"Chairman Of The Board"

"Chairman Of The Board"
© David A. Ziser

This image was captured just a weeks ago in Las Vegas during my Photoshop World wedding shoot out.  That was a challenging session as I have previously described.  We moved outside and luckily it was not too hot, only in the mid 90’s,  and we pulled off  a few images in front of the church where we were working.  This is one of my favorite images from that session.

At first, it appears to be just a simple, straightforward portrait.  But to capture this image, I pulled a lot of lighting tricks out of my bag to make it work. First, I asked Jay to take off his coat and toss it over his shoulder.  This makes for a very relaxed pose, plus it had the added benefit of showing off that great shirt he was wearing.

The light was pretty flat so I asked my assistant to add some light from camera right.  I used just a small shoe mount strobe triggered with a small radio.  That small strobe shooting at 1/4 power gave me just the right amount of light on Jay’s face to give me the dimensional look I wanted.

The problem was that my subject was fading into the background.  I needed to somehow separate him from the dark door behind him.  I still had my Quantum flash available so I asked one of our class members to hide behind Jay and point my Quantum at 1/4 power right at the door just to the right of the door handles.  I needed the strobe to be about two feet away from the surface of the door to get the light spread the way I wanted it.  This light addition really created an interesting effect on the image.

I framed Jay with both the door, the interior frame, and part of the white wall of the church, another interior frame.  This double framing does well to direct the viewer’s eye directly onto the subject.  The rich colors, great lighting, and solid expression help make this a great portrait.

Camera specs: canon 5D Mark II fitted with 70-200mm IS lens at 130mm, F9.0 @ 1/200 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David