The Scene:
If you travel a few miles South towards the outskirts of Canton, Ohio, you'll find an abandoned building which used to be called the Hercules Engine Factory. It's been out of commission for sometime, so right away I knew this would be a perfect location for promo shot for a musician. For being abandoned for a while, the area was well kept.
Gear:
The camera used was the Nikon D600 with the 24-70mm f2/8 lens attached. The D600 has been updated by Nikon with a new shutter mechanism and cleaned sensor. I just use one flash, the SB-900 which sat camera left.
Making the Shot:
Creating the shot, I wanted to keep things relatively simple. I placed the SB-900 on a light stand to the left of my subject at 1/16th power. Looking through my viewfinder, I decided to cut the light by 2 stops to cut down on the ambient light and use the flash to fill my subject. At 1/160th/sec I used the widest aperture of 2.8 to cut out the focus of the background. The hardest part wasn't getting a dramatic exposure with the flash, but cutting out the glare of my subject's glasses. So I raised my light stand slightly higher than my subject to cut away the glare.
Editing and Processing:
My editing process begins opening the Raw file in Lightroom. I love to work with presets to cut down on processing time and a particular I use probably 85% of the time is my favorite. It slightly desaturates the skintones while adding contrast to the overall image. I bumped up the clarity to +31. This setup usually leaves a dramatic look in which I was looking for in the beginning.
Looking Back:
The one thing I might of changed now is I would of raised my light stand slightly higher to remove all of Lindon's glass flare in the shot. But really doesn't bother me as you can make out both of his eyes.
