Moss Advertising and Hitachi

Another fun one (but maybe not quite legal). After I was given this layout, I had to go to a coin shop and buy 4 or 5 silver dollars. The ones from the early 1900's were less expensive than the ones before that so I picked up those "newer" ones. 

This is before digital so I took a coping saw with a metal blade and carefully chopped up one of the dollars. Yes, back then we had to actually cut up the coin. Today I would do it all in Photoshop but back then we used a saw. The value seemed to live in the silver content so I didn't really care. Back light is the light of choice for showing embossed detail and the shadows coming forward look awesome.

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When you are starting out on your own, you need to be able to shoot everything. I often tell my students that the answer is always "yes" and then you had better figure out how to do what you just said you would. This shot was for Moss Advertising.

It helped that I was a photo assistant for 4 years before going out on my own. I had lit shots like this for others in the past. Doing it on your own however was a whole different thing. As a studio we had to book all of the talent, make sure we had 12 foot white seamless and of course, a good assistant to wrangle every one and clean the bottom of their shoes. 

Back in the day we judged images and exposure with Polaroids and then just shot a lot of 120mm film. The 50mm lens was chosen mostly to fit 20 people into a small space but it cropped down perfectly and once again, the client was happy.