Professional photographer Vincent Laforet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the New York Times. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, Life, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and Paris Match, among other publications. His photos have been exhibited at the International Center of Photography in New York City and Visa Pour L'Image in Perpignan.
When Vincent Laforet prepares for a shoot, he knows exactly how he is going to expose his shots. It is this expertise that has made him one of the most recognizable photographers in the world. Well-known for his aerial photography and the vibrant colors that emanate from his works, Vincent draws on his past experience shooting on chrome slides to get the perfect exposure for his digital images.
"When I first started out as a professional, I was a sports photographer," said Vincent, describing his experience. "It was very fast-paced and given that I was mostly outdoors, the light was constantly changing. Since I was shooting slide film and often using remote cameras, I needed to predict ahead of time how the light might change, and to expose correctly in order to get the best possible images."
Vincent has carried over his exposure expertise from shooting slides to shooting digital, where the technology is more tolerant, allowing some latitude to get the correct exposure. However, that does not mean that an overexposed photo can be easily fixed. "If a shot is overexposed, the shooter won't be able to recover the highlights," Vincent points out. "The photographer needs to err towards underexposing the shot, usually by a stop or 2/3 of a stop. By underexposing, the photographer is getting all the necessary details and highlights in the shot, and anything that needs to be enhanced can be done in post-production. Overexposing a shot basically eliminates the possibility of enhancing the image's highlights later."
It is this technique that has allowed Vincent to capture the impressive shots for which he is known. By underexposing his shots, Vincent is allowing his camera to get as much information possible into the file created by his Canon 1Ds. He can then do all of the editing needed after he is done shooting. But the key to being able to capture all of this information is that a photographer has to know his camera's limitations. "After all of the preparations involved with a shoot - from measuring the light to dealing with the subjects to setting up the camera - the only thing left to do is take pictures, and part of getting the best pictures is knowing what the camera is capable of ahead of time," explains Vincent. "When in doubt, the shooter should underexpose by 1/3 of a stop and make sure that there are no spikes on the camera's histogram all the way to the left or right."
In addition to saving time in his workflow by underexposing his shots, Vincent also relies on Lexar Professional CompactFlash memory cards to store his photos. The high-capacity, high-speed cards are the perfect media for storing images, especially when shooting as much as Vincent. "Since I capture in RAW, each of the photos I take is between 12 and 20MB in size," Vincent notes. "I need memory cards that can not only store all of these images, but also write that much data quickly so I don't have to wait before I can take the next shot. I sometimes even download the data from my cards to my laptop through the Lexar Professional CF card reader while in the air. I can't wait for my cards to move data - you can't push a deadline back because you're waiting for your cards to copy over to your laptop - so I ultimately have to end the shoot early to allow for this and that doesn't make any sense at all for me. Every minute I lose in my workflow is a minute against my deadline - and ultimately a minute against my shooting time."
Of course, all of Vincent's preparation pays off in post-production, where his exposure techniques reduce the number of unusable images, thus improving his workflow and leaving him more time to shoot. "Because my images have all the data I need, I'm able to quickly and easily enhance my highlights and deliver a brilliant, color-rich picture," says Vincent. "My goal is to take images that surprise people, images that people don't necessarily expect. By using these techniques, I find that I can make my shots more memorable."
