On The Job

Tapped Out Book Cover Shoot------------------- How to Photograph a Guy Getting Punched in the Face!!!

2010-10-04T13:16:00.024-04:00

The great thing about being a photographer is you never know what you're going to be asked to do. Most of the time, requests are pretty straight forward... but recently I received a pretty unique request. A Creative Director from Gotham Publishing called to ask if it was possible to photograph someone being punched in the face. He went on to tell me about the book Tapped Out which chronicles the year long journey of author Matthew Polly as he trains for his first Mixed Martial Arts fight. The author thought the most authentic image for the book cover would be of himself being punched in the face!

An absolutely crazy concept...but I couldn't refuse! The truth of the matter is, when I first received the phone call, I had no idea how I was going to execute the concept, but in this case, I had to say YES to the assignment then figure it out.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I went to work figuring it out!

There were several factors to consider:

1---The author agreed to take 5-8 full force punches to the face... so we only had a few chances to "get the shot".
2---The moment of contact happens in a 1/1000th of a second so our timing had to be dead on or we would miss it!
3---The image had to be sharp with a good depth of field of F8 or deeper, contrasty lighting, with sweat flying off of the subject.

The biggest hurdle was how to actually catch the moment of impact. I called Cliff Hausner, my contact at Profoto to learn more about the Pro 8 power packs packs which had recently come on the market. The Pro 8 was boasting it could fire strobes at 20 frames per second with a 12,000th of a second flash duration.

Flash duration is critical when photographing something that moves! Flash duration is the amount of time it takes for a flash to fire. Flash duration typically varies from about 1/1000 to 1/20,000 of a second. If your flash duration is too long your images will be blurry around the edges. A perfect example is trying to shoot a basketball game with an on camera flash. The subject is usually moving faster than the flash duration. The movement while the light is still "strobing" causes the streaks or blurry edges. When shooting moving subject, the shorter the flash duration, the sharper the image.

Even though the Pro 8 can fire at 20 frames per second, The fastest cameras on the market can only shoot 10 frames per second, so we still had the issue of not being fast enough to catch a punch in the face! The only way to get faster was to add multiple cameras! Ultimately, we decided to set up four Canon Mark V cameras, with each camera on it's own set of strobes. We had 12 strobes total... each camera had 3 strobes.

We then had an elaborate pocket wizard system which fired each camera on a delay. Meaning each camera was firing at a different time. Ultimately, we were able to achieve very close to 40 frames per second on strobe! This would greatly increase our chances of catching the moment of contact.

We did a test shoot to make sure we could get everything to sync up. We found that even with the short flash duration there were 1-3 frames that had a double strobe, or partial double strobe. By shooting RAW we were able to compensate. We didn't encounter the double strobe frames with three cameras. Ultimately we decided 4 cameras was better than three because we were still gaining a lot more frames per second even if a couple of them weren't perfectly exposed.

I had one pocket wizard in my hand that would fire all the cameras & strobes. We would count down the "punch" and started firing the lights a split second before the moment of impact.

IT was quite a rush to see all the lights firing! It was literally an explosion of light! It was also amazing to watch Matt get punched in the face!! He was a good sport and I admire his courage! I never in a million years thought this would be my job!

Special thanks to: Matthew Polly for having the gonads to come up with this idea! To Ray Lundgren of Gotham Publishing for giving me the call! To Cliff Hausner for all his help with the Profoto and Pocketwizard gear. To Andrew Montanez our subject for the Test shoot (and a hellva MMA fighter!) To my kick ass assistants Kim Nicholas & Michelle Talan. To Ab Sesay (aka Big Sexy) for the behind the scene video! To Noho Studios... sorry about the electric bill!

Hangin with the Lebrons

2010-08-01T09:47:00.005-04:00

For the past three summers I have been the staff photographer for Nike Elite Youth Basketball. A special thanks to Kevin Foley & Marc Steigerwalt of Position Sports for keeping me on staff for this! The job includes about 6 weeks of traveling around the country photographing the top high school basketball players in the country. And I mean the best of the best such as…John Wall, Tyreke Evans, Harrison Barnes, Austin Rivers just to name a few… The marquee event is the Lebron James Skills Academy. It’s a combination of skills workouts and games hosted by King James himself. It’s an amazing opportunity for the players because they have the chance to meet the best player in the game (in my opinion). What I love about the event is, James is very candid with the young players and gives them life advice as well as pointers on their game.

My job is to take action photographs and portraits of the players as well as general event coverage. I rely very heavily on Dynalite gear for this job. Specifically 2000Wi packs and bi-tube heads. I set up strobes on the two main courts and have a portrait set up off the court. I would also like to note that this summer I was testing a new pack for Dynalite that has a very-very fast flash duration of 1/24,000th of a second. The importance of this is, the shorter the flash duration, the crisper and sharper your images will be. The current 2000Wi packs have a flash duration of 1/16,000th. I could visibly tell which images were shot with the test packs… they were tack sharp with almost no motion blur.

Back to Lebron…This year things were especially tense because of his whole free agency deal. The camp was literally the same week Lebron was making his announcement. The gym was packed with over 120 media outlets, ESPN was out front going live every 2 hours, helicopters were following Lebron everytime he drove somewhere. It was nuts! The beauty of being the Nike staff photographer is I had total access, I wasn’t bound to the shooting restrictions the press had.

During sessions that were closed to the media I was able to capture some amazing moments that no other photographers had access to. One was a players banquet hosted Lebron. He hangs with the high school guys for dinner then does a Q&A where the players can ask him anything. I feel this is when Lebron is the most genuine. He really accepts his role as mentor and role model and gives the guys’ great advice and insight into life in the NBA and life in the spotlight. Also during a session closed to the media, for the first time ever, Lebron played pick up with the high school players. I was pretty funny to watch the young bucks try and go at Lebron, then get totally embarrassed! During this session, I captured my favorite image of the week…a wide-open dunk by Bron-Bron…His signature dunk. This was just 48 hours before “the announcement” and it just seems like he is so relaxed! The court is his home.

After the dunk Lebron came up to me and said to me with a smile “Did you get that one?” He knew it was a pretty dunk! As did everyone in the gym!

Miller Time!

2010-03-01T09:19:00.001-05:00

I had a great opportunity to work for award winning producer Dan Klores shooting the Media & PR photos for his latest documentary Winning Time. Two years ago I had a blast working on another project by Dan called Black Magic, he was kind enough to call me back for this project as well. Winning Time is all about Reggie Miller and how he and the Indiana Pacers denied the New York Knicks any shot at a NBA title during the Patrick Ewing John Starks era. Check it out on ESPN.com.

My assignment was to photograph Reggie Miller…Such an iconic figure and future hall of famer in the sport! I am a big fan was totally psyched about the assignment! The concept was really simple...Reggie with props that referenced one of his most memorable games; the 1995 Eastern Conference Playoffs where he scored 8 points in 8.9 seconds to lead the Pacers to a road win over the Knicks. One of the greatest individual performances in NBA history!!!

ESPN had an idea that Reggie would sit on a huge shot clock, or hold a small shot clock in his hands.. so I went with it. But I also came up with the idea to mock up a newspaper. NYC newspapers are known for it’s bold dramatic headlines and front covers. Reggie’s performance was certainly front page news back in the day. For the mock up I actually found a company online let me make a newspaper cover. I could customize the text and ad my own photo… all for $9.99. I then got usage rights for a photo from the actual 8.9 seconds from the Associated Press and made that the cover photo. It was a nice addition to the shoot and Reggie really loved it!

The shoot was out in LA… I used 5th and Sunset, a great full service studio that is used to having celebrity/high profile shoots. I also had two great assistants and a digital tech from Assistthis.net

We had about 2 hours with Reggie and I have to say, it was one of the smoothest shoots I’ve ever been on! HE was fantastic! He brought a lot of personality to the shoot and really had fun with it. Not to mention, he had flawless skin and look amazing! I enjoyed it tremendously and look forward to seeing Reggie down the road!

Craig Robinson…The First Brother-in-Law

2009-12-01T09:01:00.001-05:00

One of the most important things about this business is the relationships you form with photo editors and creative directors. I’m especially grateful for Ray Lundgren a creative director for Gotham Publishing. He works on several dozen book covers a year and is kind enough to keep hire me several assignments a year.

This year one of those opportunities was a shoot with Craig Robinson, the head basketball coach for Oregon State and the brother of Michelle Obama. Because of Craig’s hectic schedule, I went to Oregon. I was faced with a couple of obstacles…finding gear and assistants. I contacted Clutch Camera, a newer rental company in Portland. They recommended several rock star assistants who really came through for me.

The shoot consisted of an environmental portrait of Craig and a portrait on white. The tough part was schlepping the gear around the old, but charming arena at Oregon State. Because of several sports practicing, we only had access to the basketball court for 3 hours, so we shot the environmental portrait on the court then we opted to do the white set in the foyer of the arena, it was barely large enough to build our set.

Craig was really wonderful… and I mean that! He was soooo nice! We talked basketball and politics and how crazy life had been since his brother in law became President. He talked about playing pick-up with his daughter on the Whitehouse court with Barack and his daughter. The basketball legacy is continuing with the young ladies in the family!! Craig's daughter Leslie is a rising top recruit in the state of Oregon. Craig was very gracious and stayed as long as we needed to get the shoot done. His book A Game of Character, is about life lessons Craig has learned through basketball and politics.

ADDY for Under Armour!

2009-04-29T23:38:00.006-04:00

So good things happen in pairs! The same day the Slam double cover hit the stands... I got word that the Under Armour "When in Rome" print & web campaign I shot with Brandon Jennings was awarded a Gold Addy & a Mosaic award! This is really big, considering over 60,000 people enter the Addy's! For those of you who don't know, the ADDY Awards are the world's largest and arguably toughest advertising competition. It is the highest honor in the ad world to cop an ADDY!!! I give HUGE HUGE props to the creative department at Under Armour. They took everything we shot in Rome with Brandon and created a DOPE campaign! When I saw the final cuts for the print ads, I was speechless! It is one of the best projects I have ever been a part of! The hard work and the hustle has paid off!
Here's a link to the site! http://wheninrome.underarmour.com/#/home

Slam Double Cover!!!!

2009-04-29T22:13:00.005-04:00

The minute this joint hit the stands I felt like a proud parent of twins! Having a double cover for Slam Magazine is amazing! Ben & Melissa did it up right! The shoot actually went down months ago and I've had to contain my excitement for all this time!
I flew to Barcelona in December for the lone opportunity when Ricky Rubio and Brandon Jennings would be in the same city at the same time.
I rented a studio in Barcelona, had two great local assistants. The shoot was very relaxed and quite trouble free. Ricky showed up first to the studio with his parents. What a good looking guy! and very polite! His parents were wonderful! About an hour later, Brandon arrived. IT was the first time the two players had officially met...You could tell there was a mutual respect for each other. When they got on set together it was like I was photographing Allen Iverson & Steve Nash together! It just felt like a historic moment! Two phenomenal players with their whole lives ahead of them! This was a once in a lifetime kind of photoshoot!
Here is some behind the scenes footage from the shoot!
http://slamonline.com/online/media/slam-tv/2009/04/video-more-ricky-and-brandon/
http://slamonline.com/online/media/slam-tv/2009/04/rrbj/
http://slamonline.com/online/the-magazine/toc/2009/04/slam-128-on-sale-now/#comments

As if that wasn't enough... Slam called me a week later and said they wanted to do a double cover... this time they sent me to Florida to catch John Wall & Lance Stephenson together. The two are the top high school players this year and both are just a year away from the NBA Draft! It was an overdose of basketball! Two amazing shoots in a week!

Dime Magazine

2009-04-29T22:02:00.003-04:00

In case you missed it...The January issue of Dime Magazine was full of Brandon Jennings! The cover and full spread inside are all outtakes I shot for the "When in Rome" ad campaign Under Armour. Props to Dime for recognizing how historic a move Brandon has made!

SET Magazine Cover Shoot

2008-11-27T14:05:00.008-05:00

On Monday I had the pleasure of shooting the Washington Wizards Gilbert Arenas for the cover of the 4th issue of SET Magazine. Everything went down at his home in northern Virginia. We had a great concept to shoot some environmental portraits outside of his house & with his cars. But the day took an unexpected turn when his coach was fired!! So the whole crew was in limbo just chilling at his house for about 6 hours while Gilbert was in team meetings and media interviews. A special thanks to Gilbert's fiance Laura who entertained us all day! The G-man finally got home about 8:30 in the evening!!! Despite the stress of the day, Gilbert was a great subject. We had him decked out in several great suits... as well as a bare chested tattoo look for the ladies! The issue hits the shelf in about a month!

Under Armour Website

2008-11-24T06:44:00.003-05:00

It's very rewarding to see the end product of a photoshoot. Case and point, the Under Armour website dedicated to Brandon Jennings which just launched this week. The creative team and UA did an amazing job on the site, I'm so proud of it! All of the photos are from the marathon shoot in Italy about 8 weeks ago...plus a few personal photos from Brandon. The site allows fans to follow Mr. Young Money while he is in Rome, Italy playing for Vitrus Roma. Enjoy the site! Underarmour.com/wheninrome

Elite 24 ESPN behind the scenes

2008-11-13T08:23:00.010-05:00

Ya know.... it's crazy what you can find on the internet! I was told ESPN was doing a 30 minute special on the Elite 24 to run on ESPN U sometime this fall. At least that is what they told me when they wanted to get footage during my marathon shoot the night before the game. Come to find out they also put a clip together from just the shoot itself! Click HERE to check it out The Elite 24 game at Rucker Park in NYC is a one of kind high school basketball game that features the top 24 players in the country. I not only shot the game, but had the task of shooting all 24 players in their Elite 24 uniform and their high school uniform... and I had three hours to do it! It was a lot of work in a tiny hotel room in NYC... but we got some great photos including two covers. Enjoy!

Brandon Jennings Ad Campaign

2008-10-08T20:27:00.019-04:00

I had an amazing opportunity this month to shoot an ad campaign for Under Armour. I have to say it was a dream job! Kris Stone, the director of basketball for UA called me up and said "Kelly, would you like to go to Italy?", I said, "Hell yeah!" As it turns out Under Armour had just signed basketball phenom Brandon Jennings.... the first high school player to skip college and go pro in Europe... He will most likely declare for the NBA draft in April.
The crazy part is, I got the call on a Thursday and by Sunday was on a plane to Italy!!! Since Brandon's stay in Italy will likely be short, UA didn't have time to go into a full scale production for the campaign; Kris and I literally had to get there and make it work! Yes you're hearing me right, I had 48 hours to produce a shoot in Rome, Italy... and I don't speak Italian! My knight in shining armour was Elio Carchidi, a photographer and owner of Studio 154 in Rome. Elio was able to handle all the production in Rome: locations, assistants, equipment rental, vehicles, catering, even a local cell phone! He was great!
We landed in Rome at 7am on Monday morning and began working right away... Location scouting places like the Coliseum, the Spanish Steps, the Arch of Constantine and many of the beautiful, narrow cobble streets of Rome. It was like stepping back in time... the texture and history of Rome was mind blowing! By 7am on Tuesday morning we began shooting at the arena where Brandon has practice. This was no ordinary gymnasium, it was built for the 1960 Olympics and had windows all around the top of the arena. I have to say the available light is very different in Italy. We shot the whole first set Tuesday morning with mostly available light! IT was BEAUTIFUL light! The afternoon was back to Profoto... big sets and lots of outfit changing! One note for photographers, the pocketwizards in Europe are on a different frequency than the ones in the US and they don't work together!
Wednesday was location day around Rome. We started at sunrise at the Arch of Constantine, which is right next to the Coliseum. It was a bit stressful since we didn't have the 15 days necessary to get permits, but my rule of thumb is keep it simple! Trusty 7b's in backpacks and enough assistants to keep them mobile! Every time I got a bit stressed, I would look at my assisant and say "We're in Rome!"
Brandon was great to work with. He and I had worked together earlier this year at the Jordan Brand Classic, but this was much more involved. Brandon was very focused and was well aware that he is the future of Under Armour basketball. He worked very hard to get across the mood or attitude we were trying to achieve in the images. ... but honestly it wasn't that hard! He has a natural swagger and confidence...the camera loves him!

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM

2008-09-10T23:55:00.002-04:00

This past weekend, I had the fortune of shooting the Georgia football game for Icon Sports Media. The Dawgs started the year at the top of the AP Coaches poll and are projected to contend for a national championship. Every sports magazine (ESPN, SI, Sporting News) have graced their covers with UGA stud Knowshon Moreno. So I was pretty psyched to get to check this guy out in person.
It didn't take long for me to be impressed! Knowshon broke for 169 yards and 3 touchdowns before Coach Richt retired him to the bench a the top of the forth quarter. I caught plenty of great images of Moreno... but taking the cake is "the hurdle"!!! Knowshown leapt over a poor sap from Central Michigan and into UGA folk lore! #24 is being heralded as greatest Dawg since Herschel Walker, and I'm ready to get on the bandwagon!
I'm also psyched to say ESPN the Magazine picked up the image for the double page Zoom section at the front of the magazine! Georgia Fans get your copy while you can!

Nike Global Challenge

2008-08-11T23:00:00.004-04:00

While the 2008 Olympics kicked off in Beijing, Nike had their own mini Olympics in Portland, hosting the Nike Global Challenge. The international prep basketball tournament had teams from Serbia, Canada, Puerto Rico, Lithuania, Senegal and 3 USA teams (with the top 30 players in the USA). As the Nike photographer it was my job to shoot the games and portraits with some of the top players. I have photographed most of the USA players over the last 2 years, but it's a whole new level when they put on a USA uniform. It was great to see the sense of pride these guys had for their country! Especially Thierno Ibrahima Niang of Senegal!

The competition was very spirited with each teams national pride on the line. Serbia proved they were here to contend for the title by defeating a USA team 3 on the first night. Senegal, a country with very little basketball history played with a lot of heart. My favorite action shot is of Avery Bradley dunking over 6'11" Uros Lukovic of Serbia... An in your face dunk that sparked a bench clearing fight! (click on photographs to view larger)
But in the end the championship game was between USA Team 1 & USA Team 2. Rosco Smith closed the door on USA Team 1 with a fast break for a wide open dunk! Show Time! USA Team 2 wins the Nike Global Challenge.

Hardwood

2008-08-04T12:06:00.009-04:00

Each year Rise Magazine puts out a special basketball issue called Hardwood. Editor Tatiana Zic hired me to shoot portraits of 15 different players for the issue. In order to get all of the players she requested, I went to the Nike Peach Jam in South Carolina and went bananas! There was very little room to work with at the venue since all the courts/locker rooms were being used. The only space available was a racquetball court, which work out great! The floor even looked like a basketball court, so I opted to run my backdrop to the floor instead of a full sweep. It worked out nicely and created a different look than I had done before... I then scrambled around like crazy (with the help of my assistant Jen) getting guys to the set in between their games. It was a little nutty but these are a few of my favorites!
You can click on the images to view them larger.
Equipment: Canon Mark IIN, Black backdrop, 4 Dynalite heads total: 2 edge lights with 30 degree grids, a Mola 22" beauty dish with a 50 degree grid for the key light and 1 medium softbox for fill.

Run's House

2008-08-04T10:52:00.005-04:00

It's so much fun to see a project in it's finished layout. I shoot several book covers a year for Gotham Publishing and hitting the shelf this week is a book titled Take Back Your Family by Rev. Run (of Run DMC) and his wife Justine Simmons.
I am a huge Run DMC fan, so this project was especially cool! The shoot was back in February at the Simmons home in New Jersey. Yes...we went to their home, the one you see on the MTV show Run's House. I have worked with a number of celebrities, but this assignment was to photograph Rev and his whole family!!! A Celebrity Family! Yikes...!!! A hip-hop legend, teenagers, a baby and young business tycoons! Talk about pressure!
I was working on the project with Creative Director Ray Lundgren. I have worked with Ray for 3 years now and he always does an amazing job on the book cover design. Also with me were 3 trusty assistants and a digital tech. We had approximately 6 hours to get the shoot done, from set up to breakdown. Justine, Vanessa & Angela went through hair and make-up while we got the lighting in place in the living room. We re-arranged the furniture and moved a lot of furniture out to make room for the lights.
The best thing on this job was the digital set up. When we got the family in place we were able to get immediate feedback and tweak things right away. Rev was very much part of the process, he had ideas of how the set up should be... and so did I... We were able to test a couple of groupings and come up with one that we all agreed on. Once we got the grouping set, it was bombs away! Rev is an amazing personality and really kept the shoot lite and lots of fun!
I can't say enough about the family, they were wonderful, polite and very genuine!
Check out Rev's website to learn more about the book: http://revrun.uber.com/

Soccer in the City

2008-08-04T10:00:00.002-04:00

I recently had a shoot for Rise Magazine with several of the star players of the Martin Luther King High School boys soccer team. This team has won 10 New York City championships in 12 years!! A pretty amazing feat! The kicker is, the school is smack in the middle of Manhattan and has NO field! They practice and play their games at various parks around Manhattan.
My first thought was to try and do the shoot at one of the parks, but if you have any experience shooting in NYC you know it's a real hassle getting a permit to shoot in a public park, so I went to the school and scouted for any interesting locations around the school.... Well my scout took about 10 seconds. As soon as I saw the view outside of the school, I knew we had to shoot it there! The school was surrounded by skyscrapers, plus I really thought it would drive home the fact that this team had no field of their own.
Equipment: Canon Mark III, 16-35mm lens, F/16, 1/200 a sec, 3 Dynalite strobe heads, 2 with grids, 1 with a Mola 22" beauty dish.