Teamwork, Challenge and a Dramatic Stock Photo

Quad Sculling, four people rowing a boat, demonstrates teamwork, adversity, challenge and risk in this "impossible" stock photo.
Timeless Photos and Long Term Success
This image of Quad Sculling (in sculling a light boat is powered by people using two oars each…quad sculling refers to such a boat with four people) is exactly the kind of image I most enjoy creating. It has a strong, but flexible, message or concept. It has drama and interest and even humor (as in “Yeah, right”). The photograph is on the ragged edge of believability…is it real or not? And finally, the photo is timeless, something I think is tremendously important for long-term success in the stock imagery business.


Teamwork, Challenge and the Impossible
Sculling has always been a strong metaphor for teamwork, and as such has been used countless times as a stock image. This version still speaks of teamwork, but takes it a couple of steps further. This is teamwork in the face of risk, challenge, adversity and perhaps even the impossible. I can’t help but think that an appropriate headline might be “Sometimes even teamwork isn’t enough”. Come to think of it, this image might be hitting a little close to home for us photographers!


Old Concepts, Shot In New and Different Ways
As I have mentioned before, old concepts, illustrated in new and different ways, with a strong message pertinent to the marketplace, tend to do well. This image represents any efforts being attempted by a team, but with huge challenges and an uncertain outcome at best. It could be the government attempting to deal with the recession, or a sales team overmatched by competition, or any number of other situations in which an entity, be it corporation, government or organization, is faced with huge obstacles. For example, I could see this being an editorial image about the government attempting health care reform!


Extra Ideas
This image is also a great example of how I work these days. I come up with an idea that I want to illustrate, and then build a more comprehensive shoot around that first idea. In this case I knew I needed four models (to replace the people I had originally photographed in the boat, two of whom were just kids). Then I went over my comprehensive list of ideas to see which other ones were waiting for me to shoot models in-studio in order to finish. I came up with 17 ideas. I knew that I would not be able to complete the photography for that many, but I wanted to make sure that I had extra ideas in case one or more of my planned ones just weren’t working out. As it turned out, I managed to get the raw materials shot for about eleven of the ideas.


Four Models, A Boat, and Three Waves
In my studio I set up the lighting to match that from the original sculling shoot. Since I had shot the boat from a bridge I stood on a ladder to get the correct perspective. I printed out an 11x17 print of the boat and kept it with me on the ladder. I then shot each model and compared the LCD image with the print to make sure I cam at least reasonably close to the poses that would work. Before letting the models go I also did a quick cut and paste in Photoshop just to make sure things lined up right.
I put this image together using four model shots, the boat, and three shots of waves taken from atop a bluff in the Marin Headlands on a day with particularly large swells. I crafted it in such a way that it can easily crop as a horizontal for, say, magazine spreads, or vertically for a magazine cover. There is also plenty of room for headlines and body copy, though the texture of the water might be a bit busy for that. Total Photoshop time was about six hours.


A Rights Managed Image
While the concept of teamwork is one that is always in hot demand, as are such themes as risk, challenge, and adversity, having the rather negative probable outcome as part of the image makes me think that the audience for this photograph will be on the small side. Combine that with the greater-than-ordinary amount of work that goes into such an picture, and I think it would be best served as a Rights Managed image, so that is how I am submitting it. And now I have ten more images to get back to working on!

Tango Dancing And Concept Stock Photos

Almost anything can trigger ideas for concept stock photography. While planning a recent stock trip to Buenos Aires, it seemed everyone kept asking me if I was going to shoot tango. Yet, for whatever reason, tango was not appealing to me. But because I was being asked so much I decided to see if there was something there that did appeal to me.

I started trying to think outside the box, so to speak, about how I could put my own spin on some Tango dancers. Cliché’s appeal to me, and one popped into mind. “It takes two to tango”. There might be something there. Plus, dancing can be a metaphor for teamwork, an essential and always needed business concept. I could have them holding a contract and pen to indicate sealing the deal, agreement and negotiation. Plus, tango also has that dramatic element to it.

I started picturing tango in an office. It could be dramatic and conceptual. Might be worth investigating further. The next step for me is to see if I can base a shoot around the tango concept. It occurred to me that tango dancers are, or at least probably are, athletic. Maybe I could add in some other “athletic” shots in. One technique I use for brainstorming is to think of opposite. One opposite of two people dancing is…fighting.

At this point I felt I had enough to base a shoot around. I had my Argentine producer (and fellow shooter), Paula Zacharias, check on models and an office we could shoot in. She found two tango dancers both of who also know some martial arts. One of them suggested another friend of theirs who was also a martial artist. We decided to go with the three of them. When the woman tango dancer asked if she could bring her young daughter to the shoot we decided to add some mother daughter shots as well.

It turned into a really fun shoot. We started in the office, which was actually limited to the reception area. We had the woman tango dancer, her young daughter, and a man tango dancer. The fourth model was to meet us later at the second location. This was a pretty low-key shoot. Just Paula and me, our models and one ProFoto 7b power pack with two heads. We were shooting with a Canon 5D. We spent an hour in the office shooting tango dancing, mother and daughter at work, and both the woman and the man karate-kicking the monitor (with the help of a little post-shoot Photoshop work).

Following the office portion of the shoot, we left for the nearby Puerto Madera section of Buenos Aires. This is a trendy waterfront area with lots of new shops, cafes and a cool suspension footbridge. We started with a little tango dancing on the bridge and then switched to a fight scene between the men, again using the ProFoto 7b. After a half hour of shooting a security guard ushered us off the bridge. We then shot various activities in the immediate surrounding area including working at a laptop at an outdoor café and strolling by the shops with mother, father and daughter. There was also a business park and we used the buildings as a background and had the models on each other’s shoulders with the top person scanning the horizon, some more fighting scenes, and, to finish up, shot the models sprinting towards and past the camera.

A simple half-day shoot with free locations and model fees amounting to $150.00. Not bad! I got 35 selects into Blend Images. The images recently went up so I don’t have any sales information yet but I am confident, from experience of two things. First, these images will sell. Second, you never know if an image is going to sell. Hmmmm….