The Art of Selling the Story: Acupuncture
NOTE: The latest issue of Lagniappe features an illustration by our in-house graphic designer Laura Rasmussen with the subject once again being Mardi Gras. It’s definitely worth checking out so be sure to go pick up a copy if it is within your grasp. With this break from cover responsibilities this week, I will be revisiting an old cover.
THE ART OF SELLING THE STORY
Acupuncture
On November 30, 2010 Lagniappe ran a story on Dr. Xue-Cui Xiang and her Acupuncture Clinic here in Mobile. I knew that this would make a fun cover shoot. My initial idea was to put a model on the cover with their head covered in needles, a la “Hellraiser”, but I ended up not going that extreme with it.
I was able to get a good variety of shots thanks to the kindness of Dr. Xue-Cui Xiang and the willingness of my model for the day, Mr. Nick Shantazio.
I hired (and by “hired” I mean “asked to volunteer”) Nick because last time I checked he had a shaved head, which would help with my idea. He is also a really nice guy and usually up for anything. When I called him he told me it wasn’t shaved to the skin but he was willing to take care of that before the shoot.
I tried a lot of different angles and used about two basic lighting setups. I incorporated a blue/ purple (depending on the color shift) gel at times to give the image a bump from the somewhat grey background of the clinic.
These profile shots were cool. They illustrated the needle mohawk the doctor gave him well, but they didn’t have quite enough character.
In these two shots I love the wide angle, the look in Nick’s eyes, and the color from the gel. The background with the drop ceiling really bugged the hell out of me though (also, its deprives the world of Nick’s wicked moustache). If I had taken the time to bring a backdrop with me I probably could have solved this problem.
This one is cool but some members of the editorial board thought it might be a little too much for the cover. It also goes a little overboard on the Nick-stache.
The editorial board settled on this one for the cover. The image is clean, simple and to the point. I shot it with a telephoto lens, which gives Nick’s head a large appearance when compared to the rest of the shots. I’m pretty happy with this image, but looking back…
…a part of me wishes we had chosen this one. It’s a bit cleaner than the final cover, you can see more of his head, and I like the color the gel puts on the side. If I really felt at the time that this image should have been the cover I would have just turned in a tighter edit of images to my editors instead of the 12 images I handed to them.
One of the problems when working as a photographer (or any professional creative I imagine) is trying to edit down your own work. For the acupuncture shoot I had simply looked at too many images for too long and couldn’t decide at the time what would work best. I handed my images over to the higher power of my editors. When you do such a thing, you pretty much have to go with what they decide.
I’m not saying I was disappointed with the final product. Far from it. It more than successfully delivered the idea of the story. It received one of the stronger public reactions I had seen from a cover in a while and moved a lot of Lagniappes off newsstands. If a cover does its job right I really have no reason to complain. It did its job in spades.
It also started a little game at the time. Some of you may remember Carson from my first blog post. He’s good friends with Nick and decided to start a game. Carson created a Facebook group encouraging people to cut out the Lagniappe cover and wear the “Nick mask” as they made their way across the bars of downtown Mobile. At least 30 images of people wearing Nick masks are tagged on Facebook (with one of them taken in New Orleans somewhere). I tried to pick out the best ones below:
SUPPORT A LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHER AND PURCHASE THIS AND OTHER COVERS ON MY ZENFOLIO SITE.
LIKE DAN ANDERSON PHOTOGRAPHY ON FACEBOOK.
Your comments and questions are welcome below.
Cheers,
Dan
One Response to “The Art of Selling the Story: Acupuncture”
Leave a Reply
Hiya, Hearing about Japan and the earthquick. Worried if this will affect all the education they were doing into acupuncture.