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Commercial photographer Jake Armour is talking at a rapid clip,
like a man not only truly enthusiastic about his work, but busy at
it too.
While he's got some time to spare for an interview, as he rattles
off the list of amenities in his brand-new studio in downtown
Minneapolis ("6,600 square feet, 18-foot ceilings, parking for 16,
birch wood details, curved windows, conference rooms, spacial
function with great work flow"), you can hear in his voice that
he's eager to get back to it.
"It's a happy new world," he says, by way of cheerful
apology.
He is a busy man. In the 10 years since Armour first opened shop,
he's grown from a solo operation into a fully staffed company that
employs a manager/producer, a rep (Armour's wife, Hope), and a
staff photographer. Along the way, he's transformed himself from a
local product shooter into a seasoned professional with 12 major ad
agency and design firm accounts—big regional clients like
Target and Larsen Design—and a national marketing campaign
almost ready for launch.
At a time when most of the industry seems to be grinding down,
Armour is kicking into high gear. "In the three months since we've
been in this new space," he marvels, "our clients have
doubled."
ABOVE & BEYOND
As for the reason behind this tremendous success, it may have to do
as much with what Armour Photography is not as with what
it is.
"I don't like recipe photography," he says. "When I get a job I
want to come out fresh. My goal is to create something that is
above and beyond a client's expectations."
As an example, he cites a project for a fluid-technology company
that "wanted to show 'fluid in motion,' but didn't know how." After
a bit of brainstorming, Armour built a four-step waterfall in the
studio and shot blue and green food coloring floating downstream.
"It's all about problem-solving. You have to get into their heads
and translate that into reality."
Armour himself seems unsure as to how he manages to pull this off.
He talks metaphorically about "sweet spots" and "harmonics" and
things being in tune. Like the art-school graduate he is—he
completed a two-year commercial photography program at the New
England School of Photography in Boston—he invokes Henri
Cartier-Bresson and "balance" and "negative space."
He's more successful discussing technique and mechanics. For a
Gucci watch he shot as part of a Marshall Fields holiday gift
program, he explains: "I took a conventional photo with a Cambo 4X5
and Ilford XP2 film. Then we did what I call split-toning; we did a
partial bleaching of the prints then through trial and error put
some selenium tones back in—all the things you do when you
want to destroy a B&W print. It was Science 101."
The result is a huge watchface swooning in and out of focus in
almost infinite shades of white, off-white, blue, and
gray.
GAME PLANNING
This kind of experimentation is a large part of Armour's "game," as
he calls it. For example, he'd never shot an underwater product
before "Camera in Water," a picture of a 1930s Kodak camera diving
in—as it were—trailed by a surge of bubbles.
For the shoot, Armour built a 30-gallon tank out of Plexiglas and
"started tossing in watches," but the results were unsatisfying. He
tossed in other things—a pair of jelly sandles and assorted
fashion accessories—until he hit upon his collection of small
cameras.
"I had an assistant throw them in and very quickly I saw what I
wanted. We rigged a positioning arm and a kind of track for them to
run on, then did some Polaroid testings. I could have used fast
duration strobes, but I wanted some motion. Certain areas are
blurry—that's where the kinetic energy is.
"The background was separately lit, and the tank was lit from the
sides and front. How I treat lighting is what separates me from
other shooters. I want to find the essence of luminosity."
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