Let’s face it, everyone needs a gimmick. There. I said it. You know what I’m talking about. Every now and then someone comes along and is considered “innovative” because they took a fresh approach to something. A tilt-shift lens, perhaps. Maybe a Lensbaby. Infrared. Ring lights. These things go in cycles. There’s really nothing “innovative” about them–they’ve been around for years; in reality somebody just had the good sense to recognize that they were collecting dust on the collective shelf of photography, and they were the re-trailblazers, if you will, who trotted them out. Again. Especially in my part of the business–sports photography–this return to more basic equipment and/or gimmickry, for lack of a better word, is almost necessary if you are to set yourself apart: in this day and age of just about anyone with an autofocus telephoto lens and a digital camera body calling themselves a “sports photographer,” and anyone with a computer and a high-sped internet connection able to disseminate the resultant mediocre pictures and call themselves a “wire service,” we’re always looking for something to make our pictures a little different. Hey, I’m not immune to it, either. So here’s my contribution to dusting off the old equipment shelf: manual-focus catadioptric reflex, or mirror, lens.

I know, I know. Mirror lenses are nothing new. In fact, they’ve probably been around longer than most any other telephoto design. Hell, they’ve been around longer than me. But like tilt-shift lenses and Lensbabies before them, just because people have been using them for years doesn’t mean they aren’t still worth taking for a spin every now and then. But just like those other tools, ubiquitous overuse can make images made using them a visual cliche very quickly.

It’s in this area that the mirror lens has an advantage: unlike some of its other “innovative” counterparts, the physical parameters that lend themselves to the use of a mirror lens are very limiting. That in itself should be enough to prevent their overuse. Anyone can slap on a Lensbaby to shoot an overall of a ballpark, or a tilt-shift during a portrait session, and immediately wind up with something “different” (not necessarily better, mind you, but different…) but the same can’t be said for taking a traditional telephoto off of the camera and replacing it with a mirror. Sure, they’ll give you similar angles of view, depth-of-field, and that compressed, telephoto look, but you won’t be able to achieve the signature effect of the mirror lens that makes it truly different– the “donut” background elements–unless certain physical conditions are met. And with that in mind, here they are:

1. Background: Generally speaking, the higher the contrast and more differentiated the colors therein, the better your chances of creating those rings are. Trees work well, as do crowds. But beyond that, one of the essential ingredients for creating that differentiation is…

2. Back light: The lower, the better, of course, but regardless, the sun coming in from behind the background will create much more contrast between highlights and shadows–and it will also help to separate your subject from the background.. It is that contrast which is necessary for the mirror lens to do its thing. Have a look at the two photos below for a side-by-side comparison of what happens to out of focus elements in back light versus front light. They were taken the same location (the 17th tee at TPC Boston), from pretty much the exact same position and distance (both images are uncropped) on the same day–only the one on the left was shot in the morning, when the sun was behind the player, and the one on the right was shot front-lit in the afternoon. Notice the marked difference in the background.

3. Subject-background distance: One thing mirror lenses have going for them is an extremely shallow depth of field. This makes it very easy to throw the background out of focus–but in order to get the desired effect, the background needs to be way, way out. The farther your subject is from the background, the more pronounced your rings will become. But there’s another element involved with that, and that is…

4. Camera-subject distance: Since depth of field also varies with camera-to-subject distance, it also stands to reason that the closer your subject is to you relative to the background, the better your results will be. Look at the shot of pitcher C.J. Wilson again. I didn’t exactly grab a tape measure, but a good guess (based on the dimensions of a baseball field) is that he’s about 100 feet from my position in the photo well at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. And (again, an educated guess) is that he’s about 300 feet from the right field stands. That gives us roughly a 1:3 ratio of camera-to-subject-to-background. If you were to express it in graphic form, it would look something like this:

Just right. About a 1:4 ratio of camera-subject and subject-background distance helps the mirror lens do its thing.

Too close: Having your background right up against your subject turns the mirror lens into just another, harder to use and not-quite-as-sharp telephoto with a bunch of weird stuff in the background.

So what happens if you reverse the ratios? Have a look at this golf picture (ignore the front-lit aspect for a moment). In it, my subject is still about 100 feet away, but the trees in the background are much closer–25 feet, at best. The ratio reverses; now we’re at about 4:1, and look what happens to those donuts: Smaller. Much (and pretty much worthlessly) smaller.

And if you were to move the camera say, 250 feet away from the subject and keep him 25 feet away from the background? I can’t show you visually because I never even think a picture like that is worth taking with this lens. The rings are nonexistent.

5. Other considerations: Mirror lenses are, of course, notoriously slow. If you’re heeding the advice above, and back-lighting your subject, you can see where this is going already. Shooting backlit with an f8 lens requires either a low shutter speed or a high ISO, and when you’re shooting action, the low shutter speed won’t cut it.  So the first thing you need is a camera with good high-ISO quality; my exposures for these pictures are in the range of 1/640 f8 at ISO 800 or 1000.

But even at that speed, motion is still going to be a problem. I use mirrors for what we like to call “On-field portraits” a lot, or a wait until there’s a moment where even an athlete seems to stop moving for a brief second. For the action itself, golfers are ideal because they generally keep their heads still at impact, but even some of the best don’t stay completely still. And you’ve still got a 500mm lens in your hands, so camera shake is an issue as well. So it’s also important to either use a monopod or brace the camera on the ground. I like to use a mini bean-bag with a tripod thread for this, as you’ll see later. But no matter what, don’t kid yourself: These things are hard to use, and they’re next to impossible to shoot solid action with. I have an enormous amount of respect for the guys who did it 40 years ago. But if you’re expecting to produce follow-focus, peak action shots with 40 year-old technology that can compare adequately to today’s advanced autofocus lenses, you’re going to be disappointed, no matter how good you are. Don’t overdo it, and don’t overuse it. Save these lenses for situations where they can truly produce something different.

So, putting it all together, what can we glean from all of this? Maximizing the effectiveness of a mirror lens in sports photography (or, in my mind, even using it at all) requires a harmonic convergence, of sorts, of several key elements: A backlit environment, a mottled background, extended subject-to-background distance, and a camera to subject distance that, when coupled with the subject-to background distance, produces a ratio that will yield the desired effect.

That’s pretty much a long-winded way of saying that, in order for a mirror to work, a lot of stuff has to come together. So it’s easy to understand why this lens works in only very, very few situations. Which is a good thing. Because it pretty much guarantees it won’t get overused, relegated to the dust-bin of photography fads that were the “in thing” for about 3 months and then disappeared.. Or at least, we can hope.

The setup:

Left: Carl Zeiss 1000mm Mirotar. Right: Nikkor 500mm f8.

I use two mirrors regularly–a 500mm f8 Reflex Nikkor that’s probably about 25 years old–I don’t know, I bought it used, just as had I bought my three previous ones. They’re prone to fungal infestation, and a lot of the earlier ones were, shall we say, not prone to sharpness, so it’s not uncommon to go through two or three until you find one you like. But at around $200 each on the used market, it’s not really something to worry about.

The Ungainly Beast: Zeiss 1000mm f5.6 Mirotar

The other lens I like to use is a rarity–a Carl Zeiss 1000mm f 5.6 Mirotar that I never even knew existed until I asked Mel Levine, the former equipment stockroom guru at Sports Illustrated, for the magazine’s Canon 1200mm 5.6 one day and, with that unavailable, he offered me this in its stead. I learned very quickly that this was no replacement–it weighs about 60 pounds, is a manual focus lens and, at that, utilizes bellows focusing–literally sliding the camera (and therefore, the film plane) back and forth to achieve focus. My Google research indicated that there were only 23 of these things ever manufactured, with the last one made in 1963. When Mel told me about it, it had been collecting dust in the back of the stockroom for years–with good reason. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a whirl. It redefines the idea of a “limited application” lens. Next to impossible to focus, heavy enough to induce camera shake on the most solid of tripods, and massive enough to warrant its own custom-made wheeled, hard-sided shipping case, this is not the kind of lens you just drag out for a stroll in the park. It’s a lens that requires planning, looking for a single shot and being patient–and being willing to chimp through dozens of out of focus images until you finally get one you’re happy with. Here’s a shot of the Texas Rangers’ C.J. Wilson made with it (and yes, it’s full frame):

As for my camera itself, I’m a Canon guy, so I get a few odd looks when people see a Nikon lens on a Canon body. But the fact is there are far more readily-available Nikon reflexes on the used market, and it’s a lot easier to adapt a Nikon F mount to Canon EF than it is a Canon FD one. If you go to www.cameraquest.com you can price out a hand-machined, glassless F-to-EF adapter; that’s what I use. The other problem to overcome is focus. The stock screens that come with any camera today–Nikon, Canon, whatever–don’t cut it. They’re not really intended for manual-focus applications–at least, not to the extent that their predecessors in, say, the Nikon F2 or Canon F1 (the top-end cameras around back when these lenses were current) were.  You’re going to need all the help you can get; to that end I’d recommend replacing your standard issue p.o.s. focusing screen with one made by Brightscreen. They’re pricey (about $275 or so) but well worth it. My 5D Mark II has one in there for just that reason. Finally, a word or two about sharpness. Now that you’ve gotten your camera dialed in to get the thing in focus, it’d be a shame to lose the shot because of things like flare and/or motion blur–and you;re setting yourself up for both if you’ve heeded my advice and are shooting backlit. So grab some black wrap and gaffer’s tape and improvise an extended hood. And shell out the $25 or so for a beanbag camera support. You’ll be glad you did.

My typical golf setup: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Angle Finder C, Nikkor 500mm f 8 lens with F-to-EF adapter, beanbag, and a highly technical shade--a piece of black foil taped and shaped to make an extended lens hood.

So there you have it. Mirror lenses in a nutshell. Now get out there, play around a bit, and have some fun with these relics. Just don’t overdo it.

Everyone always does this at the end of the year, so I figured I might as well not get left out… My 10 favorite assignment images (well, 12 actually, but why split hairs?) from 2010. A little bit of commentary on each appears below.

Manuel de los Santos, photographed at the 2010 Cap Cana Championship in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for Sports Illustrated.

Walking from one end of the driving range to the other in search of Bernhard Langer at the Champions Tour’s 2010 Cap Cana Championship, I came across one of those seemingly run-of-the-mill Saturday afternoon exhibitions put on by the event organizers–only this time there was a bit more than met the eye. Manuel de los Santos, a former baseball prodigy who lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident, was hitting golf balls. And when I say hitting, I mean taking full swings and booming 300-yard drives with a prodigious, twisting, uncorking motion that needs to be seen to be truly believed, blasting the ball while leaping off his right foot, then incomprehensibly landing back on that same foot after a 90-degree, airborne pivot. After picking my jaw up off of the turf, I grabbed a wideangle and a waist level finder and decided that my search for Mr. Langer could wait for a little while.

Kerry Wood, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees watch as Neftali Feliz, Bengie Molina, and a sellout crowd at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington celebrate the Rangers' victory in game 6 of the American League Championship Series. Photographed for Sports Illustrated.

Was it luck? Preparation? Foresight? An autofocus screw-up? I’ll never tell… Okay, maybe I will.

Lindsay Sears makes the first turn in the barrel racing competition during the 9th round of the 2010 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photographed for Sports Illustrated.

There’s a reason why you wear a cowboy hat when you shoot the National Finals Rodeo. Lying down on your stomach about 25 feet from the first barrel, camera nestled in the dirt and staring through a waist-level finder, when that horse rounds the turn there’s a whole lot of shit (yes, literally, too–don’t forget, this is right about where the bull riding happens) that comes flying your way. Snap the picture, tuck your head down, and let the hat do its thing.

Josh Smith of the UCLA Bruins returns a kickoff against the Texas Longhorns, at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. Photographed for Sports Illustrated.

I really would love to tell you that I envisioned this picture in my mind as I prepared to shoot Josh Smith returning a kickoff against Texas–that I just knew that the back light would cause the figures in his face mask to be reflected in front of him, and that I would see in my viewfinder the perfect positioning of the defenders as they prepared to tackle him while at the same time capturing the concentration on his face as he tries to avoid them. I’d love to tell you that. I really would.

Four year-old calf roper Joel Braden Harris, photographed at his home in San Angelo, Texas, for S.I. Kids.

This kid is good. Really good. With the light fading fast, we only had about three or four opportunities to get this shot before we lost the magic five minutes or so just after sunset when the sky is precariously balanced with your strobe and a fast enough shutter speed to capture action while at the same time yielding just enough ghosting to give you a sense of motion on the rope. He was being careful to miss me with the rope, but it just wasn’t working perfectly. For the last shot, I told him to forget about trying to miss me. The rope landed smack around my head.

Horacio de Leon, Jr., Assistant City Manager for the City of Laredo, Texas, photographed for Golf World magazine at the site of the city's soon-to-be-constructed municipal golf course .

“Head down to Laredo and shoot a portrait of this guy. We have no idea what’s going to be there.” There wasn’t much–just a hastily-built platform from which the designers of a would-be golf course could get an overview of the topography along the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s next to impossible to find an assistant in Laredo on on less than a day’s notice, too; which meant it was just me, my subject, and a couple of Profoto batteries.

Matt Harrison of the Texas Rangers throws in the bullpen at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington prior to the start of a game against the Detroit Tigers. Photographed for Sports Illustrated.

Sports Illustrated assigned me a story on the Texas Rangers’ pitching staff at the beginning of baseball season; it was great to get to the ballpark in the early afternoon to shoot the pitchers warming up in the outfield and watch the shadows get longer and longer as game time approached. Before one game, I took a walk up to the home run porch in right field, which overlooks the Rangers bullpen. I was happy I did.

Dustin Johnson, who lost the PGA Championship after receiving a penalty stroke for inadvertently grounding his club in a bunker on the 18th hole, photographed in Providence, Rhode Island for Golf Digest.

Dustin agreed to give us ten minutes on his way to a sponsor’s function before a golf tournament in Providence one evening; the story was centered around his ability to get past an unintentional gaffe–grounding his club in a sand trap–that cost him the 2010 PGA Championship. We had run the idea of sand falling through his fingers past his agent, but the message never seemed to get to Dustin. Fortunately he was a good sport about it…

Custom furniture maker David Clark, photographed at his studio in Austin, Texas for Luxe magazine.

I literally gave the shirt off my back to help light this picture, but that’s a story for another blog post. David was a great guy, completely cooperative and willing to work with me on just about any idea–including a picture for inclusion in my “Manual Labor” series.

Anthony Kim and his entourage, photographed at his home in Dallas for Sports Illustrated.

A young, charismatic superstar athlete with a swanky new bachelor pad. A pool with a hot tub attached. An entourage. A couple of dogs. Some pictures practically take themselves…

And so we wait eagerly; Kim and his entourage of three close friends (two of whom, his caddie and personal assistant, live with him) and three dogs lounge around the living room of what might be the ultimate bachelor pad, complete with the obligatory giant flat screen televisions, a shuffleboard table, and downstairs, a not-so-obligatory “movie room” with a $60,000 sound system and four queen-sized beds. As “SportsCenter” blares in a continuous loop, my assistant, Will Rutledge, and I fret about, marking time by coming up with one shot after another, setting lights, finding angles, pulling Anthony off of his bean-bag chair for five minutes of shooting here and there. We’re all waiting for the piece de resistance, but for different reasons.

Fortunately, Kim is a great guy who, in addition to taking the whole car delivery thing in stride, had no problem letting us stick around–I’m beginning to think he wants the car in the shot as much as we do, and my suspicions are confirmed when I overhear him on the phone with the truck driver: “You’re where? How long? Look, I need it here tonight for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot!” He’s extremely gracious, offering us the run of the house, but I’m content to try and keep out of the way lest we overstay our welcome. When the car does arrive some four hours behind schedule, via a giant yellow car carrier, Kim is like a kid on Christmas day. The light is fading fast, but we’ve already given up on that–Will has spent the past two hours rigging strobes and a suspending an overhead crossbar camera mount in the driveway, and by now I’m more hoping than resigned that we’ll have to shoot this in the dark. After what seems like hours, the car is backed off the truck, and Kim hops in. He motions for the others to do the same–he bought this particular car, he says, because all four of them could fit in it–and guns the engine. The car disappears around the corner of a quiet (well, until now at least) Dallas residential street. We’ll get our wish. It will be dark by the time they get back.

For the photographically inclined, the technical details:

I’m a huge proponent of the philosophy that “if you bring everything, you forget nothing,” and so we showed up for the shoot loaded for bear. I threw everything I had into the car, and rented a few things that I didn’t. But I’m also of the mind that just because something is on the truck, doesn’t mean you have to use it. The various shots from this assignment drew on a couple of different approaches, from using every single light, stand, and reflector we had (the car shot), to a couple of strobes in an outdoor setting (the pool shot), to an added, single continuous light source (the theater shot), to simply taking advantage of existing light and backgrounds (the individual portraits).

The car shot: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24-105mm lens mounted on a 12′ crossbar some 15′ in the air with the car parked underneath. Lit with Profoto heads in Elinchrom Octabanks on two sides and bounced fill in the front and back. Camera tethered to a MacBook Pro and fired remotely.

The movie theater: Available light augmented by a Profoto head with a beauty dish and 40-degree grid aimed at Kim, using only the modeling light as an ambient light source. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16-35mm lens.

The pool: 2 bare bulb Profoto heads balanced for ambient exposure. Polarizer. Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Shuffleboard and the living room shots: All available light, which was abundant thanks to a wall of windows at the rear of the house. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 lens (shuffleboard) and 16-35mm (living room).

Hallway portrait: Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 lens, with a single Profoto head bounced off of a warm, terra cotta-colored wall at camera right, balanced slightly above ambient exposure, which was utilized for fill light.

Tight portraits: Ambient window light against a textured, painted wall in the dining room. Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 85mm f1.2 lens, pretty much wide open.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II, EF 85mm f 1.2L. 1/200 sec. at f8.

I’d just landed at the airport in Austin, on my way back from shooting a portrait of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford for, of all things, Golf World magazine, when my phone buzzed with a text from John Bianco, the Sports Information Director for Texas’ football program. The gist of it was this: Texas was anticipating a high level of media demand for Colt McCoy during the season, and they wanted to take a day to make him available for portraits before the season started and he needed to concentrate on playing football. Since I was Sports Illustrated’s guy in Austin (or so he reasoned), did I think S.I. would be interested in getting a few minutes with Colt on Wednesday morning?

I tried to remember what day it was. Oh yeah. Monday.

I drove home and e-mailed S.I. picture editor Claire Bourgeois, who was handling all things football before her beloved hockey season started, and told her about the text. We’d be crazy to turn down the opportunity, she reasoned, confident that there would be something in the coming months that would necessitate our having the pictures in and ready to go. She pointed to a similar shoot she and I had collaborated on with Vince Young at Texas a few years earlier, which resulted in a multitude of uses for the magazine even though we went into it unsure of what we needed or wanted from it.

Portraits of Vince Young shot in 2005. Even without a story at the time of the shoot, each of these has run as an opener to illustrate four separate stories in various issues of S.I.

Just as with the Young shoot, since there was no real “hook” to it, I wanted to give the magazine a bunch of different things to choose from. And with McCoy’s Heisman Trophy chances (and therefore the potential late-season demands on his time) at an all-time high, I wanted to ensure that we had taken care of a bunch of potential scenarios–for example, use in an in-season feature, in a Heisman-winning story, and perhaps in a year-end commemorative issue. I decided that it wasn’t out of the question to get three distinct shots done, if I played my cards right.

On the other hand, it had the potential to be a busy day for him and I was anticipating limited shooting time.  I’m also a firm believer in not wasting my subjects’ time. Especially here; I live in Austin, I cover the Longhorns regularly, and I have a good working relationship with the Sports Information staff. I like to think that’s partly due to the fact that they know, based on years of working with me, that when I show up for a shoot I come prepared, work within a schedule–usually theirs– and do whatever I can to stick to it so as not to waste their time or that of their athletes.

So anyway, back to the three shots and playing my cards right. Doing that starts with finding an assistant who knows what he or she is doing, and I was lucky in that Andrew Loehman, Austin-based assistant extraordinaire, was available. He and I have worked together a lot over the years, and it’s reassuring to have someone as good at anticipating and executing on the set when it’s crunch time. Knowing that I was going to be working with a very competent assistant then allowed me to plan the shoot out with that in mind, and know exactly how to effectively budget my shoot time.

Uber-assistant Andrew Loehman on the set in the visitor's locker room at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. The black background for shot 2 is at right; the lockers for shot 3 are behind me. Note the black foil-wrapped flourescent fixtures at the top.

For the three shots, I decided on a full-body, seated, more formal portrait, a rather tight headshot with a black background and, based on Claire’s request, something more environmental involving lockers and/or a wider locker room picture. I’d never been in the visitor’s locker room before, so I’d be winging it–but adapting to a location is something I like to think I’m pretty good at, so I wasn’t too worried. From there, it was just a matter of sketching out in my head how I wanted each shot to look in terms of mood and lighting, and then to figure out a way to position the sets and the lights to be able to shift between them as quickly and effortlessly as we could.

The seated shot would be the most complicated; for starters it would be strobed, and the remaining two shots would be made with ambient light (more on that later). Additionally, the background was huge–a 20×30-foot gray muslin from Gear Rentals in Austin that would take a lot of room–not to mention patience–to set up. So I decided to set that as the first shot.

After getting the background into place, I worked on camera position. I wanted to try a few shots on 4×5 if I had time (yes, just for the hell of it), and since the camera had to be fixed for that, we started there. Andrew and I positioned full- and half- apple boxes at the appropriate spot in the 4×5 frame, and Andrew sat in as I looked on the ground glass, shifting him into exactly the right spot. Once established, we could set the lights.

The main light for the shot came from camera left, a Profoto Acute head in a silver beauty dish with a 40-degree grid. This would be aimed directly at McCoy’s face. While I love the hard, specular quality of the light from this modifier, the falloff is distinct and immediate, rendering the remainder of the set (and the lower half of the body) indistinguishably dark. While I wanted to emphasize his face and the burnt-orange jersey, I still needed to have some detail in the rest of the frame. To solve the problem I placed another acute head in an 8-foot Elinchrom Octabank directly behind the main light, and dialed it down to a two-stop difference from the main light. This provided just enough detail in the shadows while retaining the lighting emphasis on the face and jersey. It also meant that the background was lit just enough to go to dark, brownish gray rather than black. Nevertheless, we hid another Acute head, with a 10-degree grid and aimed at the backdrop, behind the apple boxes and disguised the head cable inside the natural folds in the backdrop. This provided a bit of separation between subject and background. After shooting a few Polaroids (both digital and the real thing), we added a bit of white cloth as a reflector to camera right to open up the shadows on McCoy’s face a bit.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II, EF 85mm f 1.2L. 1/40 sec. at f2.

From there we would move on to the tight portrait. I wanted a very shallow depth of field for this, to emphasize both his eyes and the Longhorn-logo eye black tape that he wears during games. To achieve this, I’ll use my favorite portrait lens, a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L, and shoot it almost wide open. To the right of the first set, we set up an eight-foot square black duveteen backdrop, at a slight angle off of perpendicular. This was in keeping with my desire to maximize our efficiency. Now, after we finished the first shot, all Colt had to do was turn about 70 degrees to his right while I walked around the Octabank (so that it, my new main light, was now camera right), set my white balance to tungsten and bumped my ISO up to 400. Andrew simultaneously shut down the beauty dish and background accent light, and turned on the modeling light on another head which we’d pre-positoned and snooted to light his hair. Using the modeling lights only, I took care of shot number two. The whole shift from one set to another took about 10 seconds, plus another 20 to get the eye black on.

About halfway through this shoot, though, I noticed something interesting–one of those things you don’t really plan for but just seems to work out nicely. I asked Andrew to rummage through my case and grab a 12mm extension tube–extension tubes are something I started carrying regularly a few years ago when golf assignments began calling for quick detail shots of equipment; now they’re something that sit in the bag most of the time but when I need them I’m glad they’re there. This was one of those times. After shooting a bunch of frames to ensure there was something sharp (hair’s-breadth depth of field and a 1/30 second shutter speed are never a combination to inspire confidence), it was time to take care of the last shot.

The "grab shot." Canon EOS-5D Mark II, EF 85mm f 1.2L, 12mm extension tube. 1/30 sec. at f2.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II, EF 85mm f 1.2L. 1/60 sec. at f2.

Since I’d never seen the room, the wild card was the locker shot, and it was with a great deal of anticipation that I walked into the room in the morning. I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. It was old-school, with gray mesh lockers large enough to sit inside, set in rows long enough to provide some perspective and depth. And better yet, a row of lockers could be positioned directly behind the Octabank light position for the first and second shots, meaning that essentially all McCoy had to do was get up, walk 5 feet to a new position in one of the lockers while Andrew spun the light 180 degrees. It was slightly more complicated than that–in the pre-shot tests we determined the shadow would be a little harsh, so we had to improvise a way of hiding some gold reflective fabric inside the lockers for a bit of fill, and we set some props in specific locations for a little depth in the frame, but on the whole it was pretty simple.

There was one problem with the available light approach used for the last two shots, however: nobody could figure out how to turn off the lights in “my” portion the locker room. Switches were nowhere to be found (trust me, we looked); the maintenance guys insisted it could be done but it would have to be done remotely and involve not only a huge amount of time and effort, but also turning off all the lights in the room–not an option with two other photographers working in the room. But to leave the lights on meant contaminating the tungsten modeling lights with the awful green of flourescents. Thank God for black-wrap, and lots of it. I like to travel somewhat light–I bring a ton of gear but I’m not the kind of guy who travels with a grip truck–but I always have two full rolls of the stuff buried into one of my light stand bags, and we used every square inch of it to cover whatever was affecting our frame.

Linhof Master Technika, Schneider APO-Symmar 210mm f5.6, Kodak Portra 160-NC film. 1/400 f 11.

Other than that, it all went off without a hitch. Just that little bit of troubleshooting, while a rather large pain in the ass at the time, turned out to be well worth it in the finished product. Given the choice I’ll always take the more organic look and feel of controlled ambient light over strobe for my portraits, what with the shallower depth of field, more natural expression and uninterrupted flow of the shoot, and having the right tools–not to mention the right people–on hand to make that happen was essential.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering–we were done in fifteen minutes.

Photographed from the MetLife Blimp Snoopy One, Tiger Woods and Steve Williams walk down the 14th fairway at Medinah CC during the final round of the 2006 PGA Championship.

Peace. Serenity. A whole gondola to yourself, two thousand feet up. No jostling with other photographers. No running to get into position ahead of everybody else. No snarling caddies. No spectators grabbing you, shoving you out of the way, spitting on you or threatening you with bodily harm. No F-bombs dropped on you by the fans, or by the man himself. No drinks being poured on you, umbrellas jabbed in your back. No interns with clip-on ties telling you you can’t shoot from the same exact spot you were in just a threesome before. No cops with pistols, security guards with earpieces, or officious volunteer course marshals with logoed shirts, optimistically-waisted Dockers and an extremely misplaced sense of empowerment. Nope. Just you and the blimp pilot circling the skies over suburban Chicago on a lazy Sunday afternoon, with Tiger and Stevie walking between the shadows in the fourteenth fairway on their way to another major championship.

Yep. It’s enough to make you want to sit back, take a deep breath, and crack open one of those bottles the blimp guys keep suspended in the cargo net above your head. Until you realize that’s not exactly beer in them.

But the climb is well worth it. And when you do reach the top? What a view.

More photos from the Longhorns’ 64-7 drubbing of the Miners…