Doug Tetzner – Business Portrait

I’m a location photographer, I don’t own a studio, and I don’t much care to at this point in my career. That’s why when I’m contacted to do some professional business portraits, my mind starts spinning with potential locations near my subjects office.

Why not just set up a backdrop, some lights, and have a studio there? I can, and do, and certainly have, but if they’re willing I’m a big fan of telling a story, or at least creating a more compelling image, using the elements that are found around us. I scout out some clean backdrops, some cool street-scapes & buildings (request access when necessary), and always have one experimental idea if there’s time.

This image was the later of those, it was my “what if… let’s give it a try.” I wanted to do a daytime/dusk long exposure (usually long exposures are needed for night photography) where the cars would create blurred lines with their lights (that’s why it had to be dusk). As it turns out, Doug is pretty close to one of the few streets in downtown Ottawa with a median. Better yet, it’s got that SWEET turn lane arrow right there. This photo is actually two exposures, using a Fader ND MKII by Light Craft Workshop, what this allows me to do is create an image at 1/20th of a second to capture the subject, then slap on the fader ND and get an identical exposure (light wise) but with a much slower shutter speed for the final background image.

I hope to use the Fader ND a bit more, I originally purchased it to get some shallow dof photos using my speedlights (cuts the light so you can stop down your aperture while maintaining a sync-able shutter speed) during the day, and it will be great for landscapes when I want to dial in how much light to cut, rather than root around various different filters.

What do you think of the photo? Obviously it’s not for every application, I have a few more of Doug on Flickr too.

Posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2011 at 2:25 pm. Filed under: Portraits RSS 2.0 feed.