Photo - Location Recce;

Talk about a steep learning curve, on my very first assignment at school, I was taking outdoor environmental pictures. I picked up my gear, had my models and an assistant and headed downtown Ottawa. Parked the car at the Rideau Centre and we lugged our gear up to Wellington Street. It was early fall, before 9:00 am on Sunday morning. I felt confident at the beginning until I realized all the different issues that would quickly arise.

I had my idea of creating similar styled pictures to some of the James Dean photos. Downtown in a main area, big black fence, model #1 dressed in a nice blue suit. Well it’s looking good! We set up our tri-pod and camera and started taking pictures. I had been at this location before and thought being early everything would be perfect, but surprise, surprise, surprise!!

Well I did manage to get some decent pictures, but I fought the entire time I was there. It was the most perfect day the sun was bright, so bright that this is just one of the problems that cropped up while at this location. I had lighting issues, crowd issues, obstructions, too much shade. Simple planning would have made things so much easier and would have saved so much time.

First off, if I would have sat at the kitchen table, did some planning and make a list of things that are important. I could have opened my computer and simply checked, what the weather is going to be, any special events going on, what’s the traffic like in the location during that time period. Well I didn’t do any of that and needless to say it affected the shoot, post processing and not as many nice pictures as I hoped.

It would have helped if I went down to the location during a similar time and simply check it out. You would have been able to properly assess, if it is a viable location and catch most of the issues that have been mentioned. In my next article I will be looking at the light issues I had during the shoot at this location.