Panic

Haven't had time (or energy) to blog lately as the studio and the boys have sapped all of both out of me. The last five days have been unbelievably hectic as I found out that my buddy had gotten the go-ahead to shoot a cover for Lowrider magazine, and they wanted it ... yesterday. When I got the news, I only had one wall of my cyclorama framed, and still had a TON of work to do to get it even remotely usable. Steph (my wife) put out the call on Facebook and got me a couple of guys to come in and help me. The original intent was to have them work for two days. Well, two turned into three, and we are ALMOST there. I still have some finish work to do tomorrow, but I have until 8 pm or so to get a couple of more thin coats of drywall on some areas and at least two more coats of paint on by then. I'm using primer, so it dries pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure I'll be painting (and sanding a little) all day. But the payoff will come when we get the car and model in the studio, and turn on the lights... Oh, and shoot a little.

I've learned much about construction along with way. Next time, I will absolutely plan a lot better rather than flying by the seat of my pants. I had to do quite a bit of re-work because I got to points where there just wasn't anywhere to connect studs, or stretchers or plywood edges. I probably lost a good day (or two) just fixing problems I'd created myself. Live and learn...

The corner of the cyc was the biggest challenge. I searched and searched, but couldn't find any really good information. We finally ended up making some pseudo-geometric curves and laying them in to more or less fit. Even quarter-inch plywood isn't really that flexible, especially in short lengths, so I bought a couple of cans of fiberglass resin and fiberglass mesh and slathered that in to make a roughly even surface over the plywood. We filled in the rest with drywall compound, and it is surprisingly smooth. I'll spend some time coming up to add a little more compound and do some more sanding and painting. It should be perfect in a couple of weeks, but needs to be workable by tomorrow night. Photoshop will definitely be our friend for this shoot...:-)

Day 1 in the new studio

Got the keys to the studio today! Very exciting to be new business owner. I'm more than a little bit nervous about how this is going to work out, but I don't really have time to worry. I have SOOOOOO much work to do to get the studio in working order and get ready to officially hang my shingle in two or three weeks.

I didn't get in until around noon. By that time, I had just enough time to unload all of my tools, make a quick run to Lowe's (my new hangout), put the mitre saw together and get about half-way finished with my first workbench when I had to go pick up the boys. We rushed back to meet with a local producer who is interested in using my space to shoot a commercial in early June. He really liked it, and is going to have the DP and Executive Producer come by to take a look at it. They would only need it for a couple of days, but I can also potentially rent some lighting and hire myself out to them to be the set photographer during the shoot, so it might work out to a little chunk of change. Just excited to potentially have my first booked gig!

The space is huge. It has about 600 square feet of office and reception and 1800 square feet of wide open warehouse space in the back. It has two nice little offices (interior - no windows) and two bathrooms, one of which is in the studio space and will be a great makeup/dressing room.

I think I have solved my cyclorama problem. I'll build the flat sides coming into the corner, then jam a bunch of styrofoam into the corner cove, and use marine foam to fill in all of the spaces. From there, I'll just carve the foam down (after it's cured, of course) and use fiberglass tape, resin and drywall compound to strength and shape it into a (hopefully) perfect infinity cyc. I'll post pictures of my progress. Going to use the new Nikon D300s I bought to do a time-lapse video too. I'll post that up somewhere -- maybe YouTube. There are a LOT of studio owners and managers looking for ideas on how to do this without breaking the bank and paying crazy money to cyc manufacturers. It would cost me somewhere around $8,000 to get a full cyc (for the size I want) from one of the big boys. I figure I can do the curve parts for no more than a couple of hundred dollars this way. Let the experiment commence.

I also plan to build a half-cyc, which is my term for a curved wall without the corner cove. I'm sure there's a better term, but I'm too exhausted and lazy to track down the official word. I'll have a couple of 2' by 4' work benches, and then plan to build several 4' by 8' flats, which can be connected in a variety of ways and painted, hung, decorated, etc. to create a lot of different sets and looks. This is VERY economical and will really increase the viability of JKB. I had thought about stretching canvas to save a few bucks. Then considered covering the frame with melanin board. I finally settled on quarter-inch plywood. It's a little heavier and more expensive, but should be more durable and easier to paint and re-paint. I can build 8 or 10 of these flats for the cost of one of the better canvas backdrops out there, and have much more variety for nothing more than half a can of paint or so.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Chapter 1

I titled this blog "Random musings about jumping without a parachute" because I don't anticipate that my future posts will be exactly linear. As my wife will happily tell you, there's nothing really linear (or always logical) about me. I'm sure that if I were to see a shrink, he or she would tell me that I suffer from at least a mild form of adult attention deficit disorder. It's not my fault... I'm just naturally curious about things and am easily distracted. SQUIRREL! See what I mean? :-)

The whole "jumping without a parachute"... Well. Yeah. About three months ago I was laid off from a job which I was really enjoying and getting paid very well to do. As a senior training manager for a large outsourcing company, I had a team of 8 other managers across the United States and Canada, and had JUST started the transition process to take over our Costa Rica training operations as well. In fact, the flexibility I enjoyed was (I thought) going to give us the ability to move back to my hometown of Roswell, NM to be closer to my parents and raise the boys (James, who's two and a half and Brodie who is 16 months) in the same small town I grew up in. Well, that was not to be, as I got the call on January 25th of this year (2010) that mine was one of a few thousand jobs being eliminated.

So, the last three months have been a struggle between job hunting, finding even a little motivation to keep working on my PhD, and struggling with the ludicrous notion of starting my own photography business.

You see, this has been my dream for about 25 years. I took up photography in college, worked for a few newspapers, did some assignment work for the Associated Press, got published in a few magazines. But, I was never really more than a serious amateur, even though I got paid for my work on occasion. In 1990 I left the journalism profession, mostly for good, and went on the road with the performing group Up with People. I stayed on for about 4 years, and found myself in Denver, CO in 1994. Getting back into journalism, and especially photography, was always in the back of my mind, but I either couldn't find the job, or as they say, life happened, and it just wasn't in the cards. But, the whole time I have had my camera by my side and have sought to document my life with photos.

Back to April 22, 2010... So, after not really getting any real job leads, my mind (as it is prone to do) started to daydream -- a little at first, and then a lot, and then it became my drive (my wife would say completely unhealthy obsession) to cash it all in and give it a shot. I cashed in a pretty good chunk of my IRA, my parents have kicked in a little change, and I put in my equipment order at B&H Photo out of New York, signed a lease on a studio space, got a tax ID, business license and merchant account, and am still working on all of the little details before moving in on May 1st. I expect to take about two weeks or so to get my sets built, sign made, and collect a few interesting props from Craigslist, garage sales and Hobby Lobby, break in the new lights and equipment, and get my "shingle" hung.

Steph has reluctantly agreed (given in) to allowing me to take a shot at making this happen. And for this I am eternally grateful. She is understandably nervous about how we're going to afford for me to not have a stable income going forward. Add to that the fact that she is REALLY, REALLY ready for a change in careers, and one can only imagine that taking this step has not been a cut and dried process for us. This is all I have ever really wanted to do for nearly all of my life. I was just always either not really in the position to do it, or was too scared to take the leap, or any other number of excuses I could come up with for not following my passion.

Thank you Stephanie for not completely digging in your heels (or at least not divorcing me) and letting me do this, as nervous and reluctant as you are. I promise you won't regret it!

Giddyup!

J Kevin