Sonar Scar
A visual representation of sonar.
A visual representation of sonar.
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Sep, 2016Views
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Awards
Top Shot Award 21
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Contest Finalist in Image Of The Month Photo Contest Vol 14
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in my basement in 2010. It was the second photo shoot I did with the model, Sylva. I have since painted and photographed her over 20 times.Time
This was late in the evening and done just for fun. No pressure, deadlines, or expectations.Lighting
At the time, Id always operate under a shoe string budget, so I used a ring light that I fabricated for about $50 from a round fluorescent utility lamp I had rewired to attach to my camera.Equipment
This was shot on a Nikon D90 with a Sigma 28mm 1.8 lens. I found the lens used at a camera store for $65. I felt at that price I had no choice but to try it out. That lens had a lot of personality.Inspiration
Sylva is a fan of bats. So I applied body paint that might be representative of sonar. A visual of what bats might hear. At the time I was also into the color combo of burgundy and orange. I never really aim for the concept to come across though, I generally use it as inspiration, and then photograph in a care free way to see what kind of magic can spur out of it.Editing
I almost always keep my post processing to a minimum. Generally, I just bump the contrast and fix the brightness. And then occasionally clean up some skin irregularities. This image is pretty much straight from life.In my camera bag
Currently, I'm shooting with a Nikon D750. My current go to lens is my Nikon 85mm f1.4 followed by my Nikon 24mm f1.8. I also have the nikon 50mm 1.4, a Voigtlander 40mm f2, and a nikon 105mm 2.5 AI-S. Currently, my only zoom is a nikon 70-200 f 2.8 that I occasionally use with a 2x teleconverter.Feedback
When I photographed this image, I was well aware of the effects of a ring light. Since this was not a flash it wasn't so bright that I could use faster shutter speeds. This is technically a low light image shot wide open. My favorite effect of a ring light is the catch light reflection produced in the eyes (not visible in this particular image). In order to get a nice large catch light I had to be pretty close to the model. For my crop sensor body and the size of my home made ring light I needed to be a distance from the model that required around an 18mm lens. For some of the images I used a Tokina 11-16mm. However at that focal length, there is a risk of distortion at the edges of the image creating an unflattering stretch to the model's proportion. I wanted to see what this used cheapo 24mm sigma lens was capable of so I just had fun with it. It resulted in a nice little series of ring light portraits.
