I attended an ASMP meeting featuring Michael Grecco and speaking on lighting and the dramatic portrait in Denver last night.  He was very informative and personable so I enjoyed listening to his insights.  One that stuck with me was his answer to what was essentially, “How did you shoot Steve Martin after 7000 photographers had already shot him, how did you capture the ‘real’ Steve Martin”?   Michael’s response… “I don’t care about the ‘real’ Steve Martin.  The real Steve Martin might like sleeping all day long and not working. ”

Michael’s answer for me contained the insight that you work in the moment, crafting an image with a creative subject willing to work with you toward an inspired vision of the photograph that your creating therefore it doesn’t really matter who the subject is or what they want (as long you remember who’s paying the fees) when you approach it like that.

Collision Conference

I want to have a fully functioning studio up in running within a year so I’ll need a good studio sample portfolio to show prospective clients.  To accomplish this, I’m doing TFP (trading time for prints) work and paid sessions with professional models that I’ve found through Model Mayhem and One Model Place.   Using professional models allows me to learn from their experience with other photographers and to utilize their skills in front of the camera to improve my skills behind the camera.  Some photographers are very uncomfortable working with people, and especially professional models in front of the camera.  I enjoy it and hope to improve as time goes by.

Here is an excerpt of the studio portion of a shoot that I did last week with Tabitha, a beautiful young model with recent experience  modeling in New York.

I used this image from the shoot as one of my studio samples.

Lessons learned from this shoot:

1. A single WL 1600 worked fine to drive the seamless paper background completely white.  Except for the horizontal portion around her feet while sitting on the floor, but this was easily handled in post processing.

2. Making a video of the shoot is time consuming and I need to put the camera into the hands of a real person.  Having it on a tripod gives me too much video to look through to find decent excerpts.

3. I need to do some more thrift store shopping for props and clothes.  Outfits that are too large for one model can be pinned for a smaller model.  A small range of sizes is really all that’s necessary.

I sold my film camera a couple of years ago on E-Bay.  An old Canon 35mm Ftb that I had bought 30 years ago when stationed on Guam while serving in the Navy.

I had grown up in the 60’s and 70’s, had my own darkroom and I processed my own black & white film, slides and enlargements.  I even found one of my old development tanks in the attic last month though I don’t remember what I did with my enlarger.  I had always thought that photography would be a great profession, but for some reason I never pursued it seriously.

Several months ago, I decided to.

The first thing that I did was to buy a new camera.  I decided on a Nikon D300 and have been very pleased with the camera so far.  It is a solid camera with a great reputation.  I think it will serve me well over the next several years.  Digital innovation being what it is, I’ll probably need to upgrade it again in a few years.

The second thing that I did was create a website.  I’ve created dozens of websites so this was fairly easy.  I searched through hundreds of flash templates, found the one that I liked and customized it for my own tastes.  What you see at http://www.jackdeanphotography.com is the result.

Perhaps you are like me, though I doubt it.  My wife affectionately calls me ‘unique’.

I’ve always enjoyed photography and even thought I was pretty good at it when I was younger.  Now,  nearing 55 years old, I find that I would like find a way to earn money at photography.  I want to re-create myself.  Perhaps you can identify with that.

I will try to share my experience in doing just that on these pages.