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David Rams: Playboy's Focused Man in Atlanta
David Rams is a man who knows his mind.
What else can you say about someone who announced to his class in eighth grade that he wanted to be a Playboy photographer
and then went on to do it?
David is Playboy's contract photographer in Atlanta. The road was indirect, but got there.
David's fascination with the darkroom at age twelve drew him to photography. After becoming intrigued with how
photos were developed and printed, David cajoled his Dad into constructing a home darkroom and David set about
reprinting his Dad's old negatives. Oddly, creating new images didn't interest him. Finally his father gave
David a camera and told him to start making his own photos.
Photographic studies continued in college, and then onto work as an itinerant portrait shooter, often bunking down
in his car between remote assignments.
When a studio job brought him to Atlanta, David found himself doing a fashion shoot in a mansion where
Playboy had shot the previous day. Knowing his assistant had worked with Playboy, he asked him for their phone number.
The assistant refused, so when the assistant was distracted, David confesses, he copied the number from the assistant's organizer. When he phoned, Cynthia Kaye, Playboy cover girl and producer, answered. Cynthia agreed to meet him at Murphy's in downtown Atlanta and embarrassed him ( David - "I was such a rube.") by spreading Playboy photos over the restaurant table. Cynthia liked his photos and she sent them to Chicago. Shortly afterward, Jeff Cohen called and asked David to shoot for Playboy.
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David Rams
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David began playing hooky from his fashion work to shoot a couple of days a month for Playboy in and around Atlanta.
He began working with Kevin Kuster on the Playboy Special Editions and, according to David,
"when Kevin went to the main book around nine years ago, he took me with him."
Today, David's principal jobs for Playboy are road projects to photograph the "Girls of . . . "
stories for the magazine. Twice a year David, along with his assistant, David Goodman, and producer Eden Orfanos,
embarks on a multi-city road trip during which he photographs girls in several cities. David has worked with the multi-talented
Orfanos so often he refers to their relationship as "a marriage without the sex." Preceded by Playboy public relations advance work,
Goodman drives a truck full of photo gear from Chicago to each city and, while David is doing morning radio shows promoting
a two-day casting, college reps are handing out flyers, and the ubiquitous news crews from local media cover the arrival of Playboy.
Meanwhile, Goodman is out scouting locations.
At the end of the casting, David picks several girls, and the three of them match the girls to each location.
David notifies the chosen models and the actual shoots take place over the following three days.
Then everyone packs up and moves onto the next city. Goodman drives off in what David calls the "big beautiful bread truck,"
carting its arsenal of photo gear: five Profoto power packs, seven strobe heads, hot lights, tripods, 10 light stands,
a Matthews Hi-Hi Roller stand, an 8' x 8' scrim frame and scrims, Flexfill collapsible reflectors, cables, clamps, etc.
Meanwhile David and Eden fly to the next city, await the truck, and the process is repeated, a week per locale, for four to six weeks.
In the film days, David used a medium format Pentax 6x7 with a normal 90mm lens but has since switched to a Nikon
D200 digital SLR. He has lately abandoned the standard glamour lens, his Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8,
for a Nikon DX 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.
"I don't like to stand as far back as the bigger lens would have me.
I like to get up close so I can interact with the girl."
He dislikes using strobes outdoors but often uses hot lights as an outdoor fill, creating a purposeful color mismatch to
warm the color balance of a photo.
"I like to keep the lighting gear to a minimum but I especially like the way a hot
light can give me a warm, soft back light."
David's advice for prospective models:
"Look carefully at the magazines. Practice the poses.
See what the publishers are looking for."
As far as what he looks for in a model, David maintains,
that beyond being pretty and in good shape, expression is everything. "I don't know," he says,
"it might even be that you have it or you don't. It's like dancing. Some people move well; some don't.
Some girls have lots of expressions; some don't. Some girls on these college events, otherwise shy girls
who have never been in front of a camera, just light-up when we start shooting."
For his non-Playboy work, David concentrates on commercial photography and what he calls his "edgy rock and roll stuff,"
working with Atlanta performers such as Usher and Outkast. He also does artistic works in mixed media using
combinations of photography, writing, and painted mosaics.
David's non-Playboy work can be seen at www.davidrams.com
For his Playboy work, check www.davidram.com/playboy
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