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James Spader on Broadway
James Spader – Blog – Images by Robert Caplin
Last week I received a New York Times assignment to shoot a portrait of James Spader for an article about his role on Broadway in a new David Mamet play called “Race”. The brief shoot took place at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in mid-town and was another one of those “set-up in advance and bang out a handful of frames with the talent” quickies.
I knew James Spader primarily from his Boston Legal television show in which he starred opposite William Shatner, but I’ve also seen a few movies where he plays eccentric characters, so I had no idea what he’d be like in real life. I found him to be one of the kindest and most willing celebrities to shoot with. I did have trouble trying to get much expression from him, but never the less I feel we had a very successful shoot.
For this particular shoot I met up with the play’s publicist who showed me around the theater, back rooms, basement, dressing rooms and I decided to choose the basement and a stairwell as the locations. With the help of my good pal and assistant, Noah Gilbert, I took some lighting tests and waited for Mr. Spader to arrive.
Once James arrived for the shoot it was very obvious he was going to be very easy to work with. When I shoot these celebrity assignments, I often bring a handful of lighting set-ups to get a variety of portrait options for my editor. I decided to bang out a few ring-light portraits while I had him near a brick wall…the first flash surprised him because of the brightness of the ring-light. At first I thought he was upset, but he quickly laughed it off and said, “It’s ok, I can handle the first act tonight seeing rings of light….anything for a good picture.”
Also, during the shoot another actor in the play came and pulled James away for a few minutes. Afterward James apologized explaining that he insists the entire cast gets weekly B-12 vitamin shots administered by his doctor to keep the cast healthy, and that was what the interruption was about. Smart idea considering the winter season and all the germs the playgoers must bring in each night. You have to be healthy to perform on Broadway.
Interesting fact I learned from James. As we were walking down to the basement to take a few more portraits, we passed an old poster for a play from nearly a half-century ago. On it was the profile of a woman and he mentioned how uncanny the resemblance was to Drew Barrymore. It took me a moment to put together that the woman in the poster was actually Ethel Barrymore, Drew Barrymore’s great-aunt, for whom the theater was named. Fancy that!
Here’s a quick snap I took with James in my basements set-up:
See the entire shoot by clicking here.
The World Series Time-Lapse
Lately, as I’ve been transitioning into cinematography, I’ve been experimenting with time-lapse photography. I’ve had a lot of practice while working on my latest project, Betrayed, (a motion picture short shot exclusively with the 5D Mark II staring Seth Gilliam from ‘The Wire’, Cara Buono from ‘The Sopranos‘ and PJ Sosko and is due out very soon!) so I decided to take what I’d learned to the World Series because I thought it would be a great opportunity to attempt this hit-or-miss process.
This time-lapse is a compilation of over 5,000 still-images I took from 3 cameras from about 25 locations, all around the inside/outside of Yankee Stadium, that gives a narrative of attending a game-winning World Series during the inaugural season of baseball’s most famous stadium.
This was probably one of the most tiring and time-consuming processes I’ve undertaken with still-photography. I arrived at Yankees Stadium around 3PM prior to the game and began scouting out locations for the time-lapse. The process itself took many hours and required me to rush around the monstrous stadium – scaling the upper decks, zipping back and forth from the outfield to the infield, and inside and out. Finally, I arrived home around 1:30AM and began downloading to my computer the 125GB (12,000 images) of RAW footage I’d collected.
After properly organizing all the files, I set my computer to stitch and render all the still images together in a low-resolution format just so I could see if the time-lapse actually worked. Exhausted, I finally got to bed around 5:30 AM while my computer rendered the files down. Given that the time-lapse consisted only of still images and not video, the files were 3-4 times the size of HD! Needless to say, my computer spent a good chunk of time rendering all the data.
The next morning, I woke up early to check out what I’d shot, and was truly excited by what I saw; the already visually interesting images came to life in a surreal way.
Finally, after stitching together all the raw footage, I handed over the files to my trusted editor/web designer, Laia Prats, to throw everything into Final Cut Pro and help me put it all together and add the audio track. I truly couldn’t have done this without her help. (THANK YOU soooo much, Laia!) If you ever need a website built, logo made, or any graphic design, I highly recommend Laia! She’s my designer.
Also, check out the write up on the New York Times LENS Blog.
A selection of snaps I took while at the stadium:
World Series Snaps – Images by Robert Caplin
