A few days ago I've assistant for a photographer-friend of mine while she was busy with a product shoot. OH BOY! What a day! Everything that one think is standard and can't go wrong did!
RESPECT!!! to all the people driving to Johannesburg and back each day for their work... 6 O'clock traffic is not fun! Luckily we made it there in one piece! OK, back from the detour to my story...
So, what went wrong?! Firstly we cracked the perspex of the infinity curve while setting up. DEAD silence (yes dudes, women CAN be as quite as a church mouse, you just need the right amount of horror inflicted on them!) doesn't even describe the room while we waited for the whole thing to collapse on us. NOTHING happened... at least not yet! The fun and games started out when we disassembled the thing.
The top went up wrong way around, so the screws got stuck, hence the crack in the top! we finally got three of the four screws out. We were just about to get the last one out when the perspex slipped out of our hands, right between the support booms and with a load bang broke into three peaces. We stared at one another with huge eyes, I'm waiting for my fried to burst out in tears (building cost of infinity curves are expensive), she looks at me with the utmost horror on her face and then we both burst out laughing. It lasted for a good five minutes! We re-named the infinity curve "The Body", hiding it in a big black piece of cloth, almost suited for a body bag!
The next thing that went wrong was the studio lights, not firing when we wanted them to. OH MY WORD! If you are on a time schedule that is the last thing you want breaking on you, luckily that was sorted out fast!
One of the products was garden umbrellas... the roof was too low, so we ended up getting the thing stuck between a rock and a hot place, barley able to move the darn thing! I think the horror on my friends face was far worse here than when the infinity curve broke! We finally got it out, just to discover that the client has surveillance videos all over the place... luckily for us, not in the room where we were photographing the products!
At last we were done. All went well and we had sore tummies from laughter!