Image Idea #7--Drive By Shooting

No, this is not a request for images of gang violence.  Yes, I am taking a brief break from my series on digital imaging (see Analysis 9 and Analysis 10).  Several people complained that I had depressed them with too many charts and too much analysis.  So, I’m going briefly back to pictures.

My agency, Index Stock, sometimes gets images our editors refer to as the result of “drive by shooting.”  Like most people, our wonderful, sophisticated, professional artists have children and pets, take vacations, drive their cars down the street and take walks in the park.  However, unlike most people, our artists always seem to be carrying a camera with them, as they do these things.  (Any of their spouses or children who are reading this blog, will nod in agreement, when they see that sentence and remember their artist family member saying, "Stop, move a little to the right...hold it there!")  They are constantly tempted to grab an image here and there, as they randomly move through life.

Photographic drive by shooting is not criminal, but it can be awfully annoying to an editor at a stock agency.  Here are three examples, from yours truly, that hopefully illustrate why.

My first image is of a tumbleweed, blowing across an Arizona highway in a dust storm.  It is literally a "drive by" image--shot from my rental car.  There are a couple of reasons why this is a useful image:

1. Weather sells well.  Tumbleweeds and dust storms probably match the public’s impression of the results of global warming, pretty well.  Please note that we have no tumbleweed images in our file, and only nine dust storms.
2. The weed is “attacking” a car.  Driving hazards are also popular.

There are also several reasons why it is a lousy image.  They include bad lighting, poor composition, very low resolution (I took all three images in this blog with my cell phone camera) and the fact it is taken through my windshield and therefore shows dirt and dust everywhere.

The second image is of some mannequins stacked up against a phone booth.  There originally were a whole army of them—it looked like a naked plastic person party!  I liked the stacking effect of these two and the sight of a bunch of fairly hefty men picking them up and rearranging them.  Useful?  Yes, as a reminder that mannequins are a great way to represent people generically.  We have 207 mannequin images in our file, and some of them are pretty interesting.  Not useful?  Well, having a phone booth company name in the background pretty much kills any shot, as does poor lighting, poor composition, etc.

The third image is of a cigarette butt on the ground.  Not very attractive, but amazingly ubiquitous.  A symbol of smoking, of litter, and of urban life.  A metaphor for a throw-away world.  We’ve got a couple of old examples (#360543 by Hot Ideas and #363343 by Aneal Vohra) that are pretty good, but when you consider how big the above issues are, why don’t we have more?

Of course, we don’t want more images like the ones I shot—at least not as far as all of the important techniques of photography are concerned.  What we do want are concepts such as the ones I captured.  Therefore, I offer the following suggestions for those tempted to “drive by shoot.”

1.  Stay alert for stock ideas, as you wander through your life.  Some of the best ideas you will ever have, come laterally when you are not expecting them.  Capture those ideas, either with a snapshot, by writing a note (on your arm or palm, if you don’t have any paper!), by telling them to a friend or your editor—whatever!  Just, don’t let good ideas slip away.

2.  Get the concept, not the final shot.  Look at drive by images as your own personal gallery of “tear sheets” (remember how we used to tear things out of books and magazines, so we could study the ideas?).

3.  When you go for the final shot, think stock. Take out ads in the background, do lots of variations (cigarette with filter, without, cigarette crushed, still burning, etc.).

4.  Only send your editor the good, final stuff.

I hope my advice helps prevent future “crimes” against photography, by drive by shooters!

Comments

[cattan]

Bahar take at look at my album named drive by(and I thought I had an original name)
I think the key is to edit well, but you should not be reluctant to explore especially if you have a digital camera, I am still editing my drive by shoot and there are some nice surprises.

[cattan]

Link to album http://cattan.typepad.com/photos/drive_by/index.html

[Bahar Gidwani]

Thanks Robert,

I love your photoblog. I've now added a typelist (you are the first entry) for the photoblogs of DimDump's readers. I hope that others will send me their URL so that I can help share creative ideas and images like the ones you have put on your site.

Bahar

[cattan]

Thank You Bahar,
This is the correct link that takes you to the home-page
http://cattan.typepad.com/
From there you can get to the albums
Thank you