Being back in Indy gave me a bit of time to catch up with old friends. This being a business-related voyage, I was a bit pressed for time. We still managed to meet up with my friend Steph for lunch, then later in the evening for a bit of a photo shoot. Definitely time well spent. Next time there will be more emphasis on the hanging out and less on the photo front. Really glad to have gotten some awesome snaps of her though. More on the shoot after the jump.
Stephanie Schilling and I go way back. Back to the days of New Palestine High School, large plates filled with condiments, animal noises, and way too much Wendy's. Inside jokes aside, the farther I'm removed from my high school experience, the more I realize how lucky I was to end up friends with such good people. I'm sure plenty of less-than-exemplary human beings exited the doors of NPHS around the same time as myself, but I don't count any of them among the ranks of the people with whom I bonded. Anyways, back to the bio. Steph is currently persuing degrees in International Studies and Spanish at IUPUI. We caught up with her at her awesome apartment in downtown Indianapolis.
The farther I get in this project, the more I realize how much I love photographing people who have cool stuff. Bat in a jar? Bat in a jar. (worthy of note: other animals in jars were present, which were not included in the shoot). The light in Steph's apartment is SUPER warm. Think tungsten bulbs through vintage yellowed shades. I loved how it looked, but this is a lighting project. I wanted to emulate and refine that look.
I place the main at high camera left. Even though it's off axis from the lamp in the shot, I feel it tricks the untrained eye into reading as the lamp light. Maybe not, but regardless, I like the look. Then I wanted some hard light to define the subject. LIFE LESSON: this is hard to do when your subject is in a corner. I hit Steph with a gridded sb800 from hard camera right. The grid proved too tight, and I switched off to a bare sb800 to get more even illumination on the walls. Finally, I wanted to add a little emphasis on the SKULL WITH ANTLERS and BAT IN A JAR.
YES.
BOTH OF THOSE THINGS.
I'm going to venture a guess that I'll likely never run into both of these objects in a photographic setting ever again. Life is weird though, who knows. I did so with an sb600 through barn doors from back camera left. We tried to get Steph's cat Maverick in on the action. He was moderately cooperative, yet in the end he was far more interested in laying around.
All strobes were fired through full CTO gel. I cooled things down just a tiny bit in post, but anything more and the photos would ring true to the experience of actually hanging out in her apartment. Setup shot time:
Strobist Info:
SB-800 high camera left through white and silver reflective umbrella with CTO gel
SB-800 camera right with CTO gel
SB-600 camera right with barn doors and CTO gel
Camera Settings:
1/80 f/4 at ISO 500
Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8
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