Gersh Photo Post | Max Gersh | Multimedia Photojournalist

My paper has started a project called 20 under 40. Citizens under 40 years old were nominated for profile pieces that would appear in our paper.

Each one needs a storytelling portrait.

It has presented a unique opportunity to really think on my feet for a good environmental portrait for so many different professions. We are only half way through the project and I haven’t shot every single one that has been published. Here are a few of my favorites thus far.

Each portrait delivered a new set of challenges. For this portrait of Jerry Ingalls, senior pastor at First Baptist Church, I had to find a location that focused on him but still had a churchy feel. When he told me about how he really likes to interact with his congregation, I thought it would be best to sit him in the pews near some stained glass.

I try to pay a little extra attention to the details with portraits. For example, I didn’t want a big highlight from my strobe (I used my DIY beauty dish on all of these) on the stained glass so I had to angle it just right. Also, I positioned myself so the pew on the right hid an electrical outlet on the wall.

Jerry Ingalls came to New Castle in January of 2010 to lead the First Baptist Church as senior pastor. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

For some of these portraits, I had very little time to work with the subject. For example, I met up with Dr. Damion Harris at his work during his clinic hours. Needless to say, he wanted to be in and out. He mentioned that he could pull up an x-ray on his computer and we went with it. Within five minutes, we were done.

Dr. Damion Harris is an orthopedic surgeon at the Forest Ridge Medical Pavilion. Harris came to the New Castle facility about seven months ago and specializes in shoulders. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

Reflections were again a huge issue while photographing Adam Bowman in Myers Furniture and Appliance. The light had to be just right to minimize huge glares. It was also interesting trying to balance the exposure on him and on the surrounding HDTVs in a very dimly lit room.

Adam Bowman is head of electronics at Myers Furniture and Appliance in New Castle. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

Weather was the tricky factor for Lindsay Brown’s portrait. It stormed very heavily the morning of the shoot. I wasn’t sure what was going to be happening by the time of we met up. The clouds broke and we had sun. Lots of sun. So much sun that I had to shoot at ISO 50 and f/8 to get my shutter slow enough to sync with my flash  (1/250th sec) which I needed to fill in shadows.

Lindsay Brown has been working at Henry County Hospital for almost five years, currently working in the emergency room as a nurse. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

For Seth Stevens, the biggest challenge I thought I would be facing was the location. When I heard banker, I immediately wanted to shoot by or in the vault. I was almost certain they wouldn’t allow it for security reasons. But it never hurts to ask.

Seth Stevens is the business development officer for Citizen's State Bank in New Castle. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

I still have more portraits to shoot in the coming weeks so I look forward to seeing what kind of fresh ideas I come up with.

Let’s just say I was bored the other night. I decided to shoot a self portrait.

The idea was to capture an image of myself off the ground glass in my Hasselblad 500 C/M. I had done something similar when I was testing the Hasselblad.

Looking down at the ground glass of a 1976 Hasselblad 500 C/M at a stream in Potosi, MO. ©2009 Max Gersh

So, I began to setup.

I sat the Hasselblad on the table and aimed it at my recliner. It was important to have both the focus of the Hasselblad and the capturing camera, my Canon 1D Mark II, sharp. To pre-focus the Hasselblad, I laid a newspaper over the headrest on the recliner. The contrasty text made for a great focus chart.

Next was to position my 1D Mark II.

I knew I would need a unique positioning so I took out my Magic Arm, a multi-jointed camera mount. I carefully positioned it directly over the focusing screen of the Hasselblad.

I was shooting with the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L lens. This gave me a bit of versatility once I had the Magic Arm locked down.

I wanted the image to be spot lit. I put my Canon 550ex Speedlight on a stand and attached the Gary Fong PowerSnoot. To fire it, I used my Pocket Wizards.

I took a few test shots to fine tune the exposure.

The portrait itself looked okay but I wanted to see more of the Hasselblad. I took out a red LED flashlight and sat it on top of an old cheapo zoom lens to angle it at the lens of the Hasselblad.

Here is what the setup looked like.

The setup for the self-portrait. ©2010 Max Gersh

The flash is to the left and about eight feet up.

I was worried about the Magic Arm tipping over so I placed a somewhat heavy box on the back of its tripod base as a counter-weight.

When all was said and done, the portrait turned out kind of cool.

A self-portrait of Max Gersh seen through the ground glass of a Hasselblad 500 C/M. ©2010 Max Gersh

It was completely overkill and unnecessary.

But like I said, I was bored.

I got the chance to test my DIY beauty dish this morning. It worked like a charm!

I once again had my friend Gavin Culbertson stand in for a few quick portraits.

Gavin Culbertson lit by my DIY beauty dish.

He was standing in the shadow with a sun-lit wall behind him. This picture could be improved with a back light but I only have one Speedlight, a Canon 550EX.

I love the circular highlight that shows up in the eyes of the subject.

Gavin Culbertson lit by my DIY beauty dish with circular highlights.

I will need to play with it more but it certainly gives off a nice quality of light. Not bad for a $20 DIY light modifier.

Ever since I discovered what a beauty dish was, I’ve wanted one. The problem is that I don’t have any strobes to use one on. My lighting is limited to a single Canon Speedlight (shoe mounted flash).

How could I produce the look of a beauty dish with my one Speedlight?

Simple. Build a beauty dish to fit.

I’m not the most handy of the handymen. Therefore, instead of designing the dish on my own, I Googled other peoples designs and copied it. I ended up using the one I found on David Tejada’s blog. His looks better (and probably works better too but that is yet to be determined) but I gave it a good effort.

To get most of the parts, I visited Home Depot. The main “dish” is a plastic terracotta planter. I wanted to find a relatively shallow one that was 14″ across but they didn’t have any that size. I ended up getting a deeper one that is about 12″ across.

Next, I headed over to the gutter section. I was looking for what is called a drop out or outlet (I think). While David used a metal one, the only one that fit my Canon 550EX was a plastic one. It doesn’t really make much difference. If you are planning on doing this, bring your Speedlight with you to check the fit.

I then headed to the paint section. I bough a can of flat black spray paint and a can of glossy white spray paint. I figured the gloss might help the light reflect. Maybe not.

After leaving Home Depot, I went to the auto parts store and got a 3 3/4″ blind spot mirror.

When I got home, I began building. I traced the outline of the gutter outlet onto the bottom of the dish. I used a Dremel to cut it out because I could. I imagine a sharp knife would work just as well.

I then also cut the same shape out of the bottom of a CD spool. A little bit of hot glue later, and the dish, the bottom of the CD spool and the gutter outlet were one.

I then spray painted the inside of the dish white and the outside black. I didn’t want an orange dish.

I glued a CD to the inside top of the CD spool. On top of that, I placed that blind spot mirror.

The light will be firing through the back of the dish, which is also firing into the bottom of the CD spool. The light shoots straight at the mirror which spreads it back around the dish which in turn lights the subject.

The beauty dish as seen from the front.

A rear view showing the mount for the Speedlight and also the depth of the dish.

The interior of the dish with the reflector off and set to the side.

I haven’t had an opportunity to test it on a person yet. The one thing I am concerned about is the direction of the light. This is what I would describe as a “shotgun beauty dish.” Its depth makes it a directional light modifier. I am concerned that it wont wrap a subject with light as beauty dishes are known to do.

Just from popping off a few test frames, I have noticed that I do lose about two stops of light.

Hopefully this weekend I will have an opportunity to further test it and see if this is something worth keeping. As soon as I find a wider and shallower planter, I will probably build another one.

This entire build cost me just over $20 but I already had a CD spool.

There are many videos linked in this post.
All of them are in HD and will take some time to load.
If the video is laggy, pause it and let it load before you try and watch it.
They are all worth the wait to watch.

A few months ago, multimedia photojournalism was revolutionized. Canon released the first ever full 1080P HD video camera that was integrated into a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) body - the EOS 5D Mark II. It is a terrific tool. A photographer can utilize this camera as a 21 megapixel still camera or as a high definition video camera.

It wasn’t long after the release of the camera that beautiful videos were hitting the web. The first and probably most famous yet was Reverie shot by Vincent Laforet. It showcased the cameras abilities by shooting at night with Canon still lenses ranging from Fisheye lenses to a 500mm lens and even a couple perspective correction lenses. It was not photojournalism nor was it intended to be.

The next video that caught my eye was that of German photographer Julian Stratenschulte. He did two videos on cyclists. They were unique because he was able to attach the camera to the bikes. One of his videos was called Backflip and the other was called Nachtfahrer. To view them, click on the movies link on his site. The last two videos (the ones sponsored by Canon) are those two.

At this point, everyone in the photo community was blown away by the abilities packed into this small camera. It was still yet to be seen how it would be used for photojournalism.

That is when I came across the work of David Stephenson, a staff photojournalist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and the photojournalism adviser to the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student paper. He put it to the test for a photojournalist. Here is the video:

David Stephenson wrote his review of the camera on his blog.

Now I don’t bring this video to you to argue its technical execution or use of light and lenses. I think it was shot beautifully. My concerns come with the way the story was told.

With the advent of new technology in photojournalism, journalists have to be more careful than ever to maintain objectivity.

If you look at any of my multimedia pieces, you will see that I let the subject tell the story. Narration or title slides are sometimes necessary but I try to avoid that. My way isn’t the only way and it is probably not the best way. But it is an objective way.

David Stephenson did a great job of gathering beautiful shots. The problem is that most of the video was narrated by a reporter. While I’m sure unintentionally, her tone was one that makes you sympathize with the boy and his family’s story. It worked. That should not have been the job of the story.

Photojournalists are there to inform. Not to take sides. We are used to carefully crafting pictures and words to meet a strict objectivity guideline. Slight changes in tonality and word spacing in narration can change the connotation of the message.

I don’t think any damage was done with this video. It is a happy story with beautiful imagry. It just makes me think about how video and multimedia will evolve photojournalism and if advocacy journalism is on the rise. My good friend Lanz Bañes hopes so.