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.

Music Therapy at Amazing Place.

I recently worked on a great project that lifted my soul.

I got a call from  Karen Holland, a creative director at Richards/Carlberg (Chuck Carlberg’s venerable Houston advertising agency, Rives Carlberg, recently merged and became the Houston arm of The Richards Group). Karen was spearheading a project to rebrand an Alzheimer’s care facility known as The Senior’s Place into a new entity called Amazing Place.  The new Amazing Place is a non-profit memory-care center providing therapeutic programs for adults with mild to moderate memory loss.  The center is funded by donations and local churches.

The visual challenge in photographing the Amazing Place, was the fact that they were about to move to a new building at a new location. Karen had specific ideas about the look she wanted for the photographs…..high-key, hopeful, positive, and (whenever possible) with very little or no background detail that might identify the old building.

We found the solution in using very limited depth of field, and tilt-shift lenses to achieve very limited and selective focus on the subjects.  We used minimal lighting, mostly a Profoto 7b and some Canon speedlights to supplement the window light in the building, and to provide a very natural look.  It was a tight space to work in, but we managed to make some nice images.

I was able to shoot in a virtual documentary style throughout the project, and it was incredibly rewarding to work with the clients, families and staff at Amazing Place.  It was especially rewarding and meaningful for me since I’ve had experience with two close family members with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s.

Although the printed materials haven’t been finished yet, here’s a look at the newly redesigned website, featuring a great new logo and color scheme also designed by Karen Holland.

Opening Spread of 18 page feature.

MOVES magazine did a story on my sports portrait photography work recently.  It was published a few months ago, but they’ve recently revamped their website, and a good chunk of the 18-Page portfolio is now online on their website.

For those that are unfamiliar, you can’t walk into an NBA, MLB, or NFL locker room without seeing stacks of three magazines………..ESPN, Sporting News, and Sports Illustrated, perhaps?  Uh, no……… The Robb Report, duPont Registry, and MOVES.

Not my work, just various covers from MOVES

MOVES (About Professional Athletes, For Professional Athletes) is a lifestyle magazine aimed at young sports star millionaires.  It’s a big, thick, beautifully printed publication (think Cigar Afficionado or Communication Arts), and like the other two aforementioned mags, it’s chock full of of high-end advertising for corporate jets, nice cars, watches, etc.

They’ve featured two other photographers in large portfolio features: legendary Madison Square Garden photographer George Kalinsky, and the great  Walter Iooss.  How I got thrown into the mix with those two, I couldn’t tell you, but I’m grateful and very humbled all the same.

Ostrich Dior suit

I was recently asked to collaborate with the fashion staff of GLOSS, a monthly glossy broadsheet fashion publication produced by the Houston Chronicle (Hearst Newspapers).  Over the past few months, I’ve shot four cover stories for GLOSS.  I thought I would share a few stories from those shoots, since they presented some interesting lighting challenges.

Bottega Veneta coat (Plume Wafer 100 with grid, Dramalight optical spot for rimlight, Plume Wafer 75 for the background),

Fashion photography is a nice break from shooting sports portraits of famous athletes, or annual report photography with CEO’s.  It’s nice to be completely creative, and work closely with a talented team of writers, editors, stylists, and designers who produce the section.  Even though you can experiment more and take chances with the lighting (more so, than with a CEO for example…); you still have to keep in mind the paramount principle of fashion photography….the point is to show (and sell) the clothes! 

During our first shoot together last fall, our showcase piece of the season was a purple Dior suit made of ostrich.  We really wanted the texture to come out in the exotic skin, so we kept the light soft and simple, but directional, with a dim backlight on the background in the center behind the model.  The idea was that the model be almost anonymous, so your eye would really focus on the texture of the suit.  We kept the lighting similar for a purple velvet hat/coat ensemble.

For a gray-purple Bottega Veneta coat, we took a slightly different lighting approach.  The coat featured all sorts of embellished fabric….stacked layers of loops and fringes outlining the shoulders and sleeves of the coat.  Lighting it in exactly the same manner as the other two wouldn’t show this critical signature feature of the piece, so we placed a Dramalight (a Flash Clinic custom modified optical spot), behind the model and tightly focused on her back to highlight the irregularities and loops of fabric in the coat.  The keylight was a Plume Wafer 100 with a Lighttools fabric grid to limit the front light to her face and front ¼ of the clothing.  

Many of the clothes had a funky sixties feel to them, so our makeup artist, Wendy Martin created some really over-the-top heavy eye makeup to keep with that era.

Herve Leger bandage dresses (Photek Softlighter).

 With the exception of the different treatment of the Bottega Veneta coat, we used a Photek Softlighter (essentially a 60” umbrella, with a diffuser on the front) as our main light for most of the day.  With the grey background formed by either not lighting (or in some cases barely lighting) the white cyc wall background, this gave a very similar look to Avedon’s 60’s lighting style, which fit well with the dresses and makeup.

The Photek is an interesting piece of gear.  At 90 bucks, I often call it my “Ghetto Octabank”, but in reality it gives a look with more contrast.  If you place it close to the subject on a high boom, you get a similar look to the lighting style of Avedon or David Bailey in their 1960’s heyday.

Fashion editor Clifford Pugh and designer Kellye Sanford prep model Megan O"Leary.

The 3 light, rim light setup, with a small stripbank directly over the camera.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph seven time Tour de France champ and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in Austin, Texas for an editorial client.

Lance was preparing for his Tour de France comeback, so he was only in Austin for one or two days in the time period that would make our deadline, so there was a very narrow window to schedule the shoot.

Celebrities have lots of demands on their time, and are often dealing with tons of requests for interviews, photo shoots, etc.  Lance preparing for the Tour was no exception.  On the day we were shooting him, he had a charity event scheduled, two or three television interviews, a live radio broadcast, and our shoot….all crammed between 7:30 and 9am, so that he could train the rest of the day.

3/4 length with the broad Hexoval 180 source.

Lance owns a really cool bike shop in downtown Austin called Mellow Johnny’s, and the shoot (as well as the other events) was scheduled for the bike shop location.  We scouted the shop the day before, and determined that the best location would be in the basement area of the shop, where we could essentially set up a studio shoot, away from the charity event crowd and his other interviews.  For the shots of Lance, we knew ahead of time, that we were only going to get a portrait of him in a Livestrong t-shirt.  He was not going to pose in a jersey and bike helmet, he wasn’t going to pose on a bike….it wasn’t going to happen, so, in a way, it simplified things.  The question then became, how many looks can we get out of a black t-shirt portrait in 4 minutes?

With limited time and no props, and no environment, I decided to try to get as many different looks as possible in the short time frame available.  If you try to move a celebrity around to multiple locations, or move lighting equipment during the shoot, you are wasting their time, and you risk the shoot being over even quicker.  The best way to photograph them and get multiple looks, is through careful planning, and essentially encircling them with all the lighting equipment you’re going to use.

I decided on three shots:  The first would be a double rimlit tight portrait, with a small stripbank over camera; the second shot would be a broad softbox source –a large Plume Hexoval 180 slightly from the side; the third shot, would be a dramatic profile, lit with a Plume Wafer 100 with a Lighttools 30 degree fabric grid, with a projection of a bike wheel centered behind his head.

Another broad lit hexoval portrait, with different toning.

We started with a grey seamless backdrop, because we knew in the limited space that we had, we could use it as a grey/tan backdrop, we could make it go black, or if necessary, the art director could make a clip path and turn the background white….it gave us a range of options.

We arrived early, near 5:30am and began our setup.  Each lighting setup was plugged in to a different set of power packs, so that we could switch between setups simply by turning power packs on and off.  This kept things organized and simple, and allowed us to get multiple looks without fumbling around, switching  heads, packs, stands, etc.

Andrew Loehman, the assistant on the shoot, actually hung a real bike wheel from a piece of fishing line, and held it at the proper distance between the background and the light to create the shadow of the wheel on the wall.  A custom Dynalite projection spot provided the light.  With more time, we could have created a custom bike wheel “cookie” for the spot, but with limited prep time, an actual wheel was used to provide the signature bike wheel shape.

Lance was in and out of our setup in about 4 minutes.  Other than turning his body 90 degrees for the profile shot, he never moved, and even with that limited amount of time, without changing his wardrobe, and without a bike, we were able to give the art director several looks to choose from for the story.

(All photos © 2009 Robert Seale.  All Rights Reserved. – please do not post, right- click, steal,  or otherwise use any of our photos without permission.  For licensing info, contact Robert Seale Photography through the “Contact Info” link on the right)

The last shot, a profile with a Wafer 100, Lighttools 30 degree grid, and projection spot.