A conversation with Alex Arredondo

By day, Alex is an undercover detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. But his passion is photography. I was coaching Alex when the idea for this series hit me. While there are tons of people shooting photos and owning professional level gear most of you are not fulltime working photographers. I did a quick survey of my students and found quite a few people had really cool day jobs. Since I love LA and he’s got a gun plus a badge we’ll start the series with Alex.

The Picture Coach: Give us a little background info to get us started:
Alex Arredondo: I’m 44 years old; I grew up in Los Angeles and have been with the Los Angeles Police Department for over 22 years. I have worked as a patrol officer; assigned to the Violent Fugitive Task Force, as a detective I’ve investigated everything from Domestic Violence to Homicide. I’m currently working an undercover assignment.

TPC: How’d you first get interested in joining the LAPD?
AA: I joined LAPD because of TV programs like Adam-12, CHIPs and Dragnet.

TPC: Like many of us, you started taking photos in High School. Did you take any photos back then that you were proud of or that you remember?
I thought photography would be an easy “A” but was I wrong. We shot with a Pentax K1000 and had to process the black and white film in the school darkroom. I loved getting the reaction from my classmates and one picture got lots of reaction. I was shooting a HS football game and captured a wide receiver getting hit really hard by a defensive back. The player was really close to me and you could see the pain in his eyes. My teacher submitted the photo to the LA Times. It was awarded some type of award for great sports photos! I still have the photo packed in a box.

TPC: Are there skills that you developed as a policeman that carry over as a photographer?
AA: As a police officer, you need command presents. As a photographer that’s a quality that gets you in places that the “Average Joe” can’t.

TPC: If you could assist one photographer for a day, who would it be?
Sports shooter Dave Black– I’ve seen his work on the web and on the Nikon site. I hate photographers that set everything to automatic, stand straight up and never change their camera position. That’s not Dave’s style at all. His action photos are so impressive and he can also shoot very creative nighttime photos as well. Great range.

TPC: Everyone talks about having a five-year plan. What about you Alex, what do you want to be doing in five years?
AA: I have five more years before I can retire from my law-enforcement job. My goal is to be a professional sports photographer. My dream is to shoot a “Super Bowl” or World Series. I just don’t know where to start.

Alex, as a picture coach I tell students you must be able to walk before you run. By that, I mean you must know the craft of photography backwards and forward. You need to be able to capture peak action at every game you go to. Great sports shooters like Dave Black have a well-honed sense of timing. A Nikon hitting 9-frames-a-second is helpful but the top shooter doesn’t depend on that alone.
If you want to get good at shooting sports give yourself assignments. Go to a little league game or a middle school game on assignment—for yourself. Make a list of what needs to be photographed just like you were shooting for Sports Illustrated. Obviously, you need great action photos but there’s a twist. It can’t be just any cool action shot; it needs to be pictures that tell the story of the game. What do I mean? Lets say the home team wins the game on a 45-yard- pass play at the end of the third quarter. If you were shooting for SI you’d call your editor after the game and the very first thing out of his mouth would be—“ Did you get the play???” That’s what’s expected of top shooters. You need more than just some random shots of people jumping for balls. That’s a good starting point but to really excel at sports photography you need to be a student of the sport.

Enough talk, lets take a look at Alex’s pictures:

WOW—I just love this shot and it really caught me off guard. I had been talking to Alex about maybe shooting some portraits in the fire station he hangs out in and the next thing you know he emails this image. Great drama, strong composition and by using a slow shutter speed he was able to “burn in” the lamp the fireman had on his helmet. The only down side to this photo? I want to see more dramatic portraits like this one!

You want fire photos , Alex has plenty of those to choose from. This is a dramatic shot and the color is very very intense. I like the shot, it’s a classic spot news photo and you see a ton of fire photos in the newspaper but I just wonder. What if he had been shooting with a 70-200mm lens, and zoomed in really tight on the fireman. That might have been an even more dramatic shot. I encouraged him to get a shot like this one and then get much tighter.

Here is what Alex says about this photo: I arrived at an accident scene involving a drunk driver early on a Sunday morning. As I walked around the scene, I saw a child car seat on the ground. I then saw “it”, the Pink Doll on the roadway with shattered car glass. The sun was so intense that I need to darken my background. I ran to me car and grabbed my flash, placed it on full power, closed down my F-stop and took this image. Luckily, the child was not in the car.

I’m not a big fan of students shooting with wide-angle lens. Those lenses are very seductive. Everything tends to look great through the viewfinder but later, on closer inspection the magic of the moment is lost. You now see the clutter you missed when you shot the picture. Alex avoided those pitfalls by getting on the ground for a low angle view. By putting the camera down low it made a nice clean dramatic image.

When I first moved to Los Angeles I taught photography and had a steady
stream of students whom you might politely call blessed with enthusiasm but lacking in talent. Who knew that one day I’d be following a student’s career. Even teachers need to learn.

The phone rang in my office the other day and it was Bear. No, it wasn’t a “real-life-talking-bear”—this caller’s full name is Barry Gutierrez but everyone knows him as Bear. He was one of my earliest students and in those early days he was very eager but still rough in his basic skills.

Maybe some of that photo chemistry had seeped into his brain but after taking my class a few times he decided photography was how he was going to spend his life. Barry wanted to be a photojournalist so he spent several months researching the best colleges and ended up choosing Western Kentucky University. He loaded up an old blue Chevy pickup truck; said good-bye to Los Angeles and 2200 miles later arrived in Bowling Green, KY.

The Picture Coach: What did you think of Western Kentucky University when you very first arrived?

Bear: WKU was like joining a family. A co-ed fraternity of photojournalists. I felt a sense of competition and camaraderie all at the same time. I knew that I would be judged on my character, pictures and effort. I got involved as quick as I could.

TPC: Bear worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News before he ended up at the Rocky Mountain News.

Bear: The Rocky was a fantastic place to work. I was impressed with the caliber of photographers and they pushed me to be a better photographer every day.

TPC: Lets get to the big stuff. Your were a member of the photo staff of the Rocky Mountain News which earned a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Colorado wildfires in summer 2002. Tell us about that award.

Bear: The paper entered 20 images for that contest and I had seven pictures in the original entry. I was given the task to print the entry myself. I did it in the studio of the RMN and it took nearly a month. I am almost as proud of printing the entry as I was of making the pictures. I’m pretty sure we used an Epson 2200 for the prints and an 11×14 print could take 10-20 minutes. I made each print with a thick black border and added caption information in white type to the bottom of each print. The format, style and words all had to be checked, rechecked and edited by two different editors at the paper, with the final approval from our publisher. WIth that many eyes on our entry, I had to make a dozen versions of most images and duplicates for safety.

TPC: Where were you when you got the news about the Pulitzer?

Bear: I was stuck in traffic on the 10 Freeway in Los Angeles on my way to see my grandmother. At the time she lived in a house that my grandfather builtwith his own two hands. It stood on a hill with 52 steps. I remember being a little taxed after running up the steps and trying to explain to my 92-year-old grandmother what a Pulitzer Prize was. She really had no clue but she knew it was big. She was so full of joy with me. It was the perfect person to share the news. She has since passed and that moment is chained to my heart forever.

TPC: What was great about shooting for newspapers?

Bear: The best and the worst was the daily grind. I loved the daily adventure of random assignments. One day it might be a plane crash, the next a baby’s birth, and then a baseball game. Some days I had two or three of those assignments one after the next. I loved the instant gratification of being published everyday. When I first started working I would sometimes stay up until 3 am to watch the newspaper being printed with my picture on the front page.

TPC: Tell us what you are doing since the newspaper folded?

Bear: The RMN closed its doors Feb. 28, 2009. I now work for numerous editorial clients nationwide, three or four collage publications, The Associated Press, Denver Post, European Press agency. I shoot corporate portraits, weddings and headshots. I was hired as a stills photographer for a movie in California called Heathens and Thieves in 2009. I also teach photojournalism at Front Range Community Collage and Metro State Collage.

TPC: What photographers do you study?

Bear: I think Alex Webb’s work is amazing. He is intensely drawn to great light. His pictures have a special beauty and depth which are framed by incredible culture. I’m curently reading Portrait in Light and Shadow: The Life of Yousuf Karsh by Dr. Maria Tippett, and as I read through Karsh’s journeys, I daydream about being a mouse in his pocket. It has been a fun read about an incredible portrait photographer.

TPC: Cameras are now so smart, what advice do you have for “students” to make their photos stand above the usual.

Bear: If you are examining your pictures, ask yourself this question: “Could my mother take this picture?” If the answer is yes, you need to work much harder. When I teach, I tell my students that billions of images are taken around the globe every year. What makes your images worth looking at? You have to master your equipment. You have to shoot more. Remember, your first 100,000 images are crap. The sooner you get to 100,000 frames, the sooner you will have a style, a name, and a future as a photographer.

TPC: I don’t think you have a crystal ball but what do you see in the future for photography.

Bear:” I fear that video will be our only medium to use in a very short time; 5-10 years. The quality of a still frame from a video will be that of a digital image from a Cannon EOS 1D Mark IV and then it’s all over. Still images will be no more. Like film, we will only make it for artists. There will always be a need for images. In fact that need grows greater and greater each day. It is how we gather those images that will change. Unfortunately the art and craftsmanship I fell in love with will be no more.”

Barry, I just keep learning from you.

TPC
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TPC: This was the first photo I saw after it was announced that the Rocky Mountain News had won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. Even before I knew he shot the photo I was willing to bet it was Barry’s picture. For me this photo is about timing. Both the timing of the fires as it approaches the beautiful house and the realization that in no time, that house woud be gone.

TPC: Shooting air to air can be tricky and doing it the middle of a major operation like the Colorado wild fires takes talent under pressure. The position of the airplane and the dramatic lighting were elements Barry had no control over but still managed to create a striking image with near perfect composition. In some ways the photo is so pretty it looks like a poster for an upcoming Clint Eastwood poster.

“That’s all he wanted to do, is come home and put her(Leia) on his chest,” said Dana Baum, Rayn’s mother. A photograph of Leia Ryan Baum was placed on her father Sgt. Ryan John Baum’s chest for visitation. Rayn was killed in action in Karmah, Iraq May 18, 2007. Ryan was scheduled to return home to be present for the birth of his daughter Leia Ryan Baum who was born 11 days after his death. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division.

I think most really good photos have an interesting back-story and I’d like to tell you the story of my first photo in Life Magazine. I had just moved to Los Angeles to begin my freelance career. The tallest building on the West Coast was on fire and the whole 12th floor was fully engaged. The live TV pictures from the scene made it look just like the 1974 movie thriller –The Towering Inferno.

Check out the video for the whole story—

TPC

The story behind the photo…

First Photo in Life MAgazine from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

A downside to a world where digital cameras are so advance that each image is properly exposed, every picture is in focus and the digital file can be enlarged to mural size is kind of subtle.

How do you make your photographs stand out for the herd?

In my career, I’ve always been interested in getting a camera angle no other photographer shoots. It requires extra work but I don’t know any great photographer who is lazy.

Lets start with this idea, when you look thought the viewfinder, ask yourself—“is this a snapshot or is this a photograph?” A snapshot is what EVERYBODY sees while standing in that spot. Our goal @ TPC is to make photographs. Today, we’ll look at how camera position can affect your pictures and sometimes help you make striking images.

The overhead position—

Working on assignment for Sports Illustrated, I was profiling Clay Puett, the man who invented the electric starting gate in horse racing. I had several portraits of him but I was looking for a lead photo that was more dramatic. By mounting a camera with a 15mm lens on top of the starting gate at Hollywood Park near Los Angeles I was able to provide the readers of the magazine with a very unusual view. Setting my camera to a slow shutter speed blurred the horses and riders slightly, giving it a sense of motion.

The ground level position-

Setting your camera on the ground for a “worm’s eye” view like I did in this picture from the final moments of a High School state tournament game is another way to get a dramatic shot. The score was tied with only one second left on the clock. I knew the whole game could hinge on this single free throw attempt. I quickly pulled off the prism of my Nikon F2 (try that with digital!) so I could look straight down onto the camera’s focusing screen. The photo was published the entire width of the papers sports section so you could really see the cool details which are lost at only 600 pixels! As a photojournalist you are always tiring to get the “Decisive Moment” and everything seemed to come together in this one frame.

It was 1988, I was moving to Los Angeles and I needed business cards. A newspaper buddy was a designer and he offered to do it for me. When he first showed me his design I instantly loved it. “Los Angeles is a hip place,” he said, “ and this is a hip design.”

The Los Angeles Times was my first client when I got to town and I had only been there a week when they assigned me to photograph Vice President George H.W. Bush’s arrival at LAX. I had many dealings with the Secret Service over the years and never had a problem before that day. Back then; it took a while to get a new press pass to hang around your neck so I showed up at the event knowing I’d have to do some fast-talking.

Secret Service agents are not the type who enjoys fast-talking and I was in trouble from the start. “ So let me get this straight, you have no press pass, no picture ID and you handed me a business card with a picture of a dog, are you kidding me”, the agent asked. Before I could come up with an answer he followed. “Is that your dog?” No sir, I replied. “You expect me to let a guy with no press pass, no picture ID and a dog on his business card in to photograph the Vice President?” he added with enough attitude to make me feel about six inches tall.

He walked away for a moment and that’s when I realized all was not lost. I popped open one of those zippered pocket in your camera bag you never use and pulled out my seldom-used passport. The agent let me inside and offered a valuable piece of advice. “I’d get rid of that business card.”

You may need more than a German Shepard on your business card to get this close to Vice President Bush. Nikon F3, 35mm lens and Tri-X film.

President’s day seems like a good time to dig into the archive and
talk about my first assignment to photograph in the Oval Office. I had only
been in Washington two months when the Los Angeles Times called and
needed some updated pictures of President Clinton. I jumped at the
chance. Before arriving in DC, I had lived in Los Angeles and had
photographed a bunch of famous Hollywood types. Steven Spielberg was
the best and Tim Robins was the worst. However you look at it, movie
stars have to take a back seat to the Big Guy.

I had seen those behind the scenes pictures in Vanity Fair of Annie
Leibovitz photographing (don’t think you can really use the word
shooting here) in the White House with her huge light boxes and
multiple assistants so I also wanted to pack enough gear to properly
photograph the leader of the free world.

Back in sunny southern California I would fill up my Suburban with
equipment and be able to park right at the location. This was going to
call for a much different game plan. I ended up with a small two-wheel
cart to carry a set of Dynalite strobes, tripod, light stands and some
soft boxes.

When I cleared security and got inside, the White House media people
looked at my cart like it was R2D2 from Star Wars. What do you think
you’re going to do with that, they asked? You guessed it; I was not on
equal footing with Annie. All that gear stayed outside the oval as I
entered with just two Canon film cameras, an 85mm 1.8 lens and a
70-200mm zoom. What they knew and I didn’t was my time with the
leader of the free world was going to last only three minutes or about
two rolls of color neg film. I knew I didn’t want a standard behind the
desk shot; I decided to go in tight around his face, to capture him in
a pensive moment. The resulting image, of a brooding Clinton, his chin
resting against a clenched fist, stands up well today. And it still amazes
me that I pulled it off in just about three minutes.

When my meter expired, a press person walked into my frame and
waved me toward the door. I grabbed the handle of my still unpacked
equipment cart, and headed for the front gate.

Canon EOS1, Fuji 800 speed film and 70-200 2.8 zoom lens. It may be the Oval Office but it was DARK.

One of the biggest events in sports takes place this Sunday with the 51st running of the Dayton 500. This time of the year I get a bit antsy, wanting to get back to the track to start another project. It’s been four years since I began shooting photos for my book “Faces of NASCAR” which was publish late in 2006.

When I had completed the shooting and editing phase of the book, I copied all the data to an extra external hard drive, bought a small Pelican case to store the unit and gave it to a neighbor for safekeeping. That neighbor reminded of the gray pelican case the other days so I retrieved the hardrive and began to review those images. I began looking back through the entire collection of images from the book; nearly 12,000 images and a few things jumped up and grabbed my attention.

I’ve broken it down into four areas:

#1–The Stars–Before starting this book, the only other time I had shot a race was the July 4th 1984 race in Daytona , I think they called it the Pepsi Firecracker 400 and Richard Petty was the winner. Petty won his 200th and final race of his long legendary career and then he stopped his car at the start/finish line, walked up the steep banked track and shook hands with a very special guest that afternoon-then President Ronald Reagan. Richard Petty or King Richard as they like to call him was one of those guys with a 1000-watt smile. Every time he was around the track I tried extra hard to capture a portrait of the King.

#2–The details–I was working late one night, fine-tuning a pile of images when I began to look at a photo of King Richard really close, like 300% close. That was when I first noticed the famous belt buckle. Instantly I knew I needed a really tight pictures of the buckle and began to plan out the photo. My assistant in Dover has seen my crude sketch of what I wanted and we had planed to put down a white reflector on the grown to bounce light up into the photo.When I saw the King in the garage are on Saturday before the big race, I quickly told him what I was doing. He agreed and I only shot maybe 10-15 frames. But that was enough and I knew I had my picture.

#3—The Scenes– This is one of my favorite shots. The way the American Flag staff seems to go stab the Target logo really works for me. Very clean composition with the flag, the cloudy blue sky and Target hauler (that’s NASCAR lingo for the trailer trucks that carry all the race gear) just works for me. I originally tried to do a panorama shot with a long row of the haulers but sometime less is more.–Techie tip: It’s kind of old school but I worked hard to keep the trucks from leaning too much. I hate those photos where people who don’t know how to use wide lens point up at something like a building and the things seem to be falling backwards!

#4–The Faces—It would make sense if you titled the book” Faces of NASCAR” you might have a few portraits. The staff and crew were so used to having a camera pointed at them that I felt nearly invisible—which I love. This guy was working on pit row and when he took off his helmet (all people working on the car wear helmets) he was wearing this fireproof, tan-colored Ninja mask. I loved the way it framed his face and by using a long lens (300mm) and moving in very close it made the background go out of focus. The light was very overcast and soft that day so the combination along with the incredible sharpness of the lens made for a really nice portrait.

The week leading up to Sundays big game in Miami always makes me think back to one of my best assignments–Covering Superbowl XX. It was 1985, I was a staff photographer at the Providence Journal back then and I had spent a whole month shooting playoff games in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. It was cold, snowy and bleak back home in Rhode Island but I was having a blast on the road. In the end, the Chicago Bears destroyed the Patriots 46-10 in New Orleans but I was living the dream.

It’s hard not to think back to those days and not realize how much easier the game would have been with digital. The superdome, where he game was played was pretty dark with flat ugly lighting. Most newspapers only used black and white pictures at that point and we were forced to shoot at iso 1600. That camera setting only gave us 1/500th of a second at F.3.5. In a real retro move, I pulled out the actual film, grabbed my Schneider 4x loupe and flipped the switch to the light box. Digital has spoiled us with great tonal range that made the film look hard. The combination of the high-speed way we processed the film and the poor lighting made for a grainy ugly result.

At the start of the game, looking up at some of the 72,000 fans I remember this outburst of camera flashes at the opening kickoff. I was pretty nervous in the beginning but I that didn’t last long. The first play from scrimmage was a long pass play to the Patriots Lin Dawson. He ended up getting injured right in front of me and I really mean close. I normally shot action from the sidelines with a 400mm 3.5 Nikon lens along with a 35mm lens on a second body. Remember, the 16-35 zoom was not yet invented so we all used prime lens. The medical staff working on Lin Dawson was so close I had to switch to a 20mm to get it all. My buddy and fellow “Pro-Jo” shooter Bob Breidenbach got a cool frame of me from across the field in the crush of shooters trying to get the picture.

At your average football game you can go pretty much anywhere you want. They do frown on shooters running onto the field but you can travel all 100 yards of the sideline and across the end zone. There is so much media at an event like the Superbowl, they have to provide some order by limiting your access. I remember having a sideline credential that kept me in just one corner of the field. If the action was happening on the other end of the field you couldn’t run to the other end of the field. The Bears were scoring early and often so I spend much of my time photographing the patriots on the sidelines with their helmets off looking defeated.

There were a series of messengers on the field that would collect our film and shuttle it up stairs to the Associated Press darkrooms. Our boss, Chip Maury (See earlier post on H.E.T.) was there to edit our film. He would make a small notch on the edge of the film by the sprocket holes and the AP lab techs would make an 8×10 print for him to put a caption on. It was real madhouse of a place with lots of shouting about deadlines and general craziness. Chip was a former AP guy and I’m sure he felt right at home.

The game went by quickly and it was very late before Bob and I were able to get thought the crowds and hiked up to the upper levels of the stadium to meet Chip. We had no idea if we had made any good photos (remember, no champing with a Nikon F3) but Chip showed us a whole pile of photos that he had transmitted back to the paper, using what was basically just a high tech fax machine. It was New Orleans so there was quiet a party going on as we left the stadium and hurried off to dinner.

This Sunday when the game starts I’ll be watching the sidelines to see what the photographers are doing. Super bowl 20, 30 or 40, film or digital, Nikon or Canon the goal of every shooter on the sideline is still the same. Get great action shots, tell the story of the game and just like the players, have a great game.

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TPC

Yep, that’s me on the sidelines of Superbowl XX throwing my weight around to get a better angle on the play. The action on the sidelines is nothing like whats on the field but there is often pushing, shoving and its not the place for the shy!!!

Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon was one of the big stories of Super Bowl XX. The former Brigham Young University star set a Super Bowl record with two rushing touchdowns. McMahon completed 12 of 20 passes for 256 yards before leaving the game in the fourth period with a wrist injury. Both photos were made with a Nikon F3, 400mm F3.5 lens and Tri-X film.

For me the week I spent in New Orleans, leading up to the big game was really more fun that the actual event. Media day was a huge circus and its ringleader, as usual was the sunglass wearing Jim McMahon. I loved the dramatic feel that the TV lights gave the picture and by standing behind the player, an unusual camera angle for a press conference it exaggerated the effect. Nikon F3, 20 mm F2.8 lens and Tri-X film

When I was on staff at the Providence-Journal (Rhode Island), I had a boss who was crazy about getting an H.E.T. on every assignment. For Chip, HET stood for HAIR, EYEBALLS & TEETH. That’s a really tight portrait of your subject that was more than just a “drivers license photo”. I shoot with a Nikon F3 back then (a film camera of course!) and loved the 180mm lens for shooting these photos. I’d have the person in some really sweet light with a dark background and focus in as close as the lens would go and shoot wide opens at F2.8. I was a portrait shooter even back then and I loved to see every wrinkle on that face. Now Chip was both a retired Navy frogman and a former AP photographer so lets just say if he wanted an HET on every roll then that’s what he got. When I started freelancing for the New York Times I was well trained to always get that tight portrait of the subject because it often was the one photo that would get into the paper. After an assignment, I’d eagerly pick up the paper and scream when I’d see what some dim witted editor had done. The headshot in the paper was not my nice clean HET I had shot. No it was a totally different picture. Most likely, it was a wide-angle photo from 30 feet away and had to be cropped 3000%, which looked grainy, soft and just plain ugly.

I was sure everyone that looked at that photo but must have thought I was a really sad photographer…except all the other photographers who had received the same treatment at the old gray lady.

### SR

This picture I made of Quincy Jones while on assignment for The New York Times is one of my favorites and I’d say it would pass Chip’s test of what a tight portrait should look like. I was using an 85mm lens and shot wide open (F 1.8) using Tri-X (that would be film for you new comers) and had him stand near a window so I could get some natural light on that famous face.

Early in my photo career I was a newspaper staff photographer in Florida and one of my favorite assignments was shooting big time college football. We covered Florida, Florida State and Miami games and they always had exciting teams. That’s were I learned the sidelines were packed with guys shooting the long glass but only a few who could get that great shot week in and week out, rain or shine. Faster forward 20 years and little has really changed. Most people can get a decent action photo some of the time but the shooters that were the real deal were few and far between. Rod Mar is “Real Deal”.

He was a sports photographer at the Seattle Times newspaper for nearly 20 years who now makes his living as the official photographer for several sports teams: the Seattle Sounders FC (that’s pro soccer for the soccer-challenged), and the Seattle Seahawks. His photos also appear in Sports Illustrated.

He has just started a new blog called– Eye on the Hawks, (http://eyeonthehawks.seahawks.com) which will be the proof to my earlier claim that he is the real deal. Being the team photographer, he has amazing access and his pictures really stand out.

I wanted to ask Rod something kind of off the wall, something to see how his brain works. So I gave him a theoretical assignment: Imagine you are at a game with only one lens. You only have to bring back just one picture but it has to be great. What lens do you use for capturing that “GREAT” picture. I knew Rod has all the latest gear — Nikon D3s, a 600mm F4, 400 2.8, 200-400 zoom, all the latest equipment. Still, he surprised me with his answer.

‘If I have an entire game to shoot, and I’m going to make one picture that’s memorable, I’m going to take the risk and do that wide angle,” Rod told me. “I think a lot of people with auto focus can run a 600mm, 400mm or a 300 2.8. But the pictures that are special are the ones that are unusual.”

“I’m going to take that wide angle and work the end zones and the sidelines and try to make something really cool within 10 yards of me.”

His use of the term “run” brought me right to my next question. How has modern technology changed sports photography? He answered by drawing an analogy to school. In Rod’s view, auto focus allowed more shooters to take up sports photography. But auto focus alone can only get you so far.

“In the manual focus days there was a big separation between the people who could follow focus and those that couldn’t,” Rod said. “Follow focusing was a skill that made you a great sports photographer along with your ability to know the game and capture moments.”

“So without some skill and practice, manual focus meant pictures that would earn a D- or an F”. Rod said, “Auto Focus has allowed a lot of people to get a C+. The ability to get that “A” grade is what separates the top pros from everyone else. Auto focus is a great equalizer but there will always be that separation. There is a reason why the top guys at SI, the top guys in the world, are still the top guys in the world. Even with all this technology they have just upped their game even further. They are just brilliant, visually, the way they think and their work ethic.”

Maybe there is more to sports photography than 9 frames a sec.

XXX

Here is a photo by USA today photographer Robert Hanashiro showing Rod Mar on the sidelines of a Seattle Seahawks football game with his trusty Nikon 600mm F4 lens. If you have an extra $10,249.95 you can get one from B&H Photo. Anyone (with the cash) can own one but being able to shoot great photos with one—that may take some practice. The lens alone weighs over 11 pounds so you might need to get to the gym so you can run up and down the sidelines with this for three hours a game.

In this photo, Rod has made a very nice clean action shot with the runner and ball visible but the runner was clearly having a rough day.

I got a good lesson in how much photography has changed not long ago, when I went to my local Barnes & Noble to hear Bill Eppridge speak. His book “A Time It Was – Bobby Kennedy in the 60s” had just come out. The book chronicles Bill’s days photographing Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for president – the campaign that, as we all know, ended fatefully by an assassin’s bullet. Bill had a front row position for that final night and made an amazing set of pictures. The B&N was packed that evening, and everybody in the place wanted to know more about the Kennedys.

Everybody, that is, but me.

After politely fielding one Kennedy question after another, Bills face lit up when he heard my question, the only photo related question of the night. I wanted to know about his iconic picture, the image of Bobby Kennedy on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after he had been shot. My question was this: “How many hours after you shot the picture did you know whether you had gotten the shot?’’

It was just after midnight on June 5th, 1968 when Bill made that shot. He was shooting with a Nikon Nikkormat camera and tri-X film so there was no LCD screen on the back of the camera to quickly check to see if see if he had gotten the now famours picture. This was black and white film so couldn’t just download the pictures onto his laptop and in five minutes know the answer. No, this was 1968 and technology was very different back then. Bill told me he gave his film to a reporter who hand carried it to the Life offices in Los Angeles.

It was around daybreak the next morning, he said, when he got his first feedback on the film. It came from a Time Magazine photographer who told Bill he had seen the contact sheets and said, “I don’t know what else you’ve got, but you have one hell of a picture.”

I wasn’t that surprised to hear it took a full night for Bill to learn what he had. But what did surprise me was something else he said in his talk that night: he mentioned that before the big events of that evening in the Ambassador, he went to his hotel room to pick up 10 or 12 rolls of film. After all, if Bobby Kennedy won the California primary that night, he would have sealed up the Democratic presidential nomination. Bill figured he would need that much film to record a major moment in the campaign. In my head, I quickly calculated the equivalent in CF cards. With my camera, 10 of 12 rolls of film equals about one-8 gigabyte card. I bet if you look in the camera bags of the people covering campaigns today, they would easily have five or 10 times that CF capacity.

It made me think. Technology has never been better, cameras can shoot 9 frames a second and we can make pictures in near total darkness. But I wonder: As photographers, are we making better images or do they just have lower noise in the shadows?

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TPC

Years go when I was staff photographer in Atlanta, we used to joke that a trained monkey could make a good picture of a burning building, flames blazing through the roof or a pretty sunset but it took real talent to make good photos at life’s everyday events.

I was tested at one of those everyday events Saturday and needed to produce a nice set of pictures. It was a party for my friend Cory to celebrate his retirement from the Navy after a distinguished 25-year career. For a photographer these things can be tricky. There was lots of laughing, good food and drinks but the setting was not that visual. All the non-photographers would say what a great location it was, that’s true, but it wasn’t visual. Pro shooters always hope for a location that is so visually loaded it’s easy to make great shots. We call that shooting fish in a barrel but its rare you get lucky so most of the time you’re forced to use your experience and skills with the camera.

Lets breakdown the thing you need to master to make great photos at a party or similar event. Things like this almost always require the shooter to use on camera strobe and that can be pretty ugly if you aren’t careful. I try to use a diffuser on the strobe to soften the light. There are all kinds of these things but I’m currently using the Lightsphere.

In a pinch I’ve used a white plastic coffee cup or even a sheet of white paper folded in half. The bottom line here is you need to soften the direct strobe light with something. The party had one great thing going for it and that was really nice available light. If you location has good ambient light, then you can use a slow shutter speed to supplement your on camera flash. If you want to make great party photos this is the part where you need to start paying attention.

By mixing flash and a slow shutter speed you can dramatically change the look of your photos .How does that work you ask? I approach the photo like this. I know the on camera flash can light things right in front of the camera but the light is only going to be coming from one direction making the photo flat and one dementia. I use the slow shutter speed to unlock the available light that’s in the room and make it work for me. The first thing I do is open my lens up to around F2.8 or F4 and set my ISO to around 400. I then check the meter to see what the light levels are in the room. The photo of Cory’s parents listening to him make a short speech was F.2.8 at 1/8th of a sec. The on camera flash lights the people in the foreground and the ambient paints in the ceiling that warm yellow color.

My advice is to do lots of testing to see what works for you. Normally, I HATE to see people constantly looking at their cameras LCD screen (it’s called Chimping) but this is a perfect time to chimp. Shoot pictures at different shutter speeds and see which combination works best. If the subjects are moving too much they can get a funky motion blur thing and that might be bad for you or it could be the coolest photos you’ve ever taken. That the fun part, all the camera technique in the world is worthless if you don’t make an interesting photo. I’m not charging my friend to shoot his big event but I still approach the assignment like it was. As a re-covering photojournalist I still look for the same kind of photos I always did. A few nice photos of the main speaker, then I turn the camera 180 degrees and get the reaction shot. For me these are the most interesting photos. Don’t stay in one place too long and work the whole room. I make sure I get photos of as many different people as possible. When possible I’ll try to get an overall shot showing the whole room or venue and I’m a sucker for a good overhead photo. Some times you can find just the right spot to get a high angle view and the photo look spectacular

Party on…

Cory’s parents are beaming as they listen to him make a few remarks at the end of the evenings ceremony.

Check out Gary’s web site for more info on his products: http://store.garyfonginc.com/liiido.html

When I was in high school, I shot pictures for the school paper and my first “picture coach” was my teacher Mr. Brown. What I didn’t know at the time was he knew nothing about photography but gave advice like he was on staff at the National Geographic. He once told me to always set my camera at F8 and 1/60th of a second. Daylight, nighttime, rain or shine. Didn’t matter–F8 at 1/60th was the answer. Luckily, my Uncle Tom was an amateur photographer and he corrected many of those early missteps.

Fast-forward 35 years and now I’m the uncle doing the picture coaching. My niece, Lilli is the photographer for her High School yearbook and I’ve been working with her on some of those questions we all had when we first picked up the camera. She lives 800 miles away so all of my coaching had been long distance, but that was before I made a road trip for the Christmas holiday.

It was great to be able to sit down in person with my niece and really look over the images she was shooting to make suggestions on how they might be improved. We talked about everything from software to lens selection. She had an assignment to shoot and I was well suited to be her coach. Her school was in a big holiday basketball tournament and this was a great chance to get some really good shots. Back in my newspapers days I shot tons of basketball and even covered the NBA finals a couple of times. Needless to say, I knew my way around the hardwood.

Before I jumped in and started giving suggestions I looked through some football and volleyball pictures she had shot in the fall. From the metadata I could see she had set her camera with a shutter speed that was too slow to really freeze motion.

Looking though the pages of Sports Illustrated you will see a theme to those great action photos. They use telephoto lens, they shoot those lens at the minimum apertures (F2.8) and use the fastest shutter speed possible. Say WHAT??? OK, I’ll put it in simple terms. A good sports shooter will set his camera at 1/500 of a sec and will set his telephoto lens at 2.8. A bad sports shooter would set up at 1/125 at F 5.6. Most shooters agree that you need to shoot at 1/500 of a sec or faster to capture a high percentage of sharp photos. Is it impossible to shoot sports at slow speeds? No, but it is much harder to get a sharp photo. In my early days as a photojournalist many a Friday night was spent at some dark cave of a high school football field. We were lucky to have enough light to shoot at 1/250 of a second. Almost every frame had some subject motion (because of the slow shutter speed) and often you got only one or two usable photo out of 100 images.

To wrap this baby up, I’d say: Don’t get discouraged if you’re trying to shoot basketball. The action is very fast, the arenas are dark and it takes several games to get into the flow of the action. In a controlled setting like a basketball game, move your camera to manual exposure, open your lens to its largest opening and set the shutter speed to the highest setting the lighting will allow. A good shooter will develop a sense of timing for the game and anticipate the action. It takes more than a fast motor drive.

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I was really excited when I saw this photo that my teenage niece made at the game. For me, this photo just screams – GREAT TIMING. Both players are in the air and the blue players arm is straight across with his hand firmly planted on the ball. This is the full frame version of the picture made with a Canon Rebel XSi and a short zoom lens set at 28mm. This is a great example of peak action. Good work Lilli!

Here we have the same action photo but in this version I’ve cropped in to tighten up the picture. As a general rule: tighter is better. I felt the full frame version didn’t add anything to the pictures and just made it harder to read. “Teachable Moment Alert”– I’m not a huge fan of this shooting position. It leads to a lot of “arm pit” photos and haven’t we seen enough arm pits already? By choosing a wide lens you see way too much background and it’s really cluttered. How would I have shot the photo? I’d have used my 50-mm lens and shot wide open (F2) to blur the background. It would have minimized those pesky banners, I could have shot at a high shutter speed and that’s how I like to shoot sports.

One of the fun things about having the camera mounted in a remote location is when you finally see the photos they’re a total surprise. The advance work that Michael put in before the swim meet paid off nicely. There were several strong photos to chose from but I posted my favorite one here. Why did I pick that one? I found this one striking with the bubbling water covering the swimmers head making for a sense of mystery.

While he was setting up his shot, I made a few behind the scenes photos to give you a better idea of how we set up the camera and what we used to keep the gear out of the deep end!

The late afternoon light made for interesting patterns in the water

Out on the end of the diving board one of the major concerns was to get the camera safely attached to the tripod head.

After the camera was attached, Michael had a swimmer do a few strokes so he could fine tune his composition.

Here is a tight shot of the home made gizmo I built to attach the camera to the board. It included a Arca Swiss Monoball head, two “C” clamps, a wooden “L” bracket and a 35 pound sandbag. The 15 feet long gray cable is the way we are triggering the camera. There are two pieces of tape on the lens, what do you think that is for? One pice tapes the zoom at it’s widest setting (16 mm) and the second tapes the focus at 7 feet. This way nothing can accidently giggle our setting, they are “taped down” and can’t be changed.

Talent is important but I can’t help you in that department. As “The Picture Coach” I’d like to point out something that many pro shooters regularly do that is often overlooked–testing. Don’t worry, in all my years of shooting nobody ever asked my SAT score, luckily for me. Shooters use the term, testing, to describe taking out a new piece of gear or a lighting technique and practicing with it. Testing is also a good way to improving the odds of getting the picture you want when you do get the big job.

My friend Michael and I were at a swim meet the other day, not the Swimming Nationals in Indianapolis, just a neighborhood event like many might attend. He noticed they had raised the driving boards up from their front supports, maybe 45 degrees but didn’t remove them from their rear supports. I knew instantly where he was going and liked how he was thinking. For several years he had been shooting swimming and each season his work just gets better. If you want to see swimmers, doing the butterfly stroke with just the tips of their fingers dragging across the water then he’s your guy. Once he’d covered the basics it was time to start looking for more challenges.

While these meets aren’t the big time they still don’t let photographer hang off the diving board to shoot photos. Michael knew I had several cases of clamps, special brackets, various widgets and tripods so we started talking about how to attach the camera to the diving board. The goal was to mount the cameras on the board before the meet started. Once they started swimming, he could fire the camera with a long remote cord from behind the action. We quickly realized attaching the camera was the easy part. The big question became what will his Canon D30 with a 16-35 lens “see” when mounted seven feet off the water.

Michael bravely handed me $2600 worth of his camera gear and watched me slowly walk to the end of the drive board to eyeball the shot. He stayed on the ground to coach the swimmer on what we were looking for. We made a few shots before realizing it looked great with the swimmer right under the board but in a real meet the only thing right under the board will be a blue lane divider. It’s small stuff like that you can only find out when you test. When Michael sets up for tonight’s shoot he will have this problem corrected and be prepared to make great photos. I’ll post more photos of how we mounted the camera and his action pictures later this week.

Here is a test photo I took with the Canon D30 and the 16-35 mm lens, F-4 at 1/1600 of a sec.
Special thanks to Michael Phelps for helping with out test

When I first came up with the idea for “The Picture Coach” I wanted to find a way to get out in the real world to work with students. I liked the idea of hovering over their shoulders to offer suggestions or talk about how I might approach a shoot.
On Saturday night, I was able to try out my idea at a local football game. Yeah, I know some of you are already wondering if I have my sports mixed up. If it’s June and it’s football, then it must be Women Professional Football. Our local team, the DC Divas, had a playoff game, and I was able to give three students a press pass,We spent the whole game on the sidelines, John, Meagan and James to help them understand the finer points of shooting football I was wearing a wireless microphone and I had a video camera pointed at me all night for an upcoming DVD project – an instructional video. It turns out I look pretty good on camera.
A special thanks to Paul Hamlin and Rich Daniel for making that happen!
I’ve posted a few of their photos and will be offering a mild critique with the images.

Ask any magazine picture editor and one of the first things they will tell you is they love to be surprised (in a good way) when a shooter’s work comes in from an assignment. John really got my attention with his first picture. My gut reaction was I wish that it was my image, but I put my battered ego aside to really study the photo. He was shooting with the Canon 300mm 2.8 and he clearly knew how to make great use of that lens. By shooting wide open at f 2.8 and moving in really close, he made cool things happen with that lens. Most of the picture is out of focus—except one very important thing—her right eye. BOOM, he really nailed it.

Magazine photo editors I’ve worked with over the years always have commented when I’ve gone out of my way to give them options. Sometimes it was as simple as shooting the same photo both as a vertical and a horizontal. This won’t work with every situation, but when you can do it, you look like a pro. John gave me options in this action sequence he shot from early in the game. I keep looking at these two images and can’t decide which one I like better. That’s a good problem to give an editor.
In the first shot (with her head down), I love the way the defenders hand is right on her facemask (yes, the ref did throw the flag) and the way the ball is held away from her body. In the second frame, you can see her face, which really helps all sports pixs and there is that great interaction with the arms.
You immediately notice a quality both pictures share—they’re both very clean. When pro shooters use the term “clean” they’re talking about how the background looks, which helps the image jump off the page. In these photos, the background doesn’t have other players, or light poles, or stupid cars in a parking lot. Just blank out-of-focus football field and the action is really easy to see. Again, when shooting the 300mm lens wide open (F2.8) and you really fill up the frame, you can get these kinds of sports photos. Did the photographer ask them to run over where the background is nice and clean so it would make a better photo?—Of course not. But you can be aware of what a “clean background” is and use it when you have an opportunity.

To be a good sports photographer you need to have good timing and you must learn to anticipate the action. Generally, a picture of a quarterback getting ready to handoff the ball is not a keeper. But this image has the defender charging through the line and almost getting to the QB. It’s that big arm inches away from the ball that keeps this photo from the reject pile.

Shooting tethered is a term used to describe hooking the camera directly to a computer using a fire wire or USB cable. You can control the camera from the desktop and get a large preview in seconds. Some camera companies supply the software when you buy the camera (Canon) and for others (Nikon) you need to buy additional software. It’s a pretty simple process but after looking at your camera manual you may need a small amount of help from the usual online resources.

There are lots of places you can get help finding the correct cable but I want to help you in a different way—talk about some of the different ways you can benefit from hooking your camera into your computer.

One of the most common uses for shooting tethered is studio photography. Food and still life photography is vastly improved by using the larger monitor to really see every inch of the scene. The 3-inch LCD on the back of the camera is nice but it can’t compete to looking at your image on a 20-inch color managed display seconds after clicking the shutter.

I like working this way if I’m shooting a portrait for a corporate client. If you are shooting the CEO of Widgets.com nobody wants to wait while you are downloading a card. Shooting tethered, the person who hired me can watch as the pictures hit the laptop screen. Normally, after shooting for a few minutes I look over at my “handler” who is all smiles and I know things are going well.

When I get a new tool, like a lens or a camera with new capacities I like to really give it a workout. When the box of loaner gear arrived from Nikon I wanted to try out their Live View function in a unique way. Live view lets the DSLR cameras operate more like their point and shoot cousins. What the camera sees is displayed onto the LCD on the back of the camera. I combined Live View with shooting tethered to get a dramatic photograph from 15 feet in the air with me “looking “ at the image from the ground via my portable.

Check out my “American Diner” photograph and the video that tells how I did it.

One of my favorite photo from 2009. Nikon D3 and the 14-24 zoom lens. I made the image at F5.6 at 1/40th of a second ( iso 200) but might have shot at a slower speed but the wind was really moving the camera and I was afraid of too much movement.

American City Diner from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

Testing is a word I like to use and it’s how I operate. Maybe it’s those days of being a Boy Scout back in Kentucky but I like to be prepared and I don’t like surprises. When I get a new piece of gear I take it out and shoot on my own long before I use it for an assignment—usually.

The day after the big box of Nikon gear arrived I had an editorial assignment for The Financial Times of London. I almost didn’t take the new stuff with me because I knew it would be very temping. I’m a big boy I thought. I’ve shot hundreds of these types of assignments so against my better judgment I brought both systems with me. I’m very comfortable with my trusty Canon cameras. I carry the 1DS Mark II in a Pelican case along with a 24mm 1.4, 35mm 1.4, 85mm 1.8 and the 135mm 2.0. These lenses on the full frame camera are really wonderful. They produce super sharp pictures with that nice soft out focus area that I like. The very short depth of field help isolate the subject from what is often an ugly environment.

I’m not doing a very good job of hiding where this story is headed. Yeah, I break all my rules of survival. I barely touched the trusted Canon stuff and shot 97 % with the Nikons with out even reading the manual

Watch the video and you might just learn a thing or two…..

First Test Drive with the D3 from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

One of the fun parts of being “ The Picture Coach” is getting to test out new gear. I have used Canon gear for years but there was so much chatter about the Nikon D3 I decided it was time to get my hands on the stuff and check it out.

Special thanks to my Nikon Professional Series rep, Mark Suban for making this
“test drive” happen so quickly.

Watch this funny little video I call –“Christmas Time”

New Nikons like Christmas from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

The thing to remember when making a cover image is the editors have lot of type they need to put on the picture.  Stripped across the top is the Washington Post masthead but the sides are also filled with one thing or another. In this photo all the lighting came from two sources. I placed a 4×6 foot Chimera softbox just out of the frame to the left, which gave the subject a soft light that wrapped around their bodies. A very long exposure burned in the windows to create this bright background, which the type was laid down onto. 

Canon 1DS, 24-70 zoom a 4 sec. exposure at 5.6