Pi Media Networks Tour

Pi Media is one of the biggest US commercial studios. They shoot the whole Sears catalog, among other clients.

This article is a brief look around the Pi Media studio, and how the photographers go about their work. Interestingly, the studio has been all digital since 1998.

The studio is massive - over 200,000 square feet of studio and post-production space. They employ 400 people, including 40 photographers and all the various tradespeople and professionals required to build sets, prepare models, design page layouts and prepare work for printing.

I particularly envy the standard setup that each photographer uses - a Hasselblad H1 with Phase One digital back, tethered to a cart carrying an Apple G5, Lacie monitor and Capture One software, all connected back to the servers via gigabit ethernet. That's probably a years' salary for most people!

Pi Media Networks Tour

Selecting A Subject

An excerpt from the book On Being A Photographer, by David Hurn and Bill Jay.

One of the best ways to grow as a photographer is to take on a project of some type. Choose a subject, and produce a body of work to illustrate that subject.

Maybe the end result will be a portfolio or a gallery show, or maybe it'll end up as a small photo album or a web presentation. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you spend time with your chosen subject, get to know it, get past the cliche shots of it and really make photographs that reveal something new about your subject to other people.

Presented as a conversation between the two authors, this book excerpt is loaded with good advice about how to select a subject for your photographic project.

Selecting a Subject