One thing about awards parties: they’re great opportunities to put a face to a name, or to catch-up with industry folks who you’re normally in contact with through the less-personal email and phone. This is true of the photographers, clients, reps, consultants, and affable PDN staffers attending this year’s PDN Photo Annual awards and party.
Jacqueline Bovaird from Glasshouse Assignments, Anthony Georgis (our photographer from Portland), Manuela Oprea from Adweek, and me. All photos by Bill Cramer. Fujifilm gave out a bunch of Instax Mini 7's, so everyone was photographing each other.
Before arriving at the event, we met up with our Los Angeles big rig truck photographer, Roger Snider. We dined at 508, which I’d definitely recommend for their atmosphere and ceviche.
You really need to meet Roger in person to appreciate his infectious zeal for the work that he’s doing. He’s very much found a niche with his truck work, as it combines his lifelong interests in photography and the big rigs. FYI: No Plastic Sleeves recently featured his unorthodox print portfolio.
Me and Roger Snider at 508 Restaurant, from Bill Cramer's perspective
After dinner, we headed to the awards. The first person I spotted was the iconic and clever blogger/photographer Andrew Hetherington, and we had a nice discussion on the merits of whether photographers were getting any work from appearing in photo annuals.
Another question: which ones are clients still using to find photographers? You should check out Andrew’s blog posts discussing these matters, as he is concerned that there are too many contests these days. No picture of Mr. Hetherington, but he’s pretty recognizable if you’ve seen his Facebook page icon or read his blog.
PDN award winner and Wonderful Machine photographer Susana Raab talking with a slightly blurry New York Times photographer Stephen Crowley
Cade Martin was on a shoot and unable to attend for his winning photo. However, we did have the great pleasure of hanging out with several other of our award-winning photographers, including DC photographer Susana Raab, New York’s Landon Nordeman, and Anthony Georgis, who came all the way from Portland.
Not to mention PDN‘s friendly crew, including Editor Holly Hughes, Executive Editor David Walker, Director of Photo Amber Terranova, Events and Awards man John Gimenez, and Photo Expo’s Jill Waterman.
It was also great to catch up with Manuela Oprea from Adweek, Daniella Jo Nilva-Cunningham from VH-1, the hard-working Jacqueline Bovaird, rep at Glasshouse Assignments, and our buddy from many events, consultant Louisa Curtis. We met more folks than I can name, which says how jam-packed the affair was with industry folk.
I’ve been to the last three awards, and they’ve always felt friendly and collegial. Thanks for another great evening, PDN!
Roger Snider approached us a few months back to create a new photography portfolio for his niche specialty: shooting big rig trucks. After some soul searching, our photo editor/portfolio consultant Sean Stone came up with with an interesting, custom approach to the portfolio, and one that involved skulls and flames:
I asked Sean Stone a few questions about his approach to the edit and the physical books themselves, which are fun to hold because of their glossy, metallic surfaces and custom-painted design.
What did Roger approach you to do, and why?
Roger approached me to create a portfolio specifically for a project called the Shell Rotella Superrigs Calendar. He wanted to have the book done in-time to be considered for this very big job. Its a calendar of custom trucks in different locations, and their drivers, which is exactly what Roger shoots. He wanted to create a book that would really set him apart from the competition for the calendar, but also something to help him expand his brand.
What was the extent of your input?
Roger put a lot of trust in my opinion to make the edit, and really gave me free reign to assemble the images in the way I thought would be most effective. He wanted to be sure we included the more polished work and didn’t include his more journalistic work, which was recently featured in National Geographic.
He sent me 200 images, which I honed down to 30 for our first approval round. Roger was happy with the edit, and sent a few new images which he thought would enhance what I had put together. Fortunately, a few of them fit in nicely, and we were done editing by round two.
Of course, this doesn’t include the internal rounds that I had before presenting to Roger, which include printing thumbnails on paper, allowing me to quickly re-arrange the spreads to perfect the edit. I’ll also run my edits by some of our marketing people, to get another perspective on the images’ relevance to art buyers. My goal is to make a book that shows a consistent style, unique imagery that brands the photographer, and also has marketability.
The hardest part was creating an edit that looked fresh, when dealing with a subject that is, on the surface, all the same stuff. Sort of like if I was making a book for a food photographer who only shoots sandwiches. But Roger has a huge variety of content, style and location. The longer I looked at his work, the more I appreciated the subtlety of his truck photography.
As far as the physical book goes, we both agreed that bigger would be better. We chose to use 11 x 17 landscape because the format allowed for almost no cropping, compared to a 16 x 20. I thought about a number of options for the book itself, something that would be economical but make a bigger impact than a standard book.
As I researched options for customizing the books, the idea of truck materials kept coming back to me. The sturdy aluminum of the Pina Zingaro was immediately attractive.
I also located a double sided luster paper for him, which was surprisingly hard to do. I then printed and assembled his books. The pages are hand punched by me, because Pina uses a weird size post in their Machina line of books.
I also thought that we should take advantage of Roger’s connections in the big rig business, and get his books tricked out like his subjects. Roger loved the idea and sent the books to be painted by his friend, Jeff Botelho, who builds custom trucks from his shop in Los Banos, California. Jeff made three custom painted books for us:
These were based on color schemes of trucks he had produced [including the truck in the image below, which is also in Roger's portfolio]. Do the green flames look familiar?
And what does Roger think of the finished product?
He’s been very happy with the books, so much so that he’s having me edit and create a new portfolio for his other line of photography (no trucks involved).
Roger Snider defies the typical categorization of “Automotive Photographer,” though he specializes in shooting automobiles for a living. He’s one of a select group of photographers who shoots, for the most part, 18-wheeler trucks. Even his website address bears this out: www.ultrarigsoftheworld.com.
National Geographic picked up on Snider’s specialty and featured his image above for their Visions of Earth section. These two trucks are part of a cultural phenomenon in Japan described as “art truck clubs.” They’re basically tricked out 18-wheelers owned by truck drivers who need to make their rigs look like mobile pachinko machines.
Roger regularly shoots for Peterbilt, including their annual convention of Peterbilt owners who have customized their rides. Snider’s specialty mostly takes him on location to shoot things like this:
How did he get into this niche work? “I always wanted to be a trucker as a kid…after shooting the stills on the doc film Big Rig I went to a truck show in Vegas…and knew I would be shooting show trucks on location for a long time to come.
