Back on a Tuesday morning in November I received an email containing a shot list for a shoot that Friday. The list was ambitious and designed to fill the needs of a website re-design and new marketing plan. The plan was to pack light (get the double meaning) and move decisively through the list. On paper it seemed like a lot of shots. 20 fixed shots.

I get nervous before any shoot and this was no exception. During a final run-through of our pack list for the day I noticed we were short one umbrella holder. A quick stop at Hunt's camera in Providence on the way down to the shoot and the problem was solved.

I was on familiar ground. I had shot at the location, a flight school, a number of times on my own and had even done some aerial work with them, so the staff were friends. My design company had developed the brand look for the school, so I was very familiar with the company. But, today I was working as a contract photographer for a different creative agency and with each new collaboration comes a touch of nervous energy.

Amie was along to assist, which is invaluable when you are going to be out shooting in the wind with stands. We would be shooting digital with a complete digital workflow. No big surprise right? But, I have an aesthetic preference for film so if time and budget had allowed I may have gone that route (hmm.. kind of long winded way of saying "I like film, but it costs money and time").

The problem I have with film is I love it outdoors and even in a controlled environment. But, with the setup we would be using I would benefit from the immediate digital feedback and using the Nikon CLS (creative lighting system) I could run and gun and setup/breakdown fast. Not only that, but I could control the lighting ratios entirely from the back of my camera wirelessly (I suppose if I had a Nikon F6 I could almost do this on a film camera too; but I don't). So, digital would win the day for this shoot.

Now, I mentioned CLS. This means I wasn't using high-power monoblocks to throw buckets of light on everything. I didn't want to (or need to really). My goal was to fill in the shadows and lend some drama to an already interesting scene. I didn't want to make it "super-real." We're trying to sell an idealized reality of the school, not a mock up of what the perfect school may look like.

Now, because the school wasn't shutting down for us we worked around the students and the regular flight schedule. This turned out to be only marginally annoying. The only glitch was when an off-duty instructor went mattress shopping with his wife. We had to wait a while for him to return to shoot his profile image (but he did return, which was nice of him). Other than that we just took lunch during a flight period and captured the prep and return images before and after.

Moving pilots is a bit like herding cats. Any job that doesn't include "headshot" as a requirement probably means you feel a bit silly being put in front of the camera for work. Still, the pilots (and students) obliged and we got a lot of shots. A handful were nixed due to plane availability or creative reasons. The remainder we got in the can by mid-afternoon (except for the bed buying pilot pic described above).

I held off on telling this tale until the wraps were off the new site. It is up today so I can share too.

At the end of the day we had shot 12-15 set shots, about 14 GB's of data. The only casualty was an umbrella holder that we had picked up in the morning. When a stiff wind took one of the light stands down the umbrella holder shattered (piece of crap). But, perhaps it absorbed the blow because the flash still worked. The batteries had exploded out of the flash through. Still - it worked. No broken lenses or cameras (or people).

One note - just in case it isn't obvious for the non-photographers/creative-fieldworkers. When I say 20 shots or 12-15 shots I'm talking about designed scenarios - not quantity of pictures. For instance 1 of the shots was 10 headshots of the pilot instructors. For each pilot you take a bunch of photos, and there are a bunch of pilots, but it is one basic setup (so one shot in this context).

images ©james p jones 2010. For the most part un-retouched.