From time to time in these latter years of my photography profession I am presented with a space in which I need to produce an eye-catching and creative image – usually a portrait. And several times in the past 10 years of my 25 years shooting as a full-time professional photographer the thought crosses my mind that goes something like this, “Whew, I’m sure glad I wasn’t presented with this challenge early in my career for I might have fallen flat on my face!”
Well, David – ‘Meet Yoav Niv’ as stated on his Nistar Entertainment web site, for keeping in mind his other calling as a highly successful Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyer, my task was to create a portrait that reflected edge and style without diminishing his other persona of criminal lawyer.
His Calgary office, while sizable, only had a single space that I felt could be useful to satisfy both our needs to produce such a portrait. It was a boardroom that on one end had a 4 x 5-foot graphic artwork that, if memory serves correctly, was a simple, stylistic, white on black detailing of a famous image related to the Lord of the Rings….I believe! Sigh, when I am shooting, I get so absorbed in my work I easily forget details related to my client and the space. I wish I had kept the cell phone image of that space.
There was limited distance between the end of the large boardroom table and the artwork although enough to steal and place his colleague’s chair from the adjacent office, beside the end of the table where we seated Yoav. We liked the shape of the chair, and I felt it would well lend itself to the portrait I had in mind. In fact, it did, and it also produced wonderful reflections from my gelled strobes.
Speaking of strobes, I lit the background with a layered red gelled gridded strobe, 20-degree grid on a short stand coming from viewer’s lower right and slightly behind Yoav. I also used another strobe with a grid shooting through layered blue gels and a 10-degree grid from viewer’s upper left to light Yoav. Grids were used to produce a high contrast light as I was seeking something dramatic and colorful to add unique interest to Yoav’s portrait. I considered returning his skin tones to a more natural tone without the blue cast and am glad I did not as I finally did prefer the effect of the cast on his features.
To round out the portrait Yoav had the great idea of having him hold a 16-sided…??? semi-transparent numbered ball, of course very significant to this industry but I have forgot its meaning….which we shot separately for sharper focus and digitally transferred in Adobe Photoshop back into his hand. I also somewhat enlarged the ball in post-production, for effect. We used a snoot modifier for a very narrow directional beam on a third light coming from viewer’s right to add more light to the ball. Yoav had to remain very still. He was a great model! And very, very patient.
I also added a few more lighting effects with another software program, Skylum NEO to round out the image. We also shot an image without sunglasses but the one with sunglasses won out.
Whereas in the early years of my photography career I might have found a satisfactory solution, I’m not sure I would have as effectively seen the possibilities after a few decades of experience, and I certainly would not have had the benefit of the same equipment and superb software available today to bring this image together.
This type of photo session is always very gratifying and exciting although it doesn’t come without a concomitant level of stress, for one is not sure it will pan out as visualized until all the details are finally worked through in post-production!