ALBA ROHRWACHER (actress)
Nikon D850 // Nikkor 85mm f1.4 // 1/200s // f11 // ISO 64
Shot with 3x Hensel strobes and 2x large black&white polyboards. In this image only 2 strobes are active. One main light and one rim light and the 2 polyboards just outside the frame.
This is a shot of italian character actress Alba Rohrwacher who is not so well known in the public eye although she regularly stars alongside actors like Angelina Jolie, Willem Dafoe, Ed Harris, Dakota Johnson, Marillion Cotillard, Olivia Colman, Stellan Skarsgård, Julianne Moore and many many more...
I had the pleasure working with her for short period of time. The shoot was 5-10 minutes long (honestly I don't remember) and on that day I had to cope with a few difficulties like 35 degree celsius (95 in Fahrenheit) heat in a totally improvised "studio" – which was actually a kind of storage room that I had to completely clear up myself and then setup the lights with an assistant.
My working Macbook Pro was in repair – with a new one still in the delivery process. So the Nikon D850 was tethered to a low-end Macbook I rented from a friend which was not calibrated and I could not judge the exposure correctly.
Normally I use a calibrated M1 Max MBP screen or a calibrated Eizo Monitor. I had to use my old trusty Sekonic light meter to take the guesswork out of the equation while the sun also shone into the "studio" and hit my computer screen. I had no time and equipment to block it off due to the spontaneous nature of this shoot. Finally I retouched the image with Capture One Pro and Photoshop and removed parts of the strobe because I placed it very close to her in order to get a high contrast.
Alba was very very lovely but pretty shy for an actress of her calibre. Although from experience I know that most actors are very uncomfortable in front of (photo) cameras when they don't have a role to play. It is hard for them to "be themselves". One actor once told me he has to imagine that he plays the role of a "guy being photographed in a movie" in order to trick himself being more comfortable in front of a camera. But if that gets him to be more natural – I take it. ;)
The coloring on her makes it look like she was removed from a sepia colored painting.