photography

My Super Niche Business: An Equipment Rental House and Studio for Commercial Photography

Entrepreneurship

Window Logo & Client Area - Gaeme

A niche business? How about renting studio space to commercial photographers?

That was my first entrepreneurial venture, called Silver Street Studio, LLC. (I’ve previously blogged about it here.) For eight years I supplied a fully-equipped shooting space to photographers by the day.

Little known outside the photo industry, commercial photographers utilize day-rentals for equipment and studios. It makes perfect sense. They work in hundreds of cities around the world, rarely shooting in the same town more than a day or two at a time. They don’t travel with their own gear; the equipment doesn’t travel well; it’s heavy, yet fragile. Plus, the risk of damage, or of the airline losing the equipment, is too great when a $50,000-a-day budget depends on a strict production schedule.

The solution: renting the gear and studio in the city of the day’s shoot. For gear, they rent lighting equipment, computers, even cameras.

More importantly, by industry custom, the photographer expenses the client for every rental. Most will even charge the client a 15%-20% markup on equipment rentals. For photographers, this is the ultimate in low overhead.

My business stocked over 200 different studio lights and accessories. It made me nervous to keep over a quarter-million dollars worth of gear in our equipment room.  We carried the Profoto and Matthews brands–the global industry standards for lighting and grip.  High-end commercial photographers will work with nothing less.

profoto poster

Our studio sported a very nice, two-station hair and makeup counter, a client lounge, a wardrobe styling area, and a modest-sized cyclorama.

silver street hair and makeup - new - taylor

studio page 10

studio page 2

We hosted countless shoots, some for celebrity portraiture.  When Blender Magazine needed a cover shoot of comedian Dave Chapelle, they caught up with him in Houston and booked our studio. In the days leading to the shoot, Chapelle’s producer urged me to keep a low profile for the day’s events.  Then they arrived in the not-so-low-profile tour bus!

Chappelle bus

For location shoots (i.e., not in our studio), I would deliver equipment throughout the Houston metro area, as well as to Austin, San Antonio, and New Orleans, where high-end photo equipment rentals did not exist at the time. I hauled the gear with my trusty little Thule trailer.

trailer

The Walking Dead, Season 5: Death? Uh, yeah.

Media, Writing
screen-shot The Insightful Panda dot com

Rick in the church becoming a god. (Screenshot credit: TheInsightfulPanda.com)

Has ‘The Walking Dead’ Cracked My All-time TV Top 5?

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

[If you haven’t watched Season 5, yet, stop reading, right now. Or, enter at your own risk . . .]

Just a few words of praise upon finishing Season 5.

Wow, do I have my hair blown back. And I don’t mean just by the thrills and chills. I mean by the relationship drama, the villains/villainy, the comedy. Perhaps where the show excites me most is the inventiveness — a.k.a., rule-breaking — of its cinematography. That’s especially true of Season 5. Sure, the camera work has always been fresh and ingenious. But now, with all the night shooting and severe-yet-nuanced studio lighting, they’ve really turned the thumbscrews on pure retinal agitation. Plus, shooting on the infinitely more mobile 16mm camera produces some startlingly original looks. Like in Ep. 3, “Four Walls and a Roof,” in the church, when our heroes turn the tables on Gareth and Martin, and the hunters become the hunted. That shot from Gareth’s point of view, looking up at Rick wielding the “machete with the red handle.” Sure, that point of view isn’t new, angled up and making a giant of Rick. But the framing — the shot has the altar and stained glass in the background. You’re not supposed to elevate heroes to the level of God. (Not in America, anyways. It’s not an uncommon trope in Japanese screen culture, especially in anime. See Berserk.)

Though it’s impossible to argue what the show does best, consistency has to be part of that conversation. Not a single episode feels like a dud, not in any of the five seasons. Only the rarest cable drama reaches this astonishing level of reliability, episode to episode. The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood keep it at a “10” from bell to bell. But other shows? I can’t think of any. Even some of my favorite shows of all time have their off, phone-it-in days. Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Wire. None of them can match such perfection.

In its mature state the series unsurprisingly has become heavily philosophical. Mostly themes of identity and ego. And, oh yeah, that third theme. Despite having way more characters who die than survive, the show has rarely been about death. Season 5 is about death. Tyrece, Beth, Bob, Martin. (Martin. Yep. Death.) That the nature of existence depends on death — or, rather, IS death — that’s one common thread among the episodes of Season 5.

It’s no coincidence Beth is only a great character when she confronts death.  At the front of her plot arc (Season 2, Ep.10) she tries to kill herself; at the back of her plot arc (Season 5, Ep. 8) she dies bitterly. In both, her cynicism and clear sight ring true. Take for instance her first real scenes (Season 2, Ep. 10). Maggie tries to talk Beth out of suicide.

Maggie: “You could do that to Dad?”

Beth:  “He’s clueless. He had us waitin’ for a cure.”

Maggie: “You could do that to me? I can’t take another funeral.”

Beth: “You can’t avoid it. What are we waiting for? We should both do it. At the same time–”

Maggie:  “What!”

Beth: “–help each other. It’s hard to do–”

Maggie: “Stop talking like that.”

Beth: “–our choice. Then it would be over. Or we’ll be forced to do it when this house and the farm is overrun . . . I don’t want to be gutted.”

In Seasons 3 and 4, the middle span of her plot arc, Beth comes across as flat and contrived and superfluous. But her lustrous scenes in Season 5, Ep’s 6 – 8, anchoring the drama of the mid-season finale, she grows into herself. She survives in that Lost-like, dystopian hospital from hell. She stands up to the depraved corruption, the naked abuse. She helps shield victims of what is essentially a prison. She becomes larger than life, becomes a worthy member of our group of super heroes. In her swan song she says, sneering, seething at Dawn, “I get it now.” She stabs Dawn in the chest and gets shot in the face. Showrunner Scott Gimple could’ve gotten many more great miles out of her. But her death feels just forthright. It is certainly courageous on his part.

Throughout this season Rick feels the need to tell the town folk over and over, “It’s all about survival.” Well, that’s one side of the coin.

How to Create Pre-Press PDF Files on a Budget

Entrepreneurship, Media
bus-card Adler GRACoL 2006

Need to order a commercial print job from an online printer, but don’t have Adobe Illustrator ($560)?  That’s my situation.  I’ve laid out a nice business card in PowerPoint (above), including the logo I also designed in PowerPoint.  But Powerpoint does not produce vector graphics.   Printers need vector graphics.  They also recommend submitting PDFs that have been “pre-flighted” using certain Adobe Acrobat presets, such as PDF/X-1a.

Huh?

That’s what I said.  What a bear it was to research this.  And for an additional challenge, I wanted to see if I could accomplish all this on a budget.  I assumed I could find some vector-graphics freeware with which to reproduce my designs.  But the question remained:  how to  save the graphics file in the “pre-flighted” PDF  format that online printers specify?

(In case you’re considering skipping the preflighting step, know that preflighting helps avoid printing glitches such as font substitutions and color alterations.)

Turns out, the key to all this is Adobe Acrobat.

Some of this terminology rang a bell, as I used to  own the Adobe Creative Suite (ACS; back then, $1500) when I ran my photo equipment rentals business.  ACS includes all the programs that produce file formats press printers require, such as .ID (InDesign), .EPS (Photoshop), .AI (Illustrator), and of course .PDF (Acrobat).  I needed all four of them to design marketing materials for that business.  But that was four years ago.  For the past four years I’ve been running my healthcare business, with no need for ACS, at all.  Now that I’m starting up my freelance commercial writing business, I’ve been crossing my fingers that I won’t need to spend $1000+ on design software.

The bottom line is, yes, one can create vector graphics using freeware/shareware (I used Inkscape to recreate my PowerPoint designs).  But for press printing, you need to create properly preflighted PDF’s.  For that, you must have Adobe Acrobat (price varies depending on version and how purchased, $100 – $429).

I verified this by downloading the free trial of Acrobat 11.  With Acrobat installed, the Acrobat Virtual Printer will appear in your list of devices and printers.  (This is in Windows, obviously.)  You simply design your graphics in your vector software, then follow these steps to preflight your PDF:

1) “Print” your file (That’s right, “print” not “save”!)
2) In the print dialog, select Adobe PDF as the “printer.”
3) Click preferences (or printer properties).
4) In Preferences, the “Default Settings” area offers a drop-down menu of PDF format presets.  For business card printing, Moo.com specifies the preset PDF/X-1a:2001.  For printing a brochure, Vistaprint.com requires PDF/a-1b:2005 (CMYK).
5) Click okay to get out of preferences.
6) Click print.  You’re done.

Now you have your vector-based,  properly pre-flighted  PDF to upload to your online printer.

My Rental Studio Business: Big Multiday Photo Shoots

Entrepreneurship, Media
Magazine cover shot in my rental studio business

Magazine cover shot in my rental studio business

My Rental Studio Business:  Big Multiday Photo Shoots

Weddings in Houston, the city’s premier wedding vendor resource, shot many of its covers at my photography rental studio, Silver Street Studio.  Editor and publisher Radhika Day put together a crew that fired on all cylinders over the three-day shoot.  Crack stylist Summar Salah plied her stagecraft on three different glittery sets and twelve wedding gown wardrobes.  Hair and makeup by The Perfect Face transformed the models into showstopping brides.  And photographer Larry Fagala captured all the drama with technical expertise.

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One of three sets during the three-day shoot

ice storm

Food and Drink, Health

ice storm

We came out of Karaoke Kid and I had to ride home on my frozen bike.  For the two hours we were karaokiing, my bike was outside on a pole, getting sleeted to death.  On my way home, nothing worked.  Not my brakes, not my shifters.  Couldn’t hear the usual zippy-hum of my studded tires — they were encased in ice.

Favorite Clients from My First Small Business

Entrepreneurship, Media

Image

While running my rental studio, Silver Street Studio in Houston, it was exciting to work with photographers and agencies of international renown, like Mary Ellen Mark and Mark Seliger, Art Department and Greenhouse Reps.  But it was a special pleasure to work with those photographers and crews that were at bottom simply great human beings.

TONY D’ORIO PHOTOGRAPHY

I think immediately of Tony D’Orio, of Altoids fame.  (Note:  Tony’s photo used in the ad above was not shot in my studio).  How refreshing that, in a profession so rife with jealously guarded tricks of the trade, Tony instead offered a broad openness and generousness of spirit.  Over the course of a two-day shoot for McDonald’s, he showed me a couple of studio equipment hacks that made my job easier and that would be enjoyed by other photographers in my studio for years to come.  For instance, he showed me how to switch out the hand-crank machine clamp of an Elinchrom Octabank–which have infamously weak grip—with the more robust clamp from a Matthews C-stand.

http://www.tonydorio.com/

FULTON DAVENPORT, PWL STUDIO

Image

Lucky for me I like photographer Fulton Davenport as much as I do since he was perhaps our biggest repeat client over the years.  With his busy creative firm, PWL Studio, Fulton was shooting in our space practically every other week for years.  One of his specialties is product photography, which was also a specialty of ours.  Take a look at the photo above, of Fulton at work for a high-end antique shop client.  The tabletop set is comprised of expendables and hardware we kept in stock and offered at no extra charge.  Even more to the point of product photography was our studio’s unsurpassed natural light.  Here’s Fulton on shooting day light in our space:

“I love the highly technical work, like photographing objects with intense detail, a la Irving Penn shooting for Saks Fifth Avenue.  You’d normally need (or have to build) a light tent.   But here, you’ve got such huge windows on north and south, the light is perfect.  Tents are used just to simulate this.”

http://www.pwlstudio.com/

JUSTIN CALHOUN PHOTOGRAPHY

Imageastronaut mailer sofa guy

One of my favorite people, photographers or not, is Justin Calhoun.  Justin brought us a big job one summer, and one could tell how much the crew liked working for him.  The makeup department, the photo assistants, even the kraft service people were obviously inspired to work hard for Justin, with smiles all around.  What you see here in the two photos above is a Polaroid test shot (the client wanted Justin to shoot film, not digital) and one of the direct mail pieces ultimately produced from the images.

http://www.justincalhoun.com/

FELIX SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHY

Image

Another of our busy-busy clients was Felix Sanchez.  Felix was one of the first to shoot in our studio in the early days, and he continued to bring interesting jobs into our space over the next seven years.  (He has his own beautiful new studio now.)  Before becoming a photographer Felix played in a touring Tejano band, so naturally he’s photographed many musicians throughout his career.  Early on with us, Felix was kind enough to help me assimilate the vast expanse that is studio equipment.  He’d report on all of his new experiences experimenting with lighting equipment.  I based many of my equipment acquisitions on Felix’s information.  The job in the photo above was for Walmart, for which Felix transformed our cold, empty space into a warm and cozy living room.  Go check out his handsome new website.

http://www.felixsanchez.com/

Favorite Thing About My First Small Business?

Entrepreneurship

Fotofest gallery empty

I’d be hard-pressed to pick one favorite thing about running old rentals business, Silver Street Studio, LLC. Working with photo crews? Tasty catering? Both, awesome. But our Fotofest Biennial exhibits really stand out for me.

Every two years we’d donate our space for a month to house one of the thirty Fotofest Biennial exhibits. The Fotofest Biennial, according to their website, is “the largest event of its kind in the world”. . . a “platform for ideas and discovery, combining museum-quality art with important social and aesthetic issues.”

In the photo above you can see why I loved temporarily transforming my workaday photo studio into an elegant, clean modern art gallery. There were always anxiety butterflies in that first hour of the gallery opening, when only one person would show up (above).

That one person was of course the advance guard of the army that would follow. Ever have 500 people hanging out in your house? (My photo studio was in my backyard.)
Fotofest gallery crowd

Said army out in the bar in my carport.
fotofest the bar

My wife and I enjoy throwing parties. It’s safe to say our Fotofest gallery openings were our best attended shindigs. And at the end of the night, as the last of the army would be marching out, and our volunteers could take their first much-needed break (below), my wife and I would smile at each another, a bit incredulous we had really pulled off an event of such complexity and magnitude, and had a thrilling fun time doing it.
Fotofest gallery blur