Was in Vegas last week for PhotoShop World, and gave a quickie 40 minute demo for my buds at Bogen. Used the new Quadra, a 400 watt second little big man of a flash unit. Lotta fun. Just grabbed folks off the floor and made a few pix.
Lastolite makes this thing called a background hi-liter, which is basically an empty mattress pad you can stuff lights into. It gives you this incredible, lock solid, done deal white background. Uh, Joe, this photo is shot on black. Yep, turned around and used the wall of light it creates as a main. Gorgeous light for Rae, a terrific young shooter who is hopefully bound for FIT in NY this fall.
Then there was Rodney. He was in the crowd, mildly bemused by events, so I made him the event. Terrific face for a photo. He had a wonderful sense of merriment to his eyes, and at the same time could look like a professor I just turned my term paper in late to. This is shot with the Deep Octa, which, allows the light to marinate really nicely before screaming outta the box
And then of course, there was V.
V is the spark plug, the security detail and a one man tidal wave of enthusiasm who comes and puts his massive arms around PhotoShop World twice a year. I asked him to pose for me, and he was great. As I described him to the class, he’s like a block of granite with feet.
And then there’s Kathy Siler…….
I’m in so much trouble. At the closing ceremonies I announced a “Draft Kathy Siler” movement to get her in front of a camera. So why am I compounding my difficulties by mentioning this in my blog? I’m in enough hot water as it is. Could it be, that as photographers it is part of our mission to be a pain in the ass:-)?
Lessee….a colleague showed work at PSW he specifically described as all shot “without flash or reflectors.” The holy water of available light! No evil photons generated by the machines! He used the phrase, “God is my gaffer.” Okay! Who’s your grip? There’s a whole blog’s worth of material in that phrase, just not gonna go there right now.
Speaking of available light, had my midterm review on my current National Geographic story the other day. Virtually every frame was shot with available light. (I can walk! I can walk! Thank God almighty, I can walk!) Biggest compliment the editors can offer a shooter is to expand the page count of the story, and that’s what happened. Now I just gotta figure out how to shoot the next half of the darn thing.
Headed from PSW to PRW, the Paso Robles Workshops, run by my friend with the hair with a mind of its’ own, Syl Arena. Given the dense, rich, textured, complex and multi-layered cultural experience of Vegas, when I hit Paso I decided to stay shallow and photograph Robert for a class demo with a 50mm lens at f1.4. Been experimenting a lot lately with limited depth of field portraiture. Good look at the camera for Robert here. Shot with Ezybox Hot Shoe softbox on a Sylinator paint pole rig for up front, and then just a hard, warm gelled light in the background off the tin siding.
Speaking of turns of phrases, Del, one of my participants here at the Paso workshop had trouble with a scarf someone was wearing in a photo. He said during crit it was “surprisingly luminous.” Love it. I’ve run into stuff like that too, over time. We had a good laugh, and during the deal I uttered a couple of colorful metaphors, which just bubble outta me occasionally, a bit like farting in a pool. The class, thankfully, endorses such frivolity. Frank, a Continental pilot who shoots real well, and, I’m sure, is no stranger to the use of pungent commentary, commented that my language was “surprisingly luminous.”
Buddy of mine who is a terrific shooter and is currently assisting in NY just moved on from his regular gig and is now awash in the turbulent freelance seas of the Big Apple. He had just got to the point where the job was owning his life, and he wrote to me describing that and letting me know he’s out there ready for work. Describing how a job often goes, I wrote back….
“Ahh, yes, grasshopper….a job is just a job, until it becomes it becomes like one of those things in the Alien movie that springs from a pod, smothers your face, deposits an embryo in your guts that gestates with incredible rapidity and chews through all your inside wiring, leaving you bloody, dead, mouth agape at the utter unfairness and speed with which your life force was sucked out of you. With your vision flickering like an old TV, your last image is that of the predator you incubated lurching down the block, looking for it’s next meal. Welcome to the workplace!”
I thought that was helpful, no? More tk….
So this Kelby guy walks into the locker room, see. He’s got a burger and fries. I’m in the middle of a shoot, but I’m hungry. Next thing you know…..
Had a blast at PhotoShop World. One cool thing…the world’s largest tattoo convention was right next door. Needless to say, it attracted a bit of a different audience than PSW. Drew and I did some quick Iphone scouting pix for future subjects. Amazing stuff..
I kept telling Moose Peterson he should go over and get a set of antlers done:-) No luck though…..More tk…..
In Vegas for PhotoShop World. It’s cool. It dovetails with a current shooting project I have running to be here. Got in some chopper work the other night. Very lucky, cause the clouds, generally AWOL around here, were amazing. All that’s for next year.
Right now, humming with the energy of all the folks at PSW. There’s an amazing array of knowledge here. The amount and diversity of stuff going on and being taught is unreal. Matt Klowskowski, Dave Cross, Moose Peterson, Jay Maisel, Russell Brown– from shooting to post, it’s all here.
Speaking of good teachers, there’s always…..THE MAN WITH THE HAT…
My bud Jerry Courvoisier just updated his website. Jerry’s one of those low key, patient guys. I know this cause he tolerates me. He doesn’t shout or jump up and down, he just knows. Somebody could walk in with their computer with all their images on it having just been run over by an 18 wheeler and all the smashed pieces are in a laundry basket, and Jerry will sit down with that person and say, okay, let’s see what we’ve got here, hmmmm….. (Jerry’s good at saying, hmmmmm.)
And before you know it, wire by wire, bit by byte, he’s got the person’s machine running again and they’re working their raw files. Calm, in a word, describes Jerry. Check out his website. He’s got a great Lightroom book, and he’s got a tour going with short, intensive, hands on Lightroom stuff. Chicago in October is next stop. And he teaches digital printmaking, at which he’s a master. Also, as you can see above, he’s a rakish, good looking guy. (I’m just saying that cause I took the picture and made him look better than he’s ever looked:-)
AND THEN THERE’S RC….
We shared dinner the other night, and I could barely eat from laughing so hard. RC’s, well, RC. He defines what it means to be a good teacher. Plus he’s a riot. (Question to RC….”What’s a website?” RC to questioner…..”Remember the photo album you had when you were a kid? The one you scotch taped all those pictures in? It’s like that…in the sky!”)
Plus, he’s an amazing shooter. He is married to one of my dear friends and all time amazing photo subjects, Jenn, a truly exceptional ballerina. Shot this of Jenn on a Tampa beach for a Kelby Training video.
Jenn, along with their daughter Sabie, is in front of RC’s lens quite often. He shot one of my favorite frames of all time, this one of Jenn on pointe, with little Sabie looking up at her.
Such trust, such wonder…in a photograph. Pictures like this, and talented folks like RC and the NAPP gang, are the reason it’s great to be here. The whole week…walking, talking, looking at and shooting pictures. It’s gonna be a great time. More tk….
The best camera is the one you have with you. True words indeed. Variations on a theme. Jay Maisel always says it’s tough to take a picture if you don’t carry a camera with you. Now Jay sports a D3, but Chase Jarvis has just elevated the Iphone camera to legitimacy with this new book. The camera’s quiet and cool, and doesn’t intrude. It is barely noticeable in the act of photography, but it is a formidable recording device, as he shows.
This book is sleek, small and well designed, not unlike the machine that made the pictures. Combine those qualities with Chase’s eye, and well, there you go. The other thing that ramps up here for me is kind of a quiet, heretofore inside thought I have thunk on occasion, which is, when I have a camera on my shoulder, I feel, you know, dangerous. I’ve got a camera, I can see, I know how to work it, and well, let’s just have a look at things. The act of making pictures can be considered inherently subversive, obviously. Why do you think there are lots of people who have jobs specifically designed to control us? Control where we stand, what we shoot, and how what we shoot gets used, where it goes, and how it is displayed. I mean there are cadres of folks out there just waiting to say, “No.” The people who are just so willing to put a velvet rope around the sense of possibility and imagination. Plus they’re generally kinda cranky. Maybe their shorts are too tight.
Okay, so I was raised Irish Catholic and I’ve got authority issues. Photography can be wonderful, friendly, healing, easy going, and enjoyable. It can be a window or a mirror, to borrow some words from my old managing editor at LIFE, Dan Okrent. But what a camera sees can also be really truthful and incisive. Clear headed. A camera can actually show us stuff. Imagine that! But hey, wait a minute, we can’t just have a bunch of people with cameras running around here!
Well, hate to clue you in Mr. You-Can’t-Stand-Here, but we do. It’s interesting to me. I have walked down corridors and paths in out of the way corners of the world with a 35mm camera or DSLR slung and it can feel like you’re walking around with the UCLA marching band on your hip. I mean, it’s an announcement, you know? “Hear ye, hear ye! Pictures are about to me made!” Sheesh. Part of the art of this is to segue, you know, slip and slide, see moments and instead of trampling them, kind of sidle up to them, quietly.
I guess it’s a variation on that old joke about the old bull and the young bull up on the ridge, looking at a whole valley full of cows. The youngster can barely contain himself. “Let’s run down there and nail one of ‘em!” he says to his elder. Who just smiles and says, “How ’bout we just walk down there?” Knowing wink. “We’ll nail ‘em all.”
Not that announcements are a bad thing always. David Turnley, an incredibly fine shooter who spent numerous years documenting apartheid in South Africa, was on assignment in Harlem, USA, for the Day in the Life of America book project in the very early 80’s. He walked into a pretty tough looking bar, and of course, he was an outsider. A white outsider to boot. He walked up to the bar tender and respectfully introduced himself and the book project and said he’d like to spend some time in the bar shooting pictures. The bar tender evidently nodded, and in a large voice announced to everyone, “This here fella’s gonna shoot some pictures. Anybody don’t like it can get the fuck out!”
It’d be nice to have someone around like that all the time.
I digress. I think what I’m getting at is that Chase has taken this camera, with its’ still nascent technology, combined it with a cool app (kind of home turf for the Iphone and many folks who use it) and also extended its’ reach to ink on paper. Everybody’s talking about convergence nowadays, and here’s a very cool, accessible example. It also gave me, along the lines of David Hobby’s recently voiced sentiments, one of those “coulda had a V-8″ moments. Christ. I mean I’m having giggles with my Iphone downloading things like Atomic Fart, and here Chase goes and builds his own app.
It pleases me no end to think of Chase roaming airports and such, and interpreting stuff people walk on, over and around into graphically striking photos. Iphone in hand, he sidles up to the heretofore unseen. Often the scene or moment is quiet, and via the Iphone, it is quietly observed. It is also pleasing to think of the combo punch of this accessible, almost invisible piece of hardware with a lens plunked into it and the potential it has for recording, interpreting, and taking in the world around us. Then launching and sharing those visual missives instantly. An updated wrinkle for the visual community. Another possibility. For me, it is doubly pleasing to think there might be some folks annoyed by this.
Photographers. Despite efforts to corral us and tell us what to do, we refuse to listen. We’re like a nerf ball. Squeeze us one way, we splurge out another. Be it the Iphone, the D3, the Red Camera, the point and shoot…..the urge is upon us all to visually record our life and times. Visual passion. Knowing. Seeing. Point, shoot, breathe.
Or maybe look hip. Below my daughter Claire shot dad on recent shopping trip. It was the only way she could think of me not looking tragically flawed. (How do people work in those A&F stores? I spent 15 minutes in there and had acoustic whiplash for the rest of the day.)
This guy Chase, man, he’s good. We’re friends, and respect each other a great deal. When I spoofed him a bit in a video not too long ago, he laughed a lot and in an email called me a “mad bastard.” Well, back to ya, man. Typically, he not only shot these for himself, but with the book and technology, he opens a door for all of us to take a ride. Good onya.
Check out his new book here.
Damn this guy, though. Here I’ve been happy shooting 2-4 Iphone pictures a day. Shit. I’m gonna have to go to 5-10:-) More tk…
First off, many, many thanks to all who pitched ideas and suggestions and diagrams our way. Response was off the charts, and we have had a blast going through stuff here at the studio. As always, it being a photographic dilemma, there were just about as many solutions as there are photogs. Cool thing was that some of the lighting notions are maybe exactly WHAT I COULDA DONE AND THE WAY I SHOULDA LIT IT!
Seriously, there’s lotsa ways of going about this stuff. Many paths to roughly the same end. Reminds me of teaching in a workshop scenario, and coming up on a shooter who is engaged in what I am quite sure is a hopelessly wacked out idea that will result in a train wreck of a picture. Then that person shows up the next day with a picture that not only works but represents something I didn’t see and could never have seen. It’s cool, diverse and a little nutty. Fun, in a word.
Speaking of fun, I really hadda break this stuff into two categories…those who came real close for real, and a whole gaggle of suggestions, commentary and really funny shit submitted by the mildly bent readership of this blog. Just a hoot….my look of astonishment here recorded by Lynda Peckham.
Some samples…..
From Andrew: “It was Professor Plum, in the library, with the candlestick.”
From Dave Cross, The Photoshop Guy: “Nice try Joe….But I think it’s pretty obvious: One flash and the rest is Photoshop:
8 adjustment layers with appropriate masks. Noise filter on TV set istock photo of guy with gun in doorway. Added the grid in the window with the Shape tool. A bit of dodging & burning here and there, and voila!“ (I’ll get him for that one…..)
Then this from Noodlez: “It`s so obvious- you borrowed a big Profoto-Lighting-pack from your friend Chase Jarvis. Two large Chimera softboxes in the backroom in combination with a fat fogmachine (borrowed from Drew Gardner). One Front-light gridded on the knee, handheld by Zack Arias. A snooted Light towards the pills on the floor with a DIY GRid-Snoot-Umbrella by David Hobby. Here and there you lost some flashlights…In the end you gave the pic to your Retoucher Scott Kelby, who put some red and blue colors allover. Too Easy Man…”
Dan Davies chipped in with: “It’s self evident:
1. Red light outside from 400 firefly’s of the genus “reddus buttus”.
2. Dead woman on bed lit by funeral pyre being burned just off set.
3. Joe’s coke supply being liberally sprinkled inside dummy TV screen by highly trained pet gerbil.
4. Spot on floor apparantly from fallen lamp created by stepping on a satsuma and creating orange eliptical shape
5. Man in door has also stepped on satsuma.
6. Purple ambient lighting created from long exposure mixing red & blue lights on top of police vehicle ready to arrest Joe for murdering the model in order to create realistic picture.
Am I right?“ (Uh, no, Dan, but it was a fun read.)
There was an amazing diagram from Dean Doll:
It doesn’t nail the lighting pattern, but it’s cool.
There was also a suggestion this was just a screen grab from CSI. But the guy who took the cake in this category was definitely Lyndon Smith. His submission was amazingly thoughtful, erudite, well elucidated (forgive me) and great to read, even though it was wrong. He compiled a treatise involving caffeine on the set, the role Tylenol played that night, and the potential use of a turkey carcass as a light stand. He was correct in the color and direction of the lights, but the bedsheet/window covering did him in. For his efforts, he will receive a Lastolite diffuser and a book. Lyndon, send us a note with your address. (contact@joemcnally.com)
Now….drum roll please…..Ended up with four lighting plans that came real close to what the deal was that sultry night in Florida.
From Klam: “The lighting plan:
-Camera WB tungsten. shutter dragged.
-Flash with full CTO gel grided above camera aiming downward at female leg.
- bare flash behind camera right aiming towards the wall behind the tv
-Flash with full and half CTO gel outside door flaged so the light is directed towards man chest and head
-Flash with maybe a full and half CTO gel outside down low flagged to give rim light on mans lower body and leg.
-Ambient light provided by fallen lamp.
My other guess would be the outside light was provided by car headlights and flagged so only parts of the man was lite…”
Brett Maxwell posited this: “Clearly there is ambient from the table lamp on the floor and the TV. 2 speedlights in the hall gelled red, one snooted/gridded/zoomed lighting the man’s face and one behind lighting the hall and hall window. Two speedlights gelled blue, one behind the bed and one to camera right aimed at the wall behind the TV. One speedlight high (CTO?) snooted/gridded/zoomed pointing almost straight down on the woman’s right foot.”
David contributed this thought: “Gridded and Cto’d flash above camera and to the right a little pointing on the woman’s legs. Blue Gelled flash way camera right to light the table and its contents. Another Blue gelled flash behind the bed next to the door to seperate the girls legs and the wall. Heavily red gelled flash outside, and maybe another on the guy? Ambient coming from the lamp on the floor and the television in the table.”
And, finally, Andrew had this line of attack: “I would’ve red gelled the headlights from a car outside. Flash gelled blue along the right wall.
Flash gelled blue behind the bed. Flash gridded and amber gelled above camera on model’s leg. Flash gelled amber aimed at floor behind the shooter. Incandescent lamp on floor.”
All of the above had most if not all the elements and just missed a detail or two, which is far fewer details than I usually miss when I am in the field and have my eye in the lens. So–good job gang….all four, send us address stuff to our contact slot on the website. Also gang, if there are specifics as to how you want things signed, let us know. Let’s go through the whole deal….
Camera settings are in the file….however, it is shot in cloudy white balance, which is a bit weird, I know. Wanted an intense red, and I knew I could control the blue interior just with heavy gels. And there were no signs to deal with in the distance. It was dark out there in the Florida night. I would only see what I lit. Exterior is lit up with mostly car headlights. Two cars, to be more precise, with heavy red theatrical gels placed over the four headlights. Tried my best to seal the gels in with tape, so there was not a whole lotta white light bleed. There’s an SB900 on the window sill, literally laying against the window, firing up and away in the general direction of the palm tree just by the outside walkway. Another SB unit with a tight grid and a full CTO of warming gel on it is punched towards our perp? detective? in the doorway. That is producing the slight warm highlight on the brim of his hat, a bit on his face and upper shoulders. The intensely warm highlight on the floor is the red gelled headlights, going orange-ish from blown exposure. That one headlight is hitting the linoleum at a bang on angle of incidence angle of reflection to the lens, and thus becomes a real high highlight. Add smoke, and the outside is done.
Inside was pretty apparent to lots of folks. C-stand boomed SB900 overhead the model’s legs, warmed with CTO and gridded with a Honl light shaper. It is firing straight down at her legs and the floor. Camera right has a blue gelled SB unit, washing off the wall behind the TV. It is Justin clamped to the fridge door. Another blue gelled SB unit is hidden by the bed, and is blue gelled, separating the bed and wall. Red highlights on table legs are all from outside. TV is just the static glow. The incandescent bulb is just that, available bulb light. Handy trick here is to plug that lamp into a dimmer which then plugs into the wall. That way, you can just dial in the exposure to the degree you need it.
Triggered the whole shootin’ match with an SU800 unit linked to the camera with two SC-29 cords and screwed on top of a light stand. Placed like that, we had no troubles firing everything TTL wireless. The wireless commander is on a stick to the right of camera and it is bouncing off the blue wall to camera right and thus picking up the SB unit tucked away outside the left hand side of doorway. (Working up a diagram of my own, just haven’t found a big enough napkin yet:-)
The account of the lighting is true. Names of those involved are under sealed indictment and cannot be released at this time. More tk….
