Hannah

The wonderfully expressive eyes of a young actor. Canon EOS 7D EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/2.8 1/80 ISO 800

She sits on a bench in front of a window and out of the darkness a spot light hits her.  This is the beginning, the very opening moments, the audiences seems to draw in its breath with her… and she sings.  The notes are soft and delicate  but with an undercurrent of strength that allows them to drift out over the people and pull them in.  They lean towards her to be just a little closer, to hear just a little more.  The music pulses and rises and her voice hits them with a power that pushes them back in their seats and they smile and nod and wait to hear her again.

One of the actors that I had taught in high school came to me recently looking for a headshot.  She has such beautiful and expressive eyes so I wanted a photo that emphasized that.  I was using two flashes mounted in shoot-through umbrellas and I placed them so that one was directly below the other right in front of her.  My camera was poking out between the two umbrellas.  Effectively the two umbrellas became one giant light source.  I put her quite close and over-exposed a bit to get a high key look.  I liked the way that the catch-lights in the eyes have a fairly natural look.

-Russell Berg

That Peculiar Silence

A headshot that I took of an intense young actor with remarkable blue eyes. Canon EOS 7D 50mm f/1.4 at f/5.6 1/200 ISO 400The young actor steps into the light.  She feels the warmth of it touch her cheeks, she feels the boards under her feet, she hears that peculiar silence of 200 pairs of eyes watching her, and she feels their anticipation.  The theatre is old and battered, a thousand different actors have walked these same boards and felt these same things.  She can feel their eyes watching her too.  She takes two steps to the right, downstage centre right, and breathes deep and slow.  It is time... to tell her story.

I teach theatre and I always take headshots of my actors as we prepare to perform.  I knew that I wanted to do something to accentuate the red hair and blue eye of this young lady.  I felt like putting her in a pose that was looking up at me, partially through her hair would draw the viewers eye in dramatically.  I was using two off camera flashes using Cactus V4 radio triggers to light her.  The key, at camera right, was in a shoot-through umbrella and was at a slightly higher power than the one at camera left.  I wanted fairly even light but this did produce a small amount of shadow.  Both lights were set low enough and the background was far enough back so that it went to full black.  I also made a slight increase to the saturation levels of her eyes and hair in Aperture.

-Russell Berg

Below is the picture I took just before the image above.  I feel like the two of them tell a bit of a story.