Studio day, helping to direct Hiram.

When working with pharma, there are often a number of legal restrictions. In this case, our talent had to be HIV positive. Through an epic effort on the part of my casting director, Martha Lazar, we were able to put together a pool of people to present to the client. This required considerable sensitivity. Not everyone wants the world to know they are HIV positive. For the people we chose, our shoot was them making a statement to the world about how they saw themselves. It can not be understated how dramatic this was for them. Photo shoots for non-pro talent are a big deal, but in this case it was huge.

My feeling is that in order to take good photos you have to really care about the people you are photographing. My approach to the shoot from the very beginning was that we absolutely had to work around the our talent, we had to make the shoot as easy and gradual for them as possible. That meant that we started the first day with simple lifestyle shots, where they could just be themselves. On the final day, we did the hero shots in studio. But you don’t want to put someone who is insecure about how they look in front of a white cyc first thing. You can tell them they look great, but they are not going to believe you.

I have worked in Paris, I’ve shot for V, for Bazaar, for GQ, all big fashion magazines. I know how to make models look great. I use all those same lighting and beauty skills when I worked for Reyataz. There was a moment when Shin, our client, was looking at the monitor during the big hero shots in studio, and he goes silent, his mouth drops open. I ask him if everything is ok. He turns to Zully Ortiz, our wonderful agency producer, and tells her he never imagined that our people would look so great. This is one of those moments that makes my year. That he can feel that way, that our very brave talent can feel like they are super star models, that makes me proud to be a photographer. Thank you Zully for asking me to do this job. It was an amazing experience.

Guys, beach, dog, whats not to like? Well, some real sun would be nice.

Preparing to make night time at the theater with 16x16 black frames.

Its pouring rain outside, but when we are done, it will look great.

Rain in Miami. Here is our fake sun for the cafe shot.

Giving direction on the hair. This is Jeff on set.

At the capture station with Shin, our client, and Zully our agency producer.

Studio with iPad monitor for the Hassy.

Soft box through 1/2 silk on frame as fill in the front. Single head hard light as the main.

Helping Hydeai to feel 6ft tall.

Zully Oritz, agency producer, with our star at the wrap dinner at Tap Tap.

16x16 negative fill on our black out tent. CTO on the main lights. Canon 1DSIII, 35 1.4 at f4

A very brave 4-11 Hydeai as seen in the final take.

Hiram, having never done anything like this before, looking great and feeling great.

This is one of the NYC area only ads. Reasons to love NewYorkers-their sense of humor.

The moving car shot

Getting ready to pull the windshield. Check out that insane tool our glass guy has. How they do this and don't smash the windshield is beyond me.

Shooting the primary image for the driving composite ad

Day 2

Jonathan living out his fantasy

Setting up for the night shot

Night shot lighting the street with flash, kinos, and practicals.

The graffiti wall lit

The "Wrist Breaker" camera rig

With the creatives at the wireless capture station

The premise here was to make the shots look as if they were snapshots. Thus the on-camera flash rig. We ran 3 cameras, Canon 1DSIII with a wireless transmitter, Canon 7D, and a 5DII. There were 2 laptops in the capture station, one for the wireless jpeg previews, and the second that was loading the RAW from cards. Jeff, my digi tech, has SSD drives through out which makes for super fast file transfers. On set, speed rules the day. The 7D is my high speed action cam. It runs at 9 FPS. The files under ASA 400 are fine. The mountain bike guys were shot on that camera with a 16-35. The 5DII is good in low light, and the buffer doesn’t back up like the 1DSIII does. We used that on the girls at the beach shot with 35 1.4. Most of the heavy lifting was done on the 1DSIII. That is what we set up the “Wrist Breaker” rig on. Its a camera, 24-70, pocket wizard, 580EXII, wireless file transmitter, and a Quantum power pack. We melted the front plastic on one of the 580s doing the night shot. To be expected seeing as how we shot about 1500 images as fast as the buffer could handle it.

The night time shot was a rather complex mix of 300,650, and 1 k hotlights, a couple of 4×4 kinos, 3 Pro 7bs, the existing street lights and on camera flash. To get a bit more blur out of the main girl I had my assistant walk with me holding a powerful flashlight on her. We shot these at 1/30 f 5.6 ASA 640.

The moving car shot was done with talent in the parked car and lit with flash. We covered the back and side windows with a silk and blasted them to get some light into the back seat. Then to get the road blur through the back and side windows, we set up a remotely fired camera on a 3 leg camera rig on the hood to match the POV of the main shot. Then I sat on the floor of the back seat with an iPad while my assistant drove the back roads. We did those shots at 5.6 at about 1/8 sec. These were then used as plates to be stripped in to the main in post.

Any questions, give me a shout and I will do my best to answer them.

The above are screen grabs of 3 of the ads. There are billboards, consumer ads, out of home, in addition to electronic media. All shot in Los Angeles. Agency: Full Contact Advertising, Boston. Art Director Adam St John, agency producer Amy Rappaport, Zip Car creative director Brenden Stephens, account management Kay Miller, production Daniel Long for CASEY.

Great people, great fun and much gratitude to Daniel for making the impossible seem so normal.

“The will to systematize indicates a lack of integrity” Neitsche

The hardest thing for a photographer, for an artist, or for a brand, is to know who you and what you stand for. Photographers call it vision, brands call it values. It’s all the same thing. The challenge is how to keep moving forward, not fall into a formula, while at the same time not loosing yourself. My old agent Katy Barker used to tell me that photographers are subject to image whiplash. Every time they see some shiny new technique, or some new trend, they want to adopt it. It is the agent’s job to keep that from happening. My friend Thomas Ruff, the German art photographer, will work for years on something new before he will show it to anyone, that is if he doesn’t just dump the whole thing.

Whatever I shot 10 minutes ago is my all time favorite image. I do a shoot and think I just shot 500 incredible pictures,the best thing ever produce in the history of western art. Then a year later, maybe I will still like one of them. Happens every time, guaranteed.

It’s great meeting other photographers whose work I admire. It doesn’t happen much, especially in our this post-photo lab world. I once met Helmut Newton in a lab in Paris. Awesomely funny guy, sort of scared the shit out of 24 year old me. ” So you like zee pretty girls too, ey? ” Oh, sure, yes Mr Newton, girls are great. Yikes.

Last night I went to Cass Bird’s book signing in LA. I always get a bit nervous before I am go meet other photographers, especially those whose work I think is really good. Movie stars, Noble prize winners, heavy weight champion of the world, presidential candidates, they get respect, but not my teenage awkwardness. Someone whose work is in the same realm as mine, and who I think is really good, that gets my heart fluttering. Just one of those things.

Cass is a really good photographer. I mean really. She has the gift of transparancy, of making a picture with such a lite touch that I don’t even notice her presence. She is one of those photographers from whose photos I learn a lot. Cass gets respect around here.

Her book is a gem. You should buy one today. It is lovingly printed, nicely designed and at about 8×10, a scale that perfectly suites the work. Looking at the book is like dropping into another world, its like a secret garden. Something sort of like what Camus says “Every act of rebellion exposes a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being”. If I could look into the future, I would say this is going to be one of those books that in 30 years will be a classic. I am very proud and very happy to have a signed one in front of me.

As an aside, Cass was totally cool, very glam with her tan and white jacket, beaming with her friendly smile. Awesome Isabel Marrant sneakers by the way. Well done. Hope we get to cross paths again.

Canon 1DSIII, 1/250th, f9.0, ASA 800,24-70 2.8 lens. Copyright 2012 David Harry Stewart