Back in Gear

Being a photographer 24/7 sounds like a great job, and trust me, it is. But it's still easy to burn out when you're constantly shooting assignments without time to explore and create images for yourself. Having to follow a set of instructions from a client or instructor can really suck all the fun out of shooting, and even if you're happy with the end result, getting there just wasn't a great experience.

So thats why despite having a vague idea to re-shoot some material for school, I blew all that off, created pictures the way I wanted, edited the way I wanted, and came out feeling like a load of bricks was lifted off me creatively. I saw light on my subject clearer than I have in days, and I knew how each frame would turn out before I even saw it on the monitor.

More about funks, getting out of them, and this one cool kid after the jump.

Felixx Ray (myspace) is a Massachusetts based R&B artist that had his manager contacted me to shoot a few weeks ago. We came up with a date and promptly did no pre-production. I was supposed to give him a general idea of wardrobe, but when I talked with Felixx to confirm the booking, I guess it slipped my mind. Bright orange and blue shirts weren't at the top of my list, but then I realized.

I was shooting for myself.

And for a client, but a client who wanted me to do what I think I do best. Just make a cool picture. Not worrying about lighting ratios (not that I worried much to begin with) or separation lights (which are evidently there for a reason), I had an idea of how I wanted the light to be, and I ran with it. I wasn't going crazy and making something selfish, Felixx and I had some good dialogue on which pictures we liked, which poses worked, and he seemed to really like the raw pictures on the screen.

While editing them, I even fell into a few old comfortable habits that I had left behind when I came to school. But they were different, a little better, and still me. If you looked at my old work compared to my new, you can tell it's me, but a more refined me. And that was one of my major goals in taking this year off for school.

When I book musical talent, I usually don't listen to their music before we work together. I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not, but I like to hear about their career right from them. Felixx and I didn't even get around to talking about his music, which I finally turned on while editing. And he's good. Real good. Get this kid a record deal good. He only has two songs on his myspace right now, and they're both Grade A awesome.

Check out the music portfolio on my site for pics from the shoot, and sign up for the mailing list to see even more.

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Deerfield Academy

I spent today shooting with one of my friends, Laure at the Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. They have an awesome sports program and an amazing track and field, so pulling off some portfolio-worthy shots was all on me, no backgrounds to blame this time.

I'm usually known for my lighting or photoshop, and these pictures lack both of those. All natural light, not even a speedlight to pop some fill in, and post was done almost exclusively in lightroom, except for removing some errant tree tops and the like. Check out some more after the break.


Sports photography relies on long, fast lenses, the most popular being the 70-200 f/2.8 IS, the quintessential lens for nearly any type of photography. While I did run into an enthusiastic parent with a 400 f/2.8 IS and a 1DMK4, the 70-200 covered most of my focal lengths. The 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 IS is also a great lens that I used early in the day, before switching to the 70-200 as the light fell off.

I'm of the opinion that sports photography, whether high school or pro, relies a lot on luck and good timing. The skill is in knowing where to be and when to be there, but if nothing is happening in front of you, all the equipment in the world can't save you. I spent a lot of time walking back and forth to events for practice runs, where I got my own practice in. This shot of the long jump is where all the luck came in. Getting to the end of the sand pit was no challenge, and getting that awesome spray of sand was pure luck, made slightly more difficult by the slow framerate of the 5DMKII.

The 5DMKII is a great portrait camera, but not necessarily good for sports. the 1D series (no S) is renowned for its speed, and users complain more of having too many good shots to choose from rather than a lack thereof. the 5DMKII shoots at less than half the speed of the 1D, so timing, even for multiple frames, is important, as many great shots can get lost in between one frame to the next.


Typically, the longer the lens in sports, the better. Unless you can get on the field. And unless you can get right next to the crash pad, so close in fact that you have to dodge the occasional pole vaulter landing. While I didn't go as wide as my camera bag allows me to, the 24-70 f/2.8 is an amazing lens, and is probably my most used. At 24mm there's a little distortion, but not bad at all, and the quality is tack sharp.

Shooting up into the sky has become a bit of my trademark, though I usually do it with a few hundred wattseconds of light hitting my subject. Putting the sun to my side with a still bright early afternoon sky in front gives me that look of balancing the ambient with flash, without having to worry about slow sync speeds. A speedlight would have been great to put a little fill into the bottom of the athlete, but I was traveling light for the day.

While I'm primarily an advertising photographer, being able to do the candids out on the field is a much better way to spend a day than in a studio. I'm starting to balance out my portfolio as school comes to an end, and there may be a few surprises left yet.





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Sobe Lifewater-Composite

Phase 4 is going smoothly for most of the students here as we go through mid-term reviews of our final portfolios. One of my images, this mock Sobe Lifewater ad is being submitted for my composite project, and I'll show you a little insight into how I made it.

One of the many golden rules of photography is that the more you can do in camera, the more realistic the results will be. I tend to treat this more like a rule of thumb, and I think I've successfully gotten around it this time. Read more after the break.

Not to say that this wasn't an exercise in how many times I could pound my head against the wall without it falling off. I had never shot water for composites before, so there was a fair amount of trial and error (and spilled soft drink) before I hit the right combinations needed.


From looking at this screenshot of my layers for this picture, it actually doesn't look too bad. But this is the finished version, with the 20+ splash layers condensed to save space and my sanity in trying to find each element.

Starting from the bottom with a blank layer as the background, we have the layer for the splashes behind the bottle, with its color layer, then the bottle, masked for some translucency at the bottom, then the splash in front with color, droplets with color, effects layer for dimensionality, and then the collapsed text group.

These layers are just the finished elements used to save the final image. The working file, at any given point in time, had upwards of 50 layers, some just experimental, others that were deleted, and many that were combined into the front and back splash layers.

How we got those individual layers is pretty interesting, so here's a screenshot of my lightroom catalog with the final images I shot of water droplets that were comped in.



Each of these water shots, similar to the pours that built up the base and the actual splash, were cut out, adjusted, and then colored after being placed in position in the final image. over 30 different pours, drops and splashes were used to construct the liquid elements, with a fair amount of warping, liquify and cloning to integrate them all together.

All the liquids were shot being poured from one container into another, and captured with a Toyo 4x5 and the Leaf Aptus 22. Probably not the best choice for speed, since the Toyo has to be re-cocked after every shot, but the image size and quality gave me more options when it came time to fill in gaps. The final image is just as large as if it were captured with one frame, no need to downsize to fit lower quality elements.

The bottle itself was the easiest piece to shoot, just three softboxes, one of either side and over overtop. It lacked a hard edge which I added in post, but having it too sharp would have ruined the illusion of movement. There's a fine line between physics and advertising, with each having to win in certain situations.

All told, it may be easier to shoot this in one frame, but to line everything up properly, while showing enough of the label to satisfy a client, and enough splash to make the consumer think it just might be real would be prohibitively time consuming. I prefer the total control I get while shooting the elements separately and combining them, tweaking them, and molding them to my needs.
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