Commercial Photography is Preposterous

The weirdness is the best part

I believe in the importance of niches, particularly when it comes to marketing. Do one thing and do it well, become the go-to-guy-or-gal for it, and charge a premium for your deep expertise. It took me a while to realize, however, that doesn’t mean you say no to other jobs outside your specialty. Niches are about marketing not doing. When someone calls and asks if I’m interested in photographing something far outside my specialty, I reply with a complex and nuanced answer: “Yes.”¹

It is outside of my niche that I tend to have the most peculiar experiences.

On more than one occasion I’ve had a convenience-store-style deep freeze delivered to the studio and filled with several dozen quarts of ice cream such that I could photograph scoops for product packaging. It’s such a strange process if you’re not used to it. First you fiddle with the freezer’s thermostat to get the ice cream to the ideal consistency.² Next you set the studio temp down as low as it can go. I recall breaking 60 degrees on one occasion, though not in summer. Working in a cold studio all day is challenging, but at least the ice cream doesn’t melt.

With the ice cream at the perfect temperature, the super-talented stylist with whom I work puts it in a custom-made jig, opens the bottom of the package, and with one of several different sized spoons, pulls one single solitary scoop of ice cream from the tub — which has now fulfilled its duty. You only get one perfect scoop from a quart of ice cream.³

She then uses a series of straws, sticks, tweezers, brushes and other implements to strategically melt, shape and reposition the collar around the scoop. Then back into the freezer it goes for another 45 minutes plus to refreeze nice and hard so it won’t collapse within minutes of hitting the set. The stylist is working much harder than I am on days like this, and in the end we’re lucky if we get eight or 10 scoops completed in a day.

The best part of these shoots, of course, is that there’s always ice cream left over. Once I ended up with a lot, like a few dozen unopened quarts of ice cream. I happily give away this ice cream for the next couple of weeks to anyone and everyone who visits the studio. The banker who took the ton of orange sherbet left grinning. “Everyone at the office will love this,” he said.

People really like it when you give them ice cream.

Once I took a few cartons of ice cream, along with disposable plates and spoons, to the construction site next door where roofers were taking their lunch break. You wanna see half a dozen happy guys? Surprise them with ice cream on a hot day. Everybody’s a kid again.

It is for reasons like this that I am reminded of a truism: commercial photography is preposterous.

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Photography gets you into the weirdest places, allows you to see how the sausage gets made, to meet the people who make it. It’s like the show “How It’s Made” but with a PR guy giving you a personalized, in-person tour. This goes for factories and aircraft carriers and frankly any other place we’re sent on assignment.

Even if you’re not a celebrity photographer, you meet celebrities. I’ve spent the day with reality stars and those who might typically be called “c-listers” who have been generally lovely people — some downright delightful. I’ve also met some literal royalty, hall-of-fame athletes, superstars, icons, legends…

I was once hired to photograph a business meeting with a CEO and some governors. I stood in the corner of a conference room which had, myself included, 11 people present, of which three were governors. I raised my camera when the quirky billionaire CEO walked in, and I pressed the button. It clicked quietly. The CEO turned to me, smiled, and said “That’ll be all.” So I exited and sat in the hall for the next 90 minutes patiently earning my paycheck.

Commercial photography is preposterous.

I used to photograph beer for a large American brewer with a name that rhymed with schmanhizer smush. A whole day, bottles and bottles of beer, and in the end you create one photograph. But it looks like the beer is sitting poolside or adorning a table in a cozy restaurant.

One time, for a photograph of a group of beer brands, I purchased $1,000 of cheese. (This was easily 15 years ago, so maybe $2,500 worth of 2025 cheese.) The shot was nice enough, made to match a mockup the company had come up with and styled in a particular manner. But the notable part, aside from the expense, was that it was Christmastime. So after the shoot, I doled out hundreds of dollars worth of cheese to the client, to the stylist and to myself. This was not a large quantity of cheese, but it was high quality cheese. Like $50 and $80 little blocks of the stuff. My family holiday party had one heck of a cheese plate.⁴

Other Evidence of Preposterdom

• As previously mentioned, last week I paid $350 to borrow a Camaro for about an hour. I photographed it in a pouring rainstorm and had to try to make it look like it was not a pouring rainstorm. We did surprisingly well, if you ask me.

• I lay down, on the ground, in public, quite a bit. (All the best angles, you know.) The other day I laid down at the base of the north leg of the Gateway Arch. The day before I laid down in the end zone of a high school football field. Two days ago I laid down… Well I don’t remember where, but I bet it was somewhere. You never realize how rarely you lay down in public until you start frequently laying down in public.

• One time I rented a baseball stadium. The whole stadium, for the whole day. It was minor league, but still. Nice place. Held a couple thousand people. I believe they gave me a deal, about half off, so it was surprisingly affordable. Now I’m looking for opportunities to do it again. Graduation parties, cocktail hours, any excuse I can find. I think I’ll do another shoot there this summer, in fact.

• One time I had to spell out a word in pills. It was a lot of pills. The red ones tasted like pennies and made my face hurt.

• One time I had to walk down the street, a full block, carrying a mannequin. Torso under one arm, legs in the other. It was not clothed. There was much honking.

• One time I got to photograph John Legend at a private event. He performed for us, and I sat at the edge of the stage and listened to him belt out three hits in full voice. It was sublime. Also, I ate chicken wings in his dressing room.

John Legend’s chicken wings.

• One time I spent the day on a fishing boat shooting a pilot for a fishing show. That’s not that weird except just randomly one Tuesday my job was to be on a fishing boat all day, shooting a pilot for a fishing show.

• Once I had to coerce a medical device manufacturer to come pick up their very expensive medical device machine thing that had been sitting in the studio for months. After multiple requests I floated the possibility of selling it on eBay. It was soon picked up and, coincidentally, I haven’t worked with them in quite awhile.

• Speaking of medical devices, one time I got hired to photograph bags of saline. Imagine a giant ziploc bag printed on (poorly, I might add), filled with water and thrown in a box to be shipped across the country with several other bags of water. Not big, perfect, pretty bags either. Messed up janky 1 of 1 bags that had to look good. And I did it! Well, not me per se. The skillful retoucher did the hardest part.

• One time I bid on a project to photograph the construction of a bridge across the Mississippi River. Toward the end of the call with the prospective client, he offhandedly said: “Do you have any issue with heights? You’ll need to be craned up to the top of a 400-foot tower out in the middle of the river.” I said sure with a smile in my voice, no problem at all. And then I laid awake for three nights staring at the ceiling and praying I didn’t get the job. I didn’t get the job, as evidenced by the fact that I am still here.

• Speaking of the river, on more than one occasion I got in a jon boat and set sail from the levee beneath the Gateway Arch to ride upriver and photograph the cleanup efforts of a tremendous environmental organization. Once, as we approached the far side of the river, I watched three deer swimming. Not wading, swimming. They were perpendicular to the bank and heading west. That’s when I learned that some deer swim across the Mississippi River. Or attempt to, anyway. Another time, Asian carp began leaping at the sound of our motor and several yard-long fish wound up in the boat, flailing at our feet. It’s surprisingly distressing to have huge fish flying through the air, narrowly missing your head.

• I once got to watch a governor governing. It was the opening of a new facility, and the governor was there to congratulate the corporate executive who’d flown in for the event. At one point, dozens of us were packed into a large room during the facility tour. Photo op complete, everyone filed out leaving behind just me, the executive, and the governor. The governor had the executive cornered and was emphatically selling him on the idea of building more of these facilities in our state. It was neat, given that it was only two guys talking. But I didn’t raise my camera, because it was a private moment I was not intended to be privy to. And so I got to watch a governor do the actual work of being a governor.

These are just a few things I thought of off the top of my head. For the sake of space, I trimmed several others, and I’m sure there are many more, equally absurd. It’s kind of the best thing about the job, this preposterousness. You get to go to interesting places and meet interesting people, and you see things regular people don’t get to see. It’s weird, but the weirdness might be the best part.

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1. Sometimes paired with “how much?” or “when?” or even “are you sure?”

2. I find just below zero, -1º to -5º F, to be perfect. Once I had it dialed in to -2º when I left for the night, but when I returned it was -10º and the ice cream was rock hard. But it was workable after about an hour, and too cold is better than too warm. Which I learned when a courier from the dairy arrived one hot July afternoon with five quarts of ice cream sitting loose on the floor of his car. It is moments like this for which the word “gobsmacked” were invented. You want me to shoot your ice cream for a package, and you thought “Just throw it in the backseat, I’m sure the fact that it’s 97º outside won’t matter.” This is why photographers are grumpy.

3. Which, I should mention, has not been truly a quart for several years now. One of the most egregious shrinkflations around.

4. It was at this shoot that I learned of the heavenly nature of aged gouda. I tasted it and thought, “Oh, this must be what cheese tastes like to rich people!”