Off the runway at NY Fashion Week
Reuters photographer Brendan McDermid shares his experience covering New York Fashion Week, with the logistics of shooting backstage, the shows and everything in between.
Destination: Afghanistan
It all started out with a phone call from Reuters News Pictures Washington Editor In Charge Jim Bourg on Thursday night informing me there was a secret Presidential trip leaving on Saturday to an undisclosed destination which Reuters would like me to travel with the president on. I was told that this was very secretive and that I was not to mention it to anyone and that no details were available yet. I had been with President Obama on his secret trip to Baghdad last year, so it was pretty easy to figure out that the destination this time might be Afghanistan, a trip which had been highly anticipated since Obama became president 15 months ago. I was to expect to be contacted directly by the White House for a meeting to discuss the details. But I was to “open” the White House as the first Reuters photographer arriving there on Friday morning at 7am, my scheduled shift, and to go about my day as planned acting as if everything was normal. Nothing could be further from the truth.
That afternoon I was called in to meet with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in his office at 4pm, along with some of the other members of the 14 person media travel pool who would be going on the secret trip aboard Air Force One.
We were given a schedule of events and were sworn to secrecy. I headed home to pack and test out the BGAN satellite phone I had been provided by Reuters for the trip.
On Saturday night, I met up with the 2 other wire service photographers who were in the travel pool at a gate at Andrews Air Force Base at 7pm, an hour before our call time. But after sitting in the cars for an hour outside the Air Force base gate, and when no one else showed up, we figured that we better make a protective phone call to the White House staff. It seemed we were a half-mile from the correct entry point to the base. Whoops! The details we had been given were a little too secretive even for us!
Our names were checked off a list at the gate and we drove into a parking lot. We unloaded all of our gear and it was all turned over to the U.S. Secret Service. All electronics, cameras, and blackberries were to be loaded on to the plane by them and we would get not them back until we were in flight.
The full media pool then waited on a bus for about an hour until we were driven inside the aircraft hanger where Air Force One was parked. Normally we board Air Force One in broad daylight in the middle of an open air force base tarmac and climb up the rear stairs of the aircraft. But in this case, we were asked to board the plane after dark, inside a hangar, entering the plane from the front where the president does, which we never do, and we got to see a lot of the plane that I had never seen before.
Gosh, I read the whole thing in a gulp!! How very exciting. I am coming back as you in my next life……
Behind the scenes: Winter Olympics
The 2010 Olympics in Vancouver presented some rarely seen challenges for Reuters photographers on assignment at the winter games.
Rain! Rain! And more rain!
Photographer Mark Blinch waits to shoot Olympic action. REUTERS/Andre Forget/QMI agency
Cypress Mountain, the home of snowboarding and freestyle skiing was quite possibly the worst Olympic venue of all time. Photographers were confronted with rain, fog and constantly shifting photo positions. As the snow melted positions became useless and had to be changed. Communications failed in the wet and the organizers moved snow from the finish area to other parts of the course to keep the events moving. Despite the trying conditions some wonderful pictures were made. Highlights included Alexandre Bilodeau, winning Canada’s first ever gold medal on home soil and the dazzling Shaun White in the halfpipe.
Shaun White of the U.S. celebrates in the finish area after his first run in the men’s halfpipe finals on Cypress Mountain at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, February 17, 2010. REUTERS/Mark Blinch
Men’s hockey was a special challenge for the Reuters photo team. The pressure on us to produce was immense as was the pressure on the Canadian team to rebound from a poor showing in Turin and take the hockey mad nation of Canada to nirvana.
We hung four cameras in the roof of the rink, two directly over the nets and two at center ice looking back into the nets. Special thanks to the arena crew who decided to test the giant air horn used when goals are scored while we were right next to it. Thirty stories above the ice — on a narrow catwalk. Luckily, none of the things we were holding left our hands as we jumped three feet in the air.
Well done on your coverage – you have done a brilliant job!
Ollie
White House moments: A time lapse view
What does a typical day at the White House look like?
I set out to capture a sense of everyday life at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, armed with basic knowledge from a course in video editing at the Kalish workshop. Starting with a couple of early experiments of the Marine Guards at the West Wing and a daily press briefing, I was hooked on time-lapse sequences that came to life when they were played at high speed.
I began taking along extra cameras, tripods, clamps and pocket wizard radio remote triggers. This involved slightly more work as I had to start thinking of the best place for a time lapse sequence that may not make a good still image itself, but rather as part of a larger project.
From the East Room, where most official functions are held, to the Rose Garden, the South Lawn and the West Wing, I set the cameras up to fire one picture every 5 to 10 seconds before, during and after the events. Thousands of pictures were shot over the course of those weeks, and I slowly began to put together a narrative that follows what we typically photograph on any given day at the White House.
Shooting “a day in the life” would have been nice, but it was impossible to have cameras in all the locations on one particular day.
All of what you see in this project was made with just two cameras on the time lapse and one hand-held camera — it’s a very basic set up. Shooting handheld, I had to shoot major burst sequences with long lenses, all the while ensuring that I didn’t move the camera around too much. Even slight movements can render an entire sequence unusable. Tripods are too cumbersome to use at the White House and you have to stay mobile to make pictures, so I would innovate by propping myself against a ladder and holding my breath or putting the handheld cameras on the ground — whatever it takes to shoot a short burst without moving the camera at all.
I hope you post the Memorial Day shot you got today of the Gold Star mother hugging the marine. It was brilliant despite the uncorrected exposure. Some photos are tough to take, and I know that had to be one of them. Those are the ones that stick with us, meaning those of us who must take such photos
Fashion Week, New York
Models, tall models, skinny models, Russian models, French models…sounds exotic? Yeah, not so much. Covering fashion week in New York sounds like a pretty glamorous assignment but it could hardly be further from it.
Shooting fashion week has more in common with running a marathon than it does running a sprint. There are 8 days, some 75 shows in the tents, dozens more off site, plus preparation photos. We shoot the models backstage and the designers getting ready, we shoot the front row celebrities arriving and we shoot the show from the pit.
The pit could also be called the pit of despair. Imagine taking 200 photographers with all their requisite gear, cameras, laptops, ladders, monopods, boxes and cases, putting them in a space that realistically 50 photographers could work comfortably in. Throw in 14 hour days, little regard for hygiene and an open bar in the evening and you have a recipe for a sociological experiment gone awry.
I personally shot dozens of shows and filed hundreds of photos. The images after a few days begin to homogenize and making something different becomes a real challenge. As a photographer I am always trying to redefine my visual narrative and create interesting dynamic photos.
Live from Launch Pad 39A
KSC Photo Blog from Scott Audette on Vimeo.
Reuters photographer Scott Audette documents the Reuters crew braving alligators and snakes and long hot days as they prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Hi Scott, well done. Enjoyed your video immensely and learned a lot. Thanks.
Davie
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
Thanks, that was quite interesting!