“Nick, who always pushes the limits of what the camera can show, had a vision. He wanted to show lions as never seen before. Remote-controlled micro-copters and cars with cameras, night-vision goggles, infrared cameras, and state-of-the-art camera traps allow him to get closer than he—or anyone else—could imagine,” National Geographic Magazine, Field Test.

Working closely with the Serengeti Lion Project, Nick will spend the next year (along with writer David Quammen) documenting the huge cats, their natural habitat and their interactions/conflicts with the humans in the area. His final project will be published by National Geographic in 2013.

In the meantime, photo fans can keep up with Nick and his crew via his Field Test posts on the National Geographic site. Nick’s regular updates offer a steady glimpse into the trials, struggles and successes of a wildlife photographer in the field.

At one point in my life I considered being a furniture maker. I had the woodworking bug. I read books and magazines on the subject. I built really, really bad tables with drawers that didn’t work quite right — all of the things we do when we first start a new endeavor, we screw up. After a close call between my finger and a table saw I rethought things. I’m fine with that. But I still really like good furniture. Having tried to do this myself, I have a great respect for those who do it well. Over the years I’ve had several furniture clients, some of whom make great stuff, others not so much. The clients who make great furniture are still around.

Shooting furniture takes a lot of time and patience and a LOT of space. In general, you need three times the width of a piece on either side to properly light. In other words, if you have a piece that is four feet wide, you should have at least twelve feet of space on each side. As always, when it comes to space, more is better. Also, you need to be able to tightly control your light. This means artificial light (I use studio strobes) with light modifiers such as grids, snoots, barndoors and occasionally softboxes.

Most furniture comes in three varieties, lacquered, painted or upholstered. In general, painted and upholstered furniture is a bit easier to shoot than lacquered since the reflectivity is usually lower. Specular highlights and glare are much less of a problem with painted or upholstered pieces. With painted and upholstered furniture, broad light sources often work well (softboxes, umbrellas, heads bounced off of ceilings, also cloudy daylight). Lacquered furniture is much tougher. Generally we want to see the wood grain clearly through the stain, but we also want to get a sense of the type of lacquer and finish. Is it glossy (like a French polish,) flat (tung oil,) or somewhere in between?   It’s this balance between seeing the sheen of the surface and the color and grain beneath that presents a big challenge.

I treat all of the furniture I shoot as architectural pieces. In other words, I make sure that the lines that are supposed to be straight are straight, level and plumb. This means either using shift lenses (or large format) or being able to fix it in post. Keeping things square and level is a big deal in the furniture making world, don’t screw it up by not having your camera level. In general, I use the longest lens that I can as determined by the space and the piece to be shot. Longer lenses don’t exaggerate perspective the way shorter ones can.

I approach lighting large products, such as furniture, as an exercise in surfaces. Generally, each piece will have three surfaces facing the camera — front, top, side. Each surface will have different needs for lighting and therefore, each gets it’s own lighting setup. Sometimes this can be done all at once, other times it requires using multiple exposures.





First image shows the placement of the first light, in this case a 4 foot softbox to camera left and at about 10 feet high. This provides the primary light for the side of the chair/ottoman as well as overall soft fill.





The next image shows the placement of a grid spot raking the front of the ottoman. This light, placed at about 2 feet high really brings out the texture in the rush weaving under the cushion. This light is also flagged off as to not spill too heavily on the cushion itself.





Third image shows the placement of a front fill to even out some of the shadows. It also provides a highlight along the lower rails of the ottoman. This light is placed camera right. We’re using a 7-inch reflector shooting through a 3×6 light panel.





Final image as delivered to client shows minor tweaking of light output and a small bump in contrast. The client will put a clipping path on this for inclusion in their product catalog.

Shooting furniture is a lot like my other passion, shooting food. It’s technical, slow, methodical, and the subjects don’t get an attitude. It’s a challenge to be sure. The clients I work for spend a lot of time and money developing these products so they need to make sure they show them in their best light. I realize that not everyone has access to the space and equipment I describe here. But there are a number of inexpensive options to studio strobes. A number of third party manufacturers make a wide range of light modifiers for flashguns, but you’ll give up some power and versatility using these systems, as opposed to studio strobes.

But more important than space or gear is time. Take it, go slow, look carefully at the product and the shots. I know that if I knock one of these out in 20 minutes, I’m forgetting something.

I also have a wide variety of friends who have kids active in sports, and who ask me to take pictures of their kids doing the things they do – which include sports. When you tote a camera everywhere, people assume you take pictures “everywhere”.

I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to serve as the Digital Media Director, responsible for photography and videography, for the U.S. Deaflympics Team at the recent Deaflympics in Taipei, Taiwan. (See the photos here.)

My goal with the next several articles is to help the budding sports photographer (or the involunteered sports photographer) get better pictures. In my experience, it usually takes two to three games of shooting before you learn the tempo of that particular game, and learn where to stand to improve your odds of getting a better shot. With proper instruction and guidance, my hope is that you will be walking away with keepers on the very first game.

Here’s the sports that I’ve covered

• Volleyball (court and beach)
• Basketball
• Football (American)
• Swimming
• Athletics (track and field)

General guidelines about Gear

First, you don’t need the latest Canon 1D Mark III, Mark IV, or the Nikon D3, D300 to shoot good sports pictures. Yes, these cameras have features that make it easier to handle a wide range of situations that you may encounter – especially low-light situations. These cameras have remarkable high ISO capabilities, which can provide action-freezing photos when there’s not a lot of light bouncing around.

The interesting conundrum is that the better the schools, the better lighting they’re going to have in the gymnasiums and on the field – so the less likely you are to need the high ISOs. Smaller schools with smaller budgets are going to have darker gymnasiums, less powerful lights on the football field, etc. You might want to consider auxiliary lighting for these situations. (We’ll talk about that, too.)

If all else fails – consider renting additional gear for those special occasions. My local rental shop will let me pick up rental gear on Friday afternoon after 2:00, and as long as I deliver it Monday morning before noon, they only charge me for a single day’s rental. If you can bundle up and cover several events that weekend, then it’s worth it. I’d also like to put in a plug for Lens Rentals (www.lensrentals.com) — they were one of our sponsors for the Deaflympics, and they did an amazing job of meeting our needs.

Camera Settings

Most action photos should be taken with a shutter speed of at least 1/125^th of a second, and preferably even faster. Image Stabilized lenses (or VR, for the Nikon shooters) will help a lot. The manufacturers claim a 2 to 3 stop improvement with IS. This means that an image stabilized lens shooting at 1/125^th will (should) deliver a picture as sharp as a non-IS lens shooting at 1/500^th.

Depending on the venue and the lighting, I set my camera on either Manual, or Aperture Priority. If the lighting is even across my entire field of view (indoor court sports, for example, or a cloudy overcast day outside), then it’s Manual. If I find that there are wide variations in the lighting across my field of view (for example, if I’m shooting outside sports and half the field is in the sun, and half is in shadow) then I’ll set it to Av.

My aperture is usually as wide as I can go – f/2.8. Sometimes I have better luck with 4.0, if I find that the players are moving very fast relative to my position.

What this means is that a player might be moving down the court or field very quickly – but if they are moving perpendicular to me, then a narrow aperture is going to result in a sharp picture, because they are staying within the narrow “zone” of focus as I pan the camera from side to side.

If they are moving quickly towards me (a basketball player driving down the court, or a football player rushing) then I will consider going to a 4.0 for two reasons – with the greater depth of field, I am more likely to get them to be sharp in the picture, and when I am in a position where they are coming directly at me, the background usually is much farther away than if I am perpendicular to the action, so a f/4.0 aperture is still going to result in a nicely bokeh-ed background. An example of this might be standing past the end zone in football, looking for that oncoming rush through the line of scrimmage, or being at the end of the court in basketball, looking for that drive down the line.

If you only have variable aperture lenses (typically these are the lenses that come with consumer and prosumer grade cameras) that vary between f/3.5 and f/5.6 – then you have to make some sacrifices. You can shoot aperture priority, open it up as wide as possible, and let the camera set the shutter speed, or you can shoot in manual, with a constant aperture of f/5.6. Having the constant aperture of f/2.8 is why professional photographers buy the expensive lenses – they let in more light, and allow faster shutter speeds with lower light situations.

You should set your ISO to be as low as possible, while still having a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the action. It’s a delicate balancing act. I’ve shot indoor basketball with a Canon 30D, f/2.8 lenses, at 1000 ISO, and gotten good pictures. This was with crappy tungsten lighting in the gym, no strobes. When I’ve had to bump it up to ISO 1250, 1600, the quality of the pictures took a noticeable nose dive.

Most photography books will advise you to “expose to the right” – bumping your exposure up against the right side of the histogram. In sports, I’ve found that sometimes by purposely underexposing my pictures by a stop (or even two) results in increased saturation in the photos, and allows the shutter speed to be quicker – resulting in a sharper photo. Yes, I lose detail in the shadows – but I get the shot. These are your choices: is it better to get a perfectly exposed blurry photo, or an underexposed photo (that I can bring back in post-processing) that is sharp? I prefer sharp.

It might seem obvious, but it bears repeating, you should be shooting RAW at all times. If you want to shoot RAW+JPEG, that’s fine – but those sharp underexposed photos are going to be easier to bring back to acceptable exposure levels in RAW than in JPEG.

My camera also has three different focusing modes: single shot, AI Focus, and AI Servo. Here are my thoughts on each one:

Single Shot: Total control. I can predict the action, pre-focus on a certain point (if I turn off autofocusing) and when I pull the trigger, I get the shot. The downside is that if it’s on autofocus and the subject is moving quickly, then I sometimes get a blurry photo.

AI Servo: This is great for photos of fast-moving subjects. The camera will “predict” where the subject is going to be when the shutter pops, and pre-focus to that point. The problem for me is that I use single-point focusing most of the time. The combination of single-point focusing and AI Servo means that the subject must be centered in the shot – every time. This often results in static, boring photos.   I would rather have some space around the subject – space ahead of a running football player, for example. By using single point auto focus, the camera will focus on something off in the distance, and I miss the shot.

AI Focus: This is supposed to be a combination of the two – it works like Single shot until the subject starts moving, then it will go into servo mode. My issues with these are the same as above – I like to choose my composition.

Auxiliary Lighting

If you find that you cannot get sharp pictures with the constraints of your camera, your lenses, the ISO capabilities of your camera, and the amount of light in the venue, it’s time to consider adding lights.   Most of us cannot afford to rewire a gymnasium or a football field with additional spotlights, so we need to use strobes.

I was talking with the Superintendent of the school where my kids go (The Maryland School for the Deaf, in Frederick, MD), and he was asking me about how the photos were going for the Homecoming football game. It was a night game – and the field was rather dark. It was misting, not quite raining, so I wasn’t about to bring out battery packs and strobes. (In my experience, water and electricity are not a good combination.) On top of that, the home team was wearing black uniforms. As a result, the pictures were not as good as I would have liked. The field had 4 large poles with lights (not bad for a high school) – but I told him we needed to put up an additional four to six light poles in order to get really good pictures, and I asked him when he’d be able to work that out.

“Sure, Bill, so you can get better pictures of your son playing football, yep, I’ll just slip that in the budget as a line item for next year, I think a million will cover it, we’ll see how it works out.” (I did point out that I was getting pictures of ALL the boys playing, but I still didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling that the light towers were going to be in place for next year’s Homecoming football game. But, I digress.)

If you do need auxiliary lighting in the form of strobes, there are two ways to go – battery powered, and AC (wall) powered. I have used speedlights (the small battery powered flashes typically seen on-camera, but I use them off-camera) as well as AC powered strobes – I have Alien Bee strobes. I also have a Vagabond II, which turns the AC-powered Alien Bee flashes into portable battery-powered strobes. Portability is a big deal with me, and the work I normally do.

For more information on lighting gymnasiums, there’s the Strobist website, with articles here, here and here:

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-assignment-prep-basketball.html

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-assignment-speedlighting-college-gym.html

• http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/03/q-speedlighting-gym.html

David does a far better job of teaching off-camera lighting than I could. I strongly recommend starting with his Lighting 101 series, and then branching out into the more esoteric applications, like sports.

When you read the articles, make sure you read the comments — sometimes there is a lot of additional information in the comments, pointers to other articles, etc.

Access to the Best Places to Shoot

I’m assuming that you’re shooting elementary through high school sports or perhaps a smaller college or university, where access to the venue is not a problem. If you’re in a Big Name High School, College, or University, then you may not be able to get on the court, or on the field.

One thing I’ve found that helps with access is to make friends with the Athletic Director (AD) of the school, as well as the coaches of the various teams. Approach them during quiet times (Note: 10 minutes before the game starts is not an ideal time), and explain that you’re interested in shooting pictures of their teams. If you offer to provide the pictures back to the teams – for publicity purposes, for the school yearbook, for the walls of the AD or the coach, then you’re much more likely to get the access that you want.

A free print here and there is a remarkable application of grease to the political machinery. Especially when Costco now has 20×30 prints of spectacular quality for $8.99! One of those gracing the AD’s door will go a long way.

Post-processing

One thing about shooting sports – you’re going to have a LOT of photos when you get done. I highly recommend that you find some way to sort and manage all these photos. I use Adobe Lightroom to manage the files, and do most of my post-processing. Others use Photo-Mechanic, Bridge, etc.

The reason I chose Lightroom was because it was able to manage the files, AND do rudimentary edits. Over the years that I’ve been using it, they have added more and more features to LR – so that now I rarely go into Photoshop at all. The adjustment brushes are an awesome feature that allow you to quickly dodge and burn. As of the writing of this article, Lightroom 3 Beta is available for free – check it out.

Additional resources

• Matt Kloskowski’s blog on LR – http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/
• Gene McCullagh’s LR site – http://lightroomsecrets.com/

Delivery of the Images

One thing you do not want to do is to become a CD duplication house. By this, I mean that everybody that sees you taking photos on the sidelines is going to assume that your pictures are easily duplicated and deliverable on CD. Yes, they are … but I’m not in the CD duplication business. Yes, it only takes 5 minutes to burn a CD – but it takes longer to do all the work leading up to that point, and to deliver the CD.

So, when people say, “Can you?”   I say, “I don’t, sorry.”

I use Smugmug as a delivery platform and print sales manager. I go through my photos, and I upload them to Smugmug.   I then send out an email to all the parents whose emails I have, I drop a line in my Facebook, I might blog a few selects and then point to the rest.

After that, the parents are free to go in and order what they like. I do watermark the images, and I do allow medium-sized web downloads for free. This may or may not cut into my print sales – but I’d rather have the advertising out there than spend all my time chasing people who copy/paste illegally off the website.

There are other alternatives to Smugmug – I use it because I’ve been using it, if you know what I mean.

Last, I want to give a shout out to the folks at Sportsshooter.com – who have a huge number of helpful articles, videos, etc. – designed to help the professional sports shooter.

Subsequent articles will focus on the various individual sports; next up is volleyball and basketball.

If you have questions, experiences, or additional tips – leave them in the comments!

Gnaoua (sometimes also spelled Gnawa) music is a mixture of sub-Saharan African, Berber, and Arabic Islamic religious songs and rhythms, and it combines music and acrobatic dancing. Aurally and historically, its main influence is traced back to sub-Saharan Africa, but its current practice is concentrated in north Africa, mainly Morocco and Algeria. However, I have discerned similarities between Gnaoua music and folk songs from Sudan, so perhaps its influence extends even further.

The most “personal and up-close” performances were held at small Islamic monasteries that were rather difficult to find in the labyrinthine alleys of the medina, but it was worth the effort and the price of the admission ticket. The Islamic monasteries in Morocco are called “zaouias“, and most of my photography was done during these performances at one of the most attractive and well-preserved monasteries which, in deference to the Gnaoua’s patron saint, is known locally as Zaouia Sidi Bilal. Bilal was the first muezzin in Islam, and it is said was chosen to call for prayers by Prophet Muhammad on account of his beautiful voice. He was also a freed slave from Ethiopia, and had his birth roots in Africa.

The performances called “lilas” started around midnight, and went on for hours. These started off with leaders of the troupes known as maalems or chiefs, usually playing soulful tunes on the gimbri, a three -string lute-type of instrument, essentially to tune them

However, this was short-lived. The Gnaoua troupes (usually 6 or 7 members) join in by reciting the opening verses of the Qur’an, and the performances really start in earnest after this blessing. It is then that the large heavy iron hand-held cymbals (almost like castanets) known as querqab are played, and the percussive quality of the Gnaoua music is really in full swing. These castanets provide the repetitive and almost furious percussive accompaniment to the muted lute music, and is also joined by ecstatic hand-clapping by the band and audience alike. There are no chairs so the audience sits on cushions thrown in a half-circle on the tiled floor. The temperature of the performances slowly rise, until the audience’s participation is is virtually mandatory, which eventually leads to local women joining in the furious hand-clapping, then a special stone is added to the incense burner and eventually they go into trances.

The trances are the culmination of these sessions: since the maalems by playing the gimbri, along with the feverish beat of the castanets, the burning of the incense, and the repetitive singing supposedly call on the supernatural entities (known as jinns) to take possession of some of the followers, who lose themselves in ecstatic dancing.

The best known and most highly respected maalems have exotic sounding names which denote their provenance and birth places. For instance, Maalem Allal Soudani (originally from Sudan), the Tunisian Sidi Ali Lasmar Stambali, and the fabulous Ganga de Zagora (a town south of Ouarzazate, at the gate of the Sahara.

The other highlight of the festival is its inaugural procession, during which the various Gnawa bands are all represented, It starts in the square just outside the Doukala Gate, in the northern part of the Essaouira medina, and winds its way through its narrow streets and alleys of Essaouira, and end at Mohammed El Qorry near Bab Marrakesh. The procession this year was started off by a leading Gnawa carrying a tray of incense, and followed by the troupes, possibly in a certain order of hierarchy. There was quite a presence of administrators and police, but I wasn’t prevented from photographing as I wished. I suppose they took me for an accredited photojournalist. The most prominent Gnawa troupes were the Houara de Taroudant, Ganga de Zagora, Ganga de Tamanar, and Gnaoua Agadir. Each of the troupes wore distinctive costumes, ranging from a blinding flamingo pink to a sedate black, while others such as the Ganga de Zagora only wear the traditional white.

As for photographic equipment , I used my 5D Mark II fitted with the Canon 28-70mm f2.8 about 70% of the time, the 70-200 f2.8 about 20% of the time and the 17-40mm f4.0 the balance. The 24mm f1.4 never left the bag this time. Wherever I went, I felt I needed the flexibility of zooms, and a prime wouldn’t be useful in the situations where I photographed. I experienced initial difficulty in focusing on moving subjects, and blamed my 70-200 lens until I realized that I hadn’t turned on my camera’s AI Servo AF mode!

I have to say that my beloved 70-200 f2.8 is on its last legs. I guess it dropped too many times in Orissa, on Angkor Wat’s stone slabs, in Bali’s rice paddies and elsewhere. It now wobbles and rattles and, while it still works, it also earned a well deserved retirement… maybe as door stop.

My experience with the G10 was an unhappy one, and I left it aside after a few tries. I had high hopes that it would be a perfect street camera for the alleys of the medinas, but it frustrated me and I gave up after a while. I have no doubt that in the right hands and used in the appropriate conditions, it’s a fine little point & shoot. However, in my case I expected something more… but I didn’t have the time nor patience to work at it.

On the other hand, I thought the PMD 620 recorder performed quite well in the rather extreme situations I put it through. Since most of the Gnawa performances were held in small zaouias, the din of the iron querqab (castanets) used by the Gnawa caused significant distortion in the recordings. Moving around to better positions was impractical, so I had to choose a spot where to stand or sit, record and photograph… not exactly an easy thing to do. I tried using Audacity’s filters, but the distortion on some of the sound tracks is still too harsh. As one expert told me when I complained, distortion happens and we have to live with it (or not) sometimes.

This is the second episode recounting my pursuit of authentic Zeqr, the Egyptian Sufi ceremony, after my first experience in a neighborhood of Old Cairo was somewhat diluted by a competing soccer match. This time, the Zeqr ceremony was supposed to be even more authentic because it was to take place on a Thursday night in a small rural village on the western banks of the Nile River called Matawat.

I am ready by the agreed-upon time of 10:30 pm, and wait for the hoarse honk of Abdel-Fattah’s (aka Kojak) rickety taxi. It sounds right on the dot; an extraordinary feat in Egypt where time-keeping is rarely part of the national DNA, and we are on our way, amidst gas fumes and an exhaust pipe ominously rattling against the Peugeot’s floorboards. My gear is primed and ready, and I am really excited at the prospect. I knew this was to be the real thing; especially since it was Badawi’s father who had arranged it for me to photograph and record the ceremony.

Halfway to our destination, Badawi’s cellphone rings with the news that the Zeqr ceremony by Sufi women had just ended, which is immensely disappointing, as it’s been infrequently documented. It’s not difficult to persuade Kojak to increase his already diabolical driving by a couple of notches, but he has to be careful as we’re entering areas that are not only heavily populated with bad roads, but where there are very few working street lamps. Most of the weak illumination is from small stores and houses. I see tuk-tuks (or rickshaws) in these streets, something I’ve never seen before in Egypt. Piloted by teenagers, they’re unlicensed and are banned from the large cities by the authorities that fear more traffic accidents. However, they are cheap and villagers use them for their local transport needs.

Now guided by Abu-Badawi, an elder in the local Sufi movement, we are getting close to the area where the Zeqr is being held. I ought to pause the narrative here, and explain that Egypt’s rural Sufi ceremonies and rituals, which is what we are about to witness, also include a mixture of local lore, and superstition. However, in common with Sufi traditions, it relies on repetitive chanting which often leads to trances. It’s frowned upon by the mainstream Islamic orthodoxy, but Egyptian Sufis are essentially left alone by the authorities because as a sect, they’re largely apolitical, and base their belief system on age-old traditions. This provides them sufficient freedom to hold rituals and ceremonies, provided they keep these free of political opinions. It’s no accident that these rituals are held at night in small villages, away from the glare of publicity and are therefore ignored by the governmental authorities. On the other hand, the government carefully monitors the large annual festivals held by the Egyptian Sufi movements in Cairo and in Tanta, which are attended by thousands of adherents.

The car stops at a dimly lit intersection of narrow streets, and we slowly troop out, one by one. I can hear the infectious music now that Kojak’s engine is turned off. I curse the few fluorescent street lamps that bathe some of the area with a greenish haze. This is not going to be an easy photo-shoot by any stretch of the imagination.

Following the sound of the rhythmic Sufi song booming out of loudspeakers, we turn into a narrow alley, crowded with people; some are standing but many more are sitting on simple straw mats, lighting the small pieces of charcoal that burns the tobacco on their water-pipes. The barely illuminated alley seems to be inhabited by ghosts, particularly as I now can see a row of elderly men slowly swaying to the rhythm of the song, as if they’re sheets hung up to dry in the wind. Curious eyes follow me as I make my way to the front; some noticing my camera and wondering what to make of me.

There’s no way for me to blend in such an environment, so I do what I always do in similar situations, I act as if I’m entitled to be there. I’m also comforted with the knowledge that Abu-Badawi’s intercession must be worth a lot here. Now in the midst of the swaying devotees, I photograph as best I can, almost without thinking. I know that I can’t use flash, as it would intrude on what is essentially a religious ritual, so I have to jack up the ISO to 3200 or 6400. The Canon 5D Mark II has impressive high-speed capabilities with a very usable ISO 3200, and an acceptable ISO 6400, which is what I end using while photographing the scenes that unfold in front of me.

The devotees are mostly middle-aged and elderly, wearing the traditional galabeya of Egyptian villagers and white turbans. Apart from a flash of a red t-shirt worn by a youngster, there are no bright colors in this crowd. Conservative black and brown are the colors of choice, both for men and women. As I’m photographing in a narrow alley surrounded by swaying bodies, I find it very difficult to focus on a single person, and prefer to use my 17-40mm Canon L 4.0 lens, and use it at it widest aperture to include as much of the scene as I can.

The tempo of the singing is progressively increasing, and I start to hear the devotees repeating the words Allah Hai (God is alive) under their breath, while slowly throwing their bodies left and right. With each turn of their heads, they utter the phrase over and over “¦ almost like a mantra of sorts. It’s hypnotic and I catch myself repeating the words myself. I’m glad that I’m holding my camera firmly in my hands, which anchors me to reality and to the purpose for which I am here. I try to catch the eyes of the man closest to me, but his eyes are vacant, glazed over while his lips whispers the mantra.

Sensing I’m too much in the way of the devotees’ swaying, I move to the side of the alley and find a vantage point where the rather surreal scene continues to unfold a foot or two below me. A bystander asks me if I worked for a local newspaper, but before I can answer, Abu-Badawi has sidled up to him to tell him to mind his own business. I am Abu-Badawi’s guest and he takes that very seriously.

Through my viewfinder, the faces I see are those of hardworking men, eking a meager living, and having to deal with innumerable daily tribulations. Faces prematurely lined because of hardship, are now suffused with an aura of ecstasy and rapture. The singer has grown hoarse, and the drummer’s fingers are less precise now but the music goes on, relentlessly. I believe it is this that provides solace to these men; a temporary relief from their everyday life. It is such scenes that I find the most rewarding and challenging to me as a photographer; when people are devoid of artifices and pretence, and are immersed in authenticity of emotions and feelings.

I’ve given my Marantz PMD620 audio recorder to Badawi, with the instructions to keep it recording for a few minutes at al time, and I’m glad to see he’s moved away from the blaring loudspeakers to minimize the distortion.

On my way towards the car, I’m invited to share a sheesha, the ubiquitous Egyptian water pipe, with the spectators. A gesture of genuine hospitality and acceptance for which I thank them, giving the excuse that it’s already late. Behind me, the rows of Sufis are still swaying, and will continue to do well into the wee hours of the morning until utter exhaustion. This time there’s no soccer game to distract the Sufis.

Next assignment? That’ll be in Essaouira, on the coast of Morocco, to document the famed Gnaoua musicians.

I was also working against ambient light coming into the room from camera left through a large sliding glass door. It was very shady and overcast outside, so this light had a very bluish cast. So, I decided to overpower the ambient, and use all strobes to light the scene. (As a quick aside – if you are uncomfortable using strobes, or just want to get better, head over to www.strobist.com for the low-down and the high-up on how to use strobes with your camera. David Hobby is the guy writing that, and he’s got an online tutorial, a DVD set, a matching flickr forum, and more.)

Here’s a lighting diagram of my concept:

You see the “brick wall” along the background – that’s actually the only option I had for selecting a background for this particular lighting tool. You can find the tool over at Lighting Essentials, a really great site run by Don Giannatti.

I also interchange a white shoot-through umbrella with a softbox, depending on what I’ve got with me that day. For the baby, below, I had a white shoot-through.

We are lighting this shot on two separate planes – the background, and the foreground. With space between them, we can totally control the amount of light on each plane. We can have a very bright background, and a dark foreground. We have have the opposite: a dark background, and a bright foreground. We can also balance the two. In this case, I want the foreground to be slightly brighter than the background.

Ok, so we take the first shot, of just the picture of Jesus in the background. I put a snoot on the back speedlight (a Nikon flash – I shoot with Canon bodies, but my off-camera flashes are Nikon – if they are off-camera, the brand doesn’t matter).

That gave me this:

	That’s not bad, but it’s not quite bright enough. Let’s up the power a stop, from 1/8 to 1/4. That gives us:
	Much better in terms of exposure, but the lighting is a little harsh along the right hand side. I don’t like the hard edge. Let’s back it up a wee bit, and aim it slightly to the right – that way the hard edge is outside of the frame of my photo.
	This is perfect. Nice hazy edge all the way around, still a bit underexposed, but that’s what I want. Now let’s start working on the foreground.
	This is my “model” standing in, so you can see what the shot looks like without any light on the foreground. It’s mostly a silhouette. Now let’s add the foreground light – another speedlight with a white shoot-through umbrella off to camera left.
	That’s actually pretty good – he’s a little “hot” (a bit overexposed) along his forehead, but he’s higher in the picture than my actual subject is going to be. Hmm. We should try this with an actual subject, and see what it looks like. Since the baby was sleeping, and we didn’t want to risk moving the baby until it was absolutely necessary, we found a similar-sized stand-in:
	That actually looks pretty good. Still a bit hot along the forehead of the bear, so I backed up the light a wee bit. I also knew that baby skin reflects differently than bear fur, so I wanted to see what the actual baby looked like before I fussed with it too much. You’ll notice that the background is a little bit lighter because of spill from the umbrella. That’s fine – I don’t have a lot of room between the subject and the background, so I just have to live with it. If I had more distance between the two, I could control that better.
	Hmm, ok, the forehead is still a bit hot. I guess baby skin and bear fur share some similar photonic properties. Let’s reduce the power of the light. I don’t want to back the light up any more away from the “baby”, because I want the big wraparound effect of that shoot-through umbrella.
	And there we go. Parents were delighted. A little dodging and burning in Lightroom, and it’s ready to go. (This shot is straight out of camera.) This recipe – light the background, then work on the foreground, is something I use again and again.

Once you have a lighting recipe, and :

• you know the basic ratios of front light to back light power (in this case, the back light was at 1/8 power with a snoot, front light was 1/4)
• what aperture is going to match these for optimum results (remember that aperture controls flash exposure, while shutter speed controls ambient)
• use a stand-in before picking up the baby. Repeated strobing causes cranky babies. (Ask me how I know this.)

Just follow the recipe, predictable results.