Recent Shoots
How Do You Know If You Don’t Try?
Fear is a funny thing. It has the power to hold us back, keeping us in a place that is safe, comfortable and free from risk. It holds us captive like a ball and chain, tied to routine and old, stagnant ways.
Two years ago I would have never considered shooting mid-day under harsh light during the peak of summer. It just wouldn’t have happened. As someone who built a career on shooting naturally lit adventure sports, I was comfortable and accustomed to shooting golden light during the sweetest times of day – sunrise and sunset. Mid-day sun was like the plague, and I avoided it at all costs.
I guess this is exactly why I decided to get out of my comfort zone and schedule a mountain biking shoot in the middle of the afternoon in mid-July. I wanted to face my fears and expand my horizons. After all, how could I ever know what was possible without even trying? As it turns out, with enough wattage and the right light modifiers mid-day sun can be quite cool.
Photography, life or otherwise–you don’t know unless you try. Break the chains and try new things. You might just surprise yourself. You’ve got little to lose but a tremendous amount to gain.
The Anatomy of a Road Biking Shoot
It’s no secret. I am huge fan of personal work and portfolio development (examples here, here and here. This week I carved out some additional time to work on another idea I have had floating around in my pea-sized brain and wanted to dig a little deeper than I have in the past into how I work. *DISCLAIMER* I am not at all trying to take credit for the ideas or techniques described in this post. Rather I wanted to share my own discoveries and methods of working.
The images I envisioned demanded that I shoot the action as it was happening. Somehow having my assistant push me in a wheelchair while I shot with a strobe strapped to the IV hook just didn’t seem to fit. I needed to figure out a way to keep myself and my lighting gear with the action. Enter my Subaru Outback wagon. I could have used a pickup–yes, I know–but I don’t own one, so I did what Mike does best: improvised.
By mounting an Elinchrome head with a beauty dish on a Bogen Superclamp I was able to attach the strobe to the strut on the rear hatch. Voila . . . A light stand and shooting platform that could keep up with the action. And with the Ranger power pack sitting next to me I could easily make adjustments on the fly. Now that I have tested this set-up I could see lots of potential uses on future shoots.
To really put the finishing touches on the photo at the top of the post I did a fair bit of post processing using Adobe Lightroom. I first used the Adjustments Brush to make localized adjustments to exposure, brightness, contrast and clarity. Then to give the image a grungy, desaturated look I simply reduced the overall saturation, warmed up the white balance and really cranked up the overall clarity. It’s a great technique for in-your-face type action.
Below is an additional image from the shoot.
Equipment Used: Nikon D300, 12-24mm Lens, Elinchrome Ranger RX Speed AS Battery Pack, Speed “A” Head with Beauty Dish, Pocket Wizards and Bogen Superclamp.
Tornado Chasing Success!
Friday, June 5–what an outstanding day. It will likely go down as one of the greatest days in tornado science history. The Vortex2 research team finally intercepted their first tornado of the season in Goshen County, Wyoming after nearly four weeks of chasing, and it was perfect. Never before has so much scientific data been collected in one intercept.
My time with the Vortex2 project started 10 days before the intercept in Topeka, Kansas. Immediately upon joining them we hit the road driving nearly 2500 miles across 5 states (Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado and Wyoming). Though we chased many severe storms, conditions were never favorable for tornadic activity.
Caption: Josh Wurman, president of the Center for Sever Weather Research, inside of DOW 7 (Doppler on Wheels).
The intercept itself was amazing but what makes the day so historic is the sheer amount of scientific data gathered on the storm. Intercepting this tornadic supercell for nearly an hour, the team deployed a diverse army of scientific instruments. Tools like mobile radars, sticknets, disdrometers, mobile mesonets, photogrammetry teams, and in situ tornado pods collected data from about 20 minutes before the tornado formed until it vanished into the sky. This enabled the team to collect historic amounts of data.
On the day of the storm I was lucky enough to be riding in one of the probe vehicles responsible for dropping pods in the path of the tornado. Each pods weighs 120 pounds and has numerous instruments mounted to it which gather data about conditions surrounding the tornado. The ultimate goal is to get them in the path of the tornado for direct impact, so five teams dropped 14 pods, each 150 meters apart within a mile of the tornado. Pod dropping is risky business. The vehicle I was riding in had roughly five minutes to deploy our 3 pods before fleeing for safety. Scientists monitoring radar data in the back of the Doppler on Wheels (DOW) direct the probe teams from several miles away. If anything would have gone wrong or the storm suddenly shifted direction it could have been disastrous. Needless to say the adrenaline was pumping. It was intense!
Caption: Tim Marshall and Lindsay Bennett deploying a pod in the path of the tornado. This shot was taken with a super wide angle lens so the tornado is much closer than it appears.
Witnessing something so beautiful and destructive in such close proximity was an amazing experience that I will never forget. The Weather Channel has some amazing footage on their website of this storm since they have been covering the Vortex2 project. You can view some of the videos here. In the near future I’ll be posting a special gallery on my website from my time with the Vortex2 project.
Portfolio Development – Indoor Gym Climbing
A couple of weeks ago I took the opportunity to work on another group of images I have had in my head for some time–artificially lit indoor gym climbing. Thanks to the help of a couple of strong athletes, my assistant, Tony, and Jeff, one of the owners of Momentum Climbing Gym, I was able to create some images that were a bit outside the realm of what I normally shoot.
Like the swim shoot described in a post back in early April, I wanted to use small Nikon SB-800 off camera flashes to light the climbers. For this shoot they were more than powerful enough to over power the ambient light which allowed me to create the drama I was after.
For both of the action shots in this post post I used 3 SB-800s. One flash was held on a boom pole to act as the primary light on the subject while the other two speed lights were used to illuminate parts of the bouldering cave or wall. In the image at the top of the post I kept all three speedlights as close to the wall as possible to help define the muscles and strength of the climber.
If you are a climber in the Salt Lake Valley and are looking for a place to train consider checking out Momentum. Their facilities are top notch.
Portfolio Development – Stylized Swim Shoot
In the past few months I have been carving out more and more time for shoots relating to portfolio development and personal projects. I am a huge proponent of photographers taking the time out of their schedules to shoot the things that interest them without worrying about a client’s needs or an art director’s perspective. For me a tremendous amount of growth occurs when there is freedom to play, to experiment and to push oneself to the point of failure. It’s these moments when I learn most.
Recently I got an opportunity to shoot one such vision: very stylized indoor swimming. Since I typically shoot outdoors using primarily natural light, this was departure from my normal day to day routine. In fact, this was the first time I have ever done an entire shoot primarily using only small, off-camera flashes to illuminate my subjects. What a blast! In the end it was all I had hoped it would be–challenging, fun and a great opportunity to create something out of the ordinary. I learned a ton, and walked away with shots that captured my vision not just for the shoot, but for the direction I want to take my portfolio in as well.
To all of you photo buffs, these images were created using 2-3 Nikon SB-800s fired by Pocket Wizards. I used a variety of homemade light modifiers as well as a Westcott shoot-thru-umbrella or the Lastolite 24” EzyBox which were attached to a voice activated light stand (my assistant, Tony).
Mike Tittel Photography
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