Photographing The Cast of 'The Wire'

I had the privilege of being the photographer of the Advanced Leadership Initiative's "Revitalizing Cities" Think Tank, held this past weekend at Harvard Law School. One of the main events at this conference was a panel featuring many members from the cast of The Wire. Some of you may know that Harvard Law School actually offers a class based on the series (side note: I regard it as the best television show ever made). That class's professor was able to wrangle the cast to join us for a moving panel about the need for change in urban areas all across the country.



All of these photos were shot using a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM II lens on a Canon 7D. A few quick notes:

• The Canon 7D's low-light performance is pretty great. Even at ISO 1600, images are still quite usable (or at least, up to my standards). The same can't be said of the Canon 50D, which I also shoot with.
• Some people argue that shooting in JPG saves time. But in a situation where you are shooting a lot of different lighting set-ups in rapid succession, even the camera pre-set white-balance options may not encompass your white-balance needs. I am glad to shoot in RAW and edit the images afterwards at my leisure.
• I've found that even with image stabilization activated, it is difficult for me to get a clear shot at a shutter speed of anything under 1/125th of a second. Hopefully, I will continue to improve this rate as time goes on.