When I look at this photo–which I really love–all I can focus on is the door into the Dulce Mami Cafe.  That (open) door was one of the biggest headaches I had to deal with in the entire 52 photo series.  If another set detail gave me more issues, I can’t think of it.

Normally, doors aren’t an issue.  They open, they shut, they can be latched open or, if worse comes to worse, propped open by something.  The problem with the Dulce Mami Cafe door was that it was incredibly heavy, it didn’t stay open on its own and the bottom of it was at some points, two or three inches from the ground.  No matter what I shoved under it–and, at one point, I attempted to put a 2×4 under it–the combination of the weight of the door and the slipperiness of the tiles made it impossible to keep open.  We tried rigging it from the top, putting a chair in front of it and jamming a series of shims under it and nothing worked.  Finally, I put a 24 pack of Mexican Coke bottles that I had in my car in front of it and that did the trick.

One of the joys of working with a locked camera, which I was on this shoot is that it allows for a lot of digital tomfoolery that is quite helpful in situations like these.  (For those not in the know, a locked camera is a camera that’s placement doesn’t move during the shoot.  I had my camera on a tripod that stayed in one place for the duration of the shoot… which occasionally was problematic for passersby because, as you can see, it was smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk.  Whenever I wasn’t near the tripod, I’d tell my assistant to stand next to it and direct people around it).

What the locked camera allows is for parts of one photo to be taken and seamlessly integrated with another.  And that is how I solved my ‘open door’ problem.  I had my assistant hold the door open with a towel without the 24 pack of Mexican Coke in the photo and then took the bottom right corner of the door in that image and Photoshopped it into the final version.  Presto, no door issues…  But, man, on set… that was a huge problem.