Ricky
captured by D5 / 105f1.5AFS / SB-5000 / Lightbox
My portrait of Ricky has brought a few questions so wanted to explain the process of getting the final photo. When it comes to flash, I’m not real speedy, I have to think about it before I act. It starts with thinking through the story I want it to help tell. This means I have to look at the subject, the background and how I want to move the eye around the frame. In this case Ricky is the subject in our story, the pilot about to launch in his Stinson L-5 on a mission on what appears to be a stormy day. So the key elements when it comes to light are Ricky, Plane & Sky. Above is the final shot, here’s how I got there.
Rickey #1
captured by D5 / 105f1.4AFS
Often I start by taking a shot of the main elements as they lay to see what strengths and weaknesses the “set” has before I start going crazy. Being use to being a one man band when it comes to lighting, I just don’t want to make extra work for myself. At the same time when working with aircraft, lights and light stands need to be secured so they can’t damage an aircraft by blowing or falling into them. So with that in mind, I took the first photo of Ricky. I shooting with the D5 / 105f1.4AFS thinking I wanted to have Ricky larger in the frame and the L-5 more out of focus. As you can see from the two above photos I changed my mind bigtime. You can also see that there is an issue with the light when it came to the subject. There is useable light on one side of Ricky’s face but not the other. From this I knew the flash would be the key light, the ambient the fill.
Rickey #1
captured by D5 / 105f1.4AFS / SB-5000
Flash was needed so I put a SB-5000 in the hotshoe. I did this for two reasons, first was to see the effect of adding light and second to demonstrate how in the hotshoe in this instance it was a really bad idea. Just because you can add light doesn’t mean doing so makes the photo better. After these two shots, it was obvious that first I wanted to walk backwards changing the subject / background relationship. Then simply putting the SB-5000 in a Lightbox just out of frame on the right we could better to meld the key and ambient light. What’s important is the flash has a horizontal orientation and not vertical so the light falls off quickly down Ricky’s side (those aren’t pilot shoes!). And while I had the basic idea in my head how I wanted the final photograph to look, when flash gets involved I have to think it through. If you’d like to see more how I think through flash, you might want to check out my KelbyOne Pilot Portrait class. So now you know after 20 minutes how I got there.