Behind the Scenes...

Christopher Zebo

(Chris’ author page will be ready in the next issure.)

cgzebo@gmail.com


I pull off some great photos sometimes; about 90 percent of the photos I take are crap. You never see the crappy ones. I mean, why would I share those?


Taking photos has always been a personal thing and something I've done to itch the artsy-fartsy side of myself since I suck at painting and always wanted to be a painter but I can't even draw a smiley face that doesn't look like it had a stroke.


This whole photography thing all started accidentally for me, and I don't consider myself a "photographer" to this day. But I get knocks on my door from companies worth billions of dollars who want me to take photos for them in exchange for...well...definitely not billions of dollars.


If you have any delusions about this all being glamorous, because the photos depict peaceful, idyllic scenes and "take you away" to a special place...I have news for you.


It's not glamorous most of the time.


For example, today I'm gearing up for a run-and-gun shoot for a client worth billions yet again. They reached out to me about a week ago, we've been working together every day since then, and I've been digging through my archives trying to find photos that suit their needs--doing quick edits, submitting them for appraisal, getting feedback, searching my archives for more, and doing the process over and over and over again.


My eyes have white spots floating in them from staring at a computer screen for so long and it's difficult to focus.


After all of that work, I now have to prepare to hit the road to get shots of two parks in the Dallas-Fort Worth region they want for their ad.


Here's the itinerary: I go and "teach the world to dance" salsa on Saturday night, get home at 2:30+ in the morning, try to force sleep through my salsadrenaline, wake up really early (if I even slept at all), drive over 3 hours north, arrive at Park #1 and scramble in 107-degree weather to scout locations for a shot before the sun sets, hopefully find a suitable composition and take the shots, rush north of Dallas after the sun sets to a cheap motel room close to Park #2, edit shots from Park #1 and submit them via cheap-motel WiFi, hopefully sleep a little, wake up at 5 in the morning, rush to Park #2 to catch morning sunrise/golden hour after hunting around in the dark for a composition, shoot while the light is good until 10am, rush to a Starbucks to edit and use their WiFi to submit those shots--hopefully submitting some winners to the client by 12 noon, their deadline. If the shots aren't great...it was all for nothing.


This is pretty much how most client work has looked so far. Always run-and-gun, fast turn-around, expect the best--so that someone might buy a truck photoshopped into a beautiful, peaceful scene the photographer took while frantically smacking at the fire ants biting his legs while screaming into the twilight....

enough

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