In today’s blog, I will be discussing two of my favorite shoots from the past year from start to finish. They showcase my love for fun and unique subjects, working on-location, and using Photoshop to bring elements of a photoshoot together to create a strong final image.

SWAT TEAM SHOOT:
In the Spring of 2008, the Howard County (Maryland) Police Department hired me to shoot a variety of promotional and recruiting material. I photographed patrol vehicles, K9 units, bicycle officers, community relations, etc. Although, the SWAT team portion of the job was by far my favorite. Maybe I just watched too many action movies with my big brother growing up.

We started the day in an abandoned high school near Baltimore, Maryland. They were running training exercises pretending to rescue hostage victims from terrorists. I took a lot of natural light shots with my Canon 1Ds Mk2 body and my trusty Canon 16-35 2.8L lens. Due to the low light scenarios, I shot at 1000iso at f/2.8 and very slow shutter speeds (around 1/10 of a second). I had to use something I learned from living on tour buses and shooting thousands of photos of bands in low-light back rooms and concert venues, control your breathing and use any object (wall, pillar, an assistant’s back) as a makeshift tripod when you can’t bring one with you.

Next, we moved outside to do a set-up portrait of SWAT team members in action with their armored assault vehicle and their new Bell 407 pursuit helicopter. Boy were the neighbors concerned to see a police helicopter hovering 20 feet off the ground next to the old high school and 7 SWAT guys with large guns pointed at a guy with a camera.

The biggest issue we faced with this photo was the wind produced by a low-flying helicopter; thus, using my favorite Photoflex Extra Large LiteDomes were out of the question. In fact it was so windy, I had to have 4 police officers volunteer to hold my lights with only 7′ reflectors attached to make sure they didn’t blow away. Trust me when I tell you that I was eating bits of gravel for a week after that shoot.

Swat Team Photoshoot from Douglas Sonders on Vimeo

As you will see in the video, I used 3 White Lightning X1600 strobes (660/165 true Ws, 1600/400 effective Ws) set to 3/4 power with 7′ silver reflectors attached as fill to the left and right of the SWAT team, and a White Lighting X3200 strobe (1320/330 true Ws, 3200/800 effective Ws) with a 7′ silver reflector set to 3/4 power to be used as the main light. I set it a little higher than my subjects and pointed it down to give them a dramatic overhead light. I wanted to shoot with enough light power that I could shoot at 1/160 at f/18 at 100iso, thus, turning a bright sunny day into a moody dusk shot.I used a police radio to have the helicopter position itself in the frame. The shoot itself took only 15 minutes. Any longer and I believe we would have died from rocks to the head from the low-flying Bell 407.As for on-site power, I used 2 Innovatronix Tronix Explorer battery packs (a great value for the dollar) and my SUV, which I converted into a 2000 watt sine wave power inverter, but that’s an entirely different blog for another day.

I couldn’t contain my anticipation to sit down the computer and begin editing. Here are the initial steps I made when I did my post-production:
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m off to Hartford, Connecticut today to teach my Photoshop CS3 Power Tour tomorrow, but until then, here’s some tasty Monday News Nuggets (now with more antioxidants and fiber):

• I came up with a great idea for a t-shirt that’s a play on the popular bumper stickers and shirts worn by skateboaders, which reads “Skateboading is not a crime.” You can find these online all over, so I just had to mock-up one for us tripod-using photographers just for fun (UPDATE: I mentioned this morning that had thought of setting up a CafePress.com site where you could actually buy the real shirt, but then I thought….ya know, I should probably get back to writing my book. Luckily, one of my readers, Rob Jones, took the challenge and created the shirt design, and it’s now available at CafePress.com [here's the direct link]. He priced it at Cafe’s base price, so he’s not making any money off the deal [though Cafe is making a killing]. Anyway, I just ordered mine! Thanks Rob for making this available to tripod terrorists everywhere!).
• Also, I can see from some of the reader comments posted last week to my Tripod Terror Alert, that some folks may have thought I was actually upset by the encounter, but I totally was not. Surprised? Yes. Perplexed? Absolutely. Mad? Not at all. I didn’t complain to the hotel, or get rude with the guard, ask for his supervisor, etc.., I just thought it was an interesting commentary on our times (and people’s reaction to those menacing tripods), and I just wanted to share it with you guys. In fact, once the elevator doors closed, the first thing I said to Matt and RC was, “This is SO going on my blog.”
• One of my readers posted a comment with a plug for his blog, ProPhotoLife.com, so I went and checked it out, and it’s pretty darn good. Lots of good teaching, tutorials, and other stuff worth checking out (so, why dontcha check it out). Here’s the link.
• I finagled my kids into going to our studio this past week for a secret photo shoot as a surprise for my wife for Mother’s Day. Getting a toddler and a preteen to pose for portrait shoot is…well…it was tricky (to say the least), and I knew I would only get this one shot at it. That’s when I had a “Moment of truth.” It hit when I was reaching in my camera bag to choose a memory card. I opened my card case where I saw three different brands of high-speed cards to choose from, but at that moment Lou Schmidt’s phrase from last Thursday, “zero in-field failures” starting going through my head, and I grabbed a Hoodman RAW card. There was no way I could take a chance of losing these shots, and in the past I’ve been right there when friends, other pro photographers, and even one of my Santa Fe Workshop students saw one of their memory cards go bad, and they lost all their shots forever. Knowing that the RAWs have never failed, I immediately grabbed a RAW card. Now I get it. (By the way, my wife absolutely loved the shots, but I’m not sure she even noticed the lighting, or composition, or background, or anything else, but just for this once—I didn’t care).
• Digital Photography School did a piece called “9 Hot Photoshop Books” where the author was asked by a friend to recommend some Photoshop books, and so he asked 10 of his photography buddies which books they’d recommend. I was honored to learn that three of my books made their list. Thank you guys! (Check out their full list of recommendations right here.)

That’s it for today, folks. I hope to meet some of you in person up in Hartford tomorrow at my seminar—make sure you come up and say “hi” if you read the blog. Here’s wishing you the kind of Monday that feels like a Friday!

Just when you think the intense fear of tripod’s has gone as far as it can go, this happens: Matt, RC, and I went for an early morning shoot at Grand Central Station yesterday, and each of us carried that most-hated of photographic accessory; the dreaded tripod. We had a special shooting permit to use tripods in the station (more on this later this week), but it was what happened after the shoot that took things to a new level.

After the shoot, we came back to our hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, to put up our gear so I could head over to B&H Photo for my class at 10:00 am. As we headed into the elevator to go up to our rooms, a uniformed security guard came rushing over and stopped us. He wanted to know where we were going, because after all, we were carrying (wait for it….wait for it) TRIPODS! I shook my head in disbelief and said, “We’re going to our rooms.”

I reached into my pocket to take out my room key to prove we were hotel guests, but I guess we had that really annoyed look that only real hotel guests get when they’re denied access to their rooms, because he said, “Oh, OK” and let us go.

The elevator doors closed, and we’re just standing there looking at each other dumbfounded.

Now, believe me, because this is New York, I understand and respect the need for vigilant security, but was there a tri-pod related terrorist attack that I’m not aware of, that has created this “they’ve got a tripod—they must be up to no good” air that surrounds the city?

Seriously, how have tripods gone from simple stands that hold your camera steady, to terrorist-related devices that raise suspicion and get you stopped by hotel security while simply returning to your room? And we weren’t carrying huge industrial tripods; I had my tiny Gitzo traveler. It’s not as big as an umbrella, yet it draws security like I’m hoisting a grenade launcher.

Is there anything we can do, or is this just the way it’s going to be? Arrrrggghhhh!