Sandro: Bigger than Life
"It happened because he was nice enough to give me a few extra minutes," Sandro says of this photograph of New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter.
And it also happened because the photographer and his subject had developed a rapport during the commercial shoot that preceded this portrait.
"Nike hired me to shoot a campaign for their Michael Jordan line of clothing," Sandro says. "I photographed Warren Sapp of the Oakland Raiders, boxer Roy Jones, Jr. and Derek Jeter. You basically have about three minutes to get the advertising shot. Derek was done and ready to leave, and I asked him if he'd mind sitting for a quick portrait."
At that point you can't fool around—you've got to be quick, precise and professional. "I grabbed my lights, put them where I wanted them, directed him a little and shot with the F5 and the 85mm Nikkor."
Sandro knew the shot he wanted. "I wanted to make him look heroic. He is one of the most prominent baseball players, certainly one of the most recognizable faces in baseball, and I wanted to make him look even bigger than that, bigger than life, but also with a real, gritty look—a superstar, but also a person who's worked hard to get there. It's very dramatic lighting but not beauty lighting."
Sandro loves the mood that the image creates, and says that a lot of the picture's success has to do with the film he used. "I used a film that's no longer available—PolaPan, an instant positive black-and-white transparency film that Polaroid stopped making a year or so ago. I called every camera store in the country to get what they had—I still have about 50 rolls left.
"I love the grain of it—it looks like you might have digitized a print and then added a bunch of noise to the image. I thought it would be wonderful to show Derek Jeter in a gritty, dark manner rather than what most people do with him, which is a glamour look."
