Day 278

278/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

I've been wanting to do some portraits for a while, so today I convinced my buddy Jesse to sit for me.  

I've known Jesse for a long time now and I can safely say that he is a badass. He's young (he's just now graduating high school!) but he's wise beyond his years and we've always had a special bond. The kids a pretty smart too, he just go into to UCLA for pre-med, which is mind-boggling to me. To top it all off, he's always been pretty stylish, and his flock-of-seagulls haircut seals the deal with the ladies. The kid has a lot going for him. 

Jesse's portrait has been a long time coming. We've been talking about getting together for a while, but it's hard because he lives back in my home town and my trips home have become less and less frequent. I happened to be home for spring break though, and while I had almost none of my lighting gear, we were both free so I figured I'd give his portrait a whirl. 

His house is rad, there definitely isn't a shortage of interesting locations to shoot in.  His dad recently put in a full-blown recording studio that's almost like a playground, and the actual house is filled with guitars, pianos, and tons of eastern art. The studio was being recorded in today, so we decided to shoot in this cool little sitting area in front of these big windows. 


When it came time to light things, I had to think a little bit. All I had was my camera, my 28-135mm lens, a flash and a sync cable. Normally when I shoot something like this, I'd have at least 2 more cheap flashes on me, wireless flash triggers, some light stands and some umbrellas to soften the light, but since I went on my road trip, I was traveling light and I left most of my gear at home. 


So what I did was try to mimic the natural light in the scene but enhance it. I wanted to build Jesse up a stop or two from the background, but I didn't want the area with the piano to go too dark. Using the ETTL mode with my camera and flash, I set my light ratios, and used a slower shutter speed to try and bleed more of the natural light into the shot. The light from the flash is hard, but the natural light adds a soft touch, which is nice. The hardest part about the whole thing was trying to frame the shot (my zoom lens likes to creep on me) while holding the light where I wanted it with my left hand crossing my body, and then holding the camera and taking the picture with my right. I would have killed for a tripod or a light stand, but in the end I figured it out. I added a layer with a high pass filter in photoshop, and then set the blending mode to soft light, which added a little punch and brought out some detail. It made the wave on top of Jesse's head look especially nice. 


It was a simple one light set-up and it was pretty effective, I'm really happy with how it turned out considering the circumstances. Plus it was a good excuse to spend some time with Jesse, who I rarely get to see, so today definitely goes down as a win.