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.