I just learned that MOVING PHOTOGRAPH was the winner of the Living Art contest. A huge thanks to Alexx Henry, first for having the generosity to a hold a contest, and then for picking me. I am honored. Hearing Alexx and the other speakers at the Collision Conference changed the direction of my career. I can not express how lucky I was to be there. There is no way I would be working in motion today if not for having attended. By him having the contest, it really put a fire under me to make something special, and to get it out the door quickly. Thank you thank you thank you Alexx.

“David’s entry offered something unique that we wouldn’t get as a still or as traditional video. As a living portrait, it manages to elicit a reaction that evolves with the progression of the piece. Good stuff, David.”

The edit was done in Final Cut. By stacking the clips in the time line one on top of each other, and then using the Motion tab-Crop and animating it with key frames, I was able to get more than one dog in the frame. The time line ended up looking like a huge V, all right crops going down, then back up with all left crops. We did a bit of speed changing using Modify-Speed change, but not that much. Each clip had to be graded separately in Colorista for intensity and contrast, however we left the color alone. There are 3 sound tracks, the speaker, a close up of a dog panting, and then a track of the overall kennel noise. I would enjoy any comments or questions anyone may have.

This is my assistant Robert with the doorway dolly getting the timing of the move dialed in. I can’t reveal yet what we were shooting, as it has yet to be posted and published by the magazine, however I can tell you this was one of the most personally moving stories I have ever done- but more on that when I can show you the results.

The lens is a 70-200 f4IS lens, set at f8-f16, depending on the color of the subject. I like that lens quite a bit. Sharp, fast focusing in autofocus mode, clearly not the case here, and light weight. We initially had a 2 stop ND on the lens, but decided we wanted the depth of field. The lights, which are out of frame are 1k, 650k and 150k tungsten frensels. There is a bit of fill coming from the light panel mounted on camera. Once we got going, we took the Marshal off the camera cheese plate and mounted it to the dolly. We found that balanced the camera better on the fluid head. One of the very tricky things on this set up, is that because we had very little room to work in, the camera is as close to the back wall as possible. Thus, all the focusing and framing are done in the Marshal, but the camera moves get reversed, which is a bit weird. I had wanted to do a pan plus a dolly move, but there no way I was going to attempt that from a reversed monitor.

When we were actually shooting, I walked with the dolly facing the subject and glanced at the monitor to check composition. We tried having me sit on the dolly and view the monitor, but we found that because I am pretty animated when working, the dolly shook, and thus the image was not stable.

We chose the doorway dolly, rather than lay track purely as a time savings. The floor was reasonably flat, of course the one dip was right in the middle of the dolly move, but rather than deal with track and all that ensues, we went with the simpler method. My feeling was that if I only had 6 hours to get footage, I would rather be spending it on running the camera than messing with dolly track. Whatever bump we hit seems to have been handled by the IS lens.

The subjects we were shooting were a bit twitchy, yea just a bit, so that focusing on the eyes became a real challange. We did some with the focus enhancement in the Marshal, but decided the safest way was with the 5x magnifier in the 5DII.

shutter 1/60
white balance 3300 as read from a hand held color meter
asa 650

Keep checking the blog, I should be able to post footage next week. If anyone has any questions please let me know, I would be happy to share.

This was one of the best feeling jobs I have done in years. Time Magazine was great about giving me all the support I could ask for. Feel great about the results, feel great about the dogs, feel great about the people I was working with. Here is the story of how these pictures came to be.

I received a call from Kira Pollack, photo editor at Time, whom I had often worked with when she was at The New York Times Magazine. She is one of the great ones, as anyone who comes out of the great Kathy Ryan photo dept. is. Kira says she has an interesting job and could I come in to talk about it. Rescued Fighting Dogs in St Louis, and the kicker, they need 75 portraits. Wow, a lot of pictures. My assistant and I immediately start doing light tests and background color tests on my Chihuahua, Nina. There were several issues to consider: What sort of background/lighting is going to look good on a grid of 75 dogs? The dogs being all different colors, what sort of lighting should we use? Having a potentially very dynamic subject, how should we light this so that motion is frozen and the light can be easily moved about to follow the dog? Most importantly, how can I show them with dignity? How can I bring their character into the photo?

The solution we came up with was a middle grey paper background. I had considered painting a wall and floor, fabric, or wood, but I figured we could get middle grey paper in St Louis, and if the dogs wreck it, we can pull down another section, and we wouldn’t be spending 1 entire day set building or set painting. A recent consideration to all travel jobs is the budget for the baggage. If it costs 50$ each way for a bag, and $100 each way for a heavy bag, times 5 bags, we are better off renting the gear on location. In St Louis, there is no way to get a Pro 7 pack. But we could get Dynalight 1000x packs, which I had last used 15 years ago. The issue for me was the flash duration, slow 1/600 sec and I knew we would be dealing with some active animals. Our solution was to use the Dynalights for some of the light, but the main light would come from a handheld overhead Canon 580EX attached to a Quantum and a Pocket Wizard that my assistant would hold in his hand and be able to harmonize with the dogs movement. The whole family of these Canon/ NIkon flashes emit their flash at super fast durations, and at a slightly cooler color temp than the studio flashes. I often use the pocket wizard/canon recipe outside with some gel when I need a portable backlit sun. Works great. As I read in Rob’s blog last week, ” A photographers job is problem solving” Exactly!

The first morning a problem came up. We only had one Quantum-580 EX setup. Dumb, but that is what super tight production budgets do. Something malfunctioned in the cord to EX connection and we had to have someone make a run to a local shop where thank god they had another exact setup. I have no excuse for why we didn’t dupe that set up, but we didn’t want to spend the extra $50/day. Everything else in my kit I have covered in duplicate as a minimum. Oh, well. Lost 2 very tense hours, but once we got the hand held synching properly we were on a roll. Dog moves right, Robert my assistant leans right. White dog, raise the light, black dog bring the light closer. Worked great.

I like using the 1DSIII for stills in studio. Very fast auto focus, solid dependable camera. I had it at 1/200 sec, f8-f16. For most of the shots we used a 70-200f4. I love that lens, excellent auto focus, and super sharp. When you have a revved up pit bull as a subject, it is all about speed of focus acquisition. Let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer.

I was told about this a month ago at a meeting at Time Inc and now I can publish it. Expect Conde Nast to make a similar interface for all their magazines. This is why if you are a photographer and you are not doing motion, you are on the soon to be extinct list. Of course, if Apple or whoever brings this out at $2,000 a unit, that is another story. But if they can bring it out in the $500 range, this will be a game changer. Full motion content, full motion ads. What do you think is going to happen to the web sites. My guess is they are going to cut them back, if not turn them off for non paying customers. I expect an iTunes sort of deal for the tablet subscriptions. Thrilling to be alive to see all this happen around us.

The idea here was sort of a play on words, how moving can I make a photograph? I hired an actress who could cry on command, which is a talent that absolutely mystifies me. I wanted her to go through a range of emotion from happy to sad, but for reasons that became clear once we started shooting, it is impossible to go quickly from happy to sad, but rather easy to go from sad to happy. I guess if one is a complete sociopath ……. but then that would also be problematic. So I let her get into severe sadness, which took her about 2 minutes, then had her go to happy. We reversed the direction in Final Cut, which if you look at the blinks, you will notice that something is up. I rather like it, an extra added unsettling bit. The shot was done with a 90TS with the focus on the eyes. My experience is that in motion work, many lenses work great that I would never dream of using in stills work for seeming to gimmicky. The entire shooting process lasted about 2 hours, and about 15 takes, after which everyone on set was exhausted. It is really quite powerful to cause then witness up close emotions like this.

The light is a 4 tube dim-able Kino to the right and a dimmed Starlight to the left. The lights in the background are the kitchen fluorescence. ASA 640, 60sec, f 4, 5000k.

Gear:
Canon 5D II set at ASA 600
90 mm ST lens
3 stop BW ND filter
Manfrotto 3051 tripod w/503 fluid head
Kino Flo 4 bulb w/gel
Marshall V-LCD-70P-HDMI monitor hot shoe mounted
StarLites 1000w on dimmers
Mac G5
Glyph Raid
Final Cut Studio
Compressor
Sorrenson Squeeze