Sometimes a job comes along that pushes all the right buttons. I like travel, and available light, shooting loose and limber and lots. I like trying new things and meeting new people. I like unexpected situations and improvising and playing and just seeing what happens. If I can get paid at the same time, all the better.
Many assignments meet some of these criteria — at the very minimum the “getting paid” part is usually there — but very few cover off everything. It’s rare, but it happens. One example I can think of would be the FedEx annual report I worked on a few years back; another would be an assignment I shot last year in Hong Kong and Macau (you can see some of the shots from that trip here) Over the summer, lo and behold, another came along; I was asked by DDB Vancouver to work on a new campaign for Canada Tourism. The idea was to create a library of relaxed, friendly shots that documented a group of friends taking a trip together. It was stressed from the get-go that the feel should be extremely snapshot-ish, with as little ad photography artifice as possible. This was a welcome change from a typical assignment where the client wants things to be, like, in focus and stuff. It was all about emotion and making it feel like the camera was actually a participant in the scene. And they wanted shots of a lot of different things, which is always fun. Some portraiture, a little food, a little drink, some landscape, some miscellaneous pictures of trains; everything was fair game, as you can see.
Canada is a giant country. I’ve lived here all my life and travelled extensively throughout it and still don’t feel as though I’ve seen very much. Assignments send me quite frequently to major urban centres, both here and in the US, but it’s the out of the way places that I tend to remember most vividly. This particular campaign took us through the prairies, from Winnipeg to Edmonton by rail. Basically the entire middle part of the trip was an out-of-the-way place, or at least it was for me. Now I know some of you might be chuckling derisively at my enthusiasm, after all Winnipeg isn’t nearly as exotic as Africa or Asia or Europe (where several fellow Westside photographers were also working that very same week). But I don’t care. I heard an expression recently, something along the lines of “the happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have”, and hackneyed as that sounds, it’s also kind of true, and it applies to taking photos as well. If you’re forever envious of other people’s assignments, and complaining about your own instead of making the most of them, then you’ve chosen the wrong career, because there are always cooler, or better paying, or more exciting jobs than the one you’re working on. And there always will be, if that’s how you think.
We shot thousands of frames, which art director Brandon Thomas edited down to a couple hundred. The campaign will be rolling out worldwide over the next few months and just launched in Australia — check it out here.
In other news, last week’s Heather Morton fundraiser was a big success — there’s a great recap of the event over at her blog today.
For the past few years, art buyer Heather Morton has been writing the popular and influential HMAB blog. She’s been an enthusiastic and devoted proponent of great photography, has introduced numerous up and coming artists to the public eye, and is a tireless source of advice and inspiration.
Heather was recently diagnosed with aggressive fibromatosis, and has consequently had to put many of her regular activities, including the blog, on hold; the weekly chemotherapy sessions are gruelling, and will need to continue for at least two more years! Her friends in the photographic community have rallied around her and will be holding a fundraiser at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on February 5th. There will be some notable guest speakers, a raffle, and what looks to be a pretty spectacular silent print auction featuring work donated by 40 photographers (full list here) with printing services provided by Pikto. Me, I’ve got my eyes on this great image by the talented Jaime Hogge.
I was one of the lucky artists invited to take part, and I’m contributing the photo above, from the Special Administrative Regions project I shot last year in Hong Kong and Macau. You can see some other selections from the series over on Heather’s blog (thanks to the efforts of guest blogger Jamie Rosenthal), and more information about the fundraiser can be found there as well. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check it out — tickets for the event are going fast!
In other news, I’d like to congratulate the winners of the contest I held last week: Kim Morrison and Holly Thomas , both of Toronto. Kim was the first person to identify everyone correctly, but Holly was one of the very first entrants and managed to name 8 of the 9 right off the bat – I figured that deserved something. Congratulations! We’ll be in touch shortly to arrange for your prints. Thanks to everyone who took part!
Hope to see you all on February 5th!
I’ve mentioned before my fondness for books. I read widely and avidly, sometimes because I’m looking for something specific but often as not for the simple pleasure of feeling someone else’s thoughts trickle through my brain. Right now I’m reading Pulphead, a collection of essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I picked it up because I heard somewhere that he was kind of an heir apparent to David Foster Wallace, or at least, DFW in “Consider The Lobster” essay-writing mode. I’m not so sure about that; he seems more to me like a darker and smarter version of Chuck Klosterman, but whatever. He’s quite a good writer, and I recommend the book. His pieces on Michael Jackson and Axl Rose are clearly music journalism masterpieces.
Anyway, there’s a brief passage in one of the essays where Mr. Sullivan talks about being at the hospital bedside as his recently electrocuted brother awakes briefly from a coma and looks him right in the eyes. His comparison to the eyes of an actual dead person (not at all the same!!) is succinct, profound, and apt, and feels casual yet inevitable, in a way that only a talented writer can pull off. It stuck with me and I had to put the book down, It kind of got me thinking about eyes.
I realized some time ago that my lighting approach, for portraits anyway, is fundamentally built around the subject’s eyes. It’s all about acknowledging or subverting a viewer’s expectations, and eyes are where everything starts. Eyes are where we look when talking to people. Eyes give us our first impressions and insights into people’s character. Eyes offer a running commentary on emotional states, and are where we see raw, native, human intelligence at work. It’s not just that they belong to other living creatures; I’ve noticed my son’s eyes change as they’ve gotten older, from wet and adorable but largely empty blobs when they were infants, to restless and relentlessly aware. In fact, I’ve found that if the light is such that the feeling in a subject’s eyes comes across, even if their eyes aren’t visible, the shot will still work. I’m not sure why this is. I think perhaps we’re programmed to seek cues from people’s eyes and faces, so we’re naturally drawn to circumstances where we feel that the chance to pick up on these cues is maximized. The inverse of this is the mood you can create when a subject’s eyes are unclear or obscured; it all depends on what you’re trying for, of course. Intent equals content. Maybe something to think about next time you’re struggling with lighting – work from the subject’s eyes outwards, and it will all come together…
I recently took a look at the long-term derekshapton.com usage stats. Since starting this blog, which is basically an extension of my main website, visitors to the various portfolio areas have increased tenfold. That’s a lot of new eyes, and I’m thankful for the attention. By way of expressing my gratitude, (and also saying Happy New Year) I’m going to try something a bit different this week. The grid above contains nine crops of eyes from nine different photos, all portraits of pretty well known people. The first reader who successfully identifies the personalities they belong to will win a print (image TBA). Between various blog posts and the main body of my site, the shots are all visible somewhere online. Please email me at derek@derekshapton.com with your entries. Happy hunting!
In much the same way that the Communication Arts photography annual punctuates the doldrums of deep summer, the arrival of American Photography always makes for a welcome respite from pre-Christmas nuttiness and mayhem. Rather than taking it out to the back deck with something “hoppy and not too sweet”, however, it’s more likely that I’ll flip through the pages while sitting in the light of the Christmas tree with a nice strong stout. Or some rum and eggnog, a beverage that would be utterly disgusting at any other time.
As I mentioned in one of my very first posts, I’m proud to say that this year I managed the unlikely feat of landing images in all three of my favourite juried annuals. While they all have their charms, American Photography is the one I most enjoy as a published piece. It’s a big, solid, hardcover book, with an authoritative heft and cutting edge design — this year courtesy my old friend Antonio De Luca. The printing and paper are always superb, deliciously silky and smooth, with a spicy, almost petrochemical nose like a strange white wine (The 2008 St. Antony “483″ Riesling comes to mind). The sheer and undeniable physicality of it is something sorely lacking from digital photography; oddly, the closest analogue I can think of is the experience of editing from contact sheets. Remember those?
I miss contact sheets tremendously. I miss the excitement of getting the box back from the lab, and the tiny sucking sensation as I tried to remove the lid, which was sometimes followed by a different kind of sucking feeling as I started to look at the pictures. I miss the way they would slide around in my hands, and I miss the way they smelled, kind of plasticky and musty at the same time, like a Star Wars figure and an old Penguin paperback thrown together in a blender. Most of all, I miss how easy they were to edit; the good shots would literally jump right out at me, like spelling mistakes sometimes do from a field of text. Looking through American Photography feels like that, except that unlike most of my contact sheets, nearly every frame is a keeper.
This year, the shot above appears on page two hundred and sixty seven. It’s from a series for Toronto Life, following then city councillor (now mayor) Rob Ford around on the campaign trail. I had my back to the scene, and turned around looking for my assistant, and then in one of those intense split seconds that makes you really understand what ol’ Henri was talking about, I noticed how the condo towers in the background echoed the shape of the campaign sign, and realized that if I took a step to the right I could get the stop sign and “no entry” signs interestingly positioned, and how in doing so the half-naked people on the left would be balanced by the folks on the right. I asked the campaign worker to stay where she was for a moment, and managed a few quick frames. Everything came together with this one. I’ve always been bothered by the notion that photographers “take” pictures; you’re rarely “given” anything. Raw material is everywhere, and it doesn’t care that you’ve got a camera. It’s just there, ignoring you, and your job is to get it’s attention somehow.
Planet Shapton will return in 2012. Feliz Navidad! And an extra special high five to Tom Feiler, Raina + Wilson, and Sean J. Sprague, fellow Torontonians who are also featured in American Photography this year.
See you in January.
(L to R): Anne Heche, Michael Cudlitz, Dermot Mulroney, Judd Hirsch
One of the best things about my job is the variety of assignments I get to work on, and all the different people I have the chance to meet.
A couple of months ago I was brought in on an assignment for Turner Broadcasting to shoot some promotional imagery for a film called “Silent Witness”. I’ve written before about the consummate professionalism that generally prevails on set with experienced and talented people, and this shoot was no exception. It was a real pleasure to meet and work with everyone involved, from the actors on down — as you’d expect, the hair / makeup, wardrobe styling, crew of assistants, and digital techs were top-notch. This type of shoot is particularly interesting in that rather than shooting portraits of the subjects per se, you need to instead capture the essence of the roles they’re playing. It was fascinating to watch the characters come to life in front of me.
Nuances of character, filtered through individual sensibilities, mediated by a camera, tailored to a specific need; a tidy flow chart that pretty much sums up the process behind a successful commercial portrait assignment.
Silent Witness aired December 7th, 2011 on TNT, as part of the Mystery Movie Night series.
