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Next Interview

PHOTOGRILL: What was your brief for this assignment?

PHOTOGRAPHER: The story was about the kids at Kinglake Primary School who were going to race a fuel-free vehicle that they had designed and built. Kinglake had sent a team to the annual event previously, but the Black Saturday bush-fires made an entry unlikely this year, as parents were too cash-strapped to attend. It’s been a very difficult year and the kids have been under a lot of stress, but they really wanted to do it. So it was a relief, when a commercial sponsor provided funds and the opportunity for some much needed team-building.

PHOTOGRILL: What was your process for designing and making this photo?

PHOTOGRAPHER: On the way to Kinglake , I thought about the best case scenario, a futuristic solar panelled fuel-free vehicle is speeding through burnt out forest. I think I might have expected a bit much from the primary school kids because I was shocked when they wheeled a billy cart around the corner. The picture editor had high expectation for a photo of the students with the fuel-free vehicle. After the Black Saturday fires recovery stories where of great interest to our readers and our editorial team. They would want a page 3 or 5 out of this. We wheeled the billy cart up a slight hill amongst some scrub. The bush around the school hadn’t been effected by the fire. I asked one of the drivers to jump in and one of the other students pushed as fast as they could, I had the other 3 team members cheer as the cart went past. I used a wide angle lens with a slow shutter speed and panned as they zoomed passed to create movement in the image but I wasn’t happy with the result. I needed to changed my approach, instead of photographing from side on I decided to photograph head on, changing the shape of the picture and reducing the amount of the cart that would be seen. It made the picture more about the students, which is the real story, and less about the cart.

Shooting head on meant I needed to change the location to a spot with bush on both sides. Instead of going as fast as they could I asked the students to slow down so I could pan running backward, from in front of the cart using an even slower shutter speed. After trying a various shutter speeds I chose the one that resulted in the most movement, without blurring the driver’s face. Using the motor-drive at 9 frames per second I was getting 1 or 2 useable frames. But with only a few students in  the picture it still lacked atmosphere. The photo needed more excitement.

Kinglake Primary is a very small school, so I asked the principal if we could bring all the students out of their classes to cheer on their school mates. Soon the whole school was surrounding the cart as it was pushed along, and I ran backwards shooting pictures. After 3 or 4 more runs with high fives I finally got a couple of photographs that I could happily file for the editor’s conference.

PHOTOGRILL: Have you used this visual technique on other assignments?

PHOTOGRAPHER: On a more recent occasion I was ask to get the first snow picture of the year. I was off to Mt Buller armed with the name and phone number of the public relations girl. Once again, on the way I thought about what would be the best possible outcome. I had an idea to mount a camera to the front of a toboggan with a wide angle lens. I’d use a slow shutter speed to show the moment and a remote control to activate the camera. I arranged it with the PR by phone. The shoot was off to a good start. When I arrived and met with the my contact, she informed me that there was not really anyone on the mountain. No kids, no students, no tourists. No one comes here until the snow season starts later in the year. But there was a girl in the office who might be in a photo.

PHOTOGRILL: How did you make the photo this time?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I rigged up the toboggan with a clamp, Nikon D3, 14mm lens and remote release. We set out to a nice snow covered slope with trees on both sides. It was a very over cast day, the sky was as white as the snow. So the trees blurring on both sides would be needed to show movement, and to minimise the amount of flat looking sky in the shot. But the mounted remote camera was a disaster, it was too heavy and it dug into the snow preventing the toboggan from going anywhere. I whipped the camera off the toboggan and tried panning but that wasn’t working either. I thought that if I was going down the hill in front of the toboggan looking back, the girl would be in the centre of the frame with movement all around her, and that could look good. So I grabbed a second toboggan and slowly went down the slop backwards, the PR girl guided my toboggan while I photographed my subject on another one.

I was starting to get the result I wanted, except there was too much movement in the girls face because we were going down at slightly different speeds. So at that point I decided to ride the toboggan backward down the snow slope with a camera in one hand while holding on to my subjects right foot with the other, so that we were traveling at the same speed. When I was ready to make the shot I quickly let go of her foot and started a motor-drive sequence as soon my hand was out of the frame. It was just good enough to stop the movement in her face. We did the run 6 or 7 times, shooting about 20 pics each time. I was happy with 3 or 4 frames. I filed the shots from my laptop with a wireless connection in time for 3pm conference.

PHOTOGRILL: What attracts you personally to newspaper photography?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I love meeting people and hearing their stories. Not famous people so much but everyday people, and I love the challenge of making a picture from any situation. I generally do not leave a job until I’m happy with the picture I’ve taken.

I enjoy covering sporting events purely for the photography. People have said to me “it must be great going to the football, sitting on the boundary line taking photos”, and it is great. Though I don’t really like football, I don’t care who wins or losses. All I care about is the getting the best picture possible. Whether it’s the best player on the ground, or a great mark, as long at it happens in front of me and I get the shot, I’m happy.

a a This entry was posted on Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 at 6:44 am. It is filed under Fairfax Photographers, The Grill and tagged with Action Photo, Creative Photography, People, Photographic Techniques, Photojournalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Next Interview

PHOTOGRILL: You photograph in old buildings & structures; what’s behind your interest in these places?

PHOTOGRAPHER: It’s often somewhat difficult to put into words what I find intriguing about these kinds locations; sometimes it’s the history, sometimes just the architecture…and sometimes, it’s simply the opportunity the location presents for a compelling or unusual shot. A common idea among Urbex enthusiasts is what’s referred to as “beauty in decay”…the idea that the effects of entropy on a place can render it aesthetically appealing. I see that, and I think many others do too.

PHOTOGRILL: In broad terms, what does your photographic style say about these places? What is it that compels people to your imagery?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I think one of the common threads that underlies most of my work is a sense of tension; an uneasy feeling created by a somewhat familiar subject such as an abandoned gas station or roadhouse rendered surreal as its filled with light. These objects are juxtaposed with other, unnatural visages such as car headlights that look like laser beams, clouds streaking across a moonlit sky, or turbulent water rendered eerily calm via a minutes-long exposure. Things we see and take for granted every day that take on a different appearance when time is elongated. Though none of these images in this photo-set are a prime example, a big part of the feedback I get from fans is based around simply being creeped out by the location and the lighting treatment. “Undisclosed Location” & “Pollard House” are prime examples of this. Something about a red glow inside an old house tends to make people uncomfortable.

PHOTOGRILL: Can you tell us about the gear you use to create these images?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I shoot with a Nikon D300, and for 99.9% of my images, I use a 12-24 zoom lens. There are several technical reasons why a lens in this focal range works well for this type of photography, not the least of which is the ease of focusing in darkness due to the large depth of field that a lens like this provides. Also, the perspective of a wide lens mirrors the way I tend to envision and compose these shots.

As for the other critical equipment, I use a Pixel Wireless Remote system to open/close the shutter from up to 100 yards away, and I use a Manfrotto tripod, equipped with their excellent Pistol-Grip ball head to provide a stable base for the camera.

For lighting gear, as mentioned above I use a combination of strobes and flashlights, often with colored theatrical gels, to provide the lighting effects in the images. Here’s a list of the rest of the gear that carry with me, usually in my photo vest:

Vivitar 285 Strobe, early 80’s model, running on NiMh rechargeable batteriesYong Nuo YN460-II (As a backup)X2000 Zoom Flashlight (Available through Deal Extreme) (bright & powerful)C30 Zoom Flashlight (Available through Deal Extreme) (mid-level brightness)AA Maglite (Excellent for close detail work)Streamlight Twin-Task Flashlight (LED & xenon sources; a ‘swiss-army knife’ for interior work)Custom-cut theatrical gels (12-15 different colors) (Rosco and “American DJ” Brand)Lens Pen (Gotta keep the glass clean)Buck Knife & Pepper Spray (You never know who or what you’ll encounter out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night)Whistle (Last Resort…for when you fall through a floor into a basement in a ghost town at 2 AM, break your leg, and there’s no cell phone service!)

PHOTOGRILL: OK, so tell us about the featured image in this set, “RGB 5.0”. How did you find this scene, and how did you decide to construct and compose it?

PHOTOGRAPHER: RGB 5.0 is one of my most popular and best-selling images. It was shot on March 3rd, 2008 in an abandoned two-story industrial office building that had been converted for use as a music-rehearsal-rooms-for-rent facility. Demolished in 2010, the building was located in a sketchy neighborhood of downtown Dallas. It was replete with eccentric artifacts of small-time rock bands (such as this ½ mannequin) as well as homeless person belongings, from people who had passed through here and moved on, leaving some of their stuff behind. The building was basically two stories with dozens of small offices…vacant, trashed, and wreaking of decay.

Back in 2008, I typically shot these kinds on places alone, but on this unusually cold March night, I had with me a young urban explorer who had seen my work and was interested in learning my techniques. As we explored the building, we happened upon the mannequin legs, and a few rooms later, a collection of women’s shoes, lined up neatly against the wall as if they were in a closet. I immediately got the idea for the setup in RGB 5.0, so my protégé and I rounded up the legs & shoes, and took them back to 2nd floor landing.

The placement of the mannequin, as well as the angle and composition of the shot fell together quite naturally. It was now just a matter of deciding on the lighting scheme and executing it.

PHOTOGRILL: So tell us about the exposure and effects…how exactly did you create the lighting in RGB 5.0?

PHOTOGRAPHER: Well, first off, there is absolutely no ambient light in the room of any sort; it was pitch black in there. So truly, as a photographer, you are literally “painting with light”; if you want something to appear in the image, you have to put light on it.

Another thing to consider is the fact that, to pull off these handheld lighting effects while the shutter is open, one has to navigate the area of the scene in the blackness. That can sometimes be a bit unnerving, especially if the structural integrity of the building is in question. Fortunately, this building was quite sound structurally; all I had to do was design the shot, count the steps on the stairwell, open the shutter and feel my way around in the dark.

So, having pre-visioned specifically what I wanted the image to look like, it’s time to pull the trigger. I opened the shutter and made my way in darkness to the poster wall, and hurried down the steps (I already knew how many there were) to the mid-landing I and fired off two pops of blue-gelled strobe (medium setting); one to the left corner, one to the right. I then turned to face the side wall, and fired one pop of a green-gelled strobe, climbed the steps a bit and fired off one more pop to the area where the posters are.

Now, to create the red wall. I climbed the steps and made my way into the hallway at frame right. In a doorway across the hall, I fired off one pop of a red-gelled strobe aimed at the wall in the scene.

Now all that’s left is the detail lighting on the legs and fill lighting for the foreground. To do this, I made my way across the frame, out the left side of the image. I used a tightly focused mini-Maglite to paint the legs, then moved to just left of the camera position and used a Streamlight Twin-Task to paint the floor from a low-angle to pull out the texture detail in the debris on the floor.

All of this took 2 minutes and 53 seconds to accomplish (exposure times typically range from one to three minutes, with some as long as 10-12 minutes). The exposure was made on f/5.6, at ISO 200, with a focal length of 12mm. I should also note that this image was in fact taken with my old Nikon D80, as I had not yet upgraded to the D300 in March of 2008. The final image was the second exposure of two takes.

As a side note, while we spent nearly three hours exploring this building, this was one of only two exposures I made on the evening. We were surprised when we stepped out of the building that night to discover that while were inside exploring, Dallas had been blanketed with a layer of freshly fallen snow, which we couldn’t see from inside this old, boarded up abandonment.

PHOTOGRILL: What is your post-processing workflow for an image like this?

PHOTOGRAPHER: My general philosophy is to do as little as possible in the way of manipulating the source image; the idea here is to let the light-painting make the statement, and not turn a photograph into a piece of graphic art by over-processing it, as with HDR, Photoshop filters, etc.

Typically, most of the adjustments I will make to an image are done during the import into Photoshop, in Adobe Camera Raw. I may adjust the white balance, tweak saturation & vibrance slightly, and depending upon the values in the raw file, tweak the shadow & highlight values a bit if needed. After that, in Photoshop itself, I will address any perspective/distortion issues and crop the image to taste. My objective is to delicately tune the final image into an optimal version of what I had envisioned, while still remaining faithful to what the camera saw while the shutter was open. I try to maintain the integrity of a traditional photographic process, as much as possible.

With RGB 5.0, the RAW file out of the camera and the final image are almost identical, save for sharpening and a slight crop to the left edge of the image. Upon close examination of the edited file, I can see where I had done a mask of some sort in one area, but I no longer recall what it was for; I can’t find any substantial differences between the final product and the source RAW file.

PHOTOGRILL: Where can people who are compelled by your photography see more of your work?

PHOTOGRAPHER: My website is at Noel Kerns Photography, though a more complete collection of my work, including my latest images, can be found on my Flickr Stream.

I’d also like to mention my relationship with an outstanding new online gallery called artstar.com. ArtStar is a fantastic resource for budget-minded collectors of fine art, and I’m proud for them to be representing several of my images, including “Curiosity” and Prada Marfa”, both featured in this collection.

PHOTOGRILL: Do you offer classes or workshops for people interested in learning your photographic & lighting techniques?

PHOTOGRAPHER: Yes, occasionally. Drop me an e-mail at and I’ll keep you posted on workshop opportunities as they come available.

a a This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 10:36 pm. It is filed under The Grill and tagged with Creative Photography, Lighting, Photographic Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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There are an awful lot of bizarre names around nowadays - as we were saying to our colleague, Ivor Biggun, only the other week.

So it takes something really special to make us stop and do a double-take. But this is something really special. Ready? It appears that a proud new mum has named her baby daughter 'Hashtag'. Well, that's what she announced on Facebook anyway...

Hashtag? Hashtag? You can't call a baby after a punctuation symbol. Where will the madness end? Ampersand? Asterisk? Colon? That said, we do have a very good friend called Dot.

Anyway, fingers crossed, the Facebook name announcement was merely a post-childbirth typo. And if it wasn't? Never mind, kid - at least your mum didn't decide to call you Mitt Romney like that poor baby in Kenya...

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This gives a whole new meaning to Family Names. Corleone, the name of six babies last year, joins future troublemakers named Capone, Gotti, Bates, and Juvenal. Potential sister names include Sicily and Sicilia.

We've been predicting the rise of fierce names, and this year's roster includes a pack of them: six boys named Cougar along with 86 named Fox, 85 called Bear, 29 Hawks, 14 named Wolf, seven Broncos, and five girls named Tiger. To the six girls named Bunny out there: Watch out.

The other Don, as in "Mad Men's" Draper, inspired six namesakes this year. Draper is also one of the new occupational names, ala Mason which shot to the national Number 2. Among the other strange occupational names on the list: Strummer, Governor, and Pilot.

Canada's favorite interjection -- or perhaps the international expression of apathy -- was given to 14 girls last year. Were their parents excited? Eh....

Elvis is back in the building, returning after a one year hiatus to the Top 1000, and now the name of his home, Graceland, is in the baby name lexicon too, given to seven girls. Grace and Gracelyn are popular for girls, along with Grayson and Greyson for boys, and Presley and Memphis for both sexes.

The name of the Biblical royal, spelled as one word, was given to five boys last year. Brother conjoined names include Princewilliam, Princemichael, Sircharles, and Marcjacob.

We have to believe that somewhere, beyond the bounds of Googleable English, Moo is a valid name and that five parents last year did not decide to name their daughters after the sound a cow makes. But, we want to believe in Santa Claus and instant weight loss too....

If it was good enough for Biggie... Along with children named Marvelous, Brilliant, Famous, Beautiful, and Cyncere, there were five bad boys named Notorious. Destined to tangle with the five named Tupac.

Could you pronounce that for us? While Penisimani seems to be an established if rare name in the South Sea Islands, the six boys who received it in the U.S. are sure to encounter problems with pronunciation and, oh, everything. As are the children named Asser, Peniel, Dearria and Virginia.

Big "Dirty Dancing" fan? You can be sure the five boys who received this name last year, along with their parents, will be fielding that question for a lifetime. Swayze is one of the newest of the modern hero names on the rise, which include such popular choices as Jeter and Palin.

These times demand toughness, and the boys named Tank, Trek, and Courage come pre-armed for the battle. Other badass baby names include Breaker and Ryker, especially hot in Utah where they presumably have never heard of the prison.

Brandi is so yesterday. Today's most intoxicating alcohol name is Tequila. Newborn girls were also named Chardonnay, Henessy, and Syrah, while a handful of boys were named Abeer.

Day names, from Friday to Christmas to August, are traditional in many cultures, but today's parents are expanding the lexicon. On the 2011 list were girls named Tomorrow, Evening, and Future.

No, not like the snake, like the baseball field. Fourteen girls and 25 boys were named after the classic Chicago stadium. There were also about 150 children of each sex named Shea along with five boys named Fenway. None, however, named Yankee.

(Via Awkward Messages)

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