Sergio and Don
I love working with a client that knows exactly what he or she wants. That’s not to say, I don’t like freedom to come up with something creative and unique. Instead, it is to say, it’s really nice when someone has a vision and my job, as the photographer, is to create that vision. I’ve worked with both extremes–those that are very specific, down to the most minute detail, and those that would fall into the opposite end of the spectrum. The dilemma that I feel when working without much direction is simply–I don’t know if I’m truly capturing what they want. Sure, I can create a great image (I hope), but does that mean it’s what they want? This isn’t a good feeling, especially when there are thousands of dollars on the line. It’s preferable, to me, to have specifics. On the last job I did with Rolling Stone I received great direction. By the time I was off the phone with the magazine I felt I knew what they wanted, and even more important, what they didn’t want. So, during the shoot, I was really able to hone in on doing a particular thing and find my own creative space within that context.
In the image above I was working directly with the artist, who happens to be a super talented designer as well. When we talked about the shoot, he was very specific with what he wanted. He knew how the image and the design were to fit together before we ever even picked up a camera. He showed me samples and communicated very clearly about his motivation and the look and the overall tone he wanted to achieve. It became a bit of a fun challenge to look exactly at the light and color scheme, composition, positioning, and lens choice to really nail what he was going for. And knowing that we could create exactly what he envisioned — and sign off on it, before moving on, was an absolute great feeling. And, without that kind of direction, I don’t know that I would have made all of those same choices. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have, but I’m glad I did. It all came together pretty wonderfully.
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