Long-time readers of this site are already familiar with London-based commercial and advertising photographer Drew Gardner. Many of you will be happy to know that he has just released a commercial series of walk-thru videos of over a dozen of his more notable shoots, broken into McDonald’s lunch-priced segments.
I have always enjoyed Drew’s lighting, but even more so his creativity and imagination when approaching a shoot. And frequently, that ability to source a location or bootstrap say, an elephant or water buffalo as a prop for a shoot is more key to making the magic happen than knowing where to put your soft box.
I have had a chance to view most of them, and the takeaway for me has been that there is generally one unexpected or unusual thing you have to figure out to make a shot come together. For me, that is a big lesson — because I am usually about the light.
But Drew seems to have a talent for hitting the curve ball that comes at you from left field. And I would give a lot of lighting skill away to be able to do that so seemingly effortlessly. I learn something from the guy every time we talk.
Drew kindly made one of the tutorials free, and I have embedded it above. (Blip.tv is ad-rolling it, but you can click them away.) You see the other photos selected for video tutorials here.
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