The seed for this portrait was placed a few months back, someone said to my wife "you must have a lot of nice photographs of the kids" to which she replied "nope, I'm the cobblers wife" (referring to the story of the cobbler so busy making shoes for his customers, he had no time to make shoes for his own children).Her response wasn't meant to be a "dig", not at all, it simply was the truth.
The sad truth.
Many photographers are too busy "paying the rent" to capture the people and things closest to them, and I realized that I really needed (and wanted) to break that cycle and take more images of the people close to me.
For them and for me.
Bob was next in line for several reasons, his birthday is just days away and gifts that are made for you are way better than those that are bought for you. Yes, even that afghan your grandmother made with colors that are illegal to put together. Think about it, every inch of that yarn slipped between her fingers, there is love in that afghan (and hopefully a hint of her perfume too). That's waaaay better than a blanket from Wal-Mart.
Bobs gardens, a labor of love for him, are in their summer splendor as well so the timing was right for two reasons.
And you may not realize it, but you already know him (a little), you have heard me talk about "my friend Bob" before.
If I had to describe him to a stranger it would be simple, "Bob's a good man".
I was happy with the results, as what I had envisioned came to fruition in the camera (which is not always the case).
Five lights might seem a bit daunting, but it's not, as you work through how you want a shot to look it's pretty simple. "I want this lit, I want the light to fall across these plants from right to left, and this should be lit using a grid..."
See if you can deconstruct how these images were lit and if you come back tomorrow I will explain (with pretty diagrams and lots of arrows) how it was setup. See ya then.
