Sean M.
A Portrait Session
A Portrait Session
Indy Hall's artist-in-residence, founder of THE STUDIO and very nice fellow to boot - Sean Martorana - asked me to help capture him in front of his work at a local eatery in Old City, Philadelphia. He'd painted the windows facing the street at Q BBQ on Chestnut Street as part of a local art challenge and wanted this recorded before his artwork disappeared forever -- when the windows got cleaned.
Our initial plan for the shoot was filled with visions of sun rays blasting through the windows, casting all kinds of dramatic shadows on the floor and across Sean's face. Alas it was November, in Philadelphia, on a cloudy day. So naturally we ended up improvising .. We put an E640 up on a light stand as high as it would go. No dice. We put the light stand on top of a garden table. No dice. We put the light stand on top of a garden table on top of a garden table with a 30 degree grid at full power. Now we were getting somewhere. While somewhat bright and elevated - this could not compare with the star burning at the center of our galaxy. So Sean ended up staying as close to the windows as possible.
For the second set up one E640 was placed outside pointing directly at the small of Sean's back. After a few of those - I then added a 10 degree gridded E640 throwing light across Sean's face. Then all it took was telling Sean to give me some attitude for our favorite shot of the day .. which just so happened to be the last one :)
Our initial plan for the shoot was filled with visions of sun rays blasting through the windows, casting all kinds of dramatic shadows on the floor and across Sean's face. Alas it was November, in Philadelphia, on a cloudy day. So naturally we ended up improvising .. We put an E640 up on a light stand as high as it would go. No dice. We put the light stand on top of a garden table. No dice. We put the light stand on top of a garden table on top of a garden table with a 30 degree grid at full power. Now we were getting somewhere. While somewhat bright and elevated - this could not compare with the star burning at the center of our galaxy. So Sean ended up staying as close to the windows as possible.
For the second set up one E640 was placed outside pointing directly at the small of Sean's back. After a few of those - I then added a 10 degree gridded E640 throwing light across Sean's face. Then all it took was telling Sean to give me some attitude for our favorite shot of the day .. which just so happened to be the last one :)
