© 2012 Paul D’Andrea
Paul D’Andrea is an Indianapolis-based photographer whose work runs the gamut from portraits and events to fine art. He even helps run one of the few photography galleries in the city, M10 Studio and Gallery. Here, he gives us the details behind an outdoor portrait he made with a little help from HyperSync®.
When making a portrait I have to decide how to draw the viewer’s eye to the subject. I might do this with a simplified background, a composition that frames the subject, or it might be with a shallow depth of field or a difference in exposure (making the subject brighter than the backdrop).
For an outdoor portrait, using a shallow depth of field often precludes the use of studio lights and exposure in pulling the subject off the background. With a maximum sync speed of 1/250th of a second for the studio lights, I need to choose an aperture to match the ambient exposure, this might be f/11 or f/16 on a sunny day, which won’t provide a very shallow depth of field. Enter HyperSync, which allows me to have both a shallow depth of field and large light modifiers.
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© 2012 Chris Crisman
In the final part of Chris Crisman’s Heroes of Conservation series, Chris spends the day in northern Maine with John Serfazo, founder of the American Greenlands Restoration Inc.
John began his conservation efforts over ten years ago and has to date restored or reclaimed over 1000 acres of natural habitat.
Chris takes John’s portrait in a field of wild buckwheat in the late morning, using a gridded Octabank as his key light and the sun as backlight and fill light. He writes, “Adding a grid to a larger and broader source we were able to condense the light significantly, making it a bit more contrasty and shaping but still keeping the overall soft feel we try to achieve by using our octas. Since we we were working in fairly bright daylight, we ran approximately 1500 w/s out of our Dynalite power packs, synced wirelessly to the camera with our Pocketwizard Plus® III transmitters.”
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gregvojtko.com
While working at Naval Sea Systems Command in California, photographer Greg Vojtko had the opportunity to photograph engineer Dan King, designer of laser calibration standards.
Instead of taking a traditional headshot and calling it a day, Greg created a dramatic portrait of a man at work. In a darkened room, Greg set up two speedlights to illuminate his subject, triggered them with PocketWizard radio triggers, then left his shutter open while filling the room with smoke to burn in the light from the lasers.
He writes, “While the phrase ‘Smoke and mirrors,’ is often considered a metaphor for a deceptive or fraudulent explanation, in this case served to bring a portrait to life.”
Read the full post and see more of his work on his site.
All images and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Greg Vojtko, all rights reserved; story is ©PocketWizard. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or re-post elsewhere without written permission.
Rod Cross © 2012 Chris Crisman
Chris Crisman continues his behind the scenes coverage of the Heroes of Conservation project with Rod Cross, president of Pennsylvania’s Falling Spring Chapter of Trout Unlimited.
The first shoot took place early in the morning, but on dry land. For this next shoot, Chris takes to the water to capture a portrait of Rod, a fisherman who has raised over one million dollars in grants to protect Pennsylvania’s waterways.
As with the first shoot, Chris masterfully blends the ambient light and strobe, using a small softbox with a grid to light Rod, while taking advantage of the dappled afternoon sunlight.
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© Chris Crisman 2012
Photographer Chris Crisman is known for his environmental portraiture, so he was a natural choice for Field and Stream’s annual Heroes of Conservation project. The goal of the project is to profile and recognize outdoorsmen and women who “embody the spirit of conservation.”
For the first part of what is to be a three-part series documenting some of the shoots from the project, Chris travels to North Carolina to meet and photograph Eddie Bridges, the founder of the North Carolina Wildlife Habitat Foundation.
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