About a year ago now, a project came up to create a guide book for the studio. It was meant to be a handy guide to the interesting places in the city for visiting clients, temporary transfers from other studios and other guests. The book was produced in record time (3 weeks) and it covered some sixty odd locations all throughout the city. We featured magazine stands, hot dog joints, karaoke bars, third generation family pipe stores - you name it. We made a tiny run of about 25 copies to share at a round table for our company.
And it was a hit.
The book’s writing and photography in this proof of concept was later shown to a publisher and they got all excited at the possibilities. Amazingly enough, they have commissioned us to make two new books for London and New York. The only sad part is that this Chicago book (as it stands) will not be made first. When is Chicago going to get the recognition it deserves dammit? Maybe on the next round if these do well.
So, in this coming week, I’m preparing for the trip to take the photographs for these new upcoming books. I have about a week in each city, shooting relentlessly and covering about ten locations a day. While I feel that I’m pretty comfortable taking photographs of people on the street and capturing images in a photo documentary style, I’m a little anxious about taking photographs of the interiors of the stores. I’m expecting that we will have permission for many of the locations we’re featuring but there’s still a lot of questions about lighting that I have unanswered. How to deal with multiple lighting types (fluorescent, tungsten and day light), how to deal with low light and a slow aperture wide angle lens, setting time for a tripod and a flash stand. And then there’s all the practical issues of traveling from place to place in a timely manner.
I think that there’s only so much one can plan for and the rest will be learnt as I go. And while I can safely say that the original book’s photographs had a ‘rawness’ that lent them a certain charm, I wasn’t shooting a book that might potentially be in the hands of tens/hundreds/thousands of people one day. I’m freaked out, inspired, thrilled, and then back to being freaked out again.
There’s a photography maxim that says, “Never take new equipment with you on a shoot” This is very good advice. I’m doing my best to balance bringing as much kit as I can and then be so laden heavy with kit that I can’t take a single photo at all.
I just want to take images that best represent the locations in their truest sense. The frenetic energy, the exclusivity, the warmth. All of these emotions that you feel in a space, or a street corner or in a retail store. I want to capture it all the best I can.
The photo above is from last year and it was taken right outside Facets, an independent movie rental store (and movie theatre too). When I saw her standing outside the store, I immediately got the sense that she was of an independent mind herself.
