my [JOE] blog: the dailies of a portrait & documentary photographer. who doesn't take pictures.

Carole•MUSIC•lighting…UlookHungry

Posted by jOe

My friend Carole just graduated with her Master's in Public Health from Tulane, but she wasn't so stoked about walking. As a result there were big plans in place to make sure she had too much to do that day to justify taking the time to walk, but that all fell through with the rain. So, as things go, we put together a last minute Blow-Off-Your-Graduation surprise party for her. There was a cake because it was a party. But cakes tend to look nice, and we were fishing for something a bit more, uh, tacky. Solution: finish decorating the cake ourself. Sarah, you would have either been proud or mortified; either way, strong emotions.

The result was the below. It's upside down, but let's be honest, who can tell. P.S. The "H" in the bottom-right was my doing. I kinda set the standard pretty low.

What's new.

And by the way, Carole was laughing, not crying. Although, I think in this case the latter might have been acceptable, too.

MUSIC.

In case you've grown tired of glancing to the right to see if I'll ever change the songs I'm "currently" listening to, just know, I have. Changed them.

A huge part of my musical digest is dominated by pre-1980's wonderfulness. As you can see, this is where I am. Right now. …maybe not in three weeks when I forget to update them, but for now.

Dyer Maker is one of those songs that got it's foot in the door because it's a plain-good song. But when I hear it, what really makes me feel good is remembering being nineteen and walking around in Washington D.C. by myself. I always like to explore, especially cities, so I was already in a good frame of mind. But at the same time I was away from all of my friend and family, and that tends to make me a little regretful. As I was walking I heard this amazing music (I hadn't never heard this song before then) coming from a cover band in a bar about a block ahead. And, because the place was absolutely packed, I didn't go in, I just sat on the ground outside leaning against the wall.

It was just me. Listening to Dyer Maker muffled by the nighttime mugginess that was July.

Okay, no, really I stayed outside because of the $10 cover. I had a dwindling food budget and that cover would have brought me dangerously close to being…dangerous. Yeah.

Everybody Plays The Fool. Come on, who doesn't love motown. Secretly or passionately, you're there. Don't lie.

Next.

It wasn't until the other day when Reshanda asked me what my favorite song was did I realize the strong attachment I have to This Old Heart of Mine by the Isley Brothers. I think before she had even finished asking the question, the answer was out of my mouth. It's as if it skipped my brain knowing that thinking about it would just slow down the same inevitable answer. What can I say. It's the best. There.

LIGHTING.

A while back my Dad sent me this website that lets you draft out your lighting set-up. I don't use it too often because I sketch it out by hand in a notebook, but it comes in handy for online stuff (mainly, it saves me from having to scan/upload my embarrassingly awful illustrations).

Here's how I did my latest facebook profile pic. It's nothing special, and it was a very simple, one-light setup, but it has kind of a dramatic feel to it, so I wanted to share it. In the illustration, I'm holding the reflector in my left hand and the camera shutter-cord in my right.

The only strobe I'm using is acting as a rim light to cut out my silhouette from the background. I used a super-thin depth of field (around f/2.2, I think) so that I didn't have to use a backdrop, just my regular wall. And I put the ISO very low and the shutter as fast as I could sinc to get rid of all the ambient light (the room was normal brightness). The only other thing was using the reflector to bounce a little of the light back to the front side of me, since I wasn't looking for a true silhouette. Also, I didn't gel the light because I was planning on doing it in black & white, so the color didn't matter. All in all, the whole thing took about 5 minutes!

Too good to pass up. The kids actually wrote the lyrics. Awesome! There are a lot of good things in this video. And it's local