Day 1: Swimming

Spent the day on (and under the pool deck), an exciting day with a couple broken world records in Men’s 100m breast and Women’s 400im. Here’s a few of my underwater photos, which I was happy with. While shooting for Sports Illustrated at Rio, our images are being directly ingested from our cameras as they are shooting through an ethernet cable into their servers, a great system for ease of transfer for photographers and editors! So many of my photos from the events I don’t see until a day or two later. But I will post them as I back them up, so you can follow along!

Setting up underwater cameras at Rio 2016 Olympic Aquatics

We always have to get the Olympics several days before the start to get acclimated, scope out venues and schedule, and start setting up cameras. The underwater venues take extra time in setting up the underwater remote cameras. Back when I started doing the underwater cameras 16 years ago, there was only a couple of us in the water, now the coverage under the surface since the Beijing games has really expanded with up to 10 cameras down there at a time, including large and expensive robotic rigs, that can shoot at any 180 degree angle with zoom, focus, liveview and preset shot functions as well.

Shooting for Sports Illustrated at these Olympics, the plan has been to have my static Aquatech camera in the swimming venue and the robust robotics rig in the diving/water polo/synchronized swimming venue. Here’s a couple behind the scenes photos and videos of our underwater setup, which wouldn’t be possible without the help of the consummate professionals like dive master Simon Lodge that the BOC and FINA place on the pool deck to facilitate the installation.

Be sure to check out my instagram feed @donaldmiralle as well as Sports Illustrated’s and the rest of the team of great photographers we have here covering Rio!

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Gallery: “World Champion Sebastien Kienle” – LAVA Magazine Cover

If the phrase “World Champion” precedes your name you’re pretty much a bad-ass. Sebastien Kienle is no exception. The 2012 70.3 World Champion hailing from Germany was in the lead at his first Kona Ironman World Championships last year, en route to crush the bike course record, when not only did he manage to get one flat tire, but two. And he still finished fourth at the end of the day.

I caught up with Kienle in St. George Utah before his 70.3 race there, to shoot him for the July cover of Lava Magazine. After hanging out with him for a couple days I realized the guy’s a machine, down to earth, and he will be in the lead again in Kona. I used my Nikon D800 paired with the Pocket Wizard Flex TT with the new beta firmware, to consistently freeze action shooting over 1000th of a second synched with profoto 7b strobes! Here are some of my favorite pics from our shoot, hope you enjoy!

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Miralle Family Meets Star in Bahamas

We had the great opportunity to visit the Bahamas last month shooting a campaign for the NFL Players Association, staying and shooting on the amazing resort Atlantis on Paradise Island. If you have a family with small children, I highly recommend Atlantis as its a gorgeous, expansive property as well as a plethora of fun activities, including one of the more amazing aquariums and water parks I have ever been to.

On one of the afternoons we wrapped shooting early, I was able to join my family (who was on vacation while I worked) to meet the amazing sea animals at the Dolphin Cay, including a newly born baby dolphin and Cassie, the blond sea lion.  Here’s a little video of our encounter with Cassie shot with a GoPro (my apologies about the water drop on lens that came off the bait fish) and the little surprise she gave us at the end. Special thanks for the amazing local stylist/scout Jenny Pinder for setting this visit up and to my assistants Brandon Magnus and Octavian Cantilli for shooting the pics and the video…enjoy!

Dick’s Sporting Goods Running Shoot

Panoramic view of runners on the boardwalk in the Palmetto Marsh.

Once again I had the great opportunity to do a campaign with Dick’s Sporting Goods for their upcoming 2013 Running Catalogue and commercial imagery. The assignment was in Charleston, South Carolina for about 4 days where we had the chance to shoot in some very beautiful spots which included the streets of old plantation houses, Palmetto Marsh, and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Shooting running was similar to shooting golf, looking for the right light is key for making the picture successful.

Beautiful evening for a run at Shem Creek in Charleston, SC.

The weather was all over the place, one moment it would be sunny with some scattered clouds, the next it would be dumping buckets of rain. Luckily we decided to take some pictures in the late afternoon after the 1st day of scouting and ended up with some beautiful running shots with the sun setting in the background over the marsh and some shrimping boats. On the 2nd day we had pumped out most of the shots that we needed at the marsh trails in the morning and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge before the rain started coming down hard around noon. At one point we sat in the trailer with the crew and all the models trying to wait for the rain to pass.

The crew waits out the rain in our production trailer. Thankfully we had good company and good food!

The highlights of the shoot for me were watching the sun come up over the Palmetto Marsh (and squeezing in our shots before the rain came!) and closing down the streets of downtown Charleston for our marathon shot. Here’s a funny video my assistant Brandon Magnus took of me directing traffic:

We also had one free shoot day when we decided to shoot youth soccer to fill in some content for the Dicks library. It’s always a nice change of pace when you go from shooting refined professional athletes-slash-models to young kids who just want to play sport. We couldn’t hope to direct or even contain the little monsters, so for the most part we set up game situations and had them run through it while I shot, which worked perfectly.

General view of marathon with street closure in the streets of downtown Charleston.

This was another fantastic experience and pleasure to work with Dick’s Sporting Goods team, and I look forward to our next shoot together! Big thanks to Scott Lenz, Peter Ahi, Kim McEniry, Barry Berenson, Pat Hugg, Zach Schefer, Brandon Magnus and most of all to local photographer John Smoak who made this great shoot come together and did everything from scouting, to permits, to holding a reflector…

My First Image in National Geographic Magazine

Since I was a child and my parents had a subscription to National Geographic Magazine, escaping to remote locations, excavating ruins and experiencing exotic animals was always just a page flip away. For me NGM has always been the gold standard for not only nature and conservation but also great photography. David Dubilet’s surreal underwater scenes, Steve McCurry’s Afghan girl, Chris Johns Camel’s crossing the Sahara, Paul Nicklin’s Emperor Penguins, and the list of amazing photography in the magazines 125 year history goes on and on. I am honored to have one of my favorite images, the underwater view of the mass swim start from the 2011 Kona Ironman World Champs that won World Press Photo in 2012, published as a double page spread in the March edition of National Geographic Magazine’s Visions of Earth section. It’s always been a dream of mine to be published in the magazine and can’t thank NGM enough for deeming my photograph worthy to be in the same pages as the greats. Pick up your copy of National Geographic today or go to their website here and order your own custom print of my image!

Behind the Scenes in Chopper for Outside Magazine Spread

Here’s a little clip my assistant Brandon Magnus put together of some POV behind the scenes shot from the helicopter during the 2012 Ironman World Championship. Nothing too fancy but you get a good idea of the height and the perspective from the chopper, and I was just happy that it wasn’t too windy with the door off while I was hanging outside with my camera! Shot with GoPro HD2 mounted on helmet and pole with safety strap, special thanks to Rick Loughery from GoPro! Hope you enjoy, and more videos to come!

Golf Digest Shoot with Ricky Fowler

We just did a photo shoot for Golf Digest with Ricky Fowler at Bear Creek Golf Course. It was an instructional for GD, so we went through a myriad of different swing sequences of do’s and don’ts, and ended with a couple portraits. Video was also shot during the session. Ricky was super easy to work with, and it was great to see the Golf Digest crew again. Special thanks to Golf Digest Director of Photography Christian Iooss, Staff Writer Max Adler, lighting assistant Shawn Cullen, and my Rep Jim Lee. The magazine issue isn’t out yet so I can’t put up any of the pictures but they turned out great! Here is a couple of behind the scenes shots for you guys:

DICKS SPORTING GOODS GOLF SHOOT

Last month I had the great opportunity to do a campaign with Dick’s Sporting Goods for their upcoming 2013 Golf Catalogue and commercial imagery. The assignment was in Palm Springs for 7 days where we stayed at La Quinta resort and shot at some beautiful courses including PGA West, Arnold Palmer, and Jack Nicklaus Private courses. It’s been awhile since I shot at any of these courses (Last in ’99 at the Bob Hope when David Duval shot a record 59), so luckily we took the  first 2 days to scout four courses with the Dick’s Sporting Goods crew. Golf more than many sports is all about the light, and it was a huge advantage being able to see how the sun affected different holes, how the front 9 or back 9 had better natural lighting in the beginning of the day or late afternoon, and what would look better with the talent and brands being shot.

Once we chose our spots and had a schedule set, we prepped the gear and got ready to shoot the next 5 days from 6am to 6 pm. But the long days flew by because we were working hard, the crew was so easy to be around, and every session we stuck to our shotlist but had some creative improvisations as well. Shooting in the desert in the winter can be a mixed bag of weather. You can get screaming light because the sun is so low for most of the day and the air is so clear. But you can also get howling 60 miles/hour wind,rain and  frost which can delay things a bit. Luckily for us we had some awesome weather for the majority of the shoot and only encountered a few showers on the last day.

It was a fantastic experience and pleasure to work with Dick’s Sporting Goods, and look forward to another shoot in the future. Big thanks to Barry Berenson, Scott Lenz, Jody Pfister,  Kim McEniry, Brandon Magnus, Marc Kelly, and Billy Small for all their help. Special thanks to Rep Pat Hugg of Getty Images for making the job come together!!!

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