philly

I took three portraits for the May 2009 issue of Grid magazine [.pdf]. I shot them all in one busy day. I caught up with University City High School junior Laquanda Dobson, above, after school let out in West Philly. The harsh sun is from camera right over her shoulders and highlighting her hair. The sun was tamed with a 1/200s shutter at f/8 and balanced with a SB600 on a stand out of frame to the left triggered by a SB800 on camera.

My first shoot of the day was over at Tria Rittenhouse with new chef Nick Mezzina. A lovely wine and small plate grub spot with a great banana panino which is what's in front of Nick above. He graciously let me have at the panino after we were all done. Slow shutter at 1/25s for lots of warm morning ambient light with a Nikkor 17-55mm at 17mm. SB600 on a stand to camera right and SB800 to camera left on the bar triggered by on-camera flash.

The final shoot of the day was at Pumpkin at 17/South – a small eatery which a bunch of my friends had been to and I've been wanting to go to for awhile now. Chef Ian Moroney let me snap away before the dinner rush arrived in his spotless kitchen as his camera shy sous chefs cleared out of the way. Mostly ambient light in this shot at 1/25s with a Tokina 12-24mm stopped down to f/5.6. SB800 + CTO gel on a cord held over my head bounced to the wall at camera right. SB600 + CTO gel at camera left didn't fire, but this shot looked better than the brighter shot.

Assignments are tons of fun. I got the three assignments on a Thursday and was told that they were doing final layout the following Wednesday, so Tuesday deadline. I got on the phone and email and worked out the details for 3 Friday shoots. I had a nice pace throughout the day and even had time to catch up with a fellow photog friend in Rittenhouse Square for a few minutes before the final shoot. Everything was ftp'd up to their servers Friday night and I was done.

I'm currently working on a fun rebranding shoot for iFractal, Frank's wonderful firm.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 @ 12:45 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or trackback from your own site. Your comments will be moderated [if you have never previously commented] but will appear as soon as humanly possible.