Production Hub: Innovative Storytelling at its Best

The following post originally appeared on Production Hub.

Innovative Storytelling at its Best

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Q: How did you first get involved in motion graphics and still photography?

A: I was in high school when I discovered my love for taking pictures, and first got serious about still photography. However, it wasn’t until after high school — when I was working room service at the local hotel — that I decided to do something about my passion. I quit my job and moved to Santa Barbara, California to attend Brooks Institute of Photography. My favorite projects at school involved sports, high speed action, innovative camera techniques and blowing things up. The industrial and high speed photography skill set that I developed at Brooks came in handy as I began my career in sports photography and motion.

Q: Can you name a few of your clients? What has been one of your favorite projects to date?

A: One of my favorite projects was contributing to Red Bull’s Signature Series. The promo was shot by Scott Duncan, but I did the supporting time-lapse shots. The best part of the project was just hanging out and shooting in Breckenridge for days on end. The nights were freezing, but that’s when I was shooting most of my time-lapses: icicles being formed, water freezing, crystals forming, and a lot of really cool details that I’d never really captured before. Unfortunately, Otherfilms had too much footage to cram in a short promo, and only a small portion of what I shot ended up in the promo. Afterward, though, it was pretty cool seeing my work on TV. I loved it!

Q: What has been one of your most challenging projects and why? How were you able to overcome it?

A: My most challenging projects are always my personal projects. When I’m shooting for myself, I’m pushing myself to try new things and go further than I have gone before. Sometimes I fall short of my crazy high expectations, but I keep pushing forward and end up learning amazing techniques and strategies that I then bring to my commercial and advertising work. 

Of these personal projects, my most difficult was the spec ad spot I did for Vans, in which the shoes are put together on an assembly line made of skateboards. We used a stop-motion reverse time-lapse technique to achieve this concept. To show the shoes being constructed, my team and I had to carefully and methodically deconstruct the shoes — stitch by stitch, frame by frame. The time-lapse had to be played in reverse, so we had to reverse our entire process and shot list. Talk about a head trip! We also had to make it look like a factory where the shoes were assembled on skate boards, and be able to put it all together as a seamlessly looping file. Thirty-six hours of shooting time and tens of thousands of frames later, we wrapped the shoot and sent the files off to editing. There were so many unique challenges in this project, that at times I wasn’t sure if it we were going to be able to bring my vision to life … but we did it!
blog.morahanvisuals.com

Q: Where did you learn your skill set and what advice would you give those who are trying to succeed in the production world?

A: Brooks Institute of Photography gave me the strong fundamentals and tools I needed to be a successful photographer, but I would be the first to say I have learned far more in the real world, than they could have ever taught me in school. Sometimes, shooting can be a series of trial and error, experimenting and learning from your failures. For every time-lapse I have created, there are far more that do not make the cut. You can’t be afraid to challenge yourself, or you’ll never grow as a photographer or filmmaker. I’m always pushing myself to learn, to think and to create.

Q: Where do you go to find inspiration for continual creativity?

A: My eyes are always open, taking in inspiration from the world around me. It might be a random YouTube video or photography site, or it might come to me during a walk or a camping trip. Inspiration is everywhere, and every time I think I’ve seen everything that has been done, I stumble across someone else pushing the limits. I’ve learned that I need to just live and be happy to be inspired … and the ideas just keep coming!

Q: Can you explain to us how you were able to create the two videos for Nike? (What elements it took to create the videos, etc.) 

A: The two videos below were spec ad spots I did for Nike. Like the Vans video, they were some of those tough personal projects I mentioned before. A few years back I met a producer out in LA who inspired me to start shooting motion and pushed me to put together a motion reel. Without access to a Phantom camera (one of the few motion cameras I am super comfortable with) I had to rely on my training as a still photographer and began shooting time-lapse films. After shooting so many time-lapses, they’re pretty simple to me now and I knew I could create something special using that technique. 

Later on, I saw these videos of an artist pouring paint over boxes in these amazing layers and patterns, then lets them dry. The final boxes were pretty cool, but I thought it might be way cooler to pour the paint in reverse, revealing a product hidden beneath. Well, that’s how it all started! It took a lot of testing to figure out how to shoot a video of paint pouring in reverse. In every video, I like to add an element to surprise the viewer: a dimensional logo built into the set, or an object that starts to spin. The real difficulty of these shoots comes from the extreme sensitivity of the set. Think about this: there’s a spinning soccer ball being slowly transformed into a globe by a painter in the middle of a time-lapse, and if the ball, cameras or set is bumped, or the paint is spilled, the shoot would be ruined and we would have had to start all over again! You get one take, and that’s it. The pressure is intense, but I guess that is what’s so interesting about these projects — challenging myself to push past what was safe, rational or possible. When you’re shooting for a client, most times they may want you to play it safe and not take too many risks, so you don’t get that opportunity to really push the limits. That’s why my personal projects are so important. I have no problem putting it all on the line in hopes of going further than I have ever been before. 

Q: What equipment do you use to create your photos, videos, etc.?

A: These videos were shot strictly on Canon cameras: EOS 1Ds Mark III, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 1D Mark II, 20D, Rebel XTi, and for the Vans video I also used the EOS 60D and the EOS 7D. I used Hoodman CF cards for each camera, and simple hot lights for lighting. I used Adobe Photoshop to order, organize, and touch up each individual image.

A Sporting Life: Getting the Viewer to Wow

The following blog post originally appeared on A Sporting Life.

Getting the Viewer to Wow | Joe Morahan

Joe is a sports filmmaker and photographer from Colorado. His award-winning work has garnered him a reputation as one of the most creative and passionate image-makers in print, motion and effects.



“Normal” just isn’t in my nature. I’m constantly pushing my imagination and techniques to create something new, different and mind-blowing. If the viewer isn’t saying, “WOW!” then I haven’t done my job.

I began my career shooting high-speed, time-lapse and highly technical still photography projects, which led to a successful career as a sports photographer for advertising and editorial clients. Recently, I’ve integrated more motion work into my portfolio. Whether it’s stills or motion, inspiration can come from many different sources — backpacking trips, YouTube, or just focusing on my “dream clients” and what videos they need.

For this recent series of time-lapse films, I was inspired by an artist who poured layers of paint over a box, creating these amazing patterns which would then dry and be sold as art. This triggered something in my brain and I began visualizing a product being revealed from beneath paint, using a reverse time-lapse technique. For each video, I included a surprise, whether it’s revealing a hidden logo, or a set element that starts moving. Three of these projects have been released on my blog, each of which were made possible by my extremely talented team!



Reveal (the video above) was shot as a spec ad spot for Nike’s Mercurial Victory II FG Football Boot. The preproduction on this shoot was insane! Because it was one of the first times I’d poured gallons of paint over my set, I did this as a personal project. This allowed me time to thoroughly test the components and techniques and get all the stupid mistakes out of the way. I used five Canon digital cameras on this shoot, one of which was mounted to the ceiling, and used three shoes in varying colors and designs. I did shoot motion for this project, but the final edit contains only time-lapses from still photography cameras. The two main camera angles were captured by my EOS 1Ds Mark III and a 5D Mark II, which gave me a super high resolution that gave me plenty of editing headroom. The still frames from this shoot can actually be used for print campaigns! Over the course of several hours, I shot about 30,000 images. In post-production, I organized and corrected the images, which were sent off to the editor-magicians over at OTHER films.



The second video in the series, One World, One Ball features the Nike Total 90 Tracer soccer ball. I wanted to show the unity embodied by this one ball, used by people from around the world to play the most popular sport on earth. During the time-lapse, the paint gradually reveals the ball, which spins around and transforms into a map of the world. Again, we used a five camera setup with one camera mounted to the ceiling, all of which were firing every few seconds. To get all the cameras to sync with the least amount of running around and tripping over tripod legs, I used a single intervalometer and a Pocketwizard transmitter on the main camera angle, which triggered the other cameras via Pocketwizard receivers. There were a lot of moving parts to juggle on this shoot — the set, the paint, the ball, the lights, the artist painting the ball. Once the paint starts flowing on set, there’s no stopping. If anything got bumped, it’s game over! Luckily, no red cards were pulled…



Born to Roll is the third video in the time-lapse series, and showcases the craftsmanship behind Vans shoes. I pushed the time-lapse techniques I’d been perfecting in the previous videos to a whole new level here. This shoot took 36 hours over two days, as we methodically deconstructed these shoes on-camera, stitch by stitch. It took a lot of patience, but the final video is worth the effort! An added challenge was making the video into a looping file, allowing us to use just a few shoes to create the impression of a never-ending assembly line. The pieces of the puzzle came together and I created some cool GIF files, too, which have some major applications for the future.

I love every second of these shoots! To be able to wake up in the morning and have a day of creative problem-solving with a great team, is pure awesome. I love filmmaking, though still photography will always be an important part of my work. I love putting stills together in Photoshop and creating something that might only exist inside my mind — a wild mashup of sports, landscapes, reality, imagination, creativity and a touch of visual effects. Something magical happens when I’m able to translate my visions into reality, when everything coming together and I’m able to see the excitement on people’s faces when they see my work.

The Photo Brigade: Creative Still Life Time-Lapses

The following blog post originally appeared on The Photo Brigade:

Joe Morahan is an award-winning sports photographer, filmmaker and visual effects artist living in Denver, Colorado. Since graduating with high honors from the prestigious Brooks Institute of Photography, he has shot for advertising and editorial clients including RedBull, Getty Images and Sports Illustrated.

Sometimes, I wake up and think: “Y’know, shooting regular product shots is just too easy. I know!! I’ll pour some paint over my whole set — that’ll make things interesting.”


I’ve never been one to settle for “good enough.” Honestly, normal kind of kills me. The first motion project I worked on was so normal that my soul died a little inside. I needed to seriously amp up my creativity and push the limits of my imagination to be happy with my work.

The videos you see here have been years in the making — maybe even longer. The ideas behind them have been brewing in my head since I first starting learning time-lapse techniques back in school at Brooks Institute. I took tons of classes in time-lapse and extreme high-speed photography, and ended up majoring in Industrial and Scientific Photography. Funny as it sounds for a sports photographer, I never took a single Sports Photography class! I was obsessed with warping time, bending reality and testing the technical limits of photography.


Eight years on, I still love seeing motion sped up or slowed down. My first time-lapses were of nature and the night sky, out on camping trips. Before I ever thought about adding motion to my commercial work, I was just out there freezing my butt off and having the time of my life!

At the urging of one of my mentors, a producer in Los Angeles, I began to think about putting together a director’s reel and pursuing motion jobs. Motion is such an important part of the visual landscape now, and I couldn’t ignore that the industry was moving in that direction. It was time to jump out of my comfort zone and try something new. I decided to build a reel of around eight spec projects, each showing something unique, creative and representing who I am as an artist.

Like the honor student that I was, I threw myself into studying everything motion. I had worked with high-speed motion cameras before, but I knew that I needed to learn everything I could about motion to do it well. If I was going to do this, I had to do it my way. A little crazy, a little different — but definitely me.

As a creative, the most terrifying thing in the world is the blank page. Nothing came to me at all in the beginning, and I started to get nervous. I went out in nature, and remembered my night sky time-lapses from school. I messed around on YouTube, and eventually (after watching a few dumb cat videos) came across some videos of an artist pouring layers of paint over boxes, the dried product of which he sells. My brain started waking up and I thought about how cool it would be to use pouring paint in a time-lapse motion project. I had to make the idea my own and take it to a new (and admittedly crazy) level, so I came up with the idea to play the video in reverse, gradually “revealing” a product from beneath the paint.


Just like the paint pouring over my set, there was no stopping once I got started. Soon, I’d shot ten of these projects. With each project came a new concept, new challenges, new failures and new triumphs. I kept pushing the technique and pushing my imagination. My rockstar team and I had a lot fun making these videos; I hope you like the results!

Technical Information:

It was all cameras on deck when we went to shoot these videos. My Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and 5D Mark II were the main cameras because they produce images of such an awesome quality and resolution that you can use the still frames in a print campaign. Additional angles were captured with my older cameras that I hang onto and refuse to sell: a Canon 20D, Canon 1D Mark II and a Canon Rebel XTi. For the Vans video we had two extra angles captured by anEOS 60D and a 7D. One camera was mounted to the ceiling for overhead shots, but all the other cameras were setup on tripods. That’s a lot of legs!

Another fun problem you might have guessed is how to sync all those cameras to fire at the same time. I started out using multiple intervalometers on all the cameras, but my preferred method turned out to be using one intervalometer and a PocketWizard transmitter on the main camera and using PocketWizard receivers on all the other cameras to trigger the shutters in unison. This allowed me to stop all cameras with just the intervalometer on the main camera, instead of running around the room and up on the ceiling to shut off half a dozen intervalometers. This strategy was way simpler, and meant fewer chances to bump a tripod leg or the set — a time-lapse shooter’s worst nightmare.

To get saturated colors and maximize my depth of field with minimal noise, I used a low ISO and closed down the aperture as far as I could. For a few shots I opened up to f/1.8 just to mix it up and show a very shallow depth of field in a few frames of the final video.

Since I started out as a still photographer, my primary lighting kit contains strobes. Not wanting to pop those expensive bulbs thousands of times for a single project, I opted for a continuous light source. I wasn’t ready to make the financial commitment to a whole new lighting kit, so I went down to the hardware store and picked up some work lights. They’re cheap and easy to use. For diffusion, I mounted an old white pillowcase to a picture frame. My wife was horrified, but I was working with what I had. The pillowcase got a little singed, but we managed to not set anything on fire.

I did some calculations to ballpark how many shots I needed to end up with a full minute of footage that would play at 24-30fps. I figured that I needed about 1,800 shots per camera, and if I the shoot last six hours I needed to take a shot about every 12 seconds. I ended up playing it safe and taking a shot every 7 seconds instead. This was just enough time to run up to the set, drop a bit of paint and duck out of the way before the next shot. The intervalometer was crucial to capturing a consistent interval of shots. For the Vans shoot, we had to shoot every 11 seconds to give us more time to tug a stitch or nudge the skateboards. We ended up with more usable shots at the slower shot interval than if we’d set it at a 5 second interval and caught arms reaching into the frame.

Whenever you’re trying to do something new and different, there’s always a higher risk of failure. But you’ll never learn from your mistakes if you don’t fail, you’ll never fail if you don’t try, and you’ll never succeed if you don’t try. It’s all worth it for the final product and hearing someone say, “WOW.”

Via The Photo Brigade.


Morahan Visuals has joined the Hoodman RAW Shooters

I am very happy to announce that Morahan Visuals will now be using Hoodman RAW Compact Flash Cards exclusively!!!!!!

So I can’t even start to explain how very excited I am now that I have teamed up with Hoodman Compact Flash Cards.  Not only are they known for being the best/ most reliable cards out there, they are made right here in the USA!!!  If you are not familiar with Hoodman check out there website for all the details.   The RAW UDMA Compact Flash Cards are tested to 500,000 formats and that’s just the beginning. They are rugged, and will keep on working.  They cost a bit more than some of the others out there, being the mass produced cards, but Hoodman cards are worth every penny.  Most of the other card companies have around 2%-5% card failure, however Hoodman has 0 Card Failures!!!!  And that my friends, is why I trust Hoodman with my images.  When I travel to Africa, or hiking days through the Grand Canyon trying to get the shot, it would seem silly to save a few bucks on a card and have it fail on me, while I go through so much to create the images I do.  So that being said, this is why I have chosen Hoodman as my ONLY Compact Flash Cards.

I look forward to reviewing the gear and trying a few new tools that they slipped into my sponsorship package.  The one tool I have never used before is the HoodLoupe 3.0 Glare Free LCD viewing loop.  I used a loop all the time back in the day with the old 4×5, but I am really excited to use this.  I have a feeling it might get me to take a minute to view images, helping my mind slow down a think of other parts to the image, helping me create better images.  Of course it will help with the glare of the sun, especially that I mostly shoot outdoors.  So this will be a tool that I will use on every shoot.

Also sent to me use aHoodeye Digital SLR Camera Eyecup, that will help me fight the glare I face-off with everyday.  I look forward to seeing if this is something I can use from now on….I assume it will take a little getting use to but I will get it more than a far shot and see how things work out.

Of course I will need the best card readers around town to download all these cards that were sent to me, and to download,  Hoodman sent me a few card readers.  One is the RAW Professional FireWire Reader Designed for 42 MB/Sec UDMA CompactFlash Cards.  The other card reader is a USB 2.0 UDMA Reader RAW Professional Designed for 42 MB/Second UDMA Compact Flash Card; also supports CF, SD, and SDHC Card Formats.   From what I here, these cards readers blaze through downloads with maxim reliability, but also keep up a ridicules download speed.

And to top things off Hoodman sent me a handful of RAW 675X UDMA 6 Hoodman 8 GB CompactFlash Professional 500,00 Cycle Cards.  These babies will get there fair share of use.  From the travel, sand, salt, and all the other strange places I go creating imagery we will see how they do.  I have already had a few Hoodman cards and all have never given me one problem.  These should last a lifetime!!!

Look for more updates with Morahan Visuals and Hoodman Compact Flash Cards.  I will also now be featured on the RAW Shooter List on the Hoodman website.  www.hoodmanusa.com. To be on this list of shooters is beyond words for me.  This exclusive list of the finest photographers from around the world, and to be even mentioned on it is a really great step for my company.  So a big thank you to Hoodman for teaming up with Joe Morahan Photography!!!!

Filed Under: PressTagged With: Hoodman, sponsors, Sports Photography

Profoto: In The Moment, Pt. I

The following interview originally appeared on the Profoto Blog. Be sure to check out Part Two as well!

Written by Fredrik Franzén on Monday, February 6th, 2012.

We recently received a series of sports images that caught our attention. The man behind the camera turned out to be Joe Morahan, and we responded to his email with curiosity and a deluge of questions. Luckily for us, Joe was kind enough to answer our questions in detail. You can read excerpts from our email conversation below.

Why sports photography, Joe?

“Back in the day, I played a lot of sports. Baseball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, skiing, snowboarding and biking, to name a few. I loved sports more than anything. There was a feeling I got when competing that was different to anything else I had ever felt. Keep in mind that I am super competitive, but when I hit the field, it was like a complete escape from all other aspects of my life. I simply forgot about everything in life. It was total immersion. Nothing else mattered. It is this ephemeral feeling of freedom that I’m now trying to capture on a photographic shoot.”

 

Then how come you prefer set shots to live action images?

“Because it allows me to control my environment completely. I establish all the conditions with which my final product will be formed. It’s vastly different to a shoot conducted at live events, where the lighting is set by the stadium officials, the photographic angles established by management, and where there is zero control over the action.”


©Joe Morahan

Which are the crucial factors for creating a successful sports image?

“Lighting is critical. A photo has to have great quality of lighting to create the impression, the depth of emotion, the shadows, lines and accent that is required.”

“Composition has to be spot on. The more interesting the composition, the longer someone will be enraptured by a particular image. As with most forms of art, there may be rules, but great work somehow defies description. You know it when you see it!”

“Of course, focus is hugely important. A blurry photo is no good. Clarity is so appealing to the eye; creating a ‘gotcha’ moment.”

“Lens choice. I can’t stress that enough. A photographer might move up close and personal to a basketball player, having decided to utilize a wide-angle lens to capture a spectacular dunk. But with some forethought, a more striking image can be had. Perhaps you should move away from the action and rely on a tele-photo lens instead? I think about this all the time. I never just grab a lens. I try to think through the possibilities of why I should use this particular lens for this effect versus that lens for another effect.”

“I also have a bias for distinct color. I love color. It does not always make or break a photo, but color is very important to me all the same. There is no doubt that color can dictate a mood and feeling. It is real and cannot be ignored.”

“Finally, creativity in design and production is critical!”


What is your way of working on the set? Take the image of the basketball player, for instance. How do you create something like that?

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“I will set up my tripod and frame up my shot, then close my eyes and picture exactly where the basketball player will be diving through the frame. I will then have the athlete stand in that spot to allow me to work my lights. Once the light is set, I place a quarter on the ground so the athlete knows exactly where he is to start and finish his jump.”

“The next thing I do is that I focus my camera on the player in the frame, switching my lens to manual focus to make sure that the lens does not change focus. This move really helps me get the tack sharp focus I demand from my shots, without giving myself a headache! Also, it saves the athlete from a hundred takes, preserving the athlete’s vigor for quality movements.”

“Once I’ve focused, I switch to manual exposure and close down a stop or two. This is one of the tricks I use to get richly saturated colors. If I were at even exposure, the sky might be a light blue as we would see it in normal conditions. But when closed down two stops, that light sky blue turns into an arresting deep true blue.”

“There is, however, one potential problem with this technique. Outdoors, and under exposing two full stops, your flash needs to somehow overpower the sun. That’s exactly the situation in which you guys help me. Profoto lights are powerful enough to properly expose my subject matter, while leaving all other aspects in my shot under exposed. Without these intensely powerful lights, I would be left with an unacceptably darkened photo.”


Filed Under: PressTagged With: composite, interview, profoto, Sports Photography

Profoto: In the Moment, Pt. II

The following interview originally appeared on the Profoto Blog. Be sure to catch up on Part One!

WRITTEN BY FREDRIK FRANZÉN ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7TH, 2012.

Yesterday, we published the first part of our interview with sports photographer Joe Morahan, in which he explained why he prefers set shots to live action images. He also shared his thoughts on what he believes are the most crucial factors for creating a striking sports image.

In this second part, Joe gives more detailed explanations of how he created the images that featured in this article.

Cave

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“This is one of my most favorite shots. It is a composite of two images: one of the cave with the beam of light, and the other of a girl hanging from the cliff.”

“I went on a trip with some friends to the Slot Canyons, in Page, Arizona. The cave has very smooth walls that were created over hundreds of thousands of years of flash floods, where the rushing water sculpted all these beautiful structures. The sand at the base of these structures is very fine, like a baking-flour type consistency. It’s so soft that when you step on it there is a ‘popping’ sound and scattering of dust from around your shoe.”

“These canyons rise several hundred feet and at precise times, depending on the time of the year, the sunlight streaks across the Slot Canyons, producing laser like beams of light. These beams of light last for only a few moments each day and then disappear. The phenomenon leads to crowds of people waiting in the cave for the exact moment these spectacular rays of light appear. It’s quite a scene. The wonderful beams of light are both created and aided by tossing the fine dust from the canyon floor into the air. The sunlight refracts the dust in such a startling manner.”

“So after obtaining this shot in Slot Canyon, I decided it would be interesting to get a shot of a person hanging from the cliff walls. I hired a model and went to Red Rocks, Colorado, where there are an abundance of rocks on mountainous terrain that we could climb and stage something remarkable.”

“I set up my Profoto lighting with a standard Zoom Reflector. I closed my eyes to try and recall the original photo, with its lighting and the positioning of its rock walls. I then mimicked the lighting, which was direct daylight, and placed the rock–climber model in front of the beam of light, which required the light to be emanating from directly behind her. I quickly set the light while the model was hanging there – long enough for her to flex her lithe muscles, as if she’d endured quite a climb. I took the shot and she hopped off the rock. Finally, I merged the two images in Photoshop.”

Waterfall | ©Joe Morahan

Waterfall

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“This one is also a composite image. This shot is quite simple with two components. One is the waterfall shot, the second a woman in a yoga pose. The waterfall was shot with available light at Mooney Falls, Near Havasu Falls, which is a 12-mile hike from the nearest town. Mooney Falls is down river from Havasu, but to reach the water, you first have to climb down a 150 foot cliff without ropes. With only some occasional rebar for hand and footholds, and the rocks slippery from mist, saving my life seem more important than trekking my Profoto gear, no matter how much I longed for it to be with me.”

“Once safely beneath the falls, I set up my camera and got my plate shot. When I returned to Denver, I placed my woman in a yoga position at a field near my house. I used two light sources: the sun and my Profoto light.”

“This particular image deviates from my normal style in that I used a softbox to soften up the lighting. This was necessary to match the original waterfall shot. I had taken the original waterfall shot first thing in the morning, before direct sunlight hit the waterfall. I had to make sure that the lighting patterns matched so that the image looked real to the viewer. I used a Softbox 4×6´ on a c-stand, and hung it over the woman’s head, so that one side would be slightly darker than the other side. You can see that in her arms, one is slightly darker than the other. This helped give a touch of direction to the lighting.”

Basketball player

“This may appear counter intuitive, but this shot has the least amount of compositing of all the images shown here. I brought a ladder on this shoot, setting up the camera directly under the rim, along the backboard. This way I was able to capture the exact frame! The basketball net and rim were old, rusty and broken, and it appeared exactly as you see it. The only Photoshoping tasks in this image were to give it the sepia tone, adding texture to the sky and cleaning up the court.”

“The original shot looked just like what you see here as far as the frame goes. I used only one light in this shot, other than the sun. From the rim’s point of view, the sun was to the left, and the Profoto flash was to its right. I used a Zoom Reflector in this image, keeping the lighting harsh, ‘contrasty’ and edgy. This photo shoot was a great example of why it’s so important for me to use Profoto lighting. This image was taken with a 17-40mm lens set at a focal length of 17mm. As you can see, a great deal of the court is visible, so I had to put my light relatively far away. As is my usual technique, I under exposed the background a stop or two at an exposure of f/13 at 1/250 of a second. That forced me to pump in a lot of light from a far distance – enough to make my subject pop. The Profoto lighting kit did the trick, as it always does.”

Rangefinder Magazine Profile

Rangefinder Magazine
Profile: Joe Morahan by Larry Brownstein

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While the tree in this photo is only five feet high, the camera angle and lens choice make it look much larger.

Room service changed Joe Morahan’s life. No, he wasn’t vacationing at The Ritz, enjoying a luxury suite while waiting for a filet mignon dinner to be brought up to his room. Rather, he was working at a hotel in Littleton, Colorado, delivering room service meals to guests. One day he had an epiphany: He couldn’t go on like this forever. Before long, Morahan enrolled at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California—though he didn’t even know what an aperture was at that point. While his grade point average in high school had been an unremarkable 2.5, he graduated from Brooks magna cum laude in December 2005.

Morahan is currently very busy. Last week alone, he shot for four days. Since he feels he still has some catching up to do to approach the level of other working pros out there, his strategy includes shooting as much as he can. He uses models he finds through the Internet, in addition to shooting his two younger brothers and his friends. Morahan is so committed that he even uses himself as a model quite often!

Morahan self-portrait: “I can’t jump that high,” he says, “so I used a picnic bench just outside of the frame of the picture.”

One of my favorite images from his website—a dramatic shot of a basketball player leaping for a slam dunk—is one of the images where Morahan doubles as both model and photographer (see image on next page). He managed to capture himself with a dramatic backwards arch in his back, the ball poised high in the air, ready to be smashed down through the rim just beyond. I wondered how he did this all by himself, especially since doesn’t look tall enough to dunk.

Morahan explains that he positioned a four-foot high picnic table near the hoop. A Canon EOS-1D Mark II with a 15mm fisheye was positioned nearby, which he set to burst mode with a shutter speed of 1/8000 to freeze the motion. Morahan jumped off the picnic table 45 times, until his ankle hurt and he worried that he had broken it.

“This shot was taken is Solvang, CA,” says Morahan. “The exposure was f/8, and it was taken over a period of two hours. The ISO was 100, film was Fujifilm Provia 100.”

His dedication doesn’t stop there, though. He told me about a soccer shoot in which he wanted to capture the perfect bicycle kick; again, Morahan used himself as the model. Knowing that he would be landing on his back repeatedly, he chose a location with sand, hoping it would be better protection than a grass field. When the weather was right, he went out and set up the camera focus and composition, positioning a friend behind the camera to trigger the shutter to fire the camera at nine frames per second. A few dozen kicks and several hundred exposures later, he was finished with the shoot, having captured the perfect moment. Unfortunately, his shoulder was sore for two weeks after that shoot.

One of his Brooks professors, Chuck Place, gets credit for this relentless pursuit of the great shot. Morahan recalls receiving a positive critique for an assignment he had done, only to have Place talk to him privately and encourage him to reshoot, believing his student could do better. Morahan did as instructed, taking his time to find a better approach. The real lesson for Morahan was that taking time to plan a shoot pays off in the long run. “He told me that the only way to fail on a photo shoot was by not getting exactly what you want,” Morahan says. “It proved to be one of the most important lessons I ever learned as a photographer.”

“A shot of my brother’s soccer team, in Lehigh, PA.”

Morahan learned another fundamental from Brooks professor Ralph Clevenger. “He showed me the most incredible shot of a flower that I’d ever seen in my life,” Morahan recalls. “He told me that you don’t have to search for the perfect flower—that it is all in the composition and how you light it.” Still, Morahan expressed his doubts; his suspicion was that the shot was taken in an exotic location. “When he showed me the wide angle shot and I saw that there were just two flowers at the side of a gas station parking lot, it really changed my view. You don’t have to go to some crazy location; beauty is everywhere.”

One of Morahan’s favorite subjects is surfing, and he approaches it with characteristic zeal. He told me about going out with his friend early in the morning. Usually, he shoots with a 300mm lens and a 2X teleconverter on a Canon EOS-1D Mark II—which is equivalent to a 780mm lens. He’ll shoot hundreds of frames while the light is good, then spend the middle part of the day editing. Later in the day, when the light is good again, he’ll return and shoot more.

Daniel Jacobs shoot for Santa Barbara Fitness Magazine.

There was one image in his portfolio that was of particular interest to me because of the use of water blur around Morahan’s surfer subject. It turns out that he shot this one at 1/20 of a second while panning with the 780mm lens!

Morahan loves saturated color. One way he likes to attain it is by underexposing the background. The image of Morahan dunking the basketball with the orange background is a good example of this, as the background is about two stops underexposed.

Photographed at 780mm at 1/20 at f/22 to blur the action.

While sports action photography is his main focus, Morahan is also quite adept at sports portraiture—“sportraiture,” as he calls it on his website. His site contains a portfolio of beautifully lit portraits of surfers, soccer players, golfers, tennis players and other athletes.

Another love of this diverse photographer’s is travel and nature photography. He has made several trips to Africa and hopes that this body of work will culminate in a book. He likes to experiment with long exposure images that capture the movement of the sky. For instance, exposures lasting one to eight hours are effectively able to show the circular trail of the stars against the backdrop of night.

Getting the star trail image of the windmills outside of Palm Springs, California, (see image above) was particularly challenging. He recounts that, as he set up the shot and felt himself battered by a mighty gust of wind, it became clear why the windmills were placed at that specific spot in the desert near the San Jacinto Mountains. Morahan was afraid the wind would ruin the shot, especially because it was a long exposure, but since he was already there, he figured it was worth a try. He braced the tripod with rocks around each of the legs and pulled it off without any blur.

“This shot was taken on my way to Arizona, from California. I saw some windmills and pulled my car over and shot for a few hours. The exposure was f/5.6; the film was Fujichrome Velvia.”

Morahan is busy accumulating tear sheets. His photos are published regularly in Santa Barbara Fitness Magazine, including a recent cover. He is represented by New Sport Photo and he also shoots stock.

In addition, Brooks is running an ad featuring a Morahan photo. It’s a beautiful shot of a surfer going airborne with water splashing all around. The shot is backlit by the setting sun, which makes the spray look like shattered glass. The surfer seems to be breaking free from the ocean. The copy reads: “Focus. Commitment. Excellence”— what an apt description of Morahan himself. Visit www.joemorahan.com.

Larry Brownstein is the photographer and author of two books, Los Angeles, Where Anything is Possible and The Midnight Mission. His photos appear in numerous books, magazines, calendars, etc. His stock photography is represented by Getty Images. He has a growing wedding photography business. His work can be seen at www.larrybrownstein.com.

May 2007