Day 178

178/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

This is my friend Alex.


Alex goes to Oregon, which is on the quarter system like UCSB, so we always end up coming home at the same time. Back in high school, every couple of weeks we'd grab some cigars and just hang out, and now it's kind of become a tradition whenever we're both home. So when Christmas break rolled around, I knew we'd have a cigar sesh coming up, and this picture was a no-brainer.

It's such a relaxing thing to do. We have what Alex dubbed "lifetalks", we talk about anything and everything and it's just a nice way to spend a few hours. It's something I look forward to every time I come home for a big break, and it's something I think we'll keep doing for a long time.

This is one of the two places we usually go to, this one just happened to be more photogenic. It's in the middle of a shopping center, and for a freezing cold Thursday night in the slow town that we call home, there was a surprising amount of people walking around. It didn't phase either of us, though, and after we finished our cigars, I busted out my gear.

I went back to my Ed Hopper tendencies for this one. I set up two SB-24's, and I got a lot of funny looks when I started placing the light stands where I wanted them. I picked out this bench in particular because it was right next to a lamp post, so it gave my light some motivation. The shopping center was WAY darker then I thought it was going to be, so I ended up using a pretty slow shutter speed (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/5 of a second) with my 28mm f/2.8 lens wide open. I put one flash to the right and behind Alex for a little separation, and I used a gel holder and put 1/2 CTO on it. Flashes are daylight balanced, so putting a 1/2 on there warmed the light up a little but left me with a cooler kick that would hit the smoke too. Then I put the other flash, with full CTO, in front of Alex and camera right. I think I knocked off ten frames or so before people started looking at us funny. I was stoked with it, though, and we broke it all down and finished the cigar.

Overall, it was a pretty good night, it was good catching up with Alex. On top of that, I'm happy that I'm making pictures again rather than just taking them. It feels good!