Photoshoot Breakdown #2

My bassoon quartet recently underwent some personnel change, and we needed a new group photo. I was inspired by this well-known photo of Queen, and wanted to recreate it. The setup was simple, and I'm incredibly happy with the result.

I used a 22" softbox on a 300W strobe, with a diffuser installed inside the box, and a grid to focus the light to a small area. The strobe was mounted on a C-stand, with the softbox pointing nearly straight down (tilted slightly forward). You can see the setup in the raw shot here:

Lining everybody up to be illuminated evenly took a couple minutes, and only about a dozen shots were taken before we had one that was perfect. Some simple edits and cropping got to the final result rather easily, and I must say, I think I very faithfully recreated the look of the original photo!

Photoshoot Breakdown #1

 

I recently edited this photo together as a promotional pic for one of my musical ensembles. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out and I wanted to break down how I set up the shot and how I edited the photos together for the final photo.

My original vision was to have the bassoons set out in front of the subjects, larger in scale but still reasonably in focus. A fully black background would allow for blending the four photos together in post, and a single key light would illuminate the subjects with dramatic Rembrandt shadows. Here's a sketch of the setup I used:

The foamcore board was specifically used to ensure that no part of the subject would appear on the left side of the bassoon, and to black out the left edge of the photos to facilitate the final edit. I used a parabolic umbrella to reduce light spill, and with an already black background it was very easy to keep only the subjects illuminated.

A little airbrushing was used between the shots to blend each portrait into the background, but overall the digital edits were not too time-consuming. I like to do as much work in-camera as possible, and save myself the trouble in post!