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Jeremy Lin portraits for Sports Illustrated

26.07.2012 (9:54 pm) – Filed under: Environmental Portrait,Houston Photographers,Lighting Scenarios,Magazine photography,Photographic Lighting,Products I dig,Sports Photographer,Sports Photography,Sports Portraits ::

As Jeremy Lin was in the process of inking his deal with the Houston Rockets last week, I got a call from Sports Illustrated. Often in sports, when a star player is traded to another team, there is a big fancy press conference to introduce the player to the media. Usually the player stands at a podium with the new owner, professes his love for the new city and holds up a freshly minted jersey with his name on the back. Interviews follow with all the local media outlets: radio stations, TV stations, teenage sports bloggers, and typically, the surviving newspaper in town.

What most people don’t see, is the behind the scenes photo shoots. Put together in a rush, the sleepy player gets herded to multiple locations throughout the building to pose for the NBA, a magazine or two, the local paper, and a host of team sponsor PSA’s. It’s a challenging situation, very similar to “media day” shoots that we all engage in during preseason training camps. Each photographer or news outlet gets the player for a couple of minutes and they produce the best sports portrait they can.

After I hung up with the SI photo editor, I immediately called my good friend, Rockets photographer Bill Baptist, who I knew would be doing the same gig for the NBA. I found out that we were scheduled to be on one half of the practice court, since the other half was being used for the press conference setup. Billy had to do two large setups, so he generously offered to have our shoot moved to the empty arena floor. I quickly jumped at the chance and agreed that a larger room would be beneficial for all of us. This way, we wouldn’t be crossing cords or competing for space. Plus, the last time Billy and I were that close together, I’m pretty sure he kicked my ass at tennis.

Stellar assistant Nathan Lindstrom and I showed up to the Toyota Center the next morning with a ton of gear, and made our way to the main arena floor. An empty arena makes a great photo studio, but unfortunately, it really was empty: as in, no floor! Since the arena hosts a different event almost every night, the wood basketball floor was in storage – along with the basketball goals, etc.

With the help of some friendly folks at the arena, we were able to get one of the basketball goals rolled out onto the empty concrete floor. I figured that, even if the floor didn’t show, we could at least utilize the goal as a background element for context.

We put together lighting setups in two locations: A wide angle view with the goal in the background, backlit on both sides with Profoto 8A’s and large Chimera gridded softboxes. We used a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 as the main light near the camera.

On the other setup, we put together a seamless paper backdrop with two different lighting setups: a three light setup with two Plume Wafer 100′s with Lighttools grids, and a Profoto Beauty dish on a boom just above the camera. The other setup was another Wafer Hexoval 180 to the right of the camera. We used three Profoto Acute 600′s for power on the seamless setup.

Lin showed up in a brand new red Rockets uni and made his way to our set. After shaking his hand and welcoming him to Texas, we quickly put him through both seamless lighting setups, and then standing and dribbling poses on the backlit concrete floor setup.

Part of Lin’s appeal is his status as a young, springy, high-flying point guard. He looked great flying through the air, going to he hoop, and passing in mid air to his Knicks teammates during the a few months of “Linsanity” last season. At the end of the shoot, I asked Lin how his knee was feeling.

He said it felt great.

Great enough to jump on a concrete floor?

Sure, he said.

Ok then, let’s do it.

I placed the camera, a Canon EOS1DS Mk III on the floor, and proceeded to shoot Lin leaping straight in the air with the basketball goal in the background. He looked great – our only minor tweak being that of changing his hand positions during the jump. At the end of the shoot, I handed him a towel, shook his hand and said thanks. I looked down at my watch and a mere 12 minutes had passed.

He left the arena soon after and was mobbed……not by New York paparazzi, but by mouth-watering Houston real estate agents, eager to spend at least some of his 25 million bucks.

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Robert Seale Featured in Digital SLR Magazine

12.11.2011 (9:43 am) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Magazine photography,Products I dig,Shameless Self Promotion,Sports Portraits ::

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...

Comments [4]

Robert Seale shoots Eadward Muybridge homage

25.08.2011 (2:11 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Magazine photography,Products I dig,Shameless Self Promotion,Sports Portraits,Studio portraits ::

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.)

Comments [11]

Joel Osteen Portraits for USA Weekend

17.07.2011 (8:21 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Magazine photography,Products I dig ::

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.

Comments [5]

“Fly like a butterfly…”

04.02.2011 (3:14 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig ::

Ernest H. Cockrell with a glass butterfly display in the foreground.

As a corporate photographer, I’m called upon to do executive portraits of CEO’s and local business leaders. Ernest H. Cockrell is a longtime Texas energy business executive who is also very well known in his hometown of Houston for his philanthropy. Over the years he’s given millions of dollars to a number of causes, notably the University of Texas (his alma mater), and the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Most Houstonians recognize the Cockrell name from the namesake Cockrell Buterfly Center, a giant glass annex to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, built several years ago containing a tropical butterfly habitat, rain forest, a 50 foot tall waterfall, and thousands of butterflies. After receiving a commision to photograph Mr. Cockrell for the University of Texas, I decided that this would be the perfect location for his portrait.

He had very little time on this particular day, and one of the things I’m very proud of, is being able to create several different scenarios in the same location without making the subject wait around on us to move lights and change our setup.

Although I fully planned on shooting him in the rain forest habitat, hoping to get a few butterflies in the picture, I quickly found another area in the children’s educational center of the museum, adjacent to the rain forest that offered some interesting but challenging visual possibilities.

We had a very limited amount of time (about 15 minutes), so I chose an area where we could get several shots in one location. A large wooden display inside the educational area contained 2 large vertical pieces of glass which contained a static display of butterflies who had generously donated their bodies to science. The space was tight, with interactive displays for kids, a weird corner wall behind the display, and built in stools for children everywhere. I thought that we might be able to light the butterflies, and shoot through the glass, placing our subject’s face on the other side of the glass wall.

After tinkering with the lighting and composition, we decided to backlight the butterflies from each side behind the glass, and we maneuvered a Plume Wafer 75 with a Lighttools 30 degree grid into place outside of the visible frame as the subject main light to reduce spill onto the glass. We used grids on the two backlights (a 20 and 30 degree, as I recall), and the left backlight conveniently served as a hair-light for Mr. Cockrell. Rosco cinefoil was used to gobo the backlights and prevent flare. The background was a corner wall, and was very close, so my assistant, Nathan Lindstrom was put in charge of holding a 6 x 6 black felt Scrim Jim in place behind our subject to give us a nice black background behind the multi-colored butterflies.

The space between the glass panes was quite wide, and reflections around the butterflies were an issue, so much so, that I toyed with retouching reflections in post. I finally settled on leaving the photograph as it was originally shot, after deciding that the reflections actually added a feeling of motion to the picture – almost as if we had used a slow flash sync with actual moving butterflies. (“Yeah….I meant to do that….”)

The second shot with the butterfly shadows on the wall.

The second picture was created by utilizing a small section of our cramped corner wall. We set up another light with a snoot to narrow the flash to a very small beam, and placed it about 20 feet away from the glass, at a slight angle to the wall. This created a pattern of distorted butterfly shadows on the background. We turned off our background lights from the last picture, and removed the black Scrim Jim from the set.

We had Mr. Cockrell step about 2 feet to the side to get him away from the snoot spotlight which was creating our background, and we moved his Wafer 75 main light over a few feet to keep him (but not the background) lit correctly with the small softbox. I then moved about 90 degrees and shot towards the wall, creating the shadow picture. We did all this in about 10 minutes, utilizing our remaining 5 minutes just outside the nearby doors in the rain forest habitat where a third setup with a Profoto 7B was waiting.

Comments [3]

Photographing baseball legend Nolan Ryan

27.10.2010 (9:39 am) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig,Sports Portraits ::

Rangers President Nolan Ryan in Arlington.

For almost 11 years, I shot lots of baseball. As one of three photographers at The Sporting News (the nation’s oldest national sports magazine, founded in 1886), I was lucky to be among the few photojournalists to attend and cover the World Series each and every year.

As a freelancer, I don’t get the opportunity to shoot baseball games much anymore, although I still shoot a lot of sports portraits. I thought I would use the Texas Rangers first ever appearance in the Fall Classic to show off some portraits I did earlier this year of one of my favorite sports icons.

Nolan Ryan is now the President of the Texas Rangers, the last team for whom he pitched before his retirement in 1993 after a stunning 27 seasons in the major leagues. In addition to his 6th and 7th no-hitters, Ryan had another famous moment as a Texas Ranger. In 1993, just before his retirement, Robin Ventura charged the mound on Ryan, who was easily old enough to be his father. Ryan made quick work of Ventura, putting him into a steer-hold with his left arm and pummeling him with his right. Two of my sports photography colleagues, Linda Kaye, and Brad Loper, got great photos of the altercation. I’m not sure why, but I loved that moment: it was awesome to see an old scrappy Texas cowboy holding his own against a young punk. For better or worse, this forever tainted my view of Ventura, and solidified what I already knew: Nolan Ryan is a badass.

As a kid growing up near Houston, I occasionally had the opportunity to attend games at the Astrodome. Ryan’s pitching prowess was the main attraction on those teams in the early 80′s, although, I must admit I was probably equally impressed with the Astros massive Lite-brite scoreboard (hey, I was a kid…). One of my early baseball memories was of sneaking out of class and hiding out in the band hall to watch Ryan pitch in the 1986 NLCS with my high school band director, who was a big Astros fan.

Earlier this season, I shot a group portrait of Ryan, Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux, and the Rangers pitching staff for Sports Illustrated. The highlight for me, was taking a quick opportunity after the shoot to take a few frames of Ryan alone. I photographed him with a long lens, looking down the row of archways at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. We hid a Profoto 7b behind one of the archways with a Plume Wafer 75 equipped with a Lighttools 30-degree grid (to contain the light on Ryan’s face and upper body without too much spillage on the scene). Although I don’t use gels much anymore, we also used the old tungsten film trick here, setting the EOS1Ds Mark III to tungsten to add a Rangers blue cast to the scene, and then adding a 1 1/4 CTO gel to the strobe to filter Ryan’s face back to warmish daylight. At the end of the session, I asked Nolan to show me his famous fastball grip.

Best of luck to Ryan and his Rangers in the upcoming Series.

Nolan's fastball grip: The hand that struck out 5714.

Comments [4]

All Hands on Deck: Photographing a kayak in motion

11.08.2010 (4:51 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig,Sports Portraits ::

The final image of Brad Pennington speeding through the water.

Recently, I worked with champion marathon kayaker Brad Pennington. I’ve shot many athletes in my career……and many are absolute tops in their respective sports, but you have to be completely blown away by a 43-year-old guy who set a course record in the Yukon River Quest by paddling (yes, paddling) his super skinny racing kayak 460 miles in 44 hours, 14 minutes.

Most people think kayaking is all about having giant shoulders and arms, but in fact, it engages the core muscles more than most people would realize. If you sat in Brad’s boat, you would turn over almost immediately and fall into the water. My assistant, Nathan Lindstrom, a very agile and athletic guy, who rock climbs regularly, had a pretty hard time keeping the boat upright, and he ended up in the drink. Brad offered me a chance to sit in the tippy vessel as well, but I politely declined.

I planned on photographing him paddling towards the camera, in motion, with a slow shutter speed capturing some movement in the background. I had done a similar picture with a bicyclist at a velodrome before, with the camera attached to the bicycle: rider frozen with strobe, but with the background completely blurred in motion.

Our first attempt. (Photo by Todd Spoth)

I talked to Brad about mounting a camera on his kayak, with a wide angle pointed back at him. I made arrangements to rent an SPL surf housing and a Canon 5D MkII for the shot (we decided that a Canon EOS1DsMarkIII would be too heavy and unstable. Assistants Todd Spoth and Nathan Lindstrom drilled a hole in one of Brad’s older kayaks, and we then mounted a small ballhead to the bow and attached the housing/camera.

We set up our lighting equipment on another boat (a party barge, with a large flat deck), and had Brad follow us, slightly off to one side. although the lighting worked great, and the Pocketwizard Multimax triggered everything perfectly (inside the housing), what we found was, that the top of the kayak was just too thin to support everything in a stable manner. The thin hull, although mounted securely to the ballhead, still allowed the mounted camera and housing to buckle like a plastic bottle, allowing the camera to flop back and forth. Brad makes constant adjustments, using his balance (and core muscles) to keep the kayak upright. With a slow shutter speed, this resulted in a lot of undesirable side-to-side motion blur, rather than the linear motion blur we were hoping for. There were some good frames, but again, it was not the picture I had originally envisioned. While I had the housing, I tried some other “waterline” shots with Brad and his kayak.

Waterline shot of Brad Pennington taken with an SPL surf housing.

It was clear that we needed to somehow have the kayak and camera on the same platform, moving at the same speed through the water.

I decided to reshoot on another day. In the interim, we explored building a camera rig for the kayak, almost like a Hollywood style car shot, but eventually we settled on strapping the kayak to the barge using nylon webbing and rubber pads to provide friction and to protect the hull.

After trying in vain to secure Brad’s kayak to the barge (there was no way to do it without scratching or otherwise damaging the kayak), we finally realized that we could essentially tow him through the water with very little effort. Because there were no eyelets or holes to tie a line to, Nathan laid down on the stern of the barge and held on to Brad’s kayak as we towed him through the water. Brad paddled some, but mostly to keep himself balanced and upright, as Nathan held the bow in place, between the pontoons of the barge. As strange and low tech as this sounds, it worked quite well.

Torn from one of Leonardo's notebooks, obviously.

Our light source, a Profoto 7B, with a Plume Wafer 100, was mounted on the deck of the barge, off to the side opposite the kayak. We tried out a new product from Lighttools, the company that makes Soft Egg Crate fabric grids for softboxes. We used a 30 degree grid in the Wafer 100, to limit spill and concentrate most of the light on Brad instead of the kayak and water……not an unusual setup, but this time, we added a Lighttools Stretch Frame. The Stretch Frame, consists of collapsible poles covered in velcro, which mount inside the softbox, providing a rigid frame for the grid. This eliminates sag, and keeps the openings in the grid fully stretched open, which was critical on a moving, windy boat deck. I was skeptical when I first heard about these, but they actually work really well, and are now a permanent part of my lighting kit.

I mounted my camera to the railing of the barge with a Bogen superclamp and ballhead, directly over Nathan’s head, but eventually switched to a handheld shot so that I could manually keep Brad’s head in the center of the frame while we were moving. although I normally wouldn’t have done this, I zoomed the 16-35mm lens ever so slightly to accentuate the motion of Brad coming toward the camera.

The lesson here: Despite the best laid plans, renting expensive equipment, hiring extra assistants, etc…..sometimes the simplest solution is the right solution.

Portrait of Brad, taken with a Plume Hexoval 180, (rimlight courtesy of the Sun).

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Robert Seale Featured on Profoto Lighting Blog

31.07.2010 (4:18 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig,Shameless Self Promotion,Sports Portraits ::

There’s a profile on me on the Profoto site. I was really honored that I was asked to participate. It’s got some career history, lighting stuff, and a little bit about how much I enjoy using the awesome Profoto 7B, and the famous Jeffrey Salter quote: “Saw the hot shoe off your camera.”, (which is what got me started in lighting in the first place). Check it out here.

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Figure Skating in Window Light

29.05.2010 (9:12 am) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig,Sports Portraits ::

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.

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Robert Seale lighting workshop webinar posted

22.04.2010 (2:25 pm) – Filed under: Lighting Scenarios,Products I dig,Shameless Self Promotion,Speaking events ::

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.
http://vimeo.com/10597263
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.

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