Reflecting on enterprise photos...

A good portion of my job consists of enterprise photography. For those of you who don't know what that is, here is a detailed description. I drive around town looking for something interesting to photograph.

And on some days it can be the toughest thing I do. Over the years I have come up with a process to guarantee a good enterprise photo. I cross my fingers and pray. Okay, so it doesn't work EVERY time, but it is the best thing I have been able to come up with after 20 years of searching for the ultimate enterprise photo.

Some days I find what I am looking for in the first 5 minutes of looking. Other times I may drive 50-60 miles before I find a good subject (and sometimes my prey eludes me completely) I have found that one of the true challenges in finding an enterprise photo is being able to see familiar subjects in a unique way.
On one recent afternoon I was out on the hunt for an enterprise image when I stopped by the local skatepark. The park has been the subject of dozens of enterprise photos. So I needed to try to find a way to look at skateboarding that was different from all the other times I had photographed local riders. Luckily it had rained the day before and left a bit of a pond in the middle of the skatepark.

The riders were complaining about the water, but I was lovin' it. As I walked around the park, I watched several skateboarders lose control of their boards causing them to roll through pond. And it is a good thing that my camera isn't set up to record an audio track because the things that came out of some of these kids mouths would make a sailor cringe!

After looking at the pond from several different angles I finally came up with one that worked. It required that I squat down to get the photo. This was a sketchy move for me as every time I do something like this I risk not being able to stand back up! Nothing like being the age-ed photographer surrounded by skateboarding teenagers who wonder what the hell you are doing...LOL.

I did manage to get one or two images in focus without having to call fire rescue to help me up. Maybe next time I will rent an airplane and shoot an aerial shot. Anyone have a parachute I can borrow?

Using his head

When local professional sports teams make it to the big game people try to come up with unique ways to show their support for the team. I remember the guy who painted the huge Bronco head in the middle of his street the last time the Denver Broncos were in the Super Bowl. And there were the crazy haircuts, the face painting along with all the flags and jerseys.

But before yesterday I hadn't seen a temporary tattoo emblazoned on a man's shaved head with dry-erase markers. I have no dout that it had been done before and that fans have done and will do many crazier things to show their loyalty to their favorite team. What made this one interesting was that the big fan wasn't the guy with the art on his head. It was the woman who put it there.

"I was just sitting there waiting for my coffee to cool off when she did it." he said. Personally I would say that musta been one smokin' hot cup of coffee!I thought about how I would shoot a portrait of a guy with a baseball logo on his head as I drove over to the hospital where the subject works. I figured I would shoot the photo using a mirror.

That way I would be able to show the logo on the back of his head and his face at the same time. I wanted the portrait's lighting to look as natural as possible so I placed one sb-800 on a lightstand, pointed it at the ceiling of the nearest bathroom where I had him sit and look at his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

I have to say (and I said it to him) that it almost looked like he was sitting at one of those visitor windows at the county jail. I wonder if there is a law against being assaulted with dry-erase markers.

Hunka, hunka, burnin' forest

Last week at this time I was resting-up after the first day of covering a fairly small wildlands fire near Rye, Colorado. I have to admit that I enjoy covering wildfires. I have covered several fires over the years. I have even gone through the basic wildlands firefighter training and held a "red card" for several years.

I can honestly say that if I wasn't a photographer I honestly believe that I would be a wildlands firefighter. There is just something about being in the forest and doing that kind of work. I find it very exhilarating and there is just something about the smell of a wildlands fire.

(It may sound weird, but if you were ever a wildlands firefighter you would understand.)

The Colorado fire season was nearly non-existent this past summer. There had been a great deal of spring and early summer moisture this year thus keeping the fire danger rather low until now.

A warm, dry, and windy fall has given a boost to the fire danger this past month. And it came into play last week. A rancher was out cutting hay when a spark from the farm machinery ignited the dry hay and grass. The fire quickly spread to some nearby forested property despite the efforts of the farmer to douse the flames.

Fire crews moved in quickly as law enforcement officials evacuated nearby schools and residents. The decision was made that attacking the fire from the air was the way to get a handle on the fire as quickly as possible.A helicopter was dispatched to drop 2,500 gallons of water on the fire each time it flew over. That certainly slowed the fire as well as the small tanker that was called on to drop fire retardant between the fire and a nearby home. I managed to get a few opportunities to shoot the helicopter before dropping my cell phone in the brush and spending the next 20 minutes crawling around looking for it hoping I'd find it before it got dark. I did. (But that is also why I didn't get any images of the small taker doing the slurry drops, but don't tell anyone okay?)


The only significant loss in the fire was this front-end loader. It was parked among the trees that were burning on what is called 'Rattlesnake Hill'.

Fire crews spend the next day doing what these two firefighters are doing, putting out hotspots.This is tough work and probably the part of fighting a fire that is the least popular, but the most necessary. No one wants to see a fire get a second chance to get out of control after it has been contained once.

My 'Nomex', helmet, boots, and fire shelter are all back in my bag ready for the next fire. I doubt that there will be much before next May or June, but fire doesn't stick to the calendar and could make an appearance anytime if the conditions are right.

If that happens and there is a fire in them-thar hills I will be happy to go and cover another hunka, hunka, burnin' forest.

In a bit of a fog...

Each year we have two big high school rivalry football games. For each of these games we do a photo illustration as part of the preview prior to the game. This year I figured I would make use of one of the $20 fog machines available at Target.

I am the first to admit that I have absolutely no experience with fog machines. I discovered a few things. First of all I can tell you that the fog not only smells bad, but you can also taste it in the air and it isn't a good thing.I also discovered that it can be difficult to control just exactly where the fog produced by the $20 machines goes, especially in a well-ventilated studio.

Eventually with the help of one of the other staff photographers I managed to get a photo for the preview. I don't think I could have managed to do it without his help. He manually moved the machine around to distribute the fog as evenly as possible and get as much coverage as possible before it would disperse and be sucked out through the air vents in the studio.

I am just glad that there wasn't a smoke detector in there linked to the sprinkler system. Just what I would need, to have the sprinklers activated while shooting a football preview photo.

I lit the photo with a whitelightning as the backlight and two snooted sb-800s directed a the faces of the football players. I learned from a 'Strobist' post that Pingles potato chip cans can make great snoots, and they do. I cut off the bottoms, cover it in gaffer's tape (black) and cut an opening in the lid big enough to insert the strobe head before lining the opening with more gaffer's tape. The work great as long as they aren't containers that had the flavored chips in them. Then you get snoots with a nice aroma.

All in all I think it worked out. I can always find ways to make one of my images better and this was no exception. Live and learn.

I may have to spend some more time practicing with the fog machine. That is if it doesn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Gettin' a little snooty...

Here are a couple of environmental portraits that I recently made using two SB-800s fired with Pocket Wizards. In each of the images one of the two strobes was attached to a snoot to direct the light.

The first photo is of a local artist who's effervescent personality really came through in the image. She was outgoing and willing to be herself even though I was pointing my camera at her. I love subjects like her!

We arranged her living room studio in such a way as to have her most recent painting as a background. I then positioned my painter in front of the easel with an SB-800 positioned to fire through a translucent light panel to her right. I then had my second strobe (and snoot) over her left shoulder to give my subject some separation from the background.

When I light a portrait I often try to blend existing light and the light I am producing with the SB-800s. In this case there was some light coming into the frame from camera right thanks to a large "picture" window. It is my goal to make photos where the lighting is almost seamless so as to not call attention to the lighting but rather the subject. I believe that I was more successful doing this in my second image.

The second image was an assignment to photograph the director of the local community college small business development organization.
She has a rather small office with a couple of windows to the outside. I placed two SB-800s in her office. One bounced into an umbrella to the subject's left while the second strobe (snoot attached) was placed atop a cabinet over her right shoulder to provide some separation from the background.Her office was so small that I had to actually step out of the office to be able to use the lens that I wanted to use.


The image was made during an actual interview. I just set up the light and told my subject to do her best to ignore me and go ahead with her meeting. She did a remarkable job of ignoring me and giving me a great opportunity to make the photo that I needed to make.

Both images were made with a Nikon D2Xs, the first was shot with a 17-55mm f2.8 and the second was made with a 70-200mm f2.8

I have come to realize that it can be a good thing to be a little snooty.

You're not going to believe this...

And I thought I had seen nearly everything...
apparently not.

I was assigned to shoot the local university's home volleyball game against an instate rival. The match was played at a local high school as the fieldhouse at the school is being renovated. I used two Nikon SB-800s to cross-light the net. I proceeded to shoot the first two games of the match. Then I packed up my gear and went back to the office to submit a photo for the next days paper.

I selected a photo that I thought told the story (see below). I started to work it in photoshop when something in the photo caught my attention. I realized that there was no way this image was going to get into the paper. The reason is that the woman volleyball player had decided to pen a message on the tape that she had put on the joints of her fingers. (On her right hand it says F-U-C-K and on her left I-T.)

I don't think that anyone else in the entire gym saw what I saw after closer inspection of the image. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you should be able to read the message that this young woman was sharing with me. While I think the idea of putting messages on the tape on your hands is novel, I think that a NCCA athlete may want to reconsider just what she puts there.


I brought the photo to the attention of the editor here at the paper and he notified the school and the reply that filtered down to me was that this would be taken care of, and it wouldn't happen again.

To be totally honest, I don't really care what these kids do and I even think that it is pretty funny, but when it means that I can't shoot certain athletes because of the messages that they write on themselves, then I will speak up.

I have no doubt that I will continue to be surprised by the things people will do. I think that they call that job security.