A Little News

Shooting natural light in the documentary situation is great and ethical and all that but sometimes I shoot natural light just because there is no way to beat it or duplicate it. When you can combine something as cool as the Delta Queen riverboat with excellent natural light then you have a winner, maybe even one to hang on the wall. The Delta Queen is a historic boat and I had the chance to go on board last year and produce a Soundslides show from my visit for The Decatur Daily. You can go the the site and see the show at DecaturDaily.com and click on the extras tab. You then have to navigate to the show in the multimedia section. Sorry it is not easier. Be that as it may, the DQ is a very special boat in my life.

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This boat is really special to me because it is probably the earliest memory I have with my grandfather, Helon Waddell who was the lock master for many years at Wheeler Dam on the Tennessee River.  When I was a small boy he would call my mom and dad and let them know the Delta Queen was going to come through the locks and they would take my brother and I down to watch the boat lock through.  I was very cool then and seeing the boat today still produces wonder and awe in me and connects me to a time now long past.

I shot the boat for The Daily Thursday morning but the light was really not good.  Basically it was somewhat backlit by high morning sun and there was some haze in the atmosphere which eliminated any possibility of a decent scenic type shot.  I went ahead and turned the photos in and they were placed on the page.  I had already decided to take my kids back up to see the boat later in the evening after work because I wanted to give them a memory like I had from when I was a kid.  Plus, the Delta Queen will not be sailing the nation’s waterways much longer.  She lost a Congressional exemption last year that allowed her to carry passengers in spite of having a wooden hull.  She is also listed on the National Historic Registry and is just a beautiful boat.

I had already decided to take my children back up to see the boat before she left port so, after work, I grabbed my EOS 5D and the children and headed back to Rhodes Ferry. It was already right at sunset so there was little daylight to work with. I used this light to get a couple of photos of my children with the boat. As the daylight disappeared altogether, I tried some hand held shots in the dusk light. I used the human monopod technique to steady myself. My shutter speeds were something like 1/4 second and I was shooting at ISO 800 wide open. The only light was coming from the lamps in the park, the dusk sky and the riverboat itself.

I thought if I got something nice I would try and transmit it back to the paper after I got home. After we finished shooting the pictures, I did some chimping and decided that the photo of the riverboat at the top of this post would trump about anything I had shot earlier so I called our copydesk and they agreed to hold the page for me for about thirty minutes. I got home and zipped them a photo up and our readers had a nice, visual treat to wake up to and I think the photo did a nice job conveying the end of an era with the sunset metaphor going on.

Technically there was noting to these photos but aesthetically they are really special to me. They recall a bygone era and my grandfather and some great childhood memories of spending time down at the lock with him. Sometimes natural light is special and this was one of those times. There was not way I could have duplicated it in either quality or in quantity. The softness of the light and the muted blues in the photos are just beyond my technical ability to reproduce. So natural light is not all about ethics. Sometimes it is just about aesthetics.

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

Light is funky.  Light is cool.  Light is hot.  Light is good.  Light is a particle.  Light is a wave.  Light is essential.  All true in one fashion or another and, most importantly, you can’t make a photograph without light.  Light is so very cool that if you want it to behave like a wave it behaves like a wave.  If you want it to behave like a particle, guess what, it can do that too.  While that is not essential to our use of light in photography, it is one of those cool things that everyone should know just so you can wow your friends.

Seriously, light is the essential ingredient in photographs and how we create, use or manipulate light often determines how a photo is perceived.  There is a wild variation of natural light ranging in color across the full visible spectrum on an almost daily basis.  Throw in a little geometry and the right color of light and you can make a stunning photograph of a rusty gate.  I love light.  I love to find great light and I love to create great light.  Light is the most challenging aspect of photography; therefore, light is the most satisfying aspect of photography.

You may be thinking that this is all out of place for a photojournalism blog but hold on for a minute.  Photojournalism is all about light too.  We don’t always get the pick of the light we shoot in.  Well, to be honest, we very seldom get to choose the light we shoot in.  That makes it all the more important to know how to manipulate or modify the light we are shooting in to our best advantage.  I know, the purists out there are collectively retching right about now but the purists clearly don’t have to make a digital camera reproduce on newsprint which can only generously be called paper.  So we will talk about being ethical with the use of light while we are talking about how to make light work for us.

Leading off then we will talk about using existing light without modification.  That will satisfy the purists and maybe help them keep down their lunch.  From a strictly documentary point of view, light just is what it  is.  If the light is good, great.  If the light is bad then that too is part of the story.  Believe it or not, I actually agree with this.  When I am shooting in a hard news environment I am extremely reluctant to add light.  When I do add light I am very judicious in the application of that light because I want the images to be as absolutely honest as possible.  If you add a strobe into a hard news environment you are actually modifying the environment and presenting something to the viewers that you actually couldn’t see or you present it in a way that the reader could have never seen had they been standing there.  This is even true if you are using a strobe to even out shadows in a daylight environment.

Here is reality.  Most of us work in a photojournalism environment that requires our images to be reproduced in a printed medium.  That puts us in a place where we are required to modify the light to some degree to get it into a range where the image can be successfully reproduced.  In other words, the honesty of an image is not changed by me making enough modification of the light to present an image to the readers that reproduces like I saw it.  Huh?  Okay, try this.  If a reader were standing beside me on a hard news assignment at noon, would the reader see heavy dark shadows under the eyes of my subject?  Actually, they might see the shadows but the human brain does a wonderful job of abstracting.  They would see but would not perceive.  Which means that they would remember a scene that was real but had certain details modified to fit their perceptions.  Heavy isn’t it?

I am not suggesting that reality is relative.  Actually, I guess I am.  Consider the eyewitnesses to an accident.  Every person sees and reports to the police what they have seen and every one of those eyewitness accounts will be somewhat variable.  Not that any of them were lying but they were all perceiving the scene from a slightly different point of view.  For a photojournalist that simply means that we must be as honest as possible with what we are seeing and recording without pretending that what we are recording is the absolute reality.  It is simply the reality we perceive from our point of view which we modify by lens choice, moment photographed and placement of light.

The human eye has a dynamic range that is many times what your camera can reproduce and many, many times what the printing press can reproduce.  So what you are doing in recording an image is compressing an image your eye sees and your brain perceives into a range that approximates what you saw when it is printed.  This sometimes requires you to modify the light to shorten the dynamic range of the image.  (The dynamic range for those of you who are not familiar with this term, is basically the range of visible tones from the brightest light to the darkest dark in your scene or image.)

Now, all that said, in a documentary situation you need to be as honest as possible with the light.  If you have to add light to the situation, add it from the same direction and in the same quality as the existing light.  Have you ever seen the W. Eugene Smith photo of the little girl in the bath.  Her mother is holding her and the scene looks totally genuine.  In fact, the image is strobed.  The angle of light and the quality of light mimic the light bulb in the room.  It is a convincing picture to me that really nails the whole issue of the poisoning of the village these folks live in.  You should also make yourself familiar with the work of Sebastia Salgado.  His work is amazing and it is largely documentary.  If it doesn’t move you then you might want to check you pulse.

Just to wrap this up, when you are shooting in a documentary situation modify the light as little as possible and only modify it to the extent that you are making the image more reproducable for your printing press.  Use natural light whenever you can and remember when you modify light to maintain as closely as possible the light quality that you observed in the situation.

About the photos: All three images are available light only.  There was not light modification at all and all three settings were documentary type situations.  The top photo is of a car that crashed into a church office.  D2Hs with a 17-35mm.  The second photo is from a fire in Athens.  I used the same combo for this image.  Adding flash to a night fire/crime scene is problematic because of all the reflective tape on emergency vehicles and firefighters.  You just get garish bands of wash out.  The final image is from an Indian religious service in the Bankhead National Forest.  It is all fire light and a sodium vapor security light in the edge of the woods.

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

Some days are just cool. Today was one of those days. I had the privilege of shooting the leader of the Blue Angels, Captain Kevin Mannix, to promote an air show in Huntsville. I day dreamed a shot on the way over to Huntsville thinking that I would have to shoot a portrait because I would not have time to stay and see the Blue Angels do their practice run through before I had to leave.

In my mind’s eye I could see a low angle shot of the pilot standing in front of his plane with side lighting. The sky was full of puffy cumulus clouds and could see a nice photo taking shape. The only problem was I didn’t know if we would even be allowed to see the airplanes much less photograph the pilot with the plane. Upon arrival at the airport, I found that, indeed, we would be interviewing the pilots directly in front of their aircraft. Ronnie Thomas was the reporter doing the interview and he and I were assigned Captain Mannix, the squadron boss.

Captain Mannix is an excellent man and very enthusiastic member of America’s armed forces. He has flown many combat missions the Middle East and hopes to return to carrier aviation when his tour is over with the Blue Angels. As he and Ronnie talked, I set up and tested my lights. I set two light stands about 10 feet apart with an SB28DX on one stand and an SB800 on the other with Pocket Wizards to fire them. I banged off a couple of frames to check exposure while Ronnie continued to talk with Captain Mannix. Realizing that I would need to light a full length portrait of the Captain, I decided to add a Vivitar 285HV with Pocket Wizard at the base of each light stand to illuminate the lower half of the man. These strobes I just laid in the cradle formed by the leg supports on the light stands.

I was just standing there listening to the interview when the Lieutenant managing the media tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Time’s up.” Now I just about freaked out because I had not yet taken one for real photo. I begged for just a minute and that was about all I had to shoot. Fortunately, I had my lights already set and tested. I literally shot five frames before I had to move. I had hoped to go through about three different set ups. Now I was stuck with just five frames! Had I not set up and tested while the interview was going on, I would have had nothing, literally.

Follow the Boy Scout motto and always be prepared. You just don’t know when that tap on the shoulder will come and you have to leave. In my few, brief seconds, I adjusted the Captain, set my camera on the tarmac and tilted it up with a 14mm lens and squeezed off three frames. I managed to stand up and get close with the 17-35 for the final two images and then I had to move so a TV guy could do an interview. I wasn’t happy but there was nothing left to do. If I could have a do over, I would certainly vary the pose and my angle of view. As it turned out, I was pleased with what I left with, especially considering the circumstances.

Then, to my absolute delight, the Air Force A-10 Warthawg began its practice session. The A-10 is my favorite military aircraft. It has no glamor but it is a beast with wings. The A-10 is designed for close air support and sports a variety of devastating ground attack weapons including the incredible 30mm cannon in its nose. The aircraft was designed to even the odds on the European battlefield where the Soviet Army would have had a vastly superior armored force to allied troops. The A-10 was to be the great equalizer. Thank God that it did not have to perform that role but it has proved entirely effective on Middle Eastern battlefields and in other deployments in the Balkans.

To cap off the time I had at the event, A P51 Mustang of World War II fame flew in formation with the A-10 and I was able to shoot two of my favorite planes flying side by side. What an excellent day!

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

There is something about the human brain that likes shapes. A crafty photographer will use all kinds of shapes to help grab a reader’s attention. If you have ever studied composition, you know that triangles are your friend. The triangle does not have to be literal of course but the elements in the photo that form a triangle tend to hold the eye. Well, we are not going to talk about triangles. That was just free with admission.

We are going to deal with using some naturally occurring shapes to help you make some pictures. Shapes can come in geometric forms, amorphic forms and even alphabet or numeral shapes. Any or all are just fine. The point is that shapes help keep the reader where you want him and that is staring all google eyed at your photos. (Apologies to the now famous search engine!)

You can define shapes within the frame using any lens in your bag. The real key is in seeing the shapes yourself. Many times when I am searching for a feature photo I will look for shapes to help carry an image. When I find a cool shape, I will just hang out until I have a photo or come back repeatedly, even for weeks or even months, until I get a situation that yields a nice photo. Perhaps now would be a good time to review the post on developing photographic patience. Anyway, why waste a good spot when nothing is going on. Other times I just blunder into a good shape and, BANG!, the photo practically slaps me in the face.

Sometimes you can spot a good shape and bring a subject back later for an interesting portrait. Keep a file, either mental or written down somewhere, of locations where you can check up on when you need a good portrait location or a good feature photo. These can be lifesavers when you have to have a shot really fast. Let’s talk about the photos now.

The first image is one that really appeals to me. There is something in my brain that just really digs the inverted horseshoe shape made by the ceiling which frames this stairwell on the Delta Queen Riverboat which used to dock in Decatur. The boat is now either in its final year of service or has been retired due to a government regulation barring wooden hull boats from carrying over a certain number of passengers. The Delta Queen is a truly historic boat and I have personal fond memories of seeing in lock through Wheeler Dam as a child. My grandfather was lock master at Wheeler for many years and we would go down and see him and see the riverboat going through. It is one of those warm, fuzzy childhood memories that have stayed with me over the years.

Anyway, I used a Nikon D2Hs with a 17-35 zoom with the camera placed on the floor. The only thing I could wish for would be a little less exterior light shining in the bottom of the frame and for a lady in an old fashioned southern ball dress to be on the stairwell instead of a guy in shorts and flip flops. Oh well! The low angle and the wide angle provide a nice combination that emphasizes the curvature of the lines and, like I said, causes the photo to really appeal to me. It is one of my favorites. Architecture is a great source of shapes and every place has architecture so keep your eyes open and your idea file handy.

Next we have a photo on the opposite end of the visual spectrum. This one was shot with a D2H and a 400 f2.8 S lens. I don’t remember for certain but I may have used the 1.4 teleconverter with this image. I was out near Pryor Field, a small airport in southern Limestone County and they had relocated the road to create a longer runway. The new road formed this nice, lazy “S” from a certain point of view and the telephoto compression really helps the image. All I had to do was wait for a vehicle to come along to give some perspective and I had another arresting image. It is just really cool to see these things. You can go back there now and not see this image at all because the grass along the sides of the road obscures the edges enough to make this shot impossible. Right time, right place, right lens.

The last image was made with a 17-35 on a D2Hs in Point Mallard Park’s Aquatic Center. We do a bunch of photos in the Aquatic Park so it is always a challenge to come back with something a little different. I walked up to one of the water slides just trying to see differently and suddenly I noticed this big number “6″ formed by the slide. I wish I could have been a little more elevated but there was no way to do that but the shape is still visible. Really, life is full of shapes when we take a step back from the daily routine to recognize them.

The best way to do some compositions using shapes is to go out looking for them. You drive around your city every day and never really see it. I remember reading a Sherlock Holmes story once when Holmes asked Watson if he knew how many steps led up to their flat. Of course, Watson didn’t know. He had never paid attention but Holmes knew exactly because he did pay attention. Shapes are everywhere. So, are you Holmes or are you Watson?

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I don’t know how fashionable it was to be emotional before Tiger came along with his famous fist pumps and yells, but it has certainly become more of an emo sport since he came along. I think Tiger shattered a whole lot of long standing golf idols while still managing to respect the game and its history. For all of us who have played golf as duffers, we know all about emo golf. Our golf is usually punctuated by negative emotion since few of us hit shots like the T man. We are more likely to spice our shots with thrown clubs, words our moms would not approve of and those looks of knowing disgust.

For photographers who have never covered golf, this may come as a surprise. Golf, the buttoned down game of knickers and funky plaid pants, has emotion. Looking for emotion on the course without, of course, becoming a target for someone’s thrown club, can really spice up your photography of this grand old game. Obviously, by far the most common emotions you will see are negative emotions. The grimace after a mishit drive or the bending over backwards lean after a missed putt. Sometimes the emotion shows up while players are waiting to hit. Sometimes it comes like a storm after they hit.

Like every other aspect of photography, being in the right place at the right time with the right lens and actually looking for those moments makes it much easier to shoot. You can get emotion at any time on the course but around the green you will be able to see more emotion than anywhere else. Golfers watching the ball roll to the hole are a great place to snag an emo picture. The reaction to a good putt or a bad putt are your best chance at emotion photos. Another place you will see plenty of emotion is on and around the tee box. When golfers, especially amateurs, hit poor shots they can really put on a show. You will see them drop clubs, make faces and yell things to the ball which don’t really matter to you or to the ball but it is good theater.

One thing to keep in mind when shooting the negative emotion stuff is not to overdo it. Get your shot and move on. Don’t go nuts over it because that can really irritate the competitor and most of my tournaments are the local variety where nothing other than a little pride is on the line. Most of these guys aren’t pros and won’t ever be. If I am shooting the boys who are getting paid then I would be more inclined to press the matter but that won’t help you any with your local club tournaments. Be sensitive to the situation and shoot accordingly. Of course, no one gets worked up over you shooting positive emo. You can just lay on the shutter and bang away. It all evaporates quickly anyway.

Another thing to keep an eye on is body language. A lot of golfers can play all poker faced but they will usually give away their feelings in the body language and this can be seen from a long way off. Watch the way they are walking and you can sometimes see joy or anger and that will give you a good clue where to find the emotion. Some players are just naturally more expressive than others anyway. Find one of these players and just mine them until you have some good stuff. Many times at club tournaments you are not really too worried about the leaders, especially in the early rounds and finding emotion will give you some nice photos to work with and it will keep you away from having the always present club swing photo in the paper for three or four days. It is just double eagle territory when the leaders are the ones who are giving up the best emotion. Where are you anyway Tiger Woods? Want to come play in Decatur?

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

I’m not Emily Post but here goes a little lesson in golf etiquette. Golf is the most peculiar sport I have ever run across when it comes to dos and don’ts while shooting the game. One would think that the clicking of a camera shutter would not even register on a golfer who was intensely concentrating on his game but any little noise seems to cause problems. Since this is a fact of the game you have to be particularly conscious of not being obtrusive in either positioning or in decibel level.

I was shooting the Spirit of America golf tournament one year at the Burningtree Country Club and legendary PGA golfer Jerry Pate was there to watch his son. Of course, I had to get a picture of Jerry watching his son so I introduced myself to him and we conversed briefly. The last thing he said to was, “Just make sure you don’t shoot during his back swing.” You may have seen Tiger Woods on TV dressing down a photographer for shooting when he wasn’t supposed to. It seems that the back swing is taboo.

The best safe guard is to just shoot with long glass. Sound, especially on a windy day, doesn’t carry very, particularly if you are down wind from the golfer. The other advantage to long glass is that golfers are fairly sensitive to your proximity to them. The long glass gives you a nice buffer and keeps you “out of their face” while still allowing you to get tight shots. You are still going to get some golfer who is just camera conscious and he will give you anything from an evil eye to some verbal abuse to even calling a course marshal on you for just pointing a camera at him. Fortunately, not all golfers are Princess and the Pea sensitive.

There are really two sets of rules when covering golf. There is one set for professional and serious amateur events and another set for club and charity tournaments. When I have covered the Hooter’s Tour, they have passed out a set of media guidelines which you are asked to follow. They are specific but very much common courtesy and common sense. You are expected to behave just like the photogs covering the PGA. Hooter’s is a bit like AA baseball is the the Major Leagues. These guys are serious and are trying to make the tour. The second set of rules are much more relaxed and apply to the fun events such as best ball charity tournaments. Most of your high school and college tournaments should be treated the same as a pro event.

No matter which kind of tournament you are covering, there are some basic things you should do and not do. Obviously, don’t be disruptive, especially when a golfer is in his back swing. Once he has made contact with the ball, fire away. Remain at a respectful distance from the golfer while he makes his shot. If you are unsure, ask someone such as a course marshal or even another golfer who is not involved in making a shot. Stay out of the golfer’s line of sight unless you are really quite far away. When you are shooting from a position ahead of the golfer you can use a low shooting position or use a tree or bush to help shield you from the golfer’s view.

Be conscious of your movements and don’t move around while the golfer is making his swing. It is also important that if you are driving a cart not to drive in the immediate area of a golfer making a shot. Many times you will have a driver or an escort of some kind who is a golfer and they will be mindful of this anyway. When you are around the green, you can usually get closer to the golfer but it is important not to move around while he is putting. Movement is very distracting while a person is standing over a ball. In a big tournament, the golfer can be very tense and even more sensitive than normal. Keep in mind that the people you are photographing may be playing for money or standing or both. You don’t want to be the cause of a bad shot that could cost him money.

Finally, put your cell phone on silent or just turn it off. There is really nothing more distracting than having a cell phone ring while you are shooting pictures. Imagine how much more distracting that is to a golfer trying to make a shot. You can sum up the etiquette of shooting golf with two guidelines; keep quiet and be invisible.

Photo copyright The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Golf is a boring game. Golf is a quirky game. Golf is an exciting game. Golf is a frustrating game. Golf is difficult to shoot. Golf yields spectacular photos. All true and sometimes all at the same time for both golfer and photographer. I want to get back to the Positioned For Success series and do a few posts on shooting the game of golf. Since everyone reading this can pick up a camera and shoot pictures of a person swinging the club, lets look at the quirky side of the game and see how to shoot it, or at least how to make quirky pictures that are out of the ordinary golf coverage.

First of all, I have never shot anything bigger than the Spirit of America golf tournament in Decatur or a Hooters Tour Event. The Spirit tournament draws some of the best amateur golfers from around the southeast while the Hooters is a pro tour that is a couple of notches below the venerable PGA Tour. At least a few of the players in both of these tournaments will one day play on the PGA Tour and some have played and are working their way back. That said, the vast majority of our golf coverage comes from the high school and country club events and charity events that proliferate through the Spring and Summer.

This leaves us with the probability of shooting a whole bunch of golf that has no impact beyond the event itself and often it is a charity tournament that is more of a fun event than a no holds barred competition so making pictures that are not repetitive becomes a challenge. Enter the quirky element. A quirky photo can happen anywhere from the club house to the driving range to the 18th green so you have to be ready and actually be searching for something beyond the ordinary because if there were ever a sport that is very easy to be ordinary at photographing it is golf.

That is the secret. Don’t settle for anything ordinary. At least go out having the mindset that you are not going to settle for anything ordinary. You have to shoot the guys, or gals, swinging the club but look for different ways to do the shot. Can you climb a tree? Ahh, there is one I have never tried. Maybe this year. Can you do something with lights and shadows? Can you find a golfer doing something out of the ordinary like a golfer clowning around driving the cart? Who knows, some guy a little tanked up may put a golf cart in the drink. Now that would be a photo!

There are no real technical secrets to this post. You can improve your chances of getting a quirky photo by following someone around who has some personality. Look for them on the driving range or watch a few groups tee off and see who you think might yield the best chance at something a little off beat. Just a hint here, but the guy who has his Tiger face on is probably not your guy for a quirky photo. That is the guy you will just tick off by following him around. Find the guy who is all loose on the range or on the tee and hang with him for a few holes. Don’t make a nuisance out of yourself. Just hang back and watch. Golfers are a sensitive bunch when it comes to photography which will be the subject of a later post. For now, keep your eyes peeled for the offbeat and hang in there until you get something off the beaten path.

About The Photos: The top photo was shot on the driving range during a Hooter’s Tour Event. The golfer was using a portable mirror to check his swing on the range just as many people now use video cameras. It was odd, off the beaten path and made me happy. The only thing that was difficult was keeping my reflection out of the mirror and not getting hit in the head by the follow through. The second photo is from a charity tournament. These guys were sitting between the 9th and 18th greens heckling the golfers after they would putt out. Not exactly good golf etiquette but it was a heck of a lot of fun.

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

Believe it or not, making beautiful people look beautiful in photos is not as easy as it would seem. I have found it far easier to make people look ugly than to make them look beautiful no matter what their eye appeal is. Basically, it comes down to light. Everyone has seen the difference in Hollywood stars when they are on the cover of a magazine with a well lit portrait and when they are caught in the glaring light of on camera strobes in those tabloid moments. Lighting makes the difference. Okay, makeup artists, stylists, art directors and those cool fans they use on fashion shoots make a little difference too!

Every year, we do a send off party for the reigning Miss Point Mallard as she is getting ready to leave for the Miss Alabama pageant. During this party, the beautiful young lady models her gowns for us to photograph. There is no set, no stylist, no cool fan to blow her outfits around and the lighting is usually just what you carry in with you which, in my case, means a trio of SB strobes. The party is always held in the private home of one of the pageant coordinators so the backgrounds can range from really good to very difficult to work with. Space limitations are always the biggest problem because about all of these folks have nice homes. So there we have the challenges.

Katie Boyd is the reigning Miss Point Mallard and they tell me she has a good chance to become Miss Alabama. I photographed her in three outfits during the send off party this year and I got a couple of shots that are worth talking about. Both are three light photos but there are two different approaches which I will contrast for you. The first photo is my favorite. The red dress, the excellent background and the lovely young lady just make this a really appealing photo for me.

The main light is an SB800 in an umbrella positioned to the camera left, high and at about 65 degrees left of the camera to model line. I had Katie turn slightly toward this light so the angle of the light on her was actually closer to a classic 45 degree position. There is a light positioned very high and behind her to the camera right. It was placed a ceiling level and aimed down to give some separation from the background. Then there was a problem. The high light separated her upper half from the background but the lower portion of her dress blended in and we were losing the foot and leg extended through the slit in her gown.

To solve this problem I positioned a third SB800 on a chair slightly ahead of her and aimed from her waist down. I was getting spill onto the background which was very bad so I used my bag to scrim this light so it was not impacting the background at all. The result you see here.

The second set up was with a different gown and in a different room in the house. With the owners permission we pretty much moved the furniture from her dining room so we could use a small cove in one wall for our background. Katie’s gown featured a low scooped back and I wanted to highlight this feature. The electric blue gown made a nice color combo with the wall color but I needed to light the cove to bring out the color.

The lighting setup for this one uses two umbrellas with SB strobes. The lighting ratio is not quite 2:1 but is comes fairly close with the main light being on the camera left. I collapsed the umbrella on the right so the light fall off was somewhat controlled. You can control how much of the umbrella you collapse by moving the umbrella shaft in or out relative to your flash. This helps you control how much the umbrella closes. You have to be careful with this technique because the light fall off can be fairly dramatic causing you to under light portions of your frame. The third light is just laying on the floor and aimed up. It was set to about 1/32nd power and zoomed to the 85mm setting. This lit the cove with some control on the beam spread.

I left with two photos I was very pleased with and they fed me dinner on top of all that. Very nice indeed!

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

No one really likes problems but when you come up with a solution and overcome the problem you are better for it. This was the case when I photographed pro bikers Seth Kimbrough and Corey Martinez. These guys are fantastic bikers and I was totally amazed at their skills. Had I tried even one of the tricks they were doing I would still be in a cast, a full body cast!

Seth and Corey both grew up in and around Hartselle, Alabama and they became pros the hard way. There was never a skate park or any official place for them to practice. Both of these young men have helped to set up a skate park in Hartselle so kids growing up and idolizing them will have a place locally to go and bike or skate. Many of the ramps in the park were built and then donated to the park by one or both of them.

I had know about Corey for some time but we had never met. He and my oldest daughter are friends and my oldest daughter’s best friend is married to Corey. We finally connected to do this shoot but the only time available was mid-afternoon with a high blue sky. That was fine for action photos but not for the portrait. I really wanted some late afternoon, even dusk, light to do the portrait with. Since none of our schedules worked and Corey was leaving town for a pro event we had to shoot when we had the time available.

I had seen the guys pause on top of this flat topped concrete pyramid in the middle of the park several times while they were riding and it seemed like a great spot to pose them for the portrait. The problem was the light was far too contrasty to shoot anything but a back lit portrait which meant I had to light them. I had three Nikon SB strobes at my disposal. My basic lighting plan was to set two strobes on stands at roughly 45 degrees relative to the camera position. The concrete ramp slanted in such a way that I could not set the light stands anywhere on the slope. This meant putting them on the ground with a flash to subject distance that would be somewhere between six and ten feet from the subjects. Not good.

I tried it anyway with predictable results. The strobe exposure was more than a full stop under. I was shooting a Nikon D2Hs and a full stop underexposure with strong back light was just too much. What to do? I had used my Bogen Friction Arm to set up a remote camera on top of one of the ramps earlier so I grabbed it and used an SC17 shoe cord to attach another strobe to the camera platform on the Friction Arm. Then I clamped the strobe onto the stunt peg on the front tire of Seth’s bike. He is the one of the left. I set this strobe to fire via the SU4 optical slave function on the SB800. I also pointed the strobe straight up and extended the built in bounce card to give some fill.

The problem that I could not solve with the equipment at hand was the direction of this third light. Since it was lower than the faces it created hot areas on the neck and made some crazy shadows. I would have preferred not to do this but I could not use a larger bounce device and keep the strobe invisible. In the end, the lighting kind of creates a funky feel that goes along with the whole trick bike scene so it works okay for me. Basically, you run across all kinds of situations in photojournalism that require problem solving skills. You probably won’t ever solve them perfectly; however, the more problems you solve the better you get at solving problems. You can also take the solutions to those thorny problems and use them in other situations so the general quality of your work gets elevated. Everybody is gonna have problems. Applying creative solutions, a little hard work and some sweat will make you better and that means better pictures. Hey man, in everything give thanks, even for the problems. They make you better!

About the photo: You already know I shot with a Nikon D2Hs. I used the 17-35mm lens and obviously shot from below the guys and directly into the sun with an ambient exposure of approximately 1/250th sec at about f16. My ambient exposure is about 2/3 stop under the strobe exposure. The two strobes on stands were fired with Pocket Wizards and the third strobe was fired via its built in optical slave.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Maybe I should say that the Alabama Jubilee used to be one of my favorite things. I have just spent 24 hours in the last two days covering the Jubilee which is anchored around hot air balloons. These things are absolutely great to shoot pictures of. It is one of those situations where a blind monkey could get a photo and a person with any kind of game can really nail some beautiful photographs.

And I got to fly. Local pilot Tom Lane who lives in Somerville, Alabama, took me and reporter Catherine Godbey up in his balloon, The Griffin II. I think that riding in a hot air balloon is about as close as a human being will get to walking on air. It is incredible! Just don’t drop the camera. It can be a long drop with a sudden stop which is usually pretty bad for the camera. Otherwise, hot air ballooning is just about as cool and experience as you can have.

This was actually my third flight. The first time I went up the weather was very overcast and we almost didn’t fly. I got some decent stuff but it didn’t sing like I wanted it to. Then, a couple of years ago, I got my second flight and the day was spectacular. Yesterday, the weather was decent but hazy which made for a few problems. Our pilot was one the last to take off so we were a bit behind the rest of the balloons. It made for great pictures of the balloons massed together in the air but the haze caused some frames to simply be unusable. All the problems melted away as we closed in on the other balloonists. The haze factor was eliminated leaving me with just smooth light to work with.

Then, Saturday night, I went back to Point Mallard Park for the balloon glow event which features the balloonists inflating but staying on the ground. At dusk, they fire their propane burners and light up their bags so that the balloons glow. It is really beautiful and the photo opportunities are just fantastic. I shot with my person camera, the EOS 5D for both the flight and the glow because I wanted the beautiful saturation and clean images I get with this camera. I was thrilled with the results. Except for the length of the day which began at 5:30 a.m and ended at 11 p.m. this was a wonderful day to be a photojournalist.

You can view a slide show of all the images I posted at decaturdaily.com and click on the link to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

About the photos: Everything in this gallery was done with my EOS 5D and either the 24-70 f2.8 or the 70-200 f2.8 all shot available light. For the balloon glow pictures, I used the incandescent color balance setting and shot real slow but still hand held. I don’t think any of the images were shot above ISO 400. I used the human monopod technique I detailed in an earlier post to steady the camera.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.