High Profile Event Photography

**Click to enlarge any of these images.
Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

Top photo: The 20-foot ceiling precluded bounced flash, so I used the Demb Flip-it (see below) to give me nice even lighting off an SB-800.

Middle: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao speaking at the Waldorf-Astoria during a lunch sponsored by the National Committee on US China Relations, Sept 23, 2008.

Bottom: Dr. Henry Kissinger introduces the Chinese Premier.


New York City
September 2008

My client called, "I'll need your social security number and date of birth."

"Oh, what for?"

"A Secret Service background check."

I was silent for a moment, "Oh my..."

The National Committee on US-China Relations (ncuscr.org) hired me to photograph a luncheon they sponsored honoring the Premier of China, Wen Jiabao, who is the equivalent of the US Speaker of the House, third in line in Chinese politics. The luncheon would take place at the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan.

Cirque de UNGA

It was one of the events in the week-long UN General Assembly. A real circus and pain in the neck if you life anywhere near the UN. Traffic barricades and motorcades abound.

Working with heads of state can be exhilarating as well as daunting. Their schedules are planned to the minute, protocol, assistants, and of course security surround the dignitary. It's a zoo. With literally dozens of moving parts - the photographer falls pretty low on the totem pole. In this instance, the NCUSCR did a fantastic job of coordinating with me and the other photographer ahead of time; they asked for our input for the reception and VIP greeting area.

The Chinese Premier would be greeted by NY Governor Patterson, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Ambassador Carla Hills, and Dan Brown, CEO of Motorola. Then he'd meet 30 plus VIP dignitaries, including Dr. Henry Kissinger and Ambassador Madeline Albright. My job...get perfect photos of each person meeting the Premier.

The Gear - Go Wide Young Man

For something like this, a suit and tie is mandatory, no ball cap and jeans thank you. A professional photographer needs to maintain the proper decorum and you're representing your client so make them look good.

My primary camera was the D700 with MB-D10 grip and Nikon's 17-35mm f2.8. You want wide on these types of shoots since space tends to be confined, you will be close to your subjects and people will be moving in and out of frame. This is the key PJ lens that you can't live without. Most of the shots will be at 24-35mm and you will inevitably get a lot of fluff on the sides of the frame. Fortunately, with 12 MP you can crop out a lot and still have enough pixel density for a great image.

The high ISO capability of the D700 (and D3) is unsurpassed and gives you maximum flexibility for shots with or without flash. I chose flash here, mounting a SB-800 with a Demb Flip-it (www.dembflashproducts.com/flipit/) and connected to a Quantum Turbo battery for fast recycle. No Stroboframe here - too unwieldy. These photos are not fine art, they're PJ so blast away.

I set my camera for 2000 ISO, -1 2/3 stop on TTL on the -800, a shutter speed of 1/60 (I wanted some ambient), and f8. Yep, like they say, "f8 and be there." While f8 demands more of the flash, it gives plenty of depth of field so you get some latitude on the focus in these fast moving situations. (At 5' distant, f8, 35mm, you get 3' of DOF, 1' in front, 2' behind. Plenty.)

I carried everything in a Domke J-3. This is a compact journalist bag, in black it looks small and professional, yet holds everything you need comfortably. No backpacks for this type of gig.

Kit: D700 w/grip. D2x. 70-200 VR, 17-35, 50 1.4. 2 x SB-800, 1 Quantum Turbo, assorted cards, batteries, lens cleaner, etc.

The Scrum

Fortunately there were only four of us working the greeting area, me and my partner, a photographer for the Chinese delegation, and a shooter for Secretary Chao. So we just lined up off to one side. Try to play nice with other photogs, introduce yourself, understand what they're there for and you can help each other out - like making room for a shot for each other. Yes, it can be win-win.

The problem was the two translators, two VIP greeters and a couple other assistants that kept getting in the shot - either in the background, or cutting in our line. The key here is you need to be assertive. A shrinking violet photog will not get the shot needed. Just tap the offender on the shoulder and ask them to move (in Chinese if possible).

Some dignitaries will know what they're doing, some won't. A good photographer will figure out which one they are and quickly intervene if necessary, placing people in their spots and telling them where to look. Take charge as required but lay back if not. Remember, we're not the show, we just capture it; but woe betided you if you don't...

Find A Unique Angle

The luncheon speech was standard podium shooting. I shoot manual for fixed situations like this. A black background can often fool the meter so I spot meter the face, and then tweak it till I'm happy. Shooting one particular setting also makes it easier to make batch adjustments if required in post (and yes, I only shoot RAW). These photos were at ISO 2000, f4, 1/100; I didn't mind shooting at 1/100 since I was using the VR while hand holding.

Then one of the PR guys suggested I go up with the rest of the pool photogs...what?! Screw that, I thought, I'm the official photog with full floor access. But, I reconsidered, maybe I'll get a different shot up on the balcony, and I did. So instead of the mic and face photo, I got a couple decent stage setting (pardon the pun) images. See, sometimes the PR folks do know what they're talking about and have the photographer's best interests in mind.

Good luck and good shooting!

Life on the Set - Part II

Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

Top Photo - me with a Jacobson sound blimp.
Bottom - Uh, okay, now where does the still photographer fit in?

Life on a Movie Set, Part II

As a still photographer, one of your key interfaces is the Sound Mixer. Aside from jostling the camera guys and making their lives generally miserable by crowding in with them, the person who's job you can most screw up is the sound guy. They're responsible for getting the dialog and other sound recorded at a high quality level. The usually do this with wireless lavalier mics on the actors, as well as a highly sensitive boom microphone - held by the - you guessed it boom guy.

Make friends with the sound guys. Introduce yourself and tell them you're there to work with them not against them. The sound of your shutter and mirror is like a gunshot in a small room - especially if it's a quiet scene - you need to muffle that. Not only the sound guys; it bothers the actors as well. So...

Jacobson Blimps (see picture above) This is the standard for muffling the mechanical action of your camera and is about 95% effective. www.soundblimp.com It's built for either Canon or Nikon and has a variety of tubes for various lenses that allow you to use your zoom.

The blimps are fairly straightforward. Attach remote cord, squeeze camera into the spongy interior, attach lens, attach lens cover, close and shoot.

Shooting is a bit less intuitive. For the Nikon there are two buttons, the bottom one acts like pressing the shutter on your camera half-way, the AF and metering are activated. The top button focuses and fires the shutter simultaneously. To pre-focus and reframe you need to fully hold down the bottom button and then (while holding the bottom) depress the top button. It takes a bit of getting used to.

Zooming is a bit awkward since turning the exterior tube sometimes causes noise or squeeks. Sometimes you need to wrap a few rubber bands on the zoom ring of the lens to get enough traction for turning the external tube to work.

Sometime I would remove the tube and shoot with just the camera in the blimp, allowing easier access to the zoom/focus ring, but this allows quite a bit more noise to escape.

The biggest problem with the blimps is you don't have access to any controls during a shoot without opening the camera. Therefore I will often shoot in manual mode, with ISO, aperture, and shutter speed all determined beforehand. I use the versatile Sekonic-358 to meter the scene, getting an incident reading often right at the actor's face (I meter the stand-in). Sometimes in a dynamic scene where the lighting changes, I use the Auto ISO feature of the D700, which I found to be astoundingly accurate. I seldom use aperture or shutter priority since I need to positively control both of those to achieve the look I want.

More Lens Flare? Finally, the blimp comes with clear filters on the end of the lens tube - so if you have additional protective filters on your lens you now have two additional pieces of glass - making shots very succeptible to lens flare. I suggest removing as much glass as possible when shooting, since you can't use a hood with the tube.

The Talent Well, they are the key piece in the movie puzzle. As the still guy you have a couple rules: 1) stay out of their sight lines, 2) do whatever they say, and 3) make them look great. They can be touchy and a bit spoiled but as well very nice and generous. They have tough jobs as well - to deliver emotion on cue. Sometimes anything can distract them - like you standing in their sight line (where they are looking). If they ask you to move, move right away.

Each actor differs on when they like still photographers to shoot, some like it on rehearsal, some on actual takes. And if they can hear your camera go off (even with a blimp you can hear it in a quiet small space) it may distract them.

The key here is discretion, stay low key, wear black to fade into the background, try to stay very still during takes (aside from working your zoom), and be mindful. A lot of times it's about gauging the mood on set and acting accordingly.

Also, a lot of actors have 'kill' authority meaning any photo they don't like gets deleted and never to be seen again.

Over time you get to know their work habits and preferences. Often, asking someone, like their publicist, can get you some inside info ahead of time and keep you out of trouble.

Playing Nice With Others You quickly learn who is who and what department does what. God forbid you try and grab a six-step (ladder) and move it yourself! All (big) movie work is union and sometimes they get a bit territorial about their jobs - if you need something moved, consult the right grip guy first. Make sure you stay out of people's way and let them get their work done - life on a movie set is a lot of "hurry up and wait" while sets, lighting, camera, wardrobe is tweaked. You can spend hours setting up a 15-second take. So bring a folding stool and a book (and laptop).

While the still photographer is technically part of the camera department, since we work alone we're sometimes treated like the red-headed stepchild of the crew. One way to make friends is to take a lot of behind the scenes shots of the crew - everyone likes good pictures of themselves to send to family and friends.

The Martini (The martini shot is the last shot of the day on a movie set.) Overall, the still photographer on set can be a long, tiring, tedious, and technically challenging job, wrought with chaos and emotion. As well, it can be fun, rewarding, interesting, and exciting...and you get to hobnob with the stars.

That's a wrap!

Unit Stills Photography - Life on a Movie Set

Top Photo - me with actor Cary Elwes (yes, from Princess Bride) on set. Learning the work habits of the actors in your film and respecting their craft puts you in good stead with them. That means knowing when you're in their sight lines or bothering them generally. And, of course, taking pictures that make them look fabulous helps as well.

Bottom - a movie set is a crowded place with lots of different departments (art, camera, asst director, grip, gaffer, wardrobe, production, etc.) Learning who does what and respecting their contribution enhances the cooperation you'll get as a photographer.

Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

New York City, September 22, 2008.

I just wrapped principal shooting on a film last week where I was the STILLS photographer; sometimes call the unit-, stills-, or production photographer. The unit photog's job is to take high quality still photos that mimic the look of the film for marketing and publicity purposes. The principal filming took place in New York City for 18-days. We worked long 12-hour days on set.

So what does that mean? Often, movies need to be sold to a distributor, and high quality photos that accurately reflect the 'look' of the movie are critical to making the sale. Often the actual film is not ready or available to send around to various movie distributors - so that's where stills come in. Additionally, the stills may be sent to magazines, like Entertainment Weekly, Variety, etc. for publicity.

Why a still photographer? When you're shooting a movie with film (not digital), it's tough to get a high quality image pulled from a (motion) film frame. First of all, film is shot at 24 frames per second so your shutter speed is only 1/48th of a second* - sometimes inadequate to stop motion sufficiently to give you a crisp sharp image. Plus, sometimes it's tough to find the exact frame you want from thousands of feet of film. Even with digital video, it's common to have a unit photog since their camera resolution beats most video - though with hi-def and the RED cameras this is less of an issue.

Also, the still photog can get images from slightly different angles as well as behind the scenes shots of the director with the actors, and portraits of the actors around the set - especially if they're in costume.

Simulating film. So my job is to shoot photos that look like what the director and cinematographer (or director of photography, DP) see in their monitors. To do that, I need to position myself as close to the camera as possible, and use a lens on my camera that mimics the field of view of the motion picture camera.

Getting close to the camera means making friends with the camera operator, his first asst cameraman (1st AC) - who pulls focus and is joined at the hip with the camera operator, and then the 2nd AC - who uses the clapperboard and generally assists. You need to balance the need to get your shot with the needs of the actors and the film cameras...you come in a distant distant second (or tenth).

Nitty-Gritty Equipment Choices: The 70-200 mm f2.8 was the workhorse! I found 80% of my shots required my 70-200 mm VR lens. Mainly because this lens gave me a field of view most similar to that of the video camera. (This may vary if you're doing a David Lean or other movie with lot's of panoramic vistas.) As well, the fast 2.8 aperture allowed shooting in low light - often the case on a movie set. My average camera settings (most of the film was shot indoors) were ISO 1600, f4, at 1/100.

I shot with the Nikon D700 to take advantage of it's full-frame FX sensor and unmatched ability to shoot at high ISO with relatively low noise. I felt comfortable shooting at up to 6400 with some post-production NR. My 50 1.4 and 17-35 2.8 also saw use. The jury is out on a mid-range zoom; I just did not find that much time to use it (when shooting stills). Behind the scenes (BTS) is another area. I think the 24-70 2.8 would work great here, but I did not have one with me on this gig.

Working on Set. Someone said being on a movie set can be like high school, with all the cliques and popularity contests and petty infighting. I didn't find that to be the case, though there were some standoffish individuals. Overall, people are very nice, especially if you take a moment to learn their name, what their job is, and respect their contribution to the effort. You may think that craft services (catering) is not too value added, until they deliver coffee and sandwiches to a crew standing in the freezing rain for three hours.

Everyone and everything must work together to pull off a successful film from art to wardrobe, to lighting (grip) and the acting. Moving lights around might not be as technical as the SFX (special effects) stuff - but you learn that it's just as critical.

*It's not the intuitive 1/24 because the shutter closes as the film mechanism advances the next frame into position and then exposes it. Shutter speed of 1/48th of a second is just an approximation.


End of Part I of "Life on a Movie Set." Stay tuned for Part II.

Boot Camp Graduation

Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

While I was in San Diego last month for the U.S. Open Championship (won by Tiger Woods), I decided to attend a graduation ceremony.

Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) is know among Marines everywhere as Boot Camp. This second week of June at MCRD San Diego, 330 young men of Golf Company officially graduated from eleven weeks of training under the close unyielding eyes of their DIs or drill instructors, known by their campaign hats, unofficially called Smokey the Bears (top photo).

Family and friends make up the majority of the crowd. But there are always a contingent of former-Marines (myself included) in attendence; we're never called ex-Marines because "Once a Marine, always a Marine. The former Marines come to get a taste of the brotherhood they've long since left, but which will always leave its indelible mark.

The graduating Marines march past the crowds in the grandstands before they're dismissed and reunited with their families and loved ones. They'll receive ten days of leave before they report to their next duty station. Most of these Marines will go on to serve in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I too marched for countless hours of close order drill on this parade deck, or grinder, over eleven weeks that felt like eleven months. In August 1986, I, like many before me and many after me, marched down the grinder one last time and earned the title, United States Marine.

Semper Fidelis.

US Open Golf - Torrey Pines

Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

I spent Tuesday at the US Open practice round with my camera. I am now a big fan of the practice rounds at major tournaments. I got very close to both Tiger and Phil Mickelson, both of whom came out to practice on the Torrey Pines Course, San Diego.

Happy Memorial Day

Photo: That's me in the lower right corner of an AAV-7, an amphibious assault vehicle.

Image © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

Wishing everyone a great Memorial Day Weekend. Recall that this is a time of remembrance to honor those who sacrifice to serve the greater good; not just a long weekend to get away or BBQ. I ran into some sailors in uniform last night at my local bar; they were in NYC for Fleet Week. Chatting with them, their professionalism, commitment, and patriotism was evident. The couldn't have been older than 25 - the same age as me in the photo above.

Anyway, the bumper sticker flag lapel pin jingoism that passes as patriotism today may be cheeseball and easily scoffed at. But as someone who has led young men into combat, the true virtues of sacrifice, commitment, morality, integrity, and service to the greater good continues in those who go into harm's way for us.

As Admiral Nimitz said of the Marines on Iwo Jima, "Uncommon valor was a common virtue." The same is true today, bumper sticker or not.

Fleet Week in New York

Images © Copyright 2008 Michael Seto

Good morning. Yesterday, May 21st kicked off Fleet Week in New York City. Five US Navy warships, including the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) cruised stately up the Hudson River in a parade of ships that included US Coast Guard and Canadian Royal Navy vessels. A flight of four F-18 Hornets buzzed overhead as well.

I took up a position on the Hudson Riverwalk and shot some pics using my Nikon 70-200 VR lens, arguably one of their best zooms ever made. I tacked on a 1.4x teleconverter to give me a bit more reach, a equivalent of a 420mm lens at the long end. With the aperture stopped down to f5.6 (from f4) I got some sharp images, above. I used a Nikon D2x at ISO 100 giving me a shutter speed of 1/500th.

I posted a few photos on flickr and immediately had a news blog ask for usage of the photos. News at light speed.

Last night I ran into a couple of sailors at my local bar, Thom's, and chatted for a few minutes. They were from the USS Monterey, CG 61. I told them I was a former Marine (we're never ex-Marines) and we talked about life aboard ship. Whenever I see a Marine in uniform, I always buy them a drink. Sorry Navy, close but no cigar.

Organic Food Shoot

This past week I was hired by Kopali Organics to take basic photos of their products as well as shoot some more styled magazine type images showing their snack items and raw materials.

With the basic product shots, one wants to focus on high key, good visibility on all items, labels, product, etc. This is not the time for fancy lighting or shallow depth of field.

The styled shots followed the standard food mag approach, tight, shallow focus, dappled light, shadows to reveal texture - and the two photos above what we came up with. I'm not showing the product photos since they're not quite as dynamic - a shot of a plastic bag.

Fortunately, all their food items were raw or dried or chocolate covered...mmmm...chocolate. This makes managing the food a lot easier than trying to partially cook a burger so it looks finished but does not dry out. Or the shoot where someone put brown shoe polish on a frozen turkey to give it that "just out of the oven" look.

Eddie Adams Workshop

Thank goodness, I finally sent in my Eddie Adam's Workshop application. The workshop is a three-day intensive for aspiring photojournalists, set up by Pulitzer Prize winning PJ, Eddie Adams - you know the photo of a South Vietnamese Army Colonel shooting a VC prisoner in the head. It's meant as a springboard and intensive immersion course in photojournalism, something I find myself drawn to more and more.

The hardest part was editing and submitting up to 20 photos. Choosing one's best work to show is extremely difficult, just as in writing. It took me two weeks to weed myself down to sixteen images. You can see my submissions at:

http://www.michaelseto.com/Proofs/EddieAdams/

And once submitted, there's no turning back. So if they suck...oh well.

I've been super busy otherwise, shooting some products for a small organic food company, my on-going work for City Harvest, and some jewelry photos. I hope to dig myself out from under all the post-processing required over the weekend.

Torrey Pines Here I Come

Well, a nice little package arrived today from the USGA - my pair of tickets to the U.S. Open. I'll be staying with a close friend, Joanna, who lives like 10 minutes from the course. I plan to bring all my photo gear and shoot the practice days - not quite an accredited US Open photog just yet - but I'm hoping to meet and chat with a couple of the SI guys through a friend's intro.

Anyway, I'll be out in San Jose seeing the folks then down to San Diego for the entire week. I'm bringing my clubs as well; man cannot live by watching golf alone after all.

Let me know if you're going to be out there.

Updated Blog with RSS and Email

Okay, so I am not as slow as I thought I was.

I often watch older people, like my parents, struggle with new technology. Even a cell phone elicited from my mom, "How do I check voicemail?" And then I wonder if she would figure out
how to enter names and numbers into her phones memory.

Heck, sometimes I even struggle with that stuff (if only engineers and designers made things more user friendly...but I digress.) Remember, I still not a member of ipod nation.

Anyway, I figured out how to add an RSS feed and email subscription box to this blog. So those of you who were looking to subscribe - if any - nows your chance.

Stay tuned...

Captain's Log: Spring Fever

Hey gang,

Happy May Day and Spring to everyone. The weather in New York City is finally changing, though it's been volatile the last couple weeks, going from 75 F to 55 F from one week to the next. Sorry that the Captain's been MIA for a few months. I think my last Captain's Log was around the new year. So I'll be catching you up on the last four months - but first a message from our sponsors...

Help Wanted

I need you all to start thinking of your social/business networks - you LinkedIn and myspace/facebook users.

1) Literary Agents - I need recommendations for a good agent for my book. A non-fiction work, a memoir about a naive young man that joins the Marine Corps. In essence a coming of age story; think combo of Accidental Asian meets Jarhead and The Caine Mutiny.

2) Movie People - I'm finding work as a Production Still Photographer very interesting and gratifying. I want more. So pass on names of movie people, producers, directors, etc. that I might reach out to for more work.

3) Event Planners - I do great work shooting events, and especially like corporate type gigs. So let me know who you know that is involved in this area that I might approach.

...now back to our regularly schedule program...


2008 has been a great year overall. I continue to build my photography business (check out revamped website www.michaelseto.com), with writing taking a back seat for now. I pretty much am committed to try and make a viable living from photography and more work has been slowly coming my way. I realize that I need to market myself much better since most of the work comes through word of mouth and recommendations. At the same time, I'm consciously holding back to make sure I carve out enough time to finish my book project.

What Now Lieutenant? is my memoir about my six years in the Marines and how it changed me. (updates on www.whatnowlieutenant.com) I have about 275 pages of the rough manuscript done. My outline projects a final manuscript of about 430 pages - so about 2/3 done. What I am focusing on is polishing a book proposal. I understand 90% of non-fiction is sold by proposal, a 10-12 page document that summarizes the book, market, competition, and why you should write it. It's supposed to be sent to agents and editors to try and get them to offer you a contract. A few selected friends, with writing experience, are helping me as readers for the proposal; it's always impossible to edit your own writing.

Now that I'm finished with my three month internship at a small publishing company, INK Publishing, the book proposal is my priority. The internship gave me some useful structure and a schedule. I learned a lot about how magazines, especially with tight budgets, solve their imaging needs. As a photographer, this was an invaluable lesson in how to make myself visible to the right people, and what skills I need to win their business. I successfully got a few pictures published in Skybussing, My Midwest, and Go, all airline in-flight magazines.

But April suddenly became busy with photo gigs - in one week I shoot a record eleven gigs. Wow. I'm finally emerging from under the resulting post-production; yes, the work does not stop with just snapping the shutter. I'm finding I spend two hours on post- for every hour of shooting I do. It's been great - I think I grossed about $4k in April, my best month yet. The great thing is that I feel much more certain about what areas of photography I want to concentrate on. I really enjoyed a couple of indie films where I shot the production stills. These are the stills that go into ads; they're meant to capture the look of the actual film. Then you've got the behind the scenes stuff as well. To me unit/production photography combines documentary with a commercial flair - all shot PJ style. That's photojournalistic style, I really like this type of work, as opposed to fashion. I'm also enrolled in a class on photojournalist at ICP, the International Center for Photography - the class is in it's third of ten weeks and I'm benefitting from having others look at my work, though most of the participants are more intermediate photogs and students.

With the maelstrom of photography work, the book proposal got put on the backburner till this week. Now, I'm starting on a revised proposal. My goal will be to get query letters out toward the middle of May. It's tough trying to balance working on the photography, marketing my photography, and setting aside the proper time I need to work on the book. It always feels like each week only allows me to do one or the other. Hmmmm. My plan going forward will to be try and build on a few areas like events and unit stills - stuff that pays well and motivates me, respectively - while setting aside adequate time to write. We'll see how that works out...

I do want to mention that the project I hoped for, a three-month documentary for City Harvest, a NYC based charity that rescues food, had been approved in Feb and we're entering our third month of shooting. This is strictly pro-bono but a great opportunity for me to get a foot in the door and associate my name with a well known non-profit. They'll use the photos for publicity, fund raising etc. And there's been some talk bandied about of a gallery showing to publicize the program I'm documenting - but that's putting the cart ahead of the horse and in the next valley.

Socially, I say I've been pretty reclusive and monastic; the immediate response from those who know me is, "bullsh-t!" They're probably right. I do get out, but I must say the range of what I do and where I go is curtailed. I'm trying to save $$$ so weekly $200 dinners are out of the question. I'm trying to keep my living expenses (outside of rent/utilities) to about $1000 a month. Maybe 30% of my previous spend rate when I worked on Wall Street. The Seto freezer is filled with leftovers and frozen pot pies - yikes. The only real luxury I allow myself is...you guessed it...GOLF! I've been on like four trips to Myrtle Beach since Thanksgiving with another planned for the Memorial Day Holiday. I'm also going out to the US Open in June at Torrey Pines San Diego with the hope of doing some golf photography. A friend of a friend is trying to hook me up with some folks from Sports Illustrated so we'll see how that works out.

Anyway, that's a very quick rundown of my last four months. I apologize for being MIA. I feel like I'm seeing people a lot less - those once a month things now have become once a quarter. Working a sole proprietorship, especially one where I'm constantly learning and far from any mastery of my subject takes a quantity of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual commitment that I did not conceive of beforehand.


Michael Seto

Last Minute Gig

Wed morning 9 am. The phone rings, the caller wants to know if I'm free the next couple days. Yes, I answer. Well, can you meet our delegation at 45 Rock in 90 minutes ready to shoot? Should be a standard documentary assignment, grips and grins.

Sure. This is the reason I always recharge every battery and repack all my photo gear when I get back from a shoot. This way I am always ready to go when the phone rings.

Ready-Bag

For all my shoots, I pack two of everything: cameras, lenses, flashes, batteries. So this time, I grab my Think Tank Speedbelt and lug the D2x, D200, a 12-24mm, 17-55 f2.8, and a 18-200 VR (backup); 2 SB-800's and a couple sets of Powerex AA's. Gels for the speedlights since I am shooting indoors under all kinds of lighting. I decide to bring a portable lightstand, 36" umbrella with removable black backing, and a pair of Pocket Wizards - just in case. (Turns out I don't need the portable studio setup, so I ditch it the next day.) All this fits in my TT belt and a shoulder bag.


I meet the group at Rockefeller Center and away we go for two and half-days of shooting. Here's a photo of two members walking along the unfinished 38th floor of #7 WTC.

Dipping a toe in the world of blogging

Well folks, I've officially joined the world of bloggers with this. Hmmm, not quite sure how I'll approach putting my life on the internet. If you are really bored, then watch this space.