My Biggest Lesson: Tom Kubik
Tom Kubik is a photographer living in LA. His unique, evocative and emotional work is a testament to the diverse nature of what it is to be human. A veteran, husband, and father, he uses his life experience to enrich the touching and open work focusing on lifestyle, documentary, and beauty.
Tom’s creativity and openness is only matched by his amazing ability to work within a team, no matter how big or small the project.
Use the time you’re given to create wisely, no matter how short it may be and always put the work before your own ego. When you completely give yourself in service of a project, great things happen and people recognise you as a pro, no matter the outcome.
A lot of agencies and clients are beginning to combine live TV commercial shoots with still shoots these days. I shoot several of this type of assignment a year. It has major advantages: consistent campaign assets across all mediums and production cost savings, to name the big ones. Unfortunately, when it's not done properly it can also have major consequences. Oftentimes, production folks underestimate what it takes to create a still photograph and the stills team gets the measly leftovers.
Earlier on in my career in the 2000s, on my first of such shoots, I completely exploded on the director in front of the client and agency. It was not a good look, regardless of whether it was warranted or not. My behaviour that day lost me a lot of respect from all the players on the project and I vowed to never act that way again, no matter how frustrating the situation.
I remember getting pressured from both sides. The client wanted me to capture more, but I was being told by the director that I couldn’t be on set most of the time, and I wasn’t getting any time of my own to work with the talent and to capture the individual needs of the stills component. At one point I provided a shot that was reverse of the motion set and I thought I would be able to have full creative freedom since it wasn’t his set.
Just when I started to capture, he looked over and saw the beautiful moment that was happening and demanded I leave the scene I had composed. That’s when I really lost it.
This person’s not from the story, but I recently received a great nugget of wisdom from my executive producer Elran Ofir at Nimble Beast, a newly launched production company I recently joined as a partner. He told me that ultimately, our job as creatives is to solve problems and make a positive impact with our work. This doesn’t just apply to the final product, it’s inherent in the creative process as well.
If something isn’t going our way on set, we have to roll with the punches, find solutions and figure things out, doing it in a way that’s pleasant and positive. Communication is key. The imprint we leave includes how we treat people on set as well as how people are moved by the final product.
Elran’s words really resonated with me because it reminded me that the process is just as important as the final destination. I don’t think you can call it a job well done if you’ve had to resort to negativity in order to produce a creative work or piece of advertising. We want to leave things better than we found them. And when we adopt that attitude everyone becomes more selfless and works tirelessly in service of the project because they’re invested on a deeper level. That’s how we operate at Nimble Beast.
Recently I was placed into a similar position as the one I was in that infamous day, this time on a seven-day piggyback assignment. I now jokingly called myself the 'junkyard dog' getting thrown a bone, sometimes there's a little meat, sometimes not so much.
In this case, I was given sometimes three to five minutes at the end of a scene to produce hero assets to be used in international ad campaigns, OOH and magazines—the works. The talent was often worn out and starting to lose focus. Sometimes they’d call wrap and the team would scatter before I was given a chance to explain that there's still more to capture. Sometimes there were location restrictions and we just had to snap a few and bail.
At certain points during the day, that familiar feeling crept back in and I wanted to get really angry and fight for my time. After all, I had majorly important work to create as well. BUT, my niche, my special sauce as a photographer is the bond I create with talent and crew as well as the positive, low-stress, and fun environment I run on my productions. I knew I had to protect that at all costs, so I found a way to make things work and swallowed my pride.
I didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere by being overly aggressive, but I was still able to communicate my needs effectively.
As a human being and creative I’m always under a constant process of evolution and change. I’m not the same person today that I was yesterday and hopefully that’s a good thing. I’ve found it becomes easier to completely give myself to the work in service of the project and put my ego aside, but as I grow, it manifests in different ways.
My ability to approach the shoot with a sense of adventure and play has become a lot easier the more experienced I’ve become. The people I’m working with go from simply being collaborators, to friends and hopefully eventually, family.
I do share these types of insights with other creatives, but I think each person is going to take it differently based off where they are in their career and on their journey of personal evolution and growth. When you’re starting out, you’re full of ambition and have so much to prove, so it’s understandable that you would do whatever it takes to protect your position and the work, taking things very seriously.
We’ve all been there.
But that attitude can be taken too far as I learned many years ago. At the end of the day, this is the type of advice that only makes sense once you’ve lived it first-hand. You can understand the concept in theory, but embodying it in practice is an entirely different matter. I think we all need little reminders like this occasionally, myself included. And we will still have the ability to make great, if not even greater work.
