Kicking off Football Season 2015 with Photojournalist Al Diaz

Al Diaz aldiaz305@aol.com

Football season, my favorite time of year!  Kicked it off by photographing three winning teams. This weekend I traveled to Washington DC as the Miami Dolphins defeated the Washington Redskins 17-10.

Shot with the Canon 1DX DSLR with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II with Peak Design camera straps I haul it all in my Think Tank Airport Security

On Friday night in Boca Raton, the Hurricanes stormed into FAU stadium with a weather delay during the game that lasted over an hour. The University of Miami defeated Florida Atlantic University 44-20.

Shot with the Canon 1DX DSLR with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II with Peak Design camera straps I haul it all in my Think Tank Airport Security

The previous week in Orlando FIU Panthers roared into UCF but barely squeaked by with a 15-14 win and the U trounced Bethune-Cookman at newly renovated Sun Life Stadium 45-0.

 

On September 3, the Miami Herald published my football preview covers featuring Ndamukong Suh for the Mami Dolphins, Brad Kaaya for the University of Miami, Richard Leonard for Florida International University, Flanagan High’s Devin Bush Jr. for Broward High Schools and Central High’s Donovan Thompson for Miami-Dade High Schools.

My favorite shot is of Flanagan’s Devin Bush Jr. That image was shot in a hot tub overlooking a pool. 

 

I used a black muslin background on a backdrop stand weighted down with sand bags. On either side I used two light stands with two Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT elevated to about six feet. At the bottom of the each light stand I placed two more Canon 600 strobes attached with Manfrotto 244RC Variable Friction Magic Arms. The rim light backlit the water nicely. For the main light I used a fifth Canon 600EX- mounted on a Manfrotto 025BS Super Boom Arm with Pivoting Clamp boom attached to a Manfrotto Cine Stand 008 with Casters.

Below and off to the left I used a Photoflex Litepanel 39x39" Aluminum Frame reflector for fill.

By the time we were ready it was dark. The strobes are all set to high speed sync so I could shoot at a shutter speed of 1600 at f/3.5, ISO 500 on the Canon EOS-1D X Digital SLR Camera with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM AutoFocus Telephoto Zoom Lens – USA.

 I triggered the devices using a Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT.

The toughest part was getting the beam of light from the strobe mounted to the boom to strike the subjects face. The high-speed sync also causes the batteries to drain quicker which caused a few misfires. Bush made several attempts at leaping out of the water until I finally captured an image with his hair looking hydro electric!

Shot with the Canon 1DX DSLR with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II 

I haul all in my strobe gear in a Think Tank Photo International rolling camera bag and the Production Manager 40

Using my 3 Legged Thing Monopod, Canon gear and Peak Design Sling.

Pulitzer Prize: With Photojournalist Patrick Farrell

BY PATRICK FARRELL

PFARRELL@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Winning a Pulitzer Prize is a big deal for a journalist. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that.

Yet it’s a fleeting high. The celebration doesn’t stay with you. When you’ve won an award with images of horror and unbearable pain, what sticks is guilt and grief.

That’s the honest truth.

For me, the only lingering magic is this: A Pulitzer means I can keep my silent promise to Frantz Samedi. Samedi was a father I met on Sept. 7, 2008, in the small town of Cabaret a day after torrential rain and flood waters from Hurricane Ike destroyed its flimsy infrastructure, killing 70 people. One-third of the dead were children swept from their beds and parents’ arms.

Normally, it’s an hour’s drive to Cabaret from Port-au-Prince, but that morning it took several hours for our driver to get Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles and me through washed-out roads. We saw the first solitary bodies along the street outside of town, but soon there were crowds urging us forward.

“Babies,” we kept hearing. “There are babies.”

They were lined up side-by-side, as if sleeping. They ranged in age from infants to 12- year-olds. Many of them were naked, mud-caked.

I don’t know how I pressed the shutter, but Jacquie and I numbly went through the motions, stifling our horror.

Suddenly, Samedi pushed through the crowd with a plastic jug of water and a rag. “This is my baby,” he shouted at me.

“This is my baby! Give me a picture!”

He began crying and cradling a 5-year-old girl, peeling her muddy clothes away and tenderly washing her body. He wanted to put her in a pretty dress for a proper burial, but a pickup truck from the morgue showed up.

He protested wildly, asked them to wait so he could run to get the dress. The police convinced him to let go. They had to take her. They threw her naked body onto a stack of others in the back of the truck.

Her name was Tamasha Jean.

The way Samedi held her in his arms, her body slumped and limp, reminded me of the way parents carry sleeping children in from the car. My own daughters back in Miami were 9 and 8 years old at the time.

My racing mind clung to Samedi and his simple request to acknowledge his girl’s life. I made a silent promise to give him a picture.

How could this tragedy occur without the slightest notice of the world?

When the photo of Samedi cradling Tamasha Jean ran on the front page of the Miami Herald the next day, other people asked themselves that same question.

Humanitarian aid began pouring into Haiti to help the country recover from one of its worst hurricane seasons ever, with a total death toll of 800.

That was before the devastating 2010 earthquake.

I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever see in my life. I was wrong.

Everywhere you turn in Haiti, there is an image that has to be seen. It is a place of breathtaking beauty and strength. It makes you happy to be alive. Unfortunately, all too often, Haiti also is ground zero for disaster and brutal poverty.

Seven months after that morning in Cabaret, when Samedi’s photo and 18 others I shot during that merciless season won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, an even wider audience noted Tamasha Jean’s life and Haiti’s fragile state.

For that brief moment of recognition, Haiti wasn’t some strange country filled with foreign problems and unimaginable lives. It became a place where a father loved his daughter.

I hope that human connection happens every time Frantz Samedi’s photo is published in a newspaper or posted on a Web site or hung on a wall.

And I hope it happens for people who visit “Capture the Moment” while the Pulitzer photos curated by Cyma Rubin are on exhibit at Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum in Miami.

It’s the only way I can keep my promise.

On Exhibit

What: “Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs”

When: Runs through April 20

Where: Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, 10975 SW 17th St., Miami

Museum hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday noon-5 p.m.

Sponsors: Knight Foundation and the FIU School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Info: Capture the Moment

Wednesday, March 5, 2014 | 4-6pm Panel 1: "The Story Behind the Photo: A Conversation with Pulitzer Winning Photographers." 

Moderator: Eric Newton, Knight Foundation | Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU
Wednesday, April 16, 2014 | 4-6pm Panel 2: "Photojournalism in the Digital World." 

This panel will be a conversation with photojournalists, photo editors and experts about issues such as photo-manipulation, the threat to credibility, crowdsourcing, and ethics | Moderator: Prof. Michael Sheerin, SJMC | Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/15/3937745/images-help-keep-promise-to-grieving.html#storylink=cpy

Miami Herald Pulitzer Prize

winning photojournalists

Patrick Farrell's photos from Haiti are among 166 still frames included in the exhibit, 'Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs,' at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Museum at Florida International University.

Other featured images are the work of former Herald photographers Michel duCille for the calamity of crack addiction in Miami in 1987 and Carol Guzy and duCille for the devastation caused by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia in 1985.

To view each photo story CLICK HERE.

Related Stories & Links:

Personal Perspective On Pulitzer Prize Photos

Documenting the World Miami Herald Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists

Images at Frost Museum spotlights the power of photojournalism

Photojournalists’ images can speak louder than words

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/07/3920340/photojournalists-images-can-speak.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/11/3927487/traveling-exhibit-of-pulitzer.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/static/media/projects/2014/documenting-the-world/#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/15/3937745/images-help-keep-promise-to-grieving.html#story

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2012 Football Preview

Football at last, my favorite time of year! Here are some of the preview section fronts and portraits I photographed for The Miami Herald this season.

University of Miami running back Mike James

Miami Dolphins running back Reggie Bush and Booker T. Washington High's linebacker and top college prospect Matthew Thomas. Page design by Robert Cohn.

Florida International University's Wayne Times, (5), Tourek Williams, (97) and Johnathan Cyprien, (7)

For lights I used three Dynalite strobe heads for hair light, fill or background. The main light source is from a Norman pack with a Norman 5 X 22" Soft Light Beauty Dish Reflector and grid. It was all shot on a Canon Mark EOS 1D Mark IV using the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM.