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

shutter speeds liketoof a second. This was taken with a 17–55mm Nikon lens, atof a second, at f/2.8.

    “No matter how many megapixels you’ve got inside that fancy machine you hold in your hands, they aren’t worth beans if you don’t hold your camera steady.”
    Get a Permit
     

    “This is business as usual on the Lower East Side of New York.”

    Poppo and the GoGo Boys were a big deal in the performance art scene down in the alphabet streets of Manhattan. He had amazing control, turning his Day-Glo body into all sorts of twisted sculpture.
     
    Problem was, a neighbor called it into the local precinct as a jumper in progress, and two very adrenalized NYC cops burst onto the roof. They were wired and they were pissed, having just sprinted up a six-story walkup.

    They ordered me off my ladder and started barking questions. How do you explain this away and not sound like you need a shrink or some jail time? I’m trying to calm the situation down, all the while eyeballing the rising sun and watching my picture disappear.
     
    They were having none of it until I produced my permit. Like most cities, there’s a permit office in NYC for TV and still shoots. I was covered. So, though I was still nuts as far as they were concerned, I was legally nuts. They left, and I got my shot.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    Shot with one strobe. (If I hadn’t used a strobe and had tried to use just the available light at sunrise, I’d have had to expose for the subject, so the background would have been totally washed out.) The key to doing this is to match the color of the light and the angle of the strobe to the rising sun (I added a gel to the strobe—a half-cut of CTO [ 1 ] ). Basically, you take the light stand and put it up high, right in the path of the rising sun, so the strobe hits the subject at the same angle the sun would hit the subject. That way, you can mimic the feel of sunlight but it gives you control over the exposure of the scene. There’s no umbrella, no softbox—just the raw light, just the way the sun would be.

    [ 1 ] CTO: Color Temperature Orange. It’s an amber gel, available in various intensities, that pushes daylight towards the warm (tungsten) end of the color scale. A half-cut means you get half the warmth of the full gel.

     
    Glamour Light
     

    The Over-Under. No, this is not something you transact with your bookie. This is a lighting combo that gives you the classic “glamour look.”

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    Use two softboxes. Position them high and low. Think of an open clamshell with your subject’s face at the open edge, and your camera peering at him or her from the other side. The upper source is middling size…say 3×4′. The lower light is smaller, maybe 1×2′. The higher source is dominant in terms of size and exposure. It runs maybe a stop to a stop-and-a-half over the output of the lower box, or fill.

    Move your subject into the wide end of the clamshell, as tight as they can get. Fill the frame. Photographer adds a dash of appropriately encouraging/suave/smarmy/inane patter from camera, and voilà ! Dat’s one fine lookin’ photo subject you got there!
     
    Generally, this is a light grid for the ladies, who, if you do this right, will love you forever.

    “This is a lighting combo that gives you the classic ‘glamour look.’”

     
    Taste the Light
     

    You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.

    The Vikes have this amazing window at one end of their practice facility that turns the whole place into a north-light studio. [ 1 ] I saw this and was foaming at the mouth. I was afraid the light would go away and I’d lose it.

    [ 1 ] North-Light Studio: A studio with rich, sumptuous, soft natural light that generally comes from a north-facing window. You want good portrait light? Head north.

    “Like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says, you’ve gotta taste the light.”

    I told Culpepper to “go out there with a football and stare at the goalposts like a little kid. Like ya never scored a touchdown before in your life.” I think he did it ‘cause he was scared. I was so crazed about the light that maybe he thought I’d hurt him before the season started if he didn’t cooperate.

    He was already leery of me. When I walked in to meet him, he looked at me and said, “Whoa, you’re that guy from Fargo