A Little News

I don’t know if any of you play golf so this may not makes too much sense. I don’t play much any more. I just have too much else going on but from the days when I used to play I draw this analogy. Golf can be an extremely rewarding game. You make a nice shot, drive the ball straight down the middle 300 yards or sink a long putt and it is very gratifying. Unfortunately, for a duffer like me, those were too few and far between. However, I would usually make a few really goood shots in any round of golf and that kept me coming back for more.

Photojournalism is a lot like that. We have to shoot all kinds of pictures in all kinds of light and under a wild variety of circumstances and that can make for some frustration. But, I make a shot every now and then and just go, “Ahh!” And I come back to work again and look for the next Ahh! moment. Right now, we are mired in a very involved tab section for advertising that we do every year. It takes the better part of January and February and this one will contain more than 80 profiles of different folks and the jobs they do. I shot three of these today. In two of the three jobs I came away with photos that I really like. One photo because I worked the light and one photo because I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the camera ready. I’ll take it either way. These shots help me get ready for tomorrow when I will probably have three or four more of these jobs to shoot.

Here is the rundown on the portrait. The guy is a funeral home manager so I can’t really shoot him working. Directing a funeral is a delicate business and having some guy chasing him around with a camera would just be inappropriate. Ergo, the portrait. This could be pretty pedestrian stuff. Guy standing in chapel looking at camera. The light saved the day and I came away very satisfied. I know it looks like something you might see in a brochure but that is not necessarily a bad thing in this case. He looks sharp and professional and that is what he is supposed to look like in the bereavement business. I was very happy with the result. The main light is an SB8oo fired into an umbrella at 1/8th power. The background light is an SB800 fired direct at 1/2 power and aimed right at him from the back of the chapel. I used a 17-35mm lens and a Nikon D2Hs.

The other shot was done in a restaurant in the same town an hour or so later. Same camera and lens but this one is unposed. She is really working and that makes it much easier to get spontaneity but much harder to get good light. I used an SB800 on camera in bounce mode with the little plastic diffusion dome on top. I think it was set manually to 1/8th power. I seldom use a strobe in any auto mode because I have been burned too many times. Anyway, the light is not so good but the expression and movement make the image. I came away pleased from two out of three jobs that could have really been sows ear assignments. But hey, that’s what we get paid the big bucks for, right? Turning the proverbial sows ear into a silk purse is the job about half the time.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.