I’ve been part of many creative sports portrait shoots. My football portraiture pushed boundaries and set new standards and expectations for my paper. Shortly after moving to Florida and starting my career with The Villages Daily Sun, I was asked to do an over-the-top portrait shoot for our local high school basketball teams. The photo team worked with the sports department and our executive editor to brainstorm the theme. It didn’t take long for us to land on the theme: The […]
High school football season is upon us once again. While that means we get busier on Friday nights, it also means that another Rockford Register Star Gridiron season preview section is in the books. Last year, we played with fire and light. This year, we took things to new depths (pardon the pun). Since the beginning of 2014, the photo staff and sports staff has been collaborating on what to do for this year’s Gridiron section. We had an excellent idea. […]
My paper has started a project called 20 under 40. Citizens under 40 years old were nominated for profile pieces that would appear in our paper. Each one needs a storytelling portrait. It has presented a unique opportunity to really think on my feet for a good environmental portrait for so many different professions. We are only half way through the project and I haven’t shot every single one that has been published. Here are a few of my favorites […]
If there was one valuable thing about photography that I learned in college, it was the science behind lighting. Understanding the inverse square law and how multiple lights can affect an image proved to be invaluable to me. While I was at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I had an editor give me the idea of shooting a food set with multi-point lighting. The basic multi-point setup includes three lights. One each to the left and right and one from behind. […]
I’ve always been a supporter of the idea that it is the photographer that makes the image and not the camera that he/she uses. While my close friends constantly hear me praise Canon and bash Nikon (jokingly, of course), a good photographer can make a dynamite image with a disposable film camera. That being said, I had an opportunity to shoot with a fantastic camera – the Pentax K-7. This is Pentax’s ultra-rugged flagship camera. Considering that I learned photography […]