For the last week I've been working with a company to design my new website. All of this is in an effort to take my photography in a new direction. I've been going through my archive and pulling more recent images to put on the website. I have to say that it's amazing that I haven't updated the site in something like four years.
Looking at the old site versus the new one, I have much better images to display of my photography than what's currently out there. I guess that's how it's supposed to work. As time goes on you take better pictures.
So as I was putting together my portrait gallery for the new site I selected some images ranging from corporate to sports. This one portrait in particular I especially liked. Not only was it one I was found of but it was one of the easiest and cheapest I've ever done.
It's the above portrait of USF defensive end George Selvie. I shot it during Media Day (or Portrait Day as others may call it) this past August.
I set up two different portrait sets to shoot the top players for the Bulls. One was the bigger set with a background and three strobes with the main light being a beauty dish.
The second was a quick, artsy set to get something different in the hopes of catching the eye of an art director/ picture editor. After setting up the first set I only had about five minutes for the artsy one as my players were coming down for their pictures at any minute.
The inspiration for the second set came from a job I did assisting Gary a few years ago. He was shooting a portrait using Kino Flo lights. It was a cool looking portrait and had a certain look that was different than the usual softbox portrait.
These lights are essentially daylight balanced fluorescent lights that portrait photographers use as well as video and film production companies. They generally cost $1000 for one light and I needed two for this setup which I couldn't justify spending $2k for a portrait. Instead I opted for the DIY approach and headed to Lowe's.
In the lighting aisle of the home improvement store I found some fluorescent strip lights that could be plugged into a standard household outlet. Granted this is not nearly as bright as the Kino Flos but it would be possible to emulate the look for the second portrait without breaking the bank. I think the lighting for the second portraits cost me less than $15. Nice!!
I attached the strips to light stands using a couple of superclamps and placed the two lights on either side of my subject's face. I was so rushed that I didn't even have time to gaffer tape the black background over the concrete block wall.
I had Selvie watch his step around all the extension cords lying on the ground and asked him to put his face in between the two strip lights. It was key for me to use a tripod as I had the ISO up to 800 and had a relatively slow shutter speed.
I grabbed about two dozen portraits of George at the second portrait set before whisking him to the main one during my five minutes with the Bulls' DE.
I don't know why but I'm drawn to this portrait over the other set. I think it's because it's so different of a style for me. I even like the concrete wall in the background. The image was processed slighting in the computer to enhance my vision more but it's not too different than what was captured in camera.
In the process of combing my images I keep finding treasures. This was just one that I wanted to share.
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