Comparing occupations (total imagination, achievement).

My friend Kim sent me this amazing video from Wallpaper Magazine today. We’re both architecture fans. Check out how the house is designed to slide in and out, exposing the glass, depending on the weather and the seasons. What an achievement.

Do you ever compare your own occupation with others’ occupations? Do you ever think “Which occupation requires the greatest brainpower, or imagination, or vision, or ability to reason?” Where would “photographer” rank in the overall list? Where would “architect” rank? What about “mathematician”? Or what about that Vetter guy, that charted the human genome?

When I started college, I thought I was going to be an architect. I can still remember sitting in that freshman class, with my mechanical pencil, and having the teacher obsess about how thick my pencil lines were. One day, I just walked out and never returned, knowing that it was not meant for me — to sit at a desk all day obsessing about tiny lines. I just knew that life was too short to do that, and that I wanted to take pictures.

(But what do I do now, at age 50 — I sit at a desk, many days a week, staring at a 30″ monitor, and obsessing about tiny retouching issues in a 200 meg file).

Anyway, check out the video above. What an amazing photo studio that house would make. An available light portrait job? Just slide the house out, drop a 40×40 silk out of the peak of the roof and get to work. A ten-head Profoto job? Just slide it back in and drop the blinds.

Separately, here is just a great link, 101 Great Questions.

It’s getting a little more raw lately.

Rick Santelli impromtu rant. Excellent.

Pat Buchanan and Dyson on race; that CNBC guy yesterday; and Dennis Miller on Leno. You can just feel things getting closer to the bone. For the record, I agree with Pat Buchanan. The really scary thing: In the last seven or eight days, you just get the feeling that NO ONE can get their head around this mess. It must be incredibly complex and complicated and intertwined.

What was Eric Holder thinking when he made that “cowards” comment? What a lame-brain attempt to be dramatic.

I’m sorry, I cannot get these to embed:

Santelli on CNBC. I love this.

Buchanan and Dyson on Hardball last night. Jesse Jackson should take note of this. Buchanan kicks Dyson’s ass.

Dennis Miller last night on Jay Leno. (this link does not work either, but it takes to you Tonight Show). (The Dennis Miller quote was something like, “We should help the Helpless, but the Clueless? I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Clueless”.) (great quote).

I’m sorry. Lame post. I can’t get WordPress to work correctly today.

Update: More with Santelli and Kudlow.

Production Photos: Colonial Williamsburg, (last week)

Here are a couple of quick images that producer Brett Sahler shot during the first part of a new ad campaign that we’re working on for Colonial Williamsburg, through Arnold. The AD on the project is History major Jamin Hoyle; (“see, sometimes being a History major does pay off!”). The writer-(turned-photographer) is Trevor Sloan. These ads are contrasting the historical aspects of CW along with the modern activities. We photographed the firing of the cannon several times, and no one was really ready for the feeling of having your ribcage rattle when the cannon went off. (Shot it with the 100 lens on the H2, so everyone was pretty close to it when it went off). Brett caught one image perfectly, when the fireball left the cannon. Even worse, we were shooting almost directly into the mouth of the cannon; at one point we got showered with the aluminum foil that serves as a “blank”.

Another shot involved two boys doing cannonballs off a makeshift diving board that we built in the indoor pool. (Way too cold to shoot the outdoor pool yet). In the pool, it was an Angry OSHA Inspector’s Wet Dream — 110v cables running for miles; everything temporary; a homemade diving board; Profoto packs on apple boxes, inches from the pool. We had the computer and the Hasselblad covered with plastic — most every time the kid hit the water, we’d have to reach for the lens tissue, even with David Weaver shielding the lens with a towel. It was good fun though; the kids were great.

Part two of the project continues in mid-March. (This is not a suck-up to CW, but honestly, if I had kids, I’d want them to spend some time over there, learning about the history of our country, and maybe for a while, they’d put down the ipod and the gameboy, and dress up in historical clothing, and learn how to work with their hands, get outside, get dirty, and breathe some fresh air. It would be a great family vacation. I love it every time I pull into town. Nothing like the smell of a wood-burning fireplace. It’s just a really special place).

Cannon firing. First comes flame, then the smoke.

Boys doing cannonballs into the pool.

Shortening the attention span? Is it good?

I’m on the road again, this week in Virginia, on another ad project. There’s something about leaving your home, and getting away from the comfort of your own home, that to me, is so invigorating and healthy. Checked into the room and made damn sure not to turn on the television news, and get slapped with those same droning pundits. Time to clear the head.

Woke up this morning thinking about that Alec Soth post on the Magnum blog, and how dead-on he is about it, (at least in my opinion). And I thought about this very blog, and the pressure to post something every few days. But why? For me, the downside is that my “time blocks” have now been reduced to “every few days” photographically, instead of zooming way out to the Really Big Picture, which is where I think you find answers about new bodies of work, and new ideas, and concepts that you could commit yourself to for MONTHS at a time. An even more deadly evil is that Twitter thing, where the “block of time” is reduced to HOURS; not even days, any more! How healthy can that be? “Quick, quick, find something to Twitter about; you haven’t posted anything in fourteen hours!”

I almost pulled the plug on this entire blog this morning, but I’m gonna give it some time, and try to bring this clarity forward, and keep it in the front of my mind. Honestly, I’m not even sure what I’m talking about here, but I just want to write it down, before I forget it, kinda like you do when you wake up at 4am from an intense dream, and you want to write it down before you forget it.

I just think it’s important to find those substantial ideas, and stick with them, and commit yourselves (myself) to them, and not get so distracted by the day-to-day pressures, or even the day-to-day One-Off photo ideas. (“There’s a cool image, I’ll just shoot this and post it to the blog! That way, people won’t forget about me!”) That’s the Fear talking. “Always keep new new new out there“. (No matter whether it’s worthwhile or not).

So there. It’s down on paper. I’ll reflect on it more later.

What will be next, after Twitter? Something with a shorter time span than that…? Reminds me of that old saying: “Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you should”. Will it be a head-mounted webcam that you wear like a hat, and it sends a constant video feed to your blog? I can imagine something like The Truman Show, where people tune in and say, “Yep, there he is, standing fourth in line, at the bank, making a deposit. Or buying groceries. Wow, HOW INTERESTING…”.

I want to subscribe to the WordPress blog format that only allows one post per year. Your window of opportunity opens up on your birthday, for only eight hours, and only at that time can you post what you’ve learned in the entire prior YEAR. Now that might be worthwhile and substantial.

Imagine that Joakim Eskildsen guy, who did that Roma Journeys work, with his girlfriend. Imagine spending SEVEN YEARS on one project. Now THAT is something to sink your teeth into. Think he was using Twitter every few hours…? Don’t answer that.

I just feel that, once you get into this “blog mentality”, where you’re trying to post something every few days, it simply does not encourage a deep and substantial thought process. It’s more like “get it out the door”, rather than really taking the time to bite off something meaningful, and then take the time to invest yourself in it.

How do you deliver jobs?

Just left Fedex; my semi-normal trip right before the 4pm Saturday cut-off time. Sent a DVD with final TIFFs on it.

How do you guys deliver jobs? Most of the time, there’s such a rush, I end up just FTP’ing the job either to the ad agency’s server, or I upload it to mine, and send them a clickable Link.

If there’s time, or if the files are huge, FTP is too slow, and I burn a DVD. I used to use these DVDs but they were overly complicated. Nice system, but when you’re rushing to make Fedex, they just have too many pieces to assemble.

Now, I just burn a DVD, and then make a print for the jewel box, that’s 4.75″ square, and slide it into the jewel box front cover.

It’s always sorta slapped together at the end, mixed in with printing out the airbill.

But every time I put that package together, (in a rush), I always think, “There ought to be a more professional way to do this”. (But still fast and easy). More professional, as in, not just some jewel box sandwiched in between two pieces of corrugated cardboard, and then taped up, and then just dropped into a Fedex Envelope. I imagine some kind of plastic binder thing, that opens up like a notebook, and on the right is a molded pocket to hold the DVD jewel box, and on the left is a slot molded to hold 8.5×11 guide prints. On the front, all nice and neat and professional, would be your logo. Maybe even nicer would be a molded slot to hold a peppermint mint or something fun. And this whole plastic molded thing would be designed to slide snugly right into a Fedex Small Box, all nice and neat and professional.

My friend George Fulton also sends these nice CMYK Kodak Approvals that he orders from California. But if I send guide prints, they’re normally RGB converted to CMYK and then converted back to RGB, since the Epson wants RGB information.

(Note: Topic continues in the Comments section).

Back in the warmth; finished shooting

We just completed a campaign for Lewis Advertising yesterday. Shot outside for several days. Freezing cold. Here are some small production photos. I wish I could attach a thermometer gauge to each one. Even worse, I was in the bucket of the cherry picker one morning, and got caught in the spray from the fireman’s hose, as he was wetting down the pavement.

Doing an early-morning shoot-down shot.

Casey standing in for the talent.

Drew looking at stuff on the monitor.

Fireman hosing down the parking lot.