6/18/13 – You can spend days producing, prepping, and planning for an important day, but it’s the things your can’t plan for that you’re always going to remember. It doesn’t really matter if they are positive experiences or if they are something you’d like to forget. Today was one of those days that turned out better than expected and the strange surprises made it just right.

We were dreading today’s shoot a bit. The projected high temperature was 110 degrees. We knew we’d be working hard, and moving quickly for at least 8 hours. We were prepped with gallons of water, a toxic amount of sunscreen, and outfitted my favorite shooting camoes. No matter how much the sun wanted to beat us down, we were ready.

In an uncalculated turn of events, I forgot that we’d be shooting in the mountains – about 7500 ft above sea level. Although the sun was strong, the temperature never broke 85. It was wonderful.

The project we’re working on has us photographing some unique people that put in some very valuable work for our country. Part of my process in going into a shoot is trying to understand a person as much as possible before I actually meet them (I don’t recommend this for everyone, it’s just the nature of our brief exposures with people). To meet someone who you have great expectations for and then be further impressed isn’t something I run into very often. Today was just one of those lucky days.

Did you know that Ladybugs have nests?If you step on a ladybug nest and aren’t aware because you’re completely focused on finishing a photograph, did you know that the Ladybugs will rapidly race up your bare legs like lemmings rushing for the cliffs. I learned all about this today.

Questions? Comments? Let us know below or @Crismanphoto or /Crismanphoto on Facebook. Cheers!

6/17/13 – Mondays are always tough. I’m on the road quite a bit and when a get chance to spend time at home, I like to shut off work as much as possible. Being that this past weekend included Father’s Day, transitioning back to work was particularly unfriendly. Couple that with a 6:00 AM call time trip to the airport, and I just had to take a deep breath and shuffle along.

We travel so much now that we’ve developed a system for every part of the process. We have to pack the right numbers of bags right up to the 50 pound limit as to not get hit with one of the big over the top fees that the airlines would love to charge you. We know the area of the parking lot to head to in order increase our chances of finding our car in a week. There are a few other things that aren’t worth mentioning, but you probably get the idea. We take pride in making the airport transfer process a smooth ride. (For a bit more technical approach to how we travel, you may want to take a look at our blog post on the subject.)

In our time of unlimited wireless connectivity, I still have a very hard time keeping up with my email. If I’m shooting more than 3 days a week, it is impossible to keep my inbox at zero. The flights are usually my best opportunity to get caught up and also keep my mind organized for what lies ahead of us. However, unending shooting also creates a backlog of other work processes to keep up with.

Today’s flight was an editing day, a mental prep day for this week’s shoots, and then a chunk of time being spent on overseeing the post production coming out of our studio right now. That said, if anyone reading this was expecting an email from me, I’ll advise you to email Robert this week if you need something quickly. (He’s not kidding. studio@crismanphoto.com is always available for emails).

This is one of those weeks that I feel more like a trucker/traveling salesman/wifi hotspot and less like a photographer. We’re going to hit 5 states in a week and most days we won’t have time to sit down and have a meal with the unique people we’re going to meet. There is a certain pace to things these days that is just what you have to do to make it all work.

This post may sound like I’m complaining, but don’t be fooled.  I am grateful to be here, and there, and everywhere, doing exactly what I’m doing.

Questions? Comments? Let us know below or @crismanphoto or /Crismanphoto on facebook. Cheers!

To accomplish this, the Crisman team is dividing and conquering for the next week. Chris and photo assistant David Ohl will be traveling and shooting all week on and editorial project while I’m staying back in Philadelphia to hold down the fort – and of course, post their updates as they get relayed back to home base.

As we’re posting this, Chris and David are 30,000 feet up in the air, on their way to Phoenix, Arizona to start an adventure that will take them from the scorching deserts of the southwest, through the grand natural beauty of Yellowstone, and up north to the big sky country of Idaho before returning to the east coast. Until next Monday they have two airports, eight cities, dozens of energy drinks, thousands of miles and a ton of photos to look forward to. Stay tuned as their week unfolds, delivered to you daily here on the blog, @crismanphoto or on our Facebook page.

After blogging about Chris’s recent shoot with author Lauren Kessler where he traveled to the coast of Oregon, I was reminded of a previous trip to the pacific ocean, almost three years ago. In the fall of 2010, Chris visited Olympic National Park and the Hoh Rainforest to create a portfolio of stunning landscape images.

Olympic National Park offers an incredibly diverse landscape, everything ranging from sweeping and rocky Pacific coastline, to glacial mountains, arid forests, and even one of the largest temperate rainforest in North America.

Chris shot for days, hiking through the landscape and photographing the different climates and scenery the park had to offer.

Although we’d shot a few landscapes before, this trip really kicked off the start of our landscape portfolio. Ever since visiting the Hoh Rainforest, we’ve made a point to search out places that can offer similar natural beauty in our travels.

Make sure to take a moment and see more shots from this portfolio as well as other landscape imagery in their full-sized glory over at crismanphoto.com.

When we took the assignment to shoot the anti-aging author Lauren Kessler for Prevention Magazine we knew it would be a wild ride. Little did we know that our shoot would take us as far west as the Pacific ocean to make the photos that ran. Keep reading for a few more shots and a handful of behind the scenes from our trip to the Pacific Northwest…

Working with our editors at Prevention, we knew that we wanted a location that spoke to the natural beauty and natural renewal of our subject (and author of the article). Being on the Eastern Seaboard, we relied on the expertise of our location scouts to find the perfect spot to shoot

It almost feels like when working on the Pacific coast, you can’t go wrong. After Chris touched down in Portland, he hit the road and headed to the coast. We scouted and shot near the Heceta Head Lighthouse on a small coastline close to Lauren Kessler’s home.

Thanks to the scouting work of Portland based all-star assistant Ben Cort, we knew we’d found the perfect spot. Where else could you capture the natural beauty of the Northwest coupled with a beautiful and engaging photo subject?

Working on the coast meant that we kept our setup light and mobile – one octabank balanced against the ambient light. We also made sure to be ready at a moment’s notice for a rogue wave or tidal surge. Trust me, you don’t want to mix flash heads and salt water.

I should make note for all the assistants out there – if you look closely at the flash head the octabank is mounted on, you’ll notice it is wrapped in a piece of cinefoil which helps to protect it from the salt spray when working on the beach or in a misty environment. Trust me, it’s the little things that matter.

When you’re working in an amazing location and have a helpful and photogenic subject, it’s the perfect recipe for a successful shoot. Our day with Lauren Kessler was an inspiring introduction to shooting in Oregon – hopefully we’ll be back there soon.

Any questions? Comments? Let us know below or @crismanphoto!

We’re back at it down in Texas, wrapping up our final week of shooting for the massive San Antonio project we’ve been working on since April. This week has seriously flown by, taking us everywhere from vineyards to rodeos, museums to Hindu temples, and back to the studio to shoot some very fiery action.

With dozens of days of shooting and hundreds of images captured already, wrapping up this week feels a bit like putting in the last few pieces to a jigsaw puzzle – wish I could say more but the final results will speak for themselves. For now though, keep reading to see more from our week…

We kicked off the week by packing our bags and hoping back on a flight down to the fine (and now very familiar) city of San Antonio.

Our shoots over the past few days took us from the studio photographing traditional Spanish dancers…

… to a real deal Texas rodeo to shoot some bareback bucking bronco riders. Don’t worry, no animals or photographers were harmed in the making of these photos.

We’ve spent long days all over the city finishing up the photos we’ll need to make this campaign happen. We even got to play with fire in the studio for an afternoon and light up a few luminaria lanterns. It may be a while, but you’ll see them and everything else in the final advertisements once we can release them.

And what’s a week of crazy shooting without a trip to the Texas wine country? Too bad we were there first thing in the morning and missed out on a complimentary tasting.

As far as what you may have missed these past few weeks on the internet:

 - We shared a teardown and breakdown of how we supercharged our newest Macbook pro

 - We went behind the scenes with photos and our story of shooting Philadelphia’s gossip king, Dan Gross

 - Our rep Heather Elder has part I of an excellent interview showcasing art producer’s point of view on portfolio review events

 - She’s also released part II of the same series

 - The Strobist takes a riff on our coiling cables blog post. Excellent read.

 - APhotoEditor has good advice for photo assistants on trying to work with production companies

Last but not least…

Sometimes you just need a really tall tripod to make it happen.

These days, it’s not often that we’re shooting in Philadelphia. Most of our assignments take us all over the place, and when we are back in the city of brotherly love, we enjoy a brief respite to get organized and recharge before we had back out on the road. If our friends at Philadelphia Magazine call, it’s a different story – especially if they call asking us to shoot one of our cities most iconic gossip columnists.

Dan Gross has been Philadelphia’s go-to gossip guy since 2004 and last month we welcomed him to our studio for a day of shooting. Keep reading to see the results, as well as some behind the scenes photos and stories…

For a gossip icon like Dan Gross, we knew there would only be one setting appropriate enough to serve as a backdrop for the shoot – our local Philadelphia newspapers themselves.

After a day of set-building with the art and photo team at Philadelphia Magazine, our studio was covered in newsprint and ready to shoot

We built out an additional wall of newspapers for our subject to interact with – only to learn (as it might seem obvious from the photo above) that hundreds upon hundreds of sheets of very thin paper aren’t exactly the most willing subjects.

After some very creative architecture, we finally had piles and piles of newspaper to work with.

We knew that in terms of lighting, it was important to focus in on Dan, creating some nice shape and contrast, but at the same time, illuminating the newspapers and background accordingly.

In order to achieve this light, we used a gridded octabank for our key, along with a large octabank behind camera as a fill – we also made use of a gridded extra small softbox for a touch of catch-light from the top of our set. The light provided a perfect mix of shape and contrast on our subject as well as catching and highlighting the newspapers that rained down on him.

And of course, no photoshoot would be complete without a few test shots. Ridiculous photos aside, Philadelphia Magazine has an incredible article written by the gossip kings himself – Dan Gross. Do yourself a favor and take the time to read it.

Want to know more? Any questions? Let us know in the comments or @crismanphoto!

When it comes to upgrading a core piece of technology for the studio, we have two essential criteria we need to think about. First, we shoot a helluva lot of photos. Second, we’re on the road most of the year. With these key factors in mind, we need a laptop that can handle whatever we throw at it. Our macbooks need to be both processing powerhouses and jam packed with as much storage as we can fit.

Monday we might be shooting tethered in studio in NYC and Tuesday we’ll be out in the deserts of New Mexico – we never really know what shoot scenarios to expect so we have to plan for anything. Our newest piece of technology looks like a standard Macbook Pro on the outside, but under the hood is where things get a bit different. Keep reading for the breakdown of our new, ridiculously fast laptop…

Alright, let’s start with the basic numbers, the cold hard facts – here are the specs of this monster laptop once we’re finished with all of the modifications:

- 2.7GHz Quad-core i7
- 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Expercom SDRAM
- 960GB Solid State Expercom Drive
- 1.0TB additional Hard Drive
- MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen Display

Based on the criteria listed above, we need a super-fast processor paired with as much RAM as we can realistically cram inside the laptop. In addition to that we need to max out the storage in every possible way and we can’t forget the fact that we need a matte screen. The newest generation Macbooks may have retina displays and all that fanciness, but you try to use a glossy screen in the middle of the desert and let us know what you think.

Now, I should explain that our laptop didn’t arrive stock with all of these crazy specs. It came into the studio with a ton of RAM and a fast processor, but we worked a little bit of magic to maximize the hard drive space.

How did we do it? Well, we can never quite leave things alone when we get new pieces of equipment – hence the Frankenstein modifications. The process isn’t exactly rocket science, but you have to be careful to remember which wires get removed where to plug them all back in again.

It also helps when you have guys like Jared or I in the studio who jump at any opportunity to void a warranty. The first step after we take the aluminum underside off is to (very) carefully remove the optical drive and set it aside in the event we’ll ever need to take the Macbook in for service.

After we remove the optical drive, the space is filled with a 1 terabyte storage drive mounted in an OWC Data Doubler bracket. The bracket acts as SATA bridge between the additional drive and the existing SATA ports intended for the Superdrive we previously removed.

A few screws later and the bottom aluminum panel is replaced and the dual-drive monster is ready to go. A quick format through disk utility and we have a screaming fast 1TB SSD operating system drive paired with an additional 1TB of storage.

How does this all factor into our workflow? It’s simple. When we’re on the road, we shoot tethered and download or CF cards to the 1tb storage drive. We also keep an identical external backup just in case something unfortunate were to happen.

There you have it – the real deal of facts about what makes our newest laptop screaming fast. Whether it’s a nonstop day of tethered shooting, a massive run batch processing, or even some on-set retouching, there’s nothing this new Macbook can’t handle.

Any questions? Did we miss any details? Make sure to let us know in the comments or @crismanphoto. Oh and please do us a favor and just don’t tell Apple about our little modifications…

I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since my last wrap-up. I swear it feels like three days, maximum. Even if I don’t believe it, the past fourteen days have kept us busy shooting editorial and advertising work all over the Philadelphia and NYC area. When we weren’t off shooting, we we back at home base in the studio, getting organized and gearing up for the next set of adventures on the horizon. Want a closer look?  Keep reading for what we’ve been up to for the past two weeks…

The weather in Philly is finally getting hot, and with that comes summer showers – and in our case, having to build in rain days into all of our productions and having to delay a few shoots every now and then.

Even if we got rained out, there was still plenty to keep us busy in the studio. We were hard at work Frankenstining Chris’s new laptop with a super-fast dual 1tb storage system. Just don’t tell Apple we opened up the brand new Macbook.

We also found our way to a radio station for a morning of shooting some editorial portraits.

And what would any weekly wrap up be without a wonderful test shot of yours truly? I call this my “did that octabank just fire?” face.

As far as what you may have missed these past few weeks on the internet:

 - We shared new portraits of eclectic candy shop owners, the Berley Brothers

 - In honor of their 1.1 Billion dollar acquisition by Yahoo, went back to 2011 to a shoot with Tumblr CEO David Karp

- We shared our first in the series of “Required Reading” blog posts

- Fellow photographer Ryan Donnell gave us his meaning of  life in 10 questions

 - Our rep Heather Elder was kind enough to showcase some of Chris’s newest directing work on her blog

 - Contraversey swirled over a winning entry in the World Press Photo Awards

Last but not least…

Sometimes you just catch a perfectly setup found still-life in the corner of the studio.

You know it’s going to be a good day on set when Smithsonian Magazine calls and asks us to shoot in a candy store. To further sweeten the deal (no pun intended), we were tasked to make portraits of the Berley brothers – dapper proprietors of Shane Confectionery, the oldest candy shop in the country. Famous for their zealous attention to authenticity and  incredible confectionery creations, we spent the good part of a day with Eric and Ryan, taking pictures and making candy.  Keep reading for the rest of our story…

Contrary to what you might think – we did not travel back in time for this shoot. The Berley brothers take great care to tailor themselves to match the vintage aesthetic of their candy store.

Shooting in the antique storefront presented some unique challenges for us – we took care to position our octabanks in between low-hanging light fixtures and the over 150 year old details of the store.

After spending the morning making pictures downstairs, we made our way to the original upstairs kitchen where the Berley brothers and their staff of confectioners make the candy – the old fashioned way.

From original copper kettles to vintage sugar pulling machines, no small detail is overlooked in their rigorous quest for authenticity.

As an artist, it’s always inspiring to watch others who are so deeply involved in their craft. The level of care and attention to detail that goes into every piece of candy that comes out of that kitchen certainly shows. We left the shoot feeling lucky to have met and worked with the Berley brothers that day.

I know you’ve been wondering – the answer is yes, we ate plenty of candy that day. If you find yourself in the city of brotherly love, make sure to take time and stop by Shane Confectionery – between the incredible vintage look and feel and the equally tasty chocolates, you won’t be disappointed.