Real World Estimating... Wading Into the World of Fine-Art... Book Signing Schedule...

Always an educational & informative read, today's entry at the blog A Photo Editor gives us another glimpse into the process of estimating and bidding an assignment. Jess Dudley, producer with the production company Wonderful Machine, takes us inside the process of estimating a still life product assignment for a national brand glass manufacturer who's products are sold through big box stores.

The client needed pictures showing several variations of each of the bowls, plates, and cups so that they’d have different options for use on packaging, point of purchase displays, and on their e-commerce site. They wanted everything shot on white background. Their in-house designers would process the raw files and handle the silhouetting and any retouching. The client would plan to bring a hard drive with them and simply take all the raw files with them at the conclusion of the shoot.

 Additional information going into the thought process in preparing the estimate:

Whether I quote the high end or the low end is going to depend on how prominent the brand is, the complexity of the pictures, how prominent the photographer is, how busy he is, and the exact licensing. The number of shoot days and the regularity of the work is a factor as well. If a one-day shoot suddenly becomes a five-day shoot, I would probably discount the additional days.Location of the photographer and the client can also factor in. If the client (even a big one) is in a smaller market and you’re competing with other photographers in that small market, you might not be able to charge as much as for a similar project taking place in a bigger market. In this case, the client and the photographer were in a big market, and I felt that all of the other factors together pointed to about the mid-point of the range, so I quoted 4000.00/day. The client specified the exact usage they needed, which I quoted on the estimate. 

Jess includes in his estimate fees for a digital tech and one assistant, studio & equipment rentals, expendables (set-paper backgrounds, etc.), milage, and fees for shipping & delivery of the work and catering for breakfast & lunch. The client planned to provide the stylist. ( I also note that no fee was included for digital post-production to prepare the image files for delivery & publishing. For this particular assignment, I am assuming those duties fall to the on-set digi-tech who will correct the Raw files, color correct, sharpen, etc.)

For some time now, the trend among mainland photographers has been to charge fees for studio & equipment rental, even when the photographer may have his own shooting space & gear. This is a trend I would like to see happen here... especially the equipment rental which suffers much wear & tear and is very costly to purchase & replace.

As for catering, it has been my customary practice to include expense items to cover meal per diems on shoot days for myself & crew. Catering would be quite a luxury and something I don't think most Hawaii producers or photographers include in the estimate budgets. Fortunately for me, the bulk of my work involves either food & beverage or architectural photography for resorts, hotels & dining establishments where food is easily accessible. For us, it's simply a matter of breaking for lunch in most cases. For major resort assignments with large crews, talent and early, pre-dawn call times, it's always a good idea to plan ahead and have the F&B folks and/or Room Service deliver to the location an assortment of juices, coffee, teas, fruits & pastries.  This helps to insure that the cast & crew are always on set when you need them and are fed, happy, awake and ready to work. When the body is nourished, feeding the creative hunger is much easier. 

The APE post should be an eye-opener for many of the up & coming photographers around this state. Though much of the assignment work generated in Hawaii is, for the most part, for local & regional brands where a day rate of $3K-$5K would never fly for a myriad of reasons (local or regional brand & marketing, lack of education-self confidence-Wall Mart pricing strategies and rabid undercutting amongst out newer talent pool). There are many new additions to the talent pool here that have never had the opportunity to work on or be exposed to productions of this type and simply haven't had the opportunity to be educated as to real-world values of the work they produce. Information like this post by APE provide some of those opportunities to educate yourself. Please take the time to read it here.

In other asides, I'm feeling a bit schizophrenic these days as I float between the world of commercial assignment photography and the world fine-art photography. The weekly gallery set-ups & sittings at the Four Seasons Resort & Spa in Wailea has been a learning experience indeed. 


While I could argue that what passes as a fine art market in Hawaii is more of an expensive souvenir market (and do argue this point frequently with the Art Hash Harrier gals), the point is a moot one given that I have been given the opportunity to get my personal work in front of a large & captive audience of very well-heeled and very pre-qualified potential buyers. I am further enthused by the fact that my sales thus far have been of work I am emotionally attached to, feel very proud of and has been anything but "Hawaiian" in subject matter. That I haven't yet resorted to producing tropical sunset pics or ripping off the wave photos of Clark Little, like so many others, is comforting. Mrs. NC insists that I need some of those types of images in my display and I think she may be right. Gotta get right on that! What a great luxury it would be to be generating income in this manner, freeing me considerably from the concerns of the commercial side of my business to pursue work of a more personal nature. 


And I'm enjoying my time sitting the resort gallery too; enjoying getting to know the other artists working in other mediums, enjoying the people watching, getting to meet the celebrities visiting the resort, watching what images people seem most drawn to from week to week. I'm paying close attention. My first five weeks of sittings has been during the traditional pre-holiday slow time for tourism in the islands All the better... allowing me some time to develop the learning curve as to what works , what might work and what doesn't. By Christmas peak season, I should just about have things fairly well wired. Already, new work is being produced to meet what I'm beginning to sense is the market. New work will be on display this coming monday and I will get a chance to evaluate how well it will potentially be received. Drop by on mondays between the hours of 7:00am & 1:30pm to say "hi" and check out the new work if you plan to be near the Four Seasons.


Old dog, new tricks...


I will be joining authors Mark Ellman & Barbara Santos next weekend for two books signing events as the launching of the just published Practice Aloha book continues. Next Saturday, November 27th, we will be at Borders Books & Music on Dairy Road beginning at 2:00 pm.  Word is that legendary drummer, book contributor and old friend Mick Fleetwood will be joining us for the event, signing copies of the book and greeting fans. Here's an opportunity to pick up a few excellent gifts for friends and family as you prepare for the holidays. 


On Sunday, November 28th, we will again be signing books at the Maui Ocean Center in Maalea beginning at 11:00 am. Please come & join us!

Practice Aloha

Aloha. 

The word rolls easily off the tongue and conjures up mental images of exotic islands floating amidst azure seas, brown skinned beauties adorned in sheer grass skirts and tropical blossoms - their arms beckoning sensually in the graceful movements of the hula. It brings to mind the sounds of gentle waves, of steel-guitars & ukuleles. Yes... aloha is all of this and yet so much more...

Aloha is also a way of life, a way of dealing with others whether they be close friends or complete strangers. And, while this way of life, this practice may not be entirely unique to Hawaii, I can think of no other place on this planet where it is more in practice than in these islands.

In my years on these rocks, I have met many wonderful practitioners of the art of Aloha. At the top of that list, I would have to place Mark Ellman, the hard working Chef, Restauranteur and all around nice guy. Mark arrived here just a few years after I did and quickly established himself with the long gone and sorely missed Avalon Restaurant in Lahaina. Mark was one of the original thirteen chefs in Hawaii at the forefront of the Hawaiian Regional Cuisine movement back in the late '80's & early '90's, a tend in dining that refuses to die and remains popular throughout to this day. Mark, never at rest, has gone on to found the chain of Maui-Mex taquerias  known as Maui Tacos with outlets found all over the mainland, a homestyle itallian pasta joint called Penne Pasta and now, two other excellent eateries operating under the name Mala Ocean Tavern.  Mark is also the guy I call the "patron saint" of food photographers in these islands. He was the first the demand high-quality food imagery to promote his restaurants back when there were no photographers specializing in food still-life. My early mentor rose to the challenge and learned how to produce those sumptuous photographs of food and as his assistants at the time, I followed in his wake. 

Never one to sit still, Mark has again thrown his hat into the publishing ring. After penning a couple of successful cookbooks, Mark has undertaken the monumental task of compiling a soon to be released new book to be titled Practicing Aloha where he compiles personal anecdotes from island notables across the state, sharing their experiences & their definitions of what practicing Aloha means to them. 

In preparation for publishing this book, Mark has assembled a crack team of writers, editors and contributors. I have been blessed with the opportunity to contribute as de facto photo editor on the project, as a contributing photographer and now, as a writer. Yesterday, I was asked to contribute a short blurb about my experiences with Aloha for inclusion. In today's blog entry, I thought I would share with readers the text of my submission... with thanks to co-writer & editor Barbara Santos for the clean editing. Read on...

Isles Of Smiles

Tony Novak-Clifford

Maybe it is because I am a photographer, but one of the first things I notice when visiting a place for the first time is whether or not the people I meet are smiling. That is the thing that stands out most in my mind about my first encounter with the Island of Maui, an island where I have been privileged enough to have remained a guest for almost thirty years now.

People smile here. OK, people may smile everywhere, from time to time. At least their lips curl up on each end. People in the islands, however, seem to have this perpetual grin that is ear-to-ear big, teeth-flashing big, deep from every fiber of their being big. It’s as contagious as it is disarming, I’ll have you know.

I admit that I didn’t quite know what to make of it at first. It threw me off. Here I was fresh off the boat from the east coast, a place where people you pass on the street seem as grey & stern as the weather three-quarters of the year. To suddenly arrive on the shores of a tropical island with mountains sharp, angular, and green; surrounded by water the color of precious gemstones; and breezes scented with plumeria was already an amazing transition for an uninitiated new arrival like myself. It all seemed so exotic & completely foreign to me.

And then there were these PEOPLE… these amazing people. They were big and beautiful; they were brown & golden; and they were smiling!  Well, not so much a smile as it was a giant opening in the face, roughly where the mouth should be, curled in an upward direction on each end. A smile like that can swallow you whole and then spit you out again a new man (or woman, as the case may be). And that’s exactly what happened to me.

The first time one of those big brown faces reached out and took my small, pale hand into their giant brown hands, clamping ever so gently, so warmly, in a gesture of welcome, the giant, tooth-filled grin spreading from ear to ear, I was immediately besotted… a complete goner.

The weather, the scenery, the sensual surrounding sea… these things alone were enough to make me linger in these islands for a while. It has been the people that have made me want to stay here forever.

After arriving in the islands, I had to look for things like a job, a place to live, a bed, a bicycle or car.  I remember back in those early days, going from shop to shop on Front Street in Lahaina, looking for work, inquiring about rentals and some of the other creature comforts one is forced to leave behind when flying to an island on the other side of the world. I remember some of those shopkeepers; some of them remain friends to this day.  If they didn’t have a job available or one of the other things I may have inquired about, they would stop whatever it was they were doing and pick up a telephone to call an auntie, a cousin, or a friend. Speaking into the receiver in that exotic, sing-song dialect we call pidgin, they would ask the person on the other end: “I get one malahini haole boy heah, you get one bed you like sell?” Or maybe it was a bicycle… or maybe an ohana cottage for rent. What I remember most is that they took the time, expended extra effort without giving it a second thought, to extend kindness to a stranger. That kindness always came bundled with one of those enormous smiles.

You can call that—aloha. No other word, in my mind, comes close to encompassing the feeling one gets from just hearing the word. Certainly no other term sounds as magical and musical. Aloha.

Several notable Hawaiian authorities have lent their knowledge on the subject of aloha to this book. I am neither Hawaiian nor a scholar. I am only an observer and a guest. When I first washed ashore, I was armed with only a very basic knowledge of Hawaii, it’s people, practices, and culture (and most of that garnered from the Michener novel). It was the feeling of immediate, almost unconditional, acceptance of those that I encountered and continue to encounter that were my first experiences with what I will call aloha. Their sharing of backyard fruit or fish or game, their invitations to join them under dusty carports to strum along to impromptu chang-a-lang music sessions and the ubiquitous passing of cold beer and fresh poke… in my experience these are not everyday occurrences in most places. And then there were those smiles… always those smiles.

Though the scholars may disagree on certain points, these are the things that have come to define aloha for me. Aloha is a spoken embrace and a bestowing of love. It is a sense of warmth and an acknowledgement of family that reaches beyond bloodlines. It comes, always, wrapped in one of those heroic smiles.I

Even more than this, Aloha is a practice… or maybe it’s a mindset. 

You can find out more about the Practice Aloha project here.