Portrait In The Park -The History of Big Basin

1/180 second, F20, ISO 400, Cloudy White Balance Preset. Lens 135mm equivalent

Some assignments become favorites not by the ease of their execution, but from the satisfaction that comes when a series of lighting challenges are addressed, resulting in a photo that was a close to prefect as could be made at that moment. This satisfaction was fleeting, for after the excitement has settled, I saw some things that I could have improved upon, and so the creative cycle starts once again.

In this case, the author of a book on the history of Big Basin was being interviewed by the paper, and a suitable photo was needed to accompany the article. As is often the case, there were stock photos, and many authors will offer them for the Journal's use. Some are simple candid shots, others the product of smart phones, but none seems to reproduce very well. Since I wanted to link her to the redwoods, I asked for suggestions on where the shot could be taken. After some discussion, we chose Shannon Park near in Redwood City.  Since I would have between 3:00 and 4:00 pm to make the photo, I drove to the park the day before to both locate a suitable background and to see what sort of light I'd have to work with. Luckily for me, I found some redwoods that would be back-lit during the session. And due to the landscaping, I could pose my subject on an elevated terrace that would allow me to shoot from a low angle. 

Left: Photo without supplementary flash. Right: Flashes used to brighten the background.

On the day of the shoot, I arrived about an hour early to give myself plenty of time to get set up. First, I took my light stand and set it to a height of 5' 7", my subject's actual height, and positioned it to take advantage of the background. By slightly changing my location, I could position the light stand, and later my subject, in a puddle of light created by an opening in the branches. Now if had used a tripod, the alignment could have been far more precise, but I decided to avoid the hassle of setting one up.

Note To Future Self: It hadn't occurred to me to mark the exact spot where I placed the light stand. This way, I could have had my subject stand in the exact same spot each time. Unfortunately for me, I chose for my "mark" a crack in the asphalt, and as you would expect, I forgot which crack it was. It would have been so easy to make an "X" with some gaffer tape on the ground, and simply remind my subject to stand on it. Oh well, next time.

If you re-examine the twin photos, you can see that the leaves of the tree are much brighter than the left hand image. This is because I placed a pair of flashes on the ground, pointing up at the lower branches for the second shot. This gave the background some necessary detail.

My main light source was  Adorama eVOLV 200 speedlight used with a collapsible softbox. It was positioned about 5' away from my subject's face, feathered slightly to improve the lighting "wrap" around her head. As the session progressed, my subject became very animated when discussing the Big Basin forest, so I simply asked to her to look up a bit to convey her enthusiasm for the grandeur of the great redwoods. It all seemed to work, and she was quite pleased when I showed her the image I had selected. I remember repeating "71, 71", to be sure that I submitted her favorite image from the shoot. 

Robbed Of Context: I got a hard-copy of the paper when I learned it had been published. I was a bit disappointed when I saw how it was cropped - tight on the face. Gone were the expressive hands, and with it, something of the essence of who this dedicated author really was. Under these circumstances, a straight on head shot might have been better, or been equally appropriate. Still, I really enjoyed this assignment, infected as I was by the enthusiasm of a very talented writer.

Working on location is both challenging and fun. I have managed to pack almost everything I needed into one rolling duffle bag. Cameras and accent lighting have their own bags, which makes coming onto the set fully equipped and ready for anything relatively easy.