Photography Archives

September 17, 2012November 14, 2012

1965 Sophomore Picture Day

It wasn’t the start of the school year until Paul Lueders showed up to take homeroom photos for The Girardot. The first step in this herding of cats was for him to size up where everybody was going to sit and stand. He was the consummate professional who never got flustered nor lost his patience. I’ve shot enough group photos to know that’s not easy. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Everybody look here

He’s making sure he can see every face. Girardot staffer Marcia Maupin, at right with the clipboard, is trying to get the names nailed down.

Moment of Truth

This is where the wizard disappeared behind the curtain to work his magic. His use of large-format film – probably 4″ x 5″ in this case, was one of the reasons his photos were so sharp and clear.

I apologize for all the scratches and spots on these photos. Time and storage hasn’t done the film any favors. I decided it was too damaged to try to repair everything.

Sophomore students

I actually have names for the photos for a change. If there are any errors, blame Marcia Maupin. This is the photo that appeared in the 1965 Girardot.

Isaac Visits West Palm Beach

Shooting hurricanes is tough. Not only do you have to deal with being wet and miserable (not to mention worrying about a piece of flying tin roof taking your head off), but still photos don’t capture the sounds and movement of the storm. TV guys can make a nothing storm look scary by shooting water gushing out of a drain spout or stop signs going whipity-whipity-whipity.

Hurricane Kate in 1987

I shot these two national guardsmen being told they should abandon their checkpoint and seek shelter because the winds of Hurricane Kate were getting dangerous. About 30 minutes later, a reporter and I were on the second floor of a motel talking to some folks we had spotted watching the storm from their window.

“How long have you been hearing that sound?” I asked one of them.

“Quite awhile,” he answered. “What is it?”

“That’s the sound of nails pulling out of wood.” Just then, the suspended ceiling collapsed, drenching us with water. A couple of heartbeats after that, we were looking at sky because the roof of the motel had peeled off and been deposited in the parking lot behind us.

We went down to the first floor where a bunch of utility workers were waiting to hit the streets. The reporter asked if she could use their phone to check in with the office. One of the workers offered a bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass while she was talking to the city desk. She waved off the glass, snatched up the bottle of Jack and upended it. I think it was her first hurricane.

Tropical Storm Isaac a wimp

I guess I should withhold judgement. We’ve had some power flickers (some folks have been dark for hours) and our cable TV service is out, along with our Internet connection. A UPS has smoothed out the flickers and I’m using a Verizon wireless card to file this post.

Except for rain bands that have been coming in waves all day, it hasn’t been too bad, not much worse than a strong summer thunderstorm.

Video of the wind and rain

Wife Lila took all but the opening shot of this video. I’m going to have to confess to napping through most of the heavier stuff in the late afternoon. I figure if I don’t hear the sound of nails pulling out of wood, then there’s nothing to get excited about.

By the way, it’s a well-known fact that preparing for hurricanes causes them to go somewhere else.

August 23, 2012

Team Mug Shots

The first time I went out to shoot a high school team’s mug shots for The Missourian, I took individual photos of each player. That was a chunk of change at five bucks a head. Unfortunately, jBlue balked at paying that much.

“Shoot the whole team in one photo. We’ll crop the individual mugs from it,” he ordered. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Chuck Murdoch brokered a compromise

That might have made good sense from The Missourian’s standpoint, but it meant that I had to spend an hour or more driving to the school, setting up the pictures, collecting IDs, plus another hour in the darkroom for the five bucks. The other problem was that each head was significantly smaller than a dime, which was considered the minimum size any face could be to show up clearly in the paper.

Break ’em up into fours and fives

Sports editor Chuck Murdoch, worked out a compromise: I’d break the team into groups of four or five and get paid $3 a shot for mugs. That would give Chuck faces big enough to reproduce and would make me enough money to be worthwhile. (I didn’t know in those days I could tell somebody to take a hike if I didn’t like the price.)

I got better at it

I got better and faster with experience. First off, I learned how to control the situation: I wouldn’t let a coach dictate how I was going to shoot and I wouldn’t take any guff from the players. I’D pick the location to give me the best light to work with. Then, I’d enlist the coach or someone else to help the guys write their names on a sheet of paper and line up. I’d pitch a coin on the ground or floor and say, “Kneel on the coin. I’m going to take two shots. In the first shot, hold the sheet of paper under your chin like a jailhouse booking photo. Then, drop the sheet and give me an expression that’ll make your momma proud.”

It wasn’t art

Once I realized that nobody was looking for meaningful portraits that captured the soul of the player, I could knock off a team in about 30 minutes. All the sports department wanted was a reasonably sharp photo that showed two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears (if the player had all those parts) that they could run 1 column by 3 inches to break up the type. (These aren’t examples of when I had my act together, by the way. I was still learning.)

July 31, 2012

Ghosts of Central High School

I got permission to wander around the halls at what used to be Central High School, but I had to double pinkie swear that I wouldn’t show any student faces. That’s a big switch from the old days when you could shoot just about anything, but I agreed to the rule. I wanted to show those stairs we had climbed so many times, but a shot without students was dull and a shot WITH students would have landed me in detention.

You can click on any photo to make it larger. (If you see any recognizable faces, don’t tell on me.)

How to shoot a time exposure

This was my compromise. I shot a time exposure of the kids during class change. The pictures weren’t as successful as I had hoped – those kids cleared the halls way too fast, so I didn’t have time to experiment with settings.

To be able to shoot with a slow shutter speed, I had to drop my film speed down to ISO 200 and put my camera in shutter priority mode. That meant that I locked down two variables: film speed and shutter speed and let the camera control the lens aperture or opening (f/stop). The top photo was one second at f/11.

The light must have changed a little on this photo, because it had the same ISO 200 and one-second exposure, but the lens was at f/10. The one below was f/13.

These weren’t the only ghosts

The old stairs still made the same sounds as they did when we were there. They are as solid as ever. I hope the school board isn’t looking to turn it into a pile of rubble like Washington and Franklin Schools. If they try, I think they’ll have more than bees to contend with.

Terry Kitchen describes in a video just how unhappy the spirits were when he tried to move the old trophies out of our Central to the new school out in the hinterlands. You don’t muck with Central spirits.

Tag: Photography