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This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Moment It Clicks, The: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shootersMoment It Clicks, The: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters

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This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Moment It Clicks, The: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shootersMoment It Clicks, The: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters

Learn More Buy

Stand in Front of More Interesting Stuff

  • “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”

My friend and colleague, Jim Richardson at National Geographic, has simple advice for anyone who wants to become a better photographer: “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.“

So, what could be more interesting than a bunch of Munchkins?

You know, the original Munchkins. Somehow Life magazine got access to the last living Munchkins. The magazine had no idea how to shoot them. So I put ‘em in flower pots. My editor told me I was a sick bastard, but hey, in The Wizard of Oz they pop right outta the garden, so I figured, why not?

I hauled in 300 pounds of topsoil to the rental studio. The studio people were reeeeeally pissed at me. Not only did it stink, topsoil got everywhere—like the cracks in the wood floor...the white wood floor. We were up until midnight with vacuums trying to get it out.

So the Munchkins pull up in this limousine. I meet them and we ride up to the seventh floor, alone. We get into the elevator and the door closes. I look around and, honestly, it was kinda creepy. I was trapped in a confined space with a bunch of Munchkins. I mean, I got an active imagination, and I started thinkin’ about them turnin’ on me, their little faces gettin’ all mean-like and their lollipop-guild voices saying, “Okay, let’s have the wallet, sumbitch.”

How to Get This Type of Shot

This is obviously a studio shot and that’s obviously a painted backdrop. When you roll one of these out on a studio floor, you freak (because it just looks so cheesy), but you can transform it with light and f-stop. In this case, there’s a setting sun on the right, so I put a strobe with a honeycomb spot grid to narrow the beam and aimed it at that spot with a warming gel (I used a gel from LeeFilters.com—in their light rolls, it’s their Daylight Conversion Half CTO [Color Temperature Orange] gel), which in this case turned the white strobe into the color of a setting sun. (By the way, a half-cut means that you get half the warmth of the full gel.) I also added a soft wash using a strobe fitted with an umbrella to just bring a little detail into the overall background (underexposed from the foreground subjects by about two stops). Throw in a bit of a shallow f-stop (like f/4) and the background softens and loses detail, which is exactly what you want.

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