Travelling Light: Single Strobe Sessions

Jonathan

The notion that men aren’t as comfortable in front of the camera as the ladies is one that hasn’t met Jonathan yet. I suppose he would have struck a pose for the doctor when she delivered him. But, could you really blame the guy for being aware of how photographable (yes, that is a real word) he is? And he’s not even close to being a good-looking one-trick pony because the guy has notable musical skills as well.

And no, he didn’t pay me to say that.

I’ll take credit for making this photo, but Jonathan’s parents can take credit for how hard it is to shoot a bad picture of him. For those who aren’t just reading this to ogle the guy holding up the ‘Chemist in Lab’ button, lighting details can be found after the jump.

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In keeping with the theme, this picture was shot using a single hot shoe flash. Without any more flap, here are the lighting details in bullet points:

• The flash is set at 1/4th power to offset the increase in aperture that I dialed in to prevent ambient light from becoming too flary (also a  real word). However, I couldn’t quite bump it up as high as I would have wanted because then I wouldn’t have sufficient power in my flash to light the subject.
• Once again, the light is modified by a DIY grid to ‘spotlight’ the subject. It does the job of focusing the beam of light to give it a chance against sunlight. It’s also the reason why I rarely fire a gridded flash on full power at the person I’m shooting (especially if he’s facing in the direction of the light) because I want to make pictures of him, not blind him.
• The light was positioned into place by a VAB (voice-activated boom) 1979 just behind and slightly to the left of the photographer.

Up next, is a guy who, in my opinion, cuts his drinking glass in half just so that it will always be full, and not just filled halfway.

More to come…