Moshe and Eddie Brakha: Standardizing Creativity

When most photographers hit "a certain age," they might be tempted to revert to the mean -- to play it a little safer, creatively speaking. Not so Moshe Brakha, who has never been one for safe lighting.

These days, his collaboration with his son Eddie combines experience and relative youth in a photographic one-two punch. For the Brakhas, stale is not an option. And to combat it, they are setting aside regular downtime reserved solely for stretching themselves.
__________


I make the age crack on Brakha the Elder only because we have already talked about his preference for "dirty light," dating back to the late '60's. Dude is no spring chicken. But then I'm kinda not one either, so I can say that.

Working alongside his son, the two are pushing lots of boundaries at one time -- a unique approach to lighting, heavy use of blogging, multimedia from the shoot and even going as far as set aside a day just to experiment. (More on the last thing in a minute.)




In the video above, the first minute or so gives a few glimpses of the atypical lighting behind the photos at top. The Brakhas are using four, hard hot lights arrayed at eye level with a combination of barndoors, improvised diffusers and gels.

Hardly the kind of light one would expect from a veteran photographer shooting an uber-trendy jeans ad. But then, you'd normally expect the photographer for this kind of ad to be some 25 year-old flavor of the month. It's the lifetime of creative stretching that keeps the Brakhas in a position to get these jobs.

About that light -- I kinda love it and hate it at the same time. But I am definitely reacting to it, which is certainly the point. I don't know if it is the sort of thing I would try to create, but it is right in Brakha's space if you look at his body of work.

And I can tell you one thing: It gets me thinking of several new ideas that are offshoots of what I am seeing above. And that counts for a lot.


On Standardized Creativity



If you take a look at the Brakhas' blog, you'll notice a regular string of posts called Sketchy Mondays. This idea, I love. It's the photographer's equivalent of Google's famous "20% time," in which engineers are encouraged to spend one day a week in purely creative thought.

It builds experimentation right into the model. And that yields unrestricted thinking in the day-to-day work, too. Will all of these techniques pop up on commercial jobs? Probably not. But it helps them to expand their creative toolkit while showing the results off to future clients, and all at no risk.

The compass point for Sketchy Mondays is intergenerational collaboration, creative trust and producing a strong visual. Or as they sum it up: "Mental sweat."

Sez the Brakhas:

Sketchy Mondays is our opportunity to share our sketchpad with the world.

For us, our minds, style, and overall craft are always evolving. We love to shoot. More important, we love to create. The way we figured was, why wait for a client or exhibition -- let’s go out and do what we breathe.

At the same time, we wanted to explore new untapped characters; young fledgling artists in their respective fields. Plain and simple, Sketchy Mondays is our playground, a chance for us to stay creatively healthy and tall.

After all, aren’t we all just trying to Stay Away From Passé?

Indeed.

And whether or not you respond to the specific lighting style they are pushing is not the point. The point is that they have budgeted in time, money and effort to do nothing but expand their boundaries.

And the more you study successful creative people, the likely you are to see that work ethic again and again.
__________


Portfolio: Commercial Head Films
On Twitter: @EdwynnHollywood