I found a killer photo online the other day and did a little investigating to check out the source. Turns out, the photo author had WAY more to offer than just the typical portrait session….He is totally the portrait master! And he was all about the Flash Flavor…. key thing is, he was shooting these puppies when I was in learning to drive! Yep, a film photograph…What the heck is that??? and he even used a light meter…I’m totally lost now…. This digital age has really taken off, and it is exciting to see photographers who mastered shooting weddings on film…Check his blog, linked later on in this post…. he is quite the photoshop guru!

Just remember, no chimping on this one….

“Somewhere in Time” by David Ziser

I was in Rochester, NY on a shoot a few years ago and, while filling some time one afternoon, wondered into a book store at the local mall. As I was browsing through the shop, I saw a poster of this location. I thought is was somewhere in Rome or Greece. The architecture “blew me away!” After inquiring where it was - I as told it was right there in Rochester, NY - it was City Hall!. I couldn’t believe it - I wanted to shoot there. After a few days of phone calling, I got the necessary permissions and set up the shoot. It still stands out as one of my favorite all time images.

Here is the technical background on the image. The image was made shortly after the noon hour so most of the building staff was at lunch. This is why it looks so empty. That said, you may ask… “Why is it so dark?” Here is the set up. I positioned the bride and groom on the second level of the building. I headed to the 4th floor. I had my assistant position my flash on the floor and out of site behind the bride and groom. It was set to about 100 watt-seconds. This flash supplied the nice broad wash of lighting behind the couple.

I then positioned my assistant behind the pillar to the left of the couple.
He was holding a small shoe mount flash which was fired with an optical slave. This is the flash that supplied the “front” illumination on the subjects. Since it was coming in from the left, it also provided the beautiful directional light.

The ambient light was metered at F8 at 1/60 sec, but I wanted the building to render much darker than the proper exposure would have rendered it. I was using a Hasselblad medium format camera at the time which will sync with the flash up to 1/500 sec. I put a 40mm wide angle lens on my Hasselblad, set the aperture to F8 and increased the shutter speed to 1/500 sec. Since the subject’s exposure was controlled by the flash, the reduction of exposure on the building was accomplished by “speeding up” the shutter to 1/500sec, thereby underexposing the building by 3 stops. This put the building’s lighter tonal values right where I wanted them - substantially darker than the couple. As I said earlier, the resulting image still remains one of my “all time” favorites.

 

Dang Beautiful shot! film too…beaut! Recently, David has been showcasing more of his beautiful portraits on his blog, Digital Pro Talk and he also finished up a tour last year themed “The Digital Wake Up Call”. Resident photoshop MASTER, Scott Kelby , threw some diggs David’s way in AWE of the delivery & content from his workshop, turned dvd… I’ve got my set coming in the mail!

cheers!
matt

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Photographers, David Ziser. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.