Constructing the Barbie shoot *Ding!*

As I have mentioned several times in my blog, in person and telekinetically, it doesn't take the worlds most expensive equipment to make something decent :) This Thanksgiving brought many laughs, great food, over-eating said great food and experimenting with previously uncharted territory in photography (by me at least).  I posted this photo to my instagram and Facebook, and within minutes, I had several requests for behind the scenes photos. Luckily, I took a few for my own personal progress chart!

         The most dangerous way to eat toast...

           Photo by: Rick Craft    *Ding!*


Where to begin... 

Well, let's start with an idea. I've had this shoot idea in mind for quite some time. This was going to be a shoot with a live, real model and an electrified toaster! Minus the electricity. I have been actively searching for the perfect location for this for at least 6 months. It's a pretty specific look, and colorful bathrooms with victorian tubs aren't a cheap or common location to be had in LA. An idea pushed to the back of my mind, waiting to be re-inspired by the off chance of stumbling upon this imaginary bathroom, would soon fade away into the abyss of "ideas that have lost the spark".  This is dangerous territory for artists and we all know it well. Ideas that seem great in a moment, but we later talk ourselves out of it because of the difficulty or extensive pre-production necessary to bring it to life.

This is where we have to think outside of the box, or inside the box in this situation...

In general, I feel that if I can't find the certain thing I am looking for, I will make it. If I make it poorly, at least it will serve function until I can make a better one :) In most cases, if not all, I have been more content with self-made creations than anything I can buy at a store. Going back to my childhood, I had wrestling action figures. These wrestlers would battle it out on various counter-tops and carpeted floors, but it wouldn't be long before they demanded a ring (no, not like your girlfriend). Determined to end the strike, I constructed a wrestling ring from a pizza box, 4 popsicle sticks and yarn. It was amazing. Amazingly terrible.

omit picture due to lack of camera in 1996

The ring quickly broke down after a few pile-drivers and botched stage entrances. Time to rebuild. The next version of the ring was a beast, solid wood construction (thanks to my dad) with dowel rod posts and industrial strength rubber bands for the ropes (thanks to my mom's legal office supply). This new and improved ring was the entertainment center of attention for a few months (or 6 years in kid time). For christmas that year, I asked for the flashy cage match edition of the ring found at Toys R Us. Santa delivered, and I was ecstatic! For a moment... Not that I wasn't grateful, I was, but I found myself returning to the wooden version that we had built. Even though the scale was a little off, and it wasn't officially licensed, something about it was more satisfying even as a kid.
/end childhood diversion.

Bringing it back to the shoot you have already forgotten about, I mentioned this because it took going back to that childhood-like state of invention to materialize this project. I was in Virginia visiting family, and I didn't bring any of my gear or talented model friends, so shooting wasn't really an option. Until I made it one. I lightly brought the idea up to my sister (who had always been my partner in crime with these crazy building projects), and she laughed. Since we are in our 20's now, this wasn't far off from the reaction that I expected, but it didn't end with a "No". She said "you're twisted" which translated to me as "absolutely! Go out and buy the materials and let's do this thing!". I went out and purchased the following:

-1 project panel of cherry plywood from home depot    $9
-2 smaller sticks of square wood (for trim)                    $5
-2 Martha Stewart sized sample paint mixes                $5
-2 Barbie sets containing furniture and key pieces       $40
    (this was the most expensive part, but only bc it
     was so specific. So I don't entirely count this)
-1 Snickers bar                                                               $1.29

For less than $65, I was ready to help this barbie opt out! I set out all of the building supplies and explained the scene and setup to the best of my ability. After confusing everyone, I decided to just start building the room, I knew the rest would catch on when visualization was a factor. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the raw wood or process up until this photo :(

To get our room to this point:
- I cut the walls to size, matching our floor space.
- Jessica and I measured out the squares for the checkered floor, painted the entire board white, and
  then colored the black checker squares with a sharpie.
- Martha Stewart would be proud of her sample sized paints, even though the colors were chosen
  from another color crafting genius known as Sherwin Williams (sorry Martha). The walls were
  painted, taped off and two-toned.
- Window was cut out with a jig-saw, the "glass" was plastic that was cut off of the barbie packaging.
   (thanks dad!)
- The square sticks were painted white and cut to size for our chair railing.
- Furniture was moved in to start spacing out our room.

Jessica finishes off some milk, and creates the curtains from paper towels she had colored with a pink marker. (Thanks for the idea mom!)

Again, I skipped a bunch of process photo opportunities. But I can explain!

- The chair railing has been completed on all 3 walls
- Bath tub, toaster and toilet have been painted to fit the scene a little better
- I used some leftover plywood to make the armoire in the left corner. Again, cut out with a jig saw
   and painted to match. My sister glued ball screws from old jewelry she had to the doors to work
   as little door handles!
- A rug set was created from an old ski mask we found in our winter coat closet
- The flowers in the background were also made by my sister, they were taken from some existing
  faux foliage found in our house.
- Q-tip towel rack (self explanatory)
- Toaster gets some juice! The power cable was made from old headphones most likely acquired on a
   domestic flight. Judging by the cheap quality, probably Delta.

Prepping for lights! I have never done this, but due to lack of proper lighting and diffusion options, I had to get creative. I added a layer of wax paper to the top of our set for light diffusion. The background of this photo contains a (dual) VHS version of Titanic, Kate Winslet definitely helped out during this part of the process.

Titanic remains in the photo, but this time around it has less to do with the clouds than one would think. We needed a sky background to view through our dollhouse window. We approached this a few different ways before settling on a now obvious solution. Jessica sketched out and water colored a few variations of clouds on drawing paper. This looked great though the window, but the lighting didn't quite match up. We played around with lighting the drawing, but that left us without enough light for our set. Again, we are working with what we happened to have available. I was looking up photos of clouds on my sisters laptop when it clicked... Just set the laptop behind the window!

Final behind the scenes photo! We used 3 home depot silver dish light fixtures that my sister had leftover from old snake tank setups (yes, she is a crazy snake lady). I started with the overhead, somewhat of a hair light/back light first. Then we positioned the "Sun" light outside of the window, its only effect is the sunny side key coming through the window. Lastly we added the frontal fill light, which still came from overhead, but it added the room ambience we needed. We used my sisters Canon t3 camera with a 24-55 kit lens.

        Funny how things come full circle. Final shot, was also the first in this post. 

Additional items added to the room:
- Compact wall mirror provided by my sister, served as barbie vanity check, although Ken would
   hate this urination reminding shame reflection...
- Tiny magazines cut out and created by Jessica, mini-magazine rack made by Shannon (from q-tips)
- Blow dryer is a painted ear-bud, wall mounted by a folded soda pop-tab.
- The mini trash can is a medicine measuring cup with a plastic bag liner, filled with trash from our
  shoot, including some of barbies hand soap props (and possibly tampons, gross).

There you have it. A behind the scenes look of the *Ding!* photoshoot, and my childhood. This was an amazing project and I learned a lot from it. Not only did it challenge us to create something from nothing, but to get innovative with the items we had around the house. Creating a mini-world is a great way to kill the excuses for not being able to find locations. Even though my dad was 2 seconds away from disowning me as a son for buying barbies, he eventually came around and everyone got involved :) This was truly a great collaboration and it certainly won't be the last miniature barbie danger set!

Thank you mom, dad, Shannon Craft, Mike Kidd and Jessica Huerta, your creative contributions made this possible! 

Natural talent and it's mystery

I think I've figured it out! I don't believe in the phrase "natural talent". I feel like that comment is a cop-out said by people who give up on things easily. Anyone that knows how hard they have had to work at something to be on a certain level of quality will know that it isn't an easy road given by birth. I think someone's seemingly "natural talent" is determined by a few factors. I do believe a lot of these factors are developed as a child and by your surroundings, but it isn't a genetic circumstance. Starting with quality control: maybe you learned as a child that something was good enough as long as you tried. This mentality lets you feel comfortable with the bare minimum because "you tried". I'm not saying the opposite should be done as a child to rectify this, but instead of being passed off as praise and "at least you gave it a shot", it should be met with "keep working at it, you can be as good as you want at whatever it is you want to do".

Which brings me to the next point, You can be as good as you want to be at whatever it is you want to do. Ask anyone who is self-taught in any subject, trade or hobby, they will usually have a unique experience path that led them to the position they are in today. It generally starts with an idea of becoming great at something because they were inspired by someone else who made them feel a certain passion for the craft (... the Rick Craft). It wasn't an internal battle about how they should do it, which school they should go to and what their backup plan should be. There isn't an option for failing at it. People that are genuinely hungry to learn, do just that. They grasp any means necessary to find out as much information as possible.

In our generation, ignorance is unacceptable. We have every piece of historical, theoretical and inspirational piece of information at our fingertips. Some people will spend hours texting someone they have never met, use apps to put cats shooting lasers out of their eyes all over photos of them at the beach, but somehow they just don't have time to get better at something. The funny thing is, most of the people I know that are in school to do something, are the ones who spend the most time "relaxing" when out of class. This confuses me because you are spending the equivalent of a hefty down payment on a house to learn something that is supposedly going to earn you money for the rest of your life. In contrast to those who are learning on their own, they never stop researching or putting their trade into practice.

Back to quality control. Everyone starts somewhere, I get that. We all have things that we can look back on and laugh because of our inexperience (hopefully). Some people have a false sense of quality and status, I do believe this goes back to our childhood. Example being: some people create and post pictures, songs etc. and they feel it is at it's strongest point. Some people compare the current level of work to other people that are successful, and realize it isn't quite there yet and needs a lot of improvement through critiques and trial and error. The most important thing in my opinion, is to learn and be humble. If you aren't boasting about how great your work is, or how awesome you are, people can only judge your work by what it is. Another thing that most self-taught people will tell you about their journey is how other people they admired helped them along the way. But you are "self-taught" and you had a teacher?! Hold off for a second.. this isn't a classroom and money was not exchanged. The thing about learning from others is that if they can see your passion, they can see your eagerness to learn and possibly make an impact on the world. The simple fact is that people who are legitimately into what they are doing, want to share it with others. There isn't a better feeling than being able to watch someone else grow into a better person and possibly because you gave them a hand. Chances are, if someone has that mentality to begin with, they are going to learn regardless.
Would you rather be remembered as the person who shunned them because you couldn't "give away your trade secrets", or the person that didn't mind answering a few questions to help them along just like your peers did for you?

Which lands us on my last point. Selfishness. There is a great deal of sacrifice once you decide to head down this path. You will lose touch with old friends, find yourself in a weird middle ground that leaves you feeling like you are the only one doing this, and at times, defeated. All of these feelings are normal. You can't hold on to everything from your old life, these things will slow you down and find reasons why you should take the "safe route". This is another thing school doesn't teach you, how to be independent. Selfishness can come in many forms. Obviously there would be another blog post for all of that, but let's stick with this scenario. In most cases, I have found that someone paying for an education generally feels more entitled. There is a prestige that goes along with "I am in blank school to become a _____". In theory that sounds great! In some cases, school is definitely needed but this article is more geared toward artistic approaches. It might impress your parents, or people that aren't involved in your industry, but to people actually doing it, it means nothing without a strong portfolio. The first thing they would ask you upon a job interview would be examples of your work. If all you have to show them is an apple on a table lit with 5 different lighting setups to show shadowing, chances are you aren't getting called back. They have seen this apple 500 times today from your classmates resumes.

Back to selfishness, if you are the kind of person who wouldn't share your nintendo as a child and never learned that it was wrong, you are probably going to carry these traits into your adult life. This is going to make you feel like you have everything because you deserve it, not because you genuinely worked for it. Those who feel deserved, are usually the first ones to withhold information because its "theirs". In reality, we are all imitating something that has previously inspired us even if we aren't aware of it. It can be many things that lead to a certain style, but unless you are currently waiting on a patent for something, don't be a jerk.

The next time someone says "you are naturally talented", instead of taking offense, just realize that it is an accumulative compliment of all of your hard work and of how you were raised. It could have been the smallest most insignificant thing that you experienced earlier in life that will make you have a different view on things as others. It's not genetics, and it's never too late.

This was from my first photoshoot ever. Almost 4 years ago to the day.

Recent photo featured in Vogue Italia. (Model: Vanessa Curry)