NETFLIX OPEN HOUSE
Last summer I was so excited to shoot for Netflix again. They had a press/photo/party day they called Open House in a massive mega millions mansion in Beverly Hills. I shot portraits of their home and real estate reality show talent. It was one of those shoots that reminded me that 90% of being a photographer is solving problems and having the experience and knowledge to fix anything that goes wrong. And everything went wrong! A camera broke. Lights went down. It rained! Then was sweltering hot. We sometimes had just 30 seconds to photograph someone but mostly had 1-2 minutes, we were working fast. Sometimes I love this scenario and think I thrive under the pressure. But I think it lends itself well to my personality to immeditey engage my subject, make them feel comfortable and direct them to get all we need. In this case I needed full, wide, tight, duos, singles, movement, quiet … and then we’d hustle 20 feet from the makeshift inside-out studio to the poolside for a few more grabs in a different setup. That night, we forgot to eat so stuffed our face with a lot of candy (the only thing we could find) and ran inside to the mansion to photograph a ‘party pic’ — they didn’t want it to look editorial or fussy, just what a selfie might look like if you were at a party with friends. Except this was 49 people! No surprise, there was a lot of yelling, ha (but thankfully not at me). That’s when our lights went down. My crew and client were all whispering loudly through gritted teeth to ask WTF is going on … all while not letting anyone know there was a problem and keeping everyone in the shot engaged. Whew! We aren’t entirely sure what happened but our best guess is that there were too many people with their cell phones between me and the lights we had outside the house to blast backlight into the stairway. This is when I was glad to have a solid crew and together we made it work. I love the way it turned out but would love less drama next time — I watched the shows, and that’s where all the drama should stay. I binged Selling the OC and Buying Beverly Hills. It was a fun exercise to do in reverse. I photographed them first and then watched their shows, not the other way around. I think it was good that way — I did my research but basically went in without knowing how each character would play out on the show. The thing I couldn’t get over was how beautiful everyone was. Like so perfect, zero flaws, stunning. I kept saying I guess you need to be a babe to be a real estate agent because these people were next level gorgeous.
