May I ask where you transitioned from? Were you an A.D. ?
Yes I started in print production then made A.D. Worked under a great creative director, in a small but good medium sized agency, that went from very creative and stable then the agency lost it's way when they went for the huge money and huge accounts.
I think I had a strange way of art direction when it came to photography. I always hired people I trusted, but never spent much time on set. I would start the day with the parameters of the shoot and usually leave, or if I just absolutely had to be there, never wanted to be bothered by the photographer handing me a polaroid every time he/she moved a light on changed the position of a fork. My opening statement was to make sure I was covered, don't get me fired, but if you can truly be inspirational I don't mind if I go back and get yelled at. Getting yelled at is not that big a deal if we produced something worthwhile.
I would try to hire for talent not specialty. I never liked "specialists" because I felt they were myopic and since they knew only their genre, it always looked somewhat generic to me. I'd hire a photojournalists to shoot a resort, a fashion guy to shoot product, . . . (not always) but tried to hire the photographer for their personality, their vision or I guess maybe the word is style, Don't know because that covers a lot of territory, but I always tried to stay away from the predicable.
I remember the product gig I hired the fashion guy for. He had never shot food products, wouldn't know how to work a view camera if you sent him to RIT , but he could make the two dimensional look real and three dimensions, so he got the gig.
Got yelled at for that one, until the client saw it and was overwhelmed that their cheese product could actually look that way in use. I'll never forget the client said "this is why we hire an ad agency, to be creative".
How does this relate to this camera. I don't know other than the Pentax to me is just another predicable variation of the theme. Maybe it gives a little bit different look, obviously a better lcd than other mfdb, but basically it's just another small framed digital camera that probably will shoot amazing detail in a world full of small framed digital cameras that all shoot amazing detail.
Actually truth be told I'm more impressed with some of the smaller consumerish cameras out there. They may not allow you to tether, but in ways they are almost ground breaking with some of the things they do.
As I am writing this I just received a large PDF from a client on re-use from a gig we shot in Korea at the end of 2008. On this gig I had phase backs, Nikons, Canons, and for this particular shot I used a Nikon N-90 (or is that D-90) I get them mixed up.
I bought the camera to shoot some video (it was a few months before the 5d2 appeared), but since this session framed out where the subject was running very fast on the far side of the frame, the little Nikon's focus points covered most of the frame, so it tracked every frame in focus.
I didn't think it would work so after we shot the first session, we threw it on the computer and looked at it very large size. Did it have the detail of a P-30 or even a 1ds3 . . . no, but those cameras would never have held focus, so 20 to 30 mpx doesn't mean much if it's soft.
The funny thing was in this setting, the N-90 had to prettiest look out of the camera. I guess that covers a lot of territory, but compared to every other camera the skin tones were beautiful, the focus worked, the shot worked, everybody was happy and I got paid.
But and this is just my opinion (well it's all my opinion cause it's the only opinion I can honestly quote) I think any artist can be more than one dimensional or for that matter multi task. I've heard it before that so and so only shoots lingerie, or beer, or basketball, but I've never really believed that had to be true.
I use to think we are what we shoot, but today, we are what we are paid to shoot . . . but only for the moment.
BC
