Today I started working on my biggest creative project yet.
Today saw the public start of the biggest creative project I’ve ever undertaken. It turns out big projects, actually have a lot of planning behind them. I was inspired for the concept of this project back in April while getting lost down the rabbit holes known as Pinterest. I saw a magazine cover and thought that I’ll file that one away.
Last Sunday I got word that we were a go for this project, and the concept was approved on Monday. The downside is that I need to get the artwork to the printers in two weeks time. So today was the only time that really suited the photography side of things.
To put the project in perspective, it’s a church based topic that runs for term 3 called “Better Together”, and what better way to inspire and rally a community around a theme, than to put the faces of the community on the promotional material. The vision was to do a Humans of New York crossed with a fashion photoshot, photoshot. Lights, camera, action, the works.
I realised early on that I didn’t want to be the one pressing the shutter all day. Instead, I wanted a team of people, a camera operator, an assistant, an admin assistant handling release forms, a recruiter to gather and inspire people. I knew it was impossible to fore fill all of those roles at once, I would just fail at all and the project would fall down around my ears. Instead I wanted to have the role of “Art Director” and manage the project from a high level and make sure that it’s heading towards the creative vision. I set out to recruit people, and to get people to recruit others. Now to be honest this didn’t exactly go to plan, how I’d like it to have gone. First thing this morning hit and I felt so lonely, like it was just me and a camera. I had failed to successfully recruit the other talent required to pull off this job, although we are jumping ahead.
If multiple people were going to be involved in this project, I better be sure of the artistic direction and know exactly what photos we want, complete with poses, expressions, props, etc. So I wrote a document to plan out the direction of where I was taking the project, and what we needed to make it work. This included camera angles, how much of the frame should be filled by the subject, the facial expression of the subject, etc. In the end I had 3 photos of each subject that I wanted to take.
After all this planning, and preparing, finally came the day to take a photo. After spending an hour setting up the basic “2 light” setup, I was ready to take the first picture. But hang on, it’s not working very well. Panic started to set in, I’m running out of time and the plan in my head, and the little experimentation that I did is starting to fall down. I’m a failure before I even started. Turns out, it was just a couple of technical issues that compounded together to throw me off what was happening.
In the end, the day felt like a real success, over 1100 frames taken. I’m yet to filter that down, into something more manageable. The goal is to create a collage of faces.
Thanks to the fokes who helped out today, Sally, Buzz, Kev, Katie & Sarah. Your assistance allowed me to focus on the other tasks at hand, instead of trying to juggle everything. Cheers guys and girls!
To be continued….