It’s been a long time since I made a blog post, and I’ve missed it a lot. I like to write, and I also like to think there’s value in sharing aspects of what it’s like being a working photojournalist in the day to day. So for this one I thought I’d share the background of nine images I’ve taken so far this year and how I went about capturing them-along with whatever nuggets of advice that can be gleaned from each of them. This post is aimed towards people just getting started who may not be as familiar with the technical aspects of images and may find some of the background tidbits from these photos helpful to themselves in their own work. At least, that’s the hope in writing this.
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I was covering the series of votes to make Rep. Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House for SIPA, and by the time I had taken this photo, the series of votes had stretched to 5 days before it finished with his eventual success. Inside the Chamber, you’re given a designated space and are supposed to stay there. I was just taking some group shots of members seated as we waited for McCarthy to make his debut speech as Speaker and swear in the new Congress.
Having sat inside the House chamber multiple times at that point, I was looking for something to make an interesting picture out of it. I’ve always liked working with motion and had used it in a number of ways on Capitol Hill before, so thought I would drag the shutter and see what I could come up with. 1/5 of a second has always been a favorite of mine, as its long enough to get the motion effect but short enough to stay sharp handheld. I placed the lens on the ledge for a little more balance and jerked the camera a bit near the end of each frame in one direction or another. Truth be told, out of I think the 100+ photos I took like this only one turned out, but one was enough!
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As part of a feature story on Flower Factory, an LGBTQ Collective in Washington DC that hosts parties in different venues of the city, I did a number of portraits of people attending that night. When it comes to portraits, I typically like working backwards; starting with the background and then setting the lights to balance the foreground and subject accordingly. I loved the chandelier in the background and the colors it exuded, but I also didn’t want it to be in focus very much and act as a distraction from Sandy being photographed. On top of that, as this was a club setting, it wasn’t particularly bright. To compensate for this and for my low ISO, I opened up the aperture to f/1.8 and dropped my shutter speed to just a 1/5 of a second. Because shutter speed has a direct effect on ambient light, this was enough to brighten up the chandelier and the colors of the club in the background. Because my aperture was so wide open, my lights did not need to be turned up much. I placed a profoto D1 light with a 2×3 ft softbox to my left, 45 degrees from Sandy and another D1 with an umbrella to my right to give some fill light to the left side of Sandy’s face. I had Sandy look at the light with the umbrella for this shot.
While on the subject of portraits, I want to mention that, while I use studio lights now, I spent most of my career taking portraits with speed lights, and there are few shoots that I could not do with speed lights alone. Lighting equipment doesn’t have to break your bank, and I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone may have about lighting equipment.
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I have always loved Harper’s Ferry, so when the travel section asked me to do a profile on it for an upcoming travel story I was absolutely ecstatic. I’ve photographed the town many times in the past and knew the vantage points that most people take photos from. For the piece I was asked to shoot a vertical image that could possibly be used as the cover, and I wanted to capture the town from an angle that had not been seen before. On that thought, there was a hill overlooking the highway that had a direct line of sight to Harpers Ferry that I had noticed the past couple times I had driven through, and had always wanted to see about taking a photo from that vantage point. It just so happened that there was a brewery that I was supposed to profile for the story that sat atop that hill. So while covering Harpers Ferry Brewing as part of the assignment, I asked them if I could come up after hours to take this long exposure. They were gracious enough to say yes, and so I returned as the sun was setting.
There’s always a window of time between either the end of golden hour or the heart of blue hour when the light in the sky is balanced with the lighting of the landscape, and I knew that I wanted to get Harpers Ferry with the lights from the town highlighted. As you can see in the above image, sunset had not passed and so the lights of the town could not prominently poke through. So I waited 20 minutes until the sky had calmed down enough that I could have both properly balanced-Which is when I took the first image. When shooting these types of images, it’s best to expose for the highlights, shooting a darker image than you normally would. It’s easier to bring up shadows than it is to bring down highlights, especially if you maintain a low ISO which gives you the most amount of dynamic range- aka the level of tonality in your images between shadows, midtowns and highlights. The higher your ISO, the more constrained your dynamic range will be and the less wiggle room you will have to edit your images in order to bring out details. So when it comes to long exposures like these, a lower ISO is always the most ideal.
Another 20 minutes later, and the light had changed to this-blue hour.
Blue hour is a magical time to take long exposures. The sky and landscape are relatively balanced in exposure and the resulting navy blue color as evening shifts to night makes it a favorite of landscape photographers. Cloud cover will impact to an extent the hue of blue that is present-ideally a clear or mostly clear sky is preferable. But even if cloudy, long exposures with passing clouds can make for some really interesting images too.
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I had been sent at the last minute to photograph a series of installations on the National Mall commemorating the Vietnam War. I had a pretty tight deadline, and had not really taken any images that I was particularly proud of. I had pretty much decided that the assignment was gonna be chalked up to a wash when as I was walking away, I saw a couple reenactors walking by. I immediately did a 180 and introduced myself to them, and they were happy to have me walk with them to the Huey helicopter to take some photos of them.
I decided to do a tight portrait of Caiden. Because this was the middle of the day and the sun was casting some harsh light all around, I busted out my speed light so as to light up his face. Up to a certain point, shutter speed doesn’t have an impact on the light coming from the flash, just the ambient or available light. It’s when you start using shutter speeds 1/250 and higher such as 1/500 or 1/1000 that the shutter will have an impact. At that point the flash (if it’s a flash capable of this) will slip into high speed-sync mode, firing off a series of bursts rather than a single burst so that the entirety of the flash will still be seen even at very high shutter speeds. Combined with a wide aperture, which lets you get the most mileage out of your flash power and also blurs the background, it creates a more dramatically lit image. Flash can be used for either practical or more artistic purposes, and it’s a crucial tool when photographing in especially harsh lighting circumstances such as around high noon when the sun is casting all kinds of harsh shadows on people faces.
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Fireworks can be tricky to shoot. Shoot too long and you risk blowing out the highlights and leaving yourself with a big white blob. Shoot too short and the fireworks look less than spectacular. I always shoot at the lowest ISO possible (either 64 or 100) at 20-30 seconds (which is plenty of time to get some large fireworks and all of their streaks) while tweaking the f stop around f/18. This way you get large fireworks but, thanks to the low aperture, keeps your highlights in check, and because of the low iso, allows you to bring out all that shadow detail later that you can’t see just looking at your screen. That’s because the lower your iso is, the greater tonal range your image has. Also, cameras don’t show you a raw image on playback even if you shoot raw-only a jpg preview of it. All that shadow data is still there, even if it’s not obvious looking at the frame. Your camera’s histogram is your best friend in this situation. Just look at the photo straight from the camera on the left and after I’ve increased the exposure & shadows and lowered the highlights. The image coming straight from the camera is not an accurate portrayal of the scene as it looked (it was the middle of blue hour, not 2am during a major power outage), but by photographing in a way that keeps both your shadow and highlight details in check, you’ll be able to bring those details out when editing to truly show the scene as it looked. That’s the power of dynamic range in today’s cameras, and learning how to use it to your advantage will help you with taking your vision to the next level.
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I’m using this recent one as an example that speaks to the importance of anticipation and patience. Sometimes we get lucky and happen upon/capture a moment the instant that it happens in front of us as we are just walking by. More often than not though, we come across and recognize the potential of moments before they happen-like a patch of beautiful light in an otherwise drab environment. I noticed Hilda decked out in her patriotic attire from across the grass as musicians rehearsed their routines, and went to introduce myself to her and her husband. By that point though, the musicians were taking five, and Hilda was just sitting in her chair. There was no photo to be made at that particular moment, but I knew that one could be coming soon. So rather than immediately move on, I decided to wait around for the musicians to return to see if there’d be a reaction from her and others. As I was waiting it began to rain, so she and her husband busted out their umbrellas, and not long after that the musicians started doing their thing again. This photo is the immediate reaction by them and others around them as the rehearsal started up again.
Knowing how to capture a moment is important of course, but equally as important is being observant and intuitive enough to recognize the potential images already around you, so that when the pieces come together at the right moment you’ll be ready .
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This was one of my favorite photos from an assignment last month, but I could have easily not been there for it had I been in more of a rush. I was chronicling a town along the Potomac River in Maryland for the Post’s Real Estate section, and was looking to get photos of people around town and near the river. When I met Debbie and her two granddaughters they were walking past me in the parking lot walking towards the river. I walked with them there and got photos of them looking at the water. I could have easily just been fine with that and moved on, but I decided to continue walking with them along the adjacent C&O Canal trail. Eventually, we ran into a researcher who was chronicling a peregrine falcon nest on the cliffs above.
Eventually, he offered them a look through his telescope to see the falcons themselves, and that was the resulting photo. I had an idea of what kind of photos I could get of them on the trail at the start, but definitely did not consider this. You can’t really know just where a situation may or may not lead, but if you got the time, consider sticking around a little longer than you may have planned to. You may just be surprised by what happens.
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I was assigned last month to photograph the DC Senior Pageant. It had been a long time since I got to do an assignment around a stage, and I had so, so much fun with this one. I had arrived late and initially took photos from just the front of the stage, but I knew that if I wanted to dig deeper, I would have to go backstage where the contestants were congregated. While that had not been worked out prior with the organization, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to ask. So I got the CYA (Cover your ass) shots from the front and went to the front desk to request access. From there it was features galore. The colored lights, the pageant dresses, the motion of the performances, ; it was all there. While waiting with the contestants I wanted to get a candid moment in which each person would sort of be doing their own thing, and grabbing that moment may take some time. People will look at the camera and smile, or perhaps strike a certain pose because they’re aware that you are there and think you may want them to do things a certain way. The trick to move past that beyond asking people to not pay you any mind is simply wait until they stop paying attention to you. Take photos of other things, or look through your photos with your lens pointed down. Eventually the other person’s attention will be diverted elsewhere, and that’s when you can really get to work. I spent a good amount of time on the floor waiting for this photo, but it was well worth it to me. So whatever event you may find yourself at, make a point of seeing how much access you can get; ideally before the assignment, but if not, don’t be afraid to ask when there anyway.
As an added aside, make a point of moving around a space as much as you can. Even though I initially didn’t see anything on the other side of backstage, I thought I’d walk over anyway, and I was happy to see how the light, color and framing really came together for capturing the other side where the contestants and staff were doing their thing.
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There’s a lot of thinking on your feet in this job, and it’s important to know how to troubleshoot, as well as prepare as best as you can so that if circumstances change on an assignment you’ll still be able to work through it. For this shoot I was tasked with taking some portraits of famed high-wire artist Philippe Petit, and since it was taking place in the national building museum, one of the grandest interiors of any building in Washington, I had a number of ideas that would highlight the grandiosity of the space while still lighting him up pretty good. I got there early to set up a number of lights on the ground floor where I wanted to take portraits of him, and while carrying everything inside I decided at the last second to bring my beauty dish that I often use with my speed light. I had no intention of using it, but thought I might as well bring it anyway. After setting everything up I approached Mr. Petit and his team as I saw them on the ground floor. However, as soon as I walked up I was told that they were going on a break for a couple hours-apparently there had been a mixup with the schedule. The reporter showed up just as they were getting into the van, and while, thankfully, Petit’s team agreed to follow through with the interview, it would take place next to the rigging a couple floors up for about 15-20 min; nowhere near where I had set up my lights. I knew I didn’t have the time or space to use any of the lights that I had already set up. So I ended up grabbing the only thing I could-the beauty dish that I previously said I had no intention of using.
The space was narrow, just on the balcony overlooking the ground floor. But I liked the lighting that was filtering through the windows. I wanted to mimic that spotlight effect for it to look natural, so as Petit was speaking to the reporter standing across from him, I set up my beauty dish with a grid inside 45 degrees to his left. From those series of images I was able to get a couple including the initial image posted that I liked. And while it wasn’t the photo that I had in mind coming into the assignment, I still walked away feeling I did alright.
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I hope that this has been even a little helpful to someone reading, and I look forward to writing and posting more going forward!
Craig's Corner 