How I shot it: London colleague, Rob
I promised "how I did it" posts, so let's kick it off!
Rob is adorable and is also very into fashion. So, when brainstorming about how to shoot everyone, "fashion magazine" was the obvious pick for him. The only choice was: formal or casual? In the end, we shot both, but my final pick for him was a casual shot.
Location
This was easily the simplest of all the shots in the whole series. A group of us were walking to lunch and I had my camera with me. This wall with the diagonal ridges is right in front of our office - ostensibly hiding some construction behind it, though as I think about that now, I've never seen anyone working on anything over there. Here's what it looks like (camera shot taken weeks later):
Lighting
I liked the way the wall was in shadow but the ground in front of it was getting some filtered sun. I liked this because it meant I could put Rob in the sun and have two advantages:
- He'd pop out in front of the darker background
- We'd get nice side light on him, illustrating the texture of his shirt.
Directing
This was easy to direct, because Rob is a total natural. There were a few other people with us on our way to lunch, too, so they actually did all the work for me. I didn't want eye contact with the camera on this one, so the natural smile he was giving to whomever he was talking to off-camera was really perfect.
I had time to fire off about 5 shots before Rob said, slightly irritated even though he is one of the nicest guys I know, "Can we please do this later? I'm REALLY HUNGRY." I understand being really hungry so off we went. But I'm glad I took the moment for this, because that kind of light changes quickly.
Post-processing
In terms of post-processing, there were only a few things:
- Reducing the exposure a bit in the places where the sun hit, especially the shoes
- Overall dodging and burning on the jeans, shirt, and scarf
- Removal of a little bit of trash on the ground using the clone stamp
- Touching up the wall to remove a distracting gap or two in the wood, also with the clone stamp
In the end he looked kind of like he belonged in a band. Somewhere along the line we decided to create a caption for each photo, to bring the whole project together. Here's Rob's:
See all the ZAAZ London portraits, or read all of the related posts