Photo Shoot

        I'm realizing more and more that this (as in this job) is all much bigger than me and I can't do it on my own. God is blessing me in that I'm definitely learning lessons that are bigger than the internship itself. I've been feeling the need for a confidence boost in the past couple of days. Because of the events leading up to landing this internship, I was completely sure that this is where I am supposed to be, and started last Monday without anxieties or fears about being able to perform in an industry like this. I'm still confident that this is where I am supposed to be. But since jumping in with both feet, I've realized that I'm a little fish in a really big pond. Still loving the internship...every day I love it even more. Just feeling a little unsure of myself, and I'm asking for that insecurity.
        ANYWAYS, we went to the photo shoot for one of the ad spots for the games today. The concept for the ad is simple, but definitely creative and quite effective for our purposes. This particular image is centered around the "x's and o's" of football and grilling out...think bacon crossed to form X's and onion slices shaped like O's placed on hamburgers on a grill. Let your imagination run wild (pictures to come at some point, although you may be seeing these images on billboards or in magazines in the near future). You would be surprised at the amount of effort that goes into making a picture of hamburgers on a grill sell football tickets. The crew started rolling in around 7:30 this morning...we arrived around 1 and they still hadn't started shooting. The process is quite long and involves a model (even though you only see his hand and maybe a shoe, a food stylist, a photographer, a creative director, and assistants to capture this one image. Courtney, Sarah, and I went together and were 3 of 10 people in this room to take a picture of hamburgers! It all made more sense once I saw what everyone was doing.
        The food stylist prepared the hamburgers with defined grill marks, and chemicals to make the meat the perfect shade of brown, and to make it glisten as only a perfect burger would. The stylist prepared and placed the burgers, bacon, cheese, onions, etc... on the grill in order to capture the essence of a playbook in food.
        I didn’t understand why they (meaning LGA, the marketing/advertising group we work with) hired a model to pose, when in reality the end result of the photo would have very little focus on the person in the shot-I would have done that for free! I didn’t understand, until I saw the shoot in action. This guy held a spatula in the exact same position, arm flexed and feet in the same position, head tilted just so, and back at the perfect angle for several minutes at a time while the photographer and creative team would take pictures adjust lighting, scrutinize the image, take a picture again, and so on. I asked Lisa from LGA what the qualifications were to model in this shoot and she said that they literally just sent in pictures of this guy’s hands to make sure they were “good hands, you know, manicured and everything”. His jeans weren’t showing off the tiny bit of shoe that you could see in the photo so the photographer hiked them up and clipped them in the back so they would fit him just so. There was even a wardrobe change for the shirt that you, as consumers of the ad, will probably never see. But apparently a light gray shirt picks up detail better than a white one…these are the kind of details the common eye doesn’t catch, and it’s why these guys are great at what they do. They spent endless amounts of time on body positioning. “Should he hold a can in the other hand? No, should he put that hand back on his hip? No, that makes his waist look too small. Would you mind moving that foot back just the tiniest bit?” Some call it nitpicky but these are the things that make the difference between an ok shot and a really good one.
        We were in an indoor studio so the "outdoor" set had to be created completely from scratch. That meant that the lighting had to be set perfectly. They had to recreate a backyard patio, so they brought in patches of grass, and individually laid bricks, to create the illusion of your typical outdoor cookout scene. Detail orientation is the key to capturing the perfect image, and this became obvious when I saw one of the assistants on his hands and knees with a squirt bottle spraying each individual brick in the patio area to make the red color pop. They even had 4 different options for spatulas…and there were distinct opinions on which spatula worked best. Overall, the shoot was eye opening, and I will be looking at all ads and professional photography more analytically from now on!
        On a personal note, it was a great day because my baby sister, Mary Catherine, turned 15 and reality set in that she’s not my baby sister anymore...kind of bittersweet. I also got to talk to my brother, Will, today on the phone for a little while and we haven’t gotten to have a decent conversation recently so it was just good to hear his voice. He’s starting Film school in the next couple of weeks and so I put my plug in for him to come see me in Charlotte and possibly visit the production hall of Raycom soon!