©2010 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
T Bone Burnett won his first Oscar last night, for Best Original Song from”Crazy Heart”. Walking onstage, the gentlemanly Burnett was wearing his familiar sunglasses and signature dark suit. His dark outfit made for an interesting image in the alley of the Vic Theater in Chicago when I was assigned to take his portrait on one of his visits. I was grateful for the light in the alley that day. It was one of those moments when the sun was out, and the light was skimming the surface of the bricks. You hope your subject is available before the light changes, or clouds move in. The lighting seemed appropriate. At the time, he was coming out with his first album in 14 years, so I offered the theme of “emerging from shadows” back at the office. Even with a portrait, you try to tell a story.
©2010 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
Naperville skater Evan Lysacek appeared here previously in a collection of other portraits of Olympic hopefuls, but I didn’t make any comment about his photo. Now that he rocked the Olympics by being the first U.S. man to win a gold medal in skating since 1988, I thought I’d post some specifics. In that post, I described some technical details on how the photos were supposed to look, but the look he was creating was one of focused intensity. I’m not exaggerating or lassoing a star when I say that of the seventy-some athletes I shot during those three days, Lysacek was the one whose intensity stood out. I was actually a bit startled by it. Maybe it was his eyebrows and tightly clenched jaw, or his dark eyes and quite demeanor – or all of that. As you look at his photo, especially the one at left, remember that he’s facing me and a crazy crowd of activity behind me – photographers, agents, athletes, etc.. all bumping into each other and creating a raucous roar. Some athletes handled that by being funny or irreverent. Some appeared a bit tired or distracted. Lysacek stood in and quickly stared at me with such concentration, I knew he was focusing more on the picture than I was.
©2010 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
Legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka made an appearance in a Boost mobile ad during yesterday’s Super Bowl, in which his (one-time) New Orleans Saints went marching out with a victory. 25 years after he led the Chicago Bears to a raucous Superbowl win, Da Coach still is the man for many Bears fans. My one portrait of him was not made in a studio with an art director, agents, and assistants scurrying around serving everyone’s needs over a sumptuous buffet, with 3-4 setups ready to go. As with most newspaper portraits, this shoot was no-frills – it lasted about 45 seconds in the corner of his steakhouse right after an interview. I had two direct flashes pointed directly at him from both sides – why would you put a softbox on a gritty character like Ditka? A few frames, and then he had to go. Of the many quickie portraits I’ve made of famous people, this one worked out better than most.
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
On a previous post you saw the scene where I photographed quickie portraits of Olympic hopefuls in Chicago at the Palmer House in a room crowded with athletes and other photographers. These were some of the more interesting photos from the bunch. I shot all of them in a vertical format with a tilt-shift lens while using a ringflash. Just a little cumbersome, especially when you only have a couple minutes of shooting time. I also wanted to create a cyan-bluish tone to the images, to create a sense of winter cold. To do so, I used a cyan colored background. The reason it appears white in the photos is because I overexposed it. The white then dissolved into a cyan as the light fell off the subjects – creating a cold edge. It’s a slight effect. You can see that more in the images of athletes wearing dark colors, or in the duo at bottom. All in all, I enjoyed the process. I was really struck at how the personas of the athletes tended to come out in their pictures, especially among those who have participated in previous Olympics. I also could see how those personas might possibly outlive their Olympic experiences and endear them to millions around the world.
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
Actor-director-filmmaker Kevin Smith is back in the news with a new book, so I thought his fans might appreciate this portrait of him from a couple years ago that never made it into our family newspaper. If you know his work, you might say “That’s him alright”:-) When it was time for a photo after his hotel interview was completed, it was Smith who suggested sitting on the toilet with his pants down for a picture. I didn’t even know what to say except, “uh..great!” As a photographer shooting visiting celebrities, it’s challenging to make a celebrity portrait look like it wasn’t taken in a hotel room with a 2 minute timer ticking. In all my brainstorms, I can honestly say I hadn’t ever thought of asking a celebrity to “drop trou”. Suffice to say it was a very unusual moment.
©2009 Alex Garcia
Oh, I didn’t let the fun and games at the pumpkin farm fool me. Yes, there was a smorgasbord of wholesome fun to be had this weekend, including an inflatable trampoline, a petting zoo, hay bales galore and all the wonderful non-scary fun of Midwest Americana. But when my little-big-boy got on board that tractor, it was clear he was getting down to business in choosing a career. As far as I can tell, it will involve wheels – big wheels. I’m guessing either pumpkin farmer, race car driver, monster truck driver, or even Hot Wheels brand manager. I don’t believe I steered him towards his interest in loud, noisy, powerful engines, but if you consider his sources of inspiration around our house, “Roary the Racing Car”, toy construction trucks, and Lightning McQueen, it seems that he’s got enough positive reinforcement to last him until he graduates to rocket boosters…
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
In this photoblog’s attempt to help you appear informed and city-wise at any cocktail party, I submit to you the perfect name to be casually dropped in conversation: Adrian Smith. His influence at helping make Chicago a great city far outweighs his name recognition. He’s the architect for the renovation of State Street, the basic outlines of Millennium Park, the NBC and AT&T buildings and the soon-to-be-completed Trump International Hotel & Tower, at right. He also designed the plans for the world’s tallest building building in Dubai, which will be the tallest in all four categories in which buildings are measured. When I met him in his office at left, he had a cornucopia of imaginative models for buildings, which took a while to light to get the right reflection in the tall model at left. The reflection at right came from a much bigger light:-) Architects like Smith help make the city of Chicago known not only as the “City of Broad Shoulders” but also the “City of Broad Imaginations”…
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
This week, the Tribune ran an obituary on an 89 year-old Chicagoan who I was sad to see pass. As we wrote, “Lawrence Pucci was one of the last remaining master tailors from a bygone era of American style. A proud, lifelong Chicago resident and booster, Mr. Pucci custom-made exquisite, hand-stitched suits that were sought out by the rich and the powerful. Household names including former Bears owner George Halas, Hollywood stars Dean Martin and James Mason and musician Victor Borge were among his customers…” When I photographed him on Michigan Avenue, I was struck by how much of an ambassador he was not just for Michigan Avenue and the city, but for that bygone era so far removed from my world of blue jeans and casual shirts. I’m not one for sartorial flair, but if you were to spend time with Mr. Pucci you would see it wasn’t about an expensive suit but about the whole essence of dressing, acting and being the polite and refined gentleman. It wasn’t just a style, but a world view. Since meeting him years ago, I still carry a greater appreciation for the formality of an era that our world has long since passed by.
2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
I was assigned to shoot Tracy Letts, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “August: Osage County”, at the Steppenwolf Theatre for the L.A. Times. Happily, this wasn’t just a 5-minutes-and-you’re-out-bada-bing shoot. I actually was able to scout around to find an interesting place and to shoot different situations. Originally I thought the mood should be dark – consistent with the serious intensity of the play and playwright. But I was told his most recent play was a comedy-drama so maybe upbeat would be more current. So my favorite combined a serious look with upbeat colors. It was all ambient. The hot lights with the theatrical flair was track lighting that happened to be in a lounge area. His face and side wall were lit from window daylight (which explains the blue strip at left). The red wall happened to be there. I had brought a ton of lighting gear with me, and was itching to use them. But although I tried to push them into the shoot, this picture would have none of it. Who am I to argue with the picture?
Normally if I were to take a portrait of a person and their dog, I would not sit them down in the middle of the street and ask them to turn away from me. Especially if the person is a police officer. In fact, I’m sure he thought it was a bit strange for me to make that request. But the concept was being together on the road of life. In the course of a pay squabble with his department, Bradford signed away his rights to pursue claims for back pay in order to keep “Doc”, a Belgian Malinois, who he felt was being used as a bargaining chip. Typically, police dogs are given to their owners after the dogs are retired from service because it is too hard to retrain them to work with others. For him, not being allowed to keep Doc was too much to bear. So there was something of a cinematic end to their story. A loyalty tested and a bond that was saved through sacrifice. I imagine this picture as the closing scene where Bradford turns towards Doc and says, “it’s just you and me, kid….”
It’s not often that I photograph someone who can accurately guess the shutter speed of my camera by simply hearing the click. But such is the attention to technical detail of NASA’s chief scientist John Grunsfeld, a Chicago-born astronaut who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope and who the Tribune profiled this past Sunday. Immediately after his slide presentation at the Adler Planetarium, I was to shoot a cover photo that was more interesting than a guy standing next to a museum exhibit. Pressed for time, we quickly entered the Atwood Sphere, an interactive exhibit, and while a docent held an off-camera flash, I used a tripod and a long exposure to capture the spinning sphere that shows the night sky. It was a bit of a calculated gamble, since we only had time for about 10 frames, and there wasn’t a lot of time for testing. At first I tried light-painting, but there was too much movement on our mechanical platform. Given that his grandfather helped design the dome of the Planetarium building, there was a palpable sense that history and astronomy had come full circle for the Grunsfeld clan.
I would be remiss to start a Chicago photoblog without a reference to Mayor Daley, who has become something of a fascination to those who observe him through the lens. He can appear, within moments of each other, to be both good-natured and yet, well, a tad surly. The latter is the emotion more often reflected in the day’s news, from press conferences that get testy. Whether or not that’s an unfair caricature, I thought these two images provide a useful insight on how moment, light, composition and angle of view can all contribute to different representations of Da Mayor.
A Chicago classic character. Maitre d’ at the Italian Village restaurant for fifty years. Knew Pavarotti, Sinatra, all the Italian heavyweights. Mayor Daley? Knew him when he was just a law student kid. The picture is all ambient light. Lighting subjects with the ambient available is so counter-intuitive. As photographers we’ve got our magic kit of attachments and secret-sauce recipes that we itch to use. But sometimes “you dance with the gal that brought ya”. In this case the mood of the place was too evocative of history and the twinkles of romance to not explore the possibility of letting the mood speak for itself.
Peter Sagal is back on my radio dial. The game show host of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” radio show lives in my Chicago suburb, and so with my portrait propensities, we often find ourselves in each other’s company. “Hey! You again!” I also noticed that The Buzz coffeehouse has put one of my pictures of him up on the wall (we are both customers) which makes for an interesting local connection to a national celebrity. The photo at left was my first picture of him, enjoying his vintage bicycle for a story about “favorite things”. At right was a photo at the actual coffeehouse. I’ll post the current photo when the “Blue” paper publishes.
A few posts back, I wrote about transforming a hum-drum scene. In that case, it was through the use of underexposure of sky, and the careful placement of strobes to accentuate the relevant parts of an image. Here I’m on the same subject, but am transforming the scene through the use of collage. It can be a technique that can be hackneyed if not used appropriately. I’m reminded of Gregory Heisler’s term “the appropriate response” when it comes to choosing the method that works best with the subject at hand. With discus-throwing there are so many grunts-thrusts-jerks-spins-and-grimaces that one photo doesn’t capture them well, and neither does a stand-far back-with-a-wide-angle burst of shutterfire. You need to be in his space to see the ripples and sinews of shirt and skin all building up to that one moment of discus release which doesn’t necessarily have to be seen in order to be in awe of..
I love stories of redemption. Of people who were able to see past obstacles in their life to embrace a larger vision of themselves, their loved ones, their community. Everett was one such person. Destitute. Homeless. Drug Addict. Now he has a roof over his head and a soul food catering business that has enrichened the community in which he lives. Along the way he has helped and encouraged countless others in their pursuit of happiness as well. My hats off to the chef…
Whether it’s a state champion or a Superbowl champion, I try to extend the same lighting courtesies. Which is to say, multiple flashes in a way that completely transforms the scene that you are given. In this case, I arrived on an overcast, grey day to an athlete standing without his uniform in an empty field. I’d like to think he and his coach could not have expected a picture like this to emerge from the drab surroundings. With certain pictures, my goal is to leave both the subject and the viewer with an image that interrupts their belief in the static nature of reality. Fancy words for a prep portrait…:-)
You can’t launch a Chicago blog without including some of its famous denizens. Chicago is in the national consciousness now stronger than ever because of President Obama. I was assigned to shoot his first interview with a newspaper after winning the election. Alas, “No portrait”. I was to meet him in his transitional office after his three layers of security. Fluorescent lights. Sterile. Don’t show the bullet-proof window barriers. Unwilling to walk away with just a talking head of our newest president, I quickly set up a softbox and looked for a mood to show the big issues he was struggling with. Whether you agree with him or not, he seems a thoughtful and introspective person – traits I was looking to capture. I find that photographing executives who only have a few minutes often involves more fast-thinking (technical, aesthetic, and interpersonal persuasion) than shooting spot news as a photojournalist.
