I was recently contacted by a couple of junior highschool students who wanted to shadow me for their school project. They are both interested in photography, so they wanted to see how a professional operates. I thought they would have fun experiencing both sides of the lens, so I asked them to be the models and we could spend half a day testing out some different techniques. I had just finished painting a new backdrop, so I was excited to test it out!
I kicked off the day with an ambitious idea. Owen happens to be my son's friend, so I have seen him on Instagram and he has some mad puck-flipping skills. I thought it would be fun to make the puck fiery and capture some motion blur. This is a complicated setup, that I have never tried, so I warned them that it might take some adjusting. And it did! I often spend a lot of time perfecting lighting setups. It's one of the aspects of the job.
First, we needed the puck to reflect light. I had some sparkly silver stickers that we covered the puck with. I used a tight grid (10 degrees) and a red gel and pointed it where the puck should be while he's flipping it. I turned on the model light and turned off the flash capability. The method to capture the motion is called shutter drag. I set the camera to a really slow shutter so that the red light and motion would both be picked up by the sensor. On the other side, I set up my second Profoto B1 flash head with a 30 degree grid pointed at Owen's face. This one was set to flash so that we would not have any motion blur on his face. Overall, it's pretty cool, but I couldn't spend too much time perfecting it because I wanted to show them more!
I did consult them ahead of time to bring some spare clothing options and sport accessories (like the skateboard). I was glad for that because the green shorts that Harjas was wearing were not going to work with this scene! I coached him into a nice relaxed pose with a "Blue Steel" expression that I love. He didn't know who Zoolander was, but I'll forgive him for being too young.... ;) The lighting setup was a beauty dish overhead and the 10 degree grid on the face. They are young, they can take the more contrasty light on their skin! I did a similar shot for Owen and then turned the flashes off completely. These guys work with action cameras and phones. They may not have the budget right now for off-camera flashes or strobes, so I wanted to show them some awesome natural light. This is one of the reasons why I chose to shoot this in my garage. A garage door is a beautiful light source. The first shot of them is flat-lit, and the second was to show them how to start shaping the face by turning the backdrop on an angle.
Overall, I'm super happy with the shots that I got, and I was grateful to have some new models to test out my backdrop on. I'm loving the brown tones. Can't wait to use this for my next client! Keep scrolling down for some behind-the-scenes test shots!
shoot.print.love.laurie
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