Monday Monday

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be
Oh Monday Monday, how could you leave and not take me?

If there's one day I rarely trust, it's Mondays. For me, Mondays are the one day of the week I'm most likely NOT to schedule a shoot. If someone else has booked me for a Monday, I know the odds are exponentially increased that something will screw up and Monday won't happen, leastwise, the shoot won't happen.

Today was one of those Mondays: One of those Monday Mondays that gave me no warning of what was to be. (Or not to be.)

I was booked to be on a set at a very upscale house in a private community near Calabasas, California, when, just before hopping in my ride for the 1-hour-plus commute, I received a text informing me Monday was canceled due to a "food poisoning" incident involving the project's "leading lady" as its victim.

Uh-huh.

The reason, I suppose, that Mondays are so unpredictable are weekends. Things happen on weekends: Things that adversely effect Mondays. Often, in negative ways, i.e., from a "dependability" perspective.

For one, people party on weekends. Take this past weekend. Like so many others, I partied. Maybe not the way many people partied--it was my 3-year-old grand-daughter's 3rd birthday party--but I partied nonetheless. (The giant, inflatable, rented, water slide was a big hit and the cake and ice cream was delizioso.)

Models, as life-forms, tend to party on weekends even more than most mere mortals. That's not to say models don't party other nights of the week, they do, but weekends are traditionally party time and, for many models I'm acquainted with, weekends are party-hearty time. Often, with Monday morning pay-backs: Pay-backs that effect others... like myself and the rest of the crew that was supposed to be earning some money in Calabasas today. Did I mention I turned down another gig for today? No? Well, I did.

Oh well! Wha'd'ya gonna do? Nature of the beast I guess. Besides, there's always Tuesdays to look forward to and this Tuesday, tomorrow that is, is a good example-- I'll be at a location house high in the hills above Los Angeles photographing "barely legal" models, for Larry Flynt Publications/Hustler, dressed (and undressed) as private, boarding school, girls. Hey! It's a living! Someone's gotta do it.

My apologies for this post having little to do with the art and craft of photography. More a photography business-related update, I suppose.

The two models at the top are Devin and Sofia from some time ago. Obviously, they're about to party, albeit in a Sapphic sorta way. I shot the pic on a weekend in Sin City, not a Monday. Thought it might be fun to make the photo B&W with some grain... I mean "noise" added. So that's what I did.

This update's first paragraph courtesy of The Mamas & Papas from way back in the day.

The OctoMom

No, not her! I'm not writing about that chick who had octuplets. And that ain't a picture of her either.

I'm also not writing a follow-up article about my 83 year-old mother. The only thing "octo" about my Mom is that she's an octogenarian and, perhaps, her 51-year marriage to my Father.

How does my Dad relate?

Well, my Dad was the youngest of eight. So, I guess besides Mom being 83 years old, someone could also construe a very minor octo-connection there. How many degrees of separation would that be? i.e., from my Mom who was married to my Dad who was the youngest of eight to all things octo?

Hell. I dunno. Like 179? Degrees of separation, that is.

Who cares?

I don't. And neither do you, I'll bet.

What I yam writing about is the Photoflex 7' Octodome: A light modifier I refer to as the OctoMom. Why? Because, at seven feet from its furthest point to its furthest point, it's the freakin' mother of all octodomes!

Before anyone turns into a green-eyed photo-monster, let me first mention that I don't personally own a 7' OctoMom, I mean 7' octodome. I'd like to own one but I don't. I do own one of the OctoMom's offspring: The Photoflex 5' Medium Octodome. As modifiers go, I really REALLY like the 5' octo. But the OctoMom? Fuhgedaboudit! I love that big fat sexy mama!

While I don't own an OctoMom, I do get to use the mother of all octodomes on a regular basis. Ya see, one of my long-time and frequent clients, a company I shoot for almost weekly, has an OctoMom in their studio. Yup, whenever I shoot at this client's studio I get to use their OctoMom. I also get to use it with their Profoto Acute 2 lighting gear. (It sure beats schlepping all my gear in from my truck sporty SUV every time I shoot there.)

Octodomes are great for pretty girl shooting. Their unique, 8-sided, shape matches, in a vague, subtle, roundabout sorta way, the shape of the subject. You know, wider in the middle than at the top and bottom. Leastwise, when you orient it on the speedring to give it that shape, relevant to the model.

Bigger octodomes means bigger light sources and bigger light sources means softer, more diffuse and less specular, light. Soft light often plays nicely on soft, female skin. D'uh, right? That's a no-brainer. So, the bigger the octodome, the bigger the light source's aperture and, consequently, the softer the light! Voila! Octodomes make for really nice modifiers for shooting pretty girls! Really big octodomes make even nicer modifiers for shooting pretty girls. Hence, I really love the OctoMom cuz, well, cuz I shoot a lot of pretty girls.

The pretty girl at the top--the illustrated chic with the big, uhh... hoop earings--is Mason. I shot Mason just today using an OctoMom and a couple of other heads for kickers; unmodified kickers. Mason captured with a Canon 5D w/Tamron 28-75, ISO 100, f/8 @ 125. And yeah, it says "Who's Next" on her fingers, just above her knuckles, cuz Mason's one feisty feline! She also did her own makeup with those hands/fingers.

Pretty Girls Come in All Shapes, Sizes, and Ages

The pretty girl in the pic is my 83-year-old Mom. I snapped this yesterday, Mothers Day, after my brother and I scooped her up and took her for a tasty brunch at a nice Italian restaurant near her home. She lives in a seniors mobile home park near San Diego, California. I made the picture at the front steps to her mobile home.

Mothers Day is a holiday that lets us say thanks for something very special. Something very important. Something we could would not have lived without: Our Moms. After all, none of us would be here without having a Mother. (Okay, fathers get some credit for this as well. That's why they get a holiday too.)

Most of us owe our mothers a great debt: They bore us, raised us, cared for us, nurtured us, and loved us like no other. For most men, they are the first woman in our lives who mattered, the first female face we fell in love with. They are the one woman, for some the only woman, who stood (and stands) by us through... well, through pretty much everything.

For many guys, our Mothers are the women who taught us the most about other women, who taught us how to love and admire and hold women dear. If you don't truly love and worship women--in all shapes, sizes, and ages--you'll have a difficult time, IMO, becoming a really good pretty girl shooter. It's no accident the first religions in humankind's history worshiped a female deity. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, a nod to Goddess worship will go a long way towards pretty girl shooting Nirvana.

It's amazing how we can still learn much about male/female relationships from our Moms, even when we, ourselves, have already lived fairly long lives and may have experienced various, perhaps numerous, significant relationships with other women.

Yesterday, after brunch, I sat with my Mom and she was reflecting a bit on the fifty-one years she shared with my Dad. (My father passed about 6 years ago.) Although she told me she's quite content these days, she misses my father a great deal. She misses the companionship. She misses the little things that, in her reflections, seemed to matter most.

"What kinds of things?" I asked.

She thought for a moment, then told me, "Whenever I was a little chilly, your father would take his jacket off and wrap it around my shoulders. When he did, I could feel the warmth of his body on mine even though we weren't touching. It wasn't his jacket that kept me warm." She said. "It was him." She then added, "I miss things like that a great deal."

The pretty girl at the top is Aileen, my Mom. She asked me to make her look a bit taller in the picture. (She's under five feet in heels.) Mom captured with my Canon 5D w/ Canon 17-40 f/4L, ISO 100 @ f/11, 200th of a second. I used a single light source for front fill.

So I Was Ready to Shoot This Gig...

...when I found out it's been put on hold. Postponed. Pushed back. Whatever.

I was fairly excited as this gig was something entirely different than I usually shoot. Don't get me wrong. I love shooting pretty girls. But sometimes shooting stuff that's different is refreshing. A bit more challenging. There's more to my photographic interests than pretty girls and T&A. (As heretical as that sounds.)

Anyway, this gig is in the world of non-pretty-girl photography. More mainstream-ish photography, if you will. Commercial photography. Stuff I can show my Mom or my kids photography.

Did I mention it was gonna pay fairly decently?

Well, it was. Maybe not hot-shot, "A" list, uber-photographer decently but fairly decently nonetheless.

My client for this gig isn't the end-user. My client is a graphic design firm. Being the photographer, I'm a line item on that firm's proposed budget to the end-user. Works for me. I don't care who I invoice. I don't care who pays me. I don't care who, technically, I'm working for. I only care the check clears.

But then, it seems, the main guy, i.e., the main end-user guy, realized the proposed budget for the project exceeded his discretionary authority. So now he has to take it to "the board" for approval. My client, the graphic design firm, says they're not going to green-light the photography until they have a purchase order. (Which they expect to get at some future point; hopefully, in the near future.) I don't blame them. Purchase orders often are what get you paid.

Yesterday, which was gonna be Day One for this project, albeit it was only gonna be shooting "event" candids for a few hours, was going to kick off this gig. Days 2 and 3, which were scheduled for next week, were to be the big days with architectural and landscape photography, more formal people stuff, etc. Next week also included me bringing along much more equipment as well as an assistant.

So, yesterday morning, I decided to add a piece of gear to my arsenal. To that end, I bought myself Canon's 17-40mm F/4Lto be better equipped to shoot this project. Sweet glass, right? Yep. On my full-frame 5D it's gonna deliver some potent images.

Prior to buying this new glass, the widest lens I had zoomed out to 28mm. Not very wide. And not wide enough for some of the stuff I needed to shoot for this gig. Yeah. I could'a rented a lens. But what the heck, I thought. It's not like I won't have other uses for a good wide angle lens.

But no sooner do I buy the lens--and I bought it at a local camera store so it could be immediately in my bag or on my camera--do I get a phone call telling me the project is pushed back-- Like within an hour of purchasing the lens! My guy at the design firm, a guy who knew I was going to purchase the glass for this project, said he hoped he got a hold of me before I bought the lens.

He didn't.

Oh well.

Timing is everything.

I suppose I could have asked for a "kill fee." It was only hours from showing up to shoot that my day got canceled. But kill fees can be two-edged swords. Discretion and careful consideration is, quite often, a good idea when thinking about pursuing kill fees.

Now I'm the proud owner of a Canon 17-40mm F/4Lwide angle lens. I'm excited to play with it. Since the project I bought it for is postponed, I guess I'll first be using my new toy shooting some pretty girls. That's cool! It'll give me some different perspectives and more optical options in doing so.

Then again, who knows? Maybe I'll take a little road trip and go out and shoot some landscapes or nature or something? I've done that before, although not recently, and had great fun doing so! I should add I had great company with me when last I did so and that added much to my pleasure shooting, uhhh... people-less landscapes.

The monochromatic eye candy at the top is Tori from a month or so ago. The perspective could have been more interesting if I had a wider lens when I shot it. With my nifty new 17-40, that won't be an inhibiting factor next time I shoot.

Perception is Everything

A few days ago, on the SuperShoots forum, a model posted a recent image she posed for and called it "fashion nude." (The thread has since been removed.)

I looked at the image (it didn't do much for me) and tried to imagine how it qualified as a fashion nude? I replied to the model's post: "Color me stupid but how is that a fashion nude?" I asked.

Okay. Maybe that wasn't the most tactful way to approach the subject. I'm a little blunt at times. What am I gonna do? I can't help it. I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way. (© Jessica Rabbit.)

Well, that sparked a lively forum debate on what might constitute a fashion nude and what defined "fashion." Some of the thread's participants kept focused on fashion as clothing and accessories. Rightfully, if also less than tactfully, the OP (original poster) advised everyone that, if they thought fashion was just about clothes, they really didn't know what they were talking about. "End of story," she added. (I guess the same folks who draw me draw others in a similar manner.)

To be sure, fashion isn't just about clothes although clothes are, commonly, examples of fashion.

The OP then posted other examples of "fashion nude" and referred people to certain fashion rags, like Zink and others, where nudity is sometimes employed in fashion photography.

As mentioned, this all got pretty lively and started taking on flame war dimensions. I'll admit, I didn't help matters out much. I continued participating in the thread. And I did so in a somewhat smart-ass way, posting "glamour nude" images along with my responses and proclaiming them "fashion nude" as well.

Then the photographer (of the image the OP had posted to kick-off the thread) jumped into the fray, more than a little defensively, and things really took a turn towards ugly.

While I make much of my living capturing beauty, I can do ugly, keep up with ugly, hang out within ugly's city limits and go, toe-to-toe, with the best (or should I say the worst?) of them... "them" being the ugliest of them, I mean. (It's a gift, what am I 'spose to do?)

So yeah, I took the bait.

In the end, the OP deleted her original post which deleted the entire thread.

But the whole ugly experience got me to thinking about labels and perception and context and here's what I think:

It doesn't matter if a picture resides within the usual and customary definition of fashion or anything else. It's like art and beauty and so many other things. It's in the eyes (perceptions) of the beholders. One person's fashion nude image is another person's average glam nude pic and still another person's porn. It's all got to do with context. And the context of almost any image can be manipulated, impacting viewers' perceptions, to represent almost anything. Almost any pretty girl pic I snap, for instance, with the addition, as an example, of a few words of text, a brand logo, or that it might be published in a certain magazine, will alter viewers' perceptions and, as a result, allow that image to represent something other than its original intent.

So sayeth the grand, high, exalted, mystic ruler of the Pretty Girl Shooter blog who will, in his next update, try to refrain from waxing photo-philosophically... or some facsimile of "waxing" and/or philosophy.

The gratuitous eye-candy is Jenna from a shoot last week. They're not fashion pics. They're not art. They're nothing special. They're just your basic, simple, assembly-line pretty girl pics.

Jenna captured with a Canon 5D and Tamron's most-excellent 28-75 f/2.8 zoom. ISO 100, f/8 @ 160th. Three Profoto Acute heads with the mainlight modified with a 7' Photoflex Octodome and the kickers with small, shoot-thru umbrellas hanging off them. I messed around with Nik's stylized color filters when processing the images above. Don't know if I like the effect or not. But messin' about with such tools sometimes leads to new and effective techniques. And, of course, sometimes not.

The New Pocket Wizards

Up till now, I've resisted the urge to plunk down the cash for a set of Pocket Wizards. I would need at least 3 of them and that's about $500. I've been using those cheap, Ebay systems that cost about $30 for a transmitter and receiver combo. Sure, they're cheaply made but I can go through a whole bunch of them before I come close to the $500 it would cost me to accomplish the same thing--firing my strobes--with PWs.

I'm not down on PWs. They're awesome! I'll admit, PW's physical high-profile on a camera is not something I've found attractive or practical. Being something of a klutz, I can easily envision myself busting one of them off the hot shoe. While PWs have incredible range, I don't need incredible range. I'm rarely more than 10 or 15 or so feet from my lights and, trust me, being that close means the cheap Ebay triggers work just fine. Yeah, PWs have more frequency options (as opposed to the 4-channel capability of the Ebay triggers) but, again, I haven't found myself needing all those channels: I rarely shoot where there's other shooters shooting so I don't worry about interfering frequencies.

I'm not a gear-elitist. I don't feel the need to seem "all that" from a gear perspective. If a tool, whether it's a camera, a lens, or other gear, gets the job done, and gets it done efficiently and reliably with the right amount of quality, I'm down for that. I'm fairly heavily invested in both photo and video gear so I have to make my dollars go further while still being able to deliver content to my clients that meets their expectations. Besides, if I don't have what I need to get the job done, I can always rent whatever it is I might need.

But now I'm rethinking my attitude towards PWs. Why? Because of the new PWs now available: The MiniTT1 and the FlexTT5.

First off, these new PWs are now low-profile on a camera. Yay! But it gets better than that. Way better! The new PWs offer the ability to exceed a camera's native synch speed, either in TTL mode or in manual.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

My Canon 5D has a max, usable, sync speed of 160th. That works for a lot of the applications I'm doing, i.e., in a studio or at an interior location shooting pretty girls. But when it comes to shooting outside in bright daylight, 160th is fairly restrictive. If I want to overcome bright daylight in a very noticeable way, it becomes quite difficult when the max sync speed is 160th. There's simply too much ambient reaching the sensor.

For the most part, shooting ETTL with Canon Speedlites and surpassing my camera's native max sync speed isn't something I find myself doing. But shooting in manual with monolights at "hyper-sync" shutter speeds, well, yeah baby!

A friend of mine did some testing the other day and managed to get sync at 1/500th with a Canon 5D and some Profoto heads. Another friend, a Twitter friend, tested the new PWs with a Canon 1D mkIII and some Profoto gear and he says he got 1/1600th! With a Canon 5D mkII, he says he managed 1/800th with Profoto Compact Rs at full power and 1/640th with the Profoto lights at lower power outputs.

Damn! Those are some mighty fine sync speeds! My brain is spinning thinking of all the things I can do with 1/500th "hyper-sync" on my 5D, especially considering I can go pretty much anywhere with my strobes now that I have a set of these babies.

Billing-wise, I had a really killer month this past month. Hoping it continues. If my workload continues like it's been, and it's looking like it certainly might, I see some Pocket Wizards in my very near future.

The pretty girl at the top goes by the name Princess. Shot her the other day. Easy to look at IMO. She mentioned something about having recently done a spread for Penthouse. I love when models do that thing with their mouths... that slightly biting the lower lip thing. So sexy! Princess captured with Canon 5D w/ Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 and three Profoto Acute heads, a 7' Photoflex Octodome, a couple of umbrellas, and a fan. ISO 100, f/8 @ 160th. MUA was Holly. Very minimal post-processing.