Professional photographer David Young explains how he captured this deceptively simple portrait.
This was a great job,
photographing a professional circus performer/comedian. Working with other
professionals usually makes my job easier.
This was certainly the
case with Joel – he knew what he wanted and once in front of the camera he knew
what he needed. This is also the case when using professional models. Their
expertise can make a photographer’s job that much easier – for instance
changing a pose subtly after each shot to give you a never-ending variety of
looks in a short space of time.
When shooting people,
the first decision is often to choose between a studio or a location. When I
think 'location' I’m often thinking 'available light' – open soft shadow light
and minimum depth of field to throw the background into a soft mix of colours.
When I think 'studio' I’m normally thinking simple backgrounds and complete
control over the lighting. So for the shots of Joel, we both agreed the studio
seemed like the best choice.
I kept the lighting
simple, basing it on the KISS principle (KISS = keep it simple, stupid!), as my
subject was going to be moving around and I didn’t want to be changing my
lighting around every time he moved. So I set up two brollies, one either side,
the one on my right not too far from the subject and a little higher, but
fairly close to the camera. This gives a good light on the face with some
classic “modelling” effect. The brolly on my left is about head height to the
subject and turned down to be about two stops or so less than my main light.
This gives me some subtle fill, while still leaving me with strong shadows and
a nice crisp look to the shots.
Joel’s outfit was very
colourful so a simple grey monotone background was an obvious choice for me. My
subject was very easy to work with as he naturally gave me lots of different
expressions and poses to shoot. This is often not the case with people we are
photographing and a lot of effort and thought must go into drawing what we want
out of our subjects.
The images were shot
in RAW mode and post-production was done in Adobe Photoshop. I decided to give
the shot a slightly more graphic feel to enhance Joel’s cartoon-like
expression. This was achieved by blending the original shot with a mix of
filter effects. Finally, some masking and fine tuning was needed to get the
exact feel I wanted.
Joel Salom, by David Young.
Article first published in Australian Photography.