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Shooting the photo for the cover of a magazine is as unpredictable as my second girlfriend, Kym Harper.
Sometimes it’s impossibly fast. You put the project down, take a photo of it and you’re just about done. The sun comes streaming through a window. Little cherubs sprinkle shavings exactly where you want them.
Other times, I’d rather be getting a root canal without the benefit of anesthetic. It takes forever. The image fights you. It refuses to look decent.
This morning we headed out to take the cover photo of a Shaker stepback that Glen Huey built for the cover. It’s a close copy of one from the White Water Shaker Village, so we decided to take the photo in one of the buildings at the village that is in the midst of being restored.
As the art director, Linda Watts, and I drove out there this morning, we wondered if this shoot was going to be a roughie or a smoothie.
The good thing was that the project looks like a million bucks, as Glen’s stuff always does. The other good thing was that the rooms at White Water have lots of detail and windows , but virtually no furniture. The bad thing was that the rooms were small and that was making the photographer grumpy. The cure for a grumpy photographer is equal parts lard and sugar (usually doughnuts).
Today I forgot the doughnuts.
Despite that oversight, everything went swiftly, like when I went to see the movie “E.T.” with Kym in 8th grade. The sun didn’t come streaming through the window, but we solved that by placing a light outside the building on a C-stand weighed down by sandbags.
We started about 9:30 a.m. and were done by lunch. It doesn’t get any better than that (not even during “E.T.”).
– Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I told Glen I wouldn’t post this photo of him on my blog if he paid me $10. Where’s my money, dude?
