I was fortunate enough recently to work with Long Island Pulse magazine for their March 2012 issue. One of the features in the issue is their annual “Top Legal Eagles” award winners. Below are the tear sheets from the magazine. I’ll be posting some behind the scenes information and additional photos from the shoots soon.
Along with the “Top Legal Eagles” assignment for Long Island Pulse magazine, I was also asked to shoot the cover of the March 2012 issue. This was very exciting for me since it was the first cover that I was going to shoot and I liked the idea behind the cover image. The art director at Long Island Pulse sent me an email with a very rough sketch and some reference of what they wanted to create. The idea was to use Rene Magritte’s painting The Son of Man as the reference for a story on, basically, what has happened with our economy and what it’s like to be out of work for an extended period of time. Honestly, I’m not one to get into all the details of a story like this. I’m a visual kind of guy and like to stay positive and creative. I recommend you find a copy of Long Island Pulse and read the story though. It’s pretty interesting. Plus, you get to see more of my photos. :)
SHOOT INFO
This cover photo is a composite of just two images. The first is obviously the portrait of the man holding the sign in front of his face. I shot this at Long Island Pulse’s headquarters in Patchogue, NY. A gray seamless background was used for easy compositing later in Photoshop. Lighting was a little more “complicated” than I usually use but it worked great for what I wanted to accomplish. The Elinchrom 39″ Deep Octa is flying high above and in front of the model as my key light. I then wanted to get the illusion of more daylight falling on the model’s clothing and hat. I used a bare Elinchrom Ranger Quadra high and behind the model to get some light on the hat and shoulders. Then lights were placed at almost 45 degree angles behind the model in small strip boxes for additional light. These lights were borrowed Alienbees that the art director had in the office. Finally, I used a hand held reflector just below the camera and in front of the model to fill in the shadows behind the sign. Below is a lighting diagram to give you a better idea of how this portrait was lit.
Here’s what the image looked like out of camera…
As I mentioned earlier, the composite consisted of just two images. The background landscape photo is from my personal library. I shot this landscape while on a cross country road trip with my wife a couple years ago. I honestly don’t remember exactly where we were but I’m thinking its Yellowstone National Park or in South Dakota. Here’s that background image…
After some time tweaking the two images and compositing them together in Photoshop, I was able to create the cover image. Although I don’t usually create these kinds of images, as it’s just not my typical style, I am still quite happy with the final results and honestly, how can I complain about getting my first cover?
Rick.
Mark has worked for Wenner Bread Products for over 22 years as a truck driver. That’s a long time to be behind the wheel of one of those beasts but after talking with Mark about his job, I now understand that it is just something that he loves to do. Mark is responsible for delivering truck loads of products to distribution warehouses and high quantity customers of the company. I personally can’t imagine trying to drive one of those trucks considering the trouble that I had with a 30 foot RV during a cross country road trip 2 years ago. Mark is truly just a nice guy who is willing to do just about anything (within reason of course) for his company. When he was asked to participate in the “Portraits of Loyalty” project he didn’t hesitate one second to say yes. He even came in on his day off to have his portrait done with his truck. That doesn’t sound like a lot to ask but when I have him moving the truck all over the road to get the right angles and spent some time setting up lights with Austin while he patiently waited, I was very appreciative of him coming in that day.
This first portrait was shot on the road in front of the factories. I spent a little bit of time trying to get the full length of the truck in the shot. Although those photos did come out nice, I like the intensity of this photo showing the size of the truck relative to Mark, who’s also a pretty big guy. Lighting for this was just a white beauty dish with a gold deflector. Shooting up from the ground gives you the impression of the size of the truck (and Mark) as well as only showing the sky in the background. I wanted to remove everything from the background in order not to distract you from what really matters.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts about this project, everyone was asked to have two portraits done. One in studio and one in the employee’s respective department of the company. The photo above is Mark’s studio portrait, shot with just the 39″ Deep Octa.