Susi Damilano

The assignment was to submit a photograph of Susi Damilano, the Director of The Play That Goes Wrong. The venue was the Sab Francisco Playhouse located near Union Square. Parking is away on my mind when working the in city, but there was a convenient parking garage just three blocks from the theater. I arrived at exactly 11:00 am, and was whisked into the theatre to get my lights in place and to determine exposure. In the meantime Ms. Damilano brought a lobby poster to use as a prop. I was lucky the the "G" was reversed, a shoutout to the mishaps that were part of the play's central theme. This would become the foreground for the photo, so I had to create the lighting around it. 

Since Ms. Damilano was the director, I wanted the seats in the background, rather than the stage itself. What I found was an interior that was so dark I could only light a small portion of the background. I had only one AD200 flash and my one 12' tall light stand, so I did my best to elevate the flash as high as I could, and aim it almost straight down. The objective was to create a relatively large area of edge lit chairs to emphasize their shape. By committing my one powerful flash to "background" work, I would need to use speedlight-sized flashes to light the rest of the photo. As can see from this first photo, the fabric portions of the seats were too dark to be discernable.

As it turned out, I still had two additional light stands and two speedlights. One would be committed to being the key light, so I mounted the other speedlight on the second light stand and positioned it, camera right, to throw some light on the backs of the seats. This could be dialed up or down, depending on how much detail I wanted to reveal.

White Balance: I wanted to create some additional separation between my subject and the background, so for fun, I adjusted the camera's White Balance Setting to 3800 degrees Kelvin. This would add a blue tint to background, and when I gelled my key light with a CTO gel, the flesh tones were rendered correctly, if not slightly warm. The gelled flash was shot through an umbrella, mounted just to the left of the lens axis. When working close to the subject, I am often shooting from below the umbrella, so the lighting tends to appear from just above my subject.

Just as I was finishing up, Ms. Damilano came in to see how things were going. She had a phone meeting at 12:00 noon, which was my deadline for completion. It was 11:45, so I told her that I was ready, and the shot would be over in a few minutes. This last estimate was accurate enough, and in a few exposures, I had my money shot.

In this cropped portion of the final print, you can see that Ms. Damilano is centered in the puddle of background light, while the accent light provides some separation of the hair from the background. I did not anticipate the "fill effect" of the "chair light" on my subject's face. I was hoping to get the light high enough to miss hitting her face, but it did. You can see the tiny triangular shadow below her chin, a clear sign of cross lighting. If I had an assistant I could have check this "on the fly", but once the shooting started, I couldn't spare the time for any fine tuning*.

With the shot in the can, I asked if Ms. Damilano would like a photo of Emi, the theater's "empathy dog", for her virtual scrapbook. Sure, so she and the dog came onstage. I made some quick position changes and made a few shots. Just for laughs, mind you.

The repositioning of my new subject moved the background off center, and to make room on the stage, I moved the "chair light" further off center. You can see that it completely missed my subject's face, giving me the shadows I was originally hoping for. Since I was running out of time, I contented myself with the subject's head being clipped. After all, this was a Social Media photo, something cute for friends and followers. Just for fun, I sent both of the images to my Editor. She answered quickly, and loved the shot with Emi. That one moved to the front of the line. 

I look back on the two photos, and am happy that the combination of lighting, white balance, and a CTO gel that produced two very nice photos. My next at-home project will be to streamline my lighting setup process. 

*There's an old saying: "Never let them see you sweat." When something is a tiny bit off kilter, it may be better to just let it ride, rather than disturb the rapport between the subject and the photographer.