As the title states, I am grateful to announce that I have had the good fortune of gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Golf issue this month. The shot is one I took of recent Master’s winner Bubba Watson. I am not only thankful to be on the cover, but also pleased at how clean the layout was designed and think that SI has made a beautiful piece with this one. So I would like to say thank you to those that made this one possible, both at SI and on set, as always I am nothing without you and the credit for this cover does not belong to me alone.

Finally, an update…. For those of you that follow this blog regularly, you may notice that nothing was said about the F16 flight I was to take last week. I just wanted to inform that all is well with the situation and that there was a small delay in the Air Force’s and my schedules, but we will be flying after my vacation. In the meantime I will probably resort to watching YouTube videos of reporters getting knocked out on plane rides to remind me what I’m getting myself in to.

As a kid I can remember going to airshows being silenced in the awe of what I was seeing. One of my earlier memories is going to one with my father; as I sat on his shoulders I formed an adoration of speed, of sound. My youth would not let me describe this in such eloquent words, but I’m sure my summation at the time went to the tune of, “wow.” The funny thing is that I attended the airshow again last year with my dad (though not on his shoulders) and the reaction was the same. I was made little by what I was seeing, and the experience of watching a vehicle on the edge of every bit of physics that the universe can throw at it was humbling. The percentage of women that want to date a fighter pilot is only surpassed by the percentage of men that want to be a fighter pilot.

Which brings me to the greatest honor that I have received as a photographer.  A little over a year ago I received a call from the United States Air Force asking me if I was interested in being an honorary commander. I asked the question that many of you are probably asking right now, “what’s an honorary commander?”…. In short it is a position that a civilian holds in a unit of the Air Force that bridges the military to civilian gap.  Be it the medical, engineering, janitorial, dentistry units, etc., most have an honorary that gets to experience comradery and share life experiences with those that serve a greater cause.

Without hesitation I said I would be honored to be a part of the program, not knowing how much of an understatement that would be. It was then I was told I would be the honorary commander of not just any squadron, I would be the honorary commander if the 425th Fighter Squadron, The Black Widows. At the induction there were at least a hundred inductees like myself, all accomplished in their respective fields, be it CEO’s of large corporations, surgeons, lawyers, and this 27 year kid. How out of place was I?  When I walked in with my parents, they shook my father’s hand and welcomed him as the honorary of the 425th.

At this point you might be wondering why this was never mentioned until today…. In all honesty, this position, this opportunity and this honor meant too much. I wanted to be a part of the squad and constant blogging and tweeting about it would have gotten in the way of living it.

However, I sit here giddy like the little kid that went to the air show with his father. You see there is a specific perk that some have the good fortune of enjoying, and this experience is one I will be sharing with you all.  In one week I will be waking up to more medical evaluations, followed by parachute and ejection seat training, because a dream that began at an airshow on my father’s shoulders will be realized…

I am going to fly in an F16.

So while my enthusiasm about the sport he plays is low, this doesn’t take away how happy it makes me to see a man that has strong values, strong faith, and a happy-go-lucky attitude towards life succeed.

Congrats Bubba

When the call came from Discovery to shoot the ad campaign for their show River Monsters, I was thrilled. The concept was strong and the comps that we were to key off made visualizing the final image easy. However, creative potential and potentially dangerous walked hand in hand on this campaign. The idea was to have the show’s host Jeremy Wade wrestling a giant fish in the shallow waters near South Beach, Florida. Now by giant, I mean the kind fish that hangs out with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man on the weekends… probably having a glass of wine with its flippers and talking about the delicacies of krill. Where things get complicated is that we wanted to have Jeremy and mega fish in the water thrashing around…. lit. Obviously we didn’t want a bathtub with a toaster situation, so safety would come first, creativity second, after all electrocuting an actor is not a good way to land another job (the industry tends to look down on these sort of things).

Knowing that this set would be determined by the quality and work ethic of the people on it, I flew assistants in that I had worked with on previous shoots. We approached the lighting situation with Photoflex Tritons, for their safety, weight, and flash duration (we would be freezing splashing water). We had a scout look for beaches with long gradations to the shore line and went to multiple locals just to walk into the water to his waste level. Background would not be important, as we would fade to black behind the subject. For cameras, I brought both the Nikon D3x and D3s to back it up.  Never on a shoot had I expected to destroy a camera more than this, so redundancy would play key to making sure I came home with the shot, even if the camera was a paperweight.

With lighting, safety and concept behind us, it was up to Jeremy to make the action, and he did it masterfully. Often he would bring advice and reality to the table that we could not have thought of in our wildest dreams… mostly because I have yet to catch a 350 lbs. grouper, and also because I don’t fish. However, one comment amongst all the others stood out to me… All of us (7 people, 1 fish) were waist deep in the water at night in the Florida ocean and Jeremy looked up at me and said, “you know, these are perfect conditions for a Bull Shark….” to which I replied, “haha, and when’s the last time you caught a Bull Shark?!?!”…. he replied, “I caught one here….. last night”. At that point, without any direction from me, the entire set moved about 10 feet closer to shore.

We shot for only a couple hours, not due to a time crunch, but because Jeremy, the creative director, and rest of the crew worked so well together that in two hours we had a solid 30 images that would work for the ad. Since we were in the ocean, laptop previewing would be impossible, but seeing the shots out of the back of the D3x, the CD was able to see that we had the shot directly out of the camera. Although this image was not the final one chosen because of the main subject’s address to the fish, it shows the strength of a RAW file, and gives an idea to the situation around us:

Also, here is a short video to show how the prep work went. We had originally wanted to have a complete behind the scenes of the shoot, but with the dangers at hand (be it lights, sharks, groupies, sea turtles) we decided that everyone would contribute to make the shot. My assistant Matthew Coughlin made this video of the prep, and may I warn you, once you have seen this skinny, pale photographer without his shirt on, you might wish you had never watched it…

I wish I could take 100% credit for this shoot, but, as in every shot, it is the quality of the people around you that make the image. So, Jeremy, Mike, Linas, Bryan, Matt, Grant, Paul and Lisa, here is your shot and thank you.

Such is the case with Mr. Lenny Robinson, who up until today was just known as the guy that got pulled over in a black Lamborghini while wearing a full Batman outfit. I will admit my confusion and slight intrigue into what I thought would make for a funny story on set. However, the reality of the situation turned out to be a story I will tell on set, at home, and to anyone willing to listen.

You see, Mr. Robinson is a true man, a true compliment to the word man and every bit the man I aspire to be.  It turns out that he spends his days dressed as the Caped Crusader going around to children’s hospitals, inspiring the children that there are true heroes and that they themselves are superheroes in their own right.

The irony of this all is that in doing so, Mr. Robinson has become a hero to people like me. He found a worthy cause and selflessly gives his life to it with the hope of never getting anything in return. A world that needed a hero has just found one.

Please go over to Jalopnik, and have a read of the full story, it will make your day.

And to Mr. Robinson….. Thank you

I’ll put this as a challenge to photographers, a competition if you will. Unlike many photo competitions where the winners can be picked just for their name or other politics that block the art, this one guarantees a win and a prize much greater than your name in a magazine. The rules are simple… You take pictures for someone that needs them rather than wants them. I don’t mind if you take photos for a family that can’t afford them, shoot a wedding for a military couple or photograph handicapped children to help a charity, you will all win.

After all, what is the point to walk this earth with a talent if it only gets used when enough money is on the table?  Doing so only guarantees that your art will only last as long as the shutter was open, and when you are gone, your importance is as well. So easy it is to get caught up in the now, that photographers seem to promote their success rather than their work. Screw it and the mockery it has made of the passion that exits in this medium.

In short, are you creating an image, or are you creating a legacy?

My assistant at the Miami airport (shot with the iPhone)

I am a photographer. Someone that lives his life in a grateful way, constantly reassuring himself that the good fortune that has come his way has never been deserved. For it is on the shoulders of fate and God’s good graces that my success stands. I find the fact that people take interest in my work humbling and I genuinely try and reciprocate the appreciation, because myself, and every other photographer out there, are nothing without a viewer. Likewise our existence it moot without a counter-opinion, as even the brightest of lights would not be measurable without the shadows. The place of the critic spans the area of you character that you let it occupy, and the critic himself often determines his own quality.

As this weeks launch of the of the Lamborghini video has shown, dissenting opinions are easier to show with the courage that the internet’s anonymity provides. I have read and respect all of them, and quite frankly agree with many, so allow me to address the big one…

“The Lambroghini is over retouched”  -   Hell yes it is!  I haven’t even run the image that the video contains because I feel the same way, but therein lies an aspect of irony. The video that the fstoppers made (and made well in my opinion) is a lesson in where things go in commercial photography, and where they can go. It would be worthless to make a video of instruction and have the photographer end it with, “I get every shot out of camera” because no one does. The best photographer can shoot beautiful images that convey light and emotion effectively, but they will never run unretouched for an ad. What Scott and I set out to do was make a video to teach people how photography on a commercial level works. From the prep, to the retouch, we wanted to show aspects of the process that a lot of photographers prefer not teach due to some unfounded sense of insecurity that showing to much will hurt their bottom line. We knew from the beginning that I would show lighting, both easy and for retouch, and he would show how much retouching could do, why waste the time doing work and interviews to show how little we can do? The result is a shot of over perfection that separates from reality and walks right in the door of surreal.  The entire time irony sunbaths in the concept that many of those we set out to teach got angered by what we taught.

Reality back to center stage and the assumption that the perfect image exists from the camera gets lost in the year that printing began. Many an armchair photographer will argue that Bresson’s leap was blurred, but the the critique itself debases the critic. As a professional photographer I am as unique as the 4 billion other people that classify themselves as such, and my ability to sway the masses is limited to the same baron unpaved flat that gets angered by deep prose in a blog.

In closing, it’s Friday, and another week is over, so let me offer a toast to my readers, my critics, and to those people that just plain don’t like me… cheers

Shot and over retouched with my iPhone

A couple months back, I was contacted by the fStoppers team and asked if I would be interested in creating an image, not for the sake of the image itself or my portfolio, but for the use of teaching those that want to learn how I do what I do.  The only thing that stood in our way was creating an opening in a schedule for a shoot that allowed them to get the footage they needed, oh… and finding a subject of the shoot.  I wanted to shoot an athlete or some aggressively inclined individual, however they had other plans and asked if I could get a car to the studio. Even I forget that I photograph cars sometimes.

A day before the shoot we met for dinner and to talk about our approach.  Midway through, Lee asked my opinion on some type of light, and mistakenly I thought he was referring to light theory or even the physics of light, so I answered accordingly to the question my mind had perceived. He looked at me and in the nicest possible way told me that if I talked in the degree of detail I had just answered in, no one would watch the video.

The next day we all arrived early at Loft 19 to prepare the Chimera light bank and get ready for the arrival of the car. The fStoppers had a team of three, two to film and one to scream at me if I was rambling too much. An average exchange would go along the lines of.

Lee: Can you tell us why you put that light there?

Blair: I put the light there because if we had any higher angle of attack, there would be speculars at the focal plane and unless we diffused, but that would kill line.

Lee: Damn it Blair, just say you wanted to light the wheel.

In all seriousness though, the guys from fStoppers were awesome, good people. They’re mission aligns with mine in that they want to teach. Being the future of photography can be a lonely place when you have done nothing to teach the future of photography.

The Shot:

Pretty, isn’t she? The car is a Lamborghini Aventador. Fast, aggressive, angular, and easy to make look good.  There are many different versions of the image, some have different backgrounds and floors.  My heart goes to the simplicity of the car on white, but for the full lesson on how an ad is made we created this image. The background is from the hotel I was staying at for a shoot in Vegas and a floor I found on set in Indianapolis.

The Video:

We wanted to show the approach that I used to research the angles of the car, a video game called Forza 4. From the interviews to the footage on set, to the comments from my retoucher, we didn’t want to hide anything from those that took the time to watch it. I don’t believe in keeping your ways secret from someone who wants to learn, it is counter-productive to the art as a whole. Why should one photographer find an advance forward, only to try and keep others behind?  Some will say that it is a competition, where the victor has all the cards up his sleeve. This is wrong, and those that believe that teaching their lighting will take their work away, have an insecurity in their absolute talent. The best part of this equation is that being wrong presupposes that someday I will lose a job to someone I have helped along the way, an outcome that I will gladly welcome.

I want to conclude this by saying thank you to those that made this happen: Patrick, Lee and Jaron, you guys are a great team and professional in every sense of the word.  It was an honor to work together with guys on set.  Floyd, thank you for letting us use Loft 19 for this one. You have always been a catalyst behind every production I shoot in Arizona, and I have never shot in a better studio. Mike, you are the best assistant, if the world only knew how many times you have saved my ass on shoots. Rob, thank you for the car and for scaring the hell out of Patrick and Lee on their rides. Which brings me to YOU, the reader of this. Thank you for being the reason.

Also on that note, we had a little bit of an achievement recently…. @BlairBunting has surpassed 10,000 awesome followers on Twitter.  Just think, there are 10,000 people that have learned that I did not know what the term “hot pants” were until I said I was wearing them out on a nice date.  But in all reality, I just wanted to say a very sincere Thank You to those of you that have clicked the “follow” button.  I hope that you have learned from the lessons in the midst of the madness.

I am back on set in 1 hour, so until next week…