Photography is a complicated beast, only partially about the things you’d expect: image making, cameras, lights, computers, etc. As important as those things are, I continually find that a larger part of the business is what happens off set, involving personal interaction with the client, problem solving and adaptability. And so I’m stepping away from my usual subject matter — Lightroom’s Web module — to share with you a recent on-the-job experience; a problem and how I was able to solve it through adaptability, quick thinking and my iPhone.

I hope you will find the story informative, a little entertaining, and that you will keep it in mind should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

in which the stage is set

Several days ago, I was on location for a photo shoot acting as digital tech for the job. We were in a football stadium, shooting players on the field for an advertising campaign. Aside from the photo crew and production assistants, we had several reps from the ad agency with us. We work with the ad agency and client often, and what usually happens in the studio is that as shots are made, the agency’s art director(s) will make first approval of the image, then email a comp to the client for final approval. Receiving client approval, we strike set and prep the next shot. In studio, we tether to Lightroom 3, export JPG images to email and fire them through the chain of command for approval.

On location, however, things happen a little differently. The photographer was shooting to CF cards, which were passed off to me for download to the Lightroom catalog on our Macbook Pro. I would then standby with the art director while they reviewed the images on the sidelines. Meanwhile, the photographer moves on with the shoot, making more images. No problems so far, until the art director informs me we need to be sending image selects to the client from location for approval.

Checking the Airport signals on the notebook, I find myself within range of two WiFi signals originating from the stadium. Unfortunately, both are closed networks with a password required. Our stadium keymaster doesn’t know the passwords. Nor does anyone on the shoot have a smartphone that supports notebook tethering. We are — seemingly — screwed.

in which I high-five the art director

The ad agency is unhappy. The photographer is at a loss. Our producer is frantic. I am thoughtful. An idea begins to percolate.

“I think I can do this,” I tell them. I ask for a few moments of peace while I work this out. A few days prior, I had stumbled upon an iPhone app; at this point, I hadn’t yet tested the app, but thought it might be just the solution for our dilemma. As it turned out, I was right.

The app is Photo Transfer App, a universal application for the iPhone and iPad that costs $2.99. The app allows users to easily transfer images between their PC, iPhone and iPad over a shared WiFi network.

As previously established, however, there is no WiFi network within range to which we can connect …

Every Mac includes an Airport, Apple’s proprietary network adapter which allows the computer to connect to wireless networks. An often overlooked feature of the Airport, however, is its ability to generate a local network of its own. While useless for connecting to the Internet, this feature is extremely useful in getting two devices talking to each other. And so I used the Airport on the Macbook Pro to create a local network:

All networks are locked, and so we'll make our own: Create Network!

Turning to my iPhone, I accessed my phone’s Settings for WiFi connectivity:

I then went into the Settings on my iPhone to connect the phone to the newly created local network.

At this point, the Macbook Pro and iPhone are communicating. Back in Lightroom, I exported the art director’s selected images to my desktop as web-resolution JPG files, 72 ppi and 1,000 pixels on the long side. The resulting images were roughly 150KB each, large enough to comfortable on-screen viewing, but small enough for email.

I launched the Photo Transfer App and set it up to receive images from my Macbook Pro. This done, the iPhone essentially becomes a server which any computer sharing the network can access via web-browser:

My iPhone is now a web-server for computers sharing the same network, and can be accessed by targeting the provided address using any web-browser. No additional software required!

On the computer, I launched Safari and targeted the given address. This brought me here:

Select 'Upload Files' to send images to your phone.

And, on the phone:

The images transfer from computer to iPhone.

With the image selects now saved to my iPhone’s image library, I was able to email the images to the art director over my phone’s 3G network. The art director then forwarded those images on to the client for approval. With my network and flow established, I was able to continue sending images this way throughout the shoot as new images were handed over to me for download from the CF Cards and new selects were made. Remotely, the client was kept in the loop despite our lacking direct access from our on-site computer to the Internet and email.

“You’re awesome,” the art director said as we high-fived.

“You really are awesome, Campagna,” the producer confirmed.

The photographer kept shooting, we kept sending selects to the client, and the shoot went smoothly.

Tagged as: Photography