When I got the call from Dave Baratz at USAWeekend to shoot Bill O’Reilly, I immediately could tell from his voice that this was probably when was of those quick in-and-out gigs, and I was right. Bill had extremely limited time available and wouldn’t go to a studio, so the only place we could shoot him was on the set of The O’Reilly Factor at Fox News. Oh yeah…we were told we would only have about ten minutes with him…immediately before he taped his show!
I figured I had better go check the place out…
It was small…really small! My wide-angle lenses were gonna get a workout! The only place I could drop a seamless for the cover would be in a back corner behind the cameras…
For a second shot, the only other possibility seemed around his desk…
But when I saw the Stage Manager sitting in a nook to the side I had an idea…
Because of the time constraints and the fact that I was going to shoot him against that backlit set, I made the decision to light Bill with a couple of 1′ x 1′ BiColor Litepanels. The BiColor variator made it super easy to dial in the correct color temperature and the output variator allowed me to match the intensity of the backlit blue wall in seconds. I’ve really come to appreciate the WYSIWYG aspect of shooting the the Litepanel system.
Bill O’Reilly…on set in 3…2…1…
That took care of the opener…
Now, on to the cover.
I took a subjects-eye-view of the cover setup…
…which sort of shows how tightly backed into that corner we really were…
Since the story was about volunteerism, Dave and I thought it would be nice to play off the old Uncle Sam, ‘I Want You!’ poster…
And Bill got into the whole Uncle-Sam-pointing thing which made my work that much easier…
And here’s the cover that came out yesterday…
Bill and I hope YOU enjoyed todays behind-the-scenes look!
Damn Ugly Photography 