You thought my Obama Inuguration Gigapan was big?

I produced a new one last night during the first ever World Series game at the new Yankee Stadium.

The final image is stitched together from 675 photos – 45 across by 15 down. It weighs in at 104,360 X 27,836 pixels.

That’s 2,904 megapixels. The uncompressed image is over 8 gigabytes.

You can see the whole thing exclusively at MLB.com.

** UPDATE with technical info:

I’m fortunate to be part of the Gigapan beta testing program and I shot this image using a prototype of their new Epic Pro unit. To make this Gigapan, I used my Nikon D700 and the 200-400 f/4 lens. The whole setup weighs about 10 lbs and the Epic Pro had no problem with it.

I was zoomed all the way to 400 and my settings were 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. I shot JPEG FINE to a Sandisk 16GB card and found that the cool white fluorescent white balance was the most accurate. I began shooting at the top left at 8:02 pm. Working top-to-bottom and then left-to-right, it took 53 minutes to get all the way down to the bottom right corner. The white swath down the middle is a short period of time when it was raining.

Naturally, there are some places where people moved between overlapping frames, creating a handful of weird looking errors like half bodies and people with two faces. I manually went in and fixed any that may have existed with the players on the field, but didn’t touch the crowd.

And yes, Alec Baldwin is wearing a suit at his seat behind home plate while everyone else is in rain jackets and jeans. Maybe they were filming for 30 Rock?

I learned a few things while doing this and will make some minor changes next time. I’m planning on producing at least one more Gigapan before the Series is over. Stay tuned.

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The light in South Florida is beautiful on it’s own, but I will supplement it when I have to.

I recently did another shoot with Kari, the wedding dress girl. For one series of images, I wanted to use the green cabana at Crandon Beach. The problem is that it was completely in shade. There was enough light to make a photo, but it just didn’t have any “pop.”

Instead of waiting around for the sun to cooperate, I brought out a Nikon SB900 flash.

I had Kari’s friend Melissa hold a palm frond about 15 feet away and then placed the SB900 another 15 feet back. Putting the strobe further away from the palm made the light source even smaller, tightening up the shadow.

It was a balancing act because if I went too far back, I would not have had enough power to reach the wall.

With the strobe zoomed to 200mm and a warming gel over the light, it made a pretty good substitute for the sun.

(Nikon D3, 400mm lens, 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO 400)

For the image below, we were again in shade so I could control the light however I wanted. I used an SB900 in a Lastolite EzyBox as my main light, bounced another one off a gold reflector on the ground for fill, and put one more behind the tree at camera left for separation.

(Nikon D3, 70-200 lens, 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 200)

For a shot in the gym, I fired my Dynalite uni400jr through a big white panel right over my head — essentially making it a giant softbox. I bounced an SB900 off the gold reflector on the floor and added another one with a red gel and a Honl snoot for the background.

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO 400)

I think it’s Joe McNally who says that available light is any light that’s available to you. Sunlight can be nice, but I have no problem adding lights that are “available” in my camera bag.

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When photographing celebrities, a big part of my job is to make them comfortable. I need to keep the shoot fun while subliminally reassuring them that I can get the job done. Otherwise, they’ll lose interest and it’ll show in my images. Even worse, they could leave before I’m done.

Things didn’t start out too well at my recent Kerrang Magazine cover shoot.

Jared Leto, Shannon Leto, and Tomo Milicevic, otherwise known as 30 Seconds To Mars, showed up at the photo studio right on time. These guys are pros. Jared Leto has acted in major motion pictures and been photographed hundreds of times. I really wanted to win them over quickly.

I had some music playing in the studio, but I immediately took some abuse from them for my musical choice. After trying to convince them that the new Toto album is, in fact, awesome, I gave them control of my iPod. Van Halen quickly changed the mood in the room.

You never know what might put someone off during a shoot. For example, I found out in advance that Jared is a vegetarian, so bringing in ham sandwiches for lunch would have been a bad thing.

Luckily, the guys were great to work with and by the end of the hour we were all hugs and high-fives.

Here are some of my images from the shoot, including the final magazine cover.

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 200)

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125 sec, f/11, ISO 200)

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125 sec, f/11, ISO 200)

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125 sec, f/10, ISO 200)

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125 sec, f/11, ISO 200)

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This was a quick photo shoot with Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed on the roof of a building in New York City.

For a magazine shoot like this one, I keep things fast and simple. I had to be mobile and didn’t know if I’d have power up there, so I used only Nikon SB strobes.

(Nikon D700, 24-70, 1/320 sec, f/11, ISO 200)

The image above is lit with two SB900’s in a big softbox at camera left. It was grey and overcast, so I gelled the strobes warm and put my D3 on tungsten white balance to “blue” the sky. I added the texture using Totally Rad Actions’ Dirty Pictures plug-in.

(Nikon D700, 24-70, 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200)

It should be pretty obvious that I used a ring flash for this image. In this case, it’s the Orbis slipped right over an SB800.

Two setups in 15 minutes. Quick, easy, and painless for everyone.

——-

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Halfway through the Bowling For Soup set at the Blender Theater, they told the crowd to get their cameras ready because there was going to be a “musically enhanced photograph opportunity.” The guys then proceeded to strut around the stage and pose together in various positions for about 30 seconds.

That made it pretty easy for me.

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2500)

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My plan was to teach the basics of portrait lighting. Instead, the lesson was how to deal with stress when things aren’t working exactly as you expect.

Portland editorial and wedding photographer Craig Mitchelldyer put on a workshop at The Oregonian newspaper on Thursday called “Taking your photo business to the next level.” I was honored that he asked me to fly out and lead the lighting portion.

The all day event was absolutely free to attend because Craig had sponsorships from Photoshelter, Canon, and Pro Photo Supply. White House Custom Color also made some gorgeous 16X24 mounted prints of the presenters’ work for the walls.

The place was standing room only as 180 people showed up.

In the morning, I participated in a business panel discussion with Craig, documentary photographer Robbie McClaran, Oregonian photo editor Mike Davis, Photoshelter co-founder Grover Sanschagrin, and Olympian staff photographer Tony Overman.

Someone pointed out that I was the only one on the panel who had hair on his head.

Grover also had a presentation about photographers’ websites and Thomas Boyd did a show about creativity.

In the afternoon, it was my turn to step up to the plate. After spending about 90 minutes showing my photos and telling stories, I set up for the live lighting demo. Portland band Intervision was gracious enough to be my guinea pig.

These guys are as nice as their music is awesome. If you’re a fan of Steely Dan, you should definitely check them out.

When it was time to actually make pictures, Murphy’s Law kicked into full gear and the SB-900’s would not fire via infrared. I had nearly 200 people – mostly pro photographers – breathing down my neck as I tried to figure out why the gear wasn’t working as it should.

But I wanted this to be a real-world lesson and that’s exactly what it was. Sometimes thing don’t always go perfectly – a shock, I know! The lesson was not to panic and always have a backup or two. I eventually switched to my Pocket Wizards and they worked great.

The only difference from a real shoot is that I normally work that all out before the band gets there so they don’t have any idea that anything went wrong.

Once I was up and running, I started with images of the guys in the conference room to get warmed up.

(Nikon D700, 24-70, ISO 400, 1/250, f/5.6. One softbox on each side w/SB-900’s and one bare SB-900 on the ground behind them with a red gel.)

Then I took them outside and made a couple of pictures in the park area near the paper.

(Nikon D700, 24-70, ISO 400, 1/125, f/5.6. One softbox high in front with an SB-900 and one bare SB-900 on the ground behind them with a red gel.)

(Nikon D700, 24-70, ISO 400, 1/125, f/5.6. One softbox high in front with an SB-900 and one bare SB-900 on the ground behind them with a red gel.)

Thanks to Tony Overman for taking the behind-the-scenes pic of me using Craig as a human swiveling light stand. I got to play with the new Creative Light products and the stuff is pretty cool.

The band had to get to their gig that evening, so we only shot outside for a short period of time. I would have liked to get a little more complex with the lighting by throwing some SB-900’s on the trees, but I think this worked out pretty well.

Huge thanks to all of the great folks who came out to the workshop. You’ve really got a great photo community happening out there. Feel free to say hi on Facebook.

I hung out with some of the other shooters in the evening. We went to see Intervision play live and then I got a tour of some of the local scenery.

By all measurements, the workshop was a big success. Mitchelldyer is a force of nature and I have a feeling he’ll be doing more of these. But I think next time I’ll call my workshop, “Grace under pressure: How to handle technical problems with 180 photographers watching.”

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