This Week’s LIDLIPS

56. Hollywood is waiting to teach you how to light.

57. Sometimes it is more important to look like you know what you’re doing than to actually know what you’re doing.

58. Sincerity, humility and gentle persistence can open closed doors.

59. The future is moving.

60. Analysis Paralysis and the Right Pursuit

Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School 56–60

56. Hollywood is waiting to teach you how to light.
If you really want to learn how to light, go to the movies and think about the light you see. As still shooters, we think in terms of lighting one spot for a fraction of a second. On the set of a motion picture, they have to light a broad area such that the actors can move through it without casting unwanted shadows or walking out of the light. Put another way, grips and gaffers do their jobs with intention – there is a look the director wants and their task is to deliver that vision through lighting. Virtually every lighting tool we still shooters think of as new or unique has been used in Hollywood for decades. Gels, scrims, shiny boards, flags, gobos – they all came to us from the movies. Even the newest lighting tools – like LED panels and banks of CFLs – were adopted by the movie guys first. Hollywood understands that film (or tape) records light and shadow differently than we see it. They don’t fight physics. Rather they’ve invented tools and techniques that change one reality into another. Learn what they do and how they do it. Your vision as a photographer will expand accordingly.

57. Sometimes it is more important to look like you know what you’re doing than to actually know what you’re doing.
Maintaining the confidence of your client is key – even when your shoot is crashing. Once I was on a wedding shoot with the bride and three attendants staring right into my lens when my camera mysteriously locked up. Rather than change the mood and say I had a problem, I went through the motions of taking a few more frames – even though nothing was happening. As the group moved to the next spot, I went to my gear bag and changed camera bodies. Stopping to figure out the problem (a bad CF card) would have appeared as if I didn’t know what was going on (which I didn’t at the time). Problems happen during shoots. How you respond is a measure of your professionalism. Maintaining an air of confidence and control in front of your clients is key. Have an SOS phrase in the back of your head. Something like “I see an new opportunity here. Let’s break for a few minutes so that we can set up for it.”

58. Sincerity, humility and gentle persistence can open closed doors.
Across the decades of my professional life, I have had a number of mentors. Not surprisingly, none walked up to me and said “I want to give you my time and my expertise and I don’t want to charge you anything for it.” I’ve long wanted to believe the old saying “when the student is ready the teacher will appear.” Sure, he may appear. But getting his attention is a completely different matter. My experience is that the three keys to opening up a relationship with a mentor are sincerity, humility and gentle persistence. If you are not sincere in your desire to be the best photographer you can be (if you still think it’s the gear that makes the photograph), then there’s no point in having a mentor. Being humble means you respect yourself and your mentor. It means being honest about what you don’t know and haven’t done. It means understanding the definition of “sycophant” and not going there. Even when your head and your heart are in the right place, you’ll still need to convert your hero into your mentor. Typically, this happens slowly over time. It comes through persistence – gentle persistence. Remember that you are not and never will be critical to the success of your mentor’s career. That he has taken you on is more a testament to the gifts he received from his mentors than it is of you. Still, if you are worthy, do not hesitate to knock and to come back and knock again. Eventually your persistence will open the right door.

59. The future is moving.
While I’m not ready to say that the death of still photography is at hand, it is apparent that the future of photography is in motion. Observe how the rapid growth of the Internet as an advertising channel has caused widespread devastation in the newspaper and magazine industries. As access to broadband continues to spread and as mobile tools like Apple’s iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle continue to evolve, there’s an ever-increasing opportunity to use motion over still photography. No too many years ago, the moving photographs on the walls, desks and newspapers of Harry Potter’s world seemed quaint. Now, I see them as an insightful glimpse into our future. If you are young, photographs that move and speak and sing are your future. If you are an old-school shooter, like me, now is not the time to put your head in the sand about how the world has once again changed it’s expectations of what photographers do.

60. Analysis Paralysis and the Right Pursuit.
An earnest dad came up to me a while back and asked my thoughts on which DSLR was best suited for photographing his children playing soccer. He had boiled his options down to one that shoots 3.6 frames-per-second and another that could shoot 6.2 FPS. Oh, and there was the possibility that one was coming out “soon” that would shoot close to 10 FPS. He’d been looking into cameras for the entirety of his kids’ soccer season. I offered two suggestions. The first was to get over his Analysis Paralysis. The second was to buy the best camera he could afford at the moment – regardless of specs like frames-per-second. I came away from the conversation wondering how many great shots he’d missed because the pursuit of the camera had overtaken the pursuit of the photo.

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