Sleet Face

So it's not all about sunshine and rainbows. If you've lived in Northeast Ohio for at least a year you know what I'm talking about. There's no roadmap to the weather and even if they do draw it out it's usually not right. The forecast called for snow starting at 8 o'clock. So I met up with my cousin Nick and John at Pour coffeehouse down on Euclid Ave. around 5:45, Nick has never shot Cityscape in downtown Cleveland and John had the winter blues so I felt like I needed to drag both of them out. As usual just like dinner plans no one has any idea of where they want to go, I’ve been to every inch of downtown so I tell them the cards are in their hands. I end up leading anyway. We head north to an alley that I’ve had in my mind for a few weeks now. As we get down to E 9th. St. the hail starts hitting our face, it stings, the wind whipping down 9th is pretty brutal. We set up our tripods anyway. Looking West through the alley you can see the Key tower, it sets a nice tone for the evening ahead. We each blast off a few shots of each other taking shots and head West towards the popular E. 4th St, but first we stop at the statue in front of the Hyatt and luckily we don’t get kicked out. About 20 minutes and we finally move on.

I’ve been to 4th so many times I can’t even count so it requires me to get creative with how I shoot it, luckily it’s been raining so I have plenty of puddles to play with. I don’t hesitate to set my camera down in the middle of the street and start firing off some photos. To the right of me I see Nick taking some photos of me so I try to be as still as possible, hopefully he got some bangers. At this point we’ve been out in the rain and hail for two hours, it’s time to grab some food. We settle on the Harry Buffalo and our buddy Jason meet us down there with his seven-year-old who is also photographer, how cool is that! We all smash some wings and fries, head out into the city again. Johns the first one to head home, shortly followed by Nick. Jason myself and his Son head down to Public Square, grab some shots of The Terminal Tower with the Kiss logo on it, not sure why it's on there. Maybe an inductee to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? We decide to call it a night, but not before Jason takes care of his deposit for the San Francisco workshop (we still have a spot) We part ways, even though it was crappy weather all night I still enjoyed getting out with some good people and creating!

Avery Dennison Campaign

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.