Back to Stills Model Shooting

I am preparing for a photo shoot next week. I have not shot still images in months so I am brushing up on exposure, shoot styles and techniques, and lenses. I have a small but nice collection of lenses that frankly I have not learned to use to their full potential. For model shoots I like to use the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, EF and 24-105 f/4L and the cheap but good EF 50mm f/1.8 on my Canon. Preparing for the shoot I am also reviewing my old model shoots and processing the Raw Files in new ways. I am also reviewing my favorite photographers like Greg Gorman's 2009 In Their Youth. I plan to pay closer attention to mood and lighting, and shoot video, too. I am trying to hold off buying the new Canon 7D with manual exposure and selectable frame rates of 24, 25 and 30 fps. Canon is releasing a special FCP plug-in to facilitate the addition of time code and saving the CF files into a burnable disk image. Truly we live in a fast-changing digital world!

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Casting to Concept and Back

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Filmmakers and photographers cast for projects they want to produce. I do the reverse. I find the models then develop the concept for the projects in which I can use them. It's not a bad way to work, not until I've acquired enough skills that I can devote time to starting with a concept then finding the talent to work with and realize it.

I've been exchanging email with Coty for over a year. Finally he says he is coming down for a shoot on March 20. He wants fashion modeling but is open to doing videos. This will be the first time I'll be shooting video with a model so I am very excited. Coty emailed me his Facebook url and we became friends this morning. Looking at his photos is making me redesign what I had in mind for the shoot. He loves bodybuilding so we should probably take advantage of what he's worked hard to acquire. But maybe not...

I've shot two kinds of models. Most of the men are into bodybuilding. In fact I've found a couple of my models at the gym. Fashion modeling on the other hand tends to go for tall, slim men. I need to remind myself that there are other kinds of modeling e.g. product and body parts modeling, like for gyms. The first model I shot, Kaleb, had a fine physique but he was more into actual modeling than bodybuilding. I feel compelled to take advantage of a male model's physique and play on sensuality, even eroticism but isn't that shorting the model?

As I move into videomaking I'll be thinking of acting and actors. Videos can utilize well-built models in a different way. I need to think about commercials and corporate videos although frankly working for businesses and corporations just does not appeal to me. Commercials and music videos are more my cup of tea. Short videos can showcase the cutting-edge technology that appeals to me. And the Internet with viral marketing is ripe for video delivery.

If Jobs is right, the iPad can revolutionize the creation and distribution of journalistic and entertainment media. Publications can create apps that combine text, graphics (photos and images) and animation (videos) seamlessly. My three interests shall have come together!

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The Right Time for the Right Products

Ideas took shape as I watched Charlie Rose interview three tech journalists about Apple's iPad. My goal at this time is still to gain the skills and craft in writing, photography and videos. Since January I've been posting to YouTube; since February to Facebook. Posting videos and text on the Internet is my market research for what people like, for what the market wants or is ready for. I can see the two lines converging and that time feels thrillingly closer!

I've always had the idea I would be distributing digital images and videos on the Internet. I'd love to do a theatrical feature but to be realistic I don't have the time to develop the skills, networking and financing to do that, unless, of course, I do well preserving physical and mental health. Virginia Woolf is quoted to say that in her early 40s she had to be a miser with time. She had to focus on what mattered to her. Of course, she may have had ideas of suicide even then and suicide radicalizes the picture.

Another feature: I've worked with Apple products and the Macintosh so I'll be using Apple or Apple-compatible software. This is not as much an issue today when cross-platform is more the rule. Even Microsoft has been making critical software available for the Mac and Avid in videography likewise has paid more attention to the Mac with the Mac's impressive showing through this recession. Premium pricing has not inhibited Apple's growth. Jobs was right in setting the lead instead of following the herd.

The Rose interview commented on Jobs's strategy and success. He has creative and innovative genius but these are lens through which he looks for what is missing in the commodities market and designs a beautiful product that fills that niche and that people get passionate about. His high tech design is high art.

I still don't know what products I shall eventually be making that will get monetized. Right now, I am still interested in doing model photography but I don't think I'll be doing fashion spreads. Documentary and drama are more interesting to me. I am definitely into videos not film. Right now I am producing 4 categories of videos: travel, modeling, commercials, and people interest. The last is the most intriguing but needs work to develop it so I can give an elevator speech in one sentence. Narrowing the focus is what skills acquisition and market research is about.

Meanwhile here's the elephant in the room. I love images but long ago I already had a first love: words, what I am calling right now "text." Once I feel I've acquired enough skills and craft I can push the envelope and call what I do writing. It's the elephant because it's what gets me up in the morning to start working; it's how I spend my mornings. It's an elephant because compared to video and photography work, writing feels the least likely to become monetized. What I can do is combine my love for words with my love for images, drama and people interest: write my own screenplays, direct and edit the video. Right now that feels like something in a remote future i.e. one to two years from now!

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Life and Drama in Photographs and Video

By dramatic images I mean images that convey mood or emotion not only by the model's facial expression but by his or her whole body. I like to capture close-up, full-length or three-quarter images of a single model and employing multiple models adds more possibilities for portraying emotion and relationship. This would involve acting that models already do without thinking they are acting. We call it "striking a pose." I just want to make acting out emotions and relationships more conscious.

Admittedly this focus is bound up with my interest in moving images—videos and movies—where emotion and relationship are captured through more than one frame. Movement conveys change.

I don't off hand have an image from my own shoots. This is a weak example, a man bent down as if in despair while his companion sits quietly by his side.

In a future shoot with model Coty, I want to shoot video as well. I can have the video camera shoot in the background while we shoot still images (unless I can find an assistant to man the camcorder) but I also want to use part of the shoot time to shoot these extended frames. Maybe I am too ambitious for the time we'll have but I do want to shoot a short vignette of Coty telling his story. No acting will be required because I'll just ask him some questions that he can answer (or not answer if you choose) from real life. As much as I love still images, I think moving images up the ante. This is the director in me.

Two subjects interest me that I want to document in photographs and video: life in small-town America and the lives of ordinary Americans, not the people we see in the news at night nor the intense drama of prime time TV.

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Wes Bentley in The Last Word

The Last Word (2008) was directed by Geoffrey Haley who also wrote the story. I'd not heard of him so it was because of Wes Bentley who played the main character, Evan Merc, that I chose to watch the movie. I liked it. I liked the character of Evan, a reclusive writer who made his living writing suicide notes. The character is not only reclusive but restrained, his range of emotions, emotional responses and daily activities so circumscribed they'd fit on the head of a pin.He is also dressed with the same restraint in almost monochromatic earth hues. The shirts hint at a man who dressed as he did as a teenager, someone who did not care about clothes or his appearance.  

All through the movie, the Evan character is flat and two-dimensional, a cartoon character without emotion and the barest of life. When the sister of one of his clients, Matt, pursues him, he resists but is drawn into a relationship when Charlotte (played by Winona Ryder, another movie personality I am not familiar with) casually offers sex on their third "date." His emotional involvement with Charlotte and with Abel (played by Ray Romano of the long-running TV series, "Everybody Loves Raymond") leads to Evan's castled restraint falling apart. Desolate when Charlotte finds out he had written her brother's suicide note, Evan who does not drink (or eat out, a "saint" according to Charlotte) goes on a drinking spree at a bar. When he leaves, a man follows and holds him up. Evan is surprised at the intense rage incited by the hold-upper. He punches the man to unconsciousness. His emotions are awakened. He stops Abel from killing himself and together they realize Abel's dream of making a cliff living. They allow people irate with some purchase or possession to hurl the darn thing over the cliff and watch it detonate as Abel pushes a button and the client watches on a monitor.

The story concept is original. It gives the movie an understated weirdness. It's like the elephant in the room because the movie is otherwise presented almost blandly. I'm afraid I won't remember this movie after a week and wonder how it could have been a more memorable film. On the other hand I get tired of action-driven films with explosions and acrobatic fistfights every second frame. The Last Word is memorable for how Haley constructed Evan's character. There is something lovable about this ecru-and-earth-dressed man who was drifting through life after an abusive childhood. He makes a "horrible boyfriend" but hooks me emotionally because we're all at one time or another felt we needed distance from the madding crowd to have some control over what Evan calls "issues."

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Attaining the Crest of the Curve

Sorrento 2007

Yesterday was my best day of the week and it shouldn't be. I was groggy from having stayed up till half past three and was up again at eight. I've often wondered if I do my best work, whether editing videos or writing, when sleepy or when pushing myself into the morning's wee hours.

I stayed up Thursday into Friday morning to finish my video, The Amalfi Coast from the Emerald Grotto to Amalfi. It was exactly a week since I finished my last video, A Visit to L'Isole di Capri.  Both come from videography I did on my 2008 walking tour of Naples and the Amalfi Coast, the best videographed of all my foreign travels. These two latest videos are the longest I've done since I started posting to Facebook on December 7 and to YouTube on January 4. My first YouTube video, Training To Fight 2, featuring Arron, was 2 minutes, 5 seconds long.

I'm starting to feel competent using iMovie. I started relearning Final Cut Pro ten days ago. FCP has features I want to use e.g. alpha channels, more control over audio, and animation but I can do a lot with iMovie I discovered its undocumented features. Most operations are as set but I've found out that most these defaults are easily modified. I can, for instance, start a project using a theme. When I cancel the theme I can modify its defaults i.e. beginning and closing titles, default transitions without losing what I've already edited into the video. The theme's special transitions then become available to me. Titles can be modified using Apple's built-in Fonts panel, not the Fonts panel that came with iMovie. I can choose from my computer's entire font collection, add shadow, outline and color, far beyond what Apple made available in iMovie's own font panel. David Pogue's O'Reilly manual has been invaluable. It is truly "the book that should have come in the box."

I went into photography and videography two years ago not only to explore my latent artistic bent, nor only to find another way to earn a living but, most important, to pursue necessary personal growth changes. I am back to 1969 when I paused medical school after getting overwhelmed by what I was doing. I was overwhelmed by what I was. I've made many adjustments but at core are still essential adjustments. I need to learn my own work ethic.

Learning to use iMovie has proved once again an old dictum. To succeed with a new skill one must go through and complete the learning curve. If one stopped short of achieving the crest of the curve, he would just have wasted his time. The goal each time is mastery. One needs focus and perseverance. I am learning the importance of attaining the crest of the curve.

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Dan Andrews Location-Independent Lifestyle

Kalanchoe in the Window

Early this morning, while waiting for my video to export, I checked my email. Someone had started following me on Tweeter and this person's location was the Philippines. I followed the link to Dan Andrews's site, Tropical MBA, and watched several of his "Lifestyle Business Podcasts."

Since signing up with Tweeter everyday I get notice that someone was following me. Most of these are businesses trying to create themselves on the Internet. They have something to say but after a couple of weeks I lost interest. Business has never interested me. This is why I remain poor. I don't have the patience to study business situations nor the boldness to pursue strictly business algorithms. My older sister gets nonplussed when confronted with the simplest mechanical problem. My Waterloo is business.

Despite my allergic reaction to business ideas, Dan's ideas persevered. It may be it's just the lateness of the hour. It was three this morning. I had wasted yesterday afternoon but after I finished watching The Time Traveler's Wife last night I took advantage of the return of creative energy and finished editing my Amalfi Coast video. But I don't think so. We become persuaded by ideas we'd already been primed to accept. Truth is simply what aligns with what we already believe.

Andrews and his buddy, Ian, are traveling in SE Asia. They are in Manila as of last notice. They both love to travel but not as much as they love travel when mixing business with pleasure. Location Independent Lifestyle is doing business where you enjoy spending time. It is doing business and earning money without being tied down to a location. It is creating business opportunities where you like to be.

Dan Andrews's idea to combine business with lifestyle is precisely what I've formulated over the last 20 to 30 years. I remember when the idea first occurred to me. I had just come back from Barre where a nine-day meditation retreat shocked me out of complacency. By sitting with physical and mental pain instead of running away, the quality of mind shatters through its normal states of operation. One experiences breakthrough moments. I experienced happiness for the first time in my life.

Coming back home I wondered how I could have time to continue meditating and deepening the practice. I knew happiness was real because I had experienced it beyond reasonableness and doubt. I experienced happiness under the most counter-intuitive circumstances. I didn't have a job, was not earning money, and the relationship on which I had laid great store had just broken up. Happiness did not depend on material accomplishments, on money or any of the usual methods we think we'd achieve it.

My money supply was very limited. I was not ready to stop earning money. I knew I would have to go back to work, save money so I could stop working permanently. The only opportunity that came up meant returning to doing medicine. I took it but set limits. I began working just one day every other week. Through the next 13 years I built up my work week to three days a week. My boss persuaded me to take advantage of the company's IRA plan. The diversion granted me two very important gains. I salvaged my professional self-confidence and I saved enough money to live on for a while.

When I took a leave of absence from clinical work two years ago, I had decided I wanted to work creating digital media. I became excited with video editing in 2006 when I took a week-long seminar on Final Cut Pro. This became the nidus for my vague plans. Four years after that seminar I have at last started creating videos good enough to post on the Internet. I've learned to take photographs of acceptably good quality. I am far from the quality I need to have to venture into business based on the skills I've learned but I have more of an idea of where I am if I still don't know exactly where I am going.

Dan Andrews is making his dream of freedom in my hometown, in my own backyard. He has the advantage of looking American and of having had an American childhood. Both attributes still count for something in developing countries. They count for a great deal in the Philippines where people are still struggling to find their own self-worth after centuries under Western powers. Moreover I have an attribute that goes counter to progress so that in effect I am working with three disadvantages.

Nevertheless listening to Dan last night I was reminded again of some of the ingredients for the success I've begun to envision for myself. His website blog and podcasts are the latest in a series of encounters just in the past week pointing me to a resolution of impediments. Creativity is easy enough in certain states of mind. How one thinks is the key.

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