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

later.

    “Not doing it with the flag,” she said flatly. “Roll it out.”

    “Use your power as a photographer - an image maker - to lead the subject where you want the shoot to go.”

    Hmmm. I wasn’t gonna cave, so I rolled the flag out and shot the assistant against white. Already had a shot with the flag, so I took the two very different Polaroids to the makeup room.

    I looked at her and smiled warmly. “I respect your Aboriginal sensibilities,” I explained. “And I understand your passion for your cause. But the cover of Time is a bully pulpit and if you’re serious about ramping up awareness of Indian rights in Canada, this kind of exposure can only help.”

    I showed her the Polaroid with the flag. “This gets you the cover.” I showed her the Polaroid on white. “This doesn’t.”

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    I didn’t like the way the flag looked when I lit it from the front because it just accentuated the wrinkles and started to look shiny. But when you backlight nylon, both those problems go away, and it just glows (you can see the backlighting rimming her out). I used one soft box positioned almost directly over her head providing an overall light. It’s positioned three to four feet over her forehead, at a slight angle back towards her—this helped to accentuate her cheekbones.

    Note: To get the full benefit of this type of lighting, you have to have the subject keep her head up, and into the light a bit. The foreground light was a ring light [ 1 ] (mounted around the barrel of the lens) to give her a little bit of an edge, and it exposed about ⅓ of a stop hotter than the softbox overhead (so if I was shooting at f/11, the exposure for the ring light would be 11⅓ ).

    [ 1 ] Ring Light: A circular light source that wraps around the barrel of the lens. Produces a hard, shadowless light. Very popular with fashion photogs.

     
    Listen To Your Lights
     

    The beaker is filled with a mixture of water and milk, and the student is holding a small flash about the size of a golf ball. It makes the liquid glow like a sci-fi experiment, and also lights the kid’s face.

    I’m on the rooftop of another building with a medium-format system, with multiple 2,400-watt-second strobes lighting the side of the building I’m shooting, and dragging shutter [ 1 ] for the city lights. I’ve got three assistants on radio giving the student his cues and watching the big strobes. This became the lead to a three-week effort on Stuyvesant High School, which Life put forth as perhaps the best high school in America.

    [ 1 ] Dragging Shutter: Want more detail in the background when using flash? Use a slower shutter speed (known as “dragging the shutter”). This leaves the shutter open longer and gives you more ambient light.

    The whole picture came down to a 10-cent flash powered by AAA batteries held in his hands.
     
    I always tell my assistants: watch the lights. Make sure they’re firing.

    When you have your camera to your eye, there is no way to tell if all your lights are firing in a multi-strobe setup. The last thing you want is a nasty surprise at the end of a shoot when you realize some background strobe nobody was watching was malfunctioning.
     
    So, watch the strobes! But, just as importantly, listen to them. For example, when five big packs go at once, you cannot always tell which are firing by looking at the heads, but if something is wrong, you can pick up on the lack of pop. There is a reassuring “Pop!” when big packs fire and if you are not hearing that times five, there may be a problem.

    “Watch the Strobes! But just as importantly, LISTEN to them.”

    So, look and listen on the set.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    To the right of my camera, about 30′ away are two 2,400-watt strobes lighting the side of the building. Those strobes do two things for you: they trigger the light in his hand, and they give the building detail—if the building’s black, it looks like he’s floating in space.

     

     
    Ignore Those Alligators
     

    “When you’re up to your a$$ in alligators, it’s often difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.”

    That’s a reality of location work. How do you stay focused, project confidence, and have faith in yourself and your idea when everything around you is going to hell in a handbasket?
     
    I was assigned to shoot “Sleeplessness in America,” yet another riff on the elusive idea of getting a good