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Rangefinder
Magazine
This is one of six images he had to complete in a single day for Starwood Hotels and Resorts. All of the images were to be the same horizontal format, 13.5x6.5 inches. He says, “The assignment was given to us at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, photographed on Thursday and the final files had to be FTPed by 12:00 noon on Friday.” Now that’s a schedule! All of the images were supposed to have some sort of movement in them. Chris did not want to have to do all types of digital manipulations (due to time restrictions), so he opted for in-camera effects. “ At this location,” he says, “we had a great mix of ambient and window light, but we still needed a kicker (backlight) on the male model. We used a 4x8 foot white panel to light up the background and model. I made sure that the exposure was a bit over on the chairs and background area with an extra softbox coming in from the back right. “
I knew that the large window on the left, being overexposed, would give
me a great movement effect because of the white space against the almost
silhouetted model. We did several tests at various exposures, and 1⁄4
second gave us the best results with the model’s walking speed. When on location, Chris always carries a laptop on which clients can see the just-photographed images. He shoots right into the laptop, and the large screen is great for proofing with the clients. With special formats like this one, he usually places a cropping mask onto the screen to show what the final format will look like. According to Chris, “This image blew the clients away as soon as they saw it.” Chris used a Nikon D1X, shot directly into the Mac PowerBook G3 laptop. His used a 50mm f/1.4 lens. The scene was a combination of mixed light, available light and strobe. He used two White Lightning 1200 watt-second strobes and one 600 watt-second unit. The flash output was set to f/4.5 while the inside ambient light expsure was 1⁄4 second at f/2.8 plus 1⁄3. The final exposure was 1⁄4 second at f/4 at ISO 125 in RAW file format. A custom curve was used with no sharpening. White balance readings were taken off a gray card. Chris did the image editing
on a Mac G4 with dual processors and a LaCie 22-inch monitor. He used
Nikon Capture Control software for direct download,
Nikon Capture Editor software for file processing and Adobe Photoshop
7 for the final touches. The final output was 6.5x13.5 inches at 300dpi
in Adobe RGB 1998 profile, TIFF format. As the final step, Chris burned
the file to DVD for backup and FTPed it to the client. |
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Christian
LaLonde is one of four photographers at Photolux Studios in Ontario,
Canada. Chris specializes in commercial work and Photoshop. 