Introduction
Here is an example of how to approach a professional photography shoot. I am going to use one image, a cover image for a corporate brochure, as an example. Obviously this is just one approach, any given photographer will have their own method. Also I may approach a similar job differently in the future as I am always learning and refining my skills and techniques.
Any given job can be broken down into three parts: pre-production, the shoot itself and finally the post-production.
Pre-production
The brief is discussed via telephone with my client. I give an indication that most importantly I am enthusiastic about the project; this assures the client that I will do good job for them and helps me land the job apart from other factors such as budget.
I receive a written brief from my client; in this case it’s a graphic design company that specialises in corporate communication. The brief doesn’t use visual examples to illustrate its points but a written description, which leaves a lot of visual interpretation up to me.
The theme of the brief is discussed.
'As discussed, the theme behind the brochure is ‘Race around the world’, so we would like to use an attaché case as the trophy image in almost all of the photos - giving the feeling that the case is traveling around the world. Rather than simply pasting the case on top of various locations, consensus is that we’ll go for a more airports/travel oriented feel.'
The description of the cover shot is short. Its one of a dozen shots commissioned for the brochure but it’s the most important.
'Cover: Case on bitumen (possibly runway) with airplane in sky in the background (low angle).'
I want to find a way to actually shoot this image on a runway rather than a road and worry about too much retouching to make it look like a runway. So before giving the client an estimate my producer and I look into a few things and one is if a runway is available to make such a photograph. We discount the main airport because we figure that it’s not going to be a possibility and instead concentrate on searching Sydney’s other airports and airfields. Using whereis.com.au and a street directory we find a number of suitable options. I opt for Bankstown airport because its Sydney’s second biggest airport and after speaking to them on telephone discover that it’s suitable because of the direction of the runway. The runway runs north/south and considering that early morning winter sun rises in the northeast, then if I am facing north the ¾ backlighting will pick up textures well and produce shadows falling to the bottom right of the frame.
The airport charges a fee for the hire of the runway and this is included in the quote to the client. The estimate is put together by my producer including components for pre production, photography time, assistant fee, contact sheets of a selection of images, image download fees for every final image requested, post production, courier costs, parking and a standard list of other possible costs. The estimate also clearly states a licensing agreement, which includes media, territory and duration.
After a little bit of negotiation the client and I come to an agreement on the cost of the shoot and what can and can’t be done within the budget.
The client in this case opts to supply the bag as well as the luggage tag stating the word 'priority'.
A recce to the location is organised to help galvanise the image in my head and to check logistical issues and reduce the likelihood of unwanted surprises on the day.
I decided that it would be best to do the cover in two shots, a base shot of the bag sitting on a runway. After that I would photograph a plane to appear in the sky.
My producer made up a spreadsheet to keep an eye on all aspects of the shoot to help make orgainsation clearer and easier.
In the days leading up to the shoot I checked the weather forecasts on the Internet. I wanted a clear or relatively clear day. Thankfully the weather was just what the doctor ordered on the day. A little bit of haze helped to create a sense of aerial perspective to the image.
On the afternoon prior to the shoot I printed out my standard equipment checklist to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I made sure all my batteries were fully charged.
I used my Mamiya 645 camera kit with a Leaf Valeo 11 megapixel digital camera back and a G4 mac laptop to download the images to and for previewing focus, depth and of field and composition. An 11-megapixel camera back produces a 30.7mb RGB file adequate for an A4 image with room to spare. I took just two lenses, an 80mm 2.8 and a 35mm 3.5. I anticipated that the job would probably done on the 35mm. I took along a standard tripod and a reflector.
 The Shoot
I arrived with my assistant half an hour before time at the location just in case there were traffic problems and ended up using the time to have a quick coffee and a bite to eat before we started.
We were driven out to the runway and it was blocked off. Planes in the area were told of our presence for OH&S reasons. I had two hours to do the shot. There was some low cloud cover, which meant that I had to wait for the sun to clear so I could get my shot.
I took 122 frames in the two hours doing different angles of the case at a few different spots as well as a few other images without the bag that might be useful. Obviously all images were taken in a portrait format as it was to be a full bleed cover image, and there needed to be plenty of sky to allow room for a plane to be stripped in.
It’s important not to overexpose digital files, so I err on the side of underexposure rather than overexposure. This ensures that highlights have detail. Shadows and midtones can be brought up to a pleasing level utilizing the full 16bit power of the Leaf digital back.
I took a couple of frames of my GretagMacbeth ColorChecker in different lighting situations to help with applying colour correction to the final images.
Post Production begins
On the way back to the studio I called the client to let them know that the shoot went well and that soon I would send through some images for them to look at.
 After getting back to the studio all shots were backed up onto another hard drive. Data can be lost and an important shoot such as this is exactly the type of situation where you don’t want to have to re-shoot because of one drive playing up. Images were then quickly edited using Leaf ContactSheet v8.3.2. A selection of 19 images were made into jpegs, put onto a CD and delivered to the client to choose one base image for the cover.
I rang the client and we agreed on an image to use for the cover.
Second image
Now that we had a base image I could concentrate on the second image of a plane to strip into the sky.
I knew I wanted a picture of a jet aircraft and so would use Sydney’s main international airport to take this picture. I wanted similar lighting conditions to match the two images so if I was facing north I wanted the sun to be rising again. Alternately I could face south and take the shot in the afternoon, but seeing as Sydney’s main runway sticks out into Botany Bay in the south I was mostly going to concentrate on using the northern end of the runway. I check street directories for a good location around the suburbs of Sydney’s inner west and found a park close to the airport in Sydenham directly under the flight path. The next step was to check the airport’s arrival and departure schedule, after a quick look on the Internet I found a site with all the information that I needed. The best time for me to photograph large international aircraft was early in the morning. Perfect.
After one failed morning when the planes were operating on the east/west runway I got lots of photos of airplanes one fine sunny morning. I had a printout of the schedule of aircraft movements so I knew roughly what type of plane to expect at what time.
The planes were moving quite fast at that low height and I did some shots with my 35mm lens and others with my 80mm lens. I had to use a relatively fast shutter speed, 1/250 second to freeze the movement.
The plane had to be anonymous so the ¾ backlighting put the planes into silhouette and thus the colours of the plane were mostly obscured.
With around 30 images to choose from I imported about 4 different images of planes into Adobe Photoshop as tiff files and started overlaying them onto the chosen base image. These were emailed as low-resolution jpegs to the client and discussed over the telephone. We chose an image of a 747 landing very early in the morning deep in shadow on the underside so it didn’t look like any particular airline.
Retouching
With the two images chosen, both raw files were exported again in 16bit using LeafCapture V8.3.2 using the colour correction files to ensure colour accuracy between the images. Both files are imbedded with colour space Adobe RGB (1998). All retouching is done on a colour calibrated computer monitor set to the international colour standard D65.
Bringing the images into Adobe Photoshop CS I use layers and masks to create a montage of the two images.
 I keep all my layers intact and keep an copy of this file so I can change any mistakes and also so I can refer to it in future if I need to apply any techniques to other images or just simply to remember how it was done.
Background layer is the base image.
Layer 3 is the image of the plane that has been scaled to fit the base image. The mask on that layer shows where the two skies have been blended together.
Slight adjustments to the colour of the sky are made so the images are easier to match using hue/saturation layers 1 and 2.
Layer 4 was where a terminal building and safety cones were removed from the base image.
The bag was selected using the pen tool and copied from the background layer to sit on a layer above the plane image. Layer: background copy. And then background copy 2, Layer 6 and Curves 3 were created to adjust the ‘priority tag’ using the clone tool and airbrush.
Curves layer 1 gives an overall adjustment to brighten the image overall and add contrast.
A curve with no adjustments but set to screen mode creates a bright layer that is then airbrushed on its mask to apply to the silver bag area.
Curves 3 applies selective brightness and contrast to the luggage tag.
Layer 7 is created by duplicating the image, flattening and adjusting to grayscale; and then made into duotone made up of a neutral grey base and a green pantone colour. This is then copied back onto the image, blended by overlay, with both the opacity and fill reduced to add a little bit of unusual colour and contrast to the image
Finally a new (Layer 8) is created and all layers are copied and merged to it, final curve is made to increase contrast and applied then only to selective areas using a layer mask.
The images is saved for archival and a duplicate image is created, all layers are flattened, mode adjusted to 8 bit and then a little bit of unsharp mask is applied and faded by luminosity.
The image is then burnt to CD and delivered to the client.
All aspects of the job including all raw files, pre-production notes, layered files and final files are then archived on two separate media in two locations. The location of the files are catalogued in iView mediaPRO.
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