Lighting Scenarios – Page 6 – Robert Seale's Blog

Warren Sapp emerging from the Black Lagoon

Sometimes you have an idea in your head, and even though you don’t know who you might eventually use it on, you know that one day, you’ll eventually realize your vision and take that photograph.

For several years, I knew that I wanted to photograph someone, (ANYONE), their face painted with theatrical face paint, emerging from a pool of water, or just under the surface. I could picture this photograph in my head before I ever had a subject to photograph. Usually, my imagination wandered toward blue water and gold paint….maybe it would be a photograph of an Olympic swimmer or diver, who knows?…. but nevertheless, the vision stayed with me for quite some time.

When I received an assignment to photograph Warren Sapp, a big NFL football star, who had recently changed teams, I knew the time had arrived to float this harebrained scheme. Sapp had just signed with the Oakland Raiders, whose crazed Raider-Nation fans dress up in other-worldly costumes, face paint, crazy masks, etc… and attend games in costume. He was known for having an outlandish personality matching his oversized frame. My thought was that he might be crazy enough to let me try the face paint on him, in a silver color matching the Raider Nation fans I had seen at so many Raiders games. I made some sketches of him in the crazy fan uniform and of the “face-emerging-from-water” photo that I had been thinking of for so long.

Sketches from my Moleskine notebook....try not to hate.

It was the off season, so there were not the usual practice time constraints, or teammates watching, and since we were doing the shot at his agent’s (Drew Rosenhaus) home in Miami, there would be no nervous team PR man there telling us we couldn’t do it. After setting up the shoot and making sure Drew had a pool (who doesn’t have a pool in South Beach, right?), I asked Drew’s marketing guy about my idea….black water, silver face paint….an abstract homage to the Raider fan. I’ll never forget his response….”Hell yeah! He’ll put all that spiky costume shit on for you too!”

I had a tight schedule with another shoot in Indianapolis, a half day at home, and then a shoot in Denver, with two days at home before the Sapp shoot in Miami. I used what little time I had to scurry all over town looking for props to create a true Raider Fan outfit…..I found latex shoulder pads and a skull belt and shoes via a Gene Simmons Halloween costume, ordered a Raiders jersey, which I ripped to shreds, and bought football pants and Umpire’s shin guards, to which we attached little silver painted skulls and spikes that we found at an art supply shop. I painted and touched up the Halloween costume, which was looking a little old.

The next trick was to test my black water idea. I knew I wouldn’t have long with Warren, and I wanted to make sure everything was perfect before we tried such a crazy idea. I also thought it might help to show him the photo so he would know what we were going for. I knew that we needed a black pool, since a regular pool would have picked up a light blue tone from the water. I have a fairly large koi pond in the back yard, and I had recently bought one of those pre-formed black plastic water garden pools, to keep fish in while cleaning my main pond….I decided it would make a great test pool. I needed to find a test subject with a shaved head like Warren, who was also nutty enough to let me cover them with face paint and lay in my pond for a test photo. I somehow convinced my only bald-by-choice friend, David, to help me out. I determined from the test that we needed a larger light source, since it made more interesting reflections on the water, and that the water needed to be disturbed, or it would just look black.

I went to the airport the next morning for a leisurely flight to Miami….I built in plenty of time to look around the neighborhood, rent additional lighting gear and prep for the shoot the next day. Unfortunately, a huge thunderstorm had other plans, and I literally spent the night in the airport while doing the constant rebooking/flight cancellation dance between gates all night. I finally made a flight at 5:00am, and barely made it to Miami in time. I’ve always been anal about arriving in town for big shoots at least the day before, so 18 hours of flight delays made me very nervous.

A trusted assistant Cy Cyr, and makeup artist Paula Abraham were already en route from Orlando and met me at Drew’s house. Paula setup her airbrushing tools, while Cy climbed in the pool and covered the bottom with black plastic. We used weights to secure it to the pool floor and keep the plastic from floating around. We set up lighting for both shots, and waited for Warren to arrive.

It was an interesting location for a shoot. Drew is probably the most famous sports agent in the world: he’s the only agent ever featured on the cover of SI, and he’s reviled in many NFL front offices for his hard-hitting negotiating skills. For us, he was a gracious host, and we were happy to photograph Warren in a comfortable, relaxed environment.

Warren was great during the shoot…..an absolute showman, and he went through a million great poses for us, screaming and hissing like some sort of Raider monster. He was having a great time, and was fabulous to work with. We had both setups done quickly and we were able to get him back in his normal attire and on with his day. As I returned to the airport, I was able to scratch another crazy idea off my list.

LightSource Photography Podcast

The guys over at StudioLighting.net have compiled quite a list of interviews with photographers which are archived on their website in podcast form. The interviews, conducted with Bill Crawford and Ed Hidden, cover lighting techniques, stories and tips from top commercial photographers and others well known for their lighting prowess. These are great fun to listen to and are full of good information.

In addition to me (Episode 33), they have also featured the likes of Michael Grecco, Michael Muller, Chase Jarvis, Tim Tadder, Dave Hill, and David Hobby.

You can check out the entire list here, or by looking for Lightsource Studio Photography Podcast under “podcasts” in itunes.

Launching LaDainian Tomlinson from an aircraft carrier

The final photo that was used on the cover.

I get a lot of questions and comments about the shoot with LaDainian Tomlinson from a couple of years ago, so now seems like as good a time as any to revisit that photograph, and talk about the shoot.

I was in San Diego, scouting locations for a cover shoot for the Sporting News. Each year, the magazine publishes their “Top 100” issue, ranking the 100 best players in the NFL. This particular year, San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson was tops in the whole country, so we needed a great, dynamic portrait and inside spread that would convey his athletic prowess, and also give a little local flavor/context to the photo.

I spent some time looking at various locations around Coronado Island……beaches, sand, palm trees, etc….and with the right time of day, any of those elements might have made a usable background for a photo like this. I was trying to think of something better, and I’ve always been a military buff, so my eye kept going back to the Navy ships in the harbor. San Diego is a big Navy town, and there were several big ships, including a couple of aircraft carriers parked in the harbor. This was post 9/11, so I figured the chances of getting a location on one of those great Navy ships would be impossible without a blood sample and 6 months of government paperwork, but I mentioned it anyway while chatting with a good friend of mine, who worked at the Padres. Amazingly enough, my friend hooked me up with a retired high-ranking Navy officer who happened to work a lot with the Padres…..this was the guy who arranged for all sorts of outrageous things on behalf of the club: Blue Angels flyovers, Navy color guards, ship visits, etc. In about an hour, he called me back with “You have a venue on the USS Nimitz tomorrow at 1500.”

Tight portrait of LT with San Diego in the background

Now, all I had to do was convince the Chargers that this was a good idea.

After several phone calls, a lot of schmoozing, and descriptive selling….”Just think of the headline on the cover….”Top Gun!”, and promising to send a limo for LaDainian to pick him up, we finally got a commitment about four hours later from LT and the Chargers.

Now, I absolutely had to pull this off.

I lined up a limo service, and secured directions to LaDainian’s house, leaving careful instructions, to load up the back of the limo with his favorite beverages, and securing the uniform and pads from the team.
My assistant on the shoot, Shawn Cullen (a stellar, former SI assistant who has worked with great San Diego photographers like Andy Hayt, Tim Tadder, Tim Mantoani), and I arrived at the naval base that afternoon for security screening, which was very similar to an airport. After they checked out all of our equipment, we headed towards the carrier, where I assumed the large aircraft elevator would promptly whisk us up to the top deck.

Wrong! Most of the crew was on shore leave, and the key people who could operate the elevator were not there. I guess we’ll be taking the stairs.

Shawn is a strong, strapping young dude….but lugging each Lightware case up an M.C. Escher maze of ladders and hatches up I don’t know how many levels of stairs was excruciating for both of us. There were more stairs leading to that deck than to the top of the Empire State Building! We were so worn out, we figured we would just throw the gear over the side after the shoot….or launch it off the catapult into the harbor.
Strangely enough, once on deck, with help from the crew, we found power outlets all over the place, and we didn’t have to use any of our battery packs. We ran power cables and began setting up lighting.
We found a great spot where we could see the bridge…and framed it up with the impending sunset. LaDainian’s car was on the way…we shot some tests and anxiously awaited his arrival, along with staff from the Chargers.

Sending a car for an athlete or other celebrity is always a good idea on a location shoot.

LT during one of the earlier shots, prior to sunset

Relying on the subject to find the location and get there on time (especially with something critical like a sunset) is never a good idea. Having a car and driver go to retrieve the talent allows the photo crew to set up on set well ahead of time, prepare and test the shoot, and be ready to go at the appointed time.

We were tested and ready when LaDainian arrived…..he was into the idea, and actually brought his wife with him as well. As always, I began with some pretty straightforward portraits before trying the more athletic poses that we eventually ended up with.

He was actually a bit early, and we also had some built in time in case there was a problem getting him there, so it now became critical to stall a bit. We knew the sunset would be beautiful during the magic hour, and it was just a matter of keeping him there, and keeping him interested long enough to finish the shoot in the optimum light of the day.

We moved on, after the straightforward stuff to some athletic poses, including some leaping and jumping. No trampoline here, just LaDainian’s insane vertical leap. Putting the camera all the way down on the deck gave us an extremely low angle, which accentuates the feeling that he’s high in the sky.

We shot another series of tight pictures….faces, with San Diego shoreline in the background to pass the time…..stalling his departure until about 20 more minutes until the light was a classic ROYGBIV spectrum sunset.
People have asked me about whetether we used rear-sync on these. Actually, we were using Dyna-Lite studio strobes with a Hasselblad at the time…..so there was no rear sync. I have found, over time….while shooting with slow-sync speed exposures with strobe, that if you have people leap into the air, and if you fire the exposure (and strobe) right at the apex of the leap, that the blur falls below the subject…making it appear that it is a rear-sync picture. It is sort of like panning backwards…it gives you the same look as a rear-sync, but you can precisely control the moment that you want strobed. Personally, I think rear-sync, unless the exposure is very short, leaves too much to chance.
We bracketed the shutter speeds to get different looks from the sky, but the final pick was shot on a Hasseleblad 40mm lens, at around ¼ second at F11.

This turned out to be one of my favorite photographs, incorporating many elements that I like: beautiful twilight sunset background, nice big soft light on the subject, an athletic action pose, and a strange location with conceptual context) into one photo.

In the end, as much as we wanted to, we didn’t launch the gear off the deck……but we thought long and hard about it when we had to face all those stairs again.