The landscape is rough and barren. Its moss covered lava fields and tall sloping mountains have an almost lunar appearance.

This is 66 degrees north.  The home of seals and poets.

A few years ago, we produced a multimedia piece on Australia for the launch of the Nikon D3s and rolling through the southwest Iceland felt so much like our time in Tasmania.

Bill and I were lucky to be escorted through the Snæfellsnes peninsula of Iceland on Sunday by our new friend Raymond Hoffmann.

He works with Dionys Moser, a Swiss photographer who is famous for his landscape work.

We will be joining them on some tours in the near future — a diverse selection of locations from the north of Norway for the Northern Lights to the White Desert of Egypt to the Blues country of the Mississippi Delta.  We will have dates and descriptions posted on our blog and their Web sites soon.
Raymond was born in Germany, but moved to Iceland after meeting his wife – a native Icelander – on a trip to the island 10 years ago.
He took us to spots the guide books never mention. A black rock beach, a cozy ocean front hotel for a gourmet lunch — lost on Bill, but much appreciated by me — and small waterfalls overlooking a breathtaking backdrop of Church Mountain.

We started the day with coffee and croissants with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.  Along with spending hours talking with photographers at a lunch graciously arranged by Baldvin Einarsson, this was easily the highlight of our trip.  As much as we love taking pictures, spending time with people and making new friends is the best part of our existence.

Baldvin runs a professional camera store in Reykajavik.  A really professional camera store.  It was a another step back in time for us. Along with our friends at the Camera Store in Calgary, and Light and Byte in Zurich, Becco is a wonderful throwback to when service mattered most.  It’s just a different way to shop, and learn.

We’re lucky because we have Jeff Snyder and Annie Cahill at Adorama in NYC who are long time friends and colleagues. We can’t drop in often and hang out with them — it’s a bit of a commute –but they give great small town service with huge national resources.

The weather Sunday was perhaps less than desirable for most tourists but, as Raymond pointed out, typically Icelandic. The temperature wavered between 0 and -2 degrees Celsius, and the wind was a blustery 30 meters per second, which translates to just over 60 miles per hour.
We spent the day driving along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, unable to see the famous Snæfellsjökull volcanic glacier due to clouds, but enjoying the scenery nonetheless.  We stopped to watch a family of Icelandic ponies graze in a rocky field. We made pictures of a small church in the center of a lava field. Raymond took us to the famous beach at Búðir where we watched snow fall on its one-of-a-kind round, black rocks, a jarring yet phenomenal scene.

We ended the tour in a small fishing town where we warmed up with a bowl of homemade vegetable cream soup before driving back to Reykjavik. As the sun set behind a wall of clouds, rays of light escaped, allowing us to make the last of our Icelandic photos.

Maybe we’ll make it back there someday.  There is still so much more to see and do.

This is one place I’d like to get back to on a sunny day.  It’s called Gullfols, or Golden Falls, and pictures from there are spectacular when the weather is nice.  I shot this using the 8mm app on my iPhone just for fun, trying to make light of a dark day.

But there is a lot of work to be done this weekend at the Preakness Stakes so after a quick stop in Norway, home we go.

Great music on the radio didn’t hurt my mood either, nor did the excellent coffee.  Outside of Portland, and maybe Seattle, why doesn’t the USA have the same wonderfully prepared coffee I always find in Europe?   Sure, most US cities have a great coffee shop, but you have to search for it.  Here, it’s everywhere.

The land is gorgeous.  Geysers, snow covered mountains and beaches within sight of each other…….not to mention the delicious thermal spring baths.  Peter Brodin from Nikon Nordic took us straight to Blue Lagoon Wednesday after we got off the plane – the perfect way to relax after a long journey across the Atlantic. The warm water coupled with the chilly air and shocking landscape was refreshing in an uncommon way.

Then yesterday Laura and I took a road trip east to Geysir – a small town about an hour and a half outside Reykjavik that consists of a gas station, a motel and the world’s largest geyser. Geysir, the geyser (they are clever with names here)  has not erupted since 2000, but when it does it is twice the size of Old Faithful in Yellowstone. However, a smaller geyser 50 yards away called Strokkur erupts every 8 to 10 minutes and, unlike Yellowstone, Laura and I were the only people there to enjoy it. Watching something like that is like watching the world begin. It’s beautiful in a primordial way.

After the sweltering heat, and the intensity of the Kentucky Derby, the chill air and thermal hot springs of Reykjavik have been an extremely pleasant salve.

Just the right tonic to revive me before I head to Baltimore to continue to document the quest for a horse racing triple crown at the Preakness Stakes.

While the Derby is known as “the fastest two-minutes in sports,” for Bill it lasts most of a week.  He typically arrives at Churchill Downs on the Tuesday before Derby Day.  This is by choice.  One thing you don’t see too much in the magazine is how much Bill loves to photograph the entire Derby experience, from the barns and exercise riders to the fans and their hats.  The Derby is perhaps without peer among American sporting events in terms photographic opportunities, but you rarely, if ever, see Bill’s non-race work featured in print.  The advent of DSLR video and post-production software like Apple’s Final Cut Pro changed the game, providing Bill and Laura with the tools to create multimedia pieces for SI’s Web sites.  These pieces are an ideal outlet for incorporating all of the creative elements that make the Derby such a compelling event for Bill and Laura to cover.

Racing at Churchill Downs is an all-day event, with 11 or 12 races stretching from late morning to dinnertime.  That means exercising the horses on the track takes place early, starting before dawn.  Bill’s usual routine is to be out of the hotel everyday between 4:30 and 5 a.m. in order to shoot the activity on the “backside,” the area where the barns are located.  Bill has shot the backside for something like 28 years, and he never gets tired of it. There is a tremendous amount of activity here, with more than 40 barns packed into a fairly tight space.  It also feels intimate.  Horses, exercise riders, hot walkers and trainers are everywhere, and the sunrise brings ever-changing light. As Bill said in an earlier blog post, it’s “peaceful and beautiful; tranquil, but exciting.”  It’s a great place to be a photographer.  Bill loves to wander the backside with a 400mm lens, and he’s a master a picking out details with it.

Serious preparations for the Derby itself begin on Friday of race week with the marking of spots.  After the morning training session is done, all of the photographers from the various press agencies get together on the “frontside,” where the grandstands are located.  Spots are marked along the finish line, on both the inside and outside rails.  There is a pecking order for this.  The Churchill Downs official track photographer gets first choice, followed by the major media outlets such as SI, Associated Press and Getty Images, the great local papers –The Louisville Courier Journal and the Lexington Herald Leader.   The spots are small, usually 18 inches to 3 feet wide.

Once the spots are determined, cameras can be installed.

This year, SI covered the race with three photographers: Bill, Heinz Kluetmeier, and Gary Bogdon.  Bill always covers the first turn and the finish line.  This is a lot of territory, encompassing a bunch of angles, so Bill installs upwards of 30 cameras to capture it all.  Obviously, he can’t be in all places at the same time, so most of the cameras are pre-composed and focused by Bill and fired by assistants.  A few others are handheld by other assistants.

Bill places a dozen cameras under the inside rail, just after the finish line.  These cameras — equipped with lenses ranging from 14mm to 400mm lenses — give the perspective of horses running nearly on top of you with the grandstands in the background.  Other cameras are clamped to stands 1/8 of a mile ahead of the finish line, providing a higher perspective of the race.  These have wide angle lenses and are mostly composed to directly face the grandstands.  All of the cameras are wired so that they can be fired remotely, as the photographers here have to stand some distance away from the rail in order to avoid creating distractions for the horses.  Another set of cameras is placed on the roof of the grandstands.  These give you the sweeping shots of the fans and the track.  With the Derby run late in the day, the lighting is usually gorgeous for these shots.  After Bill composes and pre-focuses everything, the cameras are then “bagged” with plastic bags in case it rains before Derby time and to keep the cameras protected from dirt and moisture during the day while the racing card takes place and the grounds crew prepares the surface.

The last set of remotes are installed on the outside rail of turn one.  Which brings me to my job at the Derby this year…  In the past, I’ve handled what I would consider non-essential shots; that is, shots that wouldn’t seriously detract from the overall shoot if they failed.  One of my favorite Derby memories is from two years ago.  It was raining on race day and in the afternoon Bill got the idea to install a camera under the rail to shoot the horses’ hooves close up, splashing in the mud for a multimedia piece.  I took the equipment out to the location where Bill planned to meet me to set it up.  But he got delayed and sent me the text, “Can’t get there.  Do what you can.  Good luck.”  This was my first time using a pocket wizard — something you wouldn’t ordinarily use in this environment — but with Andy Hancock’s help, we got it all working.

This year, Bill upped the ante, asking me to man turn one.  Turn one is the location for one of the most iconic shots of the Derby — the pack of horses rounding the turn with the Churchill Downs twin spires in the background.  Bill sets up turn one with three pre-focused, pre-composed cameras: A mid-range lens to capture the spires, and a 300mm and 400mm to come in tight on the horses rounding the turn.  These are all wired together so that they can be fired with a single remote trigger.  An assistant –my wife, in this case — only has to push the button at the right time.  Sounds easy, right?  But there’s also the problem of exposure, which cannot be pre-determined because of the changing light conditions.  For instance, last year it rained all day, right up until a minute before the horses left the starting gate, when the sun came out.  It made for incredible images with mud flying everywhere, but it was a scramble trying to get exposures changed.  Not only that, we shoot the horses “twice around,” meaning the light could be different from one time to the next.  For the inside rail shots, last minute changes aren’t possible because the assistants have to be off the rail around race time, so you do the best you can.

In addition to the pre-composed cameras in turn one, I was assigned to shoot a handheld 600mm.  Now, let me just say right here that I’ve never shot a 600mm lens, so the prospect of getting tightly composed and properly focused shots of horses running past me at 35 miles per hour or so seemed a bit daunting.  But like I said earlier, there are races all day long, so I practiced.

In between all of the set up and preparations, Bill also finds time to shoot the fans and what he calls “feature work.”  Not much of it will find its way into the magazine, but this kind of shooting is one of the reasons Bill keeps coming back.  One of the best places to shoot fans is from the paddock where the horses are saddled and the jockeys are mounted before each race.  It is packed with spectators, and Bill can use his 400mm for tight crops and shallow depth of field.  He also finds time to wander the infield, which is a completely different world from the grandstands.  All in all, Bill’s days are packed and sleep is in short supply.  The same goes for Laura, who in addition to capturing audio and video at Churchill, does most of the post-production work and all of the video editing.

Finally, race time approaches.  For me, the Derby is both exhilarating and nerve-racking.  My wife and I got to turn one about an hour before the race in order to be there before the horses are lead from the barns to the frontside and into the paddock through a tunnel in the stands. Bill made one last check and set exposures, but there’s still plenty of time for the light to change, and of course, it does.  My main job is to stay on top of the exposures of the pre-composed cameras and shoot the 600mm handheld.  I was so pre-occupied with the light that I completely missed the horses coming out of the paddock and parading in front of the stands before being lead to the starting gate at the far end of the track.

Once the horses are off, they are on top of you quickly and you’ve got about a five second window in which to shoot in turn one.  The long lenses are shot wide open, so depth of field is extremely limited.  I absolutely could not have shot that 600mm on manual focus while tracking the horses.  Today’s auto focusing cameras and lenses are a boon to photographers, dramatically increasing the success rate of mere mortals such as myself.  And even then, it’s not that easy.  Back in the day when Bill came up, everything was manual focus, and the ability to focus long lenses on rapidly moving subjects separated the men from the boys. It’s one of the essential qualities that have made top notch sports photographers such as Bill and Heinz Kluetmeier so successful.  For the Derby, Bill shoots a 600mm handheld from the outside rail about 70 yards past the finish line — he still shoot manual focus so that he can compose the way he wants quickly.  He shoots the horses all the way down the track coming toward him, but most often the money shot is a tight one of the winning horse passing the finish line and the jockey celebrating.  That’s the shot that made the cover when Calvin Borel won aboard 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird in 2009.

After the race, it’s a scramble to get cards back to the media room so that they can be copied onto computers and uploaded to the magazine’s offices.  The Nikon cameras Bill uses have two card slots which can be configured so that each shot is written to both cards.  This enables Bill and Laura to give one set of cards to SI’s Photo Operations Manager Erick Rasco while keeping another set of cards for their use in prepping another multiple piece.  Erick is so calm, friendly and fast when he is on location with the photographers it makes an incredible difference.

We also have to clean and pack all of the equipment. This may seem like an afterthought, but cleaning and packing is extremely important and is not taken lightly.

You are talking about a massive amount of fragile and expensive gear.

We typically use wet wipes to clean off the equipment.  Fortunately there was no rain on race day so the cleaning part was easy this time — we finished it in about three hours.

When all is said and done, we got out of the Downs at around 10 p.m., time enough to get back to the hotel and order pizzas for everyone and a night of post-production editing.

My thanks to Bill and Laura for another great Derby.  I had a great time, and so did the backup (or is it primary?) brain.

The multimedia “Beating the Odds: The 138th Kentucky Derby” is now on SI.com

Laura and I arrived in Kentucky on Tuesday to get settled in, and to start work on several multimedia pieces.

We’ve been at the track every morning by 5 a.m.  It’s my favorite part of this event.

Dawn on the backside of Churchill Downs allows me to make beautiful pictures at a slower pace.  It’s peaceful and beautiful.  Tranquil, but exciting.

But I don’t come to the Derby just for the horses.  I come for the people.

I’ve been covering this event for more than two decades, and through the years I have made some of my closest friends here.  People like Bill Luster, Dan Dry, Matt Goins and Skip Dickstein, just to name a few, are the main reason I wouldn’t miss the Kentucky Derby.

The Run for the Roses also gives a chance to catch up with colleagues, like SI senior staff writer Tim Layden.  He is a wonderful writer and great friend.  Working with him is always a pleasure.

He was the subject of our first multimedia piece, a multi-camera stand-up where he gives viewers his picks for this year’s race.

Our second multimedia is a backstage look into the making of champion race horses and the beauty of the Derby.

Stay tuned for more….

I was excited about having a chance to work with some great folks, and spend time interacting with the 11,000 photographers who would be attending the expo.  Plus with plenty of fine German beer for Laura, I knew it could only be a happy environment.

Before anything else I need to talk about Yasuo for a moment.  This was a mammoth undertaking. I think it has to be the largest event of it’s kind in the world.  With his team at Nikon Germany, he put together not only an impressive group of speakers, but also filled a giant hall with a wide range of corporate friends and provided a brilliant environment for everyone to learn and share.     He had time and kind words for everyone.  Gracious and generous while under so much pressure and stress is a lesson we can all learn from.

The last month I’ve had a chance to work often with my long time friend Joe McNally.  Every time I hear him present it’s an education.  He is not only incredibly knowledgeable about photography, he is just flat out fun to listen to.

Laura and I were backstage with Anne Cahill right before Joe’s first presentation on Saturday — he was lighting an elephant and a lingerie model with small flash — and there was a lighting diagram/sketch Joe had drawn on a piece of cardboard lying on one of the shipping cases.   Some of the group–and I am not naming names here,  but it wasn’t me, were discussing selling it on Ebay.

I got the chance to make a new friend this weekend who spends significant time with some of my old friends.  Florian Schulz is a contributor to  National Geographic with a world of talent.  Seeing his work on display and meeting his young family was a joy.   I hope to see more of him down the road soon.

The guys from Profoto Germany knocked themselves out to help us with various lighting solutions.  They  introduced us to their ProDaylight system for our shoot with the body builder and gymnasts.  These are an extremely powerful continuous light source — they will be very helpful particularly for video solutions.  These lights allowed us to show the audience exactly what the light would look like, why we placed the lights where we did and — more important — allowed the photographers in the audience to join and shoot with me.   At one point I was struggling to make a point so I invited some of the crowd to come and sit on the floor with me to see things from my, literal, point of view.  About 150 flooded out of the seats and surrounded me.  This was really fun for all of us.

Photo by Carsten Bockermann

Nikon Solutions was a 2 day festival.  Each of the days, we did three presentations: one on DSLR video, one on a Love of Photography and a live shooting demonstration with multi remote cameras.

I always learn more than I can teach at this type of conference.  I have shot about 150,000 frames now with the Nikon D4 but every day I get new information that helps me make the images I want to make.  Each of the other presenters opened my eyes to useful solutions.

It’s time to take the inspiration and information and get back to work.

Tomorrow first thing, we are loading up 20 cases of gear and heading to see another group of old friends at my favorite yearly event, the Kentucky Derby.  The only place to be the first weekend of May, every year.

I was doing workshops and talks about DSLR video both places.

In Las Vegas, I was a guest of Manfrotto at NAB. I always love to spend time at the Kata booth. They are some of my favorite people and their products, while seemingly simple, are a critical component of what I do. I work on the road, on deadline, and my gear has to arrive organized and protected. Kata bags make that happen.

As much as I enjoyed spending time with Kata and Manfrotto, and seeing so many of my friends on the convention floor, one of the best things I did in Nevada was head to Red Rocks at dusk.  It was great to get out of town, grab my D800 and iPhone 4s and go for a long, slow walk.

In New York, I was speaking at Adorama and the crowd was wonderful. Terrific questions, fun atmosphere — and the knowledge that excellent pizza was right around the corner. I walked from my hotel in Midtown down to Adorama on 18th street, and then back to Sports Illustrated’s offices on 50th street and the Avenue of the Americas. Twice. Lots to see, lots to shoot. Sore feet.

This is easily the best time to be a photographer/storyteller.

At Adorama, I was hosted by Jeff Snyder. We’ve been friends for a long time, which is a good thing in someone you are doing business with, but even better he is a photographer and understands what we do.  With him it’s like having a hometown camera store instantly available, but with national resources.

Over the past two years, I’ve had the opportunity to help design and test Manfrotto’s new supports range, the SYMPLA.

The SYMPLA is the perfect match for the flexibility provided by HDSLR filmmaking. It provides multiple supports for your camera and lens, making it well-balanced and stable. It is easy to adjust, easy to pack, and easy to customize.

Comfortable and convertible, the SYMPLA expands creative potential by allowing you to shoot where you want.

In our exclusive behind the scenes video, you can watch many of the different ways we utilized the SYMPLA.

I’m honored to get to introduce the SYMPLA at NAB today, April 17 at 11:30. I’ll be discussing the design and the SYMPLA’s special features.

Yesterday was even better. I got to just roam the floor and visit my friends.

Before I entered the hall, I bumped into Tim David from Apple, who really need to watch where he is going, but that turned into the best surprise of the day. While I was talking to Tim, Garrett Rice – also from Apple came by and made me laugh for 30 minutes. A very nice way to start the day.

Inside, my first stop was Eileen Healey at Chimera — if there is a nicer person alive I don’t know who it is.

Next Dennis Wood at Cinevate. Their new jib is really cool, and I haven’t told Laura yet, but we will have one soon. If Dennis only had a little more energy…

Then to Chris Kearns from Small HD Monitors. I love their products. The new D7 monitor is sweet. Incredibly lightweight. It’s going to be a huge help with handheld cameras.

I went by Nikon’s booth, but the crowd was too big, and so I’ll head back today and visit with all of them. There is never enough time with those guys. Kris Bosworth, Scott Diussa, Mark Kettenhoffen, Sara Moosbrugger, Mark Suban, and if I have enough time I’ll talk to Mr. Silverman, but that usually requires a few hours and an instruction manual.

A huge bonus for me is the Manfrotto booth where Stacy Pearsall — check out her new book – and Andy Dunaway are doing demos and helping explain things. Really fine folks that I am lucky to have as close friends.

]]> http://www.strawhatvisuals.com/blog/equipment/2012/04/16/manfrottos-sympla-announcement-at-nab/feed/ 0 http://www.strawhatvisuals.com/blog/seminars-workshops/2012/04/15/capturing-your-vision-workshop/ http://www.strawhatvisuals.com/blog/seminars-workshops/2012/04/15/capturing-your-vision-workshop/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:57:28 +0000 Sara Tanner http://www.strawhatvisuals.com/blog/?p=1232 The countdown is on for Bill’s upcoming workshop Emotional Motion: Capturing Your Vision sponsored by Adorama and Nikon. This special event is Thursday, April 19 from 5:30 – 8 p.m. (EST) at the Adorama Building in New York.

Deadline to sign up is Wednesday, April 18.

Registration is $25 and each attendee will receive a $25.00 coupon at the event in exchange for a copy of their registration receipt.

The coupon will be valid for 30 days towards the purchase of any merchandise when presented at either Adorama’s retail store at 42 West 18th Street, New York, or for an online purchase at www.adorama.com