Isaac A. Sanch Photography

It speaks something to the character of America that people can get arrested for taking a picture of a subway station.

Fear really does seem to rule out common sense sometimes. Like when police harass and then arrest people for the legal activity of taking pictures of a New York subway station with an ordinary digital SLR camera. yup, it happens; February 12th of this year a guy named Robert Taylor was arrested for taking photos of the Freeman Street station in the Bronx. Did I mention that taking photos of the subway isn’t illegal?

The new york times article was titled “No Photo ban In Subways, Yet an Arrest,” an accurate title to be sure, but it doesn’t quite cover the level of absurdity that exists in the paranoia inherant in trying to ban photography in the first place. First and foremost, the idea that making photographs in certain locations illegal will suddenly make us all safer is a total load of crap. Camera phones are everywhere now, are the police going to arrest anybody that holds up a phone and takes a picture of their group of friends? no. They’re going to arrest the guy with the expensive looking DSLR. Nevermind that an even remotely competant person with the slightest inkling of ill intention isn’t going to traipse around so obviously. No, a terrorist is going to make his plans using crappy cell phone images or quick shots with a little pocket camera.

I ran into this crap a few years ago myself when waiting for a flight to Israel. I was asked not to take pictures of the 747 I was going to be getting onto while 10 other people had been running over to the window with crappy pocket cameras to do the same damn thing. Apparently I must have been concentrating too much and taking too long trying to have a decently composed image. I’ll never understand what it is about a professional camera that automatically makes people think “that guy MUST be up to something.”

Somehow having a little authority seems to make people lose all damn sense.

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The second shoot for the semester on a technical level went much smoother. I finally got my flash syncs, so i was able to get set up far more easily and on the lighting level didn’t run into any serious issues.

The counter-point to that is that this outing there was a very different mood to the shoot location. From the moment of walking in to the moment of walking out there seemed to be a distinct feeling about the place. Tension. To put it to the least, I had a really hard time trying to figure out how to handle the atmosphere. I found myself distracted by the mood, more persuant to keeping the model in the moment of the shoot. I found myself doing my best just to follow into the concept rather than create.

I got some wonderful images from the shoot and overall it feel like it ended as a positive experience, but I don’t know how just the general atmosphere of the moment may influence future shoots.

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I decided it is time to get my arse into gear shooting for the semester. So, a few weeks ago I started contacting models and places to shoot. One thing leads to another and I’m thrown the contact info for a friend of a friend named Guy. I get a hold of Guy on the phone (because he has one of the most amazingly photo friendly bohemian houses I’ve ever stepped foot into) to plan a shoot at his place with one of the models I have worked with before. Turns out, he has a model living with him: Jenni Lee. I’m put on the phone with Jenni and we agree to meet up last saturday to talk about shooting.

Saturday comes and David comes by to pick me up (the friend who knows Guy.) I grab my lighting gear and camera to bring with me on impulse. Good thing I did too, Jenni Lee was happy to shoot that day and egged two other people to join the fun; Michelle and Andrew. Jenni is an amusing little sprite with a penchant for being lighthearted, random, and bubbly. Michelle is Guy’s live-in girlfriend and a beautiful and entertaining young woman. Andrew… what to say of Andrew? He’s quiet, very quiet, but seemed like a very nice guy.

[at this moment Isaac runs off to rescue the can of Pam cooking spray from his three year old son]

We end up hanging out for an hour or so just talking while Jenni makes a stir fry (delicious.) After that, Jenni Lee and Michelle end up finding themselves perching on a little pass-through between the kitchen and the living room. Watching them a light bulb pops on in my head and says *PERFECT!*. In my usual glib witticism I look at the ladies (Andrew is not here at this point) and ask “so, when are you ladies going to get naked for me.” (maybe this is one of those things you just had to be there for, but at that moment with the content of the conversation it was entirely appropriate; oh, and guy contributed to wanting to use the shot to photograph based off of an existing snapshot that had been taken of the ladies sitting there before.)

I set up my lights and start getting shots of the ladies literally perched up in this little space between the two rooms. It was a wonderful spot to shoot (despite fighting with both the backdrop and the lights for the better part of an hour.) I started out shooting with the lighting around front and back so that both foreground and background were lit… but the images didn’t feel right, so I switched to just a strong silhouette idea. Without radio slaves… backlighting an image using strobes is a lot harder than one might think… it involved using a 580EX just firing its IR to trip a 430EX which could then fire the main strobe by the flash from the 430EX. (My first priority after getting home that night was to purchase my new MicroSync transmitter and receivers.)

After shooting for quite a while in that space we took a break and then went for a major change of pace upstairs. we commandeered the use of Guy’s shower… and interesting little space consumed by the appearance that it is dingy and very dirty, when in reality it is grout that lends to the appearance and not actual dirt. I’ve never shot near any sort of falling water before and I must say that the fear of electrocution and damaged equipment was in my mind the entire time while shooting. In this space, with its distressed appearance I found myself tending to shoot a darker, more moody image and somehow it worked.

We finished shooting, a short while later said our thank yous and goodbyes and we left in a manner almost as strangely as we had started. I think that may be the way Guy’s place just works.

…

The next day I post a few of the rough images to DeviantART and find that every one of the images enjoys more views than any other image I have ever posted. I definitely feel like I’ve done something right.

Later in the week (wednesday) I show some of the roughs to my professor… after a couple discussions and some encouragement on my direction for my portfolio for the class we decide I should continue on the silhouette series as the content of my portfolio for the semester in the form of a gesture study within the space. (A moment which made me exceedingly happy.) As soon as I could I called Jenni Lee and she was on for another shoot for Friday the 20th. Here’s looking forward to it!

Photography Gesture Study, Lighting, Nudes, Phoography

My boss changed web hosts and all I got was this empty blog…

I’m working on it, but in all odds because our old host did some really stupid things I likely won’t be able to get the old blog entries back. (Just to add insult to injury I’m going to have to pretty much rebuild my gallery from scratch.)

Web Blog, Epic Fail