“Ahhhhhhh…” the sound of joy you make when you drink a cold beer after a hard day of work…

Letter A, day 3/14, 3/365

First of all, special thanks to the beautiful and witty Kanae Bamba for this appropriate and fun prompt. I miss you, Kanae! Thanks for contributing!

This frame is yet another instance of a lot of planning for naught.

I imagined this frame as something different on a few fronts. To make a long story short, I wanted the lighting to be dramatic instead fairly even; I wanted his expression to be somewhat serious (in a relaxing way), and I wanted the viewing angle to be wider.

What went wrong?

I sketched this out during my lunch break. I imagined a man, most likely my friend and coworker here, Micah White, with his body toward the camera, but with his face toward the light source. I also imagined the small softbox I used positioned across this “ice bar” from Micah, the light mostly falling on his face. I also imagined some sort of light maybe hanging from the ceiling, but perhaps altogether absent.

I started out by shooting a few frames of my good buddy Se-jun, with whom I drank a couple of beers before my model arrived. In just those few test frames, I knew I wasn’t going to get the shot I wanted. I left the strobes dialed in and set up for when Micah walked through the door. When he did, I immediately sat him down, told him to give me an “Ahhhh,” and snapped the frame. Even though it wasn’t what I wanted, I liked it. I was surprised.

Still, though, I moved Micah around the bar, trying to get something that I liked more than this gut reaction-inducing, luke-warm shot. I didn’t get it.

Lesson learned – practice shooting in really dark spaces like an underground bar before thinking you know what you’re doing. How does shutter speed and amount/position of lights used affect the ambient light situation in the venue? Considering what I have planned in the next couple days, I had better sort this out, or I’m going to have crap for frames.

I’ve got a lot to learn.

Strobist:

Nikon SB-600 into small softbox very high camera left, down onto the subject, perhaps 1/32. Nikon SB-26 VAL’d, bare, up into the ceiling, maybe 1/4.