It is always important to keep up your creativity and shoot things that you want to do. Lately I have been shooting events for a company called teamphotogenic, out of Seattle. It’s a pretty good side gig, but the shots are all standard and kind of boring. I wanted to get creative with my camera and practice some photoshop techniques. This shot was an idea that I wanted to execute for myself and as a fun Halloween theme for my facebook profile picture.
Click to view larger. I used three lights:
SB-900 camera right through an umbrella (with half covered for bounce control), at 1/32 power.
SB-900 directly behind and above the model (me) for the hair light and separation from the background. flash head zoomed to 200mm and 1/32 power.
Pop-up flash set at 1/128 power – mainly just to trigger other 2 flashes.
Camera was at shutter speed 1/250 (to kill ambient light), f/9, and iso 200
I used a remote trigger, which is in my right hand, out of the frame, to focus and take the picture.
I tweaked it a bunch in photoshop to give it the cool color tempeture and dodged and burned my face and wrinkles to make them more apparent and grungy. I also “doctored” up the Corn Syrup and food coloring fake blood to make it look more realistic.
It is always fun for me to finish an image that I am excited about and get something that I am proud of, that is another reason to occasionally shoot pictures just for yourself.
I like taking pictures around this time of year because of the colors and creativity in pumpkins and costumes. I should have more Halloween pictures to come! Here is one that I took last year.
