This image was a blast to create. We were going for concept of a sort of dystopian villain in a near future. Zak did an amazing job at channelling his inner "Frank Castle" to create the sense of a powerful but confident villain.
The image was shot in studio and heavily composited to create the final image. I generated the background scene before the shoot using a combination of Photoshop, Stock photos, Midjourney, and Oniric effects. We then built a lighting setup to match.
We shot tethered to Lightroom using the Loupe Overlay feature to place the subject "sorta" into the scene in real-time as we shot, which I then projected to a large screen in my studio so that we could ensure the lighting and perspective perfectly matched the background.
I love how it turned out. :)
Love the color contrast
maybe a faster or longer lens would have singled him out a bit more. Also I could imagine a hairlight to have made him pop just a bit more.
Thanks, I appreciate your feedback. It actually is a composite; the background was added in the post. I opted to go with that amount of blur for a balance of subject pop and to avoid blurring out the background so much that the viewer loses context on the scene.
As for the hair light, I totally see what you mean, but it was actually intentional. I originally did have a hair light (that blue sheen on the side of his face also bled onto his hair), but I opted to remove it because I felt it made the scene look less realistic, as there is no light source above his head.
thanks so much though! I really appreciate your thoughts.