Regardless of our methods and techniques, we’re all striving to create a soul in our images.  So it would seem to be an easy task to shoot a town filled with souls.  It would seem…

California is filled with millions of souls and personalities.  Most of the world only hears about the fruits, flakes and nuts that make up the Granola State.  I would like all of you to know that there are heroes who live here, too. They don’t get headlines. In fact, I couldn’t get these pictures or this story published by the one major newspaper or the two local magazines in Fresno. Anti-heroes get press, the story of these volunteers wasn’t considered news.

The souls I refer to are the pilots, doctors, nurses, translators and volunteers of an organization called the Flying Doctors of Mercy. I was fortunate to fly with the Fresno chapter. The short version of their story is that the first weekend of almost every month, private pilots fly their own planes filled with volunteers and supplies to impoverished towns in Mexico.  Planes fly from San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno and other cities to adopted towns deep inside Mexico … far from prosperity and medical expertise.

We departed on a Friday morning before dawn.  It took most of the day to fly to Guasave.  After numerous stops for fuel and after passing through Customs, we landed at a remote airstrip outside of town guarded by the Mexican army. It was important that we landed before sunset because, as we were reminded numerous times, anything flying after sunset would be shot down as a suspected drug runner.

Welcome to Mexico.

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Alyssa

It’s Friday.  The shoot I have planned for tomorrow is a bikini catalog test shoot with one of my favorite models.  I was supposed to do this shoot a week ago but she was booked in LA for a weekend of shoots.  Yes, she’s local but she’ll be national soon. She has a number of looks and all of them are quality.  She’s blessed with brains and beauty. I need to shoot her now before she’s gone for good and I’ll have to buy the magazine to see her latest work. (I’m sure she would take my calls if her assistant knew who I was…)

I picked up the bikinis and met with the owner already. To say this guy has vision is an understatement.  He’ll look at my finished shots and decide in a tenth of a second whether I captured the look he’s after regardless of how many days it took to put this shoot together. These shots have to go ‘bang’ or the whole shoot is a bust. He is the perfect microcosm for the internet age – it’s bang or bust, there are just too many shots and shooters out there now. You have to catch someone’s attention in one second – or less. He’s seen my portfolio so I’m optimistic that I can catch his eye again.

I have to study the shots he already has on his website and in his catalog. Did his previous shooters use reflectors or strobes? Are we leaning towards the natural girl-next-door look or are we turning a corner towards a more glam look and lighting? I need to tell the MUA the look I’m after so she can get to work minutes after arrival if I’m going to keep on my intended schedule.

Oh, and it’s October. We’re shooting test shots for a bikini catalog that gets released in the winter /spring. If I get this contract, where in hell am I going to shoot it? We’re not in Florida, we’re in Fresno. That thought is filed away in the ‘good problems to have’ drawer in the filing cabinet that is my tiny brain, hopefully for not too long.

I also have to get to the studio and pick up the big reflector, the small octabox, three AB800s, CTS gels and stands. Oh, and grab the ringlight in case I need a fill flash or get inspired to shoot with a thousand pounds hanging off my camera. The odds are small but it could happen…

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OK, you beat it out of me.

I cannot draw.

I cannot paint.

But I can paint with light.

From the era of the ‘olde’ masters, artists have been judged as much by their use of shadows as their use of light. In fact, quality of light even took on meaning of its own. A shaft of sunbeam breaking through the clouds was seen as God speaking to a saint. Along the same lines, a shadow dropped across a face created an ambiguity associated with evil.

Today, use of shadow is sometimes considered ‘artsy’, ‘dramatic’ or even ‘edgy’. (BTW, I HATE that word!).

I confess, I love shadows. Lighting for me is a subtractive art. I like to remove all light and then target the light where I want it. I like shadows that are deep and moody. My buddy Rick over at www.unspun.us says that my taste is ‘contrasty’. I like that word, I can live with that.

Today’s shot is a shot I took for Casey Olson, a mixed martial arts fighter from Fresno, CA (www.teamunderdog24.com).

This is not a man who wants to make a ‘good’ first impression. He will give you your first impression thank you and that impression is fear and danger. So how do you light fear and danger? You don’t, you use shadows. Deep, dark intimidating shadows please, there are no saints in discussion with God here. (That is in no way a commentary on Casey – I don’t want him angry with me!)

Ironically, you need lots of lights to pull this off. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor -  to get shadows you need lights?

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Maternal Stillness

We could start this discussion about how the arts are necessary to life. We could opine on the arts are Mankind’s great achievements in spite of Mankind’s great flaws. We could glow about the double fugue ‘Kyrie’ in the Mozart Requiem or the clarity of vision of a Henri Cartier-Bresson. Name a genre and a quick ‘shopping’ list of genuine masterpieces can be compiled, discussed, dissected and ranked.

But when we build this list, and check it twice, we ‘purify’ the art. We extract the times and culture of the artist from the work and view the final product in a sterile lab environment. A college music prof of mine used to say that music was not written in a vacuum. The fact is that few artists enjoyed the fame and fortune in their lives that allowed them to become ‘comfortable’. The word ‘complacent’ is seldom associated with great works.

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