Capturing A Knockout

One of my first assignments I ever had as a photographer was a photo essay on boxing. My photojournalism professor asked us to do a photo essay on someone we didn't know and it just happened to be at the same time the Texas Golden Gloves finals were taking place in Fort Worth. I'm still not sure how I had the guts to do this but I pulled into the parking lot as the athletes were registering for the event and I just walked up to the biggest boxer I saw. His name was Ladell Williams from Oak Cliff. Somehow Ladell and his coach trusted me and let me follow them around that weekend and I came away with some decent shots--nothing extraordinary. Photography was completely new to me at the time.

I really loved the experience. Boxing is different from sports like football and basketball. It's way more personal. In football there's 53-75 players on a team and it's just next to impossible to really focus in on one player or even care about one player. With boxing I was able to focus on Ladell and spend time with him as he prepared. Sadly, most of those images were lost when a hard drive crashed but I have a couple that I put on flickr. 

Since that time I've been looking for more opportunities to shoot some boxing but I just haven't had any luck until recently. One of Dallas' newest venues, The Bomb Factory, hosted a Premier Boxing Champions event that was nationally broadcasted on NBC of which I was able to get access. It wasn't the access I was hoping for but as a photographer usually has to do, I worked with what I had. It would’ve been great to be able to shoot ringside with my 16-35mm capturing wide angle shots of jarring punches but instead I was relegated to the balcony of the venue. To get as close to the action as I could I had to work with my 70-200mm. 

One of my favorite current photographers is Al Bello. He’s a sports photographer for Getty Images and his boxing photography is unrivaled. He consistently pumps out fantastic work from the major bouts featuring the likes of Mayweather, Pacquiao and Canelo. Well, after this event I have a whole new found respect for his amazing work. It was much more difficult than I thought to keep up with the fights and try to capture a flurry of punches, let alone a knockout punch. In one of the early fights I thought I was about to capture one—I saw it coming. One of the boxers attempted a wild right hook but he missed and while he was attempting to regather himself he was wide open and his opponent rocked him with a right hook of his own and knocked him out cold. I saw it coming but I couldn’t react fast enough and missed the knockout punch by at least two frames. I was pretty bummed out. 

Later I felt like I was getting better but it still took a few rounds of each fight for me to start to see patterns in the boxers’ styles and prepare for flurries, but it was still quite a task. It was a great challenge, though, and I definitely look forward to being able to shoot more fights because when you do a great shot from a boxing match it feels pretty damn rewarding.

Inside The Trump Show At American Airlines Center

This photo gallery was originally published on the Dallas Observer (Click Here To View) 

This isn't a blog about politics so I'm going to keep the focus on the photos in this post, but I'll tell you this: it was pretty surreal to be a minority standing in the epicenter of one of Donald Trump's political rallies as he campaigns for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. I'm posting this a month after the event took place but I still vividly remember how high emotions were on that night for his supporters and detractors alike. 

For this gallery of photos, I was on assignment for the Dallas Observer and I was asked to capture the general scene inside the arena and of course capture photos of the Trump. It was my first real political event to shoot but I wasn't too surprised by how choreographed the whole event was. Trump's handlers made sure photographers were in the right place for their candidate before he made his entrance, while he was at the podium and when he left the stage. It was a little odd to be corralled around like that but at least it was better access than I had anticipated. Initially I was worried they would keep us too far from Trump, but instead we were able to shoot right in front of his podium. This was a situation where having a second body would've come in handy. For the podium shots I believe I was using a 50mm and I wasn't sure how long we had there and by the time I thought to change lenses for a variety of shots, we were already being led out of the photo area and wasn't able to capture anything else with other lenses.

One of the things that I've been told lately by my editors is that I've nailed the 'front-page' photo but could use a lot more work in the creativity of my shots and that's something I'm genuinely starting to work on. Being able to change lenses and try something different would've been a good opportunity for that. 

For an event like this it's really important to capture as many candid moments as possible and while I caught a few of the crowd I really should've worked hard to capture more. I got caught up letting people pose for photos with their signs and Trump memorabilia. Overall I did a good job of capturing the whole scene but as always there's room for improvement. 

Trying To Capture Newsworthy Photos Of FC Dallas

I'm no soccer expert and that was kind of a problem during Saturday's FC Dallas vs. Portland Timbers game. Shooting soccer is a whole different beast compared to football, well, american football. 

Going in to the game I knew I would be able to walk away with some decent action photos because that's just what happens when guys are running up and down the field for at least 90 minutes. The hard part is to capture photos that tell a story, e.g., capture that goal-scoring kick or the moment the goalie misses the ball. The problem is there's not much time to adjust to situations. In football, there's stoppage between plays even if it's just for 15 seconds but that's usually enough time to move into a new position if a team is moving in a certain direction. In soccer, it's completely unpredictable as to which side of the field the players will bring the ball up. And even if you're locked in on the player bringing the ball up there's a pretty high probability he's going to cross it to one of his teammates--that's the prediction you have to make as the photographer trying to capture newsworthy photo. 

During this game FC Dallas scored two goals in the first 22 minutes of the game and I just wasn't prepared for that. I happened to catch a photo of Michael Barrios kicking the goal but in the photo it's doesn't provide much visual context. I did however catch a photo of him celebrating with his teammates, which is the same and only photo the Dallas Morning News ran from the game. 

That first game was a good experience and lucky for me the team here is on a five-game win streak, so my editor is more than happy to keep sending me out to the games where I'll be able to get more practice and capture those newsworthy photos.  

The Legend of Leon Bridges

This photo gallery was originally published on D Magazine's Front Row (Click To View)

I shoot a lot of shows and unfortunately that means I've mostly become desensitized to the shimmer of a live show. Now, it usually comes down to "Can I create great work from this event?" Not, "Oh, wow, I'm about to see so-and-so perform live!" I think this perspective works for me, though. Being nervous has gotten the best of me before and it's not a great feeling afterward. When I shot an Ellie Goulding show I was pretty much starstruck and it definitely affected my photos. Point is, that doesn't happen very often anymore, at least I thought that was the case until Leon Bridges came back in town. 

If you don't know the legend of Leon Bridges yet, here's a quick primer: Leon is a 25-year-old singer from Fort Worth, Texas who nobody knew of last year. He was quietly playing gigs around town and hooked up with an indie band from Austin called White Denim. They recorded a couple tracks together, threw em up on Soundcloud around October and by December he was signed to Columbia Records. Since then Bridges has generated a buzz I've never seen before. His shows are selling out in minutes, scalped tickets are going for hundreds of dollars and he's had placements in commercials with Apple and Beats. The greatest part of his story is that it's deserving. Things like this happen, but it's usually a pop star manufactured by a label with superstar hit-making producers. Bridges' success happened the old-school, yet modern, way. And he's authentic. He's the real deal. Not only is his voice like the second-coming of Sam Cooke, but his style is a blast from the past as well--it's a very charming package. Anyway, that's Leon. 

This photo gallery is from his show for KXT's Barefoot at the Belmont series. It's an annual event the local radio station puts together every summer and hosts at The Belmont hotel in West Dallas. It's a popular ticket because the grounds of the Belmont coupled with the band that night and the Dallas skyline in the background make for a wonderful spectacle of an evening. Well, when Bridges was added to the bill the anticipation for this concert was insane. There were probably only about 50 tickets available online and they sold out in a matter of seconds, freezing the website. I was able to attend since D Magazine wanted a photo gallery from the show. 

As usually happens. Things didn't go as planned. The week of the show we had a horrible amount of rain and to prevent the show from being rained out, it was moved to Sons of Hermann Hall--a historic venue on the far east side of Deep Ellum. I was pretty bummed out to hear this news because I was chomping at the bit to snap shots of Leon in front of the skyline, but to my surprise the venue change may have worked out even better photo wise. 

Sons of Hermann hall is an old place. Like, untouched since the 50s type of old. It creates a special charm to it and luckily for me and everyone in attendance this charm was in the same vein of Bridges' old-school aesthetic. The minimal lighting, wood-paneled walls and Bridges' outfit just worked out perfectly in the photos. That minimal lighting created some great contrast that I ended up really loving even though his eyes are lost in a lot of the shots. And it probably goes without saying that he was fantastic. After I finished shooting I finally got to sit back and watch the man perform and I was floored. When he performed Lisa Sawyer I had chills. I'm really glad to have been able to shoot this show because it was truly unique. I don't think many other photographers will be able to shoot him in such an intimate and old school setting with the access I had. That was a special night. 

When To Use VSCO Film

This photo gallery was originally published on Central Track (Click To View)

Visual Supply Co or VSCO filters/film emulators, however you'd like to describe them, are extremely popular and it's easy to see why. Once one of the packs is loaded into your Lightroom application you can edit your photos with a single click. It's absurdly easy to put a significantly dramatic effect on your photos and there are so many you can still remain some sense of individuality from all the other VSCO users with your end result. 

I'm just not a fan of them, though. It's hard for me to understand why we invest in such advanced equipment that can produce stunning high resolution photos but we're obsessed with degrading our photos with a look vintage or manipulating tones so harshly that the photo falls out of any realm of photojournalism. 

With that said, I just so happened to rely heavily on this quick and convenient trick this week. I was covering Action Bronson's headlining set at the House of Blues for Central Track Monday night and I experienced every photographer's worst nightmare: ugly, harsh lighting. The first two songs Bronson was covered in red lights, but even more frustrating was that there was very little key lighting on his face so a lot of my shots had somewhat of a silhouette look. The last song that I was allowed to shoot was a cartoonish blend of green and blue with the same lack of key lighting. As I was shooting I knew these colors were going to be difficult to process and pretty much knew after the second song I would be converting all of these shots to black and white even it's not something I like to do. Converting photos to black and white, to me, is a signal that I've lost control of the colors and tones in the photos. 

But, considering I was on a deadline I had little recourse so I decided to see if I could use one of the famed VSCO film emulators to rescue me. Lo and behold, I found a really great emulator called Kodak T-Max 3200. I just the amount of grain to zero and tweaked the shadows a bit and was able to walk away with some pretty clean photos that I'm pretty happy with. Part of my review of the concert was how captivating he is as a performer by himself on stage as opposed to a lot of rappers who act like they have stage fright and need at least 15 friends on stage with them as some sort of security blanket. The black and white really emphasized his solitude on stage, helping to tell the story. 

So when it comes to using VSCO products, I'm not a fan of people slapping them on every photo they take as some sort of short cut for  creating rich, dramatic photos but I can now fully understand the usefulness of this tool in the repertoire.