I was taught long ago that it is extremely important to expand your bag of tricks so that anytime you are asked to do something, you can pull out a skill and use it.
For instance, I don’t necessarily care too much about shooting weddings all the time – I shoot 3 or 4 a year and that’s completely fine with me. I do just enough weddings to enjoy it. Then there is sports: I don’t shoot sports exclusively, but it is in my bag of tricks and I can pull that out and shoot it capably any time it is required.
So goes it for these university photography gigs I take from time to time. Given two or three days to make a university look great. And typically I do it twice a year. Not my usual job of photojournalism, but it is something in my bag of tricks… and it is actually kinda enjoyable.
University photography like this calls upon a surprisingly wide array of “tricks.” From fairly difficult lighting scenarios…
…like the above photo (single, on camera flash shot 90 degrees to the right, bounced off the wall and set to balance the outdoor exposure through tinted glass) or just simple found settings…
I actually think university photography like this calls upon almost all the tricks at once, from photojournalism to studio photography.
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Looking through all of these photos, only two are of actual “found” situations and the rest are staged. For this job, the idea is to make some of them as un-posed as possible.
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How do you think I did?
Though I prefer true documentary photojournalism, pulling this out of my bag of tricks is a little refreshing. It is pretty difficult. And difficulty sharpens me.
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
