Shooting Outdoors

“Your pictures looked good.” The Lab Guy says in total amazement.

“Thanks.” I say and think about shooting outside in the hot sun on that first day back at work. “Glad you like them.”

“I know this is challenging.” He says. “But we have to do what the clients want.”

Covid hasn’t just gone away. Crowds of people still get together and still spread the virus around among their friends and family. My job is taking portraits on college campuses. In the days before, this often involved mobs of young people crowded in small rooms waiting their turn in front of the camera. Now things are a bit different. We have the appointments spread out a bit more. We are trying to limit the number of people in the studio area to one or two. I’m wearing a mask and the subjects wear a mask until they sit down to have their portrait taken. And we are doing a few outdoor shoots.

I have had several groups cancel on me. Colleges are often hot spots for Covid. I’m a bit surprised that things have gone as well as they have. Everyone is trying to be careful, but they are still college kids and some of them are not trying very hard.

I have a small portable studio. A background, a couple of studio lights and a background light. All of them are great at catching the wind. Not designed for outdoor use. The weather had been warm leaning toward hot. But autumn is in the air here in the smoke filled Northwest. The day is soon approaching where I will not want to standing around in near freezing weather taking portraits. Outdoor shoots are not going to be an option once it starts snowing and raining.

On the other hand, most of the shoots have been pretty normal. The traffic is lighter, but everything is rolling along. The business side goes on much as it did before. I have had several cancelled shoots but so far this has not adversely effected my bottom line.

It hasn’t given me Covid-19 either. It remains a concern. There are lots of numbskulls up here that don’t want to wear a mask and bitch about businesses with mask mandates. The subjects don’t like social distancing and still tend to gather in small groups. They have all been good about following my directions, but all it takes is one person to spread it around.

Idaho and Washington are beautiful this time of year, well, except for the constant forest fires. There have been several days when the smoke has filled the air. The smell of burning wood is far too common. My neck of the woods has been mostly safe from direct assault. Of course, we’re all just one Gender Reveal Party away from disaster.

Most of the shoots have been light, in that I’m shooting ten or twenty people for a house that has a hundred or more members. They are all planning on follow up shoots in the Spring. Which is fine, but I’m still a Texan and have no interest in returning to the Great White North once snow is thick on the ground.

This remains essentially my dream job. Good pay, travel around the country, simple setup and tear down, and people who, at least in part, want me to take their portraits. The work is simple Assembly Line Portrait work. Four near identical shoots banged out as quickly as possible. Sure I’d rather be some hotshot working for National Geo or maybe a Travel Photographer doing a bit of globe trotting, but those kinds of jobs are not in my cards. This is as good as Assemble Line Portraits get, too bad I didn’t get hired until I was leaning into my old and lazy days.

Of course, old guys are what they want. We spend our days surrounded by half naked 20-somethings who are less of a temptation to me than they are to someone younger. We have already lost one photographer due to inappropriate behavior, whatever that means. The other day I was shooting outside and the young women who came to have their portraits taken were all wearing shorts and tube tops. These outfits left little to the imagination. Like high school yearbook photographers, we use Drapes to make it appear that the women are wearing formal dresses, so tops without straps are good for the photos. I don’t know what the photographer who got in trouble said. He might have just been talking politics, which is never a good idea.

The people in the Office continue to be surprised that we are all getting cancellations, as if Covid doesn’t exist if we just pretend it doesn’t exist. I’d rather not go to houses that have confirmed cases. Not just for me, but for the hundreds of other kids I will photographer over the next few days and weeks. The Company, of course, cares more about profits. Yes, I want to make money, but I can’t spend it when I’m dead.

Work is a means to an end. It allows me to travel and dine in new places. But Covid has put a bit of a damper on that. Many places here and there have closed dinning rooms and it’s a bit scary in the places where you are allowed to dine in. So I’ve been eating a lot of more frozen dinners and take out pizza than I normally would. It’s all good. Things will get back to normal one of these days.