Planning

Like any venture in life, it is always good to plan ahead, as it will save you a lot of heartache when it comes to implementing the plan. For several days now, I have been driving by a site that has many vintage train cars, which have been relocated to a permanent site. As it turns out most of these trains were from an old rail service known as Texas Zephyr that commenced its services in 1940 and it was lastly used in September 1967. After several weeks of sitting idle, the crew started renovating the cars that started to look like collection of diners, bars and retail shops. Apart from the big complex, getting a contact information for the trains was really hard even after several weeks of research. Therefore, I decided to Shoot Vintage Photos on Saturday afternoon since I expect it won’t have a lot of people. At least this ensured we won’t get into anyone’s way or disrupt work in the area.

This trains were extremely well preserved and placed in an artful fashion, which invokes a sentimental emotion, ideal for a theme Shoot. I told a friend who was perfect for this role about my idea and she bought it. She was so excited about it until she decided to rent a costume that will be used including shoes, gloves, suitcase and a period specific dress. For this kind of work it is imperative that not only but your model and other people who are involved invested and excited in the final product. Most of the times conceptual pieces like this are unpaid and if people you are working with don’t see the value/importance of producing the idea, it will likely show through the pictures, or even worse as the team may cancel the day leaving you dry and high. After booking my model and deciding the location, it was high time to think about the pictures.

Shoot day

On the week of the shoot my brain was daydreaming of visuals, I had many shots in my mind even before I hit the ground. In simple terms I was hoping to capture different variations of my model ranging from model hanging in one of the train with her suitcase, looking out for a familiar face in a crowd, waving goodbye to aliens, etc… secondly, I wanted to capture my model waiting with her bags, by the rail car, like someone at the station. I also wanted to capture her walking down the lane with two bags in her hand. And so many other visuals. All these conceptual were possible as I had visited the site before.

There other thing which is very important when it comes to planning is checking out the location on foot with a camera at least once the material day of shooting. I walk around searching for angles, compositions, direction of light and so many more. This will make you comfortable with the place and assist you to conceptualize the shoot earlier before getting on site. This is very important in executing the shoot and staying on time without provoking nervousness to your crew, yourself, and most importantly your model who you want to feel comfortable and relaxed as possible.

Thankfully everybody come on time and we started the shooting on time without disruption. One of the biggest challenge we faced was heavy winds which kept one of my crew very busy with 47” octobox and light. Another important thing, find a good assistance mostly preferably someone who is good at several things you are not; in that he/she can be able to provide sound direction and guidance when you are distracted with your camera.

The whole exercise of shooting lasted for 2 hours and we were able to capture most of our planned shots. For my shooting I went with amazing Xplor 600 HSS strobe powered battery for my light, Avenger C-stand for grip, Paul C Buff 47 Octobox, 48” reflector as flag for reflections on the cars from a fill for the key or the key, Canon 24-70mm f2.8L ii and my trusty Canon 6D.

Post production

I walked away with a total of about 300 shots. Assuming a ten percent success rate, I hope for about 30 of those shots to be keepers. My post process started with light room where I imported all my pictures with tags like vintage, train, portraiture, etc., which truly helped my catalog in remaining organized and optimizing my pictures for in the internet.  I began by going through the entire gallery and deleting noticeable failures. I then proceed assigning numeric ratings to the remaining pictures. I tried to remain as objective as possible when rating my images, this required me to have the ability to identify an amazing image.

At the end, the shoot was a success; the client and I were happy with the outcome and more importantly, we both enjoyed doing something we purely love of artistic creativity.

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