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Cyber Blue

On October 11th , I worked with Dayvon on a cyber concept shoot. This shoot was designed around a pair of contact lens with a circuit board pattern. This inspired me to think about things like “Blade Runner”, “Tron” and cyber punk in general.   

For this shoot I used:

  • Canon 80D
  • 2 Speed lights
  • 2 Phottix strobes
  • 2 Phottix Rectangular Softboxes with a grid
  • 2 C-stands
  • Blue gels
  • Silver garage insulation
  • Backdrop stand
  • Black backdrop
  • Connectable foam workout mats

For this shoot I started out using four lights. The first two were small speed lights with blue gels attached placed on the floor aimed at the backdrop.  The backdrop was silver garage insulation, which looks like silver bubble wrap. The backdrop reflected the blue light forward providing a bit of rim light.  My main two lights were the strobes is rectangular soft boxes with grids attached. For this shoot I kept the lighting very low key, styled along that of a photo of Ryan Gosling in “Blade Runner 2049”.

I shot at ISO 100 with an aperture of f5 and a shutter speed of 1/200s.  I also took about 10 shots at ISO 100 with an aperture of F5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/200s.  My focal range varied from 18mm to 140mm with the most common focal length being 35mm.  The most common focal length is not 18mm because I was focusing mostly on the upper body and head shots, thus shrunk the overall focus area.

One of my favorite images from the session is the one below, because I like the overall feel of the image. The way the light is reflecting off the background give me the feeling of numbers or code running across a computer screen, lending to the cyber feel. The expression of his on his face makes it feel like he is some sort of tragic hero in a dystopian world and melds with the background.  It matches the feeling I was trying to go for based on the inspiration image.  When editing this image, I enhanced the eyes slightly by brightening just a touch so they still look natural but your attention is drawn to them. I also used Adobe’s new “neural filters” to smooth out the skin tone while leaving a manly texture on the face.  The neural filter is amazing and significantly sped up my workflow.  To finish the image, I did add a bit of a cool colored split tone, leaning towards the blues and a slight vignette.   

(Focal Length 80mm, Aperture f5, Shutter 1/200s, ISO 100)

This second image moves away from the cyber and moves towards a raw emotion. I like this image because it is strong and you have a mix of feeling from reflection, sadness, strength, and revenge. As you can see in the image, I removed the small speed lights with the gels and just relied on the two main strobes. The main light is coming from the upper left-hand side of the image while the light on the right is just providing a little bit of rim lighting to the model while providing a little bit of light to the background. When editing this image, I enhance the shadows to balance them out against the highlights in the image. I also added a circular mask that covers from the top of the head to about the elbow to adjust the exposure in that area. I also went in with the brush tool to darken the top of the model’s head to ensure the hair did not look overly bright. To finalize the image, I added a vignette. (Focal Length 18mm, Aperture f5, Shutter 1/200s, ISO 100)

(Focal Length 18mm, Aperture f5, Shutter 1/200s, ISO 100)

This shoot went well, and I love the pictures that I got out of it. I have been shooting more high-key lately and it was nice to work in the low-ley space, which I actually love shooting in. Dayvon is a great model to work with, takes direction well and is pleasure to work with.  If you would like to see all the images from the session click here.

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