Freelance "Audition"

It's been a very busy week for photography. A webinar to a seminar, A meetup and then a possible freelance job "trial". A few weeks ago I was contacted through my Flickr account by a new startup company about a possible freelance photography opportunity. The email briefly indicated that they were looking for photographers to go into NYC and shoot store windows, and close-ups of mannequins.

After a short back and forth I was able to confirm this is something I might be interested in participating in. The shoot was asked to be done at sunset to "avoid reflections". Perhaps they've never been to a big city, but reflections are ever-present in the big city. With all the lights, cars and other city-living distractions it's almost impossible to remove all reflections from the original TTL shot.

They recommended a CPL/Polarizer as well. Now, while on a recent cross-country trip I did learn that a circular polarizer will help reduce reflection present in windows. However, this was car glass that I was less than a foot away from. I had never tried using one a distance away from the glass. And even at a wide 24mm, it was rather troublesome to try to get rid of all reflections.

Additionally, the Tiffen CPL filter I use must take at least 1 to 1.5 stops off my shots. I was continually raising the ISO level the darker it got out, with hopes of just removing the noise in Lighroom during post.

The photographs I made didn't come out nearly as nice as I would have liked. The lighting in most of the shop windows was a mixture of tungsten and florescent, so of course I couldn't adjust the white balance right in camera. Additionally, I learned that I need to take more time to frame each individual shot, as I was cropping quite a bit to get things tighter in post.

Should the trial go well, and they ask me to join the "team", I would certainly considering an early morning shoot instead of a sunset shoot. I honestly hated having to wait for all the 5th avenue tourists to pass by before making my shot!