Travels
Back in Sweden, location scouting today for a music video project we are shooting next week.
Laura and Sara chose to stay in sunny Florida this week, letting me plow through the snow near the arctic circle solo.
This is going to be very interesting. Keeping the cameras warm enough for the batteries to function properly will be a major challenge. Keeping me warm enough to function the cameras even more so.
Twice in the last three weeks Sports Illustrated has sent me to Lincoln cover games at Memorial Stadium.
As a child growing up in rural western Nebraska my earth revolved around Cornhusker football.
When the Huskers broke lose for 24 unanswered points in the first quarter of the game against mighty Mizzou the balloons flew, and the nation's best fans soared.
Friday I was walking through the Zurich Airport. As is always my custom I glanced up at the list of departing flights and started rapidly making a mental list of the places I still want to visit for the first time. This time I realized strongly what I of course knew but had not before put a firm face on--that list of destinations is shrinking quickly. And I remembered again just how lucky I have been. I have a great job.
August brought home what I really love about working in the USA. The simple, sweet and almost naive. Nothing fancy, just good solid old photojournalism and storytelling.
A frog jumping competition in Valley City for Sports Illustrated. It was featured on SI.com and in the iPad edition of the magazine as a leading off and a multimedia.
A week teaching multimedia and hanging with friends like Seth Gitner on Minnesota's Border Lakes for Apple.
The NFL Hall of Fame game in Canton, OH for Sports Illustrated.
Shooting a music video of Bluegrass Legend Ricky Skaggs from the Grand Ole Opry with our friends from Nikon--Bill Pekala, Mark Suban and Bill Fortney
The Tom Watson Watermelon Festival in Thomson, GA which got wonderful display on the iPad edition of Sports Illustrated, and also on SI.com. Again an iPad leading off and a multimedia in the magazine.
Sports Illustrated sent us to Georgetown, KY to spend some time with Cincinatti Bengals defensive lineman Tank Johnson. Incredible access and cooperation. It was an epic shoot. You can see it on SI.com, and in the iPad edition of the magazine.
We closed out August with time in Los Angeles and Dallas teaching and making multimedias.
In Dallas, we shot a BMX race that SI.com and SIKids.com both posted.
After five weeks enjoying part of an American summer, we are back in Europe. Watching the sun roll up over the Alps, the river valleys thick with fog, knowing that very shortly I would be enjoying a delicious continental breakfast filled my entire being with goodness.
Laura and I are in Switzerland shooting and teaching this week.
Last week we were in Italy. We spent time in Florence, Bassano del Grappa and Siena. One of the world's greatest sporting events takes place in Siena - Il Palio. Il Palio takes place twice each year, once in July and once in August, and its origins date back to Medieval times.
The show is incredible. The post parade is two and one half hours of traditional medieval uniform and song. It is truly a site to behold in the 21st century.
It was my third trip to the Palio, so I had a pretty good idea going in about what I wanted to do. We were each able to secure a position -I took the head on position by the start and finish line, Laura was i a balcony position. But neither of our positions could capture the chaos that is the Palio. For that, we knew we were going to need some remote cameras.
With the help of some Italian speaking friends of ours, I was able to secure an overall of the Piazza del Campo on top of a bank, and two overheads of the winner's parade to the Basilica after the race.
The overhead camera of the Piazza del Campo had to be in six hours before the race. We weren't sure exactly what the light was going to be like for the 8pm race, so we set the aperture and shutter speed we wanted and put the camera on auto-ISO. The auto-ISO capabilities of the D3s are extremely helpful in situations such as these.
That camera took over 1,300 photos. It captured a very nice angle of the race incorporating the scene into the image. That is the picture Sports Illustrated chose to run in their Leading Off section of the magazine.
We also set up two cameras on Athenas, the new Gitzo remote control heads. They are really incredible to work with. We also set these cameras up 6 hours before the race and gave each 3 positions to shoot. Through the head's software and Nikon's Camera Control Pro, we could change the settings and the positions of the cameras remotely. This head expands the way we can make images. With planning and foresight we have the opporunity to make photographs from places we otherwise couldn't be.
When the race was done and we were able to start editing back at the hotel, we realized that we had more than a couple really nice images. We quickly sent a gallery to Sports Illustrated and put together a 3 and a half minute multi media for the web and another 2 minute piece for the iPad.
Laura and I are in the KLM lounge at Schipol. Interesting that in a year that has seen me on more than 100 different flights, the three airports I have visited the most are:
1) Jacksonville International 2) Hartsfield in Atlanta, GA 3) Schipol in Amsterdam
We are headed to Sienna, for the Palio. An incredible, centuries old horse race. Our flight to Florence was cancelled so we are scrambling to make other arrangements.
And by that I mean I am working two cell phones with agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and pounding the keyboard on my Macbook pro.
Laura meanwhile is on her machine cutting a video interview I shot Tuesday in Washington, DC--she'll finish it and upload before we catch our next flight in four hours. The old slogan, there is a deadline every minute, sure fits how we work.
And I would modify it to be not only a deadline every minute, but a different medium to file for constantly. Working in print, web, emag and broadcast television and radio gives us so many different outlets for the stories we want to tell.
I visited an old family friend in Gainesville yesterday. Murray Lasley was my grandfather's best friend from grade school on. I lived in Gainesville for four years as a student at the University of Florida. I only went to visit Murray once when my grandfather died.
Until recently, I never appreciated what he means to me, to my family. He's a priceless piece of history that is slowly fading away. Part of me, as I am finding, is without doubt linked to him.
Murray has had a stroke and broken his hip since I saw him a year and a half ago, but the young man is still there.
He's been legally blind now for over 20 years. Glaucoma began to slowly take his sight in his mid-20s. But his stories are vivid and his mind sharp. He's speaks slow, but with purpose. And every word is worth hanging on to.
As I drove home with his stories fresh in my mind it began to rain. It was a typical summer shower in Florida. The kind of weather I remember from countless nights on the marsh, watching the heat lightning dance above the palm trees.
It didn't rain long enough to wet the ground, just long enough to create a low, thick steam.
I drove into Ponte Vedra Beach just after the sun went down - my favorite time of day - when the world turns a dense shade of blue.
I stopped at the beach just in time to take this double exposure on my D700.
Bill and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore covering the Men's Division 1 Lacrosse Championship tournament. The weekend ended with a leading off in this week's magazine and a multimedia that was posted the morning after the championship game between Notre Dame and Duke.
Here in the South the wind is created by the old ceiling fan steadily pushing a gentle artificial breeze over us as we work to edit our latest music videos. It's delicious.
The over the high Plains of Western Nebraska some of the most spectacular cloud paintings roll along, pushed by the constant winds.
When I was a child there was never a still moment. I had no idea there was a place where the air was heavy and motionless.
And then I moved to Mississippi and Florida.
When I have a chance to go home, either in my mind or actually traveling there, it's always the big sky that I think of first.
Our multimedia project from the Derby is on SI.COM
Using Athena, we can anticipate and execute multiple images with one camera and lens combination remote precisely. The gimbal is controlled with software running on a laptop, for us that's a Macbook pro. It allows us to not only remotely tilt, shift, pan, level or roll the head holding the camera but also to program in and name a number of preset positions. The live view feature of the Nikon D3s lets us see what the shot looks like and control the camera using Nikon's Camera Control software.