Yesterday I stopped by the New and Improved Smash Photo for a short session with the Incredible Jason Soaris. The shoot went well (a feature with David Griffin Photography;), but, what took it over the top was my decision to go out side and do some sun-over powering 1 light magic!The result was standard fantastic and I was especially happy because of my test subject… my son Xavier! The kid is hilarious. With a simple hood wife beater and a side slashed hat my son became the well known hood character Lil Cookie Bake!

The lighting setup wasn’t complicated at all. All I did was setup a 400 watt Clo-Wens flash with a 24×24 inch ebay softbox and grid with the inner baffle (for extra softness) at a 60 degree angle about 1.5ft over his head, 4 feet away and full and blasted him and the wall at half power to get f8 (to control the flashes intensity), 1/200th (to darken the overall ambient light), ISO100 (to get the best quality image with the least amount of digital noise). Now, that explains it. How bout a hand drawn diagram check the pics of course!

The overall goal was to establish a Lighting quality that was a mix between dramatic and soft. Soft explains my choice of light modifiers. Dramatic explains my choice using a grid, overpowering the sun and not using any fill light source. I felt that the best way for me to accentuate the character (garbage look) of the location was to shoot it rather harsh. Here’s a piece of irony. Because of where the light source was, it was soft on the subject but (because of the distance between the subject and the background) harsh on the background!

Speaking of the new and improved Smash Photo… they upgraded there sinage as well as installed some killer frosty new air conditioning! Here’s the new sign!

Don’t forget too look up!