Going InIn…

Sometimes you never know where a job will come from.  Someone you don’t know can like your work and want to hire you, or you can sell yourself to someone who will then hire you, or even maybe just a friend of yours thinks of you when it’s time for a job to come up.  You just never know.  Two years ago, I shot an event at Vincennes Aviation Technology Center called the Redbull Fight with Flight.  The Fight with Flight was a very neat event, that I was very thankful to witness again as the Battle on the Bricks this year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  The thing with the Fight with Flight though is that I did it as a pro bono event in the hopes of making some good contacts with the folks up at Redbull.  That didn’t exactly happen as planned though.  While I did make some friends with some important folk there,  all I had in the end were the expenses I incurred for the weekend and some photos that went onto Flickr and my blog. While I did have contacts at Redbull, they weren’t interested in anything I had from that event, or the other’s that I’ve covered for them since.  Not a big deal, you’ve got to keep plugging away at things sometimes in order for them to work out.  It actually cost me more money to shoot that fight with flight event than I made within the year and a half after it from the contacts that I had made from it.  Like I said though right at the beginning of this post.  You never know where your next job will come from, and that was proven to me for sure when I got a call from Brittany at a company known as Interactive Intelligence (InIn for short) to shoot some photos for their recruitment cards….

(Nikon D3s, 100ISO, Nikon 85mmF1.4AF-D, 1/200th@F2.  Nikon SB900 Speedlight behind the blue plexiglass shot into the wall set to 1/16th power to light up the blue background, Single Nikon SB900 zoomed to 200mm set to TTL on the computer pointed into the laptop screen with a 1/4CTO to light up Josh in that neat computer screen kinda way. Nikon SB800 on the floor zoomed to 105mm Set to 1/32nd power shot into the blue plexiglass on the other side of Josh to add a little bit of ambiance fill on the back of the computer and his legs.  All Speedlights triggered by Pocket Wizard TT5 Transceivers, Triggered by a Pocket Wizard TT1 with a Nikon SU-800 on the hot shoe).

I’m pretty random, but this does relate trust me.  Brittany used to work at the Vincennes Aviation technology Center, and was one of the hosts of the Redbull Fight with Flight.  She remembered my work from back then with that spent time and extra effort and thought that shooting the Marketing and Recruitment photos for Interactive Intelligence would be right up my alley.  I was honored and humbled that she remembered me and the extra work that I had put into that weekend and without any problems we can to an agreement for the job and were off.

(Nikon D3s, 200ISO, Nikon AFS50mmF1.4, 1/40th@F2.8.  Single Nikon SB900 Speedlight zoomed to 200mm, set to 1/8th with a 1/2CTB fired from on top of a server rack about 20′ to camera left.  Single SB900 Speedlight zoomed to 70mm set to 1/16th with a 1/4 CTO shot through a 32″ Umbrella pointed into the server to camera right.  Both Speedlights triggered by Pocket Wizard TT5’s, Fired by an on camera Pocket Wizard TT1 with a Nikon SU-800 on the hot shoe). 

The assignment was simple (at least to me), I needed to create professional portraits of young adults for recruitment and marketing at college fairs.  One of the campaigns that Interactive Intelligence has run with reads something like, Wear your best dress sandals.  The company has no dress code, and if you have large earrings, tattoos, blonde, black, white, grey, Green, or no hair you’re in. Anything goes.  You from Mars?  They like that too.  Very, VERY, smart individuals all had to deal with my bringing the IQ of the building down by a sizeable percentage for the day.  They were cool with it though.  Met some folks interested in cameras, met some folks that were interested in things I didn’t understand, and even met one of the owners.  All wearing shorts, flip flops, and T-Shirts to work.  All probably some of the smartest people I’ll ever meet.

I was given a pretty solid creative freedom for the assignment, and some parts of the facility were much harder to light than others.  Examples being the above photo in the server room.  I was told going into it that it would be almost impossible to get a high quality photo in there, as it had been tried but it required a long exposure which caused blur from elements moving due to the air conditioners keeping the servers cool.  While I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, everybody was pleased with the results.  Little bit of blue light, little bit of orange light, couple of cookies out of the snack area, and ShaZam!  People walked away happy, which is always a good sign.

(Nikon D3s, 200ISO, Nikon AFS 24F1.4N, 1/800th@F1.8.  Single Nikon SB900 zoomed to 200mm pointed into the ceiling on top of the bookshelf set to 1/2 power, Single SB900 Speedlight on the floor pointed into the bookshelf to add some lower fill to the desk and the computer monitor set to 1/4th power.  Both Speedlights triggered by Pocket Wizard TT5 units, with a Pocket Wizard TT1 on camera with a Nikon SU-800 in the hot shoe.)

Everybody gets their own office at InIn, and can customize them any way they want.  The Nerf guns are a nice touch in my opinion, and while I didn’t witness it; apparently there are daily battles down the hallway.  That may have been an exaggeration, but just to have them at your desk is cool enough for me.  Great group of folks.  They were very hospitable, they were very helpful, and in turn they and I were all very pleased at the end of the day.  It makes me very pleased that a job that I did in good faith a few years ago yielded a fun, and rewarding assignment such as this.  Who knows what’s next?  Maybe the blog will generate a job?  Until then though, if you’re out at any career fairs look for the InIn table.  Going InIn seems like a very solid job direction to me, if I only knew anything about computers…..   At least if you’ve read this, you’ll know where some of their photos came from.  More Soon.