A Little News

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.

Dr. Charles Elliott photographed with a D2Hs, 17-35mm lens and lit with a lumedyne 200ws strobe bounced in an umbrella.

We are frequently shooting portraits of people being honored for some reason or other and these are great opportunities to do what I call a dignified portrait.  This is a totally made up phrase and I just like the way it sounds.  You can see a lot of this kind of portrait work in corporate publications such as annual reports and that kind of thing.  For photojournalism I would avoid the soft look that a lot of those style portraits use because that is just not what we do; however, the lighting styles are things that can be copied and employed for these type portraits.

This lighting style is something that I actually learned while watching people work who are real portrait photographers.  By that I mean they make their living shooting portraits.  They learned a long time ago how to make a person look dignified and it has a lot to do with the lighting style employed.  If you look at a fine portrait done in the dignified style you will notice one thing for sure.  The lighting is very simple.  You don’t want to be throwing all kinds of gelled strobes around on these shoots.  I usually try and employ only one strobe and an umbrella.  You could just as easily use a soft box but they are pretty expensive relative to the umbrella so I carry and use the umbrella.  The only other light is ambient.

The ambient light can be very strong, directional light or it can be soft, almost unnoticeable light from a window.  You can even do this with no ambient and a single light.  This is a bit risky at my paper because our press does not handle dark really well so I usually don’t do the really low key style portrait because it tends to turn into an ink blot on the press.  That said, dark areas in a portrait can carry some heavy psychological weight but that is a post for another day.

The essence of this style portrait is to convey the honor of the event.  I have done several of these portraits recently and I have used a single Lumedyne in an umbrella for all of them.  The exception is when I shot a pair of brothers back lit by direct sunlight.  I shot that one direct with only a 1/2 stop diffuser in place but the lighting style worked well.  It was for a profile story and doesn’t fit this mold exactly but I am including it to illustrate the uses for a single light in this portrait style.

There was a time when I didn’t like doing portraits all that much.  I felt like that was for studio photographers to do so I basically tried to avoid them.  I thought a portrait was just something you shot with your subject on a posing stool so I was kind of turned off by the whole thing.   Then I discovered the environmental portrait.  No studio.  I like that.  As I got better with my lighting skills I found portrait photography to be quite engaging.  Then I discovered how much you can show about a person in a portrait, their character, their nature, even their interests.  Suddenly the portrait took on a new life for me.  Now I look forward to shooting portraits.  I have found that I can bring out so much about a person through the portrait.  Portraiture has become a fascinating field of photography for me as I have discovered what so many other people already knew.

No doubt, you guys will experiment with your own portraits and your own style and develop your own way of doing the dignified portrait.  Let us know when you’ve got a good one and share with class. You can see a beautiful example of this style of portrait by Jay Janner who is a photojournalist for the Austin American Statesman in Austin, TX. If you have not already discovered his excellent work through the blogroll, take a minute to check him out now.

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.

Ernestine Robinson

Ernestine Robinson is a forceful woman.  She is a woman whom I admire and enjoyed photographing.  Decatur Daily writer Deangelo McDaniel and I went to interview her on election night as Barak Obama was about to become the nation’s first black president.  Robinson marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights wars, and they were wars in Alabama, and she knows what it cost to see a black man standing before the nation as president elect.  She was one of those who helped pay that price.

I wanted to do a really dignified portrait of her and I had done some previsualization on my drive down to Moulton.  As often happens, my ideas had to be tossed out the window as soon as I got there because there was no location in her house where I could do what I had envisioned.  Situation normal.  I still had a basic lighting scheme in mind and this I was able to apply.  You have heard me say it before, have a lighting scheme or two that you are comfortable with and can fall back on.  That way you want be stumbling all over yourself when you actually go on location.

I knew I wanted to use the Octobank for a big, soft light and I knew I wanted to use a second light as a background fill or, if needed, as a secondary light on the subject.  What I wanted to avoid at all cost was a front light of any sort.  I wanted a dramatic quality to the portrait because I already knew something of her story.  What I ended up doing with my lighting scheme was not too far off what I had previsualized.  Instead of a portrait in the classic sense, I ended up doing and interview portrait which is sometimes better than a strictly posed shot and sometimes not.  I managed to squeeze in a couple of images of her looking at the camera near the end of the shoot.

The problems I faced in her home were mainly ones of spacing and background.  Her home is pretty normal, no big open areas and the collections of a lifetime around her in the form of photos, nick knacks, and quite a number of indoor plants.  I initially decided to just set up and use the window with a blind as the background.  She was already in place doing the interview there so it made sense.  I placed my main light in the kitchen doorway to the camera left and almost in a side light position.  This light was a Lumedyne strobe in the Octobank.  The background light was an SB800 on about 1/8th power aimed straight up the blind.  After a few shots I decided this simply was not working.  I was also struggling with my lens choices.  I didn’t have my full frame Canon with me and was using a Nikon D2Hs which I sometimes have trouble with because I don’t have a mid-range zoom leaving me with a feeling of never having exactly the right lens.  I tried the 17-35, a 50mm manual and the 80-200.  Nothing felt totally right.

After deciding that the background wasn’t working, I moved a little to the right and used the wall where I was getting a nice light falloff from the Octobank and now moved the SB800 behind her and off her shoulder to give a little separation.  I turned that strobe down even more to about 1/32nd power.  Now I felt a bit of a visual groove and she was animated while speaking to Deangelo.  The pictures flowed from this angle and I was able to use  the 50mm and the 80-200 effectively.  I was getting a nice rim light which worked well but decided to move the main light a bit more to the front because I was afraid of going too dark for our printing press.

Mrs. Robinson said one thing that really struck me while we were working with her.  She told Deangleo that she never dreamed there would be a day in her lifetime when she would be able to vote for a black man for president of the United States.  As I considered all she had been through to be able to vote for Barak Obama that day, I found a new appreciation for the courage it took for her and for all those who put so much on the line to just obtain the basic rights afforded to the rest of society.  I am about as conservative as it gets and Mr. Obama was not my choice but as I sat there and talked with Mrs. Robinson I decided that we would be alright as a nation especially if we can look across the table at one another and see more similarities than differences.

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.

Once in a while you will need to light two people from opposite directions and maintain similar lighting quality on both subjects.  This is a little how to that may help you when you run across this situation on one of your assignments.  Now, honestly, I created this problem for myself.  I didn’t have to shoot the photo this way.  This was, in fact, a desperate attempt to create an interesting photo from a situation that simply lacked visual zip.  Ronnie Thomas writes a weekly people featuer called Real People and I love working on these assignments with Ronnie.  We have met so many interesting people over the years and I have made more really nice pictures working on Real People assignments than on any other regular assignment I can think of.

Rosemary Hodges talks with fellow professor Tina Sloan at Athens State University. Sloan wrote a book about about her childhood growing up in Detroit, AL while Hodges spent much of her life in Detroit, MI. The two have become friends and educate one another on the finer points of life in their respective home towns. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/15/08

This particular feature was on two ladies who were both from Detroit, one from Detroit, MI and one from Detroit, AL.  Just listening to the interview was excellent and very entertaining especially having a “yankee” wife myself.  So many of the crossing culture stories were familiar to me and funny too.  Anyway, the photo was just of the two ladies while they were being interviewed.  Keeping Ronnie out of these photos is always a challenge because he really gets into the interview and he ends up edging closer to the subject all the time and getting into my frame.  Like I said, we have been doing this for a long time so I can just tell him to step back without any problems.  I had shot several front and side view setups and the photo just wasn’t clicking for me.  We were on the front porch of Founders Hall on the campus of Athens State University where they are both professors and there are beautiful columns there so I really wanted to work in the columns but there was just no way to make it happen.

This is a view showing the same set up but with front lighting by a single umbrella.

Then the light came on.  You know, that cool little bulb above your head that you see in cartoons.  Hey, with 8 kids I still have an excuse man!  I was fortunate to have my EOS 5D with me which has a full frame sensor.  I snapped on a 20mm and got behind the ladies shooting out.  Only problem, I couldn’t get them both in the frame while looking through the viewfinder because I was too close to them.  I didn’t want to move them and break the mood because they had a really nice exchange going.  And I noticed my light was not going to cover both ladies especailly with one being dark skinned and the other light skinned.  I had only one of my Lumedynes and it was set up in an umbrella.  So I used my voice activiated light stand and fired a second, hand held Vivitar 285HV.  (The voice activated light stand is my reporter!  They need something to do, right?!)

I positioned by umbrella mounted strobe behind the lady on the left aimed at the lady on the right and had Ronnie take up a similar position behind the lady on the right with the strobe aimed at the lady on the left.  Still with me?  Now it was only a tweak or two to balance the lights.   I held my camera against the brick wall behind the ladies to get enough coverage and just chimped until I had my framing right.  What I ended up with is a well lit moment that actually looks pretty natural in terms of the lighting and really nice interaction between the two ladies so the photo has a nice feel to it.  I was pretty happy with the outcome and it resulted from just not settling for another photo but pushing a little here and there until I found the picture within the situation.

By the way, there usually is a picture buried somewhere in just about every assignment and digging it out is most of the challenge of any job I shoot.  It is just too easy to walk away with an average shot.  A real pro will seldom settle for just another photo.  Push, dig, elbow, furrow your brow, bang your head against a wall, whatever it takes until you get the photo.  Then you can go home at night and know you earned your money but more importantly, you will know that you got just a little bit better.

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.

Now that I have your attention… What a great job that allows so much flexibility. You may be shooting a traffic accident, a ball game, a city government meeting, a chicken house, or you might be shooting a piece on a romance novelist. I had an assignment last week to do just that. Now how cool is that?

Lynn Raye Harris is a novice novelist, okay, I just had to say that. She is actually an accomplished writer with published work but she has not yet been published as a novelist. Our story was based upon her recently winning a contest sponsored by Harlequin. I went to the assignment not knowing anything more than where she lived and that she was a romance novelist. Not much to go on. Fortunately, she was very easy to work with and she was fascinated by the photographic process. So basically I went in with a blank slate. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to do a “romantic” portrait if she was at all a candidate for that treatment. That is a nice way of saying I would shoot a romantic portrait if she was not an old hag wearing the pink feather boa and the fru fru pink house shoes with the fuzzy rings around the top. I know, enough of the stereotyping already!

Fortunately, Lynn was not an old hag and she was very agreeable to doing any kind of photo we could dream up. We began the shoot attempting a romantic portrait. My lighting set up was a basic three light set with a bit of a twist. I had an octobank that I had borrowed from my friend David Higginbotham and I used it for my main light. The octobank is a large, soft light source that is amazing. I mounted a Lumedyne 200ws head in the octobank and we started with it very, very close to Lynn. Keep in mind that the closer a light source is to your subject, the softer it will appear and the octobank is a double diffused light modifier so it is really soft when used up close. I also used another Lumedyne head with a snoot for a hair light.

I was shooting at about f11 so the ambient light was essentially nil leaving me with nothing but darkness in the background. This was a mixed blessing because I was able to use that darkness in another photo but it killed me on this one. To cure the problem, I took an SB800 and set it on the mantle behind her and aimed it down on about 1/4 power to give me a little fill. This created the specular highlight behind her and added to the rim lighting. Now the snooted Lumedyne was not getting it done so I took off the snoot and added a red gel. Actually, I did not have a red gel so I borrowed a kitchen hand towel from Lynn and draped it over the second Lumedyne and moved it very close behind her. The towel was thick and really knocked down the strobe. This gave me a soft red fill light completing the first photo.

While Lynn was being interviewed for our story, I moved the octobank to a position exactly beside one of the windows in her living room and jacked up the power and raised the light stand to about 8 feet. This approximated the window lighting but with enough power to shoot with. I used the other Lumedyne as a bounce light off the ceiling and set it in the adjacent kitchen to provide some secondary fill. This also mimicked the direction of some available light. This set up allowed me to accomplish the second photo.

Now, I still wanted something of a more sensual, dramatic quality if I could. Remember the darkness I had to overcome in the first photo? I used that here to my advantage. I turned off the second Lumedyne and just used the one in the octobank and shot in profile against the dark mantle. Now I had a rim lighting effect by doing nothing but shooting in profile against a dark background. The octobank did all the work. I just tuned my exposure a bit to get the rim lighting like I wanted it and then waited for the right moment. I had several photos where she leaned forward and brought her chin up giving me a somewhat sensual look without being over the top. Since I was not posing this part of the shoot, I just watched while she was talking and noticed that she would do this from time to time when she was either thinking about something or talking about something that she was really into.

I shot all these photos with a Canon EOS 5D and either the 24-70 or 70-200. The strobes were fired with Pocket Wizards. The octobank is not something I am going to use frequently. It takes several minutes to assemble the thing and it is bulky and it is not appropriate for every situation but man, where it is appropriate it really is nice. Unfortunately, I have to give it back to Dave someday. Hopefully Lynn gets published soon and she hires me to take her photo for the book jacket and we both get filthy rich! Right! Well, here’s hoping anyway and good luck to Lynn on her novel.

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.

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.

Joe Johnston, a staff photographer for the Tribune in San Luis Obispo in California, gets the nod as our featured reader photo of this week. Joe’s portrait of Cal Poly pitcher Eric Massingham has a lot going for it and I wanted to point out some of the strong points.

First, the lighting is excellent. If you look at the photo and do a little Strobist exercise you can see Joe used two lights. His main light is a Canon strobe shot through an umbrella about a foot away from the guy’s face. The second light is positioned about four feet out of the frame to the left and is direct and about a +1 stop hotter than the main light giving him the excellent separation.

The next thing you are going to see is how Joe used a low angle to give him a clean, and interesting background. When ever you have a poor background, go low angle. The sky is an endlessly variable background that is totally free. Use it liberally. The slightly overcast condition also gives him some depth and texture in the background which adds a layer of interest. Although Joe did not tell me this in his description, I suspect he has underexposed the sky by at least 1/2 stop allowing the strobes to set the key of the photograph.

I highly recommend you check out Joe’s Flickr photostream. It is a beautiful collection of photos that will inspire you. Also check out a story Joe did for the Tribune. The story details a kayak trip he and a reporter did along the Pacific coast covering 100 miles in six days. Okay, now he is just showing off but if you live on the California coast, why not? Joe is 34 years old and has been at the paper for the past eight years. He has been a working photojournalist for ten years total.

Photos copyright Joe Johnston, The Tribune.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of The Decatur Daily or The Tribune.

Not too long ago, my co-worker Jonathan Palmer did a super shot of a guy driving his classic V-Dub beetle. He did the shot in fairly low light and used a strobe inside the car to provide the illumination. You can check out JP’s shot in his November gallery on his blog. The only problem is the image did not run. Well, it was a problem for Jonathan but a great boon to me. I loved the shot and though that it would be good to use the concept some time in the future.

Low and behold, I had the opportunity just last week. We were doing a story on a man who uses classic Rolls Royce autos in his limo business. The day was miserable, in fact I did the shoot between covering the two tornadoes last Friday. The man lives in the country so his home had to be the setting. I needed to get a portrait of him and I needed to limit the background which was a plowed field. I used Jonathan’s internal lighting scheme with a Vivitar 285HV laid on the seat beside him. The ambient light on the field was about 1/2 stop below the strobe and the front of the car was at least one stop below the strobe.

The real key to making this happen was to position the car so that some dark foliage was strategically blocking the light from the sky so I could see him inside the car. He had some tall evergreens in his yard that allowed me to have the area of windshield where he was seated to be free from the reflected sky light. Keep in mind that shiny objects will reflect whatever they “see.” This applies to a table top product shot just as well as it does to a car’s windshield. You can see my slacks reflected in some of the chrome on the front of the car. There was just nothing I could do about that.

The shot has real nice contrast because the paint is dark which creates a low key feel but the chrome gives some really nice highlight and, combined with the strobe, makes the shot really work from the lighting standpoint. I did the two versions you see here and we ran the tighter shot which was my favorite. The photo ran with a couple of other images that showed more of the car. For those of you reading this in the English Isles, the Rolls Royce is no big deal and you see them all the time. Let’s just say they are pretty rare in North Alabama so showing the car was a major part of the assignment.

Now when you check out Jonathan’s shot, you should know that he did his while driving down the road in front of the other car with his Canon D1 and a 300 2.8 hand held, out the window, backwards and without looking through the viewfinder. And he nailed it on the first frame. Jonathan is known by some around here as a legend, or just J-Ledge for short. By the way, he and I are partners in a real estate venture selling ocean front property in Arizona so drop us a line if you are interested. The prices are incredible!

About the photos: Both shots were done using a Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 f2.8 lens, pocket wizards and a Vivitar 285HV. I believe the Vivitar was set to 1/4 power and was aimed at the roof of the car on its widest zoom setting. The exposure for ambient was about one stop under the metered exposure to ensure the car would drop down to a true black allowing the chrome and the guy to shine.

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