> The first thing you do when you start trying to make a living with this > stuff is to get an "insurance" shot. That is the shot you take first > to CYA in case you never get another opportunity. Then, as Dan writes, > you keeping trying to get another, and another, and another until you > get the best one. Sometimes the insurance shot is the best one. > Sometimes it is the only one.
Ken, I've got a funny story along those lines. Many years ago I worked for a hardass commercial advertising pro. Occasionally, he would do portraits for friends despite having no great aptitude for it. Well, once, some friends asked him to take some pictures of their four-year-old. He came to me and asked me how I lit some portraits of mine that he'd seen, and I told him it was just window-light--that if it were me, I'd set up the backdrop perpendicular to the window and put up a big reflector panel opposite it. He said, "you use _natural_ light?" with an expression of utter scorn, and ordered me to set up the backdrop in the studio and link four 2400w/s power packs to a Black Line Quad Head in an 8-foot soft box. I did as I was told. The couple and the child arrived, they schmoozed for a while, and then it came down to the portrait session. I had the Hassie backs loaded and the Polaroid back on the camera. My boss told the little boy to sit down on a box we'd set under the canvas backdrop, next to the soft box, and then he shot off a Polaroid to test the light. POW! The Quad Head popped loudly and with a blinding light. The little boy gave a look of terror, screamed, and bolted for his Mommy's arms. And he screamed and screamed. Unable to calm him down, they finally took him back to the office, where after a while he settled down and played happily. But the minute we brought him back into the studio, he took one look at the soft box and immediately started to scream in terror again, clinging to his Mommy. The upshot was that although they stayed all afternoon, my boss never got to shoot a single frame of film. And that one Polaroid? It showed the little boy looking cute and relaxed and smiling happily at the camera. Would have made a pretty nice portrait. --Mike
