Robert Seale Photography Blog » Magazine photography

A Weekend with the Doolittle Raiders

Robert — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:46:22 +0000

Lt. Col. Richard E. "Dick" Cole with the Panchito B-25

I’m a real military aviation history buff, so it was an incredible honor when I was recently assigned to take portraits of the Doolittle Raiders for Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine. It was especially gratifying because I was able to pitch the idea to the magazine and then get the green light to take on the assignment.

The Doolittle Raid was America’s first major strike back at the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. On April 18, 1942, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led an all volunteer group 80 men launched 16 B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet and struck Japan. Because a Japanese fishing boat detected the carrier group early, the crews launched early, which weakened their already compromised range, and prevented them from landing safely on Chinese airfields as planned. The crews bailed out or ditched their planes near the coast of China after running out of fuel. Three men were killed in the raid, and eight more would die in Japanese POW camps. Miraculously, most of the crews were eventually rescued and safely transferred back to the US by the Chinese.

The crew of aircraft 1. Doolittle is second from left; Cole is second from right. Check out the "Thunderbird" logo on his jacket and compare it to the one in the portrait above. (USAF Photo)

It was an incredible feat for a number of reasons – chief among them, the fact that they used Army bombers, which were not designed to take off or land on an aircraft carrier. The men on the mission were not told the details of their target until the Hornet was steaming toward Japan. Even though the common thought was that it would probably be a suicide mission, no one backed down and all volunteered to continue. Although the raid didn’t inflict series damage on the Japanese, it was a huge morale booster for the Americans. The raid had an additional benefit: the Japanese islands, once thought to be safely out of range of American attack, were shown to be vulnerable, thus Japan would need to hold back key defense forces to protect their homeland for the rest of the war.

There are five living crewman remaining from the raid:

-Colonel Richard E. Cole, copilot of aircraft #1

-Major Thomas C. Griffin, navigator of aircraft #9

-Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Hite, copilot of aircraft #16

-Major Edward Joseph Saylor, engineer of aircraft #15

-Staff Sergeant David J. Thatcher, gunner of aircraft #7 (Thatcher is featured prominently in Ted Lawson’s book, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, which became a movie starring Spencer Tracy in 1944).

I’m always excited to photograph notable pilots, and I knew that Dick Cole, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot during the raid, lived in Comfort, Texas, near San Antonio. I thought that perhaps with the 70th anniversary of the raid coming up next year, that it might be a great opportunity to photograph him with a B-25. I thought that I could probably arrange to photograph him in Texas with help from the CAF (Commemorative Air Force). After making some phone calls, I found out to my surprise that three of the remaining five raiders would get together at the Florida International Airshow in Punta Gorda, Florida for an airshow, and that it might be a great opportunity to photograph them together for the magazine.

Col. Cole's steady 95 year old hands on the wheel of the B-25

Upon arrival, I found out that Dick Cole was going to meet up with Larry Kelley, the owner of the “Panchito” B-25, and fly in his airplane from Sarasota to Punta Gorda. K.T. and Syd Jones, along with Matt Jolley from Warbird Radio were crewing the plane with Larry, and were kind enough to make arrangements for me to make the flight with Col. Cole. Space was tight inside the plane, but through their generosity, I was able to take one of their seats in the main crew compartment and photograph Col. Cole’s experienced hands taking the yoke from the right seat of the B-25. At 95, he was as smooth as ever, and it was an incredible experience to know that we were being flown around by Doolittle’s co-pilot!

Larry Kelley (left), and Col. Cole (right) flying high over the Florida coast in Panchito

With fabulous support from my editor at A&S, and incredible support from this tight-knit warbird community, we were able to pull off a once in a lifetime sunset photo shoot the next day with 3 of the Raiders and a B-25 very similar to the one they flew to Japan in 69 years earlier.

Fellow photographers and good friends Brian Blanco and Chip Litherland assisted me on this dream assignment. Chip and I used Lighttrac, an Ipad app, to determine the optimum position of the plane at sunset. Once we determined our position, Larry graciously provided his airplane as our iconic backdrop and allowed us to tow it into the perfect position for the evening shoot. The airboss and ground crew at the airport actually shut down an active taxiway to provide us with the perfect angle, far from the other planes on the ramp. Tom Casey, who runs the Raiders charity organization, and manages their appearances, delivered our hero subjects at the right time, and arranged for us to borrow an authentic copy of Cole’s WWII era leather jacket. K.T. Budde-Jones and Syd Jones, who work with Stallion 51 in Kissimmee, Florida, pitched in and answered a million of my dumb questions. Matt Jolley helped us out as well, and videotaped the shoot for Warbird Radio, a fabulous internet radio site, with tons of interviews and information on pilots and planes.

Maj. Thomas C. Griffin, navigator of aircraft 9

We photographed the group together in their Doolittle insignia blazers, and then photographed each Raider individually. Col. Cole looked great in his WWII era A-2 leather flight jacket. We kept the lighting simple, utilizing an easy corner lighting setup with two softboxes. For Griffin, we used a Plume Wafer 100 and some ridiculously low shuter speeds to try to capture what little ambient light we had remaining. Because we had a cloudless sky, it quickly became very dark, and we photographed SSgt. David Thatcher in almost complete darkness. Chip backlit Panchito’s nose and canopy with the Wafer 100, and we used a large Hexoval for Thatcher’s face. We used Profoto 7B’s and Profoto Acute 600 battery powered strobes, since we were out on the taxiway far from any sources of AC power.

SSgt. David J. Thatcher, gunner of aircraft 7

One of the highlights for me, was a bit of audio on Matt’s video of the shoot. Dick Cole is a very laid back, humble and classy guy. If you met him on the street, you would never know that he was a famous pilot or war hero. Matt asked him on camera – ‘what do you think of all the fuss?’ Cole quickly came back with, “the water-boarding is next?”

The lead time on the story was several months, but they’ve finally been published and now I can share them here. It was a real treat to photograph these heroes, and it wouldn’t have been successful without the help of my Florida colleagues and good friends in the warbird community.

Robert Seale Featured in Digital SLR Magazine

Robert — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:43:43 +0000

The opening spread in the Nov. 2011 issue of Digital SLR

Yep, you guessed it - the second spread...

I’m featured in the November 2011 issue of Digital SLR magazine, a photo magazine published by Dennis Publishing in the UK. It’s available at most camera stores, Barnes and Noble and fine bookstores/magazine shops everywhere.

Daniel Lezano did a great job with the article, and translated a few of my quotes to add Brit-speak (“brilliant, kit, flashgun”), but other than that it’s pretty much what I said. Big thanks to them for asking me to be a part of it.

Here’s the text from Daniel’s article:

When the leading US sports publications are looking for someone to add energy and impact to portraits, it’s the Texas-based photographer Robert Seale that gets the nod. He explains to Daniel Lezano the techniques he uses to capture his Portraits in Action:

“I’ve been actIvely Involved with photography for all of my adult life. Having studied photography and interned on a newspaper as a photojournalist, I later joined The Sporting News, where I worked for ten years as a staff photographer. there were three of us covering the whole country, shooting major professional sporting events, including the World Series, Superbowl and college sports, although around a third of the time was spent shooting portraits for magazine covers.

In 2006, I left to start my own business, working for magazines like Sports Illustrated, as well as ad agencies and design firms, then later shooting for large companies, like oil firms. “As much as I enjoyed shooting live sports, taking portraits was always more fun. this was especially true after 9/11, when the added security meant it became more difficult travelling into stadiums with the large amounts of camera kit required to shoot major events. “the two disciplines are very different. With the portrait shoots, I obviously have far more interaction with the subject. I’ll usually have time to prepare in advance for a shoot, being provided with an outline or thesis of the article. often, though, I’ll fly to some city not knowing what the location will look like and what’s needed and I’ll sit on the flight planning out the possibilities. That’s where the newspaper experience comes in, because if you do assignments for a newspaper, you get thrust into situations where you have to think on your feet and come up with ideas that work without much pre-planning. I obviously much prefer knowing a little about what’s needed in advance, as being able to read the story or speak with the reporter lets me add some context to my ideas for the shoot.

“Perhaps the biggest difference to action portraits over live sports is the ability to control how a subject is lit. I learned lighting techniques through a combination of studying – both at university, and on my own – I have bookshelves full of photo books – and practice. When I worked on the newspaper, I would volunteer for various studio assignments, such as one to support a story on wedding dresses, so that I could get better at lighting. It gradually developed from using a small number of flashguns to using studioflash with various types of light modifiers. My current lighting kit consists of a number of mains and battery-operated Profoto heads. “one of the techniques I enjoy using to add the element of motion to my sports portraits is to set a slow shutter speed with flash to capture a little subject blur. The vast majority of photographers often try to use rear-curtain sync to capture the effect of movement. the problem is, if you use rear-curtain sync, you can’t control what part of the picture is stopped because you never quite know when the shutter is about to close, causing the flash to fire. To get around this problem, I’ve developed a method that allows me to use first-curtain sync. What I do is pre-focus on a spot and have the subject jump in place. Even if they appear to be running in the image, they’re actually jumping straight up in the air. I coach them on the body position and what their legs should be doing, what facial expression to have and anything else important. Then what I do is fire the flash at the apex of the jump and as they come up, a silhouetted blur is recorded on the bottom of their feet that makes so it look as if he is leaping. The key advantage of this method is that I can choose exactly the moment I want the flash to fire.

“The number of heads I use really depends on the type of shoot and the location. Much of my lighting set-ups are relatively simple and use between one and three heads, but I do sometimes use four or six heads when the need arises. If you look closely, you can usually work out the number of heads used, for instance, images where the subject’s outline is highlighted are usually the result of using two back lights and one or two front lights. “On most of my shoots, I’ll only have one assistant, and then I’m fortunate that if it’s a bigger budget job, we can hire more. Sometimes I have a digital technician and a couple of assistants, but it really depends on the budget. If it’s an editorial shoot for a magazine, then it’s one or two assistants and me, but if it is for advertising, it may well be two assistants, a digital technician and a make-up artist.

I often use Plume softboxes, which are made in Colorado, and I regularly use grids from a Canadian firm called Lighttools, which are great for limiting the direction of the light spill. “When I used to shoot film, I was meticulous with my flash metering and used a handheld flash meter. but after a time, I got good at judging exposures without metering and would only use a flash meter to double-check. I use one now when I’m doing really critical things, like trying to balance two backlights or using a technical white background, but often when it’s outside, we will just go with what we are seeing on the camera or computer screen, which we use as a digital ‘Polaroid’.

“I use a Canon EOS-1dS MkIII for portraits and an EOS-1d MkIv for anything requiring a motordriven sequence and find their lcd monitors to be fairly accurate. I’ve an extensive set of Canon lenses, including the 16-35mm, 24-105mm, 70-200mm f/2.8 and 300mm. If I need an extreme wide-angle then the 16-35mm is brilliant, but the 24-105mm is my main choice for portraits as it offers such a useful range.”

To see more of Robert Seale’s brilliant portraits, visit:

www.robertseale.com. To view his lighting blog, visit:

www.robertsealeblog.com

The cover. Not my photo, but in case you're looking for the issue...

Mike Tirico and Deion Sanders shoot for GMC

Robert — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:17:09 +0000

There's a strip mall behind that cloud curtain......

As photographers, we are often thrust into bad situations. Try as we might, it’s often not possible to schedule photo shoots during magic hour, or work in wonderful and exotic locations with gorgeous people who have all the time in the world.

In reality, I often deal with very busy people, and things need to get done on their schedule, not mine. Back in August, I received an assignment to shoot ABC/ESPN television commentators Mike Tirico and Deion Sanders. The catch? I was piggybacking on an existing video shoot, and would have a whopping 5 minutes with them.

No problem, I’m thinking….I’ve done ok with less time than that before. Then, I heard more details: high noon shoot, they’re wearing dark suits, with a black truck, in a strip mall parking lot, you can’t take them anywhere else, you’ll have 5 minutes, and, oh yeah….did I mention it was August in Houston?

No problem, I’ll arrive early, take every piece of lighting gear I have, and figure something out…..maybe it’s a huge parking lot near a school with a football field – I can surely get them to go there.

My assistant, Todd Spoth and I arrived early, and canvassed the neighborhood. The video shoot was at a small sound stage 30 miles from downtown. It was literally suburban hell – strip malls, gas stations, light poles, and power lines everywhere…we literally couldn’t find a clean location to take our subjects anywhere near the studio.

I found a parking lot next door with a slight slope to it, parked the spanking new GMC Sierra at the edge of the lot, and placed the camera on the ground. If you can’t get your subject in a clean, nice location – go low.

A 12 x 12 shaded the area in front of the truck where Tirico and Sanders were to stand, and some large mirror boards (borrowed from the super nice video guys) gave us a great kick on half of the chrome grill of the pickup. A Wafer Plume 140 lit the other half of the grill.

Under the 12 x 12, we set up a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 and a Wafer Hexoval 140, which were set up near each other in a corner lighting arrangement.

Good thing we were there early, because our talent left the studio early and were ready to shoot an hour before we had originally planned. We shot Tirico and Sanders individually, then together, shook hands, said thanks and they hopped back in their limos before they melted. We were literally done in 5 1/2 minutes.

The Tirico-Sanders insert

The magazine loved the photos but decided to change the background, dropping out the strip mall on the horizon and replacing it with sky. I had anticipated the change and had already asked retoucher extraordinaire Pratik Naik to work one of the frames up as an example. GMC liked that photo so much that they relicensed it for use in their online newsletter e-blast, and in a NFL insert in their magazine, as well as using it in the original “advertorial” feature in their trade magazine. They used the sky photo in the eblast, and they decided to have their retoucher add grass to the insert photo.

The lesson here? Keep a good attitude and do your best, even in a rough situation where you feel like there is no good picture to be made. Light your subjects carefully, even if you are stuck with a less than desirable background. You never know when a little shoot could turn into something bigger.

The "advertorial" spread featuring Tirico

Robert Seale named SFASU Outstanding Young Alumnus

Robert — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:19:01 +0000

Cover image of me defacing a rental car in Germany. (Photo by Todd Spoth)

This happened a while back, but the story just recently ran last quarter in Sawdust, the Stephen F. Austin State University Alumni magazine. Here’s the text from the article and the 6 page layout featuring some of my photos. A big thanks to SFA Student Publications director Pat Spence for crafting the story to make me sound like Mother Theresa.

Robert Seale shoots Eadward Muybridge homage

Robert — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:11:26 +0000

Trevor Bauer's pitching motion, in an Eadward Muybridge style grid.

Trevor Bauer, a pitching prodigy from UCLA, recently drafted third in the 2011 MLB draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks, is known for his unconventional pitching motion and training philosophy. He’s been compared to another wildly successful, yet undersized pitcher: Tim Lincecum of the SF Giants, who generates torque by rotating his hips, arms and legs in a whip-like motion, allowing him to pitch as fast as some of his taller, more muscle-bound counterparts in the major leagues.

When I originally got the call to shoot Bauer for Sports Illustrated, the photo editor, Nate Gordon and I discussed shooting a stroboscopic sequence on a black background, much like the work of Life Magazine photographer Gjon Mili. I had done this type of shot before, in fact my first cover for the Sporting News was a stroboscopic photo of Mets pitcher Pete Harnisch.

My first Sporting News cover: circa 1996.

I first learned about Mili and his work during college. I took about 27 hours of art history classes (is that enough for a third major?). The most memorable one was my mentor, Dr. Michael Roach‘s “History of Photography” class. Presented chronologically, each class featured a wonderful slide show and biographical talk about pioneering photographers. Each day we would tackle the work of two-three new photographers, and it was really great to go out and shoot later in the day, channeling the styles you had absorbed by osmosis that morning and trying to emulate that photographer’s look in your own photographs.

It’s great to formulate and grow your own style, but I think it’s equally important to know the history of our craft, learn all those techniques, and have them in your toolbox for when you’re called upon to provide a specific look.

In addition to Mili, one of those early photographers that Dr. Roach introduced us to was the pioneering motion sequence photographer Eadward Muybridge. Muybridge, using a series of cameras triggered in sequence, put together grids of individual photographs featuring motion studies of humans, horses, and other animals. There’s not an animator or artist who doesn’t own a dog eared copy of Muybridge’s “The Human Figure in Motion”, first published in 1907.

Anyway, I mentioned I had also been wanting to try a Muybridge homage, and perhaps Bauer’s motion was a good chance to explore the idea. Nate liked the idea, and after pitching it to Director of Photography Steve Fine, gave me the go ahead to put the shoot together. One wrinkle in this was that Bauer had not yet been signed to a contract by the diamondbacks at the time of our shoot. That meant that we had to literally scour the country to piece together a Diamondbacks uniform from several different vendors for him on short notice.

Bauer’s pitching coach Ron Wolforth, helped us find a nearby high school gym to set up the sets for both shots. Assistant Nathan Lindstrom morphed into a master set builder for this one, designing and erecting a huge plywood wall, that we painted a neutral gray. We used white tape for the larger grids and chalk pencils for the smaller lines between the grids, and set up the wall in the gym.

Next to that, we erected essentially a cube of black 20 x 20 overheads. For the Mili shot, it was important that Bauer be rim lit from behind in a pitch black environment. We used two Plume Wafer 100′s with Lighttools grids to accomplish this, and then added a third light to put a little more light on Bauer’s profile.

For the Muybridge shot, we took off the grids, and lit the set essentially from the front with the lights at 45 degree angles to the wall. Muybridge’s shots were lit with sunlight, and there were often imperfections and shadows on the walls of his photos, so we didn’t want to make the lighting too slick or neat. We were going for authenticity. Both setups were lit with Profoto 8A‘s.

The Bauer pitching sequence shot in our black 20 x 20 "cube."

We monitored the shoot with a tethered Mac laptop, so we could keep track of sequences and make sure we had all the different body positions needed to put together the Muybridge grid. With stroboscopic photos of a baseball pitch, you can’t fire the strobe more than 3-4 times, or the picture turns into a big busy mess. for this reason, we actually shot the photo as a stroboscopic sequence, and also separately with individual photos, which could then be pieced together into a panoramic sequence by a retoucher.

Although the Muybridge homage photo ran in color in the magazine, I actually prefer it in sepia tone, which I think better evokes the mood of his pioneering work in photography.

http://vimeo.com/26410832

(Assistants Nathan Lindstrom and Todd Spoth really busted their tails on this, and Todd put together a great Go-Pro time lapse of the shoot.)

Robert Seale featured in PhotoPlus UK Magazine

Robert — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:10:12 +0000

The clip from the July issue of PhotoPlus UK.

My photo of Evan Longoria, originally taken for Sports Illustrated, was recently featured in PhotoPlus UK magazine on their back page feature “My Favourite Shot.” The photo and a technical description of the shoot, originally detailed here on the blog, are featured in the July 2011 issue.

Joel Osteen Portraits for USA Weekend

Robert — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 03:21:08 +0000

Osteen, lit from overhead with a Wafer Hexoval 140.

I recently photographed Joel Osteen, a popular televangelist and the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas for the cover of USA Weekend. Lakewood Church is the largest congregation in the country, with over 43,000 worshippers attending every week. Osteen also writes books, including his New York Times Bestseller, Your Best Life Now.

Joel’s wife, Victoria, is a co-pastor of the church. I photographed her previously for a health magazine cover story. I met Joel briefly during that shoot, when I asked them to join their kids on a trampoline at their home. They were really great sports. Both are both super nice people and great photographic subjects.

Lakewood renovated the 16,000 seat Compaq Center, the Houston Rockets former arena (known earlier as The Summit), and holds several church services there each week.

The cover shot.

As part of the assignment, I was also assigned to shoot an actual church service at Lakewood, and this made for a great scouting trip. It was great being able to witness the service, watch Joel and Victoria’s mannerisms, and study the lighting looks and locations available in the building for our portrait shoot later that week.

For the cover shot, we scouted an area in the church with a plain, warm wall (no need for a seamless this time), and set up one background light to create a gradient “glow” behind Osteen. We then lit him with two lights set up in a corner lighting pattern. Our warm background was changed to a bright purple in post (the story was running Easter weekend…). Before we finished, I turned off half of the corner setup and just used a boom light over his head. It made a dramatic photo that turned out to be my favorite frame from the shoot.

Though I knew it might not be simple enough for the cover, I knew it was important to try to capture the size of the church in some of the photos. We set up another very simple setup on the stage inside the auditorium of the church: a Plume Wafer 100 with a 30 degree Lighttools grid. I had the lighting guys from the church bring up the lights over the audience and turn on a follow spot for us, high in the catwalks. At first the spots weren’t showing well, so we asked the lighting director to fog the room for about an hour before the shoot, so that the smoky haze would make the spotlight beams show up in the background.

The stage setup, photographed with one Wafer 100 with a 30 degree grid.

It was interesting to be in the building again where I photographed so many Rockets games, including both their championship runs in 94 and 95. I spent many an hour hanging remote cameras and strobe packs on those same catwalks we were now using to light up a portrait of a preacher.

Shooting on Plexiglas for the SI Baseball Preview

Robert — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:56:46 +0000

I recently photographed Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays in mid-swing through Plexiglas for the Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview issue. I photographed a similar shot of Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon years ago, and I ‘ve wanted to update that portrait for quite some time (it’s so old, he was actually wearing LA Gear shoes!). The cool photo editor at SI remembered my Hakeem photo and asked me to produce a similar shot of Longoria. Just to prove that there are very few new ideas in this world, he sent me an awesome John Zimmerman photo of Ted Williams from the 1950′s taken from below his feet through a glass floor!

The Longoria portrait was part of a series on baseball players who are the best in the league at hitting a certain pitch: best curveball hitter, best fastball hitter, etc. The essay was parceled out to several different photographers since some of the players were in Arizona and some were at Spring Training in Florida.

Check out Hakeem's "LA Gear" kicks.

It took several days of pre-production phone calls to source our 1.25 inch thick, 5′ x 8′ sheet of optically clear Plexi. We finally found a piece in Ft. Lauderdale, and had it trucked in for the shoot. It wasn’t cheap.

Cy Cyr, a great SI assistant from Orlando who I’ve worked with many times over the years, helped out by picking up our additional rental gear, and then accompanying me to the Rays Spring Training location in Port Charlotte. Armando Solares and Chip Litherland, both great photographers from Sarasota, agreed to help out as well. A 400 lb , 5′ x 8′ sheet of Plexiglas is incredibly heavy and difficult to move, so we needed all that extra muscle to assemble the set.

When I did the Hakeem picture, we placed the Plexi on a set of wooden boxes that were only 2-3 feet off the ground, which limited our lens choice to a super-wide, and it really was not enough room to work properly. This time, I decided to erect a platform of heavy-duty construction scaffolding, which gave us an elevation of five feet. At that distance, I was able to use a variety of lenses.

Once the scaffolding was delivered and assembled, we unloaded the glass (which took 6 people), secured everything, and strapped it to the scaffolding. Ground stakes with cargo tie-downs and a ton of sandbags made the whole set very safe and secure. The last thing I needed was to injure the Rays star player!

The biggest issue with shooting a photo like this is unwanted reflections. We covered the inside of the scaffolding, ground, and back of the set with black drape, essentially creating a “black box” for me to shoot from. For lighting, we used a Plume Wafer Hexoval 140 (the medium one) as our main light, positioning it just above the plexi, but a little lower than usual to illuminate Evan under his hat. We then added a medium stip bank with a 40 degree grid, from below the glass, right behind my head. This light gave us some fill, and illuminated the soles of Longoria’s shoes. We used two lights from behind the set with regular reflectors to outline Longoria and his bat, and separate him from the background. All of the lights used were Profoto 7B’s.

LightTrac is an awesome tool for planning a shoot.

Once we had everything set, we peeled the protective adhesive paper off the plexiglas, shot some tests (in socks!), and did our final preparations before Longoria arrived. The time of day was not ideal: we were shooting at 3:30pm, rather than 5pm, so the sun was still a problem. although we had chosen our location carefully based on recon from the Ipad app LightTrac (which shows the sun path on a google map satellite photo), we still had some sunlight to deal with.

We erected an 8 x 8 on Matthews hi-rollers to block the sunlight , although we did toy with the prospect of putting Cy in a tractor bucket with a large golf umbrella, due to the heavy winds in the area. Armando and Chip did a great job of keeping the 8×8 from blowing away during the shoot.

We had about 30 minutes for the shoot, and Longoria was great during the whole thing. He even got into it at the end and started making some great faces, screaming while pretending to knock the cover off the ball.

Check out the cool time lapse video that Cy shot for us which chronicles the entire shoot start to finish.

Robert Seale photo shoot time lapse from Robert Seale on Vimeo.

And, yes, of course – we had to shoot some pictures of ourselves as well!

Cy Cyr, Armando Solares, Chip Litherland, and me doing the "mush-face" pose after the shoot.

A cool view from underneath. (Photo by Chip Litherland)

Robert Seale shoots Coach K at Duke

Robert — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:32:44 +0000

The March 13, 2011 USA Weekend cover.

Since March Madness is in the air, I thought now would be a great time to share a shoot I recently did with Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. The assignment was a cover story for USA Weekend magazine (a Sunday newspaper insert with a whopping circulation of over 22 million!).

“Coach K” (yes, we all have trouble spelling his name…) is an icon at Duke (currently # 3 in the AP top 25), and a Number 1 seed in the west bracket of the 2011 NCAA Tournament, and he’s led the Duke Blue Devils to 4 NCAA Championships and 11 Final Four appearances. He was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, when his current crop of players were 8-9 years old.

Because of Coach K’s demanding schedule and celebrity status on campus (he apparently gets mobbed when he lingers on campus too long), we elected to shoot him inside the controlled environment of the Duke practice facility (the main floor at Cameron was in use).

We had a tight 15-20 minute window, and needed several looks – at a minimum, we needed a cover image and an inside photo for the magazine.

The open "corner lighting" setup - used as the opener inside

One of the critical things about shooting a cover, is finding ways to simplify the picture – particularly the background, so that the composition works with the publication’s logo, and that there is enough room for the various cover lines. An added challenge, in the case of a Sunday insert is keeping tones and colors in a range that is printable by literally hundreds of different newspaper printing facilities all over the country.

On this shoot, I had the added treat of working with a vastly overqualified “assistant”, my old Sporting News photographer colleague Bob Leverone. He was not only a big help with pulling off the shoot, but he also took me on a short Carolina BBQ tour after we wrapped. (Sidebar: We sampled pulled pork at four of North Carolina’s most famous cue joints around the state, but the best by far was the barbeque we had at Dan Huntley’s place. Huntley is the author of Extreme Barbeque, and a former Charlotte Observer columnist. He is the real deal, and I’m a BBQ snob from Texas…. …ok, end of sidebar – back to the shoot.)

We settled on three lighting setups: a simple, blue padded background with fairly open corner lighting with a graduated “glow” in the background; a second, more dramatically lit setup with a row of sideline chairs; and an elevated look from a ladder with a simple background of court flooring.

For the cover, the photo editor (a longtime client, and wonderful guy to work with, who also accompanied us on the shoot) chose a dramatic tight shot of Coach K with a ball looking off camera, taken during our more dramatic setup with the chairs. We shot it with a Plume Wafer 100 with a 30 degree Lighttools grid, and a bare reflector head aimed at the wall behind him.

I’ll talk more about my corner lighting setup in an upcoming post.

Best of luck to Coach K and Duke in this month’s tournament. Perhaps he’ll get to visit us here in Texas later this month at the Final Four!

A pensive Coach K, taken with a Wafer 100 with a 30 degree Lighttools grid.

Seale shoots portraits for COLORS Magazine

Robert — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:17:56 +0000

Banana label collector Becky Martz

I recently was assigned a portrait for COLORS, a very cool, artsy Italian magazine. COLORS is published by Fabrica, a creative think tank sponsored by Benetton. COLORS publishes each issue according to a different theme, and the latest issue (No. 79: Winter 2010-2011) is all about collectors.

Featured in the magazine, are profiles on people who collect toasters, tea bags, vacuum cleaners, dinosaur statues, etc. There was even one collector who collected items and memorabilia from the now mothballed Concorde.

My assignment was to shoot Becky Martz, the foremost collector of banana labels in the world. Yes folks….banana labels. She has over 10000 in her collection.

The photo editor was kind enough to send us some samples so that we could match lighting and mood to the spare style favored by the magazine. This was important, as there were other photographers who were working on this project in various locales throughout the world. Each layout was identical, so it was necessary to match the lighting so that the magazine had a unified look.

We decided to have a little fun with it, and we posed Becky with a variety of bananas as props, mimicking a pistol, a telephone, an infant, and even a bunch of bananas as the old “idea” light bulb over her head (which ended up being the main photo in the layout). We did all the photos in a makeshift studio that we set up in her living room.

We also shot close ups and details of her label collection, resulting in three spreads in the Winter 2011 issue.The magazine has received quite a bit of publicity, including a mention by the NYT Magazine Culture blog.

Two of the spreads from the Winter 2010-2011 issue of COLORS.