#espnthemag

MLB Baltimore Orioles Catcher Matt Wieters for ESPN the Mag

It's not very often you see a 6'5" MLB catcher. Catchers are not traditionally really tall. They also don't usually catch for 7 or 8 innings and then close the 9th as a pitcher, which he did all through college at Georgia Tech, and for Stratford High School outside my home town of Charleston, SC. He also knocks the cover off the ball and bats 3rd in the line-up, and on defense he throws more guys out at 2nd from home than anyone else in the league. He takes it very seriously.

We shot Wieters during Spring Training outside of Sarasota, FL for both the magazine and ESPN's website. We used this job as an experiment with RED EPIC camera to see what kind of still file was really possible with a RED camera and also shoot a piece for the website. We shot at 5k res @ 96 frames a sec. using Zeiss Super Speed cinema lenses and pulled the stills through RED's software. Seeing a still for 96 frames in a sequence is pretty crazy, but we felt the images were slightly soft and could not be pushed any larger 9" x 13" @ 300dpi. Up close stills were much more impressive off the Red, but a 6' 5" baseball player was pushing it without turning the camera on it's side. We made some nice files from the camera but they required extensive work and don't enlarge very well. We also experienced overheating from the EPIC while in the midst of our interview, effectively stopping the shoot and refusing to work after several reboots.  Matt was cool and we continued shooting on the DSLR video rigs we have with 5D's and 7D's.

We also shot it on our trusty Canon Mark III camera at a turtle like (compared to the RED) 10 fps. We lit with HMI's once again avoiding the headache of strobes, which we did use for portraits. 

I really enjoyed talking with Matt, we come from the same area and had a lot of things to go on about. The guys from the team said they had never seen Matt talk that much. They had a great season and he was a big part of it making it into the playoffs against the Yankees and taking the series all the way to Game 5.

Thanks to the Baltimore Orioles staff, and the photo dept. at ESPN.

NFL Quarterback Cam Newton in the Gatorade Athlete Testing Laboratory for ESPN the Magazine

Cam Newton is a large dude and was not particularly thrilled when I met him. I can't blame him it was early and a team of scientists were about to stick him with needles, then strap him into various pieces of equipment where he would either have to be very still or exert as much energy as possible in a barrage of stress tests. This said seeing a world class athlete in his prime pushing himself to his physical edge in the name of science is a pretty impressive thing to behold, so I forgive him for not being Mr. Personality, and all told I would have been way grumpier than he was.

This was not my typical assignment as we were not allowed to disturb the scientists, coach the talent, or light anything. Not even on board flash (which I never use anyway, because it looks like on board flash). Pure reportage photo journalism in a bleak, windowless, badly fluorescent lit room, which usually lends itself more favorably to black and whites in my opinion. Just back to basics and use a fast lens.

I shot most of this assignment on the Canon 1Ds Mark III with the Canon 50mm 1.0, 35mm 1.4, and the 24mm 1.4 allowing me to shoot in low light and crush the depth of field. It was tight and not the most ideal shooting condition, but I am spoiled and used to setting things up my way, so it was also a welcome return to reportage.

They spent about 3 hours torturing the Panther QB in various ways, starting with blood work and body scans, moving to reaction testing (which he enjoyed the most), then 30 minutes of the fastest running on a treadmill I have ever seen with a full on snorkel in his mouth, then strength testing, and the grand finale speed bursts on the bike that I could barely turn the wheels on. Fun!

Gatorade brings in all of it's top athletes and runs these tests on them and uses the data to plan on overthrowing the world by cloning them. No I kid. I have no idea what they do with the data exactly, but it's cool to see that they have created a place to record this information on all of these top tier athletes and hopefully they cure cancer with the info or maybe figure out how long it takes athletes to recover from injuries, etc.....

Cool assignment and thanks to Nick Galac and the photo department at ESPN for sending me on this mission. Thanks to the good folks at Gatorade as well.

WNBA All Star and US Olympic Gold Medalist Simeone Augustus for ESPN the Magazine

This year we have been shooting the Technique section for ESPN the Mag all over the country with athletes from many different sports. Each one presents a different challenge figuring out the best way to show each athletes particular technique we are featuring. I won't lie and say it has not been a great deal of fun working with these athletes and putting them through their paces.

Simeone Augustus plays for the US National Women's Basketball Team, and the current WNBA Champions the Minnesota Lynx, as well as playing for a professional team in Russia when her US season ends.  We were tasked with the job of showing her crossover technique and were given the Lynx and the Timberwolves practice facility in Minneapolis to shoot the job.

This job like most of our technique shoots was lit using continous HMI lighting, this way we can shoot at 14 fps with the new Canon 1DX and not worry about our strobes needing to recycle. It is a much more expensive and slower way to work as the lights are large and bulky and require a ridiculous amount of power to operate compared with a standard strobe kit. 

The practice facility was inside the Target Center in Minneapolis which is the home to both the Lynx and Twolves and is an amazing complex. Everyone we worked with there from our gaffer and grip, our local photo assistant, the Lynx organizers, and generally everyone we met in Minneapolis were very cool and the city itself was alot of fun as well.

Simeone was an ace to work with and took direction very well. She made it easy for us with the action and nailed it right away. After shooting action on the court we shot several portrait set-ups and followed her to the locker room and shot a few more in there. Simeone had a great sense of humor and we hit it off immediately as I am a closet LSU fan due to my parents both going to college there and she is a Baton Rouge native. Easy going in life and intense on the court, we wish her the best luck for the future.