Aug 10, 2012 | Field Reports
I’ve had a number of folks email and ask if I’ve found a remote method for starting video capture with the D4 / D800. What I do is use the Pocket Wizard III and it works great! Is there something special you have to do to make this work? The only trick is on the D4 / D800, set Custom Setting g4 to Record movies. When you do that, when the D4/D800 is in Movie Mode (lever on the back of the camera) the shutter release starts and stop the video recording. With this, you partially depress the Test Button on the Pocket Wizard, the camera will focus, depress fully and the recording begins. To stop, depress the Test button again. I have added CS g4 to My Menu because I use it so much. Hope that helps.
Aug 10, 2012 | Field Reports
As photographers, we have to have some loyalties, the first no matter what I firmly believe is to ourselves. That photograph is our expression of so much we know as creatives and humans. Another loyalty is to the subject and lastly to the story. It’s these loyalties that push us each time we click. So after getting some of the ground work images in the can, it was time to focus in on the mission, telling the story of where Meb lives and loves to train.
The Eastern Sierra has many iconic locations known around the globe like Death Valley and Mt Whitney and the ghost town Bodie. It has even more iconic locations known just to Californians and one of those is the Green Church. It’s been around since dirt first fell here and had been the focus of many, many events in history. It’s also where many park before taking off on their workout on the road. Many think it’s still an active church because of all the cars seemingly always parked there. Well we finished our “road” work and drove back to the Green Church to bring the shoot back to its purpose, Meb’s home in Mammoth. Now in this photo, while Meb and we know it’s the Green Church, it looks like just a green wall to anyone else.
To at least tell the story that it’s a church, I needed to include the steeple (open the doors you see the …). So shooting with the D4 and 200-400VR2 zoomed to 400mm (Sharon filling in Meb’s right side with Lastolite TriGrip with softgold), I walked the side of the road where I could get just Meb and the Steeple and not the rest of the “junk” that is around the Green Church. Meb didn’t have to run any great distance because as it turned out, we only had two strides where I had just the right background. Now if I didn’t write all of this story, you wouldn’t understand why the last picture here is the photo we were going for. So one its own, the photo doesn’t tell the story without a caption but thank goodness, that wasn’t why we took this photo. It wasn’t meant to stand alone but be part of a greater story. But what does bring a smile to my heart was Meb’s big smile when he saw the photograph because he’s the client, he was who the photo was being made for. So while being loyal to my concepts and skills as a photographer, I was able to stay loyal to the subject and the story. That’s make the photograph successful. But were these the photographs that really were on my mind for this assignment? mtc.
Aug 9, 2012 | Field Reports
With the road portraits done, we started to work on some road work. Sharon & I figured pretty quick we weren’t going to run and keep up with Meb so the reflector was out. His first “run” up the center line proved that thought right. Since the sun was going down and the clouds were building, the light had mellowed some so I just went with basic front lighting. I grabbed the D4 and 200-400VR2, sat down on the center line and had Meb Job up to the lens. In the composite of the stills below, you can see how far Meb was from me when he started (shot at 400mm) and in a few strides, he was on top of me. The first time it was so fast I just laughed. What was I thinking, I wasn’t going to have much time to shoot.
The D4 was on CH and it did a killer job! Using my typical center AF sensor technique, I placed it on Meb’s chest, kept the center line dead center and just had Meb run a couple of sets up the road. Neither Meb nor the D4 missed a step and luckily, we had no road traffic to interrupt us. This still you see above, we printed up 50 5×7 copies and sent along with Meb. He has so many fans and Meb is such a nice guy, thought he would enjoy handing them out. When we gave them to him the evening before we left, he gave us that Mab smile and said holding up one of the prints, “Hope this gets me a first class upgrade.” I hope it did, he’s a first class human being!
Aug 8, 2012 | Field Reports
Meb doesn’t train just on mountain trails. We have a road here in the Eastern Sierra which at times is a highway filled with hundreds training by either running or biking. Meb has been running on the road since his days at UCLA. So it was only natural we continue on with the project by shooting down on the flats.
At Meb’s feet is a mark where he starts his training run. It’s a top a rise in the highway and was a natural place for the portrait. The funny thing, I had scouted it prior to this day and picked this spot without knowing it was his start. Meb does A LOT of road work coming up on so many miles he would have circled the earth four times! I wanted the first shot to look like he owned the road. Wearing what he’ll be running in on the 12th, we placed him on the center line. This puts the light over his left shoulder so to light up his right side, used a simple Lastolite TriGrip with softgold. I shot D4 with 200-400VR2 at about 350mm. Other than dodging cars, we started off with a simple shot.
The road has produced many champions over the decades. One is our son Jake who trained there during the summer for his winter sport cross country skiing. Our oldest son Brent did his dry land training down on the flats as well and one occasion, dad would go down and do his best to stay alive trying to keep up with them for a hundred yards. Just working out on the road doesn’t guarantee results I can report firsthand. mtc.
Aug 7, 2012 | Field Reports
While the basic portrait was OK, the story is Meb runs these mountain trails to train for the London Olympic Marathon. The photograph has to say this without a caption. Still shooting with SB-900 powered by SD-9, D4, 70-200VR2, we had to put Meb in motion (not hard to do). The SB-900 was on a pole about a foot out of the picture. There was a spot on the ground, a drop of light which was the mark for where I was going to focus and where the light would be at the angle as you see it in the photograph. All we had to do was put Meb in motion and go click. Pretty simple stuff.
I received a lot of emails asking about the exposure, like, “How’d you do that?” I was torn about how to do it and what solved my dilemma was staying true to the client. How did Meb see the forest he trains in daily? It would have been easy to do a more “landscape” type forest scene shooting at a different hour with no light on the forest floor, much more mellow, landscapie look. But that’s not when Meb trains. It might have been more appealing to the masses, but not an accurate telling of the story. So I went with the “nasty” light version here to stay true to the goal, tell the story of Meb’s training on these mountain trails. I dialed in minus 2 in the D4 and with CSe4, simply left the SB-900 at 0. Wide angle dome was attached and a 1/4 CTO used to warm up the light. The D4 AF was set to d21 so all I had to do is keep Meb dead center in the frame, count his pace as he ran, look at the spot on the ground and shoot when both feet were off the ground.
The short answer then is, used technology with the story to be told to make the click. We did the standing portrait first to get him comfortable with me (he is not camera shy) and for me to zero in on the final look I wanted for the exposure. Then a couple runs down the trail and we were out of there. It all took less than 10min. Meb had to get to his ice bath so the clock was ticking. mtc
Aug 7, 2012 | Field Reports
We finally were able to get the current issue in the mail, it was a painful process this time but we made it. It turned out looking great so glad it’s in route to you. Another back issue of the BT Journal for the iPad is in the works for release.
