PAID UP MEMBER OF THE STILL LIFE PHOTOGRAPHER’S CLUB

So it was just last month that I, a humble photographer, cheerfully moseying about the studio in relaxed fashion, prepared to shoot some large, expensive handmade rugs for e-commerce. It was, and should’ve been a simple job. Evenly lit rugs, showing texture detail and accurate colour. The rugs had to fill the frame, so no hassles with getting the right background – on paper it looked like an easy job.

For some reason, though, I seemed to miss this fact, and right off the bat, concocted the most circuitous, harebrained set-build I could’ve possibly imagined. The rugs weighed about 60kg each. Instead of shooting the rugs flat, I decided I needed to hang them against the wall of the studio, as that would allow me to get the camera central to the rug. The rug, which was 10 feet long, would need to be suspended very high up the wall, so I set up a couple of autopoles, some super clamps, and a couple of hooks and placed a pole between them in order to get the rug-hooks to hang the rug on.

The first attempt to hand the rug was a complete failure. The rug was too expensive to simply wrench up onto the teeth that locked onto it from the bar, and attempts to do it carefully, while perched 15 feet up a ladder led to loud swear words, sweat and frustration. The rug was being suspended from individual hooks that functioned like teeth, taking the wait of the wrong all the way across it. The only problem was that attaching the teeth one at a time would overload the rug and probably rip it, so I was attempting to balance on the ladder and attach the rug at five points.

I finally gave up with this idea and decided to first roll the rug up, truss it with cable ties, and then attach the teeth to the rug, then lift the rug to the pole. Upon doing this, the pole promptly bent all the way to the ground. By this time, I had hoisted the 60kg up the ladder several times, and was just completely knackered, so I decided to just cut the ties to let the rug drop, as it was only effectively a couple of feet from the floor, and safely wrapped up. I grabbed my pristine new Leatherman, a Christmas present from my girlfriend, and whipped out the super-sharp knife..

You know what happened next..

Yeah, I cut the first truss, the knife slipped, and sunk in my thumb, right to the bone, causing a 95% laceration of the tendon. Blood immediately started spraying out like a Bronx fire hydrant, and 15 feet up the ladder, and worried that I might soak the rug, I stuck my geysering thumb under my armpit, and streaked down the ladder. I didn’t know what to do, as the cut was clearly all the way to the bone. I knew it was to the bone, because when I looked at my thumb, I saw my thumb bone. At this point, I had gone into a little bit of shock, and was essentially pacing around my studio, covering the floor in my claret. I regained my senses after about a minute of this, and decided to phone a taxi to get me to a hospital. This being Battersea, no taxi’s would touch me, because who is going to pick up a bleeding man in Battersea?  Nobody, of course. After failing with four taxi companies, I decided to ring an ambulance, because by this time, I was actually getting worried about blood loss (not dying-worried, just worried).

I spent 6 hours in the hospital, and got booked in for surgery for the next day. I was going to need to have my tendon stitched back together, so they could only bandage the thumb up.

Worst thing was that I still had to finish the bloody job, so at midnight, I was back in the studio, one-handed, laying out the rug on the floor (after mopping up, obviously, one handed, obviously), and climbing back up the ladder to attach the camera to the studio rafters, which is what I should’ve been doing in the first place. What a shitty lesson to learn.

In the back of the ambulance. My thumb looked like a nice fluffy marshmallow. With a creamy bloody filling.

the wound. It’s actually better than it looked in real life, given that the blood has coagulated slightly, and is hiding the bone.

Embarrassing post surgery plaster cast.

how I SHOULD have shot the rug in the first place.

So, the net result is that I spent the last month shooting and retouching with one hand. Have you tried that? It’s thoroughly unenjoyable. I had the cast off last week, and the range of motion in my thumb has been steadily returning. I’ve got absolutely no feeling in it, but the doctors are confident it will return in time.

So with that said, I don’t care who makes the rules, as far as product photography goes, I’m in the club, and nobody is gonna tell me otherwise…