the February 2012 russellgraves.com Newsletter

FEBRUARY 2012

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The Test Drive Trying New Technologies Depending on which platform you are viewing this newsletter, you’ll definitely see some changes.

I first started doing this newsletter several years ago when it was all simply text based and included just words and links (check it out HERE thanks to the Wayback Machine). While the newsletter was crude, it did its job to create engagement with those who read it.

I’ll admit that I am a constant tinkerer. I’ve never been content with the status quo and enjoy constantly making refinements to whatever I do to try to make the content better for a wider audience. If you’ve read this newsletter for any length of time, you’ll know that I’ve worked to bring a better design to the mix, add more images to each newsletter, as well as more educational content.

One of the big changes this month is that I am launching a companion version of this newsletter for the iPad. If you are reading it in the traditional way in the flip page format, great and thank you so much. If you have an iPad and want to test out a new experience, check it out by downloading it

HERE (You can find the install instructions HERE.) I hope that the change is a good one. Now, I can’t guarantee that I’ll publish an iPad version each month - at least not for now. According to a recent survey I launched, about a third of the readers of this newsletter use the iPad for reading online content. As the number of subscribers grows and as iPad utilization grows, I’ll definitely produce an iPad version. For now though, consider this issue a test drive. As such, if you view it on an iPad, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have a fantastic month.

russell@russellgraves.com

CHECK OUT RUSSELLGRAVES.COM FOR A NEW VIDEOS!

IP T O T PHO

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location, the one in which we’re interested looks like a giant

cactus and mesquite are just scrap dumped by someone. To me and

crosshairs precisely laid across a

Bill, though, these pieces of World

hardscrabble piece of Panhandle ranchland.

War II flotsam represent much more than that.

“I think I can get us on this place,” I tell Bill. “If I am correct, I

Each hunk of aggregate, chicken wire, and cement were

know who owns this property.

made by American hands, placed

oil industry, a private pilot, a photography enthusiast, and a

While Bill had to leave and head back for San Angelo, I promptly

in the bombers by American servicemen, and dropped by the

World War II buff whose

sent an e-mail and confirmed the location of the targets and turns

same Americans who make up the greatest generation the world has

out, I did get permission.

ever know. Men like my Uncle L.D.

Seven months later, Bill and I are winding our way across

Hall from Bonham, Texas and others who fought and defeated

powder-dry ranch roads navigating our way to where the target ought

perhaps the greatest evil to ever lay scourge upon the earth. And

to be. Using a GPS, a print-out of

they did it not for the fanfare or the

era bombing targets in the area.

“Targets?” I quizzed, knowing I’d

the Google Earth screen, and a measure of country savvy we

fame and glory. Instead, they did it because as Uncle L.D. once told

missed something in my fifteen

wander into the unknown. While Bill stared as his GPS, he was just

me, “...I’m an American.”

Before Bill and I leave, I walk

about to speak when I interrupted

over to where we started our

simple question set in motion a personal research project that

him and said, “Look there!”

Tilted in the same fashion as the

mission and visit the lone bomb atop the mound one more time.

connected the latest consumer

Easter Island monoliths, the tower at Pisa, Italy, and the Cadillacs in

Instinctively I touched the bomb and wonder about the person who

Amarillo, the back end of a

dropped this over 60 years ago.

ended in a glorious afternoon outdoors in the Texas Rolling

concrete bomb jutted mightily from the caliche mound that marked the

While I may never know the contribution that the bombardier

Plains.

target’s center. It’s lasting monument of some unknown

made to the overall war effort, I do know this: because of him and

bombardier trainee who, at least for

servicemen and women like him, I

found the rough coordinates of some of the targets - information

a moment, mastered the Norden bomb sight because of his training

can snap one more picture and walk away proudly knowing, I am

he’d garnered from pouring over

at the air base in Childress. Then, at the precise moment, he released

Featured Column Bomb Hunting Last June a visitor from San Angelo stopped by my house for a visit. Bill Yeates is many things: he’s a retired seismologist for the

encyclopedic knowledge of everything pertaining to the old Texas Army Airfields west of the 100th meridian is staggering.

When he was at my house last summer he asked if I had every visited any of the old World War II

years of living in Childress. Turns out, his query had merit and a

technology with some old fashioned detective work and

By the time we first met, Bill had already done a bit of research and

old war maps.

Using the software program

the practice bomb from the AT-11

Google Earth, we honed in on a few of the areas were the targets

trainer and it sailed silently on a downward arc until it’s final,

presumably lay. A bit of scrolling

unceremonious thump into the dirt.

To the untrained eye, you might

and we found the tell-tale outline of old targets that time and hi-tech satellite imagery couldn’t hide.

While the target shapes vary by

think that the concrete pieces and metal fragments from the faux munitions scattered amongst the

an American.

I grew up in cattle country. If you live anywhere in Texas, In much of Texas, old you know that the cattle traditions are still the c u l t u r e d o m i n a t e s r u r a l rule. communities.

Cattle Country

W h e n I g r a d u a t e d f ro m college, I moved west to a county where the cattle outnumber people.

It is a simple place where people live

their lives at a slow, perfect pace. Out here, people are connected to the land and vice versa.

This is cattle country.

THE SKINNY: CANON 5D MARK II CAMERA WITH VARIOUS LENSES

ON TO I O T PH UC R T INS

Producing the Solo Photo Shoot

Magazine work can be tough. Believe me I do plenty of it. Assignment work, while as exotic as it seems, can be a challenge. Often I’m presented with challenges that range from creatively lighting in the field to catching up with wary subjects.

I tell people that on a magazine shoot, the real work happens before the shoot.

Here’s why: Pre-production

Of course every shoot begins with a call from a magazine. I work for a lot of different publications and each one works differently. Some will come up with an extensive shot list in which I work collaboratively with a photo editor or creative director. Others (most) will just say, “Get me some shots of ...”

When either situation arises, it is imperative upon me to do my research.

For this shoot, I was given the instructions to photograph a diminutive subject - the dunes sagebrush lizard (DSL).

What’s the big deal?

I know, the thought of shooting pictures of a dunes sagebrush lizard doesn’t sound all that sexy but believe me, it is an important subject.

The small lizard is petitioned to be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species legislation. If the listing occurs, it could potentially curtail oil and gas exploration activities in the area of Texas and New Mexico where the lizards are found. Therefore, it is imperative for people on both sides of this issue to do what they can to keep the economic engine of drilling and pumping running while maintaining sand lizard habitat.

The Challenges

When approaching a shoot like this, I

often make a list of the challenges I’ll face. For this piece I knew that I’d have to:

1.

Find a lizard to photograph;

2.

Find someone who knows the habits and habitat of the lizard so we can accomplish number one;

3.

Come up with a way to photograph a lizard that probably just wants to go about its lizard business and not stand still for a photo.

For number one, I knew the area in which the reptile lives. In western Texas and Eastern New Mexico, broad sand dunes run south to north through the Permian Basin region. These sand dunes are held in place by the diminutive sand shinoak and an array of prairie grasses.

Living in the dunes and burrowing tiny tunnels are the four to five inch long dunes sagebrush lizard.

At first, I’d never seen a DSL in person. My only glimpse of one is what I found online through a Google search.

Therefore, I knew

that securing permission to explore private property and then finding a lizard would be like finding a needle in a hay stack. To compound the problem, I was on a budget with the magazine so I didn’t have the luxury of spending weeks in the field for half a dozen images.

Therefore, to solve problem number two, I got on the phone and started calling my network of wildlife biologists with whom I’ve made contact in the past.

After a half dozen or so calls, I found the name of a graduate student who was studying the lizard for his doctoral thesis.

A few e-mails and phone calls later, he’d agreed to take me afield but it took nearly six weeks for us to coordinate our schedules.

When we finally met in midSeptember, he only had a few days left in the field and said that the adult lizards would be hard to find.

Not having any choice, I said that we’d have to take our chances on finding one.

In the Field

I left my house at 5am and headed southwest to the

“I KNOW, THE THOUGHT OF SHOOTING PICTURES OF A DUNES SAGEBRUSH LIZARD DOESN’T SOUND ALL THAT SEXY BUT BELIEVE ME, IT IS AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT.”

tiny village of Maljamar, New Mexico. Seven hours later, I arrived and met my contact on the ranch where he and his two research associates were checking pitfall traps. Pitfall traps are plastic buckets placed in the ground and are used for catching lizards once they fall in the buckets.

All summer long, they’d caught and measured and tagged lizards for their study which included monitoring the health and well being of the lizard in the critical habitat in which they lived.

This morning, I got lucky. My contact had caught two lizards and he was saving them for me to photograph before he turned them loose.

The set-up is simple:

Add soil and vegetation that matches the surrounding terrain and put the animal inside. Once the critter figures out that they have barriers, they’ll often settle in and pose nicely for images.

To light the lizard, I used single strobe shot through a translucent scrim and lit from above to cast the shadows below the lizard and make the light source seem more believable. Therefore, the final shots ended up being a mix of ambient light that filtered in from the sides of the tank and a fill light from above to add a pop of color.

Metering was based on the ambient light and the flash The Shoot used TTL to decide the

Shooting small appropriate amount of fill. mammals and reptiles is easy

Ten minutes later the if you understand how to do it. lizard shoot was over and the For this shoot, I decided to reptiles were turned loose employ my $10, 10-gallon fish none worse for wear. Six tank that I bought from Petco. weeks of prep time and It works wonders for shoots coordination all paid off on this like this. brief shoot.

It actually took me more time to walk from my vehicle to the research site than it did to shoot the pictures.

While I was there, I rounded out my shoot with images of the researchers at work and pictures of the habitat where the lizards live.

About an hour after I arrived, I was back on the road. Another successful shoot behind me.

The Takeaway

The lesson here is that for assignment shoots, the more prep work you can do the better. In a perfect world, even the most complicated shoots can go smoothly and efficiently. By managing all of the variables that I could, I made the least manageable aspects (whether or not we would find a a lizard) workable.

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