Speed-Dating

John Blas(NCS Creative), a long time friend and a very creative Ad guy , called me up a while back to tell me there was someone he thought I should meet. John thought that I'd be a perfect match, both creatively and personally, with La Monde the Producer. If you are a fan of Mad Men on AMC then you will recognize La Monde Byrd. In addition to being a talented actor, La Monde is also a Producer. La Monde and his producing partner, Mekita Faiye, had just finished shooting a project titled Speed Dating. John, La Monde, Mekita, and myself got together and talked about what direction to take the campaign.

We met at my Hollywood office (Starbucks) and I spent some time getting to know La Monde and Mekita (pronounced like the power tool). I sat there and drank my little cappuccino while the three of them came up with some amazing and creative ideas that we would later capture in the studio. I had a hard time keeping up with them but I do vaguely remember (caffeine buzz) learning one great Hollywood insider secret. If you say an idea at least three times, you can rightfully claim it, and the shower of praise it brings you, as your own (Thanks to LMB)!

The concept was simple and elegant. We shot everyone in the same format and the same anonymous crop. The lighting was a large beauty dish with two gridded strobes for edge. There were a couple of bare heads on the white seamless and a reflector or two here and there with some flags and 4x4s to boot. Aside from the power outage in the building that shut us down for a few minuets, the day went great. It was a very long day to be sure. We had a huge talent list and just as large of a shot list.

The job was a great success. We captured a ton of awesome images that were singularly unique and yet able to remain true to the campaign's intent. A job like this takes a huge talent pool. While having vision and leadership, is a plus, an assignment like this could not be completed without the help of the entire crew. From makeup and styling to the actors and models all the way down to the building security (who held the answer to the power problem). Oh and before I forget, big thanks to my beautiful producer for getting us bags and bags of killer soft tacos. La Monde, Curtis and myself devoured them like it was our last meal.

Like an old reliable Swiss watch, John has done it again with his impeccable sense of design and balance. They are simple in concept yet laser sharp in execution.

It has been a pleasure to get to know La Monde. It turns out he smokes the occasional cigar and has a sip of scotch every now and then. John was right, we are a perfect match.

Technorati Tags: Speed Dating, La Monde Byrd, John Blas, Mekita Faiye

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What's new around here.

It has been a while since any new posts around here. I would love for you to believe that I haven't posted lately because of the last post. You see, it was written by a guest blogger named Randy Fullmer. I really like the way he wrote his post and I REALLY didn't want to have to follow with one of my own.


Blogging is painful for me. I would rather be creating images or surfing or playing with my kids. There is just no easy way to create a blog that continually shows content that is relevant and interesting(unless Randy is writing it). Oh well, time to get to it! We have been pretty busy here the last couple of months with a great assortment of projects. I photographed more Directors of Photography for Clairmont Camera, shot some DPs in Canada, shot a great print campaign for the film Speed Dating, and have started a super secret fine art project involving veterans of the Iraq War(more on that later). So please check back often, subscribe to the RSS feed or add me to your Google Reader and watch for the new posts coming shortly.

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Guest Blogger Randall Fullmer

I recently had Scott do a couple of photo shoots for my bass guitar company, Wyn Guitars. I was to the moon with the results and thought I'd blog my experience so others can get a sense of what a total pleasure and fantastic creative photographer Scott Shepard is.

I started building guitars at the age of 12 and after an amazing life as an animator and producer at Walt Disney Feature Animation, over the past 20 years, I decided to get back to full time guitar building as a profession. (Wyn Guitars is born out of my middle name Wyn taken from a cool old Welsh uncle of mine. He had the music in him and I have to think that's where what ever musical talent I have came from!)

So I'm having the time of my life busily building bass guitars out of exotic African and Central American hardwoods. Woods with intense beauty and amazing tone properties. I am currently in the final stages of putting together a website. It quickly became apparent to me that if people from all over the planet were going to be interested in my basses, I better have very accurate and lets face it, delicious artful photographs of my guitars.

A good friend of mine from Disney, John Blas, a talented illustrator and marketing guru told me he knew just the guy. Scott Shepard. John had known Scott since high school and said you're just never going to find a better photographer and a nicer guy. You bet I said!!

So initially Scott came to my shop to shoot my tools and processes, work in progress guitars, and to capture my working environment. It was a comical shoot. While I was busy explaining to Scott all of these very mundane ideas I had about what to shoot, I noticed him sort of wandering off and clicking his camera at very different things. I wasn't even sure what he was doing half the time. I started thinking I'd lost control of the shoot. Come on, I worked at the Walt Disney Company, I know how to do a shoot!! Was I going to get what I wanted?

Well Scott would eventually shoot every thing I asked for, but when the photos came back from Scott I really had to laugh out loud. All of the really interesting shots came from Scott's eye and his curiosity in my shop. From his "seeing" things that went right past me. I realized that when I just shut up and let him capture what his eye saw, he made me look like a genius!! And that lady's and gentlemen is my admission that I apparently do not know how to run a photo shoot!!

We spent the day shooting perhaps 200 images. Scott was able to get to far more than I imagined he would. With his lighting and computer equipment in addition to his camera and multiple quality lenses, Scott was a one man wrecking crew, a flurry of activity. Really stunning what we got that day. My first thought was that I can't really have anyone come over to my shop, because it really isn't half as interesting as it looks like in these shots. But another fun gift grew out of this shoot. I found myself enjoying my shop and the lighting in my shop (I have six skylights) much more than I had before the shoot. It was really that I had to see my shop through Scott's eyes to realize what a special place it is. Pretty remarkable!

So I am clearly leading a charmed life. A mutual friend recently put me together with the great and famed bassist Jimmy Haslip of the Yellow Jackets and numerous inspirational jazz , rock and fusion groups. He came to my house, tried out one of my latest prototype basses and loved it. So the next thing I knew, we were collaborating on building Jimmy a 6 string left handed bass out of the most exotic woods I had ever used. Wildly flamed Cocobolo Rosewood and African Wenge among others. He found an amazing shape of a rose as part of the grain pattern in some of the wood I showed him (I think we're picking up a fairly clear pattern here that everyone else sees amazing things that I seem to miss. Hmmmm).

Jimmy has a lovely daughter named Rose. Gabriela Rose to be exact and he decided that he wanted that naturally occurring rose shape to be front and center on the guitar along with her name engraved accross the front. "Yes Mr. Haslip!!" What a fun moment that was. It immediately personalized the bass for him and for me. Months later, after many visits and I must say great ideas from Jimmy, I was completing the bass. I started having those pangs of trepidation. I was going to send my baby out into the world with Jimmy Haslip. A thrill to be sure, but man I had worked so hard on this guitar, I better really document it well.

Yes, Scott immediately came to mind. A second shoot was all about this one guitar. I learned so much that day about photography and filtered lighting and photoshop to get exactly what one was looking for. And Scott served me the greatest home made Cappuccinos and treats while we pondered our various results. How good can life be really? We worked hard, had incredible fun, and I walked out of the session with photos that were so clear, artful, well composed and appealing.

So now I'm back to worrying if anyone sees the bass in person, will it not add up to these amazing photographs? Do I worry too much? I think I do, but all I can say is that when ever I show them to friends and people in the luthier trade, the first thing out of their mouths is what fantastic photographs these are. Not what a great guitar this is, just how great the photographs are. Which brings me to my warning and conclusion. Scott Shepard Photography will ruin your life. What ever you have photographed will look so good that the original item will shrink by comparison. Your life will be reduced to showing fantastic photos!!!

I keep that bass in hiding now so as not to reveal how it really looks!! (Actually Jimmy Halip just toured Denmark and Sweden with the bass and will be recording and touring with it all year.) But my ability to take Scott's photographs and show them to prospective buyers of my basses will really increase my ability to succeed.

Scott is also a world class nice guy. The creative process for me always goes best when there is a fun easy way about it. The fact that if you don't like his cappuccinos, he becomes an intolerable screamer can be managed if you know it's coming!!

best,
Randall Wyn Fullmer

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Jessica and the Merry-go-round

A while back I had this idea to shoot someone on the old style playground merry go round. I was hanging out with Curtis (translation: eating steak and drinking mojitos), and he said he knew of such a place not to far away. We decide to kidnap, err I mean, convince Jessica to go for a ride with us the next morning. Jessica is a family friend of ours. She had no reason not to believe we were going shoe shopping. Well she ended up being a good sport about it and we set off to make some images.

I wanted to rig a remote camera and strobes to the merry go round. You see, I didn’t want to be on that thing while it was going round and round. Not to long ago I was on a U.S. Naval vessel known as a HSV or high speed vessel. We were on our way to Spain from Morocco and the seas were angry. The trip lasted almost 24 hours and I was seasick for 20 of them. Now in my defense the seas were really, really angry. Anyway, I didn’t want to sit on this thing and go round and round so I rigged up the camera. I wasn’t worried about Jess, she’s young and needs to earn her sea legs anyway.

I attached some Pocket Wizards, aimed the strobes and started to spin this thing with Jess on it. I got it going pretty fast and then just started firing the camera with the remote. The images were coming out pretty cool. I should have brought my laptop and used the remote live view option to capture the images in real time. It would have been a whole lot less spinning, stopping, reviewing and spinning again.

We changed positions and I had Jess lie down on the floor plate. I put a snoot on one of the strobes and let the open shade handle the fill.

By now Jess has been spinning quite a bit and she needed a break. We moved over to the swings that were close by. I shot a few pictures of Jess swinging but the damage was done.

She was already turning green! Thanks Jess for being a good sport and thanks to Curtis for shooting the behind the scenes images.

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Some personal work

I thought I would change it up a bit and show some of the images I shot over the winter that were more personal in nature. Here are some pictures of my daughters Makena and Kaylee.  When I get a new lens or an idea to test I turn to my kids first. They make great subjects and they are happy to goof around in front of my camera. In case you are wondering, the beach stuff is early winter, late fall here in California.  It’s tuff to live here (wink) but we’ll manage.

   

           

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Robert Primes

Here is another series of images from the ongoing advertisements for Clairmont Camera. This ad will be featuring Emmy winning Cinematographer Robert Primes. Bob earned Emmy Awards for Felicity and My Antonio, and a third nomination for Harrison: Cry of the City. Bob received the ASC award for the series MDs, the first digital show so honored and has had ASC nominations for Felicity and the Reasonable Doubts pilot.

While setting up at location, we found these great big drums of used film. I thought it would be awesome if we could shoot Bob fooling around with some of it. When he arrived on set we started to collaborate and kick some ideas around. I told him about the film idea and he said he was willing to try anything. I get so stoked when someone with obvious talent is willing to explore some of my creative ideas.

We started by giving Bob some film to hold, but that didn’t last long. Bob is a real funny guy. While we were shooting, he started throwing the giant bunch of film around, including at me.

It was starting to look great. I wanted more film in the frame so I had Curtis on camera left and Laurie on camera right start to throw big bunches of film into frame. The timing wasn’t always right but I knew we were onto something great.

Some of the shots were hysterical, like this one above. It looks like a giant wall of film is about to devour poor Bob. Bob never lost his genuine enthusiasm during the entire time we were shooting. At one point the film swallowed him whole.

I was shooting with Profoto strobe packs. The flash durations on these packs are really short. It does so well at freezing the action that the film started to look like a crazy sculpture. It really would not have been possible with any other lighting system. The other great thing is to shoot tethered to a capture computer. The ability to review the images on the fly allowed us to shoot until we were sure we had the shot. Below is the final image used for the Clairmont Camera ad in the International Cinematographers Guild magazine and the American Cinematographer magazine.

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Michael Bonvillain

Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain earned an Emmy and a second nomination for his work on Alias, as well as two Outstanding Achievement Award nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers. It was my privilege to photograph him for an advertisement for Clairmont Camera. Clairmont Camera is a motion picture camera and equipment rental house. Clairmont is a big player in the camera rental business with offices in Hollywood, Vancouver, Toronto, Albuquerque, and Montreal.

I was contacted by Mardrie Mullen from Clairmont Camera to create images of Michael Bonvillain that establish a new creative direction for their company advertising. Mardrie wanted to do something more cinematic and dramatic than what they had been doing. She wants to showcase Cinematographers who can give a testimonial type endorsement for Clairmont Camera's equipment and customer service. Michael had recently shot the pilot for a new series called "Fringe". It has a modern, dark and edgy feel to it. Michael also has "Lost", "Alias", and "Cloverfield" on his list of film credits. The idea was to shoot something a little grittier and urban, instead of a DP sitting in the studio behind a camera.

Our shooting schedule was quite narrow because Michael had a very limited time with us. He had flown in from Europe late morning on the day of the shoot. Initially we had scouted a few spots at Clairmont Camera's building, but I soon realized that our time wouldn't allow multiple setups on different floors. Oh and to add to that the roof was a great spot but there was only stairwell access. Lots of fun with camera carts and capture computers and such. The day of the tech scout I found the underground parking at Clairmont. Right away I knew that it would work great.

On the shoot day Curtis Marzinzik and I arrived a few hours early to setup. Curtis is a Marine Corps buddy, the owner of Bouquet Pools, and trusted comedian. Anyway, we set up the Profoto strobes with a large Mola dish and a few grids and ran a few test shots to balance the background color temperature. This was a few weeks back when the humidity in LA was like 110%. It sure was hot three floors down. You would think that it would have been nice and cool in the subterranean concrete parking structure. Noooo! I think they turned on the heater to see if the two jarheads could take it.

By then Michael had arrived and we got started. He is a very nice guy and he was very up front when he said he didn't like his picture to be taken. Being the resourceful DP that he is, he came prepared with a solution (in a brown paper bag) to ease his reluctance. I only wish I had thought of that! We started to shoot a little and my producer Laurie, whom I tricked into marrying me, showed up to check on us. She had brought our kids to set and Michael, Laurie, and my oldest daughter Makena immediately hit it off. Once Michael started talking to them he completely forgot about me and relaxed. At one point he asked Makena to pose with him and he then asked her give him some direction in front of the camera. He wanted her to come up with an idea for a picture. She was a little embarrassed because everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked at her. She came through like a pro and told him to play with his hair and make it "stick up" (she tells me the same thing at home). Thanks to Makena for this one.

Michael saw the monitor after I did a quick B/W conversion in Lightroom and said he loved it. He said it captured the essence of what he feels like in this business. Kind of crazy, a little nutty.

We shot a few more set ups and reviewed the images . At that point we decided to wrap it up. We had created everything that Clairmont needed and Michael was set free. Michael is a great talent in his profession and quite charming. What I liked about Michael is that he knows about creating and lighting a scene, and he got what we were trying to do.

In the end we created some great images and the 17x22 proofs are beautiful. I had the great opportunity to photograph a very interesting person and produce a great job for Clairmont Camera.

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