Being a smart shooter is knowing when to ask for help.  I was recently asked to photograph this interior at UCSD for the builder.  The primary use was to enter in a competition.  The big problem was that the location was not going to be finished until the following Thursday, with the deadline that Monday.  Thursday would be too late.  So after a fair amount of negotiating my assistant Abbey and I decided to remove the cardboard off the desktops in the whole auditorium.  After a quick call to my retoucher, Holly of Spitting Images we decided to remove temporarily the plastic off three rows of the chairs.  That would give Holly enough of a sample to clean up the image.  Additionally we shot a section of paneling which she also layered on top of the black wood to complete the retouch portion of the project.  I then lightened the top projection screen and wal la……. image done, ready to send to the client.

As a pro you need to be a problem solver.  When someone say no as the project manager answered when we asked to clear all the plastic we came up with another solution.  Develop and utilize your resources.

Techy stuff:  camera: Nikon D3, lens 14-24, image processing in Lightroom 3, Photomatrix and Photoshop 5.  Additional retouching by the wonderful Holly Nelson-Kramer.

More of my work…… www.zwink.com