When I was in California, I finally had a chance to do something I’d been wanting to do for a while. Julie’s cousin Jillian and her boyfriend Steven have started their own line of hair and beard products for men. It’s called Port City Pomade, and I’ve been trying to find time to take some product photos for them. I had a pretty good idea of the kind of shots I wanted: close-ups of the products arranged in various configurations with the Port of Stockton slightly out of focus in the background. I had visions of cranes, ships, and smokestacks behind their cool packaging. Instead, I got a lesson in adaptability.
When I actually got into Stockton and got some of their products in hand, though, I started to realize that this might be more difficult than I had anticipated. I lived in Stockton for about 6 years, but I had never really bothered exploring downtown or near the port. (Downtown Stockton isn’t really known for its country clubs and high standard of living, if you know what I mean.) Julie and I got in the car and drove down to the port in search of a decent location that fit my vision. The results were abysmal. The whole place was much more run-down that I had even imagined, and I didn’t have high hopes for it in the first place. From the freeway, you can see something similar to what I wanted in the background, but when you’re actually down at the port, all of the elements I wanted in the photos look far too spaced out to be placed together behind the subject. After driving around for a while, I decided this probably just wasn’t going to happen. I had to give up on my original vision and come up with something new. After giving it some thought and downing some caffeine, I realized that the port itself isn’t even what their product alludes to; it’s actually Port City Pomade, and Stockton is the port city.
So I decided we’d start driving around downtown to find a location that allowed us to capture some of the cool old buildings in the background. We ran into the same exact problem. There was no vantage point other than the side of the freeway to get a good view of downtown, and I didn’t feel like getting arrested or hit by a speeding low rider for some simple product photos. The direction the city has gone can be pretty well summed up by the position of the freeway in relation to one of the coolest historical buildings around. See below how close to the front of St. Mary’s Church the crosstown runs:
I didn’t have a lot of time left before I had to go back to Phoenix, so this was really the last day I was going to have the chance to get these shots. We went back toward the port in a last-ditch effort to find anywhere that might look decent enough to use for the shots. We got off of the freeway at a different exit than the last time and stopped at a 7-11. There was a spot right across the street that looked like it actually might work pretty well. Some of it was fenced off, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me at this point. I grabbed the gear I needed from the car, loaded Julie up with the product, and we started to walk toward the street. But, of course, we were accosted by someone who was clearly out of their mind on what was likely crack cocaine (could’ve been meth, for all I know). He was very interested in what we had, what we were doing, and in our car, a newer 5-series BMW that didn’t quite fit in with the neighborhood. We kept walking after we were reasonably sure he was finished inspecting us, but when I looked back I saw him lingering around the car. The car itself and the gear I still had inside were too valuable to leave in a place like that, so we got back in the car and headed back toward a better part of town.
Sigh. We just sat in a CVS parking lot for a while trying to think of a new solution. Eventually, it occurred to us that there is one very nice place that’s quintessentially Stockton: the University of the Pacific. We headed to the campus immediately, only to find that the lighting was as bad as it could possibly be for the type of shots I wanted. After walking around the campus for a while, we finally settled on a bench in a shady area with nice red bricks and some ivy in the background. The difference between what I had planned and what I ended up getting was huge, but I think they turned out pretty well anyways. In the end, I didn’t even get anything overtly related to Stockton. I had to adapt to my surroundings and bend to the will of the light, as we photographers so often do. What I did get was a set of nice old-timey photos with which the client was quite pleased.
When I bought my first DSLR, I resolved to learn something new every time I took it out. That resolve still stands today, and I guess this time the lesson was that I can’t always get what I want. But if I try, sometimes, I get what I need. Yes, I went there.
Let me know what you think of the shots. Be gentle, though–I had to go through a lot to get them.
