Going Big

It is always helpful to have the final use of a photograph in mind during the planning stages and during a shoot. For instance if images are destined to only be used on the web, simple compositions shot in landscape format often work better.

For a much larger size like a billboard some of the same considerations, like simplicity, are relevant. In addition, quality and resolution are important factors in producing a photograph for a billboard. Format and orientation are often prescribed by an existing layout. Billboards are large budget projects and the client will typically already have approved the final design by the time we get involved in the project.

For an on-going campaign we have photographed some of Saint Joseph's University's successful alumni. This billboard campaign, created by Articus Ltd. , features tight portraits of notable alumni.

Named as one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2009, Sister Mary Scullion is cofounder of Project H.O.M.E.. Project H.O.M.E. describes itself as a program that "empowers people to break the cycle of homelessness, address the structural causes of poverty, and attain their fullest potential as members of society."

The most recent billboard shows Dr. Ray Washington, class of 1991. For Dr. Washington, playing for St. Joseph's demanding basketball team and simultaneously pursuing a pre-med major, made medical school easier by comparison.

Back to School

Earlier this year we were hired by the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania to photograph students and teachers interacting during class. Over the course a day we sat in on half a dozen classes ranging in subjects from film, Japanese studies, economics, history, and philosophy. We listened in on many interesting and informed discussions--all without having to worry about studying for any tests!

The above shot is from a discussion in Professor Simon Richter's film class. The classroom lights were dimmed and the windows were blacked out to allow him to screen movie clips for his students. We set up a minimal amount of lighting to mimic the effect of natural light streaming in through a window.

Not all the classrooms required setup lighting, Professor Struck's Religion and Literature class was held in a room blessed (fittingly) with a tall, cathedral-like window. The image of the professor jotting down notes from an ongoing class discussion benefits from that natural light mixing with the classroom lights. His gesture and the lighting have an easy, natural candid feel.

Professor Eudey's Economics class was held in a darkened lecture hall as she projected powerpoint slides as visual aides to her lesson. Here flash would have been a distraction. About a third of the students were armed and ready with laptops, their faces bathed in the glow of their individual computer screens adding mood to the more general glow of the larger projected screen at the front of the room. While some aspects of the college experience (the lecture hall) remain constant, other things have changed (note taking on laptops).

The glow of the projector sharply cut the contour of one side of Professor Kano and soft window light defined the other, while she discussed Japanese identity in a modern, post-isolated world.

New Images: People Portfolio

After poring over many hundreds of photographs we have finished selecting images for our Portraits section. Because there were so many interesting images we wanted to share on the web we chose to not only update the galleries but also to expand them from one to three pages.

In these photographs you can see that as an aid in making the final selections we printed small "thumbnail" prints that we pasted to boards with correction tape. This makes it possible to group images, slide them around a table, regroup them, and keep making quick changes during the selection process.

Much of photography as a discipline is about selection. What subject to photograph? What parts of the scene are left in or out of the frame? Which images from the day's take are shown? When the final shot is chosen, does it then also get cropped to simplify the message?

Choosing images to show in a portfolio applies the art of selection to yet another end. Please take a look at the images we selected, we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Multi-Dimensional Portraits

In late 2008, I was given an assignment to take an environmental portrait of Robert Ghrist, a math professor who teaches in both the School of Arts and Sciences and the Engineering School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The topic of n-dimensional space is an abstract and esoteric subject. My challenge in photographing Professor Ghrist was to find an environment that hints at spatial relationships.

The newest Penn Engineering building, Skirkanich Hall has a multitude of textures and colors. Working in collaboration with an art director for Penn, I spent time scouting, looking at several places in the building in which to shoot the portrait.

Below are alternate photographs taken during the shoot, including one with a model made with flexible rods that helps students visualize multi-dimensional spaces.

Mayor Nutter in Low Light

This week I had an assignment to photograph the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter. I was hired by the Institute of Law and Economics at the Penn Law School to document the Mayor speaking at their Law and Entrepreneurship Lecture series on the importance of education to the city. Nutter is smart and articulate, and not afraid to speak his mind.

Having residents of Philadelphia succeed with their public schooling and increasing the percentage of college graduates in the city are goals of his administration. Children who graduate from high school are less likely to end up in jail and a city with an educated work force attracts businesses that pay good salaries. These are sensible and worthy goals. Achieving them won't be easy.

The new Canon 5D Mark 2 camera that I shot with has amazing low light capabilities. Here is a shot under available light which was shot at ISO 6400. When the large file is reduced to web size there isn't any noticeable noise. Below is a 100% crop of the actual pixels. There is certainly noise but compared to film and digital cameras of the past, the latest generation of digital cameras are far superior in low light situations. (For more on image quality see my post regarding megapixels and image quality - Fernando)