Using the California Sunbounce Sun swatter

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to photograph Greg Miller, son of Utah business mogul Larry H. Miller. Our newspaper was doing a profile on the younger Mr. Miller as he recently was handed the reigns of the company built by his father. The elder Miller had recently undergone some health related problems which necessitated his pulling back on his busy 90 hour work weeks running his business empire which consists of numerous car dealerships in multiple states, a $115 million dollar road course race track, a TV station, restaurant's, etc. etc., a minor league baseball team and oh yeah a little NBA franchise named the Utah Jazz.

Needless to say with all this responsibility handed to him and being the father of a large family his son Greg is a very busy man these days. And when you are called upon to photograph someone who is very busy, you need to make sure that you are ready to go and don't waste any of their time.

I just wanted to say up front that after spending some time with Greg Miller I found him to be very different from his father. His father is a talker, he loves the media, is very adept and public speaking and is very comfortable in front of a camera, still or television. Greg on the other hand is smart, engaging, but not yet as comfortable with us media types as his dad. I suspect as time goes on he will find his own path in this area. He listened, he thought he spoke, he was not arrogant, cocky or insecure. II will add that I found him very gracious, professional and kind.

Now having said all that for those of you who are taking or are going to take photos of busy people, whether they be celebrities, business people, lawyers, doctors, etc. They all have one thing in common. They have a schedule. When you are arranging the photo shoot, you need to make sure that you set a day and time that will work in their schedule. Yes it would be great if you could set things up for the time of day when the light is perfect, the weather is just right etc. But in reality that will not be the case. So be prepared to work around their schedules, not yours. These people are not models who are getting paid large sums of money to stand around for hours waiting for just the right light, hair and make-up.

So step number one. Set a time, date and location that will work with them. Ask them for suggestions and then prepare to be flexible.

For this particular shot I originally asked for 20-30 minutes of Mr. Miller's time at the start finish line of the race track which he owns and manages. The day had been set several weeks before hand by the reporter who was working on the story. Two days before it was to happen I got a call on my day off that the photo shoot was the next morning, on my other day off and it would take place around 8:30 - 9:00 a.m. in the morning.

Knowing what I wanted from the portrait I immediately made a call to a local photo equipment rental shop and drove down to pick up my lighting equipment. Just after I had left the shop and was driving back home I got a call from the racetrack PR manager telling me that my 20-30 minutes would now be trimmed to 5 minutes and that Mr. Miller would not have time for a big production shoot. I assured the PR manager that I could do what was needed in 5 minutes and hung up the phone. I immediately remembered when I was working as Photo Editor at the Sporting News magazine and former Chief Photographer Albert Dickson was telling us about how his photo shoot for the cover of the magazine of New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner went. He had arrived, set up his lights and expected at least 10-15 minutes with the man, but got exactly 10-15 seconds. Albert had a lot of experience and used it to pull off a great portrait of Mr. Steinbrenner. He arrived early, he was prepared with a concept and he didn't waste anyone's time.

As I drove the rest of the way home. I turned on my iPod which is hooked to my stereo in my car and put on some favorite Marshall Tucker Band songs and started to formulate a plan. The next morning the arrived an hour early at the race track about 7:45 a.m.. I got the help of the race track PR people to help me get some cars on the start finish line. I originally had only two cars in the set up, but they suggested three and they were right as it really helped the composition I was looking for. The next problem that needed to be solved was the fact that in order to get the name Miller Motorsports park correct with the cars behind it, that meant that Mr. Miller would be facing directly into the morning sun. This meant squint city. Luckly I had been at the race track before and knew what to do so I had rented a California Sunbounce Sun-Swatter. For those of you who don't know what this is or want more info, check out this link. Sun-Swatter.

They have videos etc. that show you how to use this very wonderful tool.

I asked one of the PR people to help me hold the sun-swatter so it would block the direct sunlight from the face of another track person that I had borrowed to do a test run-through to make sure things would work before Mr. Miller showed up which brings me to step number two. Make sure things work before your subject shows up, not after.

The sun-swatter comes with a three choices of white fabric that allow different amounts of light to come through them by blocking approximately 1/3, 1/2 or 2/3 of a stop of light. For this shoot I chose the 2/3 stop fabric which would block most of the light as it was direct light and allow the subject to not have to squint when looking towards the camera.

The next step was to adjust my ambient light to the level that I wanted it to be. For this shot I was shooting at 100 ISO on a Canon 1D Mark III and 1/125 of a second @ f 11. I had started at f8 and closed my f stops down until finally settling on f11 which made the overall photographic color of the sky and cars more saturated and would help my subject stand out from the back ground.

I had previously set up a large 54x72 in. Chimera softbox and using a speed-ring I attached it to a Profot0 Acute d4 head put it on a stand with some shot bags to weigh it down and keep it from tipping over in the wind and then I had brought an extra head extension so I could run the light out onto the race track from the Acute 2400R generator I was using.


With this set up I was able to adjust the flash output to approximately f22 about two- stops above my ambient. So I tested it out on my stand-in models and all I had to do was wait for Mr. Miller to show up. I made a quick run back to my car to make sure I had an extra battery for my camera and as I was opening my trunk a man came riding his bike past me and smiled and waved. I politely smiled and waved back and then realized it was Greg Miller. I thought my day had started early, but he had been out at the track riding his road bike for several hours before I had even arrived. I had asked to take photos of him on his road bike during a daily ride, but this part of the profile had not yet been set up and agreed to.

So now everything was ready, the test shots had been made and all there was to do was wait for the subject to show up.

He was right on time and I told him we were ready to go. I stayed true to what we had discussed, took my shots in less than five minutes and said, "Thank you Mr. Miller, were done". He said "That's it?" to which I replied, "yup" and he said that was painless and we were done with the formal portrait. As I had finished so quickly he was willing to talk for a minute and we had a great conversation about people we knew and about his love of cycling. He sets a personal goal to ride his road bike about 4000 miles a year, and showed me that he was about 11.7 miles ahead of his goal for the year.

I had recently started running again to try and lose weight and get my blood sugar levels back to normal following doctors orders to do so or have to go on medication.

So I told him that if someone who was busy as him could take time to ride his bike then there was really no excuse for people like me. He told me riding a bike was a lot more fun than jogging. I suspect he's right, but right now I jog at least 1-2 miles every day except Sunday and so far I have lost some weight and my blood sugar is back to normal levels.

I packed up my gear and got it off the track so that he and a special guest of his could spend some time racing around the track and doing business. I got some shots of this and later the next week I spent some time taking a few photos of him riding his road bike. With these photos and some others that he had taken of his family and some other family photos we were able to put together a really nice package for this last Sunday's A1 centerpiece.

So thanks to California Sun-Swatter, Profoto, Chimera, and Redman Movies and Stories plus a lot of pre-planning and preparation, a less than 5 minute photo shoot turned into a pleasant experience with a portrait that I was really happy with.

Here is the portrait and a few others from this package. Let me know what you think.




Here is how the formal portrait was used in the newspaper layout.

Jill Greenburg and John McCain

Many people have commented and blogged about the photos Commerical Photographer Jill Greenburg took of Senator John McCain for the Atlantic magazine and especially what she did with the outakes on her own website manipulator.com. For those who have been living under a rock and don't know the story. Jill Greenburg was hired to shoot a portrait of John McCain for Atlantic Monthly magazine. Greenburg a notorious anti-Republican and anti-Bush photographer used the 15 minutes of shooting time to take some personal photos of John McCain which she then manipulated using photoshop to add sharks teeth and blood and put a title of Warmonger on top of the photo and then posted this and several other photoshop manipulated photos of John McCain on her personal website. maniuplator.com

She was then interviewed by Photo District News about the photoshoot and told how she purposely tried to make McCain look bad etc. This has caused an uproar in the photo community and the media, as it should have.

I have read most of the comments and diatribes written about this unfortunate situation and I think the comments of Mark Tucker on his blog: http://marktucker.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/what-ive-learned-from-this-greenbergmccain-fiasco/ pretty much some up my feelings on the whole incident.

Here is a brief excerpt of one of his points. "You don’t pee in the pool. If you’re a commercial photographer, your actions can affect every other working photographer out there. Imagine the paranoia right now, if you were McCain or Obama, and you were walking into a cover shoot, as we get nearer to the election. Can you imagine the trepidation and doubt? And what about celebrities too — it’s hard enough to pull off a shoot like that. So when you go off and pull something like Greenberg did, if affects EVERYONE after you. The Ripple Factor is massive."

This was a selfish act of self expression by an immature photographer who obviously did not or doesn't care about anyone else in her profession. One of my "pet peeves" is about all the people who lump all us into two single words "The Media". And mostly when they want to point out something negative or that they don't agree with. The media is far more complex than this. The media includes, screenwriters, novelists, journalists, television executives, musicians, radio personalities, cable, bloggers, youtube, presidential speechwriters, actors, directors, advertising copy writers and on and on and on.

There are as many different types of photographers as there are different types of writers. One final thought on this whole mess. Some have blamed McCain's camp for not vetting the photographer, but that isn't fair. That's not their job. That's the job of the magazine photo editor.

A quick google search of Jill Greenburg would have alerted the photo editor at The Atlantic that hiring her could have been problematic and maybe a bad idea. So much of the blame in my opinion goes to the magazine that hired her in the first place. There are many fine ethical and qualified portrait photographers who could have done the job.

John McCain, however you feel about his politics, had every right to believe he was stepping into a 15 minute photo shoot for a magazine cover and nothing else.

My first blog post...finally

For those that do not know me, I'm the assistant photo editor at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah and have been a professional photographer for...a long time now.

I've been getting a lot of grief from some of the staff about not blogging and as I spend a lot of time reading other photographers blogs, and there are a lot of really good ones out there in the blog-o-sphere, I thought it was about time that I started one of my own.

I hope to make it a journal-like experience with some occasional rants about things other than photography, but mostly just fun stuff, nothing too serious or heavy. I get enough of that everyday at work.


So let's start with the photo above. Tom Smart, one of our staff photographers asked me to help him on a freelance assignment to photograph the University of Utah football team for this years programs etc. I was glad he asked me as I really enjoy doing portrait work and a little extra money for school clothes for the kids is always a bonus.

I was asked to take an individual portrait of each member of the team and then group shots of each unit. (offensive line, defensive line etc.) It was hard, fast work, with not a lot of space to work in as they wanted to do the shots inside the locker room.

So knowing my limited space I rented a profoto acute 1200R and two heads with silver umbrella reflectors as I wanted to go for a more contrasty look, I knew I wouldn’t have room for a third back light so I just went with the two heads, added a pocketwizard to the mix to trigger the lights and I was ready to rock-n-roll.


Here are a couple of the portraits I did at the end of the shoot just for fun.


And here is a photo from the shoot without any post processing in Photoshop.




Two days ago the University of Utah went Michigan and beat the Wolverines 25-23 in the big house. It was a very good start to their young season. In two weeks I will get to go up to Logan, Utah and shoot their game against in-state rivals Utah State University, should be fun, but probably not for my Alma matter USU, who lost their opener to UNLV on Saturday.


A few weeks back I had an assignment to shoot a pioneer day celebration at "This is The Place Heritage Park". As part of the daily activities they have a parade where any child who wants to can wear some pioneer clothing and march in a short 2-3 block long parade. Parents were lined up along the street with digital cameras in hand trying to get photos of their children as they marched. I was there too, but with one difference. I was the only photographer who was kneeling down to take a photograph. Every parent was standing up.

Why mention this?

Well when I was back in college I learned a valuable lesson from a visiting photo editor at the time about children.

They're shorter than us.

And no one likes photos of the tops of their heads or their kinked little necks as they tilt their heads back to look up at us.

I remember quite clearly when he asked me to sit down on the floor in front of the class as an object lesson on the importance of seeing into the faces of those we were photographing. I felt like a complete idiot at the time.

A few years later when I graduated, this photo editor gave me my first photojournalism job. Maybe he felt bad about embarrassing me in front of the class, who knows, but I never made that mistake again.


As always many of the things we learn can be used to build on and grow if we think about it. Getting down low to take photos of children taught me not to be lazy when I photographed people, which my wife can tell you all about every time I throw a batch of clothes in the washer that have dirt all over them from laying on the ground to get a better or more interesting angle at an event I am shooting. Here is a photo from the Pioneer photo shoot where I used a low angle to try and make a more interesting photograph of an otherwise ordinary (translated to boring) situation.

There are other ways to make more visually interesting images from these types of events and situations. Low angles as I have mentioned work well, even for a posed portrait such as this one of the canon re-enactment volunteers especially when you use the rule of thirds to place your subject off to one side rather than directly in the middle of the photograph.

Another say to help break up the visual doldrums is to try and use a little fill flash with a slow shutter speed (in this case I used 1/15 of a second @ 100 ISA) and twist the camera to the left or right (I chose twisting to the left just a split second after you push the shutter). Remember to do it in a fluid motion and try not to move your camera until after you have pushed the shutter.