FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Timothy Hogan
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen talks to Timothy Hogan, award-winning tabletop film director and stills photographer.
Click here to visit Timothy's website.
This podcast is brought to you by FRAMES, a high-quality quarterly printed photography magazine, and its accompanying international photography membership.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
Every time you click that shutter, two bucks, two bucks, two bucks. Or if you're shooting four by five, ten bucks, or if you're shooting eight by ten, fifty bucks. You know, it it made you think, it made you stop. And rather than just uh click and see what happens, it's like, I'm gonna go through the scene and I'm gonna use my light meter and I'm gonna look at it and I'm gonna take some time and it slows you down, and there are connections that I think the human brain makes in that slower pace that um aren't it's not made in the quicker digital phase.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_03Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and today, my folks, I am so excited for today. We are going into an area of photography that I find brilliant. And I mean that in in both ways, intellectually brilliant uh as well as just brilliant on the page or the wall or the screen. We are talking about product photography. We're talking about high-speed cinematography. We are talking about the kind of work that we see every single day that is meant to reach out and make us feel something, make us react, make us want, or make us reject. Um, incredibly, incredibly powerful work. And I gotta tell you, I mean, if you go to Google and you just type in who is the best product photographer working right now, one name's gonna keep coming up over and over and over again, and that's Timothy Hogan. Timothy has got a list of awards that just goes on and on. Everything from, you know, golden, what is it, golden uh silver medals from Graphis Photo Annual. Uh, we're talking Communication Photo Arts Awards, and his list of clients. Oh my heavens. If you go to his website and you just start typing and say accessories, there's Tommy Hilbert, Hilver, Hil, come on, Scott, I can say that. Tommy Hilbert, I can't say that today. Hilfiger, Hilfiger, okay. Calvin Klein, there's one I can say. Uh Tommy Bahama, it just goes on. Maybelline. If you go look at old cosmetics, let's say. The clients, there's Morphe, there's Glamgow Medmund, there's Olay, there's I mean, it just goes on and on. We're talking the A-list of product photography through beverages, through watches, through you name it. And I'm excited because I look at this work and it's like looking at industrial light and magic. It is just absolutely, from a technical point of view and from an aesthetic point of view, really at the pinnacle of what a lot of what our work can do. So we get to talk to the very best. Tim, how are you doing today? Welcome for to the podcast.
SPEAKER_04I am doing great and thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_03You know, Tim, you don't just wake up one day and say, you know, I'm gonna call Maybelline and ask to do one of their shots. You know, everybody's got an origin story to get into photography. Everybody's got a way that the image first got into their head. Yeah. Now, I do I do know that you grew up in Connecticut. I do know that you studied philosop uh photography with a minor in marketing over at Syracuse. But what I don't know is is how you got from fifth grade to Syracuse. I don't know where the image became something that you were attracted to.
SPEAKER_04Oh man. So it was a bit of a guess, to be completely honest with you. Um I guess a good guess. I'm still here, I don't know however many years later that is. Um, but I originally uh had been at Syracuse looking at Syracuse because uh I wanted to be a flight nurse. I was an EMT in high school. Oh, really? Yeah, I was an EMT in high school. Um, grew up in a small town in Connecticut, and uh us high school kids were the EMT technicians, um, oddly enough. Um and so I was like, I want to be on LifeStar, one of the uh the helicopters or whatever. So found Syracuse for that, then uh got interested in computer science um in you know in high school and was like, oh, I want to be a computer programmer and went up to Syracuse for one of the Fall Friday weekends where they pay off the weather gods and it's not snowing, it's beautiful, and you're like, oh, this is amazing. Oh man, I see every parent's weekend is or every it was it's our fall Fridays, it's always beautiful, it's always perfect. I don't know how they manage it. Um so I go up there and I'm up there with my dad, and we're looking at uh we're we're touring the engineering and computer science things, and they're actually doing early CGI, which they called ray tracing back in the day. And I remember much less about that, and much more about seeing a computer lab filled with you know monitors and whatever, and went to myself as uh I just went and I was like, I don't want to do this for eight hours a day. I don't want to sit at this computer. It's like I can't do this. And it was one of those moments where where I was just like, nope. All right, I gotta rethink this whole thing. Okay. And uh I went back to the what's it, the Shine Student Center and the auditorium, and I was literally flipping through the course book, big fat, like phone book looking thing. And um, you know, like, what do I do with my life? You know, what's on page 183? And uh photojournalism was up there, and I went, oh, that sounds cool. I'll do that.
SPEAKER_03I would say, no, it's there could be, but you had two options because there's photography in the art department, and there's photography in communications. And they're not exactly the same thing.
SPEAKER_04No, very different, especially up there. Um, I was towards a communication side. I've never been, I'm very technical. I wouldn't call myself artistic in the I have something to say about things category. Um, and I'm a very technical person. I love building things and you know, mechanics and engineering and that kind of thing. So the communication school at New House struck me as the best uh best place. Um, and it was photojournalism at the time, right? And and I didn't even see the product side of it, the commercial photography side of that, of it at that point. Maybe I skipped that page and started doing photojournalism. And yeah, it was all right. I got to work with the camera and shoot stuff and whatever. And at some point I found I talked my way into getting into one of the photo studios. So normally there's uh you couldn't get access to the photo studio itself there until uh like the second year. Somehow I weasel my way in. I was kind of good at talking myself into access.
SPEAKER_03Now, by studio, do you mean the dark room or do you mean the whole setup with lights and no the actual the actual studio?
SPEAKER_04Um and I remember being entranced with the four by five camera and going out and buying film for it, and and my I think my first shots in studio, I was trying to do some like Oakley sunglasses on black with with uh uh dry ice smoke, and I couldn't figure out and we were using hotlights and I couldn't find out or figure out why the ice, the the smoke wasn't showing up. You know, it was like all these things, but uh you know, swinging for the bleachers right off the bat. And um, and then I just I just got hooked, man. I got hooked with the studio. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, but you know, you you say you didn't you you weren't artistic in in the you know, I've got something to say, but you I mean you are a woodworker as well. So I mean you do have an artistic bent.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I would have I would say I have an aesthetic. I would say I instead of an artistic bent, I have an aesthetic bent. Um, I like making beautiful things. I like things that last and people can appreciate and you know, a print for me up on the wall if I'm doing photographies. That's that's that's what it's about. It's about making the physical piece, is what I like, what I like the best. So I think there's a physicality in all the work. Um as to the artistic side of things, I don't have huge comments about society and you know, blah, blah, blah, art speak type stuff. It's more I just appreciate beautiful things and enjoy making them.
SPEAKER_03Did you just fall out of love then with photojournalism? The city councils and the traffic accidents didn't hold it for you?
SPEAKER_04It didn't hold it. I was I remember going to protests in Albany, and I was like, okay, first off, it was kind of butting your camera into um into people's lives at like kind of some often their worst moment, you know, and I was like, this just feels a little intrusive. Um and there was no making. You were taking pictures, not making pictures.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And these days you are certainly, certainly making pictures. Yes, you know, from scratch. I can't wait to talk about some of the work that you're doing now and the relationships you've got there. But but I'm still curious, man, because say so you're a junior, you're a senior, it's Syracuse. That's still a long way from getting in any kind of a door.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, absolutely. Um, and at that point, so let's see here. I was also super aggressive in terms of reaching out to people uh other than school. So uh between my freshman and sophomore year, I started cold calling uh photography stores in Hartford, Connecticut, um, which is uh I grew up in Ellington, Connecticut, kind of outside about half an hour outside of Hartford. And I called a store called Simons Photographic, owned by Mike Simons. And uh Anita Hill, I believe was her last name. I called up and I was like, hey, you know, I'm I'm Tim. I'm I'm back from school. Are you, you know, are you guys hiring? And she's like, we were just talking about needing somebody. And so I went in the next day, got the job. They had basically it was more the more pro-oriented shop in all of Connecticut. So you had a lot of the corporate industrial shooters, the guys who worked for the insurance companies or Pratt and Whitney. So I was able to sell all these pros film um back in the good old days, right? I was able to get discounts on film. Mike had a small studio with a small rental department, so I had access to hostile blods and mamias and all this kind of stuff. And then I also got introduced to all the shooters in the area and start, so I started assisting um photographers in my um basically summer between freshman and sophomore year of college.
SPEAKER_03So you're you're 19 years old and and you're assisting with the A-list photographers in Connecticut and New York.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh, not New York yet. Um New York was the next summer. I between junior and senior year, um, there was a Syracuse alum named Jeff Lakata, a fashion photographer, uh, and I went down and assisted him for the summer. Stayed in a really sweaty, smelly apartment in Chinatown. And uh with one air conditioner that barely worked in like a Chinese food store and a and a welding shop downstairs. The smells were just incredible. The glamorous life of a photographer, yeah. Oh, the glamorous life, you know, hot New York City summer. Um and yeah, assisted him. And uh that was a well, that was that was an eye-opener to the you know the the fashion world, you know, shooting at Pier 59 and and all that kind of stuff. And I mean, I was just a sponge, right? Like just just soaking it all in.
SPEAKER_03Well, what what were some of the early lessons? I mean, what what what did you sponge up?
SPEAKER_04What didn't I sponge up? I mean, I was thinking about this the other day, and you know, I was, you know, one of my pet peeves on set now is like messy non-coiled cords, right? And one of the very, very first, the very first assisting job I had in Connecticut, we were shooting at the DMV, like shooting people getting their cars smogged, like real glamorous stuff. Um, and it was my first assisting job ever, and I don't remember this guy's name right now. Um and uh I that was let's just call it a comment, some feedback was like, get your effing chords together, kind of thing. Make sure those cords are dressed, and from that day on, it was like, nope, we gotta, you know, core cords have to be coiled a certain way, dressed next to the pack, all that kind of stuff. So that was one of the early technical ones. Um and oh, so many stories. I think assisting is just it's one of the things that I wish, and we'll maybe get into this. I wish younger photographers took that path rather than just going out and trying it on their own, watching YouTube videos and thinking they can do everything. Um I really wish there was more of an apprentice style um assisting uh roadmap that people respected. Um I sound like the grumpy old photographer right now. Respect. Um, but that's not what I mean. I just think there's lessons there that you don't that you don't get on your own. Um because you're just making your own mistakes and the amount of the amount of education that you get by seeing how it's done at a high level is um it's worth its weight in gold. And it's worth being patient at that time in your career versus just going straight out and trying to get clients.
SPEAKER_03You know, patience is is is stock and trade for photographers. It's something that we've absolutely every single one of us needs to have and have more of, no matter how much we've got. Um in those early shots, though, you know, with fashion, there's a community there. There's not only the shooter, there's the model, there's the makeup, there's the hair, and then there are those other people called art directors or or whatever that are hanging around. Um tell me about that part of the early education because I mean you you define that world now. You've got teams, you've got, um, I mean, you're hiring according to your website. You all sorts of stuff is going on where you've got to wrangle two to 20 people, all of whom are trying to get to the same end zone, but may not have the same way of thinking about it.
SPEAKER_04I would reframe that instead of saying wrangle is my goal in building a team is to find and collaborate with people who are better than me in every way at whatever their their job is. And I think that should be the goal of everybody building a team is you know surround yourself with people better than you, period. Hard it's hard to do. Um and it takes um it takes some recalibrating of I think ego a little bit. Um I'm I'm definitely a person who like I I like to do things very well and I like to know a lot of things, and so I'm always getting my hands into other into other departments um, you know, business a little bit. And you know, it's it's a I have you know, however many years later this is, you know, it's still uh it's still a work in progress. But um yeah, that's that's always the goal is is to kind of surround yourself with a crew that when you're humbled by your crew, that's how you know it's the right people.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_03Um, I don't want to jump too far forward, but you know, a couple of things in doing my research you said that that have really struck me, and and something you just said I want to go back to about um shooting outside with fashion, because um I won't talk about issues of light and controlling light with that. But you're old enough to have begun your career in film. Yes. Um and you said something you really think that everybody uh needs to you know have a film foundation. And but the reason why you gave in this another interview said because there's there's consequence when you're using film. Yes. Um and and I thought that was a really interesting, cool word to use. Um you said there's there's no consequence to digital.
SPEAKER_04Um what do you mean? So when I was in my first studio, um, I rented a little 500 square foot studio, split it with another photographer on 29th Street in New York. Um it's when I was still assisting and I was shooting at night. I think my last night uh or my last week assisting, I think I worked like a hundred hours straight or something like that. It was like just ridiculous. I don't even know how I did it at that point. Um, but if I wanted to do a beauty test, it was, you know, you had to put together, obviously put together your model and your crew and whatever, but you also spent four to five thousand dollars a day in film and processing. And so you had to get it right. Um, and every time you hit that shutter, you knew that there was a cost involved. Uh, you know, a roll of 120 on the Mamiya 6.7, you were talking, you know, hard cost back then 20 bucks, if not more, for a single roll of film. Right. You know, so eat every time you click that shutter, two bucks, two bucks, two bucks. Or if you're shooting four by five, ten bucks, or if you're shooting eight by ten, fifty bucks. You know, it it made you think, it made you stop. And rather than just a click and see what happens, it's like I'm gonna go through the scene and I'm gonna use my light meter and I'm gonna look at it and I'm gonna take some time and it slows you down, and there are connections that I think the human brain makes in that slower pace that um aren't it's not made in the quicker digital pace. Now, there's there's things to be said for the immediate feedback of the faster digital pace. Um, but I think there's a learning process that um is uh there's a learning process that is more felt and um I don't know, cellular in a way, if we're getting deep about it, yeah, in that slower method of learning.
SPEAKER_03I I agree a thousand percent. Uh short while ago, a group of friends of mine uh and I, we got together, and we were all shooting with digital cameras these days, but we've all still got film cameras somewhere. Uh and we said, okay, gang, we're all gonna go, each of us is gonna get a roll of Tri-X, and we're gonna go back. Um, and we promised ourselves to put on a little exhibition at a gallery here in town, um, no matter what the work was. If we completely blew it, it was gonna go up on the wall. Cool. Um and if it was, you know, and we all reported the same thing, and that was the mindfulness, the intentionality, the the complete reorienting of the speed to think about the image in its technical aspects, its aesthetic, its composition. Um do you do you think the 18-year-olds will buy that? Or or is is this the old folks talking?
SPEAKER_04Oh boy. Um I don't know. I there there definitely is a resurgence with with film right now. I think in a little bit of a novelty way, um there's still a technical aspect to the film shooters that I see now that it's not like when we were shooting Chrome back in the day and you had to, you know, nail your exposure within a quarter of a stop, right? That's not what's going on right now. It's a little bit more run and gun and oh, the negatives then and uh well, we'll just fix it later, you know, kind of thing. Still a different, um, a different uh the precision isn't necessarily there. But hey, to the 18-year-olds, go get a film camera and try it out. See how your own process um differs by shooting film, um, and or by shooting it and not, I think the other thing is, especially if you're shooting film, you just you know, click, shutter goes click, and you're like, maybe I got it, maybe I didn't. And we'll see, you know, in a couple weeks when it comes back in. I'm not chimping the back of the camera to see if there's so I like, I like, especially when I travel shooting film, because it's like click, great, and I'm gonna keep walking because uh there I can't sit here and and look at my screen and make certain it's perfect. It's just you got you did what you did and you move on.
SPEAKER_03One other mentor that that you've talked about in other places, Elon Rubin. Yeah, tell me the influence there.
SPEAKER_04There was a lot, there was Elon was a fantastic guy to work with. Um gave us as assistants um a lot of leeway um in terms of doing the shot and and um you know coming to him with the results. And so in a way he was uh more of a director in certain ways. Great team of people there, um, who he just had this community around him that was um oh, it was great. Uh it was a it was a fantastic uh place to work. Uh and there was also this very technical. I mean, you want to talk about somebody who embraced the technical side of it. You know, we would. You would buy a case of film and we would check that emulsion based and uh work with color correction gels in front of the lens to make certain it was dead on and and then do tons of different brackets. And you want to talk about like nailing things, shooting eight by I think I told the story in one of the other uh podcasts, but um, shooting a thing for a Conde Nas traveler of famous celebrities like travel bags and shooting eight by ten inch film overhead. We were shooting Peter Beard's uh kit bag, the artist, in two different sections. And I mean, I was there until I don't even know, some very, very late hour shooting, you know, eight by ten Polaroid to nail this thing and getting that film back the next day and having it be, you know, the left side of the frame and the right side of the frame. We're absolutely dead on perfect. Um just it it he gave you a lot of we leeway to get it right because he wasn't there hovering over your shoulder. He was just kind of like, all right, um, you know, this is what we're doing. You know, it's styled, it's great. Okay, shoot it, and you know, don't fuck it up.
SPEAKER_03Yep. There is in your world an a um unusually large need for um, pick your term, exactness, precision. Um, I mean, there's zero room for error in product photography, right?
SPEAKER_04Especially in the motion work that we're doing right now. Um where the difference of uh you know a thousandth of a second um in terms of the camera move or the special effect effects rigs going off will make or break the shot. So um, yeah, it's uh it is a precision game these days.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Quickly, because I mean we we could spend a lot of time. Um you're assisting in New York, then you open your own shop, but then you head west. Yep. Um and and and so so tell me about and and you know, a couple places out west, tell me about becoming your own business out there. Because guess what? There's a bunch of other really good photographers in California. How do you get in the door?
SPEAKER_04How do you say, world, listen to me? I think to say it started from New York, like I had my own business in New York. I really only assisted for a year and then left out on my own in New York. So that was probably 2000 and that was 2001, I think I got my first studio. And just always, you know, we want to talk about patience to just bring it full circle. Like I was, I've been very impatient uh in my career at certain times. Um and was like, oh, I'm just gonna go out and do it on my own. Um, that kind of thing. And um, so it started from back there when I moved from New York out to LA. It already had a pretty established business. We had a great year in, you know, in 2008 and then the or 2007-2008, we had one of our best years ever. And then of course the 08 kind of crash, you know, happened. Um, and I moved out to California, to be honest, completely burnt out. Um, and uh it took a while to get my footing underneath me in California and get enough work and whatever. Um, and you know, burnout is a is a topic that I've talked about um a little bit online, and um there's a lot of discussions going on around that these days. And um yeah, so I would say the starting the business in California, it was really starting the business in New York, and it was it was, you know, just I was relentless at that time. I would cold call anybody back in those days. And that's when people actually picked up the phone. So cold calling was was, I guess, a little bit more effective. But I was, you know, I was out there cold calling, doing emails, doing printed promos. I was relentless back then.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And if people didn't say no immediately, then what? You emailed, you showed up with a portfolio, you you know, that how how did you get your work in front of them?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you did everything you can. I mean, showing up to magazines, asking, you know, I would sit at the bookshop um uh in Union Square and I would, you know, have a stack of magazines and you'd be pulling names from the front of the magazines and the masthead, and then you would be digging for emails or finding phone numbers or accosting people on their way into work um to look at your stuff. I mean, it was a very much a um all that information wasn't necessarily at your fingertips, and so you had to you had to quite literally pound the pavement uh to get in front of people.
SPEAKER_03Well, tell me the story of an early success. So you someone who, you know, fairly early on said, This is cool. Let's talk.
SPEAKER_04I first thing that came that comes to mind, it was not glamorous at all, but through an agent that I knew. Um I went to uh college with uh several agents who worked at Stockland Martel in New York, a very reputable rep agency back in the day. And they're still in the business. They're awesome, uh, Kat and Emily. And um one of I believe Liz Levitt was uh who's also a rep now, um, was working at Stockland, and her husband was at Ernst and Young, the accounting firm and in the creative department. And uh my first, my first quote break was shooting what is which was effectively was stock photography for Ernst and Young, um creating like an image library for him. So we were, you know, doing to be young, it's pretty cheesy stock photography. I look back at it in uh you know, in hindsight, right? We were doing globes and magnifying glasses and you know, all this colorful gel stuff, shot everything on four by five. And but that was my you know, basically my first contract, um, and doing things on a regular basis. And so we shot, I think, once a week for them for a year and a half or something like that. Um, not not a glamorous first break by any means, but um, you know, was concepting things, shooting things, uh, propping things out, delivering things on time, dealing with deal memos, you know, all of those things uh in a in a short amount of time.
SPEAKER_03Okay, now you you just said something that I want to pause at. You said that you were concepting things out. So this isn't a world where Ernst Young or whoever calls an ad agency and some creative director comes up with a campaign and then calls you.
SPEAKER_04No, this was we did work with, and it's killing me that I don't remember these people's names right now, but to be honest, it was 20-something years ago, so I'll give myself a break. Um John, something or other. Oh, it's gonna kill me. Anyways, um yeah, I you think there were some briefs, but then, you know, it was in a way I was left to my own devices. Um I think we'd get some initial feedback, and then I was out, you know, I'd just be walking around or I remember going to an antique store and buying a magnifying glass because like, oh, this will be a cool whatever. We were just um it was very much a um as inspiration struck type of type of deal.
SPEAKER_03If if somebody hires you today, are they getting an art director as well as a photographer and cinematographer? I mean, do you reserve that for yourself?
SPEAKER_04A lot of times. Um, you know, with some of the smaller companies that we were doing a wine thing in a couple of weeks uh for a smaller wine company out of New York. And um, you know, it's basically like, hey, we have this bottle. That, you know, this this brief. I'm like, okay, you know, um, and that's fun because we get to um I enjoy that side of things. Um, and I also enjoy sometimes when we get a really good brief and it's like, all right, let's just shoot that. Um it there I don't know, we've I've done it so much in either direction that um it doesn't really matter the the process these days.
SPEAKER_03But we're we're gonna get to the motion work in in just a second, but uh a couple questions about your still work. Um and I was chuckling uh a little bit earlier today because I was looking at the the um shot you did for Tommy Bahama, where the little bottle is in the surf. Yeah. And you and everybody uh Tim's got a great website. And and one of the real joys for those of us that are photographers are all the behind the scenes um content that he's got there. It's fun to watch. I I watched the video you did on this shoot where you're laying, you got a wetsuit on, you're laying on the beach, the surf's coming in, uh, and you're shooting, you're shooting, you're shooting. Uh, and you said, you know, the only thing wrong was getting sand out of everywhere. But then, but but then I mean the comments were as informed as comments often are uh on the web. But but one of them struck me. It said, why did you do this in real life? You know, why not let the computer do this for you? So two things. Walk me through that shot because it's it's a it's a very, very interesting, pretty shot. But why actually go put on the websuit and lay down in the water? Because why not?
SPEAKER_04I mean, uh I don't know about you you all, but I would much rather be at the beach and instead of at a computer.
SPEAKER_03Uh um, you know I'm with you, man. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04Maybe I'm strange. I mean, it goes back, and you know, there's a funny bit of this is if we go back full circle to the origin story, is I had the epiphany that I didn't want to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day. Yep. Yep. And then photography turns digital, and now we're sitting in front of one for ten hours a day. I'm like son of a, you know, I can't get away from this thing. So yeah, I do not want to sit in front of a computer any more than I absolutely have to. Um, I would much rather be on the beach, you know, getting messy, um, doing things physically, you know, just sign me up for that any day over doing something on the computer.
SPEAKER_03Oh, very good. Well, tell me the story of this shot because as I could see from the, you know, and maybe the behind the scenes didn't show everything, but it looks like entirely natural light. You maybe used a little fill flash. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Yep, there was a little bit of strobe. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Yeah. And you, I mean, you just shot the waves as they came in until you got the right one. Or tell tell me the setup, tell me the story.
SPEAKER_04It was uh uh yeah, so uh client was uh Tommy Bahama, uh creative director Ferdinand Ben Alpen, who I had met on uh at when he was at Tommy Hilfiger, one of my favorite clients of all time, because he gave me a lot of leeway and a lot of trust, and that was awesome. We did everything from uh from jewelry campaigns to watches, some of my first motion pieces back in the day, to uh we shot kids, we shot betting with him. It was like whatever, it was like all over the place. But and that that's just a message to say like it's amazing when you have a client who trusts you. That's yeah, just incredible, like the leeway in that is versus the micromanaging and all the other things that happen. So that's amazing. So, you know, fragrance, it's California. Um, obviously, let's go to the beach and shoot this thing. The whole idea was it it was gonna be in the waves, it was gonna be sunset. And I don't know if you looked closely behind the scenes, but did you see how cloudy it was? No, I didn't, but I'm gonna go back and look now. Go back and check it out. It was the grayest day you've that's how you get it to not be sunny in Malibu, is you schedule a shoot on the beach. There you go. Yeah, and it's gonna be the grayest day you've ever seen. Um and so the the sunlight in that shot is actually added in post. Um we faked that, but it was just got and it was like, oh, maybe it'll burn off and it'll be beautiful. And it just got grayer and grayer and grayer. It was it was gray and cold. I was like surprised there's any frames that are sharp because of how much I was shivering. Um but um yeah, it was just kind of the whole idea was to do this in- situately dragged shutter, you know, so the waves aren't super sharp, dreamy um type of environment. And it just it was super fun. I we did go back in the studio after the fact and reshoot the bottles so that they were a little bit higher fidelity. Um but the main shot um was yeah, what was there uh in the salt. And I think did I ruin the camera that day? Uh uh. Yeah, I think it I think it may have gotten a little salty on a couple of the shots.
SPEAKER_03But you know, you know, I'll all the weather sealing. Uh you'll you'll appreciate this as an old VW owner. Um, the the the uh the old campaign for the beetle when when people discovered it would float, um, they said it the the VW Beetle will definitely float, but it will not float indefinitely. And every every time I see a camera that says they're weather sealed, yeah, that's what I think of. Yeah, it'll it'll it'll keep out some things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but not as salt water on the beach in the waves, probably not. So it was like, you know, trying to get as low as possible, and then having my assistant Jason at the time like be like, wave, and like lifting the camera up out of the way so I didn't totally waterlog it.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. Um, I saw a surfer walk by behind that shot. Was that was that a model, or was that just the Linda Ronstadt hasting down the wind accident?
SPEAKER_04No, that was that was uh I brought a couple of my vintage uh surfboards down, and that was my assistant John at the time. Um and I was like, dude, come on, you're you you I need a background element. And of course we didn't we didn't end up using it. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_03You you also have in in in the bit we've skipped over, uh, a really cool photo portfolio out there, the Finn project, which is all surfboard fins and stuff. Yeah. Um and you know, that's where I started to really think this guy's got a handle on light. Um and more, you know, more than just being good at it, um, being really good at it. And um again, we're gonna get with motion, we'll talk about that in a second. I do want to talk about watches for a second, though. Uh oh okay, good, good pun there, right? Oh, that's good. I didn't even get that one, man. That was good.
SPEAKER_04You're too fast for me.
SPEAKER_03No, man. But I'm I'm looking at the Calvin Klein campaign. Yeah. Was that your idea? Was that theirs? I mean, the here, the this is really, really sensual, um, you know, erotic in in the best sense, yep, um, campaign. And you're you know, you're you're pushing a attitude, you're pushing a a mood. Um and I look at this and I think, boy, did this seems so wonderful. And I realize in the studio, it's hard, it's tough.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. And those watches, by the way, are completely mirrored. The entire face of them is mirrored as well. So from a technical standpoint, that shoot was a nightmare. Um, and I was actually brought on for that shoot. It was part of a larger campaign, and which I believe Mario Sorrenti was shooting the on-figure stuff, but the watches needed some extra special treatment. So somehow, uh somehow I got that gig and it was great. Um and yeah, it was obviously casting was everything, um, making certain the two people who are in the shots are were comfortable with one another because they were, you know, getting rather intimate. Um and uh yeah, and then the mirror, mirror-faced cylindrical watches, making certain that everything was um that you could still see it and it had the right, you know, it was like so such a combination of of you know the right sweat beads in the right place. Literally a stylist, you know, like like we style uh like we style a soda can these days, but it was sweat and not condensation. And um just making certain that they had the you know, that just that right central attitude and and that everything was uh telling that story while being correct as well.
SPEAKER_03When you're in the studio with a shot like that or any of the others, um do you know when you've got it?
SPEAKER_04Yes, I think there is a feeling um and that was shot digitally. I'm scratching my brain. I'm 99% certain that was uh on my Imicon flex type back, like early days of digital. So you're you're seeing it come up, but I feel like there's this um you don't know if you have it, and if you don't, if you don't, if you're not confident that you have it, that means you don't, and there's a point at which it tips over to the other side and you're like, oh no, we got this.
SPEAKER_03Is it is is that intuition or is that intuition built on experience? And you know, you've done this enough now you you know when you got it?
SPEAKER_04If there's any question mark in your head, you just keep shooting until that, until it tips over to the side where you're like, oh no, we got this. And that, to be honest, you know, that can happen. I was doing a fashion thing, another random story with an amazing model in New York. And she was in this bridal dress and kind of flicking and throwing the dress. And I think we got it on frame three or something like that. It was like, forget it, that's it, we're done. Uh it's it's it's not getting any better than that. It was just like everything was absolute perfection. You know, the way her fingers were, I was just like, and I think we shot like five more images and I was like, forget it, we're done. Um, it's just that, you know, so sometimes it happens really soon, like that. And then other times you're just grinding on it and and and knowing, I think it's also a special, special trick to like know when to walk away from it. Um, when an image isn't working. It's like, all right, it's time for lunch. Or all right, let's come back and do this tomorrow, or like this is just not working. Let's let's move on to something and not um you know, bang our heads against the wall there. Because when it does work, it's natural, it's in flow state, and you're like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I don't know how we got here, but it was easy. And like there's uh there's this uh flexibility you have to have with yourself and your process to know that if it's not working, that it's okay to move on and come back to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can't force yourself into that flow state, it's it's got to evolve out of what you're doing. Um, so okay, you're doing all this marvelous still stuff. Where does motion arrive in your portfolio? Um, and you did somebody just say, hey, you know, you're doing all this great shots, you know, with tequila or scotch or whatever. Now we now we want the liquid to move? Or how how how did that happen?
SPEAKER_04I technically shot my first motion stuff back in like 2008. Um again, same client, Ferdinand. Um we uh at Tommy Hillfigger, we did two watch videos for him in my studio in Brooklyn. It was a nightmare. Um, we were doing things. I mean, we had the original red camera, which the software would crash all the time. Um I think we pulled an all-nighter delivering that um and editing that that piece. It was just like we didn't have the right equipment. We didn't know what we were doing. Um, we had put the camera on my phoba stand and we were trying to do like robot moves handheld, like on the phoba stand, which obviously doesn't work now that we know. And yeah, it was kind of it was kind of a nightmare. And it was it was at a spot in my career where when things didn't go the way I wanted them to, um my my immaturity at that time would just be like, oh, I don't like this, I don't want to do it. Um and I and I I did those two motion things. I think I shot one other on-figure motion thing, and I was kind of like, I don't really like this motion thing. And I didn't shoot any, to be honest, any more motion until um and I known about the Phantom. I lived down the street uh when I moved to LA from camera control, um, who has the the bolt and the Milo, uh, which are a couple of the amazing motion control arms. And I knew about it and I had known of the work uh from the Marmalade, which was a company in Germany who is doing a lot of this uh amazing type of special effects, practical special effects, slow motion work. And I didn't have the uh I didn't want to spend the $5,000 a day to rent a Phantom and test things out, and I just wasn't prepared to make that investment. Um, and then my client Suzanne at uh Vince Camuto uh had a shoot, and I was like, this was like in the right in the middle of COVID lockdowns and all that kind of stuff. And she's like, Oh, I need this, and I want to be, you know, I want to do something with liquids. And I was like, oh my God, this is my opportunity. Is this the shoe falling in the water? It's the shoe falling in the water, yeah. Yeah. Um and it was a brilliant shoot. Like we did a lot of cool things, like that shoe turning around and that bubble popping right at the mo, like, wow, like it was it was really fun. Uh, and then I'm like, oh, this is great. And then I started getting into using the robots on the next couple of shoots, and I was like, this is the this is what I wanted to do back in. 2008 that I just couldn't do.
SPEAKER_03Is it because the tech evolved to match your vision?
SPEAKER_04I think that the tech evolved. Um the yeah, I think that the tech evolved, and I think also just my my experience and my career evolved to the point where I could do uh the level of work that I wanted to do, right? Like sometimes as as creatives, our bar is set so high, and then you know, we want to be Michael Jordan and we're out there trying to shoot free throws and we're just missing all the time. And that gap is is is is really hard to um to deal with sometimes as a creative.
SPEAKER_03Well, well, to tell me about the the relationship between sort of tech and what you imagine is possible and and what you have then the experience to execute. Um, you know, for example, you know, I I would have trouble you know with the kind of photography I do, um, setting up just a two-light studio shot. Um I don't ever I don't ever I mean don't ever use lights. I'm a you know street shooter, photojournalist, that kind of stuff. When you are imagining a campaign, when you are imagining the art direction, you've got to have a relationship to what you know is possible. How often do you want something that's not possible?
SPEAKER_04I think just about everything is possible. I I go into it. I mean, I go into it with that um viewpoint and that perspective. And then it's just like, how do we engineer it to do what we want it to do? Umunds simple. It's not simple, but um, and it requires oftentimes a lot of smart people to figure it out. So I go into it with kind of crazy ideas, and it's like, oh, I want it to do X, Y, and Z. And it's like, okay, great. What do we need to build to have it do that? You know, in wordworking, woodworking, we want to build a thing, but sometimes we need to build the thing to build the thing. There's always steps in both steps before the final product. So that's where a lot of our work in this kind of um, you know, high-speed special effects space is is like, all right, we want the explosion to look like, you know, to look like this. All right, how do we do it? What are the tools that we can use to make that? And then, like, how do we test a theory? We encounter this all the time where we think, we, we think this, you know, this this rig or this process will work. And you start down this path and you build this rig, you're like, yeah, it actually doesn't work at all. You know, so you're right back to the drawing board. So we're always trying to test things, you know, get things out of theory and in into the practical sense, even if it's really shitty to begin with. We try to get things going, you know, first and then iterate from there.
SPEAKER_03I'm looking at one of your behind-the-scenes shots. Yeah, and and you are shooting a golf club. Oh, yeah. There are 18 robots, 353 tripod. I mean, just the the the thing, I mean, you're shooting a golf club, man. You know, and and yet here's this super tech world that I don't know what 80% of the stuff in there does. Yeah. But you look at the golf club and say, oh, this is what we could do. Oh, yeah. How do you get from that? How do you get to imagining what's possible with something as simple as a golf club?
SPEAKER_04So that shoot for Callaway. Um good, how do I decipher this? I mean, when I'm when I'm when I'm looking at an object, right? It's it's like I'm uh and I'm a I can't draw anything, but like when they there's all those drawing classes where you're taking a face and you're dividing it up into a bunch of all their there's triangles and there's circles, and there's those things. Um, you know, lighting a still life object, the shaft of a golf club is just a uh is just a shiny round tube. It's the same thing as a shiny soda can, but smaller, right? Smaller and longer. There's there's certain fundamentals of light and what looks good, and I'm basing it, I'm kind of deconstructing the subject matter off of that. That's kind of like my first step in figuring out how this whole thing works from a very, you know, basic lighting perspective. Working on the robot moves is definitely like, you know, you're doing the little director fingers and you're making the frame, you're saying, I want the camera to start here and it's going to go down here. A lot of that stuff is figured out either on set on the day or sometimes in pre-viz or working on the computer in advance to kind of understand what it is that we're doing and the timing. So there's a bunch of tools and the software that we use that allow us to pre-vis things and try things out before we get on set. So it's really this combination of all these things is okay, what am I shooting? What are the kind of like constituent parts of it? Pulling from the, you know, the lighting database that's in my brain around, okay, this is gonna, you know, and that's the experience side of it, is like it's a it's an amber liquid. It, I amber liquid, I need to, you know, I need to have part of it backlight, part of it front light, and part of it speculate. I know all those things, right? And you just put together, you're kind of like pulling from a toolbox, right, of all the tools that you need to do the final thing. So combination of knowing what you want the end result to look to look like, combination of knowing your tools.
SPEAKER_03One of the things, you know, as I've said before, I'm really impressed with is light. And you often have lights on robot arms that are moving in obviously independently of the camera, um, but also not just sort of locked in to follow. I mean, you're doing um the lighting is changing as as the shot's going on. Is light your you're where you start with composition? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04Um, I am, as you can tell, an absolute lighting nerd. I am always looking at light. I'm always, you know, looking around a room, looking at the I'm looking across the room at a you know shadow from a lamp. And it's, you know, the the light that's in the ceiling is a little bit warm, but the rest of the light in the room is a little bit blue, and so the shadow has a little bit of a blue tone to it. This is how I see the world, right? Is I'm always looking at the light coming through an oak tree outside my house, and it's passing through, you know, it's a hard light because it's the sun, but it's coming through multiple layers of of uh of things breaking up the pattern, and that's why it looks like on that on the table. Uh I can't help it. That's the way I, you know, a poet sees everything in words, whatever, writer, you know, it's just like that's the way I view the world. Um, so I'm always looking at those um those characteristics, and then the flip side to that is knowing the tools. Um, and I remember back at Syracuse, again, one of those things, spending time and money to understand the tools is I went through every single lighting modifier in the whole photo studio and shot pictures of myself in front of a background with the seven-inch reflector, with the 11-inch reflector, with the softbox, with the bounce light, so I could know exactly what every single one of those tools looked like in the final image.
SPEAKER_03And and you've got the Andy Warhouse style poster in in your house now, right?
SPEAKER_04No, I know, right? I should pick that up. I still have all my negatives somewhere. I'm sure that's like kicking around with polarite in a box somewhere. But um, but no, it it's it's like taking the time to to do that um to do that practice uh before you get on the job. Um and so you can understand your tools is everything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. The the tools have to be intuitive, or or you need to work towards making the tools. Uh yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04I mean, if you want to uh if I want a hard, sunny light with a crisp shadow, I need to like, I don't need to like fart, I know exactly I'm never gonna pick up just a strobe with a reflector on it, because that's gonna give me multiple shadows. I'm gonna pick up a a projector style thing or bounce it into a mirror or something like that. Like there's uh again, it's it's just a toolbox. So um, like any pro, you know your tools.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Um last question, I mean, because we're gonna come up on an hour here. This this has been fantastic. Oh man, I could go for days. So could I. Like I said, you know, this is so um mysterious and wonderful to me. Um I you know, I'm looking at your studio setups and a lot of this behind the scenes stuff, and yeah, envious as hell for just you know just the gear, but also realizing I wouldn't know what button to push first. So, you know, it's it's like I said, like walking into industrial light and magic for me. Tell me the story of something that just went so well. That that I mean, just you know, it was just one of those, you know, thank you, God, whatever, you know, whatever I did in fifth grade, it's paying off now.
SPEAKER_04Oh man. Um I'm gonna go with the work that I did for um uh uh Robert Mundabi winery. We did that a couple years ago. Uh yeah, they we did the rebrand and they did this beautiful, and that was that was again um an example of a client who showed trust and was like willing to like. I mean, we did everything from the campaigns for that NFT Bernadotte with the chrome bottles and just super ultra technical studio still life, to we shot an event that they did up in Napa in the vineyard, along with uh Taste Made and um uh Outstanding in the Field, which is the um uh kind of catering event company. And I haven't shot an event in years, right? But I'm like, but we had done this other work with Mandabi around my house, my home in OHI here, and we had done all this other stuff. I was like, no, like I want to shoot this because I want to have this consistency of vision that leads everything through all of these different aspects of this client, um, rather than having it go to somebody else. And uh I hired a second shooter um out of San Francisco, and um I was there and and man, we made beautiful stuff that night. And it was really great to have the trust from a client to allow us to shoot something that that wasn't our norm, you know, that's not like a bottle in the studio, which you know we're fairly niche down on, but like, no, let's just go out and take this same vision and and apply it somewhere else. And and um that went just fantastic. It was uh you know, exciting three hours of nonstop, you know, running around a hot um vineyard uh in the summer, but it was fantastic. Um and I I always appreciate those times when um a client trusts you enough to allow you outside the little box that they put you in. Um Vince Camudo, another example where we got to go shoot in the dunes of Death Valley and the um uh slot canyons of Arizona and do a fragrance campaign on location of a fragrance bottle. Like, how cool is that? Those are some of my favorites.
SPEAKER_03That's that's the question. How cool is that?
SPEAKER_04How cool is that? I mean, like shooting a fragrance bottle in a slot canyon. Um, it's like, you know, the the Boy Scout in me is like, ah, adventure, you know, like this is great. Sign me up. I'm gonna do more of that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, see, with someone like me, I'd pick up the perfume bottle and think, what in the world am I gonna do with this? Yeah, uh Tim, thank you, man. I'm I'm impressed. I'm grateful for the hour. Um, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_04Thank you very much. I totally appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Frames, because excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit us at www.readframes.com.