Tuesday, October 09, 2007

City Hall portrait.....

I had the great pleasure of photographing Rae Gabelich yesterday. She is the Councilwoman for the 8th district in Long Beach and is one of its more progressive members.

I didn't have much time but I knew I wanted a few different looks, so I decided to shoot a few quick ones in her office in City Hall. The room had large windows so the light was perfect. We tried a few with her sitting then a few standing. At one point, I noticed that she had a map of Long Beach on the wall so I positioned that as a background.

Simple. Nothing fancy, but a solid portrait.

After a few minutes we went downstairs. I had been playing with my Norman 200b and a borrowed umbrella box for the last two weeks and wanted to use it for the portrait. My thinking was to do some nice hard heroic lighting with city hall looming in the background. Unfortunately, it didn't quite pan out. The building was too tall and the angle I was getting wasn't too flattering. It seemed a bit over-dramatic.

I ended up submitting the available light pics because it seemed to better capture her personality better than the ones with the strobes. Like they say, "The best laid plans ..."

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