Apparently, It's been a while since I made a blog post... so I figure its about time I got back in here! :)
As you may have noticed, in earlier posts, I am currently enrolled in some night school courses at Sheridan College... I am a high school teacher after all and life-long education is something of a thing for me. So what better way to improve my photography skills than to take a few courses here and there, get some new gear, and practice using it?!?!
To that end, I recently acquired a new backdrop stand! It's always exciting to get new gear... but more fun when you can actually use it to put what you learned into practice. I was able to get some nice black and white backdrops along with a nice cloth patterned one as well. The pictures I'm including with this post are of my friend Adam. He was kind enough to pose for me as I completed an assignment for my latest History of Photography course.
With this assignment, I set out to create portraits of a gentleman. The period of time that influenced me was the early 20th century. For the past 4 years, I have been shooting family and wedding photographer, and during this time I found that most of the pictures that I was looking to for inspiration usually had the man as a prop instead of a central important figure in the picture. In family pictures, the father was often in the background as the photographer focused on the children. In wedding pictures, the bride in her beautiful dress would be draped over him and staring at the camera while he had his back to the photographer, sometimes he was almost cropped out completely.
So, my idea was a simple one. Practice photographing a man in interesting, intriguing, and/or striking poses.
As much as I feel I was influenced by the early 20th century, especially having a man in a nice brown suit and the use of the top-hat, I didn’t want to fall back on the old ways of photography... I used my modern, full frame, DSLR, a nice clean black paper back drop, and a single speed light shot through a white umbrella. My goal was to use a soft light, yet have that light fall off dramatically so as to create a strong contrast between the light and the shadows.
Enjoy!