I was recently assigned to photograph figure skater Becky Bereswill.  Becky is 19, and won the gold in the 2008-2009 ISU Junior Grand Prix in Goyang, South Korea.  In addition to being an incredible figure skater, Becky was also a record setting track athlete in high school, and she has an identical twin who also competes in figure skating!

She normally practices at a suburban Houston ice rink.  Most ice rinks are tough to light, and usually have all the drama of a high school gym, with fluorescent or sodium vapor lighting.  We are fortunate to have a great ice rink here in Houston in the Galleria mall.  The Galleria is one of the first multi-level malls in the country, and the ice rink on the bottom level was the centerpiece of the design when it was originally built in 1970.  I thought that the skylights in the roof, and the elevated positions on the second and third levels might make for some interesting pictures…..certainly better than a fluorescent lit metal building.

We arranged access for early morning, before the mall opened to shoppers.  Becky was in expert hands with makeup artist Wendy Martin, while assistant Nathan Lindstrom and I set up the lighting for the shoot.  Unfortunately, we knew it was going to be a cloudy day, so in order to get something similar to the skylight effect I was hoping for, we brought a 2000 watt-second optical spot called a Dramalight (made by the Flash Clinic in New York).  I’ve mentioned this unit before, and even though I rarely use it, it comes in handy in a situation like this.

The Dramalight was set up (and chained to the railing for safety) on the second level of the mall, and pointed down onto the ice.  We used a variety of Rosco gobo patterns to create different window light effects on the surface of the ice.  To light Becky, we set up a Profoto 7B on the ice with a Plume Wafer 100 and a Lighttools 30 degree grid.  This provided a soft yet dramatic effect, and minimized the amount of spill from the Wafer onto our window pattern background.

Becky was tireless throughout the shoot, and showed us a wide variety of poses and jumps.  Not only did she execute perfectly, but she also hit her marks so well so that we were able to line her up exactly where we wanted in the various window pattern compositions.

After several weeks of design, editing, and caption writing, I finally went live with my new website this week.

I added some new categories to better represent the diversity of the work I’m doing now.

My primary focus is on lighting and portrait oriented work, but that often takes different forms depending on the goals of the client for whom I’m working.

There’s a category called “Sports/Celebrity Portraits” which features mostly static portraiture of sports stars, musicians, and other notables.  I still shoot a lot of athletes, and I’m fortunate that sports apparel companies, and editorial clients like sports magazines, and health/fitness publications call on me for sports portraits.

I’ve added a new section called “Motion” which features some of the more active and athletic sports portraits in my portfolio.  Recent feedback from ad agency art buyers, and sports apparel reps pushed the decision to create another category and separate this work from the other sports portraits in my portfolio.

I’ve also added a “CEO/Executive Portraits” section.  I’ve had a lot of experience with shooting powerful executives, and I still get a lot of calls for this type of work.  I’m convinced  the experience I have shooting famous athletes has really prepared me well for this work.  The shoots are actually very similar:  they are always carefully choreographed and pre-lit with test subjects.  When the executive arrives, we’re on the clock, and we often shoot multiple set-ups in less time than it takes most photographers to take a meter reading.   If there are multiple lighting set-ups, we bring more equipment.  I never want a CEO standing around tapping his foot while we’re moving  strobes and stands.

The last gallery is  the “Annual Report/Corporate Photography”  portfolio.   Working for corporations sometimes calls for a diverse skill set.  I get to draw on my newspaper photojournalism background, my lighting skills, and even aerial photography in many cases to help corporations present their photographic message in corporate collateral materials, annual reports, and advertising.

I’ve added lots of new work in all the categories, and I hope to update on a much more regular basis than the last site.  I hope you’ll check it out.

Houston Photographer Robert Seale

A video of the lighting workshop webinar presentation Photoshelter founder Allen Murabayashi and I recently took part in is now available.  The video features our live webinar from March 31st in which we discussed my lighting demo shoot with Michael Scott Creature from the SXSW festival in Austin last month.  Taylor Jones, the owner of Texas Grip, provided us with a fabulous grip truck stocked with Profoto gear for our demo shoot.

The video has made the rounds among many of my favorite photography websites, including, David Hobby’s Strobist site, Rob Galbraith.com, and even the Profoto blog.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak at SXSW in Austin at an event sponsored by Photoshelter.  At the end of the seminar, we did a quick lighting demo with a local Austin musician, and we’ll share those photos, the planning, and the thought process that went into the demo this Wednesday night, March 31 from 6-7pm Central Time during a live webinar at Photoshelter.com.  I hope you can join us.

Taylor Jones, a fabulous Austin digital tech (and owner of Texas Grip) provided support with live capture during the event, and provided most of the lighting equipment from his magically awesome grip truck.  We were assisted by good friends Nathan Lindstrom, Todd Spoth, Will Rutledge, and Andrew Loehman.  Profoto also helped out by loaning us some additional equipment for the event.

We thought it would be interesting to show a scenario that happens all too often in our business:  How to deal with a subject with limited time in a single location.  Planning and choreographing your shoot ahead of time and utilizing different lighting tools can make all the difference and can give your art director more setups to choose from.

We really lucked out by landing a great musician and artist to be our muse for the shoot:  Michael Scott Parker, of Creature Rock.  Michael used to live in San Francisco, and has been photographed numerous times by the trinity of rock and roll photographers: Michael Zagaris, Baron Wolman, and the late, great, Jim Marshall.  She was great to work with, and I hope to shoot with her again soon.

I’ve been asked to participate in an exciting event coming up on Saturday, March 13 in Austin, Texas.  Photoshelter, the premier company helping photographers with websites, sales and marketing tools, file delivery and secure image archiving is putting together an exciting photo workshop  in conjunction with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference.

Allen Murabayashi, the CEO of Photoshelter will be presenting a program on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for photography websites.  Allen and his colleague Grover Sanschagrin  have studied photo websites and SEO more than anyone on the planet.  (They are also two of the smartest people I know).  If you haven’t checked out their FREE pdf reports on SEO, social media, and photography websites, then you’re just plain nuts.  This will be a great presentation.

I’ll deliver a talk/slideshow showing a wide-ranging body of work, and talk about transitioning through different phases of a photography career.  I started in newspapers, migrated to a magazine staff job, and then went out on my own as a commercial photographer.  I’ll talk about each phase, the challenges of a changing marketplace, and (of course) show lots of photographs.

After a quick lunch break, there will be a panel discussion with my two of my good friends:  stellar photographer, and BBQ buddy  Darren Carroll (probably the best golf photographer in the world, and a helluva portrait shooter, too), and Taylor Jones (a fellow photographer who has made a name for himself as a super high-end digital tech, who works all over the country for some of the biggest names in the advertising world).  Local photogs (who I don’t know personally – but am looking forward to meeting) Eric Hegwer, and Jack Hollingsworth will also be on hand to complete the panel.  Together we’ll discuss both the art and business of photography.

At the end of the day, we’ll have a live photo shoot/lighting workshop.  I’ll answer some lighting questions, talk about portrait concepts, research and planning.  I’ll show you how to pull off a quick portrait shoot with a variety of looks in one location.  Taylor will be on hand to demonstrate how a great digital tech operates.  It should be a lot of fun, and I’m excited that they’ve asked me to participate.

The event will be from 11-4, at The Long Center for the Performing Arts, 701 West Riverside, Austin, Texas on Saturday, March 13, 2010.

Looking forward to seeing lots of folks there!

The cover shot from inside Kentucky's Memorial Hall

I recently had the good fortune of a great assignment in Lexington, Kentucky.  I was sent there a couple of days after Christmas to photograph one of the top college basketball players in the country, John Wall, for Sports Illustrated.

Portrait of Wall inside Kentucky's Memorial Hall

My charge was to photograph Wall on the Kentucky campus in an iconic and easily recognizable setting.  Lexington is an absolutely  beautiful area, but the horse farms, race tracks (Bourbon distilleries?…..just kidding.)  and the like were out due to the limited time we had with Wall, and oh yeah….it was about 24 degrees, completely overcast, snowing off and on,  with 20-30 mph winds that day!

We couldn’t use Rupp Arena either, as the team was practicing throughout the day, and the women’s gym (the old coliseum) was being set up for a gymnastics event.  I found a nice expanse of three large glass brick windows (the outside wall of an old swimming pool) on campus, but alas, it had been divided into classrooms/study halls for the athletic department tutoring program.  Ugh!  Most of the buildings with character  on campus were closed for the holidays and we were quickly running out of options.

It’s tough trying to come back with nice pictures, when you have very little to work with in the background department, but it’s also the most common problem most photographers deal with.  When pressed, I can take a 6-10 foot sliver of just about anything and make a passable shot.  I was just about ready to stage the shoot in a practice gym, or a locker room hallway….hell, even a stretch of solid white concrete wall was looking pretty good to us at that point!

Fortunately, with the help of the Sports Information Director, we were able to convince a campus guard to let us access Memorial Hall, a grand old theater/church-like building on the campus.  Anyone who is familiar with Kentucky knows this building, which is a memorial for soldiers killed in WW I, and dates back to 1929.  During our scouting trip the night before, our plans were just to utilize the signature building in the background of some of the shots (although we knew we would have to work fast due to the weather conditions).  When we got inside, it was obvious that the stage, with the cool arched windows in the background, could make a great and very graphic shot.

Black background, with the gridded Wafer 75 high on a boom, right in front of the subject

We had to make the most of our 35 minutes of alloted time, so SI assistant Andrew Loehman and I  quickly went to work inside, setting up lighting gear in a central location around one spot, so that Wall would not need to move much at all.  Since we originally planned to be outside on the campus, we brought Profoto 7B packs and heads for the assignment.

For the black background-tight shot we used a Plume Wafer 75 directly over and in front of the subject’s head on a boom, with a Lighttools 30 degree fabric grid to limit the spill. The rim-light was formed by  two lights with regular reflectors and makeshift snoots from behind the subject on each side..  We intended for the background to go completely black, but since we were working in a white room with no black background, I placed a black reflector disc behind the subject’s head, in the event that background retouching was required (so there would be no issues with selecting hair).

Sepia shot from the middle of the hall

For the full length shot, we used a Plume Wafer 100 with a 30 degree grid, high and to the subject’s right, and a Wafer 75 with 30 degree grid from behind on the left side of the subject…slightly lower.  This formed a simple crosslight effect, and the grids kept the white walls of the room in check.  I would have preferred using a larger light source for both of these, but the smaller boxes with grids were really the only solution to preserve the effect of the dramatic window in the background.  We added a full CTO gel to the strobes so we could shift the overall white balance  cooler, making the subject a normal skin tone color, but the window light slightly blue.  For this shot, we did tight and loose static poses, and then just before moving on, I asked Wall to do a few leaps for me.  He obliged with a few dramatic spring-loaded jumps.  One of these was eventually selected for the cover.

Next, we quickly moved forward in the seats (about 20 rows back) to  create a higher-key portrait from the middle of the hall (which I converted to black and white).  Then we had John change into his warm ups (not for sartorial reasons, but  for warmth), and sprinted outside with one light and a Plume Wafer Hexoval 140 (Plume’s medium hexoval).  There we photographed Wall for 4 minutes or so at two different spots with Memorial Hall, with and without tungsten white balance settings.  On the tungsten shots we added a full + 1/4 CTO gel to bring the strobe back fairly close to daylight on camera.

Wall was a great kid to work with, and I’m hoping to photograph him again someday (probably soon), when he makes his next leap to the NBA.

Wall: outside in the elements with Memorial Hall in the background

All Photographs in this article are © 2009 Robert Seale.  All Rights Reserved.  Feel free to link to these, but do not otherwise use without permission.  Thanks.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving a sports photography slide show presentation Tuesday, February 9th for the New England chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP).  My good friend and colleague, Damian Strohmeyer, a longtime Sports Illustrated staff photographer, will also be presenting that night, and I’m very proud to be on the same bill with him.

Damian will focus more on his sports action work, and I’ll be showing sports portrait work.

Here’s a link to the event on the official ASMP New England website.

The event will be held at E.P. Levine, 23 Drydock Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 7:00PM.

Hope to see you there!

A 1-second exposure of home run No. 62, September 8, 1998.

Ok, this is supposed to be a blog about photography and lighting, and primarily about my conceptual sports portraiture work, but I’m going to break with tradition today and talk for a moment about Mark McGwire.

A little background first:  I’ve covered professional baseball since 1992.  For 10+ years  I was a staff photographer for The Sporting News.  I did sports portraits for covers, feature stories, and some reportage work back then, but 60-70% of my job then was covering games and shooting action.  These days, I mostly get called upon for portraits, but there was a time when my 400/2.8 and I were inseparable.

McGwire celebrating after home run No. 61.

I first photographed McGwire when he played for Oakland in 1996.  Later on, I covered him during his chase to break Roger Maris’ record during the summer of 1998.  I witnessed first hand the amazing batting practice feats of strength, (I saw him send a ball into the upper deck suite level of the Astrodome), and when he got close to 61, I flew to St. Louis, (on a TWA redeye, with Joe Morgan across the aisle…) to cover him for several days.

The sons of the late Roger Maris, checking out their father's 61st HR bat.

As part of the Sporting News team (along with my great sports photographer colleagues Albert Dickson, Bob Leverone, and Dilip Vishwanat), I was positioned in the outside first photo well.  There were four of us in that position: John Biever from SI, Eric Draper (then with the AP), J. B. Forbes of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and me (holy crap!).  There were photographers all over the stadium, but this was a pretty primo spot to catch McGwire’s swing and subsequent jubilation.  The commissioner and Stan Musial were sitting in the box next to our well.  Maris’ kids were right behind us.  It was an exciting, and very high-pressure assignment.

How many headline writers could resist "Huggy Bear?" Not many.

We blew through film like nothing you’ve ever seen (yes, we were still shooting film then).  Each swing brought forth a wave of noise that sounded like a machine gun chorus of motor drives, followed by the inevitable tossing of the film after each missed swing during his non-home run at bats.  He hit home run no. 61 on Sep. 7 (a day game).  Home run 62 (which broke the record) came the next day (a night game).  The crowd went nuts.  He hugged his son.  He hugged Sosa.  The media went nuts and gushed over him for months (my own employer even more than most).  America welcomed baseball back after a bitter strike.  It was exciting and wonderful, and to this day is the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed in sports.

(Chris Rock voice here)

That’s right, aaahhhhhhh said it.

THE most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in sports.  Without question.

Here’s the part where you are thinking….

“well, he didn’t work there that long….Robert doesn’t really have a broad scope covering sports…..he didn’t really see any other major events, etc…..”  To that, I say…..here’s my list of a few memorable events I’ve photographed:

I was at Michael Jordan’s last NBA finals game in Salt Lake City  (Jordan’s “Last Shot”).

I was at every game of  the 2001 World Series (Yankees/Diamondbacks)…remember game 4?  game 5?  game 7?

I was at John Elway’s two consecutive Super Bowl Wins (33, 34).

I was in the end zone when Vince Young ran in for his final touchdown in the 2006 Rose Bowl.

I followed Annika Sorenstam for 18 holes at the Colonial in Ft. Worth in 2003.

I was on the field when crazed fans tore down the goalposts at Doak Campbell Stadium  when #2 FSU beat #1 Florida in 1996.

I was there when Barry Bonds hit home run No. 70 to tie McGwire’s record.

I was at almost every NBA Finals game from 1994-2006 (I think I missed 3 or 4 games in 13 years).

Actually, I was at every Super Bowl game, World Series game, and Final Four game, from 1996-2006.

I’ve seen some amazing sports moments….and the McGwire home run chase  is still the most amazing thing I’ve covered in sports.  It brought baseball back from the dead.  Not a corny cliche, but an absolute truth.

I wonder who Jenn is?

Am I upset that he cheated?  Absolutely.  Were we duped?  Uh, not really.

Everyone knew what was going on-but we all wanted to believe.

Are we really going to ban steroid/HGH users from the Hall of Fame?  If so, which guys?  Just the ones that didn’t admit to prior use, or all of them?  What about the ones who had HOF level careers (Clemens, Bonds), before they ever took steroids or HGH?  Are we really willing to erase 15-20 years of baseball history, historic games, and memorable moments over this?  Where do we draw the line?  Are you just going to let in the guys who were nice and contrite about it, that everyone likes, like Andy Pettite? and exclude the prickly ones, like Bonds?  I don’t think so, it’s really an either/or proposition….and would there really be any players left if you eliminated everyone who ever took these substances?  Good luck.

Believe me, I think the whole era smells.  I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but I’m just not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water here.  For better or worse, this is now part of the history of baseball.

Throw out the moral arguments about cheating for a moment, and tell me why we put so much stock in home run records when the game is chock full of variables?  Think about it.  A football field is always 100 yards.  The 400 meter dash is always 400 meters.  But baseball?  Every park is different.  The dimensions are different from city to city, and teams in recent years even built parks to suit their star hitters (Houston, San Francisco), with ridiculously short fences.  Hell, in the old days, groundskeepers moved the outfield fences depending on which team/slugger was coming to town.  Was that cheating?

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Spitball?  Stealing signs?  Corking bats?  Bueller?  Anyone?….

What about the NFL?  What about the NBA?  What about the Olympics?  I’m convinced that the sports-writing world, and even the general public, gets much more upset about baseball because of the romanticism associated with the game.  Boy Scouts, apple pie, etc….we all played little league at some point, and we all feel maligned that these professionals ruined “our” game.

McGwire celebrates No. 62.

Here’s my solution to the whole Hall of Fame thing.  Let them all in.  A-Rod, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Palmiero, etc.  Just let them all in.  We know it was the steroid era, hell, we’ve known it for years.  Baseball,  the commissioners office, the media, and the players association were complicit in this.  Everyone knew what was going on.  Some have estimated that more than 80% of the players during that era were using some sort of performance enhancing drug.  That doesn’t make it right, and I’m not happy about it, but over time, we’ll find out that the majority of players were doing it.  Should we ban players who were using substances in other eras? There were a lot of cokeheads in the 70’s and 80’s.  Amphetamines have been prevalent for decades.

Perhaps we need to lose some of our moral indignation.  The damage is done, and these guys, even if they do get into the hall of fame will have to live with big scarlet asterisks on their collective foreheads for the rest of their days.  It’s now part of the history and lore of baseball -the good and the bad.  And hopefully we’ll chronicle it accordingly, put it behind us,  and move on.

(Please note: These photographs are © 1998 Robert Seale/The Sporting News.  All Rights Reserved.  Please do not right-click, use, or appropriate any of these without permission or attribution.  Thanks!)

In Cincinnati on September 9, 1998.

Olympic gymnast Raj Bhavsar hanging from a goalpost

I had the opportunity to collaborate recently on some sports portrait photographs of Olympic gymnast Raj Bhavsar.  Raj was on the 2001 and 2003 U.S. World Champion gymnastics team, and was a bronze medalist on the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team in Beijing.

After a weather delay derailed our first shoot, we regrouped a week later and had a wonderful day with clear skies for our rescheduled shoot.  One of the chief concerns was finding a suitable location for the shoot.  Raj’s gym was a typical fluorescent lit nightmare for photography.  I knew that we could get cleaner and more dramatic photos outdoor somewhere, but Raj is a badass in the rings event…..where do you hang his rings outside, so that you can still get a sky/clean background behind him?

Raj at the edge of the Galveston seawall: sometimes you lose the strobes and go with what God gave you...

After thinking for a few days, it hit me…..why not hang them from the goalpost of a football field?  This is Texas, so football fields are everywhere and easily accessible.  We wanted a location that might give us several different options, both with the rings and without, so we finally decided on Galveston Island.  I used Google Earth to scout football fields, and to look at the directional layouts of various fields.  Google Earth rules, and has become an invaluable scouting tool for us.

We began the shoot at Galveston Ball High School (we got permission from the school district first), and used a ladder to rig Raj’s ring setup to the crossbar of the goalpost.  We decided to do this shoot with Raj dressed in jeans, and we did some shots with and without his shirt on to showcase his highly developed upper body.

After breaking down the ring setup, and after an interview and quick costume change we took Raj down to the Galveston seawall, and photographed him there.  The evening light was beautiful and warm, so we went with natural light on this series.  For sunset, we traveled to the end of the seawall and photographed him holding an amazing pose as the sun went down.  The sunset shots were lit simply, with a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 held by assistant Nathan Lindstrom over very uneven rocks in high winds.  Raj was really interested in photography, so he made a fabulous subject.  I can’t wait to work with him again soon.

Raj holding an unbelievable pose, lit with a Hexoval 180

Neftali Feliz and Derek Holland for Sports Illustrated.

I recently photographed Texas Rangers pitchers Neftali Feliz and Derek Holland for Sports Illustrated.  While brainstorming ideas for the shoot with the photo editor, he mentioned a picture I had done several years earlier for a Sporting News cover of CC  Sabathia in which I had lit Sabathia’s face with a small strobe hidden in his glove.  He mentioned that he would like to see this treatment with the Feliz/Holland duo.

Sabathia, "throwing" the 25 dollar Morris Mini Slave.

In the original photo, we lit the background with a strobe with a blue gel, to give a graduated spot on the background wall behind Sabathia.  I then used a (no kidding!) 25 dollar Morris mini slave strobe in Sabathia’s glove……since the strobe was circular and of similar size to a baseball, we even shot some photos of him “throwing” the strobe/ball at the camera.  It made a pretty cool picture.

Strangely enough, that photo of Sabathia was taken in Arlington when he was pitching for Cleveland, and visiting the Texas Rangers.  Several years later, here I was in the SAME ROOM beneath the Ballpark at Arlington shooting Feliz/Holland in a very similar setup.  Weird.  Sometimes I feel like I know the hallways, storage rooms, and locker rooms of these stadiums better than the actual field.

The downside of using the Morris Strobe, is that they aren’t very powerful, nor can you vary the power.  We decided that the much more sophisticated Canon 580’s would probably work much better……however hiding them in a tiny pitcher’s glove proved to be a challenge indeed.

Anyway, we knew the Rangers photo was to be combined in the final layout with several other pitchers from around the league, so we kept the background a simple black.  I decided to rimlight the two guys with a pair of medium softboxes ( Plume Wafer 100) with a 30 degree grid on each side.  We added a Plume Wafer 140 in the center of the set on a low stand directly below the camera, for fill.  It was important to set the fill light at a low enough power to keep the white uniforms from blowing out.  We just wanted the fill to barely illuminate some detail in the uniforms and faces of the players.  Then we placed a Canon 580 Speedlight with an Omni-bounce in each player’s glove with a Pocketwizard Multimax to trigger each strobe.

Assistant Will Rutledge testing the glove strobe.

It took some careful testing to get the ratios just right, which we of course tested before the players arrived (I think we got about 10 minutes with them).

Basically, we set the camera up at F11.0, then adjusted the softbox rimlights a full stop hotter (F16.0), the speedlights in the gloves were set and metered to 11 1/2, and the Wafer 140 softbox, our fill light, was set to  5.6 1/2.

In addition to this photo, we also shot individual portraits of both players, and a couple of different versions of a “safer” shot of the two of them together.  For the “safe” shot, we simply ditched the 580’s, kept the rimlights in place, reposed the players, and raised the fill light onto a taller stand and adjusted the power up one stop.

The "safe" version.