There aren't many actresses who would face the world's press with no, or minimal, make-up as Nicole Kidman did, but we all know she's georgous when all done up.
The room was absolutely packed tight for her press conference. I spent half of it with a photographer I'm friends with using my shoulder to brace his 300mm 2.8 while occassionally getting dinged in the head by another photog shooting over my head with the same lens.
The night before she and Keith Urban were at a red carpet gala for her film, but I passed on that photo op as the venue's media area is ridiculously crowded and you have to stand on ladders for hours on end just to save your spot as there literally is no room to stand in between them.
At her press conference Nicole Kidman talked about how she enjoyed the quiet life in Nashville with her husband Keith and her new baby. Very down to earth. Didn't put on airs at all. And like a lot of models I've shot, she's not necessarily the most beautiful woman you've ever seen in real life, but the camera just loves her. I got totally carried away and shot a couple hundred frames of her.
The blizzard of flashes that went off when Natalie Portman stepped up to the media area caused my auto focus to fail at first. Could not get a lock for a couple seconds it was so intense, and from both sides as the fans were also lighting her up with a ton of flashes.
After the step and go is done, Ms. Portman heads on down the red carpet to the video cameras for interviews. Everyone starts putting away their equipment.
Photographers are not allowed to leave the media area until the talent has gone all the way down the red carpet, so minutes pass, we're all standing around talking, killing time, some guys are already FTPing images out on laptops, when suddenly out of nowhere ... Natalie walks right past us going the other way and goes back out to meet the fans!
You never saw so much equipment, bags, knapsacks and whatever flying around in your life as all the photographers in a panic grabbed anything with a lens on it and started hosing the scene again. After it was over and she'd gone back in, there was equipment spilling out of bags and cases everywhere, laptops lying around abandoned in mid-transfer, it was hilarious. Looked like racoons had been foraging for food amongst the equipment.
Clive Owen had the misfortune of having his film's premiere the same night Megan Fox was doing the red carpet thing. Since Megan Fox is a guaranteed sale (one guy told me he made $3600 just in overnight sales on her) everyone, and I mean everyone, was over at that venue.
At Roy Thomson Hall where Clive was there were just 4 accredited photogrpahers in the media area. The situation was so embarrassing for the festival that they brought over half a dozen amateurs with DSLR's from the crowd to fill out the press section a bit. The new recruits had a blast shooting the step and go with their idols just a few feet away. He was pretty generous with his time. Everyone got along fine.
Olympus E30 cameras w/ 35-100mm f2, 50-200mm and 150mm f2 lenses. 1600 ISO for Clive and Natalie, 2500 ISO for Nicole. Clive and Natalie in manual mode w/flash, Nicole in Aperture priority no flash allowed.
Here is a quick video glimpse at the chaos of the red carpet media pit - well, the photo section at least, the video side is much calmer - at the gala for The Conspirators featuring Robin Wright Penn.
As you can see, finding an opening in the wall of photographers is quite a trick. They are stacked up two rows deep.
At the Roy Thomson Hall venue the Photo media area is split into two areas at a 90 degree angle to each other.
If you want to shoot the talent outside with the crowd in the background (which my client prefers) then it's hard to reserve a spot in the area where the actors step in front of the logo-festooned background as well.
Thus you end up trying to squeeze your camera through small openings if you want to photograph any of this.
I've pretty much written off the logo wall as the area where I will experiment with video.
So, as soon as the photos of the talent are finished using my Olympus E30 DSLR, I pick up my little Olympus EP-2 PEN mirrorless camera in video mode, usually with the mZuiko 9-18mm wide zoom lens attached but sometimes with the mZuiko 14-150mm, and try to capture some of the energy of the event.
The laughter at the end is because another photographer and I ended up tangling our cameras together manouvering to get the shot. Although the interview part looks calmer, there were actually a lot of cameras and lense surrounding me just out of frame.
Note the publicist in the background moving the actor (didn't catch his name, have no idea who he is) along the line of video cameras.
At each stop they talk for about a minute or so, than on to the next one. It's a very long line of video cameras. I'm sure they hear the same questions again and again.
Also, a photo from the Robert DeNiro press conference with Milla Jovovich (yeow!) watching on. Done with the Zuiko 150mm f2 lens.
The results from the nightly galas and press conferences I shot with the Olympus E30 mirror or exceed published results achieved by other media photographers around me using D3's and 1Dmk4's.
The New York photo agency I contribute to were happy to acccept them with no negative comments at all.
Looking forward to trying out the recently announced E5 pro camera Olympus will have on the market by October.
I've spent the last 10 days surrounded by the most state of the art photo equipment available, yet I am constantly struck by how basic the needs are for this type of photography ... which has some relevance in light of the percieved shortcomings of the Olympus E5 in the online forums.
Most of the D3/1DMK4 shooters here are using manual exposure to control background detail (so much for the 1,000 pixel light meter).
The reason most celeb shots feature flash as the key light is because the background is intentionally darkened to make the celebrity stand out with no distractions. They will intentionally underexpose backgrounds by up to three stops so your eye goes straight to the talent (more sales to busy A.D.'s quickly scanning hundreds of photos).
Most of these guys are also using manual flash, again to control the daylight/flash ratio to an even finer degree - so much for flash TTL algorithms.
And a lot of them are using manual focusing, partly because as I said earlier, the stroboscopic barrage at some of these events (honestly, I don't know how these actors stand it) will throw off even the best autofocus systems - not giving those 51 point focusing modules much of a workout.
The major advantage they are looking for by using top pro cameras is durability, number one, and the increased cropping possibilities of the larger full frame sensor. The greater dynamic range full frame pixels offer is of secondary importance, in fact most of their lighting choices serve to narrow dynamic range rather than broaden the response of the scene.
Full frame's selective depth of field advantage is a joke here. They are all shooting at f8 - f16 (seriously).
When I am using the 35-100mm at f2 to isolate a subject, and one of my exposures coincides with that of another photographer's, it is completely whited out. Even at 5.6, which is as stopped down as I like to get, their flashes toast my image.
The reason for stopping down so far? Your image is literally never out of focus. Even if you miss focus, even if the celebrity moves unexpectedly, they have enough overlapping depth of field that they are pretty sure to get a saleable picture.
High megapixel sensor? The Agency I'm sending to requires that my 12 megapixel images be reduced to 10 megapixel then ftp'd at number 8 compression setting for the JPEG. What do any of them need with higher megapixel counts than what the current top pro cameras offer?
My point is that, even though a more highly evolved camera like a Sony A55 is a lot of fun to shoot with (and I really think that camera is a major indicator of the type of camera we'll all be using in a couple years), how applicable is such an uber-cam to the profession?
In real world pro usage, the E5 will be just as effective in many cases, as evidenced by the dumbed down methodology at work here at TIFF. Outside of high speed professional sports, there are a lot of pro assignments - one could say the majority of pro work - the completion of which would tap maybe 25 percent of a top pro camera's high spec capabilities.
All photos shot with the Olympus E30 with 150mm f2, 50-200mm 2.8, 35-100 f2, and 12-60mm 2.8 lenses. Video shot with the EP-2 with mZuiko 9-18mm and mZuiko 14-150mm lenses.
All photos and text copyright Torontowide.com. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction in any medium requires the written permission of the author.
Red Carpet Gala for The Conspirators at the Toronto International Film Festival from Douglas Brown on Vimeo.
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