High School Basketball Portrait

I took a photo of the Norwalk High School girls varsity basketball team to run full-page on the cover of a local paper's winter ports preview section. The team had posted an impressive record last season, and the sports editor figured they'd be a good team to highlight. Turns out the captains are also good sports, too.

We did the photoshoot moments before their first scrimmage of the season. It worked out great, since the players were all suited up already. I had scouted the location earlier, and had come up with this courtyard in the school. It had three things going for it: I liked the warm lights in the background, it was close to the gym so we'd maximize the short time we had together, and since it was freezing outside, no one else was around. I used a couple battery-powered strobes in umbrellas to light 'em.

We did a couple of traditional poses first. The toughest part was getting them all to be serious, since we all had a hard time not laughing. The photo above gives you an idea. It works OK. We had a couple of minutes before the game started, so we figured we'd try something different. Sometimes the best -- and most fun -- shots come when I know I have a "safe" shot in the camera already.

The players climbed up on a rock in the courtyard, figuring we'd get a "we're tall and tough" pose, with the added benefit of getting that nice blue sky in the background. While they were getting ready, I snapped this unposed frame for kicks:



But we weren't quite done. We were having such a good time together, that I asked them if they might be willing to jump off the rock. I was a bit nervous, because I sure didn't want anyone hurting themselves. But they insisted they could do it. We talked through how everyone should position themselves. We only had time for two shots.

The first shot we got a hand out of the frame. Below is the second shot -- my favorite and the girls' favorite from the whole session. It's the one that ran full page.

Bridgeport Sound Tigers -- Back at the Arena

I was back at the Arena at Harbor Yard last night, this time on assignment for the Connecticut Post for professional hockey. Same place as last post, only this time it was on ice. That's Pascal Morency of the Sound Tigers blowing by Lowell's Benoit Mondou.

It got me thinking that I'm on a theme here, since the second-to-last post was about a guy who was helping to put an ice rink into a theater.

Below, Sound Tiger Kurtis McLean gets horizontal for a shot on goal against Lowell goalie Jeff Frazee.

Fairfield University Basketball

Shot a men's college basketball game at the Arena at Harbor Yard recently -- Fairfield University squeaked by Iona. It was a treat to shoot in a place with good light.


Fairfield #44 Greg Nero reacts after having his shot blocked by #23 Iona Devon Clarke late in the first half. Neo reclaimed the ball and took another shot.


Fairfield #32 Anthony Johnson blocks Iona #21 Alejo Rodriguez.


Fairfield #3 Jonathan Han chases down a loose ball in the second half.

Ice Rink in the Palace Theater in Stamford

I've been to ice rinks, I've been to theaters. But it's not often I go to an ice rink in a theater, especially a rink that's only there for a day.

This past Sunday, the Palace Theater in Stamford hosted "Sleeping Beauty on Ice," a holiday show. The Sleeping Beauty part is standard, I suppose; it's the "on ice" part that gets tricky in a traditional theater setting. So on Saturday the Stamford Advocate sent me there to photograph how an ice rink gets built inside a grand old theater.

Turns out it's not too tricky, if you know what you're doing. Not many people do, but Lynn Novakofski does. That's him in the photo above, spraying water on crushed ice cubes. The photo below shows his colleague, Ed Armstrong, taking a turn a half hour later.


Technique note: I shot the frame above with a very long shutter speed -- longer than a second, I think -- on a tripod. I wanted the lights from the theater to burn in nicely.

Speaking of lights, while Lynn, Ed, and crew were setting up the rink, Michael Pegler, house electrician for the Stamford Center for the Arts, fine-tuned the lights for the performance. That's Michael at work, below:

Martha Stewart at Stew Leonard's

Yesterday I was asked by one of my client newspapers to photograph a book signing at Stew Leonard's, a local grocery store. Going to Stew's is as much an event as it is a weekly shopping expedition. For those who don't live near one of their stores, it may be hard to fathom that Stew's is indeed a *venue.*

So it wasn't a shock that Stew's guest would be Martha Stewart. Her new book is called "Martha Stewart's Cooking School."


The press was offered a 10-minute window at the start of the book signing to take photographs. I didn't recognize any of the handful of photographers there, which was a bit of a surprise, since the photojournalist community is pretty small around here. We run into each other from time to time on assignment, and it's a cordial group. Perhaps the event drew media from a bit further away.

In that ten minutes, there was plenty of time to capture a portrait of Martha with her book, as well as images of the first few customers who asked to have their book signed. As an assignment, it was easy. The atmosphere was friendly.

Something unexpected happened while we were making the quick portrait. We were all pointing our cameras at Stewart. Instinctively, I lowered my camera and waited until the other photographers were finished -- a matter of a mere few seconds, really. It's my habit to take turns, rather than blitz a person with shutter clicks.

I figure it's confusing to a person to try to decide which camera to look at. The momentary confusion can show on their face, which mars the image. Besides, if I clicked with all the others, most of my images, like theirs, would show a person looking at someone else's camera. Why take a bunch of images I'll never use and add to the confusion? So I waited my turn.

The unexpected thing was that while I was waiting, I realized that it didn't really matter that I waited. Stewart handled the situation with grace and ease, and gave every photographer a direct gaze, one at a time. In my experience, that's never happened before. It was a small thing, a fleeting thing, but I was impressed. Sure, it helped ensure the photographers got a good image, which helps with publicity. But it was also a courtesy, since the photographers could be on to their next job more quickly and the hundreds of waiting people would wait just a little bit less.

Two clicks from me -- one more than I ended up needing, in case she had blinked (she hadn't) -- and the portrait, seen above, was done.

This isn't the picture that ran in the paper today. The other ones -- the images that included customers -- captured the event better. But I like to give the editors choices.

I then left the book-signing area to look for crowd images. I ran into Terry, the grocery manager, who was restocking a display of the book to accommodate the growing crowd. He said they had ordered a thousand books for the two-hour book signing. "We might not have enough," he said. Here's Terry:


I made a few more crowd images, then headed on to my next assignment.

Cloved Oranges and Holiday Spices

The aroma of holiday baking is in the air...as it was one September when I was photographing a feature that would appear during the holidays. A wonderful editor named Val created the cloved oranges, seen in my photo below, in her home kitchen. We thought it might look nice to photograph them in front of her fireplace.


Alas, the fireplace was a gas fireplace, and the flames were too low to show up well in the photo. But that's not a problem -- just an opportunity for creativity. I put an orange gel over a speedlight, and directed it toward the fireplace -- instant roaring fire. Selective focus added to the effect.

Val had been doing some baking that day, and the ingredients were on the counter. We arranged them on her cutting board, with the help of a talented stylist named Tim.



The cinnamon sticks inspired Val to create an ornament. I photographed it on a white cutting board, so it would be easier for Tim to remove it from the background when he placed it on a page.



When I left Val's house that day, it sure felt like a late November day. But the warm September air reminded me we had a few months to go.

Senior Wii - update

Last week, I got a call asking me to photograph seniors playing the video game Wii. Seniors, as in seniors in high school? Nope. Seniors as in senior citizens.

Turns out it's a super way to stay active for the older set.

It's a sweet story how the Wii came to the senior residence hall. The woman on the right, the home's activities director, had gone to a family party with lots of relatives in various parts of the house. She said she was surprised to go into the den to discover her grandmother playing Wii. This is a grandmother who is not particularly mobile.

The grandmother had joined in the game when one of the teen cousins saw her watching him play the game. He simply asked if she'd like to try and she had said yes.

The teens and grandmother enjoyed a wonderful afternoon together, and the activities director decided to bring the Wii to the home where she worked.

The photo technique here is a favorite for showing motion. I wanted the woman's face -- with her intent gaze -- to be perfectly in focus, while her swinging arm to be blurred to depict her quick movements.

I worked in manual mode, for the most control. I set the shutter slow enough to capture the blur. It was likely around 1/30 or 1/15. I then set the aperture to underexpose the background just a bit. Easiest way to do that? Take a guess at the right aperture, shoot a frame, then look at the histogram. Adjust the aperture until you like what you see. I usually do this a bit away from the subject, so they don't get too concerned that I'm taking a lot of frames.

Then, with my shutter and aperture set, I handheld a flash off-camera with my left hand, and shot in TTL mode, so the flash would sort out the right exposure on the woman for me. Gotta love that technology.

So why isn't everything blurry with such a slow aperture?

The natural light in the room is mostly behind the woman, so the light on her face is even less bright than the light in the rest of the room. Since I underexposed the background, she would have been really quite underexposed had I not used flash. This is the same reason sometimes pictures at the beach turn out with a bright sky and people whose faces are too underexposed to see. (So no, it's not crazy to use flash on a sunny day at the beach)

Then the flash helped freeze the action. Since the flash helped to illuminate the woman, and the flash is very fast -- much faster than 1/15 of a second -- it effectively froze her in time and kept most of her from being blurry.

Also very important in this image, the woman's hand was moving much faster than the rest of her body. The flash couldn't stop this blur because there was just enough ambient light on her to create the "ghosting" I was after.

Sounds harder than it is, really. It's an easy one to practice if you have a willing pet, friend, child, or significant other.

License images of senior citizens playing the wii video game for editorial use here.

Our Town: Theater Images

Last week one of my assignments took me to a rehearsal of Thornton Wilder's classic play, Our Town. The young lady, pictured above, played the Stage Manager.

As it was a rehearsal, all kinds of things were going on apart from the action onstage: The lighting personnel were discussing technique, costumers and prop people were running around carrying things, and the actual stage manager (not the character) was barking directions to all. But amidst all the hubbub, this actress stayed in character and delivered her lines.

It made think about how, when I've covered professional tennis players, they demand complete silence and no movement. I suppose it's true that certainly, this actress doesn't have a ball coming at her at 100 miles an hour. But still, I was impressed how she was able to block out everything and deliver.

Often, I'll be in a theater and, when cameras are allowed, I see people in the audience using flash. I guess the automatic features on their camera suggest it. But even from across the room I know they won't be happy with the resulting image on their LCD. If they're too far away, their flash won't reach the stage, but will just light up the backs of the heads in front of them. If they're closer, the flash washes out everything onstage, and you get "soap opera" flat lighting, making the image a far cry from what the play actually looked like.

The trick is to not use flash at all. Think about it: The lighting designer is an expert who has spent time figuring out the most dramatic way to light a performance. Why should I override that?

So I set my camera on manual, with the widest aperture and the slowest shutter speed I can handhold. That lets me get the most light into my camera. I play with the ISO so I don't burn out any areas. Then I wait.

Wait for what? I wait for the actress to move into an area with decent light and a clean background. That works.

Veteran's Day

Last week's Veteran's Day celebrations reminded me of one of my favorite encounters while on assignment. It was a year ago, at a Veteran's Day celebration at a local elementary school (see above photo), when I met Jane J., pictured here:


Jane was in the first class of WAVEs, enlisting in the Navy during World War II. She moved to Washington, D.C. and worked decoding Japanese messages for three years.

I got to thinking about how different life was for women back then, and how interesting Jane must be to have made such a bold move, for the times. So I tried to chat her up, to get a peek into her way of thinking.

Me: So, Jane, you worked decoding Japanese messages during the war. You must be good at speaking Japanese.

Jane (dead serious, sounding exasperated): Uh, I don't know any Japanese. It was in code. That was the point, sweetie.

Me (embarassed, trying to recover): In code, like numbers?

Jane nods yes.

Me (trying to make up for my gaffe): So you must be good at math, then.

Jane (more exasperated): Uh, no. It was just 0 through 9, honey.

Then she smirked, realizing she had gotten me twice in a row. She went on to tell me about moving into the barracks in D.C.. Since the women were new to the Navy, so were the women's barracks. On the day they opened, they had a bit of a celebration, with a surprise visitor.

Jane: So everyone was unpacking, and I was standing outside the barracks with a few friends. Eleanor Roosevelt pulls up in this Jeep.

Me: Eleanor Roosevelt?

Jane: Lovely person. Not handsome by a long stretch.

Me: What did you do?

Jane: Well, it was near lunchtime, so Eleanor asked if she could join us. I said sure.

Me: So your WAVE class had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt? Must have been a few hundred people. Did you sit near her?

Jane (exasperated): Honey, it was just me, a few friends, and Mrs. Roosevelt. I said the others were still unpacking.

Me: Oh, right. (three strikes. sheesh)

Jane (smirking, enjoying that she got me again): You know, she lived an interesting life, Mrs. Roosevelt. You should really read a biography of her.

Me (trying to get back in Jane's good graces): Good idea. Do you have one you recommend?

Jane (exasperated): The bookstore's full of them! Get your own!

(grin)

Eco-Friendly and Beautiful, Too

I shot this image back in September. I figured it'd run between Halloween and Thanksgiving, so I played up the fall color palette. Pleasant surprise to see the image on the cover. See the whole magazine here.

The items pictured are all eco-friendly, in a store chock-full of other beautiful items that are made from recycled materials. When I was assigned to do a photoshoot at Practically Green, in Ridgefield, CT, I figured it'd be a burlap-and-brown-bag fest. Not at all. The friendly staff there proves that what's good for the earth can be good on the eyes, too.

Technique note: Shooting with windows in the background can be tricky on a bright sunny day. The only way to tame the light -- and avoid blown-out windowpanes -- is to use flash to control the light on the subject. That lets you control the light coming through the window with your shutter speed. I used the technique here because I wanted to make sure the green color outside would read well in the image.

Old School Football

Artificial turf fields seem to be practical. The maintenance is easier, so they say, and the field can be used day in and day out, without worries that the grass will give out.

But they do have an unreal quality to them, a too-pristine quality, especially in the rain. As a photographer, I miss the days of muddy, sloppy plays in the rain (easy for me to say, when I'm on the sidelines). So I was happy when one of the few remaining local teams with a grass field played through a steady rain on Saturday.

The guy above dove through heavy traffic at the end zone, and made it in a single leap. Something about the frame reminded me of a simpler time.

See the full take from the game, as well as some of my other sports photos here.

Happy Halloween - Bag O Tricks

If you've ever wondered what it's like to traverse through fields of thousands -- truly, thousands -- of jack-o-lanterns, I can tell you it's pretty creepy. The one above was one of the more benign designs I photographed earlier this week at Van Cortland Manor, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

The eerie effect in this photo was all done in-camera: a long shutter (a second and a half, I think) combined with a flash pop and a camera twist. It's a technique I like to have in my back pocket.

New England Farm in Autumn

When autumn rolls around here in New England, it's no secret that the colors explode. Southern Connecticut is about a week shy of peak season, and yesterday we were graced with a gorgeous 60+ degree sunny day.

Amie Hall asked me to photograph a seminar she was hosting. Amie runs From Your Inside Out, a consulting firm specializing in helping people learn how to prepare healthy meals. The setting was the spectacular Sport Hill Farm in Easton, Connecticut, shown above.

I love this job.

The Circus Comes to Bridgeport

Who knew such big fat animals could walk so fast? This was an athletic event, keeping up with these elephants.

Cancer Heroes

Last week, I photographed a fashion show to benefit breast cancer survivors. It was nearly a year to the day that someone close to me had survived cancer surgery. As I watched the survivors revel in their beauty, I imagined my own loved one among the courageous women.

I know, I'm not supposed to get personally invested while on assignment for a newspaper, but this one did hit home. While there, I kept my experiences to myself, of course, but I was extra motivated to work hard to capture the sheer joy exuding from the survivors.

These weren't professional models; they were survivors who had been helped by this organization and wanted to help raise funds to help other survivors. In the image above, I'm not sure if I'm drawn in more by the smile of the woman modeling, or by the admiration on the faces in the audience. I sure like this kind of assignment.

Football Slideshow

Now that it's football season, it brings to mind this slideshow I did of a state championship game last season.

Boxer Tarvis Simms

It's got to be tough to make a living as a boxer. They pummel each other with great force, over and over again. It was hard to watch. But my close-up perspective shed a surprising light on the sport. More than once in the match, when one boxer hit another with a particularly swift jab or well-placed cross, the other would recover from the blow, then give an almost imperceptible nod to his opponent, as if to say, "good shot." Maybe it was my imagination.

For the photographers out there, the shot above was taken with a 17-55mm lens -- the short focal length gives you an idea of how close I was. You need to be close to be able to shoot around the ring ropes.

This top-of-the-card matchup started past the paper's deadline, but I stayed to the end anyway and the story and pictures ended up getting good play in the following edition.

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.

Lens Appeal

My new favorite lens is a 20mm prime. I throw it on a small (relatively) D300, and I'm good to go.

It's lightweight, tiny, and best of all, it makes me get up close and personal. In the picture above, I could feel the breeze as this cute little guy went by, that's how close I was.

It makes me pay attention to the foreground and the background in ways that a zoom somehow doesn't.

It lets me blend in with the other camera-toters, so people tend to act more naturally then they do when I'm aiming a big fat zoom at them.

Even though it's tiny, it's still a 2.8, so I can work in natural light, even as dusk approaches.

So right now it's my favorite lens. Until tomorrow, when I'll need something different for football.

Back to School

Now that school's about to reopen, I'm thinking about Amy Marshall. I met Amy this past June, when I was assigned to photograph her at the elementary school where she's the principal. More accurately: I was assigned to photograph her while she was ON the elementary school where she's the principal.

Amy had promised her K-6 students that if they read a total of 8,000 books in a four-month period, she'd sit on the roof of their three-story urban brick building for the day. That works out to a daunting 15 books per student.

They did.

Then she had to figure out how to get up there. So she called the fire department, who brought a truck with a ladder and a bucket.

Amy wisely made sure her students were far from the truck. A safety choice, to be sure, but she also worried that, should she fall out, she didn't want them to have a good view of her hurtling through the air and going "splat" on the pavement. It struck me that even though she thought that could happen, she was still going ahead with it. After all, she had promised them, she said. This is one dedicated principal. I liked her immediately.

Amy's courage inspired me. I quickly realized that there was only one way to depict Amy's adventure, to show the readers what Amy was risking. I asked the kind firemen if they'd take me up in the bucket, too. They said yes.

It became clear that, under the care of the firefighters, Amy had nothing to worry about. These professionals were calm, adept, and determined to have everything go smoothly. Amy was in good hands, as was I.

So they hoisted me up and planted me on the roof so I could photograph Amy as she was being hoisted up. Amy then handed the firefighters a lawn chair and a book bag and climbed in the bucket after them. After all, she said, she had work to do up there.

While we had been on the roof together briefly, I asked Amy how she had thought of this particular bet with her students. She said she needed to do something more spectacular than the previous year to motivate her students. What did she do last year, I asked? "I kissed a pig on the lips," she replied. It wasn't a good time to ask what she'll do next year. Whatever it is, I hope I get to be there again.

America's Best

It's hard to describe the deep respect I have for Danny Molina, right, and Juan Rojas. These two young men graduated from high school together just a few weeks ago, and plan to train as Marines. I was assigned by the newspaper to take some photos of them at a celebratory picnic, the day before they headed for training camp.

A former drill instructor attended as well, and he filled me in on the type of rigorous training these men will endure. It was awe-inspiring.

I took quite a few candid shots, and then decided to do a portrait.

In the first frame I made, Danny and Juan each wore a serious expression. But I wanted to show the warmth of these men. These two have been friends for a long time, and had spent the afternoon playing pick-up games of basketball and football with their buddies. After a few moments, they relaxed and gifted me, and the paper's readers, with their smiles.

Sure it was a simple portrait that took less than a minute start to finish. Yet it entailed lots of small decisions. Where do they stand? Not in direct sunlight, that's for sure. What's behind them? Nothing too distracting. What f-stop? Wide enough to blur out the details of the leaves, so the reader's eye is drawn to the faces. How are they positioned? In a way to highlight both their strength and their friendship. What's the camera position? Slightly lower than the men's eye level, to add to the feeling of strength (that one was easy, given that I'm so short).

For the portrait to work, these decisions need to be made quickly and transparently. Otherwise, that glazed look can set in, ruining the spontaneous emotions I like to see in a frame.

Every assignment is the most important assignment. That's what I think. Given the rigors these men would endure in service for the country, this one was even more so.

Chinese Opera

As a photojournalist, I get to cover all kinds of events. Recently I was asked to get some pictures from a Chinese Opera in town. My editor said he'd really like some performance images, but that cameras were forbidden in the theater. He said I ought to go early and get some backstage images.

So I did.

I've never been to a Chinese Opera before, and had a great time goofing around with the performers backstage. I met performers, makeup artists, and wardrobe specialists, who were all more than happy to have me hang around and take pictures.

At one point, I hadn't noticed as one of the performers headed down a long hallway backstage by himself. I was busy photographing a performer having her makeup done, when I heard a loud, sharp yell. I jumped! When I turned toward the source of the scream, the performer down the hall looked at me in surprise, then doubled over in laughter. I then realized he was just warming up his voice, and the yell was part of his usual pre-show routine. He got a kick out of my reaction. As soon as my heart restarted, I laughed, too.

You see above an image from the performance, despite the earlier ban on cameras. Turns out, as I suspected, they didn't mind pictures. They just found the flash distracting, natch. So when I promised to go flashless, with a smile, I got the green light.

Suited me just fine, really. Why would I want to blot out the artistry of a professional theater light person with my flash? I just cranked up the ISO, opened the aperture up to 2.8, made sure VR was on, and got plenty of good frames.

The key to getting clear, low-light images is to make sure to set the ISO high enough. I once made the mistake of thinking it'd be best to use a lower ISO. You know, because the lower the ISO, the lower the digital noise, right? I figured I could always boost the exposure in Photoshop later, and get a good image. Wrong. Turns out, an underexposed image shot in low light looks like mud when you try that boost-the-exposure trick. The mud is especially mucky in the darker areas of the frame. I had outsmarted myself right out of some clean images. So for this job I used the correct stratosphere-level ISO and they came out nice and clear, no surprise.

Want to license the above and similar images from the Chinese Opera for editorial use? Click here.

Meet the students in Africa

Here's a short (three-minute) multimedia piece about the people in Africa that are working hard to improve their community school.

Clinic in Guinaw Rail

This midwife drives a long way every day to come deliver babies and take care of expectant mothers at the clinic in Guinaw Rail, in Senegal. She's here, in the delivery room, pointing out photos of the babies she's helped bring into this world. She gave up a lucrative job elsewhere because, she said, she wanted to help others who otherwise might not get much help. She asked if we could send her some needed supplies, so we're working on it.

Schoolchildren in Senegal

It was the singing that truly opened my heart. As I climbed up the stairs of the old school, I could hear the children before I could see them. Their teacher was leading a class lesson, singing phrases for the children to repeat. By the time I reached the top step and peered into the now-filled rooftop classroom, I was smiling.

The young teacher, dressed in a white robe, nodded a greeting my way, and I settled into the back of the classroom. When the song was finished, he introduced me and my friends to the class. They then broke into song again, singing "welcome, welcome" in perfect English. When they got to the part where they sang "Welcome, Shelley" I knew the smile would stay in my heart forever, permanently emplanted there, to be recalled whenever I needed it.

Here are more pictures of the children and teacher at Guinaw Rails School.

Helping on Two Continents

One of the biggest fundraisers of the Ludlowe Corps has been a silent auction, where we collect items from our community and sell them to the highest bidder. The money goes to fund projects for schools in Senegal. When the Connecticut middle school students visited the school at Guinaw Rail, they described this auction to the administrators and teachers, and explained that's how the Ludlowe Corps obtained much of the funding for their new school building.

I arrived at the school maybe a week and a half after that conversation. One of the teachers sat down with us while we were having a snack, and mentioned that she had something that might help at our next fundraiser. Would we like to see it, she asked?

The teacher then brought out a whole bagful of beaded animals that she and her class had made (see photo above). You better believe these will be very popular at the auction next year.

It touched me to think that people who have so little would do this. It solidified the idea that we are indeed partners with the people of Guinaw Rail, helping each other to help each other.

New School in Guinaw Rail

The new school our group is helping to build is nearly complete. Like many buildings in Senegal, it's made of cement block. It's two stories high, and will accommodate the older children in the school. In the above picture, Waranka Association Director Masse stands with School Director Diouma in the ground floor of the new school.

See more images of the new school under construction here.

In the Neighborhood

The neighborhood in Guinaw Rails is a friendly one. It's also a study in recycling. Everywhere you look, people are using materials in unique ways. Old truck tires are buried halfway in the sand to mark the entrance of a store. Clotheslines are strung up with all kinds of different ropes and wires. People in Guinaw Rails make do with what they have.

Markedly, though, in the midst of this area with sand for roads, an occasional horse cart for transport, and goats roaming freely, the schoolchildren wear freshly-washed dresses and button-down shirts. Not everyone has shoes.

See more images of the neighborhood of Guinaw Rails here.

Rooftop Classroom

The older students attend class in this upstairs classroom. It's not really a room, just some desks enclosed by hanging wooden slats on the roof of the building. I'm not sure how they're able to manage in the rainy season -- I don't think the plastic sheeting in the back can protect them fully. During the dry season, when we visited, it gets pretty hot up there. On the left, outside of the image, is just the open roof. Halfway to the edge of the roof is a set of stairs leading to the classroom and school library inside.

As we walked around the classroom, I couldn't wait for the students to return from lunch, so I could meet them.

School Library in Guinaw Rail

The school library is next to the classroom for younger kids. The books are all in French, naturally. I think the shelves are from the crate we had sent, but I'm not sure. In any case, they could use more shelving.

I also thought that it would be great to send them French translations of Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown books. Anyone who can get their hands on such books, and knows a good shipping company, let me know!

Check out the mosquito net hanging in the middle of the room, and also the floppy drive bay on the computer.

Classroom for Younger Kids

As we continued on our tour of the existing grade school in Guinaw Rail, Senegal, we saw the classroom for the youngest children. The tiny desks accomodated three or four students. Even without the students there, I could see why they needed more space.

Tour of School

When we arrived Tuesday at the grade school in Guinaw Rail, Senegal it was lunchtime. The students were home for their customary mid-day break. Masse, the association director, and Diouma, the school director, gave us a tour while the school was empty.

From the outside, the school looks like a telecenter. That's because the first room on the right is indeed a place where anyone can pay to use the internet. It's a way for the school to raise some funds (see Diouma in the telecenter above, appropriately taking a call on his cell phone).