News and Events
October, 2007
October was a great month for business photography. This month I photographed Dr. Daniel Papp, President of Kennesaw State University for the cover of a local magazine. The photograph was for an article about the possibility that KSU, the third largest University in GA, will get a football program.
This was big news, and Dr. Papp was being photographed a lot in October. Because of the demands of Dr. Papp's schedule, photographers were allowed only 15 minutes with him, often around lunch time, which is the most difficult time of day for an outdoor shoot. When the sun is overhead, it creates unattractive dark shadows under a person's eyes. Most photographers would have taken a reactive approach (and many did), simply finding a shady spot to shoot. I realized, however, an image about football needed to be outside on grass and that the best compostion would come from standing right in the middle of an open field with Kennesaw Hall as the background.
As you can see from the final image, the lighting is beautiful. Why? Because in order to get such great lighting at that time of day, I had to show up on site with a full "portable photography studio." I set up a large "flag," which put Dr. Papp in shade. After the unattractive sunlight was blocked, I added attractive light back with a studio strobe and a large softbox. Have you ever taken a picture of someone in shade and noticed that the background becomes completely blown out? That would have happened without all this extra effort. And had that happened the shot would have been ruined because it was important that the Kennesaw Hall was visible and properly exposed. In this case, some extra hard work produced an amazing shot under tough conditions.
At least it wasn't raining.
