Looking at the Light

Christina AguileraLos Angeles - One of the most difficult things for photographers is to figure out the lighting.

For the beginner, its a moot point. Just set the camera to program and the camera will set the exposure and either utilize it's flash or not. The resulting photographs are hit or miss, usually miss.

Later as you learn more and more, flash and other artificial light sources are introduced to make a technically good photographs. A great blog to learn about using small strobes is the Strobist.

The trap in using artificial light sources is that it provides an easy solution but you tend toJustin Timberlake use it as a crutch and overlook the great available light.

Standard operating procedure for covering red carpet events in Hollywood is to use flash on a bracket. It provides even, shadow free lighting that most magazines like. The problem is that all the photographs look the same, which is good for the magazines as it provides a consistent look on a page.

I try to have one camera with flash and one I use for available light. I can usually shoot all the photos with one camera with a flash and 24-105mm lens. The second camera has a 70-200mm lens for available light shots.

Last Sunday's Grammy Awards was a perfect situation for shooting available light. Because of the threat of rain, the red carpet area was tented which blocked out any exterior light, making the lights they set up very consistent. If the event was held outdoors in bright sun, it would be a challenge to balance flash to fill in harsh shadows cast by the sun. And that sun would be constantly changing in exposure and color temperature as it got closer to sundown.
Hilary Duff
The one thing to consider when shooting available light is not only the exposure, but the color temperature or white balance. Most modern digital cameras have a few standard settings like sun, shadow, flash, fluorescent, tungsten (it's symbol is a light bulb) and auto white balance. People who shoot video really key on the white balance as they know if they screw that up the video will be unusable.

For still cameras, white balance range from bluish-ness of daylight to orangey-ness of tungsten to green cast of fluorescent. You can manually put a Kelvin number in your digital camera to match the available light. Most of the time Auto White Balance works, but with some cameras, like my Canon's, shooting in tungsten lighting will give you poor results.
Scarlett Johansson
At the Grammy's they had the ideal lights, which were daylight-balanced movie lights. They were mounted very high on light stands which gave even, shadow free lighting. They were also really bright, I shot at ASA 400 at 1/500th at f2.8. The beauty of shooting available light is that I can shoot at f2.8 and blur out the distracting background. I also didn't have to worry about my flash recycling.

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UFC 67

Las Vegas - Is mixed-martial arts just a passing fad? Is the UFC the XFL of today? From Saturday's UFC 67 at the Mandalay Bay Event Center, you gotta wonder.

Last month's event was clearly a success. It was the highest grossing pay-per-view TV event of the year. The Los Angeles Times did a two-part series on MMA. 60 Minutes had a story. A sell out crowd at the MGM Grand. Celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio were in attendance.

Then Saturday happened. The main event was a Brazilian fighter named Anderson Silva, who speaks no English, against a guy who's reputation is made from a Spike TV reality show. And to top it off, the fighter, Travis Lutter failed to make weight, rendering the fight an exhibition contest. No offense to Silva, who is a great fighter and is well known in MMA circles, but you can't put fannies in the seats with a guy with a personality of a soccer ball.

The other attraction was this guy Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic from Croatia. If there were good guys and bad guys in MMA, this guy would be wearing a black hat. He is best described as looking like an ex-KGB henchman from the former Soviet Republic. One with the weird speedo-type swim trunks. Dana White, the president of the UFC, paid him like $300,000 to show up and he didn't do any press, whatsoever. Oh, by the way, his music on entrance to the octagon, was the theme from the competing MMA group, Pride. Nice touch.

The UFC bought up the World Fighting Alliance and closed its operations. They got from the WFA Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. He was one of the few bright spots on Saturday's card. Jackson is a pit-bull of a man whose trademark is a huge chain he wears around his neck. He dominated the post-fight press conference with his energy and probably because he was one of the few who actually spoke English. But his fight was pretty unremarkable, both he and Filipovic were given relatively easy opponents that they could dispatch for their debut at a UFC show.

Actually there wasn't much for fans to cheer about. One fan favorite, Georges St. Pierre, was scheduled to fight but had to withdraw because of a knee injury suffered during training.

Dana White was visibly upset after Saturday night. All the traction that UFC gained in the last month came to a grinding halt. All the equity spent and nothing to show for it. He has dragged out Randy Couture out of retirement for a fight next month in Columbus, Ohio. St. Pierre is headlining a card in Houston the month after that.

The die-hard MMA fan is going to watch UFC and the other leagues, no matter what. To lure the mainstream public is going to be a lot harder. The one thing they have failed to focus on is story line. The guy on the street needs that to get interested in the fighter and root for them. Most of the public know very little about the fighters except for their nicknames.

The reputation of the UFC is of a renegade band of "cage" fighters with no rules. When fans show up and there is little or no action, like in many of Saturday's fight, they boo. They want to see blood. The UFC has little promos up on the jumbotron before matches of the fighters wearing Roman gladiators garb. Well if you advertise it, you have to deliver. Currently MMA is relying on the dissatisfaction of boxing fans to convert. It's not enough to bash boxing to lure fans.

Has MMA reached a critical mass and plateaued? Will it just be a peripheral sport like hockey and the NHL?

UFC 67:All or Nothing? Well it wasn't all.

Covering The SAGs

Covering last weekend's Screen Actor's Guild Award (SAG) show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles took a lot of careful planning and work.

It starts with trying to get access for the show.

Every show has a different criteria for who they allow to cover their event. There is an application process which every media outlet has to go through. It details what kind of access is needed and in what role each member has in covering the event.

Each news agency that wants to cover an Award Show must submit an application and carefully fill them out with an awareness for the deadlines for different shows. The Award Show organizers don't contact you to cover their event, you have to be proactive and find out when the show is, what are deadlines and how to cover them.

For a TV production, it can be an immense affair with talent, camera people, sound technicians, lighting grips, and carpenters building sets at different locations. The print wire services like the Associated Press, a team of editors, messengers and photographers descend on the day of the event.

For me, I'm it. I shoot, edit and transmit my photos which in turn are sent by my agency to publications around the world.

After your get an approval email, you can then start thinking how to cover the event.

One thing that is important if your a still photographer working for the magazines is what day the event is on. The SAGs was held on a Sunday. Many magazines finish editing or "close" on Monday. Sometimes if the event is huge, like the Oscars, they start editing the magazine that night and have editors laying out pages as soon as they get photos. That means you have to get your photos in front of those editors eyes ASAP or you won't see your photographs published that week. Different magazines close at different days of the week, so knowing what day is crucial to a photographer's success.

Luckily for me, the magazines did not have people working on Sunday so I sent my photos after the event and didn't have to worry about arranging for an on-site editor plus messenger to get my digital card to and from that editor from my shooting spots.

Photographers are granted access three areas for shooting at the SAG's. The Red Carpet, which is called arrivals, the press room, where winners of the awards pose after they win, and the show itself.

Most of what is televised of photographers are images of the Red Carpet where photographers are seen shouting at the stars trying to get their attention and pose in a certain way. The biggest reason why you see that is because for the most part video and still photography is mostly segregated except on the Red Capet. Plus it makes for good TV with all the photographer's flashes going off. At some awards shows and movie premieres, there is disco strobes installed to simulate photographer's flashes going off to give the Red Carpet the atmosphere of a big Hollywood spectacle.

There is a Red Carpet Protocol. It's the order of when and how movie stars walk down the Red Carpet. The Red Carpet "opens" for celebs about 2 hours before a show. First to walk down the Red Carpet are correspondents for the entertainment networks. They do the carpet first because it really the only time they have to get their photo taken as they will later have to interview the celebs. Next in line are minor actors, usually in supporting roles, or people that have to get into the theater early for the show because they have some kind of role during the show. Somewhere in the mix is a sponsor or in the case of the Oscars, guys from the accounting firm that counts the ballots with handcuffed suitcases attached. (Insert Big Corporate Logo)

Then around 30 minutes at the end, the big stars come out. Rapid fire, sometimes there is star grid-lock and if the star is big enough, they just get frustrated and avoid the press line and walk straight into the theater. The worst thing for a mid to low level celebrity is to walk near a big celeb and be totally ignored. If they are shrewd, they will come early and avoid that pitfall.

The SAGs and most shows are televised live, so stars have to be in their seats by a certain time. But their is always a few stragglers. They don't care, there whole purpose is to get photographed and interviewed, the show is secondary especially if they are not presenters or nominees. At the Emmys in September, they closed the Red Carpet and told photographers that no one else was coming and the show was starting and all photographers had to go inside. Well, I did, and the photographers who dragged their feet got to shoot some really big stars that came very late.

Only a small handful of people are allowed to shoot the show itself. There is little space for photographers inside and they don't want a bunch of photographers shooting away, possibly making a disturbance. At the Golden Globes, only one photographer from NBC is allowed in, at the SAGs and Oscars, about six.

Ten to fifteen minutes into the show, the first awards are given out, and after they get their award, they are escorted backstage to get photographed and interviewed at various locales.
The entertainment TV shows produce elaborate sets where winners are interviewed. People Magazine, a sponsor of the SAGs sets up a make-shift studio with huge studio strobes and a back drop for portraits of the winners.

Then there is the press room for photographers. A little stage with taped areas where the winners are supposed to stand along with a long back drop, also called a "step and repeat" because celebs walk, stop, pose, and repeat. The winners pose with their trophy and photographers shout. Its a little noisy because it's indoors and the sound of 50-60 photographers shouting to look their way can be deafening. Not to mention the strobes of 50-60 cameras going off continually. You wonder how any hasn't gone into an epileptic fit.

A lot of photographers use an on camera strobe for the press room, but a light bar in the back of the room is set up for photographers to hang studio strobes. There is a huge difference in quality using the studio strobes. I mount two Dyna-Lite Uni 400 mono-lights that are plugged in and are triggered by Pocket Wizards. Doing so also means that I have to lug a lot more equipment to the show and show up extra early to mount and test them and stay late to take them down and pack them.

At the Oscars, photographers will come a day early to mount their strobes in the press room as light bar gets filled very quickly and room for more strobe heads are gone.

The most secure way is to have all your strobes hardwired and to have the packs under your seat at the press room. That way if there is a problem, the packs are right next to your and your sync cord is short. I try to keep it simple with the small self-contained flashes and the radio Pocket Wizards. I can leave my seat if I have to and if I'm using multiple cameras, at the SAGs I used three, there is no wires to tangle up.

The SAGS are a good show to shoot. You get to shoot stars from both TV and Film. The show itself is short. No long parade of winners of obscure awards.

It may have been a short show of only two hours, but is was a long day for me. I started my day at 8:00 a.m. Got my tuxedo in order, the show is black-tie, packed one rolling bag full of equipment with three cameras, three lenses and five Pocket-Wizards, one hard Pelican case with my Dyna-Lites, and another bag with my laptop and other computer equipment. Loaded the car and drove to the Shrine, set up the strobes and tested them, and then staked out my spot on the Red Carpet. At the press room I did a preliminary edit on my computer of arrivals, then after the show changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and drove two blocks to the local Starbucks, where I transmitted photos until they closed at 1 a.m. Drove home and then did a second edit and transmitted more photos until 5:30 a.m. That's over 21 hours of work for the day.

One Step Closer to the Prize

Beverly Hills- The race starts today.

The morning the Academy Awards announce their nominations is when the fog of early Awards Season is lifted and the contenders are thrust into focus.

Reading between the lines of the announcement, the media looks for what is called the "snub". Who got snubbed and whogot a nod? Dreamgirls got snubbed because they didn't get nominated for Best Picture. I guess if you get eight nominations and not the top one, its a snub.

The nominations made it clear that the Best Actor Oscar will go to Forest Whitaker and Best Actress to Helen Mirren. Consensus has it that Martin Scoresese will finally get a Director Oscar.

A nomination can change a career. Jennifer Hudson, nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Dreamgirls, has come from nowhere reality television star to center stage in Hollywood. Eddie Murphy can now get some respect for acting, not just playing a clown. Sasha Baron Cohen, whose Borat is considered in the low-brow comedy genre, is taken seriously with a nomination for best adapted screenplay.

The actual nominations event is run like a CIA clandestine project. A lot of employees at the Academy know who the actual nominees are before they are announced and the Academy takes every effort to keep the knowledge from getting out prematurely. Cellphones, cameras, Blackberrys and other communication devices are not allowed on the upper floors of the Academy building where the information is processed. The media arrives in the middle of the night to set-up for the 5:38:30 a.m. PST live announcement. They shut down the theater from 3:30 a.m. to 5:15 a.m. to have rehearsals and everyone must vacate the area with all TV cameras pointed down and all microphones turned off. A security force checks all bags and all attendees are issued badges that you have to get photographed for in advance, yet no photo is actually placed on the badge itself.

After the announcements, all hell breaks loose. Publicists call their clients. The actor that reads the nominees, in this case Salma Hayek, is mobbed by media to comment on what she just read. TV shows, print, radio and photographers jockey for position.

Ms. Hayek was very accomodating. Her friend, Penelope Cruz, was nominated for Best Actress for her role in Volver, and she pumped her fist on live television when it was announced. She later said to the media that she thought is was a great day for Hispanics with Cruz, Adriana Barraza, and Alejandro González Iñárritu getting nods from the Academy. One television interviewer asked what she was wearing, and Hayek put her hands up to the camera lenses in a mock protest.

For a photographer, covering the event, which is pretty much the same every year, is a challenge. The whole thing is over in less than five minutes. The president of the Academy, Sid Ganis, walks out to the podium, introduces Salma Hayek, and they both read off from a teleprompter as five panels behind them show the nominees. The theater is small and well lit.

You pretty much have to shoot from the center if you want a photo of the announcers with all five panels shown behind them.

I used three cameras, one with a wide-angle 16mm-35mm lens for an overall shot, a medium-range 70mm-200mm zoom lens to get a variety of photos during the event and the third body with a 24mm-105mm lens with a flash for post-announcement photos. I brought a fourth body along to set-up a remote camera, but wasn't allowed to set it up. (No unmanned cameras).

Fear and Loathing in Hollywoood

Hollywood- There are two kinds of people in Hollywood. The famous and those who want to be famous.

The ironic thing is that the famous say they don't want the attention and those who want to be famous will do anything to get it.

Everyone knows who the A-listers are. Those are the ones who get invites to the Golden Globes. The others, who are working their way up the list, have to go to the endless promotional parties that their publicists set up and hope they can get some ink in Page Six.

This week I got to see the whole gamut.

Monday was another Award Show, the Golden Globes. It's less like an award show and more like a free-wheeling party in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton. There is dinner and drinks. Celebs sit at tables and mingle. Everyone goes home happy.

If you saw the show, you know who won. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the awards, have plenty of categories for both film and television including drama and comedy, where everyone goes away happy.

The whole event is a barometer of who's in and who's out in Hollywood. Who gets to arrive in a limo, and who arrives on a bus. The media parking lot was in Century City via a shuttle bus. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were not on that bus.

A party for Donald Trump's Vodka on Wednesday was another story. This is more of the down and dirty Hollywood.

Les Deux, a night club off Hollywood Blvd. was location for this little event.

These promotional events serve many purposes. The main mission if to promote a product or service. In this case, Trump Vodka. The other benefits are self-promotion, which come hopefully when you photo is published in a magazine or you get interviewed by television.

The Hollywood clubs also serve as a meeting ground where a group of trust-fund babies hang out nightly. Some of the names you know, Paris Hilton, whose great-grandfather, Conrad Hilton, started the Hilton Hotel chain. Others include Kimberly Stewart, daughter of rocker Rod Stewart, her brother, Sean, Kim Kardashian, daughter of O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian, Brandon Davis, who late grandfather is billionaire Marvin Davis, Brittny Gastineau, whose father, Mark, played pro football for the New York Jets, and even the DJ at the party, Steve Aoki, whose father is Rocky Aoki of Benihana fame.

Absent from this particular party was Lindsey Lohan who just checked into rehab after a particularly rough night at some Golden Globes after-parties. But Jessica Simpson and her sister, Ashlee, made an appearance, trying to evade photographers.

Part of any Hollywood event is the parade of starlets and young actors that walk the red carpet. The amazing thing is that every now and then a few get plucked from obscurity and flung into super stardom. A couple years back Scarlett Johansson was an actress that photographers had to ask each other who that was. Before "Desperate Housewives" became a hit, Eva Longoria dutiful walked down every carpet indistinguishable from the rest.

First, some rules on who gets picked. Generally, you have to be young and pretty. Over 25? Forgetaboutit. You also need a vehicle for stardom. That vehicle can be a movie, a hit TV show, a hit record, even a porn video (Paris Hilton). Or you can be somebody's famous best friend or lover (K-Fed anyone?).

You can't be boring. Drug rehab, arrests, marriages, divorces, babies, affairs, all contribute to the mix.

So what's a pre-stardom star like? That person could be a waitress like Julianne Moore or sleeping in their car like Hilary Swank. On a soap opera like General Hospital in the case of Demi Moore.

And no one can predict the future. So photographers snap everyone that comes down the red carpet. Maybe one day that person will be in the spotlight and that photograph becomes valuable. It's like investing in penny stocks, even Microsoft started small.

Pity the photographer who doesn't take at least one photograph of someone because they think that person isn't worthwhile.

Everyone who shoots a lot of celebs knows of a guy who didn't bother shooting an ex-football player whose days were long gone at a movie premiere with his family. That player was O.J. Simpson with his wife, Nicole and kids, the last time they were photographed publicly before Nicole was murdered. I'm sure everyday that photographer wished he had just taken a few frames, not that he could of retired on the money, but because missed opportunities are a photographer's bane.

I got a lot of photographs of obscure people that will never see the light of day. Somewhere in that batch are a few diamonds, waiting to be mined.