Personal Project: “Wild Studio”
Always make time to play
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Always make time to play 〰️
I love digging into personal project photo shoots. They help recharge my creative battery, give me room to learn a ton while experimenting and they help break me out of the production treadmill. For me, it’s also often work that I’m most proud of.
The idea behind “Wild Studio”
I love the outdoors. I also love creative studio photography. Why not combine the two? The plan was to take the studio with me (lights, camera, lenses, grip, modifiers, rigging, laptop, tablets… the whole mess) and drag it all out into the woods. Making the authentic surroundings of the wilderness (the gravel, dirt, water, wind) my set, my props and my crew (for better or worse).
Planning ahead: Sketches & Creative Treatment
I could kind of see the photos in my mind’s eye, but to make sure none of my ideas disappeared between planning and execution, I developed them into a series of sketches.
The Sketches
I use Procreate on the iPad to plan out my shoots in detail. I can change up colors, rework textures and backgrounds, add and remove things until I’m pretty happy with what i’ve got in place,… and then it’s up to me to find and assemble these elements and make the shot happen.
Looking for partners
Cycling gear, like any athletic gear, is expensive and I was planning on needing a fair amount of it to make this series happen. I could use what I ride with every day, but just take one look at your gym shoes, or favorite sports bra and tell me if you’d like to put that ragged stuff front and center. Hahaha… yeah no. I reached out to handful of brand that I have either had intimate experience using on trail, or had an interest in. Just like pitching to any client, I put together a creative treatment including my sketches, travel plans, dates, and shipping information and asked if they had any gently used demo products, returns that couldn’t be put back on the market (but were in working order), etc. that I would love to feature them in my wild studio still life series.
How it came together
I had this grand idea that I’d be shooting at every location along the way on my road trip, but with just little ol’ me working on the project solo, it’s a lot to lug around. Plus, in some cases, I was only in a location for one to two days. That’s definitely not enough time to scout, account for weather, and shoot something I could be proud of.
Ultimately, I kept the photography to my loamy, woodsy, Northern Wisconsin location (where I stayed for 3 weeks) and that was 100% the right move. That gave me the time to purposefully location scout, plan around nature’s crazy whims, and gather the items I’d want/need in the shots.
What it was like on set
Each shot was born of a sketch, in some cases the shots are very close to the original drawing, in others, I tweaked the final to match my location/subject better. I sketched a lot and only selected the ones I felt would be the strongest to execute given what nature was giving me to work with. In order to be efficient, I’d test-rig everything indoors allowing me to get setup quickly on shoot day. Along the way, in preparation, I groomed my locations. Gathering bits of lichen, perfect pine cones, sweeping and brushing off moss, collecting heaps and heaps of pebbles and gravel, sorting pine needles, trimming branches, dispatching fallen trees… oh and so much more.
Yes, I really did bring a studio with me into the wild. I shot tethered so I could review my images as I went along, tweaking, adjusting, and confirming focus. And while I didn’t bring $30k battery packs and $$$ light heads with me, the nimble light kit I did have did an amazing job. It was a lot of gear to haul to each location, but well worth the effort.
The result was a very happy photographer… I mean, how can you beat the surroundings and my chipmunk studio-mates?
Behind the Scenes
The results
The editing process has been lengthy, this is new territory for me, knitting together my vibrant aesthetic with a loamy, peaceful woodland setting. Some images were quick to process, the path from RAW to polished finished image was quick and direct, while others took more time to moderate the setting a little, pull up the details and make it match my vision.
Lessons learned
Lean on your teams. Because I couldn’t take my team on my road trip with me for the summer (though wouldn’t that have been amazing?) I executed all of this solo. And you will always hear me say that a shoot can only be improved when you pull in a capable group of professional creatives to collaborate.
Find efficiencies wherever you can. I knew it would be tough to drag c-stands, lights, and ALL THE GEAR down hilly slopes, shoot, and then pack it up and drag it back up again. Closer is better, near an out-building or shed is great so you can stage your gear in advance or duck in if it rains…
Stop, and be mindful. I took a moment and envisioned my teammates putting their discerning eye to each image to make tweaks. Working alone means you can kind of cut corners… “That looks good, that’s a wrap” right from shot one. But, I pushed to really give each image a thorough review. Having the iPad connected to Capture One (yes I was shooting tethered… IN THE WOODS) helped me really zoom into the details and get things “just so.”
Plan ahead as much as possible. With wind, weather shifts, bugs, and time of day coming into the equation, any floating, balancing, or creatively rigged shots needed to be test-rigged in the cabin first and then finalized on location during the shoot.
Wind is not something to take lightly. I learned several techniques to mitigate wind from one shot to another. This is not something I’ve had to deal with inside the studio much (except from the occasional HVAC vent).
Going into the wild to shoot is seriously rewarding. I was surrounded nearly constantly by humming birds, blue jays, chipmunks, the occasional beetle or daddy longlegs, and some portly toads. The sound of the wind in the leaves, nature chattering, and the water lapping at the shore made for an incredible photographic ambiance.
I want to do this again! I can envision this project expanding and evolving over time. There’s still so much more to experiment with and to create. So we’ll see…