52 portraits: 30/52 Gideon Evans

This week, I had a last minute cancellation, and thus a last minute change of plans. I scrambled to Star Lounge on Sunday night and informed Gideon that I would be taking his portrait. As expected, he was totally game.

Gideon Evans is a barista at Star Lounge Coffee Bar. In addition to serving up the best coffee in Chicago, he also is involved in several music groups. He is currently collaborating on a weirdo-rap group with my roommate and friend Jeff, and is the front-man of a death metal band called "Pilgrim." He has an extreme interest in linguistics, which comes manifests in his musical projects.

The interior of star has several different temperature light sources. This is a huge challenge, and it would be nearly impossible to expose for ambient and color-balance my flashes. To work around this, I decided to shoot at my sync speed and try as best as I could to kill the ambient light. Then, I bounced a flash off the ceiling to properly expose the room. The key comes from a white-over-silver umbrella placed on top of the bar, and I put one more strobe behind the bar for an edge.

I also had a difficult time with the mirrors behind the bar. I ended up having to tape a flag against one of them to prevent lens flare. Overall I don't think it takes away from the image.

I placed the flash lighting the room on the bar and zoomed it in pointed towards the ceiling. I began to shoot a bit before i noticed that despite being zoomed in, it was still spilling on Gideon's face. Here's a pic of what that looked like:

It totally messes up the gradient from the key and casts a weird unflattering harsh light on his face. I threw some barn doors on it and carried on with the shoot. While I was at it, I had Jeff stand in for a few.