day 88 - 100 feet tall

simple setup here. just a silver umbrella high camera right, the sb-3 w' cto gel low camera right, and a lone sb-28 distant camera left w' a blue gel.

the color contrast element really appeals to me. the more i execute it the more i wonder if i'm settling into some kind of personal style, either temporary or permanent.

i'm here on day 88. i've shot 2188 pictures for this project so far. i'm 24% through this project right now. i think my style and competence level has already evolved dramatically. it's strange, but i'm getting to the point where i can almost predict what the light is going to do. like i set up things this way, it's going to look like this, add this element here, and there it is. it's weird.

setup shot:

day 87 - lit like a strip club

for this one i wanted a really strong color contrast on me, but little color contrast on the background. it seems like if you want to keep light off the background, you have to stay away from the shoot through umbrellas.... they just throw too much light around. so for this one i went with a silver reflective umbrella and my lumiquest sb-3 softbox.

the silver umbrella had two cuts of blue gels, and my sb-3 had a cto gel on it. i also set up a reflector camera right, thinking it would add a bit of warm light to the cool light area, but i'm not sure it did anything.

setup shot:

day 86 - crazy smile

this picture comes from earlier today when alisia said that i make the same expression in all of my pictures. so this is a different expression.

setup shot:

day 85 - outside diffuser

wanted to try out my diffuser in the backyard. i didn't have enough room to throw the tree behind me out of focus like i would've wanted, but it is interesting that it's all soft light on me, and hard light on the tree back there. this isn't my usual style... i prefer to make the subject brighter than the background, and not the other way around, but if i could find a dark colored wall or shadowy garage interior, this could be an effective direct sunlight modifier style.

setup shot:

day 84 - couch bounce

for this one i sat on the couch, set up an umbrella and a reflector, put a flash behind the couch pointed at the wall (zoomed in for a tighter gradient) and pulled the trigger. i like that my eyes are lit more from below than from above. i think it adds a subtle bit of ominous feelings to the mix.

setup shot:

day 83 - outside reflector

i wanted to do a diffusion thing with my trigrip diffuser outside. just stick it between me and the sun, and see what happens. but when i went out there the sun was behind some clouds and a tree. so instead i settled for some reflection.

hopefully the sun'll come out soon.

setup shot:

day 82 - hard outside, soft in the middle

i was looking through the portfolio of patrick hoelck, and i noticed that a lot of his celebrity portraits have a similar kind of formula to them, hard light on either side, soft light in the middle. so i figured i'd give it a shot. i didn't nail it exactly like he does it, but i got pretty close pretty quick.

his stuff looks pretty tweaky.... i can't tell if he's fantastic at light control, or if he's got someone who's really good at photoshop. i like his color balances. all the cool tones with a warm light source in there somewhere. i dig that.

so yeah. i really enjoy his work. i've been going through his portfolio for well over an hour now, just deconstructing each lighting setup. he's got some solid stuff in there.

setup shot: