For once it didn't take long to come up with an idea for this challenge. I knew the perfect pair of shoes for the shoot, these neon-orange tuxedo shoes, and was able to be able to borrow them in time for the challenge.
Now. Thanks to [user]Enlightened[/user], I learned of a local photog who is going out of business. Before I knew it I had bought his seamless kit and an inexpensive strobe kit. And here is the result! I am very happy with it and although I still have a lot to learn about working with strobes, think I got off to a decent start. Now I can't buy any more photo gear for a year. :-)
The hardest part of this shoot, hands down, was the actual shoot. I set the camera to go off in bursts of 5 shots with only a 2-second interval between shots. So I got a very good aerobic workout! The tux outfit is from the good ol days in Vancouver, some 15 years ago now...which is probably why my knees were so stiff this morning!
Thankfully most of the outfit still fit, except the pants, which were kinda tight...:-/ very glad they didn't split! But as I haven't lost my somewhat androgynous looks, so once I got everything on, including the makeup, which does include facial hair (hairspray+real hair cut very, very fine+makeup brush = eh wala, stubble) as I'm trying to look like a guy.
The boobs are bound down with an 8inch Ace bandage, to enhance the illusion. So this makes breathing a little tricky, especially when you're a) trying to time the jump just right; b) get height; c) twist your body; d) kick feet to show shoes without risking smashing on your face on landing and oh yeah e) make eye contact and keep face engaged with the camera!
The cane is actually a plastic broom handle, with white tape on the end a la the kind of cane Fred Astaire would have used. I also shot with a sparkly gold-sequined and fake-stones vest, but wasn't happy with how my face looked in those shots, too deer-in-the-headlights.
But like I said, I'm very happy with this image. I had only homemade floods before and now I have seamless to work with and strobes - cheap strobes, yes. But hey, they work, and the luxury of being able to dial the power up and down is a dream come true for me. I suppose eventually I'll need more power and outgrow them, but I'll worry about that later when it's time.
And...I only bought the strobes Saturday evening the 17th, and shot this on Sunday the 18th...so glad they were pretty easy to learn once I figured some things out :-)
And oh yeah thanks [user]Bear_Music[/user] for the title!
pp: shot RAW, crop, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, clone/dodge bg, minor healing tool, some Viveza stuff, resize, some pre-sharpening stuff, sharpen and fade sharpen 55% in PS, save for web
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Nice and very original.
I would have loved to see a bit of soft shadow underneath. There are elements of shadow from the cane visible, but none from the dancer.
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