Sometimes I take a picture I consider “iconic” like this one. It’s of Scott Dawson. Scott is an acquaintance of mine from the community but he’s also an evangelist of the gospel. This year, Stadiumfest featured music from TobyMac and Casting Crowns among others. I volunteered to cover the event for Scott and near the end I was able to capture this image as he gave an invitation for people to come forward. It just so happened that the spotlight hit him at just the right moment.
Scott Dawson
Last summer I got a call from Lawdragon to shoot portraits of two lawyers here in Alabama for their journal. Lawdragon is a national portal listing of lawyers, evaluations and lawyer profiles and for this assignment they wanted to spotlight lawyers outside of their offices and not in suits. The direction was to place them in environments that matched up with something regarding their own hobbies or interests outside of the office. Jere Beasley and Ralph Cook were my two assignments. I have been wanting to release these for months but as it usually turns out the time between the shoot and when pictures are published sometimes stretches out further than one may expect.
Mr. Beasley lives in Montgomery and was Lt Governor during one of George Wallace’s terms as governor. In fact, Jere was acting governor for 30 days after George Wallace was shot. Mr. Beasley’s office was a short walk from the Montgomery Biscuits’ ball park. At this point I forgot the exact involvement Mr. Beasley has with the park itself and the land on which it sits now but I do remember that he loves to watch them play! That’s where we decided to go for our portraits.
Jere Beasley
Mr. Cook lives in Birmingham and is a lawyer with a firm downtown. I found out that he was the former Supreme Court Chief Justice of Alabama which is a big deal for such a humble and personable man. I called him to discuss the shoot and discover his hobbies and fishing came to the top. He gladly volunteered to bring his hat, vest, waders and fly rod to our shoot. We chose the lake at Oak Mountain to shoot and I waded (minus waders) into the water with him and my assistant positioned my strobe toward Mr. Cook (i.e. held the strobe to keep it from falling into the water).
Ralph Cook
Many of you have a flash and I would venture to guess it’s attached to your hot shoe. Now, there are more adventurous types of you who have ventured out to off-camera flash with some sort of remote either with a cord attached to your hot shoe or a wireless remote like a Pocket Wizard. I was using my off camera flash yesterday with my model Lynlee at the Morgan Creek Vineyard when the opportunity came up for me to demonstrate the power of shadows.
The problem with the light yesterday was that it was 7PM and had been raining so there wasn’t much sun at all. I did my best to create my own sunshine. So I had Lynlee stand between two rows of vines while I shot over at her from slightly behind her left side. My assistant stood in the same aisle with her in the first picture with the flash (umbrella attached) pointed right at her. I looked at the picture and thought the light from the flash was good enough but the results weren’t what I desired.
Rule: Shadows make a photo more interesting not light. Actually, you do have to have light to create shadows which is the trick…use your light source to create shadows that make shots more intriguing. You wouldn’t put your subject looking directly into the sun would you? Of course not! You would put them turned slightly with the sun at the side or back of their head.
I had my assistant go over one more row of vines to the next aisle and point the flash up and over the vines at the right side of her face which created shadows on the left side of her face. I included a before and after shot to illustrate…
Light creates shadows when used correctly
The problem with this is going to be how do you get that $300 Canon 580 off the hot shoe right? A 6ft cord attached to the flash and the camera wouldn’t allow you to more your flash around very far. More on that later…yes it’s just more money!