So You Say You Want To Turn Pro, Part X

The Brouton Stroube "Paintball Office" Photo Shoot

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David Emerick

Further Explication from David A. Goldfarb: "The fact-checking team at TOP might want to vet this [note: I haven't —MJ], but I was wondering what this photograph was supposed to be advertising and found the following here, which purports to be a response from Bruton Stroube to a similar query—

"Whatever one thinks of the impressiveness of the results, this was not an unusually expensive production. The image was produced, not for profit, but to use as an invitation to a paintball party we were throwing for some friends and clients. The components of the set already existed from a previous shoot (that, by the way, was profitable) and we simply used our staff to produce the image for the invite. It was quickly done and really was no big deal. We just thought it would be fun to post a movie on it. It was our first effort at posting a production movie and, frankly, I'm surprised at the large reponse we're getting. I guess it's a big world out there. Thanks for your inquiry. Tom" [Tom would be Tom Stringer, the studio manager —MJ]

Featured Comment by David [note: not David Emerick]: "I ran a commercial photography biz for almost twenty years. Dropped out of college to assist and started shooting on my own when I was 23. Shooting multiple elements for assembly was, thank god, a smaller part of my work. However, I did enjoy the challenges that were presented. On film, it was majorly critical to get the lighting, angles, etc. spot on before handing off to the assembler/retoucher. The point of that video...it looked like it was a fun job.

"The commercial business is, for sure, 95% prep. Hard work. The most interesting part of the job is problem solving, and every day is totally different, even if you're shooting on white for outline. The dreariest part of the commercial biz is not shown in that video. The hours sitting at a desk creating proposals, haggling with copyright issues, peripheral crap...especially in today's photo environment. Even with a rep you have to be involved to properly protect your interests. It's the reason I shut down my business—that, and a growing dissatisfaction with spending a lot of hours creating work that usually has a shelf life of a couple of months to a year, stuff that is destined for the circular file.

"Pre-pro details such as: The prop stylist can't find a 50X bigger than life stethoscope for Andre The Giant posing as a Pediatrician for an ad in Physician’s Holiday magazine, So, we have to build one ourselves. I enjoyed this end of the business, pursuing bizarre solutions to quirky problems, doing oddball things to fill my day. Much better than waiting for the boss to lean over my cubicle parapet to say, 'We need to talk about your TPS reports….'

"The one thing that people don't realize when looking into the commercial world is how dirty you get and the incredibly long hours that you have to work. If you leave that set to go home, it can get stale in many ways...you come back the next day and in the most strange ways, things aren't perfect anymore. Most times you have to keep going and it means frequent 12 to 15 hour days and more. I've done many 23 hour day shoots. Crash on the couch, and back at it as soon as the lab is open, looking at snips and test film while scraping crud out of my eyes and gagging on a piece of dried up cheese from the production meeting two days ago.

"I used to marvel at what the retouchers could do with several pieces of film, it was a hands-on art/craft and those guys earned their keep. A lot of the old school guys went out of biz when computers swept in, kind of sad to watch that happen. The younger ones got with the new tech and kept going.

"Not much has changed when shooting those elements destined for assembly. You can fudge a bit with Photoshop but when you take great care and shoot the elements properly, it's fairly easy to make things happen in Photoshop. And that care pays off in creating those seamless illusions. A lot of times the easiest way to make the job successful was to actually shoot it live, in real time—fun to try to choreograph that type of thing.

"I liked the blonde’s hairstyle, very Victoria Beckham, only better!"

Comments

[Mark]

Reminds me of Salvador Dali's portrait "Dali Atomicus" by Philippe Halsman, see http://www.luhring-design.com/information/essays/dali-atomicus/philippe-halsman.html

[Charlie D.]

Enjoyed watching that Dave,

10% of your time taking pics and 90% "working"

While that seems like a fun shoot it really drives home the time spent NOT shooting.I wonder how that breaks down in terms of dollars and cents? Looks like a good long sit behind a computer as well......

Ah the glamorous life!

[Carl Leonardi]

Great shoot Dave, Charlie back in the old days this would have been done with a 4X5 and film (lots of film), plus many days in the dark room and on to the air brush guy. You didn't sleep nights until the piece got printed.
Those were the days. Thankfully there gone. Digital rules and you can sleep at night.

[Stephen Gillette]

Anybody else find this image a little bit disturbing? What about the ethical question [yeah, I know, this is advertising] of anchoring this image concept around graphic violence?

The Photoshop post production is pretty pedestrian, and is about the least interesting thing about this image.

[yunfat]

I thought the photoshop PP was interesting. Kudos to the studio and photographers for giving us a glimpse of their production, I learned a lot. As for "graphic violence", thats a joke right... do you not own a TV or something?

[WetcoastBob]

Uuh... so what's the message?

[Mark S]

I sure hope the graphic violence thing is a joke, and as far as the photoshop production, the technique doesn't really seem to be the point—and regarding the "pedestrian" comment, that's way off topic, and kinda rude. (Does everything have to be groundbreaking to be artistically viable? Are you doing some thing so creative that it justifies calling someone's technique, a perfectly acceptable and practical one at that, "pedestrian?")

It seems pretty obvious that though the original point of this video may have been to display the technique, or more simply, how a modern photographic shoot using digital technology might occur, that is not its point here. If you look at the title of this post, it relates to an ongoing string of posts on this blog that discuss the difficulty and the amount of work that goes into being a professional photographer. The video clearly shows that it took a lot of effort and coordination between many individuals just to get one shot completed. Now, the other treads on this topic generally discussed the other parts of being a professional photographer that many don't think about when dreaming of this career—salesmanship, etc. Though I don't feel that what was shown in this video is necessarily something only a professional photographer would do (some folks have a lot of time on their hands) unlike like the more tedious aspects of being a pro photographer, I think that the point of this is pretty clear, and it is the same point the other threads on this topic made: It takes a lot of work—not just fun and games—to be a pro.

[Fred]

>>>>So You Say You Want To Turn Pro...

Nope, never said it, never will. This looks like a bunch of really boring stuff to do. Nothing at all like the kind of photography I like to do, nor the reason I like to make photographs. It's like relating a wedding photographer to a documentary street or landscape photographer. They have little overlap in how it's done except for that fraction of a second when a shutter is pushed on a camera.

[Ken Tanaka]

A few of my thoughts in no particular order.

- David's remarks are worth re-reading for anyone attracted to commercial (ad) photography by this video micro-doc. Every business has its dirty side but commercial photography has more than its portion.

- It struck me that Jeff Wall and Jeffrey Crewdson do the same kinds of productions for their art photography. (Crewdson does enormous Hollywood-scale productions for a single shot.) But their work (a) doesn't have the shelf-life of bread (borrowing from one of David's comments), (b) is -their- work, and (c) probably offers much greater, and longer-term, financial compensation than this work.

- Anything can be made to look fun with a skillfully edited, cheerfully (or movingly) scored film, eh? The Army has known that for a very long time.

[Stephen Gillette]

Responding to Mark...my graphic violence comment was a question, which you and yunfat have each answered in similar fashion. Many people under the age of 40 accept the violence we experience around us (in music, ads, movies, news coverage, etc.) as status quo. Granting that, many people have nothing to compare that status quo with.

Violence was less a coin-of-the-realm, bankable commodity a few decades ago, at least in the USA. If it is a "joke" to question the need for promoting more violence in advertising today, that notion itself is worth exploring.

How would you have responded if the ad had been based upon a visual concept of flag-draped coffins? That could be attention-getting, too. Especially in a time when journalists are discouraged from recording such images. We have an abundance of both flag-draped coffins and images of violence today. Should there be any consideration of high road vs. low road in ads? Or is it right and proper to use any angle to get our attention? Is it ridiculous to even discuss such things?

Regarding paintballs, as shown in the video, they are incredibly potent, even at a distance. The golfball-sized welt shown on the model's back attests to that. Being shot in the head or through the eye socket at close range might be fashionably extreme, but would not be cool. It would likely be lethal. How cool is that, literally?

I was worried about my use of the word "pedestrian" after-the-fact. My mistake. I did not mean to imply that the post-processing work was not high quality. It is solid, without a doubt, and I know something about this. (Don't tell anybody, but digital retouching, color-correction and repurposing is my day job. My artist rep is trash if word gets out!)

Better to have said this: digital retouchers all over the planet do this every day, at-or-near this level of expertise. It is what is expected in the [competitive] marketplace. And Brouton Stroube did good work on this one. Not ground-breaking work.

The image is simply more interesting to me because of the issue of casual use of violence than it is as an example of process and post process in ad making.

[Ken Tanaka]

"How would you have responded if the ad had been based upon a visual concept of flag-draped coffins? That could be attention-getting, too. Especially in a time when journalists are discouraged from recording such images. We have an abundance of both flag-draped coffins and images of violence today. Should there be any consideration of high road vs. low road in ads? Or is it right and proper to use any angle to get our attention? Is it ridiculous to even discuss such things?"

Stephen's remarks suggest an excellent topic for a broader discussion outside of this particular topic.

[Kent Ibbott]

Arggh ... can't resist ... must butt in ...

I've been watching this one for a couple of days, thinking that my feelings about the image are a bit off-topic and should probably be kept to myself, but the heck with it.

Understanding that the point of the presentation is to illustrate the amount of work that goes into a shoot of this type ... (been in the advertising industry too long myself and, heck, even a simple static product shoot can be a huge undertaking) ... but the image itself really made an impression. Although I wouldn't go as far as to say "graphic violence," the image does fall in with what seems to be a trend towards more action, more intensity, more effects, wilder, bigger ... more more more ... which at some point starts to get a little old. I call it the "Jurassic Park Effect". It's cool once, but the sequel just doesn't quite make it. I'd hate to think that young aspiring creators are being led to believe that the only way to succeed is to go to ever increasing extremes.

Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I can really appreciate a well thought out, well composed, well lit image even if it doesn't include over-the-top action and digital manipulation.

Cheers,

The Old Fuddy-Duddy