FEBRUARY 2012RUSSELLGRAVES.COM

N E W S L E T T E R

The Test Drive

Trying New Technologies

Depending on which platform you are viewing this newsletter, you’ll definitely see some changes.

I first started doing this newsletter several years ago when it was all simply text based and included just words and links (check it out HERE thanks to the Wayback Machine). While the newsletter was crude, it did its job to create engagement with those who read it.

I’ll admit that I am a constant tinkerer. I’ve never been content with the status quo and enjoy constantly making refinements to whatever I do to try to make the content better for a wider audience. If you’ve read this newsletter for any length of time, you’ll know that I’ve worked to bring a better design to the mix, add more images to each newsletter, as well as more educational content.

One of the big changes this month is that I am launching a companion version of this newsletter for the iPad. If you are reading it in the traditional way in the flip page format, great and thank you so much. If you have an iPad and want to test out a new experience, check it out by downloading it

HERE (You can find the install instructions HERE.)

I hope that the change is a good one. Now, I can’t guarantee that I’ll publish an iPad version each month - at least not for now. According to a recent survey I launched, about a third of the readers of this newsletter use the iPad for reading online content. As the number of subscribers grows and as iPad utilization grows, I’ll definitely produce an iPad version. For now though, consider this issue a test drive. As such, if you view it on an iPad, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have a fantastic month.

russell@russellgraves.com

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PHOTO TIP

Interested in getting images with really soft and creamy backgrounds? It is

really easy. First, open your lens as wide as it will go. Set the aperture to a

number like f2.8 or wider. Then try to concentrate on getting you background

as far away as you can from the subject and move your subject as close as you

reasonably can to the camera.

Canon 1D Mark III camera, 500 f4 lens, ISO 100, 1/500 sec @ f5.6

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Featured Column Bomb Hunting

Last June a visitor from San Angelo stopped by my house for a visit. Bill Yeates is many things: he’s a retired seismologist for the oil industry, a private pilot, a photography enthusiast, and a World War II buff whose encyclopedic knowledge of everything pertaining to the old Texas Army Airfields west of the 100th meridian is staggering. When he was at my house last summer he asked if I had every visited any of the old World War II era bombing targets in the area. “Targets?” I quizzed, knowing I’d missed something in my fifteen years of living in Childress. Turns out, his query had merit and a simple question set in motion a personal research project that connected the latest consumer technology with some old fashioned detective work and ended in a glorious afternoon outdoors in the Texas Rolling Plains. By the time we first met, Bill had already done a bit of research and found the rough coordinates of some of the targets - information he’d garnered from pouring over old war maps. Using the software program Google Earth, we honed in on a few of the areas were the targets presumably lay. A bit of scrolling and we found the tell-tale outline of old targets that time and hi-tech satellite imagery couldn’t hide. While the target shapes vary by

location, the one in which we’re interested looks like a giant crosshairs precisely laid across a hardscrabble piece of Panhandle ranchland. “I think I can get us on this place,” I tell Bill. “If I am correct, I know who owns this property. While Bill had to leave and head back for San Angelo, I promptly sent an e-mail and confirmed the location of the targets and turns out, I did get permission. Seven months later, Bill and I are winding our way across powder-dry ranch roads navigating our way to where the target ought to be. Using a GPS, a print-out of the Google Earth screen, and a measure of country savvy we wander into the unknown. While Bill stared as his GPS, he was just about to speak when I interrupted him and said, “Look there!” Tilted in the same fashion as the Easter Island monoliths, the tower at Pisa, Italy, and the Cadillacs in Amarillo, the back end of a concrete bomb jutted mightily from the caliche mound that marked the target’s center. It’s lasting monument of some unknown bombardier trainee who, at least for a moment, mastered the Norden bomb sight because of his training at the air base in Childress. Then, at the precise moment, he released the practice bomb from the AT-11 trainer and it sailed silently on a downward arc until it’s final, unceremonious thump into the dirt. To the untrained eye, you might think that the concrete pieces and metal fragments from the faux munitions scattered amongst the

cactus and mesquite are just scrap dumped by someone. To me and Bill, though, these pieces of World War II flotsam represent much more than that. Each hunk of aggregate, chicken wire, and cement were made by American hands, placed in the bombers by American servicemen, and dropped by the same Americans who make up the greatest generation the world has ever know. Men like my Uncle L.D. Hall from Bonham, Texas and others who fought and defeated perhaps the greatest evil to ever lay scourge upon the earth. And they did it not for the fanfare or the fame and glory. Instead, they did it because as Uncle L.D. once told me, “...I’m an American.” Before Bill and I leave, I walk over to where we started our mission and visit the lone bomb atop the mound one more time. Instinctively I touched the bomb and wonder about the person who dropped this over 60 years ago. While I may never know the contribution that the bombardier made to the overall war effort, I do know this: because of him and servicemen and women like him, I can snap one more picture and walk away proudly knowing, I am

an American.

Cattle Country In much of Texas, old traditions are still the

rule.

I grew up in cattle country. If you live anywhere in Texas, you know that the cattle cu l tu re domina tes ru ra l communities.

When I g raduated f rom college, I moved west to a county where the catt le outnumber people. It is a simple place where people live

their lives at a slow, perfect pace. Out here, people are connected to the land and vice versa.

This is cattle country.

THE SKINNY:

CANON 5D MARK II CAMERA

WITH VARIOUS LENSES

PHOTO

INSTRUCTION

Producing the Solo Photo Shoot Magazine work can be tough.  Believe me I do plenty of it.  Assignment work, while as exotic as it seems, can be a challenge.  Often I’m presented with challenges that range from creatively lighting in the field to catching up with wary subjects. I tell people that on a magazine shoot, the real work happens before the shoot. Here’s why:

Pre-production Of course every shoot begins with a call from a magazine.  I work for a lot of different publications and each one works differently.  Some will come up with an extensive shot list in which I work  collaboratively with a photo editor or creative director.  Others (most) will just say, “Get me some shots of ...” When either situation arises, it is imperative upon me to do my research. For this shoot, I was given the instructions to photograph a diminutive subject - the dunes sagebrush lizard (DSL).

What’s the big deal? I know, the thought of shooting pictures of a dunes sagebrush lizard doesn’t sound all that sexy but believe me, it is an important subject.  The small lizard is petitioned to be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species legislation. If the listing occurs, it could potentially curtail oil and gas exploration activities in the area of Texas and New Mexico where the lizards are found.  Therefore, it is imperative for people on both sides of this issue to do what they can to keep the economic engine of drilling and pumping  running while maintaining sand lizard habitat.

The Challenges When approaching a shoot like this, I

often make a list of the challenges I’ll face.  For this piece I knew that I’d have to: 1. Find a lizard to photograph; 2. Find someone who knows the habits and habitat of the lizard so we can accomplish number one; 3. Come up with a way to photograph a lizard that probably just wants to go about its lizard business and not stand still for a photo. For number one, I knew the area in which the reptile lives.  In western Texas and Eastern New Mexico, broad sand dunes run south to north through the Permian Basin region.  These sand dunes are held in place by the diminutive sand shinoak and an array of prairie grasses.  Living in the dunes and

burrowing tiny tunnels are the four to five inch long dunes sagebrush lizard. At first, I’d never seen a DSL in person.  My only glimpse of one is what I found on-line through a Google search.  Therefore, I knew

that securing permission to explore private property and then finding a lizard would be like finding a needle in a hay stack.  To compound the problem, I was on a budget with the magazine so I didn’t have the luxury of spending weeks in the field for half a dozen images. Therefore, to solve problem number two, I got on the phone and started calling my network of wildlife biologists with whom I’ve made contact in the past.  After a half dozen or so calls, I found the name of a graduate student who was studying the lizard for his doctoral thesis. A few e-mails and phone calls later, he’d agreed to take me afield but it took nearly six weeks for us to coordinate our schedules.  When we finally met in mid-September, he only had a few days left in the field and said that the adult lizards would be hard to find. Not having any choice, I said that we’d have to take our chances on finding one.

In the Field I left my house at 5am and headed southwest to the

“I KNOW, THE THOUGHT OF SHOOTING PICTURES OF A DUNES SAGEBRUSH LIZARD DOESN’T SOUND ALL THAT

SEXY BUT BELIEVE ME, IT IS AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT.”

tiny village of Maljamar, New Mexico.  Seven hours later, I arrived and met my contact on the ranch where he and his two research associates were checking pitfall traps.  Pitfall traps are plastic buckets placed in the ground and are used for catching lizards once they fall in the buckets. All summer long, they’d caught and measured and tagged lizards for their study which included monitoring the health and well being of the lizard in the critical habitat in which they lived.  This morning, I got lucky.  My contact had caught two lizards and he was saving them for me to photograph before he turned them loose.

The Shoot Shooting small mammals and reptiles is easy if you understand how to do it.  For this shoot, I decided to employ my $10, 10-gallon fish tank that I bought from Petco.  It works wonders for shoots like this.

The set-up is simple: Add soil and vegetation that matches the surrounding terrain and put the animal inside.  Once the critter figures out that they have barriers, they’ll often settle in and pose nicely for images. To light the lizard, I used single strobe shot through a translucent scrim and lit from above to cast the shadows below the lizard and make the light source seem more believable.  Therefore, the final shots ended up being a mix of ambient light that filtered in from the sides of the tank and a fill light from above to add a pop of color. Metering was based on the ambient light and the flash used TTL to decide the appropriate amount of fill. Ten minutes later the lizard shoot was over and the reptiles were turned loose - none worse for wear.  Six weeks of prep time and coordination all paid off on this brief shoot.  

It actually took me more time to walk from my vehicle to the research site than it did to shoot the pictures. While I was there, I rounded out my shoot with images of the researchers at work and pictures of the habitat where the lizards live. About an hour after I arrived, I was back on the road.  Another successful shoot behind me.

The Takeaway The lesson here is that for assignment shoots, the more prep work you can do the better.  In a perfect world, even the most complicated shoots can go smoothly and efficiently.  By managing all of the variables that I could, I made the least manageable aspects (whether or not we would find a a lizard) workable.

NEW VIDEOTHE DROUGHT

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT

MARCH 7COLLECTORS COVEY

DALLAS, TEXAS

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