Photography is a quest for light, but sometimes there\u2019s just too much.<\/p>\n
Like last July 15, 11 a.m., when we were interviewing filmmaker and former Little Giant quarterback Russ Harbaugh \u201906 in his old neighborhood in Evansville under a cloudless sky.<\/p>\n
When I photograph Commencement at Wabash on these kinds of intensely bright days, people often come up to me and ask, \u201cBeautiful day for pictures, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n
And I say, \u201cNo\u2014it\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was that kind of overexposed world, awash with faded colors and harsh shadows, all texture and any sense of depth blown out by the too-bright light.<\/p>\n
Add to that the camera I was using didn\u2019t have the pop-up fill flash I needed and I hadn\u2019t thought to bring a reflector, and there was a good chance we\u2019d driven four hours for nothing, at least visually.<\/p>\n
Russ was still energized from the great reviews for his first feature film, Love After Love,\u00a0<\/em>starring\u00a0Andie MacDowell and Chris O’Dowd, and thoughts of his next project.\u00a0We could see the joy on his face when we congratulated him on the distribution deal he\u2019d gotten for the film\u2014a breakthrough for any young director.\u00a0How often do we get to sit down an\u00a0alumnus fresh from such a huge success early in\u00a0his career? But now readers of WM<\/em> wouldn\u2019t see any of it, thanks to me.<\/p>\n I explained my\u00a0problem to Russ, who was back in his hometown for just a day or two and had driven his mother\u2019s car to meet us.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she has a yoga mat in the trunk,\u201d he said. \u201cWould that help?\u201d<\/p>\n Kind of. We tried a few shots with our writer Rich Paige holding the mat to shield Russ from the sun while I snapped away. We must have looked ridiculous\u2014Russ standing on the sidewalk in front of the house he’d grown up in while Rich held a yoga mat over his head and I stood in the middle of the street bracketing every exposure, my embarrassment intensified by the fact Russ is a film director and knew all about light and the mistake I was making.<\/p>\n But he just rolled with it. Even as I apologized he told me not to worry. And when I suggested we move the shoot to his old high school\u2019s football stadium where the covered stands might provide some shade, he said, \u201cSure!\u201d<\/p>\n And seated on the bleachers overlooking the field where the kid who would become one of Wabash\u2019s finest quarterbacks and a critically acclaimed director had once led the Bosse Bulldogs, we enjoyed the most relaxed, interesting, and free-wheeling interview\/photoshoot I\u2019ve done at Wabash. Rich and I had both seen the film and loved it, so we were peppering Russ with questions for most of an hour and a half. I mean, how often do you get to see a breakthrough film and a few days later get to ask the director all about making it? We ended the visit\u00a0over thin crust\u00a0and craft brews at one of Russ’s favorite pizza places.<\/p>\n Rich has written the story and we\u2019ll post that later this week\u00a0when the print edition of WM<\/em> mails. But I wanted to share some of the photos that didn\u2019t make the cut for the printed edition\u2014one from under that yoga mat on the planet Venus, the rest from the football stands. So you can see what difference a little bit of shade can make, and you\u00a0can see the happiness and generosity of spirit in Russ’s expression\u00a0that turned our work that day into play.<\/p>\n \u2014Steve Charles<\/em><\/p>\n Watch for “Making <\/em>Love After Love” in the Summer 2017 edition of WM, mailing September 7.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photography is a quest for light, but sometimes there\u2019s just too much. Like last July 15, 11 a.m., when we were interviewing filmmaker and former Little Giant quarterback Russ Harbaugh \u201906 in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/08\/01-smiling-with-scripts-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3550"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3581,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3550\/revisions\/3581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}