Old Pro Images

[Schewe]

As an anecdote from the past: I once heard a rumor that some high-profile brand of beer used to have this one bartender dude specially flown in on advertising shoots all over the world, just to create the perfect sized foam in every shot as required. I don't quite know the truth value of the story but I do remember it was meant to be illustrative for the kind of advertising expenditure in those days. That mindset clearly doesn't generate innovation...

It wouldn't surprise me...beer advertising gigs are pretty special. There are some really hard and fast rules about how the beer companies want their product to look in ads. I used to do a ton of Budweiser ads...there was a golden ratio of head to beer and some tough to achieve rules about color and lightness of the beer (and lack of bubbles in the beer). It is really tough to learn how to get a great beer pour.

For a period of time in the later 1980's I owned Bud beer ads because I could achieve the perfect head, perfect color and the right amount and type of moisture on the glasses. I would spend days and days of setup & testing (something advertisers really don't pay for anymore). I designed beer aquariums and used an airbrush to add moisture. Pretty elaborate special effect riggings too, just to get the right head on the beer...I'll have to drag out a fe tear sheets and scan then to show you guys...

The bottom line is, innovation is a function of personal creativity not a function of budget. But the lack of a budget will hamper the creative process...if you have the time & budget, all sorts of creative solutions are possible...if you have little time and money, you are very limited in what you can produce. If you look at major print advertising these days, I see little innovation (and actually little good advertising).

Are good print images still being produced commercially? You betcha...but print advertising pretty much sucks these days because of a severe lack of budget for both production as well as media buys. Magazines are dying these days...(or going only digital which still pushes print budgets downward).

I haven't done a commercial shoot for about 5/6 years...but I have a couple of good friends who still shoot here in Chicago. Their lives suck...very demanding (and whiney) clients with emaciated fees and expenses...some guys take jobs they will end up breaking even on (or even loosing $) just to  be doing something...hard to compete against that. Innovation in that environment? Well, the biggest innovation many have is how to produce something cheaply...not good mind you, but cheap. Is that a good thing?

[Rob C]

Schewe

I wish you would show some of your work here; I did calendars for Tennent's Lager for, I think, at least six consecutive years. I never did studio shoots for them - I was a people shooter by interest and wish. Carting lager cans around the world, even though most were dummies with very good printing on them, wasn't much fun, and then trying to get spray onto them in sunlight and have it remain believable (in small sections of images) was a bitch: mostly, the drops were far too large and soon ran and/or evaporated. Similar problems existed when using the logo-ed glasses containing product. The girls were the main thing, but usually even they were very limited by the rather stict morality that dwelt in northern minds in parts of corporate Britain at that time.

It was all rather frustrating: I had budgets and access to the country's best model agencies and girls, but the corporate mindsets often reducd the value of all that. It was a shame, really, because the fears were all in the official minds and not in the heads of the public. But hell, it all paid for everything else, so thanks for the ride, even if it got bumpy at times!

Rob C

[Craig Lamson]

It's no more contorted than this example shot in September.  The Viper shot is a minimum of a 4 way strip, I'll post the parts later, they aren't on my home machine.  There was sense of accomplishment that I felt in making an image that required little (if any) retouching which is the case in the Citroen image.  Perhaps I was incorrect in my comment about budgets, the client might spend as much now as before per image but at least half of it is retouching.  Nothing wrong with this, I happen to embrace this workflow, it's just a different approach then in the past.

I do miss the 'hard way" of old, actually getting it all on film.  It was a lot of fun finding a way to do things that at first seemed impossible and the solutions were often a work of art themselves.  I suspect that the new photographers of today are missing some really interesting times.

That said the new ways are just as rewarding, just in different ways.  It is possible to do things with an image that were simply out of reach with the old workflow.  I too fully embrace it.

Different times to be sure.

[Craig Lamson]

Some very old kodachromes...from the late 80's.  Sorry for the poor quality of these scans, I really need to find the film again and redo these...

Nikon of some sort...Kenlabs gyro, camera boat with photo tower.  From my in-house days.

[Rob C]

Hi Craig,

The third shot down, against the golden water, was something very popular in boat catalogues at the end of the 70s: I used to look at them, and boating magazines, very closely at that time because I entertained the notion of selling the house, buying a boat and living in it on the Med. Fortunately, my wife had more sense! A boat that cost the same as a house would have bankrupted us in a couple of years! I never bought a ski boat, either, because nobody here would say where and how much a mooring was going to be... another lucky escape. But, the very first winter of living here by the sea, seeing all those boats up on the hard, with the workmen buzzing away underneath, told me all I really needed to know. If you have to ask, your really, really can't afford it.

;-)

Rob C

[Go Go]

Here is one for your consideration.

This was shot 6x6 after a very boring catalog shoot in studio. I shot it on B/W film distressed the negative, did some hand painting with pigment dies and then printed it on pre fogged colour paper.

I was in Toronto at the time the models name was Teri and the year was 1984 to 1986 ish.

At the time I was totally into this technique, looks a little muddy now.

Ciao,

[Go Go]

And one for Rob!

Shot in Roma for a Canadian designer (Roger Edwards) 35mm loaded up with Agfa Chrome 1000. I loved that film, it made my pulse quicken.

The courtyard of some building that I talked my way into, shot from a second floor apartment, I tried to have model smoke a cigarette but she was from California and refused, so I threw a but into the frame. 1987 was the year.

I never did get a tear sheet from the ad, too bad.

[Go Go]

One more from the Roma trip, same model.

[Ellis Vener]

Look: No Moire! From an annual report shoot. What I remember most from the shoot was how nice everyone was.

[Rob C]

And one for Rob!

Shot in Roma for a Canadian designer (Roger Edwards) 35mm loaded up with Agfa Chrome 1000. I loved that film, it made my pulse quicken.

The courtyard of some building that I talked my way into, shot from a second floor apartment, I tried to have model smoke a cigarette but she was from California and refused, so I threw a but into the frame. 1987 was the year.

I never did get a tear sheet from the ad, too bad.

Hi Giorgio,

If you like grainy colour, then you must have loved Sarah Moon!

She was probably one of my greatest influences in her time shooting Vogue stuff; my favourite model of the time was also a fan of hers, and the irony was that we never got to shoot anything with grain. Doing fashion advertising, they wanted to see every stitch and I suppose I could have used a store dummy for all the difference they thought it made. Thank goodness they didn't think of it or see Helmut Newton doing it!

In fact, the fastest transparency film I ever used was Kodachrome 200. It was sharp and grainy, but I'm sure they tried their best to keep the grain as low as possible.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Look: No Moire! From an annual report shoot. What I remember most from the shoot was how nice everyone was.

Moire be damned: you might get attacked for pixel peeping with blowups like that!

;-)

Rob C

[Ellis Vener]

Moire be damned: you might get attacked for pixel peeping with blowups like that!

;-)

Rob C

regarding moire: In all candor once this photo was in pre-press moire became an issue. I do not think this film and lens combination is necessarily sharper BTW than a D800 or higher res digital camera (and a good lens) but even very carefully processed digital images have a different feel to the appearance of sharpness / real world detail resolution than film does , along with a larger dynamic range.

[Go Go]

Paolo Pilartz for Fenzi, distressed B/W negative printed on color paper.

[Rob C]

Nice one, Giorgio, and nice client, too!

The guy in the picture looks like I used to imagine that I looked in the late 50s... almost-Tony Curtis hair, etc. etc. Trouble is, this blower styling ends up killing the roots; I distinctly remember sitting in the barber's chair with the dryer burning my scalp as the comb did its best to pull the hair out, all of it accompanid by the smell of the burning 'friction' liquid that was used to torture the poor old hairs into perma-place. This pain, I might add, was hidden by controlled, casual conversation with the barber about jazz greats...

Now, what little's left gets pulled back and held in place with a band. Strangely, the longer it gets the less thick it feels, which is in direct conflict with what I observe on some others sporting the same conceit.

Oh well - c'est la  vie.

Rob C

[haefnerphoto]

I'm in the process of revisiting my website design and think I'll incorporate an "Archive" gallery.  Here are a few shots I'll be including when it's up.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

These are better than any recent car shot I've seen!

[Rob C]

Lovely stuff, J¡m; I particularly like the bottom shot with the evil look!

Rob C

[SecondFocus]

Wonderful photographs!

I'm in the process of revisiting my website design and think I'll incorporate an "Archive" gallery.  Here are a few shots I'll be including when it's up.

[jjj]

The bottom line is, innovation is a function of personal creativity not a function of budget. But the lack of a budget will hamper the creative process...if you have the time & budget, all sorts of creative solutions are possible...if you have little time and money, you are very limited in what you can produce. If you look at major print advertising these days, I see little innovation (and actually little good advertising).

I think lack of money can really spur innovation as rather than buy your way out of a problem, you may have get creative.
My favourite example of this is in the film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. Because their budget was shall we say sparse, they couldn't afford horses for the knights of Camelot to ride on. So instead of that they had their manservant follow them with a coconut making horse noises, which was far funnier and more suited to the absurd goings on and was even referenced within the film itself.

Are you suggesting Coconuts migrate?

The film director Terry Gilliam [who plays the servant in this scene] has also commented that having money makes you lazy.

[jjj]

I'm in the process of revisiting my website design and think I'll incorporate an "Archive" gallery.  Here are a few shots I'll be including when it's up.

Very striking shot Jim.
How did you get the elevation in that shot? Did budget include helicopter rental, a lot of scaffolding or a convenient water/fire tower?