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.