Playin' the Blues
Apr, 2020Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at my home in Vassar, Michigan during the pandemic.Time
As I recall, the photo was taken in early afternoon.Lighting
The photo was lit with my Godox V860-II with MagMod's MagSphere fitted with a blue gel, with the flash off-camera to camera right, slightly below camera level.Equipment
I used my Canon 80D (hand-held), fitted with my EF-S 50mm f/1.8 lens set at f/11. Shutter speed was 1/125s, ISO100. The image was lit with my Godox V850II, fitted with my MagSphere and a blue color gel. The flash was off-camera to the right, slightly below the camera level. I used the Godox X1T remote flash trigger to fire the flash.Inspiration
There were a couple reasons I took this photo. First and foremost, I'm a drummer, and I have this cool metal statuette of a metal man sitting behind a drum set playing the drums, and I wanted to play around with it, taking a bunch of different photos using different colored gels. The other reason was more personal, so let me just say that I, along with most everybody else in the world, was feeling pretty blue about the situation in the world, so I thought an image of a "blues drummer" fit pretty well!Editing
I did some cropping and alignment of the image in Luminar, with some color enhancement of the blues.In my camera bag
I typically carry my Canon 80D with five lenses (Canon 50mm f/1.8, 10-18mm wide angle zoom, 18-55mm zoom, and 55-250mm zoom, and Tokina 100mm macro prime lens). I also have my Haida M10 pro filter holder with a 10-stop ND and 3-stop GND filter and circular polarizer. Of course, I always have my standard accessories like spare batteries, lens hoods, memory cards, etc., and I carry a Godox V860-II speedlight with MagMod Sphere & MagBeam flash modifiers with color gels and gobos.Feedback
My advice is always simple...soak up everything about where you are, and feel the story that starts to reveal itself about your subject and your surroundings. I'm always amazed that eventually a compelling story begins to emerge, and my job then becomes how best to capture that story. Sometimes that's easy to do, sometimes it's damn hard, and sometimes I'm not able to do it at all. It's those times that I just enjoy the story and the moment, and then later it drives me to get better at my craft so in the future I can perhaps succeed.
