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This was fun. I shot most of it in studio with a Canon 30D for an “Adventure Vacation” theme used in a tourism ad campaign. The golf club was too heavy for ...
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This was fun. I shot most of it in studio with a Canon 30D for an “Adventure Vacation” theme used in a tourism ad campaign. The golf club was too heavy for the little guy to hold above his head so he held a black magic marker instead.
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Aug, 2013Views
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
I shot this in the board room of the Sevierville, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce. I currently use a white vinyl infinity background, but back in 2010 when I shot this project, all I had was 2 white sheets from K-Mart duct taped over a window. Most of the props (fishing pole, luggage, golf club, and raft) were also shot in the same space. The end of the towel / cape was draped over an old tripod in order to give it the shape it needed to look like the fishing hook was holding it up.Time
This was shot on a cold morning in December.Lighting
I lit this with 2 caged led work lights I picked up from a local hardware. Thinking about those work lights makes me really appreciate what I’m shooting with now.Equipment
I shot this with a Canon 30D (my first EOS camera) using a Canon EFS 18-200mm lens.Inspiration
I shot this for the cover of the 2010 Sevierville, Tennessee Vacation Planner publication. I had worked on 3 previous covers (storyboards, art direction, post edits, casting, etc.) but this is the first cover I decided to actually shoot myself. I learned so much from this project and looking back now it’s obvious that this was really the moment that lead me into shooting professionally and gave me the confidence I needed to shoot my own content for many commercial projects to come. The concept came from a storyboard that I had pitched to our Marketing Committee that got shot down. The original idea was too complex and we needed something simpler that would translate well in quarter-page ads as well as on the cover of a brochure. So, this concept was plan B. Sevierville, Tennessee is known as the hometown of Dolly Parton and I may have been subconsciously influenced by the cover of her 1980 album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs. I never really considered the similarities until well after the photo was released but there are definitely some resemblances.Editing
There’s a lot of post processing in this photo. The tracks of mud, the courthouse reflection in the tube, the vintage luggage stickers, the butterfly, the positioning of the fishing pole / paddle, the reflections in the goggles and the hook were all accomplished in Photoshop. There’s an obvious color treatment that has been applied as well. The golf club was too heavy for the little guy to hold above his head so I gave him a black magic marker to hold instead and inserted the golf club over top of it in post.In my camera bag
My camera bag has come a long ways since I shot this. I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 7D and normally use a Canon Zoom EF 70-200mm for sports and outdoors, a Canon Zoom 24-105mm for portraits, a Canon EFS 18-135 for video and a Canon EF 15mm Fisheye for fun. I absolutely love my LowePro Flipside 400 AW camera bag and almost never shoot without my Manfrotto 290 tripod handy.Feedback
Working with kids can be a challenge sometimes and I knew it would be very important to the final product that I capture the right devious expression. Before we started spending time on the pose, I took a series of tight, funny-faced portrait shots. I knew that as we began to work on the pose, most of the boy’s attention was going to be on positioning his body correctly, not his facial expressions. I’m glad I took that precaution because I actually ended up using one of those portrait shots on the final piece by replacing the head from the full-length shot. Without that expression, the image may have told a different story.
