Pushing The Limits

In the past when business was slow it was damn near impossible for me to self-motivate to shoot for my book. As I’ve aged and embraced the advantages of our digital age, I’ve fallen in love with the creative process of photography again. I look forward now to an empty pipeline in that if frees me to work on my portfolio. I have the luxurious problem now of finding time to interpret my visions.

I’ve give myself assignments like flash fill and indoor sports, available light long lens portraits, tilt-shift travel and time-lapse of just about anything. Shooting with my 5D, 5D MRKII, GoPro Hero 2’s and my iPhone, I’ve amassed gigabytes of new work. Coupled with my new found expertise in Lightroom and Premiere and I’m having a blast. I feel like a newbie!

I’ve always been one for taking a mundane subject and building a dynamic photograph from it. It’s comparatively easy to take something beautiful and make it more beautiful through the magic of photography, but I thrive the most when I photograph average subjects and turn them into something beautiful. Here’s a shot I made using my tilt-shift lens of a WWII submarine docked at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco:

This is one of the core values of my career, pushing the limits to see what can be seen. I’ve always been this way, even back in my film days when photographing hundred’s of children’s toys and clothing for Disney, Applause, Universal Studios and Paramount. Sorry, I just had to name drop here….that was fun! But I digress….

The image at the top of this post is the completed image. Here is what came out of my camera. Essentially it’s all here, it just needs a little bit of this and that:

I arrived 2.5 hours early and scouted spots where I thought I’d get the best Endeavor and Forum view at the same time. This was crucial for two reasons: it gives context in terms of location and this image is being used as a marketing piece for a very specific purpose, something I call guerrilla marketing. Here’s the scenario: thousands of people were jockeying for position with their camera phones and dslr’s, pushing and shoving, drinking hot chocolate, sitting on chairs, standing on cars and holding their children’s hands. And there I am with my MRKII, my 24mm tilt-shift, 24-105, 16-35 and my brand new 100-400. I found my spot, planted my flag and waited. When things lined up I took my shot. Several in fact because the jet meant I had a choice regarding its’ placement in the composition. I love it when a spontaneous event happens, it creates added pressure and makes it all the more exciting. You have to be present at this point in order to take advantage of the situation. If you’ve done your homework these things usually work out well. And the jet was a gift I wasn’t going to waste.

This frame had the jet in the right spot for the composition I envisioned. I didn’t care for the distortion but my 24mm tilt-shift was not wide enough so I switched to the 16-35. I’d prepared earlier with my lens choice and at this point I was just waiting for the sun to get into position.

Per my usual protocol, I applied camera and lens profile corrections. And after adjusting for tone, color, clarity and the graduated filter, I was still not crazy with the amount of distortion. So I went to the Manual adjustment portion of the Lens Corrections tab in Lightroom and pulled the vertical slider to a -72:

Brought the file into CS6 to add clouds, move the plane down a bit and generally tone site specific areas that I felt still needed work. It was only later that I gave myself permission to remove the three poles. This IMHO really pushes the image into the beautiful and dynamic category. Success!