Natalie and I agree, he is a catch…
Free Pablo–amended- he is now free!
January 7th, 2011 Comments Off
I had the good pleasure of meeting, riding with and photographing Pablo Airaldi in May of 2007 for NYT…
I got a call recently from the VV to request images of Pablo, no mention of why, but they really liked what I sent and said that it was a possible cover.
It’s not the cover that is remarkable, it is Pablo’s story. We didn’t discuss much that day except the story, do some cool pics of Pablo on the streets of New York in different cycling garb, a style piece, and I suggested we just cycle and find locations that worked, which he was all for. Pablo was riding a fixie, and I loved watching him descend the Brooklyn Bridge locking up the rear wheel every once and a while. I lumbered along after him on my mountain bike. (I’m old enough to remember when it was necessary variously to have: a Banana Seat Bike, a 10 Speed, a Mountain Bike….I skipped the BMX phase…)
Anyway you should read the VV story, it is very current, it is an individual story about an immigrant, which we should recognize as very common.
I am sensitive to the whole notion of “immigration” – Neither of my parents are in the country that they were born in, and now, neither am I. By “law” I have rights to three passports but carry two- on from jus soli and the other by jus sanguinis to get fancy- born in Canada to an American mother. I have a third option available to claim British Citizenship through my father and his father, although my father was born in New York to British parents…what a bounty of passports simply being thrown at me! I have to wonder- what are we all so sensitive about when it comes to people born south of the border? East-West doesn’t seem to get everyone so worked up.
I am oversimplifying-Pablo was convicted of a felony- had I been convicted of a felony while in Canada I do not know how the immigration authorities would have handled my case-as far as they were concerned, I was an American from birth, so I suppose you cannot deny something from someone that they already possess.
Everyone accepts that this is the country you come to to get a new start-certainly things were good enough for me in Canada that I didn’t need to come here, I wanted to. I have never been to Uruguay. I am told it has a high standard of living relatively in South America, and is progressive and democratic.
What the story boils down to, as so many stories do, is that if you have money and can hire better than a public defender, your troubles will likely go away. No one will talk about rewarding bad behaviour, consequences, etc. “Used to be” that this country was a place for people with no money to come and work and create a new life. Now that we are the “haves,” we are insensitive to the have-nots. And unless we all get down to making babies real soon, we need immigration simply to prop up social security and medicare for all those boomers who used to be on the side of immigration but now seem to be against it.
Update: so I wrote all that last night and was going to post it and checked the VV story again for the link and evidently he is out!-
Alexa Chung for NYT Style
November 27th, 2010 Comments Off
Chelcie Ross for ESPN
November 24th, 2010 Comments Off
Thanks to Catriona at ESPN, JB who assisted, Steve Wulf the writer and Chelcie for making this a great day. Ross was in Rudy, Major League, Hoosiers, and the list goes on. His big thing is that he shows up ready to work, likes to work, feels that attitude is everything. So we got down to it and had great light. What else can you ask for?
New York City Marathon 2010 Race Report
November 10th, 2010 Comments Off
I get my name in the paper, but this time it is different…
3:43:04-not a personal best, but best personally.
Last year was 3:38:33. But to describe the difference between the two years as simply 4 minutes and 31 seconds is way off.
There is a big difference between doing the NYC Marathon the first time and a second time. My whole approach was different. I really wanted to stick to my plan, but I really wanted to enjoy it too, and I was prepared to sacrifice the one for the other.
Mile by Mile
It starts at 4:00 am. Dark, cold. Getting up and getting coffee and a bagel going, putting on the kit. In a car by 5 to catch a charter bus from jackrabbit at 5:30. Four tour buses full head south on the BQE in the darkness towards the Verrazano Bridge. For some on the bus it is their first, and the advice is always the same, “save for later”.
Early morning at Ft. Wadsworth, Staten Island is cold, windy, dark. The tour buses unload at the toll plaza on the SI end of the bridge, and we walk in early twilight towards the encampment. I go to my section, green, and we are amongst the first to arrive, so everyone is moving slowly and without much urgency. That will come later. There are sleeping bags, cardboard boxes, blankets, no Snuggles tho- but anything to shelter from the cold. I have brought a plastic drop cloth and wrap myself up like a burrito in it. Next time, I’m going for the Snuggle. We have over two hours to wait till 9:40 start…
A man seated next to me offers a patch of grass to sit on, warmer than concrete, and it is his first NYCM, and he is curious, so I share my experiences, but I am sure none of it really matters, he will find out, just as I did, what happens. The sun finally comes up at 7, and takes the chill off, just a little. But we are all cold.
We move into the corrals and it seems better organized this year, or maybe I paid better attention this year, but I am there with time to spare. The only trouble is there is no way to warm up, it will be cold muscles on the bridge. So I plan on going out very slow just to warm up. A canon boom and we are off! Immediately several people trip and fall over plastic bags other have shed-not the way you want to start a race, note to self-look down! I am on the lower level this year, and the wind is strong- coming from the side, but the air is so clear, the city is etched in relief in the distance. I run the whole first mile up the Verrazano just looking sideways at this sight, and most of the way down to Brooklyn. For some reason it seems far away and close all at the same time.
This is part of the difference between the first year and the second- there are now acts in this play, and this is the beginning of the first act, the first 8 miles in Brooklyn. I can see the Williamsburg Savings Bank, mile 8, and so I know exactly how far that is, so even tho all of that is very distant, it is a near goal in this context, a warm-up 8 miles, which is somehow comforting.
We come off the bridge and into Bay Ridge, and the 3:30 pace group goes by me, and for a moment I think, should I hang on to them? That is the goal time, but the plan was to run a negative split and go slow the first half and faster the second. It is a conservative plan which leaves you something in the tank if things are not so good, so I leave them to their 8:01 splits and I do my 8:10 splits.
We chug along for the early Brooklyn miles- I get a shout out from Cristina and Emmet at mile 6!- it feels really good when you see someone you know, and also, it is really really hard to find people, so when you succeed it is great. I run the plan all the way to mile 8, the end of the “first act”, and we turn onto Lafayette, a small hill up and a bottleneck of runners. A slow split, but nothing troubling, a downhill comes next and it is all made up. I am running a minute behind schedule, which I feel great about, very very consistent. It is consistent all the way to the half point on the Pulaski Bridge.
So this is the point where if I am going to negative split I have to go from 8:10′s to 7:50′s- which poses a problem because now I am on the first major hill since the start and I need to shave a good 20 seconds off my pace- had I looked at it like this I probably would have not planned it this way. So I drop a half minute more without even going that much slower. I can react to this badly or not, and this time around, knowing what I know I decide it really doesn’t matter, that I am not going to push here, this is only the second act of this play, I still am worried that I am going to have some pain later and really don’t want to run the last 10 miles wincing with every step, so I let it go. But the pace does not go up on the downhill either, I am still doing 8:10′s or so, and then there is the Queensboro Bridge to content with. I had already made my bargain with this last year, it had really done me in, so I lose another minute in those two miles up and over, and coming on to First Ave, I am 3 minutes behind, but actually feeling really really good to be in Manhattan. End of second act.
The third act is 3.5 miles up First Avenue to 110th Street-then another 3 through the Bronx back into Manhattan, and my goal was to get through this feeling fresh because I knew there is that hill on Fifth Avenue at mile 22.5 that required serious work. In planning for this I decided to plant the “ULTRA” there, positioned at mile 22.5 with the secret ingredient that I knew would guarantee me home free…(The ULTRA was Winston Churchill’s code name during WWII for ultra top secret military intelligence-the breaking of the German secret coded communications. It was what he knew would be the “difference” between victory and defeat.) What I remember of this section is coming back into Manhattan and really knowing that I had it, I was in such better shape this year than last, tired, but still moving easily, just not as fast. I could look around and take it all in, it was not a grim block by block campaign. I remember seeing the stretch of Fifth Avenue ahead when we came around the turn at Marcus Garvey, and the sun was almost directly overhead but low as it is in late fall, all the runners were back lit and outlined against the trees overhead, it was very beautiful, and I was chugging steadily towards the ULTRA!
I find the ULTRA at 110th Street just as we had planned, this is the climax of the third act, and we are shocked to see each other, it is 15 seconds of omigod keep going and I have no idea what I said, and deciding, do I want water, gatorade, salty chips, M&M’s, almonds, whatever the food craving was, we had it covered!- this was to be my motivator, and cramp protector, hence the salty snacks, and maybe running up Fifth Avenue with a bag of Lay’s would have been funny, but I felt ok, so I took some water, so-called “Smart Water” only to check later and see–ZERO SODIUM! Too funny. But the ULTRA had worked, I was ready to finish this race, so I continue up Fifth Avenue at a steady pace, three quarters of a mile uphill, densely packed on both sides with spectators until the Park entrance at 90th Street. Last year all of this was a blur, but this year I am tired but moving, although I do get a little cramp during the park miles, which I solve by not panicking and breathing and speeding up a little and turning up the music on the ipod- anything to just get my mind off my left hamstring. End of fourth act.
Finally the fifth act, the denoument, where it is all resolved!–the last mile along Central Park South towards Columbus Circle, where last year I was hating all those happy folks who were having a banner day while I was suffering. This year I am very excited, happy, actually going slower just to savour it, I had missed the 3:330 finish long ago, and the previous best did not really matter. And that is how it ended, very glad not to be running anymore as I crossed the finish line, but not spent either. Simply very satisfied.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that this year I could share this experience with someone close, someone special, in addition to friends and family. You train alone, perhaps you run alone, but you don’t go through life alone, at least you needn’t. So thanks to everyone and special thanks to the ULTRA for making this year the personal best.
The shoot that wasn’t
November 6th, 2010 Comments Off
Ian Schrager back of the envelope lighting diagram
October 25th, 2010 Comments Off
A while back I promised a cautionary tale…
So this is the basic setup for a seamless portrait with back glow. I set this up in the reception area, with a 5 foot white seamless. I just gives enough to get a head and shoulders edge to edge. Nothing fancy, it works. The backlight is a speedlight with a diffusion dome, on a stand, probably set to 1/8th power, aimed sort of at the paper and up a little, about a foot away from the paper. The subject, Ian, is about 3 feet away from the paper, and I am under the front light on a c-stand extension arm, with a speedlight in a x-small chimera over camera. It is maybe 2.5 feet away and above. Power is probably 1/4, 400 ISO. I can get f8-1/3 out of this with an instant recycle using the canon battery pack.
So that is what you see top left, moi, ugh…doing the self posing self timer thing. I keep meaning to get the canon remote. And a makeover!
That is the “A” setup, there is another setup in his office with a big softlighter. The issue is when I packed, since I was doing this solo, and I had a backdrop, I only packed four stands. So I had to take the stand from the backdrop light to use in the office setup. Once I got this done, I realized I had compromised myself, that there was not going to be any time to move the stand back, so I improvised using my tripod as you can see. Well, I couldn’t now test that because the tripod was holding the camera…
Interview ends and we do the “B” setup first, in the office, and it goes well and I tell my charming tale of my only experience in Studio 54–NO I am not THAT OLD- it was a magazine party for NY Magazine 40 years in 1999. Not even ‘back in the day but now it qualifies as a kind of ‘back in the day… We then move to the “A” setup and first frame- that is top right. Bingo. Or not Bingo. The rear light is not firing. Ok, Strobist does not tell you this, but I will-honestly- again-speedlights are no substitute for real lights, the kind that go off every time. Why-? In that moment, I had no idea why. But you can’t do anything about it. You have to punt. So I continued. And finished. But the writer has a few more questions, and Ian is wonderful, takes time, and they go back to the interview.
So now I am determined-what is going on? I fire directly at the slave- nothing. I move the head around, jiggle, watusi- nada. Then I pull the batterypack cord out-the result frame bottom left-what had happened is that the rechargeables in the battery pack had flatted in the interim- unlike regular batteries when they go they go-instantly. There is no delayed recharge. It is just done. So now the light is firing and I summon up some crow eating reserves and politely ask if I could have a few more, I’d like something a little different. And Ian again is wonderful, and he stands in for a few more, frame bottom right.
At this point, I really don’t know what I am getting. I cannot really look, really take time. I have no modeling light on the speedlight to see what it looks like. The light should have been a tad higher to give a full shadow under the chin. But I can’t really see that, and every moment I chimp is a moment lost. I have to go on experience and hope there is something useful. Also, the camera is not on a tripod, so I cannot stand off from it, I must look through the viewfinder, and this reduces me to taking pictures, not making pictures.
Ok- so the problem is not the speedlight but the batteries. True. But they are a fact of using speedlights unless you want to be tossing batteries into the trash once a week. And recharging 24 double-A’s at a time is a PITA. Then they flat unexpectedly. It has happened before. If one goes, or if you bought the cheap Adorama batts, one out of four will be flakey. And that one will take down the entire unit. You could get a turbo, but for another 400 dollars on top of the 400 dollars you have already spent- do the math people, 2 speedlights plus 2 turbo battery packs is 1600+. Even the canon pack is 150 each. Plus rechargeables. You are well on your way to two monolights or an elinchrome quadra.
Yes they are small and they are light and they go anywhere but when you really need them-they suck. I really cringe when I read the supposed wisdom that is being shared on the ‘internets and what the next generation of photographers are taking away-good work is not, repeat, not being done with voice-activated light stands-salad bowl beauty dishes or tinfoil hats! Light is our most important ingredient-forget the cameras, with great light you can use your iphone (don’t get me started on that…) to make a picture.
Second problem is I got lazy, humping all the gear, and thought, a fifth stand- won’t need it. But I did, and in moving a tested setup, as you can see, the glow is not as good in the final as in the setup. So another piece of advice, if it is working leave it alone! It is the kind of thing that inexperienced people do, and interestingly enough, the kind of thing experienced people do too…because they know they will be able to figure it out. And I did, but it cost me, it cost me frames I did not get.
In the end, photoshop saves the day. Awful to say, but I pulled a page out of Nadav Kandar’s book and sandwiched two layers of the same image processed differently, you can control background and foreground colour and exposure this way, and came up with a third look, which is on my portfolio site. And depending on the way you brush the two together, a third colour appears which is the blend of the two layers. You can see it in the hair, it looks like bleed from the background. Also, the shadow is not really there like that. He looks somewhat flat yet three dimensional. Another way to do a classic portrait on white.
Taper Madness
October 25th, 2010 Comments Off
20 Weeks, 500 miles, 2 weeks to go…
Reflections if any on a third marathon training cycle?
As research for a recent shoot I watched “Rudy”, the story of one incredibly obsessed man’s efforts to play football for Notre Dame. And when I say obsessed you can think possibly delusional. He claws his way towards one goal, to dress for a game so that his dad can see he really is playing for ND, that it’s not just a made up story, a pipe dream. His assessment is that all of his hard work will be for not if this doesn’t happen. He cannot see the forest for the trees. Several people around him, those that are on the far side of their dreams, remind him that it is not for nothing that he is also getting a first class education, and is not toiling away like his brothers in a steel mill. We are all about the goals, the distance travelled to get there is inconsequential.
What I remember about the training is not the task at hand, but the small rewards along the way, the weather, the people I see regularly and give a small wave too, the kind one farmer gives to another as they pass in pickup trucks, the kind that says, “yup.” I remember the feeling in my legs and body after a long run, a kind of weary relaxation where nothing is particularly urgent and I am just perambulating home. I remember only once this year, running in a light rain, for it was so dry. I saw “the express”, the man who put the bug in me, and we both remarked about how it was so great to have the park to ourselves that day, mostly.
I remember chasing bunnies and getting passed, blown into the weeds, it is pretty amazing to get passed like you are standing still. You look at the turnover and the high leg kick and the relentless pace, you match it for a while just to see, and then you are reminded that you are 44 and not 24…That said, I am faster this year, you do change, it just takes a long time to adapt. It is the whole body that is required to run fast, and those changes accumulate slowly in the 40+, more likely injury is what is accumulating.
On that note, I did sustain an injury this year, same exact one as last year, achilles, this time on the left side not the right. And I had tried so hard to avoid that-I trained gently, I stretched. But 20 weeks is really a long time, and just like last year, after about 12, a sudden training effect surge, then the feeling of being able to go infinitely fast, leading to going to fast, too hard, too soon, and then there you are-injured. If you are reading this looking for advice, I’d say ice is your friend, even if you are not injured, and compression socks are also very good, and finally rest is what fixes it. You can take a whole week off or more even in the cycle, it does not affect the whole, in fact, your body rewards you for the rest by coming back quicker than if you try to train through it. That was my mistake last year. To be afraid to take time off. Two weeks out of twenty, plus whatever base mileage you have before that, you are not going to miss.
My “goal” such as it is for the marathon this year, and I have put a lot of thought into this, is simply completion. You have to give the distance respect, and anything can happen on a given sunday. If you recall I was a little bent out of shape last year at the end, it was kind of grim there. Bargaining. Compromising other parts of my body in compensating for what was hurting. Probably not atypical. What I think is different this year is that there are all sorts of little things that I did differently, preparations, running the course, consistency in pacing, and also just the experience of last year- I think I will know how to handle myself better. My goal is always to run the “perfect” race, the race I could run on a given day. It probably won’t be that, but the obvious mistakes, like last year, going out way too hot, I think I can avoid.
Some other satisfactions: I am in the first wave this year- “locally competitive men’s start”–ha! that is funny. (There is still professional and sub-elite ahead of that…) Downside is that we are on the lowerdeck of the Verrazano Bridge- the advice is to stay near the center to avoid the “gifts” coming from above. Dunno about that, I didn’t see anyone last year heave or pee over the edge…
Also, couple of people I know have begun running this year, and have come to me for advice. I am always happy to “pay it forward.” Whatever the distance or goal, the reward is great.
found yesterday on a stoop in Park Slope. Not too coincidental-there are literally hundreds of books on stoops in Park Slope for the taking…
Ann Coulter back of the envelope lighting diagram
October 13th, 2010 Comments Off
An actual back of the envelope lighting diagram. An un-actual polaroid.
I had tested all this out, with lights in front., but we got to the condo and there was nuthin- no space at all, no way to put the seamless illumination in front of the seamless, so we punted, and put it behind the seamless. The big box is actually the hallway we setup in, all white, about 12 feet deep. I figured if I could blast all 1600ws through the paper I could get something in front- which turned out to be 5.6 at 200 ISO. This accomplished a couple things, one was to soften the edges of the subject next to all that massive overexposure. In the past I have seen digital do nasty things to fine edges like hair when silo’d in front of 255,255,255. 5.6 keeps things softer.
Next we setup a small softlighter on a c stand arm in front-this was going to be the “second” setup, in other words, shoot backlight for some of the session and then add the front light for a different look. We went with f11 on the front light, which gave me almost pure white on the background with the backlight on. Something like 245, 245, 245. If you wanted a third look you could then kill the backlight and end up with middle grey on the backdrop. Ann was about 2 feet in front of the paper.
OK, WHAT STROBIST DOESN’T TELL YOU (well he’s been saying it more lately…)
So if I had brought three speedlights I would have been really stuck. NO way to blow two speedlights through the paper. Even 1600ws was barely enough. And we were boxed in with the location, literally. So the whole backlight ethereal idea goes out the door. As it was, I had two broncolor heads and a third Q-Flash in the front light. So what isn’t ideal about that? No modeling light. You can’t see your subject, and you can’t see what the light is doing. Sure, you can test it and set it, but when you are actually shooting, you don’t know. And critically, the front light has to be just right, not too high not too low. In a tight head portrait there is nothing but small moves, and every move looks different. It was great on my assistant, but not so good on her. So I 86′d that setup as we were shooting, and just went with the backlight.
So I can’t stress this enough-you can’t shoot what you can’t see. Another thing I like to do is put the camera on a tripod and use the live view to focus and compose, standing next to the camera, so I can see in 3D and in “2D” simultaneously. Like using a 4×5- there is something liberating about not looking through that 35mm viewfinder tunnel. But I didn’t do that, the hallway was only 4 feet wide, and the tripod was going to be a timewaster to move around. But in retrospect, perhaps useful. See I didn’t expect a long shoot, but actually there was no time pressure once we got started, and having some process to stumble through with the tripod might have been useful, useful to break the constant practiced media smile I was getting. Whatever works.
So what does this tell you? Well, really great work requires preparation and support. There is a lot of cost cutting going on, downsizing of gear, all this information out there about how to get good results without employing a truckload of lighting. I am here to tell you it is mostly bunk. You may think you can hang out at ISO 800 and f2.8 with a few speedlights and get what you want, and sometimes you have to, but the difference, what you see in really good work is different by an order of magnitude. You do need gobs of light, small apertures, fast recycles, bright modeling lights, some space, some preparation, and good crew. I had only a few of those things going for me. And some luck.
In a couple weeks I’ll have another back of the envelope to share where I made a crucial rookie mistake but learned something I didn’t know in the end. For now, lets just say for want of a stand…