On assignment!

I like to work on photography assignments. I really enjoy them. They keep me sharp!

It is true that I can't accept all of them, and I cannot even ask for more. I have enough if I get one every four to six weeks: one week to prepare (studying on the evening/weekends), performing the assignment (one free day I need to take at work OR a weekend day) and one to two weeks working on the pictures at home (also on the evenings).

Needless to say I only accept assignments from people I really know well, and with whom I can build some close relation to achieve a good mood on the pictures.

Two weeks ago I had a challenge: I knew one of my victims (I mean subjects) very well, she is my lovely neighbor, but the photo shoot also involved another singer, someone for the costumes, a director and the location's owner.

The images are to an opera promotion and I had on mind something very dramatic in respect of lighting. I wanted shadows, projections and I also wanted to show a bit of the location! A great restaurant in a very old Haarlem neighborhood called "In 't Goede Uur".

The restaurant is completely dark, all the walls are brown and full of texture. There are cups, old bottles, old candles, posters, lamps, every kind of objects hanging around. It would be a waste to not include those details on the image.

The opera director was quite critical. She had already an idea of the image she wanted to project and that made my life very easy: I just relaxed and tried to go with her vision on how the cast had to look at the camera. And I had plenty of space to workout light :) a PARADISE!

I used two strobes: one on the right side of the singers, and one to fill up the environment and give some dimension to the walls around. The other light came from the windows on the left.


Even the images taken early in the morning, when the lights from outside were still very weak and the shadows got very accentuated are great. The sharp shadows add tons of drama:

Light was so beautiful that, when the situation allowed, I mixed. On this case, you see that most of the light is coming from the window, but there is a clear definition on her back, the chair.. there is dimension.

By midday the light was strong enough and I could do some expositions using only natural light. A bless.

For the post processing, I had those painter colors on my head. I just tweaked a bit the shadows (increased the shadows) without messing up with the highlights and darks. On the split toning, I gave a bit of green. Strong noise reduction applied to give this impression of painting (the lines that which define the contours of the image are softened).

I would for sure do some things differently. Specially regarding the zooming on the strobes. Sometimes I needed a more wide beam and I couldn't get it to work: the beam kept being focused and sharp. I should have diffused the light of the second strobe a bit.

What is also difficult is to setup into such a tiny place, where you have no more than 30 cm between tables. Luckily I am a very small woman. I wonder if I would be so tall as the singer himself. I bet he was more than 2 meters long... also a challenge on such a tiny place! Every time we moved around I needed to rearrange the lights and sometimes that was extremely difficult and time consuming.

Space was so narrow I couldn't use any other lens: only the 17-40mm.

Concluding, I had the biggest compliment I could expect: the team enjoyed the images! And that is for me a great sign that a good work is complete. I can leave my kids (the images) go their path and be thankful for the opportunity of working with those fantastic professionals.

More information about the Opera can be found here!