Photography Project – Shooting the Team

After more then two years of running DIYP, I finally feel comfortable to share the fact that I am living a double life. It took me countless rehearsals in front of the mirror to gather the guts to tell. Here goes:

Aside from my real life as a blogger and a photographer, I also have a secret identity as a software developer. Yes, every morning I step into my secret cave, and trade the camera and flash for laptop and network equipment.

Although my family safety demands that I will not disclose my secret identity’s workplace, I can hint that I work for the same company that made the cute Little Professor Calculator – that’s the guy on the left (Image by draggin). Yes, I work for The Silicon Masters Texas Instruments.

What do I do there? I can not reveal (Actually I can, but then I’ll have to kill you). Let’s just say that if you are reading this page via a Comcast or other cable service, you’re surfing my code.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been involved in a challenging development project, creating the next generation of TI’s Cable Modem. As the project evolved and deadlines started to come closer and closer, work started to take on more and more time from other aspects of my life. One of the major casualties was my passion – Photography.

It was time to ACT! I went into my secret photo cave and planned my revenge. After ruling out Plan A (storm the offices with a flame-thrower), and Plan B (move the studio into my cubicle), I came up with the ultimate plan.

I will combine (or as managers like to say create synergy) between work and photography. This is when I came up with the Shoot the Team Project. Read more.

My team is made up from eight great developers each with unique character and personality. After discussing with them, I decided to take their portraits, each one in a different way. The exercise is an exercise in journalism photography. I decided to make each portrait unique and emphasize the qualities and character of the person. I used techniques I learned from other great journalists and photographers (like The Strobist, Chase Jarvis and David Tejada. Actually Chase’s inspiring talk at NYC was one of the great inspirations for this project).

I discussed with each team member about the setup and what kind of shot we want to do, I then brought the camera and gear and tried to make this photo shoot as “journalist” as I can. That means Shooting on location; Doing a fast set-up / tear-down sequence; traveling light; and using cheap props on location items.

In the next few posts, I will share the outcome of this project with DIYP readers. I will show the final image of each team member; describe the setup and explain why I chose to take this specific picture for that specific person.

Last words: The team really rocked and was cooperative with my whims, props, crazy ideas and needed time (not to mention preposterous clothing and impossible poses).

The project is still half baked as some of the team (including yours truly) was not shot yet, but this commitment-post will definitely help me to see this project comes to a successful end.