Michael Freeman – How Did You Shoot That? – Japanese cranes

As my other article this week, on Graphic and High Key, explains, the core idea of this kind of shooting is ‘white on white’, but usually with smaller darker tones to give definition. What more natural place and situation than a winter snowscape with an animal or bird with white fur or plumage? Two things [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – The Place

This is actually the name of a shopping mall, The Place, in the heart of Beijing’s Central Business District. It’s main feature is a huge LED screen covering the entire pedestrianized  street. In fact, at 88 feet wide and over 2,000 feet long, the length of a city block, it is (or at least was [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Geisha

As you can tell from the article on Color Themes on this week’s other page, I’m drawn to the idea of capturing a distinct and unified range of color in a scene, and the purpose of that article is to show you how to recognize it and plan for it. Here was a shot that [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Mandalay Hill

I’m not completely sure why this is a favorite of mine. It probably has something to do with the very direct, but slightly enigmatic, expression on the boy’s face as he looks towards me, complicated by the different expression of his companion looking at him. On balance, I tend to take many fewer pictures of [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – As Close As It Gets

On the final leg of shooting for my latest book Tea Horse Road, I was traveling up one of the more remote valleys in southwest China, the Nujiang. In fact, it’s a gorge for most of its distance in China (lower down it becomes Burma’s Salween River), and completely un-navigable. Its Chinese name means, in [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Day to Night

This was a commission for the London Chamber of Commerce, and if you’re at all familiar with London, you’ll know that this is not the most up to date skyline. And that dates the shot to the pre-digital era, the age we used to call simply Photography. It was to be a cover shot, and the [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Darfur women

It was the year after the fighting in Darfur erupted, in Sudan. I was in the middle of a two-year book project on the country (Sudan: The Land and the People), and I had an assignment from American Vogue to shoot here in Darfur at the refugee camps. What I never saw put across effectively [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Khmer Dancers

Over on the other page we do street photography, and while this is hardly a street, and indeed it was on location for another shot, it is about moment, that essential ingredient in all unobserved photography. First, the setting and the purpose. This was part of an assignment for the Smithsonian magazine, a cover story [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – The Map Room

This is the old Map Room of the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London. A venerable institution, more or less next to the Royal Albert Hall. Built in 1830, this was the core of the Society, which built up a fantastic collection of maps, for which it became famous. Within a few years, the Society [...]

Michael Freeman: How Did You Shoot That? – Hong Kong waterfront

It was one of those 50-photographers-one-week books, this time in Hong Kong. Day-in-the-Life books are even more concentrated than Week-in-the-Lifes, but even so, everyone had a full schedule, morning till night. And that left little choice to maneuver and get the right light for each. Appointments tended to be booked by proximity rather than best [...]

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