Commercial Studio 1898
© Tropenmuseum Amsterdam
On occasion I have written
about Photoshop and the advantages it provides compared to doing things the way
we used to. That is especially true to
commercial photography in large studios.
Minneapolis has the
advantage of being one of the largest advertising markets in the US. As such I have had the opportunity to visit
many of the commercial photography studios in town.
Along the way I have heard
some horror stories which are actually quite funny, but at the time were quite
upsetting and time consuming to fix, something that can be done much better and
more efficiently with the use of modern computer software like Photoshop.
© Ravenshoe Group - Photo Studio © Roman Bonnefoy
Small commercial studio
One such studio is the old
Glen Silker studio now named Gamut One Studios.
One of my past students is now one of the owners of that studio.
They had contracted with a
manufacturer of candy bars to photograph a new candy bar they had
developed. This happened during a time
when much of their photography was done with hot lights, a name that is well
deserved.
To prevent the candy bar
from deteriorating or even melting during the shoot, the manufacturer provided them
with a mock-up. Before the scheduled shoot
they kept the mock-up in a refrigerator.
As it turned out, one of
their employees had been on vacation, returning to the studio later on in the
day after everyone else was gone. Upon
looking in the refrigerator, he saw a tasty looking candy bar, unwrapped it and
took a bite out of it. The next day, to
the horror of everyone else, he complained about the lousy tasting candy bar.
They were forced to ask
the client for another mock-up which turned out to be quite expensive to make. The client apparently was none too happy.
But not all was necessarily
bad. On one of my visits I talked to
Glen Silker. During the conversation he
showed me a small pyramid, about three inches tall, sitting on his desk. It showed a large number of multi colored horizontal
stripes. Nothing unusual until he
explained that it was made of paint. It
is common procedure that an infinity wall or cove is often repainted to fit the
needs of the shoot. He explained that
occasionally they needed to remove the paint to prevent the many layers from
getting too thick. The pyramid on his
desk was made of a piece of the many
layers of removed paint.
The same studio had an
account with Anderson windows, a large window maker in the area. For the shoot of one large window they set up
an entire living room inside the studio.
The room by itself was no big problem to light and shoot. However, it was also necessary to create a
nice looking scene outside the window.
These days this can
relatively easily be done with the help of Photoshop. But this shoot was done prior to digital
photography and Photoshop. A common way
to incorporate an outdoor scene was to use rear projection, where the scene was
projected from the back of a large translucent screen, set up outside the
window, in this case.
Two examples of insering the background with rear projection
Rear projection
The problem with such a
shot is that projectors were not anywhere near as bright as the lighting used
for the interior of the room. Subsequently
a double exposure procedure was used, where the interior of the room was
exposed first and then, in a separate exposure, the background.
For this shot a
relatively small aperture had to be used to allow for enough depth of field, resulting
in an exposure time of about two hours if I remember correctly. To avoid any problems, it had been planned to
do the shoot late in the evening after everyone had left the studio, with the
projector on a timer.
Everything was planned correctly
with one exception. Nobody had thought
about the janitor. He arrived during the
time the projector was running. Not
realizing what was going on, he proceeded to take a short cut through the
living room set. That by itself would
not have been a problem because with a long time exposure, he would never have
shown in the final exposure. But walking
through the set resulted in a considerable amount of movement and vibration to
render an unsharp outline of the room itself with the result that the shot had
to be repeated.
Front projection
Here a two way mirror is placed between the subject and the camera.
With careful positioning of the two way mirror the projected image
will be projected from the same position as the camera lens, thus eliminating
any visible shadow from the subject on the screen.
Some systems incorporating the projector and camera holder in one single unit,
eliminating the necessity of aligning the camera and the projector position.
A counter part to rear
projection is front projection, where the background image is projected from
the camera position on a special screen, originally developed by 3M. The special properties of the screen are that
the projected image is very bright. In
addition, any light falling onto the screen is reflected in the very direction
where the light comes from. Subsequently
any subject lighting is reflected right back to the actual light source and not
toward the camera. This eliminates any deterioration of the projected image from the subject lighting.
The result is that only a
single exposure is necessary. The part
of the projected image falling onto the subject is of no consequence. The image on the screen is several stops brighter
than that on the subject, with the result that it never shows in the final exposure.
These procedures are no longer in any wide spread use since the projected image with both rear and
front projection can be inserted with Photoshop.
I have always liked to
work in a studio. To me it has the
advantage of allowing to set up a shot just right, often with the help of an
art director. It enables the creation of
preconceived scenes without relying on location shoots. It allows for total control of the scene,
including the most advantageous lighting.
Two examples of a similar studio set
I feel fortunate that I
was able to work in photography before the digital age. I learned a lot of tricks of the trade that
are quickly becoming a thing of the past, replaced by computers and software
that may make things a lot easier at times, but it also eliminates the need for
skills without which a professional photographer could not have survived.
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right