Eleanor, Chicago 1953

Eleanor Callahan died yesterday at a hospice in Atlanta.

That name may not mean much on its own until you realize she was the photographic muse for famed photographer Harry Callahan who one of the most innovative and influential photographers of the 20th century. The above photo of his wife, simply title–“Eleanor, Chicago” gives you a taste of the artist style, simple yet upon closer inspection very powerful.

I was able to see an original print of that photo and many others of Eleanor in the retrospective  “Harry Callahan at 100,” at the National Gallery. The good news: if you are in the Washington, DC area you can see this show until March 4^th.

The gallery was nearly empty as my friend and former photo editor Charles Kogod walked from room to room inspecting every one of the 100 photographs in the exhibit.  At one point the security guard came over and said we were standing too close. The prints had that kind of power. First you were back at a normal distance and before you knew it you were pulled right up onto prints trying to figure out something about the image.

Like many, Callahan had no formal training as a photographer except for a few workshops. He started off with a “regular job” working as a shipping clerk in Detroit for Chrysler. He bought his first camera, a Rolleicord and joined the Chrysler Camera Club. Some of the photos in this exhibit were taken as he walked to or from his job at Chrysler.

Two things really stood out to me as I studied the photos that day. He has an amazing ability to work right up to the edge of the light. By that I mean he often had a shaft of light slicing through the image like a knife. The composition was amazing but it was the light that was making the photo special. The beam of daylight looked like it was 30 seconds from fading below the horizon and like magic; Callahan would have framed a person on the extreme edge of the frame crossing that light. No motordrive, no image editing, just amazing understating of the craft of photography.( see Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago, 1953)

A photograph that is “busy” is normally a bad thing. Except if you shoot it like Harry Callahan. The photo below is a great example of the second thing that he did so well. Create a photo that is very complicated, one where your eye doesn’t know where to look but at the same time so compelling that you can’t take your eyes off it. The photo below is the image that nearly got me in trouble with the museum guard because I wanted to be able to figure it out. I never did.( see Detroit 1943 below)

All images are © Estate of Harry Callahan

Special thanks to the National Gallery of Art,

Washington, DC

Detroit, 1943

Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago, 1953

Eleanor, New York, 1945

No every frame I shot made it into the book. This one didn’t but I still love the picture. The trio was so into getting their photo taken (they had been working on that keg for a while) that each one took turns holding the tap and looking at the camera. I had an assistant hold a huge diffusion umbrella to shade the people making the light really soft and beautiful. Using the short telephoto lens I shot wide open to limit the depth of field. 85mm lens, 1/2000 of a second @ F1.8.

Rain in Florida caused The Daytona 500 to be postponed until Monday night and that turned out to be a great opportunity for The Picture Coach. I got a phone call from a reporter at the Washington, DC Fox affiliate asking if I would like to do an interview about my Faces of NASCAR book and to talk about the sport. In less than an hour they were set up at the studio and we were talking about Richard Petty, NASCAR and all things racing.

The semi trucks that carry a teams race cars and equipment around the county are called “Haulers” in NASCAR speak and they are really spectacular. Even after driving cross-country to this race in Fontana, CA the trucks look showroom clean. Here I found them early one morning as they wait for the track to open. I wanted as little depth of field as possible so I shot with a 300mm lens at F4.0, shutter speed was 1/2000.

Once again, the Talladega track provided me with an unusual photo. I wasn’t expecting to see fans watching a race while sitting in a blowup pool but with NASCAR you never know. I was backed up agaist a fence so I used the 14mm lens to bring in all parts of the scene. 1/1000 @ F3.5

This photo still makes me laugh. I love to walk around and take in the sights at these races. This “food wagon” was in the infield at the Talladega race. 35mm lens , F1.4 @ 1/40th

Wanting to capture as much of the scene as possible, plus show little bit of motion I set the camera at 1/80th a second and the 14mm lens to F10 for additional depth of field.

I shot this photo at my first weekend working on the book and its still a favorite. The day was just perfect with a beautiful blue sky along with those big clouds; they just kept calling out for something—like a huge American flag. Again it was the 35mm lens, which gave me just the perspective I was looking for. A wider lens looks slightly distorted and a longer lens tended to compress the scene too much. 1/500th @ F9.No every frame I shot made it into the book. This one didn’t but I still love the picture. The trio was so into getting their photo taken (they had been working on that keg for a while) that each one took turns holding the tap and looking at the camera. I had an assistant hold a huge diffusion umbrella to shade the people making the light really soft and beautiful. Using the short telephoto lens I shot wide open to limit the depth of field. 85mm lens, 1/2000 of a second @ F1.8.

Shot with an 85mm 1.8 lens, exposure was 1/160th at F 5.6

The Daytona 500 is the biggest race in NASCAR and in the 54-year history of the race they had never been rained out–until yesterday. The start of the 2012 season begins tonight and that seemed like a great time to talk about shooting portraits which I’ll illustrate with a picture from my book, “Faces of NASCAR”.

Does a portrait always include a face?

Most times that’s true but one my favorites portraits has no eyes, no nose and just a touch of skin.

Richard Petty is one of the biggest names in NASCAR and when I began creating a shot list for my book, “Faces of NASCAR” I knew I wanted a killer portrait of “King Richard”. Chances are you’ve seen a photo of him over the years and I bet he’s sporting that famous 1000-watt smile topped off with a black cowboy hat.

The first time I saw him at a track I stalked him like a big game hunter. First, shooting from a distance with a 400mm lens, then later with a shorter lens and then finally with a wide angle. Looking over my pictures that evening in the hotel room I realized it was easy to get a good photograph of Petty but I need something bold. My quest for something special began by looking over every photo of Petty in fine detail. It was at 100% magnification that I first caught glimpse of the buckle, “NASCAR Winston Cup, Seven Time Champion”. Seeing that buckle I knew the picture I wanted to make.

It would be a few weeks before I had another chance to photograph Petty so there was time to make sure all the details were nailed down. I chose my 85mm 1.8 lens because it would allow me to be work very close, maybe two feet away and it’s wicked sharp to show off all that fine metal work on the buckles surface.

Petty is like a rock star at the track and people are always grabbing his attention for one thing or the other. The racetrack is also covered with packs of photographers, so I didn’t want to make a killer photo just to see my idea stolen by everyone else.

When the next race arrived, I was prepared and again began looking for Petty. I knew I’d only get one chance but I was ready. Luck was working for me that day because it was cloudy and the light was so soft it looked like I had set up a huge overhead softbox. When I saw the king from a distance, I first looked around and didn’t see any other photographers so I hustled up to Petty, quickly told him about my idea and he said “why not”. I dropped down on one knee, framed the shot like I had practiced then made about six or seven frames. That was it. I stood up, thanked the King and walked away. I knew I had nailed it without ever looking at the camera back.

The Picture Coach says….

The idea for this picture began with a quest to do more than shoot another famous face smiling for the camera. Like a golfer putting in time on the driving range I practiced making the picture until I could almost do it in my sleep. I’ll be the first to say that not every photo is something you can practice for but this photo of Richard Petty is another example of what can happen when you pay attention to the details.

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It was after 10pm when my group finally arrived at Lockhouse 49 for the night and I was really ready to get off my mountain bike. Riding 50 miles on the C&O canal can wear you out, especially on a cold and windy winters day. When I first saw the house where we were spending the night I was really ticked off. I knew I couldn’t just get inside and warm up with the guys. Why? If I didn’t make the photo right then, I would never do it and then “the critic” would haunt me for days. The critic doesn’t take kindly to being lazy; if you see it then you shoot it, no questions. Easier to just get the damn camera out and make the picture.

Being on the bike I didn’t pack a tripod but I needed a solid platform to set the camera for making a time exposure photo. I did find a nice flat stonewall that I could rest the camera on so that was lucky.  I didn’t see this as the next shot for my portfolio but it should look pretty cool. If you exposed to make the porch look good, (f 4.5 at 3.2 seconds) everything else in the frame would be totally black with no detail anywhere, (see photo below). You see in the top photo that letting more light into the picture (f4.5 @ 20 seconds) the porch is totally white but we get color in the sky and the house separates from the woods.

I got lucky in the photo above. Notice how the left side of the house is lit up? I can than Alan for that, he was putting his bike away and the light from the big-time helmet light provided the perfect “fill” light for that side of the house to help separate it from woods behind. Picture made, I hustle inside to warm up.

These days, its still fun to do pretty much the same thing, walking around looking to make nice pictures. One thing that 30 years of experience has given me is a “co-pilot” who is always there. I call him the critic, that voice in my head that keeps pushing me to make better pictures. That may seem odd but that’s what’s going on upstairs.

When I’m just getting warmed up, or when I haven’t seen anything good to shoot the voice can be kind of tough. As I scan the horizon, framing each possibility in my brains view finder I might hear the voice in a biting tone: “That sucks, or that really sucks.” As the critic, it says “That’s nothing,” or that I must suck as a shooter. Sometimes when the critic is in a really bad mood, he’ll name a certain shooter by name and say “I bet Brian Lanker would have already found a nice photo”.  Once I see something that catches my eye the voice softens and becomes more of a collaborator. Then I hear: ”HEY, HEY, HEY LOOK AT THAT, yeah that just might be something cool, we can work with that……..and then I pick up the camera and off we go.

It’s easy to get a graphic shot like this but Post staff photographer Linda Davidson spends hours getting all the details just right. In the post 9-11 world you have to be very, very careful with photos of landmarks and jet planes. The plane, taking off from Reagan National nicely filled the right side of the photo and is headed away from the monument so as not to alarm anyone. It’s a small detail but the silhouette of the worker at the very top of the structure provides perfect balance to the image.

When I asked her about the photo she pointed out something I over looked—patience.” The technical part is very important, but so is patience, she said.” Having an idea, waiting for the weather to clear, watching planes and traffic patterns, I can’t stress enough the patience that can go into things”.

For gear, she was shooting with a Nikon D700, a 200-400mm zoom combined with a 1.4 converter to give her a 560mm lens. By choosing the long telephoto lens she is able to stand far away from the subject, bringing the viewers eye right to it he top of the monument where the action was.

It seems a shame to have to point out the obvious but this photo is real. This is not a composite image. The plane was not photoshopped into the image. The little man on the top of the monument wasn’t copy and pasted from a different frame. Many people think good photography requires the use of that famous Adobe product but in some cases it’s just a shooter that knows their craft.

Teachable moment here:> I don’t want you to run out and buy a $5000 lens, for most subjects any camera is fine. You can improve your pictures by just thinking more. Once you take a good photo (like the monument with the climber) think of what you could do make a good photo even better. Don’t settle for the obvious but push yourself to something better.

Do a search for Washington Post photographer — Linda Davidson, her work will inspire you!

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Shooting night football used to be a serious test of your skills when I began working as a newspaper photographer. The fields were dark as hell, you didn’t have a long telephoto lens to really cover the sport and the film was just too damn slow.

Back then, we shot Kodak Tri-X (iso 400) and over developed it to make us believe we were shooting at iso 1600. How did it look? If you did everything right and got lucky then it only looked bad but often it looked just plain horrible. When you arrived at the game and saw one team was wearing black uniforms you knew it was going to be a tough night. The film when underexposed and over developed (what we called pushing the film) could not hold detail in the black helmets and it would “disappear” when the player was in front of a dark background. Using this film at 1600 controlled your maximum shutter speed. If you could only shoot at iso 1600, then your shutter speed would fall around 1/250 or even 1/125th of a second. Good sports shooters know you need 1/500th to begin to freeze the action. The result of those slow shutter speeds gave you lots of film that was unusable because of motion blur from the players running down the field.

Watch the video to fast-forward yourself a couple of decades. I recently used a Nikon D3s and 200-400mm zoom lens to shoot at a super dark field and the results really really blew me away. I sent samples to a bunch of my photographer buddies and as one said–“It just shouldn’t look this good”

TPC
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The Picture Coach talks shooting night football and the Nikon D3s from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

I was watching the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and had one of those “Glad I wasn’t there” moments. It had rained all day in Louisville and
the total rainfall was nearly three inches. Having covered the race a few times I knew the conditions would totally suck for the shooters
but extreme conditions sometimes make for dramatic pictures.

The next morning when I picked up my New York Times I was not disappointed. The Times ran a race photo the full width of the sports
front page and it looked great. The way the horses were bunched up in the shot I figured it was turn fourth and they were all covered with
mud. To make it even better, like taking a cue from a high-powered movie director, the sun popped out right before the big race and the
bright sun added enough contrast to the scene that the photos really snapped.

Heavy responsibilities come with being “The Picture Coach” and when I saw that photo I knew I needed to track down the photographer for a
little — “How’d ya do it

Enter Rob Carr, a staff photographer for the Associated Press based in Baltimore, MD.

The Picture Coach-Rob, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. Tell us a little about yourself and your history with the
Kentucky Derby.

Rob Carr– I grew up in Kentucky, went to school at Eastern Kentucky University and worked all over the state. This was my 21st year
shooting the Derby.

TPC- At a big event like this, how many photographers did the AP have covering the race?

RC– The AP had 7 staff photographers covering the race along with several freelancer photographers positioned along the track.

TPC-Where did you position yourself for this race and what were the conditions with all that rain.

RC– While I’ve shot the race from just about every position on the track, including the 2000 Derby from a helicopter, I always love
shooting the fourth turn because that is usually where the race is won, or lost.

This year I decided to move back out of the turn a bit more to get more of the horses as they came out the turn.

While it rained most the day, we got lucky about 45 minutes before post as the rained stopped and for the first time the sun popped out
long enough for some nice evening light to begin streaming across the track. A welcome relief to trying to keep camera’s dry all day but a
rush to change the ISO on all the remote cameras before the race started.

TPC-What gear did you use for the race?

RC– I shot the above photo with a Canon MKIV with a 500mm f-4 Canon lens and I also had three remotes mounted to the starting gate, a
16-35mm over the 1 slot, along with a 15mm fisheye on 5DMKII as well as a Sigma 8.5 fisheye on another 5D MKII.

TPC-Great stuff Rob, thanks again.

“Learning to Shoot Football Like a Pro” from Scott Robinson on Vimeo.

Let’s talk football. Professional football. WOMENS profession football. Last year I brought a few of my students to the sidelines of a DC Diva’s football game. Like a mother hen, I stood right beside them, offering suggestions to improve their action photography. Check out the above video to see The Picture Coach in action. The results were great and I wanted to do it again this year but just like those TV offers –I’ve added one more thing. I’ve added a session before the game to shoot portraits of a few players.

Mark the night of May 22nd on your calendar. We’re still going to shoot game action from the sidelines just like last year (for the first 10 people to sign up). In advance of the game, I’ll bring in a truckload of gear to prepare a different lighting setup for each player. For example, I might have the first player standing in front of a white seamless with a ring light for her face and use some hard light from each side to really define her jersey and shoulder pads. (Yes, they were shoulder pads just like the big-boys!)

All you have to do is sync your camera with the flash and start making pictures. The cost is $85.00.

Send me an email with questions or to sign up for the workshop–scott@scottrobinsonphoto.com

John Matthews had shot a few games before attending the first “Learn to Shoot Football Like a Pro” workshop. For last years game I rented a 300mm 2.8 lens from my good friends at Penn Camera, here in the DC area. John shot the whole game with that lens and never looked back. I love this shot that John made using the 300mm’s narrow depth of field. The light was great and your attention is just drawn to the player’s right eye.

In this picture, John has great timing. Normally, a quarterback handing off the ball is not a great shot but this one works because the defensive player is right on top of the QB. A split second before or after and this shot would be in the trash.

Here is another great example of what the 300mm 2.8 lens does best. By using the lens at 2.8, the narrow depth of field makes for a very clean background. By wisely shooting from the end zone (guess who suggested that?) you don’t have grandstands or together distracting elements to clutter up your photo. Again, good timing comes into play. The clean view of the players face, the way the ball is being help and her hand on the other players faces mast all combine for a very solid action shot.

I was heading out to my daughters lacrosse game and noticed how great the light was and just hoped it held until game time. After years of covering sports for a living, sitting in the stands seems odd plus I still enjoy being on the field.

Some days all the stars align correctly and you get lucky. The late afternoon light was so good it almost made me think I was standing on the set of a Hollywood movie. I’ve found the best way to really show off great light is to combine it with a dark background. I got extra lucky at this game because there was a navy blue wall at one end of the field, which would help created a dramatic photo.

My good luck continued when the visiting team ran onto the field wearing these bright red jerseys. With all this going for me, “all I need to do” was make a nice photo. With lacrosse, there is action all over the field but I tried to keep my focus on the area with the dark background. I was not covering this game for a client so I could make up my own rules. For me, rule #1 was to walk away with a dramatic and colorful image.

Let’s break down this picture so you can see how I did it:

The metadata panel shows how the camera is set for the above photo. I was using the 300mm F4 lens and set the f-stop to it’s most wide open setting and the fastest shutter speed (1/640th). I normally set the camera to aperture value but in this case I was using manual exposure.

Here is what the “whole frame” looks like before I cropped it. Even with a 300mm lens you still can be too loose when shooting sports. One of the advantages of a large file size (my camera has a 16 meg sensor) is that you can do a major crop like this one and still have plenty of image left to work with.