I Heart Huckabee

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Sometimes, you have to take advantage of someone's last name when it plays so well!

Concept/Objective:

I as looking to make a nice portrait of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. I was with him at a town hall stop, and wanted to make a nice portrait of him.

Pre-Production:

Time was tight, as it always is with someone so strictly scheduled. The town hall was to begin in under a minute, and the candidate stepped to the side as last minute seating was taking place for the audience. I had looked around for some nominally interesting background, in anticipation of an opportunity, and there was just one place that I was happy with. My only light source was a bounced flash off a white cieling, dragging the shutter a bit with a higher than normal ISO to capture some ambient.

Assignment:

As the governor stood to the side, I asked him to look my way for a few moments, and was able to get off six frames before the thirty-second mark, when he had to be in his seat. I wasn’t looking for something significantly dramatic, but finding a setting other than a white (or grey) wall allowed for an interesting setting. I was looking to leverage my opportunity more than anything else. The space was alongside a piano against a glass wall.

Post-Production:

Normal post production and archiving was done. Nothing special.

Final Analysis:

I was pleased with the results, and will be filing it as a stock portrait of him for future use. He said during the town hall he’s in the campaign for the long haul, so perhaps this image will have a longer than expected lifespan.

That's the best portrait I've seen in your work, lighting-wise. The colors are subtle and not overdone, the key is pleasant, and the yellow to green background gradient adds to the picture without being distracting.

I especially like the spill of magenta light on his arm and face. Nice ambient touch.

Billed as "an existential comedy," I Heart Huckabees is a flawed yet endearingly audacious screwball romp that dares to ponder life's biggest questions. Much of director David O. Russell's philosophical humor is dense, talky, and impenetrable, leading critic Roger Ebert to observe that "it leaves the viewer out of the loop," and suggesting that Russell's screenplay is admirably bold yet frustratingly undisciplined. Russell's ideas are big but his expression of them is frenetic, centering on the unlikely pairing of an environmentalist and a firefighter as they depend on existential detectives and a French nihilist to make sense of their existential crises, brought on by a two-faced chain-store executive and his spokesmodel girlfriend, and the aftermath of 9/11's terrorism. No brief description can do justice to Russell's comedic conceit; you'll either be annoyed and mystified or elated and delighted by this wacky primer for coping with 21st century lunacy. Deserving of its mixed reviews, I Heart Huckabees is an audacious mess, like life itself, and accepting that is the key to enjoying both. <a href="http://www.computervalley.ca/">buy notebook</a>

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