That’s what today in the studio will be about. Simple, usable, workhorse images. Maybe even a cliche or two.

The blog post isn’t so much about making funny pictures, but rather the lessons that professionals in the photo world should take from professionals in  the comedy world. It’s a great read… David duChemin is a great writer and a hell of a photgrapher. Do check out the site when you get a chance.

The original image used is this one, available, as always, from iStockphoto.com:

No doubt it’ll take some getting used to; lensbabies are not like other lenses. The cool thing about lensbabies is their repositionable barrel. Basically, you move the elements around by hand, which moves the sweet spot around your frame. It’s fun, but very different. I’ll have some more samples online soon.

The image above will be available for licensing from my stock photography portfolio soon.

EDIT:

Just for the heck of it, here’s another shot from the lensbaby:

The ribbon cutting was a bigger event than we usually see here in Oro Valley, with the CDO marching band and cheerleaders on hand, presentations of charitable donations from Walmart to various organizations, and Mayor Loomis providing a few words to the crowd.

There are still some tweaks to make: I have a few legacy details in the blog css to revisit, and I need to rewatermark the sample images on the site so that they all use the new Myerson Photo logo, rather than the old stylized “EM” logo. I hope the new look goes over well!

The key light (OK, only light) was a Canon 430 EX. It was off to camera left, placed further back of the subject, sort of between the subject and the back wall of the sweep. That sweep, by the way, is a $4.99 piece of gold paper I picked up at Aaron Brothers. I’ve had it for years, and use it all the time. I also have one in silver. They’re really handy.

I put a yellow gel on the background half of the speedlight. That allowed the light hitting the back of the sweep to have a little extra warmth, and the light hitting the subject was allowed to stay white. A mirror placed camera right bounced some of that white light back onto the subject. That’s what’s illuminating the standing quarter.

A piece of foam core to camera right helped fill in some of the background shadows.

Here’s a diagram showing the setup:

If you want to go the easy route to lighting a scene with a single strobe, you can create a light tent or reflector box and fire away. You’ll get a flat even lighting all around the subject. Sometimes that may be exactly what you’re looking for. For this assignment, however, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted instead to create a scene that had the look of multiple lights. One way to do that was to create harsh reflections. I figured that would look more like a second light source, and less like a reflector. Mirrors do a great job of reflecting the light without any diffusion or light loss (if they didn’t do that, they wouldn’t be very useful additions to our bathrooms), so that’s what I used at camera right.

I’ve been looking through the Strobist Flickr pool, and there are some great examples of double/triple/quadruple lighting in there. Nice work, folks.

The limitations in a corporate head shot session are many. The main one is that your time is dictated by the availability of people who are very busy and not very inclined to make time for a photo shoot. CEOs are no different from the rest of the world – given the choice between a conference call and smiling for the camera, the conference call will win every time.

Beyond the time factor, however, there are other limitations. The shoot will almost always be on-site at their offices, and their offices will often not be what they want to have published. Again going with the “CEOs are no different” theory, the desks of busy people tend to look, well, busy. That’s not always the makings of great photos.

So I was very fortunate when I did a recent photo shoot with the executive committee of Ventana Medical Systems in Oro Valley, AZ. The company needed headshots of the CEO, CFO, and COO – both individually and as a group and in two different sets. We did the studio background first. The background shown in the image at left is a white vinyl window shade (click the image for a larger view). We used several different color gels until we found a backdrop that made everyone happy.

After the individual shots, we shot the three CxO’s as a group. For this, we decided the easiest and best option would be isolated against a white background. That had its own set of challenges, mainly the height differences among the three men. One of the things I love about commercial photography is that many times it’s more about problem solving and engineering solutions than about aesthetics. I suppose that appeals to my inner geek.