cairo. When I got to Aswan, I was driven out to somewhere close to the middle of nowhere, and there was absolutely nothing around except this tower.

As the sun was getting ready to set, I was doing the best I could to try and create an interesting picture out of basically nothing but a tower and some rocks.

In my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our planet, never give up! There’s always something you can do and whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to be better than what most people would shoot…why?

Because not only do I show people how to incorporate the elements of visual design into their imagery, but I also give my Did It Do It list for good composition out to my fellow photographers; on that list is pre-visualization.

Btw, I also send them a link to one of my favorite quotes said by Eddie Adams.

As I was thinking and scratching my head, this man appeared out of nowhere and came up to see what we were doing. I thought to myself, “Did I just get really lucky or what??? I told our driver to ask him if he would be willing to be in my photo, and that I was willing to pay him the equivalent of ten dollars in his currency.

Even though that was more money that he would see in several months, he was simply to shy to pose for me; and the money wasn’t really a factor. We finally got him to be in it providing he was far away from the camera…photo #1.

As he became more comfortable, I moved him closer to the camera, knowing where I wanted him to end up…photo #2

FYI, the featured photo above was what I had pre-visualized all along.

When I was done and gave him his modeling fee, his friends decided to get in on some of the action; they were also each paid, but just half…photo #3

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

Keep sending in your photos and questions to: AskjoeB@gmail.com and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB

I was shooting a series of ads for Dewars Scotch in Edinburgh, Scotland, and one of the ads featured two men exchanging their secret fly-fishing spots to one another.

We scoured the city for an authentic Scottish pub that fit the layout that had previously been approved by the client…without any luck. It seems that all the old antique wooden bars, tables, and paneling had been bought up by entrepreneurs in the US to use in their new restaurants being built.

We found a room in the back of a boy’s prep school that fit the layout. The only problem was that it was an empty room and needed a lot of help to convert it to a typical Scottish pub. As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also my fellow photographers that take my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind”, if you’re going to use props and set things up (which I always encourage) make it look like you didn’t. It’s gotta look real to the viewer. Right before they click the shutter I have them ask themselves…”Do I believe it?”.

While we were dressing the room, my producer went out on the street to look for a couple of men we could use in the ad. Fairly easy since all the older men could have come straight out of central casting; everyone looked great. We picked out two separate men, total strangers, who agreed to play the role of the two fly-fishermen for a fee of $250.00 each.

I had a 12K HMI (a very large daylight balanced twelve thousand watt motion picture light) outside the window to act as the late afternoon light. To bounce light back into the men, I set up a roll of white seamless paper between us and cut a small hole in it to stick my 20mm lens through. That done, I couldn’t see anything except what I saw in the viewfinder. To make it more realistic and to get the men loosened up we use the real thing…a bottle of Dewars.

We had been shooting for quite a while and every time their glasses looked empty, my assistant would fill them up again. Finally, when I saw their glasses needed to be refilled I mentioned it, whereas I was told that the bottle was empty. They had consumed the entire bottle, drinking it ‘neat’ or in other words without anything mixed in it including ice.

It was over!

The two men, who never laid eyes on one another in their lives, were so drunk that they were laughing and falling over each other…and in a matter of an hour and a half had become close enough to be brothers. In fact, so drunk that they could barely walk and were in no condition to find their way home. It made us so nervous that we renting two private cars to drive each one home.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my 2016-17 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime and I’ll buy you a drink!

Keep sending in your photos and questions to: AskJoeB@gmail.com and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB

Years ago I was shooting the annual report for Anderson Consulting, and they had me travel virtually around the world shooting their clients in action. A dirty job but someone had to do it!

One of their clients was Spain’s Social Security Department. Shooting in Madrid, Cordoba, and Toledo, I basically had a free hand to photograph the people in their environments; environment portraiture being one of my favorite genres.

We were there in February during carnival, and I was walking around looking for interesting subject matter in Madrid’s most famous square (packed with tourists and locals) The Plaza Mayor, and saw this local artist starting to draw this young girl’s portrait.

As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also my fellow photographers that take my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our planet, always decide where you want to be in relation to the sun before you bring the camera up to your eye…and that’s just what I was doing.

In order to get the side light I wanted both on the girl and the artist, I needed to stand behind her; which is what I wanted to do in the first place. I wanted the artist drawing and the little girl looking over her shoulder at me as if she had just discovered that I was there.

To get her attention I would make the ‘psst’ sound and each time I did she would turn away from the artist to me, and just as she did I would click the shutter. It didn’t take long before the artist began to get upset, and finally he stood up, through his small piece of pastel on the ground, and started ranting and raving. He was yelling at me in Spanish and since I speak and understand the language just enough to get by, I knew pretty much what he was saying.

It didn’t take long before we had drawn a crowd, and as it grew people started laughing which made him more irate. He finally throw off his sunglasses, hat, and coat and “put up his dukes”…which made me start laughing;…which made him start jumping up and down.

Finally two local policia came up on each side and tried to quiet him down, and now he started in with them, which was not in his best interest. They picked him up by his elbows, and with him screaming what sounded like obscenities, carried him away.

That seemed to be a good time for me to make an exit from that side of the plaza. That was a very long time ago and for all I know he’s still locked up in Spain’s “ho-ho” house.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and watch for my 2016 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. The end of July marks my twenty-eight year at the Maine Media workshops. It’s a wonderful way to immerse yourself for a week and think about nothing but photography. It’s the same week as the Lobster Festival down the road in Rockland, and offers a completely different set of photo ops than the beautiful Maine coastline, amazing lighthouses, and quaint fishing villages. The full description is at the top of this blog.

I have added a new workshop to my 2016 schedule. On September 21st, ten photographers will get together with me at my evening “meet and greet” to begin a fantastic five-day workshop in New York, New York. Check out my description at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me.

Keep those photos and questions coming it to: AskJoeB@gmail.com, and I’ll create a video critique for you.

JoeB