Old School Art Director Horror

[Andy_Farrington]

I have been amazed with my new (2nd hand) 1DS Mk1 - Now I have learnt the workflow and tremendously bizarre logic of button presses and releases to achieve anything in menus. That aside, image quality is superb.
It gave me renewed confidence in digital and I went to see an A.D. who had seen some of my work posted. It was an informal meeting as the agency is n the same comlex as my studio - My A3 prints were layed out o his desk and he was almost whooping with delight!!! He called evryone over to "take a look at the unbelievable quality achievable from 5x4 film"?!?!?!?!?!? Now I admit that sometimes I play around with borders such as polaroid effect and 5x4 film mock edges - but I feel they can enhance an image as they are quite subtle. When he asked me my film and camera set-up I said, "digital, Canon 1DS". There was a pregnant-pause and some embarrased murmers from his surrounding minions......he took some time to study the print again and after a minute at 6 inches from the print surface exclaimed "oh yes, yes can see it's digital here" pointing to a few bristles on the chin of the sitter.
Their usual photographer will only shoot film and he himself is a film fanatic - or so he thought.....I didn't get the gig and their usual film guy did the job. He didn't even call round to say as much and if he had he would have seen a huge collection of film cameras of every shape and size waiting for to do his shot with111
In retrospect I wondered whether I'd made a fool of him in front of people, but realised that it was he who had made a fool of himself and he's not really the sort of fella I'd ever want to work with.
Long live digital.

Andy

[Edmund_Ronald]

Think faster; Say "Yes, THAT ONE was a digital test, as YOU just noticed ". THESE are 4x5. Then run out and order some 4x5 dupes [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Edmund

[MarkPinder]

Ha Ha, the war against prats goes on. It appears that pretentious b*****cks is fairly prevalent amongst many art directors in the agencies I have ever dealt with in the past. Was he the stereotype bouffant, white shirt and big glasses type? I've never been able to understood the nylon slacks though, deeply uncool!!

A few years ago, I thought i wanted to work for these people as the pay was much better generally than editorial. I rang round a few agencies up here in the north-east, either to be told that they weren't condescending to seeing photographers at that time or I could leave my folio for them to look at when they felt like it. Thanks but no thanks. How come I can ring a picture editor on a big magazines or paper in London who'll generally have far more pressure and far less time yet still agree to see me?

On the rare occasions I have worked for design agencies, I found the endless rounds of meetings and client handholdings drove me to distraction. I much prefer working for a client who trusts my experience and professionalism enough to be able to ring me up brief me in 30 seconds and leave me to deliver the job. Saying this, I do work regularly for one design agency here in Newcastle, but working for them is like doing an editorial job, I get briefed, I shoot the job, (alone generally), and they trust me enough to deliver the goods, no fuss.

A little while ago, i was asked to supply some file shots for a book project and they needed them quickly, (and surprise surprise pleaded poverty). I went back to the original files as shot from the camera, colour balanced and sharpened them and e-mailed them as level 10 Photoshop j'pegs. The next morning I got a phone call from the editor as I was going out the door-the designer wanted TIFFS on a disk and needed them the next day. I didn't have time to re-edit the original files so I converted the previous days j'pegs to TIFFS, burnt them to disk and posted them to the designer. The next day I recieved an e-mail from the designer thanking me.............

Like you, I realised long ago that life is too short to spend humouring fools. If money is your main motivating factor, don't do photography, (although saying that I do manage to live quite comfortably).

Cheers,

Mark Pinder

[KirkThompson]

Scenarios like yours are becoming a lot more frequent: as our equipment & software & skills improve, people with prejudices are tripping more & more often over their own tongues. Being retired, I can enjoy such encounters without fearing loss of work. I do envy you, however, for being 'accused' of using not medium-format but 4x5.

[David_Hardy]

I have it clearly written on my website that I don't use film, ever.

If the clients are daft enough to insist, they can go elsewhere. I'm not mucking about with two types of media any more, for my work (now mainly industrial, under mixed lighting) digital is SO far superior as to render film entirely obsolete.

David

[AlexLins]

Making a client lose face or look stupid is not my goal. My goal is to land the gig. I tell my clients outright if those images they're looking at were shot digitally from the get-go. This saves them the potentially embarrassing situation mentioned by Andy.

It is still photography at the end of day whether the gig was shot digitally or on film. We don't have to take an adversarial approach to it.

I admit that I do it for the money. I cannot afford to look smug in the face of losing the gigs to someone else. Who has the last laugh then?

Sorry, fellas. A little bit of skill in people management and emotional intelligence is called for here. If nobody hires me, I will have to find another line of work which I do not enjoy. That is what sobers me up.

[Andy_Farrington]

[ QUOTE ]
Making a client lose face or look stupid is not my goal. My goal is to land the gig. I tell my clients outright if those images they're looking at were shot digitally from the get-go. This saves them the potentially embarrassing situation mentioned by Andy.

It is still photography at the end of day whether the gig was shot digitally or on film. We don't have to take an adversarial approach to it.

I admit that I do it for the money. I cannot afford to look smug in the face of losing the gigs to someone else. Who has the last laugh then?

Sorry, fellas. A little bit of skill in people management and emotional intelligence is called for here. If nobody hires me, I will have to find another line of work which I do not enjoy. That is what sobers me up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Alex, my intention wasn't to deceive or embarrass the client - he was singing the praises of the image and when he asked what it waas shot on I could have used 'emotional intelligence' and lied to him, but that isn't my thing - I'd rather the truth was out there from the first instance.
The whole point of my post anyway was that image quality from the 1DS is, for me, a confidence boost, and though I'd like a shot at the Mk2, I just don't know whether I need it?
But if an AD wants to gloat to his minions about how film so great then to be shown something which contradicts this, then surely he has a problem.

There are links from this forum to some images which are simply astounding - more astounding that the photographers have been able in such a short time to establish a 'look' and workflow which moves film to the side and for very specific projects. I think this AD missed the point in that I could have easily shot any of images with a film camera and sent them to a lab and got hand-prints, but I'd rather be in control from start to finish - I've said it before that prior to digital and being in control of my entire workflow, I was never -not once- proud or amazed by a print from one of my colour negs or trannies by a lab's hand printer. (The same doesn't apply to B&W).

I imagine this particular client would have been a pain in the a*s at every point of the job - not to mention the final invoice - imagine how he'd react to extras for digital shooting!!! Not too well I'd imagine.

Andy

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