How promo photos get done around here
Trillian_Stars like you've never seen her before: Drunk and Pregnant.
(In brief: Trillian's in a new play, we did promo photos, if you're not interested in how the pix got made, you can just skip to the photo go "ooh," and then move on down your friends page.)
So, trillian_stars is in a new play, it's called Boat Hole and it's part of the Philly Fringe Festival, tickets are $15 and you can find out more about it on this web page here. One of the projects this weekend was to do some publicity photos. I wish I'd thought to do some more "behind the scenes" type shots showing the lighting setups but ah well, next time.
Trillian's bit of the play takes place in a bar where she plays a rather annoying beer-guzzling pregnant woman. I figured we could try rolling into the local pub Fiume as soon as it opened and seeing if they wouldn't mind a little photo shoot. Which brings up something important about photography -- I really think that one of the most important aspects of being able to take photos successfully is being able to talk to other people. Not just things like "can I take your photo?" but "can I use your bar" or "can I take a photo from the roof of your building" -- people skills = very important.
Anyhoo, meet Intern Monkey Addie Plum who's taking over from Intern Monkey lindsocerous who moved to Australia (who in turn took over from Intern Monkey Carl who's still in County for some foolishness we won't discuss) she held lights and carried gear and wrangled kittens.
To improve our chances of being able to take over the bar, I wanted to be able to say "we can be done in 15 minutes" and then be ready to do it in 5 if they said "no". So Addie and I practiced setting up some lights in the living room. trillian_stars said they all looked like I was lighting Long Days Journey Into Night instead of a comedy. I had lots of moody shadows.
We used a (knockoff) Lastolite Ezybox softbox for speedlights and figured out how best to angle it for "comedy" rather than "drama" and once I was pretty sure we could setup and be shooting within 60 seconds, we went over to the bar where they were happy to let us do the photo.
I got in close and used the fisheye not only because I love the fisheye, but because, you know, fisheyes are funny (and this isn't Long Days Journey Into Night). I shot with a slow shutter speed to catch ambient room light and set off the flash with a pair of Pocket Wizard radio flash triggers. I intentionally shook the camera while the shutter was open to blur the ambient exposure - so you have the blurry, available light image, and "on top" of it, the sharp image caught by the flash. That's what gives things the dark "glow". We were done in ten minutes; then we drank the props and went home.
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