Coming Soon To This Theater

My focus this week is to empty my office in Broad Ripple so I can vacate it before July 31. I am doing all my shoots at my home studio. I can save money and earmark what I have for expenses more relevant to where I am with the photography business by dismantling the office

Down the road (my target date is still October or November when I need to make some financial decisions) I'd want a studio with more space and a high ceiling. I want to have more options about camera positioning, maybe shoot from above or from a distance with longer lenses, maybe even occasionally hire a crane for really long shots. 

By that time I should be shooting videos. Maybe I can find someone who can man the video cameras while I shoot with still cameras. I have seen and liked photography sites that used videos to create excitement about the photos but I want to create movie-quality videos that are art works in their own right. As Robin Gillan writes, "any medium used by an artist is art."

The last two shoots at the swimming pool were thoroughly enjoyable. I loved the photos in natural light. I loved having that space in which to stage the shoots. For the first time I got a sense of what it was like to shoot professional models on location. There is much more to location shooting for advertising or fashion than what I have done so far. That's okay. A step at a time will get me there soon enough.

Meanwhile I have more ideas for studio shoots as well. I've found a suitable platform so I can elevate the models and take better photographs of them in more poses. The platform will also compensate for the shallow depth of my current studio space so it will be easier to shoot full-length photos. I like the plain, white backgrounds á la Richard Avedon but I'd like to try more elaborate shoots as well. I generally don't care for complexity but how else does one grow but by pushing his limits.

British portrait photographer, Robin Gillan, is educating me not only about his academic interest, photography, but also his specialty, portraits. Most of what I am reading in his book, The Photographic Portrait, is strangely familiar, like dreams I just awoke from. We can learn from other people's experiences but mostly we learn from what we have to do to survive. Necessity truly mothers invention.

I canceled a shoot with a model who is coming to town from New York. I just can't summon the energy to shoot her. I need to have models who excite me. A job is a job and starting out I couldn't expect to always call the shots (no pun intended) but as much as I can I want to choose who I work with. Necessity notwithstanding, art is still ultimately a luxury item. Some of us may have to live on pizzas and water while making our fortunes but art nonetheless is about carving out time to waste on activities that in the real world amount to nothing.

My dad used lecture us: Why waste good money going to a movie? It's just make-believe." He was, as I've written before, consummately practical. Art is not on the same level as breathing. Without oxygen our bodies die. Without art, we die.

After finishing the duendearts.com website, after processing the last three photoshoots, and after vacating the Broad Ripple office, I want to learn more about designing and printing marketing materials. Another book I'm reading is Lou Lesko's Advertising Photography. He writes how he spent lots of time and money persuading his graphic designer friends to design his marketing card until he discovered that the most effective was something he designed in Photoshop. The front showed one of his photos with a narrow border displaying his name and contact information. That was it. Simple and effective, my style.

Art is make-believe but tolerates no excesses. Hyperbole however is absolutely okay.