Girls varsity basketball team member Linnae Harper poses outside Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago. Harper, a 5 foot 7 inch senior who plays the point guard position, is set to attend the University of Kentucky in the fall.

When I received my requests to shoot portraits of members of the USA Today All-USA High School Basketball Team, I was given little more than each player’s contact information and a deadline date. With everything up to me (including scheduling the shoots themselves) and no specific look to follow, the creative wheels in my brain started turning on how I could make each portrait unique and polished without necessitating a grip truck in the process.

While looking up the location to Whitney Young High School on Google Street View, I realized that the Sears Tower (technically the Willis Tower, but it will always be the Sears Tower to me) was directly down the street. I decided to take Linnae Harper outdoors and use that as my backdrop, creating an iconic hometown look for this Chicago player. Linnae is lit here with two Elinchrom Style 600 monolights, one up front as my key, and one over her right shoulder as a back light.

I wanted to compress the background against Linnae, making the Sears Tower dominant, and also, making Linnae appear larger than it. This would have probably worked better had the Sears Tower been tack sharp along with her, but with 1.3 miles separating my subject from the background, and an aperture already at f16 @ 200mm, I’m not sure how much sharper the tower would have gotten had I stopped down all the way. Even then, shooting at f22 might have left me with not enough fire power from my strobes.

Linnae was as cooperative as photo subjects come. Here, she’s positioned atop an apple box and my strobe case to get her above the tree line and lamp posts that cluttered my view of the Sears Tower. While I couldn’t totally eliminate these distractions, having Linnae higher up helped me out quite a bit with cleaning up my background. I also set up my shot in the shadow of an overhead bridge that connects two of the Whitney Young school buildings, allowing me to control the light to a greater degree using my strobes.

On a previous outing to Whitney Young, I photographed varsity basketball team member Jahlil Okafor. Okafor, a 6 foot 10 inch junior who plays the center position, is poised to become one of the top basketball recruits for college teams in the country. The gym at Whitney Young is rather architecturally bland, so I used a ladder to incorporate the most graphically interesting thing (the floor) as my background. This image was lit with three Vivitar 285HV flashes: One in a softbox up front as my key, a back light off the subject’s left shoulder, and a unit gelled orange off the subject’s right side pointing at the floor.

I grabbed a head shot as well using the same three lights, this time using the gym’s bleacher handrails as a “cookie” to create some texture.

After researching Simeon Career Academy’s gym prior to my shoot with varsity basketball standout Jabari Parker (and finding the same typicality that I encountered at Whitney Young), I decided to take Parker to an outdoor basketball court just across the street from the school. I hoped the light and gritty textures would give me some more interesting visual elements in my frame.

I used an Elinchrom Style 600 inside a 5′ Octabank to light Parker from his left side, allowing the sun to fill in as a back light of sorts. While overcast conditions would have been preferable, Mother Nature doesn’t always cooperate. Still, I was pleased enough with the results.

Members of the group Mariachi Acero pose during a promotional portrait shoot on Frenchman Mountain in Las Vegas. The group, based in Las Vegas, is comprised of area youths led by instructor Erik Ramirez (third from right).

Just to my left, the view outside the window of the 737-700 aircraft I’m currently flying aboard offers a never-ending view of white, flat-topped clouds. Some 40,000 feet over Denver, the sun is fast on its way to setting, leaving the tallest parts of this cloudy expanse dabbed with crisp, warm light. As with the last time I traveled to Las Vegas, nature is once again reminding me that the visuals out this way are just a little more special.

I don’t know what it is about sunsets in the desert southwest of the United States, but they usually end up being a visual artist’s dream. Perhaps it’s the dust that swirls high into the sky, helped aloft by strong, arid winds? Perhaps mother nature simply shares a penchant for bold colors, just like this photographer? Her paint brushes at sunset in the desert drip heavy with intense color saturation and texture, painted upon a clear canvas broken only by mountains a million years in the making (and made a million years before the cameras I often use to capture this spectacle were even a consideration).

On one of my last visits to Las Vegas in April, 2012, I was asked by my longtime friend and Las Vegas resident Erik Ramirez to create a promotional portrait of his youth musical group, Mariachi Acero. The group is mainly comprised of high school students who’ve learned the mariachi music discipline at the school where Erik teaches. While I could have just knocked out a quick photo at the school and called it a day, in true Guy Rhodes fashion, grander visions began to dance through my mind.

Members of the group braved a steep climb up a rocky incline in slippery boots (large instruments in hand, no less) to reach the location for the shoot at the base of Frenchman Mountain.

On previous trips to Las Vegas, Erik has been quite helpful in assisting me with scouting great locations to make beautiful images of Las Vegas. From Betty Willis’ fabulous Las Vegas sign on the southern end of the strip, to airport observation areas on the fence line of McCarran Airport, Erik has been instrumental in providing locations from which to make great images, both for work and entertainment.

When the idea of the mariachi group portrait was presented, one of my favorite past photo locations, Frenchman Mountain, immediately came to mind. As its namesake implies, the mountainous area on the extreme northeastern edge of the Las Vegas metro area offers a great elevated perspective of the entire strip, flanked by additional mountains just to the west. With several ridges just a short hike uphill from the road, the Frenchman Mountain area would give me a great place to compose the group with their home city as the backdrop.

I decided to set the call time for the group to arrive at the location one hour before sunset, and I’d roll the dice and gamble on mother nature adding in one of her desert sunset spectacles with my already great perspective of the city. Luckily for me, and even luckier for my excited photo subjects, she didn’t disappoint!

A stiff breeze at the location vibrated the strings of group member Joey Manzano’s harp the entire time we were shooting. Between this, and the eerie sounds of fighter jets streaking high overhead from nearby Nellis Air Force Base, the location had an unnerving energy as the group posed for me in otherwise complete silence.

All it took was one glimpse of my camera’s LCD screen by the group of the great results I was getting once the sky started to explode with color, and I had their complete and total cooperation for the rest of the shoot. Here, I lit the musicians with 2 Vivitar 285HV battery operated flashes atop small, portable light stands. The flashes were triggered with Pocket Wizard Plus units.

This is one of those accidental images that only I typically love, and my photographer friends typically hate. My front light flash wasn’t completely recycled, and didn’t fire, creating these ghostly silhouettes.

By the time night fell, the location had fallen into almost complete darkness. This made it very difficult to adjust my lighting angles on the rough terrain, so there’s a few harsh face shadows here. This was compounded by the lack of modeling lights in the Vivitars. Still, the city lights behind the group look kinda cool.

Even though night had fallen, the guys still wanted to do some quick single portraits with the Las Vegas lights in the background. Because of the darkness, the autofocus on my camera was useless. Manually focusing was out of the question as well, since I couldn’t see the subjects through the viewfinder. To combat this, I had each group member hold their lit up cell phone as they stepped up, so my autofocus would have something to “grab” on to. This technique has saved my behind on numerous occasions.

The nighttime single portraits wrapped up our session on Frenchman Mountain.

Actors at The West Side Theatre Guild rehearse a performance of Driving Miss Daisy in the Gerry Street Theatre in Gary, Ind., Wednesday, March 13, 2013. The lighting design for the show had to transport the audience to several different locations and time periods, utilizing the same set.

It has been suggested that, when it comes to lighting design, my forte is in the concert and musical genres. While I enjoy lighting for music immensely, I get the same satisfaction from lighting straight plays, especially in intimate venues. When I found out that longtime client The West Side Theatre Guild was producing Driving Miss Daisy in their Gerry Street Theatre (a small proscenium space that seats just over 130), I jumped at the opportunity to light it. I enjoy the subtle nuances that are possible (with both lighting as well as acting) when the front row is a mere seven feet away from the stage.

Lighting Driving Miss Daisy was challenging because all the story locations (including Daisy’s house, her son’s office, a cemetery, grocery store, nursing home, and the famous car) take place on the same set, and must be differentiated with lighting. This might seem pretty straightforward, however, the Gerry Street Theatre only has 42 dimmers. While I’ve successfully lit shows of similar scale with less than 12 dimmers, having only 42 dimmers to split between 9 acting areas and various specials required for all the story locations required a lot of thought and planning. I could only get away with one to two specials for just the most important locations, leaving the less importation locations to be lit with my basic systems only.

The color key for Driving Miss Daisy included a warm frontlight color with a hint of pink (R05) to accommodate the multiracial cast, along with an extremely subtle cool color (R3206) as its compliment, which in actuality, also served as another warm color when dimmed down. The warm feel continued for my wall toners (R302), and my toplight (L017), which I joked was inspired by looking through a glass of iced tea, something Daisy might have served to her guests? My cool toplight (R64) was used for nighttime looks as well as later in the show when Daisy becomes older and more unstable. Rounding out my systems was a no-color “kicker” wash from stage left, something I’ve brought over from my video work. I usually throw this in to help add definition to actors on shallow stages.

Click to see a larger view of the light plot, drafted using Vectorworks.

One of the specials I used for Daisy’s house was a gobo on the upstage wall, for the appearance of sunlight shining through permanent window shutters that would be found in a southern plantation style home. I also employed two no-color “slashes” on the bookshelves stage left and right, which served to highlight the books and add some dimension to these areas.

The famous driving scenes were done in a very simplistic way, with the actors miming the entire thing using furniture from the house brought downstage center. Even the car’s steering wheel was mimed. To help add some realism to these scenes, I employed a GAM Film FX unit in a Source 4 36 degree unit mounted directly overhead to add some subtle moving texture across the actors.

This was my first time using a GAM Film FX unit, and I was disappointed with how often the thin metal loop in the unit became stuck and stopped moving. The rental house warned me that the loops didn’t last too long, so I can’t say I was completely surprised that the rental loop wasn’t flawless. Luckily, WSTG master electrician Andre Campbell (pictured above) took it as a personal challenge to make the unit work, long after I’d given up. He did just that after about 45 minutes of coaxing the loop with my Leatherman.

The cemetery visit scene between Daisy and Hoke was one of the scenes I afforded myself the use of a special system (a two-fered gobo wash using 2 Source 4 36 degrees meant to appear as warm sunlight shining through trees).

An early morning power outage scene at Daisy’s house took me completely by surprise in rehearsal. It wasn’t until our first tech run-through that I saw that Daisy was going to carry a lit candle into the living room at the top of the scene. I allowed the lights to fade up slowly on an 8 count, allowing the natural candle light to briefly fill the entire theater. This kind of thing wouldn’t have worked in a larger space, but in a small theater like the Gerry Street, it worked very well!

When the older Daisy has a mental lapse, thinking she is again a youthful schoolteacher, I wanted the audience to feel lost right along with her. I made a radical shift from the warm, even palette the house had been lit with in previous scenes, instead lighting the room starkly with only the no-color kicker system and the window gobo, with just a subtle amount of frontlight fill.

I’m still on the fence about my final look of the show, where Hoke feeds Daisy Thanksgiving pie at her nursing home. When I read nursing home in the script, I immediately thought of the uninviting nursing home my great-grandmother spent her last days in. My cool color choices here reflect this, though this is really one of the most loving scenes in the entire play. I almost wish I would have incorporated some warmth here for this moment, but this worked too.

A fireball rises from an explosion at the scene of a structure fire at 526 W. Chicago Ave. in East Chicago, Ind., Saturday, March 9, 2013. The initial fire call came in at 4:33 pm. The fire eventually spread to a neighboring building to the east.

Just as I was leaving home last Saturday afternoon en route to the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater concert in Chicago (for a rare evening out as a spectator only), I stepped outside to smell the unmistakably heavy odor of a burning building. Anyone who’s ever experienced a structure fire in person knows exactly what I’m referring to. It’s a smell that immediately latches onto your hair, your skin, your clothes, and anything else you might have on you if you’re unfortunate enough to get caught in the smoke plume.

Remembering that I’d heard fire trucks pass by about 30 minutes prior, I decided to take a little detour and see if I could find the incident. It didn’t take long to discover an entire building completely engulfed in flames just a few blocks away. After returning home for my gear, I made a quick call to my photo editor at The Post-Tribune to let him know of the situation, and to tell him to expect my images. I worked the scene from a variety of vantage points and angles, including a great one high atop a new overpass just to the east of the fire.

Spectators quickly accumulated with cell phones clutched at the ends of outstretched arms, giving police a workout to maintain order in the intermediate area. Watching and listening to peoples’ reactions who’d gathered behind the barricades made watching the fire seem like a spectator sport. Is this response a primal reaction where human beings are somehow attracted to watching fire? Is it simply the interest of a spectacle shattering the ho hum everyday routine? Either way, I was right there with everyone else, documenting one of the largest fires I’ve shot here in East Chicago in the past eight years.

The front side of the fire scene, where several conjoined buildings share a common facade.

This is an uncropped sequence of one of the large explosions I photographed from the overpass on the east side of the fire. At the time, I was looking away from the scene for a new vantage point to shoot from when I heard the explosion go off. I quickly lifted my Canon 1D Mark IV and 70-200mm lens (set at 70mm) to my face with my right hand only and fired off eight frames, without any time to pre-focus or expose. Luckily, these settings were still in the correct ballpark from previous frames, and the images were solid. Note the top of the utility pole which becomes completely encased in the growing fireball.

Firefighters work to gain control of the blaze as part of a parapet wall at the front of the structure begins to collapse.

A car burns in a building adjacent to the one where the fire originally started. The fire eventually destroyed most of this structure as well.

I have the utmost respect for firefighters who have to go head first without hesitation into infernos like this. Notice the chair sitting just inside the door to the left.

Here, owners of the business at the far east (left) end of the group of buildings motion to firefighters at the other end of the block. The man on the left told me he was frustrated that firefighters had not attempted to attack the fire from the north side of the building (pictured above), and he was almost certain his business would be destroyed with the others. This is where the job of a photojournalist sometimes gets awkward. You’re often interacting with people at some of the worst moments of their lives. Being a good listener and observer is key. In my mind, I knew the firefighters were doing all they could given the hazardous explosions that continued to rock the structure, as well as the strong winds that were present, but I simply heard the frustrated business owners out and continued to document the scene without giving them any of my opinions.

East Chicago resident Albert Muskin Sr. (left) takes a picture on his phone.

An East Chicago firefighter mans an aerial ladder unit after part of a parapet wall collapsed.

A utility pole, which was enveloped in several fireballs from explosions, burns.

Fire crews remained on the scene well into the next morning, for nearly twelve hours, before the blaze was extinguished.