Finished up a two week stint at the Santa Fe Workshops, and had some wonderful folks in front of the lens for class demos. John Wayne Haynes, above, has the classic face that can only be arrived at after years of cowboy life. Likewise, Billy Manns below. Both are shot standing in the same place, with the same lighting setup.
The portrait of John in B&W is done with one of my favorite combos, the Nikon D500 fitted with the 16-80 DX Nikkor. As a camera and lens duo, they’re a super light and sharp tandem. The vertical above was shot with the D5, and a 105 f/1.4 lens. The lighting setup is below.
Pretty straight up, no frills light. Two Profoto 1×4 RFI soft boxes were placed right and left, and my subjects lived in between. With Billy, because Trey, his dog, chose to pose with him (he never moved, amazingly wonderful pooch) we had to move the lights back a little bit to accommodate the camera angle. With John, they were in much tighter. I realized when I shot the full length portrait of Billy including Trey and the grass, it gave the pic a bit more of a “studio” look and feel than I normally go for out there in the world, but I ended up liking it. It’s also shot at f11, which means it’s way sharp. Both sessions were done back to back and because I was teaching, and yakking my way through the sessions, so they were very brief. Got Billy in front of camera for a first frame at 6:28 and was done at 6:34. The D500 portrait of John was done in two minutes, according to the camera.
The light source to camera left is a Profoto B4, which is a wondrous monster of a location battery unit, and the camera right light was a B1, which is a go-to source out there away from electric. Glad I had them both. Many thanks to Profoto USA for supporting my Santa Fe Workshops classes this year! They gave the class four B1 units to play with, and light shapers galore. It was fun, and a great education for the participants.
More tk….
Great captures (as always) and thank you for the behind the scenes narratives!
I can always tell the remarkable image making of the D-5. Awesome portraits… really heart felt Joe. You ARE one of my mentors and continue to inspire me.
Thank you TBow!! All the best…..
Love the photograph of the man and the dog (and the lighting). Would look great in b&w also.
What was the ratio between the two lights?
Hi back…probably about 3:1 somewhere in there….
B&W is amazing!
That’s Lit. Amazing idea on how to use the lighting effect perfectly. Thanks for sharing guys.
Excellent. Easy light set up and fast quality work. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much for sharing these two amazing photos and some of the gear you used to get them. I really could look at the shot of John Wayne Haynes all day.
I have a quick question though.
How do you decide which images to shoot in black and white and which ones to use colour? I’ve only just started taking photos and I’m interested in getting some black and white shots but I’m not sure if there are any hard and fast rules I should follow with regards to subject, composition, lighting etc. Maybe even if you shared your thinking of why you wanted John’s portrait in B&W and Billy’s in colour?
I want to try and avoid the pitfall of making something black and white purely for the sake of making it black and white.
Any quick tips you have would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Blake…just loved the color of the pic w Billy and the dog. John simply appealed to me in B&W so much so I shot it in monochrome…
Thank you