Photographing a portrait of someone must tell the story, learning the story must come before you put camera to eye…

Over the years I have loved photographing my friend Arlyn Jiminez, who is also a superbly talented metal artist. He makes sculptures for his own art but for commissions as well. Here and there some galleries even show his work… Ariodante Gallery in New Orleans will be showing some work of his in the near future..stay tuned.

I wanted to go by Arlyn’s studio sculpture studio in New Orleans to demonstrate some mixed lighting portraits using some new gear I got. I will be doing alot of this type of instruction in my “Art of the Photographic Portrait” photography workshop on August 20th at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art, but I wanted to show those interested what is possible….really, anything is!

Explaining the 3 Light Portrait Setup

I was using a 3 strobe setup, also know as a 3 Light Setup, using natural light, and 3 Paul C. Buff Strobes with grids and colored gels. In the shot above I had no gel on a 30º grid on his face, a blue gel w/ a 40º grid on the tools in the foreground, and a orange gel on a 10º grid for the warm look on the background. I had a video done of this setup you can see here: