Welcome Life’s Surprises
A number of years ago I was assigned to photograph a well-known local heart surgeon for a local magazine. I was told that we were going to do the photograph in a surgery room at the University of Minnesota. I had the photo all figured out in my head—the surgeon standing nobly by the side of an operating table surrounded by all manner of hi-tech equipment in a gleaming room. When I got to the room ahead of time to set up my lights, I discovered that the room we had been given was a former surgery room for animals, no longer used, and nearly half filled with boxes. My vision of the final product disappeared into a cloud of ether. I sat down on one of the many boxes available and went into panic mode.
I wasn’t able to find an acceptable angle where the clutter would not be visible in the photo. With the time drawing near to when I would meet my subject, I finally figured out that the only viable alternative was to use the overhead surgery light pointed on my subject’s face and add a little soft light from the side, keeping the background completely dark. The resulting photograph was much better than the one I had previously envisioned. Since that incident I have made it a point to not have everything figured out until I get to where that next photo will be taken. Now I look for and even expect surprises, the little things that make the photo so much better than what I could have imagined ahead of time.
—Mark Luinenburg, photographer, mark@luinenburg.net, www.markluinenburg.com