With commercial photography in Shanghai at a standstill, it’s nice to pick up a bit of press work. This job for The Australian Financial Review was very last minute. I got the call and basically had two hours to shoot the photos, edit, caption and send them to the photo desk in Sydney.
The assignment was on Apple’s announcement that their sales projections have fallen due to the coronavirus outbreak. I decided the quickest way to one of the few Apple Stores open these days was on my bike. Actually, a scooter would have been quicker, but since I’ve been cooped up indoors more than I’d like to be lately, I thought I could do with some exercise.
In hindsight, I should have taken the scooter. I reached the store within about 15 minutes, but I had dressed a bit too warmly for the weather. To enter the store I had to have my temperature taken and I caused a bit of a panic by my high temperature reading. It took a minute or so and half a dozen tries to get a reading that was normal. Those pistol shaped electronic thermometers are known to be fairly inaccurate, but you would have to wonder why anyone would raise themselves from their sick bed with a raging fever because they just have to get their hands on an iPhone 11 Plus. I guess you can’t be too careful.
Anyway, this was far from the low-key entry I had hoped for since my instructions were to photograph staff and customers inside the store. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness and permission, but it’s hard to be incognito when you’ve continually approached by helpful sales staff. I found that no one seemed to mind me shooting some photos of the spiral staircase at the front of the store. I thought this was a more interesting shot than the examples I had been sent of customers looking at phones in a near empty store and besides, the store did have a few customers in it. I hung around in the store for less than 20 minutes, stared at my phone, looked at some product and then discreetly shot three frames of a couple in surgical masks (of course everyone is wearing masks these days) being shown an iPad Pro by a sales assistant. Having ticked that box, I figured it was time to go.
I thought I may as well get one more shot outside with an Apple logo and someone passing by in a mask. This was not as easy as it would normally be since there’s hardly anyone on the streets of Shanghai these days. The first person I saw walking along gave me a wide berth when they saw I was looking to take a photo. This is pretty normal. Either they don’t want to wreck what they think is my perfectly empty framing or they just don’t want to photographed by some strange foreigner.
I had to wait a few minutes for the next person to pass by. The clock was ticking, so I kept my camera around my neck until the person was in right in front of me and then shot a quick burst. I saw that my timing was slightly off as I had wanted the person framed directly beneath the Apple logo. Since there were no other pedestrians heading from the direction I needed for the shot I had in mind (this a really weird thing for Shanghai), I decided the folks on the picture desk would rather have me file in a timely manner than miss a deadline standing on a deserted street corner in Shanghai, chasing perfection. A good enough shot early was always going to be better than a superior shot filed after deadline, so I beat it.
I ended up making the deadline with thirty minutes to spare. I filed six shots in all. The last shot I did outside ran the next day as part of the lead story on page one and a cropped version of the one shots with the spiral staircase ran inside on page 14. Although it seems just about everything is digital these days, including of course, this blog, it’s still a bit of a buzz to have a photo run in print on page one above the fold.
www.afr.com.au (paywall)
More work at www.davetacon.com
