Inspiration | Big Square Box
If you can shoot in a big square box, you can shoot anywhere.
I told them from the beginning, the theme of today is going to be resourcefulness. We were rained in. It was our final workshop in the 4-part series, and we were supposed to do a live shoot with models and the whole shebang. But there was just the smallest tinge of fuzzy rain that thwarted us from going outside, and so we were stuck inside.
I scouted my own building two hours before the workshop was set to begin. I looked into every corner of the building and discovered rooms, entrances, elevators I didn’t even know existed– yes, several things I had never even seen in the place where I live.
I came upon this loading dock area. The walls were plain, rough, industrial. Sure, it smelled faintly of garbage, and the floors were dirty. But the lighting was great–window lighting from floor to ceiling through a grated garage door– and my workshop participants are really cool people who have faith in my crazy ideas. So this was our big square box. And we shot in it.
Life is unpredictable. It can be a little unwieldy. Embrace it.
Big thanks to my participants who didn’t let the rain stop them today: Vilma, Justin, and Jing. And to our two brave models Shannon and Henry who were totally cool with sitting on the floor, pretending they were camp buddies, and rolling with the punches. Also, credit goes to Justin for quoting me on Facebook and triggering this whole “be resourceful” blog post.
I leave you with a terrible photo of our not so attractive space. I’ll be blogging the full workshop (with nice photos) soon.
