No pictures today. May have some Thursday since Brack could have (another) photo-shoot this time with USA Baseball. Also on Friday is the home-opener which I will also cover. This post is more about the ground rules of this project. Before I started the Andrew Brackman project I wanted to come up with some rules to follow that I would use for future projects as well. I know you are holding on tight to your seat with anticipation of what they are. Ok, just kidding. Most people couldn’t care less so this is more for posterity sake as I add this to my pseudo-journal that everyone can see. But I wanted to document these rules so I didn’t forget. I might add more later.
- Honor one of the most important rules of photojournalism which is we are observers of events and not there to create events. Therefore, never artificially create or modify a scene for a photo (e.g. “stand over there and do this”) instead only relying on what actually happens. The spirit of the story (i.e. to document the ‘real life’ behind the scenes) would be defeated otherwise. There are exceptions for “fun pix” like asking two people to stand together; but these would be for internal use and not to be used in the project.
- Not use an on-camera flash, instead relying on ambient-only lighting. (I am close to breaking this rule though in outdoor situations). May utilize off-camera strobes though if we ever do a portrait.
- Force myself to utilize a lens even if it’s awkward. Normally I bring an arsenal of lenses such as a 16-35, 28-70 and 70-200 (not including the super teles like the 300 and 400 2.8 for action). I also have a 135mm 2.0. I want to leave the car with only one lens and force myself to get pictures with it and make myself think “outside of the box” rather than relying on large lens selection to get a good photo.
- Not use Photoshop to substantially alter a photo. Exceptions are light toning, desaturating to B+W, cropping, sharpening, removing dust spots, etc. But no cloning or heavy alternations.
- Black and white photos only. I always shoot in color for the clients I work for and I wanted to do some black and white photography. So all the the photos published in the final product will be B+W.
- Little to no action photography in the final product. I will of course take lots of action photos, but the point of the project is to go behind the scenes. Anyone can see Brack on the mound so I want the project to show something different.