August 20th 2008 - Inspiration pt3

Explored! #1

If you'd like to see it large... you may.

When I started this little series I thought I'd wax poetic about inspiration and where we as artists find our muse. But the more I thought about it, the more I figured that the photos should speak for themselves. This is the third part of my series that I've been doing every other day.

If you're interested, you should also check out PART 1 and PART 2.

I will say that continuing to produce creative shots throughout the 365 Days project can be quite daunting. My first year was all about documenting my life. This year has been about being more creative and learning new techniques that I didn't have the opportunity to use with my current clients. I feel like I've come a long way towards that this year. And what better way to learn than from the best... you guys!

Strobist Info: Alien Bee's B800 through a large softbox just above camera and two SP Studios strobes at left and right behind subject. I also had a Canon 430ex in the book at 1/32 for a slight fill under the eyes, but in the dodge and burn process I think rendered unnoticable.

Edit: I would also like to note (since I've had some emails and comments about the lighting setup) that I was going for a look that combined different white balances, but I didn't want one light source to contaminate another. I wanted everything not being lit by the "book" to fall into a blue cast and then the book would "light" the face and jacket in a nuetral tone. I could have done that by setting my white balance to tungsten and then gelling my keylight with a CTO. That would have turned the backlights blue but I wanted some of the key light to turn blue as well. So here's the secret. Shoot RAW. When you shoot Raw, you don't have to choose a white balance until you process your photo. After pulling the photo into Adobe Raw, I processed a "blue" version and a "correct" version. I then layed the two over each other in photoshop and masked in the "correct" color where I wanted it to show up. Hope that helps.