Something special to do on a rainy day!

Thank you for your comment. I shot another image in the same location several months ago. I wish I knew how to delete this image and put in another one.

Bruce

This man felt lost until he spent time alone with his bible. Now he knows there is still hope

I was having some issues excepting my last post "Playing Alone". It just didn't feel anchored. The sitter was shot in my studio and was placed in the building. A photographer I have admired for years Yousaf Karsh, captured an image of the great Cellist, Composer, and Conductor Pablo Casals in an old French Abbey back in 1954. This is a far cry from an old French Abbey, and it's an old violin not a cello. Oh well I can't have it all, all the time so here's my interpretation. The French Abbey was like a prison cell, symbolized the self-imposed exile Casals had choose. My little building is on reservation property with no real value anymore. I have no idea what it use to be!

No, this is a friend that has all kinds of old gear. When I ran into the old building the first thought I had was a portrait Yousuf Karsh did in an old French Abbey of Pablo Casals playing his cello. It was done in 1954. This is far from a cello but it's all I had.

Just a little fun project.

This is another version of the two people I photographed before. This time they are both together. I tried to make it look vintage.

this Image:
This image was taken in Tombstone at Boot Hill Cemetery following the Tombstone Trolley Ghost and Murder Tour with Parson George and Lee. The cemetery is one of the stops during the tour. At the time this image was taken the sun was setting and the cemetery was about to close. The trolley driver, Lee, who also posed as my model, got special permission to enter the cemetery. The store owner who told us we had only a few minutes to photograph Lee because they wanted to close for the night.
I explained to Lee how I wanted to make his image and how I would like him to pose. My wife, Elaine, helped me set up the equipment before entering the cemetery. We opened my Westcott 6 -in-1 reflector and took out the silver reflector. I installed my Canon 580 speed light on the camera mount and set it to minus one in the manual mode. A good starting point. This speed light allows the flash tube to be turned 90 degrees left or right or straight up.
We walked out through the general store into the cemetery. I found a grave that would work well for this capture. The grave had all the compositional elements necessary to accomplish my vision of this image, which I have titled "So Long Good Buddy." With the foreground composition there was a grave some distance away I also wanted in sharp focus.
I set the f- stop at f:13 with an ISO of 200, and a shutter speed of 125th. Elaine held the reflector at camera right a few feet from our model. By keeping the reflector close to the him, the reflected light wouldn't cause harsh shadows. I knew the inverse square law would come into play which states, "an object that is twice the distance from the point source of light will receive a quarter of the illumination." What this means to a photographer is if you move your subject from 10 feet to 20 feet away from your subject you will need four times more light to get the proper exposed. I could have opened the aperture two additional f-stops and kept the reflector at 10 feet, but the background wouldn't have been as sharp.
The next item to consider was how I want this image to look. What story did I want to tell? I felt if I "short lit" my subject, meaning more light on the side of his face away from the camera, it would bring more drama into the image, and allow more light in the background. This uses a well-known law of physics: the degree of incidence equals the degree of reflection. This means if I aim the head of my speed light at the reflector using a 45 degree angle, the light would bounce off the reflector at that angle resulting in a pleasing effect.
If the light hitting the subject lit too much of the broadside of his face, I would have had to adjust the angle the light bounced off the reflector. The first image looked good but the background was a little too dark. To correct this I dragged the shutter 1/60 to lighten it up more.

Not sure what you mean.

Bruce

Thank you. Have a healthy New Year.

Bruce

And you too my friend.

Bruce

What's a bow hair? :)

Thank you for your comment. My first step is to check facial features. Once it's determined what direction to face the client, I add the background light at f5.6, then slowly add lights until it's right in the camera. My setups are typically six lights.

Bruce

He would do better playing the radio. Have a healthy New Year.

This was taken a week of so ago. Another six light setup. From that I went one step further to take it from a standard portrait to a fine art portrait. I'm in hopes you like it.