An Afternoon with a Basement Chair.

My son was home from college and, naturally, albeit gingerly, was asked to be my model. The kids have been asked enough that they typically run the other way when the camera comes out. I thought what a nice father and son project this would be. It actually started out with a gun instead of the can, but looked a bit too sinister. The beards kids wear nowadays make them like hoodlums. And, yes, to you moms out there, it was a toy gun. But, the gun wasn't the point. We had a great time with the can and the shot. In between takes, we were watching the movie Face Off. So, maybe the gun was a bit tame! The details of the photo session after the jump...




Lighting Interlude (AKA Lighting Lude)...
This is my first post. Since I am new at this blog stuff, I will start so simply even I can understand me (and that's not easy). I built this picture with some light, some thought, and after about an hour, some coke Coke. It started with an idea to use a gun in a picture. I played with the lights and decided that I do not have a great basement for placing lights anywhere, so I redistributed my talent and set up a shot that might work.

Sooo, I grabbed a chair and started with the lighting. I started with a phooph (my technical term for a light) 45 degrees off rear center axis and added another on the other side. This lit the ears and sides of the face real well. I wanted the background to be minimized to near darkness, so I tried closing down the aperture, arriving at f11 by increasing the lights' power just under the blow out level for my camera sensor. Then came the piece of resistance...fill with on front axis ringflash. I use the Alien Bees model. It seems to be my workhorse for most non normal light needs. I adjusted it to my liking and viola! No, not really. It gave me a great starter shot. I then took it to lightroom and found that it was not in the right power range for what I wanted to do so it went to Pshop CS2. There I primped it and used  "A Touch of Light and a Touch of Darkness from MCPActions.com. It works great for low to moderate alterations. I increasd the alterations with the levels tool and ended up with this. This was not all that happened, though.