I finished photography for the Ant Farm at the beginning of February, but that did not mean I was anywhere close to being done with the project. No, that’s when a whole other level of work kicked in.

But maybe I should back up . . . → Read More: Ant Farm: Finished]]> Well that was a hell of a lot of work.

I finished photography for the Ant Farm at the beginning of February, but that did not mean I was anywhere close to being done with the project. No, that’s when a whole other level of work kicked in.

But maybe I should back up a bit first and describe the process that was happening during the photography stage. Each of the 100 models was shot in either a horizontal or vertical set piece that helped me keep the proportions correct. I had everything set up so that the lights would be the same for each shot, ensuring a consistent appearance. (It also helped that I was doing everything very high-key, so there really wasn’t an issue with watching out for shadows.)

I jumped on the post-processing right after doing each shot rather than saving it all to the end. Not only did this keep my sanity by spreading this work out over a long period of time, but it helped me catch some set-up issues early on that I was able to correct. But still, this means that for each of the 100 models I had to:

1. Recruit and schedule, often involving quite a bit of back-and-forth emails.
2. Do the shoot, which usually was fairly quick.
3. Do the post-processing for that image.
4. Add that image to the overall grid. The more the grid was filled in, the trickier this became because a domino effect would kick in. I’d discover that the new image would look great in a particular spot, but that meant I had to move another, and the process would start all over again.

Once all 100 models were photographed I spent a couple weeks doing final arrangements to make sure each person was in the perfect spot. At the same time I was constructing the framework they would be standing on. This was a bit of a challenge because I know very little about creating and manipulating textures in Photoshop, so it took a while to come up with something that had the gritty, orangic look that was stuck in my head. This is something I could have keep tweaking for the next two years, but at one point I just had to call it done and move on.

My original plan was to just output the Ant Farm as a single-sheet print, which would have required using a professional print shop in order to get the size I wanted. This led me to start thinking if there was some way I could print it with my Epson 3800, even though its maximum print size of 17″x37″ falls far short of the 60″x45″ size of the image.

After a lot of experimenting, I decided to pursue a staggered, overlapping tiled design that is a slight tip-of-the-hat to the late James Rizzi. I divided the image into a series of about 35 panels, each with two to four models. I then worked through some small-scale mock-ups to find a series of vertical offsets that would work across the entire pieces.

Now that I had a game plan, it was time to move on to the construction portion. This entailed:

1. I isolated the separate panels from my primary Photoshop file and employed my finest Tetris skills to arrange as many as I could on each sheet of my expensive 17″x22″ Exhibition Fiber paper.
2. I proceeded to waste several sheets of paper while dealing with printing problems, which turned out to be the result of accidentally selecting the wrong paper profile in the Print dialog box.
3. When each sheet came out I hung it up in a safe place for 24 hours to give the ink sufficient time to dry. I have no idea if this is really necessary, but it makes me feel good.
4. After drying, each sheet gets two coatings of Hahnemuhle protective spray.
5. Once the spray is dry, each panel is carefully cut out using an X-Acto.
6. For each panel, I cut out a foam core backing that is the same shape as the panel but slightly smaller so it would not show.
7. I ran a black magic marker along the edge of each piece of foam core to help hide it even more. Ideally I would have just used black foam core, but when I went to buy it all the black sheets were annoying warped so I bought white and just dealt with it.
8. I spray mounted each panel to the foam core.
9. I defined four different heights of standoffs I would need to support the panels and decided to use styrofoam to keep the weight down. I bought a sheet of rigid styrofoam insulation and trimmed the blocks using a power scroll saw. This was extremely messy.
10. Meanwhile, I was also constructing the wood frame. Fortunately, it worked well to just use simple 1″x6″ boards and a sheet of plywood for the backing so the construction was rather simple. When building something like this, however, it’s very important to think ahead as to how it will be hung on the wall and work that into your design. I added a couple support pieces to the back that will bear most of the weight. A couple coats of flat black followed by a protective clear coat and it was ready to go.
11. I dry-fitted the panels several times to ensure that everything fit and looked good. Once I was satisfied, I glued everything in place. (The brevity of that last sentence does not convey how long this took. I spent several days glueing a few pieces at a time, letting them dry, then continuing.)
12. Once everything was secured I affixed a sheet of clear acrylic over the front and called it done!

Since you’ve been so nice and read to the end of this long post, I guess I’ll show you what it looks like:

Ha! Fooled you! The best you’re going to get now is this shot with the blue protective film still stuck on the plexi. I won’t be posting an unobscured image of the Ant Farm until it is debuted at SEAF in June 2012. In fact, I suggest you simply attend SEAF and see it in person!

When I kicked off this project in the Fall of 2011, I first spent several weeks working out the logistics of just how I would do the photos. I needed to construct a set that I could quickly switch between horizontal and vertical orientations without . . . → Read More: Ant Farm: That’s a Wrap!]]> Photography for the Ant Farm project is now complete!

When I kicked off this project in the Fall of 2011, I first spent several weeks working out the logistics of just how I would do the photos. I needed to construct a set that I could quickly switch between horizontal and vertical orientations without having to alter my light setup, with the goal of being able to get 100 consistent images in a somewhat assembly line process. Test shots that I did with my first setup revealed some fundamental flaws that I had to address by essentially tearing everything apart and starting over.

By late October I was ready to begin and I had decide just how to solicit participants. Since I had done two large-scale projects before, I obviously had a mailing list with more than enough names of ready and willing people, but I wanted to mix things up a bit. I didn’t want to go so far as to not use any of the people from the earlier projects, but I did think it would be fun to tap into some other talent pools.

This time around I decided to let word of mouth (or word of Facebook) do most of the work for me. I made an intial post about the project which attracted the first few people. I then asked them to tell their friends about it, just to see what would happen. Well, what happened was that I ended up doing very little promoting of the project and the vast majority of people came in through recommendations from their friends. It became very common for emails to arrive that started with “I heard about the project through my friend and I’d love to be a part of it, too!”

And with that, I was off and running.

Since I’m a project manager by trade, I’m always collecting data, and the data I collected for this project is rather interesting (at least to me, that is):

• Total number of participants: 100
• Women: 67; men: 33. This is very interesting, because my past projects were much more gender-balanced. Why this one was so skewed, I have no idea.
• People who had been in Self-Censored Portraits: 21; people who had been in Common Thread: 22; people who had been in both: 12. That means 69 had never been in any of my projects!
• People I had never met before: 52
• People who told me that they had never posed nude before: a lot (sorry, didn’t keep an accurate count).
• Youngest: 21; oldest: 62
• Most common age: late 30s (actually, this is just a guess)

What’s next? Now it’s all about fine-tuning the images to prepare it for printing. I still have a bit of time so I can take this part nice and slow.

Maybe… but probably not.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of all the models in the Ant Farm project; not only the ones I have already shot but . . . → Read More: Is the Ant Farm Full?]]> (Update 1/14/2012: Yeah, it’s full. By the end of this coming week I will have shot all 100 ants. I’ll post a full recap soon.)

Maybe… but probably not.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of all the models in the Ant Farm project; not only the ones I have already shot but also the ones that are scheduled and the people who have expressed interest but haven’t yet booked a date. I just noticed that all together, these now add up to an even 100 people, which is the capacity of the project.

So that means it’s full, right? Not necessarily.

Right now there are about 20 people who are in the category of having expressed interest but haven’t yet booked a date to do the photo. History tells me that not all of these people will end up in the project; schedules can be tough to coordinate, especially this time of the year. In all likelihood I will still be able to take some new people.

What I’m doing for now is putting any new people on a wait list. In the meantime I’m going to contact all the unscheduled people and ask them to try to set up a date with me by the end of the year (that is, by 12/31 tell me when you can do the photo, not necessarily do the photo by 12/31). After the first of the year, I’ll know how many spots I have open and I can start working my way through the wait list.

So, if you have previously told me you want to do a photo, please be in touch soon to set something up.

If you are new to all this, drop me a line and I’ll put you on the wait list.

To provide myself with a large, almost-real-time representation . . . → Read More: When It’s Time to Change…]]> When I first started setting up the Ant Farm project, I built the grid in a portrait orientation because… well… I don’t really know why I did that. It’s simply the way I started arranging the pieces and that’s how it got locked into my brain.

To provide myself with a large, almost-real-time representation of how the project is developing, I print out a low-res shot of each model and tape it to a large piece of foam core. This also gives me something to show to models when they first arrive so they can get a feel for what other people have done and how the project will ultimately look. Last night, however, something rather dramatic happened when I picked up the foam core to move it.

I accidentally rotated it 90 degrees.

In an instant I realized that the portrait orientation was completely wrong and that it needed to be landscape. This is one of those things that was so bloody obvious once I saw it, but it had not even crossed my mind until that moment. Yes, this meant that I instantly created about four hours of Photoshop work for myself to rearrange all the elements, but it was time well spent. Once I finished that the project simply looked better. It’s hard to explain why, but it just did.

I guess the point of this is to remind myself to occasionally step back and question why I’m doing things the way I am. Chances are there are decisions I made purely out of habit that should now be re-evaluated. Assume nothing; experiment often. And above all, don’t forget the valuable lesson the Brady kids taught us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyooALwfxO8

You can read all the details on this page, but the quick pitch is that 100 people will be depicted crawling all . . . → Read More: New Project: The Ant Farm]]> I knew that once summer wrapped up I would need another large project to keep me busy until the warmer weather returned, so I devised something that I’m currently calling the Ant Farm.

You can read all the details on this page, but the quick pitch is that 100 people will be depicted crawling all over a large structure. The structure is made of 100 boxes, some horizontal, some vertical, all arranged into a tight grid. As with previous multi-person projects, I’m mostly leaving it up to the individual models to decide how they want to pose. This just makes it all the more interesting.

The one thing I’m doing slightly different this time is my approach to finding models. In the past I’ve hit up my circle of friends repeatedly until enough people agreed to pose (if for no reason other than to just shut me up). This time, however, I’m finding that word-of-mouth is providing most all the advertising I need to keep a steady stream of people coming over. Most of the emails that I’m getting start off with saying something like “My friend just posed for your project and now I want to do it!”

In actually executing this project, I’m finding that my most valuable tool is not my camera or the set pieces I use, it’s the spreadsheet that keeps track of all the people I’ve shot, the ones who are booked, and everyone else who has expressed interest. If I lost this I’d be sunk.

I shot my first model for this project on October 16, and as of today (November 26) I’ve shot 38, I have 14 people scheduled over the next couple weeks, and another 22 who have expressed interest but have not yet scheduled. Altogether, this represents 74 people, though history tells me I shouldn’t really count anyone until I’ve actually taken their picture. Even people who are really eager to participate sometimes can’t work it into their calendar.

I started off the season not planning to do many underwater shoots. My plan was to focus on . . . → Read More: Underwater 2011 Recap]]> It appears that I’ve fallen into a pretty predictable pattern with these blog entries. That is, I don’t do one for months, then lead off with noting that I haven’t don’t one for months. Oh well.

I started off the season not planning to do many underwater shoots. My plan was to focus on a few special projects instead of shooting numerous individual models. Why? Primarily to break things up a bit. In the end, however, it seems like I did far more shoots than I had planned, though not all of them are represented in my galleries. There were a couple where I was just lurking in the background while another photographer shot and I didn’t end up with many interesting shots. I might still put together a Miscellaneous gallery of random things.

But, the galleries that I have posted include:

• Lydia 2011. This was an unscheduled shoot that happened because the intended model had a ferry snafu and wasn’t able to get into Seattle in time. (Note: as of now this gallery still has a password on it; I need to get a couple things cleared up first.)
• Stripped Screw Burlesque. Earlier this year, SSB contacted me and asked about doing some underwater portraits that they could use on new business cards. I happily agreed, with the provision that afterward they stick around and pose for some additional shots.
• Roxie Moxie. I originally shot Roxie with the rest of Stripped Screw Burlesque, but due to an odd combination of events her photos did not at all turn out. So, we quickly rebooked and had her come back for another session!
• Wiggly Stardust. Wiggy is a local burlesque artist who I had seen perform several time but whom I had never met. Roxie made an email introduction and I was able to get Wiggy in for a shoot right away (which was a good thing because the season was quickly coming to an end).
• Michele Francis. Talk about sneaking in under the wire! It was the very last day of possible shooting, another photographer had already shot one model and I had just taken down the set pieces when Michele stopped by. She had brought such great outfits that were going to look fantastic in the water, so I set everything back up and resumed shooting!

So as I said, not many galleries but that’s OK. It’s not always about quantity.

Anyway, I just updated the Common Thread page with a final image of the piece and a few notes about it’s production.

And now to start planning for next year’s mega-project…