The Fogged Lens
A depository for photographer/director Chris McEniry for all things photo/film oriented that may not have a home otherwise and should not be hidden from the world........
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MLS All Star and Sporting KC Forward Kei Kammara for ESPN the Mag
“Technique” at LiveStrong Stadium in Kansas City. Here is the final magazine version, our version we turned in after working through several rounds with ESPN photo editor Nick Galac and several other mock-ups that were made. Thanks as always to my retoucher and digital tech Zachary Scheffer (digitalagenda.net).
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MLS Sporting KC Forward Kei Kammara for ESPN the Mag
©2012ChrisMcEniryPhotography
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MLB Baltimore Orioles Baseball Catcher Matt Wieters for ESPN
Short “Technique” spot I shot for ESPN with RED EPIC using various frame rates up to 300 fps.
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MLB Baltimore Orioles Catcher Matt Wieters for ESPN the Mag
It’s not very often you see a 6’5” MLB catcher. Catchers are not traditionally really tall. They also don’t usually catch for 7 or 8 innings and then close the 9th as a pitcher, which he did all through college at Georgia Tech, and for Stratford High School outside my home town of Charleston, SC. He also knocks the cover off the ball and bats 3rd in the line-up, and on defense he throws more guys out at 2nd from home than anyone else in the league. He takes it very seriously.
We shot Wieters during Spring Training outside of Sarasota, FL for both the magazine and ESPN’s website. We used this job as an experiment with RED EPIC camera to see what kind of still file was really possible with a RED camera and also shoot a piece for the website. We shot at 5k res @ 96 frames a sec. using Zeiss Super Speed cinema lenses and pulled the stills through RED’s software. Seeing a still for 96 frames in a sequence is pretty crazy, but we felt the images were slightly soft and could not be pushed any larger 9” x 13” @ 300dpi. Up close stills were much more impressive off the Red, but a 6’ 5” baseball player was pushing it without turning the camera on it’s side. We made some nice files from the camera but they required extensive work and don’t enlarge very well. We also experienced overheating from the EPIC while in the midst of our interview, effectively stopping the shoot and refusing to work after several reboots. Matt was cool and we continued shooting on the DSLR video rigs we have with 5D’s and 7D’s.
We also shot it on our trusty Canon Mark III camera at a turtle like (compared to the RED) 10 fps. We lit with HMI’s once again avoiding the headache of strobes, which we did use for portraits.
I really enjoyed talking with Matt, we come from the same area and had a lot of things to go on about. The guys from the team said they had never seen Matt talk that much. They had a great season and he was a big part of it making it into the playoffs against the Yankees and taking the series all the way to Game 5.
Thanks to the Baltimore Orioles staff, and the photo dept. at ESPN.
©2012ChrisMcEniryPhotography
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NFL Quarterback Cam Newton in the Gatorade Athlete Testing Laboratory for ESPN the Magazine
Cam Newton is a large dude and was not particularly thrilled when I met him. I can’t blame him it was early and a team of scientists were about to stick him with needles, then strap him into various pieces of equipment where he would either have to be very still or exert as much energy as possible in a barrage of stress tests. This said seeing a world class athlete in his prime pushing himself to his physical edge in the name of science is a pretty impressive thing to behold, so I forgive him for not being Mr. Personality, and all told I would have been way grumpier than he was.
This was not my typical assignment as we were not allowed to disturb the scientists, coach the talent, or light anything. Not even on board flash (which I never use anyway, because it looks like on board flash). Pure reportage photo journalism in a bleak, windowless, badly fluorescent lit room, which usually lends itself more favorably to black and whites in my opinion. Just back to basics and use a fast lens.
I shot most of this assignment on the Canon 1Ds Mark III with the Canon 50mm 1.0, 35mm 1.4, and the 24mm 1.4 allowing me to shoot in low light and crush the depth of field. It was tight and not the most ideal shooting condition, but I am spoiled and used to setting things up my way, so it was also a welcome return to reportage.
They spent about 3 hours torturing the Panther QB in various ways, starting with blood work and body scans, moving to reaction testing (which he enjoyed the most), then 30 minutes of the fastest running on a treadmill I have ever seen with a full on snorkel in his mouth, then strength testing, and the grand finale speed bursts on the bike that I could barely turn the wheels on. Fun!
Gatorade brings in all of it’s top athletes and runs these tests on them and uses the data to plan on overthrowing the world by cloning them. No I kid. I have no idea what they do with the data exactly, but it’s cool to see that they have created a place to record this information on all of these top tier athletes and hopefully they cure cancer with the info or maybe figure out how long it takes athletes to recover from injuries, etc…..
Cool assignment and thanks to Nick Galac and the photo department at ESPN for sending me on this mission. Thanks to the good folks at Gatorade as well.
©2012ChrisMcEniry
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WNBA All Star and US Olympic Gold Medalist Simeone Augustus for ESPN the Magazine
This year we have been shooting the Technique section for ESPN the Mag all over the country with athletes from many different sports. Each one presents a different challenge figuring out the best way to show each athletes particular technique we are featuring. I won’t lie and say it has not been a great deal of fun working with these athletes and putting them through their paces.
Simeone Augustus plays for the US National Women’s Basketball Team, and the current WNBA Champions the Minnesota Lynx, as well as playing for a professional team in Russia when her US season ends. We were tasked with the job of showing her crossover technique and were given the Lynx and the Timberwolves practice facility in Minneapolis to shoot the job.
This job like most of our technique shoots was lit using continous HMI lighting, this way we can shoot at 14 fps with the new Canon 1DX and not worry about our strobes needing to recycle. It is a much more expensive and slower way to work as the lights are large and bulky and require a ridiculous amount of power to operate compared with a standard strobe kit.
The practice facility was inside the Target Center in Minneapolis which is the home to both the Lynx and Twolves and is an amazing complex. Everyone we worked with there from our gaffer and grip, our local photo assistant, the Lynx organizers, and generally everyone we met in Minneapolis were very cool and the city itself was alot of fun as well.
Simeone was an ace to work with and took direction very well. She made it easy for us with the action and nailed it right away. After shooting action on the court we shot several portrait set-ups and followed her to the locker room and shot a few more in there. Simeone had a great sense of humor and we hit it off immediately as I am a closet LSU fan due to my parents both going to college there and she is a Baton Rouge native. Easy going in life and intense on the court, we wish her the best luck for the future.
Simeone is currently playing in the WNBA Finals and scored 27 points in tonights game, the finals are on ESPN this week, keep your eye out for her.
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Here is a video I directed for the Wall Street Journal on the legendary Skate Park and Ramp builder Tim Payne. I also shot the Creating section for the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal paper with Tim. He was cool as a polar bears toenails and we had a lot of fun with working with him at his newest skatepark in Apollo Beach FL. Some of his comments and responses about how skateboarding and parks have become a part of our culture and changed our city planning forever are really cool. I built my first jump ramp as a kid based off his plans in the back of Thrasher mag. Tim is a legend and it was honor to work with him also thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s photo editor Rebecca Horne and video editor Beckey Bright.
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Dwight Howard - NBA All Star Center
We have worked with Dwight so many times I have lost track and it never gets old, definitely one of the most fun athletes out there to work with.
Imagine being 25 worth millions 7’ tall and loved by virtually everyone around the world and that is the essence of Dwight Howard, what’s not to love. Well we all know this year has been a bit off, but really in the end he stayed in Orlando and did not make the Lebron move. It may all be different in the end with him we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out, but either way we wish you the best big guy your a total ham and funny as hell to work with.
This video was done a year ago for a sport bracelet Dwight endorses, down at www.orangestudio4rent.com
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Gemma Spofforth - World Record Holder in the 100 meter Backstroke and 2- Time Olympian for Great Britain.
We originally shot Gemma a few months back for a British lifestyle Magazine called Zest. Right about this time we were working on a project with my agent Luke Lalor in Berlin at Periscope Creative and Dan Jones the in-house producer there shooting a series of Olympic swimmers from different countries. They had produced a successful series with famous soccer players from different countries with the colors/Flags of their home country painted onto them in various ways. Not so much an exact replica of the flag but more an artistic interpretation. Still trying to be faithful enough that the viewer understood and it would be patriotic not offensive.
We began pitching the idea to different Olympians and their agents to see if they were interested and we got a great response back but we found out we should have begun the process (especially for editorial with little to no budget) a year earlier, these athletes were now in the 6 month workout lead up to team trials and the Olympics and did not want to risk any media distractions. Some agreed others did not, however it has led to a worldwide process involving all Olympians and multiple photographers in multiple countries shooting athletes around the world. If you know a past, present, or future Olympian that might be interested in taking place in this series have them get in touch with us we may be interested.
Back to my original story. We did the shoot for Zest with Gemma and then pitched her on the idea for this Olympic shoot as well. Our luck is that she came over from England for college a few years ago in good old Gainesville, FL right up the road from us where she swam as a UF Gator and does her Olympic training there full time. This meant we would not have to travel across the Atlantic and it was very easy to get her to our studio as she came to town for various reasons quite often.
Gemma took about 2 months since we shot her to train undisturbed and get through team trials for London this summer, which she did clenching her spot on the England team for her second Olympics. Gemma is a pretty inspirational character and has had to come back from the loss of her mother and a pretty nasty accident on a bike and still win a spot on the team. Her world record still stands and she is looking very fit for the games this summer. She was a great sport letting us paint her up, dress her up, and even throw water on her. We love working with her and wish her the best in the pool.
Thanks to Kristen Nugent @knmakeupdesigns for her flag painting and great job on the H&M, also to Tammara Kohler @fusedfashion always great. These girls make me look like I know what I am doing dressing women, thank god I know I just need to have them. Once again, Zach and Flipper did a great job throwing the water as well as tolerating a shoot that definitely went longer than planned……
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Tampa Bay Rays Pitcher “Complete Game” James Shields for ESPN the Mag
All photos are the sole copyright of Chris McEniry and any or all usage of these images in any manner in web, print, or otherwise are not permitted without express written consent of the copyright holder mentioned above.©2012ChrisMcEniry
Spring Training and ESPN
This Spring I have been busy with multiple assignments from ESPN the Magazine shooting the Technique section for the Mag. This section is used to illustrate a very specific action(s) that different professional athletes perform in game that makes them elite in their respective sports.
ESPN has sent us to the Orioles training camp to shoot catcher Matt Wieters (*will post and update once the images run), TB Rays pitcher James Shields, and Braves base stealer Michael Bourn*.
James was awesome and knew quite a bit about photography because his wife is a photographer, which was cool because he wanted to know everything about our Hasselblad and which lenses we were using. It’s funny how many of these guys are actually into photography, you’d be surprised. He was very gracious with his time and told us some pretty cool major league stories, especially the one about the Coco Crisp fight, when Coco charged him at the mound, it’s all over the web you can find it. Once again James was super cool and thanks to everyone from the Tampa Bay Rays organization, especially Dave Haller for catching some pretty hard throws, all down to earth guys you could easily throw one back with. Also AK Clemmons the writer from ESPN is really cool, and is definitely the girl you want on your team for sports trivia night, super knowledgeable about some obscure baseball techniques.
The main purpose for our shoot has been to capture the technique of individual athletes doing very specific things. James is the man when it comes to throwing would be base stealers out at 1st. He has developed a unique style for doing it and shared some of his secrets with us. The coolest one I thought was how he measures the distance from 1st base to the edge of the infield grass apron, which he uses to tell him how far a runner is from the bag. One step to far (which is around 10’ to 12’ apparently) and he’s got them. We shot multiple angles on him doing the pitchout and together with ESPN photo editor Nick Galac, and my digital wunderkind Zachary Scheffer we created the series you see before you.
For technical details, we wanted to keep these shoots looking natural but have some pop to the players, while also being able to do super fast sequences. We used 4K HMI’s in order to match daylight and punch in enough fill so we could motor drive @10 fps to capture the action and not worry about strobes recycling fast enough. We also bumped up the ISO slightly in order to be able to shoot at faster shutter speeds as well. Several of these shoots involved us shooting TV/video elements in slow motion on the Red Epic camera at speeds up to 300 fps is another reason we opted for HMI’s. I would have loved to have had a 12k HMI or more out there, but for one guy on the mound the 4k’s proved to be plenty.
I will continue to post updates from the all the different MLB shoots as well as several other shoots including pro golf and Olympic athletes, so keep checking back. I am officially going to keep up with the blog this time.
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