I had a photo shoot today! That's pretty unusual these days. My friend Bob Keeler is about to have his new book published after years of work on it, and the publicist at his publisher wanted two things. He wanted a current portrait of Bob, AND he wanted two short videos of Bob talking about his new book. The first video was Bob talking about his history and his work, and the second was where he described what his book is about. I don't have a studio, so Kathy and I removed the dining room table and all the chairs, and I set up my lights in the dining room. You can see that table through the door in the living room! It has been quite a while since I have set up my electronic flash units in the house and it took a couple of hours to bring stuff up from the basement, and then light stands and umbrellas and soft boxes and seamless background paper and light stands for that from out in the garage. I also needed high intensity quartz lights for the videos. Then once everything was set up, I had to do some test shots of Kathy to have the lighting ready when Bob arrived. It was a lot of work but really rewarding. Good to be shooting in the studio again!
When switching from the still photographs to the videos I had to go to the car to get a tripod, and when I glanced into the dining room, I saw this. All the illuminated umbrellas seemed so strange, so I came back in the house, grabbed a camera and went outside and took this shot. Bob an Kathy wondered where I had gone to!
Wow! That’s a lot of work to set up for a photo shoot. Love the shot from outside looking in. (Why are there an umbrellas in your dining room?) Glad you enjoyed the process. Betsey
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I noticed about the photo was the rich colors in the dining room. Really pretty. It must be nice to be able to do a project like that for a friend and then have it appear on his book. Trace
ReplyDeleteThank you both for your comments. Glad you love our deep red color, Trace! We had wallpaper that color then stripped it off because it was getting old, and painted the room the color of the red wallpaper! Betsey: The umbrellas are part of the lighting setup. Instead of pointing a bright light directly at the subject, instead I point the light into an umbrella which makes the light source much larger and therefore much softer when it arrives on the subjects face. Much more flattering.
ReplyDeleteI was joking about the umbrellas because it just looked funny from he outside if you didn't know you had them set up for a photo shoot...
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