Stress Test - 3 Army Generals in 60 Seconds for Magazine Cover

jhelmsjhelms Registered Users Posts: 651 Major grins
edited February 3, 2011 in People
The Assignment

I'm a photographer on a military base, absolutely love the job and stuff like this keeps me going. Wednesday, my boss mentions this assignment to me...

"think about maybe some kind of photo of our 3 top guys, might take it Friday after the awards breakfast, will be for an army magazine, probably on the cover, won't have a lot of time and one of them is leaving this weekend for a month, so just bounce some ideas around"

Um, ok.... AND...... from 7:30am until 9:30am Friday morning, I'm shooting this quarterly awards breakfast (which all the generals are attending). The quick group photo will take place immediately after the awards breakfast as they are walking 100 yards from the breakfast location (which is across the street from their offices).

-Creative backdrops? Limited.
-Timeline? Locked in.
-Pre-shoot setup time? Can be done 2 hours before shoot, but then setup must be left to provide breakfast coverage, photographer will then run at full pace to turn lights on and pop-off a quick test shot.
-Chance for do-over? You must be kidding.
-Time allotted on the general's schedule? 60 seconds. Not a typo.

The suggestion was for me to just do a pose or two with an on-camera flash; but there was NO WAY I was going to do that.


Pre-Work

Typically I like to visit the location at the exact time of day of the shoot a few days in advance. This time I couldn't do that. So, the night before, I went ahead and setup all the flashes, remotes, and battery packs so that all I would have to do would be to set them on the light stands and tweak the settings.

I don't have an assistant / grip.

I used 3 light stands; one behind the subjects with 3 Nikon SB800's, a main 320ws studio strobe (DC powered via Quantum Turbo3) shooting into an 86" silver Paul Buff PLM, and lastly another 320ws studio strobe (DC powered via Quantum Turbo3) through a medium sized double diffused octobox.

Arriving before dawn; I was able to set the stands up and at least do a test fire. But since the sun wasn't out yet, I couldn't really get any indication of how much light I would need. I did an educated guess and planned on ISO200, f/10, 1/250th with the lights all at 1/2 power then fiddled from there.

I can sync all these lights up to 1/8000th but wanted a lot of depth of field for this shot, so aperture of f/10 and regular shutter speed sync of 1/250th was fine this time. Lens was the 24mm f/1.4 on a D3. Lights were triggered with Bowens/Pulsar radio triggers.


The Shoot

After covering the awards breakfast (consisting of 400+ in attendance, over 100 awardees, 3 guest speakers, photos are to be edited and uploaded within a couple of hours), I ran at full speed over to the light stands.

I turned on the remotes, batteries and lights and had time to fire THREE test shots with someone from my office as a stand-in before the generals walked up.


Results

POSE 1

This pose was my starting point, but after taking it, just was too 'drab'. The backlights were also too hot. The cover photo for the magazine will likely be torso / waist up.

1170334858_CgvLA-L.jpg
The COL on the left has his one-star promotion ceremony in less than a week, but our timeline couldn't wait


POSE 2

One of the things we wanted to communicate was the unity between the Armor / tank soldiers (who are moving here from Fort Knox) and the Infantry soldiers, who have been at Fort Benning for a long time (Fort Benning has long been known as the 'Home of the Infantry" but we are now the "Maneuver Center of Excellence" after BRAC re-organization).
So after the first pose, our two star commanding general suggested a huddle / team type pose (he was a very good college basketball player, has lots of good teamwork/sports analogies).

I think he came up with the winner, this shot leaves enough room for the magazine to crop in and I'm happy with it given the constraints (and the request from the magazine for "a shot of the top three guys together"... i.e. not a huge amount of guidance/requirements).

1170333536_NEULM-L.jpg



That was it, 2 poses, 5 frames shot, 73 seconds.

As always, I'm open to any comments / suggestions / critiques.


Here's the setup shot taken by my phone (this was actually just before sunrise, the auto-settings on the phone gave it quite a light boost, lol):

1175729363_tvH8u-M.jpg
John in Georgia
Nikon | Private Photojournalist

Comments

  • WirenWiren Registered Users Posts: 741 Major grins
    edited February 2, 2011
    Really great job for the time constraint and I think the shot came out really good, I personally hate being put under a pressure cooker like that, but you came out of it with flying colors!

    Not sure if you're in the service or on the base, lot's of people there, if you know (doubtful) or run into Seargant Robert Ryder, tell him his brother in law says he's a putz! :)

    Cheers

    Lee
    Lee Wiren
  • HackboneHackbone Registered Users Posts: 4,027 Major grins
    edited February 3, 2011
    Great job, especially for the restrictions you had. Thanks to all the military for the sacrifices you make for us.
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