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

body builders and told them to go light themselves. Trust Me, they were into it.”

    Sometimes, especially when I am just plumb out of ideas (a not infrequent condition), I ask my subjects for help. I’ll pose them a question: “Is there any way you would like to be photographed that you have never been?”

    Sometimes you get no answer. Other times, believe me, you get suggestions that would be unwise to follow up on. And, occasionally, you get a notion, a snippet of an insight that unlocks the door to a successful photo.

    That’s one way of getting your subjects involved. Another is to make them actors on your stage and have them collaborate, physically, in the success of the picture. Body builders are like statues, monuments to physical perfection. They are like pieces of sculpture that, just like in a museum, need drama and highlights.
     
    So I gave these body builders a mission. Light themselves. It involved them, and intrigued them, and in a way, made them the art directors of the photo. They would strike a pose and then light that pose. It was cool and it gave them something to concentrate on other than the cold ocean water I was asking them to stand in.

    These little flashes are great. You can zoom them and control their spread and intensity. The generation of flashes we have now can be controlled wirelessly from the camera. You can push the output up or down, and never leave the tripod. That’s a significant advantage when the sun is sinking, the waves are sloshing, and your subjects are freezing.
    You Gotta Turn on a Dime
     

    You have to be able to turn on a dime.

    I suggested a story to Life on strong women and singer-songwriter Fiona Apple fit the bill. Perfect, since she was riding her Tidal wave of success.

    Fiona had always been shot as a waif—tendrils of hair blowing (dressed in lingerie), out in some sort of lily field. She told me she wanted to chuck that scene and be a warrior woman in a suit of armor. I was like, “Cool, babe, works for me!”

    We did the whole Camelot thing in a daylight studio. A big deal with hair, makeup, styling, painted backdrop, falling rose petals, fake blood on the sword, catering, crew, managers, hangers-on. Everything. All the while, her manager is heating up about how late it’s getting. I was like, “You brought her late, okay?”

    Finally, he explodes and says, “Gotta go now and the subway is the only way.” (It was rush hour in New York and she had a gig in Jersey.) I looked at Fiona over the camera, “Get on the subway in the armor?”

    “We bolt and slip her through the turnstiles - sword and all - unnoticed. Subway came right away and I started ripping film like crazy for five stops. On the train, New Yorkers, true to form, avoided eye contact.”

    I shout for a camera, wide lens, hot shoe flash, green and magenta gels, and a bunch of 100-speed 35 chrome. We bolt and slip her through the turnstiles—sword and all—unnoticed. Subway came right away and I started ripping film [ 1 ] like crazy for five stops. On the train, New Yorkers, true to form, avoided eye contact.

    [ 1 ] Ripping Film: Shooting bursts of photos—you just keeping shooting without ever lifting your finger off the shutter.

    The studio shot went away and the subway shot (flash-on-camera,of a second at f/4, a hand-held mess of a photograph) ran as the lead.
     
    You never know.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    On the subway, to match the fluorescent lights, I put a green gel on the strobe, and a 30 magenta filter on the lens to clean up the fluorescence and give me good skin tones. The key to the picture was making this hot shoe flash look like good light. I did that by using a Lumiquest 80/20, which lets 80% of the light go to the ceiling and 20% go towards your subject’s eyes. Shot with a 20–35mm zoom lens.

     

    Fiona Apple
    Shoot What You Love
     

    No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

    This kid is 15 years old, and I literally thought an angel had walked into the room. She shook my hand, she was completely comfortable, and from the