Down in central Florida last week on assignment I was able to build in a couple of personal days into my schedule to hang with family and also (
fingers crossed) shoot some personal work. The first idea was only just barely nibbled at around the edges so hopefully I can head back to actually dig in. Apologies for the rant that was the genesis of this idea.
One of the strange things about being from one of the top 3 weird states in America (I was going to say top 5 but political insanity raised the bar) is that I often get to witness my native Florida portrayed in ridiculous, cliched, and repetitive ways by my NYC/LA colleagues. Florida... oh right: Spring Break, South Beach, alligator wrestling, Disney World, and Jewish grandparents. I'm leaving out a ton of other hot spots, but you get the picture and in fact carry those images in the back of your mind ready to be deployed to fill in for the lack of story-telling/perspective usually executed by writers/photographers picking low hanging fruit.
Well you get the picture that I'm sort of allergic to this sort of approach and subject matter and so knowing that I would be with my sister in Gainesville I decided that I wanted to go back to the summers of my childhood and head into some "real Florida" type of shit. And Florida doesn't get much more real than tubing down one of our spring fed rivers on a hot summer day, specifically the Ichetucknee River (which I'm ashamed to say I've apparently mis-pronouned my entire life as "Ich
netuckee").
So my sister Amy and I headed out early last week to see what we might find. I expected a horde of people but because school (UF/Santa Fe) was on break and it was a weekday we had a very leisurely float down the river followed by some portraits on one of the take-out points (which was then abruptly cut short by the daily summer thunderstorm). The portraits were really fun and the people were truly excited to participate in a way that I haven't experienced when shooting randomly in public sans client in quite some time.
As a kid our summers were filled with either the beach/scalloping or tubing on the Ichetucknee and Suwannee rivers, as well as hundreds of trips to Wakulla Springs and their famous 4-story diving board (what a shock diving in on a scorching day into 68 degree crystal clear water). Florida is such a big state that there are lots of versions of "real" that natives will remember and agree upon, but these places and many more along the gulf are where my family lived and played. Thanks for taking a look.
My favorite new client of 2011 was Golf Digest -- Christian, Kerry, & Matt you all rawk -- and one of the most challenging things I've shot for them are cars for their "Long Drives" feature. And wouldn't you know, the only thing in common about two automotive shoots completed near year's end was the bad weather... the rides themselves were worlds apart: the 2012 Chevy Volt and the 2012 Jaguar XJL Supersport (roughly $90,000 difference in sticker price).
Having worked with cars a handful of times in the past I know that they aren't easy to shoot well... especially within the normal compromised environments/obstacles of editorial photography. For one, it's truly impossible to have enough lights for a car shoot... unless you sort of approach it like I did and focus on finding interesting locations and going from there. Then hopefully, even if each wheel is not lit just right, a story and a context trump pure, chromed-up aesthetics.
Though we had to hustle around in Sarasota, FL for the Jaguar (featured in the Feb. 2012 issue out now), shooting the Volt in Washington D.C. was a nutty late-night affair that found us all alone in an underpass dodging cops wondering what in the hell we were thinking. The weather of our actual shoot day went from bad to worse and so we decided to give it a rip late the night before and were rewarded with a really nice vibe.
Golf Digest subscribers can check out a sweet new aspect to these shoots in the iPad edition of the magazine as I've started to do some motion of the cars as well. Nothing ground breaking but it adds even more challenge to these gigs.
