To maintain the great depth-of-field needed, I had to use two 800 Watt second White Lightnings to control contrast. I also used Tungsten gels to match the lights from the incandescent lights. White Balance was set for Tungsten for this particular picture. Â I also tested it with White Balance set on Daylight. Since I shoot JPEG and RAW most of the time, this really wasn’t necessary. I like to experiment to see which gives better results in various situaions. Â My camera was on a tripod and stopped down to f22. I used the self-timer since I didn’t have my cable or remote to trip the shuttter.
Taxidermist Tim Bovard and a Sumatran Tiger was lit by one Lumedyne 200 watt/sec flash. The flash triggered by a Quantum radio slave placed on the display case between the Tim and the tiger. The house lights were turned off to remove the clutter in the background. Whatever is not lit, can’t be seen, so there’s no need to remove them from the background. Exposure info: ISO 200 1/200 sec @ f11 using a 28mm lens.
Taxidermist & Sumatran Tiger
There are many schools of thought when it comes to lighting.
If I have a lot of time with my subject, I will take the trouble to actually create the “feel†or ambience by lighting everything.
Baseball was not my favorite sport to cover. Bases can be loaded inning after inning and no one scores. Then out-of-the-blue, all hell breaks loose and a collision at home plate occurs. Thankfully I wasn’t asleep here. Picture taken with a Nikon F4 triggered by a foot pedal. 180 f2.8 lens prefocused at home plate. Fujichrome 100 1/2000 @ f2.8 . Angels Stadium, Anaheim.
So let’s assume you’re in and you’ve gotten the nod to shoot your first sports assignment.
Sorry, those professional baseball, basketball and Big 10 college football games will be covered by the staff photographers because they’ll appear on the cover of the section.
Don’t despair, as you get better, you’ll get to the front page of the Sports section. If you have a really good picture, it may run on the front page, but  let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet. Continue reading Freelancing for Newspapers–Part 3→
Photo tips from a creative Southern California photographer
