Why my job is hard..

While I am on the subject of my job....let me tell you about what is the most challenging aspect of my work. Direction. Generally I spend more time talking about what "direction" my clients want the shoot to go than actually shooting. Whether it is a photo editor of a magazine, an actor who needs updated headshots, or an art director that needs an image to function as part of an ad campaign. The toughest decisions are all the little decisions that determine whether in the end a photo works or not. Of course whether or not that final photo works is all in the eye of the beholder, but I digress.

So what determines the direction of the image, everything. The talent or subject, wardrobe, the hair/makeup, the lighting, the setting, the posing, the expression, the angle the image is taken from, and the list goes on. Literally hundreds of decisions are made before the shutter is clicked for the first time.

Some of the funniest things I have heard on a photo shoot have taken place as all of the people present on a shoot are trying to make decisions on all these little things. Always the biggest concern is if something is "too" (fill in the blank). Too sexy, too conservative, too LA, too girl next door, too happy, you name it and it is possible for it to be too much whatever it is.

I often find myself trying to read people's minds and body language to determine if what we are doing is the direction they wanted to go. In some instances I am surprised that we wade through the waters of all the decisions and manage to produce anything that anybody likes because we have spent so much time talking about it and weeding it down to meet everyone's needs that it ends up being shot with nice soft lighting with no shadows against a white background and the talent is wearing a blue shirt.

I always find it interesting that my industry has created a commerical look that is really far from reality yet we all accept it. For example you see all these ads at Petsmart with a perfectly groomed happy older man (also insert woman, couple, child) at a park with their beautifully groomed golden retriever (also insert lab, weirmariner) the light is glowing golden rays on both their happy faces. I spend a lot of time at the park (I have two kids under the age of three) and I have yet to see that scene in the real world. Generally people are in sweatpants with a couple plastic bags from Price Chopper hanging out of their back pocket trying to listen to their Ipod or talk on their cell phone while "Fluffy" is sniffing around like their is fresh meat covering the ground. But maybe that is just the part of town I live in.

Photography and the ad business in general have created this hyper happy worlds that we all see continuously as we are out and about in the world or even just watching television. If you start to pay attention to the images you see(or become a photographer that creates those images) you will see what I am talking about. Just don't ask me if your shirt makes you look fat, because we all know that it isn't the shirt :)