This week marked the official launch of Pre-Orders for the BBOMG6 (Builders Buyers Official Meet and Greet 6) Hard Cover Photo Book. A truly exciting time for me personally, as it's so refreshing to actually know that everyone that I spent last year's event with, will finally get something tangible from the time together, and all the hard work I put in will be well worth it, once I see everyone's smiles again.
The whole process was a bit of an undertaking, the planning that goes into just packing equipment for shooting multiple days in unpredictable situations, while managing space in a sports car that you're road tripping in is a complicated process. Lens choices as well as efficient lighting and support equipment was another hugely important decision as well. Both were important to maximize the opportunities that would be given to me behind the camera.
As with any shoot, challenges always come up. The most common one throughout the event was undertaking shooting more advanced lighting shots with such a short time to plan and adjust in between events and locations that were unfamiliar places. This meant running in without an idea of layout or obstructions and attempting to adapt and adjust the photo ideas and lighting setups in your head to each situation. The whole process has been so much fun and considering challenges like time and the restraints of organizing 100 people in the same spot, things can get complicated and I think for the most part the production of the harder shots came out amazing.
The one issue I ran into is that I have the most complicated schedule known to man. This time last year, I returned home in New York from Oshawa, and ran straight into both the peak of wedding season and the start of hockey season (ton of big news trades and the final year at Nassau Coliseum for the team) at the same time. Therefore the post production work of the book took a lot longer than I wanted. Unlike a lot of photographers today, my personal standards are tremendously higher than the large majority of the photographers out there, and therefore every photo was analyzed for print usage, this varies quite a bit from analyzing shots for web usage and wire service work. Each photo was cleaned up, adjusted and color corrected, before I even started working on the layout of the book itself.
After that the hardest task was balancing the book that most everyone had a part in it. Sadly everyone from the event didn't make it into the book with such limited time and space but I think I caught the large majority of everyone and enough people to actually show the story of what BBOMG actually is...and more importantly I think I did a good job of showing the people and the car community itself.
Outside of that, it's been incredibly entertaining to launch everything, although it's been quite a challenge for the time restraints (for those that don't know, I've handled every part of the launch personally). Luckily today, I've become kind of a modern renaissance man and I'm not only familiar, but well versed with every bit of the marketing, e-commerce, web design, printing, proofing, social media work, even building a large scale email blast, and webstore. So it's been quite funny when my friends have asked "what have you been up to?", or said something like "Oh you're not shooting today? What are you doing sitting on a computer?" and I just smile and say "oh you know...". It's just really enlightening, how creative one can be in their spare time, if you have an idea in your head, a bit of drive and a lot of Starbucks.
Anyways, I personally hope everyone enjoys their books, when they get them. It's seriously going to be so amazing to see everyone again and to show them that their modelling work was worth it. Everyone better start editing their resumes to add "model" to their previous occupations!
