Portraits

After shooting for a newspaper for 12 years, I met a bunch of creatives. I began a personal project of making portraits of them in their studios and workspaces. This guy is a metal artist and allowed me to shoot in his shop. I interview the folks before I make a photo. He has a bad-ass f-bomb-dropping public persona. When I asked him about it, he said as he is getting older he has developed a soft side. This portrait shows his badassness in deflecting harm from a helpless chick. I love his look! I flooded his shop with red-gelled flashes, snooted a yellow flash into his hand to accent the real sparks (being generated by his partner hitting a piece of metal with a grinder camera right), and lit him with a beauty dish and a strip hair light. We did a shot of the chick in his hand right after the original shot was taken and composited it in Photoshop. Canon 5dMkIII, Canon EF 70-200. 1/125, @70mm, f2.8