37/52 Ahmed Ozsever

Welcome to our fake room. How can a room be fake? Read on, dear reader. Read on.

Ahmed Ozsever is a multitasking fine artist and coffee roaster from Indianapolis, Indiana. He's a graduate of the Herron school of art and his artistic efforts most often find their end in photography. Like many of my friends, he has found his way to Chicago, and now teaches introduction to digital photography at the Hyde Park Art Center. He also is one of the main roasters at Dark Matter Coffee, a place I've visited just a few times over the course of this project. Ahmed, Jeff and I have a show which is currently hanging in Star for the next month or two. Those of you in Chicago should definitely come and check it out!

So, a fake room?

Ohhhhhhh, I get it. A fake room. Got it.


Many of Ahmed's artistic endeavors center around the creation of artificial sets with pre-arranged elements. For the shoot, we headed to his studio space on the west side and proceeded to brainstorm. We scoured his building and found the chair that we used, which had apparently been thrown away. We decided to attempted to work with some elements he had lying around, in attempt to make the most "soul-crushing room possible." I think we did pretty well at it. Here's a shot of the "room" by itself.

I think the bird is a pretty crucial element.

This creepy thing is actually a candle. I jokingly told Ahmed that perhaps next week I should just do a portrait of the bird. On second thought....


Anyways, as seen in the wide shot above, I brought the big lights out. The main was a gridded octa, feathered slightly to the front of the subject, and the edge was an Einstein with 7" reflector and barn doors. I'm really happy with how the light came out. We did a few different preparations of the room. The one up top has weird metal brackets on the "table" (the table was actually an overturned trashcan with a piece of brown Plexiglas on top of it). I liked his pose in iteration the best, though I think the mise en scene in the later ones was more convincing.

All told, this was an awesome shoot, resulted in some great images, and was a lot of fun. Till next time, dear readers.

Strobist Info:

PCB Einstein camera right through gridded large octabox

PCB Einstein back camera left through 7" reflector with barndoors

Camera Settings:

1/250 f/6.3 at ISO 100

Nikon 17-55 f/2.8@ 50mm