Jared Blog

TIME is something photographers are challenged with at pretty much every shoot, from working with creative all the way down to working with talent, and everything in between. Time fights us every chance it gets, it pulls us to become quicker and be more productive, it forces us to embrace what is happening and might cause us to change something in a split second to accommodate others. Being talent, creative, location, or available light, everything has to do with TIME. TIME is our friend and our enemy, we all love time, and many of us wish TIME would slow or stand still, always wishing we had more TIME.

What’s my point? well time is not on our side as photographers and there is pretty much nothing we can do about it, sure we can bitch and complain, but what good is that. Sure we can demand more time with talent, yea right, or we can just suck it up and deal. Out of the last stack of assignments we have dealt heavily with the whole time issue, pretty much always the same, photographer will have 2 hours to shoot with the subject. Two hours is a lot of time, sometimes even 20 minutes is a lot, well how about 10 minutes to do a couple different lighting set-ups? wipe your forehead, tighten your pants, get ready to grab a cool one because that’s how the last half a dozen shoots for us have gone, yup 10 minutes, welcome to the “A” Team, life in the fast lane, the majors. Talent has run late, make-up was a no-show, location needs to open back up, food isn’t prepped yet, wardrobe needs a last minute change, and athlete is tired and is not getting paid to do the shoot. This post is in no way a rant it is only a close reflection of the past couple months, everything equals TIME.

Last night was the perfect example of timing at a shoot, I can’t go into to many details other then the fact that I was ready to leave before I even started shooting, I have been treated like shit before, been called all sorts of crazy names, gotten kicked out of places, and have put up with my fair share of crap while being a photographer, but I have never ever considered walking away from a shoot, before last night. Working with and photographing athletes is where my passion lies, I love sports, but what I really enjoy is working with athletes to create images, photographs with impact and emotion. Everything that happened last night reminded me of THIS, sure I could of did a shitty job, busted out some poor lighting, said up yours and walked away, but instead I decided to toss my ego and feelings aside and make some photographs. The entire event last night made me a stronger photographer, it made me want to do an even better job, it pushed me to push back with my camera, and of course all in ten minutes, and we were lucky to even get that.

Years ago I meet a truly great sports photographer and he gave some of the best advice I have ever gotten, he said “the best pictures are made when people are pissed off” meaning the subjects, well last night I turned the tables and I was the person pissed off and I feel I made the best pictures………..