The Art of Selling the Story

Professional Blog for Dan Anderson, freelance photographer and videographer

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A Quick Update

Finally got around to updating my portfolio and wanted to do a quick post about the variety of work included. The last 5 months of 2025 were very busy for me (I am not complaining) so I was not able to write up any blog post at the time.  Depending on my schedule I hope to have a few more deeper updates written over the next month.

Award Winning Photography

Back in summer of 2024 The Knights of Columbus reached out to see if I could photograph a Eucharist procession in Long Beach, Mississippi for the Catholic organization’s magazine Columbia.  The church being featured was located right across from the beach on the Gulf Coast and the procession, involving the Blessing of the Sea, took place close enough to sunset for the light to be solid.  It was a good shoot and my editor seemed happy with the photos.  A little over a year later and the same client reaches out not only to hire me for another assignment, but to let me know that my work from the previous year has won an award!  

Photo by Dan Anderson

The image above won the 2025 Best News Photograph for Catholic Print Media . While I was welcome there to photograph the event it was a religious ceremony and it’s important to be respectful and not get in the way.  I had to stand in the water to get this shot, but after 20 years of taking pictures along the gulf coast getting water and sand in my sandals during a shoot is old hat. Of course I decided to add the image to my news photography gallery.

Shooting Still Photos for a Commercial

August of 2025 I was contacted by representatives of Brawl, an international advertising and marketing agency based out of the United Kingdom.  They were putting together a commercial shoot for Orlyadeyo, a pharmaceutical product used to treat hereditary angioedema, in Dothan, Alabama and wanted me to capture still images for the campaign as the video teamed worked on the motion side.  We would be taking “lifestyle’ type images during the two day shoot that would center around a young girl who was taking the drug for treatment.

Photo by Dan Anderson

I’ve worked as a still photographer as a part of a commercial video production in the past and it was my second pharmaceutical shoot as well. It was a good way to utilize my skills from work as a unit set still photographer on film and tv productions.  It’s always a good time when I get to work with other creative professionals and this was no exception.  I was really happy with my results from the shoot and edited some of my favorite images from it here along with some of the ad copy my photos were used in.

Hybrid Shooting for Southern Poverty Law Center

For the second year in a row I was asked by Southern Poverty Law Center to document the Truth, Poverty and Democracy Tour in Mississippi.  The event takes place over multiple days and involves a bus tour across the state of Mississippi with stops highlighting a variety of social issues people in the state are facing.  The year before I was only hired for one day of coverage, so I was overjoyed when they decided to bring me on for two days this time.

Video by Dan Anderson/ SPLC

The video above was shot and edited by myself for SPLC and does a good job of summarizing the variety of events covered over two days.  It takes a lot of effort trying to juggle both video and stills at the same time but luckily that’s a skill I’ve had plenty of practice with over the past decade.  I plan on doing a deeper dive into the spinning plate trick that is shooting both stills and video as a one-person-band (hence the term hybrid) in a documentary setting, so look for that blog post sometime in the near future.

Odds and Ends

Photo by Dan Anderson/ ZUMA Images

With the exception of my Mardi Gras gallery that I posted back in February (check the previous blog post for more on that), that pretty much covers most of the major additions to my portfolio. There are a few additions to my Entertainment gallery that you can check out here.  I also added a few new images to my Sports gallery this year as well, although I wasn’t able to cover as many New Orleans Saints games as I have in past seasons due to my busy fall schedule.  Hope you enjoy the new work and I look forward to making more great images this year!

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MARDI GRAS ON THE GULF COAST

photo by Dan Anderson/ Visit Mobile

Once again it’s Mardi Gras season on the Gulf Coast.  I have already shot three different Mardi Gras parades here in Mobile, Alabama this season and am currently preparing to shoot the final day of celebrations tomorrow during Fat Tuesday.  Even when that's done and over with a it will still feel like I am in Mardi Gras as I will be catching up on editing the images over the next week.

photo by Dan Anderson/ University of South Alabama

Like last year I was able to photograph the Jaguar Marching Band for the University of South Alabama.  You can check out the images from this year’s shoot here.  It’s always a joy to follow the marching band on the parade route and this year was no exception. 

photo by Dan Anderson/ EPA

Over the years I’ve been meaning to collect some of my favorite Mardi Gras images together in a gallery for my website. I’ve finally took the time to put them together  with photos from both New Orleans and Mobile festivities. I believe the oldest images in the gallery date back to 2013, although I first started shooting Mardi Gras regularly back when I got really into photography in college around 2002 (and those images were all shot in film!).  Feel free to check out the collection of images here.  While not totally comprehensive, I believe they are good illustrations of the country’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration here in Mobile, Alabama, and it’s largest in New Orleans.

photo by Dan Anderson/ EPA

I realize that this blog post is shorter than most of the ones I have published.  I also realize it’s been months since I have been able to update the blog at all.  August of 2025 hit and I was so busy with shoots that I did not have time to do a proper update (for the month of October I was so busy I never had a full day off) and things didn’t really calm down until right before the holidays.  I’ve used January to catch up on some busy work, but once the Mardi Gras rush and edits are behind I hope to have the time to update more of my portfolio along with writing a few blog post about some of the projects I worked on in the second half of last year.

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TRAINWRECK: MY EXPERIENCE COVERING THE CARNIVAL TRIUMPH IN 2013

Over a month ago Netflix released a segment in their documentary anthology series, titled “Trainwreck”, about the infamous Carnival Triumph that was stranded due to a mechanical failure and had to be towed into port.  You can read more about it here (although if you scroll down to check one of the photo credits you might see a familiar name.). While I didn’t work on the documentary, I did cover the story as it happened over a decade ago so I thought it would be an interesting prism to view covering a news story as a photojournalist.

LEAD UP: IMMERSED IN A DIFFERENT CARNIVAL

While the Carnival Triumph was stranded in the gulf, the residents of the gulf coast were mostly caught up in celebrating the final days of Mardi Gras.  I was covering New Orleans Mardi Gras for the first time (Mobile, Alabama has it’s own Mardi Gras that I had photographed for years) so my focus was more on shooting the parade and the partying.  Sure I saw a it pop up on my social media feed but being assigned Mardi Gras for the European PressPhoto Agency for the first time I was more worried about dealing with the logistics and crowds of what is essentially a city wide street party. It’s kind of funny looking back on it now after having covered Carnival celebrations for over a decade in New Orleans, but that’s a blog post for another day.

Krewe of Bacchus Parade in New Orleans, Louisiana USA on February 10, 2013. photo by Dan Anderson/ EPA

My memory is a little hazy on this but I believe the story started to come more into focus for me on February 11, 2013 (the day before Fat Tuesday).  I had taken a much needed break from two straight days of Mardi Gras so I could rest up for my final day of coverage on Fat Tuesday. It had been announced the Carnival Triumph would be towed into my home base of Mobile, Alabama as it had a cruise ship terminal that was not currently in use.  Sources were unsure if it would get into Mobile Bay on Wednesday or Thursday, but this was enough info to start sending out messages to different clients to see if they were interested in any coverage. Of course I didn’t start getting return emails and phone calls until I was in the middle of covering the parades on Fat Tuesday morning in downtown New Orleans, but such is the life of a freelance photojournalist at times. 

I agreed to cover the story for Agence France-Presse (commonly referred to as AFP).  The ship was not projected to arrive till Thursday and although I am sure all the passengers would have loved to have been off the boat ASAP it was nice to have a day off to rest and prepare between coverage of two very different stories in two different cities.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY: HURRY UP AND WAIT FOR THE POOP CRUISE

Of course this meant that the Carnival Triumph would arrive on February 14, 2013.  While the story was developing all morning there really wasn’t much for me to cover from a photographic standpoint until early afternoon.  Some of the corporate members of Carnival Cruise line came into town for a press conference at the cruise terminal. I shot some of the talking heads there including Terry Thornton, Senior Vice President of Carnival Cruise Lines, that you can check out below.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

“Heads at press conferences” can be somewhat standard coverage on many a news assignment, but I think I did a decent job of capturing the look of “damn we messed up” from the VP.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

After shooting this I immediately edited the photos and sent them to the wire in my car then headed south towards Dauphin Island, Alabama.  Word was that the ship would be making its way up Mobile Bay during the late afternoon so I drove along Dauphin Island Parkway to see if I could spot the ship from land.  The ship came in during golden hour, so I had the orange sun light adding some lagniappe to the photo for me.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

In many cases like this some news organizations might charter a boat or rent a plane or helicopter to get photos of the ship coming in.  That was not in the cards for me (and also right before the complete prevalence of drone photography) so I leaned on my 300mm telephoto lens plus some cropping to grab some images of the Triumph as it first entered Alabama waters.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

SOMETIMES IT’S WHO YOU KNOW

After sending those images to AFP I got a call from a colleague in town who’s wife worked for the Port Authority.  He said she could get us access to an area of Mobile Bay that was on the opposite end of the shore from the cruise terminal.  I would not be able to get access to there on my own so I jumped at the chance.  On a story like this you sometimes get every news organization covering the same thing from the same location, which can lead to everyone’s coverage looking similar.  If I could get a different angle on the story I was happy to take it. Considering how slow moving the huge ship was I had more than enough time to make my way back to the other side of the bay and wait for the ship to land and the passengers to disembark.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

A CIRCUS WAITING FOR A CARNIVAL

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

By the time I arrived on the other end of the bay it was 9:30 at night and the full media circus had arrived at the cruise terminal.  Multiple news networks with trucks and other still photographers and video team were swarming the place.  I hung out with a few of my friends as we all waited for the ship to make its slow arrival to port.

(left to right) Myself, Lyle Ratliff and JD Mercer waiting for the cruise ship to dock. photo by Jon Hauge

EXIT AND RELIEF

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

As soon as the passengers made their way off the ship we were in full media scrum mode as we all started getting whatever images we could.  Carnival was doing its best to try and control the narrative on this by keeping the media area away from the passengers. They tried to guide those who had no one waiting for them in Mobile onto busses to take them to hotels in a different state.  They couldn’t really control individual passengers and what they would say as some ran right to the media area to talk about the troubles on board the cursed cruise.

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

Kendall Jenkins, the woman above enthusiastically kissing the ground, came right to the media area to comment and take questions.  

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

I ended up editing and captioning 25 images that I sent off to AFP over the course of the day, with the metadata from my last images reading at 10:50 pm (with editing I probably didn’t wrap up till closer to midnight).  

photo by Dan Anderson/ AFP

Looking back almost a decade later I think these images are a good example of covering breaking news for a wire service.  As photojournalist we all want to make interesting and unique photos to share important stories of the day. Sometimes though the story itself and the limitations of coverage boils down to being in the right place at the right time and having the patience and energy to let the story unfold as it will. You just have your camera their when it happens.

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"The Life of Chuck" and a breakdown of covering a film set as a unit photographer

About a year and a half ago I had the opportunity to work on the new feature film “The Life of Chuck.” Being a horror fan I was excited by the opportunity to work on a film based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Mike Flanagan, even though the story was more “Stand by Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption” then “IT” or “Carrie.”

My first 3 days on set gave me a wealth of material to photograph as the main focus on those days was a public dance sequence involving adult Chuck, played by Tom Hiddleston. 

The sequence was filmed throughout the week close to noon to help keep the lighting consistent day to day.  I’ll be honest and say that I probably overshot this sequence on my first day. Hiddleston was really throwing himself into this dance sequence and it was infectious among the crew and large group of extras we had surrounding him.  With all that it’s hard not to get swept up in the moment and just tell myself “shoot first and pick out selects later.”

As much I love having a large open action scene to photograph on set, the visibly “big” moments aren’t the only place my attention has to be on set. Relatively quieter scenes can have just as much if not more importance then the visual “bang-bang” of a dance number.

“Behind the scenes” photos are another core requirement when working as a unit still photographer.  While giving people a view behind the curtain of the show, they also serve an important documentary function.

On my last week on set I was able to capture photos of the director working with his young son Cody, who briefly plays Chuck in the film for the part about the character’s early childhood.

Getting a photo of the director working with any of his children on set should be a no-brainer for any first year photo student paying attention, but it was doubly important months after the the movie had wrapped when Mike Flanagan was quoted in multiple interviews saying one of his motivations in making this film was for his son.

WE LOVE A GOOD IN CAMERA EFFECT

The second week of shooting I spent two days on set working overnights in a suburban neighborhood in Baldwin County, Alabama. The scene takes place at night right before the end of the world. The power goes out in the neighborhood, replaced with a glowing animation coming from every window in the neighborhood houses showing Hiddleston’s Chuck and thanking him for “39 Great Years.”

Almost every production these days has some level of CGI augmentation taking place at least a few scenes, usually with blue or green screens set up across the set.  While “Life of Chuck” has CGI in it at some points, for this scene the filmmakers went all practical and placed large plasma screen TVs in the windows of the neighborhood homes.  The TVs were vertically propped up on wooden stands and play a loop as actor Chiwetel Ejiofor runs to the home of his ex-wife, played by Karen Gillan.

Shooting unit stills I’m always excited when a visual effect is live on set as I will have more production stills to turn in for future promotion.  Call me old school, but I got a kick out of vertical video being one of the final harbingers of the apocalypse.

Speaking of “in camera,” one of the great things about this job is that you get to lean on the lighting design of the director of photography.  Our D.P. Eben Bolter, ASC and BSC, helped create images that were beautiful. To stay close to the fidelity of the colors in the scene I would usually manual set the color temperature to what ever settings he chose for the cinema cameras.  While there is a lot more that goes into the look of a film image then CT, this at least keeps it in the ball park and prevents any colors from getting accidentally averaged out by auto white balance.

One of the joys of being on a film set is being able to work with and meet a variety of creative people, both in front of and behind the camera.  As I stated earlier, being a horror fan and being able to work on project from Mike Flanagan and Stephen King felt like Christmas came early that year.  Even though it’s not a horror movie, it was one of the better projects I’ve worked on over the years and it produced a wonderful film.  

I’ve worked with a variety of well known talent throughout the years, but this was also the first project where I had some bragging rights when it comes to my 10 year old step daughter.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have pictures of people like Robert De Niro and Nicolas Cage from multiple projects but my step daughter doesn’t have any real reference point for those actors.  She does know who the hell Loki, Nebula and Luke Skywalker are though.  If you had gone back in time and told Star Wars obsessed me that I would day get to take photos of Mark Hamill, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Two people I unexpectedly ran into during my first week were Eric Vespe and Scott Wampler, longtime film bloggers and podcast host of The Kingcast.  The director had them on set a few days partially as a media set visit, but he also recorded some voice work were they can be head on the radio early in the movie along with throwing them in as background extras in one shot.  I’ve been reading their film criticism since my college year on different sites over the past 20 years and was a regular listener of The Kingcast. I didn’t recognize them at first but after overhearing them talk the light bulb went off in my head. I chatted with them over one of our lunch breaks and also made sure to frame a still shot to make sure you could you can see them in the background while Hiddleston’s Chuck was grabbing a coffee on a park bench.

Sadly, Scott Wampler would unexpectedly pass away about 6 months after filming.  Flanagan would go on to dedicate the film to Wampler in the credits and the shot of them in the background would run with his final story on their set visit that ran in Fangoria right before the film’s release.  

The first release of images came around the time the film made it’s premiere at The Toronto International Film Festival in 2024 as a part of a first look feature in Vanity Fair.  

Their was also a flurry of different photos that ended up on different social media accounts tied to the film, so it was always personally exciting for me whenever I opened up my Instagram account and found new images posted from the film’s account.

While I got my image on the official poster for the film, the cherry on top for me involved the same design ending up on the promotional tie in release of the Stephen King short story the movie was based on.

I was really happy with my work on the film and enjoyed seeing the completed film almost a year and half later in theaters (of course my opinion is a bit biased on this).  Being a life long movie nerd, it was exciting when I worked on my first film set almost a decade and half ago.  That excitement and love of film has stayed with me almost every time I’ve started on a new project over the years and I can’t wait till I get the opportunity to work on a new film production in the future.

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Summer Fun!

Advertising Shoot for a Local Waterpark

Two years ago I was contacted by Portside Advertising in Fairhope, Alabama about doing a one day advertising shoot for Waterville, USA.  It is a waterpark and amusement park located near the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I jumped at the opportunity considering the variety of fun photos I could make of people enjoying the different water rides.  The only issue is that I had to work quick.

We arrived before opening to shoot some scenes both indoors and outdoors, but we were not going to “own” the park for the day. Having to get a set of shoots done before opening compounded with shooting advertising images with talent while customers went about their day meant I would not have time for any lighting set ups and had to rely mostly on available light to create the images (with an assistant and a 5-and-1 reflector helping me out on some shots).  

I toyed with the idea of using my assistant as a roving light stand for some of the images, but I wanted him to be my certified “dry set of hands” I could hand off gear to along with keeping an eye on my equipment throughout the day.

While making images of the Top Golf area indoors and the outside bar went well, the photos I was really excited to make involved the different water riders at the park.

We ran some of our kid models through a wave-riding simulator they had (which I am sure they all HATED).  It was a good chance to make some fun photos that also included the park’s branding in them.

Like most water parks, there is a wave pool for people to enjoy.  For this I used a waterproof dive bag I keep around for special occasions.  I am not credited to scuba dive, but living close to the ocean means the opportunity to make photos in the water does come up from time to time.  I used the bag with a combination of an older camera I keep as a back up (in case the dive bag has a leak I won’t hose any of my newer equipment ) along with a wide prime lens since the bag doesn’t leave must room to operate a zoom. Of course I got right in the wave pool with the kids for the photos as well.

I also made a few images of two of our adult models acting as parents watching the kids play while enjoying the sun.

After this I took a series of photos of some of the kids and adults riding a big waterslide down into a splash pool. I couldn’t soak all of my models since I needed them dry for later in day (although we made an exception for some of the kids since they were easier to clean up and turn around). Besides, it would have been cruel to not let them have fun out there.

These were challenging images for several reasons. Since the water park was open at this point we had deal with cycling through our models while paying customers were waiting in line for the slides.  Also the slide was really high up a large set of stairs, giving us a time delay between set ups for the shots.  We could really only budget time for two or three rides though the slide.  I leaned on my trusty telephoto prime lens I usually keep for sporting events to make up for the reach.  Even though I don’t like the idea of “spray and pray” when it comes to shooting fast action, I cranked my shots per second up to 15 images since I would only have a few takes to get the shots I wanted. One great thing about these images is that I didn’t have to get any of the talent to “act” while riding the slides.

After we finished with photos from different water rides we sent some of our models to dry off and change while the client and I scouted a few locations to shoot images of our model “family” playing miniature golf and racing go carts.

It was almost noon, so I tried to use a few miniature golf areas that were shaded so I could avoid the harsh outdoor light.

The images ended up being used on social media, the park’s website and print ads.  They also ended up on a series of billboards along the highway on the way to Gulf Shores.

Billboard designs by Portside Advertising

Fun fact: I completely missed out on seeing the billboards until a family trip to the beach a few months ago.  I hadn’t made the drive to the beach since my photo shoot at Waterville and completely missed out on them being posted. 

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Editorial Portraits for the Washington Post

Back in late April I accepted an assignment from the Washington Post to shoot a series of portraits for a story on a Pensacola, Florida based business owner.  Emily Ley is owner of Simplified, a stationary company that she runs out of her home on the Florida Gulf Coast.  This wasn’t a lifestyle feature about independent business owner as Ley was suing the administration of US President Donald Trump over his tariff policy.  It has disrupted her business in the worst way and caused the cost of her suppliers to skyrocket over night.

Tear sheet from the Washington Post

I packed my roller kit with a few cameras, lenses and my small flash kit.  I wasn’t sure what the location was going to be like till I arrived, so I wanted to be prepared.  After arriving at her home (she was lovely to work with btw) and seeing her home office I probably could have gotten by with half the gear I brought.  Her home office was in a corner room of her house with open windows on two of the four sides.  The shoot was held at midday so the sun was directly overhead meaning mostly nice soft light was bouncing in from the windows.  I built a few lights just in case, but I probably could have gotten by with just a reflector on a small stand.

Alternate photo with a small flash with a small soft box for the main light with ambient window light as the fill.

For most of the shots I chose a combination of both.  I had one small strobe in a bounce-umbrella that operates like a small octobox on one stand and my trusty Five-in-one circular reflector on the other.  

For the photos above (yes it's the color version of the published image) I placed the light just out of frame camera right as a separation light and had the reflector just camera left of me catching the light of the flash and bouncing it onto her face fro some fill.

Her office wasn't the only place with a good flood of natural, soft light. We shot several images in the kitchen to vary it up. For the above image I had my reflector off to camera right for a kiss of fill, but it the distance it was at it would not have killed me to shoot without it. I really like the soft highlights on her hair from the left and right windows.

For this image I ditched the modifiers and went with all available light.

I shot some alternates of her smiling just in case. On their own they are solid images, but considering the tone of the story they would be more appropriate for a lifestyle piece on Emily's company and not a feature story about her business facing difficulty from the new tariffs policy.

I only used a reflector off to camera left for fill on here face with the windows in the back and front providing mostly enough light for the image.

I even took some images outside on her back porch. The sun provided a nice highlight to the camera right side of here face. I used my flash with a bounce umbrella to camera left for my main light. I kept a ND filter on my 23mm prime lens to keep my depth of field low and my shutter speed within sink range. I could have gone with high speed sync for my light, but I prefer to avoid it when possible to save me on recycling time for my flash.

The shoot went well. Not including travel time I was at her home for maybe two hours (including set up and break down) and immediately went to a coffee shop about ten minutes away to edit and send the images so my editor could look them through over the weekend.

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TEAR SHEETS: "THE LIFE OF CHUCK"

Back in the earlier days of my career (and still to this day) one of the things I enjoyed after an assignment or project was seeing what kind of “play” my photos would receive. Where were they used?  How large were they printed?  It’s not always an indication of how well you did on the assignment but it’s great when your images can get in front of as many eyeballs as possible (in both digital and print).

A few weeks ago the latest promotional poster for “Life of Chuck” was released by Neon and it features one of my unit stills of actor Tom Hiddleston dancing.  It can be the front page of a newspaper or the post for a film, but I always get a thrill from seeing my photography out in the wild.

I can’t go into to much detail about the project till after the film is released, but you can read more about if you go back to my first blog post.  The film’s trailer was also recently released and everyone can check out the film, based on a story by Stephen King and directed by Mike Flanagan, this June in theaters.

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Photographer's Spotlight with Wonderful Machine

A few months ago as a part of my first post on this blog, I mentioned a shoot I did for AAA Explored Magazine last summer. It was a profile of three different oyster farmers in south Alabama. I even added the photo below to my Editorial Portrait section.

It was a fun assignment and the good folks over at Wonderful Machine released a Photographer's Spotlight about my work on the story that you can read here.

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Welcome to The Boom-Boom!

It’s Mardi Gras season here on the Gulf Coast which means there are Carnival celebrations occurring from Louisiana all the way to Pensacola, Florida. Parades, parties in the streets, beads, costumes and general revelry throughout provide plenty of opportunities for photographers to make great photos on and off the parade route.  

I’ve been covering Mardi Gras since my Junior year of college back in 2002 (and shot it on film!) and the following year covering Mardi Gras parades was my “trial by fire” assignment when I first started shooting as a freelancer for the Mobile Press Register back in the early years of my career.  

I’ve covered Mardi Gras in both Mobile, Alabama (the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in the US) and New Orleans (the largest and most well known in the country) for over 20 years.  Each year I try and find a way to challenge myself or just give myself another angel on coverage.  Usually this involves different combinations of what gear to shoot with plus what shooting position I want to take.  There is a long list of ways to approach coverage of just the parades alone and if I am being honest it was difficult for me to find a focus for this post the past few weeks.  Luckily an email from one of my clients about a Mardi Gras related assignment gave me a more narrow focus for this story.

The University of South Alabama reached out to me the week of the Conde Cavaliers Parade, the first parade to roll through downtown Mobile during Carnival season.  The Jaguar Marching Band would be performing and marching throughout the parade route and they wanted me to follow them the majority of the route and focus on the performance.  Marching bands from high school’s and colleges across the city and the country come to perform in the parades both here and in New Orleans.  This has earned the Mardi Gras parades the local nick name of “The Boom-Boom” since many of the locals like to show up and support many of the marching bands, some attached to school they themselves or their children attend.

Narrowing down the both organized yet chaotic energy of a Mardi Gras down to just following one marching band gave me more time to play and let moments happen (as apposed to some parade coverage where I am just trying shoot a little bit over everything).  Even though my focus was narrow I had to get their a few hours in advance to both find a parking place and to meet the band as they were off loading from the bus and preparing to march.

I wanted to keep my gear light since I was going to be walking miles along the parade route with the band but still decided to shoot with 3 camera so I didn’t have to worry about changing lenses all the time.  

I was able to easily make photos using available light as the Jaguar marching band warmed up before the parade, but by the time the parade rolled it was evening and most of my available light would come from street lights, buildings and the occasional flood lights positioned at various points on the route.  

Using a flash to cover night parades has been a staple since I started shooting Mardi Gras, do partially to the limitations of digital cameras 20 years ago (and myself not owning a lens that with an aperture wider then f2.8) but I’ve learned to lean into into although modern digital cameras can easily handle higher ISOs and I now own a solid set of f1.4 or wider prime lenses.  

(top image with on camera flash. second image with fast prime only using street lights. both good shots but different vibes.)

The trick, which I learned from the a few Mobile Press Register staff photographers who mentored back in the day, was to shoot with a relatively low shutter speed (I prefer 1/30 of a second ) and setting my camera to rear curtain sync flash.  This will cause the flash to fire near the end of the exposure, allowing some light trails to be seen from the dragged shutter but still producing a sharp image of the subject.  You’ll need to set the power setting and ASA of your camera manually but the effect not only allows for an interesting mix of ambient light and camera flash but can help communicate the kinetic energy of being in and experiencing a Mardi Gras parade. It also helps to use an ultra-wide zoom lens to really get into the action of the moments.

As I mentioned earlier modern digital cameras perform much better in low light compared to the early days.  Combined with prime lenses you could shoot a majority of the night parades with available light, although a few spaces on the route are black holes.  The latest mirrorless camera’s also make it a lot safer to shoot inside the Mardi Gras parade route as you can just look at the back of the LCD screen while maintaining situational awareness.  You still need to keep your head on a swivel as one of the support crew had to stop me from almost walking backwards into a curb as I was taking photos.

Just like the band I fell into a rhythm as we progressed through the route.  When the light was good or just dramatic I could shoot on my 23mm or 16mm 1.4 on my neck camera or my 75mm1.2 for my telephoto like shots.  Sometime it would be street lights or the blue flicker of police motorcycles up and down the route.  

The on camera flash was great for when the action got a little chaotic or there was just a drop off in ambient light in the area.  

In the end this was a fun shoot which is something I don’t always say of an event I’ve been covering for over 20 years.  This was just one of the first parades of the season.  I’m currently making plans to shoot some parades in Mobile over the weekend and will be driving into New Orleans early Fat Tuesday morning to cover celebrations there.

[danandersonphoto]

Snow Days

While there is presently a winter surge hitting the northern half of the country, last month the Gulf Coast had a snow storm that shut down much of the areas from New Orleans to Pensacola for a few days.  Warnings of blizzard like conditions popped up on my phone the morning of and here in Mobile, Alabama our 130 year old record for single day snow fall was broken with up to 7.5 inches of snow recorded.  

These aren’t the kind of weather conditions most people on the coast are use to experiencing (myself included), so of course I wanted to get out and experience it while grabbing some good old weather features with my camera.  I’ve experienced extreme weather in the forms of more hurricanes then I can easily name and some tornadoes as well but this was the first honest snow storm of my adult life. 

I didn’t want to get on the roads in this storm partially because I lack all wheel drive on my car but also because I was worried how all the other drivers would handle the rare snow-and-ice covered roads, so I decided just walking around my area of town would have to do.  The last extreme winter storm that made it’s way through the southeast was about 4 years ago.  I was working on a film production in south Georgia at the time and while I had enough cold weather clothing to get through a week and a half of night shoots in freezing temps without getting sick, I wasn’t exactly comfortable.  “Never again” I told myself and started stocking up on some winter gear essentials thanks to a few end of season sales.

Although I was layered up underneath it, the puffer jacket from Eddie Bower kept me nice and toasty while some great photography-oriented winter gloves from Vallerret made it easy to operate my cameras.  My sneaker boots from Forsake are waterproof so combined with the thickest pair of Smart Wool socks I own I was able to keep my feet warm even when covered in snow.

My camera’s needed cover as well, so I had a basic Manfrotto rain cover over my Fuji Pro 3 with a nice 23mm 1.4 prime for my close shots and a solid ThinkTank cover on my Fuji XH2s with 50-140mm 2.8 for those compressed shots of the snow falling.

As I’ve said earlier it’s rare I have to photograph in conditions like this, so being able to take my winter gear and cameras for a walk let me safely test drive shooting in heavy snow conditions (especially if I ever find myself on several weeks of overnight shooting again during a winter surge). Snow, especially a snow storm, is so rare down here that I kept making excuses to go back outside and walk around the neighborhood looking for photos (logging over 6 miles according to my Apple Watch). I ended making a solid set of 17 images that I sent to ZumaPress for licensing. I wish I could experience weather like this like this at least once a year, allowing winter (which feels more like spring/ fall most months on the coast) to feel like a real season. It was really a joy to experience for myself and I know all the kids in the area who got out of school for the week will be talking about it for years to come.

[danandersonphoto]

January 2025 Portfolio Update

Hello readers and welcome to the blog of Mobile, Alabama based freelance photojournalist and union still photographer Dan Anderson.  I usually try and make some update to my portfolio based on the the work that’s been released over the past 6 months, so lets get into it.

My life with “The Life Of Chuck”

Back in fall of 2023 I was lucky enough to come on board as the unit set still photographer on director Mike Flanagan’s feature adaptation of author Stephen King’s “Life of Chuck” while it was filming in south Alabama.  As with most feature films I’ve worked on, I couldn’t share my work until it was officially released by production so I was happy to see a first look piece by Vanity Fair published in September of 2024 before the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.  It’s a great write up on the film that you can read here, but it also featured a strong set of unit stills and behind the scenes photos taken by myself during production. The film would go on to win the People’s Choice Award at TIFF and is set to be given a theatrical release by NEON in May of 2025.  I’m really looking forward to catching this film in theaters and hope to share more of my unit stills from this film once it’s released but feel free to check out some of the released stills I’ve added here.

Lifestyle photos for a local law firm

This past summer Hummingbird Ideas commissioned me to photographer a series of lifestyle stills for a commercial photography job for Hedge Copeland P.C. based in Mobile, Alabama.  It was a fun, creative shoot for some local clients to use on their website and other marketing materials.  I utilized a series of small strobes to help me light the interiors quickly and without the help of an assistant (which helped keep us on budget).  I added a gallery of some of my favorite images here under the corporate/ commercial section of my website.

Football and Oysters

Summer of 2024 AAA Explorer Magazine commissioned me to photograph three different oyster farming operations in south Alabama for a feature story they ran in the fall.  It involved having to wade out into waist high water with my camera gear to document the oyster farming while using a small off camera flash to shoot some environmental portraits.  It was mostly a fun adventure taking photos in the water (at least after I knew my gear was securely on me) and I added one of the photos to my editorial portrait section that you can check out here.  Late summer also brought the beginning of the NFL preseason and the beginning of my 16th season covering the New Orleans Saints.  It was not the Saints best season, but I did add a few of the images from this past year to the sports section of my portfolio that you can check out here.

Moving Pictures with the SPLC

In 2023 the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center commissioned me to help produce a series of videos for their partners in Mississippi and Louisiana,  The videos were primarily interview based productions, shot in the traditional horizontal view but also re-edited and re-composed for vertical video to be shared on social media.  The first video concerns a historically African-American elementary school that locals in Louisiana are trying to save.  The second was a series of issues-based video featuring local community leaders urging people to get out and vote in the Mississippi state election in 2023. I shot and edited multiple videos where each community leader talks about a specific topic while encouraging people to go vote, while I also edited a supercut video featuring all of the leaders edited together.  Both can be viewed under my video section here.  I shot a few more videos for SPLC in Mississippi in 2024 as well and hope to share more of those in the future.

[danandersonphoto]

Coming soon..

Changing this to a work diary/ bts blog for my photo and video work (to be linked in to my website as well). Should have a reasonable post soon!