MONDAY
Myself, a stylist and art director have joined forces to pull together an editorial shoot in London this week, and today we’re in organisation mode. We’ve all been super busy on various other commercial work the past fortnight so it’s quite a last minute scenario and communications have been tricky at times but sometimes that’s the best way. It’s a street shoot, run-and-gun style and the styling is low key; just the sort of thing I feel like shooting at the moment after a few commercial shoots.
I’m renting a Contax 645 for the day and shooting that, alongside my Mamiya 645 AFDii, which is my ride or die camera. I’m keen to invest in a second medium format body so renting is a good way to trial a new model. It’s £75 all in. from a reputable and professional rental house on Fat Llama (long term readers will remember how badly I was stung on my Elle Denmark shoot by a private rental on Fat Llama so I won’t be doing that again) and I’m just having a 55mm wide angle lens with it. This way I can keep the 80mm on the Mamiya, and swap between two focal lengths without having to swap lenses which I find a massive faff. I will take a 150mm lens as well for some really tight portraits and incidentals. We’ve secured a print placement and the imagery needs to be ready and in the hands of the magazine by the 10th April so it’s going to be a super quick turn around. I’m booking a rush at the lab, so they can turn around the scans in one day, ready for selections by the end of the day. After that I’ll need to hand print and retouch the prints and I’m still weighing up if I get them to send the negatives next day delivery to me, so I can print them myself, or whether to pay the lab to print them - more expensive, but less stressful… Hmmm.
TUESDAY
As I mentioned last week, I’m splitting the retouching of the past three jobs between myself and an external retoucher. Spent a lot of the day sifting through the selections for two jobs and sending them over to the retoucher with notes. I like to colour grade the images myself first and then send over to someone else to do skin work and any tidying up / clothing alterations as they are the most time consuming.
The job i’ve chosen to do in-house I immediately regret not farming out to the retoucher… The garments are extremely tricky to make look perfect as they’re fine (very creasable!) floral cotton, and it takes me all day to get the first half of the images done - which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I remind myself again and again that the reason you hand over to a retoucher is to buy yourself time to do other things, like getting back into the dark room, which I’ve not been able to get into for 4 or 5 weeks. How/why I didn’t do this for this particular job i’m not sure but by the time I realise a mistake has been make, the retoucher is booked out so I grit my teeth and carry on!
WEDNESDAY
*I have really tussled with whether to include this in here but on reflection it really coloured the rest of my week so here it goes*.
I’m sitting at my desk (still retouching…!) and have an extraordinary call from an old client - someone who I haven’t spoken to for four years, and I only shot for once even back then. It’s hard to really sum up this call but after some really nice chit chat, she asked me to help her with a shoot, and after a bit of back and forth, she told me the budget, which was below what I’d normally do. It was also eComm, which I don’t do anymore apart from in specific circumstances. So I told her this, and said I could help her get someone great, via the Job Board on this Substack, and something in her just… flipped. I don’t know if she was annoyed I charged more than she had budget for, but in the end I was so offended by her tone I had to very calmly tell her I didn’t want to carry on this conversation and eventually had to hang up on her. It was so incredibly weird and honestly it completely floored me - and reminded me how wildly triggering money can be. I felt like i’d been kicked in the stomach. Straight after this call I sat and scrolled for 10 minutes to calm myself down and had three messages from Substack followers about how much my audio had resonated with them - and I burst into tears. People are weird - but people are also so kind and honestly I really thank you guys for writing nice things on here - it’s a huge help.
ANYWAY - I get the selection through from another shoot last month. The agreed deliverables are 80 and 128 so I’m able to negotiate a rate for the extra images. This is always such a great win and an easy way to bolster your income.
Tying up loose ends for tomorrow. Weather is looking beautiful and sunny so I renting a sun swatter and ask one of my assistants for tomorrow (a PP reader!) to pick it up for me. Get the Contax 645 biked over to her as well as she lives around the corner from the shoot, and organise Public Liability Insurance for the day which I think is a good idea for a shoot on the street like this.
Pack up kit, take my film out the fridge, book my train and head home.
THURSDAY
Shoot Day. I can do a full case study about this at some stage but it was a fun hectic day with a few lessons learned as always. It’s so fun just roaming around on the streets with a crew and finding spots that work and shout out to Eve and Abby for all your help. The Contax 645 was great - and felt exactly like my Mamiya to be honest. It made me think about whether I should just buy another Mamiya but I’m going to see how the prints come out to make this decision.They’re very similar is all I can say for now!
One of the models was flying to Milan that evening so we wrapped at 4pm and went straight to the lab to drop off film. Home by 6.30, absolutely knackered and excited to see the pictures tomorrow.
FRIDAY
Suddenly realise I have three weeks without any flights so use this time to apply for a new Passport as I’ve got lots of trips abroad coming up at the end of the month and don’t want to be caught with less than six months left on there - here’s a reminder to all of you to check yours and Europe has got super tight about this (most likely even more so for us Brexit-ers….).
Scans come through from yesterday at lunch time so I run through and send over my selects as well as the rest of the imagery to the Stylist and Art Director.
Do a first edit of the Super8 video from France. Finalise flights and hotel bookings for an upcoming trip and log off and head to the pub to soak up some long overdue sun.
* Things I didn’t do *
I’m changing to a new accountant and all the paperwork for this change has been coming through all week. Having swapped to a new company for a fresh start I definitely haven’t been as ‘fresh’ in my admin as I would have liked… In fact I haven’t replied to his emails this week as yet. Must get on this on Monday.
P.S. Do you have any assisting opportunities you need to get great photographers for? Or are there jobs you can’t do that you want to pass onto someone else? To list them on our Job Board and tap into this amazing community of creatives, just send the details to studio@aliciawaite.com.
P.P.S. Picture Papers. is now on Instagram! Join us over here.
Hey Alicia - I was looking at hiring a camera on Fat Llama - would you mind sharing the contact you use and recommended? Thank you!
Would love to hear about / see the difference between the Contax and Mamiya negs - I’ve been eyeing up the Contax 645 recently but it’s such an investment I will have to sell a limb first ;)