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There's Always Something to Bounce Light Off Of

Apr 21, 2008

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This chapter is from the book 

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

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Try Not to Be Too Self-Involved

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“I wanted to show everybody my prize tray of slides. ‘Wanna see my sight tray?’ became the extent of my conversation. Didn’t matter who you were. The poor FedEx guy would show up with a package. ‘Wanna see my sight tray?’”

Ever notice how a conversation with a photographer goes something like, “That’s enough about me, let’s talk about what you think of my work!”

We’re mildly self-involved. Especially after you’ve worked on a National Geographic story called “Sense of Sight” for the better part of a year, and it gets the cover and runs 40 pages. I was very proud of it. I wanted to show everybody my prize tray of slides. “Wanna see my sight tray?” became the extent of my conversation. Didn’t matter who you were. The poor FedEx guy would show up with a package. “Wanna see my sight tray?”

After that story, I put my feet up and waited for the phone to ring. And waited. And waited some more. Never happened. I had spent so long and had dived so deep into the story, I had to go out and pound the pavement, reminding people I existed.

It was a long haul before I got any work again. Bills were mounting. Couldn’t pay ‘em. It was bad. Not a happy household. Tense, in a word. I was on the phone with American Express, telling them they‘d get their money real soon. My now ex-wife called out from the kitchen, “Why don’t you show them your sight tray!”

Lots of lessons learned. Including the wherefores of a shot like this, which is basically spit, glue, and a whole bunch of luck.

How to Get This Type of Shot

I needed a picture that defined sight. I thought a shot of a procedure like this might cut it. It’s lit with one hot shoe flash, camera right, slightly behind the subject. (If the subject’s eye is 12 noon, the flash is at two o’clock.) All it is doing is edging out his nose and defining his eye. I controlled the spill of the light by making a snoot¹ out of gaffer tape.

Now for the laser. You generally can’t see a laser unless it hits particulate matter in the air, so one good non-toxic solution is dry ice vapor. All you need is a subject who can keep his eye open for 30 seconds (the exposure was a complete guess) with a laser beam going in it, a flash going off, and a cup of dry ice vapor being poured down his forehead. Luckily, this gentleman was studying Zen Buddhism.

I shot one roll of Kodachrome 200. One frame worked, a mighty lucky one at that. After a year on the road, 1,500 rolls of film and many, many thousands of miles in the air, the lead shot came down to a high-tech Hail Mary.

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