I was writing a book about some aspect of lighting and I decided to shoot a bunch of variations for possible book covers. I asked an attractive friend to pose for me. Since it was work I paid a modeling fee. This was exactly the look I wanted for the book cover but there is a tradition/precedent/agreement in book publishing that while the author has editorial control over the contents of a book, because the cover image is part of marketing for the project, the publisher has authority over the front and back covers. I'm sure if you are a super-hotshot-legendary novelist currently residing in Santa Fe you can make your own rules with the publishers but we newbies don't have that kind of power.
The subject of the chapter I was going to use this image as an example of was about modifying sunlight by using translucent modifiers. A fancy way of saying those pop up reflectors that allow you to take the covers off and shoot through white diffusion material. Cheap to buy and easy to use.
I decided I should do this image exactly with the method I was writing about so I put up a 50 inch round diffusion disk on a stand between my model and a hazy sun. The image had everything I wanted to write about going on in it. Blonde hair for highlight detail. Jet black shirt for shadow detail. A great out of focus background.... just for the heck of it.
The image was shot with a Nikon D700 camera using a 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens and just the diffuser on a light stand. It's an image I was quite happy with. Nothing over the top. Nothing too dramatic and certainly an image that would be easy to replicate for a reader of my book.
I can't imagine that a current Leica or Sony camera, or a more prestigious lens would have given me better results. Sharper? Maybe but I think this one is sharp enough on the model's face; which is where I wanted the attention. More resolution? Sure. Maybe four+ times the resolution. But the original would fill a book cover with 300 dpi's of information so to what end?
Image created on December 19, 2008. At 3:15 in the afternoon. Can't believe that was almost 15 years ago!!!
Just reminiscing while other people discuss monochrome cameras. I'll get around to that as soon as my Q2 Monochrom gets here.... gotta test these weird and off the wall conceptions of preferences for myself...
3 comments:
The super hotshot novelist residing in Santa Fe (if you're referring to me, there are several of us, including George R.R. Martin, the Game of Thrones guy, and Doug Preston, of the NYT #1 best-selling Prendergast novels) has two things to say.
#1 -- I never have much to say about the covers and have, in fact, never even picked the title for any of my books. My second Letty Davenport novel, out this past Tuesday, is called Dark Angel; I wanted to call it, "Letty Gets Laid." The publisher said, "John, let us do the titles." I still think mine was better.
#2. Some years ago, a woman who was very, very close to me, expressed a slight interest in photography. In an excess of enthusiasm, I bought her (okay, my now-wife) a Pentax and a bag of lenses. I think she used them twice. I think she might have taken a class. In any case, I now have an obsolete Pentax camera and (sometimes Lady Luck kisses you right on the sweet-patootie) a bag of lenses that all work natively on the new Pentax Monochrome. If you (Kirk) would buy the tax-deductible body to experiment with, I would send you the said bag of lenses, on the condition that if you think the combination is really great, you send all the lenses back and I'll buy the camera myself. If you think it's not so good, and return the camera, uh, I don't know. You could send the lenses back and maybe I'll use them for coffee coasters. I just saw a really pretty good YouTube video in which the guy expresses the opinion that the Monochrome isn't that much better than B&W conversion from color, and I think that would be especially true of the Fuji film emulations.
Fujifilm S5Pro...got one heavily abused (shutter count over 150k, battered outside, but working perfectly) for around $80 two years ago, to see if its colors are all the rage that people say.
Yes, they are.
A very professional shot, in every meaning of this word.
And a classic one as well.
BR, Yoram
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