DAVID JOEL- CHICAGO PHOTOGRAPHER 800-211-2694 e-mail: david@davidjoel.com For more images by David Joel click on links to Main Portfolio or Portrait Portfolio or Location Portfolio

Technically Speaking: Chicago photographer David Joel
Makes Sparks and DNA look cool!
as told to Jack Neubart
Photo District News
Volume 20; Issue 8

Photo District News

Careful placement of umbrellas, strobes and other lights allow this Chicago-based photogapher to capture two very different industrial images. The assignment encompassed a number of images taken in various locations at a Chicago-area steel mill, Central Steel and Wire Co., for a series of ads and a capabilities brochure. The art director, Kerry Petertil, at Kaye Co., a Chicago-based corporate design firm, wanted this particular shot of a large machine drilling holes into large plates of metal to have a sense of energy and drama. For us, this meant focusing on the sparks. This shot would be used as a double-page trade advertisement. Managing this environment was challenging. This is an immensely noisy space, and we had to turn off nearby machines so that we could control the flow of the metal for the duration of this shot. We shot repeatedly, pushing additional pieces of metal through, for a total of about 45 minutes, to guarantee both the exposure and the best pattern of sparks, which were totally random and unpredictable. For each of these shots, our window of opportunity-the moment when the drilling cycle produced these sparks-was only 4 to 6 seconds. While extensive Polaroiding would confirm the overall lighting and exposure, only the pattern of sparks could dictate the success or failure of the shot. This required numerous exposures. The camera needed to be quite close to the "hot area" in order to create the desired drama. I positioned myself on a short ladder, about 6 or 8 feet up and 5 feet from the action, handholding a Nikon N90. I opted for this viewpoint because it let me crop out areas that were unimportant. To physically take the picture, I had plenty of headroom: The ceiling is at least three stories high. The camera, loaded with Ektachrome 200, was protected with a jerry-rigged frame made of black paper, although its 24mm lens, peeking out of a hole in this frame, was exposed to the sparks. No other camera shielding was used. I took my chances in having the sparks hit the lens. For my protection, I wore a vest (similar to the one worn by the operator) and eyeglasses specially made of hardened glass. However, quite a few sparks did manage to hit me. They weren't hot, but they were prickly and sharp! The exposure was set to 1/30 second, at f/8. I pushed the film one stop to give me at least a 1/30 second exposure, so I could handhold the camera with the 24mm lens, and shoot at a reasonable f-stop. That also allowed me to register the ambient lighting, consisting of both the sparking and overhead lights. I didn't want to filter for the sodium vapor ceiling lights, because the sparks would have lost their color. We'd started shooting at the site at 6 A.M., and after completing our other shots, reached this area around 5 P.M. This shot took an hour and 45 minutes to set up and 45 minutes to shoot. One factor that did make it easier to orchestrate the shoot was the fact that the facility is open 24 hours. For factory settings such as this, I've always used Speedotrons. I've found that, because the powerpacks are not vented, they don't draw airborne dust inside each time the strobe fires. In vented units, this has the potential of damaging the pack. The only direction that I gave our model, the machine operator, was to angle his body so that the umbrella to his left, my first light, would frame him and separate him against the background. This 52-inch white umbrella was positioned to his left and slightly behind, maybe 2 feet above his head, and 6 feet from him, powered off a 1200 w/s pack. All the packs were synched using optical slaves. The next light actually consisted of a bank of three individual lights, partially ringing the machine, starting from in front and circling around to the right. These, respectively, were a 72-, 52-, and 72-inch umbrella-all silver. I powered the leftmost and rightmost lights off a 2400 w/s pack each, while the middle light came off a 1200 w/s unit. The leftmost umbrella came in slightly from the left of the machine, to the right of the operator, at a height of 9 feet, 10 feet from the machine. I placed the 52-inch umbrella in the front, angled in slightly from the right, while I positioned the final light to the right of the frame and around to the side of the apparatus. In back, I added two barebulb 2400 w/s heads, 15 feet from the far wall, out of frame, to the left. One might expect that all these lights would produce an intensely bright environment. However, this is a very large space and the light's intensity is markedly reduced. They're high enough, at 6 or 7 feet, to be hidden by some machinery, but at the same time, they also catch some of that surrounding machinery with reflective touches. For the second shot, Gene Bellini, of Bellini Design, contacted me to illustrate a capabilities brochure for a research facility, a division of Baxter International, a healthcare company headquartered in Chicago. Here we show a technician designing equipment to analyze DNA and blood samples. We did five images, each of which had a different color palette and each focusing on a different environment at this site. For each, we wanted the colors to grab the viewer's attention. The key to these pictures was again to show a large setting, which is my specialty. This space is nearly twice as large as the area shown in the image, and is randomly filled with computers, desks and people. We needed a point of focus, which again would be highlighted by a high camera viewpoint and selective lighting, where much of this space would remain in total darkness. In fact, we would keep the area pitch-black for the shot. This complete darkness obviously added to the challenge of the setting. We knew right away that we wanted the computers to appear blurred, but not necessarily out of focus. This time my Nikon would be fitted with a 20mm lens, loaded with Fuji Astia, for an exposure of 1 second at f/8. (I find the Astia matches my Polaroid 669 very well.) For my lighting, I began by setting the overall tone, with a homemade bank consisting of an umbrella fixed with a translucent shower curtain, with two layers of blue gel to fit the desired color scheme. This light was on the floor, and aimed in the general vicinity of the researcher, spreading a wide swath of light. We decided we needed to have some white light on him, for a cleaner skin tone. So we aimed a grid spot with diffusion onto his face from the side and from slightly behind, 7 feet up, 6 feet from him, to camera right. For the floor, we had two grids, left and right, each gelled blue, all the way in back. While pointed at the floor, these lights do manage to pick up a little bit of the equipment at the rear. The final light, coming in from the left and a foot off the floor, is a grid with an orange gel, to pick up an additional hint of color in the equipment. After the strobes fired, I kept the shutter open to burn in the computer monitors, shaking the camera to get that "dancing screen" effect, to convey a sense that this is an energetic and vital facility. The rear monitors were positioned far enough back to add a sense of depth to the scene and show scale.

Compliments of Photo District News

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