Sean Murphy – Murphy Explains It

The 4th Son. The Intern.

Hello, my name is John Harrington and I am Sean’s current intern. I am an Advertising Major at Florida State University and projected to graduate this 2020 Fall. I picked up a camera for the first time in Fall of 2016 of my senior year of high school. I started taking photos every day, for events, sports games, and anything for the school’s yearbook. I researched like hell on anything and everything photo related and was immediately hooked on taking photos that were cool or people liked.

From left to right, Raphye, Henley, Tatumn, Tripp and I.
Dance photoshoot we did these two talented sisters.

I met Sean at my alum high school. I graduated Class of 2017 from Choctawhatchee High School in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. After I graduated, I stayed to do my AA for one year. That fall of 2017, I was helping the yearbook class at Choctaw with their photo work and the teacher told us we had a photographer coming to speak to the class and I was to go lead him to the class. Once I brought Sean back to the class, I was blown away by looking at all the photos he had taken. He spoke to the class for about 40 minutes and then the bell rang for the end of the day but Sean and I stayed after and spoke for about two hours about photos. At the end of the conversation, Sean asked if I wanted to come to assist on a photoshoot three days later and I said yes immediately. The photoshoot was in a hurricane where I’m holding an umbrella and a battery pack in the pouring rain coming in sideways. That didn’t scare me off and was hooked on the rush of the shoot because I didn’t know taking photos could give me that feeling!

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and this truck is really big”

Now its 2020 and I am still here. I’ve been brought into the Murphy family enough that people that didn’t know Sean and I’s relationship thought he was my dad, thus you will hear me refer to him as “pops” in the majority of situations. Its been an interesting 2.5 years working on chill photoshoots for his friends and the opposite of working on high-end production sets for clients. It hasn’t been easy, but there’s a reason why I’m still here. It’s an incredible opportunity for someone from my area to get. I get to learn and perfect my passion from someone who is also extremely passionate about it and I have gained a small family from it. I’ve learned the technicals, I’ve learned what not to do on set, I’ve learned life shit, I’ve learned stuff I shouldn’t have learned so early in my career and more. But, there is always gonna be more learning and I love to know what is going on anywhere I am, so I’m ready.

I think why I am most excited about doing this blog among other things I help Sean with, is this is a record of my growth and progress whether it be photo related or my writing skills and show the growth from learning and working with Sean. Stay tuned for the next post!

P o l a r o i d

Lately I have been discussing film with young photographers. Development, metering light… The basics. It seems simple enough, but having lived through “The Negative Era,” there is much more to it. To me, the most important thing before clicking the shutter is to visualize the end result.

The discussion usually turns into me sounding like a hundred-year-old grandpa, saying shit like… “When I was a kid, we didn’t have fancy cameras that we could just look on the back image monitor and not have to know anything.” I reflect back on how many decisions went into making a particular photograph. “Is the image going to be black and white or color? What film will I use? What iso? Will I under or over expose it in camera? Will I push or pull the exposure in the development? What brand of paper will I print it on, and what finish will it have?” It was like winning the lottery when a decent image made it through the gauntlet. In Lightroom, it is possible now to have VSCO which has every film stock ever made at your fingertips. The random clicking of presets without having any clue about the film stocks is an epidemic. When I was shooting film I had a “look.” Every photographer did. You could look at say… “Carlos Serrao,” and know it was a Carlos image just by the way it was lit, the tones and the printing. I feel like the same should hold true today. My go-tos were Kodak 160 NC, 400 NC and Portra 800 for color and Tri X 400 and Ilford Delta 3200 for black and white. Of course there were others, but these were the ones that gave me my signature look.

My film cameras of choice were the Mamiya RZ67 and the Mamiya 645. I sometimes used a Hasselblad if I was feeling artsy and wanted the square negative.

On the set of a “Levis” shoot. The whole campaign was shot in “black and white” and then printed high contrast. Here is one of the models looking through the camera. It has a polaroid back attached loaded with black and white and a yellow filter on the front for contrast.

To check the image, (exposure, lighting, etc.,) I interchanged the film back on the camera with a Polaroid back. It went something like this… (Keep in mind this was usually done on a set with art directors and many people looking over your shoulder.) The assistant metered the shot and yelled out some settings for the Polaroid, which is mostly 100 ISO. I would shoot it at a third stop-over, then pull the Polaroid from the back of the camera and stick it under my arm to develop for 90 seconds. If the polaroid looked good then we would do some math. The film speed would more than likely be different from the Polaroid speed so we had to know how to adjust the f-stop and shutter speed to compensate. If we made a mistake, then we did it all over again. Those 90 seconds seemed like an eternity. Then we would fold the finished polaroid to crop it and tell the art director “It won’t be blurry on film. The film is a faster ISO.” Hopefully they understood that shit, which wasn’t always the case.

*Various polaroid backs for Mamiya and Hasselblad.*

Sometimes we would mix in Polaroid 665 which gives a black and white negative. You would shoot the photo, pull the paper apart and take away a sticky negative that would need to go in a small bucket of water until you could get home and fix. This was perfect for band shoots to throw in a different vibe.

Unlike a negative or digital file which is easy to reproduce, a Polaroid is more of a one off. Good or bad- it’s a moment in time.

Thanks for reading – take a moment to follow me on Instagram for more images.

Floating Heads, Jackalopes and Linoleum with “Vegas Death Ray.”

First blog post! Whoop! Whoop!

I wanted a place where I can post some of my less glossy work and talk more about the process behind concept shoots and how things actually get done, so here we are.

It’s funny how shoots come to be sometimes. I got a call a couple months ago from a guy named Shawn, who is in a band. He was quick to say that it wasn’t a freebee and that he wanted to do rad shit.

I asked him how he found out about me and he said that the drummer in his band found me through the shoots I’ve done with Weezer. Shawn comes from an Ad Agency background and knew the process.

His original idea was to drive to Las Vegas and shoot at the Neon Museum (aka Sign Graveyard). He also had the idea to somehow stick “Jackalope heads” over the band member’s privates. Hmmmmm.

Time went by and the graveyard thing was a bust due to a temporary shut down. Shit happens and you gotta be ready to roll with whatever reality you’re dealing with at the time.

Shawn and I met up for coffee and quickly came up with a new plan. I said “Hey, let’s get a big piece of wood, cut some holes in it and fuckin’ stick y’alls heads through it.” And… “We can buy a piece of linoleum and pant it.” And… ” I live on a mountain so we can shoot the Jackalope shots there!” He loved it so BAM! we were set.

Day before the shoot Shawn and I met up for “Arts and Crafts.” It’s super fun to come up with interesting ideas but then you need to do the work to make those ideas come to life and that takes time. We cut some slits/holes in the wood with a jig saw, my kids painted the background and we scouted the Jackalope location. It’s important to figure things out and pick your locations ahead of time. The weather was perfect and we were feeling good.

Next day it is raining and cold. Not exactly what we had planned for. Forgot to check the weather. The painted linoleum was outside so we definitely wanted to get those shots before the rain started coming down harder – it was a little bit of a struggle but we did it.

Shawn had envisioned a killer sunset with strobe for the Jackalope shots but we had to switch gears and go with the flow instead of bumming out about it.

When it came time to shoot the band member’s heads popping out of the wood, I decided to mix strobe with a hard projector light and a longer exposure to get a blurred effect on one side of the faces.

All in all, shit turned out great. We felt good about what we got. Not what was originally planned but it may have turned out even better.