Man Cold

Unfortunately, I have a cold (man cold). So whats a photographer going to do? Well take some photos of course.

First up the lighting. This was a simple 3 light set up, with a diffused beauty dish, 45 degrees left, and a strip box back right and a blue gelled speed light behind me, lighting up the background. I didn’t want the lighting to be too harsh but I did want some shadow, hence, the defused beauty dish, instead of an Octa. I added a blue gel behind just to add a little contrast colour and also, blue is a signifier for cold.

To shoot the photo, I used my D800, with a 35mm f/2 lens (f/8, 1/160 of a second).. The 35mm close up, has little compression exaggerates the features, which gives it more of an uncomfortable look. which is how I have felt today, I was around a foot from the camera lens. I put the hat and scarf on to show that I was cold. Like a lot of my photos, the 3 above photos, evolved organically, from the original idea for the photo (which you can see below).

Post processing was a case of making everything look harsh. I desaturated the image, taking the life out of it and adding clarity/structure, I also added a vignette. I had originally planned to only post 1 photo but I noticed, that the 3 worked together rather well, showing me going through a sneeze. I actually wasn’t and these photos are actually shown out of order in which I took them but it worked best that way