How I shot my favorite photograph (so far)

Previsualizing
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had an inspired vision for a photograph at the moment I was prepared to shoot it in exactly the way I wanted to. My image “American Family” is one of the shots I made at just such a moment. It’s probably my favorite photograph I’ve taken to date, but what makes it so special to me has more to do with how we got the result than it does with what appears in the frame.

The “we” I’m referring to was my team of assistants I was working with that day—my mother-in-law, Linda, my father-in-law, Blair and my beloved wife, Julie. Since Linda had asked me to photograph the litter of five-week-old English Springer Spaniel puppies that had taken over one of her guest bedrooms, I arrived at her home with most of my lighting gear with me.

About five seconds after I walked into the room, I noticed an old baby scale sitting on a small folding table by the window, and that’s when the vision hit me: compose a group shot of all the puppies on the scale, which would indicate the combined weight of the puppies.

Sometimes when I’m fortunate enough to have a clear and sudden previsualization of a photograph, I either don’t have the time, or the light, or some piece of gear, and it might be days or months before I can situate myself and my equipment to make the image I see in my head. Other times, one of the variables will change by the time I get my act together, and I get to choose between shooting a composition that isn’t quite what I want, postponing the shoot, or in those cases where it’s unreasonable to assume that the subject and set pieces will ever assemble again for my viewing pleasure, letting it go. (Old Chinese guy pulling the steaming, flopping fish out of the East River in front of the Manhattan Bridge under in a hot-pink winter dawn sky, I’m looking at you.)

But this wasn’t one of those occasions. As soon as I saw the image, I knew I had everything I needed to shoot it—including crucial assistance from willing family members.

Setting up
The first thing I had to do was decide where I wanted to set up the table and the lights. With the whelping box, assorted puppy-nurturing equipment and various pieces of furniture consuming much of the available floor space, there wasn’t a lot of extra wiggle room for arranging a photo shoot. And since the puppies were still too small to regulate their own body temperature, we had to keep them in the climate-controlled room. The quarters were cramped, but workable.

I moved the table into the middle of the room and borrowed a white bed sheet from the linen closet to neutralize the “blah” look of the tabletop. I knew I’d want to use all three of my speedlights—a grid spot to separate the subjects from the (conveniently color-coordinated) wall, a fill light in a shoot-through umbrella to reveal the details in the scale’s face, and most important, a key light in a small softbox over the directly puppies’ heads.
Shooting
After all the gear was set up and I’d taken a few test shots with a stuffed animal to dial in exposure and power settings, it was showtime. The plan was to start by shooting individual portraits and work our way up to the group shot. The problem was, the puppies were only five weeks old; even if they had been old enough to open their eyes, they were still puppies, and puppies don’t sit still. Although they appear in the photos to be asleep, they’re actually squirming around incessantly.

The crew rose to meet the challenge. With Blair and Linda crouched on either side of the scale just out of the frame, each puppy had a spotter with two hands cupped a few inches below the edge of the scale, so when a puppy squirmed too far to one side—which would happen constantly—someone would be there to scoop the puppy up and plop him back in the middle of the scale. Julie provided a third pair of hands just below the face of the scale, close enough to me that we were jostling each other. From that position Julie also ferried puppies between the set and the whelping box. Behind Julie sat Stella, the proud mother of the five puppies.

I was shooting handheld, so I was doing my best to keep the crew out of the frame as I attempted to get the puppy’s face into the same focal plane as the face of the scale. Synchronizing communication, position, lights, camera and action was tricky, but a couple of puppies into the shoot, the four of us had fallen into a groove of sorts. It was time for the money shot.

Between the tiny puppies’ increasing squirminess and Stella’s dwindling patience with all the man-handling of her fragile offspring, we knew we wouldn’t have much time to get the shot. Julie lifted all five puppies up to the scale. With heads on swivels, Blair and Linda looked to me for cues and arranged puppies to face the camera (when possible) while watching the edges for any spaniel spillover. With so many moving parts for us to keep track of, the mood on set became tense.

“Are you ready? Are you ready?” Linda said. “Shoot!”

“Linda, I’m the photographer,” I shouted. “I tell you when I’m ready, not the other way around!”

“Instead of talking, you could be taking the picture,” said Julie.

I squeezed off about a dozen shots in less than a minute before we had to wrap. Stella was standing now, the puppies were officially unruly, and one of them had taken a crap that the rest of them had rolled around in. (Cloning out a tiny spec of poop on white fur was the one creative free pass I gave myself during processing.)

Wrapping
As much as I would like to take credit for engineering the shape of the puppy pile, the casual paw hanging off one edge, and the head of the center dog smack dab in the middle of the separation light, I can’t. That just happened to be the position the puppies had squirmed into at the instant I pressed the shutter release.

And while I may have been the one holding the camera, I don’t think of “American Family” as “my” creation. The people who turned my vision into a photograph were the puppy wranglers. They were in the right place at the right time. Without them, this image would not exist. Thanks again you guys.

Plan B: break the rules

Around the time I was getting ready to plunk down major coin on my first DSLR, my longtime friend and mentor Tom Powel gave me some sage advice about choosing gear: there are no absolute truths—what’s right for one photographer’s needs may not be right for another’s. It’s not about what other people tell you to get; it’s about what works for you.

Four years have passed since I first received this invaluable guidance. I’ve heard it repeated in one way or another by pretty much every photographer I’ve spoken to. I consider it a central tenet to the medium (and life in general, for that matter) but I’ve only recently begun to appreciate how it applies to my assumptions about technique and how I feel about my work.

With the best of intentions, I’d spent my first couple of years with my DSLR trying to use the “right” gear to shoot the “right” way. Imitating what I’d read was the correct lens choice/camera setting/subject/vantage point helped give me confidence that I could create images like those that had inspired me to pick up a camera in the first place. Sure enough, that precise cross-section of variables would have its own flickr group or dpreview challenge where I could post the image I’d made in hopes of getting validation from people I hadn’t met.

Although that was an important phase of my development as a photographer, there was something about it that didn’t feel right. I came to the realization that I’d been shooting images for other people instead of for myself. The energy I was expending trying to shoot the picture that would grant me community approval was energy I wasn’t devoting to my inner yearnings as an artist.

I’m not knocking dpreview or flickr—”some of my best friends are on flickr”—I still love them for what they are and I use them regularly. I’m just starting to see that there are limits to the usefulness of the Online Community. Just because the Community decides which pictures are Favorites or which settings are Optimal doesn’t mean I have to adopt the same opinion. When I venture beyond the techno-aesthetic consensus of correctness, I open myself up to the true wonder and mystery of photography. I feel more like an artist.

Nikon D40x / Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 G. July 4th fireworks display in Memorial Park, Maplewood, NJ. Every so often I'd press the shutter exactly when more than one shell would burst, which would throw off enough light to illuminate the surrounding trees and backlight the crowd. Any resemblance to the rule of thirds is purely accidental.

Take the image in this post, taken July 4, 2011. I had read and re-read the same “tips and settings for shooting fireworks” posts that spring up every year in the last week of June. Prepared to shoot as instructed, I had brought my gorillapod and wireless remote trigger to capture the recommended 5- to 20-second exposures without any blur from camera shake.

No sooner had I found the perfect spot for the shot I had in mind than I realized that the battery in my remote had finally crapped out. On cue, I did a textbook Jack Bauer “dammit!” Then I implemented plan B: open up my aperture and raise the ISO to get a high enough shutter speed to shoot handheld.

I knew I wasn’t going to get those gorgeous, cascading arcs of incendiary color I’ve seen in thousands of long-exposure photos of fireworks, so I focused on the backlit flag and people in the crowd, which I found to be more compelling subjects anyway.

With the recommended settings, I might have made a better image of the fireworks themselves, but the slower shutter speed would have blurred the movement of the people and the flag. Instead of making a “correct” picture, I made my own. In spite of what the fireworks photo-establishment might say, I am happy with the result.

Shoot where you are

I recently realized that much of the time I spend daydreaming about ideal shooting conditions, subjects, techniques and locations is time I can spend shooting where I am in that moment. It’s one thing for me to visualize the image I want to make weeks or even years before identifying the first chance I get to make it happen, and another to use the particulars of that vision to justify procrastination while other creative opportunities come and go. So I’ve relaxed my grip on my agenda for The Perfect Shot and begun a more freewheeling approach to photography, and you know what? I like it.

Nikon D40x / Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 G. Eighth Avenue near times square is one of many stretches of sidewalk in the city too crowded to walk on. I noticed when people walked in the bike lane near 39th st., the morning sun used the white side of a truck as a bounce card.

Example: Being a faithful devotee of the strobist’s way, I’m always looking for ways to work off camera flash (manual exposure, of course) into pretty much any subject I am shooting. When I hustle gigs, my light-footprint, mobile, wireless studio flash setup is one of the differentiating capabilities I bring to the table. And with due appreciation to Mr. Hobby and his teachings, it has helped me get several jobs.

But pursuing the professional aspect of photography is merely one of many that constitute what it means (in my mind anyway) to be a photographer. More important to me is the ongoing process of working the creative muscles, especially when no one is paying me to. As much as I love being paid to make photographs, personal work keeps me connected to everything I love about shooting, and allows me to decide how and where I want to challenge myself to get better.

These days it’s all about street photography. Truth be told, I’d never had more than a raised eyebrow’s worth of interest in that kind of shooting, and I’ve always had mixed feelings about how gratifying it is. With few exceptions, I never saw anything particularly compelling about people walking down the street, going about their lives; also, I am timid. It’s not in my nature to photograph strangers. But a few months ago, I decided it was healthier for me to get out of my comfort zone and shoot in a new way than it was for me to keep wishing I was shooting under circumstances other than those I was in at the moment. I started to make photographs from where I was standing, not where I wanted to be standing.

As an artist, it’s not my job to judge my work, so I won’t claim that the images I’m producing are “good” or “bad.” I can claim, however, that I’m shooting a lot more than I was, and I’m having a lot of fun, so at least in that respect, my experimentation with street photography is a success. I can feel the addictive tug of capturing the ever-changing confluence of people, movement and light. I keep a mental catalog of what scenes I want to shoot, what the light looks like in a certain spot at a given time of day, how it will change as the seasons progress, and the kinds of images I want to make. And the more I do it, the more I like it.

In praise of cheap primes

Last summer a friend of a friend sold me two F-mount pre-Ai Nikkor prime lenses—a 2.8cm f/3.5 and 5.5cm f/3.5 macro—for $50. Considering they date back to the early 1960s, they were in pretty good shape. I haven’t bothered subjecting them to the kinds of optical tests I see all over the Web because a) I’d rather play with my dog and b) the lens was only 25 bucks, man! Mostly I just wanted an inexpensive way to enjoy the discipline of shooting fixed focal lengths and focusing manually, all while guessing the proper exposure by chimping my LCD.

The modest investment I made in what many would have good reason to consider obsolete glass has paid huge creative dividends. I love the shots I’ve been making with both of these lenses because I’ve had to work harder to get them. The act of taking a photograph is a more athletic. I zoom with my feet and focus with my left hand. To practice filling the frame with more deliberateness, I sometimes have to crouch down a little more, lie down on my stomach, or wait for a traffic light to turn red so I can stand in the street for a few seconds. All stuff you might have to do with a zoom that can autofocus, but with added necessity.

Then there is the tactility of the old-school metal-encased lenses. They just have a character and solidity that you don’t find in the newer, plastic lenses. Their cases are constructed from thick, musty, padded leather. Flick the lens hood and it sounds like a bell. Rotate the focus ring and enjoy the slight resistance that slows down your motion. Stop down by clicking the aperture ring to the right, like they did in the old days, each f-stop a different color stamped in glossy black. Anachronistic quirks like these provide a creative counterbalance to the automated everything we now take for granted almost every camera used to day, and they do something that even the fanciest lenses can’t claim to do, much less want to: they slow you down. They give you the time to ask yourself “what am I photographing?” which is not always a comfortable question to answer.

Nikon’s F-mount is now in its seventh decade of production. For as disengaged and uninterested as Nikon seems to be about everything from customer interaction to product releases, they want most of their newest cameras to work with many of their oldest lenses. They want us to be able to put a $25 lens on a $7500 camera body, should the mood strike us, just because we can. You got to give them credit for that.

Never leave home without at least one strobe

From the first day I started messing around with off camera flash (OCF), I’ve been loving the results I’ve been getting from shooting people in formal and informal settings. But the real benefit I’ve enjoyed is the extra preparation I have for lighting the unexpected.

Example: Our last night in Grenada this past August. After I’d taken a few (ok, dozens of) shots of my brother-in-law and his girlfriend sitting on a beach in front of an appropriately stunning sunset, I’d put my flash away and committed to acting like a normal human being who is capable of enjoying a meal without looking around for stuff to point his camera at.

But before I even had a chance to get into my new role, everyone noticed that the table where we’d just sat down to eat already had someone sitting at it—a lizard about the size of a pen cap. The tiny creature did not sprint away in fright, but rather seemed interested in hanging out and seeing what we would do next. The handing out of menus, unfolding of napkins and filling of water glasses seemed not to phase him at all. It soon became evident to me and my superhumanly patient wife, who telegraphed her consent to me with a look of affectionate pity, that the lizard was waiting to have his picture taken.

I laid my flash on the edge of the table at an angle that would accentuate his face. And while this provided a dramatic, almost comical mood for such a small animal, what I like most about the image is how delicate his translucent skin appears amid his dark surroundings.

It certainly isn’t the best picture I’ve ever taken, but I know I like it more than I would if I’d shot it the only other way I used to know, with the flash on the same axis as the sensor. There would have been no sculpting of the light or the subject; the TTL metering would have washed out the subtlety of his features against the darkness, and, in my view, the sweetness and curiosity of the moment—one of the many for which I am glad I had both my camera and off-camera strobe.

Being That Guy

I have no idea what photography is about, much less what it is about for me. All I know is I like to take pictures, an activity I undertake in spite of a friend’s guidance to not “take pictures” but instead “make photographs.” Even though I lack a formal education in photography, I think I get what she means, and whenever I can muster the concentration I get into the mindset of making, not taking. But more often than not I pretty much take pictures when I am doing something else, because for me that’s preferable to doing it without being able to take pictures, or the option to upgrade to making photographs.

On vacation I’m a total loss. I am That Guy scrunching his face into the viewfinder, lugging around way too much gear, and always looking over my wife’s shoulder for better framing, lighting or subject matter than I’m seeing wherever I’m standing, and then walking toward it. Convenient as it may be to blame the preoccupation with taking/making on the occupational hazard that is gear fetishization, I was in truth doing the same thing with the disposable cameras I used for the years when I lived in denial of my yearning to be a photographer. I carried and thought and worried less than I do now, but I still interrupted the flow of the journey for the sake of having a picture, if only to prove I was there.

Fast forward to 2009. Not on vacation. Meeting friends for a night of bowling. I went through the cycle of doubt and reluctance: no camera tonight; just enjoy the company. Okay, camera with a fast lens, that’s it. I’ll just sneak a few shots; no one will even know. Would I like to bring a flash? Of course. Do I really want to be That Guy? No way. But the wife–who’s heard me bemoan my decisions on many occasions to not take something I wish I had–insisted. With all the justification I needed, I showed up with one more camera and flash than I thought was gentlemanly.

As soon as I started shooting, I became willing to admit to myself that a big reason I decided to show up was to take pictures of my friends. Most of the time I shot wide open with no flash. The ambient light was a constantly changing rainbow LED job and it made for some fun shooting. Eventually I decided to play around with some off camera flash.

I knew that given the relative darkness of the space, even a powered-down flash would get annoying fast, so I picked my spot and angle before I started setting off the strobe, which I rested on a table overlooking our lane. After finding a spot that gave me some interesting background blur/coloration, I basically hung out and waited for people to approach the table, to get food or refill a drink.

The expression I captured in this image pretty much sums up my friend, at least in my mind. I took it a second after he asked me and the two other people there with cameras if we could “cool it with the picture taking.” The woman he was talking to immediately agreed with the sentiment and my friend broke into a spontaneous, genuine, and let’s face it, kind of angry grin., made all the more freakish by the stark sidelighting. Nothing at all like the others I got of him (or anyone else) that night.

Right after I got that shot, I knew I had a good one, and I showed him the image on the screen, and he belly laughed. Then I put my flash and camera away.

Yes, I was That Guy at the bowling alley taking pictures while everyone else was bowling. But I got a shot I really liked of a friend who liked the shot too. Just as I was getting okay with the idea of taking pictures, I wound up making a photograph.