Sometimes things are pulled together at the relatively last minute, like this shoot for the Educational Theatre Association. A shoot like this could take weeks of planning, propping and styling, but in this case it was a week long scramble to prep and was shot over a holiday weekend. Pulling something ambitious like this off in a short amount of time requires a talented cast. In this case the acting cast of 17 characters was just one person, comedian and actor Mike Rock.

Every year the ETA hosts the national Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska, a place where high school-aged actors gather to “put on a show”. It’s a week of acting instruction and plays, a chance for like-minded students and theatre teachers to practice their craft and to compare notes.

This year the ETA (more specifically, their publishing arm, Dramatics Magazine) chose the theme of “occupations” and they were searching for a way to express that in their annual Festival program. They immediately thought of long-time Festival instructor Mike Rock, a talented comedian and actor based in Los Angeles. Mike had been attending the festival since he was a high school student in Wisconsin some years ago and now shares his knowledge as an instructor. He is well known and respected by the students and would make a great figurehead for the program.

Mike was chosen to portray 17 different characters (including himself), all expressing either a career choice (from rock star to plumber) or a character in a play that would be recognized by the students (Willy Loman to Momma Rose). With just one actor and a number of characters in mind, Mike was required to spend the better part of a day in makeup to pull off a few female characters.

So, while most of America was celebrating the Memorial Day weekend, myself and the Daylight Photo team, the crew from the magazine, Laurie the makeup artist and our lead actor were hard at work in the studio, moving from character to character.

Everyone was pleased with the shoot, it was a great deal of fun. We even managed to sneak in a grill out at the end of day two. There are many observations that could be made about working on a project like this. I’d like to share some of the thoughts that first come to mind, all worthy of a post of their own:

1. It’s great to work with professionals. Everyone, every single person on the set, made a contribution. I really enjoy that about the creative process. It’s also the reason I gravitated toward commercial photography: the collaboration is a lot of fun. That old adage about “hiring great people and letting them do their job” really rings true in a situation like this.

2. Yes, I keep talking about problem solving on prophotolife.com. I can still clearly picture how Laurie handled wardrobe for one of the female characters. Without hesitation or explanation she picked up the two cabbage halves from the chef photo and used them to, shall we say, create one of the female figures.

3. I remember a time when the world didn’t move quite so fast, when scheduling was easier. When we met to begin photography on Saturday morning we’d all been working non-stop for many, many days and were all visibly tired, right from the get-go. But it’s amazing to watch someone like Mike, from the very first minute to the very last, putting careful thought and complete energy into each character. It’s infectious and keeps everyone wanting to achieve more. Every character built up the energy of the cast and crew.

4. Going into a shoot like this we all get mental images of what each character might be like. From the very beginning it’s easy to preconceive what we will consider our favorite character. Very often the ones we assume will be easy, turn difficult, and the ones considered a huge challenge become a favorite. As a result, I don’t spend as much time on preconceptions as I used to.

Hmmm, maybe that’s what years in this business have taught me. Surround yourself with good people and keep your eyes, ears and mind open throughout the process, that way the limitations begin to disappear.

The photographs pictured here were done for our studio portfolio in 2006. We’re always testing new concepts and new styles for our work, trying different things to see what works best. In addition to creating some nice new photos, portfolio shoots are also designed to let us troubleshoot a process in order to make it more efficient. Clients do have time and budget considerations in addition to needing great looking photography and we try to take that into consideration, too.

The major credit for these images goes to Julia (aka “Julio”) for the incredible work she did with styling. Julio is a wonderful stylist who I’ve worked with off and on for almost twenty years. This series all started with a conversation and a desire we shared to show clothing in a new way. Here were our goals going in:

1. show clothing in a new and exciting way
2. include movement
3. do the above without using models

Let’s cut right to what I feel is the most incredible part of these photos. Hardly any image retouching was done. One metal post was taken out of the full length photos and the necklace and purse were stripped into the dress shot. Other than that there was only minor cleanup done to threads and buttons. There really was no post-production “magic”.

When Julia and I first worked together years ago there were no digital images or digital post-production. Everything we shot was on 4″ x 5″ or 8″ x 10″ transparency film with a view camera. So when it came time to tackle this, that’s the approach we took. “Back in the day” we had to previsualize and take a methodical approach to getting it right the first time, with maybe the aid of a few Polaroids for testing.

The implied movement Julio created with this clothing involved hours of rigging with wire, foam padding and fishing line. We started with a basic metal form and Julio built a person’s outline, clothed it and then filled it in. Really, what she accomplished is worthy of any gallery.

As a fashion design graduate, Julio knows fabric and how clothing is made. She would look at the cut of an arm, and would tell me exactly how it would best be laid, in just the same way I knew where the light should be placed. She could discuss any fabric, the fashion designers that probably influenced the clothing we were photographing and how a men’s jacket is cut for a perfect drape.

I brought out the textures and flow of the clothing by lighting angles carefully. The movement, the edge blur on the clothing, was all done in-camera using a combination of strobe and tungsten lighting (yes, it’s a great subject for a video and we’ll try to get to it in the future). So we really kicked it old-school on this one, putting our tactile, hands-on skills to the test.

One of my first jobs in photography was working in a catalog photography studio, alongside 6 or 7 other photographers. There were stylists, assistants, set builders, art directors and merchandisers right there on the staff of 30-plus people. It was there that I first worked with Julia. To be honest, many of those people are out of the photography business now. Photography is done faster and cheaper now and the prop makers, set builders and stylists have been largely replaced by the capabilities of the retouching computer. Julio, in fact, is no longer styling after being in the business for thirty years. This mid-sized midwestern market, it seems, can no longer support someone with her knowledge and particular specialties. Time marches on and computers and technology are now the preferred approach.

So what were the results of the portfolio shoot? Well, we’re all very happy with the images. Has it led to more work? Well, we’ve seen clients that are excited by the possibilities but they “don’t quite have the budget” for something with this much hand work. Can we do something like it, they ask, but less expensively…maybe do some of it in Photoshop? No, not really. It takes a special talent to style the clothing, we tell them, and that takes a certain amount of time and money. I don’t know any way around it.