The Buzz

The Hidden Ball Trick

glennnelson — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:05:17 +0000

Sports photographers have it drummed into their heads to get the ball (or puck or curling stone) into their pictures, and with good reason. The ball is the centerpiece of any action and serves to provide context and perspective to any sports action shot. It’s considered so important, in fact, that among the 79 photos found to be digitally doctored by prize-winning photographer Allen Detrich, one of the best-known was a women’s basketball shot into which an otherwise missing ball was Photoshopped.

Marysville-Pilchuk coach Julie Martin and her players.

Detrich and others needn’t go that far, in my opinion. There are plenty of subjects and moments away from the ball that are essential to telling the story of a basketball game, for example. That’s why I love shooting state tournaments. The stakes are high, and so is the emotion and intensity. So much so, in fact, that I try not to “resort” to the tried-and-true, hidden-ball tricks of sports photography, such as the celebration (unless it’s for a championship) or the often-colorful (but ever-present and stationary) fans (that said, I’ve included another cliche, the cheerleader, below).

While shooting a day of the Washington State 4A tournament this week, I really noticed how dogged most photographers were in their pursuit of the ball. For example, I often try to “shoot through” a play — keeping the shutter depressed in a burst even after a basket is made or a foul committed — because there are reactions and even consequences such as hair pulling, stomping and rabbit punches (not all sugar and spice, this sport of girls’ basketball). This is my photographic equivalent of following through. All of the guys shooting around me stopped when the action did. I wondered why they stopped, and they probably wondered why I did not.

It’s maybe because I was trying to get something I noticed earlier in the action, like these neon shoes.

A lot of times, it’s not “chimping” (looking through your just-recorded images on the LCD screen of your camera) during timeouts and finding animation in a face like official Al Perez, set against the neon art installation at the Tacoma Dome (yes, I have a thing for neon).

And sometimes the enthusiasm of a cheerleader helps tell the story about the atmosphere of the competition.

You also cannot assume that you got all that a subject had to offer in just one visit. Follow-up can offer equally good rewards. Julie Martin, the Marysville-Pilchuk coach, originally piqued my interest because she was wearing a coat on the sidelines during the game. Checking that out, I noticed the expressions of her and her players. I went back later, when MPHS was in the midst of a frenzied comeback, and got this.

Finally, I might keep shooting after a play because the aftermath is more interesting. Here, Kentwood’s Sanda Milovic is consoled by an assistant coach and teammate Kylie Huerta after she missed a potentially game-tying shot during an upset loss to Mead.

Again, the ball appears in none of the above shots, yet I hope you agree they are interesting unto themselves, and help tell the story of a day at an event that was colorful and emotional — though played with a ball.

Newspaper Essentials for the iTab

glennnelson — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:42:16 +0000

Though I will be perfectly happy to run current and enhanced applications on a new Apple tablet device with a higher-resolution, 10-inch color screen that will read multiple finger swipes and be tethered to the Internet, like many of my ilk, I will be most interested in its impact on journalism – more specifically, the newspaper industry. Coupled with the iTunes retailing environment, the iTab, or whatever it will be called, should enable newspapers to easily and more reliable charge for content. But it will be up to the print-publishing industry (lets include magazines) to generate the kind of compelling content for which digital-generation consumers will pay.

One imagined version of the Apple tablet

I’ve tried out many of the newspaper and magazine readers for the iPhone and have to say The New York Times comes closest to getting it right. It is fast, and intuitive to navigate (via headlines and categories), updates as news breaks and includes images. Stupidly, almost no other newspaper does the latter. I travel considerably and consume newspapers religiously. I cannot tell you how many “photo projects” I’ve seen in recent months that lost their impact because the photos were published out of register (color plates are not lined up, producing a “ghosting” effect). The Internet is where photos go and can be viewed at their heavenly best.

I hope it goes almost without saying that newspapers on an iTab must constantly be updated. Gone are the days when one, two or three editions of a paper and published and the day is done. Because of the Web, news cycles now are 24/7. This would be a starting point for me to even consider installing a newspaper app – for free – on my new device. Otherwise, I’m happy with the NYT (I’m a print subscriber which probably means I will be grandfathered into any new, digital offerings) and excellent news apps from the Associated Press, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).

To get me to pay for a subscription via iTunes, newspapers also will have to offer:

News Judgment Reflected in Intuitive Layout

That’s a mouth full, I realize. Though a lot of people are tired of the newspaper industry’s we’re-smarting-so-we’ll-tell-you-what-you-should-know approach, there still is an expectation of some guidance through a massive world’s daily events while everyone is living their lives at 100 mph. Curation is a buzz word in online journalism these days. Yes, journalists should be more in touch and therefore able to at least point others in the right direction, as opposed to ramming standards and points of view down people’s throats.

So, on a 10-inch screen, I expect to see some kind of layout, similar to the way the news is laid out on paper. I expect to see that layout change as news event dictates, minute to minute, if need be. I also expect some alternate layouts – stories listed by time and date posted, for example, or clickable headlines listed in order of importance (as of course decided by human editors). I further expect to be able to navigate to categories or sections. For a decent example, check out Esquire Magazine’s iPhone reader, developed by Iceberg Magazine. You can flip or flick your way through the book, page by page, or call up a list of contents, which can be sorted several different ways.

Yes, Let Me Also Decide

Yes, I mean some form of customization and not just sorting options. I should, for example, be able to designate my favorite teams, newsmakers and, even, writers. When David Pogue posts his witty gadgets column for the NYT, maybe I want that offered up before all other news. At some point, some genius will come up with a system of allowing users to assign a weight to their news priorities, allowing software to “lay out” a page that’s uniquely yours or mine. The Glenn Nelson version of the New York Times might have a Seattle Mariners story stripped across the top, with a big image of a Victoria’s Secret model anchoring the page, a politics story down the right rail, Pogue’s column on the left, with a movie or dance review and fashion story sharing the bottom of the page. We can dream …

Images – Still and Moving

I will expect pictures – lots of them. My mission as a journalist is to take people places they cannot go; I expect other journalists to do this for me as well. That can be done with words but, let’s face it, we’re reading fewer and fewer of those online. I will expect to be able to tap a photo to isolate it and make it full screen, to pinch to shrink or use two fingers to expand and zoom. Maybe two taps will reveal a whole photo gallery, or an audio photo gallery.

Some photos should be specially designated screen grabs from video that is brought to life with a tap or three-finger swipe or some such gesture. And the video cannot the kind of choppy, unedited crap that I’ve heard some newspaper “multimedia” gurus argue that consumers will accept. That’s rubbish. The point of reference for younger consumers, in particular (and even budding geezers), are their Nintendos or X-Boxes – or Avatar. Newspaper videos don’t have to be Jack Bauer on steroids, but they should be well-shot, edited, emotional and, yes, in high definition. Think Travis Fox’s work for the Washington Post. The barriers to this kind of work (financially and otherwise) have all but vanished and the only limitations are the story-telling abilities of today’s journalists.

We Can Hear, Too

Audio is part of the immersive, take-me-there experience. What does the subject sound like – even if it’s just the answer to one question? What does war sound like? How about Game 7 of the NBA Finals? I think audio even is a great way to get a quick take on a subject matter from a non-writing expert. One cannot misspell an audio clip (though they certain can butcher grammar).

Context and Digging Deeper

One of the beauties of digital news delivery is that all content continues to live and is relatively easy to access. Important people and terms should be hyperlinked to other content. If I’m reading about, say, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), maybe I can find out what he looks and sounds like by clicking on his name, which pops up a profile box. Come to think of it, I also should be able to do this with, say, any SI swimsuit model. Every story has the potential to have a related content box imbedded or at the end. This in fact could, in time, change newspaper writing to a more consumer-friendly style. Honestly, though perfectly rational to a journalist, the alien-just-landed style of writing which assumes a reader is tackling a subject for the first time ever is getting old and makes a lot of writers feel unapproachable and disassociated from a lot of readers.

I also would go the “related” route a bit further. Newspaper chains can offer alternate takes on topics from a writer or columnist in another city. The L.A. Times, say, could offer a Chicago Tribune story on the same subject. Or a newspaper such as The Seattle Times, which has relationships with dozens of hyperlocal blogs, can offer those as a companion to a particular story. What makes this all powerful is the context, not the “additional content” as a value-added proposition.

In Conclusion

This is not a definitive list by any means. My point is that newspapers cannot merely offer up their websites for pay on the iTab. They have to do what they probably should have done 5-10 years ago and tailor their content to the digital age and tastes. Someone, somewhere, will exceed the expectations outlined above, and blow everyone’s minds. That, to me, is the most exciting aspect of the Apple reveal in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Gone, but Hardly Muted

glennnelson — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:11:55 +0000

It’s just occurred to me that I listened to Bob Blackburn during the 25 most formative years of my life. I first listened to him for 15 years on the radio, delivering an almost nightly Sonic serenade, mostly in the dark, on my scratchy transistor radio. I then was a captured audience during my first 10 years as a sportwriter, during which Bob was a travel and dinner companion, and tennis partner on the long and long-winded NBA road.

Bob Blackburn, 1924-2010

Man, the guy could talk. It’s difficult to fathom The Voice silenced. Not even death, which came to Bob Blackburn today, Jan. 7, 2010, could muzzle him. I mean, as I contemplate and grieve his passing, Bob’s voice, clear as a bell, comes flooding back, describing Bob “The Golden” Rule’s 47 rookie points so vividly I almost think I actually was there. Or like I was in Washington, D.C., when Gus Williams threw the ball way up in the air and Les Habegger did the “Habegger Hop” after the Sonics won the 1979 NBA championship. Bob was the reason I ran out to my porch that day to listen to what seemed like the entire city of Seattle honking its horns in celebration.

I went to as many games as a guy with a Seattle Times paper route could afford, but I knew them all because of Bob. Tommy Kron and Tom Meschery. Dick “the Duck” Synder and “Downtown” Freddy Brown. Spencer Haywood and Slick Watts. They all came to life via a voice that cannot be described as mellifluous as much as it was unwavering.

“Well, you kno-ooow …” There was no such thing as ESPN back then, and we had only five TV channels, none of which carried Sonic games.

When I started covering the Sonics for The Times, much of the championship team still was intact. I remember a buddy asking me, “What’s he like?” Who, I asked, Gus? Sikma? Lenny? “No,” he insisted, “Blackburn!” Yeah, that’s where the guy stood with a lot of us.

Back in those days, NBA teams still flew commercial. So there was a lot of sitting around on airplanes, standing around in airports or baggage claim, staged on busses, before disembarking for dinners and furious tennis matches. All the while, I did a lot of listening because of Bob. The listening skills have come in handy during my career. I think a lot of athletes liked being interviewed by me because I listened. I gotta admit, I’d been programmed for 10 years by Bob. During his last year with the Sonics, Bob and I did what may have been the first sports call-in show on KJR. I remember being startled because Bob began the first show by asking me questions and insisting that I speak.

The Voice

“Now, Bob?” I asked during a break. “After all these years?”

A crafty tennis player, Bob frustrated me and neutralized my youthful advantages with spin and guile. And he could keep those gums flapping. Once, during a doubles match on the roof of the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, I sent a serve screaming … right into the kidney of my partner, Lenny Wilkens, then the Sonic coach with whom I was in the midst of a tense feud. Leave it to Bob to blurt, out loud, something about my “striking a blow for the media.”

I swear Bob could out-talk the Devil himself. He was so glib, he could render mime-like the late Jimmy Jones, part of the Sonics entourage as broadcaster along with Jim Marsh, analyst and lefty with a big serve. Bob was muted, temporarily, in 1983 because of triple-bypass surgery. When he returned, he loved talking about his good fortune and new dietary ways, which irked Jones, who’d had at least one quadruple bypass. Jones would order a big steak and maybe desert in retaliation, but the move would backfire, serving only to fuel more culinary commentary by Bob.

The past 10 years I ran into Bob too infrequently. He was of course still talking. About his auctioneering (how poetic is that?) and his cruises. I hung on to every word, as if the Bill Russell-coached Sonics were marching to the franchise’s first playoff berth. Or drafting the X-Man ahead of Detlef. He’d had his mic retired, but that hardly quieted him.

The Sonics – and the NBA – were my job for 17 years, so I have not missed them since they moved to Oklahoma City. Until now, that is. For me, Bob Blackburn was the Sonics. And now they’re both gone, reminding me that so, too, is my youth. The silence is not golden, much less welcomed. It never was.

Print’s Comeback, Dressed in a Swim Suit

glennnelson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:28:04 +0000

I recently reached the 10th anniversary of my leaving print journalism for the Web and, in reflecting upon some of the personal developments during that decade, I noted with some remorse my separation from one of my childhood loves — my subscription to Sports Illustrated. As a sports junkie and participant, plus a budding sportswriter, SI was my Bible. However, with the proliferation of instant score gratification and sports analysis on the Web, SI’s weekly format and in-depth, albeit well-crafted, prose no longer fit into my what’s-happening-this-millisecond lifestyle.

But, like the ugly high-school duckling who shows up to the reunion as the swan you wish you’d asked to the prom, SI is poised for a dramatic return — more beautiful, hip and engaging than ever.

more about "Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5 …", posted with vodpod

C’mon, admit it, if you’re like me, you want this badly. Real badly.

Truthfully, this is the kind of experience I’d been secretly hoping for (but knowing would not materialize) when I turned to the Kindle 2 as a “newspaper savior.” After all, I left The Seattle Times a decade ago mostly for the promise of this kind of dynamic interactivity — imbedded photos that sprang to life with a click (now touch), panoramic views of stadiums and arenas, real-time statistics, easy sharing, and the like. When I was recruited to the original Rivals.com, that was exactly the picture that was painted for me.

Ten years later, many aspects of that picture now exist. My company, ESPN.com, has a killer feature called Gamecast that is available even on mobile devices, via the killer app, Scorecenter. I ordered my season tickets from Sounders FC using the team’s seat perspective, which previewed the view I’d have from various seats at Xbox Pitch. Until now, many of these kinds of features have not been aggregated in one place.

Now all of this, and more, is in something I can hold in my hands — I’ve died and gone back in time 10 years but took today’s technology with me.

No surprise here that it is the magazine industry that is first to breathe life back into “print,” if that’s what we can call the SI Tablet. With its challenges around timeliness, magazines always have focused on bright, bold photography and graphics and summaries, in addition to in-depth reporting and writing. I don’t expect SI and the rest of the Time Inc., stables to skimp on multimedia — particularly, video — the way most daily newspapers have, outside the leaders such as New York Times and Washington Post and a handful of others. The newspaper industry’s too widely held belief that users will tolerate lower standards in exchange for a new content experience is what continues to plung it into irrelevancy.

Besides, most newspapers are too consumed with figuring out how to charge micro-payments for a story to actually develop something like the SI Tablet, for which an impassioned audience likely will spend hundreds to acquire the device, then monthly fees to continue feeding the beast. As my household peanut gallery (my wife) put it, “All that, and the SI swimsuit models.” Or vice versa.

It’s no great revelation that the last decade’s great technological advancements have conferred upon vast numbers of us a bad case of Internet ADD. I guess we should not have been surprised that, given tremendous and ever growing numbers of choices, that we human beings are choosing to sample them all — and often not anything very thoroughly. If content were morsels, then we’re all fat ladies on the couch with boxes of half-eaten chocolates arrayed before us.

I’m of course not privvy to any strategic thinking at Time Inc., but if I were them, I would not offer choices on The Wonder Factory developed tablet. I’d make it a dedicated device for “niche” audiences, sports being such a huge one it defies even being identified as a niche. With Sports Illustrated’s branding — and as long as it slakes our appetite for the ever-fluid commodities such as scores, stats and news that are the lifeblood of sports fandom — I know a lot of us would be willing to settle back into some form of media monogamy.

Multimedia Jazz and Thomas Marriott

glennnelson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:56:15 +0000

As my multimedia ideas and capabilities have evolved, it has been nice to intersect them with the evolution of jazz trumpeter Thomas Marriott, one of my favorite musicians and friend. Marriott on Sunday headlined a concert for the Earshot Jazz Festival, considered by Downbeat to be “Seattle’s most important annual jazz event.” The concert, at Tula’s in Seattle, highlighted Marriott’s own works, which are formidable, and Marriott had a great supporting cast, which included local sax player Mark Taylor and pianist Travis Shook, an electric performer who was in from New York City for the show.

I’m a big fan of jazz and a big fan of trumpet players, dating back to Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Miles Davis and stretching to Wynton Marsalis, whom I started following when he was just a young lion in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Marriott is moving into the realm of the former because he’s more of an artist than musician, with inventive and emotive approaches to his tunes. I never get tired of his music.

more about "Thomas Marriott at Earshot Jazz 09 on…", posted with vodpod

This is my third post about Marriott, and each has discussed a shooting (still and video) environment with its own unique challenges. The first shoot took place at Ama Ama, a restaurant and bar with no stage and little ambient lighting; the second shoot was at The Triple Door, with its big stage and good stage lighting. Tula’s, which has been the local showcase for jazz, is more typical of jazz clubs you’ll find in other parts of the country, with a small stage engulfed by tables and a bar, with stage lighting that is a bit more localized.

As with 98 percent of jazz performances, this one took place at night and in challenging light, destined to put my Nikon D3 and Nikon D700 to the ultimate test. I have very fast glass — a 200mm f2 and 85mm f1.4 — but I also want to change up once in a while. This time I brought along a 12-24mm f2.8, wide-angle lens. While 2.8 is fast, it often doesn’t cut it when it comes to my usual photographic gig, which is shooting girl’s basketball players in dimly lit gymnasiums.

In the following, I was going for a tools-of-the-trade shot and wanted pretty much everything clear, thus the larger f-stop. This is hand-held at 1/8 shutter speed, so bracing and grip, while always important, is even more so. The D3 delivers great quality at an astronomic ISO.

Nikon D3, 14 mm F2.8 at ISO 3200, 1/8 sec, f6.3.

Here, I wanted to show where the notes emerged. I was head on, with the 200 mm on a monopod. It’s the D700 that this time delivers at an even higher ISO.

Nikon D700, 200 mm f2 at ISO 4000, 1/250 sec, f2.0.

As we’ve shown time and time again, the latest generation Nikon pro and prosumer bodies deliver admirably in low-light conditions. I almost take it for granted. Several of the stills in the multimedia piece were taken in very little ambient light. The challenges here mostly were trying to get the right vantage while maneuvering in very tight quarters by squeezing between customers or squatting on the floor — all of which is much harder with a video camera.

Speaking of which, my video camera is new. I swapped my larger, somewhat nicer Sony for a JVC GY-HM100U, which doesn’t function as well in low light, but is much smaller and thus more useful for me since I travel so much. That said, the unit is a marvel of ever-shrinking electronics, with three CCD sensors, XLR jacks or built-in stereo mic (I used an external and got a little better sound than I had with the Sony), and lots of features in a camera that basically fits in your palm.

The biggest deal about the JVC is that it records onto little SDHC cards in formats native to Final Cut Pro. That means, yes, no converting files before importing them to Final Cut. The workflow starts by dragging files off the card directly into Final Cut for editing. This is the only way I could have produced this piece (even as uncomplicated as the video is) so quickly. In fact, it took much longer to edit and process the still photos. The end result is that I believe I used stills in a video as effectively as ever.

The Media’s Blurred Line Between Leading and Cheerleading

glennnelson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:57:19 +0000

When critics accuse journalists of “being in bed” with some of their sources, I don’t think they mean it literally. But occasionally it happens. And in the “real world,” it can be the stuff of major scandal.

Just two years ago, Mirthala Salinas, an anchor for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, became the source of national headlines when her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public. Salinas was suspended without pay and subsequently reassigned (banished, really) by Telemundo and her once-rising star has been shot down. Her crime — covering the mayor while she was romantically involved with him — is considered a clear conflict of interest by the news industry and the public at large.

Which begs the question: Is sports no longer part of the real world? Where I live, in Seattle, Wash., sports reporter Lisa Gangel of KING-TV is engaged to Patrick Kerney, a defensive end for the NFL’s Seahawks. I’d really not thought a lot about that until, channel surfing last Sunday, I happened across a Seahawks post-game show on KING and there was Gangel on the broadcast. Interesting — Salinas covers her love interest and gets drummed into obscurity; Gangel covers hers and is named recently by SeattlePI.com sports columnist Jim Moore, (in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine), the sexiest female sports personality in Seattle.

I covered the NBA and other sports for 17 years at The Seattle Times before embarking on a career, also in sports media, on the Internet, so I know how cozy one can get with subjects covered on a daily basis. I trust this also happens in other parts of the news world. I am reading “The Clinton Tapes” by Taylor Branch, a Pultizer Prize-winning author whose friendship with Bill Clinton earned him extraordinary access to the President. Branch was not covering President Clinton for any media organization and wrote a book, post-presidency, in first person, that explains a process and doesn’t attempt to overtly advance any agenda. That, to me, is worth a pass.

Trust in the media continues to plunge, according to a Pew Center survey, and there even are suggestions that the press cover entities such as Fox News as the equivalent of opposition parties. Clearly, the comingling of subject matter and self-interest is something with which the public is not comfortable. After all, how can anyone trust news from a given media source when the motivations of that source are simultaneously in doubt?

At ESPN HoopGurlz, which I head, everyone on staff has divested her- or himself of any association that might convey even the appearance of a conflict. So while almost everyone on staff has coaching experience, none is presently coaching. Nor does anyone run programs or operate events. None of us is sponsored by a sneaker company. Moreover, we make a particular effort to cover events across sponsorship lines and devote precious resources to do so.

Lisa Gangel of KING-TV via Flickr

Sometimes coziness supplies perspective not otherwise obtained, but there has to be a line and sharing a bed seems to be a pretty clear one. But in sports, in Seattle, at least, that line has become blurred. To wit, the Seattle Times’ Jerry Brewer, in a column on the Erin Andrews peep-hole video incident, acknowledged that journalists might debate the ethics of the Gangel-Kerney relationship, but he ain’t one of them.

“I’m not here to judge, especially since Gangel and Kerney are among the best and most likable people on the Seattle sports scene,” Brewer wrote.

OK, I don’t think I get it. If you’re likeable, attractive and give good quote or sound bite, it’s a pass? Couldn’t that have been said of Salinas and Villaraigosa? The only way this makes sense is if the line that truly is blurred is the one between sportswriter and cheerleader. As one of the former, I’d like to hope that really isn’t true.

Gangel photo credit: Bernzilla

The Real McCoy

glennnelson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:45:48 +0000

I got an opportunity to do a short photo shoot of jazz legend McCoy Tyner’s visit to KPLU, the NPR affiliate in Seattle. First of all, I was really thrilled because he still is a vibrant performer, though he is one of the last from the truly golden era of jazz. He is closely associated with John Coltrane, but stands more than firmly on his own. Just find a version of his “Search for Peace,” one of my all-time favorite songs (also see the bottom of a previous post Jazz and the Flip Mino HD Camera). It’ll move you, for sure.

Tyner is humble and easy going. I got a chance to speak to him for 5-10 minutes and it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it could have been. I often get intimidated speaking to artists, as opposed to athletes, mostly because I’m afraid my very crowded memory will fail me. I tend to remember when a basketball player scored 40 points in a game a lot better than who played the bass on a certain recording with a certain artist.

McCoy Tyner waiting for his on-air session at KPLU.

Anyway, the mission of this blog is to talk about the intersection of things I do, mostly with photography. It’s difficult, however, to blog about McCoy Tyner without pointing out his greatest as an artist and person. He is a little camera weary (as opposed to shy). He told me that he gets his picture taken a lot and asked me very nicely not to go overboard.

Nikon D700, 200mm F2 lens, ISO 3200, 1/250th at f2, with diffused SB900.

The lighting in the performance studio at KPLU can be a little challenging. It can be difficult to get a good white-balance setting because there are “hot spots” in the lighting. I was under somewhat of a time crunch, so I got only one shot of Tyner at the piano. The color was terrible, so I made do — I took the color out and made it a black and white.

Nikon D3, 85mm f1.4 lens, ISO 1600, 1/125th at f1.4.

The shoot was limited, but McCoy Tyner’s personality shows in the tight shots, which makes me happy.

The Lower Ninth Ward

glennnelson — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:49:41 +0000

NEW ORLEANS — We think a lot of time has passed — four years — and therefore much has changed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Shockingly not as much has changed as you might expect.

I’m down here for a basketball tournament, but cannot help but be captivated by the continuing reminder of loss and rebuilding that has not happened quickly enough.

‘Nuff said, don’t you think?

Cover Girl

glennnelson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:50:29 +0000

Next week at ESPN HoopGurlz we are launching a three-day series of featurettes on the players we considered for the No. 1 ranking in the 2011 class. We will unveil our choice on Thursday. The candidates are (spoiler alert) Cierra Burdick of Matthews, N.C.; Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis of Anaheim, Calif., and Elizabeth Williams of Virginia Beach, Va.

Kaleena is one of my subjects, so while I was in Orange County last month, I stopped by her place to shoot a portrait. Since we’ve already run so many different shots of her, I wanted something different. This is what I came up with:

Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis

I believe I do a decent job at action and environmental portraits and want to get better at doing more-formal sitdown shots. That requires mastering the lighting and other variables that help bring out the subject’s personality. This is going to be a tale of how I bumbled into what I feel is a pretty good shot.

My vision for Kaleena, because of the nature of the series, was some kind of “in the spotlight” kind of shot. I got to her place before she returned from her daily workout, so her stepfather, Kairi Ali, showed me her room. It definitely was a girl’s room, but also clearly a girl who loved hoops. I knew I wanted to shoot the portrait there. I also knew Kaleena would be a good sport about it, and I could experiment. When I did a photo shoot at the Nike National Skills Academy last year, she practically ran it, and some of the results are priceless.

Since I was traveling, I brought one body (my Nikon D3), one lens (my favorite, the 85 mm f1.4), one flash (Nikon SB900), one light stand and some Honl Photo accessories. I decided to shoot with a speed grid on my flash, which narrows the beam of light via honeycomb cells. Kaleena’s friend and Mater Dei teammate, Mya Olivier, was over, so I photographed them both, using a 1/4 grid, which produces a wider beam than the 1/8 version.

Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Mya Olivier

Now, a seasoned photographer reading this knows I’m getting myself into trouble here. One, a “spotlight” effect, and, two, showing the environment of the subject don’t exactly go hand and hand. Plus shooting in a bedroom can introduce a lot of things that could distract from the subject and make composition tricky. All true, but how does one learn but from making mistakes?

So, yeah, if I’d stopped with the shot below, I’d have been in trouble. The picture shows Kaleena for how I envision her — happy and confident. She grabbed the basketball pillow by instinct and it makes a good secondary item. But, though interesting, the stuff on her walls distracts from her.

(By the way, I’m using the smaller grid, plus using a gobo, which acts like a barndoor, helping one to contain the light).

Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis

So software to the rescue! I first exaggerated several settings in Aperture, which allowed me to more easily apply a paint-brush finish to the photo. Then I essentially cut Kaleena out of the photo, which retained the nice, orange side light that matched her pillow, and I put her against a black background. I’m not sure how well the texture shows up on the Web, but it is a nice effect on a print — or if it appeared larger in print.

Final Product: Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis

Multimedia Little Frances

glennnelson — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:20:23 +0000

I was present during the birth of my two daughters, Sassia and Mika, and, believe me, there’s nothing like it. I also was at the figurative birth of Thomas Marriott’s latest creation, the “Flexicon” CD. And that, too, was awesome.

In my opinion, the highlight of the performance, as well as the CD, is Marriott’s tune, “Little Frances,” about his daughter. To some, it is a melancholy song, so much that Marriott says people sometimes ask if anything is wrong with Frances (a resounding, “No!”). I hear a father’s emotional homage to his daughter, and the flugelhorn Marriott used during the CD release party gave it a light and playful touch (check out the clip):

more about "Little Frances on Vimeo", posted with vodpod

This clip, by the way, was exactly what Florangela Davila and I needed for our video project on Marriott and the KPLU School of Jazz. I open with his fingers on the valves, in front of the mic, and pan to a full shot of Marriott and his horn, to first surprise, then answer (just as one of my mentors, Travis Fox, once instructed).

I repurposed a portion of the audio from the above video clip to also produce a Soundslides presentation from the performance, which took place May 12, 2009 at the Triple Door in Seattle, Wash. You can check out the presentation (broadband connection is highly advised; FYI: images are 1280 x 720 resolution):

Click Here for Flexicon Release Soundslides Presentation

First off, I’ve wanted to photograph another live jazz performance since my first one (see: It’s All Relative) was conducted in cave-like conditions. Of course, the lighting is not going to get too much better, but at least at the Triple Door there are stage lights. These are necessary because one cannot use flashes, which could potentially distract the artists, especially in such a dark environment.

I led off the Soundslides show with the following because it is my favorite. Jazz is such a personal music genre and I think (hope) this tight shot of Marriott helps convey the emotion of his performance. As you’ll note, I shot this at a very high ISO and, compared, to just a year or so ago, the results almost are miraculous.

Nikon D700, 200 mm (at DX, so 300 mm) f2.0, ISO 2500 1/250th at f2.0.

I like the following, of bassist Jeff Johnson, also because it shows emotion and focus. But I backed out a little on this one because I thought the blue lights in the background added some ambiance. Note the ginormous ISO.

Nikon D700, 200 mm (at DX: 300 mm) f2.0, ISO 4000, 1/100th at f2.0.

Finally, I shot a lot of detail shots, the way one should when trying to chronicle an event. I got crowd shots, table shots, equipment shots and the like. Ultimately, I wanted to focus this Soundslides on the artists, since it was for the release of Marriott’s new CD, and all of these men appear on the recording. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have any detail shots; I included the following, which is similar to that in the video clip. In the larger version used in the Soundslides, you can see the reflection of Marriott in his horn.

Nikon D700, 200mm (DX: 300mm) f2.0, ISO 2500, 1/200th at f2.0.

By the way, again, all of the shots I posted were made with the D700. That doesn’t mean it’s my favorite, or best, camera body. I just like to pair my D3 with my 85mm f.1.4 lens to create the fastest combination possible for me. That combo (usually at ISO 2500) took the wider pictures in the Soundslides. I went lower on the ISO and shutter speeds when I wanted more dramatic, contrasty images.

All in all, I feel like I got a lot of flexibility out of the Sony HVRZ7U video camera, the D3 and D700, plus 200mm f2.0, 85mm f1.4 and 14-24mm f2.8 lenses. It was a lot to manage but, hey, it was a very important occasion.