Shot with the 24mm f1.4. I really have been looking forward to this lens. Fast, wide glass is paramount doing what I do. This past year I logged a ton of chopper time for the Geographic, shooting at dusk or flat out nighttime conditions, so chip performance (D3S) and fast glass with edge to edge sharpness has been hugely important. I’m pushing myself back towards prime lenses. I’m trying to remember how to move my feet. I’m trying not to be on location and stand there like a frikkin’ house plant.
Shot on the streets of Ybor (”Call me Eye-bor”) City during the Safari pre-con get together at PhotoShop World in Orlando last week. Had a hoot out there with a nice bunch of folks, tagging along with my bud the Mooster. Ybor is a real nice, weird place. Friendly people. This gentleman was kind enough to allow me a snap in good light.
Just bought the 24 1.4 from the magic man, Jeff Snyder, at Adorama, which is where I buy all my stuff. He was able to reach into the system and re-direct the shipping so the lens caught up with me on the road. Jeff (jsnyder@adorama.com –go ahead, use it, tell him it’s my fault) routinely pulls gear outta the air and pulls the levers needed to make stuff happen on deadline, which is cool. Tougher to make that happen talking to an 800 number.
I still have my 28 1.4, though Nikon stopped making that years ago. From what I know the construction of that lens entailed the use of lead, hence it was banned in a bunch of countries, and Nikon said forget it. I guess the powers that be in these places understandably wanted to save photographers from themselves, knowing we are insecure babies and when things go wrong on location we just revert to a preverbal state, curl into a ball, and start rocking in the corner while sucking on our lenses. I personally don’t suck on my lenses, I just routinely suck when I use them. There’s a big difference.
But I still have it, even though there’s an incurable aberration on the back element, which makes it less than attractive on Ebay, so I just hang onto it. You can’t see the little ding when you shoot at 1.4, and that’s all I shoot that lens at. Which makes it kinda like my old catadioptric 5oomm mirror lens, which has a fixed aperture of f8. I just look at my 28 as a fixed aperture lens as well, only faster and easier to focus.
Writing this on Saturday night. Another wild night at JFK airport. Non-stop excitement. Bound for Abu Dhabi. Never been there, but I’m sure in its’ own way, it’s just as interesting as Ybor City. More tk….
Jim Marshall died today. That name might not mean much to lots of folks, even photographic folks, but we are all the poorer for his passing. He was an iconic shooter of the rock and roll scene in it’s heyday. He lived hard, and chased pictures even harder. He didn’t shoot raw files. He just shot raw. His demands for access were as unflinching as his lens. “If someone doesn’t want me to shoot them, fine, fuck ‘em,” he said. “But if they do, there can’t be any restrictions.”
An eye that doesn’t blink can be unflattering. One of Jim’s most famous images is Johnny Cash at San Quentin, flipping the camera the bird. Hendrix, Joplin. Jim shot them all. His way. Real isn’t necessarily pretty. But it can be memorable.
“I don’t sign shit either, I own all of my photographs and no one I’ve shot, not Dylan, not Miles, not Cash, has ever complained about how my pictures of them have been used.”
We are at a place where 50 or 60 or 100 shooters all vie for space in the pit for 3 songs, if that. All of them are outside the velvet rope, hoping for a glimpse, waiting for an opening. Jim, working in a different era, made his own openings. His pictures smell of sweat, incense and dope. They pop, ’cause they’re real. And, more importantly, he owned them. He was careful with his negs. As he said, “I took care of my negatives. Now they take care of me.”
Has anyone ever shot a memorable picture of, for instance, Coldplay? I ask this question from afar, as I am not a rock and roll shooter. From what I hear, again, from a serious distance, is that this is a band, like many, who has left the term “control freak” in the rear view mirror. Absolute control of image, and images. I guess that’s understandable. It’s a business. Good music, to be sure. Sanitized, moderated imagery. Will we look in 20 years? Will that retouched, altered image hit a nerve? Seeing as many shooters now have to sign over rights to gain access, will we ever see it? Because of his talent, and tough stance, and his steely eye through a Leica, Jim gave us memory. I cannot imagine growing up without knowing the picture of Hendrix setting his guitar on fire.
I met Jim several times. That doesn’t mean I knew him. Actually, quite the contrary. I had to be re-introduced every time we bumped into each other. He was always direct, and said on a couple of occasions, sotto voce, “You know Joe, I don’t really know your work.” That was more than okay. It was, in a funny way, validation. He was Jim. He didn’t need to know.
My wife Annie befriended Jim. He was fond of her. (Who isn’t?) She tried to guide him through the digital woods, but their conversations almost always veered away from pixels into matters far more interesting. He sent her autographed books, and gave her a suite of signed prints, which are on our walls. The print of Hendrix up top is her favorite.
“I love all these musicians - they’re like family,” he said. “Looking back, I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”
Looking back from where we are now, even more amazing. More tk….
So, referring to yesterday’s blog post, definitely not practical to line the Northeast Amtrak corridor with SB units to create window light. I got lucky photographing then Senator Biden with soft light on a cloudy day, and even luckier with the Tri-x in my camera. (No worries about the greenish windows often present on trains shifting my color transparency film over into “aquarium” mode, and making my subject look like Swamp Thing.)
But now, in our digital world, in a more static situation, it is easy to make window light with speed light.
As I always tell Thomas Wingate, who’s a great friend and an American original, his face belongs on Mount Rushmore. It is the road map to an interesting life, well lived. I not only enjoy photographing him, I enjoy the time we have when we just say cameras be damned, let’s just hang. This has occasionally involved putting the camera down and picking up a beer, or several. While you cannot make a picture with a can of beer, it is potentially an important component in terms of imagining your next picture.
In this instance, Thomas is being lit by 3 SB 900 units, placed outside the smallish window of the jail cell in Eaves Ranch. I viewed the small size of the window as an advantage, actually, as it is easily sealed off with one 3×3 Lastolite skylite panel.When I say sealed, I really mean that. When doing this, it is generally advisable to let no other stray daylight in. Hence the Avenger c-stand with the extension arm. That arm is able to angle the panel right flush to the side of the building. The only light gettin’ in there now is comin’ from the speed lights.
I remain inside with the camera. We ran a couple of SC-29 cords from the hot shoe of the D3X to a commander SB-900, justin clamped to the bars of the other window. You can see it, over there on the right. It is talking to the window lights for me. I put three out there, which may or may not be overkill. If I had just one, it would be working pretty hard, to be sure. So the extra lights, to me, make sense, especially if you want to move with any speed through a set of pictures.
So here’s the beauty of wireless flash. I can stay in the jail cell, talk it out with Thomas, and shift my lens/f-stop combo seamlessly. I went from the 70-200 at F8, used for the above pictures, to a 200mm at f2 for the snap below. Without going outside to change the lights. Cool beans. Don’t know which version I necessarily like better, but, when you are moving fast, the ability to flip a couple switches and get a distinctly different result, to me, just enhances your versatility as a shooter, maximizes the efficiency of your location time, and can, at least occasionally, endear you to the art director, if such a person is present on the set with you. Clients love it when you can change on a dime. Versatility and flexibility can mean you’ll get called back, which is generally desirable.
And then, just to see the reach of the light, I put the magnificent Mawgie in there. I’m not saying Mawgie is the type of lady who might get arrested on her wedding day, but hey….
A bunch of my favorite folks, a few speed lights, and a jail cell. What more could one ask for? More tk…..
Lots of eyes on Washington this week. Made me remember this picture. Joe Biden, then senator from Delaware. We do so much currently with flash to re-create window light. And there it is, on a cloudy day, just waiting for tri-x.
I was shooting Biden for People magazine, which really used to do good stories, and do them in B&W. Started as the brain child of Dick Stolley, People has been a juggernaut of magazine publishing for years, though I gather now it faces stiff competition from the likes of US, Them, Now, We, He, She, and It. (Whatever would they all do without little Suri Cruise?)
Anyway, the story used to go around (and it might have been apocryphal for all I know) that readers’ surveys conducted by People always cited the fact that folks enjoyed the stirring color photography which dominated the magazine. Which was odd, ’cause there wasn’t a damn thing in color in the magazine except the ads and the cover. This I’m sure was one of the great coups of magazine publishing–to produce a black and white weekly that somehow at least some of the readers thought was color.
The black and white persona of the magazine was reveled in, right down to the Black and White Ball held every year. Flush with success, the magazine would generously host a bash at the end of every year, and invite even us scruffy freelancers to don a tux and show up. There was a participatory spirit that dominated that era, not the “us vs. them” mentality of now. The magazine realized its’ success depended on the ongoing input and creativity of the band of oddball, goofball (I fell into both categories) shooters out there who contributed every week, and refused, at least for a time, to crush us. The tandem of picture editors up there, Mary Dunn and MC Marden, were the type you would walk through fire for on a handshake.
Things change, as they obviously have for Mr. Biden above, who really has gone onto to greater things. Back then, when I shot this, he was just returning to the Senate after a series of life threatening aneurysms and other medical complications nearly took his life. I met him at the Wilmington station, simple and easy, and just sat down across from him and went to work with a Leica M4, quietly observing his introspective mood about his first days back to work, as the train sped him towards the hill. The soft window light helped the mood. Simple job. Me and a Domke bag, and the future VP.
He’s certainly come up in the world, while I haven’t made much progress, remaining a scruffy freelance content provider. He did me a good turn, actually. I was supposed to be home that night, I mean pretty seriously home, but the lateness of his scheduling precluded that. I had to stick with him, and the story, and spend the night in DC. He called my house and got the voice answering machine and apologized on tape and said it was his fault and if anyone in the McNally household was ever in DC he would buy them lunch at the Senate cafeteria. So far, my daughter Caitlin hasn’t taken him up on that, but knowing Caity, she just might. More tk….
Got a good class here in Santa Fe. We started rocking and rolling yesterday, just examining light shaping tools, exposure differences, control of light, both with big and small flash. As I said during the day, we shoulda all been arrested, ’cause we were having too much damned fun. Professional boxer Clara de la Torre came in to be our demo model. It was cool. We did some pretty simple, straightforward umbrella stuff, and then decided to head in the direction of bad ass light.
I’ve messed around with this type of light before, which is pretty ideal for athletic bodies. Thing is, I mostly have done it with small flash. For this, we kinda went gaga, and mixed 3 different light sources. The main overhead is an Elinchrom Ranger plugged into a beauty dish. It is, as you see, table topped over Clara, coming right down on her, shading her eyes, making her look like she belongs in the movie poster for Goodfellas. Then in the background, we got identical strip lights going, both running off Quadra packs and heads. Right down at her knees are two SB900 units, banging into a silver Lastolite reflector sheet. Then, in front of her, and low, is another SB900, zoomed to 200mm to tighten the light spill, and further concentrated by a Honl 1/8th inch grid. On top of the grid I layered some gaffer tape, to cut the light down to a super specific spot, i.e., Clara’s eyes. Then of course I drove Dustin and Sarah, the studio assistants, completely nuts by having them edge down the spill of the beauty dish with hand held tri-grip solids. As you can see, they took that puppy down to basically a sliver of light. Sarah’s side is more completely flagged. Dustin kinda screwed his side up:-)
Then, I opened that Pandora’s Box known as Photoshop, which to me is like a large, ornate mansion with about 75 rooms and 15 bathrooms. I’m standing in the lobby, looking for luggage assistance. But, here’s the great thing about the internet. I hit one of my stored Strobist links and voila! I got a path to follow in PS. DH has a detailed high pass layer deal in there that is simple but pretty cool. Naturally, like a kid with a new toy, I went Nike on the file, and got the top result. The file outta the camera is below, after dropping a black point. Of course in the original file, there’s my Honl grid, poking into the bottom edge. Didn’t bother me too much, it being in a dark area. Rather have the light where I want it in this instance, than pull back and lose some of the snap and concentration in the face.
Did I overdo it? Dunno? I’d love to hear if you love it/hate it. The light of course, was what I was after during the demo. Really liked the feel of the strips. Nice and smooth for the rim. Did this on previous occasions with mutliple small flashes serving as the backlight, triggered again by an overhead beauty dish. Got the below, which is nice, but as you can see, the rim light effect is a touch more splashy and uneven, due to the smaller sources.
This is also done without the benefit of the low, frontal, gridded SB unit, hence really nothing in the eyes. This is Aaron, who’s been on the blog before and is a supremely capable athlete. This iteration of this style light was just about attitude and physicality, and not dedicated to seeing eyes and facial detail. More tk….
