First let me promise you no more baseball players (at least for a couple months).  After photographing football campaigns the last two weeks, I think it’s likely that that sport will occupy the blog for a bit, with some other random shoots thrown in to dilute the potency.

Now on to the Lester shoot…  Overall, I have found that photographing baseball players has gotten very easy, almost second nature.  This is not to say that all at the same, but that learning who wants to talk about the sport and who doesn’t, who’s interested in the shoot and who just wants to go lift weights has greatly increased efficiency.  What also made this shoot easy was the ability to fly in some of my lighting gear, in particular the softboxes.  At this point in the blog, clients should step away for a paragraph so as not to think less of me…

OK, photographers, now that we’re here alone, let’s talk about softboxes.  We all love them (or at least you should), but many of us treat them like an elegant piece of glassware, boxed when not in use and delicately folded when put away.  I respect this adoration of gear, but believe such care should be reserved for the camera.  With light, we are looking to create a sense of place, and realness, and in reality perfect light is none existent.  Look around your environment and find where a pure light source is diffused by an even plane and hits an object as to smooth away any roughness.  Yet everyday photographers bring this aspect into a photo and wonder why the “real” has been brought into the “surreal”.  Now let me be clear, I am not encouraging you to go destroy your softboxes and shoot through the seeming remainders of a paper bag.  I am only encouraging the introduction of reality into your images through closely analyzing of your light sources.

Welcome back clients, on with the details about the Lester shoot…  While everything was pretty standard about the set and shooting, there was a slightly funny story.  While I was prepping the second shot with John, a bald man without a shirt walks on set with a cell phone and proceeds to say “hello” to everyone.  Odd, yes, but with set being so easy going it was fine with me.  This man then proceeds to walk out on to the baseball field we were shooting next to and pace back and forth in midfield, still chatting away on the phone.  He eventually exited the field back to our set and chatted with people including the players to the point that I turned to the security guard and quietly sad, “is this guy ok to be on set?”  His response to me was, “yeah, coach is in a weird mood today, but he should be fine.”  And that’s how I met Terry Francona.