Saxophonist, Mark Taylor is one of the first musicians I met and worked with when I moved to Seattle in 1994. Over the years he has always been among my favorite musicians to work with as well as one of my best friends. In addition to being an incredible musician, he is one of the most down to earth, good-natured people I know.I have a fairly long list of potential subjects for the Leading Questions project. The main consideration for me when selecting my next subject is whether or not a have I concept for their photo. This one came to me when shopping at a joke store with my kids. I saw a bin of these Chinese finger traps and immediately thought they might make a good prop for a picture. Seconds later, it occurred to me that it would work well for a photo of Mark Taylor. Mark has a great sense of humor and an expressive face, it was easy to imagine him going along with it.
It's probably a good time to mention that I really try to match the photo concept with the subject, and my biggest fear is that a subject might find what I consider a humorous concept to be something that they feel makes them look foolish. That's the last thing I'd want. I really want them to be comfortable with what they're doing and how they are being represented. If a subject feels misrepresented in a picture, then I have failed in my basic objective, trying to express an element of who they are.
That said, I'm glad Mark liked the idea of the photo and we had fun shooting it. Mark had a broad range of expressions and was doing his best to avoid laughing when I snapped a shot. One of the things I found interesting is that Mark had never seen these Chinese finger traps before, something I thought every child had been a victim of at some point in life. He took them home with the intention of terrorizing his own children.
I thought quite a bit about how I wanted Mark's shot to look. I knew I wanted it to be a studio shot as opposed to on location. I recently saw an image that photographer Platon had taken of Annie Liebovitz and thought it looked good on a not quite black background, so I decided to follow this route as well. I initially considered using just one light, but decided that I might be able to create more tension in Mark's expression with light that emphasized highlights as well as shadows. A single light would have created correctly exposed skin tones accompanied by dramatic shadow, with the light scheme I chose, you can see that there is an emphasis on the strong highlights on the sides of Mark's face as well as nicely contrasting shadows on his wrinkled brow. I think this makes his expression "pop" a little more. Finally, the additional lights did a great job separating Mark's black shirt from the black background. (Actually, the shirt is mine. I made Mark wear it because I thought the little bits would add a nice element.)
To light this, I used a medium soft box directly in front of Mark, above and on axis with the camera. It was metered at f/11. Directly above Mark is a small soft box, lighting the top of his head and shoulders, metered at f/16. On each side of Mark is a four foot strip light, directed straight into his arms. These were both set at f/16 as well. Mark was actually sitting on the floor of my studio and there is a large, white circular reflector on the floor directly in front of him.
I shot multiple takes with my Canon 5D digital camera and then shot a roll with my Mamiya RZ67 using Kodak Portra 160 NC. I could have easily used the digital or film files, in this environment, they looked very similar and it was not hard to get the digital files to match the color of the film. The shot I chose is a film shot, it was simply the best shot. Sometimes, the 20 seconds moving from one camera to the next is enough to change a pose just enough to make the difference.
Here's a link to the interview: Leading Questions
Here's a link to Mark's site: Mark Taylor
Technical info:
Shot with a Mamiya RZ67 w/110mm 2.8 lens at f/11, 1/400th of a second, using Kodak Portra 160 NC film rated at ISO 100.
The lighting was provided by a medium soft box on axis with the camera as key, a small soft box over the subject's head and 4' strip lights on either side. A large, white, circular reflector is on the floor in front of Mark, helping to lift the shadows just a touch.
Triggered by Pocket Wizards
