There but a few moments in one’s life when we get to be wowed! And the other day was one of those moments. Through a serendipitous connection from a friend, I had the pleasure of working with her, as well as alongside a renowned interior designer – whose name I won’t mention for privacy reasons – but needless to say that for a little guy like me, it was the equivalent of working alongside David Fincher on a movie set. I mean the amount of effort and detail that was poured into the shoot was nothing short of amazing! This was my first shoot where there was a small team of people running around like mad, bringing in props and taking styling and staging to a whole other level. It was incredible to see a professional designer's vision come to life and how mood and emotion are created by engendering a compelling story.

The place was located inside a penthouse in the city near the Chelsea Stratus. A place that forces your jaw to drop just a little bit longer than usual, but you have to exercise control to avoid looking like a total derp who can’t keep his mouth closed. We got there around ten in the morning and after getting a tour of the place I began taking snapshots of all the angles that seemed most interesting to go over with the designer.

There was a really funny moment when the question came about how much longer the shoot will take and someone said they thought it’d be no longer than two hours. Which turned out to be very ironic, as we hadn’t even finished staging the place within that timeframe – let alone shoot it. However, seeing and experiencing the creative process, the build-up and creation of a two dimensional frame in time that captures and delivers an aesthetic rush to the mind was well worth the wait and effort.

Normally, I don’t pay attention to the amount of photos I take (whether it’s architectural, interiors or real estate) because I’m not concerned with numbers. Only that I have enough images to choose from the best possible ones. But as we were getting closer to wrap up what turned out to be an almost twelve-hour photoshoot, I couldn’t help but notice that the amount of images taken displayed on my camera was getting close to a thousand hundred! Think about that for a second next time you press the shutter button. And think about the selection process that goes into editing a single image, as the client in my case, only needed twenty images for their portfolio.

There is seemingly a lot of digital waste. But it’s not waste. In fact, Pablo Picasso is said to have produced over 50,000 works of art in his life time. However, only a handful have been sold or surfaced for the world to see. And I think it goes to show that mastery of anything, requires an obsessive-compulsive-neurotic-to-the-point-of-fanatical immersion into the craft itself, as well as a letting go of all else that is happening around. It’s that Bukowski quote “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relative, jobs and maybe even your mind.”

To wrap up the evening we all went out on the terrace for one last photo of the sunset. It’s not often that you get to witness nature from such heights and feel the wind breezing around you as you breathe in and out of awe at the world’s and sun’s and cloud’s majestic beauty. What a treat it was!