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Photographing Commercial Assignments with a Sports Angle (cont.)

And what he wants, always, is to come up with the better image.

"I make a conscious decision not to do a run-of-the-mill shot," John has said. "I don't settle for just putting film in and getting the right exposure. There's so much more I can do—angle, motion, background, filters, pushing and pulling film. I don't put the camera on automatic and shoot—that'll work fine, but I want to break away from that."

He's always looking for ideas for his photographs. "I look at an enormous amount of photography, but I also look at painting and sculpture for ideas and inspiration. I think everybody looks around to a certain extent, but I'm a stickler about not plagiarizing. Too many photographers think they are the best photographers, and what they're really doing is ripping off the best photographers."

John not only likes to make the decisions about what to shoot, but also about what to show. "The problem I have in advertising is that if I give people a lot of options, they'll take a lot of options. And they might not take the one I want. I've had that happen—one idea I really liked and should have just stuck with that and not showed anything else. Then they'd have had to use that one. They ask for a lot of options, and a lot of times those options diminish what I thought the photograph should be, and the option they picked in one particular case was, to me, the weakest."

If there's a difference of opinion about an approach to a job, John prefers that it not come down to him doing what the client wants and then shooting his own way and offering his take as an option. "I'd rather convince them of my concept before we ever get there," he says.

You have to be pretty strong in your convictions and have a lot of self-confidence to work like that. John says a lot of that confidence comes from successfully doing the job for a long time. "Hey, if the phone keeps ringing...."

To see more of John’s photography visit his website at http://www.johnhuet.com