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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Lori Adamski-Peek - Motion Sickness

Lori Adamski-Peek has learned to trust her digital equipment in even the stickiest situations

As an “active lifestyle” shooter, portability is essential. But as a commercial photographer with a demanding client awaiting every shot, mobility and convenience aren't enough. Adamski-Peek needs to know that her equipment will provide the technical results that make her images functional for commercial use. Once she saw what her equipment could do, it was only a matter of waiting for the clients to catch up. For that, she let the images speak for themselves.

Says Adamski-Peek, “Once we made the change to digital, it was more a matter of convincing clients that the images would be the same quality or better than film, and that we could provide an end product that they could work with for their final needs. For the first few years, many clients were apprehensive, as many had had a bad experience with digital. But it seemed to me that digital was here to stay and that, in time, more and more clients would be asking for it. Now we're being asked for digital with enthusiasm. Once they have seen how much easier the entire process is, they won't go back to a normal film shoot. When we made the transition, I never took a job where the client wanted to shoot digital, but wanted film shot as a backup—I just never thought that was a good idea for my style of shooting.”

Not only does Adamski-Peek's style of shooting stress the importance of preproduction planning and in-camera fundamentals, but all of her images receive some amount of postproduction attention before the finished pieces are delivered to the client.

“All of our images have postproduction processing,” she says. “Everything is shot in RAW mode, which requires a file conversion at the least. A client will get a file of small JPEGs immediately for FPO [for placement only], and these have little, if any, adjustment due to the large number of files. For final art, there are many adjustments made for curves and saturation, basic cleanup and verification that the image has a healthy histogram for output. These adjustments are done on a file-by-file basis based on client request.”

With so many changes to her production methods, is Adamski-Peek concerned about a change to her creative style? Hardly. In fact, like so many recent converts, she's excited about the opportunities that the technology has provided. She has found any stylistic changes to be positive.

“I shoot much more variety with digital because I can move along at a faster pace, knowing what I've captured in the camera,” she explains. “Recently, we were on a shoot in Los Angeles, shooting one very complicated shot for a national ad. My digital tech was downloading and checking images while I was shooting. He found that all the images we had shot were slightly out of focus. Within half an hour from the start of the shoot, we had determined that one of our lenses wasn't focusing correctly. We were able to continue shooting with a different lens without losing any images besides the very first few. This type of control lets me be a lot more comfortable on shoots. With film shoots, I was always nervous until I got all the film back from the lab.”

Adds Adamski-Peek, “I can honestly say that I know I've become a better photographer using digital technology. I'm much more daring, and I'll shoot in light I never felt comfortable shooting in with film. I've learned to trust my equipment more and more.”

To see more of Lori Adamski-Peek's photography, visit www.adamskipeek.com.