alittlenews

 

I have been working in photojournalism for very nearly 20 years and I had never shot a magazine cover for any publication not done by the newspaper I worked for.  That all changed when David Wassan, editor of the new publication, Friday Night Football Alabama contacted me to shoot two athletes for the premier edition of the magazine.  Brooke Milam Johnson, a sports writer I have worked with for several years at The Decatur Daily, recommended me to Wassan so many thanks go out to her.  The magazine just hit the news stands and can be found in Books A Million stores and news stands across Alabama.

My subjects were Stephen Rivers, younger brother of San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, who plays quarterback for Athens High School and Brent Calloway who plays linebacker and running back for Russellville High School.  I was familiar with Stephen because I have covered him for three seasons.  It was my first time meeting Brent.  Stephen recently committed to play for LSU and Brent for Alabama so these are both blue chip recruits. (By the way, I also covered Philip Rivers when he played quarterback at Athens.  Talk about getting old!)

My challenge was to produce photos of each athlete that could be used on the cover of the magazine.  The photo shoots would be in different locations on different days and even at different times of the day.  I wanted the lighting to match fairly closely so the designers wouldn’t have funky differences to deal with.  I also needed to shoot very similar poses on both young men so the designers could work with similar images.

I photographed Stephen first and it was right in the middle of the day.  When I called his coach to arrange the assignment I had visions of late evening, even dusk, dancing through my head.  The coach asked could I be there during the middle of the morning because that was when Stephen was normally there to take part in out of season workouts and his jersey would be available.  So much for dreams of great light.  Likewise, I had to catch Brent right after a practice session but the light was somewhat better.

I set a Lumedyne with an Octobank as the main light and positioned it to camera left for both shoots.  I used a second light as a kicker.  This was necessary in Stephen’s case because of the need to completely overcome the daylight with strobes.  The kicker was behind the subjects and to the camera right.  I placed a third strobe on the ground pointed straight up to light the ball they were both holding.  I had Stephen positioned so his right shoulder was further from the camera than his left and had him hold the football down by his side in his left hand.  I reversed this set up to photograph Brent so the designers could get both guys on the page in the best possible way.

After getting my lighting set I varied my angles of view and lenses making sure to duplicate with Brent each angle I shot with Stephen.  I began with a full length shot from low angle, moved to a more normal angle shot from about waist level.  I then changed lenses and shot more of a 3/4 length portrait and then shot some tighter stuff.  This gave several different perspectives and hopefully some options to the page designer.

After I got this shot out of the way I moved into a little bit of a fun mode.  I moved Stephen into the tunnel and shot with a strong back light from the sun which cast a really hard shadow on the ground.  I filled this with an SB800 shot direct with as tight a zoom spread as possible.  I still  had more spill than I wanted but I didn’t bring anything to make a snoot from.  I went again from wide and low to extremely tight in a shot that was basically just shoulder pads and eyes with no fill light at all.  This turned out to be my favorite shot of Stephen.  It was just his eyes.  The hard back light reflecting off his jersey and the walls of the tunnel was the only light.

On Brent’s shoot I did a variety of lighting effects and poses with the ball which pretty much amounted to my old standby lighting style of two lights crossed on the subject.  Brent has a wonderfully intense look when he wants to and I was able to capitalize on this for some really nice tight work.  It was not the same as Stephen’s set up but I didn’t think this would be used on the cover anyway so I wasn’t worried about duplication.

I then moved Brent into a kind of portable tunnel which was a metal frame covered with a white tarp style covering.  I was hoping that I could do a nice lighting effect by placing a strobe behind him fired down the tunnel with a front light which ended up being a Lumedyne in an umbrella.  I was very pleased with this shot even though it was not used in the magazine.  The rear strobe did its work and the tunnel picked up a kind of ripple in the fabric creating a nice effect.

I really enjoyed working with both of these guys.  Both of them present themselves very well and I look forward to covering them in their senior seasons this year and then in the SEC for a few years to come.  Who knows, there may be another brother combination at quarterback in the NFL before too many years have gone by.  I imagine Stephen will have to dodge a few blitzes from Brent over the next couple of seasons.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.   The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer.

One of the things I love about my job is the chance to shoot portraits of so many different people in so many different situations.  The environmental portrait is very enjoyable and the only thing I don’t like about shooting portraits is when I am forced to shoot in a studio.  I absolutely hate the studio.  Hate it I say.  I am not sure where my anti-studio thing began but it is simply not for me.

Don’t misunderstand.  I know that many people who specialize in the portrait love the starkness and visual simplicity of having nothing but the subject in a photo.  They have the ability to distill the essence of the individual with nothing more than a blank backdrop, the camera and whatever light they are going to use.  I think of the famous portrait of Winston Churchill when I think of this style of portraiture.  It is fabulous but it is not for me.

I love being on location.  I love the challenge of either working with the existing light or overcoming it.  I love finding something of the person in his or her environment.  I don’t know when this started because I remember distinctly how I used to disdain any situation that was contrived or set up in any way.  One day the switch just flipped and I began finding a pleasurable challenge in the environmental portrait.

This series of portraits literally runs the gamut for me.  There are one light portraits, two light portraits, three light portraits and even a four light portrait.  That, of course, is the lights I have added because, in most cases, daylight is also involved.  I probably should make you deconstruct each photo and tell me the number of lights in each portrait.  That might be fun.  Besides, what kind of teacher would I be if I never gave a test.  So, ahem, class, class, please take out your test booklets and match the number of lights to each portrait and kindly post your answers in the comments section.  There will be no prize awarded for this only the knowledge gained from your experience.  If you really want to get creative you can tell me where the lights are positioned.  Now there is a tester!

Just on a personal note here, I really enjoyed photographing the people in these pictures.  The captions will tell you something of their stories and if you are really interested you can go to decaturdaily.com and look up each person for the story associated with the photo.  Of course, some of them will be under our subscription lock so that won’t work for all of them.  The combo portrait of the Special Olympians is very special to me.  One of the people, Lucas Compton, was one of my subjects in The Upside of Down.  He is a very special young man and I absolutely love being around him.

I could really go on and on about these fine people.  I never cease to be amazed how willing people are to share their lives and their stories with me.  It is a true privilege and pleasure.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

 

A better title might be how to turn horrible mid-day sunlight into something reminiscent of night light, of course that is a bit unwieldy so we will stick with what we have.  The situation was a feature story on a lady who has been collecting tickets at Danville High School football games for 25 years.  It is one of those features you do in the off season to keep some local interest on your sports pages.  Nice story but one heck of a challenge for the poor photographer.

Here is the situation.  I have a lady waiting to be photographed at 1:30 on a sunny July afternoon.  She has no tickets and no programs.  We do have access to the ticket booth but that is it.  I have a twenty five minute drive to Danville, call it imagination time, to come up with some kind of photo that wasn’t boring.  I remembered how movie makers used to shoot “night” scenes during the day by underexposing the film so much they were left with nothing but the highlights.  It never really looked like night but hey, the movie world is all imagination anyway.  I decided to adapt that technique to this situation.

I wanted it to feel a little bit like Friday night so I decided to put her in the ticket booth and strobe the who set up.  I would try to knock my daylight down two stops below normal.  This is all I can do  based on the limitations of time of day and the camera’s technical limits.  I would gel my strobes to create a little atmosphere in the booth and, yapple dapple, I would have a photo.  Yapple dapple, by the way, is a highly technical term reserved for those times when we completely make up an image when one doesn’t actually exist!  I would have gladly waved a magic wand but, alas, none were available.

Upon arrival I found a willing subject who was happy to play along with my idea so here is how it went down.  I used three SB flash units and one Lumedyne.  I put two of the SBs on light stands in the two booths and I put the third on a magic arm attached to an overhead steel structure and put deep amber gels on all three.  I left the Lumedyne ungelled and used it direct in the first set up.  I had the lady stand in the breezeway between the two ticket booths, which was my original idea, and made a decent image.  I decided to move here into one of the booths and stand by the window.

I liked this better but shooting from outside through the window proved impossible to light so I moved across the breezeway into the other ticket booth.  Now the problems arose.  The light was too weak on her and too weak inside the booth.  I moved a second SB into her booth.  Both were firing on full power.  I moved the third to a better position to light the outside wall of the booth.  Then I moved my Lumedyne in real close to the ticket booth window and put an umbrella on it.  This softened the light a bit and gave it some dimension.  Now I had three SB strobes all firing on full power and one Lumedyne firing at 100 watt seconds.  My exposure was ISO 100 equivalent, 1/250th second at about f16 on a Nikon D3 with a 17-35 lens.

All things considered I think it made a much more interesting image than I would have been able to do without the gels and extra strobes.  My best shot came when I knelt down in the opposite booth and got some sky in the window while hiding all those light stands.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Sometimes you need to work quickly to respect your subject’s time but you still need to make a really nice image.  I had an assignment late last week to photograph Decatur’s new police chief.  The city’s new chief, Ed Taylor, also happens to be a friend.  I have known him for years but we have become better friends over the last few years.  Ed’s step son has special needs and, of course, I had a son with special needs.  Ed and his wife have been great advocates for people with special needs and are heavily involved in Special Olympics. I was very happy to hear that he had been promoted to chief and I was also happy to be assigned his portrait introducing him to the city.

My oldest son Alex was at work with me the day I did the portrait and this was a great help.  I used Alex as my equipment mule and as my stand in so I could fine tune my setup before bringing Chief Taylor in to do his portrait.  The lighting setup could not have been more simple.  I used an SB28DX as my main light and set it to shoot through an umbrella at 1/4 power.  I used an SB8oo on optical slave as a background light to illuminate the flag.  All I had to do was fine tune my lighting ratio to get it just right.

This first frame was my first test image.  Obviously too dark all the way around.  I adjusted my aperture and exposed a second test image.  Better but not quite correct.  On the third test image I moved my background light which was coming in at too shallow and angle.  I moved it so it was more directly pointed at the flag and turned down the power.  Now I had everything about right.  The final test shot was just right.

I set up my lights in one of the detective’s offices because he had the flag on his wall.  It made an excellent background and the office was right next door to Taylor’s.  When Alex and I had finished I went next door and interrupted the interview to get the Chief.  We took about two minutes to get the pictures.  I probably didn’t shoot more than 12 frames.  I had two or three I liked a lot and this one was the best.  I let the Chief get back to the interview and Alex and I wrapped up the gear and got on out to the next job.

Now maybe you won’t have Alex with you on a shoot but it is pretty rare that you won’t have anyone around to stand in for you for just a minute.  In a pinch you can just hold the camera at arms length and snap a frame of yourself.  This was give you an idea if your light ratios are okay.  When your subject comes in you won’t have to make major adjustments.  You can fine tune but you won’t look incompetent.  That’s always nice.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

 

Every year the Spirit of America Festival honors someone with the Audie Murhpy Award.  The Spirit of America Festival committee selects an outstanding American for the  honor  for patriotism and heroic conduct.  This year the honoree is Homer Hickam a man accomplished in many fields but famous for his book, Rocket Boys.  Hickam’s life began with a destiny.  He was going to spend his days in the coal mines of West Virginia just like his father had done before him.  Hickams dreams refused to allow him to be shunted underground.  He wanted to point his life to the stars.

I had the honor of photographing Hickam in his home in Huntsville.  I knew I had to do something with a rocket because that is what the story our reporter did was all about.  When I arrived at his home he did not really want to do anything with rockets.  Hickam told me his latest book was on dinosaurs.  He has become something of a dino hunter and has been involved in finding two T-Rex skeletons.  I found myself looking at a Renaissance Man and the rocket thing no longer seemed appropriate.  I still had to shoot it but I was looking for something else.

 

Hickam has authored 13 books so his wife set up a small display with a few meaningful items for a backdrop.  Among them was this amazing thing that looked like a platter but was translucent and had a variety of colors in it.  I figured this was perfect because, at least in my mind, it held echoes of both the earth and the heavens.  The earth colors gave it the tie to this world but its shape, a swirling kind of thing, reminded me of galaxies.  Now the challenge became lighting it.  I tried three angles before finding one that worked.  The best way to do it was lay an SB28DX on the back of the couch the dish was next to and fire it at almost a flat angle to the back.  That would be at the 15 degree position relative to the dish back.

I used a Lumedyne strobe fired through a large Octobank for my main light and I used an SB800 bounced into the joint between ceiling and wall as a very low powered fill light.  There was a large bank of windows on that side of the room but I decided to use the strobe to maintain color balance.  I never got the relationship exactly right between the size and position of Hickam’s face relative to the size of the object in the background.  It was just a bit too small to do what I had envisioned but I think it worked out okay.  When I left his home I was fairly well pleased with the portrait.

There was one very nice thing about photographing him from the photographer’s point of view; he is accustomed to being photographed.  I brought a lot of equipment into his home and was apologizing about it but he said not to worry.  He had been on a national morning TV show, I think Good Morning America, a couple weeks before and they had arrived at his home at 4:30 in the morning to set up their gear.  This comfort level in front of the camera really helps because you don’t have to overcome that level of discomfort many people feel allowing you to focus on the lighting and the moment.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Bill Thomason is now 88 years old and lives a quiet life in Decatur.  Sixty four years ago he found himself facing a Soviet firing squad in the immediate aftermath of World War II.  Thomason’s reflections on his close encounter were written by my friend and Decatur Daily writer Ronnie Thomas.  Ronnie and I have done many, I don’t venture to say how many but a whole bunch, of veteran profiles over the years.  In all those stories I guess I had never heard of anyone facing a firing squad.

Thomason’s unit found a Soviet soldier in the US zone during the occupation of post-World War Europe.  His CO told him to take the soldier back to the Soviet side.  A group of US troops driven by Thomason returned the soldier to his comrades who promptly arrested the Americans and lined them up in front of machine guns.  Fortunately, a Soviet officer saw what was going on and stopped the execution and invited everyone in for a drink to smooth things over.  Thomason didn’t join the drinking.  He said US regulations didn’t allow him to leave his truck and all he wanted to do was get out of there.

I found myself listening to his story absolutely fascinated and flummoxed.  His story was amazing but there was literally nothing in the house to tie him to his past.  The only thing that held any potential for a photo was the vertical blinds behind his table.  I asked him to sit with his back to the blinds thinking this might convey some hint of bars like in a prison which might link him to his brief captivity.  I know, talk about a stretch but it was all I could come up with.  At the very least it would add a compositional element I could use even if it was not fraught with meaning.

I set two Elinchrom D-Lite  mono lights up firing them through small  soft boxes.  The lights were positioned opposite one another and very slightly behind Thomason.  I have been trying some wrap around lighting techniques and one day I will get it just right.  I got some nice tight stuff on him but nothing I thought would carry a page visually.  Finally Ronnie picked up the old newspaper which was about the only thing he had in the house from the World War II era and I was fortunate to be in a good spot.  I dropped low and used the widest setting on a 24-70 zoom and prayed that enough light would come through the paper to keep it from silhouetting.  There was barely enough and I used Photoshop to dodge that area just a bit using the history brush.

Once in a while I use my Canon 5D at work and this was one of those times.  I love that camera for portrait work.  Actually, I love that camera for almost anything not sports related but it is especially strong for portraits.  I don’t have a 24-70 company lens so I really have a hard time with short portrait work using the 17-35 or the 80-200 lenses I have for the D3.  (Wish list item:  a 24-70 f2.8 for the D3.)  Most of the lighting gear I use at work is also my personal gear.  I don’t have any company issue lighting modifiers or light stands at all but I do have a good supply of SB strobes.  The soft boxes provide a very excellent controlled light that is both soft and directional.  I don’t mind umbrellas at all and use them frequently but a soft box is very nice to have and I don’t have a modifier that allows me to shoot the SBs through a soft box.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

A big part of the joy I get from my job comes through photographing guys like Jim Odom.  Jim was a rocket scientist, literally.  He was in charge of the construction of the second stage of the Saturn V rocket during the days of America’s challenge to reach the moon.  Jim is an extremely nice, humble man and photographing him was a real pleasure.

When I have the opportunity to photograph guys like Jim I am cognizant of the fact that I am photographing an unsung hero in American history.  Everyone knows Wernher von Braun and some will have heard the names of the other German scientists who came to America after World War II.  But guys like Jim have not been heard of by very many people at all.  Helping tell his story then became a real honor for me.

We walk around in our communities every day and don’t realize who the people are around us or what they have done.  Some of you old timers reading this you will remember Lou Grant and Joe Rossi walking down the street one day during an episode of the Lour Grant show.  Grant, the editor, challenges Rossi, the reporter, to find a story from the next person they pass walking along the sidewalk.  Rossi scoffs but does it.  A little old lady carrying groceries is the next person they pass.  Eventually Rossi breaks through and finds that the little lady has a phenomenal story that no one knew about.  The episode ends with Grant and Rossi walking down the street.  They pass another person and Rossi looks at Grant and turns to run after the person they just walked past.

You just never know.  If I had met Jim walking down the street I would never have known he played such a pivotal role in our national history.  He doesn’t wear a badge proclaiming his accomplishments.  I am glad to have had the chance to photograph him but more than that, I am glad to have had a chance to meet him.  That is the real privilege of the job.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

There are few things that I take greater pleasure in as a photojournalist than telling the stories of America’s veterans.  This portrait of Edwin Slaten, an Air Force veteran, is one of several shot for a special section honoring veterans we did back in February.  Slaten served in the U.S. Air Force.  I could have selected any number of photos from this series because I had several I really liked.  I chose this one because, if you have been a reader here for long, you will know my love for clouds and the sky.  I try and use clouds and skyscapes in my photography as often as possible.

This particular portrait is back lit by the sun and side lit by a pair of Lumedynes direct with no modifiers.  The was was windy and any sort of umbrella or soft box would have just been impossible.  The wind would have blown the things over in a heart beat.  The direct light has the side benefit of giving me a higher contrast and a sharper edge to the light.  I thought all of that worked pretty well.

I believe I shot this portrait with a Canon 5D and a 24-70 zoom on the wide end of the scale.  Obviously, there is a low angle to give some emphasis to the sky and to the man.  Over many years of doing various stories on veterans I have come to a deep appreciation of what these men and women have accomplished.  Some of them have served voluntarily.  Some were drafted.  Every last one of them served their country at high risk and low pay and some did it for an entire career.  Others who served never made it back to have a portrait taken.  Whenever I shoot a portrait of a veteran I have both the person I am photographing and their comrades who died in the line of duty in my mind.

There is one story that has stuck with me over the years.  Ronnie Thomas and I did a story one year on a World War II vet who lived in Priceville.  He and a buddy were in their fox hole and it was either Thanksgiving or Christmas, I can’t remember which off the top of my head.  The man telling us the story was asleep in the hole and his buddy woke him up to take his turn on duty.  While he was keeping watch a German shell hit in a tree very near their hole.  The guy thought everything was okay until he went to wake his buddy.  It was then he discovered that shrapnel had hit his friend and killed him in his sleep.

Most of us will just never know the sacrifice these folks have given for us.  A portrait is a poor way to honor ones who have given so much but it is all I have so it is what I give.  That is why these guys always get my best effort.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

From time to time I get to shoot a picture of someone that I really admire or like.  It is not that I don’t give every photo assignment all I have it is just that some assignments make me want to excel just a bit more.  I had a portrait assignment recently that had my juices flowing.  Junior Hill is one of the most widely sought after evangelists in the South.  He lives in Decatur and he had just completed a new book about his dramatic weight loss.  Brother Hill is not one of these guys you are likely to find embroiled in a mess that brings shame to himself, the church or the Kingdom.

I wanted to do a really nice portrait so I arrived at the Westmeade Baptist Church in Decatur to meet him and the church pastor.  I had great visions in my head of stained glass and crosses in the background.  They wanted to shoot outside.  Okay, make and adjustment to the plan.  The sky wasn’t great and the church front is fairly typical.  I shot the two of them together and then move on to a portrait type shot of Hill.

I jokingly asked him if  he had a Bible.  I figured this was about like asking a photographer is he has his camera.  He had left the Bible at home but hey, there is a church handy and the pastor ran in to get us one.  I am hoping for a big, black, leather one but all they have is a hard back with a book jacket on it.  Okay.  Moving on.  Now my pose has to de-emphasize the Bible.

I turned Dr. Hill in a way where I would have only sky as a background.  I wanted a sweeping panorama of clouds behind the white haired evangelist.  You guessed it.  Power lines  are all over the place.  The best I can do, if I hold the camera just right, is get about a 35mm wide angle of view when I was really hoping for a giant sweeping panorama.  Oh well, one does what one can.  A God beam shooting through the clouds would have been nice but it was not to be.

I am now shooting from a low angle, holding both the camera and my mouth just right, and hoping Dr. Hill will give me some kind of a grand gesture.  Hmmm, nothing more than the posed shot.  Okay.  Moving on.  I thanked both men for being there and packed up my gear and moved along to the next job, not too happy but not too disappointed either.

I used a basic two light set up.  My main light was a Lumedyne head bounced into an umbrella to camera left.  I used a second Lumedyne direct, but at probably 20 feet off to the side and slightly behind to give me a kicker.  The only trouble with the lighting is that it doesn’t really bring out the eyes.  Other than that, my grand portrait idea of crosses and stained glass turned out okay considering there were neither crosses nor stained glass to be had.  This kind of thing happens all the time on photo assignments and you just have to learn to go with the flow.

Each time you tear down your game plan and build a new one on the fly you have grown just a little bit more as a photographer.  Each time you grow you get a little bit more flexible and a little bit more able to handle the changing environment of photojournalism.  Next time you get a curve ball instead of the expected fast ball, just keep your hands back and hit the thing to right field.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Back when I was a baseball player we used to say practice makes perfect.  That is slightly inaccurate.  The truth is that perfect practice makes perfect.  We are learning with therapy for Reece now that we have done some wrong things and it has allowed him to get strong but not always in the right way.  With those metaphors in mind, lets do a little photo practice.

My daughter Katie, who recently graduated from Auburn University, was home not long ago and she wanted me to shoot some portraits of her.  I agreed thinking that it might be good practice even though I really didn’t want to get out the lights and set up the Octobank, which is a real pain sometimes, but if you are going to shoot some pictures then do it right.  Katie has never met a camera she doesn’t like and she is a POSER!!! big time.  Point a camera at Katie and you will get everything from clown to Marilyn Monroe and it has always been that way.  She loves being photographed.  I guess it is a good thing that I am a photographer if for no other reason than for my daughter’s amusement.

The plus side to all that theatrical nature is that she requires very little direction.  In fact, if I am not careful, Katie will be directing me! So I set up the Octobank as main and a second Lumedyne head fired more or less straight but through a chair backing.  I did this hoping to create some funky shadows but it didn’t work.  What I ended up with was nice high key lighting.  So I just did a natural progression from light to dark and from a mid-range portrait to a very tight portrait progressing from light to dark the closer in I shot.

So what is the point of all this you ask?  Practice will help you improve when it is game time.  No athlete just waltzes out onto the field and plays the game.  Many hours of hard work and practice that no one sees go into preparation for the game that people do see.  Much of the reason that people stay mired in mediocrity is that they never do the things that lift them out of the morass of doing the same thing over and over again.  I may actually never shoot a newspaper portrait like these but I guarantee you that it is valuable to be able to take a high key portrait and a low key portrait in the same location by doing nothing other than manipulating the light.

How did I go from high key to low key you ask?  That my friends is the right question.  I began this against a plain, white wall in our home.  I used the straight Lumedyne low and to camera left laying in the seat of a chair.  It was aimed at the wall but provided face fill as well.  The Octobank was positioned at camera right in more or less a standard portrait angle of about 45 degrees relative to the subject.  This blasted the white wall with all kinds of light.  In fact, my first frame is more than a stop overexposed (not one shown here) and is so high key that it looks intentionally overexposed.  I shot the “normal” portraits at this se up.

As I moved tighter I also moved my camera position down in front of Katie.  This had the effect of elevating the light.  By moving closer I eliminated much of the light background.  Then I moved my main light closer to Katie and changed the angle so that it was almost beside her.  This changed the relationship of the light to the background and the light fall off was much more pronounced.  This gave the feathered light on the background.  I also stopped down my aperture as I moved in.  The final step in going low key was turning off the second Lumedyne which was filling the wall and the face.  Now I have dropped the background to subject light ratio by something like four or five stops.  (Not scientific – Just a guess)

So now I have actually made my daughter happy and I have some nice images of her and I have done some practice that will be valuable to me down the road.  It is a win, win, win situation.  Now it is time for the disclaimer that Katie knew was coming.  Ready Kate?  The parents of Katie neither condone nor encourage the piercing of body parts other than a single piercing for each ear.  The parents of Kate are pretty sure that an alien came into Katie’s room as a child and implanted these ideas into her brain using alien telepathy.  The parents of Katie can’t imagine where she got all that weirdness from!  What’s up with that Katie!? Now back to our regularly scheduled disclaimer.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer and certainly don’t represent those of Katie!  Love ya babe.