2024 08 20
I was up early this morning making editorial portraits of a band on the lakefront. We scheduled the shoot early, or at least what Iād thought would be early enough for some nice-looking sunlight low enough in the sky to be a bit more subtle. Of course, I woke up at 6:45am and the sun was already shining bright through my bedroom window, telling me to get my ass to set. By the time our scheduled start rolled around two hours later, the sun was intense and high in the sky, making it a challenge to find a nice exposure for my four subjects.
My strobe was maxed out and my ISO was bottomed out, yet my aperture was far more stopped down than Iād wanted it to be, making the beautiful Chicago skyline well in the distance beyond my subjects to be sharp and in focus, without anything I could do about it. I paused shooting and dug into my camera back in search of the ND filter I knew Iād left back at the studio in my never-ending reshuffling of my bag to accommodate whatever next assignment Iām being tasked with. Sure enough, it was nowhere to be found, however, I did have a random orange gel large enough to completely cover my lens. This gel, designed for an LED light I no longer even have, has been hiding in my bag for years without ever getting used ā until today!
Editorial assignments are fun because they allow me to let a bit loose and try stuff. Of all the hundreds of images I made this morning, perhaps my favorite ones are the ones made while holding a cheap, orange, plastic gel over my lens because I thought why not (and wanted to open up my iris just a tad bit more and needed all the help I could get)!
-Clayton
Driving down a rainy road. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
I was up early this morning making editorial portraits of a band on the lakefront. We scheduled the shoot early, or at least what Iād thought would be early enough for some nice-looking sunlight low enough in the sky to be a bit more subtle. Of course, I woke up at 6:45am and the sun was already shining bright through my bedroom window, telling me to get my ass to set. By the time our scheduled start rolled around two hours later, the sun was intense and high in the sky, making it a challenge to find a nice exposure for my four subjects.
My strobe was maxed out and my ISO was bottomed out, yet my aperture was far more stopped down than Iād wanted it to be, making the beautiful Chicago skyline well in the distance beyond my subjects to be sharp and in focus, without anything I could do about it. I paused shooting and dug into my camera back in search of the ND filter I knew Iād left back at the studio in my never-ending reshuffling of my bag to accommodate whatever next assignment Iām being tasked with. Sure enough, it was nowhere to be found, however, I did have a random orange gel large enough to completely cover my lens. This gel, designed for an LED light I no longer even have, has been hiding in my bag for years without ever getting used ā until today!
Editorial assignments are fun because they allow me to let a bit loose and try stuff. Of all the hundreds of images I made this morning, perhaps my favorite ones are the ones made while holding a cheap, orange, plastic gel over my lens because I thought why not (and wanted to open up my iris just a tad bit more and needed all the help I could get)!
-Clayton