IPC 2013: The Journey of an Image – from Inspiration to Loan Collection

Last summer I shot a session that’s been 11 years in the planning.

Let me back up.

I took this photo in April 2001. Mr. Wootness and I were on the trip of a lifetime to Ireland. We were warmly ensconced within the tea room at Aillwee Caves in County Clare. This was our first full day in Ireland and our first official “tea.”

I do have to say, the Europeans are delightfully civilized in that they have created this little oasis of relaxation and dessert-eating smack dab in the middle of the day. Yet, I digress.

So, like the amateur-photographer-tourist I was, I documented the moment by having Mr. Wootness pose for a photo. In fact, I had Mr. Wootness pose for so many photos it looks like he toured Ireland alone. Yet, again, I digress.

Later, after returning home and reviewing the photographs, this became one of the highlight images of the trip. My mother christened it “The Old Man and the Tea” and the name stuck. (Perhaps I should begin consulting mom for competition image titles).

As my photography skills grew, this photo became the subject of self-criticism. Oh, how I wish I had digital back then, how I wish I’d have lit him better and posed him better and dang the aperture isn’t quite what I wanted. I cringed at the shadows and harsh, flat light from the flash I was using at the time and tucked the frame behind some others…

I began to say “I’d like to reshoot this” – as if it was anything but a snapshot to begin with.

And one day last summer, I did. Much to the chagrin of Mr Wootness, on a day reserved for things other than work, in the July 4th heat, he bundled himself into the same exact outfit he wore over 11 years prior and sat for me while I tried to re-create the image in a new way.

An aside: Did you note that after 11 years, the same exact outfit was still hanging around? It was a sign.

I have a deep affection for “character” portraits – not ones that are contrived, but ones that are enhanced with lighting and color tones, with some conversation or direction to pull the right expression from the subject, and always always with the most intense eye contact with the camera possible…

With over 30 years of experience in community theatre, my mind instantly goes into “director” mode and I think about the clothing, props and set that will be needed as well as what I could do visually to convey that mood. In the theatre, mood can also be conveyed with music and sound effects, but in photography, it can only be done visually, so visual propping needs to be strong. Since I loathe props to begin with, I use them very sparsely and rely on clothing and lighting the most.

With this in mind, I analyzed the scene & emotion I wanted. The Ailwee Cave shot was not just to be copied, but to be improved upon and tweaked until all was in harmony. I have a habit of shooting in low key, and with the coat and hat being dark, black seamless was the obvious choice.

I had puttered about, looking for the right tea-cup that wouldn’t make Mr. Wootness’ hands look too large in comparison and was unable to come up with something that wasn’t totally at odds with mood I was trying to convey. Plus most teacups are high key and that wasn’t working, either. I also had issues with the fact that his outfit didn’t exactly scream “tea-drinking outfit”. What’s so special about a man in an overcoat with a teacup?

What was the story? Story-telling is one of the 12 Elements of a Merit Print – and I certainly didn’t want my story to be about a dude in an overcoat holding a teacup…

I altered my plans, slightly and changed the scope of the image – out with the tea room and in with the pub. A man. Sitting alone at the bar. All dressed to pop right out into the weather. Perhaps he’s been sitting there all night. Perhaps he just put his coat and hat back on and this is his last nip of whisky before setting back out into the cold. Or back to his boat for the night… now THERE was a story…

Wootness! Now I was cooking…

To convey the perception that the man was sitting in a pub, I needed a bar. I had an older wooden table in the house that with the cropping out of trim around the edge, would pass as a bar. I might want to have a shot of whiskey in the image, so some Irish whiskey and glasses were procured. In the theatre, iced tea is used for dark hard alcohols, but since this was my studio, right next to my home, we used whiskey. I gathered a few small glasses and a shot glass because I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go with the image. Eventually, the shot glass was chosen.

After getting down to business and setting up the lights, we went in and out of several different scenes, added a scarf, took it out, lit a cigarette, put it out, poured a drink, held the shot glass, a couple of more clicks and we were done. 34 minutes and 51 frames later, I think I had a nice solid assortment to choose from.

I narrowed it down to 8 overall choices:

Eventually I chose frame #37 to move forward with for the 2013 competition year.

Here is the image I chose SOOC (Straight Out of the Camera):

After fussing around with some cropping (wound up cutting out all of that special “bar” I had obtained), I ended up with this competition image:

With the crop, the story was altered. But still, a wrinkled coat; a disheveled, tired look; a boat worker, in from the cold, face chapped…. weathered by time, by circumstance, by hard work, by loss…

Weathered.

Since this was created very early in the 2012/2013 competition year, I was able to enter it at every level of competition I participate in throughout the year.

In November 2012, it scored a 90 at the Professional Photographers of Ohio (PPO) Fall Conference and was the highest scoring image in the Portrait category.

It was entered again at the PPO’s state convention in February 2013, where it received an 82 and after a few tweaks to toning and eye highlights, was sent to the Northeast District Competition where it scored an 84.

A nice solid merit image. *whew*

On June 18, I said “goodbye” and forwarded it to the International Photographic Competition to be judged at the end of July.

For the first time, I followed my case to Atlanta. I signed up for the Judges’ Workshop, which was held during IPC. I knew that our workshop schedule would allow some time to observe some of the judging, so I crossed my fingers and hoped that I would be able to sit in on the Loan judging since all four images in my case were sealed at districts and went straight to the loan judging rooms.

Four times a day, the judges gathered in the main meeting room at Gwinnett Tech and received their judging room assignments. I recorded the information on which rooms were holding what type of images and any time Portraits were being judged for Loan, I tried to make sure my observation time was spent there. Even though I only got to sit in on portrait judging twice, I did see two of my images get judged. Quite a coincidence, as there were over 5000 images being judged throughout 4 days and there were 3-5 rooms being used for judging at a time.

After seeing a couple of my images get judged and not receiving any text notifications about it, I knew I probably wouldn’t hear on the other two, so I waited for a few days and asked a a nice young lady in the computer lab if she could look it up for me.

By this time, all four images had been judged. I searched for the title “Weathered” – ran my finger across the line to the status…

… and it went Loan. *gasp* *smiles* *tears*

One other image went Loan that I had been hoping would do so, but this image going Loan was a bit of a surprise, and the one I was most pleased about.

Why?

Because it’s Mr. Wootness.

I’ve made it a practice of not entering family members into competition and this year I broke that rule in a major way. I felt I could do it objectively, now. I really couldn’t, as I discovered,  but the extra-special joy that came with learning this was chosen for the Loan Collection was just that much sweeter because it was of someone I love.

And after all these years of patiently smiling and looking at the camera whenever I asked him to – it paid off. In spades.

So, is this the end of the road? Is it all over?

Heck no!

Sometime in the next few months, Marathon Press will send me a proof to approve for the Loan Book that will probably be put out some time in the Christmas/Pre-IUSA time frame. Then the image will be shown at IUSA as part of the ASP Master’s Loan Collection. It will be considered “The Best of The Best”, quite the honor for this small-town Ohio photographer and her husband.

It will also travel to other photographic events across the world as part of the traveling Loan Collection, and will be considered for the Grand Imaging Awards, the results of which, will be announced at IUSA in January 2014.

In the meantime – I’m gonna blow that sucker up BIG on canvas and hang it on the wall. I may even chat with it since it’s going to be pretty close to life-size 😉