A Real American Book!

At the DFW G.I. Joe and Action Figure Show in late June I bumped into Derryl DePriest, toy collector, book author, and former Hasbro VP. I joked that he should drive north to finally see my store many, many hours from where he lives. Turns out he was heading my way two months hence!

Fast forward to September. This would be a nice friend meet-up. We’d get lunch. DePriest asked if he could bring anything from his collection to show me. He was swinging through RI and MA to meet up with some friends, former co-workers, and collectors, and was bringing a big bit of treasure with him, Carl Cederholm’s original wax sculpt for the 1975 Eagle Eye GI Joe action figure — a massive 4-up! Did DePriest have anything I needed to see for my book? This is a tough question that kind collector friends sometimes ask, but I don’t always know what a friend owns, nor what my book needs. Sometimes it’s clear — a whole paragraph in my book describes one toy, so that suggests a photo of that toy (or a scan of some development art for that toy, or its original packaging). Other times a whole page of my book broadly sweeps across an era of G.I. Joe, so any number of images would work there. DePriest sent a photo of (part of) his collection, and I saw a few things that definitely want to be in Chapter 16. And I thought of something he could bring for Chapter 1. Now I was asking him to bring three additional items: two paintmasters for some ’90s Joe figures and a production ’75 figure. (“Production” means regular, like a common toy anyone could buy at a store. I don’t own anything from the ’70s.)

And now this was no longer a store “tour” and lunch, but a photoshoot for my book!

In years past, I mostly drove an hour to Rhode Island and worked with a photographer in a big room. We’d audition background colors and textures, sometimes for an action figure just standing there — a product shot — and other times with some diorama “action.” Both meant shaping the light, looking out for glare, picking big sheets of color paper or casting about for glass tiles, rubber drink coasters, place mats, stacks of postcards or anything that could look interesting around, behind, or under a G.I. Joe action figure. These have tended to be fun but stressful affairs. Last November I called in a favor with a photographer who works much closer. We were only shooting one object at a time, and with just a color behind each, no exciting poses, nothing reflective. It was faster and easier.

If DePriest would only be visiting me for three or so hours, there wasn’t time to also lug his stuff to someone’s studio, or the school near me with a big, empty room. And I wouldn’t want to hire a photographer to meet us at my store to shoot his stuff — too complicated, too many things could go wrong. This time photos would be taken at my store, and I’d be doing it myself. Unlike the full photoshoots of the past, this would so short there would be no time to worry.

My wife owns one of those lightbox cubes for taking product photos. She’s interested in anthropology and childhood development, and for a class she took she did use this cube to shoot a ceramic figure of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese Twins. (They’re Siamese because they were born in Siam, the modern term is “conjoined twins,” Lisa Simpson tells me.) My wife showed me how to set up the cube the day before — easy! On the 4th DePriest was meeting someone else for breakfast, and would get to my shop around 11am. I was there early, clearing part of the counter and setting up the cube. Hub Comics opens at noon, so we had a short window — give DePriest a tour of the store, then use my smartphone to photograph the four items he brought. The lightbox came with six color backgrounds, so I couldn’t overthink that. If I wanted green, there was just the one green.

My Thursday employee takes the train, and there were big delays, so he texted to say he’d be a little late. No big deal as I was already there.

Instead of taking dozens of variations, rotating a toy one degree to the right, swapping in a different color cyc, moving the lights for a different effect, bracketing shots for a range of exposures — all things I and my past photographers had done — I just snapped two shots of each thing with my phone* and moved on. I sure wanted to finish by noon! We don’t expect a stampede of customers at opening time. In fact, we might not see anyone at all for 5 or 10 minutes on a Thursday, but I wanted to be able to focus on one task. Part of even a simple, fast photoshoot is having some mental space in the event that something goes wrong — what if this fragile prototype of DePriest’s won’t stand upright? I didn’t bring any wax to stick to its foot. Or for manning the store — what if a walk-in needs a refund on a purchase and our Square reader is being finicky? Any minute I spent with a customer was time I wasn’t working my camera or talking with DePriest. Splitting my focus, or my potential focus, between these two jobs wasn’t ideal. Fortunately, only a few customers stopped in, and they didn’t need much attention or had straightforward transactions, no looking up something obscure in the catalog or scouring our shelves for a book that’s been misplaced. I finished taking photos and my Thursday employee arrived. Note to self: don’t schedule a photoshoot at the store during store hours!

I did not overthink my photos, and DePriest and I got lunch next door. He had to leave shortly, with an hour drive to his next meeting, something about Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering or rare G.I. Joe toys. Since he had gone to the trouble of bringing some one of a kind G.I. Joe stuff for me, I brought a few paintings from my collection at home to show him. It was great seeing his reaction. We said goodbye and he drove off.

After my other photoshoots, I wait a few weeks for my photographer to make a contact sheet and process all those RAW files. Not so with these pics on my phone! This was part of the trade-off. For a down-and-dirty, simple photoshoot, my phone’s optics and the lightbox’s default setting were going to have to be enough. And after a few taps on my phone, these photos were my hard drive the same day!

Photoshoot #19 was a success.

* – Keen-eyed blog readers will note that I’ve lamented the poor quality of my camera phone in recent blog posts where I write up my convention experiences and thank con-pals who contribute their own higher quality photos. I didn’t use my old phone to capture DePriest’s treasure, as I had just, finally, after nine years (yes, nine years) upgraded.