Marcus and Marcus...

I was assigned to shoot a father/son portrait the other day for the District. It was a football playing combo. Marcus Turner (former Bruin and NFL player) and his son Marcus Turner Jr., a highschool football player at Cabrillo Highschool in Long Beach. Marcus (the elder) happens to be the coach at Cabrillo and is coaching his own son (the junior).


I came a little early to shoot some shots of the practice as supporting images to the story. The highschool I went to didn't have a football team so it was all new to me, so all I had of knowledge of football practice was from the movies. Usually, there is some new student (an outsider with a heart of gold) that is trying to fit in and gain respect from his weary teammates. Unfortunately, there was no such human drama to be witnessed at this practice. Just lots of running.


After the practice, I had to chase down Marcus and Marcus for the portrait. I could sense they were all ready to go home but I had to squeeze a bit of time from them to get some shots for the story. I tried a few of them casually walking down the field (father and son exchanging pleasantries and worldly advice) but knew I also wanted a nicely lit portrait that popped (in event of a cover story).

I quickly ushered them to the end of the field where my lighting gear was and threw up a strobe and an umbrella. Problem was, since it was still relatively bright out, I couldn't get enough light through the umbrella. So I tossed the umbrella and shot it with the bare flash, angling it down to get some nice shape on their faces and using the sun as a rim light.

All in all, not bad for a ten minute shoot.

Say it Ain't So...

Well...had a good and bad day today....Good day because I finally got the cover of The District Weekly. It's a real minimal photo of the side of Acres of Books building. They also used quite a number of photos from that session in the article. The joy, however, was a bit short lived after I saw this anti-bike invective by Steve Lowery:

I’d like to continue on the cycling tack and say a few words about cyclists: I hate them. I don’t mean the top-notch, racer types; I mean the losers who think they are top-notch, racer types and insist on riding by you on the beach pedestrian/bike path yelling “On your left! On your left!” as if pedaling faster is going to make the wife come home. And then there’s the lot that likes to pretend they have every right to share the road with the adults in the cars. Look, just because you have a beverage-holder on that thing DOES NOT MAKE IT A CAR. And what is the deal with the clothes? Look, I get that you want to be visible, but dressing up in what appears to be Liza’s laundry-day duds only makes people want to hit you more . . . unless it’s Pride Week in which case You go, girl!

I've met Steve and he's a nice guy and I know this part of the magazine is meant to wind some people up, but it was still a bit irksome. So, I shot off this letter to the editors.

Dear Editors,
I have to say I was a bit mortified by Steve Lowery's comments regarding cyclists in the last issue's Vector Control especially when he wrote that he "hates them." There are lots of things to hate in Long Beach, like the Minute Men screaming in front of St. Lukes, the breakwater, the RDA, but cyclists? Those are words that I would expect from a yahoo in a pickup truck or the Traffic Engineer's office.

I can understand the disdain for the Tour of California, it was a lot of sizzle and no steak, but don't take it out on people that are just trying to do something good. I ride because I enjoy it, because it is good for the environment and because I have a brother in Iraq. When I'm on the street I'm not trying to be a car, I'm simply being a vehicle. As a vehicle I have the full and legal right (CVC 21202) to occupy the traffic lane (not the "car" lane) and to even take up the entire lane if I feel that it is necessary for my safety.

It's hard enough to ride day in and day out in traffic with people who would rather play with their iPhones than pass me safely on the street. I don't need another publication, especially The District, which I held in high regard, fueling the anger and ignorance against cyclists.

In a way Steve Lowery is right, Long Beach cyclists, the real ones that ride day in and day out not the "top-notch racer types", were the biggest losers from this whole embarrassing affair. Many biking advocates were bandied around city council meetings and planning meetings to demonstrate just how bike friendly Long Beach is. We were promised a Bicycle Action Team, the city staff seemed more than willing to try to make Long Beach the bike friendliest city in the US, for a few brief weeks we felt that we were finally being heard.

Of course, after all the bleachers were taken down and the lycra was neatly put away so were any intentions of carrying out the Bicycle Master Plan.

Just a little compositing...

Well, still bummed about my lost memory cards. I was going to spend the money on a new tent for the tour, but that will have to wait. No cards. Can't shoot.

I can't really do much about the lost images, but I can work with what I have. I reworked one of the images from the shoot. The sky was totally blown out if I adjusted the exposure for the subject. Luckily, there was enough info in the RAW file that I could darken the top part of the image and bring the barbed wire and sky into better view. I think it definitely adds to the image to have that ominous barbed wire running across the frame.

Photography is Improvisation...

Plan but don't over plan.

Have a vision of the final image, but be willing to let go of it.

This is usually the mantra going on in my head as a I pedal to a job. Most of my assignments require me to shoot in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of information. Most of the time I have no idea what my subject will look like, what the environment will look like, if the light is good or bad, if my subject is willing or ornery.

At first I found this extremely stressful. I would stay up the night before and storyboard, or dream up different approaches and contingency plans, all of which I either forgot or went out the window once I got to the location.

Needless to say, I've learned to deal with it. I simply accept things won't be perfect, that there will be constraints, but within those constraints is my arena.



This assignment today was a good example. I had talked to the PR person for the two DJs and had anticipated being able to shoot inside the club. When I arrived it was in full swing and there was no way I could set up in there. Luckily, the club had a foyer with a big green wall. Unfortunately, there was a whole bunch of stuff in front of it. So the first fifteen minutes was moving stuff away from the wall and then dragging a speaker from the other side of the room into the frame.

Also, there was a lot of outside ambient light coming in, which wasn't helping the picutre. So I had to dial down to my lowest ISO and my hightest flash synch speed so I could make my strobes the only light source. But to do that, I had to pump the strobes up to almost full and bring them in really tight, giving me a limited number of shots and slow recycle times.

It's organized chaos.

I feel most alive when I'm shooting, it's as if everything in my head turns on and I'm observing and judging variables all at once to create the picture. It's turning the survival instinct into art.

Somewhere I've Never Been

Today's Adventure

Out on assignment today for the District. They're sending me to Santa Fe Springs. It sounds far. Santa Fe ( I think, New Mexico?) Springs (I think, there's nothing in LB even remotely pastoral). I found the location on Google Maps and although it was further than average (20 miles one way, 40 miles round trip), it was atleast located near the San Gabriel river trail.

I've never been that far on the San Gabriel, nor have I ever even heard of Santa Fe Springs, so it will be an adventure. I always think of Diane Arbus' statement in her Aperture monograph.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been. For me there's something about just going into somebody else's house. When it comes time to go, if I have to take a bus to somewhere or if I have to take a cab uptown, it's like I've got a blind date. It's always seemed something like that to me. And sometimes I have a sinking feeling of, Oh God it's time and I really don't want to go. And then, once I'm on my way, something terrific takes over about the sort of queasiness of it and how there's absolutely no method for control.

I get the same mixture of queasiness and fear, but the prospect of something new and different always pushes me and my bike out the door.