Le Switch band shoot at Runyon Canyon. Nikon D700, 1/250th, f/5.6, 24mm, iso 200, white balance set to “cloudy.”
This was a little complicated. I had a fairly specific idea in mind going into this, more than usual - I was looking to try and go for a magic hour look, something along the lines of Days of Heaven with old timey-ness. I actually spent the day before shooting scouting vistas at Griffith Park and then Runyon Canyon.
Initially, I was looking for something that overlooked LA that would look great at sunset, but honestly such thoughts are sort of a waste, as the vistas aren’t nearly as important as you would think, other than as background texture. Standing there, the view might be spectacular, but I find it contributes less to the final look of the shot than the character of the sky or the nature of the light.
For styling, the band was told to dress in tones of black, white, or brown [except Maria]. Or more to the point, “Depression era sharecropper hipsters.” Everybody wanted to wear hats, but I kept it down to two hats between Joe [far left] and Chris [second from right]. There was a discussion on who gets ties, who gets no ties, and who gets suspenders. Maria wore a vintage dress and I figured setting her in a quasi tangential picnic setting would offset the look of it just being a bunch of dudes standing around. Not quite sure if that succeeded, but I feel it looks nice.
The sunset was used as a back/side light, and two Nikon SB24s with shoot through umbrellas triggered via Pocket Wizards with 1/2 CTO gels off camera left as main lights. 1/4 power on both. In hindsight, I’d probably should’ve dropped down to 1/4 CTO. One of the SB24s was aimed towards the center cluster of the band, favoring Maria on the ground. The other was further camera left, favoring Joe on the far left side.
Post processing with RAW in Adobe Lightroom 2 consisted of a mild gradient filter for the skyline, with a little darkening of the exposure and tweaking the color of the sky to be slightly more golden.
The rest was in camera.
3 years ago
