A Little News

Flames billow from a house at 1205 North St. SE in Decatur Sunday night as Decatur Firefigthers prepare to attack. The house was heavily damaged by the fire but firefighters did not think anyone was home. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 1/11/09

Seems like a no brainer doesn’t it?  Yet, this is exactly what almost happened to me Sunday night and this one really is one of those things they never teach you in school.  I was covering a fully involved house fire Sunday night and I very nearly stepped on the power service which had been snapped by the fire and was laying in the street.  Now, I am an old firefighter and whenever I have ever approached a fully involved structure fire as either a fireman or a photographer I have always located the power service.  Early in any fire this will still be “hot” and able to kill you quickly.

This time I didn’t look.  I was trying to hurry and get a photo because the Decatur Fire and Rescue is good and a fully involved house fire thirty seconds before I pulled up was now rapidly becoming a steaming, black pit on a very dark section of street.  My Dad used to say that God protects fools and firefighters.  It was a good thing Sunday night or I would  have stood a good chance of joining the heavenly choir in the role of fool.  I was hurrying along trying to find a better shooting angle before the flames were completely gone when I just happened to look down in mid-stride.  My foot was just about to land on the power service.  Thank God I was able to pull my foot back and move away.

Moments later, the end of the power line crackled in a huge ball sparks beside the house and I saw a firefighter go down.  I was afraid the line had gotten him.  Fortunately he was not injured and must have only been startled or something like that because he got right up.  There are many dangers out there on assignment.  Some you see, those you can usually avoid, some you don’t see, those are the dangerous ones, and some you are ignorant of and those too can get you.  Don’t get so caught up in getting that picture that you ignore the dangers of the assignment.

Over the years I have been through many things that made me grateful for my fire and EMS background.  I have been able to avoid some trouble because of it.  You may not have that background and people may not tell you about them.  Keep any eye on your surroundings and stay alive.  You may not even have to touch the danger to get whacked.  Had that power service been draped over the chain link fence surrounding the property it would have been electrified and touching it would be equally deadly.  There is just not a single photo I have ever seen that I wanted to die for.  The power service didn’t care that I am married and have eight kids to take care of.  It didn’t care that I have goals and ambitions.  Had I touched it all that would have gone away in a split second.  Like the sergeant on Hill Street Blues used to say, “Let’s be careful out there!”

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.

To say I am a little juiced would be an understatement and it is not what you think by reading the headline.  By juiced, I mean excited, pumped up, psyched!  The only bummer on the whole thing is I can’t really show you the whole project yet.  I am working on a multi-media package on a family who bought an old log cabin and reconstructed it on their property.  It is going to be a very nice project and last night I put the cap on it.

I wanted to do a multi-light shot right at dusk with the owners in the photo to pull the whole project together and put a nice bow on it.  I had planned to use all my personal gear and all the company gear to set up several strobes to light the house and the people without it being over strobed.  In other words, I wanted it to look as natural as possible even though it would be lit to high heaven.  (Sorry about tossing yet another drinking reference into the post and I am not even a drinker!  I really must be psyched.)

Click on the image to see a larger version.

What I ended up with was a six light configuration and the only reason it was six lights instead of seven was I ran out of Pocket Wizards.  I could have really used one, or even two more strobes.  Still, I was so very happy with the outcome I will not get too critical of the final shot.  I arrived at 4:30 to begin my setup and the property owners had already lit the oil lamps hanging under the eaves of the porch and built a fire in the fire place.  I began by assembling my buddy David Higginbotham’s Octobank, which I have on semi-permanent loan, and then placed it on a Lumedyne head.  This would be the key light for the people.

I then began attaching Vivitar 285 HV strobes and Nikon SB800 strobes under the porch and in the dog trot so I would have my background lighting.  I then took another Lumedyne strobe and set it upstairs so I could get some light coming out the top windows.  As it turned out I would have been better served by using this strobe in one of the downstairs rooms but I didn’t realize it until it was too late.  At any rate, I used a variety of power settings on the small strobes.  The one clamped to a rafter in the dog trot was bounced off the wooden underside of the roof so I set it to 1/2 power.  The ones under the porch were set to 1/16 power.  I spaced these roughly at even intervals to cover most of the porch.

The dog trot strobe had no gel on it since it would be bounced off of wood that was roughly the color I wanted the light to be anyway.  The three strobes under the eaves of the porch all had warming gels to more closely resemble light coming from the lamps.  Here again is a small error I would fix if I could but the gels made the flash a bit more yellow than I wanted.  If I were doing it over I would go with more amber and less yellow.  Oh well, live and learn.  The Octobank was unfiltered but that did not matter because most of what it was illuminating was either wood, ground or dark green roof tin.  I also did not want too much yellow/orange lighting spilling onto the people.

So, there we have it.  I shot with my EOS 5D knowing the colors would just sing and if I needed some higher ISO numbers I could get them without grain and too much contrast buildup ruining shadow detail if I decided I needed it.  Obviously, that handsome fellow in the photo is me.  When I finished shooting, the family asked if I would like to have my photo taken and I said sure.  That is not my usual MO but in this case I thought it would make a nice photo of me.  My mom and dad still think I am handsome and want an occasional photo of me.  Go figure!  Hey, they are my parents.  When I publish the whole story in a week or two I will get back to you with the entire show and then you can see the whole deal.  I am absolutely thrilled with the way this project is turning out and I can’t wait to share it with you.

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

The members of Flower Hill Primitive Baptist Church honored Oquilla Clay with a 100th birthday celebration Sunday, December 28 at the church in Hillsboro. Family members from all across the country along with many former pastors of the church returned to honor the Hillsboro resident. Clay sits and prays during the service Sunday. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 12/28/08

I plan to do one of these posts from time to time and it is especially for you who are in journalism or for those hoping to get into journalism.  Not that it won’t help the rest of your guys, it is just that our business is in a bit of a tight spot right now and becoming more valuable to your company is a good way to remain employed.  There are many ways to do this and today’s post is only one of those many ways.

I was given an assignment on a recent Sunday afternoon to shoot a birthday portrait of a lady turning 100.  Our newspaper publishes the photo of anyone under five or over ninety on their birthday and we shoot many of these.  Obviously, there are a bunch more five and unders than there are in the over ninety crowd.  These assignments are traditionally a thumb nail size photo with a bio for the babies and a bit larger one column by three inch photo with bio for the elders.  My job order said the church where this lady attended was having a special celebration honoring her so they might run a little bit larger photo if the situation merited it.

Knowing I was going to an all African American church, I wasn’t too worried about being exactly on time.  I have been in several serivces in black churches and the clock tends to be irrelevant.  I arrived just about 2:15 with an assigned time of anywhere from 2:00 to 2:3o thinking I might have to wait a few minutes to make the photo.  Upon arrival I found a church full of people and the honoree sitting in a special chair right up front.  One of the lady’s relatives escorted me down front and I realized quickly that it was going to be more than a few minutes before this service ended.  The man speaking was in the middle of a full tribute to the birthday girl and there were several others waiting to speak.

The atmosphere was relaxed so I could move about a little bit without disturbing anyone so I found a place next to the church organ and knelt down and began shooting.  As the tribute continued I realized that this needed to be way more than a birthday portrait.  The little lady in the chair had influenced several generations of family, friends and church leaders and they were singing her praises, one guy literally singing to her.  The longer I stayed the more happy I was to have the photo assignment.  Sometimes you are around great people who are famous like actors or politicians or pro athletes.  This day I realized I was around a great person whom no one knew about outside of her small community.

I shot for almost an hour before the service ended and the tributes stopped.  When I got back to the office I went immediately to the assigning editor and told them about the experience and how I felt the lady’s story needed to be told.  A week later we ran a Living centerpiece on her and it would never have happened had I only gone there and shot my portrait and left.  I was able to add value to our photo assignment and hopefully contribute to this wonderful woman’s legacy by being a little more patient than normal and by shooting a lot more than my actual assignment required.

Yeah, that is a little thing but let me tell you about little things.  Even a big building is made up of little pieces and each piece contributes to the strength and stability and even the beauty of the whole.  When you are known for contributing a lot of little things that add value to your publication you are actually making your job more and more secure and your career more and more successful.  Everyone is always looking for the big thing.  Be the guy who nails the big things but don’t ever ignore doing that little bit extra every day.

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.

Christie Raney watches while Carolyn Burgess comforts Raney's mother Connie Patterson who is battling cancer. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 12/19/08

Okay class, this is what it is all about.  You will shoot literally thousands of assignments in your photojournalism career and your degree of success will depend on how many times you come back with “the moment” from that assignment.  And I am not just talking about the big football game or huge fire, I am talking about every day, every job getting the shot.  Sometimes that moment will not look all that dramatic and I have chosen photos for this post to illustrate that concept.  Most people will never even remember these pictures and certainly no one will remember them like they would a photo from a dramatic fire or big football game.

That said, the essence of the job is finding that definitive moment in your every day assignments.  This job was one of those you look at and think to yourself, “there may actually be something here!” The job was not a set up thing.  They were actually having a Christmas meal for a family that was struggling through some hard times.  The African American lady in the main photo is comforting a lady who is fighting through cancer.  The younger lady at left is her daughter and the story centers around them.  (That is why I didn’t crop the photo tighter.)  The moment is genuine and I had already just about given up on getting a genuine moment when this one happened.   The African American lady reached out to comfort the one suffering with cancer and there it was.  I don’t even want to think about how many photos like this I have missed over the years because I just wasn’t ready to shoot when it happened.

The family invited me to eat with them and I am always reluctant to eat on a photo assignment because of the possibility to miss a photo.  But this day there was no way to say no.  So I ate and ate as quickly as I could so I could be ready because I knew I didn’t have the moment yet.  This actually played into my hands, as well as my stomach, because eating with the family caused them to relax a bit and get used to me being there.  By the time I picked up the camera again no one was really paying attention to me and that is the situation you want.  I was able to shoot freely now with no one noticing my presence.

I also lit the room with a pair of Vivitar 285 HV strobes fired with Pocket Wizards.  I just wanted to mimic room light so they were both bounced off the ceiling.  I laid both strobes on a low freezer which was out of the frame and mostly behind me.  I used two strobes rather than one because that gave me more power with a quicker recycle time compared to using a single unit.  Now I am free from technical details and just focused on shooting.  This is really important because if you are fussing with equipment you are dealing with a distraction that can hurt your mental focus.  Staying mentally awake and free of distractions is a really important key to being able to nail the moment especially in these every day situations.  When the moment finally did happen I was ready for it and was able to get the shot.  Unfortunately that is not always the story.  You can see all the photos I turned in from this assignment in the gallery.

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.

Bounce flash in a very small gym with lots of white surfaces to bounce light from.

Did I fail to mention that it is basketball season again?  This is my least favorite sport to shoot and I guess I am lucky that I don’t cover too much of it any more since I am working mostly day shifts now but over the years I have covered hundreds, if not thousands, of basketball games.  It seems to be the season that never ends.  It does have its moments though and you get some of the best, funniest and even ugliest faces in photos during basketball games.  Way more than in other sports where faces are often obscured and you are very close to the action which increases your chances of good facial expression.  On top of that, if you shoot a lot of high school hoops like I have always done, you are most likely strobing the gym so you have great light on those expressions.

Well, you  have great light assuming that you can position your strobes in good locations and not end up with garish shadows crossing those great facial expressions.  So maybe now is the time for a little lighting primer.  Back in the day I used to always shoot with on camera direct flash which partially explains why I never really liked shooting high school hoops.  No amount of Photoshop can cure on camera flash in a dark gym.  It just is what it is.  Then one day my friend Corey Wilson came to work for The Decatur Daily.  He owned his own set of White Lightning strobes and he used them for every basketball game.  His stuff looked great and my stuff looked like I didn’t care.  I bummed strobes off of Corey every chance I got but that was not a good solution.  I finally convinced the boss to buy us a set of mono-lights we could use and then Corey left us to go to Green Bay and he took his lights with him.  I spent the next season and a half lugging in those AC powered mono-lights, stands and endless extension cords climbing all over the patrons trying to get everything hooked up, taped down and out of the way.

Finally one day, the light came on.  My boss bought me an SB800 to go with the SB28DX I was already carrying and just like that my shoulder began to recover from heavy mono-light syndrome.  Never heard of it?  That is an obvious deformity of the left shoulder leaving a deep indentation between the neck and shoulder joint which results from carrying that ever loving heavy bag in and out of crowded gymnasiums all winter long.  About that same time I discovered Strobist, God bless David Hobby, and my life was transformed.  Now I was going into those same gyms with about forty pounds less gear and getting essentially the same results.

I have made one more evolution in my lighting gear.  Now I am using a pair of Lumedynes I picked up used and they are wonderful.  They have more power than the SBs and are less bulky than the mono-lights.  A great compromise and they work wonderfully.  So how do you position the lights and yourself to make the most out of those small, dark high school gymnasiums.  I am so glad you asked.  Tonight, for instance, I worked in one of the two or three smallest gymnasiums in our area and it is not well lit either.  What it does have is that white padded insulation stuff all over the place in the ceiling and even on the walls above the concrete blocks.  So I could bounce my strobes into the ceiling and shoot basketball in a giant softbox.  Nice!  And it is almost compensation for shooting in a “cracker box” gymnasium.

Normally I have to use direct flash.  Most gymnasiums are a bit larger and less accommodating of bounce flash with ceilings that are either too high or simply not white.  Most high school gyms use the same basic layout.  They have bleacher seating down the sides and open ends with varying amounts of space between the baseline and the wall.  Some gymns have balconies or even tracks around the court area.  Some have full balconies running all the way around the gym and others have balconies just on the sides.  There is even one gym with balconies behind each basket, no baseline area at all and stands down both sides right up to the court.  Setting up strobes then becomes a work in gymnastics.  (Yeah, I planned that one.  Did you enjoy that little pun?)

The basic lighting scheme I use in almost every case where there are no balconies is two lights on light stands in the corners of the gym on either side of the basket I am shooting under.  I place them as high as I can get them and aim them to cross in the lane or at the top of the key.  It depends on how far back I can get the strobes.  The more distance behind the basket I can get the strobes the further up the court I aim them.  In those gyms where there is only a few feet between the basket and the back wall I cross the lights more toward the center of the lane to prevent light loss under the basket.

If there are balconies then I am very happy.  I can get my strobes much higher and I can get them out of the way of the majority of the foot traffic in the gym.  It is a constant worry that someone will trip over the light stands and knock them over or even hurt themselves.  I usually secure my light stands to something stationary with ball bungee cords or even tape.  An alternative to light stands are super clamps that allow you to physically clamp your strobe to something like a rail or a bar.  The gym usually dictates what you can do.  Nine times out of ten I have to shoot my strobes direct but every now and then I get to use bounce and it is really nice light.  Since I will never have the luxury of really setting a lighting scheme like you see in the big arenas I am not worried about darkening down my backgrounds so the bounce light is really nice.

I do not try and totally kill the ambient light in the gym.  A lot of people do and that is fine.  I like to have my ISO up around 800 and in most of our places this gives me a bit of illumination in the background to balance the lighting from the strobes.  I usually aim for an exposure of 1/250 at f2.8 ISO 800.  About 90 percent of all my high school hoops is done this way.  It is my preference and not any rule.  When I began shooting SBs in gyms this worked really well and I have continued it using my Lumedynes.  It all comes down to whatever works for you.  I just don’t like my backgrounds to be real dark because then it looks like photos are over strobed.

The photos with this post area combination of shots done with both bounce and direct flash.  Strobe positions are very similar with the difference being the size of the gyms and the ability or lack of ability to bounce.

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.

Nikon Professional Services loaned me a D700 a few weeks ago to go along with the 4oomm f2.8 which was stolen (I am coming for you dude, but enough of that!) and it is a really nice camera.  It is the little brother both literally and figuratively to the D3.  It is somewhat ironic that I began and ended my college football season in the Georgia Dome covering Alabama.  I used the D3 in the first game and the D700 in the second.

First of all, the D700 is a remarkable camera.  It can do 5 fps in the configuration I had from Nikon and 8 fps with the appropriate grip attached which is, I think, the Mbd10.  The camera is set up in the FX format giving you the heaven sent full frame sensor.  The camera is much lighter than the D3 and much smaller.  The down side of the construction is that the camera includes one of those irritating pop-up flashes that scream, “I am an amateur!”  I hate those things.  Why anyone would build a camera that costs basically $3,000 and put one of those cheap things on it is beyond me.  Anyone spending three grand on a camera might splurge for an add on flash.  Whatever.  It is a minor flaw in an otherwise nice camera.

The image quality is very similar to the D3.  I found the higher ISO images very clean.  The images I shot at ISO 4000 were just as clean as those I shot with the D3.  I can’t quantify this, it is only an impression, but the images from the D3 look marginally better than those from the D700 at high ISO.  It is a slight difference and not one that would cause me to spend $2,000 more for the D3.  That said, the D3 is a big boy camera and if I were choosing between the two with no regard for that extra money the D3 is the hands down choice.

The control setup is similar to that of the D3 or the D2H for that matter but not the same.  Because the motor drive is not integral the controls for white balance, ISO and image quality are moved to the top of the camera.  It is not a big deal just something I was not used to.  I have also become addicted to the vertical grip.  Man, it is tough to shoot verticals without that grip.  Back in the early days before I owned a camera with a motor drive I never even thought about it but once I had a vertical shutter release it is something I don’t want to do without.

The auto focus performance on this camera is truly remarkable.  I am not nearly as picky about AF as some folks evaluating cameras on the internet seem to be but no matter how picky you want to get this is a remarkable performer.  I actually like the AF performance on the D700 better than I like the AF performance on the D3.  No doubt the AF sensor is a little less sensitive on the D700 which suits my shooting style better.  The D3 was so touchy that any slip off that center AF sensor produced an immediate out of focus response.  The D700 gave me just a slight delay, nothing you would notice, but just enough so I had time to readjust my camera and catch some of those shots I might have missed.  That said, I like using the center AF sensor only.  I am not a big fan of all the focus tracking sensor arrays that allegedly track moving subjects when they leave your primary AF area.  Maybe it is that I have grown up on cameras where the AF sensors not in the center position are worthless so I learned early not to trust any AF sensor except that middle one.  This caused me to develop a shooting style that relies heavily on the center AF sensor to the complete disregard for all others.  Your shooting style may be different and you will get different results so this is just me.  Suffice it to say this is an amazing AF camera.

I referred to the D3 as My New Mistress in an earlier post.  While I like the D700 it wouldn’t make it to that level.  I like the camera but it left me a bit unmoved.  Maybe if I had shot it before the D3 I would have been more impressed.  It is not that there is a world of difference between the images the two bodies produce.  It is not really that there is a big difference in construction or quality.  Really, I can’t put my finger on it at all.  It is just a bad feeling about spending $3,000 for the camera.  I think that is it.  My feeling is the camera is over priced by about a thousand dollars.  For this camera with no vertical grip attached I would not personally be willing to drop three big bills on it.  Last time I checked, that is a bunch of money and if I were going to spend that much on a body I would just go ahead and bite the bullet and get a D3.  I guess that is the bottom line.  Drop the price to around $2,000 and I would jump on it.

Would I recommend the body?  Oh yeah!  This is a fantastic camera.  The money is a complaint I have about pretty much all photo gear but especially Nikon’s gear.  It has always been overpriced and it probably will always be overpriced.  What I do in most purchasing decisions is to do a cost/benefit analysis.  I try to determine if spending the money on a camera or lens or any piece of gear is going to yield an appreciably better result than I could get without that piece of equipment.  I was doing this long before the national economy got into a funk.  When you have a big family and not so big an income you learn early to evaluate all your purchasing decisions this way.  Is the camera worth the money?  For me as a member of a newspaper photo staff, the camera would be a great camera for our newspaper to buy because it is an excellent compromise between the price and image quality.  For me personally, this camera is a bit out of my range for the benefit it would produce.

The images in the gallery below are from the D3 and the D700.  Both images were shot at ISO 3200 and the D3 image was shot at 1/1250th at 2.8 while the D700 images was done at 1/1000th at f2.8.  The images were shot in NEF which is the Nikon Raw format and they were just opened directly in Photoshop with no image adjustments.  The JPG images were toned like they were when I sent them to our paper for publication.

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.

I suppose one of the early tips we had that Reece was not developing normally was that his speech was not progressing beyond rudimentary sounds.  He said, “Da, da, da” about as soon as any of the kids and that is normally a baby’s first sound.  It’s just that he never progressed.  At one year old most other kids have already developed a fairly entertaining vocabulary but even taking into account the differences in children Reece was not making progress.

Two weeks ago, Reece began speech therapy with Karen Gannaway in Decatur.  I made my first trip with him just this past week and to say that it was entertaining would be an understatement.  It is always a little bit painful to watch him go through his physical therapy because he usually cries his way through it.  The therapists are not hurting him but just to see him in so much distress kind of hurts even when I know he is getting stronger and more mobile every time.  Speech therapy is a lot more fun for Reece and a lot more fun to watch.

Reece really has a thing for mirrors.  Karen has a full length mirror in her room and Reece simply loves it.  She has a hard time prying him away.  All his life Reece has been attracted to his own reflection.  He just wants to love on that baby in the mirror.  He goes right to the reflection and starts to give the baby in the mirror a big kiss.  I have no idea if he makes the connection yet that the baby in the mirror is him or if he just likes to be with others his own size.  Who knows?  It is fascinating and entertaining to watch.

Karen has Reece learning his “p” sound and his “m” sound.  We reinforce any attempt he makes at any sound but especially these.  The teaching method is not really all that different for Reece than it would be for any of us.  You make the sound and associate it with an object or an action or a person and the repetition in various forms helps him retain and understand the sound.  For instance, Karen blew bubbles for Reece then let him pop the bubble.  She would say, “pop!” whenever he would reach out and pop one.  Rhymes help too.  We are now doing the Itsy bitsy spider, row, row, row your boat and rock a bye baby among others.  And Reece is now giving kisses.  We worked on that one for a while but now when you ask for a kiss good ol’ Reece will pucker up and lay a big, sloppy kiss on you.  Very cool!

All of this is a learning experience for our whole family.  I am amazed at how well the other kids do with Reece and what a delight he is to have in our home.  Reece has less to offer and more to give than any kid I have seen.  There is not a thing he can do for you but he gives you so much in terms of joy and happiness and love.  I don’t know if I will ever understand that but I can observe it.  I guess that is just part of the miracle that he is.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.

Y’all tired of football updates?  I thought I would change things up a bit and revert to my commercial photography education.  Really, I didn’t learn much of this stuff in college.  I actually learned most of it by trial and error.  You know, if you see something in a magazine story or and advertisement and you know you can’t duplicate it with your current skill set you basically have two options.  First, you could just say, “Well, that is beyond me.  I don’t have the tools or the knowledge so I am just moving on.”  OR, you could decide to learn how to do it.  That is what happened to me.  I was shooting some table top stuff for a company I worked for and my stuff wasn’t looking like the high dollar magazine shoots I saw in magazine ads.

I could have just bagged it and said I don’t have the gear.  That is the easy way out.  Instead, I really wanted my small product work to look professional.  Now, at The Decatur Daily, I have to shoot advertising as well as editorial.  That is the curse of the small newspaper world.  I could complain about it and do a crappy job or I could take pride in my work and make it the best I can regardless.  I took the latter approach.  Several years ago, our business manager decided that the jewelry ads in the newspaper were not good enough and he wanted the photo staff to do the shots.  Now you have to understand, the jewelry shots he was rejecting were done by a professional ad agency.  This did not look promising.  Did I mention that we were not given any budget to buy additional equipment or get additional training?

I began by setting up a basic table top light tent completely home made.  I used a piece of 3/4 inch mdf board for a base and then used PVC pipe to construct a frame work over that.  I then hung a white fabric over that frame and had a light tent.  Not what the big boys use, but hey, it worked.  The problem was it was fairly complicated to set up and required a lot of time.  I have migrated away from the light tent and now use a basic overhead light source, usually and umbrella quite close to the product and directly overhead.  I then use white fill cards placed around the object as necessary.

One of the most important things to remember when doing shiny objects is that they “see” whatever you show them.  You don’t want the shiny metal to reflect you, your camera, the walls, another person standing nearby or pretty much anything to distract from the piece itself.  Using white reflectors is a great way to help the jewelry “see” what you want it to.  And what you want it to see is a blank, white surface in almost every case.  I usually use a sheet of white foam that is available at the Hobby Lobby for under a dollar.  I lean my light stand against the table so that my umbrella is over the set and use the foam sheets to create the nice white surface I want the jewelry to see.  The white foam also acts like a fill card to give me a more well rounded light.  So what I get is a result that is similar to what a high dollar ad shoot would yield and I get that with a set up time of less than five minutes and a financial investment that is pennies on the dollar to what the big boys are doing.

The results are very nice and only someone with a very discerning eye will know the difference between mine and theirs.  This basic concept can be modified to a multiple light set with no trouble whatever.  You can add colored foam reflectors to add a bit of warmth to the shot and you can use black to accomplish subtractive lighting.  (That is basically taking away highlights and fill light rather than adding them.)  You will be able to go in and produce great results with nothing more than what you have in your bag right now.  It is cool, cheap and produces great results.  It just takes a little practice.  And the concept can be applied to any static set all the way up to automobiles so you can shoot anything from a diamond ring to a Ferrari using this basic concept.  Cool huh!

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.

Alabama defensive lineman Terrence Cody walks off the field following Alabama's 31-20 loss to Florida in the SEC Championship Game.

And I am not talking about the game either.  I had a loaned 400mm f2.8 from Nikon Professional Services stolen while I was covering the post-game dejection/jubilation right from in front of Georgia Dome Security.  The thief could only have been another photographer.  The lens shade and monopod were found in one of the photo workrooms after the game.  All I can say is that really stinks and the person who did this violated every tenant of ethics and trust that we subscribe to in this business.

The game itself was very good for about three quarters then Florida put on a fourth quarter surge to claim a 31-20 victory.  My feeling going into the game was that Florida would probably win but that Alabama had a really good football team and the game would be very competitive.  It lived up to the billing.  As our sports editor Mark Edwards put it, the difference in the game was that Florida has the best football player in the country on their team and Alabama does not.  That player is, of course, Tim Tebow.  This is the first time I have shot a game involving Tebow and he is more impressive in person than he is on TV and he is plenty impressive on TV.  He may not win the Heisman again this year but it won’t be because he doesn’t deserve it.

I shot the game with the same gear as at the Iron Bowl, the 400mm f2.8 with a D700 and a Nikon D2Hs with an 80-200.  At times I switched bodies around depending on how close I was to the action.  We ran a huge, for us anyway, section just on the SEC Championship.  We had an 8 page section wrapped around our normal sports section and we ran a lead story on A1 with photo.  That meant a bunch of photos.  I had plenty of shots to cover the sections and slide show for the internet. You can view the slide show here.

The primary trouble in covering this game was just mobility.  The sidelines were full of shooters, still and video, and moving up and down the field is really tough.  I favored an end zone position for most of the game but that meant long jogs from one end of the field to the other carrying a lot of gear.  Fun times and judging by the outcome, I would really still be loving it to carry that lens around (nasty thief!).  Okay, I know, I have vented enough.

Covering the game was a blast.  It was my first SEC Championship game and I was thrilled to be there shooting.  We have had teams in the Championship before but someone on staff always seemed to be from Georgia and got to go shoot the game.  I was feeling a little bit of pressure because our paper was running the extra section and the big lead photo on page one.  Still, pressure is a good thing as long as you control it and don’t allow it to control you.  That is kind of an important point.  When you are covering any big assignment it is easy to get caught up in the pressure and get swamped.  I learned how to handle pressure when I was a volunteer firefighter.  There is no pressure in photojounalism like in the fire service where your actions can literally determine the life and death of people.  What I found to be true in fire service was that in those high tension times you perform well because your training kicks and you do things automatically.  In other words, you don’t think too much about what you are doing you simply do what your training dictates in the moment.  The only times I ever really felt fear as a firefighter were in those rare situations where I had not been trained to handle something.  As a photojournalist you have been trained to handle yourself in terms of equipment and through your education and then through your own experiences.  Don’t allow nerves to distract you, allow them to motivate and drive you.  Then you will perform your best.  Whenever I “try” to do really good is when I generally under perform.  When I simply go with the flow of the moment I usually get outstanding results.

For what it is worth, this SEC Championship was a mixed bag for me.  I got plenty of good action but I didn’t feel like I got “the moment.”  I didn’t see it and miss it, I just never saw it.  Some games have a really defining play in visual terms and I never found that play in this game.  Maybe others did.  I don’t know but I didn’t.  So in the final evaluation of my own performance I would have to say that my performance was good but not great.  It is a good thing to evaluate yourself but don’t be too hard on yourself.  If you underperform there will be another day.  If you knock it out of the park there is still going to be another day so don’t get to bummed on the bad days and don’t get too high on the good days because you will have plenty of both in your career.  Just go out today and do your best.  Oh, and have some fun doing it!

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  These photos are intended for the viewing/instruction of readers of Alittlenews.  Any other use is strictly prohibited.  Downloading or republication of NCAA football photos is prohibited.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

The annual Iron Bowl is in the books and it could be called the retribution bowl as Alabama vented six years of frustration on Auburn with a 36-0 pounding.  The game was played in a continual mist of rain, not bad rain but enough to be annoying and enough to make you keep rain covers on your gear.  That’s no big deal except it makes you have to focus on routine maneuvers with your cameras.  It could have been much worse.  It could have been cold for one thing and it could have been really raining.  The only real side effect was the weather made a day game look a lot like a night game.

This Iron Bowl marked the completion of two very different season.  For Alabama the game marked the completion of a 12-0 regular season and sealed the number one ranking going into the SEC Championship where they will play Florida which is probably the hottest team in the nation right now.  For Auburn it marked the merciful end to what can only be the worst year in the Tommy Tuberville era.  Auburn’s offense was the worst major college offense I have ever seen.  They could not move the ball much less score points.

So the big game was not so big this year with Auburn being so low coming in but it was still the big game in Alabama as it is every year.  I covet this game.  I want to be there because I know all the best shooters in the state are going to be there and, of course, in a big year like this one for Alabama Sports Illustrated is going to be there.  So yeah, I want to be in that mix to test myself against the best in the state.  And this year, I think I had my best Iron Bowl, especially in terms of peak action photos.  A lady at church this morning said, “God really put you in the right place all day didn’t He.”  I couldn’t agree more.  I also got a nice photo of Rolando McClain celebrating which was one of my goals.  Rolando is a graduate of Decatur High so he is a homegrown product and the starting middle linebacker for the Tide.  Another Decatur High grad, Jerraud Powers, plays corner back for Auburn and he is one of their best defenders.  Clearly, getting good photos of those two was something I wanted to do.

Deangelo McDaniel, one of the Daily’s reporters who is also a photographer on the side, went to the game with me after my photojournalist co-worker Jernomio Nisa became ill at the last minute so Deangelo and I shot the game together.  It is always great to have two shooters at a game like this because if one of you miss something the chances are the other one will get it.

I used a Nikon D700 and 400mm f2.8s that Nikon Professional Services graciously loaned to me.  That camera is the little brother to the D3 and it rocks just about as much as the D3 does.  I shot most of the second half at ISO 4000 and it was sweet, noiseless and wonderfully sharp.  The only thing I lacked was the battery grip that gives the camera 8fps.  I can’t say enough about the performance of this little full frame wonder.  It was a fantastic camera.  Many thanks to NPS for the loaner.  They have helped me shoot many big games over the years.  Without their assistance my photos would have been nowhere near as good as they were.  The other gear I used was a Nikon D2Hs and 80-200 which I barely touched.  The 400 was just perfect on the full-frame D700.  For the post game stuff, I shot a 17-35 f2.8 on the D700.  I have never used a flash for the post game stuff.  I like the stadium light and there is enough light I don’t really need to supplement.

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.