Fake Sun

Though not a big fan of the show, I felt some sense of pride when I was assigned to shoot Biggest Loser Asia finalist Chef Carlo Miguel. I didn't realize what the fuzz was about until I saw his before photos, and men!...it was really quiet a feat he achieved there!

My client ran a story on weight loss and Chef Carlo was on top of the list as a subject.

We did several layouts for the shoot and almost all of them showed how much weight he lost. I wanted to do something not-so-stating-the-obvious so I decided to have one layout with him just sitting down (this shot is an outtake and didn't make print....it lacked that weight-loss-feel thingy).

I was looking for mood and texture for this one shot with him and saw this part of the restaurant. I loved the textured light at the end of the room and decided that that will be my backdrop. I also liked the sunlight coming in from the door at camera left and planned to use this as my main light. Mood and texture?... check and check.

I framed the shot, metered for the ambient light and did a test shot. For my desired exposure, I needed to set my cam at ISO400, my shutter speed at 1/60 and aperture at f3.5.

Good to go? I thought so, until I did a test shot with a stand-in. The sun wasn't lighting my subject well enough. I didn't want to change any of my cam setting anymore since I already liked what I saw. I didn't want to flood the shot with artificial light either since this was not the mood I was gunning for.

Solution? I placed a single strobe at camera left, beside the door where sunlight was coming in, mimicking the sunlight. Set it at the lowest power setting and bounced it off an umbrella. The result put the shot where I want it to be but still felt that my "fake sun" still looked fake. It was still too harsh and I was already at the lowest power setting of my strobe. Again, I didn't want to change any of my cam setting so I need to do something about my "fake sun". So I placed a white transluscent cloth on my umbrella, ala Softlighter, to achieve the desired lighting.

The result was this shot. Doesn't look fake eh?

Hope this helps. Happy shooting!

Brief Moment With a Legend

Apologies for the long quiet time, it's been quite crazy these past few months. Anyways....

Above everthing else, what I'm really thankful about my profession is that I am able to meet a lot of interesting people. And every now and then, you get the unique opportunity to shoot a legend.

You don't say no to an assignment like that!

Lucky for me I had time and managed to include the rare opportunity to shoot boxing legend, Gerry Penalosa, that day.

Though this shoot/interview sked granted by Gerry was exclusive to us, we didn't want to abuse it and take much of his time. We maximized the sked alloted for us and did not allow for any lull time.

When an assignment calls for both an interview and shoot, I normally let the writer go ahead with the interview first. This buys me time to scout for a good location to shoot and set up. Plus, it helps to loosen the subject up a bit for the shoot. Next time you go to a shoot/interview, let your writer go ahead first with the interview so you have time for scouting and setting up.

For this, I decided to drown out the ambient light of the gym by using the max sync speed of my cam and lit our subject with two strobes. One for key and the other for high/backlight. ISO was set at 100 and aperture was f5.6.

The key light was softened up with a transluscent white umbrella in shoot through position set at 1/2 power and placed just outside of the frame, camera right. The other one also placed just outside the frame, camera left, and gridded to limit light spill. It was set at 3/4 power. I used two Foresto's for this by the way.

I did a few test shots with a stand-in to check for proper exposure and after that all I needed was to put the legend in the frame.

Once interview was done, we had Gerry change into a boxing outfit, put him in the ring and shot his portrait right away.

Mission accomplished! Portrait shoot with no waiting time for the legend.

Next?.....The Pacman......I hope.

Happy shooting!