MLB Postseason Gigapans!

In October 2011, I flew just over 9000 miles ... 

from New York/Orlando/Dallas/Milwaukee/Tampa/St Louis/Orlando to St Louis. 

That is easily the most travel that I have done in a one month period. 

St Louis Cardinals manager Tony Larussa speaks during the World Series Celebration

Shooting panoramic gigapan photos from the entire 2011 Major League Baseball playoff run was an amazing experience. My friend, David Bergman, a leader in the use of gigapan photography, brought me on board to help him tackle this MLB project. We were tasked to shoot gigapans of every MLB playoff game during the 2011 postseason. What an assignment!
For those who do not know, the gigapan is a device that helps you to take extremely detailed panoramics by stitching together hundreds of photos together. You just program the device with the scene you want to capture, and you let it go!

The St Louis Cardinals World Series Celebration

Most of the images that I made were comprised of about 300 to 400 images (each one, shot with a Nikon D700, a 12 megapixel file) and stitched together the file is easily in excess of a 4 gigabyte file.  The amazing thing is that online you will see the wide shot of the baseball game, but you are able to zoom in and see people in the stands and, if you connect with Facebook, you can also tag yourself and your Facebook friends. Of course, the art of the gigapan is subtle. Anyone can get a gigapan on and let it shoot, but are the players in the right spot? Are they duplicated somewhere else on the field? Is there a real moment on the field of play?

Fans at Game 6 

On October 27th, I witnessed World Series game 6. In addition to seeing one of the greatest postseason games ever, I was the first person to ever shoot a World Series gigapan from behind home plate. Normally, the position has to be in dead center field because the goal is to showcase as many fans as possible. I was able to shoot from behind home plate because for games 6 and 7, David and I produced "dueling" gigapans from opposite sides so that we could virtually photograph everyone in the stadium. 

World Series Game 6 - Texas Rangers at St Louis Cardinals . All the blue squares represent all the people who tagged themselves on Facebook. 

This web feature has been very popular with the fans who pop onto the MLB.com website. According to a recent USA Today newspaper story, the use of this technology has driven over 100,000 page views on MLB.com this season. Here is a link to the 2011 MLB Tagoramics that David and I produced this postseason. 

A photo of me from World Series Game 7.  This is from David Bergman's gigapan from home plate.

Curtis Stone for Hy-Vee

Here are some nice clips from my recent advertising shoot in Kansas City.

I had a week to shoot Celebrity chef Curtis Stone for Hy-Vee, the premier grocery chain in the Mid West. My photos are now being used for all the print advertising and in store displays of Curtis. In addition to being a really great photo subject, Curtis was a really down to Earth guy. I could not have asked for a nicer subject!

Southwest Airlines print ad

My favorite image from the shoot - A "Charlie's Angels" inspired pose. 

I was really excited when got the phone call to bid on a national Southwest Airlines print ad. Southwest always has always shown really interesting and creative ads on air and in print. Southwest Airlines wanted to create a nice print piece that would help announce their purchase of Airtran Airways. All four of the talent would be actual airline employees.

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After getting awarded the job, I quickly assembled my team: 

-Local art director Julio Lima from Say it Loud rented me his studio for the day

-Gaffer Michael Smallwood is my gaffer and lit the set

-Ana Rivera from Beaute Speciale handled the hair & make up

-Tammara Kohler from Fused Fashion took care of the wardrobe 

On the day of the shoot, we had transportation pick up the 4 Southwest Airlines executives, the 3 ad agency creatives and the 4 talent from Orlando International Airport. We got them all to the studio safely and fed them a nice catered lunch before getting started. 

On the white cyc wall we shot many variations. Different groupings, posing and wardrobe. I lit the talent evenly at first, but after reviewing the comp with the art director, I added a high sidelight on the left. We needed to match the "daylight" from the existing plane image that would be used in the composite. My favorite were the funnier, looser grab shots you get after the crew gets to know each other. Below is the final print ad. 

The final print ad

Graeme McDowell for ECCO Shoes

Graeme McDowell for ECCO Shoes

I have been working with ECCO shoes for over 3 years now. It has always been to shoot PGA Tour Pro Stuart Appleby at his home course at the Isleworth Country Club. Recently, they changed it up by asking me to photograph Graeme McDowell, the current US Open Champion.

Graeme recently signed a shoe contract with ECCO, and they were excited to welcome him to the brand.
They asked for some solid portraiture and action photos that they could use to promote the relationship. The art director provided some comps and we hashed out a plan. We would only have Graeme for 1 1/2  hours (from 10:30am to 12pm) . Immediately after the photo shoot, he was going to test some new Srixon golf balls, so we could not run over the time limit.

The shoot was going to happen at his home course in Orlando,  Lake Nona. We picked the photo location at the driving range. This way, we could squeeze every minute with him until he had to leave and hit golf balls. I brought along Cy Cyr, a local photographer and friend. Cy is an excellent golfer and it is always a plus to have knowledgeable people on your team.

My latest lighting fad is with the beauty dish. I just love directional light - so easy to control but not harsh like from a normal reflector. I always try to light as minimally as possible, and achieve the best overall exposure. The dish allows me to do that. I had previously used the Profoto beauty dish, and I was happy with it, but it costs $375.
Normally, if I need a piece of lighting equipment, I would just buy it. I never buy inferior gear, but I also don't want to waste money. I knew that the Speedotron Beauty Dish is of a similar design and finish, but costs only $139. I just bought the Speedotron and changed out the speed ring to a Profoto speedring.

We set up at the driving range and picked up all of the range loose balls. We picked out a nice background - nice trees and some pleasant rolling fairways. When Grame arrived, we got started. I feel that for nice portraits, you need to have the subject's face in shade. You don't want the person's face to have different and ugly patterns of light or shadow, so it is best to shoot backlit in this situation and make sure his face is completely in shade.  The exposure for the images was about 1/250th of a second and f/11, at 200ASA. As usual, I used a Profoto 7B on a boom. I also have a hand made diffuser sock over the beauty dish. The sock just makes the light a little bit softer, almost like a softbox light but with the directionality of the dish. The best of both worlds!
Graeme was easy to work with and the photos turned out great. I hope he has another championship year!