Big Budgets or Cheap Setups

[Shadowman]

http://vostokphotos.ru/eng/projects/...cross-russia#2

Photographers were showcased in July 2014 issue of Popular Photography magazine. Article "Over Ice" stated that some lighting budgets can top $100,000. This particular shot was completed using two assistants, multiple lights, and some prep work to make the ice appealing.

[IzzieK]

You know...I do not believe so...every year in many countries around the world they almost would simultaneously put out a car model. Now all marketing and sales promotion have to do is contact a partcular country where the weather are different, work out some logistics, have them send ideas after scouting some good places then order the photoshoot then choose from so many submissions and use the ones they like.

Being a location scout is a highly satisfactory paying job when you are single and has not much responsibility apart from yourself. Once you have settled down, your gallivanting is limited. Nowadays all is digitally done. I was a location scout in my younger days.

[chauncey]

John, I might suggest that someone needs to be thinking outside the box.
That scene might have been done at a more reasonable cost by using a cookie tray of ice and a high
end model car and some table top lighting...you can color the ice with food coloring.

[Shadowman]

You know...I do not believe so...every year in many countries around the world they almost would simultaneously put out a car model. Now all marketing and sales promotion have to do is contact a partcular country where the weather are different, work out some logistics, have them send ideas after scouting some good places then order the photoshoot then choose from so many submissions and use the ones they like.

Being a location scout is a highly satisfactory paying job when you are single and has not much responsibility apart from yourself. Once you have settled down, your gallivanting is limited. Nowadays all is digitally done. I was a location scout in my younger days.

Izzie,

Any interesting stories from your scouting days?

[Manfred M]

Let's remember what a budget of $100,000 would include. I suspect something that expensive would likely mean that the shot is being taken in a remote location. If you've ever been to a remote part of the world, you'll understand this for sure...

1. Equipment aquisition or rental fees. This could include taking accomodations, food prep and generators with you in remote locations;

2. Salary / wages of the crew and models (if they are used);

3. Local accomodation, meals and transport;

4. Licencing fees / site rental if the site is privately owned;

5. Cost of getting the crew. Try flying on a commercial airline to a fairly remote location, with a crew of four. This could be 20 - 25% of the costs right there;

5. Cost of getting the equipment on site and back and subject on site and back. For instance, if the car had to be flown to the location and then hauled to the shooting site by helicopter (something car companies do for commercials). This could be the main cost of the shot (perhaps in the order of 75% - 80% of the total if heavy lift aircraft and helicopters are used); and

6. Standby costs while waiting for the weather to clear for on location shots. Up north, this could be a number of days, even a week if bad weather settles in.

[Shadowman]

John, I might suggest that someone needs to be thinking outside the box.
That scene might have been done at a more reasonable cost by using a cookie tray of ice and a high
end model car and some table top lighting...you can color the ice with food coloring.

Definitely a challenging way (using a model car) to accomplish the same results, I wonder if many car manufacturers would allow it?

[Manfred M]

Definitely a challenging way (using a model car) to accomplish the same results, I wonder if many car manufacturers would allow it?

The manufacturers might, but the advertising regulators probably would not. There was a famous case in the USA a number of decades ago where the Campbell Soup Company was heavily sanctioned for putting clear glass marbles in a soup bowl to make it look like there were more "solids" in the soup.

That case changed how ads are shot completely.

[Shadowman]

The manufacturers might, but the advertising regulators probably would not. There was a famous case in the USA a number of decades ago where the Campbell Soup Company was heavily sanctioned for putting clear glass marbles in a soup bowl to make it look like there were more "solids" in the soup.

That case changed how ads are shot completely.

That definitely makes me rethink the ease of food photography, I thought it was an industry standard to cosmetically enhance a shot?

[Shadowman]

Let's remember what a budget of $100,000 would include. I suspect something that expensive would likely mean that the shot is being taken in a remote location. If you've ever been to a remote part of the world, you'll understand this for sure...

1. Equipment aquisition or rental fees. This could include taking accomodations, food prep and generators with you in remote locations;

2. Salary / wages of the crew and models (if they are used);

3. Local accomodation, meals and transport;

4. Licencing fees / site rental if the site is privately owned;

5. Cost of getting the crew. Try flying on a commercial airline to a fairly remote location, with a crew of four. This could be 20 - 25% of the costs right there;

5. Cost of getting the equipment on site and back and subject on site and back. For instance, if the car had to be flown to the location and then hauled to the shooting site by helicopter (something car companies do for commercials). This could be the main cost of the shot (perhaps in the order of 75% - 80% of the total if heavy lift aircraft and helicopters are used); and

6. Standby costs while waiting for the weather to clear for on location shots. Up north, this could be a number of days, even a week if bad weather settles in.

There was definitely a lot of prep work in the ice shot, removing and then resurfacing, plus I'm sure insurance costs are a small part of any budget.

[Manfred M]

There was definitely a lot of prep work in the ice shot, removing and then resurfacing, plus I'm sure insurance costs are a small part of any budget.

Insurance tends to be either part of the contractual obligations of the contracted suppliers, including ad agencies, so that would be buried in the per diem costs. Large companies, like GM in the case of the car ads, tend to be self-insured.

[Shadowman]

Interesting blog on production shoots, everyone different from the other.

http://www.photovideoedu.com/Learn/A...p-by-step.aspx

[IzzieK]

Izzie,

Any interesting stories from your scouting days?

I have a lot of stories to tell from that job but it'll have to wait another day. Not today.

[cuilin]

i think someone just wanted to play with some new toys. if you've ever seen top gear then you know that this can be done on a much tighter budget.

[Mike Buckley]

this can be done on a much tighter budget.

I just love showing my wife my copy of Popular Photography when they have an article explaining the studio setup and cost of making photos with the same characteristics and style I've made in my makeshift studio. The cost of the equipment is often ten times or more than the cost of my equipment with little to no appreciable difference in resulting quality. Even when the quality difference is noticeable, I'm confident that it has to do with the quality, time and patience of the photographer rather than the amount of money spent on equipment to make it happen.

This reminds me of the stories decades ago about Russian computer programmers who were able to do so much with so little. They didn't have the hardware of competing programmers elsewhere in the world. So, they had to be much better programmers to make their programs work on hardware that had such relatively limited capabilities.

Similarly, just because one photographer spends one heck of a lot of money to make a certain photo doesn't mean essentially the same photo can't be made using equipment that costs a lot less.

[Mike Buckley]

i think someone just wanted to play with some new toys.

I often wonder if the photographer's invoice isn't based largely on the amount of money spent to make it happen. If that's the case, the photographer inherently has an incentive to spend more money so long as the client is willing to take the bait.

[rpcrowe]

Izzie,
In my single days, I thought that being a location scout (especially for motion pictures) would be the ultimate job... Running a "prop shop" for movies would also have been a fun job. My uncle who was in the motion picture industry in New York City got me a summer job in a prop shop and I absolutely loved that grand warehouse with a collection of neat props. One prop I remember was John The Baptist's head on a tray, constructed for some Cecil B. DeMille type movie and then stored in the prop shop for any future uses...

[Shadowman]

i think someone just wanted to play with some new toys. if you've ever seen top gear then you know that this can be done on a much tighter budget.

If you were the assistant to the photographer, would you tell them so?

[D L]

If you can get people posting links and discussing a photo of your car, maybe $100k is worth it to the GM marketing team

[Shadowman]

If you can get people posting links and discussing a photo of your car, maybe $100k is worth it to the GM marketing team

David,

Yeah, I think that works from a marketing standpoint, however telling people you spent $100,000 works just as well.

[Manfred M]

The cost of the equipment is often ten times or more than the cost of my equipment with little to no appreciable difference in resulting quality. Even when the quality difference is noticeable,

The difference, Mike, I suspect is that you can live with failure or something going wrong, where as someone on an advertising shoot can't. They have to meet the production schedule or they are toast.

I think an analogy might be a wedding photographer. The ones that I know that do this for a living have the best gear, as well as some form of redundancy in terms of a second body, spare batteries, flashes, memory cards, etc. The bride's uncle with his entry level DSLR likely won't, so he is going to miss some shots where better glass or gear will be needed and if he has an equipment failure, people might not be happy, but... The "real" wedding photographer can't do this and will be expected to get the shots even if he has a major equipment failure.

The advertising shot on a lake in the middle of nowhere is much the same, take the best, just in case you need that quality to come through and get the shots. When I'm writing about the "best", I'm also thinking of the reliability side, not just image quality. Who wants an equipment failure to stop the work in its tracks when the nearest camera shop is 1000 miles away...