If you haven’t seen this already - you have to check out the following slide show from the two conventions from The New York Times. It’s a 3 part slide show - and while the first section is a bit more straightforward - wait until you get to the second (Protests) and especially the third section (Vision.)
I’ve featured Damon Winter’s work once already on this blog, and once again he and Todd Heisler - along with Ozier Muhammad and Stephen Crowley - produce some absolutely fantastic work from the conventions.
Thursday September 04th 2008, 12:39 am
Filed under: Olympics
Here’s a quick video of the still camera remotes at the Beijing Olympics. I didn’t have time to shoot, blog AND edit video during the games - so I didn’t get a chance to look through and cut this video until now. It shows close to 100 remote cameras - ALL - focused on the finish line of the men’s 100M Final - THE - marquee event of any summer Olympic games (with the exception of Phelps this time around of course.)
(Click on the image above to start the video.)
Photographers showed up as early as 5:30 a.m. - for a 10:30 p.m. race that lasted less than 10 seconds… and as I wrote in a previous blog post - it was a hilarious scene to witness at times… maddening to some who had other photographers “bump” their cameras off target at the last minute… and these were often photographers showing up “late” (late being 4-5 hours prior to the race) bumping the photographers’ cameras that had been set up 17 hours prior to the race…. Bill Frakes of Sports Illustrated had 17 of his remote cameras set up for the race alone… and he shot #18 handheld of course. Nuts!
This is quite a site - even for professional photographers (you’ll see a quick shot of photographers taking photographs OF the cameras midway through the video…) I love the little Canon G9 used to shoot this - perfect little camera to have on you at all times.
When you think of it, you’re looking at close to $1 million worth of camera gear used for remotes alone when you add the lenses, Pocket Wizards, cords and mounts in this video… All to get that “one” great shot… enjoy!
N.B.: You will need to have Apple’s free Quicktime plugin installed on your browser to see this video on either a Mac or PC. If you’re still having trouble - you can also see a lower quality version of this video on YouTube at the link here.
I just wanted to share with you the future site of the first “Cloud is Falling” workshop that will take place in early 2009. We’re still working on the final signage and as always, I’m open to suggestions… I thought it would be a good idea to secure a large location early on in the process. Andrew Hetherington, who is well traveled throughout Asia, helped me secure a local designer - you can see some of what we’ve been working on, in terms of signage, in the image above… if you look carefully, you can see the spot where Chase Jarvis’ banner will be to the right of my name, along with Jacko’s to the left - although Chase’s staff hasn’t gotten back to me on his choice of color for his banner just yet, and Andrew hasn’t decided yet on whether or not to include his famous Moo Cow picture in his… (more…)
One of the first big decisions I had to make upon returning home from 18 days in Beijing - was wether or not to pack right back up and go cover Hurricane Gustav. A major news magazine was asking me to go - and they gave me overnight to make a decision. While the newsman in me definitely wanted to go, I knew that A. I just didn’t have the mental energy to live through another Katrina after an Olympics and B. it just wouldn’t be fair to my wife who had just spent 18 days alone taking care of our son.
So I passed on the assignment - which is never an easy thing to do for any photographer - but I’m now confident that it was the right move (I’ve been catching up on a LOT of sleep these past few days - your body and mind know when to decompress and let go…) (more…)
I finally got one of the issues of Sports Illustrated today from the Olympics (a good friend of mine had mailed it to me because I was “lucky” enough to make it into the Leading Off section - no - not a photo that I made, but a photo of me - in the scrum of photographers covering Phelps getting a hug from his mother after the race…) and I saw something extremely refreshing: the credit read: Photo by Heinz Kluetmeier and Jeff Kavanaugh.(more…)
Off to a crack-o-dawn shoot this morning…. so here’s an early post: If you haven’t done so already - check out Damon Winter’s Neighbors Lens series - something that I think truly separates Damon from most newspaper photographers out there. It’s absolutely inspirational - not only is it old school - but man does the guy have … well … you know… cojones. Double exposure on 8 X 10 sheets of film - two exposures on one single sheet of film over a 4-8 hour period - an entire day’s work… wow. (more…)
One of the most common questions that have been posed by people on this blog is: Do you delete your images in camera and do you delete images on your server or in your Aperture Library?
I think it’s a very important question, and my answer for the most part is: No - I don’t.
Why? Well here it is: I’ll point to the following events in specific: My coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and my coverage of (actually pretty much any) Olympics. In all of these events - I was often rushing to make a deadline and under severe pressure. I had a clear idea of what the “news of the day” was and what images I needed to get out first, and I was all too often sleep deprived - in that state, I become pretty close to being my own worst editor.
And here’s a big lesson: once you make that initial edit - you almost NEVER MAKE a second edit of that work - EVER. All too often you move on to the next event or day - and never get the luxury of looking back.
Wednesday August 27th 2008, 11:53 pm
Filed under: Tech Tips
Tech Tips are back - now that I’m back out of the Olympic Bubble…
Here’s a simple one that most of you likely know - but for those who don’t - it’s so essential that I have to go over it.
When you get back from an assignment and want to copy files from your laptop over to your desktop machine or server - simply restart your laptop and hold down the “T” key on your keyboard. (more…)
Wednesday August 27th 2008, 6:29 am
Filed under: New Technology
Nikon D90
So - IT happened - Digital SLRs can now shoot HD Quality video - and the repercussions this will have on our industry are going to be pretty fascinating to watch in the upcoming years. While most newspaper photogaphers will be thrilled not to have to carry both SLR and video camera systems to perform their new duties, sports photographers may find that these cameras create serious headaches for them going into venues with broadcasters who own exclusive rights to the video content being broadcast from that very venue. These will be very interesting times that will lead to some very precedent setting debate.
I had a very strong feeling that this was coming down the pipeline and mentioned it in several previous articles over the past few years, including the “Cloud is Falling” article that I wrote a few months ago. I should mention that never had I heard anything coming out of either a Canon or Nikon rep about video - it was kept TIGHTLY under wraps - until Nikon revealed the Nikon D90 yesterday. The buzz about this upcoming announcement was circulating amongst a few people “in the know” at the Olympics - I hadn’t heard any solid information on the details of this camera but did know something was coming out - and I was expecting it to be announced at Photokina in about a month from now. The rumour going around was that one or more manufacturers might be releasing a camera that could shoot both video and still images - but not simultaneously. This first amateur camera can neither autofocus, nor simultaneously shoot stills and video. That - my guess is - will be what the professional cameras will do - and soon. (more…)
Wednesday August 27th 2008, 6:28 am
Filed under: China, Olympics
Well, I just got done copying the files from my trusty 17″ MackBook Pro and 3 External Hard Drives over to my server overnight… and here are the facts:
In Beijing, with a total of 6 cameras, I shot: 28,444 files for a total of a whopping 480 Gigabytes of Images! That’s INSANE! Even I am shocked.
So I looked into at what Sports Illustrated shot during the Olympics with their ten staff photographers there - SI shot over 300,000 images of which their staff kept 17,000. One of their editors took that down to 1046 “super selects” and then their director of photography Steve Fine, edited his selection down to 135 images. That means their “best of” turned out to be 0.045% of what they shot.
These numbers may - and should - look crazy to most of you. But truth be told - it’s what happens when you have cameras that now shoot bursts at 10 frames per second - and when you’re likely firing not one - but two or three cameras at once (via remotes.) In fact mon ami Bill Frakes had more than 18 cameras firing at once each time someone crossed the finish line at the Athletics (Track & Field) venue for example- so imagine the volume coming out of the track venue. Hallucinating.
With simple arithmetic, it looks like I shot just a little under what the SI shooters did - but there is one important distinction: I saw many of them editing their images live on the back of their cameras. In other words - they would look at every series of images after they’d shot them (either during events or in between each rotation for example) and delete the poor or out of focus images - this to make sure that a “bad” one didn’t make it into the magazine - as someone else would end up editing their images. I on the other hand - never deleted a single frame - and that’s because I would be the only one editing my take each day (and not have to explain myself for missing a key frame to any editor.) I don’t believe in deleting images on the back of the camera myself - I’ve deleted quite a few keepers out of “sleep deprivation” or just by rushing in the past, and in fact missed more moments that happened right in front of me because I was “chimping” (term used for looking at back of one’s camera, and jumping up and down and howling like an ape, when one finds a good image, often showing it off to the person to the left or right of you.) So I keep everything. Given that those guys tended to mount a few more remote cameras thanI did - I’m sure it evens out things a bit further. (more…)
One of the most common questions that have been posed by people on this blog is: Do you delete your images in camera and do you delete images on your server or in your Aperture Library?
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