Just wrapped up another round of shooting these new comic-inspired tees for Threadless!
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Photographers: click the set-up shot below for information on lighting and process!
It’s always a surprise to find out that one of your photos has been used by someone without your knowledge. Luckily this time it was for a buyers guide in Inked magazine for a tee I shot for Threadless. I was more than happy to see this photo I shot of my friend Natalie Slater of Bake and Destroy turn up unannounced! It’s always nice to have your name attached to something you’ve created when it’s being shown to thousands of people, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen. That being said I still love these, and I’m happy to further promote Threadless. If you like the tee, you can find one here. These are a few extra shots from this session:
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How to shoot a Wizard!
I recently had the pleasure of shooting a design called “Impasse” for Threadless.com. The shirt features a wizard in some of sort of standoff with a knight. I had a pretty fun idea as far as the lighting was concerned: I wanted to use a speedlight to illuminate the top of the wizard’s “staff”. Unfortunately it’s winter in Chicago and the Bristol renaissance fair doesn’t start up until summer, so tracking down a genuine wizard’s staff would prove difficult. I opted instead to go with a good old-fashioned boom-arm.
The next step was to find a suitable location for the shoot. There’s an underpass nearby work that’s very reminiscent of a cave which I’ve been using to shoot bear-related tees lately. I’m not a huge Lord of the rings fan, but I do remember seeing the animated version of the hobbit when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure there’s a scene where Gandolf is hanging out with Bilbo Baggins in a cave, so it seemed like a pretty good fit.
The next step was designing the lighting:
Seeing as wizards are typically portrayed as beings with supernatural capabilities, I thought it was only right to make the lighting sort of epic. I kept thinking of the song “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath and wanted to really bring him to life. On account of us shooting outside in the cold, it was also important to be able to set up very quickly before my models get too cold! I ended up bringing my Alien bees portable power pack (which totally rules and everyone should have imo), a 30” octa with grid, and 2 strobes. The octa would serve as the key-light while one of the strobes would be part of the wizard’s staff. The last remaining strobe was used for a little bit of rim-light on the non-staff arm of the wizard. I pictured the final image to be sort of ethereal, so spent a few frames trying to really coax some lens flare out of the strobe on the wizard’s staff by varying the angle and power output of the strobe.
A little photoshop work later, and it was ready to serve up to the internet!….
Suggested listening:
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January 27, 2012 - 12:15 pm
Good stuff! Didn’t even need a Wein. Great processing.. looks like modified VSCO to me!
January 27, 2012 - 12:36 pm
Haha,thanks dude. And no, the color stuff was all curves believe it or not.
This lens is really blowing my mind! I originally purchased this lens for it’s outstanding portrait capabilities and hadn’t experimented with macro photography much until now. It’s really fun turning household objects (like a floor fan) into super shallow depth of field craziness. Very cool!
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I was in the studio the other day shooting some headshots for my friend Sarah and did some super shallow DOF stuff with the 85mm 1.2. I love this lens!
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jake nickell - Really enjoying these process blogs! Especially love seeing the setup and details that you posted on Flickr.
admin - Thanks Jake! I’ll keep em’ up.