The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One of the World's Top Shooters

a puppet.

    When Kermit shows up, though, he’s got an entourage that would put JLo to shame. He’s got handlers, groomers, animators, and art directors. Also, because it was a cover, Life showed up with a bunch of opinionated folks.
     
    So it wasn’t just me and the frog having a little chat. There were lots of folks on the set, almost all of them over the top emotionally because of Jim’s death. I had to light the job, shoot the job, but very importantly, I needed to manage the job.

    Ya gotta keep your head on straight and remain confident behind the lens in a deal like this when everybody thinks you should shoot it their way.
     
    Jim’s director’s chair was a given. Kermit perched on it with a soulful, sad expression. Huh? I swear, before this job I would’ve just thought a puppet is a puppet is a puppet. They’re not alive, so their expression doesn’t change. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    The muppeteers kept hovering, tweaking a finger, turning the head, bending a knee. I kept hearing, “Focus the eyes, focus the eyes.” They would respond to that by grabbing Kermit’s head and shaking it slightly, refreshing the position, and then walking away and looking back at him.
     
    Dang! They would do this and I swear the little green guy would look better, more attentive, more emotional. It was amazing.

    So, deep and dark and moody might be the way to go for a “sad” cover. But darkness can run counter to the purpose of the cover, which is selling the magazine. Magazines sit on the newsstands with hundreds of their competitors, every single one of them screaming for attention. You’ve often got to light one of these puppies not in the way you might like, but in a way that is going to pop and grab the attention of the harried commuter as he or she rushes past, giving each cover, oh, about a nanosecond’s worth of their attention.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    I got a little cover pop with a hair light. I used a spot grid on a strobe boomed above and behind Kermit. It rims him out, and gives him some snap. Another one creates the background highlight. Kermit himself is lit with one, mid-sized overhead softbox, lighting him but having enough sharpness and punch not to flood my little amphibious buddy with light, instead creating a highlight/shadow ratio that is very clear and defined.

    Throw a very tight, gridded light source on Henson’s name, highlighting it just a little, focus the eyes, and you have a melancholy Kermit that will hold its own on the newsstand.

    “Ya gotta keep your head on straight and remain confident behind the lens in a deal like this when everybody thinks you should shoot it their way.”

     
    Keep Asking Questions
     

    “Keep pushing. ‘No,’ is ALWAYS the easiest answer.”

    You have to keep asking questions on location. How does that work? When do you do that? Anything at all relative to this story that could possibly be pictorial in nature? Scientists are the worst. Their first response is generally, “Well, you can photograph me at my computer. How about that?” Then, during the day, if you keep pressing, they’ll say, “Oh, by the way, we’re going to blow up a tank with the world’s most powerful laser in a test chamber down the hall in a couple of hours. Would that interest you?”

    Nahhhh! Let’s stay here at the word processor!

    Keep pushing. “No,” is always the easiest answer. This picture is the inside of the test chamber at the National Ignition Facility in California, destined to be the world’s most powerful laser. It was sealed up and they didn’t want to take off the covers. Understandable, as they each weighed several tons and you needed a crane to remove them. They said, “You can photograph our computers!”

    I said, “Take the covers off and let me inside, or I’m not coming.” They took two covers off. I dropped a light through one. One strobe pop filled the whole blessedly reflective chamber. Dropped myself through the other. Shot it wide. The picture ran double truck [ 1 ] in National Geographic .

    [ 1 ] Double Truck: A double truck is a two-page spread.

     
    Take the Next Step
     

    “Shooting an Olympic athlete, on skis, on the edge of one of the most famous buildings in the world should be enough, but it isn’t. You still have to take the next step.

    I had a magazine assignment to do a tongue-in-cheek look at the U.S. Winter Olympic Team, so I tried to find humorous or unusual situations in which to place