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

the background softens and loses detail, which is exactly what you want.

     
    Play Catch
     

    “If you catch the light just right, you can throw it a long way.”

    Think of it as volley and serve with the sun. Find the right angle and you can just smoke a return back the other way.
     
    You don’t need much to do this. There’s all sorts of springy, twisty, bendy, collapsible-type fill surfaces out there that compact real well and stuff in your bag. Lastolite makes a thing called a TriGrip reflector that gives you a handle to hold it with one hand while you shoot with the other.

    But a piece of white cardboard will do. So will a bed sheet. Or a table cloth. Or a bunch of pieces of Xerox paper Scotch-taped together.
     
    Just make the catch.

    It’s also advisable not to have your own gear in the picture. Some editors will get upset about that. In this instance, you can tell I’m using a fill card, ‘cause it’s poking into the left side of the frame. Oops.

     

    Milos Forman
    Stick with Your Subjects
     

    Tracy McGrady

    “Stick with your subjects. Especially Athletes.”

    I was assigned to shoot Tracy McGrady, with the Orlando Magic, for a cover of a kids’ sports magazine. We had it all set up for a simulated action shot on a seamless. I was working for a very enthusiastic, very young picture editor. I loaded a back and turned around. Tracy was gone.
     
    “What’s up?” I asked the picture editor.

    “Oh, he’s just going into the locker room. He said he’d come right back and then we could go to his house!” he said excitedly.

    I looked at the ground, shaking my head. “He ain’t comin’ back.”

    “No, really, he said we could come to his house, he’ll be back….”

    Both of us stared in the direction of the locker room where our star disappeared. I only had a few frames and I knew Tracy was already halfway to his house in a gated community outside Orlando. Gone. Shoot was over. Cover never ran.

    Young athletes. Stick with ‘em. Always remember they’d rather be playing Halo .

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    This was shot in the arena and I positioned a blue paper seamless background behind the basket. The key to this picture was lowering the basket down to where it was just six feet high, so he could just stand there and make like he was dunking. It’s a very basic setup: one strobe on him positioned to the left of the camera and up high and a second strobe behind him aiming directly at him to give him a tiny bit of backlight.
    Always Something to Bounce Light Off Of
     

    I was in this glitzy hall of mirrors that was the main office of cosmetics maven Georgette Klinger, shooting a business feature for
Forbes
magazine, and there was a spiral staircase where we couldn’t use a softbox or an umbrella because the mirrors would have picked it up. Luckily, I had a bounce card (a 3×4′ piece of white cardboard) with me and I had my assistant stand just out of the reflection in the mirrors, where he held a small flash and bounced it off the card, which filled her just enough. It ain’t great light, but sometimes “just enough” is plenty.

    In tough situations like this, I take inspiration from one of my photo heroes, Jim Stanfield, who tells a story about being on assignment for National Geographic , shooting an ornately dressed bride in a cavern of a church, with only one flash in his bag. He really had nothing to bounce off of (Jim being Jim, he knew that straight-on flash equals no picture). His solution: he called the groom over and had him open his suit jacket, so he could bounce his flash off the groom’s white shirt. He got a terrific frame.
     
    This ain’t rocket science.

    Jim, by the way, could outshoot most of us with one eye shut and a bug in the other. If you want to know how to be an all-purpose, can-do-anything assignment photographer, study his work.

    “Jim being Jim, he knew straight-on flash equals no picture. He called the groom over and had him open his suit jacket.”

     

    Georgette Klinger
    Soft Window Light Equals Studio
     

    “There was a big window and a little window. In my photographer’s brain, that translated into Main light, Fill light.”

    There is nothing like the light in an Irish bar.
     
    On the east coast of Ireland, the soft window light makes everyplace you go a studio. Legendary Irish writer Frank McCourt was sitting there and I noticed there was a big window and a little window. In my photographer’s brain, that translated