46/52 Holly Sabin

 

Well hello there friends. It's been an awful long time since we've caught up, and I have to say it's all my fault. Let's skip the usual excuses and get right down to it. This time around I caught up with Hinge Gallery's co-owner Holly Sabin on the gallery's opening day.

Holly Sabin is an independent art gallery owner/operator from Chicago, Illinois. She is the co-owner of Hinge Gallery, located on Chicago avenue. Rather than doing Holly and her gallery the disservice of butchering their mission statement, here's a brief excerpt from their website:

Located in the Ukrainian Village, Hinge Gallery presents a future forward vision for the culture of Chicago's creative community. Hinge Gallery is dedicated to the exploration of multimedia arts through experiential discovery. Supporting programming includes artist’s talks, performances, panel discussions, workshops, and receptions.

Holly is a graduate of the University of Chicago with a degree in Visual Arts, as well her Master's in Arts Management from Columbia College.


I caught up with her, as mentioned previously, during the afternoon on Hinge's opening day. Despite the rush to hang the last of the work, all was suprisingly calm and collected in the gallery space. I shot Holly at the desk in the front of their storefront, at what is basically their reception desk. The space is a nice mix of natural and tungsten light, but lord only knows I can't leave well enough alone. I keyed from High camera left with my standby, the silver over white dual folding umbrella. I gelled it full CTO to balance with the tungsten, and I used a shutter speed of 1/250 in order to minimize the now-cold ambient from the front windows. I used a speedlight from back camera left to provide an edge, which I flagged by putting on the other side of the doorway into the other room. This was gelled 3/4 CTO to leave it subtly cooler than the key. Rounding out the setup, I bounced flash off the ceiling in the room in the background to fake the ambient light of the room. It was also gelled full CTO. Here's what the lights looked like hidden behind the half-wall doorway thing.

I spoke earlier of the ambient of the front window. Here's an ambient-only frame, and you can see the slightly blue cast caused by the windows. It's not desirable, but I feel that it helps to add a different hue to one of the planes of the desk, helping to dimensionalize it.Too bad you can't see it in this photo, but you all understand what I'm talking about. Maybe.

I also was introduced to the mascot of Hinge gallery. Presenting, a pinecone:

Apparently upon taking over the space and beginning to convert it into a gallery, this pinecone was the only thing inside the entire storefront. Both myself and my roommate Jeff independently commented "that's a handsome pinecone." Great minds think alike, and it's a handsome pinecone indeed. Here's a final outtake of Holly interacting with the Hinge Gallery security guard:

 

Strobist Info:
SB-800 high camera left through silver-over-white umbrella with full CTO gel
SB-600 back camera left through barn doors with 3/4 CTO gel
SB-600 back camera left bounced off of wall camera left with full CTO gel

Camera Settings:
1/250 f/6.3 at ISO 160
Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 @ 32mm