On Assignment: Art Basel MB

A skate ramp in the middle of ABMB's Art Positions stands in front of the hotels along Miami Beach. Skateboarding legend Tony Alva will be hitting the ramp for a performance during the exhibit on Wednesday night, Dec. 5th.

I may have set myself up for this by using the phrase "Art Basel | Miami Beach craziness," but last night at my first official shoot connected to the 6th annual gigantic art fair things got nuts. Working for new client Monopol, the German art magazine, I showed up to the opening party for the 2007 ABMB for the Basel staff held this year at the Art Positions exhibit space (an outdoor space right next to the boardwalk) to do a large group portrait of the staff. And then the rain began.

It rained off and on for 2 hours while staff slowly gathered. I had plenty of time to scout and make a plan, but couldn't actually get any gear set in place because of the weather, which I was anxious to do and get some tests done since I don't shoot 25-person group portraits all that often (and because it was such a large group I was shooting a mixture of my Hensel Portys and a Profoto 7b set-up, which though I knew it should work just fine talking together w/ Pocket Wizards I still wanted confirmation). We got there at about 6:45 p.m. for a 8 p.m. shoot time, and by 10 the rain stopped long enough and 3 out of the 4 Art Basel directors were now present. Go time baby!

Josh Ritchie, The Fiancée, and I (big thanks guys!) got the location and lights set up and balanced pretty quickly and we were ready to roll. We called for the staff to come over and suddenly about 50 people started to walk our way. WTF?! I'd been told 20-25 by the client and then confirmed that with the communications manager. Suddenly it looks like I'm shooting a high school class portrait and I'm just about to freak out. By sheer dumb luck (uh, I mean superior foresight) our set-up was flexible enough to squeeze in the full lot, though with the extra persons the composition lost some of the umpfh (whaddya going to do).

After a lot of shouting (I nearly lost my voice by night's end) I managed to get everyone in positions, directors front and center. Thank god these were creatives because they all immediately got it when I began yelling about the GUTTER! running down the center of our portrait (Monopol always runs their monthly feature double-truck). By this time it was 10:30 and had been dark for hours and hours so I had to drag the curtain for 1-4 seconds to get some/any detail and color in the clouds above and boardwalk behind. Dragging an exposure isn't a big deal with 1, 2 or even 5 people. But with 50 its a pain.

We wrapped the first set-up after a few dozen shots and I told everyone to go get (another) drink while we regrouped. The second set-up took advantage of a very cool skate ramp that had been built right in the center of the Art Positions exhibit. Without the rain there were dozens of ways I'd love to have done the group shot on the ramp, but with all of the treated plywood wet there was no way we would be able to get everything dry and safe to have 50 people climbing all over it (my liability insurance is only $2 million folks). So our second shot was fun but pretty safe, lit by 2 large softboxes and a beauty dish running down the 60 feet of ramp.

Once everyone was in place (herding cats) and the shot was in the bag, Judy passed out numbers written with Sharpie on some commercial grade paper towels we found and I had everyone hold them up in front of them for a Where's Waldo picture. We then went from either side of the group shot and put numbers to contact information for the whole group (the magazine had to have names and titles for everyone). Thanks to all the staff (many of whom were still fighting jet lag) for being so patient and great to work with, and most of all to Josh and Judy who saved the day. All told and despite the rain and numbers everything went off well and we were on our way home just short of midnight.

Truly if you are anywhere near Miami over the next week you should try to make a huge effort to get down for the ABMB fair and/or the now 23 additional satellite art fairs going on (including Photo Miami and the AIPAD Photography Show). There is just so much cool shit to be seen and experienced and the weather this week is looking pretty sick as well. If you do head down give us a shout and we can grab a drink. And if you are skate fan the legendary Tony Alva will be hitting the above mentioned ramp that I shot on last night during the opening night of the exhibit this Wednesday.

« Go to previous entry | Home | Go to next entry »

Comments (1)

wish I still had my Jay Adams z-flex that I got for christmas circa 1978.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Adams

send us some pics of Mr Alva.

© 2006-2008 John Loomis. All Rights Reserved.