Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

First Session of 2025 - Queen of Hearts

My first official shoot of 2025 was with Lady Cels on January 4 th , to shoot her Queen of Hearts cosplay based off the NoFlutter Design. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 60-inch umbrella with sock 1 rectangular soft box 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 1 Platypod Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Primary Red Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps   Gold ring wedding altar pieces Playing cards Flowers Styrofoam block Scotch tape     The set up The inspiration for this shoot was obviously the Queen of Hearts, but I took my set design cues from the original NoFlutter drawing.  I wanted to create something similar to the swirls used in the background of the image, so I started looking at wrought iron garden fences and ended up on gold we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Snow Session

On January 9 th , Washu Cosplay and I did a slightly impromptu snow session at Great Falls National Park.   This was possible because of the passing of the Explorers Act which allows photography in a National Park with a model without a permit.   Before you get too excited, the law limits equipment and the size of the party; you are allowed your camera, tripod, and handheld lighting equipment, and the group can be no more than 5 people, which includes the photographer, model, and assistants.   So, there are no big lighting setups or big crews; for big shots, you will still need a permit.      For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 1 speed light 1 light stand     The set up For this shoot I was mixing flash and natural light.  In most cases, my model was partially backlighted by the sun.  Thus, I u...
Post a Comment
Read more