Memories from the front lines of 9/11

July 1, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, On Assignment, On Location

[photoshelter-img width=’600′ height=’419′ i_id=’I0000hX.030xcCIs’ buy=’0′]

Steven Kanarian, BS, MPH, is an accomplished EMS professional with over 25 years' experience including paramedic, EMS supervisor, FEMA USAR Medical Specialist and EMS educator. (Brian Fitzgerald)

Steve Kanarian was at work on September 11, 2001. Since his job was as an EMT with the New York Fire Department, Steve’s view of the devastation was a bit more up-front and personal than for most other New Yorkers. Lieutenant Kanarian (ret.) lectures on EMS topics, terrorism response and does corporate keynote speeches. He’s also a writer. His book, The Downwind Walk: A USAR Paramedic’s experiences on September 11, 2001 takes you to the front lines of 9/11 and delves into lessons learned from a quarter-century with the nation’s premier fire department.

Steve contacted me after getting referred to me by another client. Once he saw my work, he wanted to move forward because he liked the gritty style of my environmental portraits and my familiarity shooting law enforcement, military and other paramilitary organizations.
In talking with Steve I determined he needed professional headshots, a portrait for his book and soome lifestyle images showing him training firefighters. Since we couldn’t do it in NYC, we ended up shooting in Maine—first in our Portland studio, then in a few locations we set up and arranged beforehand.

Note: most photographers I know have a running file of locations that they can tap for future shoots. When Steve and I spoke, I knew I’d have to shoot in a narrow, grafitti-covered alleyway located in Portland’s Old Port. We ended up shooting my favorite portrait of the day there. Steve was happy to do it, and commented that it was cleaner than the NYC equivalent: “It doesn’t smell like urine,” he remarked. I think the simple portrait captures some of the drama and gravity of his job.

After a few hours of shooting, Steve and I had a great time and ended up with a handful of images that give him great flexibilty when building his brand. Great job, Steve!

A blue moon

June 30, 2011 1 Comment read Blog, News

Verrill Dana formals in Boston, MA--Mark Borreliz (Brian Fitzgerald) — Moonrise over Cape Cod, MA

We recently got back from an all-too-brief vacation to Cape Cod. It was our first time there (we stayed in a great little resort on the beach), and I can report that Maggie loved…the swimming pool. A lot.

It was raining every day but one. At day’s end, the full moon came out and made me dig out my camera gear.

Meet Charlie

June 3, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, On Location

Michelle Souliere, owner of the Green Hand Bookshop in Portland, ME. (Brian Fitzgerald) — Charlie Widdis, assisting this week in a cemetery.

I don’t use assistants.

What I mean is that I tend to do a lot of things myself on assignment. Call it a remnant of a career spent as a newspaper photographer. Back in the day, when I had a photo shoot for the newspaper’s entertainment section, the only assisting I got was from the reporter that I pressed into service holding a reflector.

That was okay by me. It was quicker to just do it myself.

In my life as a commercial photographer, things have changed. I find myself loading and unloading bags of gear containing hundreds of pounds of lights, stands, batteries and whatever else I just bought at the hardware store. Surprisingly many buildings in New England are elevator-challenged. Our studio, for example, is on the third floor and the walled-up dumbwaiter doesn’t count. We call our stairs the Fitzgerald Photo wellness program. That’s funny…but walking upstairs with all that gear aint’.

So, meet Charlie Widdis. Charlie is one of the assistants I use—yes, I still try to do most things myself—from time to time. He’s a recent USM grad and is a talented photographer in his own right. Even better for me, he can carry a lot of gear, jumps in to solve issues without being told and is fairly technical when it comes to gear and lights. That’s good because if you’ve got an assistant who can set up and break down your gear properly, you can focus on making the actual shoot.

I also use Ayla and Stepheney as my assistants, but it’s rare that I use more than one on an assignment. Then there’d be nothing to do but drink Evian and show up to push the button on the camera….

Seriously—life as an assistant is hard and definitely not glamorous. It is a great way to learn the realities of life as a professional photographer, and to learn first-hand how everything from photo shoots to a photo business works.

All assistants have to suffer the pain of being ‘stand-ins’ as I’m building a shot. Most of the photos never see the light of day, but occasionally they’re useful for a blog post or blackmail material.

Enter Charile. You might be seeing more of him here on the blog moving forward. He’ll be the guy sweating to make me—and the subjects—look their best.

Ambient light and dirty hands: meet Peter Brown

May 23, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, On Assignment, On Location, Shop Talk, Workshop

A week or so ago I found myself photographing Peter Brown, owner of Cumberland Ave. Garage (my friend Matt swears by these guys). There always seems to be an antique car or two there, Peter’s passion. On the day of our shoot, a 1921 Model T Ford was sitting, wheels off, in a corner of his garage, waiting for a little TLC.

I was there to get a portrait of Brown, but he was busy working in between my setups–it was a busy Monday with a line of cars needing work. So I started by lighting the space and photographing him within it—all small lights. In fact, I prefer working in such spaces with my small lights because of their portability and flexibility. If you’re trying to light dramatically, you want the right amount of light in the right places. Big studio lights tends to light everything you want and some things you don’t want, too.

I started by lighting the Model T—one flash in the interior, several working the inky black exterior and the flourescent -bathed shop walls cluttered with tools. My favorite is actually a tight shot (see just the headlamp of the Model T jutting into the frame. I like the look on Peter’s face and his body language.

At the end of the shoot, I did a simple three-light setup in the bay with the colorful garage sign behind him. I gelled the lights, but let his face go a little yellow just because I like the warm tones.

Sometimes the light you find is better than anything out of a can. While Peter did a weld repair, I was able to show him in action in his environment. This is the kind of stuff we’d encounter routinely on assignment for the newspaper. Quick couple of portraits, enhanced by ambient light, and an interesting angle on a man going about his business in his environment.

The gear you need when on the road

May 9, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, News, Shop Talk, Workshop

Pocket_Wizard — Pocket Wizard Radio Transmitter

We’re just a couple of weeks from our Traveling Light Workshop, and as a lead-in I’m previewing some of the topics and shoots we’ll cover during the three-hour class.

You can’t discuss portable lighting without getting heavy into some nerdy gear discussions. So, we’ll be talking plenty about triggering your flashes using manual and auto triggers—everything from old-school sync cords to off-camera TTL cords, from optical slaves to Pocket Wizards and Radio Poppers.

But it’s not all about gear. It’s also about technique—how you approach a shoot and what works best for different situations ‘in the wild’.

As always, the best system for you is the one that fits your budget and allows you flexibility in lighting on location.

I’ve gotten requests from people who want to bring their flashes and other gear. Great! We’ll discuss those and, time permitting, will give hands-on demos with your gear.

If you have any questions about off-camera lighting that you want to make sure we cover, shoot me an email with your feedback.

Traveling Light #2: Location portraits

May 4, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, News, On Location, Shop Talk, Workshop

Here’s another sample of the types of portraits we’ll be building with small lights during the upcoming Traveling Light workshop on May 24.
Location photographers find themselves in an incredible variety of environments. In the studio it’s easy to control all the variables. When you show up at a location, you’ve got to make some decisions to make regarding ambient light and background. Namely, how much of each do you want to include in the final image?

For me, location photography is kind of a reductive exercise—start with what you find, and then remove light, clean up background elements, modify your flash— until you end up with what you want. In the studio, it’s more of an additive approach: start with nothing and build up the lighting and elements to create the image.

In the case of these portraits, shot with the help of Matt and Ben of Single Source Staffing, we had about 15 minutes to do two different looks. The vivid green walls in the office were an interesting feature I knew I wanted to use, as was their cool, colorful logo—perfect for an environmental portrait.

No lighting diagrams on these—we”ll talk more about approach during the workshop—but here’s the basics: Ben (green background) is lit from camera left with an SB800 shooting through a white diffuser screen simulating window light. There’s an SB900 in a medium soft box (camera right with a 1/2 power CTO gel), placed to hit Ben slightly angled toward the back side of his head. The shadow? A happy accident. Once I saw it, I liked it.

Matt is lit by the same soft box. There’s another SB800 with a diffusion dome just to camera left, pointing at the right side of Matt’s face. On camera right, there’s a third strobe with a snoot aimed at the SingleSource logo. In this case, we underexposed the background so that there’s very little ambient light (ugly flourescent lighting) in this image.

These are two quick-hit examples of location portraits that use their environment to create interest and drama.

SingleSource_Noone_01 — Matt: three-light environmental portrait

Traveling Light shoot #1: Beauty Light

May 2, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, On Location, Shop Talk, Workshop

Stepheney_Beauty_Light — Beauty Light: soft, almost shadowless light

In preparation for our upcoming. May 24th lighting workshop, Traveling Light: lighting for photographers on the go, I’m publishing a series of portraits that use some of the specific techniques we’ll discuss—and play with—during the all-too-brief workshop. Again, all of these shoots are done with “small” strobes—the expensive pieces of gear too many photographers leave attached to the hot shoes of their DSLR cameras.

First up is Beauty Light. Why beauty light? Because it looks good, is flattering especially to women, and is the height of simplicity. Three strobes, a diffusion scrim and one well-placed reflector.

Here’s a lighting diagram:

Beauty_dish — Note: Diffusion panel is actually directly overhead subject; reflector under subject's chin not shown.

Now I hear the question: why should we come to the workshop if you’re showing off the shoots (and the lighting diagrams) here? Well, from my point of view, describing a shoot isn’t the same as being on a shoot. Not even close. Hopefully you’ll glean some helpful info from these short descriptions, but this is more inspirational than strictly informational. You can play around with settings and locations in order to recreate these shots, and you can eventually recreate them. Thus you’ll learn, which is the point. But if you have limited time and learn best by interaction, then you might want to attend a workshop or a class. This will save you some time—usually, a lot of it. At the Traveling Light workshop, for example, we’ll discuss not just technique, but approach, philosophy and how to react when you’re in the pressure cooker situation of a real, live shoot, with real, live, impatient people.

So I hope you get a lot out of these posts. Stay tuned to the blog for more sample shoots. Special thanks to www.lightingdiagrams.com!

What’s your (working) space?

April 26, 2011 4 Comments read Blog, Shop Talk

Colorspace — Color gamut map courtesy of adobe.com

As a photographer who doesn’t make a lot of prints—most of my ‘deliverables’ consist of digital files—I have to pay close attention to color that may render differently on my screen than on my clients’. Specifically, the Working Space color on my computer and the color space I embed in the digital file before sending it out a client or the photo lab.

Sound mystifying? Here’s a short break-down.

Color Space is simply the gamut, or range, of possible colors. Some spaces, such as ProPhoto RGB, encompass millions of colors, which makes the images look great on a computer screen. Output that file to a device that can’t read the ProPhoto RGB color space, and the results for your image will be less than stellar.

The basic thing I keep in mind is this. Work in the largest-gamut color space you can…say, ProPhoto or Adobe RGB. When outputting photos for a client or for a specific use (i.e., for the web), convert the photo’s color space to one with a more limited gamut if that makes it render better for that particular use.

As Rob Galbraith noted in a long-ago digital workflow seminar, “Assign on input. Convert on output.”

First step is setting the color space in your camera. My recommendation? ProPhoto RGB, if it is available. If not, AdobeRGB, both of which have a much bigger gamut than sRGB (see the color map above).

After you import your image into Photoshop in this format, you can choose to assign a new color space. This doesn’t actually change the digital zeros and ones that comprise your image, but it does make the photo appear different on the screen–sometimes very different. I only assign a new color space if my image is way too magenta, etc. I might assign ColorMatch RGB, which takes out redness pretty effectively. The key here is you’re visually making the photo look good on the screen. To Assign a color profile, go to Edit–>Assign Profile in Photoshop. There, you can choose from a variety of color spaces. If you have the “Preview” box checked, you’ll see the effect each profile will have on the image. If you find one you like, great. If you don’t, then don’t worry about assigning a different profile.

AssignProfile — Options under "Assign Profile"

Once you’ve imaged the photo and it’s ready for it’s final destination—be it client or your own website—consider the end use. Then you Convert by going to Edit–>Convert to Profile in Photoshop, and choosing a space there. This time, the little zeros and ones inside the image file are changed by your selection, so always save the original before this “conversion” step. Note the “Source Space”—the current color space of your image file—and the “Destination Space”. In this example, both are sRGB.

Screen shot 2011-04-26 at 2.28.34 PM — Convert to Profile dialog box

My default is to convert it to sRGB. This is more limited in terms of gamut. However, sRGB is the best choice for PC (and non-Apple) screens. If you sent an image in the ProPhoto space that looks great on your gleaming Mac, your client’s PC might render it in unpredictable ways. Convert it to sRGB, you can know that it’ll look pretty close to what you see on most average screens. For this reason, if I’m publishing for the web I’ll convert to sRGB too. If you’re printing yourself, you may choose to keep in a higher gamut space. If you’re printing with a lab, you should check with them. Most ask for sRGB or allow you to embed an .icc profile (more on that another time; basically it’s a color profile designed for a specific printer). Color offset printers will require conversion to CMYK at this point, and then more imaging will likely be required to tweak the images before printing.

So, whether you ever decide to play with Photoshop’s “Assign Profile” function, you should always be aware of the color space your images are using. If they aren’t optimized for their eventual destination, make sure to convert those files to the proper color space.

Announcing: 2011 Maine Studio B Photo Workshops

April 22, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, Shop Talk

Studio B 2011 Workshop series

We’ve finalized dates for our photography programs this year at Maine Studio B. These workshops are are intended for anyone with a DSLR wanting to get to the “next level” in terms of lighting, storytelling and creativity.

Who is this workshop for? Working professionals, amateurs, students–anyone who knows how to use their flashes and/or strobes but wants to light in a more interesting way. It’s also for those who have a flash but can’t seem to find time to read the manual…or who have a set of studio strobes and now are thinking, “Ok, now what?”

Space is limited. Payment instructions and other details are shown below with the description for each event.

Traveling Light: Flash techniques and tips for photographers on the go

Time: Tuesday, May 24, 5-8:30 pm
Location: Maine Studio B, 28 Maple Street, Third Floor, Portland, ME (207) 699.9321
Cost: $99

Join veteran photojournalist and commercial photographer Brian Fitzgerald for this information-loaded seminar. Brian will show how to more effectively use your portable flash in a variety of real-world situations. Topics include:

Manual flash vs. TTL
on-camera strobe techniques
off-camera strobes using wireless, optical and corded systems
Modifying and shaping light
Practical tips, from gels to mounts
From one flash to many: building a portrait
Q-and-A session
Plus: The 10-minute portrait challenge

Space is limited to 15. Pay for your sessions below using the Paypal button. NOTE: Maine Wedding Company members: “Traveling Light” attendance is free with your membership. Please just RSVP by emailing Brian.

Lights on location: Amp up your location images with studio and portable strobes * PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TIME AND LOCATION HAVE CHANGED

Time: Tuesday, October 18, 4-7:30 pm
Location: Ferry Beach, Scarborough (207) 699.9321
Cost: $99

Sometimes natural light isn’t enough. Often it just needs to be “helped” by the addition of some well-placed strobes. Join veteran photojournalist and commercial photographer Brian Fitzgerald for this comprehensive, hands-on workshop on the use of studio and portable flashes on location. Whether you’re a studio photographer or you work out of the back of your Honda Civic, you should know how to build a shot with all available tools–ambient and artificial.

In this workshop, topics include:

Location gear – what you need to have
Small flashes (i.e., camera strobes) vs. studio strobes
Balancing ambient light and artificial light
Reflectors and modifiers
Tips for when things go wrong: surviving the location shoot
Plus: The 10-minute portrait challenge
Q-and-A session

Space is limited to 10. Reserve a spot now by contacting Brian Fitzgerald by email at brian@fitzgeraldphoto.com. Cost is $99 for this intensive instructional workshop.

Frequently asked questions

Why should I attend either workshop?

Professionals never stop learning. The best way to learn—for us photographers and for most people—is to see it with our own eyes, to discuss it with others, and to get the chance to put it into practice immediately. Why me? My approach is what you’d expect from a photojournalist–practical, down-n-dirty, heavy on results and not theory. In short, if you like to get your hands dirty, both figuratively and literally, then this might be for you.

What do you bring to the table?

My approach is practical, geared toward giving useful, real-world information gleaned over 17 years as a working photojournalist and commercial photographer.

Should I bring my camera? Will I have a chance to shoot?

Given the time available to us, and the amount of ground we’ll be covering, these are not hands-on shooting workshops. That said, you can shoot the setups and anything else you’d care to during the talks. It may be useful to have your flash and camera as a reference for some of the things we’ll be doing.

Is this a hands-on workshop?

This isn’t a shooting workshop, but it relies heavily on participation. You may be called in to be a model, or to assist with lighting, or to give your two cents’ worth. How else you gonna learn?

Will you have food?

Nope. We only have three hours, so food will have to wait. We will have water and sodas (we’re not heathens).

Will everything be at Maine Studio B?

The location light session starts at the studio but, weather permitting, we”ll transition to an outdoor setting for the majority of the time.

Should I bring anything else?

As my high school geometry teacher used to say, “Bring a sharp pencil and a mind to match.” Oh, and no shirt, no shoes….no service. Seriously. Just come, be prepared to participate, and we’ll have a great time.

Visuals for Verrill Dana

April 19, 2011 0 Comments read Blog, Case Studies, News

I met the folks at Portland-based law firm Verrill Dana last year. The firm was in the middle of a complete web redesign of their site, and needed photos—lots of them. Verrill Dana is one of the largest law firms in northern New England, with offices in Maine, Boston, Connecticut and Washington, DC.

The firm already had professional headshots of most of the their 100+ attorneys, but needed updated versions. In addition, they wanted to showcase more of each attorney’s personality: on each bio page they would run three black-and-white candid photographs of each person in their work environment, engaged in normal interaction.

We met and came up with a plan to tackle the job. The formal portraits would be taken over the course of weeks and would be shot in Portland, Boston and in our studio—but they had to look consistent, as if they were taken all at the same time. The candids needed to be purposful but natural, orchestrated but spontaneous-looking.

I started by photographing some test “attorneys” in a variety of ways to provide some different looks. Once the artistic vision was decided on, we arranged shoot dates and makeup days, then got to work. The shooting days went very smoothly, primarily because the marketing team at Verrill Dana is so well-organized. Although small issues always come up in the course of shooting, a bit of flexibility and a solid team can easily overcome them. My years as a photojournalist helped me move quickly and roll with the punches, too.

We love Verrill Dana’s new site, launched earlier this month. It’s inviting, clean and filled with nice touches, like being able to view an image of each attorney just by mousing over their name. Congratulations, Verrill Dana!