Edgy three light look

By far this is one of my favorite images in the recent times, There is a very interesting story behind this image I was in Columbus Ohio for two days working on a project with my friend Yogesh who also happens to be a awesome art director. After a long day of shoot we both went to eat at his wife's restaurant. we were sitting and planning our next day where we were suppose to do a lot of post production work and wrap the shoot as well. All of a sudden I saw two very interesting faces standing and talking to “Uma”, Yogesh’s wife. I asked Yogesh who are they; he told me they are our regular guests and come here often as they just love the Indian food. he questioned me back why are you asking about them? I said, that something just came in my head and I really would like to do that,  upon which he looked back  at me with a weird look and said what? I said, Look at their faces dude, aren’t they amazing, let’s go and talk to them. He said, what about our work, I told him we will finish that in time. I explained Yogesh what was in my mind in terms of lighting and he looked at me and said hmmmmmm, sure lets do it, because he is as crazy as I am when it comes to creating art. He introduced me to them and I started talking and explaining to them the concept. They were real sport and said yes. Otherwise people think a photographer from New York, ummmm let me think again. Lol, no it’s not like that. Photographers from New York are well respected; we decided to shoot the next morning at 9.a.m in Yogis’ home studio. I was really excited to do this shoot and was looking forward to it.

Now came the time where we were thinking how we will finish our work and still do this shoot. Both of us decided to work all night and finish the post production work, even though it was tough but like I always say anything for a good picture. We worked all night till 6.am and woke up at 8.am since our models arrived before time. It was the husband wife and there their two kids. I wanted to set up the lights for the Edgy three light gritty look. Ideally I would like 2 medium sized soft boxes with chimera grids and a beauty dish for such a set up, but we had 2 Profoto heads with one large soft box and one umbrella and for the third light we had a Nikon speed light SB800. The challenge here for me was to create the right highlights on the right spots and they have to be equally distributed and balanced. I used the SB800 as the key light which is replacing the beauty dish; it will illuminate the forehead and the nose. The other two lights were placed on the right and left of the model; I had to move the lights at different distances several times just to get the right exposure  since there is very little room for any spill light in this kind of set up I had to flag the lights, we used a spare door sitting in his garage, we used the black side of the umbrella as a black bounce and of course a white reflector under  the models chest to give that little highlight on his collar bone It took almost a hour and half to finally get the right exposure and setup. Finally we started shooting and working on his expressions and at the end I got what I was looking for. I can’t tell you guys how satisfying it is to achieve something you have visualized and especially in a situation like this. I did a different lighting setup for his wife just to make her look softer and prettier. I will talk about her image soon,  we also wrapped our actual assingment in time  and i got on my flight back to NY in time.
chao.

Spring Swirl

The time is here to witness the beautiful colors of flowers and trees, I always wonder how God creates things and changes things according to season and this applies not only on the trees but also on us humans, not all the seasons of our life are the same. There is a tree outside my home which was naked not long ago and with in couple weeks it is loaded with the most beautiful and colorful flowers one can imagine, i have been shooting pictures of this particular tree in all seasons, I like to document the changes it goes through in every season and during my life time in this house.
These flowers will stay for another couple of weeks and transition to beautiful leaves.
 I wanted to shoot this picture in a  diffrent manner and give it some twist, so i thougt about the swirl, it was late in the evening aroung 7.00 pm when i took these shots. i had my fav Nikon lens 28.. 70mm 2.8 set at 28mm for maximum width, i stood right underneath the tree and shot it upwards with a long exposure of about 4the of sec  and during the exposure time i had to keep the camera very steady and give it a swirl to get this effect. important thing in this picture is a slow shutter, open apperture and a very parrell and steady movement in the camera.. if this info is any help to you please do share it your experiences with me.

Thanks

Mayor Nutter Picture

I had about 15 miniutes to shoot some pictures of Mayor Michael Nutter in his office (mayor of Philadelphia), amd in those 15 miniutes he was also supposed to give his interview over the phone to the editor of the magazine who was doing the story on him. I was intially worried and nervous that how will i get a good picture of him. prior to this assignment i had not shot with a politician, i am more into models and musicians and actors celebs from the entertainment world, I also have a lot of respect for him and the work he is doing in philly. His staff called me in and said do it quickly you will have to hurry mayor only has about 10 miniutes for this shoot, i was carrying 2 strobe lights with soft boxes and umbrellas, stands.
 and to add to the pot my assistant called out, thank God for my wife that she voluntered to be my assistant that day. we had already set up the soft boxes put the lights on the stands while waiting in his lobby. I met the mayor shook hands and immediately the crunch started, i right away spotted a flag so what i did was focused one light on the flag and the key light to camera right. I kept the back light on the flag about half stop under to the key light and then started shooting in my usual way i started directing the mayor to look down ,right, left, foot forward, shift your body weight and what not at that time he was a just another model in front of me. right away i spotted a beautiful couch behind me i asked the mayor to sit on it and moved  my light to camera left  and just used one light this time, i wanted to create a rembrant style of  lighting and portrait  and i succeded to create the right exposure and temprature,  shot about 5 frames and i knew i got my picture. all this was done in about 8 miniutes. the funny thing is when i gifted the picture to the mayor he said oh you are the one who was moving me too much...oops.. the end reuslt is that he loved the image and propsed it to be used on the billboards all across philadelphia for the cencus campaign.