Pigeon Culture – “Shoot & Tell”
Friday, September 25th, 2009My all-time favorite assignment was my “Pigeon Culture” project I produced during my internship with National Geographic Magazine. To put into perspective how valuable some pigeons can be, auctions are held around the world where pigeons are bought and sold for over $200,000 and races are held in some countries with a top prize of $1 million to the winning flyer. I explain more in depth in my multimedia presentation about the amazing and beautiful sport of racing pigeons. I would like to share my techniques, settings, and my approach to three of my 10,000+ images I took during the assignment.
Butch and His Prized Trophies
I was kindly invited to Butch Gentile’s home in Spring Hill, Florida for dinner with two of his racing friends. I arrived and Butch was cooking swordfish with no shirt on. As the four of us sat down to eat, Butch still had no shirt on and I knew I had a great opportunity for a photograph. After dinner, I asked if he could show me some of his prized pigeon racing awards. (more…)


In this picture, Rob is using the large reflector to diffuse the light coming in from the skylight and the small reflector to cast a shadow on the back of peanuts.
As you can see, this allowed the peanuts in the foreground and in focus to really pop while the darkened background would allow the cover text to read better in the layout.
Rob used 
























