The Travelling Showman
Mar, 2015Views
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Christofa
April 06, 2015
You are obviously an outstanding portrait photographer, I cannot fault this fabulous image. perfectly exposed with beautiful clarity between the blacks and the whites.
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tg2125
October 27, 2016
Love this photo! Puts me in the mind of the old western days of a witch doctor selling his wares! Bravo! Thanks for sharing!
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
The shot was taken at my home studio, affectionately known the "old dining room". It’s a very small room, too small really, but then just makes you think in a smarter way; well most of the time.Time
The shoot began on location started around 1pm and then we moved into the studio and shot until about 3pm. It was quite a quick shoot for me, normally they go on for hours, but as both Johnny (the model) and myself have a very focused vision of what we wish to archive, that does makes things go smoother.Lighting
Lighting was done using 2 elinchrom d-lite rx 4 heads with soft boxes. It was a pretty straight forward set-up, with heads more or less pointed and Johnny at 45 degrees. At the time I didn’t have much else to work with, not even my beauty dish.Equipment
Panasonic GH3 body with a Lumix G Vario 14-45/F3.5-5.6 2 elinchrom d-lite rx 4 heads with soft boxesInspiration
We met at a model meet-up a few months before. He wasn’t modelling at the time but his girlfriend was. That day I ended up shooting them both, but at those venues like those time is never enough. I sent him a couple of the images, he like my style of processing and I thought his look stood out, namely his styled tash. Both of us agreed we could do more and we organised a shoot date.Editing
Initially I used nik effects in Photoshop to really push the colours in the image, but when I went back to it the next day, his blue shirt stood out like a saw thumb. Rather than just deleting and restarting over, I thought about turning it into a black & white shot. The awful mix of colours now added pop. I worked it again in nic effects pushing the local contrast further exposing as much detail in his face as I could.In my camera bag
Shooting micro four thirds means you can fit a lot into a small-ish bag but still have a lot of choices at hand. I will take different equipment depending if I’m shooting landscapes or people, but as a rule I take my GH3 a 14-140mm, 100-300mm, 14-45mm, 45mm macro and a 7.5mm fish eye. This covers me for just about anything I need. For landscapes I’d grab my grads, a 10 stopper and a wireless remote, my main 3 lenses have screw in polarisers on all the time (I find this quicker than adding them to lenses whist out and about). If I’m shooting people speedlights, a battery pack and triggers are added to the bag.Feedback
Spend time getting your desired lighting, make sure the exposure is correct, a flash meter is best. Talk to your model, make them feel at ease, allow their personality to come through. Have a plan in your head of what you want and how you’re going to achieve it, but don’t be afraid to let go either. Do what feels natural, let the shoot grow and develop.
