Flexibility on location

Being flexible is something that I learned many years ago, and I was reminded of this with a recent assignment.
A magazine for doctors had located me on the Find A Photographer (FAP) feature of  ASMP , and they wanted me to shoot a portrait of a young physician at Yale University Hospital. The thrust of the article was about "environmentally responsible initiatives in medical practices".
With the subject-a very nice doctor who I'll call Dr. "S",  I scouted locations at the hospital about a week before the shoot, and we found a few areas that would work. Not great, but ok, given the parameters. his year has been quite snowy & cold, so shooting inside was our only viable option.
On the afternoon of the shoot, I arrived early to make sure that I had enough time to meet with the very helpful Media Relations person at the Hospital, whose name is Mark. At some point in our conversation before the subject arrived, he mentioned another area of the hospital, with "great light".
We had time to spare, so off we went. Mark was right, and our timing would be perfect for the time of day, so we contacted Susan to let her know about the new location.

Naturally diffused sunlight was complimented with a bit of fill light from a single Dynalight head & a soft bank. Some of the greenery was there & I borrowed the plant that Susan held in some of the images.
The happy client chose the image above.

Brian Lanker, Photographer & Filmmaker

Brian Lanker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and who built an incredible career working for Life, Sports Illustrated & National Geographic, has died. His photograph of his future wife giving birth via the Lamaze method won the 1973 Pulitzer for Photography while he was working at The Topeka Capital-Journal, with Rich Clarkson as his photography editor.
He later published the beautiful book of B & W photographs, "I Dream A World:Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America"


To read more about his amazing life: Brian Lanker, 63, Loses Brief Battle With Cancer

© Brian Lanker

Just to make you smile.

Frieda

A Gallup of Common Redpolls at a Feeder in VT.

Common Redpolls

While staying with friends at a rented house in Southern Vermont a few weeks ago, we were visited a few times a day by a feeding "gallup" or flock, of Common Redpolls.

These hardy little finches thrive in colder weather, and they mostly live in the Northern parts of North America. Every other year, depending on the food sources in Winter, they will move south (irruption) to Northern New England and New York to find food.

From the Wikipedia page on Bird Migration:
"Sometimes circumstances such as a good breeding season followed by a food source failure the following year lead to irruptions in which large numbers of a species move far beyond the normal range. Bohemian Waxwing and Common Crossbills show this unpredictable variation in annual numbers."

This image is now included in my Getty Images stock library.

Oh Well......

 

My signature image is probably the pre-dawn photograph of the Jade Screen Hotel, in the Huangshan Mt's.
Conde Nast Traveler magazine used it as a double-page spread opener (unusual for a vertical image?), for their story on "Extreme Hotels", in the February 2011 issue.
Nice.
But, the least that they could have done was to correctly spell my last name in the Credit sections in the back of the magazine! "Wymon"?!
They have promised to print a correction in the May issue.