[Leica] The shoe book is ready to view

[pswango at att.net (Phil Swango)]

Philippe Orlent wrote:
Great theme for a book. What is the reason that you kept your camera
on eye level and not lowereed it?
(No critique, just an observation)
=========================

That's a perceptive question, Philippe.  The main reason is that we wanted a
kind of "in the moment" or "a la sauvette" look, and when I shot at shoe
level it was hard to avoid static-looking poses.  Also, though the pictures
were not candid by any means, they were taken during the actual working day
of the art gallery and getting down on the floor for extended times was not
always an option when customers were present.  Finally, with my
eye-level-only Pentax DSLR it was really hard to get low enough and still
see through the finder.  Ironically, the cover shot was at shoe level, but
to make it we had to elevate the foot/shoe on a prop.  A few of the pictures
later in the book were taken nearer to shoe level but you can't see them in
the PDF preview on the Blurb site.  But I was always a bit concerned that
the eye-level POV might put some people off.  There are 40 shoe images in
the book and sometimes it was a challenge to find a fresh way of seeing the
same type of subject.

The way the book evolved is that I would visit the gallery every day and the
owners or manager would show me the footwear and outifts they wore to work.
If something looked interesting we would do a quick shoot, usually lasting
only 3-5 minutes because they were on work time.  It was a very casual
project and a lot of fun.  We're now working on a second one.

-- 
Phil Swango
307 Aliso Dr SE
Albuquerque, NM 87108
505-262-4085