Planning a shoot is never an easy task, especially one of this size, it takes emails and phone calls, permits also need to be pulled. You need to find the proper people to pull the permits from. Get a video guy, coordinate assistants and times and you need to figure out how to get all of the cars there and keep them clean, all before sunrise at 6am. You need to figure out which car picked up the doughnuts, that's pretty important.
This Campaign is for Avery Dennison New Color Launch, The Costal Collection.
You don't plan for the midges to be flocking everywhere by the millions, sticking to your legs and the condensation on the cars as they come in. It's fine, you got this!
So now you have to drive the cars down a single lane walkway with water on either side with only a chainlink fence separating you and Lake Erie. It's still dark out, you want to get the cars staged no later than 30 minutes after sunrise. Why not start shooting at sunrise, you'll find out in a minute. I need height but I need distance. I now have my pickup truck backed all the way up to that chainlink fence, that one I mentioned that is touching the water. I will shoot from the bed of my truck.
Cars are placed as perfect as you're going to get them, the sun is up high enough in the sky where there is no color cast. You need the cars color as true as possible, it is a new color launch after all. Now you have 5 cars that you need to light paint but you need to be careful, the sun is in and out of clouds, sunny, shady, sunny again. You need to watch your shadows and highlights as the sun changes position. Lightpainting from the bed of my truck is risky business but it needs to be done. I am at 14mm and cant go back any further.
We light each car up twice, you can't be too safe, you need to cover your ass, just in case. You can't get your files home and notice you're missing a shot, the campaign is too big, you're a professional after all. We shoot 2 more angles of the 5 car bunch and then we shoot each car individually around the grounds of the Old Coastguard Station.
Don't forget you still need to edit the photos from your 50MP camera. That's a task in itself, don't forget about the last minute deadline change. What's that, you need the hero shot in less than a week? You break the hero shot down in to 6 parts. You edit each car separately for 5 images and then you do your final composition with your base plate, talk about a big file.
There's the little details of getting final images approve by the client, paying your Assistants and Videographer, backing up your files and I'm sure tons of other things I am forgetting about at the time of write up.
Prep starts long before you press that shutter button and go long after.
