On Assignment

Okay! As promised earlier this morning, I have a lot more pictures to share from today’s Michigan Football Media Day.

As in past years, I shot the event for the Associated Press. And as in past years, it was a mixed bag of results and a genuinely challenging, albeit enjoyable experience. Helps that I actually care about these players and this team…

Photos wise, I had no help for the third year in a row. Couldn’t convince Emma from the Daily to tag along and I don’t blame her for not wanting to get up at 7 in the morning! Although, I must say I fully expected all the problems and issues that could’ve made this a disaster assignment, so with my half a decade of experiencing Michigan’s Media Day now, I knew what I needed to do, and I knew what to forecast and be prepared for.

My best innovation from the assignment this year: Compiled shotlist with player mug shots.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before in the past. It made identifying the players so much easier on the field, because they’re all over the place and huge and when you’re stressed and in a time-crunch, each minute saved from scanning the crowd for your guy is a minute afforded for a picture. Worked like a charm!

The other secrets to success for covering Media Day of course would be planning out all the pictures to be taken the day before. Sunday I spent all day brainstorming all the poses and portrait ideas i could use on each player i needed to get, and like last year, it was very helpful to tryout and do a dry-run of the shoot with all the lights setup just so I had a feel for what the necessary exposure settings would need to be, which lens would work best for the shot and things like whether i needed to use my step-ladder or not. Special thanks this year to Dan Felds of the Daily for being my “Jose” this year modeling for me…

Alright that’s enough shop for now, here’s what you all are really only interested in:

The three frosh DBs jocking around. My suggestion.

I just told them to be silly and push each other around.

Jon got a lot of shit from the sideline watchers i think…

Mallett very poised, not sure what his breakout is about, and no i wasn’t gonna airbush… journalistic integrity and all.

This was as good of a threesome shot as i could manage. Initially i wanted to do a “Three Little Bears” parody, but the scrum of photogs was just too rediculous:

My previous point… (this is only like half of them that were there hoggin my shoot damnit!)…..it was my shoot cuz i was the one who got them together. No good moochers.

Obligatory QB tossing the pigskin routine…. my ball that i brought no less.

I tried to have Mike channel those old vintage football pics

Mario get excited!

Still not so excited… it was early, i forgive you.

Kickers! ZZZZZZZZoltan + new not-as-fat-as-#38 kid

Where’s the ball!?!

I told them to “diss my camera”

Everybody was laughing at how Mario was posing in an offensive players group shot…

The Wovlerine’s weapons

Hey! There’s that smile I was looking for Mario!

Apparently everybody loves Austin’s prospects, so i took his pic.

Lloyd giving me the old stare-down

…but he warmed up

Lloyd doing something silly like every year during the team photo, Martin Vloet must love that…

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Sometimes your favorite picture from a shoot is the last one you take. That happens a lot with me where I think I just keep shooting until I am finally satisfied with something and willing to call it quits. This happened on this enterprise piece AP asked me to shoot special for the Chicago Tribune.

The subject was on this researcher growing artificial heart tissue in Petri dishes. All I had to work with was the dude, and his Petri dishes… After a bunch of run-of-the mill environmental portraits in the BSRB Atrium and his dimly lit lab, I was getting desperate. Then, I realized the Petri dishes all had this Koolaid-colored solution in them and that I had this little red LED key-chain light my Mom (bless her heart) pawned off on me last Christmas. “Here you might have a use for this toy”

So I put the Doc into his little lab closet, turned off the lights, and shined the LED from below the Petri dish as he held it. Its a little too dark, and a bit soft, but at a glance the shot works to grab attention. I didn’t know if the Tribune would run the photo, so I included my safety shots in the transmission too.

Oh, and while I was in the lab, one of the research assistants started cutting up a dead mouse. I liked how she used a sheet to cover up the “unpleasantness”, as if the mouse was in surgery. Alas no, she was harvesting its organs.

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A lot of people, i assume, know of the trick where you can get a nice fire ball from igniting a cloud of non-dairy creamer. Apparently has to do with the emulsifying qualities of the powder with air, or something…Alton Brown can explain it better. Anyhoo, earlier this month, I had an AP assignment special for the Atlanta Journal-Constitutional [story] that featured Michigan Aerospace Professor Bill Kauffman.

He’s a big expert on the science of dust explosions, which apparently frequently blows up grain elevators (see photo in picture) or saw mills.

My only option for the story was to get something interesting in the form of a portrait for Kauffman. His office in the Aerospace building on campus didn’t help with the story as it was covered floor to ceiling with airplane pictures and such. This story doesn’t mention aviation at all. So, we found a room where there wasn’t much clutter, and i liked the scribbles on the chalk board, which made a nice clean “academic” background. He was a pretty photogenic old fella so i knew I should just make him pop. With the room’s florescent lights off and all the blinds drawn, i could control the lighting with two strobes.

He thankfully had a framed picture of a dust explosion accident, and that worked okay to relate his mug to the topic of the story. He also had a bag of saw dust, which looked like rabbit food. He didn’t mind making a mess dumping all of it on the table, so that helped add even more context. The good thing that made this shoot work was definitely Kauffman’s cooperation. He was a good sport with trying out different poses and performed to his abilities.

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