Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Allison has been doing just that for the last 15 years, and she’s proven that it’s possible to create unforgettable art and run a portrait business that supports your family and your dreams. All it takes is a little rework. Episodes will include interviews with experts from in and outside of the photo industry, mini workshops, and behind-the-scenes secrets that Allison uses in her portrait studio every single day. She will challenge your thinking, and inspire your confidence to create a profitable, sustainable portrait business you love through continually refining and reworking your business. Let’s do The ReWork.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. Well, I am so excited to have Mr. John Gress in the podcast studio today because famous, talented, amazing. Thank you for being here and doing this with us today.
John Gress: Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here with the famous and amazing ATJ.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I don’t know about that, but I feel really excited about this because when we were just talking before we got started here, I feel like I’m always the bad medicine, the nobody wants to talk about pricing and sales and all the hard things. Everybody wants to talk about what you do, which is the gorgeous lighting, amazing creative model shoots. I mean, some of those guys that you shoot, well and women, are so beautiful, and so I really wanted to have you on because when this airs, we’re going to be heading into the holiday season so most of my listeners are portrait photographers, and they’re, sometimes you just need some love. You need creative, you need, and so I’m always telling people, “Forget about the lenses, forget about the lighting, get your business in order.” But today, we’re going to talk about the lenses, the lighting, and all the fun things.
John Gress: Sounds good, sounds like a plan.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. So for the one person that’s listening to this that doesn’t know who you are, will you tell our listeners where you are, what you do, what your deal is? Who is John Gress?
John Gress: Yeah, so I’m a photographer. I live in Chicago. I am originally from Oregon though on the West Coast. I started off my career as a photojournalist and as that market changed over time and my clients were pulling back doing that, I started doing more commercial photography. And then about six years ago, I got asked to speak at Imaging USA, and I’d never talked before, a group of people before. And so I decided to start practicing by teaching workshops in my studio so that I wouldn’t feel like an idiot when I got in front of an audience. I started doing that and I found that I really liked doing it, and I really liked helping people because when I started out using lighting in 1999, the photographers that I was learning from, they had pretty rudimentary skills when it came to that, and they were trying to teach me, but they really didn’t know what to say. One of them actually said, “Light goes until it hits something. What else do you need to know?”
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, that’s so photojournalism though, right?
John Gress: It is.
Allison Tyler Jones: Because you’re not actually supposed to be thinking about lighting if it’s photojournalist, you’re like, “Where is the piano falling on the person? Where is the person jumping out of the six-story window?” You don’t really care about that if it’s in focus, just get it before they hit the ground, right?
John Gress: Between all of the disasters and the sports events, there also were business portraits that needed to be taken and so I was trying to take those to the next level. I always liked things that were complicated, the more different things I had to do and take care of, the more interesting it was to me. I started trying to use lighting for portraits and learn lighting and do things that were creative, and I really found that I liked doing that. And then fast-forward, 20 years later, I then had that opportunity to start sharing those things that I learned with others because I wished that over that 20-year period of time as I was learning that I had someone there that could be my mentor and help me out, but I didn’t really have that. I just had to learn by trial and error.
Allison Tyler Jones: Figure it out, yeah.
John Gress: For the past six or so years, I’ve started to dedicate more and more of my time to educating other photographers, and now it’s about two thirds of what I do. So that could be teaching workshops in person. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And it could be teaching workshops in person. It could be my members’ only website where there are longer tutorials than what you find on YouTube. And then YouTube, the other thing that I end up doing, so.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, and you’re so good at it, I mean, your work is beautiful.
John Gress: Thank you so much.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’s also, you can tell that it’s complex in the best way. It’s not just complex for the sake of being complex because I think you can see some of that out there, but I think everything you do, I think is so intentional and really lends itself to the feel of the image. So really because it’s simple, the concepts are simple, but the execution is masterful. It’s no wonder that you have grown it to what it is. It’s awesome. When you started and you were casting about for mentors and couldn’t find, how did you do it? How did you learn it? Was it just trial and error?
John Gress: Well, it was before there were blogs, and it was before there was YouTube. I just started looking at pictures and trying to reverse engineer in my head what the lighting might be. I would look to see how much texture and contrast there was, because if there was a lot of contrast and texture, then it was probably hard light if those shadows were super abrupt. If I was looking at it and it was very buttery, and I mean not high contrast, and I would think that it’s soft light, and then I would look and see where the shadows fell because wherever the shadows fell would tell me where the light was located, and I started looking to see, are there multiple lights here and what is each one of them doing? And started to recognize if you have one light off to the right, then you’re going to end up with dark shadows on the left. And if you see light in those shadows, then there’s probably another light over there, lighting up the shadows and adding some fill. So it was just trying to figure that out.
John Gress: And I actually left out the biggest clue, which is I would look in really closely at the person’s eyes or their glasses and try to see if there were any reflections there. And that would tell me a lot because if it was a very small highlight, then I knew that it was a hard light, and if it was a very big square, I knew it was a soft box, so that started helping me too.
John Gress: And then a lot of what I was doing was experimenting, and thankfully I came along here just at the right time where I started shooting film in my career, and then digital cameras became a thing right about the same time that I started experimenting with lighting. So whereas my predecessors would’ve had to use Polaroids to test the lighting, I was able to just look at it on the back of the camera. And so I just started experimenting and getting better and trying different things on every shoot. And eventually I learned that I shouldn’t be experimenting when I’m getting paid, that I should be, it’s just what I would do all the time.
Allison Tyler Jones: Come on now.
John Gress: Yeah, I just found that I was reinventing the wheel every single time, and sometimes I would fail and sometimes I would do great. I learned there along the way too that I should be just trying to repeat things that I did before that I knew that I was good at, that I could execute, and then maybe experimenting at the end.
Allison Tyler Jones: For those of us who’ve been around a while, you forget in those early times that you really are just running and gunning and you’re so, it’s exciting, it’s so fun, but also super scary. Is it going to work?
John Gress: I was going to say fun, very fun.
Allison Tyler Jones: Is it going to be okay? And I don’t know about you, but people would say, “Can you do this?” “Sure.” And I had no idea how to do it, but I’d figure it out. And so there’s something super exciting about that, that I love. But there is that point where you do need to have that repeatability,
John Gress: Most definitely, whether that’s in figuring out your sales process or figuring out your creative process. And over time, I started to, nothing really happened in the 10 years between, what, eight years, between 1999 and 2007. But in 2007, my friend came to me and he said, and I photograph mostly business people or people that were in the news for some other reason. But in 2007, my friend came to me and he said, “Oh, I want to be a fashion photographer. Would you teach me lighting?”
John Gress: So we went out there the first night. I was the model, he was the photographer. I was very uncomfortable having my picture taken, but I started teaching him things. And eventually we found people on a website called Model Mayhem, which is a precursor to Instagram. Right now, it’s probably very trashy if it still exists. But on that website, you could connect with stylists and makeup artists and people that wanted to have their picture taken, and we ended up finding some people that wanted to work with us. And that was great too, because all of those business people or people that were in the news for some of their purpose, they mostly didn’t want to have their picture taken. They just wanted to get it over with.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: Whereas yeah, these people that we found that wanted to be models are actors. They would actually sit there and they would let us practice and perfect things and try things.
Allison Tyler Jones: As much as you needed to.
John Gress: And after maybe about five or six shoots with him, he came to me and he said, “I don’t need to know all this technical stuff you’re trying to teach me. I just want to feel the pictures, and I think I want to go to Paris to find myself.”
Allison Tyler Jones: There you go.
John Gress: Yeah. I think he ended up becoming a waiter. I’m not sure what has happening now in his life, but we fell out of touch, the last time I heard he was a waiter. But I realized that I found myself because I realized that I could work with those actors and models and I could practice and I could play, and I could just develop my skills through that process. So that actually, I guess thinking about good timing, and I never thought about it in this context until this conversation, that I started using lighting when digital cameras became a thing, and I started photographing models right before the great recession happened. So when that happened, then I had a lot of time on my hands. So then I started dedicating more and more time to practice in learning because I didn’t have a lot of things to shoot for money at the time.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: That allowed me to occupy my time and not go crazy and get better as going through that when going through that recession.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I love that with the model thing, I think the thing that’s great about that is that if you learn it, you have your really go-to things that are going to work no matter what. And so then when you go to work with a CEO or a business leader or somebody that is not about that, you can quickly set up something and have them look really great, like a model.
John Gress: Most definitely.
Allison Tyler Jones: Like a model. And they’re not, so they look like talent, but they’re not talent. And then that brings a whole level of value to your commercial work that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
John Gress: I actually have a bad on me story that will be helpful for people hopefully related to that. I photographed different actors, and I had all these samples, and a client came to me that worked for a big company and they were like, “Hey, we want ideas for headshots for our executives.”I showed them all these photos that I took that I thought looked pretty cool. They picked one that they thought looked really cool. It was lit somewhere between Rembrandt lighting and split lighting. And so we started that off, and I went out there and I started shooting the executives. And when the first person came along that wasn’t 24 years old, it really showed because all of a sudden like, oh, now we have wrinkles, way too many wrinkles, and this is the art direction we’ve decided on, and now what do I do?
Allison Tyler Jones: They didn’t want to look like Dirty Harry.
John Gress: From that experience, I ended up learning which things I should show those clients to guide them towards so that we end up having everybody looking good. Because if you came to me today and you wanted some cool and different headshots for your business, for me to photograph everyone at your company, I would probably think about doing things that were different in the background and the people would be loop lit and we wouldn’t be doing a lot of interesting lighting on people’s faces just because we’d want to start with what would be successful. But that was another thing that I had to learn over time from failure.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, but I think it’s fair because, again, when you’re starting out, you love everything. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s a creative challenge. And then you want to give everybody, doesn’t everybody want tons of options? And then you realize, actually, no, they don’t want tons of options. They want you to say, “This is what is going to work and make you our director, you HR person in charge of headshots for this company look like you are a genius.”
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re making them look good in addition to making all the people in the pictures look good. But that’s another level of expertise that has nothing to do with photography. If you’re shooting a bunch of models for Ford model, fine. But when it’s 45-year-old women who haven’t had Botox-
John Gress: Go out in the sun.
Allison Tyler Jones: Have texture in their skin or whatever, it’s a whole different thing. I mean, men all think they’re fabulous, so they probably don’t care, but women really care.
John Gress: Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. I guess what I left out too is that when I started off using lighting in ’99, my skills went way up, and then I just, things flattened out until that day where my friend asked me to teach him lighting, because then I had to start looking at things a different way. And then I started practicing with those models, and then my skills started to go up again. And part of that process was learning more tricks. And then as my story told, learning how to use those tricks for good, not just use, “Oh, let’s do this Rembrandt lighting on all these people because it’s going to look cool.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: Realizing that which things to use when and having those skills, because I’m sure there’s a lot of things that I learned during those periods that I put right to use doing commercial photography with a lifestyle ad with people in a bar, for instance, having a fun night out. So it’s all part of the process.
Allison Tyler Jones: You started, you learn. I think that really highlights the journey of a photographer, right? Everything’s exciting, everything’s new, everything’s scary, everything’s a problem to solve. And then you’re finding in between they’re like, “Oh, that is so cool. Oh, I totally love that.” And so out of that, a style emerges, and then you learn what you’re good at and you learn what you can sell honestly.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then you lean into that for a while, and like you say, it flattens out. And so I would say to you, for all of us that are out here, when you feel like maybe you’re on one of those plateaus or the flat, where do you go? What do you do to push yourself to that next level? Sometimes you don’t need to, for your business, you may not need to push yourself. Clients are still paying. They’re still coming. They still love what you do. But just as the soul of the artist, I want to feel relevant. I want to feel challenged. I want to be still interested and love what I do. What do you do?
John Gress: Yeah, a friend actually, I was talking to him a few days ago and he said, “Oh, I just feel really bored right now,” because he just does the same thing over and over and over again. And for me, I’m always bookmarking pictures on Instagram that I think are cool. And then when I have time, I will schedule a play date with a model. Usually someone I found on Instagram where it’s just for trade, where I’ll just say, “Hey, I’ll give you pictures. I want to try something out. Let’s see what happens,” sort of thing.
John Gress: So by the way, in that I stipulate that I’ll give them about two images that are retouched per look, and we’ll do about one look per hour, give or take, and I’ll choose them. For the most part, that’s true, but that’s the general setup.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s key right there.
John Gress: Yeah, so.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s good. Okay, so say that again. So two, you’re offering them two images per look, about one look per hour, so that way they don’t think they’re going to get 700 retouched images.
John Gress: Yeah, exactly, and they don’t really push back on it. If it’s somebody that I’ve worked with for a while, I guess the reality is that they could get six pictures and they could get 16 pictures if we do a three to five hour session.
John Gress: And that’s the other crazy thing is when I started this, I would try to book two, I would bookmark people that I thought would be good subjects. I’d come up with an idea, I’d find two people out of those bookmarks that would align with that subject I wanted to explore that day. If I’m doing fitness type shots, I’m going to pick a personal trainer, and if I’m doing fashion shots, I’m going to pick someone that looks more like an editorial model, that sort of thing. I would pick two of them and I would try to book them about three hours apart. And then if one of them didn’t show up, it wasn’t a big deal. And one of them, I just ended early or started late. But over time, I started getting into a mode where I just started booking one person, and those shoots started creeping from three hours to five hours. I just rolled the dice now. But for good or bad.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, because then you’re having hair and, are you scheduling hair and makeup and all of that as well?
John Gress: It really depends. And the reason why I’m photographing, have been photographing men most of the time when people think of my work is because I realized quite a while ago that if I wasn’t very confident at directing women’s hair and makeup or styling at the time, and so I would try to get people to do a collaboration that could do those things.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: What would happen though is I would get everything lined up and then one person couldn’t make it, and then it’s like, “Ah, now what do I do?” Now we got to start all over and figure things out again. So then I realized that well, I could style the men’s clothing and I could do basic makeup for them if that was necessary. And so I just started going down that road a lot of the time, but-
Allison Tyler Jones: That makes sense.
John Gress: Now I forgot your question, but yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: No, you answered it. It makes sense because yeah, it’s like the arts are flaky. I mean, honestly.
John Gress: Oh, I know what you asked. Yes, so I started also becoming more confident that if I saw a female model that if I saw that they were doing their makeup well most of the time, or they were doing their hair well most of the time, and their styling well most of the time, I would just tell them they were going to do their own hair and makeup, and tell them to bring a variety of clothes that matched a mood board, and I would just edit what they ended up wearing if necessary. A lot of times I would just let them drive. If I was doing something that was really avant-garde and from a hair and makeup perspective, yeah, I would have someone for hair and makeup and for styling, but for the most part, I don’t get into that too much. There are always exceptions, but so most of the time it’s just me and the model and maybe a stylist and maybe someone assisting me, but it’s mostly just a one-on-one sort of thing. When I started out, I would get asked if they could bring their friend.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh my gosh.
John Gress: And I think someone asked me once if they could bring their friend so I would photograph them. Either that, or I was just completely oblivious. So I started saying no. It took me a while to realize they wanted to bring someone to observe for their safety, so then I started changing.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh.
John Gress: Yeah, so I hadn’t even thought about that. So then I started changing my wording in my confirmation email that said, “Feel free to bring a friend with you to observe or hang out.” I don’t know what it says, but it’s something like that. It makes it clear, bring a friend. I’m not taking photos of them, but if you want to bring a friend, bring a friend, it’s fine.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that the serial killer photographer doesn’t take you into a black van.
John Gress: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Gosh.
John Gress: Exactly.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s hilarious. No, well, that also highlights a difference sometimes between men and women too, right?
John Gress: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: You got some guy that’s DMing you off of Instagram. Of course, you’d be crazy if you didn’t know who they were to go in on that. Whereas women, I think, have an easier time.
John Gress: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, wow. The things you don’t think about. That’s interesting. Okay, so my question for you is, and I don’t know, maybe you’re not ADD, but I think almost every photographer I’ve ever met is, and I know for sure I’m probably-
John Gress: This conversation might diagnose me as such, but yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right? So when you have this setup, how do you slow yourself down enough to not just be hopping all over the place, just shooting everything where you end up with way too many images or how do you approach it creatively, a test shoot like that? Because I’ve done that, I’ve tried it, and I just end up all over the place and I feel like I never really get what I want out of it. I don’t know. Is that a fair question?
John Gress: Oh, absolutely. I will end up taking somewhere between 300 and 700 images on that three to five hour shoot. But I also go into it usually lately with a mood board of pictures that I want to recreate. And this may be somewhat controversial, but I will look at other pictures that I like that I see on Instagram, and I will try to recreate them. I don’t necessarily, I might make a direct copy. I might put my own spin on it. I might make a direct copy and then do it again next time and put my own spin on it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Sure.
John Gress: I’m trying to learn through that process. Like, “This is cool. What did this person do? How can I figure this out?” Because I think I know how to do this. I think I know what they did, and I think I can do it. Let’s see if I can do it. Or, yeah, just putting that little twist.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s totally legit. I mean, artists have been doing that for centuries, right? Sitting in a museum and sketching and painting, and then you put your spin on it. Yeah, I think that’s perfectly legit.
John Gress: It’s so completely, it’s funny you said the century part, because this is one of these things that annoys me about people sometimes, is that they will just get upset, like, “Oh, you’re copying my work,” or, “You’re stealing my models,” or whatever it is.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
John Gress: Yeah, it’s like, just think about art over the history of art. Nothing is an original idea. It’s all an adaptive work. My husband makes his own music and is the lead singer in a band, and we end up conflicting from time to time because he’s always on the side of the person suing the other person over music.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
John Gress: And I’m always on their side saying, “No, this is an adaptive work. It’s different.”
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s funny.
John Gress: It’s not a facsimile of what they did, it’s a variation of what they did. So it’s like, why are we having these rules about music that’s like, “You can’t use notes in this series.” I can’t remember what the thing is. There’s something, I don’t know if it’s a chord progression or something like that. There’s only so many possible things. There’s only, let’s say a hundred outcomes. So if someone else uses one of those things, that’s not proof that you’ve copied the other person’s work.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right. Well, and I think people can get very precious about their work, and I think we should value our work for sure. But when you’re learning, you’re not putting it out there. You’re not doing a direct copy of something and then putting it out there saying, “Look, what I invented.” You’re just doing it for yourself and then doing a reduction, or like you said, some version of that.
John Gress: And photographers are so touchy about like, “Oh, they’re going to steal my clients.” And it’s like, well, if you had a good relationship with your clients.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: They’ll come back to you. It doesn’t matter if someone else can do 85% of what you do the same way you do it. If they like you, they’re going to come back. If they don’t like you, they’re not going to come back. If you made everybody look old and wrinkly, they’re not going to come back.
Allison Tyler Jones: No. Or you’re a jerk to deal with, or just going back to your hair and makeup people-
John Gress: You’re slow, you’re late.
Allison Tyler Jones: If you don’t show up, you run a freight train through the whole schedule because you have to, or you keep jumping in and trying to touch makeup up and you’re getting in the shot. I mean, there’s a million ways to be annoying and not do a good job, and there’s a million ways to do it right. And if you’re doing it right, you’re building the relationships and that’s not going to be threatened. I think that’s a really good point.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. It sounds like what you’re saying is that the mood board, the pre-production basically, if you will, on that test shoot, I guess, is that what you call it? Test shoot or creative shoot, it’s the mood board that’s driving that for you, and you’re trying to keep yourself to that mood board, and so that limits your variables so you’re not just going off all over the place.
John Gress: I think the program I’m using limits me either to nine or 12 images on that collage. I’m often looking at the clothes the model brings and looking at those images and then deciding what would be the best combination? What do they have that works on these 12 images or nine images, and how do I make that happen? So it quickly becomes, here are the outfits, here’s the inspiration. Where do they line up? And okay, we’ll do those things now.
Allison Tyler Jones: I don’t know if you realize this, but I mean 300 to 700 images in a three to five hour period, for most photographers I know, that is an incredibly low amount of images.
John Gress: Okay, that’s good. I thought you were going to say a lot.
Allison Tyler Jones: You know what, it’s incredibly low. I mean, I could do 1,200 images in an hour with kids running around, and I mean, I don’t do that, but I could easily, I could. That helps me realize I am still overshooting. I need to be more dialed in and more focused. Mood board, nine to 12 images. The reason I keep going back over this is because I want people that are listening, all of us that are listening to think, okay, if I’m going to go away and do this, I want you to take away how would I do it? So you make a mood board of nine to 12 images that you love, and are they somewhat related?
John Gress: Yeah, most definitely. When I find the people, it’s either going to be other photographers in my area who photograph that person, or it’s going to be me looking at a hashtag like Chicago model or ATL model or NYC models. There’s going to be different ones that are popular wherever you are located. I couldn’t think of the one for Phoenix, but interesting.
Allison Tyler Jones: PHX.
John Gress: But yeah, that could be, yeah, so it could be PHX model, it could be Phoenix models, you just have to look and see what’s most popular. Then when I’m looking for those photos that I like, I’m then gathering them into things that are similar. So the next creative shoot that I might do might be with dancers. I think this is probably going to be true. I photographed some dancers last year. One of them reached out to me, said, “Oh, I have a friend.”
John Gress: The friend came, I photographed them together. The friend was like, “Let’s do a shoot together,” and I keep putting it off, so I’m probably going to do that next. When I do that, I’m going to message him and send him a collage that’s like 12 dance photos that I have bookmarked over the last year and see what he’s into and what resonates with him, and then take that feedback and then lean towards that idea when we’re together and working together. I’m already stacking the deck though, because I’ve sent him that mood board of stuff that I already like and want to recreate. So it doesn’t matter if he picks one, six, and nine, I already like them, so I already want to do them. So I’m winning either way, but he’s also going to feel like he’s got buy-in because we’re doing what he wants to do.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, no, I love that. Well, and if you’re working with a dancer that’s one artist working with another artist, so you’re photographing his art, and so he might have opinions about, “Well, I can’t do a backflip,” or whatever the dance terms are.
John Gress: Yeah, no.
Allison Tyler Jones: Maybe there’s something he’s really good at doing. I can’t do those three of those images. I can’t even do that thing, but I specialize in this other thing. But then with models with, if you’re working with a model, are you doing the same thing, sending them and then maybe they’re saying, “Oh, I have clothes like that.”
John Gress: Yeah, so it might be that everything looks like it’s hard window light, it’s artificial, but that might be the mood board, or the mood board might be all high contrast, multiple light black and white portraits.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay.
John Gress: And then I’m sending that to them and saying, “Do you think you could bring things like this?” Or yeah, sometimes I might have five mood boards that are all different genres, and I might say, “What resonates with you?” And that sort of thing. They’re all things I want to do.
Allison Tyler Jones: But you’re narrowing your concept, so that mood board is not soft, airy blowing in the wind, hard light. There’s not five incredibly different images. You’re thinking, I want to try this thing that’s.
John Gress: One of them is all going to be slow shutter speed, drag flash with gels, and then one of them is going to be all colored light, and then one of them is going to be-
Allison Tyler Jones: One whole mood board.
John Gress: And one whole mood board will be all window lit, simulating window light.
Allison Tyler Jones: This is helpful.
John Gress: With a soft box, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: This is super helpful. I know you probably feel like you’re talking to a first-grader, but I just think-
John Gress: No, not at all, it’s=
Allison Tyler Jones: Because I think as a photographer you’re like, “I like this and I like this and I like this.” And then you end up with a mood board that has six incredibly different things, and you can’t do that in three hours. You’re going to make a lot of nothing out of that.
John Gress: Especially if your mood board is black and white with six lights and hard light, and then four lights simulating window light with soft boxes, and then four colored lights, maybe LEDs in the next shot. And then it’s like you’re getting out all this gear and using it one way, and then you’re putting out other gear and using it another way.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re describing every test shoot I’ve ever done in my life, which is why I don’t do a lot of it because it’s like, that’s me. Let’s pull everything out of the closet and use it all. Rather than, I really like that mood board and thinking, okay, I want to do this look, this kind of thing, this kind of feel, this concept, if you will. I think that’s such a good way to do it.
John Gress: Okay, good, yeah. And so most of the time, I know I did say that I would send five different mood boards of different genres to people. I think I have done that a few times lately, but I also, depending on their response, they might only pick from three or two of those mood boards. And then that means I’m only doing two types of shots that day, or three types of shots that day, and I try to plan around so it’s not like this is a lot of gear. This is no gear, this is a bunch of gear, but it’s different than the other gear. I try to make it so it builds on itself during the day.
Allison Tyler Jones: Say more about that if you’re planning that.
John Gress: Well, so let’s say that they wanted a shot with gels, a black and white film noir look, and a simulated window light, full body portrait. I’m going to do that full body portrait first because it’s soft light, it’s not going to be very difficult or precise in where I place things because big modifiers are going to be forgiving on pose and I’ll be able to feel them out and learn what works best for them and learn what their little idiosyncrasies are while we do that look.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re getting easy success in the beginning.
John Gress: Yes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right?
John Gress: And then when I do that, I’m going to choose the film noir headshot next, because it’s going to be between four and six lights, all with hard light. The reason I’m doing that next is because following that, I’m going to do the gels, and often when I do gels, I use hard lights with the gels. I’ve already got the hard light out, hard light modifiers out and using them, I just need to put the gels on them and move them around a bit. That’s the workflow I’m going to think about.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay. I think that’s so good to hear that, because when you think of going on a, doing a big commercial shoot, that’s pre-production, you’ve got to just figure out what’s the flow? How are we doing this, and where do you start and where do you end up so that you’re not just running around and willingly having like, “Oh, shoot, we did this big complicated thing. Now we have to strike that whole set and then go to the soft window light. Why didn’t we just start?” That’s trial and error a lot of times. But to hear, even in a test shoot, you’re testing your work, but you’re also testing your process, you’re learning-
John Gress: Yeah, most definitely.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re learning better ways to be more efficient in shooting. I think that’s really awesome. I wouldn’t have thought of that.
John Gress: And I did have a shoot earlier this year. It was the most complicated shoot I’ve ever done where I used 21 lights.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh my gosh.
John Gress: To photograph, let’s say 40 football players give or take in one day. And I photographed each football player for about 10 minutes, but I photographed them in five different sets.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh my gosh.
John Gress: But I knew from all of my tests that I perfected, okay, only one of those looks was new. Every other setup was something I’d done before. So it was just that I knew exactly how to execute that thing, and I understood every nuance of it. And one of those things, the fifth thing was a variation on one of those looks that I hadn’t done quite before. That also became about process. It became about which, do we have the helmet on or the helmet off? Now I got to do all my helmet off shots together, so I need to set up my setups with no helmet next to each other. I need to transition over into where we have a helmet on and there’s action things happening. But that’s just an example of where, I actually had one shot in that setup. This is super nerdy, but I guess I drove off the cliff.
Allison Tyler Jones: I’m here for all the nerdyness, go for it.
John Gress: Okay, so I had a look where I used a background that was a piece of translucent gel material, so diffusion fabric, but it was gels, the diffusion gel screen. Picture basically a five-foot wide roll of plastic that you can see through, but you can’t really see through so it’s like a shower curtain liner sort of thing, like frosted glass, but it’s gel plastic. I was shining a light through that that was coming at the camera in order to create flare. I also was using lights on another background that was behind that layer of diffusion that I was using with gels to light up that background so that I could make that background, let’s say purple. Let’s say I’ve made that background blue, for instance.
Allison Tyler Jones: Got it.
John Gress: So I can see through the frosted glass fabric material, diffusion material, the frosted diffusion material, I can see the blue color, and I have a light coming through it at the camera from the back, and that light is pointed at my subject, but it’s making my lens flare. I had previously done a look where I did blue background and orange light coming through the fabric. It looked cool because it was almost like a sun as it was coming through there. However, the problem is that when the orange light faded away and it blended in with the blue light, those two colors combined, and when you combine blue and orange together, you get magenta. So I had a sample image-
Allison Tyler Jones: Which is no bueno.
John Gress: Which is no bueno, because if you’re photographing the Chicago Bears and their colors are blue and orange, you’re going to end up with magenta in the middle and it’s not going to work. So I did a test shoot with a model to show my clients what it would look like if I didn’t have a gel on that light coming through the background, and it was white light, and I did this so that I could show them that if we photograph, every football team will use the accent color on their jerseys to light the background, but we’ll have white light come through there. But I had to take a look that I’ve already done before successfully, but then do a test shoot so I could show them exactly how it would look in order to prove the concept of what we were going to do that day.
Allison Tyler Jones: Wow.
John Gress: I know that was very long and very complicated and very nerdy, but.
Allison Tyler Jones: So my question for you, and everybody that listens to this podcast is going to be like, “When is she going to ask this question?” So you’re charging for that pre-production time, correct?
John Gress: So in this instance, no. The reason why this is more of a, oh God, you’re going to hate this. This is more of a prestige job than it is a high paying job. And sometimes, these jobs will be like that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, no, for sure. I get that.
John Gress: Yeah, so.
Allison Tyler Jones: But if you were bidding that out as a commercial job for somebody that had budget, you would be factoring in that pre-production time to do all that.
John Gress: Usually there would be a, you might build in-
Allison Tyler Jones: Just say yes. Just say, “Yes, you’re right.”
John Gress: Yes, you’re right.
Allison Tyler Jones: That’s the only answer.
John Gress: Okay. But the nuance of that, so people don’t get carried away, I haven’t seen that or heard of people charging for the photographer to have a play date to prove a concept-
Allison Tyler Jones: No, not a play date. I’m talking about pre-production like planning out, calling hair and makeup, getting all the planning ahead-
John Gress: Oh, no, absolutely. Absolutely, and sometimes you’ll even hire a person to do that for you.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes.
John Gress: I was going to say from a creative point of view, sometimes you might put in a half-day pre-light line item, which the day before, you’ll set everything up and make sure it’s dialed in so that when the models come in the morning and the art director and all the crew, it’s already ready to go. So that was the one thing I was going to qualify.
John Gress: So if I was on a shoot like that, this particular shoot I talked about, I needed to definitely have a plan in advance because there was too much gear and too much at stake. If it was just going to photograph the family in the kitchen cooking spaghetti, and we’re going to sell a cleaning product, then I would just need to have an idea that we’re simulating window light that day in the kitchen and what the vibe is we’re going for. And then I wouldn’t have to plan out these things, but.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah, well, that’s so specific and technical and the colors. You could really, can you imagine, “Oh, this would be fun. Let’s try this.” And then they look at it on the screen, they’re like, “Excuse me, what is the magenta?”
John Gress: Yeah, I was photographing the players for six to eight minutes each, and I actually had two assistants, which sounded excessive at first, but I actually had one of them who was changing the height of the main light to match the height of the player. And the other one, her sole job was changing the gels on that set we talked about, and also changing the color of some LEDs on the following set.
Allison Tyler Jones: Wow.
John Gress: We actually had a list that day of every team and every color we were going to execute. And on our testing day, we tested every gel color, and made sure that we knew exactly how bright we were going to turn the lights up with that gel color to get the exact hue of blue or red that we wanted. She had in a spreadsheet team, gel power, setting for every single team. The entire page was just what she was going to do and what color and what power she was going to use.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I mean, that sounds like death by a thousand cuts, but honestly, you could now turn around and do that again for another team, and it would be, think how much easier it would be the next time. For people that are doing team sports or whatever to have that in a spreadsheet, wow, that’s amazing.
John Gress: Yeah. Well, I actually think if we just changed the gel color and I started taking test shots and figured out what the brightness should be on the fly, that would’ve been death by a thousand cuts.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh, yeah.
John Gress: But having the spreadsheet was like gold because there were no test shots.
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: It was literally like, “Stand here, pose here, turn there.”
Allison Tyler Jones: No, that’s what I’m saying here. Doing it ahead of time saved you so much on the back end.
John Gress: Yeah, no, absolutely. And none of this fix it in post.
Allison Tyler Jones: Yeah. Well, and probably also made you feel so much more confident because if you’ve got art director and other people that are there that are not talent, they’re in your face and they want to see stuff and they want to know, and then you could just confidently just move your way through that, I think that’s amazing.
John Gress: Yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re very smart.
John Gress: Thank you. Well, and I don’t know about that. I’m just trying to get by. But yeah, that’s a good example though of where I took all of that stuff from my play dates, learned stuff, perfected stuff, and then knew exactly what to do.
John Gress: Another time, I set it up when I had a similar shoot where I think I was using nine lights on the set, but I was doing seven photos with seven different looks with nine lights. I had it programmed so these lights would fire for this look, and these lights would fire for that look and adjustments would happen, and I was just loading that in while I was shooting on the mobile app that my lighting company uses. But that was an example of where I thought about which looks I’d perfected during these test shoots, and which ones I could put together in a routine that would flow for minimum equipment movement and would get the client what they needed in the end. Coming up with that workflow, getting the variety, and making it all make sense and go together. That’s another way that I would take these experiences and put them together.
Allison Tyler Jones: So now, I have a question for you. This is for me, and it will probably apply to others, but I’m just going to be totally selfish. I always look at your work. I look at Lindsay Adler, I look at so many other photographers who just do absolutely gorgeous work that I totally admire, and I’m like, “Okay, I love that you did that.”
Allison Tyler Jones: This is an adult who is well-behaved and not giving you any crap. So for a photographer who is a family photographer, so shooting multiple subjects, not all of who would like to be there, if you were me and you wanted to do a play date, what would you suggest as a way to maybe test out new ideas if you wanted new ideas for a family portrait or family, more portraits of multiple people.
John Gress: Yeah, I think I get this question a lot sometimes, which is, “Who is this for? Who do I sell it to,” kind of thing. And I think sometimes we’re just going to do things that are for us to learn and expand things that we know and skills we have, because maybe some date in the future, we’ll need to draw on that skill sometime to do something. Or maybe it could be that you have your play time and think of concepts for senior shoots if you do seniors, because usually those are a little more-
Allison Tyler Jones: Fashion.
John Gress: … model looking, and then maybe you’ll find something in there by doing that that you could then relate back to the family shoots, whether maybe that’s putting, it pains me to maybe say this, putting a color gradients on a background. I’m thinking of all of these horrible family photos I’ve seen over time that probably have a colored gradient on the background. But yes, it might be that maybe you’re going to make everybody look like they’re on a film set, the entire family, and it’s going to look like it’s right out of the Hollywood Reporter or Vanity Fair. But maybe from your senior shoot, you’re going to get an idea of how to set up those props or light the background in that theatrical sort of way in your senior test shoot. And then maybe that’s going to relate back to when you have a group of people later or something-
Allison Tyler Jones: Putting more bodies in there, yeah.
John Gress: … like that, yeah.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. And I think sometimes can’t really, it’s not actually very much of a play date if you’re trying to bring some toddlers in here, it’s not going to happen because they won’t sit there for two or three hours. But you can extrapolate what you’re getting from one or two people, even a couple. I think even a couple shoot you can get that feel. You can spread the people out to where the lighting’s going to hit in different ways, and that would work for a bigger group. You can just duplicate that.
John Gress: And now that I mentioned that idea of that last concept I just had, now I want to do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: What’s that?
John Gress: Some idea of some black and white group portrait with photo gear or video gear in the background. But then in my head, it’s on a white cyc wall and it’s black and white, and the lighting in the background is dramatic. I’m probably going to have to wait until the next time I teach a workshop in a studio with a cyc wall and then photograph the class.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well then Annie Leibovitz will call you and tell you that you stole her idea, right?
John Gress: There’s this idea. That’ll be it actually.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’ll get in trouble. Yeah, lawyer up.
John Gress: About seven years ago, I was on Instagram minding my business, and there was a picture of, I think his name was John Boyega, but he’s one of the actors in Star Wars, and that was on my explore page. I clicked on it and I looked through it and it was the entire cast of Star Wars in a formal attire in front of these glowing white tubes behind them, because that’s when these LED tubes were becoming more popular, but they were really expensive. And also it tied in with lightsabers or something futuristic looking. So I was like, “I really like this idea, I can’t spend $5,000 on having 10 of these tubes in the background. How do I get this look?”
John Gress: So then I was thinking that, well, for a while, I’d used a soft box, a large soft box as my background. So it became a hair light background, light edge lighting all in one. I was like, well, if I put a black piece of foam core in front of that and I cut little slits in it, I can have that light come through from the soft box and it will kind of look the same. So I set all of this up and I did it, and I shared it with other people as to what I did in the process of how I did it, because I just wanted to share with photographers how they could get that same look with maybe gear that they had and a trip to the craft store, and you don’t have to spend five grand, you could just use this stuff you already have. So what should happen? But I got a direct message in my box from the photographer who took those original photos. I’d not referenced that photographer at any time.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh my gosh.
John Gress: I had not shared with anything that I recall anyone, anything about it. It was a very nasty message about how I had stole, “People think that you’re stealing my work,” or it was something like that.
Allison Tyler Jones: Oh my gosh.
John Gress: “You should delete them right now.” And I’m just like, “Okay, whatever.” That’s not the point. The point was not copying your work. The point was here’s an image. How do I make that happen with the stuff I have? This is just a DIY craft project. Just calm down.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re just being instructive. So who do you like to look at on Instagram? Do you have any favorite accounts that you’d like to look at for inspiration?
John Gress: So the photographer, Art Streiber, who does a lot of those-
Allison Tyler Jones: Yes, my favorite.
John Gress: Yes. So he does a lot of those Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair type shots, and he will also light really theatrically with a lot of lights. I find that looking at his pictures, it’s always, he shares a lot of what he’s doing. He’s not one of these, “They’re going to steal my clients,” photographers. And he shows, I don’t know if he talks so much as to why he did it, but he’ll say he-
Allison Tyler Jones: He tells how he does it, for sure.
John Gress: Yeah. The how is definitely there, the why maybe not, but the how is there, and it makes you think, how could I use 14 lights on one picture? And it’s just very expansive. Makes you think differently.
Allison Tyler Jones: He’s awesome because in fact, there was one thing he did, gosh, it was years ago, but I’m trying to think. It was Oprah. I mean, I don’t even know what the shoot was for, but it was like every A-lister known to man, and they shot in this big thing and they had these white stools that were just cylinders. And I’m always looking for those. I use them a lot, but the ones that I have are concrete and they’re constantly getting dinged up and banged up. And I was just like, “Well, where’s another source for that?” And so I just thought, well, I’ll ask him. So I DMed him and asked him, and he sent me a link, and I mean just the nicest guy.
John Gress: Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. I’ve never met him, but I want to. We did exchange messages one day, but our schedules weren’t aligned at the time that I was in LA, but that’s, definitely going out to lunch with him or coffee would be on my bucket list.
Allison Tyler Jones: Totally. Well, yeah. Well, tell me, because I’m a half an hour flight from LA. I’ll meet you. We’ll go. I’ll buy.
John Gress: Okay.
Allison Tyler Jones: It’ll be totally fun. But yeah, he’s a photographer’s photographer. He reminds me of Gregory Heisler, who’s just not afraid to share and to tell and is like a craftsman at his core and isn’t afraid that somebody else is going to steal his stuff because I mean, I think if you’re really confident, that’s not even possible.
John Gress: Yeah, because I think-
Allison Tyler Jones: Nobody thinks the same way.
John Gress: Yeah. I was actually listening to you talking to Jeff Dachowski talking about how one of you was talking about how someone could come for three months and learn at their studio, your studio or his studio, exactly how to do everything, and that person would not walk away shooting the same photos. I think it was Jeff talking that there’s only one Jeff and there’s only one you, the broader you. So this idea that none of us are going to be able to copy what the other person does because we’re all different.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, I don’t even think I can copy myself because I’ve had clients, you’ll have maybe an iconic image. You put it up on your website and then somebody else will say, “Okay, I want to do that picture with my kid.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And I always say, “I can’t even copy myself. So let’s take that as inspiration and then let’s spin that and make it your kid, because that was a unique combination of events. It was that particular kid, that particular prop, that particular lighting, me on that day. It’s going to be different for your kid.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And so I think if we hold it a little bit looser and have a little bit more of that element of play, which is what I think you’ve brought to this whole conversation and wrapping that whole thing up, is that we do, it’s a business for sure. We need to make money, we’ve got to pay bills, but it is art, and we need to take that time to play because that feeds our creative soul in ways that coming up with a new price list is just not going to do.
John Gress: Coming back to the business side of things and how I use all this stuff that I’m learning, when I have a client, I’m trying to think of something else though, okay. So when I’m teaching my workshops, I’ll tell people, “I’m going to give you 100%, I’m going to take everything to the furthest level possible. I’m going to try to dial this in 100% accurate in every single way and make the best image that I can so that I can show you what is possible for me to do. When I work with a client, though, I’m doing 85%. I’m doing things that I know are universally flattering, universally work, gets me through it, gets me the session and gets the images that I need.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Right.
John Gress: If the client comes to me and says, “I want you to create these three photos,” then I create those three photos. But if not, I’m probably doing the bread and butter type shots most of the time. I’m doing whatever I think meets what they need at that moment for the thing they told me they’re doing.
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, right. And then that reminds me of one thing that you said earlier too is that we’re not shooting speculative stuff when we’re being paid to do it. But I do think that there’s something, and you alluded to it when you’re talking about that team, those football portraits, is that yes, 85% to 90% has to be that. I know I’m going to get it. So in my world, what that looks like is I might meet with a client and they would say, “I just love candid, I love kids running around. I love us tickling them. I don’t even care if they’re looking at the camera,” until they see the images. And then they’re like, “Well, he’s not looking at the camera.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So I’ve learned, no, no, no. You’ve got to get one image where everyone is looking at the camera and has at least a pleasant smile on their face, or else you are screwed, I don’t care what they told you. So I know, okay, I got to get that, and then we’ll get the things that they said that they thought they wanted. And then I do always like to try in every shoot to do a little something for me, even if they didn’t ask for it, and they may never see it, but I’m going to try to do something a little bit crazy, like get over there and flip that light around or strip that kid’s shirt off and give them a sucker or whatever, and just do something that is just fun for me.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then those are usually the ones that end up on my website, but they sometimes aren’t the ones that my clients order. They might be a little bit too true. They might be the kid completely melting down with snot running down his face or whatever. But I think there is something in that. So have the play date, but then when you are also shooting the work, to have, and this probably isn’t as applicable to commercial work, but in portrait work, to just have that little moment of serendipity or open yourself up to it so that you do, it keeps you going, keeps it interesting, keeps you fun.
John Gress: Most definitely. When I was doing those business people and I tried to reinvent the wheel all the time, I realized that I needed to every time just capture for editorial purposes. When I did those editorial shoots of business people and I would try to do things that were different every time I realized that I needed to just shoot a regular picture on a clean background with loop lighting, that was just them, three-quarter length. And I also needed a close up head shot. That was the thing you needed a lot of times in journalism and just so you had it. And then you could have the things that were fun. It’s the same thing when I get a magazine client now I make sure that I get that boring shot that’s just competent lighting, clean background with room on it for text and the person looking at the camera happy, just like your whole family looking happy. And then you can get those fun shots that you were talking about, but no stop.
Allison Tyler Jones: And then every now, and you’ll get a client that will go there that will like, “Oh no, give me the crazy where everybody’s falling over and the baby’s crying and the mom’s glasses are falling off because the toddler just kicked them in the face.”
Allison Tyler Jones: But usually you won’t. They won’t, but you have it. I have it, and I know that that’s fun. Then I’m showing that on my website, I’m showing that stuff that pushes the envelope, and that brings my clients along with me and it helps develop my brand. Even if that person didn’t order that one, the next person might be more willing to take a chance on it so I think it helps you push your work a little bit.
John Gress: Most definitely.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love it. Well, you have provided, I have three pages of notes of things I’m going to do. You’ve inspired me. Anything else that you want our listeners to take away to encourage them for creativity or just staying interested, relevant, inspired?
John Gress: Probably it’s like your skills are going to grow a lot when you get started in whatever you’re doing, but then it’s going to plateau a little bit. But that’s just when you have to keep trying new things and looking for that next bit of inspiration, and realize that your artistic growth and journey is going to be slow and steady and don’t get discouraged by that. Just like the growth of your skills after you get started is going to be slow and steady, but definitely put in the work, the way that we can get better is either getting critiques or practicing. Get out there and do that because you’ll feel a lot better developing that new skill and taking your work to the next level then if you just sit back and say, “Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it next week. I’ll do it next month,” or, “I just don’t have a good enough idea yet,” or, “I just can’t find the right person yet.”
John Gress: Just accept 80% of what you want and go for it. The model’s 80% right, the idea is 80% together. Just get those things together and go out there and try and see where things take you and practice makes perfect, so just keep going and don’t get discouraged and have fun, most of all.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, where can our listeners find you as far as, we’ll link to all of your places in the show notes, but where do you want them to find you first? Is it Instagram or?
John Gress: Yeah, so they could go to my website, which is johngress.com, and that’s where you find my members-only platform where you can find all sorts of tutorials there and a learning path that will take you from just starting off as a photographer to developing expert level skills. And that’s also where you find information about my workshops and my Lightroom presets and my digital downloads for lighting guides and that sort of thing.
John Gress: Or my Instagram is @johngressmedia, and on November 15th and 16th I think, or 16th and 17th, I’m having an advanced lighting workshop at my studio in Chicago. So if this makes it out in time for that, that’s something that people might want to check out. It’s limited to five people and we work together for two days and people come with images that they want to recreate, whether they’re mine or someone else’s, and we figure out how to make that happen. It’s a lot of fun just experimenting and working through all of those challenges and problems that come up.
Allison Tyler Jones: I love that. Well, that’s great. And yeah, this will come out in time for that, so I will say I mean you and I have not spent a lot of time together, but the little time that we have spent, you’re a very kind, encouraging person and I think that’s not always the case with educators. And so I would just say it would make the case for if you’re wanting to learn lighting or you’re wanting to really do it, that John, you’re an amazing human and really kind person and very supportive and that makes a huge difference when you’re learning something new.
John Gress: Thank you so much.
Allison Tyler Jones: Thanks for being here, I appreciate you.
John Gress: All right. Yeah, thank you.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com, and on Instagram @do.the.rework.
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…
Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait…