Thursday, May 27, 2010

One Ring (light) to Rule Them All

My friend Nathan Smith of Smith Fine Art invited me over to his studio to play; and boy did we ever play! Using a is studio lighting (a ring flash, SB-900 and a studio strobe) we had some creative lighting fun. Nathan provided me these copies of the work to process while he processes the same images using this style of porcessing. He did promise to zombify at least one of the images of me. All in all we simply has fun. He stood behind the camera, I made faces through the ring light and we made adjustments to the lighting and experimented to our heart's content. Like I said... it was fun. Thanks for inviting me over Nathan. I know you were laughing throughout the process, but sometimes it sounded a little like nervous laughter, so I hope I didn't scare you too much. I was really having fun.
Creative lighting is a blast. While there are some rules to follow, rules are not laws and therefore can be broken. This shot includes an SB-900 backlighting my head against a black backdrop, a ring light illuminating my face and a studio stobe lighting my hand reaching through the ring light.
Oh the fun that can be had using a little pent up angst, an experimental model and equally experimental photographer. Give it a try sometime.

I loved the framing of this shot.... a small glimpse of the ring flash, an outstretched hand and a seriously pissed off expression allowed me to convey "Come here, I about to whoop your ass!" This was one of the shots where Nathan's laughter was more on the nervous side. He had nothing to fear though, my rage was focused more on the intensity of the insanely bright ring light... that hurt my eyes bad for the first half hour.

This is a scarey version of peek-a-boo. My goal here was to create the illusion of peeking around a corner or through a toilet seat. I think that I even shot this one through a remote trigger. Again using the small glimpse of the housing of the ring flash, used to illuminate me, it gives an illusion of depth and that I am coming from behind something.

No ring flash housing is visible here. But rather the appearance that I am coming our of the darkness at you. I am not kid friendly at Halloween for obvious reasons. I promise that I am genuinely a nice guy. A little odd, but nice.

I can't explain what I was trying to express here, but for me it appears to be a mixed emotion of seduction and loathing. Nathan, I neither loath you nor wish to seduce you just so that we are straight.



This was a complete High-Key process. The ring light was reverses, to face the camera and a SB-??? on camera flash was used to light my face. I really like how this turned out.

A simple composition of light using the ring flash to light my hand and face (notice the light dropping off from my hand to my face?) and the SB-900 to light the backdrop behind me.

And to wrap things up... something a little sinister and something a little mellow to let the lights do what they do best.






 Thanks again Nathan for inviting me over. I am serious about doing this again sometime... I had a blast!