Stunning Images Of Earth Captured From An Astronaut's Perspective

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The
Perilous Photos of
Jimmy Chin

Steve McCurry's
Life In Pictures
Documenting
Democracy
Reflections On
Photojournalism

AUGUST 2019
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 EDITORIAL
WES PITTS
Editorial Director
TERRY SULLIVAN
Editor
KRISTAN ASHWORTH
Managing Editor
JULY/AUGUST 2019 Vol. 17 No. 4 digitalphotopro.com DANIEL BROCKETT, MARK EDWARD HARRIS,
WILLIAM SAWALICH
Contributing Editors

Contents ART & PRODUCTION

CAROLYN V. MARSDEN
Departments Art Director

ALLYSON PREBLE
Graphic Designer
4 EDITOR’S NOTE 10 NEW PRODUCTS 64 LOOKING FORWARD
SALES & MARKETING
Portfolios (617) 706-9110, FA X (617) 536-0102
14 SCOTT LUKSH
Media Solutions Director
14 A MASTER PHOTOJOURNALIST BOB METH
IN FULL Senior Media Solutions Manager

Steve McCurry's most recent book reveals more ALEXANDRA PICCIRILLI

Senior Media Solutions Manager
about the photographer behind the great images
By Mark Edward Harris CLIENT SERVICES
clientservices@madavor.com
Photography By Steve McCurry
ANDREW YEUM
20 DOCUMENTING THE HUMAN Marketing Director

CONDITION IN THE AGE OF TOMMY GOODALE

CONSTANT AGGRESSION
Award-winning photojournalist Lynsey
Addario's most recent photography book, Of
Love & War, depicts the many tragic facets
of our current hostile global zeitgeist
By Terry Sullivan | Photography By Lynsey Addario
28 CAPTURING IMAGES FROM AN
UNUSUAL PERSPECTIVE
The "travel" photographs Terry Virts creates were
produced by having access to a unique vantage
Marketing Associate
TIM DOOLAN
Social Media Manager
ANTHONY BUZZEO, JOANNA CASSIDY
Content Marketing Associates
Printed in the U.S.A.
Digital Photo Pro (ISSN: 1545-8520)–Vol. 17 No. 4–is published bimonthly
except monthly in November and December by Madavor Media, LLC. Ex-
ecutive, editorial and advertising offices: 25 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite
404, Braintree, MA 02184, (617) 706-9110. Periodicals Postage Paid at
Boston, MA, and at additional mailing offices. Single-copy price–$6.99. An-
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other foreign–$39.97, including postage and taxes. Payable in U.S. funds.
For orders, address changes and all other customer service, phone toll-free
(800) 814-2993. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Digital Photo Pro, Box
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20
point on the International Space Station
By Mark Edward Harris | Photography By Terry Virts
ment No. 1559788.
Email us (editorial matters only) at editors@digitalphotopro.com or visit our
website at www.digitalphotopro.com Copyright © 2019 by Madavor Media, LLC.
No material may be reproduced without written permission. This publication
is purchased with the understanding that information presented is from many
sources for which there can be no warranty or responsibility by the publisher
as to accuracy, originality or completeness. It is sold with the understanding

28 that the publisher is not engaged in rendering product endorsements or pro-

viding instruction as a substitute for appropriate training by qualified sources.
EDITORIAL SUBMISSION: Digital Photo Pro assumes no responsibility for solicited or
unsolicited contributions and materials. Otherwise, insurance for such materi-
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Editor’s Note
Be sure never to throw away this issue of
Digital Photo Pro. In fact, although the
theme of this issue is Photojournalism
and Travel Photography, we really should
have called it the “Warning: Keep This
Issue Forever” issue. Or perhaps the “Do
Not Lend…Even To A Friend” issue.
Why? For starters, we’ve included
award-winning photojournalists Steve
McCurry and Lynsey Addario, who’ve
provided some exceptional images and
discuss various aspects of their careers
and recently published retrospective
anthologies. (You can see one of Addario’s
extraordinary photographs on this page
from her assignments covering conflicts
in sub-Saharan Africa in the Darfur
region of Sudan.) Also, photojournalist
4 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

Lynsey Addario's photo depicts Sudanese soldiers waiting for their truck to be
fixed as a sandstorm approaches in Darfur, Sudan, August 2004.
Andrea Bruce, who has won her share
of prominent awards, discusses how
she’s using multimedia in a new way to
explore what democracy, community and
citizenship mean today. And she includes
some equally powerful photographs.
But if that wasn’t enough, we take you
to explore some unique travel images.
First, we think you’ll be fascinated by
the images shot by astronaut Terry Virts
during his missions on board the Space
Shuttle Endeavour in 2010, and 200-
plus days on the International Space
Station in 2014 through 2015. Plus, we
travel along with writer and photogra-
pher Mark Edward Harris, who inter-
views photographer and director Jimmy
Chin, who took home the Oscar for best
documentary film this year for his film
“Free Solo.” And while I know Alfred
Hitchcock created the movie “Vertigo,” I
believe you’ll actually experience vertigo
when you check out Jimmy Chin’s pho-
tos of Alex Honnold’s ropeless ascent up
El Capitan that he used for the movie.
They’re extraordinary travel and adven-
ture images that are one of a kind.
So, after you read this issue, be sure
to keep it safe (and even hidden from
others), since I believe you’ll be return-
ing to it again and again.
Enjoy your treasured issue!
— Terry Sullivan
Editor
editors@digitalphotopro.com
 CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
Madavor Media, LLC
25 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 404
Braintree, MA 02184
JULY/AUGUST 2019 Vol. 17 No. 4 digitalphotopro.com

OPERATIONS

36
Contents JASON POMERANTZ
VP, Strategy

TONI EUNICE
36 USING PHOTOGRAPHY TO Operations Coordinator

DISCOVER DEMOCRACY ALICIA ROACH

A renowned photojournalist is using multimedia Human Resources Generalist

in a new way to explore what democracy, CHEYENNE CORLISS

community and citizenship mean today Client Services Supervisor

By Aimee Baldridge | Photography By Andrea Bruce TOU ZONG HER

Senior Client Services Associate
50 HOW TO FILM A MOUNTAINEER AUBRIE BRITTO, DARREN CORMIER,
WHO ASPIRES TO EXTREMES ANDREA PALLI
Client Services
Discover what it took for Jimmy Chin and his
crew to document Alex Honnold's ropeless AMANDA JOYCE
Accounting Director
ascent up El Capitan in the award-winning
TINA MCDERMOTT
documentary movie "Free Solo"
Accounts Payable Associate
By Mark Edward Harris
Photography By Jimmy Chin WAYNE TUGGLE
Accounts Receivable Associate

50 DIGITAL OPERATIONS
RENEE DEXTRADEUR
Senior Director, Digital Operations

DAVID GLASSMAN
WordPress Developer

MIKE DECKER
Senior Digital Designer

EXECUTIVE
JEFFREY C. WOLK
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6 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 Change gear.
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New! JULY/AUGUST 2019 Vol. 17 No. 4 digitalphotopro.com

Online Contents
60 AUDIO ASSIST
Ordering Boom pole tips, tricks and techniques
By Daniel Brockett

for Books Equipment

& Albums! 56 HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY PUSH THE
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digitalphotopro.com
The AIPAD Photography Show In New York City
The AIPAD Photography Show displayed some
iconic photos in April, like this one of Bob Dylan
by renowned music photographer, Elliott Landy.
World Press Photo Announces Contest Winners
Winners of this year's World Press Photo Contest included
John Moore, of Getty Images, and his compelling image of a
two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker
DigitalPhotoPro digitalphotopro digitalphotopro
Reports From NAB 2019
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conven-
tion may be over, but there was a lot to take in during the
three-and-a-half-day exhibition. Check out Michael Gun-
cheon’s take on the trade show and Terry Sullivan’s report
on trends to keep your eye on.
NEWSLETTER: Subscribe today for updates on the
latest features, how-to articles and photography news.
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 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 9
NewProducts New Tools Of The Trade

>> Canon Introduces New Cine Sumire Lenses

In response to photographers, filmmakers and cinematographers looking for Canon
glass with a PL mount, Canon introduced its first set of seven cinema prime PL-mount
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>> For the latest product news and in-depth coverage of new announcements, visit digitalphotopro.com/newswire

10 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


>> Sharp Unveils 8K Video Camera
Sharp hasn’t made many cameras in the past 15
years. However, recently, there was news (posted
on the Japan headquarters website of Olympus)
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Rajab, Kabul, Afghanistan 1993

Photojournalist
Steve McCurry’s most recent book reveals more
about the photographer behind the great images
By Mark Edward Harris | Photography by Steve McCurry
Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984
A Master
In Full
If you search the internet for lists of the most well-
known photographers working today, American
photographer and photojournalist Steve McCurry, who has
been responsible for capturing some of the most captivating
images of the past 50 years, is almost always among those
distinguished names.
However, for a more personal and comprehensive view
of how this photographer came to be included on those top-
tier lists, you should take a close look at his most recently
published book, Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures (Laurence
King), which is the most comprehensive volume on the
photographer’s images and life published to date.
Forty years of McCurry’s incredible imagery are inter-
twined with unfiltered comments from his sister, Bon-
nie, allowing us to gain a more personal view of the
photographer behind the lens. Plus, personal notes, tele-
grams and memorabilia from his travels are included in
this revealing opus.
You also learn much about his early life: For instance,
Bonnie and Steve’s father was an avid photographer, docu-
menting his family with an Argus C3 and a Kodak Brownie.
Steve’s first camera was a Kodak Instamatic, which he used
to document his first extensive trip to Europe the summer
after he graduated from high school in 1969.
It’s intriguing to find out that McCurry majored in film
and cinematography at Penn State since he continues to be
an avid fan of the moving picture. “Citizen Kane,” “Sunset
Boulevard,” “The Godfather,” “Goodfellas,” “The Shaw-
shank Redemption” and two films by Stanley Kubrick—
“Paths of Glory” and “Barry Lyndon”—are among the
films he cites as inspiration. In fact, “Barry Lyndon” stands
out for its scenes shot by candlelight using ultra-fast lenses
developed by NASA. And while a third-year class in fine-
art photography redirected his interests toward shooting
the frozen moment, his training in filmmaking at Penn
State gave him a firm understanding of how to tell a story
through images.
 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 15
 In 1978, after a few years work-
ing as a photographer at Today’s
Post, his local paper in King of
Prussia, Pennsylvania, McCurry
took the major step that put him on
a path that eventually led him into
the pantheon of great photogra-
phers: He bought a one-way ticket
to India to build his own personal
body of work. He later said, “If I
were to choose to photograph in
just one country, I would
choose India” because of
its “beautiful chaos.”
Less than a decade later,
“I feel a real personal
his portrait of a 12-year-old
green-eyed Afghan refu-
relationship with the
gee named Sharbat Gula in
Pakistan graced the cover
of the June 1985 issue of
National Geographic. How-
ever, what’s revealed in
the book is that McCurry’s
best-known single photo-
graph almost never saw the
light of day: Bill Garrett,
then the editor-in-chief of
National Geographic, pulled it from a
pile of rejects after the story’s photo
editor had chosen an alternate image
during his edit.
In A Life in Pictures, McCurry’s sis-
ter reminisces, “From the time he was
a kid, Steve was never still, and he’s
never been one to wait for things to
happen to him. I’ve heard it said that
only amateurs wait for inspiration;
professionals just get up every day
and get to work.” Now in his late 60s,
Steve McCurry is still proving his sis-
ter’s comment to be true and shows no
signs of slowing down.
McCurry’s fascination with daily
life and the human condition contin-
ues to be the driving force behind his
images, perhaps best summed up by
the late, famed National Geographic
photo editor Bob Gilka: “McCur-
ry’s success did not come from the
bang-bang syndrome of the swash-
buckling combat photographer.
16 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

Rather, it is because of his versatility
and sensitivity.”
Digital Photo Pro: The exten-
sive text in your new book by
your sister, Bonnie McCurry,
gives us incredible insight into
the makings of you as both a
person and your evolution as
a photographer.
Afghan people,
who I’ve met…and
who have become
extended family.”
Steve McCurry: My sister is the per-
son who knows me the best. She has a
great eye and memory, so it was obvi-
ous she would be the only one capable
of doing this huge, extensive work in
gathering stories, going through my
work and selecting pictures that have
never been seen before. It was also
important to give some context to
situations I lived through, witnessed,
with ephemera and texts, and could
be potentially an educational tool for
future generations. I believe she did an
amazing job.
You started out studying cin-
ema and, as your sister wrote
in the book, the medium has
had a major influence on the
development of your eye.
You’ve cited Stanley Kubrick,
for instance, as a major influ-
ence. What made you adjust
your focus to a life capturing
frozen moments?
Kubrick was a master of light and
composition. His color palette was
poetic and harmonious. He started
his career as a still photographer for
Look magazine, and I think his eye
for design and light carried through to
his filmmaking.
While I was studying cinematogra-
phy in college, I took a fine-art pho-
tography class. I just fell in love with
the medium and the work
of photographers like Henri
Cartier-Bresson,
Kertész, Dorothea Lange
André
and Elliott Erwitt. Their
work is full of humanity,
emotion and great artistry.
They turned universal sto-
ries into art. They photo-
graphed the world from
their personal point of view.
Henri Cartier-Bresson and
André Kertész generally
used one or two lenses and
worked mostly in available
light. This simplicity, as
well as the mastery of light and com-
position, helped contribute to create
this timeless quality.
I knew I wanted to spend my life
traveling and exploring the world we
live in. Photography has a solitary ele-
ment that I’m attracted by. You can
walk out your door and start shoot-
ing images. It seemed more spontane-
ous than film. I thought it was more
immediate. I liked wandering around
with my camera and making pictures
of things that interested me.
What has drawn you to focus
so much of your photographic
efforts on Asia?
There’s such depth of culture and
geography, and there’s so much vari-
ety. It’s truly a unique part of the
world, and so often misunderstood.
When you think of a place like
Afghanistan, and then next door you
have India, Nepal and Tibet…the
September 11, New York City, 2001
cultures go back thousands of years.
The architecture, the language, the
way people dress, everything is so
distinct and unique, unlike Europe
or the United States, which has
become this homogeneous globaliza-
tion of culture.
Afghanistan has been one of the
central and most important stories of
my career. I have traveled there more
than 30 times.
One of my first photographs pub-
lished by The New York Times was
from my first visit to Afghanistan
when I traveled with the Mujahideen
in 1979. When the Soviet Union’s Red
Army invaded Afghanistan, it was
extremely difficult to get access to the
country. I was one of the few people
who had a body of work from there.
Since then, I have been following
the political situation that is evolv-
ing constantly. No matter how often I
return, this country always changes in
my absence through conflict, change
of regime, modernization. I feel a real
personal relationship with the Afghan
people, who I’ve met and who have
helped me while traveling the coun-
try and who have become extended
family. I also captured images of child
labor, young boys and girls working in
candy factories, images that still haunt
me, and always wanted to make a
change regarding this situation.
And you have in part done
that through your non-
profit organization.
I founded ImagineAsia with fam-
ily and friends a couple years ago to
help young Afghans from the Bami-
yan region where the Hazara people
live. We are providing textbooks
and materials for schools to promote
education. We do drives to provide
blankets and coats for the hard win-
ters. We wanted to do something
very manageable where one could
actually see the benefits directly to
the people. Afghanistan’s children
represent the country’s hopes for a
better future, and education is the
only key to that future.

What is it about India that
also has been a major focus in
your career?
India is also fascinating because it is
so culturally rich, with a varied geog-
raphy and strong social and cultural
disparities among its people. It was
the first place I traveled to as a young
photographer, and I was struck by the
unique variety of cultures, customs
and religions. The mix of Hinduism,
Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, Christi-
anity—and to see how they all inter-
mingled—has been a constant source
of fascination.
I find the people to be some of the
most outgoing, warm and generous on
the planet. Celebration is abundant,
exuberant, dramatic and colorful.
There is a vital spirit that is alive and
continuously connected to the ancient
history of the country.
Above all, no matter how much it’s
changing, there’s something about
India that makes you feel like you’re
stepping back into another time
and age. In terms of specific places,
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 17
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Ladakh and Kol-
kata are extraordinary spots that I
keep wanting to return to.
One of the aspects of India
you focus on is the monsoon.
How do you translate some-
thing so massive like that into
a cohesive story?
I researched what was the fundamen-
tal meaning of the monsoon and how
it affected people’s lives. The monsoon
is an important part of the Indian cul-
ture. Often, it is either too much rain,
resulting in flooding, or not enough
rain, resulting in drought and poor
crops. In either case, it creates devas-
tating results. It is a dramatic situation,
and sometimes can be life-threatening
for thousands of people.
Having lived through two mon-
soons I understood I would need to
travel to areas with extreme weather
conditions in order to tell the story.
During and after the monsoon,
there were very interesting festivals.
Take the city of Varanasi. People
Scotland, 2016
have to cope with flooded streets,
sometimes using boats to com-
mute and adjust their lifestyle with
the weather.
My first encounter with the mon-
soon was through the pictures of
Brian Brake, published in LIFE
magazine in 1962. I was inspired,
and I wanted to go to these places as
a 12-year-old boy. I decided when I
got older to see these places myself.
That is what I did 20 years later and
spent two years in India.
In addition to the reportage
work you’ve done in the region,
you’ve produced many powerful
portraits of locals often working
in open shade and with a shal-
low depth of field.
I'm using the selective focusing,
and I'm selecting what I want the
viewer to focus on. Besides the
technical and the composition, the
most important thing is the human
aspect, and telling a story through
the empathy that you feel for the
person you are photographing. I
like the fact that a photo tells some-
thing about what it is like to be the
person that I photograph.
What camera equipment are you
working with these days?
I'm currently shooting with the
Nikon D850 and limit myself to
two lenses—the 28-70mm and
28-300mm zooms—and the Has-
selblad H6D-100c with the XCD
120mm Macro and the 45mm. The
Hasselblad allows me to make large
prints. I typically do not spend too
much time on settings and dedicate
most of my time to the situations and
the people I'm encountering.
Some of those situations and
people have been in war zones.
How did you go about trying to
convey the horror of 9/11, which
happened so close to home?
The attacks on September 11th happened
in my neighborhood in New York. I live
about a 30-minute walk from there.
 I actually looked out the window
and could see the World Trade Cen-
ter on fire. Immediately, I grabbed
my camera bag and raced up to the
roof of my building. I photographed
both towers collapsing from
there. We were all completely
devastated, but you have to keep
control of yourself so that you
can function…dial your emo-
tions back so that you can put
one foot in front of the other.
Then, I went down to do
what I always do, to photo-
graph. I arrived at Ground
are entering a very different I think if you’re doing something you
world from when you started. care about, then it’s time well spent.
Any suggestions for those You only live once, so you want to
making their early forays into have a taste of all the different fac-
the field? ets of the planet we live on. It is also
important to be prepared, to
work with good people—fix-
ers, translators or guides. They
“Stay focused, be are a key to successful projects.
If you don’t speak the local
engaged and language, you can run into
problems. If you don’t know
photograph things in the customs, you need someone
to help. I have always traveled
the world that with translators. Most impor-

fascinate you.”
Zero at around 11 a.m. It was tantly, I think if you’re doing
difficult to make my way there something you care about, then
as all the roads were blocked it’s time well spent. DPP
by police and firefighters, but I
knew it was important to document For more on Steve McCurry’s book and
the horrific event. You need patience and discipline. Stay work, go to stevemccurry.com. To learn
focused, be engaged and photograph more about the nonprofit organization
Photographers starting off now things in the world that fascinate you. ImagineAsia, go to imagine-asia.net.

It gets pretty wild out there,

but that’s when you
have to really dig deep,
recenter, and carry on.
And in the end when
you capture that perfect
moment, it makes all
the challenges worth it.
Manfrotto Ambassador
Renan Ozturk

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 « Documenting »
The Human Condition
« In The Age Of »
Constant Aggression
Award-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario’s most
recent photography book, Of Love & War, depicts the
many tragic facets of our current hostile global zeitgeist
By Terry Sullivan | Photography By Lynsey Addario

20 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 An Iraqi woman walks through a plume
of smoke rising from a massive fire at
a liquid gas factory as she searches for
her husband in Basra, Iraq, May 2003.

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 21

If I had to choose the most important
photograph shot in the 21st cen-
tury, it may just be the opening image
for this article (pages 20-21), shot by
the Pulitzer Prize-winning photogra-
pher Lynsey Addario during one of her
assignments in Iraq.
In the caption, you learn the photo-
graph depicts an Iraqi woman desper-
ately looking to find her husband after
a massive fire took place at a liquid
gas factory in Basra, Iraq. But for me,
there’s much more taking place, both
visually and metaphorically, in this
nightmarish shot, which packs so much
22 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

about our world into the frame…and
into a single image.
Right off the bat, you instantly sense
a world turned on its head from the
slanted horizon line. The main figure’s
identity, though, is literarily shrouded,
like so many women in that part of the
world, by a burka-like garb that com-
pletely abstracts her form and identity,
with the exception of her shoes. Those
are what anchor the figure in the frame.
So we sense the figure of a woman, but
we’re unsure of who she is.
And the longer you look, the
stranger things get. For me, if you look
at the image long enough, she almost
becomes an optical illusion, turning
into negative space. And, for me, in
that Rorschach-like watercolor blot of a
portrait, Addario records a miraculous
apparition, which transforms into a
figurative black hole that seems to pull
everything toward it—history, politics,
culture, religion, war, humanity and
hope—and into its black void.
In a way, the photograph changes
from being a very specific narrative of
a woman’s quest to find her husband
in Iraq to an ominous, visually abstract
metaphor of war, chaos and collapse.
 Addario says, “Noor Nisa, 18 (right),
in labor and stranded with her mother
in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan,
November 2009. Her husband’s first
wife died during childbirth, so he was
determined to get her to the hospital,
a four-hour drive from their village. His
borrowed car broke down, and I ended
up taking them to the hospital, where
Noor Nisa delivered a baby girl.”
Of course, that’s just one photo.
But it’s one of many spectacular
images and photo essays by Addario—
most of them tragic and heartbreaking,
and several that are almost too pain-
ful to look at—included in her recent
oversized retrospective book, Of Love &
War (published by Penguin Press).
For me, it’s a quintessential image
by Addario that powerfully and poeti-
cally conveys our era, an age of constant
aggression, which she alludes to in her
introduction, calling this new cen-
tury “a century of never-ending wars,
never-ending side effects, never-ending
tragedy,” yet, despite all this, she adds,
“and never-ending resilience.”
On Becoming A War Photographer
Of Love & War is certainly a large,
oversized anthology that chronicles
Addario’s career since the late 1990s.
However, it’s also something more.
“It's a retrospective of my photos,”
says Addario, “but it's also sort of a
scrapbook of my thoughts. I didn't
“…I am trying to capture their lives,
the tangible tension along the frontier,
to put some faces to all the gunfire
and constant aggression….”
want a typical book of photography.
I wanted to make it more personal
and be about my journey as a photog-
rapher and the narrative of not only
my career but also of the moments of
frustration, those moments of being
really lonely.”
You can get a sense of this scrapbook
sensibility right from the start: The
first photo in the book is actually an
image of a letter to her friend, Vineta,
written in March of 2000, in which
she describes being in Kashmir, or, as
she says in the letter, quoting President
Bill Clinton, “the most dangerous place
on earth.”
At the end of the letter, she says, “I
never thought I’d be attracted to these
kinds of pictures, Vin, but I guess I am
trying to capture their lives, the tan-
gible tension along the frontier, to put
some faces to all the gunfire and con-
stant aggression between the two coun-
tries that I read about every day in the
papers. Somehow, I always end up see-
ing everything through this humanistic
looking glass, without ever perceiving
my own danger.”
It's a captivating way start to the
book, since the handwritten letter
seems to predict the path that she will
take—which includes covering wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, South

Sudan, Libya and other countries; get-
ting published in The New York Times
and National Geographic; being kid-
napped twice; writing a memoir; and
winning major awards, including a
MacArthur Fellowship (or “genius
grant”) and being part of The New
York Times team that was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for International Report-
ing in 2009.
But what’s also powerful about
presenting the book in a somewhat
rough-edges-and-all manner is that
it provides a sense of transparency,
that allows you to trust her storytell-
ing. In fact, what’s important to see
throughout the volume, particularly
for young photographers who wish
to emulate her, is what an all-around
excellent communicator she is, in not
only her photos but also in her writ-
ing. She’s exceptionally focused.
Telling War Stories About Women:
Photographing Noor Nisa
Addario’s 2009 photograph of Noor
Nisa, a young pregnant Afghan woman
in a remote province of Afghanistan,
is an excellent example of the photog-
rapher’s instincts for seeing an oppor-
tunity to capture a memorable image,
tell a remarkable story and also gain
more insight into what it means to be
a photojournalist.
“I was working on a story on mater-
nal mortality,” says Addario, “a body
of work I've been doing for the last
10 years or so. I had been traveling in
Badakhshan province of Afghanistan,”
a province with one of the highest rates
of maternal deaths in the world. “I had
been meeting with women in hospitals
and very remote clinics.”
Addario says while traveling through
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 23
Afghanistan, back from these meet-
ings with her translator, Dr. Zeba,
“we saw these two women in burkas
on the side of the road, and right away
when we realized there was some-
thing amiss because women are always
accompanied by a man, and those two
women were not. They were just on
the side of the road in the middle of
the mountains.”
Addario and her translator stopped
the car. “We jumped out and asked,
‘what's going on? Is there something
wrong?’ It turned out the woman on
the right, Noor Nisa, was in labor,” says
Addario. The reason they were alone
was because the pregnant woman’s
husband’s car had broken down. The
husband, whose first wife had died in
childbirth and was determined not to
lose his second wife, had gone off to
find help.
“So I asked,” says Addario, “why
don't I just take them to a hospital?”
But Addario said that the women
needed permission from the hus-
band. “So, I turned to Dr. Zeba and
I said, ‘Go find the husband.’” Luck-
ily, Addario says, Dr. Zeba found
the husband almost immediately.
(Essentially, there’s only one road in
the whole province.) “I gave them all “I've always been interested in Addario, “was very segregated—
a ride to the hospital,” says Addario, telling stories about women,” says male, female—and men who are
where Noor Nisa safely delivered a Addario, “and not only the injustices not blood relatives couldn't actually
baby girl. but also celebrating strong women. get into family homes or go into the
Although there’s a happy ending to
this story, when many people hear it,
they often ask Addario if she captured “I also sort of fall in love with the people
photos of her delivery.
“I did not,” she says, “because actu-
I photograph. I think that in these
ally, I knew that I had really changed relationships, they have opened themselves
the story with my presence and that
they probably would not have made it up, and I open myself up….”
to the hospital had I not taken them.”
However, when she thinks back on
what transpired, she says, “But I could And so I think it was sort of natu- women's hospital. So I realized that
have. I could have taken pictures and ral for me to focus on women where my gender as a woman was an asset
put it in the caption that I'm the one I had more access.” For example, in and that I could focus on these wom-
who took her to the hospital. So it was Afghanistan under the Taliban, dur- en's stories.”
just a personal decision.” ing her first assignments, being a But she had a personal interest as
For me, Addario’s image may tell female allowed her access to women well: “I grew up with three sisters, my
a story of one woman in a specific in situations that were inaccessible to mother and a gay father.” So, Addario
time and place, but it resonates on a her male colleagues. “Afghanistan, says, early on her family supported
global scale. especially under the Taliban,” says and embraced strong women.

24 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 Men stand outside the governor’s house hours after
the fall of the Taliban, in Kandahar, December 2001.

One-hundred-nine African refugees from the Gambia, Mali, Senegal,

Ivory Coast, Guinea and Nigeria are rescued by the Italian navy from
a rubber boat in the sea between Italy and Libya, October 2014.
Kahindo, 20, sits in her home with her two
children born out of rape in North Kivu
Province, eastern Congo, April 2008.
Finding Surprising Images From The Past
Addario notes in the book that she has
captured perhaps millions of photos in
her lifetime, starting as a photojournal-
ist 23 years ago. What’s interesting to
note, though, is that during that time,
photography itself went from a film-
based system to a digital-based one. For
Addario, that has meant she had some
older projects in an analog format and
needed them to be digitized. To help
out, she hired an archivist.
“When I started doing the book,”
Addario says, “I had a room full of nega-
tives from when I first started shooting
from the ’90s.” Addario says her archivist
was scanning all of her negatives, many
of which the photographer had forgot-
ten about. But just as Addario and her
team were closing the book, the archivist
sent in a scanned image of men standing
outside the governor’s house in Afghani-
stan after the fall of the Taliban. “She
sent me this panoramic, and I thought,
‘Oh my God, I have to include it.’ It went
26 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

perfectly with the text. It described what
I was feeling, and so we were able to get
it in.”
Connecting With Subjects
One common element in most of
Addario’s photos is her ability to have
subjects agree to be photographed. Some
of them have endured unimaginable
traumas, such as the parents of soldiers
killed in battle or victims who have suf-
fered rape in war. To do so, Addario says
it has meant she has had to form strong
relationships with them, and they have
had to build a sense of trust together…
which in some cases may mean deciding
not to photograph them.
But building relationships is cen-
tral to her work. “For me, photog-
raphy is all about connecting with
my subjects,” says Addario. “And so
I think for me, it's really important
to have those relationships that you
establish that have some sort of con-
nection. Otherwise, how would I be a
sensitive photographer who can accu-
rately convey a situation. I have to
understand what's going on. I have to
really have a good sense of the subject
and sort of what they're feeling and
what they're trying to say. So for me,
it's really about communicating.”
Yet in a book comprising war photos,
one thing puzzled me: I asked Addario
why she chose to include the word
“Love” in the title Of Love & War.
“It could mean many different
things for me,” says Addario. “People
always associate war with the most
horrific things, because, of course, it
brings out the worst in humanity. But
it also brings out the best in many. I
see generosity, I see kindness, I see
love and inspiration.
“I also sort of fall in love with the
people I photograph. I think that in
these relationships, they have opened
themselves up, and I open myself up…
So there are many reasons for including
‘love’ in the title.” DPP
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Capturing Images
From An Unusual Perspective
The "travel" photographs Terry Virts creates were produced by having
access to a unique vantage point on the International Space Station
By Mark Edward Harris | Photography by Terry Virts

28 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 Cloud shadows at dusk, with Soyuz in
foreground. All photos from Terry Virts'
book View from Above, published by
National Geographic, 2017. Courtesy
of Terry Virts and National Geographic.

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 29


T erry Virts is the most prolific
photographer in the history of
space travel. He’s shot more than
300,000 images during his two
spaceflights, a two-week mis-
sion on board the Space Shuttle
Endeavour in 2010 and 200-plus
days on the International Space Sta-
tion in 2014-2015, which included
three spacewalks. He’s also shot
terabytes of video, some for the eye-
boggling IMAX film “A Beauti-
ful Planet.”
In addition to his dramatic images,
his book, View From Above, published
by National Geographic, has nail-biting
stories about his experiences circling the
globe, including an emergency exit into
the Russian side of the space station to
the sound of warning bells resonating
throughout the American sector.
Digital Photo Pro: Was photog-
raphy an official part of your
missions or did NASA allow
30 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

you to pursue your passion
in space?
Terry Virts: The thing about being
an astronaut [is] you’re not a special-
ist. On the shuttle, I was the pilot as
well as a robotics guy and a photo/
TV guy. When I first showed up
on the space station, I was a flight
engineer, then halfway through, the
old commander left, and I became
commander. But everybody has to
do everything.
The cargo ships would bring up
stuff, and I would track everything
on an Excel spreadsheet. Also,
we had 250 science experiments.
And every astronaut is a photogra-
pher to a certain extent, and we all
get training.
There are always technical pictures.
But 99 percent of the time, it was a
labor of love because of my passion
for photography. The subject mat-
ter is pretty spectacular in space, so I
wanted to take advantage of that.
Terry Virts captures a spacewalk selfie.
Does NASA have an official
photography program?
They do. There are around six people
in what they call the Photography/TV
group. A lot of the training has to do
with how to take pictures in the unique
environment of space because the light-
ing is so extreme.
We used to have Hasselblads when
I first got to NASA, which was won-
derful. They would let us check it
out to practice on Earth so we could
get good at it.
Then, there’s the video part, and the
system on the space shuttle was super
complicated, this kludge of 1970s wir-
ing and digital cameras.
What cameras are being
brought up now and what
modifications are done to
make them space-worthy?
The mainstay of the NASA program
is now the Nikon D5 DSLR, although
when I was up there it was the D4.
 In the past, there was a change in lubricants, but it was determined
that the modification is no longer needed. They did modify one of
the Nikons–I think it was the D2–to take imagery in the near IR by
having the IR filter removed from the chip.
There are also probably 20 Canon XF305 cameras on board
for video.
Every module has one of them stuck to a wall with a cable
running out linking video down to the ground. Then, they have
a few free-floating ones that you can shoot with. When I was
there, I was fortunate to shoot footage for DP James Neihouse
for the IMAX film “A Beautiful Planet,” including a sequence
of stills at four frames a second using the Canon EOS-1D C
DSLR that was converted into 24-frames-per-second video. We
also used a Canon EOS C500. For the IMAX project, they had
hard drives that we would fill up and send back down to Earth
on a cargo ship.
We also had the first-ever RED Dragon on board. But they
warned us, “The files are too big, be careful what you shoot, we’ll
never be able to downlink it,” since bandwidth is pretty limited.
After a few months, I got the RED out, which at the time was the
first 4K in space, and spent a whole weekend shooting a terabyte
of video.

Left: A crescent moon setting above Earth’s thin blue atmosphere.

Below: France at night from the International Space Station.

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 31

Above: The northern lights with moonlight behind the SpaceX Dragon.

Below: Terry Virts photographing Earth from the cupola.

 “One of the profound
With the Nikons, I things…is that when you
would shoot in RAW, plus
JPEG to a CF card, then see those city lights, you’re
download and transmit
RAW images and use the not seeing population,
JPEGs for social media
from space. you’re seeing wealth.”
What lenses did you
have on the space
station to work with for your
still photography?
Four or five prime NIKKOR lenses,
as well as an 8mm fish-eye and an
800mm and a teleconverter. Also, I
used a 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8,
14-24mm f/2.8 and 17-35mm f/2.8
zooms, among others.
How did you record
your spacewalks?
It was hard to use the Nikon D2 with
pressurized gloves on, but the protec-
tive thermal blanket container that you
put the camera in had a bigger shutter
button on it to depress.
There was a little LED light on the
back that came on showing a busy sig-
nal, so you could tell that it worked.
We also had a GoPro, which was
actually owned by the Russians. They
built a box—a thermal blanket for it to
protect it in case it got too crazy hot or
cold. It also kept it pressurized.
I borrowed it from the Russians for
all three of my spacewalks. Toni Myers,
the director of “A Beautiful Planet,”
put together a really nice montage of
my spacewalking just with a GoPro.
We also had a Ghost that could fit in
your palm but is really high quality and
could do time-lapse, stills or video.
Are you weightless the whole
time you’re circling around
the Earth?
From the moment the engines shut
down! You launch, and then eight-
and-a-half minutes later the engines
shut down, and you’re in space. When
you come back to Earth—on my last
flight it was 200 days later—as soon as
you hit the atmosphere, you start feel-
ing gravity again.
Once you’re in orbit on the space
station, how fast are you travel-
ing and how does that affect your
shutter speed when you want to
freeze an image of the Earth?
It’s about 17,500 miles an hour. In day-
light, it’s not a problem, you’re a few
hundred miles away. If you were a mile
away, it would be nothing but blur.
So in daylight, your shutter speeds are
1/500th or a 1/1000th of a second at 100
or 200 ISO.
It depends on what you’re shooting
and what your aperture is. I will say
this: During the day, it’s the brightest
bright you’ve ever seen, and at night,
it’s the darkest dark you’ve ever seen. So
you have to push the ISO.
A lot of my Nikon stuff was ISO 6400.
On the Canons, I would often use ISO
10,000. You need to get city lights, the
aurora or stars. Even at those speeds, you
have to slow your shutter speed down as
well as use a fast prime lens pretty wide
open. You’re down to a 1/15th or a 1/8th
of a second. The camera is on a bracket,
so you’re not tracking the target. All
those parameters are on the edge of blur.
What type of window were you
shooting through when you
were not out on a spacewalk?
The Russians have pure glass on their
side, but they don’t protect them very
well, so they are super scratched up. The
U.S. segment has two different windows.
The one in the lab is a window made of
pure scientific-grade glass. Whenever
you’re down in that lab window area,

you have to wear a mask. We
go to a lot of effort to protect
it. There’s a cover on the out-
side that you only open up
when you’re actually taking
pictures so that the fuel from
cargo ships or little meteor-
ites flying around out there
doesn’t scratch it up.
The cupola is a module I
installed on my STS-130 shuttle flight
in 2010, and it’s got seven windows.
Frankly, it’s the coolest place in space!
It also has covers, but usually, we leave
them open all day.
Did you get motion sickness?
I think everybody feels bad the first
day or two you’re in space, either dizzy,
have motion sickness or your back hurts
because you’re stretching out. My first
two days, I had a raging headache. But
after a couple of days, everybody adjusts
and gets better.
How do you photograph inside
the space station? What’s the
Kelvin temperature in there?
We have a Nikon Speedlight and also
battery-powered Litepanels that were
used in constructing the portable light
we call “bricks” because of their size
and shape. The U.S. segment was
roughly 5500K, and the Russian seg-
ment was roughly 3700K.
Did you ever see anything
going by that couldn’t
be explained?
Not really. But I did see amazing things
that I never knew existed on Earth or
in space.
For instance, over the planet, there’s
a thing called airglow. It sort of looks
like an aurora, but it’s not. It’s just that
the normal high upper-level atmo-
sphere sometimes has this thin uniform
straight green glow to it.
When you get to the Northern Lights
or the Southern Lights, where the mag-
netic poles are—then that’s the aurora,
that green is from the sun’s radiation
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 33

getting funneled through the mag-
netic field down into our atmosphere.
At higher levels, those auroras are also
white/red streaks. I never realized there
were different colors there.
Here’s something else I discovered: As
you go around the Earth, during the day
you see a thin blue line, which is our atmo-
sphere. But at night, it’s about five times as
thick and brown, with a little green line at
the top. It turns out the atmosphere goes
up really high, like a hundred miles, but it
becomes really thin. However, during the
day, you can’t see it.
How many miles above Earth
were you and how do you
stay in orbit after turning the
engines off?
Mr. Isaac Newton! Once you’re moving,
unless something pushes on you, your
motion is not going to change. There’s
such a small amount of air, it barely
impacts anything. We just floated in our
orbit roughly 250 miles above Earth.
34 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

Can you see manmade struc-
tures such as China’s Great Wall?
You can’t see the Great Wall because
of pollution. The only form that really
stuck out during the day was Buenos
Aires and Montevideo on a bay on the
east coast of South America.
At nighttime, you see city lights.
One of the profound things that I
never realized until I thought about it
is that when you see those city lights,
you’re not seeing population, you’re
seeing wealth.
Where did you see the
most wealth?
Western Europe, the East Coast of
America, East Asia from Thailand
through Japan. There’s a lot of eco-
nomic activity going on down there.
I think the most profound picture
I took from space was of North and
South Korea at night. Some people
live in the light. Some people live in
the dark.
The Bahamas and the Caribbean.
What final thoughts do you
have on this project?
The main thing about photography is
that it’s the artistic side of space flight,
and it’s the way to capture spaceflight for
people on Earth.
When I went to the Air and Space
Museum for the grand opening of
“A Beautiful Planet,” the director
there told me that a million people
were going to see that movie. They’ll
be showing it for years.
So, in my mind, it was the most
important and useful thing I did
because so many people will get to
see it. The technical stuff is great,
but I think the human element
is most important. Photography
was my vehicle to share the story
with folks. DPP
For more on Terry Virts’ work, visit his
website at terryvirts.com, his Twitter feed
at @astroterry, Instagram at astro_terry
and Facebook account astrovirts.
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36 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

 Using
Photography
To Discover
Democracy
By Aimee Baldridge | Photography By Andrea Bruce

A renowned photojournalist is using

multimedia in a new way to explore
what democracy, community and
citizenship mean today

Voters line up at the Richmond Police

Training Academy in Richmond, VA, to vote
in Congressional District 3.

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 37

“What does democracy
mean?” It’s one
of those exasperating questions, like
“what is art?” Both questions remind
you that the dictionary definition is
less a comprehensive explanation than
a placeholder for centuries-old debates.
Photographer Andrea Bruce was
asked the first question in 2003 by a
woman who was working as a prosti-
tute in Iraq to support her children after
her husband was killed by a bomb.
“My answer had to do with the Bill
of Rights, and it made no sense to her
whatsoever,” says Bruce. She had been
assigned to cover the war in Iraq and
its impact on civilians as a staff photog-
rapher for The Washington Post. Dur-
ing the following years that took her
to conflict zones across the globe, that
question about democracy would con-
tinue to dog her.
Bruce left the Post as a staff photogra-
pher in 2009 to gain more flexibility to
take on long-term projects. Her work
has been carried by outlets ranging
from The New York Times and National
Geographic to the photojournalism col-
lectives VII and NOOR, the latter of
which she currently belongs to.
Her photographs have earned numer-
ous accolades, including the Overseas
Press Club John Faber Award and several
Pictures of the Year International awards,
and the White House News Photogra-
phers Association named her Photogra-
pher of the Year four times. Bruce has
also received two awards named for fel-
low conflict photographers who lost their
lives on the job: the 2018 Anja Niedring-
haus Courage in Photojournalism Award
and the 2012 inaugural Chris Hondros
Fund Award for the “commitment, will-
ingness and sacrifice shown in her work.”
Her work is also marked by the
empathy she brings to her subjects, as
well as a determination not to turn away
from hard truths, no matter how ugly
or mundane. She has photographed the
violence of war, prostitutes at work and
girls being subjected to female genital
mutilation. She traveled to India, Viet-
nam and Haiti to cover a vital issue that
may be the most unglamorous subject
known to photojournalism—sanitation
One factor in the idea of democracy is
the changing state of the working class.
Buchanan County, on the farthest west corner
of Virginia, is home to the highest number
of Trump supporters in the United States,
mostly due to the president's promises to
the coal industry. In recent months, the coal
industry has picked up. But many in the
county who rely heavily on federal help are
worried about the president's promises to cut
benefits, including health care.
and public defecation—and won a Pic-
tures of the Year International award
for the body of work she produced.
To all of her images, Bruce brings a
keen eye for light and human expres-
sion. Her poignant use of chiaroscuro
in many images is a reminder that in
photojournalism, aesthetic techniques
can be used not just to make striking
pictures but also to draw us in close to
people we'll never meet and illuminate
their experiences.
Everywhere Bruce traveled to cap-
ture those images, the inquisitive-
ness about democracy popped up like
a leitmotif.
“People kept asking this question—
in Egypt during the revolution, or in
Afghanistan and Mexico and Liberia,”
she says. “It seems like the definition of
this word overseas is very different from
place to place.” People appeared to think
that as an American, she’d have a ready
answer, but she was never satisfied with
The Looney family in Grundy, Virginia, has
suffered from the unemployment issues
of the county, which depends mostly on
the coal industry. They voted for Trump in
the last U.S. presidential election. They
are also "fearful" that many of the benefit
programs that exist in the county will
disappear for the poor.
the explanations she came up with. “I
wondered what people in the United
States think this word means,” she
recalls. So after more than a dozen years
covering conflicts, disasters and social
issues overseas, Bruce decided to come
home and find out.
She applied for a Nieman Fel-
lowship at Harvard to spend a year
studying political theory and ideas
of democracy. Her fellowship year
turned out to be one of the most con-
tentious in recent American politi-
cal life, 2016. Over the course of the

Gloucester, Massachusetts: How the local
community is fighting opioid addiction.
year, Bruce drew on her academic
work and discussions with scholars
to plan a collaborative multimedia
project called Our Democracy, with
the goal of exploring what democracy
means to people in the United States
through in-depth reporting on com-
munities across the country.
“And then [President Donald]
Trump was elected,” she says, “and I
was like, ‘Oh, well this is even more
interesting to me now.’” She kicked the
project off right after the election. “This
is what I think is needed right now,”
she says. “I want to show how people
are wrestling with ideas of democracy
and community and citizenship.”
Bruce spends two weeks at each
location she covers, accompanied by
two assistants, her mother and her
baby daughter. She and her assis-
tants hold community discussions,
take photographs, conduct inter-
views and invite community mem-
bers to contribute their own photos
to an Instagram feed called @ourde-
mocracy. They also host a “Democ-
racy Dinner” near the end of their
stay, inviting community members
they’ve met to join them for a meal
and some lively conversation.
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 39

During the 2016 presidential race,
Bruce noticed a disconnect between how
national media covered the United States
and what she saw for herself when she
went back to the small towns in North
Carolina and Indiana where she had
grown up. She wants to avoid that kind of
problem in her own work.
“I want to approach journalism in
a different way, a way that's actu-
ally an old way, a community jour-
nalism style,” she says. That means
“This is what I think is needed right now.
I want to show how people are wrestling
with ideas of democracy and commu-
nity and citizenship.”
40 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

going into the community and talk-
ing with people before she starts
to shoot. “This is an approach that
we use overseas all the time,” she
explains. “We really get involved
with the community, and we talk
to fixers and translators and driv-
ers and community people to try to
battle the idea of clichés and stereo-
types that are so easy to fall back on
when you're covering a country that
is not yours.”
With duck hunters in Pamlico County,
North Carolina.
As it turns out, that approach is
pretty effective for covering a coun-
try that is yours, too. In fact, it’s the
kind of community journalism Bruce
practiced early in her career before
she went abroad. But during her years
away, local journalism continued its
steep 21st-century decline, and by
the time she came home, many areas
outside of major cities had no jour-
nalists left at all. Local papers that
still exist are often filled with notices
and syndicated content. Most people
she meets traveling across the United
States now tell her they’ve never met
a journalist before.
“When people talk about democ-
racy and how they would change the
community they live in…the media
is never mentioned,” she says. “Using
“We really get
involved with the
community…to
try to battle the
idea of clichés and
stereotypes that
are so easy to fall
back on…”
journalism, in general, is just not
something people think about.”
Even when she talked with students
at an affluent high school in San Fran-
cisco, she found that they didn’t con-
sider the media to be a useful resource.
“There's this idea of mistrust every-
where, not just in rural areas,” she says.
Demonstrating the role that journalists
can play by listening to people’s ideas
and concerns, and generating commu-
nity discussions, has become one of the
unintended purposes of the project.
Bruce usually begins her conversa-
tion with each community at a high
school, since schools often lie at the cen-
ter of community life. “When you start
with them, you hear a lot about what
people are thinking about, even from
the students and the teacher,” she says.
Although the framework for her proj-
ect grew out of scholarly research and
is informed by thinkers like the 19th-
century political scientist Alexis de
Tocqueville, she stays away from politi-
cal theory abstractions and national
politics in these conversations.
Instead, she comes to each group
with just three questions. “They're very
simple, and they don't use the word
democracy,” she explains. She asks
what people like about their commu-
nity, what they'd like to change about
it, and how they'd go about making
that change. The conversations her
questions generate help her shape her
coverage and identify other groups to
approach. “I start to get into the com-
munity that way and then start cover-
ing the issues that they're all talking
about,” she explains.
She has ended up talking with and
photographing a wide variety of sub-
jects, from business people and non-
profit groups to veterans to ex-offenders
and gang members. And the early dis-
cussions don’t just point her in relevant
directions; she says they also make her
photojournalism better. “Those dis-
cussions mostly help dispel clichés and
stereotypes that I have in my head,” she
says. “You can't help but have things
Afghanistan holds its first elections since
the fall of the Taliban. In the village of
Dehnow, an hour south of Kabul, women
line up in the courtyard of a family home
to vote on October 9, 2004.

like that when you go to a community
that you've never been to before.”
Unfortunately, that kind of commit-
ment to avoiding preconceptions can
make a project like Our Democracy
hard to sell to media outlets that want
to know what they’ll be getting when
they sign a contract.
“It really is something that's defined
by each community, and you can't pre-
visualize it,” says Bruce. The project
also loses media marketability because
it doesn’t fit neatly into a content cat-
egory. “It's audience engagement and
education and media literacy and
reporting and photography,” says
Bruce, “and so when I try to explain
this project to magazines and newspa-
pers, they just can't get there.”
She ended up finding support for the
project through grants from the National
Geographic Society and the visual sto-
rytelling funder CatchLight instead.
Bruce and her team are planning to go
to a new location each month until the
42 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

grant money runs out. In between trips,
they’re editing the work into a book, a
traveling exhibit, content for the ourde-
mocracyproject.com website and a cur-
riculum that schools can use when they’re
teaching about de Tocqueville or ideas
of democracy, especially during the 2020
election year.
But Bruce stresses the nonpartisan
nature of Our Democracy. “We really
are trying not to take political sides,”
she says. “This is actually trying to
bridge the divide in our country.”
If she’s on the side of anything, it’s
the power of community journal-
ism to help us get closer to the truth.
In a documentary project like Our
Democracy, she says, that means lis-
tening to and giving an honest por-
trayal of people with all kinds of dif-
ferent perspectives.
“It comes down to the same thing it
comes down to when I'm covering inter-
national news,” she says, “which is every-
one has a shared humanity. Most people
Halla Hameed receives a kiss from her son,
Iaad Hameed, 4, while her 2-year-old drinks
from a bottle. Halla’s husband, Walid Hameed,
the father of her two children, was shot and
killed in the violence surrounding Baghdad
during the war. She became a prostitute to
provide for her children. A customer sits
behind her. ©The Washington Post
go to school. Most people have jobs. Most
people have dinner, at some point, some-
how. And where you have your power in
your daily life in this shared humanity is
the main starting point of photograph-
ing people and not just showing how
messed up people are or what makes
people different than other people. And
that's hard, because it's also kind of
making life more boring, not exoticiz-
ing people, which is sometimes hard to
sell when you're a freelance photogra-
pher. I'm showing daily life and daily
struggles, and sometimes that's not sexy,
and sometimes it's not the answer that
people are looking for. But it's the reality,
as close as I can get there.” DPP
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Travel Portrait
Techniques Text & Photography By Brian Matiash
One of my favorite things about travel
portraiture trips is that I can focus my energy
and time on diving into how people and their
culture make a certain place unique.
Follow these valuable tips when traveling abroad
I 'll just come out and say it: I love to
travel with photography as my primary
agenda. Everything from the decision-
making process of where to visit to
deciding which gear to pack to those jit-
ters I feel the night before I depart, it all
culminates in an experience that always
enriches my life and my creative vision.
Naturally, not all travel photography
trips are created equal. In some cases,
I’m heading to a location specifically
for the natural landscapes. In those
instances, everything from the gear I
pack to how I manage my expectations is
set with landscape photography in mind.
However, there’s another type of travel
photography trip that I thoroughly look
forward to, not because of the images I’ll
get so much as the cultural enrichment
that I experience. I am, of course, refer-
ring to travel portraiture trips.
Much like traveling with landscape
photography purposes in mind, travel
portraiture trips come with their own
expectations and practices, and it’s best
not to conflate the two together because
they can often be worlds apart.
I’ve put together a series of techniques
based on cultural and humanitarian trips
I’ve made to various areas to help you get
the most out of such a trip, should you
plan on taking one. For every trip that
I’ve approached with the proper research
and expectations already set, I’ve always
returned feeling like I’ve gained some
truly wonderful life experiences.
Learn About And Respect
The Local Culture
While you may technically be consid-
ered a tourist whenever you visit a for-
eign country, there’s no reason to “act
like one.” What I mean by that is, you
can always tell when someone is act-
ing like a tourist when they go about
treating everyone and everything as if
they were still in their home country.
Social, gender, religious and political
norms can vary dramatically depend-
ing on where you visit. So it helps to
do some research before departing.
Fortunately, there are plenty of help-
ful resources shared by intrepid trav-
elers to help you avoid making any
faux pas.
46 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

For example, when I was researching
the cultures and societal norms in prepa-
ration for a two-week trip throughout
Morocco, I read several journals and
spoke to other photographers who had
been to the country. While most of what
I learned made me very excited, I also
discovered that many local denizens
don’t take too kindly to having their pic-
tures taken. While I certainly didn’t take
that as a blanket statement, I did file it in
the back of my head, just in case.
And, sure enough, I did experience
more resistance and negative responses
to my camera than I had in any other
country before. Had I not done my
research first, I may have been put off
by this. However, because I went in with
this knowledge, I was able to adjust how
I approached my shooting time in the
country. Rather than concentrating on
Because I was prepared for some
resistance to taking photos while
visiting Morocco, I altered my approach
and utilized a variety of compositional
hacks to get some unique photos.
taking more traditional head-on shots, I
looked for ways to use distance and alter-
native angles to compose my photos.
Challenge Yourself To Create
A Cohesive Photo Study
The reality is that there’s a vast amount
of cultural nuance to find just about
anywhere you go, but you can quickly
become overwhelmed since some geo-
graphic regions might offer so many sub-
jects to shoot. It can turn into a daunting
task instead of a creative endeavor.
That’s why I’m such a fan of identify-
ing and building out photo studies on
every travel portraiture trip I take. The
benefit of locking yourself into a partic-
ular photo study is that it can free your
mind to explore the creative opportuni-
ties of a single theme, whether it’s a par-
ticular neighborhood or time of day.
For example, while I grew up in New
York City and visit there quite regularly,
I always approach each return trip as if it
were my first time. To that end, for each
trip I’d make back home, I’d force myself
to focus on capturing the essence of a sin-
gle neighborhood or area in the city.
On a recent trip, my entire photo
study revolved around capturing the
vibe of Chinatown at dusk. Because I
imposed geographic and time limita-
tions with this study, I was free from
having to roam around and guess what I
should focus on shooting. Instead, I was
able to take my time looking for ideal
moments when the neighborhood’s
denizens would showcase what living in
that area felt like.
Another way to add cohesion to a
photo study is to limit yourself to a par-
ticular processing style or technique.
Shortly before departing for a trip to
Venice, Italy, I realized that I hardly ever
processed my photos in black and white.
So, I resolved to spend a significant
portion of my trip looking for photos of
locals that would translate well in black
and white. As such, I found myself
focusing far more on tone and form,
rather than color, and it was one of
the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever
made on a travel photography trip.
Explore Early And Stay Out Late
I’ll be the first to admit that I love sleep.
However, when I’m visiting a foreign
country, the first thing that I happily
forgo is sleep, especially if my goal is
to observe and photograph the locals
going about their days. In almost every
case, my favorite time to capture the
comings and goings of locals is early
in the morning, before the throngs of
tourists tend to show up.
One of my favorite experiences with
early-morning shooting was when I
led a workshop in Nicaragua with
The Giving Lens, a humanitarian

photography company founded by my
close friend Colby Brown. On one early
morning, we had chartered a boat to
explore Lake Managua.
Little did we know that we’d come
across several locals who were out try-
ing to get their first catch of the day. As a
result, we were able to get some compel-
ling photos as they’d cast their nets out
by hand from the docks and boats.
Now, I get that you may not be an
early bird. I know I’m not. Fortunately,
there are plenty of unique opportuni-
ties to capture locals going about their
routines later in the day, especially if
you’re willing to delay dinner.
On a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan, I
decided to spend about three hours,
from late afternoon to early evening,
photographing Shibuya Crossing. If
you’ve ever wanted to know what it
feels like to have a school of people flow
Another example of how a photo series
can help add focus to your travel
portraiture is to choose a specific
processing technique like black and white.
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 47
48 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

all around you, just stand in the middle
of one of the crosswalks when the traf-
fic lights turn red. Because I chose the
time of day when most of the locals
were heading home from work, I was
able to maximize the density of com-
muters in my frame.
Make An Effort To Learn The Language
Learning Spanish in high school
proved to be invaluable when I vis-
ited Nicaragua and Cuba. And while
I certainly understand that learning
an entirely new language before visit-
ing a country that doesn’t speak your
native tongue isn’t really feasible, in
most cases, all you need to do is mem-
orize (or write down) a handful of
important phrases.
Before we’d begin the aforemen-
tioned workshops in Nicaragua, we’d
give all participants a print-out with
commonly used, and important,
phrases in English and Spanish. As you
could imagine, one of the phrases on
this sheet translated, “Can I take your
picture?” while another said, “Would
you like to see the picture I just took?”
You’d be surprised at how many
people showed sincere appreciation
simply because we made a real effort
to communicate in their native lan-
guage. Nowadays, it’s even easier to
accomplish this because of the assort-
ment of translation apps for smart-
phones that will allow you to down-
load entire language packs right onto
your device, just in case you don’t
have a roaming cell signal.
Being able to communicate in the
local language is also especially helpful
when you’re photographing young kids.
During several tours around
Nicaragua, we had opportunities
to photograph young students in
and around their schools. Because
we were properly equipped to com-
municate somewhat effectively, we
were able to secure the necessary
permissions and ensure that our
intentions were sound. The last
thing you want to do is create an
awkward or tense situation due to a
language barrier issue.
At the very least, if you can’t figure
out a way to communicate verbally,

Left Top: While it’s not guaranteed by
any means, making the effort to explore
a new area during the early hours can
yield wonderful results.
Left Bottom: If you plan on photographing
local children, be absolutely sure that you
are able to communicate with them and either
their parents or guardians. Let them know
your intentions, and always be respectful of
their decisions should they decline.
Above: Spending your evenings exploring is
a great way to see how locals go about their
lives after work is done. By hanging around
Shibuya Crossing in the evening, I was
able to photograph thousands of commuters
rushing to head home for the night.
try using gestures like pointing to
your camera and nodding yes. If the
nod is returned, feel free to take a
photo. If it isn’t returned, graciously
smile and walk away.
But remember, if you do take a
photo of a local, offer to show it to
them on the back of your camera.
Make them feel like the experience
was a positive one. DPP
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 49
Alex Honnold peers over the edge of Glacier Point in Yosemite
National Park. He had just climbed 2,000 feet up from the valley floor.

50 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 Alex Honnold climbs Freerider on El
Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

How To Film A Mountaineer Discover what it took for Jimmy

Chin and his crew to document
Who Aspires To Alex Honnold’s ropeless ascent up

Extremes El Capitan in the award-winning

documentary movie "Free Solo"
By Mark Edward Harris | Photography By Jimmy Chin

Colorado-based climber, mountaineer, skier and
photographer Jimmy Chin can now add
the title “Academy Award-winning
film director” to his already-presti-
gious resume and ever-growing list
of accomplishments.
That’s because when Chin, along with
his wife, co-director/producer Elizabeth
Chai Vasarhelyi, and an elite high-angle
team descended into Yosemite Val-
ley, they were ready to document Alex
Honnold’s ropeless attempt to scale El
Capitan in the National Geographic film
“Free Solo,” which won this year’s Oscar
for Best Documentary Feature.
Chin is no stranger to acrophobic
experiences, having done everything
from climbing and skiing Mt. Ever-
est from the summit to making first
ascents on big walls and staggering
mountain towers in the Karakoram
Mountains of Pakistan and the Gar-
hwal Himalayas of Northern India.
Chin will be the first to acknowledge
that Honnold’s achievement—of scal-
ing “El Cap” without a rope—puts
him in a different class.
But in terms of filmmaking, Chin
is remarkable in his own right.
For instance, when he began his
cinematographic efforts in 2003
under the mentorship of Rick Ridge-
way, it resulted in the National Geo-
graphic special “Deadly Fashion,”
which revealed how Chin has often
played double roles—shooting stills or
video or both to document high alti-
tude expeditions.
Yet, as Chin and his team moved
into position on June 3, 2017, to record
Honnold’s free solo 2,900-foot climb
up El Capitan, it was clear from the
start that this project would undoubt-
edly present a host of new challenges
for all of them.

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 51

Digital Photo Pro: From a non-
climber’s perspective, it looks
like “Free Solo” documented
the greatest athletic feat
ever accomplished.
Jimmy Chin: There’s an argument
to be made for it. I think the greatest
athletic achievements and the great-
est athletes are remembered by how
well they performed under pressure—
when the stakes are the highest—and
what level of execution was required
in order to succeed.
I think the stakes were very clear
with Alex’s attempt on El Capitan—it
was life and death. So, it’s not like losing
the Super Bowl by dropping the ball in
the end zone or missing a last-second
shot in the NBA championships.
The thing that makes it unique
is that the technical difficulty of the
actual endeavor was extraordinarily
high. It’s already world-class climbing
with a rope. You could equate it with
a world-class endeavor like the Super
Bowl or the NBA championships or
the World Cup, except that at any given
moment you could die with a single
mistake. That’s one thing.
But knowing that you have to execute
perfectly throughout and not make that
mistake…the stakes were something
you could not ignore. They were all
around you.

So, the mental strength

required is almost unfathom-
able, as well. Have you ever wit-
nessed anything like this? You’re
no stranger to extreme dangers.
I’ve been working with some of the
greatest athletes in the outdoor world,
whether that’s snowboarding or ski-
ing or mountaineering or climbing for
20 years. But I’ve never seen anything
close to this. many years, and I’ve known him for very well. The trust that has built up
over 12 years. He’s been systematically between us over time was really critical.
How did you go about captur- preparing, soloing bigger and bigger Over the course of production, he
ing what Alex was doing on El routes, and I’ve worked with him docu- was practicing for two years how he
Capitan? It seemed like a balanc- menting these routes. was going to do the climb, and we were
ing act, so to speak, between We’ve also climbed all over the world essentially practicing how we were
getting into the best positions together, and I’ve seen the decisions going to shoot it.
but not interfering with him. he’s made throughout his career on I was also shooting stills for a National
Alex has been dreaming about this for climbs and in life. We know each other Geographic assignment on top of that.

52 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 Alex Honnold prepares to rappel off the summit of El
Capitan in order to climb certain sections of Freerider.

Did the National Geographic
magazine shoot come first?
The movie came first, and then
National Geographic magazine said,
“Well, we would love for you to also
shoot a photo assignment.”
How were you able to do both?
It’s very difficult. They have different
agendas. I literally had a camera for
stills bolted to my cinema camera. You
have to make a lot of hard decisions.
Try to imagine shooting a movie and
stills simultaneously, and you’re trying
to pick up a vérité scene that’s really
critical to the narrative of the film, yet
it’s an amazing photo and you’ve now
positioned your own DP in the position
you want to shoot.
It was a major juggling act. We spent
35 to 40 days on El Cap filming while
he was practicing.
On the day he decided to “go
for it,” where did you position
the cameras?
We had two long-lensed Canon EOS

 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 53

 Alex Honnold free solo climbing the boulder
pitch of Freerider on Yosemite's El Capitan.

The crew sorts and packs up all the ropes

and climbing equipment used to document
Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan's
Freerider in Yosemite National Park.

Jimmy Chin photographs Cheyne Lempe filming

Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold (out of
frame) climbing Babel, an 800-meter, 7c+
on the Tagoujimt n’Tsouïant massif in Taghia,
Morocco on September 15th, 2016.
C300 cameras on the ground. One with
a 600mm lens with an f/1.4 extender
and one with the Canon CINE-
SERVO 50-1000mm.
Then we had six fixed cameras on the
wall and four people on the wall also
filming. We had another camera on the
ground filming Alex approaching the
climb and when he left the bottom. We
had two people on top filming, as well.
We used the Canon C300. The remote
trigger cameras were Canon 1D Xs with
a range of lenses, including the Canon
24-105mm f/4, the Canon 24mm f/1.4
and the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8. We also
had an ALEXA Mini at the top and bot-
tom as well as a RED Dragon in a heli-
copter that was shooting from 3,000 feet
above with a 50-1000mm lens. You can’t
fly drones in national parks, but we also
didn’t want a little buzzy thing flying
around Alex. Most of the camera angles
are from us hanging off the wall.
That shooting position must
have been extremely intense on
a number of levels.
Basically, everyone on the high-angle
team had to be a world-class climber as
well as a world-class cinematographer.
There are only a few of those in the
world, and they were all on the team.
Our top high-angle team member,
Mikey Schaefer, was hurt in [an unre-
lated event] to our production. He
was my high-angle DP, and he and I
were up on the wall for 99 percent of
the production. But he couldn’t be on
the wall the day Alex actually went
because he had blown an ACL. So he
shot from the ground since we needed
someone there anyway.
He was the one that couldn’t bear to
look at Alex at a few points on the way
up. The high-angle members were Mikey
Schaefer, Cheyne Lempe, Sam Crossley,
Josh Huckaby, myself and a rigging team.
Did you hang off the face of
El Capitan for the almost four
hours it took for Alex to do
the climb?
A little less. We let him get off the
ground but wanted to be ahead of him
and not leave anything to chance. It takes
a couple of hours just to get into position.
There was one particular move
Alex had to do mainly with his
thumbs. That seemed to be
shot fairly close with not that
long of a lens.
That was with one of the remote-trig-
gered cameras. He didn’t mind the
cameras there. He just didn’t want his
friends there. There’s this weird reflec-
tive thing. He can feel us being scared.
At one point, he does encounter
some people up on the wall.
One, strangely enough, dressed
like a unicorn. They seemed to
have no clue he was coming up.
No. This whole production was made
in secrecy. That area was probably 5
feet wide. I think Alex might have said,
“Good morning” when he passed by.
Your wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasar-
helyi, and you teamed up to
make “Free Solo.”
We were co-directors and co-producers,
but we bring very different skills to the
table. She was managing and directing
all the footage on the ground, includ-
ing where you see Mikey. She was also
the mastermind behind the edit. We
all sat in the edit bay, but there are so
many different aspects to filmmaking.
I get the hero role of, “How did you get
up there and film it?” But she actually
does a lot of the heavy lifting when it
comes to filmmaking.
All of the vérité scenes, making it into
a love story, the narrative structure—
there are 10,000 decisions to be made
on the edit, and it’s very subtle because
obviously, you don’t want to have people
thinking about the filmmaking when
they’re watching the film.
The audience was definitely
questioning the relationship
Alex had with his girlfriend

when he ran into some climb-
ing issues on the run-up to the
big free solo day on El Capitan.
That was a strong thread that
ran through the film thanks to
great editing. Regardless of
the outcome of Alex’s attempt,
would the documentary still
have been released?
Yes, absolutely.
Most people watching the film
know the end, yet you’re able
to convey all the suspense that
everyone involved was going
through at the time.
That was a lot of the craft of filmmak-
ing and the storytelling and the editing
and the music and the graphics. There
are so many elements. The whole
soundtrack was original, including a
song performed by Tim McGraw and
written by him and Lori McKenna
called “Gravity.”
I don’t want to tell people what they
should get out of the movie. I think
everybody gets something different.
I think it was a remarkable intersec-
tion of Alex bringing the best of what
he could bring and a production team
that absolutely brought the best of
what they could bring. That’s what
made the film special.
Is there going to be a “Free
Solo II?”
Ah, no. I don’t think I could sur-
vive another one. We’re working on
another nonfiction film, and we’re
looking at a lot of scripted films as
well. The next documentary is about
Kristine Tompkins, Doug Tomp-
kins and Yvon Chouinard and their
story. Doug started The North Face,
Yvon started Patagonia. They’re the
greatest conservationists of our time,
and Kris is the glue that made all of
it happen. DPP
For more on Jimmy Chin, his crew and
“Free Solo,” go to nationalgeographic.
com/films/free-solo.
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 55
How To Successfully Push
The Limits Of A One-Man Band
If you’re going to go with an OMB approach, follow these tips and suggestions
Text & Photography by Daniel Brockett
An interesting and significant by-prod-
uct of the digital revolution is that
most of the gear used today to create
television and film is now significantly
lighter, smaller, less expensive and
higher-quality than anyone could
have imagined 15 or 20 years ago.
Many of us are using cameras that,
for a little over $1,000, can shoot in
high-quality 4:2:2 10-bit 4K-resolution
formats that would have been unimagi-
nable just a few years ago. Heavy, heat-
generating Tungsten lighting instru-
ments have been replaced with much
smaller, cooler, more flexible and versa-
tile LED instruments. It’s now possible
to easily and effectively edit not only on
This shoot pushed the limits of how much gear I could set up and manage solo.
56 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

non-computer devices like tablets but to
edit 4K video on our mobile phones.
Yes, although the digital revolution has
given us these benefits, there’s a down-
side. Budgets. That’s right. If you were in
video production in the 1980s, ’90s and
early 2000s, it cost significantly more for
clients to produce programming at any
level. Gear was expensive, and the skills to
use it professionally were rarer than they
are today. The advent of web video has
changed who creates video today. Even
as little as a decade ago, the expense and
complexity of pro video gear meant that
it simply took more skilled labor to create
video and cinema.
What that all means is that one
person—you—needs to know more
about all aspects of the production.
What Is An OMB Approach?
The “one-man band” approach to video
production is a phenomenon that has
grown side-by-side with the advent of
new smaller, lighter and simpler-to-
use gear.
A decade ago, a small documentary
or corporate shoot would typically
have a cameraperson, sound mixer and
perhaps a PA or a gaffer as well as a
producer/director/interviewer.
A crew of three to five people was
considered a small, minimal crew. In
2019, a small crew is often just you.
Video and film are definitely a collab-
orative medium and were designed to
be shot with a crew, with each position
filled by a person whose job it was to
light a scene, shoot it with a camera
and record the sound. But the real-
ity is, today that paradigm is shifting
from working in a group to work-
ing solo.
Personally, I most enjoy working
with a small crew of between five and
10 people. Such a group gives me the
benefits of being able to concentrate on
doing just one job really well (directing,
cinematography and interviewing are
what I like doing most), while leaving
the lugging of gear, setting it all up,
setting lights, recording sound, hair,
makeup, props, wardrobe and produc-
tion design to my crew.
Others I know in the field prefer
working on an even larger crew of 50
to 200 positions, which are typical in
a lot of episodic television and on fea-
ture films.
But as I noted earlier, in shooting my
own low-budget documentaries and
on a decent percentage of corporate
and even some broadcast projects, I’m
often called upon to act as a one-man
band, meaning that I’m responsible
for picture, sound, makeup, produc-
tion design and often interviewing or
directing by myself.
I don’t want to go too deeply into the
relative merits of having a crew versus
working solo, but they’re apparent to
anyone who has worked with a crew as
well as solo.
What we’re going to talk about is
when you’re required to act as a one-
man band, how do you plan, strat-
egize, execute that strategy and end
up with good-looking and -sounding
footage when you have to do every-
thing yourself?
The Key
When working as an OMB, the key to
success is most often planning.
When shooting solo, you have to
know what kind of situation you’re
walking into. What type of shoot is it?
Will the client give you adequate time
and resources to set up each scene by
yourself and have it look and sound
good? When do you draw the line
and tap out, telling the client that what
they’re proposing is too much for a sin-
gle person to handle?
Planning and knowing what you
are walking into is crucial for suc-
cessfully shooting solo. A location
scout or at least having the client send
you some cell phone pictures will let
you roughly know the size and shape
of the room you’re going to shoot in.
It will also give you a sense of the
ambient light and the ability to con-
trol the lighting (are there windows
or window coverings?). You can also
ask about access to electrical outlets
and ambient noise as well. You won’t
know if you have to black out win-
dows or hang sound blankets with-
out a scout and or planning, and you
won’t know what gear you’ll need to
accomplish your mission, either, with-
out a scout or at least some detailed
info from the client.
Realistic Scenarios
Top: Setting up a medium Chimera in homes
The second-most-important compo-
and offices and not on stages with high
nent to consider after planning is time. ceilings can be tricky.
Will you have enough time to load
in all of your gear and make sure that Bottom: Using a green screen in your shoot
your vehicle is parked in an area where when working solo can also be a challenge.
it should be and won’t be ticketed or
towed? You’d be surprised,
but a lot of my OMB assign-
ments have taken place in
Hollywood, New York,
London and other big cit-
ies where parking is at a
premium. And parking
in the wrong spot can lead
to trouble.
Also, once you’re loaded in,
will you have enough time to
unpack all of your gear, set it
up, test it and make sure it’s
ready to go before you have
a subject in front of the cam-
era? If a client isn’t willing to
pay for you to hire a PA, gaf-
fer or sound mixer, you’ll end
up performing the functions
of those jobs.
For example, I’ve shot
a series of green-screen
 digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 57
Top: Rigging up your camera with all of its necessary
accessories before you arrive at the location can save
a lot of time.

Middle: A 1x1 LED panel like this Litepanels Gemini

can provide enough output to light up multiple talent.

Bottom: It goes without saying that all of your batteries

should be fully charged when you arrive at the location.

interviews for a client for years as an OMB. To do that

setup solo, the client knows I need three hours. If I had
the same client and setup but only an hour to set it all
up, it wouldn’t be a realistic scenario or I’d need crew to
accomplish that.

Working Efficiently
If you’re going to shoot solo, you’d be amazed at how
much time you can waste on location. It’s important
to learn to set up things first at home or in your office.
For instance, my main video camera can pack down
to a very small and light package in a camera back-
pack. The downside of this is that to build the camera
back up to a fully configured build takes me about 20
to 25 minutes, depending on the setup.
It’s obvious that when I’m OMB shooting, I need to
pre-build my camera and carry it into the job fully set up.
It can be difficult to set up lighting and carry the
light, stand and diffusor in when working alone.
But I’ve arrived at locations a few minutes early
and pre-built my key source outside and carried it
into the location, plugged it in and at least my key
was set to go.
Every situation is different, but here’s the takeaway:
Think about the gear you’ll need to use to accomplish
the goal and make sure that all of it is as accessible
and pre-assembled as possible. Setting up cameras,
plugging in mics, formatting media—none of that’s
creative. It’s all mechanical tedium. So do as much of
that beforehand as you can so you can spend the little
time you have being creative with lighting, art direc-
tion, backgrounds, troubleshooting audio issues, etc.

Anatomy Of An OMB shoot

Let’s take a look at a recent OMB shoot I did.
For the assignment, I needed to interview two sys-
tems engineers about a challenging project they had
been working on. Their working area wasn’t avail-
able for the shoot, but I was offered the use of an
apartment to shoot their interview.
Because it was a two-talent shot, I wanted to utilize
two cameras, one in a wide, slider shot of the two of
them. Then I could use a longer lens on my other cam-
era, allowing me to shoot singles as each responded.
Unfortunately, the apartment I was given to shoot
Happiness is hours of battery power to keep
your camera, monitor and lights running. You
cannot over prepare, only under prepare.

in was fairly small, making shooting the

talent with two cameras challenging.
The main difficulties were: the location
really didn’t look like a corporate work-
space, it looked like a nice apartment
living room; and, from an art direction
perspective, there was little to work
with, and white walls are deadly boring
to look at.
Fortunately, the apartment had a
nice black AV cabinet and LED TV
on the wall. So I decided that I could
have one of the engineers hook up his
laptop to the LED so that he could
show some of the work that they had
been performing on the TV screen in
the background. and prevents the soft light from spilling setup, I always leave enough time for
everywhere resulting in flat, dull lighting. setting up audio properly. Do a sound
My Workflow When Shooting OMB check. In most corporate and inter-
1. Before you do anything else, set up 4. In this setup, I had a boring white view-driven projects, audio is more
your two cameras. You have to choose wall behind the talent that I wanted important than the picture. So take
the camera location, and you cannot to do something with. So I decided to the time to set up audio correctly.
check framing, composition, back- light it with a 10-inch RGB LED light,
grounds or much else until you set up the Luxli Cello. This light has been a This sort of setup with two cam-
your cameras and look at what they’ll huge timesaver over traditional Arri eras, two talent and three to five
see of the location. 650 Tungsten lights with dimmers and lights and sound is my personal limit
Once you have set up both cameras and gels and the end result with the Cello for shooting solo.
received client sign off on their position is actually better with deeper, more I know of a talented DP who won’t
and the frames, then you can go to work saturated colors than the gels with the shoot solo without a sound mixer.
lighting your setup. When working as an ARRIs can deliver. However, I’m personally comfortable
OMB, you’re often stuck with practical with sound, so I can shoot some proj-
locations and often cannot really change 5. I added a little fill light on the engi- ects that the other DP cannot.
the amount of ambient light. neers from camera left using a Kam- Hopefully, you’ve found this primer
erar Brightcast LED panel through a on the limits of shooting as a one-man
2. I build my key light first. In this case, 42-inch diffusion disc. band helpful. Shooting video and cin-
I used my medium Chimera with an ema is a team sport, but occasionally
Aputure Lightstorm LS-1S LED panel 6. Once I’m satisfied with the lighting you may have to take the field solo. DPP
as my key source. A medium Chimera
is fairly large for a small room, measur-
ing roughly 3x4 feet. So I build it first
to make sure it will fit where I want
to use it. If not, plan B is to go to a
smaller-sized key source. In this case,
the medium Chimera fit, although
just barely.

3. When shooting as an OMB in small

rooms, use an egg crate on your key
source, if possible. This prevents the key
source from lighting up the background

®
Audio Assist:
Boom Pole Tips, Tricks
And Techniques
By Daniel Brockett

Where To Mount Your Microphone

Where do you think is a good place to
set up your microphone?
Audio and sound beginners typically
mount a microphone on top of their
new camera, but it’s probably one of the
worst places you can place it. There are
many reasons why, but an important
one is that when you mount it there,
the microphone is often too far from the
subject to pick up a clean, clear sound.
Another problem is signal-to-noise
ratio, often written as “S/N ratio” or
just “S/N.” It refers to the amount
of signal—or desired sound—versus
the amount of noise—or undesirable
sound that’s picked up. The closer the
microphone is to the subject, the more
signal, and less noise, it will pick up.
So, when you mount a microphone
on top of a camera, with today’s typi-
cally longer zoom ranges, the look of
the shot is often most flattering when
the camera is located farther from
the subject, requiring the operator to
zoom in on the subject or use a longer
telephoto lens. This allows the longer
focal-length lenses to compress the
foreground, mid-ground and back-
ground, producing a softening of the
background and giving a dreamy,
poetic look and feel to the shot.
But here’s the problem: If you’re
moving your camera farther away
from your subject and the micro-
phone is tagging along on top of
your camera for the ride, you’ve just
added in a lot of noise to the record-
ing while reducing the signal the
microphone can pick up since you
have increased the distance of the
microphone from the subject.
However, I’m not saying having a
microphone mounted on a camera
is totally useless. It’s not. On-camera
mics can be handy for recording
scratch tracks that can be
matched up with better-
quality recordings in post.
Also, on-camera mics are
fine for recording ambient
or environmental sound.
Just don’t rely on a camera-
mounted mic to record tal-
ent very effectively.
The Importance Of A
Microphone Boom Pole
Almost anyone who has An Audio Technica AT875R shotgun microphone
ever watched behind-the- with a Rycote Softie mounted on a Canon C200 to
capture ambient and scratch audio.
scenes footage of a television
show or a Hollywood movie
being filmed has seen a profes-
sional boom operator at work.
They’re the ones you’ll often
see holding a long boom pole
over their heads and position-
ing the microphone as close to
the talent as they can get.
Now, in my eyes, these pros
are extremely talented. In fact,
seeing a skilled boom operator
maneuver a mic is like watch-
ing a skilled camera opera-
tor work handheld. Both jobs Some cameras offer a rubber-mounted microphone
involve many subtleties, which holder to reduce camera-handling noise for the mic.

60 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com


 The Rycote Lyre design microphone mount is a popular design and
comes in several different mount styles for different situations.
add up to professional-level audio and
video footage.
So, while my tips won’t magically
turn you into a pro-level boom op, I
hope this article helps you get a better
sense of how to improve using a boom
mic on your own productions.
A helpful way to understand audio, at
least as far as gear goes, is to trace the sig-
nal path from the subject to the camera
and/or recorded audio. With an audio
boom pole setup, we generally have five
different components that make up this
signal chain, which includes the follow-
ing devices and pieces of gear to produce
a signal:
1. Microphone: Since we’re talk-
ing boom microphones in this article
(and not lavalier microphones), it’s
safe to say that in professional sound
for picture work, generally, the signal
chain will begin with a shotgun or
cardioid-variant (cardioid, super car-
dioid or hyper cardioid) microphone.
Usually, the shotgun microphone will
have a narrower angle of acceptance
of sounds than a cardioid variant,
rejecting more noise while recording
more signal. There’s a lot more to it
than that, but for this article, I won’t
go into specifics. Just know that there
are many effective and high-quality
microphones that are typically used
on boom poles at many different price
and sound characteristic levels.
2. Wind Protection: Most boom micro-
phones used in video and television pro-
ductions are powered condenser mics
that are typically very sensitive and can
pick up even subtle or nuanced sounds,
including HVAC, wind or other air
movements quite easily. So, it’s always a
good idea to use a foam, softie or micro-
phone zeppelin when recording with a
boom pole. These condenser micro-
phones generally come from the man-
ufacturer with a foam microphone
cover. You can use them for interiors or
exteriors, but once you move outside,
you’ll need to use a softie or micro-
phone zeppelin. A softie is generally
a fur-covered slip-on cover that cov-
ers the front two-thirds of the micro-
phone, offering a dramatic reduction
in wind noise. The fur on a softie
breaks up wind and greatly reduces
or even eliminates most wind buffet-
ing. However, a softie leaves the rear
of the microphone element uncovered
For the maximum protection from
wind noise, a plastic capsule that
completely encloses the microphone

K-Tek is one of the more popular boom
pole brands on the market, but there are
dozens of others as well.
is preferred. The zeppelin has a foam
windscreen over the entire surface
of the mic, and sound mixers can
also add a fur-covered windscreen,
often referred to as a “dead cat,” to
the zeppelin. This adds even more
wind reduction without dampening
high frequencies.
3. Microphone Mount: Most sensitive
condenser microphones will pick up
and amplify handling noise. But a high-
quality microphone mount lets the boom
operator manipulate the microphone into
position while significantly reducing han-
dling noise. And remember that some
mics are very sensitive to handling noise.
So use a good microphone mount help to
limit those sorts of unwanted sounds.
4. Audio Boom Pole: Audio boom poles
are designed to easily and efficiently
allow a boom operator to quickly and
precisely move a microphone into posi-
tion above the talent’s head, just out of
frame line. It’s why you wouldn’t just use
Gaffer tape to stick your microphone
onto a house painter’s pole that costs $5:
Your DIY pole just won’t allow you to
place a microphone in a specific position
precisely, easily and quickly.
Audio boom poles come in many
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 61
different lengths and diameters. Some
are internally cabled, while others are
externally cabled. And you can find
them in several different materials,
including aluminum, fiberglass and
carbon fiber.
As you might expect, since you’re the
one who will be holding the boom pole,
microphone mount and microphone
over your head, weight is the most
important factor in choosing a boom
pole. In short, lighter is always better
when it comes to boom poles.
Most audio boom poles terminate in a
male ¼”-20 or 3/8” male-threaded fitting,
and, not coincidentally, most microphone
mounts terminate in a ¼”-20 or 3/8”
female thread for mounting the micro-
phone mount and microphone to the
boom pole.
5. XLR Cable: The outputs on most
pro microphones are three-pin XLR
audio outputs. We also most typically
use XLR cables with a male XLR con-
nector on one end and a female XLR
on the opposite end. Higher-quality
A Rycote Softie for an Audix
SCX1-HC microphone.
XLR cables are easier to coil and uncoil,
have greater noise rejection and will
generally last much longer than cheap
XLR cables.
Boom Operator Tips
Now that we’ve broken down all of
the components of a boom-pole micro-
phone setup, let’s talk about some
tricks and tips of the trade to more
effectively use a boom-mounted micro-
phone system.
• Most often, you’ll place the boom
above talent and point the mic
down at talent’s chest cavity, which
will yield the highest-quality audio.
There are situations where boom-
ing from underneath the frame may
work better, but generally overhead
booming is best so that the micro-
phone picks up less ambient sound
behind the talent.
• Begin with the microphone fully
visible, in frame, then raise it until
the camera operator says that the
mic has cleared the frame. As a
boom operator, mentally draw a box
around the talent that approximates
the frame the camera is capturing.
Then, place the boom mic as close to
the edge of that imaginary frame as
possible but keep it out of frame.
• Wrap a light-colored piece of paper
tape or gaffer tape around the end of
the foam, softie or zeppelin. This lets
the camera operator see if the tip of
your mic intrudes into the video frame.
If possible, try to work out a set
of visual signals with the camera
operator so that if they change the
framing and your microphone ends
up in the frame, you’ll respond by
raising it up and out of frame. This
can range from simple hand sig-
nals to watching the camera opera-
tor’s eyes or head signals when they
need you to raise the boom and clear
the frame.
• If the camera is locked off, there’s
often no reason to hand-boom a scene
or interview. Boom operators often
place their boom pole onto a C-stand
or light stand with a boom-pole
holder when shooting a long, locked-
off scene. That’s because your arms
will get shaky the longer you hold the
boom pole above your head. So, use
a mic stand wherever possible to save
your strength for when you have to
hand-boom a scene.
You can also place a pillow or sand-
bag on top of a light stand and rest your
leading arm on it for scenes with more
than one talent where you still need to
rotate your boom pole to pick up more
than a single talent.
• When booming overhead, keep
your lead arm—the one closest
to the microphone—locked. You
should also try to position the elbow
of your lead arm close to your head.
Positioning your arms in this man-
ner allows you to hold the pole
steady during long takes while also

Premium XLR cables are available in several
different lengths and colors, allowing you to
customize your cables for your situation.
preventing muscle strain.
Your rear arm functions as a tilt-and-
swing control. Use it to position the mic
and pole wherever you need them.
To smoothly move the mic from
actor to actor, rotate the boom pole
using your fingertips. In scenes with
two or three actors, it’s common for
one boom operator to cover the lines
from all the actors. If there are more
than three actors, it’s best to cover
those scenes with two or more boom
operators and poles.
• It’s extremely helpful if the boom
operator can wear headphones to hear
the sound that the microphones pick
up. In fact, there are special duplex
cables available for headphones that
will allow the mixer and the boom
operator to both hear what the boom
microphone as well as other micro-
phones are recording. DPP
digitalphotopro.com July/August 2019 | 63
LookingForward
By Terry Sullivan
Two models, by Terry Sullivan. I shot this image with Sony’s FE 100mm F2.8 STF OSS G
lens, which includes a special lens element to help produce a softer background bokeh.
W e’ll be covering both fashion photography and
portrait photography in our next issue.
What’s intriguing to see is that while there are vast
differences in both genres, they’ve also been affected
by technology but in different ways. For instance,
social media has upended some of the old-guard fash-
ion influencers. The public isn’t waiting around to see
what Vogue magazine says to find out what’s trending.
They’re experiencing it in real time on Instagram.
On the other hand, portraiture, whether com-
mercial or fine art, isn’t looking to new influencers.
However, selfies and mobile devices have made today’s
subjects the most self-conscious and image-conscious
64 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com

Fashion Photography
And Portraiture
subjects of any era. In other words, social media has
sucked portraiture into its vortex, for better or for
worse, allowing subjects to be very cognizant of pho-
tography and how they appear in photos.
But there are perhaps some less-noticeable changes
taking place in the gear photographers use, particularly
at the high end. In some cases, new lighter, speedier
and more versatile lenses are allowing photographers
to shoot with more accurate tracking and quicker
autofocusing features. And lighting gear has contin-
ued to improve and include easier-to-use features.
We’ll be checking out these trends and more in the
next issue. Stay tuned. DPP
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