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

third of the umbrella or softbox, knocking the stuffing out of the f-stop in the lower part of your frame.

    That way, the light falls naturally down the subject’s body and you don’t light the ground. Light falls. Just make sure it falls in your favor.
     
    Besides, do you really want to light her toes?
    Don’t Pack Up Till You Leave
     

    Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.

    I spent three days photographing Linus Pauling at his house in Big Sur and came up with some reasonable—but hardly exciting—pictures. Came time to leave and I had a Nikon FM2 still out, Kodachrome loaded, and a 20mm lens sitting on the front seat of the car.
     
    Linus went to open the gate, and one of his frisky kittens scampered up the fencepost and onto his shoulder. I nearly broke my leg charging the scene. I got three frames before the cat got bored (or freaked out by my lunatic charge). I had the lead to the story just seconds before I was about to leave.

    The fog turns the light into a softbox, so I shot it with just straight natural light.

    “Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.”

     

    Linus Pauling
    Shoot It Now
     

    “Shoot it now. Don’t ever assume you can do a picture ‘Later.’”

    Don’t think you can come back tomorrow and get it. Won’t happen. Light won’t be there, subjects will have second thoughts, and there’ll be a parade right where you want to shoot. Don’t ever assume you can do a picture “later.”

    I was doing a mood piece on the nutty disparity between the pomp, wealth, and circumstance of the Masters golf tournament and the hardscrabble town it calls home—Augusta, Georgia. Face it, the place doesn’t get its nickname, “Ugh-usta,” for nothin’.

    One of the dismaying things that happened in the history of the Masters was when the PGA ruled that the golf biggies could bring in their own caddies and not use the local, mostly African-American, course caddies. The locals lost their biggest payday.
     
    The old caddies tend to gather around a hole-in-the-wall place called the Sand Hill Grill, which has a painting of an Augusta National caddie on the side of the building. I was with Hop and Mark, two old Masters caddies. They had been tough to run down on the phone, and even tougher to find in person. I needed this picture. It was getting dark out.

    I asked if we could meet the next day at sunset. “Sure, yeah, okay….” Both were nodding and looking off.
     
    No way that was gonna happen. I dragged my lights out, and shot it right then and there.

    Did I want to shoot at night on a dark street corner? No. But I needed this picture. I got lucky. The grill door opened and there was a guy at the bar.
     
    Shoot it now.

    How to Get This Type of Shot

    I shot this with one light source (an Elinchrom Octabank [ 1 ] with a Ranger unit [ 2 ] ) to the camera’s left, out in the street, about 20 feet from the subjects. I needed a big blow of light to cover the area. There’s no artistry to this light—it just covers the street corner. The only camera trick I pulled here was to drag the shutter to get detail inside the grill, using a slow shutter speed like ⅛-second. If you don’t drag the shutter, the all-important interior of the bar goes away—and so does the picture. I have frames with the door closed and frankly—they suck.

    [ 1 ] Elinchrom Octabank: A large softbox, slightly over 6′ wide. A source of very soft, reflected light. An industry standard for both studio and location portraiture.

    [ 2 ] Ranger Unit: An 1,100-watt-second, battery-operated flash unit. Great, dependable location strobe system.

     
    Keep Your Head on Straight
     

    My first Life cover resulted from the tragic death of America’s muppeteer, Jim Henson. He died needlessly, of pneumonia of all things. It was a sad story.

    The one bright moment was my daughter Caitlin, six at the time, started to realize that her photog dad actually did this sort of cool thing. While other dads were driving buses, or selling stocks and bonds, or listening to suits drone on at board meetings, her dad spent the day with a talking frog.

    She brought the magazine into school for show and tell and told everyone, “My daddy took this picture. My daddy knows Kermit.”

    So, if my editor hated the shot, at least I knew a bunch of six-year-olds loved it.
     
    Which was good, ‘cause I was very nervous about this job. Sounds crazy, right? Why be nervous? I mean, Kermit’s