sun in an empty room

Shades of Gray in the Gulf

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:08:46 -0500

Just got my film back from the Gulf Coast and took a quick look. I was hoping to shoot mostly film on my trip, but had a camera malfunction as my Mamiya 6 got doused with water while I was out kayaking one day. Thankfully the camera survived, and the result was a few altered images including the first one here.

Evidence: Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:52:28 -0500

Last week, I spent some time covering the oil spill along the Gulf Coast. One beach on Grand Isle, LA was especially hard hit and I decided to shoot a small series of the affected landscape on white. Here's what I found.

Rock

Styrofoam boom

Sand

Hermit crab

Plastic water bottle

Plant

As usual, these images are available on the Redux Pictures Archive.

RIP Manute Bol, 1962-2010

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:56:31 -0500

I was saddened to hear about Manute Bol's death last week. I remember watching him play basketball and blocking shots like no one I'd ever seen. This clip encapsulates the player I remember - sometimes blocking multiple shots in one possession and occasionally lofting a 3 pointer.

I met and photographed Mr. Bol last year in DC and in preparing for the shoot, did some reading about his life and work. It turns out that basketball was really just the first act for him, and he devoted his years after basketball to the plight of Sudanese refugees and worked to find an end to the genocide in Sudan, often at great personal risk and sacrifice. In person, he walked slightly stooped over from the injuries he suffered in a car accident, and was slow to lower himself down in the chair where I photographed him. He was also kind, with a gentle handshake and soft voice.

When we wrapped up, I remember saying something like "Thank you for all of the work you do," and he smiled, touched his hand to my shoulder and walked out.

Carry Me Ohio by Matt Eich

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:18:54 -0500

I've been fortunate to be a part of APhotoADay, a photographic mailing list, for over ten years now and that's where I first saw Matt Eich's work.

From the very first pictures that came across the list, his work had an intimacy to it I rarely see. His first book bears the mark of a photographer who has given himself to his subjects and in return, been allowed access to their every day - the moments between moments when not much but daily living is happening.

There is a weight to these images, to the honest look at hard lives in one of the more economically-bleak areas of the country. But this book is not about the economic downturn, but about specific people who struggle to make their lives work and about a place seemingly designed to make this difficult.

I'd recommend getting this book immediately, but unfortunately it was a limited printing of 100 copies and already sold out. Here's hoping for a 2nd printing so more people can share in Matt's work.

Drinking with Christopher Hitchens

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:12:55 -0500

Journalist/Writer Christopher Hitchens for Good Weekend

The gift Christopher Hitchens gave me when he answered the door at his apartment wasn't a stiff drink (though that was repeatedly offered), but something photographers dream of getting with their subjects-- complete honesty and an utter lack of care about how he looked. The only caveat was his sensitivity to light, so I did my best not to blast him with any direct light.

And no, I didn't end up drinking with Mr. Hitchens. Against my better judgment, I refused all drink offers, though in retrospect downing a few drinks might have given me even more time with him. Here's a few more that I liked from the shoot.

10 Things to Do when the Phone Isn't Ringing

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:32:14 -0500

The summer is often a slow season for photographers - editors go on vacation and those spaces between phone calls or emails can extend into long days. I've been fortunate to have less of those days and weeks as my career has progressed, but I've also come to recognize these little spaces of time as gifts that allow for a little reflection, personal growth, promotion and career development. Here are a few things I try to do this when I'm given this time.

Get better. As Steve Martin said, the key to success is being "undeniably good." There's no end to this journey of improvement and change. Being good takes time, self-honesty and focused attention. Practicing your craft shouldn't just occur on shoots you're being paid for, but on your own time as well. This might mean spending a day in your studio/garage working out some new lighting setups or pursuing a personal project that allows you to take some risks and fail spectacularly.
Share something. Whether it's a blog post, phone call or taking the time to write to an aspiring photographer who sent you an email, sharing is beneficial to both parties. The key here is to remember this is not a zero sum game. You don't lose your competitive advantage when you talk about how you run your business/light a subject/process an image. Instead, you become the person other people come to for inspiration. The "new economy" or whatever you want to call it, rewards those who share, the gift-givers.
Work on your Search Engine Optimization. Right now this means Google. PhotoShelter has been preaching this forever and has so much good information (and is a great example of a gift-giver), that it's really the only place worth going for this information (without getting into the nitty-gritty). And yes, doing this well (along with being a good photographer) translates into real, paying jobs and attracting new clients you would never reach otherwise.
Promote yo'self. Do you have a marketing plan scheduled out for the year? Do you know how much you plan to spend this year on reaching out to editors/art buyers/etc.? Do you regularly send out emailers/portfolios/scratch 'n' sniff postcards? When is your next trip to New York to meet with editors and show them a new portfolio? Promotion is a multipronged beast and doing just one thing (like having a web site), is not enough. At the same time, the old ways of promoting yourself may no longer be as effective.
Social media as a participatory medium. Checking your Facebook and Twitter feeds is a way to procrastinate and waste time, as is posting inane status updates (of which I'm as guilty of as the next person). Still, social media can be a useful tool - figure out what mixture of personal and professional you want to present to the world and begin participating.
Pitch a story. This isn't just something that photojournalists can do. Every time I meet with editors in New York I hear pleas to send them story ideas. As always, know your audience and make sure your pitch is relevant and targeted to whoever you're sending it to. I've also found pitches to be much more effective when you've already shot some photos on the subject.
Give thanks. Take the time to hand write a thank you note to an editor. These cut through the clutter and are a nice bookend to completing a job.
Think about the future. I just finished up Seth Godin's Linchpin (great interview here) which talks about how one can be successful in this changing, post-industrial world and highly recommend it to any photographer looking to make their mark. In a broader sense, I try to set specific short-term and long-term goals (more of a "to do" list actually) that can I turn to whenever I have free time rather than procrastinating.
Do something different. Plant a garden, read The Economist, ride your bike. Being well-rounded is an asset to your growth as a person and as a photographer.
Back up your photos! Nothing like holding my most obvious and pedestrian piece of advice for last. Doing this doesn't ever seem to pay off, until the moment it does. I'd also highly recommend cloning your bootable drive so that if it crashes, you can be up and running again in minutes, not hours.

Review of the Paul Buff Einstein Studio Lights

Thu, 13 May 2010 18:14:55 -0500

See July 2010 Update at bottom of review I don't do much in the way of equipment reviews, but I thought I'd share some thoughts on the new Einstein lights from Paul Buff. I've been using the same four AlienBee B800 lights for almost ten years. The lights have been across the country many times and survived being dropped, blown over in the wind and just plain kicked around.

My only issues with them have come from my own bad judgment. In one case, I used the lights in the rain and one of them started smoking (and smelling remarkably like Chinese food). I shipped the light back to Paul Buff and had it back in two weeks for less than $75. I've also broken the flash tubes a couple of times and now take a few extra with me whenever I go on a shoot.

In short, these lights have worked flawlessly for me, and it's only recently as I've attempted to exert a little more control over my lighting setups that I've noticed the slight variations in color temperature from picture to picture. I've also been wanting a little more power than I currently have, especially when shooting outside. Two Einstein lights arrived at my door last week, just in time for a few shoots where I got to try them out.

A few quick observations
Out of the box, the Einstein feels more solid and are clearly heavier (specs say at least 1 lb. more than AB800s, or similar weight to AB1600s). There's definitely a more professional feel to these lights overall. I'm sure I'm not the only professional who gaffer taped over the fluorescent logos on the AlienBees in an attempt to make them a bit more understated.

In my hand, the Einsteins are very front heavy. A few times I've held them in the middle of the light to mount on a light stand and felt them nearly slip out of my hands. On the plus side, the light stand mount is set farther back on the light. This allows you to tilt a beauty dish farther forward without it hitting the light stand, which had been an ongoing issue for me.

I was in New York last week and spent some time playing with the different lighting systems at B&H. The user interface on these lights is like nothing I've seen on any other system. The flash actually takes a couple of seconds to boot up when you turn it on and you're rewarded for this short wait with a rather sophisticated menu system that gives you complete control over the modeling light, recycling indicator and slave tripper (regardless of whether a sync cord is plugged in). All in all, a welcome technological advance from the tiny plastic buttons I'd become used to.

The 9-stop output range is great, giving me more (and less, if needed) power than the B800 and allowing me to light portraits while still using wider apertures (and not having to break out the ND filters).

The umbrella mounts are much improved, keeping the umbrella at a better angle for even light distribution.

The modeling light is bright (250W) and I could easily see using this for video as well as making it easy to shoot portraits with the lens wide open at any shutter speed.

I put together a quick video here showing how to use the basic features of the light.

Color Temperature Test
While this test is by no means scientific, I thought it might be interesting to compare the consistency of the output between these two lights. I set up some white seamless, put a reflector head on each light, and made sure they metered the same (AB800 was about 1/2 power) so that no detail would be blown out. Then I plugged in my intervalometer and took a photo every five seconds (with the camera white balance set to 5600K) for thirty minutes.

Here's a short time lapse, at six frames per second of the full set of images.

After running this test, I debated whether it was even worth posting the time lapse. In looking through these images, I honestly can't see much of a different between the two lights. Obviously, there's a little spill-over from the two lights that might affect the results, but aside from some very minor light output variation (of which the AlienBees exhibits a bit more), these lights seem pretty similar with the AlienBee being perhaps a touch warmer overall. The color temperature consistency is one of the big selling points and it is kind of interesting that there's little difference here, at least to my eye.

To see if what I saw was actually accurate, I randomly pulled twenty or so of the images into Photoshop, and used the Eyedropper tool to compare RGB values in a given spot for each light. Here there was some evidence of the Einstein's consistency, with the values consistently within 2-3 of each other. The AlienBees wasn't far off, but mostly showed values with 4-5 units of each other.

Locking mechanism
It was always a pain to mount a softbox on to the AlienBees. Between squeezing the two release levers together (mine have gotten progressively stickier over the years) and trying to make sure that all four "holding fingers" (their words, not mine) were inside the speed ring before releasing, this was one of my least favorite things about my lights. After a lot of headaches, I discovered the best way to mount a softbox was to put it facedown on the floor and mount the light to it, rather than putting the light on a stand first.

The Einstein has a quick-release lever that smoothly slides the holding fingers in and out. In theory this seems like a much more refined mechanism but in using it during four shoots over the past few days, I found it at least as frustrating as the old mount system.

There are now four screws holding the clips that hold the frosted glass dome onto the light. When your light modifier is exactly lined up, the speed ring fits neatly around these four screws. But when you're mounting a large softbox and don't have a great visual on where the holding fingers are, the screws often get in the way, catching on the speed ring and making a good fit difficult.

Twice on recent shoots I've had a softbox fall off as I was trying to mount it and I've learned to be much more careful about ensuring a good softbox mount before letting go of it. By moving the screws, or having them sit flush with the face of the strobe, I think this mounting solution would be much improved as the holding fingers would essentially force the speed ring into place as you moved the lever.

Wrapping up, these lights are a clear upgrade for me and have kept me away (for now at least) from investing in a Profoto setup or something similar. The lights already feel intuitive and are just plain more precise pieces of equipment, allowing me to control my lighting to a much higher degree than before.

I'm excited about possible firmware upgrades and am glad one of the best customer service experiences available anywhere is there in case something does go wrong. I'll be updating this review in six months or so once I've had a chance to use the lights on an ongoing basis for awhile.

July 2010 Update
Having now used the Einsteins for a couple of months, I have a few updates to share. First off, having full adopted the practice of attached the light to the softbox sitting on the ground, I no longer have any issue with that screw getting in the way.

The bigger issue is that I'm just not getting reliable triggering with the PocketWizards when using the lights outside. Paul Buff has addressed this issue and a fix will be out in August, but until then, I've shelved these lights for any outside work as they only seem to fire about 50% of the time working at distances much closer than the 50 feet that they're supposed to function. Personally, August can't come quick enough as I really do miss the extra power of these lights, especially outdoors.

Detroit Schools in American Photo Magazine

Wed, 12 May 2010 10:09:08 -0500

Having never had any formal photography training, I used to spend hours poring over the photography magazines, trying to extract every last piece of information from them, in search of some elusive "secret" to becoming a successful photographer. One of the magazines that I always spent time with was American Photo and I was really pleased to be contacted by them about running some of my work from the Detroit schools.

Over the course of a few weeks, writer Eric Rudolph and I spoke a half dozen times about what brought me to Detroit and the experience of being in these schools for the single day I spent shooting this. I owe him a big thanks for making the excerpts of these conversations sound coherent and was happy about seeing my name on the cover next to one of my photographic heroes.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Dr. Joe Hibbeln for EatingWell Magazine

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:04:48 -0500

Any shoot that starts with procuring a 14 lb. wild salmon is clearly heading in the right direction. Dr. Hibbeln is a researcher at NIH, specifically focused on the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids which can be found in abundance in wild salmon. I started taking fish oil capsules each day with my wife when she was expecting and had a great conversation with Dr. Hibbeln about his research. There's evidence that daily consumption can reduce risks of everything from cardiovascular disease to cancer, and even contribute to better mental health.

Dr. Hibbeln was a great sport for the entire shoot, and I sent him home with the salmon for dinner.

Thanks to my friend Jay for setting up this time lapse for the shoot. As you can see, our initial setup with the salmon was just too low, so we propped the table (a bit precariously) on a garbage can to bring it up to waist level and help the shot come together a bit more. Many thanks to Mike Balzano at EatingWell for this assignment.

UPS Training for The Wall Street Journal

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:58:58 -0500

A few weeks ago, I spent the day in and around a small concrete building in Landover, Maryland where UPS drivers are trained in the requirements of the job and the smallest details of being a good driver. I learned the right way to hold a package, to exit a truck and even the timing of the double-honk they use to announce their arrival at a delivery site.

Many of the tests the trainees must take are sudden death, meaning if they don't pass, they're sent back to the hotel to pack their things and go home. This created some great drama and tension and fortunately all of the drivers I photographed passed and are on their way to full-time employment by UPS.

Here are a few more I liked from the day.

American Photography 26 - Chosen

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:06:46 -0500

There was a time when I entered all of the photojournalism-based contests, diligently following the esoteric filenaming and captioning instructions and crossing my fingers as I hit upload. These days I'm only entering American Photography and Communication Arts, and was very happy to get an e-mail yesterday that one of my Detroit Schools images had been "Chosen" for the web site.

This was one of the first photos I shot while working on this project and I remember struggling to make sense of what I was seeing and feeling a little creeped out by the noises I kept hearing as I walked down the dark hallways.

91 days, sign up now

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:30:14 -0500

Today was looking like a slow day, so I decided to start a little Spring time art project to keep the creative motor humming. Video was filmed/edited this morning, and the domain was registered a few hours ago. Want a free, one-of-a-kind fujiroid, check out 91-days.org.

Spring Cleaning

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:58:04 -0500

Bonsai from today, with old Fujiroid film

After getting tired of the dark, heavy colors of my site and blog, I decided today to do a little facelift.

A new edit is coming soon, but for today, I'm excited to shed a little visual weight, shoot some 4x5 and get outside to work in my garden as the ground begins to warm.

the Shape of Things to Come

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:45:43 -0500

With the sad news of layoffs at BusinessWeek, I thought I'd post the most recent few of my tearsheets for them and also wish a hearty thanks and good luck to the wonderful editors I've worked with.

A special thank you to Sarah Morse, Lori Perbeck, Mindy Katzman, Scott Mlyn, Kathy Moore and Andrew Popper, who have seen me through 60+ assignments in the last year and a half. I know for a fact that my professional development as a photographer has been hastened along in the last 18 months due in no small part to the faith these editors had in me and the wonderful, and challenging shoots they've entrusted me with. Their incredible talents will no doubt be missed, but I'm hopeful there will continue to be jobs out there in this strange media landscape for talented editors with strong visions like the ones I've been lucky to work for.

Congressman Darrell Issa for BusinessWeek

I photographed Congressman Darrel Issa and T. Rowe Price Director James Kennedy almost 3 months apart, but the photos came out within a couple weeks of each other. Congressman Issa does not have the typical political backstory, and in fact was admittedly a car thief who was arrested several times along with his brother in stolen vehicles, but never charged with a crime. Issa went on to run the largest car alarm company in the country.

T. Rowe Price's James Kennedy for BusinessWeek

T. Rowe Price's James Kennedy for BusinessWeek

Mr. Kennedy helped T. Rowe Price weather the financial crisis, foreseeing the coming problems with mortgage-backed securities. While I didn't leave with any hot stock tips, I was taken with his generosity in making sure I didn't feel rushed and letting me use locations spread out all over the entire building where the company was headquartered.

The Healing, for the Washington Post Magazine

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:49:44 -0500

"He doesn't speak much English, so you'll need a translator at the shoot."

"Once you meet him, he may or may not agree to the shoot."

"You can call him Paul, but that's not his real name."

"We want a good portrait of him, but you can't show his face or anything else that will identify him."

These were the instructions I received on this recent story I worked on for The Washington Post Magazine that was published on Sunday. I was again working with one of my favorite photo editors, Evan Jane Kriss who stressed the sensitivity of the situation and the very real possibility that the subject might back out of the shoot.

I met Paul and the translator outside of a metro stop in DC. Paul is a Cameroonian refugee and victim of torture who escaped from his country after being brutally beaten by members of the police force. Reporter Phil Zabriskie had been talking to him and other torture victims over the past year in working on this story.

We spoke for a bit and he agreed to be photographed at his home. I had been experimenting most of the day with different lighting setups involving silhouettes, blown highlights and other visual tricks that would conceal his face, but when we arrived at the small room that he rented from a family, it was clear he wanted the photos taken quickly, with minimal setup.

The room was dimly lit and I was able to set up a few hot lights to bring up the levels a bit before shooting the portraits. I had seen a street lamp outside that I thought might make for a good setup as well and we shot there briefly before wrapping up. Looking at these photos now, I'm not so sure that the complicated lighting setups would've done much justice to him or the modest bedroom where he lived, thousands of miles away from his family.

The story also brought me to Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma in Baltimore, where amazing work is being done in helping torture victims deal with the traumatic situations they've been through. Karen Hansom and Mary Cogar exemplify the good that can be done in helping other people.

As we were wrapping up with Paul, he smiled and said something to the translator.

"Paul just heard from his family yesterday. They've been granted visas and will be coming to America."

You can read Phil's story here, and below are a few more of my favorite photos.

Karen Hanscom and Mary Cogar of Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma