Sweat And Gobo’s

Buffalo Bills Linebacker Joe Andreessen

Portrait shoots are somewhat rare for me and I usually ask myself why that is. I always end up loving them.

Evans Bank approached me with a bit of a last minute shoot and I was all in. They had reference shots and a pretty strong concept and a Buffalo Bills linebacker… hell yeah. I had a few days to think through a lighting setup and came up with this. The main players are a DIY snoot and a ‘custom cut’ paper plate with some rare earth magnets so I could rotate said gobo.

A gobo is an object placed inside or in front of a light source to control the shape of the emitted light and its shadow

One of the notes from Evans Bank was sweat! A lot of sweat. So we brought on Buffalo’s sweat queen herself Katie Ambrose. and she absolutely crushed it.

Joe ended up being a nice dude who despite not having a lot of time in front of a camera was a total pro, taking directions well and coming ready to work.

Cool shoot, fun idea and I’m curious to see how Evans ends up using these in their campaign.

Crew shot! Thanks to y’all.

Childhood Memories & New Lenses

My parents cleaned out their basement and unearthed several trays of matchbox cars almost the same day as an RF100mm F2.8 L Macro got delivered. Light test time!

Seeing these 40 year old relics was …weird. I have a lot of deep seated memories of crashing, smashing, burning, and blowing them up with fireworks. And who else used their bath tub as a race track? If you threw certain cars around at the right speed you could get them to zip around the walls of the tub 2 or 3 times before they fell into the water. Man I was a cool kid.

Since I had just taken delivery of a new Canon RF mount macro lens this was a perfect test to play with the new CA control ring on it. It’s a neat little feature that I will be using in the future for sure. And holy shit the new RF mount lens series are so sharp. This 100mm macro is no different.

After I had a few shots in the can I realized the overview of the cars was just plain boring. So I started punching in on all of the tiny little details that I also fixated on as a little brat. Much cooler.

This was just a goofy light test with the cars. I think I can do something better with them and it involves stop motion. So I’ve ordered a little animation rig and started playing with green screens. You haven’t seen the last of my shitty little cars!