Reflections on Magazine Work

I always enjoy the challenge of photographing shiny objects. You've got all the usual challenges of setting up the lighting so it looks interesting, and with shiny objects there are always the reflections to think about. It's especially tricky when shooting on location, as I do often.

The bottles above are just a bit taller than my thumb, so they're tiny. Look carefully at the reflections (ignore the watermark) and see if you can figure out how I lit them.

Hello Monday - Iguana

Welcome to Monday. I hope your day is at least as good as this guy's. He (or she, who knows?) is a land iguana, Conolophus subcristatus, that I photographed on Santa Cruz island in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador earlier this year.

That's a lot of kayaks

Some 300 or so kayakers decided to paddle from Norwalk, Connecticut across Long Island Sound recently. They figured it would take a few hours. It did. They raised money for local charities, and had some fun in the process.

The event is called Kayak for a Cause. Like all good causes, this one had its genesis in a bar bet. Someone dared a couple of buddies to paddle from Connecticut to Long Island, across the Sound, for fifty bucks. They did it, but never got their money. It stuck in their craw enough that they kept thinking about it, and decided to repeat the stunt the following year with a few more friends as witnesses/participants. They collected a few pledges -- less risky than a bet, I guess -- and gave the money away. Every year more people join them, and now it's quite an official thing, complete with pre-trip training and post-trip mega-party. So that's how they inadvertently started this charity. I'm not sure if they still hang out with the person who welched on the bet.

Night for Day Photo

Walking up to the soccer field, I figured this was gonna be a tricky portrait. I was supposed to make a frame of the team captains, who were busy onfield running drills. So I knew this would be a quick one. The sun was shining bright overhead, so I looked around for some shade nearby where I could bring these guys, but no dice. I knew there was no way they'd have time to walk the five minutes to the nearest shady area.

Lucky for me, though, some storm clouds hovered in one edge of the sky. I asked the guys to stand on the edge of the field, with some trees and the storm clouds behind them. I closed down the aperture and raised the shutter to its highest sync speed to darken the frame. Popped a few frames and adjusted the settings until those clouds looked nice and ominous. Of course, that made the guys silhouetted against the sky, so I held a single flash in my left hand to pop some light onto them.

The image ended up running full page as a sports section cover.

Field Hockey in the Rain

Yup, even if it's pouring, they'll still play field hockey. For an assignment from last week.

Football Captain Portrait

Last week a newspaper hired me to take a portrait of the captains and coaches of the town's two public school football teams. They're often billed as crosstown rivals, yet during the photo shoot, they sure seemed like good friends.

The sports editor had thought about an on-the-field portrait, but our scheduled time slot was near high noon, when the light wasn't conducive to a direct-sun photo. Of course there are ways of making that work -- and making it work well -- but that would take more time and money than we had for this job. I suggested the above setting, under the bleachers, and the editor agreed.

I asked the strong athletes to help me move the tires into place -- why the tires were there I have no idea -- and we got it done. I think I used three speedlights on this: Two on camera left in front, and one clamped to the underside of the bleachers behind, to give a little separation light. It ran as a vertical on the cover of the fall sports preview section -- for the blog I've cropped off the top where the mast ran.

Underwater Portrait

When I got the assignment to shoot images of a few high school swim teams, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted something different than the usual "half head above water in the middle of a swim stroke" images that usually run. Instead, I figured I'd do an underwater portrait of the team captains. I thought it'd be an interesting challenge. I had no idea how fun it would be, too.

For safety's sake, I'd use battery-powered strobes to light the portrait. Turns out that the water acts as a super diffuser, so I got some nice soft light without using any modifiers on the speedlights. I got the lights all set up and tested exposure before I called the athletes out of practice.

I also did some test shots before I called the athletes over, and got a good idea of the area of coverage I'd have with my wide angle lens. I showed the test shots to the swimmers, so they knew where they'd need to be. Just out of the frame above, the lane line comes to a "T," so they knew as long as they stayed just behind that "T" painted on the ground, they'd be good to go. It's a bit of a bummer that the one girl's fingers found their way out of the frame above, but I still like the frame.

I gave the swimmers some pretty specific instructions: I wanted their feet off the ground and knees bent. I figured floating feet would be a definite visual cue that the athletes were indeed underwater, in case the image ran in B&W and/or was cropped tightly. I also reminded them to smile, look toward the camera at the same time, and not exhale, since the bubbles might block their faces.

What I didn't say -- and didn't think of at all -- was that they needed to exhale completely before they went under. One of the swimmers would get in position, then start floating upwards, still holding her "pose," while valiantly trying to will herself to sink. Once her teammate reminded her that air makes you float -- after a lot of giggling -- things worked out fine.

Anyway, I ended up doing several underwater portraits for different teams, and the images reproduced well in print. I'm hoping I get to expand on the technique in future assignments.

Blues du Fleuve 2008 Video

Here's a video posted on Youtube by someone identified as mbengubachir.

If it's the gentleman I remember when I attended the festival earlier this year, he was simply everywhere that weekend. He must have had a tough time deciding what to drop onto the cutting room floor. The video does a great job bringing back the sights and sounds of a wonderful festival in Podor, Senegal, in West Africa.

Check out my blog entries under the "Africa" label to see some stills from the same weekend in Senegal. In many cases, you can see the videographer and I were side-by-side.

To license any of my still images from the Blues du Fleuve festival for editorial use, please click on the "Archive" sidebar on the right to connect with my stock agency, or email me directly.

Blues in the Sky

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's.... well, a plane. And don't worry, it's doing that squiggly move on purpose, at the Jones Beach Air Show this past May, on Long Island in New York. This photo breaks a lot of traditional rules: blown highlights, lens flare, and probably a few more. But that's what makes it work, I think. That and a little help from not breaking the rule of thirds.

Shot in RAW, used a custom white balance nudged just a tad toward the tungsten end of the scale, as the sky really was quite blue that day. I wouldn't do this adjustment if the image were destined for a newspaper, but for an artsy Monday morning blog post, 's'okay.

Chevy Hood Ornament

The antique car show at Bear Mountain, in New York state, is one of my Uncle Ralph's favorites. Elevated high above the banks of the Hudson River, the setting alone is worth the trip. But the best part for me was walking the rows and rows of meticulously maintained vehicles with a true expert. Uncle Ralph knows his cars. I could listen to him describe -- in his Bronx accent -- kit cars, hydraulic suspension, and gear shift mechanisms for hours.

Crowds, cars and visitors made it difficult to find a clean background for photos of the cars. I fell back to a favorite technique. I shot with a very wide aperture -- in this case 2.8 -- to blur out the busy background. This also, natch, accentuated the hood ornament of this antique Chevrolet. I love the curves.

License this image of the antique Chevrolet hood ornament here.

Goodbye Summer

To license this image of the jetty in Fairfield, Connecticut, click here.