All the best from The Oklahoman Photo Dept.

Media Days

There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes work that’s done on Media Day at our local Division 1 colleges, and, of course, there’s plenty of waiting.

On Sunday local media outlets converged at Gallagher-Iba Arena on Oklahoma State University to photograph fans getting autographs, press conferences, practices and portraits of players.  At some point in the hour and a half wait for the players to arrive for the player availability part of the day, the media relations team brought in helmets that we could use for portraits (above). Staff Photographer Bryan Terry got portraits at OSU, while a few days before, Chris Landsberger photographed players at the University of Oklahoma. Meanwhile, I photographed practices and fan appreciation events at OSU and Steve Sisney photographed Fan Appreciation day in Norman. You can see photo galleries from both events by clicking here. The portraits will run in the August 29 newspaper, and we’ll talk about them on Alternate Crop as well.

-John Clanton

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Behind the Photo-Studio Photography

I mentioned yesterday that The Oklahoman Photography staff did well at this year’s Great Plains Journalism Awards. A contest that includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota and Iowa. One of the categories that we don’t have in our local AP/ONE and SPJ contests is Studio Photography. Basically, the best picture taken in a Studio. This year, Our Director of Photography, Doug Hoke, was the Winner in this category. Here’s what he wrote about the winning photograph.

The sports department chose the theme of “Dark Horses” for it’s high school 
football playoff section. A different way of approaching the playoffs. When 
the writer contacted me about the assignment, he described the idea and said he 
had a model, one of the local stars, and the eye-black patches.

 I wanted to keep the photo simple and one that worked either in color or 
black and white, since we didn’t know where the photo was to appear in the
 section. 

I decided to use an 85mm lens wide open at f 1.8 to limit the depth-of-field
to draw the focus to the words “dark horse.” So, although I shot in the
 studio where we have over 4,000 watts of strobe power available, I just used
 the 250 watt modeling light in one head with a 8” reflector and a grid
above the camera, to concentrate the light on the player’s face. I kept the
 player well away from the background so that it would drop to black. 

I then moved in as tight as the lens would focus, keeping the framing
 horizontal to add power to the face and let the sides drop to black.

Chris Landsberger was named as a finalist in this category.

-John Clanton

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Too much lens

Here’s a little technical info for the photography enthusiasts out there. When I was assigned to photograph the bald eagles at the Oklahoma City Zoo last week, I brought way too much lens. I used a 400mm @2.8 and a 2x converter. The converter doubles the length, but you also lose two stops of light. So instead of a 400mm @2.8, I had an 800 @5.6, which is fine because the eagles were in the shade on a bright, sunny day.

In their enclosure on the Oklahoma Trails at the Oklahoma City Zoo, the eagles feel like they are very close. I probably could have used a 300mm, but the tighter I filled the frame with the eagles, the more the background dropped out of focus. If I’d used a 80-200mm, I’d have similar pictures, but I’d have to crop in too much and the backgrounds would be very distracting.

And speaking camera settings and technical stuff, Nate Billings and Sarah Phipps photographed fireworks this weekend. Sarah’s picture, that you can see here, was taken with a Canon 24mm lens, ISO 400, a 4.5 f-stop and a half second shutter speed. For the picture below, Nate used a 35mm, 200 ISO, f/16, and a 3 second shutter speed.

-John Clanton

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Photo-geek

I’ve been a photo-geek at my home lately, and it all started with this picture.

To be perfectly honest, I should say ‘more of a photo-geek.’ A few months back, DOP Doug Hoke said he want to see some more unusual and artistic pictures from the Festival of the Arts in downtown Oklahoma City. I used an old photography trick to get a detail picture (above) of a sliver of wood. I’ve probably been looking at too many nature pictures in National Geographic, but ever since that Festival of the Arts assignment, I’ve been taking my camera out to the backyard, flipping the 50mm around the wrong way, and photographing flowers, leaves and any bug that doesn’t move too fast. Here’s a few images I’ve come up with. This is what a photo-geek does after work, but before re-runs of Star Trek The Next Generation.

-John Clanton

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Long Day at the Ball Park

Yesterday I had the assignment to cover the last two evening session games of the four game set in the Big 12 Baseball Championship at Bricktown Ballpark. It looked as though it was going to be a great day to cover some baseball, but Mother Nature had other thoughts. The first game that started at 4pm between Baylor and Kansas State lasted all of an inning and a half before the rain decided to make an appearance and stay awhile. After about a three hour rain delay, and chasing around weather features, the Bears and the Wildcats went back into action to finish their game under the full moon.

The second game between OU and Kansas was to start at 7:30 now was pushed back to a start time of about 10:35 pm. Since my deadline to get photos back to the paper was 10:45 pm, I have just enough time to shoot OU’s starting pitcher at the top of the inning and their first few at bat in the bottom of the inning before I had to start sending photos back.

I went back out to the field when I was done transmitting to try and get some much needed ‘better’ photos. Which did not go so well. For a fan, the game was great KU had a no hitter going to the 5th inning, and the 1-0 lead over the Sooners, but for a photographer who is in need of some action photographs it was not what I was looking for in a late game. I kept telling myself the next inning will be better, the next inning will be better, and the next thing you know it was the bottom of the 9th inning at 1:15 am with KU holding onto a 2-1 lead. Then karma decided to pay it forward for me since I had done my time for the day when the Sooners hit a two run shot to win the game 3-2. Photos of the Sooners’ celebration made it well worth the wait to finally get to bed at 3am.

Here are a few photos from the two games. Click HERE for full gallery.

-Chris Landsberger

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‘A friend of ours.’

When I speak to journalism students, they always ask about the process of photographing  victims of violent storms or natural disasters. The perception, I guess, is that news photographers and storm victims have an adversarial relationship. I’ve worked at newspapers through 13 Oklahoma storm seasons and only once have I encountered someone who preferred not to be photographed and was not shy about letting me know it.

Last week, when neighborhoods in Little Axe, Oklahoma, were destroyed by storms, I was sent at dawn the next day to get pictures of the damage. After a few conversations and laps around the town, I saw resident Keith Bolles waiting at a blocked intersection on the east side of town. I pulled into the grass and approached he and his son. From the first handshake and introduction, I could tell that the Bolles family, while dealing with a huge loss, were nice people who were not only willing to talk, but eager to.

I stood in a ditch talking to Keith, his son, Caden and his wife Shelley, and a growing crowd of concerned relatives for nearly 4 hours while we waited for the Cleveland County Sheriff’s deputies to open the restricted area to homeowners.  When the area was finally opened and the Bolles family drove in to their neighborhood to look at the devastation, I passed the police blockade as relatives told them, ‘he’s a friend of ours.”

This story isn’t unusual. It’s almost normal after floods, tornadoes, wildfires and other natural disasters. People want to tell their stories. Pictures that news photographers bring back from some of these major events don’t happen without the family accepting a photographer onto their property, if only for awhile.

As I watched the Bolles family pick up their belongings, I was struck not by their sadness, but by their relief and happiness. Every time somebody found something that wasn’t broken, they celebrated. Keith held up pictures of his children that could be salvaged and laughed about them with his relatives. Shelley cried tears of joy when the puppy they thought was dead was returned to them by Animal Control officers. And when Caden was able, against all odds, to find a ring that was important to his mother, the family stopped digging through the rubble for a moment and cheered.

-John Clanton

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I went for a bike ride and a time lapse broke out.

The Photo Department was recently approached about photographing the route of this weekend’s Memorial Marathon. The idea was an interactive map featuring a time-lapse video of the route that runners will take through the city. If you think this sounds easy, then you’re doing it wrong.

Photographers Nate Billings and Sarah Phipps did the bulk of the work. All I did was ride my bicycle at Lake Hefner. They spent most of a Sunday morning with designer Matt Clayton rigging a camera to the dash of a car, programming a pocket wizard to fire a frame from the camera every second, and then driving the route. Nate says that figuring out how to attach the camera to his CRV and testing to determine the best frame rate and shutter speed took longer than the hour-and-a-half it took to drive the route. Sarah put all of the thousands of frames together to make a video that showed the entire route in about three-and-a-half minutes. Brian Mays then took the video and matched the frames with a map of the course to show where the shots take place.

If you watch the finished product, you’ll see that near the Capitol, the route goes the wrong way down a one-way street. Sarah and Nate managed to out-think that obstacle without breaking any laws. They drove that portion of the marathon with the camera attached to the back of the car shooting backwards and then later spliced that section into the time lapse with the order of those frames being reversed. So, when you play it back, it just looks like you’re going the wrong way down the street.

Also, there is a point where the route goes along Lake Hefner trails. A week after the drivable portion of the route was photographed, I went with Sarah to capture the portion on the trails from my bike. Sarah then added that section to make the finished time-lapse video.

Click here to see the time-lapse video. And check back next week for an update from the Memorial Marathon.

-John Clanton

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Searching Merlin

In the last 30 days, we’ve turned in 3,325 pictures to Merlin.

As both of you know by now, Merlin is the name of the archive system that we use to store pictures. Not just the ones turned in by The Oklahoman staff photographers, but also from the Associated Press, reporters sometimes take pictures, families will submit archive snapshots of themselves or loved ones if they’re needed for a story, and we get pictures from local authorities. Police mug shots, framegrabs pulled from surveillance cameras, that kind of stuff. Mostly though, the pictures come from the 13 staff photographers at The Oklahoman. Here are five nice pictures that you may have missed over the last 30 days.

-John Clanton

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Best of the Year

The Oklahoman Staff Photographer Jim Beckel has placed in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism Contest.

Last year, during an outbreak of wildfires, Beckel was sent to a neighborhood in Midwest City that is less than half a mile from his home. Beckel described a scene of chaos, but what caught his eye amid all the smoke, was a bright yellow truck. Paul Norwood, the subject of the picture, had helped firemen push the truck out of the garage moments before Beckel arrived. From across the street, Beckel began taking pictures. He took fewer than five pictures before Paul looked up at the smoke and Beckel captured an award winning picture. “It was a lucky picture,” said Beckel. Director of Photography Doug Hoke said today after we heard that Beckel had placed in NPPAs worldwide contest, that he doesn’t remember anyone at The Oklahoman ever placing in the contest.  To see Jim’s entry, click here, or for NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism website, click here. Congratulations to Jim.

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Behind the Photo-Extreme Edition

On Sunday I was sent to Slaughterville, Okla., to photograph the taping of the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Sunday was the final day, so I was supposed to get a picture of their reaction to the famous reveal, when the bus pulls away and the family sees their new home.

As chaotic as I thought the scene would be, it was worse. There were barricades and corrals set up for fans, extended family members and media. Cameras crews, sound guys, volunteers, Thunder Girls, PR representatives and the stars of the show, like Ty Pennington and Xzibit, were  cheered by the fans as they walked by. I stood up against the fence in the media pin, watching the scene unfold. For three hours.

My favorite part was right before the reveal. There was a group of people stationed to the right of the media, extended family, the home builders, and people with all access passes. They would have the best seats in the house, after the bus pulled away. The Public Relations representatives were worried that before the bus pulled away, the crowd would get excited and press into the media’s view, so they brought in human blockers. Volunteers from CVS pharmacy were seated in front of us. The idea was that the excited crowd wouldn’t step on volunteers just to get a good view. It worked. Despite the chaos for three straight hours, once the bus pulled away, we had a decent view of the family’s reaction. More pictures from the reveal will be published on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010,  in The Oklahoman’s real estate magazine.

-John Clanton

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