No Setup Photos

The cry of all the focus groups when they review most educational recruiting pieces seems to always say they want natural looking photos and not setup.

After having spent the last twenty plus years as a photographer shooting pure photojournalism, where you capture what happens in front of the camera to shooting for advertising pieces, where there are stylists arranging everything in a photo; my experience says most focus groups are asking the wrong questions.

“Do you like the photo?” is not as good of a question to see if the photo was successful as a question like “What did you learn from the photo?” You can even have a photo again on a questionnaire from your recruiting materials and ask, “Does the photo help you see what a typical dorm room looks like?” You could even have a follow up question “What could improve the photo to show you a dorm room?”

The reason I have come to this place about evaluating photos is my experience with truly “real” photographs. I have spent many years shooting “photojournalism” for magazines, newspapers and wire services. You do not change a thing in these photos and you do everything you can use composition, lens choices, lighting and timing to communicate the mood and reality of a situation.

Often a photojournalist’s photos are not “pretty” pictures. Photographers will even use their composition to create more conflict to add to the mood of the photo. Having a focus group evaluate war photos with the typical questions we ask “Did you like the photos?” will give you results which would say the photographers were not successful.

How can you know the right moment to take a picture unless you have a fairly clear idea of what the subject means and what you are after? When you are interested in a subject, you want to learn more about it. You dig below the surface values to the truth beneath. That way you get to know it intimately and are able to photograph it understandingly.

Understanding does not necessarily mean a technical knowledge of the subject. Understanding is interest, sympathy, curiosity, the human element of the equation.

While photojournalism will give you “real” photos, sometimes reality for recruiting will keep your institution on the same path rather than to where you would like to be.

This is where what I call the “sitcom” photography works best. We all know the sitcom isn’t real, but it can create such a reality we are all tuning in to see “Who shot JR?”

This is the type of photography where the school has determined where they want to go and then create communications pieces to help them attain the goal. For example if you want to be more diverse in the future, you will need to show diversity. If you keep it real, you would then research to find those situations where diversity exists already. Then you would photograph those situations and play them prominently in your piece.

As one person put it “You don’t want to be the lone raisin in a bowl of milk.” If everyone works to help the school to become more diverse it can be done.

As you can see there are a few ways to communicate your message using photographs. The ideal scenario is to have “reality” photos. If you had a photographer go to everything you did this year—then maybe you would get the reality you need.

Sometimes “reality” isn’t what you want to show. The student wearing another competing schools T-Shirt. A student with major over weight issues or skin problems can detract from the message. This is why so often we re-create reality like the sitcom. If properly planned, you will tune in and want to know more about your school.

Photographs are made of light, mood, texture, form, and line. The value of techniques lies in how they are used. Techniques by themselves are barren. To come alive with meaning, they must be employed interpretively. This is where I come in. Give me a call and let’s make your recruiting photos—REAL.

How to Take a Good Group Photo in 15 Minutes or Less

The key to group photos is planning -- and how big you plan to use the photo can make a big difference in your planning. We don't hang wristwatches on the wall, because their faces are so small you cannot tell time with them. In most family rooms, you could have a three-inch face clock and tell the time. In a classroom, you might need a 10-inch face. The clock face size is a good rule of thumb for determining whether someone will be recognized in a wall print at a normal viewing distance.

The more you show in a photograph other than people's faces, the larger the photo needs to be to recognize the people, because their face size will diminish. If your group photo is more for identification, then getting everyone close together where you can see their faces should be the primary goal. Then you can run the photo in a publication and people can tell what everyone looks like.

On the other hand, if your photo is more about creating a mood for a poster of, say, a hip-hop band, then you will shoot much looser and space the people out and let their body language help establish the mood. For these concept/mood photos, I like to spread people out and put people at different heights (relative to their faces). I like to think in triangles. If you were to connect the dots (faces) between people, do they make triangles? Create depth by having some people closer to the camera and others further away. This will give it a more three-dimensional feel.

If you go to the music store and look at CD covers of music groups, you can see some of the leading work done in the industry. Try copying some of these until you get the hang of it and can come up with your own concepts.

If you pre-plan and have a good idea and have taken into consideration people's sizes, you will move pretty quickly through the process. If you don't, it goes slowly and your photo may fall apart -- because you will lose the attention and interest of the people in the photo.

In scouting locations in advance, you are not only choosing a location because of the scenery; you are also ensuring you are there at the best time of day for a group photo. Having the sun right behind the group isn't the best technical photo. Sometimes, a location won't work simply because the group isn't available at the right time of day to make the photo.

I have found that if you have done your homework, you can pretty much make any group photo in 10 to 15 minutes. You may get to the location earlier, but the people in the photo should be able to be placed into position immediately -- and then you are just looking for good expressions.

One last thing that can make a great impact on the quality of your photo: either have a laptop computer or TV on location to view the images as you shoot. Virtually all digital cameras will plug into a TV and let you see the image big enough to assess the smallest details -- enabling you to move people only inches and improve the final product.

To Break the Rules, You Must First Know the Rules

Finding Forrester is one of my favorite films. In the movie, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, is a reclusive Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who never gave the world a second novel. Forrester befriends a 16-year-old inner-city basketball player named Jamal. Jamal, an aspiring writer, visits Forrester's apartment to seek the author's wisdom. In one scene, Forrester and Jamal have a lively discussion about rules of writing, such as "You shouldn't start a sentence with 'and'." They talk about how breaking the rules can create a wonderful impact. If overdone, however, it also can have a devastating impact.

This is so true in photography. Photographers must study and know the rules of good visual composition like writers study and learn the rules of good writing composition. Once you understand the rules, your ability to break them helps you have better impact with your photos.

Breaking the rules can create visual surprises. Tom Kennedy was the director of photography for National Geographic magazine when I showed him my portfolio many moons ago. While at the time my work was professional and of excellent quality, Kennedy's comment was that he wanted more surprises.

Kennedy had seen just about everything in his role at National Geographic. When Kennedy said he wanted to see more surprises, he wanted -- for example -- to see shots that weren't taken from my normal standing height or sitting height. One of the things his critique had me doing right away was looking for the extreme. I started shooting with my camera on the ground, and finding ways to get up high. I also started to shoot extreme close-ups, another change in what I'd been doing.

There comes a point in your photographic journey where you begin to find your own voice. In the movie, Forrester had Jamal use a typewriter to simply copy Forrester's work. The author began doing this after he set down a typewriter in front of Jamal, and the pupil just sat there waiting for something to come into his head. When Forrester saw Jamal wasn't typing, he asked Jamal, "What are you doing?"

"I am thinking," said Jamal.

"No thinking," Forrester replied. "That comes later."

To get the juices flowing, Forrester gave him some of his own work to copy. It was through punching the keys and going through the actions that Jamal loosened up and slowly, after copying the work, started to write his own work.

Photographers do the same thing. We copy other people's work to learn how they did it, and then add the underlying technique to our long-term memory to use later. Most of the arts require the mastery of certain skills before you can create your own original works. This typically takes about five years. You can see this as musicians learn to play an instrument like a piano.

After copying the concepts of other photographers, you soon learn that your work is no better or worse than many others. This is when you realize that to stand out from others, you must do something unique -- your surprise.

Forrester had a great quote that made me think; he asked, "Why is it the words we write for ourselves are always so much better than the words we write for others?" As photographers, we don't always receive assignments that challenge us; there's only so much you can do with a check presentation, for example. Most of the great photographers I know have a secret to their work -- personal projects that sustain their creative juices.

The key to surprising others is to first surprise yourself -- to take risks and look through your camera in a different way, not being afraid to break the rules. Stretch your way of looking and see if there is a better perspective than you normally take when making photos. Who knows what you might discover?

Anatomy of a Sports Photography Assignment

Last month, I covered Boston College's victory over Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Here are a few of my photos from the game, along with some thoughts on my approach to shooting the assignment.

First, when covering a football game, I like to stand behind the end zone so the team I'm focusing on is facing me. That way, I am already where they are trying to go.

There are two types of photos you can get of a team from this vantage point -- defense and offense. The great thing is you can see the players' faces, which for me is very important.

In this photo, for example, Boston College wide receiver Kevin Challenger spins loose from Georgia Tech defensive back Avery Roberson, setting up Boston College's first touchdown. What I like in the photo is you can see Challenger's face, along with the defensive player he left in the dust and the ball.

In sports with a ball, I am typically looking for three things: (1) peak action, (2) the ball and (3) competition. Sometimes you can't get all three in a picture, but if one element stands out, the photo will still work.

In this photo, BC receiver Rich Gunnell is tackled by Georgia Tech safety Djay Jones and teammate cornerback Pat Clark after a catch. While you cannot see the ball or their faces, the peak action of the players' feet off the ground communicates the effort.

After one team is ahead in a game, I often begin to focus on the other team to see if there is a play that changes the whole game. When the game is close, this can happen at any moment. With a blowout, the latter part of the game is harder to cover since not much will happen to change the outcome of the game.

After you shoot a game, it's important not to editorialize in your captions -- but to provide concise descriptions of what's taken place. Concise, but chock-full of information.

Today, databases require the captions to be written so the software can pick keywords from the caption so that editors can find the photos. One thing to remember, for example, is to list both teams in the caption. This way, the editor knows which game the photo is from. It is common for editors to search for a few photos and then put them in a folder, and well-written captions help them with the necessary information.

Here's a caption for the photo at left, for example:

Sept 15, 2007; Atlanta, GA, USA; Georgia Tech running back Tashard Choice (22) cuts on Boston College linebacker JoLonn Dunbar (40) during first quarter at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Getting a great moment in the camera is only part of the story; it is the caption that fills in the rest.

A final note about the picture above; like all of these, it's taken at night, which is a bit more diffcult. But it communicates all three elements: He's carrying the ball, it contains peak action, and you can sense the competitive pressure he probably feels from the defensive player pursuing him.